Artful Dodger: The idea of Palin being able to press a big red button!!

I have a problem with someone who believes in Armageddon being having that power.

Pedro Martínez: His make-up is very thick.

Snoopy: It's called diversion, a standard politician technique. They get trained in that from an early political career.

Did you watch "Have I got news for you"? &1241*

Snoopy: Brown is running scared. He's tired and hoping stuff he's promised (like election reform) will buy him votes.

As one interviewer said.. "why when you've had the chance haven't you done it before?"

I ain't voting for him.

Sidoarjo Mud Flow....

".....is a mud volcano[1] in the subdistrict of Porong, Sidoarjo in East Java, Indonesia that has been ongoing since May 2006. Approximately 2,500 m³ (88,000 cubic feet) of mud — equivalent to the contents of a dozen Olympic-size swimming pools — are expelled per day.[2] It is expected that the flow will continue for the next 30 years.

...There was controversy as to what triggered the eruption and whether the event was a natural disaster or not. According to PT Lapindo Brantas it was the May 2006 earthquake losers that triggered the mud flow eruption, and not their drilling activities.....

...In June 2008, a report released by British, American, Indonesian, and Australian scientists [13] concluded that the volcano was not a natural disaster, but the result of oil and gas drilling..."

30 YEARS possibly beginning caldera formation.

The Yangtze River and it's dolphins.

Artful Dodger: Ever heard of how butterfly's can cause hurricanes. How our natural species of squirrel has been nearly replaced by an American import.

I don't call a countrywide event .... "immediate". The Black plague killed .. .. lots and lots due to ships carrying rats. Back then no-one knew what was causing it through ignorance of medical matters.

We are part of this planet I believe.. our bones being made from it.

Artful Dodger: The carbon credit was/is and always be a farce is true. That we should keep the planet clean is true... have you ever heard of acid rain?

Artful Dodger: If you mean the extreme Climate worriers are probably going to be proves wrong.. you are probably right.

If you are saying that mankind's impact on the planet is insignificant then I must remind you of a thing called combined effect. One instance of this is in India, where a certain area that produces much food is having problems now with it's wells used for irrigation. They just keep having to dig deeper.

Why... more farms.

The dustbowl of USA history was caused by bad farming practices that ended up with the topsoil blowing away. Nature had some part.. but the removal of hedgerows was a bad idea.

Snoopy: I'm wanting a hung parliament.

pleeeeaaasssseeee

Artful Dodger: You will always get the extremists saying the world is going to end, we've had it off the religious element for years.. The anti-christ is coming, end of the world..etc, etc, etc..... ... year 2k.. I worked for a firm making sure that computer systems of various companies would not cave by the 00 digit problem of old mainframe systems, yet some guy had the idea that toasters would stop working.. even though they had no chips in them.

Regardless of those extremists on all sides, we cannot deny mankind's impact. I saw a documentary on the British coast remarking on how when someone thought it was a bright idea to turn salt marsh into farmland it ruined a natural harbour which dried up through it's sea water supply being disturbed by the new farmland.

It's no good saying quoting the doom and gloomers and saying Global warming is wrong because their figures were inaccurate.

btw... that story is two years old and from what I gather to do with a few weeks of cold weather in one part of the arctic.

As the source says I'm looking at...

"It's called freaky Arctic weather.

"All of the action is in the Bering Sea," Serreze said.

"For the past several weeks, we've been under a rather unusual weather pattern, a cold pattern, that's given us this late spurt in ice growth in the Bering Sea. If you look at the rest of the Arctic Ocean proper, it is very warm."

The Bering Sea, between Alaska and Russia, is caught between two low-pressure systems.

"This is weather," said Serreze. "Don't conflate this with climate."

Serreze notes that on the Atlantic side of the Arctic, ice is low.

However, online climate change sceptics have seized on the data as proof that global warming is a hoax. By Thursday morning, hundreds of Twitter posts were referencing Serreze's graph - many linking to a Sydney Morning Herald blog that displays the graph without explanation or context.

"An inconvenient fact," reads one post. "Arctic sea ice back to normal - oops."

Another asked: "Will the hysterical eco-nuts be called out? NO!"

Right-wing think-tanks such as the U.S.-based Heartland Institute had stories on the graph, but without comment from Serreze. Other online articles quoted climate skeptics as if they were the authors of the research."

http://www.thefreepress.ca/article/GB/20100401/CP10/304019901/-1/FERNIE/northern-sea-ice-growth-a-fluke-not-end-of-climate-change-researcher&template=cpArt

Pedro Martínez: The Daily Mail has reverted back to being a tabloid.. Shame, it did have a period of being a good newspaper some 20 years back.

.. then again, some 60 years back it was supporting the pro Nazi movement in the UK, before that was banned.

Swings and roundabouts!!

GTCharlie: ??? Enlighten me.

Artful Dodger: I hear talk that the Tea party movement could either be a bonus to the GOP or a curse. As votes could be deflected.

You don't need a third party, you guys from both main just need to join and say "we want change".. this fighting between parties tends to forget one thing.

You are all Americans.

March together. Protest together. But as long as there is "us and them" you'll let those who are gravy training this constant infighting win and the American people will lose out.

btw.. what is conservatism? It seems to be different from the UK variety.

Artful Dodger: lol I don't think so... but we could both nit pick over that for a few lifetimes.

Maybe by then the political system would have changed and something better than democracy will be worked out.

Artful Dodger: I think you've taken over that title.

*ducks*

Artful Dodger: Some of those are in jail, or at least prosecuted and found guilty. But, probably like over here.. they claim it's within the rules.

My point is, it's no good making out the Democrats to be worse then the Republicans, or nit pick over little things. In the end, it's how much good generally they achieve.

... If JFK was in power today, would his womanising be appreciated, or that he steered the world away from a nuclear war that no one would have won.

Even the righteous sin.

100 Examples of GOP Corruption, Lies, and Ignorance (Part 1)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WE3WM9qJUf0&feature=fvw

part 2

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XeDb0ElJSnU

part 3

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ag720jQSXo8

By The Angry Republican.

Artful Dodger: 50 out of how many operating in Washington that are employed by corporations?? I still remember the story of how Nixon delayed the law on seatbelts due to pressure by the car manufacturers who were complaining that it would cost more to make cars.

Artful Dodger: Your original post said no more corporate lobbyists.

"He's like every other politician. He says one thing, he does another. There's no change in Washington. It's business as usual."

And as such the Republicans in Washington you are saying were no different. They lied, contradicted, etc.

No new news there.

Artful Dodger: You should read your links....

"The Obama administration's limitation on lobbyists isn't a direct ban. Lobbyists are still allowed to be a part of the administration working on areas that they have not lobbied on."

Artful Dodger: He said corporate lobbyists according to the site you are C&P from. Has he hired 50 corporate lobbyists?

Artful Dodger: No corporate lobbyists, federal lobbyists??

Is this the same as in the UK, where former MP's are offering their contacts to companies, making claims that are not true????

Artful Dodger: So he employed 4 more.. I find that hardly big news compared to the number already working to pervert USA democracy.

Artful Dodger: Are these lobbyists he's hired corporate ones as discussed in his own words? Doesn't sound like it.

Artful Dodger: Which bit?

As for the birth of terrorism.. That is in dispute. Various groups from the world's history have been awarded that status. Islamic fighters for freedom, Jewish killers of Jewish collaborators with the Romans. The RCC in it's formation period when religion came armed with swords and fire.

Moses... the ten plagues. Could it be said that even though he just envisioned a natural event be terrorism, even though there was no way he could stop the eruption.. he used such sight as a means to plant terror in the heart of the Egyptians. That God was angry.

Ferris Bueller: I don't think some people would like Christ's return. The temple money changers, book sellers n' "send me 10 bucks to fight the devil" businesses would suddenly be redundant.

Maybe the Hippocratic oath would be more remembered rather than the dollar.

Ferris Bueller: I'll give you an example.. The IRA was supported by outsiders, mostly through NORAID as well as support from Libya and other groups. Arms shipments came from primarily the USA and Libya as well as deals with arms dealers in Europe.

They even managed to smuggle small arms on the QE2!!

One guy got caught trying to buy SAM's...

Gaddafi gave help as a result of the British support to an attack killing his adopted daughter by the USAF.

Artful Dodger: Ok.. let me put it this way. Since when were people of middle eastern origin the only ones to blow up or hijack planes. The first one was in 1931, there have been over 600 hijackings. At one time 41 on average per year.

Artful Dodger: Perhaps you should read back to WWII

http://www.spectacle.org/yearzero/tribunal.html

"....Unlike Quirin, which was unanimous, two justices dissented in Yamashita. Justice Murphy argued that the Fifth Amendment guarantee of due process applied to enemy belligerents:

The immutable rights of the individual, including those secured by the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment, belong not alone to the members of those nations that excel on the battlefield or that subscribe to the democratic ideology. They belong to every person in the world, victor or vanquished, whatever may be his race, color or beliefs. They rise above any status of belligerency or outlawry. They survive any popular passion or frenzy of the moment. No court or legislature or executive, not even the mightiest army in the world, can ever destroy them. Such is the universal and indestructible nature of the rights which the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment recognizes and protects when life or liberty is threatened by virtue of the authority of the United States.

Justice Murphy concluded that the defendant "was rushed to trial under an improper charge, given insufficient time to prepare an adequate defense, deprived of the benefits of some of the most elementary rules of evidence and summarily sentenced to be hanged." He said that the use of military tribunals to try a "fallen enemy commander" formed part of a cycle of vindictiveness and retribution and represented an abandonment of American ideals. "To conclude otherwise is to admit that the enemy has lost the battle but has destroyed our ideals."....."

Artful Dodger: Nope... any reasonable person will see it was a more complicated matter than first thought. These things happen.

It's not like someone deliberately lying.

Vikings: No.. the topic was aircraft scanners and how someone abused them. It then turned onto terrorism. No-one is skirting the issue that radicals who fly under the Muslim banner hate America..... yet they are not the only ones who are terrorists.

"but they must not be lumped together like apples and oranges"

Our fruit bowl usually has apples, oranges, bananas and other fruits such as pears, plums, etc in it.

Big bowl

That you may choose to focus on just 'Muslim bannered' terrorists is your choice. But us in the UK and in Europe through the various terrorist threats and others committing hate killing cannot and will not.

Bernice: Spitting image was a great series.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LCQa4iFmkW4

The only way to diffuse the problem with Muslim extremists is by dealing with the recruitment points used, that which is causing the angers. It worked in NI, where 99.99% of those at war are now at peace. They want peace to work.

... Bin Laden and his gang was a leftover of the cold war, I remember the news showing how these "brave guys" are killing Russians in Afghanistan. Their weaponry, the bad Russians, etc.

The west trained them to conduct guerilla warfare.

What gets me is with the Bin Laden family being based in the USA at the time with their links.. Surely they knew in US intelligence that Bin Laden was heavily against the USA.

Bernice: Perhaps by dealing with key issues. Israel is not flavour of the month at the mo in Europe and the USA. Spying, assassinations, bribery.. murder, taking land and property of those who legally have the right to live there.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1GPtMfhpQ4Y

Vikings: Since when did government officials stop being Americans? Since when did those government officials stop having families with relatives.. Their names might be Joe, Bob, Jim.. they might buy regularly at Joe's corner store. Bob the accountant might have these officials using him for working on the taxes... and in visits to government offices Sue might end up as collateral damage.

They wish to cause terror and death, in that there is no difference between your internal and external terrorist threats.

Artful Dodger: The point is while so called Islamic fighters (who we in the west trained) are killing, or planning killing.. do not lose sight of the other groups hell bent on some vengeance or other plan for mass murder.

Some old granny could be a white supremacist sympathiser, others have used the blow a plane up system before. Lockerbie was in 1988, others have happened.

Vikings: The government is made up of people off the USA, these groups are made up by people of the USA. ... I don't get it.. are you saying the terror felt by those targeted was any less real than terror felt by those killed by terrorists on a plane. Those who were targeted by the anthrax bomber(s?) was less real?

I worked in a chemical warehouse, where each chemical had to be hazard rated on a scale of 0-10 ... fatal was 6.2, the real nasty stuff was the mutagens. If there was a fire.. we would run upwind!!

Artful Dodger: Maybe we shouldn't have trained them "freedom fighters" so well... well Reagan called them that when us in the west taught them how to blow up the USSR military machine back a while.

And that some think suicide is martyrdom shows how far off from real Islam they are. Like those who threatened Kevin Smith over the film "Dogma" with death.

Just because they say they are Christians, don't mean they are in heart, mind and spirit.

The UK's main problem has been an American export.. kids trying to be rapper gangsters. The pirates off Somalia... they have been causing much in the way of problems.

Extremists are only part of the problem.

Vikings: Are you telling me that because your internal terrorists do not (so far) use planes they are not a threat to USA civilians, etc.

Suppose they start using private small planes from small airfields, or start on the 1000's of internal flights instead of just bombing and killing.. will they then score enough points on the 'who will kill a civilian' scale?

No. The FBI will pursue anyone who threatens your people. Whether internal or external terrorists.

The 2001 anthrax attacks in the United States, also known as Amerithrax from its Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) case name, occurred over the course of several weeks beginning on September 18, 2001, only a few days after the September 11 attacks. Letters containing anthrax spores were mailed to several news media offices and two Democratic U.S. Senators, killing five people and infecting 17 others. (A 2004 study however, has shown that the total number of harmed people should be raised to 68 [1].) The primary suspect was not publicly identified until 2008.

In mid-2008, the FBI narrowed its focus to Bruce Edwards Ivins, a scientist who worked at the government's biodefense labs at Fort Detrick in Frederick, Maryland. Ivins was told of the impending prosecution and on July 27 committed suicide, by an overdose of acetaminophen.[2]

On August 6, 2008, federal prosecutors declared Ivins to be the sole culprit of the crime.[3] Two days later, Sen. Charles Grassley and Rep. Rush Holt called for hearings into the DOJ and FBI's handling of the investigation.[4][5]

Tom Carey was inspector in charge of the FBI Amerithrax investigation from October 2001 to April 2002.

On the mailings of the letters,

"What we do have and what we do know is that the anthrax was mailed here in the United States; we know it was mailed from 10 Nassau Street, Princeton, New Jersey, from a mailbox. We know the flow of the mail flow, we know the dates that the letters were sent, and it would appear to many of us that have worked this investigation, that it’s much more consistent with someone being an American-born, and having some level of familiarity with the Princeton-Clinton New Jersey area versus a foreign operative coming into the U.S. and being able to successfully conduct such an attack."

On May 9, 2002, New Scientist published an article that reported:

'The DNA sequence of the anthrax sent through the US mail in 2001 has been revealed and confirms suspicions that the bacteria originally came from a US military laboratory. The data released uses codenames for the reference strains against which the attack strain was compared. The two reference strains that appear identical to the attack strain most likely originated at the US Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick (USAMRIID), Maryland. The new work also shows that substantial genetic differences can emerge in two samples of an anthrax culture separated for only three years. This means the attacker's anthrax was not separated from its ancestors at USAMRIID for many generations.'

Artful Dodger: Do we? Can you show me where you get your info for such a statement. Quite frankly.. it doesn't seem to be true. The local army base has not needed to have armed guards on the gates for ages. A more accurate measure I feel than some government 'alert'.

"but I'm speaking specifically about Muslim terrorists and what should be the reaction of the US regarding profiling policies."

The USA is just one country who is at risk of attack, we in Europe have had to deal with actual terrorism as I said for decades. That gives us a different attitude then you in the USA.

We cannot in the UK just forget or drop worries about other terrorist groups such as the IRA, especially when splinter groups from the main are trying to kick it all off again. It is totally unsafe to do so. Just because you in the USA did not feel the effects of that terrorism does not make it less important.

That we've had several white supremacist attacks and attempts makes us in Europe (and Russia seeing as there has been a significant rise in white folk killing non white folk) makes us concerned over what is going on. It was only last year when one Nazi lover was jailed for attempting to blow up people in the UK. The only thing that stopped him was him getting drunk and stopped for D&D by the police.

Islam, like Christianity does not condone suicide. It more so forbids the taking of non-combatants. Those who fight under the Islamic banner may use the name, but like those Christians who have used God as an excuse to kill with a clear conscience it is a perversion of the faith.

Artful Dodger: Can you name which some? The groups in the Uk seem to be very vocal over what's happening and (as I said) helping the UK police and security forces in this troubled time. Many other countries Muslims are helping as well I hear.

Artful Dodger: No we are talking about terrorism. Something the UK and Europe have been dealing with for decades in some form or another.

Artful Dodger: Ohhhh yes they have.

Artful Dodger: ... It matters to us in the UK. As UK citizens have been blown up or attempted to be blown up by more then Muslims. Muslims did not invent terrorism

We've had several white supremacists attempt or actually kill people in the UK. The IRA splinter groups have been blowing up and are PROMISING more in order to try and restart the Northern Ireland troubles again... over 3500 deaths over 40 years that war took.

They are NOT boy scouts. They don't care if the person is a civilian or not.

The British foreign office is warning those UK nationals travelling to Israel to only hand over their passports to anyone including Israeli officials when absolutely necessary. The risk (especially with old pre biometric passports) of fraudulent use by Israeli secret service is considered high after the recent assassination in Dubai. Even though after a similar incident in 1987 the Israeli government promised not to fake UK passports again.

Those involved in the assassination are now on Interpol's wanted list.

GTCharlie: Look don't ... we have enough trouble with white supremacists, splinter IRA groups and the BNP stirring it. We are kicking out with help from the Muslim community any extremists, or them being arrested for hate crime. It's going to get so confusing for the poor security services over here!!

That's why everyone gets scanned.

Artful Dodger: And of the European Muslims? Who are 2nd or 3rd generation but still (thanks to bad policies in the west & those would pervert Islam in order to spread hate) ... what then?

That's why everyone gets scanned.

Plus, false passports can be gotten.