More, More, More... British Consulate Attacked. I Drag My Knuckles, Therefore I Aren't Evolved.

When Too Much Is Never Enough

Here we go again. The House of Representatives just bent over for President Bush to throw more money away in Iraq.
Excerpt:

WASHINGTON - The House easily approved another $82 billion for Iraq and Afghanistan on Thursday, a measure that includes sweeping immigration reforms and boosts the total spent on fighting terrorism since 2001 to beyond $300 billion. The vote was 368-58.

The Senate is to vote on the measure next week when it returns from a weeklong recess, and approval is expected.
The bulk of the money $75.9 billion is slated for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, while $4.2 billion goes to foreign aid and other international relations programs worldwide.

The bill also includes uniform requirements for driver's licenses across states, toughens asylum laws, authorizes the completion of a fence across the California-Mexican border and provides money to hire more border security agents.

Both the Republican-controlled House and Senate had promised to "scrub" President Bush's request to cut spending for items that did not represent emergency spending needs. But the bill carries the same overall price tag that Bush proposed in February, and he gets most of what he sought.

Full story: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050505/ap_on_go_co/us_iraq_spending

I thought that when President Bungler announced his intention to go to war, the cost of reconstruction would come from sales of oil that Halliburton would be pumping from the Iraqi oil wells. I have a question. Why, given the fact that Halliburton has been handed every piece of the "rebuilding" action in Iraq, and that it's gouging and financial mismanagement has become legendary, was the House of Representatives so eager to give the White House even MORE money to throw down the black hole that it has created?

Part of the answer may be, that tied to this legislation is a mindless piece of nonsense that will make anyone renewing a drivers license have to show at least 473 pieces of identification proving that they aren't A. A terrorist B. An illegal alien C. A non-registered sex offender (not applicable if you are a Catholic priest) D. A Martian E. Any, or all of the above. And since the gargoyles running the cathedral attached it to the measure, the bulk of which money is ostensibly going towards military operations (finally), it becomes impossible for many who oppose that part of the bill to reject it for fear of being labeled hostile to the troops. The irony in that is that the administration is solely responsible for sending those very troops into battle woefully underequipped. Well, nobody ever accused these bastards of not having chutzpah...


But We Really ARE Winning The War On Terror...

The British Consulate in New York City was attacked early this morning.

Excerpt:

NEW YORK - Two small makeshift grenades exploded early Thursday outside a building housing the British Consulate, just as Britons went to the polls in a national election. The blast caused minor damage and no injuries.

Authorities said they had no clear indication the consulate, which shares the building with several other tenants, was a target. The blasts blew out a glass panel at the building's entrance. Police were reviewing images shot by 17 security cameras at the building and other locations to try to identify possible suspects. One of the videos raised suspicions that one of the devices may have been thrown from across the street, police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said.

The devices used in the attack were described as replica grenades, normally sold as novelty items, that were stuffed with gunpowder and lit with a fuse. "We don't know who the particular target was at this time," Mayor Michael Bloomberg said. "There were no threats or phone calls."

Kelly noted that left wing Jewish activists demonstrated last month against another building tenant a board member of Caterpillar Inc. over the bulldozing of Palestinian homes. A sponsor of the rally, Jewish Voice for Peace, "only engages in nonviolent activities period," spokeswoman Liat Weingart said.

The FBI and police questioned and released a Dutch analyst for the United Nations' who was lingering near the midtown Manhattan office building after the blasts. In London, a Foreign Office spokeswoman, asked whether British authorities believed the blast was terrorism-related, said only: "Investigations are ongoing."
"We're not speculating about whether it's connected to the election," she added.

Exit polls indicated that British citizens narrowly gave Prime Minister Tony Blair a third term in Thursday's election, despite public anger over the Iraq war.

Full story: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050505/ap_on_re_us/consulate_explosion

Maybe now shouldn't be the time for me to state what I'm going to state, but here goes: I fully expect President Bungler and Vice President Go Fuck Yourself to use this attack to marshal even more arguments that will involve renewal of the Patriot Act and all the draconian measures that it includes. All in the guise of keeping Americans safe from terrorist attacks. Attacks such as the one that occurred this morning...


If A Knuckle Scrapes The Ground, And No Primates Are Around To Hear It, Does It Still Make A Sound?

The Kansas Stait Bored Uv Edyoukayshun began meeting today to discuss how best to cut evolution out of the discussion in their state's public schools.

Excerpt:

TOPEKA, Kan. - Eighty years after the first famed "Monkey Trial," a second one of sorts opened Thursday, giving critics of evolution a forum in which to attack the theory.

A State Board of Education subcommittee began four days of trial-like hearings on evolution, and witnesses were advocates of intelligent design, critics of evolution or both. The entire board plans to consider changes in June to standards that determine how Kansas students are tested on science.

The three board members presiding over the hearings are all conservative Republicans and receptive to criticism of evolution. Two of them, Kathy Martin, of Clay Center, and Connie Morris, of St. Francis, agreed several times with witnesses critical of evolution. "I was hoping this hearing would give me good, hard evidence that I could repeat," Morris said.

Gee, it couldn't be that this Morris character has an agenda now, could it?

Last year, the board asked a committee of educators to recommend changes but eventually received two competing proposals. One, the majority plan, would continue the existing policy of treating evolution as a key concept for students to learn. The other, the minority plan, suggests more criticism of evolution.

Some science groups and many scientists contend the board is being pushed to adopt language that would enshrine tenets of intelligent design in the standards even if that concept isn't mentioned by name. National and state organizations are boycotting the hearings, viewing them as rigged against evolution.

But intelligent design advocates say that's not true and argue that they're only trying to give students a more balanced view of evolution.

Evolution says species change over time and that such changes can lead to new species, giving different ones, such as man and apes, common ancestors. Intelligent design says some features of the natural world, because of their well-ordered complexities, are best explained by an intelligent cause.

The problem with this argument is simple: What is the intelligent cause these fanatics are so eager to promote? The real irony here is that the argument "evolution is only a theory that hasn't been 'proven'". Well, pardon me for asking the obvious question, but what is the proof that there was an intelligent designer behind this intelligent design?

There are all sorts of places one can turn to for information about evolution (and the divides within that community, for example: Darwinism versus Lamarckian evolution). There is a large body of knowledge, accumulated over many years of intense study of this subject, that made use of skills like observation, speculation, experimentation and repetition. Part of this study includes the numerous fossils that have led scientists to be able to draw a picture of what the early earth was like.

And yes, the intelligent design side has plenty of books giving its side of the story, mostly by lonely prophets whose stories are suspiciously similar (Jesus, Moses, Mohammed, Buddha, Mithra to name but a few), but has far fewer pieces of evidence to suggest that they are closer to the truth than the evolutionists are. Might I politely suggest that they retire to a quiet library somewhere to study and get their collective shit together? That is unless they've closed all the libraries in Kansas as well...