My first son is going to be borned in two months, you can be sure that you will be one of the examples when he grows up.

Best regards

Christian Maciel
Sao Paulo, Brazil

I hear all the time from people here “down south” that complain about the US because of people such as that “Joe”, that type of guy and President Bush are the present examples of the US politics

What I do when that happens is to demonstrate ( look for science here ) that there is people in the US such as you that look “trought the smoke” to see what can come from such a bill that goes against the basic rights of the people and against international laws ( such as the Geneva convention).

A question to ask to anyone that supports that bill, if the US decided that doesn’t have to respect the Geneva convention. Do any enemy have the same right ?

When I as what we see when such a bill passes I remember my childhood, you see I was borned in Argentina, my family was one of the many that had to leave the country because the military regime in power at that time considered that anything could be valid to “bring peace and security”.

Personal liberties were suspended, special courts and secret courts created, laws about special “jailing” created.

Does it seem bad ? I would ask Joe something, would he agree in being the guy that goes to Jail, or the US G.I. that has go throught interrogation after capture.

I always enjoyed your site because of the science involved, please, keep the GREAT work.

Best regards

Christian Maciel
Sao Paulo, Brasil

Joe & other right-wingers if you think bombing peopel and invading nations and all this isn’t evil .. but Janet Jackson showing part of a mammary gland for half-a second gets you frothing at the mouth then I suggest you take a long hard look at things and try to recall a few words the Bible (among other sources) says like : Do unto others

Do Unto The Iraqis as ye’d be done by .. Imagine Iraq has invaded America, toppled Bush, bombed the living daylights out of New York or Bible Belt whereever you live ..

Do unto the Palestrineans .. Imagine if someone else had turned you into second class citizens in your own land, killed half your family then blown up your house because another family member or friend chose tofight back even at the cost of their own life..

Much as Americans wish to believ it tehsepeople aren’t mindless, stereotypical fanatical barbarians doing what theydo because they want todestory The good of US of A.

They’re doing unto you over what yopu’ve being doing unto them and te sooner you realise that & change course the better. Stop supporting the murder, torture and oppression of so many in the Muslim world for once and you just see if that doesn’t make a huge difference!

10 quotes & their sources to consider for whatever its worth :

1) ” ..the United States is neither omnipotent nor omniscient. We [the USA] are only 6% of the World’s population – we cannot impose our will upon the other 94% of mankind.”
- John F. Kennedy. (Quoted by Phillip Adams, Page 11, ‘Weekend Australian’ magazine. Dec. 13-14, 2003.)

2) Quote from President Eisenhower (quoted in ’The Guardian weekly’, 2005 Jan 28th – Feb. 3rd .) : “We cannot consider that the armed invasion and occupation of another country are peaceful or proper means to achieve justice and conformity with international law.”

3) ‘Since it is impossible to coerce thought, the way to social harmony is to discuss conflict and pursue truth; the more people speak their minds freely, the more they are likely to be loyal citizens.’
– Jewish Dutch 17th C philosopher, B. Spinoza.

4) “.. the very best defense against terrorism would be the example of the world’s strongest nation leading the world in the moral battle against poverty, disease, intolerance, and oppression.”
- Jim Wallis, head of the ‘Sojourner’s’ Christian Anti-War movement.

5) “When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist.” – Dom Helder Camara

6) “Wherever our armies have marched, wherever they have encamped, every species of barbarity has been executed. We planted an irrevocable hatred wherever we went, which neither time nor measure will be able to eradicate.”
- Col. Charles Stuart during the American War of Independence, 1778.

7) “There is one safeguard known generally to the wise, which is an advantage and security to all, but especially to democracies against despots – suspicion.”
- Demosthenes, Phillipics-2. [Collins Concise Dictionary of Quotations, P.108.]
“Protest : the alternative to complicity”
Senator Bob Brown, quoted in ‘The Age’, 2004 May 15th.

9) The Earth should not be cut up into hundreds of different sections, each inhabited by a self-defined segment of humanity that considers its own welfare and its own “national security” to be paramount above all other considerations. … I am not a Zionist, then, because I don’t believe in nations … There are no nations! There is only humanity. And if we don’t come to understand that right soon, there will be no nations, because there will be no humanity.”
- Isaac Asimov, Pages 419-421, ‘ I Asimov : A memoir’ chapter 7 ‘anti-Semitism’, Bantam Books , 1995.

& 10) “True peace is not merely the absence of tension, it is the presence of justice.”
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

If USA, the nation that used to call itself the beacon of reason, justice and compassion, falls to Fascism and degenerates to the level of the indisciminate mass-murderers we claim to despise, all of the people of Earth will face truly horrible times. USA is still, despite the terrible damage done to it by years of Bush madness, the best hope humanity has to survive.

And here you are on that same soap box and it isn’t even yours. Perhaps you failed to notice.

As to your perspective that they’re all bad and we’re all good, it lacks one important dimension and the rationale you conclude from it leaves out one important fact.

The missing dimension, they and we are only a fraction of the people involved. If you think the USA rules the world, then don’t be surprised when in the process of violating the sovereignty of our allies’ countries they call such a position into question. Don’t be surprised when our allies don’t come to our aide. Don’t be surprised when the incredibly egocentric position as you describe it leads to many many more joining the forces that oppose us. Just as we would oppose any other country that held that attitude toward us.

Which brings me to the important fact you left out of your version. Regardless of how self righteous you feel about your position, and how justified you feel, that doesn’t equate to your position actually being effective. Great, you feel justified, while even more people join the Taliban and Al Qaeda.

Watching Frontline last night, I saw Bush express your very attitude and make public demands in Pakistan that Musharif should do more. Bush acted like an ignorant bully. His lack of common diplomacy only served to push Pakistan one step closer toward destabilization.

You may feel justified but all the while WWIII looms ever larger. Doesn’t it make more sense to be smarter than to be tougher? Or do you not think humans are really at the top of the food chain with brains over brawn taking the clear advantage?

Well that is amaizing!
The very idea that American servicemen and women are anything like the people they fight ,or the current administration is anything like the enemy the world faces in the Islamofacist.

Wow! please tell me about the beheading, the roadside bombs designed to kill and maime the maximum amount of civillians regardless who they are and what they believe that the American and allied soldiers are doing.

The Geneva convention says nothing about terrorists at all they are not accorded any rights period.

As far as I am concerned Habeus Corpus has nothing to do with non citizens period.

Please show or link to the part of the US constetution that says otherwise,

of course.

-Joe.

“When you become like your enemy, your enemy has won.”
-Sun Tzu, The Art of War

(ps – apologies of this appears twice – got spam error message:-( )

As to people being manipulated, I described O’Reilly’s tactics. The people who did buy his argument bought the straw. It has nothing to do with agreeing with me. I think that was clear in what I wrote. Perhaps you haven’t seen the original entry on that matter.

All the examples of past infringements of our liberties do not change my assessment of the current one. But under the other blog entry, I did post what the Supreme Court ruled on the example re Lincoln and the Civil War.

How do I as a skeptic and a liberal explain the decreased cost of laser eye surgery? That’s out there in left field. Pretty hard to address all your unrelated arguments but I’ll be brief on this one. What does the cost of any single procedure coming down with competition have to do with national health insurance or health coverage? And what does the cost of a single procedure matter anyway? What matters is the total cost and the total outcome. Several studies have shown the US pays more and gets less in health care than a number of other countries with national health insurance.

There are a number of procedures in health care that really rake in the bucks. Eye acuity surgery is one of those. So are some of the face lifts and liposuctions. Lots of doctors want to get in on the gravy train. I recommend you don’t pick the cheapest guy, pick the one with the most experience and highest standard of practice.

Whether private health care is more efficient than when the government is involved doesn’t address the problem of the uninsured showing up in emergency departments. Those who pay for health care currently pay for the uninsured’s health care in the payer’s insurance premiums or out of pocket expense. Either the hospital has to turn those who can’t pay away (currently illegal if they are seeking emergency care) or the hospital has to charge those who do pay enough to cover the costs of those who don’t. So market efficiency has nothing to do with the issue I spoke of.

The rest of your comments make you appear a bit uninformed. Come on over to the Skeptic Friends Network forum and I’ll be happy to discuss them with you. I post at the JREF forum also but it is so big I may not see your posts. And the BA’s forum here doesn’t allow political discussions. I won’t post more on those off topic issues here. It bores people.

This is YOUR site, YOUR blog. Do whatever the hell you want with it. If other people have negative opinions on the site, good for them. Thats why this is a free nation. Which is exactly why you dont have to change a thing.

And, there are plenty of definitions for “right wing”. If one sticks too closely to the image one believes a right wing person is and doesn’t pay enough attention to the thing represented by the label, the result is support of the current Republican administration in spite of how close or far that administration is to the individual’s image.

I see nothing in ‘right wing’ or ‘conservative’ that requires one follow religion blindly over science. I see nothing in ‘right wing’ that requires one support suspension of Constitutional rights, or supports blind allegiance to the President if it becomes apparent the actions taken by that President increase the risk of terrorism rather than decrease it.

By the same token, there is nothing in the term ‘left wing’ or ‘liberal’ that says one will never support suspension of some Constitutional rights in times of war, nor do the labels say religion may never be followed.

If people focus only on the images, and not on the underlying basis, then we remain more susceptible to manipulation. I imagine conservatives bristle when they hear liberals attach stereotypes to the conservative label the same way I bristle when conservatives claim all sorts of nonsense about their image of what a liberal person believes or does.

A am not for abortion, I am for deceasing the numbers of abortions by more effective means that just making it illegal. I’m not for giving in to terrorism. I’m for fighting it with more effective means based on scientific principles rather than emotions. I’m not for taxing and spending any more than conservatives are for borrowing and spending. Health care costs all of us less when it is available to all. When it isn’t, we still pay for it when our health insurance premiums and taxes cover the uninsured’s health care in the emergency departments and un-reimbursed hospital care. Labor unions mean more wages for workers which translates into more money to buy the products and more income for corporations. If those on the corporate side of the equation would look a little past some of the short term gains, then liberals and conservatives might not be so far apart in this area either.

My point is we can stop identifying with these images and groups (which BTW our leaders exploit for their personal gain) and we can start looking at the fact we agree on a lot of the same goals, we may just differ on the best ways to get there.

That still leaves a lot of conflict over religion which isn’t resolved as easily as looking past the images. But I won’t get into that here. In the case of this bill, getting past the images will in itself help immensely.

Actually, I place more blame in the apathy of too many Americans, and in the failure of too many Americans to actually look further than the talking points and slogans they are fed large quantities of every day.

Beyond that, in this case, I point out that one of those talking points is to claim, ‘the other guys’ are as bad, or are the same, or are as corrupt and so on. No, in this case, ‘the other guys’ and more and more Republicans as well, (thankfully and finally), are not the same. That particular talking point serves to dampen the significance of the current situation.

I replied to Xannady and John in the original blog entry on this to keep this entry from becoming an extension of that one.

I think the fact the original blog entry has >150 replies and this one has >65 says a lot for the value of speaking up on this topic.

I wish so many people didn’t snatch up their marbles and go home when something appears that they don’t like. There’s nothing to be gained by further separation of viewpoints.

In any case, this is your site, Phil. While people expect a certain theme (bad astronomy, according to the domain name), they also should expect personal views… particularly when issues occur during the same administration which would suppress science.

But seriously, it saddens me to think how many people keep missing the point that it’s our differences that make our country strong. It’s the BA’s freedom to make his posting what makes this country great. Instead of jumping down the other guy’s throat, try listening to other side.

My best friend since childhood voted for Bush, and he has his reasons. I let him explain his reasons, and I understand his point of view now. I still disagree with him, but at least I understand.

Learning in general is always important. Learning is what I do when I read this blog. Learning is what I did when I read this post. Thank you BA.

-j

Post away–what’s a blog without opinions? I don’t agree that liberals are any more “reality based” than conservatives, and I think generalizing viewpoints on whether a person is one of two parties (think of it–two parties to represent 300 million people! Egad!) isn’t very precise. However, there are some serious problems with the way the government handles science and other matters, and I think it’s perfectly appropriate to gripe about those things. Just for the record, plenty of so-called right wingers have big problems with Creationism, anti-science/technology policies, torture, war, etc. Each party is an enormous tent, containing pretty much any viewpoint that you care to name.

In the end, I come to this site for the science and for the skepticism. To the extent that those things remain the focus–even when you venture into politics–I’ll keep reading. Rand Simberg does a similar thing from a more conservative (or maybe libertarian is the better label) perspective, but I’d imagine that on science and skepticism issues, you’d be pretty closely aligned. People have a variety of reasons for their political leanings, but I can always respect rationality, logic, and the scientific method regardless of religion or creed

Not surprising when you think about the way the Dems tried to shoot down the space commecialisation(ammendments) bill. I never understood untill then how ANYONE could vote republican, but if you are a one or two issue voter, and you see someone carrying on like that about your pet peeve…

“Be who you are and say what you feel, ’cause people who mind don’t matter, and people who matter don’t mind.” – Theodor Seuss Geisel