This woman needs your help. Call 661-992-7173 to give her your emotional and financial support. All prank calls will be reported to the local police department.
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Tuesday, October 2, 2007
basing u.s. policy on fictional television characters
click here
Former president Bill Clinton has told NBC's Meet The Press that America needs more intelligence agents who make their own rules and engage in whatever actions are necessary like Jack Bauer from the fictional TV show 24.
"I think what our policy ought to be is to be uncompromisingly opposed to terror--I mean to torture, and that if you're the Jack Bauer person, you'll do whatever you do and you should be prepared to take the consequences... And I think the consequences will be imposed based on what turns out to be the truth." Clinton said.
"If you have any kind of a formal exception, people just drive a truck through it, and they'll say, 'Well, I thought it was covered by the exception,'" Clinton added.
The question was again raised by host Tim Russert after Clinton told him last year that he would authorize torture in a "ticking bomb 24"-style situation.
Clinton went on to state “If you look at the show, every time they get the president to approve something, the president gets in trouble, the country gets in trouble. And when Bauer goes out there on his own and is prepared to live with the consequences, it always seems to work better.".
Clinton's comments represent another case of an influential political figure discussing the benefits of torture in the context of a fictional TV show character.
Earlier this year Supreme Court judge Antonin Scalia also used the analogy at a panel discussion on torture, stating "Jack Bauer saved Los Angeles. ... He saved hundreds of thousands of lives... Are you going to convict Jack Bauer? Say that criminal law is against him? ‘You have the right to a jury trial?’ Is any jury going to convict Jack Bauer? I don’t think so.”
We are more used to this kind of dross from Fox News. For example, Laura Ingraham has previously stated that the average American's love of the show is a referendum for the use of torture against anyone considered to be with "Al Qaeda" whether they be American citizens or not. Watch it:
24 has routinely depicted scenes of detainee torture, as well as plot-lines broaching the issue of the detention of American citizens in a time of crisis.
At a time when legislation such as The Patriot Act and The Military Commissions Act are setting the precedent for the detention of American citizens, and in the absence of any real terror 24 serves as the perfect dose of fear-mongering propaganda to encourage acceptance of such attacks upon the fabric of freedom.
24, Threat Matrix, Spooks, and other such shows are contributions to a conditioning mechanism that present torture as a reasonable and ethical method. However, in every case of torture that has come to light in the real world there isn't even a basis of "situational ethics" to justify this with.
Click here to watch a video clip in which Alex Jones explains the hypocrisy of torture and why the doublethink of the "it's bad when the enemy does it but good when we do it" mentality is so dangerous.
Finally, should we really have to endure BIll Clinton, an impeached former president who has been accused of rape and molestation, speaking on "facing consequences" for one's actions based on "what turns out to be the truth"?
Former president Bill Clinton has told NBC's Meet The Press that America needs more intelligence agents who make their own rules and engage in whatever actions are necessary like Jack Bauer from the fictional TV show 24.
"I think what our policy ought to be is to be uncompromisingly opposed to terror--I mean to torture, and that if you're the Jack Bauer person, you'll do whatever you do and you should be prepared to take the consequences... And I think the consequences will be imposed based on what turns out to be the truth." Clinton said.
"If you have any kind of a formal exception, people just drive a truck through it, and they'll say, 'Well, I thought it was covered by the exception,'" Clinton added.
The question was again raised by host Tim Russert after Clinton told him last year that he would authorize torture in a "ticking bomb 24"-style situation.
Clinton went on to state “If you look at the show, every time they get the president to approve something, the president gets in trouble, the country gets in trouble. And when Bauer goes out there on his own and is prepared to live with the consequences, it always seems to work better.".
Clinton's comments represent another case of an influential political figure discussing the benefits of torture in the context of a fictional TV show character.
Earlier this year Supreme Court judge Antonin Scalia also used the analogy at a panel discussion on torture, stating "Jack Bauer saved Los Angeles. ... He saved hundreds of thousands of lives... Are you going to convict Jack Bauer? Say that criminal law is against him? ‘You have the right to a jury trial?’ Is any jury going to convict Jack Bauer? I don’t think so.”
We are more used to this kind of dross from Fox News. For example, Laura Ingraham has previously stated that the average American's love of the show is a referendum for the use of torture against anyone considered to be with "Al Qaeda" whether they be American citizens or not. Watch it:
24 has routinely depicted scenes of detainee torture, as well as plot-lines broaching the issue of the detention of American citizens in a time of crisis.
At a time when legislation such as The Patriot Act and The Military Commissions Act are setting the precedent for the detention of American citizens, and in the absence of any real terror 24 serves as the perfect dose of fear-mongering propaganda to encourage acceptance of such attacks upon the fabric of freedom.
24, Threat Matrix, Spooks, and other such shows are contributions to a conditioning mechanism that present torture as a reasonable and ethical method. However, in every case of torture that has come to light in the real world there isn't even a basis of "situational ethics" to justify this with.
Click here to watch a video clip in which Alex Jones explains the hypocrisy of torture and why the doublethink of the "it's bad when the enemy does it but good when we do it" mentality is so dangerous.
Finally, should we really have to endure BIll Clinton, an impeached former president who has been accused of rape and molestation, speaking on "facing consequences" for one's actions based on "what turns out to be the truth"?
Monday, October 1, 2007
man who deduced dna double helix was on lsd
Nobel Prize genius Crick was high on LSD
when he discovered the secret of life
By Alun Rees
Francis Crick, the Nobel Prize-winning father of modern genetics, was under the influence of LSD when he first deduced the double-helix structure of DNA nearly 50 years ago.
The abrasive and unorthodox Crick and his brilliant American co-researcher James Watson famously celebrated their eureka moment in March 1953 by running from the now legendary Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge to the nearby Eagle pub, where they announced over pints of bitter that they had discovered the secret of life.
Crick, who died ten days ago [2004-07-28], aged 88, later told a fellow scientist that he often used small doses of LSD, then an experimental drug used in psychotherapy, to boost his powers of thought. He said it was LSD, not the Eagle's warm beer, that helped him to unravel the structure of DNA, the discovery that won him the Nobel Prize.
Despite his Establishment image, Crick was a devotee of novelist Aldous Huxley, whose accounts of his experiments with LSD and another hallucinogen, mescaline, in The Doors Of Perception and Heaven And Hell became cult texts for the hippies of the Sixties and Seventies. In the late Sixties, Crick was a founder member of Soma, a legalise-cannabis group named after the drug in Huxley's novel Brave New World. He even put his name to a famous letter to The Times in 1967 calling for a reform in the drugs laws.
It was through his membership of Soma that Crick inadvertently became the inspiration for the biggest LSD manufacturing conspiracy the world has ever seen the multimillion-pound drug factory in a remote farmhouse in Wales that was smashed by the Operation Julie raids of the late Seventies.
Crick's involvement with the gang was fleeting but crucial. The revered scientist had been invited to the Cambridge home of freewheeling American writer David Solomon, a friend of hippie LSD guru Timothy Leary, who had come to Britain in 1967 on a quest to discover a method for manufacturing pure THC, the active ingredient of cannabis.
It was Crick's presence in Solomon's social circle that attracted a brilliant young biochemist, Richard Kemp, who soon became a convert to the attractions of both cannabis and LSD. Kemp was recruited to the THC project in 1968, but soon afterwards devised the world's first foolproof method of producing cheap, pure LSD. Solomon and Kemp went into business, manufacturing 'acid' in a succession of rented houses before setting up their laboratory in a cottage on a hillside near Tregaron, Carmarthenshire, in 1973. It is estimated that Kemp manufactured drugs worth £2.5 million — an astonishing amount in the Seventies — before police stormed the building in 1977 and seized enough pure LSD and its constituent chemicals to make two million LSD 'tabs'.
The arrest and conviction of Solomon, Kemp and a string of co-conspirators dominated the headlines for months. I was covering the case as a reporter at the time and it was then that I met Kemp's close friend, Garrod Harker, whose home had been raided by police but who had not been arrested. Harker told me that Kemp and his girlfriend Christine Bott by then in jail were hippie idealists who were completely uninterested in the money they were making.
They gave away thousands to pet causes such as the Glastonbury pop festival and Release.
"They have a philosophy," Harker told me at the time. "They believe industrial society will collapse when the oil runs out and that the answer is to change people's mindsets using acid. They believe LSD can help people to see that a return to a natural society based on self-sufficiency is the only way to save themselves.
"Dick Kemp told me he met Francis Crick at Cambridge. Crick had told him that some Cambridge academics used LSD in tiny amounts as a thinking tool, to liberate them from preconceptions and let their genius wander freely to new ideas. Crick told him he had perceived the double-helix shape while on LSD.
"It was clear that Dick Kemp was highly impressed and probably bowled over by what Crick had told him. He told me that if a man like Crick, who had gone to the heart of human existence, had used LSD, then it was worth using. Crick was certainly Dick Kemp's inspiration."
Shortly afterwards I visited Crick at his home, Golden Helix, in Cambridge. He listened with rapt, amused attention to what I told him about the role of LSD in his Nobel Prize-winning discovery. He gave no intimation of surprise. When I had finished, he said: "Print a word of it and I'll sue."
when he discovered the secret of life
By Alun Rees
Francis Crick, the Nobel Prize-winning father of modern genetics, was under the influence of LSD when he first deduced the double-helix structure of DNA nearly 50 years ago.
The abrasive and unorthodox Crick and his brilliant American co-researcher James Watson famously celebrated their eureka moment in March 1953 by running from the now legendary Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge to the nearby Eagle pub, where they announced over pints of bitter that they had discovered the secret of life.
Crick, who died ten days ago [2004-07-28], aged 88, later told a fellow scientist that he often used small doses of LSD, then an experimental drug used in psychotherapy, to boost his powers of thought. He said it was LSD, not the Eagle's warm beer, that helped him to unravel the structure of DNA, the discovery that won him the Nobel Prize.
Despite his Establishment image, Crick was a devotee of novelist Aldous Huxley, whose accounts of his experiments with LSD and another hallucinogen, mescaline, in The Doors Of Perception and Heaven And Hell became cult texts for the hippies of the Sixties and Seventies. In the late Sixties, Crick was a founder member of Soma, a legalise-cannabis group named after the drug in Huxley's novel Brave New World. He even put his name to a famous letter to The Times in 1967 calling for a reform in the drugs laws.
It was through his membership of Soma that Crick inadvertently became the inspiration for the biggest LSD manufacturing conspiracy the world has ever seen the multimillion-pound drug factory in a remote farmhouse in Wales that was smashed by the Operation Julie raids of the late Seventies.
Crick's involvement with the gang was fleeting but crucial. The revered scientist had been invited to the Cambridge home of freewheeling American writer David Solomon, a friend of hippie LSD guru Timothy Leary, who had come to Britain in 1967 on a quest to discover a method for manufacturing pure THC, the active ingredient of cannabis.
It was Crick's presence in Solomon's social circle that attracted a brilliant young biochemist, Richard Kemp, who soon became a convert to the attractions of both cannabis and LSD. Kemp was recruited to the THC project in 1968, but soon afterwards devised the world's first foolproof method of producing cheap, pure LSD. Solomon and Kemp went into business, manufacturing 'acid' in a succession of rented houses before setting up their laboratory in a cottage on a hillside near Tregaron, Carmarthenshire, in 1973. It is estimated that Kemp manufactured drugs worth £2.5 million — an astonishing amount in the Seventies — before police stormed the building in 1977 and seized enough pure LSD and its constituent chemicals to make two million LSD 'tabs'.
The arrest and conviction of Solomon, Kemp and a string of co-conspirators dominated the headlines for months. I was covering the case as a reporter at the time and it was then that I met Kemp's close friend, Garrod Harker, whose home had been raided by police but who had not been arrested. Harker told me that Kemp and his girlfriend Christine Bott by then in jail were hippie idealists who were completely uninterested in the money they were making.
They gave away thousands to pet causes such as the Glastonbury pop festival and Release.
"They have a philosophy," Harker told me at the time. "They believe industrial society will collapse when the oil runs out and that the answer is to change people's mindsets using acid. They believe LSD can help people to see that a return to a natural society based on self-sufficiency is the only way to save themselves.
"Dick Kemp told me he met Francis Crick at Cambridge. Crick had told him that some Cambridge academics used LSD in tiny amounts as a thinking tool, to liberate them from preconceptions and let their genius wander freely to new ideas. Crick told him he had perceived the double-helix shape while on LSD.
"It was clear that Dick Kemp was highly impressed and probably bowled over by what Crick had told him. He told me that if a man like Crick, who had gone to the heart of human existence, had used LSD, then it was worth using. Crick was certainly Dick Kemp's inspiration."
Shortly afterwards I visited Crick at his home, Golden Helix, in Cambridge. He listened with rapt, amused attention to what I told him about the role of LSD in his Nobel Prize-winning discovery. He gave no intimation of surprise. When I had finished, he said: "Print a word of it and I'll sue."
myspace is not our space
click here
MySpace Censors Anti-War Websites
Prison Planet blocked as the model for government regulated Internet 2 gets a dry run
Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet
Tuesday, September 25, 2007
Rupert Murdoch's MySpace has been caught in another act of alternative media censorship after it was revealed that bulletin posts containing links to Prison Planet.com were being hijacked and forwarded to MySpace's home page. MySpace has placed Prison Planet on a list of blocked websites supposedly reserved for spam, phishing scams or virus trojans.
It has been apparent for at least two weeks that all bulletin posts containing links to Prison Planet were being censored but we decided to wait and see if it was just a technical error before drawing any attention to the problem.
Now there is little doubt that MySpace has deliberately filtered out Prison Planet, preventing anyone from accessing the site via the social networking giant.
MySpace Censors Anti-War Websites
Prison Planet blocked as the model for government regulated Internet 2 gets a dry run
Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet
Tuesday, September 25, 2007
Rupert Murdoch's MySpace has been caught in another act of alternative media censorship after it was revealed that bulletin posts containing links to Prison Planet.com were being hijacked and forwarded to MySpace's home page. MySpace has placed Prison Planet on a list of blocked websites supposedly reserved for spam, phishing scams or virus trojans.
It has been apparent for at least two weeks that all bulletin posts containing links to Prison Planet were being censored but we decided to wait and see if it was just a technical error before drawing any attention to the problem.
Now there is little doubt that MySpace has deliberately filtered out Prison Planet, preventing anyone from accessing the site via the social networking giant.
(Article continues below)
Try it for yourself, post a bulletin from your MySpace account with a link to Prison Planet contained in the text. Click here and copy the html code into the bulletin window and press send. Then go to "Show Bulletins I've Posted". You will notice that your link has been hijacked and now links to a URL that begins with http://www.msplinks.com - this is MySpace's filtering middleman that was launched earlier this year to supposedly combat spam assaults and phishing scams.
When the link is clicked, it doesn't go to the Prison Planet.com link you intended, but instead forwards to the MySpace home page.
"These links are legit and we are creating them," MySpace.com President Tom Anderson announced in April. "They are not viruses or whatever else your conspiracy theorist friends told you. They still point to their original url, but let us easily turn off links to spam, phishing, or virus sites. booyah!"
The problem with this statement is that Prison Planet.com is an alternative news website that has been featured and referenced in hundreds of mainstream publications and is also carried as a news source of Google News. Though our detractors are fond of arguing that we are "not a credible news source," the contention that we are either a spam, phishing or virus website is completely false.
MySpace should come clean and admit that it is now following an official policy of censorship based on political affiliation, and that its readers are not left free to make up their own minds on the credibility of any particular story, but are intentionally prevented from accessing certain websites that MySpace deems contrary to the political agenda of its owner, Rupert Murdoch.
Why is this important? Shouldn't MySpace have the right to block any website they wish? After all, it's their website, they decide the content.
Firstly, websites such as MySpace, Wikipedia and Digg pose as virtuous online information democracies yet are bossed by bias censors and patrolled by organized armies of trolls whose sole purpose is to discredit and delete controversial information by launching unsubstantiated ad hominem attacks on the credibility of its source or its very right to be discussed (Wikipedia trolls deleted a list of Republican sex scandals, among a host of other manifestly provable controversies).
They are also wide open to abuse from nefarious government agencies and corporations seeking to "memory hole" sensitive information from the web, as was documented by the WikiScanner scandal. In this climate, a media watchdog like Prison Planet should be welcomed, not shunned, censored and blocked off by MySpace filtering software.
Secondly, this is the model for the imminent arrival of Internet 2, a government regulated and controlled cyberspace police state where bloggers require ID numbers and permission from the powers that be to simply express an opinion, and then that opinion is subsequently subject to censorship and deletion if it is counterproductive to the interests of the state.
Earlier this year, MySpace were caught red-handed when a moderator unwittingly admitted that Prison Planet.com was one of the alternative media websites that MySpace was blocking from its messageboards and bulletin posts.
In a discussion thread, a MySpace user complained that his Ron Paul post had been censored, to which a MySpace moderator responded, "Ron Paul wasn't being censored, it was the prisonplanet.com part of the message that was being filtered out."
The moderator later clarifies that it was beyond his control and that "prisonplanet.com" is on a list of URL's that are automatically blocked by MySpace's servers.
But Prison Planet isn't the only website to be targeted by Murdoch's censorship jackboots - in January 2006 MySpace enacted a policy to block all You Tube links, a move that resulted in a boycott of the social networking website after thousands complained before MySpace was forced to restore the links.
Please use this link to contact MySpace and let them know what you think about their decision to censor political websites that don't toe Murdoch's corporate agenda.
MySpace Censors Anti-War Websites
Prison Planet blocked as the model for government regulated Internet 2 gets a dry run
Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet
Tuesday, September 25, 2007
Rupert Murdoch's MySpace has been caught in another act of alternative media censorship after it was revealed that bulletin posts containing links to Prison Planet.com were being hijacked and forwarded to MySpace's home page. MySpace has placed Prison Planet on a list of blocked websites supposedly reserved for spam, phishing scams or virus trojans.
It has been apparent for at least two weeks that all bulletin posts containing links to Prison Planet were being censored but we decided to wait and see if it was just a technical error before drawing any attention to the problem.
Now there is little doubt that MySpace has deliberately filtered out Prison Planet, preventing anyone from accessing the site via the social networking giant.
MySpace Censors Anti-War Websites
Prison Planet blocked as the model for government regulated Internet 2 gets a dry run
Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet
Tuesday, September 25, 2007
Rupert Murdoch's MySpace has been caught in another act of alternative media censorship after it was revealed that bulletin posts containing links to Prison Planet.com were being hijacked and forwarded to MySpace's home page. MySpace has placed Prison Planet on a list of blocked websites supposedly reserved for spam, phishing scams or virus trojans.
It has been apparent for at least two weeks that all bulletin posts containing links to Prison Planet were being censored but we decided to wait and see if it was just a technical error before drawing any attention to the problem.
Now there is little doubt that MySpace has deliberately filtered out Prison Planet, preventing anyone from accessing the site via the social networking giant.
(Article continues below)
Try it for yourself, post a bulletin from your MySpace account with a link to Prison Planet contained in the text. Click here and copy the html code into the bulletin window and press send. Then go to "Show Bulletins I've Posted". You will notice that your link has been hijacked and now links to a URL that begins with http://www.msplinks.com - this is MySpace's filtering middleman that was launched earlier this year to supposedly combat spam assaults and phishing scams.
When the link is clicked, it doesn't go to the Prison Planet.com link you intended, but instead forwards to the MySpace home page.
"These links are legit and we are creating them," MySpace.com President Tom Anderson announced in April. "They are not viruses or whatever else your conspiracy theorist friends told you. They still point to their original url, but let us easily turn off links to spam, phishing, or virus sites. booyah!"
The problem with this statement is that Prison Planet.com is an alternative news website that has been featured and referenced in hundreds of mainstream publications and is also carried as a news source of Google News. Though our detractors are fond of arguing that we are "not a credible news source," the contention that we are either a spam, phishing or virus website is completely false.
MySpace should come clean and admit that it is now following an official policy of censorship based on political affiliation, and that its readers are not left free to make up their own minds on the credibility of any particular story, but are intentionally prevented from accessing certain websites that MySpace deems contrary to the political agenda of its owner, Rupert Murdoch.
Why is this important? Shouldn't MySpace have the right to block any website they wish? After all, it's their website, they decide the content.
Firstly, websites such as MySpace, Wikipedia and Digg pose as virtuous online information democracies yet are bossed by bias censors and patrolled by organized armies of trolls whose sole purpose is to discredit and delete controversial information by launching unsubstantiated ad hominem attacks on the credibility of its source or its very right to be discussed (Wikipedia trolls deleted a list of Republican sex scandals, among a host of other manifestly provable controversies).
They are also wide open to abuse from nefarious government agencies and corporations seeking to "memory hole" sensitive information from the web, as was documented by the WikiScanner scandal. In this climate, a media watchdog like Prison Planet should be welcomed, not shunned, censored and blocked off by MySpace filtering software.
Secondly, this is the model for the imminent arrival of Internet 2, a government regulated and controlled cyberspace police state where bloggers require ID numbers and permission from the powers that be to simply express an opinion, and then that opinion is subsequently subject to censorship and deletion if it is counterproductive to the interests of the state.
Earlier this year, MySpace were caught red-handed when a moderator unwittingly admitted that Prison Planet.com was one of the alternative media websites that MySpace was blocking from its messageboards and bulletin posts.
In a discussion thread, a MySpace user complained that his Ron Paul post had been censored, to which a MySpace moderator responded, "Ron Paul wasn't being censored, it was the prisonplanet.com part of the message that was being filtered out."
The moderator later clarifies that it was beyond his control and that "prisonplanet.com" is on a list of URL's that are automatically blocked by MySpace's servers.
But Prison Planet isn't the only website to be targeted by Murdoch's censorship jackboots - in January 2006 MySpace enacted a policy to block all You Tube links, a move that resulted in a boycott of the social networking website after thousands complained before MySpace was forced to restore the links.
Please use this link to contact MySpace and let them know what you think about their decision to censor political websites that don't toe Murdoch's corporate agenda.
young black male
click here
Edwards: 'Pretty Soon We’re Not Going to Have a Young African-American Male Population in America.'
Asked about what he could do about "inner-city kids partaking in violence" at the MTV/MySpace Forum yesterday, Democratic candidate John Edwards offered an apocalyptic prediction for young black males:
“We cannot build enough prisons to solve this problem. And the idea that we can keep incarcerating and keep incarcerating — pretty soon we’re not going to have a young African-American male population in America. They’re all going to be in prison or dead. One of the two.”
Hyperbole much? Despite popular misperception and those who find it a convenient talking point to illustrate inescapable racism, there are more young African-American men in college than in prison. In 2005, according to the Census Bureau, there were 864,000 black men in college. According to Justice Department statistics, there were 802,000 in federal and state prisons and jails; between the ages of 18 and 24, however, black men in college outnumber those incarcerated by 4 to 1.
UPDATE: Some readers are finding the numbers above confusing. The first set of numbers (comparing 864,000 to 802,000) refers to all black men of all ages. The 4 to 1 ratio is among black men between the ages of 18 to 24. In other words, a large percentage of that 802,000 are black men above the age of 24.
09/28 02:32 PM
Edwards: 'Pretty Soon We’re Not Going to Have a Young African-American Male Population in America.'
Asked about what he could do about "inner-city kids partaking in violence" at the MTV/MySpace Forum yesterday, Democratic candidate John Edwards offered an apocalyptic prediction for young black males:
“We cannot build enough prisons to solve this problem. And the idea that we can keep incarcerating and keep incarcerating — pretty soon we’re not going to have a young African-American male population in America. They’re all going to be in prison or dead. One of the two.”
Hyperbole much? Despite popular misperception and those who find it a convenient talking point to illustrate inescapable racism, there are more young African-American men in college than in prison. In 2005, according to the Census Bureau, there were 864,000 black men in college. According to Justice Department statistics, there were 802,000 in federal and state prisons and jails; between the ages of 18 and 24, however, black men in college outnumber those incarcerated by 4 to 1.
UPDATE: Some readers are finding the numbers above confusing. The first set of numbers (comparing 864,000 to 802,000) refers to all black men of all ages. The 4 to 1 ratio is among black men between the ages of 18 to 24. In other words, a large percentage of that 802,000 are black men above the age of 24.
09/28 02:32 PM
Monday, September 24, 2007
olberman to bush: your hypocrisy is so vast
click here
Olbermann to Bush: ‘Your hypocrisy is so vast’
A reaction to Thursday’s press conference: the president was the one who interjected Gen. Petraeus into the political dialogue in the first place
So the President, behaving a little bit more than usual, like we would all interrupt him while he was watching his favorite cartoons on the DVR, stepped before the press conference microphone and after side-stepping most of the substantive issues like the Israeli raid on Syria, in condescending and infuriating fashion, produced a big political finish that indicates, certainly, that if it wasn’t already – the annual Republican witch-hunting season is underway.
“I thought the ad was disgusting. I felt like the ad was an attack not only on General Petraeus, but on the U.S. Military.”
“And I was disappointed that not more leaders in the Democrat party spoke out strongly against that kind of ad.
“And that leads me to come to this conclusion: that most Democrats are afraid of irritating a left-wing group like Moveon.org or more afraid of irritating them, than they are of irritating the United States military.”
“That was a sorry deal.”
First off, it’s “Democrat-ic” party.
You keep pretending you’re not a politician, so stop using words your party made up. Show a little respect.
Secondly, you could say this seriously after the advertising/mugging of Senator Max Cleland? After the swift-boating of John Kerry?
But most importantly, making that the last question?
So that there was no chance at a follow-up?
So nobody could point out, as Chris Matthews so incisively did, a week ago tonight, that you were the one who inappropriately interjected General Petraeus into the political dialogue of this nation in the first place!
Deliberately, premeditatedly, and virtually without precedent, you shanghaied a military man as your personal spokesman and now you’re complaining about the outcome, and then running away from the microphone?
Eleven months ago the President’s own party, the Republican National Committee, introduced this very different kind of advertisement, just nineteen days before the mid-term elections.
Bin Laden.
Al-Zawahiri’s rumored quote of six years ago about having bought “suitcase bombs.”
academia
rense.com
Ivy League Students Actually
Getting Dumber In College
New York Sun
9-22-7
Students at many of the country's most prestigious colleges and universities are graduating with less knowledge of American history, government, and economics than they had as incoming freshmen, with Harvard University seniors scoring a "D+" average on a 60-question multiple-choice exam about civic literacy.
According to a report released yesterday by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, the average college senior at the 50 colleges and universities polled did not earn a passing grade.
"At the most expensive colleges, they actually graduate knowing less," the executive director of the Jack Miller Center at the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, Michael Ratliff, said. "Colleges and universities are not directing students to the courses that would educate them. We want to know whether after getting $300 billion to do their work, universities are actually educating their students."
At universities such as Princeton, Yale, Cornell, Duke, and Berkeley, seniors scored lower on the test, available here, than freshmen, living proof of the broadening relevancy of the old Harvard adage that the university is a storehouse of knowledge because "the freshmen bring so much and the seniors take away so little."
The average foreign student studying in an American college learned nothing about the country's history and its civic institutions, according to the study.
The low scores indicate a looming crisis in American citizenship, officials at the institute said yesterday, as students who increased their knowledge of American history in college were more likely to register to vote and to participate in civic activities as adults.
The study, titled *"Failing Our Students, Failing America,"* was conducted by researchers at the department of public policy at the University of Connecticut. The exam was distributed to 14,000 college seniors at 50 institutions of higher education across the country. The researchers hand-picked 25 "elite" schools, and randomly selected 25 schools from all four-year American colleges and universities to poll. The multiple-choice questions were written by specialists in each field.
A professor of American history at Columbia University, Eric Foner, said that a multiple-choice exam testing factual knowledge of history could exaggerate student ignorance of American history.
"The study of history has changed enormously," Mr. Foner said. "It's become much more broad and diverse. The study of facts about particular battles has diminished, but maybe students are in a better position to answer questions about the abolition of slavery."
Some of the questions in the exam were strictly factual, asking students to identify which battle ended Revolutionary War, or the dates when President Lincoln was in office. Other questions tested their understanding of different forms of government, or of the basic theories of philosophers such as Plato.
"History has a pragmatic value," Mr. Foner said. "You are acquiring skills that are desired by employers - an ability to write, analyze material, and produce your own point of view."
The chairman of the history department at Princeton University, Jeremy Adelman, said that providing students with a foundation in American history and governance should not be the sole mission of any institution of higher education.
"You have to ask what is the social function of the university?" Mr. Adelman said. "If you're in chemical engineering, why study history? Should we require students to study history? I don't think if you polled the history department faculty there would be unanimity on the question." Students at Princeton are required to take one history class, he said. The course does not have to be in American history.
Less than half of the students who participated identified the phrase "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal" as a line from the Declaration of Independence. Many of them identified its source as "The Communist Manifesto," or said that it was an inscription on the Statue of Liberty.
Cornell and Princeton spokeswomen said the institutions would not comment on the report. A Harvard spokesman did not return a call for comment. A spokeswoman for Yale pointed out that history is the most popular major at the college, and that last year, 3,586 students out of about 5,200 students registered to take a history course.
The Intercollegiate Studies Institute was founded in 1953 with William Buckley Jr. as its president. Its mission is to cultivate the values of democracy and of a free society among American college students. This is the third year that the institute has issued the report on civic knowledge among American college students.
Ivy League Students Actually
Getting Dumber In College
New York Sun
9-22-7
Students at many of the country's most prestigious colleges and universities are graduating with less knowledge of American history, government, and economics than they had as incoming freshmen, with Harvard University seniors scoring a "D+" average on a 60-question multiple-choice exam about civic literacy.
According to a report released yesterday by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, the average college senior at the 50 colleges and universities polled did not earn a passing grade.
"At the most expensive colleges, they actually graduate knowing less," the executive director of the Jack Miller Center at the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, Michael Ratliff, said. "Colleges and universities are not directing students to the courses that would educate them. We want to know whether after getting $300 billion to do their work, universities are actually educating their students."
At universities such as Princeton, Yale, Cornell, Duke, and Berkeley, seniors scored lower on the test, available here, than freshmen, living proof of the broadening relevancy of the old Harvard adage that the university is a storehouse of knowledge because "the freshmen bring so much and the seniors take away so little."
The average foreign student studying in an American college learned nothing about the country's history and its civic institutions, according to the study.
The low scores indicate a looming crisis in American citizenship, officials at the institute said yesterday, as students who increased their knowledge of American history in college were more likely to register to vote and to participate in civic activities as adults.
The study, titled *"Failing Our Students, Failing America,"* was conducted by researchers at the department of public policy at the University of Connecticut. The exam was distributed to 14,000 college seniors at 50 institutions of higher education across the country. The researchers hand-picked 25 "elite" schools, and randomly selected 25 schools from all four-year American colleges and universities to poll. The multiple-choice questions were written by specialists in each field.
A professor of American history at Columbia University, Eric Foner, said that a multiple-choice exam testing factual knowledge of history could exaggerate student ignorance of American history.
"The study of history has changed enormously," Mr. Foner said. "It's become much more broad and diverse. The study of facts about particular battles has diminished, but maybe students are in a better position to answer questions about the abolition of slavery."
Some of the questions in the exam were strictly factual, asking students to identify which battle ended Revolutionary War, or the dates when President Lincoln was in office. Other questions tested their understanding of different forms of government, or of the basic theories of philosophers such as Plato.
"History has a pragmatic value," Mr. Foner said. "You are acquiring skills that are desired by employers - an ability to write, analyze material, and produce your own point of view."
The chairman of the history department at Princeton University, Jeremy Adelman, said that providing students with a foundation in American history and governance should not be the sole mission of any institution of higher education.
"You have to ask what is the social function of the university?" Mr. Adelman said. "If you're in chemical engineering, why study history? Should we require students to study history? I don't think if you polled the history department faculty there would be unanimity on the question." Students at Princeton are required to take one history class, he said. The course does not have to be in American history.
Less than half of the students who participated identified the phrase "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal" as a line from the Declaration of Independence. Many of them identified its source as "The Communist Manifesto," or said that it was an inscription on the Statue of Liberty.
Cornell and Princeton spokeswomen said the institutions would not comment on the report. A Harvard spokesman did not return a call for comment. A spokeswoman for Yale pointed out that history is the most popular major at the college, and that last year, 3,586 students out of about 5,200 students registered to take a history course.
The Intercollegiate Studies Institute was founded in 1953 with William Buckley Jr. as its president. Its mission is to cultivate the values of democracy and of a free society among American college students. This is the third year that the institute has issued the report on civic knowledge among American college students.
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