Big Ol' Smitty

Where is this from? I don't even know and it kills me.

From Keith Olbermann's show:

Boooo! You mean I don't get to do any of the fun stuff, and to top it all off I have to study. F that in the A. And Jingus, WTF is this talk about people who can do magic?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml.../ixnewstop.html President George W Bush added a new twist to the international tension over Iran's nuclear programme last night by pledging to support Israel if it tries to destroy the Islamic regime's capacity to make an atomic bomb. Asked whether he would back Israel if it raided Teheran's nuclear facilities, Mr Bush first expressed cautious solidarity with European efforts, led by Britain, France and Germany, to negotiate with Iran. But he quickly qualified himself, adding that all nations should be concerned about whether Iran could make nuclear weapons. "Clearly, if I was the leader of Israel and I'd listened to some of the statements by the Iranian ayatollahs that regarded the security of my country, I'd be concerned about Iran having a nuclear weapon as well. And in that Israel is our ally, and in that we've made a very strong commitment to support Israel, we will support Israel if her security is threatened." His comments appeared to be a departure from the administration's line that there are no plans to attack at present and that Washington backs European diplomatic efforts. The remarks may have reflected Mr Bush's personal thinking on an issue causing deep concern in Washington. Moments later, Mr Bush was asked another question on Iran and appeared to return to his script - this time emphasising the need for a diplomatic effort. Speaking days before he arrives in Europe on a tour designed to mend fences with estranged allies, he underscored the differences still hobbling western policy towards the Middle East. Many figures close to the United States administration believe that the European diplomatic initiative is calculated more to dilute America's hardline approach to weapons of mass destruction than to stop Iran's mullahs building a bomb. Israel, meanwhile, has given warning about Iran's nuclear ambitions, saying that an Iranian bomb might be only six months away and that such a weapon would pose a grave risk to its security. Mr Bush repeated the reasons for America's anxiety: "Remember, this all started when we found [iran] enriching uranium in an undeclared fashion, and it happened because somebody told on them." Iran's long march towards becoming a nuclear power appeared to make a significant step forward yesterday with the opening of a £450 million reactor at Bushehr. A senior Russian nuclear official said he would go to Iran next week to sign a protocol agreeing the return of spent nuclear fuel, the last remaining obstacle to Bushehr's functioning. This will allow deliveries of Russian nuclear fuel. The protocol's signing has been repeatedly delayed. It aims to ease concerns that Iran could reprocess spent nuclear fuel from Bushehr to extract plutonium, which could be used in nuclear weapons. Iran's influential former president, Hashemi Rafsanjani, speaking yesterday after meeting the Syrian prime minister, Mohammad Naji al-Otari, said his country needed to create a powerful alliance with Syria, Iraq and other Arab countries. Mr Rafsanjani, widely expected to run in Iran's June presidential elections, said the region must "stay completely vigilant vis-a-vis the US and Israeli plots". America has this week stepped up its rhetoric against Syria following Monday's murder of the former Lebanese premier, Rafik al-Hariri. Pro-Syrian elements have been widely accused of involvement. Mr Bush called on Syria yesterday to obey a UN resolution demanding that it remove its troops from Lebanon and restore the country's independence. He said: "We've recalled our ambassador [from Damascus], which indicates the relationship is not moving forward; that Syria is out of step with the progress being made in the greater Middle East."

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-1490248,00.html Why global warming is not natural By Mark Henderson, Science Correspondent Report from the American Association for the Advancement of Science THE strongest evidence yet that global warming has been triggered by human activity has emerged from a study of rising temperatures in the oceans. The rise in marine temperatures — by an average of 0.5C (0.9F) in 40 years — can be explained only if greenhouse gas emissions are responsible, research has shown. The results are so compelling that they should end controversy about the causes of climate change, one of the scientists who led the study said yesterday. “The debate about whether there is a global warming signal now is over, at least for rational people,” said Tim Barnett, of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, California. “The models got it right. If a politician stands up and says the uncertainty is too great to believe these models, that is no longer tenable.” Dr Barnett’s team examined seven million observations of temperature, salinity and other variables in the world’s oceans collected by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and compared the patterns with those predicted by computer models of potential causes of climate change. Natural variation in the Earth’s climate, or changes in solar activity or volcanic eruptions, which have been suggested as alternative explanations for rising temperatures, could not explain the data collected in the real world. Models based on man-made emissions of greenhouse gases matched the observations almost precisely. “What absolutely nailed it was the greenhouse model,” Dr Barnett told the American Association for the Advancement of Science conference in Washington. Two models, one designed in Britain and one here in the US, got it almost exactly. We were stunned.” Climate change has affected the seas in different ways in different parts of the world: in the Atlantic, rising temperatures can be observed up to 2,300ft below the surface, while in the Pacific the warming is seen only up to 330ft down. Only the greenhouse models replicated the changes that have been observed in practice. “All the potential culprits have been ruled out except one,” Dr Barnett said. The results, which are about to be submitted for publication in a peer-reviewed journal, should increase pressure on the US Administration to sign the Kyoto Protocol, which came into force this week, he said. “It is time for nations that are not part of Kyoto to re-evaluate and see if it would be to their advantage to join,” he said. “The debate is not — have we got a clear global warming signal; the debate is — what we are going to do about it.” In a separate study a team led by Ruth Curry, of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Connecticut, has established that 20,000 sq km of freshwater ice melted in the Arctic between 1965 and 1995. Further melting on this scale could be sufficient to turn off the ocean currents that drive the Gulf Stream, which keeps Britain up to 6C warmer than it would otherwise be.

Ask England how well SS privatization works. They are looking at our current system pretty longingly right about now.

I'm shocked you haven't done that yet, since you are a fairly big hockey fan.

Conservative Brigade...away!

Thanks for having such faith in me!

This picture was taken shortly after the conservative circle jerk. The TSM posters were viciously beaten by this ruthless gang of hippies just 4 days later.

I don't watch TV news.

CEOs?

Stats please. http://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat41.pdf Anecdotes are cool and all. But I can't argue with your own personal experiences, AoO and MikeSC. If that's what you guys have seen, then you're probably gonna feel that way. The statistics show that unions help workers--better pay and better benefits on average. The World Bank even said so, and they're hardly left-wing. I'm not saying that they don't definitely have their warts, though. I'd like to see if this includes such unions as the Screen Actor's Guild and the like that would ridiculously skew the numbers. -=Mike But are there not also non-union workers who make shitloads of money?

Uh, they're a little behind the times. Or beer is killing my brain cells.

Stats please. http://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat41.pdf Anecdotes are cool and all. But I can't argue with your own personal experiences, AoO and MikeSC. If that's what you guys have seen, then you're probably gonna feel that way. The statistics show that unions help workers--better pay and better benefits on average. The World Bank even said so, and they're hardly left-wing. I'm not saying that they don't definitely have their warts, though.

Edited for accuracy. I thought you were above this sort of shit. Then again, I don't remember you having an economics degree... or a history degree... or any degree that gives you authority on the subject matter. What I do have, though, is common sense. And common sense tells me that unions have been a very destructive force in the American workplace. Have they done good? Yes, unquestionably. But they've also done a lot of harm, And in my opinion, the bad has outweighed the good for some time now. Unions are still by far the best way for working people to win some semblance of economic security and to have a say in the terms of their employment. Union members make 25 percent more in wages than workers who don’t have a union. Women and black workers with a union make 30 percent more, and Latino union workers make 45 percent more. Union members are considerably more likely to have a defined-benefit pension plan and health care than workers without unions. Unions also curb discrimination on the job, push for workplace safety and give workers a much-needed collective voice.

Looks like them damn libruls don't have quite as easy a time getting WH Press Corps passes as gay Republican prostitutes: Maureen Dowd, NY Times Op-Ed: MadDog (earlier thread): I guess the NY Times isn't a publication and isn't being published? And it turns out that he was at the WH *before* he even started his crap Talon News website.

Common sense is overrated. I prefer facts and logic. Got any? Well, we could point to the rapidly dwindling percentage of union employees as evidence that WORKERS don't much care for what they offer. -=Mike Or we could point to the almost entirely conservative makeup of the NLRB and the extremely unfriendly (pro-employer, anti-employee) climate for unions that this has created as the reason for this decrease.

He could get access to classified memos, though. And the whole gay prostitute thing isn't a big deal to me (the fact that he was a right wing hack w/ no journalistic credibility is the kicker for me). It's just kinda funny given the nature of the current administration. MilitaryStud.com.

That's high praise from a Democrat, Popick, nobody knows pompousness and arrogance like the liberals Nobody knows sweepings generalizations and veering threads off topic for some random liberal bashing/flaming like Czech.

You don't expect him to be at least somewhat knowledgeable about one of the top policy goals of his second term?

Exactly. It's perfectly acceptable to use "I want the black man to win" as rationale for voting for Jesse Jackson (God knows there's really no other legitimate way to explain voting for him), but nobody could EVER say "I voted for the white man because I want a white president." Slightly off topic, but I used to work at a daycare. One day we had all of the kindergarteners sitting waiting to go to the pool and the bus hadn't come yet, so we started quizzing them with various questions about the US and such. One of the questions we asked was, "Can any of you name the President of the US?" A little black kindergartner, AJ, blurted out, "The White Man!" What wisdom from the mouths of babes.

Touche.

You're really gonna call a guy out on MISSPEAKING? When the other option is this guy? Rule #1: If you are going to pretend to be the fan of a team, you damn sure better know the name of the player you are talking about. Manny Ortez....christ, I'm not a Red Sox fan and even I know that isn't close. Rule #2: If you are going to attempt to make sweeping, conservative changes to the most successful government entitlement program in the nation's history, at least have some semblance of a clue of what you're talking about: