Saturday, May 23, 2009
Friday, May 22, 2009
Darwinism Vs. Intelligent Design Debate
What I have decided to post here is a debate which took place in 2006 and is certainly a debate that is not disappearing any time soon. It is the debate of Darwinism against those who oppose it. I have long been interested in this debate. The debate I am posting here is a face-off between Peter Ward and Stephen Meyer. In light of the fact that Darwin was a front-page story this week with the new "Ida" fossil, I have decided to post this debate.
Allow me to introduce the participants in the debate and start with the one on the 
intelligent design side of the question. Stephen C. Meyer is director and Senior Fellow of the Center for Science and Culture at the Discovery Institute, in Seattle. Meyer earned his Ph.D. in the History and Philosophy of Science from Cambridge University for his dissertation on the history of origin of life biology and the methodology of the historical sciences. Previously he worked as a geophysicist with the Atlantic Richfield Company after earning his undergraduate degrees in Physics and Geology. Meyer has co-authored two books: Darwinism, Design, and Public Education and Science and Evidence of Design in the Universe.
Now t
o the evolutionist side. Peter Ward is a professor and researcher with the UW Earth and Space Sciences Dept. Since earning his Ph.D. in 1976, Ward has published more than 100 scientific papers dealing with paleontological, zoological , and astronomical topics. Ward is currently examining the nature of the Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction event with studies in France and Spain involving detailed field work which concentrates on ammonites and bivalves. His other areas of research include Analytical Geochemistry, Astrobiology and Paleontology. He's also authored or co-authored 12 books including Life As We Do Not Know It, and The Rare Earth.
I will allow you to decide which side wins the debate, and feel free to comment on who you think won. This is an issue that continues to influence our educational system, science, and philosophy, and will surely not cease to be debated. I also believe that this is a discussion for which I am not the only one interested. If you found this type of post interesting please let me know in the comments section, and let me know whether you would like me to post similiar videos in the future.
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Nutter Keith Olbermann's Hyperbolic Attacks On Cheney As Being “Insane As Any Terrorist” And Helping "Kill Americans"
Among the gems in Keith Olbermann's newest radical leftist rant on MSNBC:
1. "You [Cheney] saved no one, sir. If the classified documents you seek released really did detail plots other than those manufactured by drowning men in order to get it to stop, or if they truly did know plans beyond the laughable ones you and President Bush have already revealed, hijackers without passports, targeting a building whose name Mr. Bush could not remember, clowns who thought they could destroy airports by dropping matches in fuel pipelines 30 miles away, men who planned to attack a military base dressed as pizza delivery boys, forgetting that every man there was armed, and today, the four would-be synagogue bombers, one of whom turns out to keep bottles of urine in his apartment, and is on schizophrenia medicine. If those documents contain anything of value, you would have leaked those already, as you leaked those revenge fantasies of the Library Tower and the JFK Bomber and the Ft. Dix Six."
2. "Neurotic, paranoid, false to fact and false to reason, forever self-rationalizing his inner rage at his own impotence, and failure dripping from every word, and as irrational, as separated from the real world, as dishonest, as insane as any terrorist; the former vice president has today humiliated himself beyond redemption."
3. "Gee, thanks for being motivated by the deaths of nearly 3,000 Americans to go so far as to take a serious second look. And thank you, sir, for admitting, obviously inadvertently, that you did not take a serious first look in the seven months and 23 days between your inauguration and 9/11. For that attack, sir, you are culpable, morally, ethically. At best, you are guilty of malfeasance and eternally lasting stupidity. At worst, sir, in the deaths of 9/11, you are negligent."
4. "You saved no one, Mr. Cheney. All you did was help kill Americans. You were negligent before 9/11. Your response to your complicity by omission on 9/11 was panic and shame and insanity, and lying this country into a war that did nothing but kill 4,299 more of us. We will take no further instructions from you, sir. And let me again quote Oliver Cromwell to you, Mr. Cheney. "You have sat too long for any good you have been doing lately. Depart, I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of god, go."
Here is John Gibson ripping into Keith Olbermann:
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Liz Cheney Vs. Lawrence O'Donnell On Waterboarding
Lawrence O'Donnell makes the asinine argument that waterboarding cannot work or else it would have been used hundreds of more times. This is one of the most stupid arguments I have ever heard. The fact is that waterboarding was not an interrogation technique of first resort, but one of last resort used upon the highest captured Al-Qaeda terrorists. I find it hard to believe that O'Donnell would be objecting less if waterboarding was used on hundreds of detainees rather than on three.
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Thursday, May 21, 2009
Chairman Of The US Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen: Iran Acquiring A Nuclear Weapon Would Be "Calamitous"
Mullen told the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee, "I'm one who believes that Iran getting a nuclear weapon is calamitous for the region and for the world. It then, in my view, generates neighbors who feel exposed, deficient and then develop or buy the capability themselves. The downside, potentially, is absolutely disastrous," alluding to the possibility of a nuclear arms-race in the Middle East.
"Major leaders, internationally, have got to come together to arrest this growth or the long-term downside for the people in the world is really, really tragic and drastic," Mullen said.
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Cheney Vs. Obama: Former VP And Current President Deliver Competing National Security Speeches
Here is Obama's fifty-minute speech. As many are pointing out, Obama flubs the name of his own Secretary of Defense, calling him "William Gates" when his name is Robert Gates. Obama also announced that "we will seek to transfer some detainees to the same type of facilities that we hold all manner of dangerous and violent criminals within our borders, namely highly secure prisons that ensure the public's safety." This plan to allow these terrorists into the United States comes one day after the Dem Congress refused to fund the closing of Gitmo that Obama was requesting precisely because they feared that Obama would begin transferring detainees into the U.S.: Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy
Moments after Obama delivered the above speech, the news cut to Cheney's competing speech on national security, and suffice it to say that, unlike Obama, Cheney hits the nail on the head. He argues and explains that the measures taken by the Bush adminstration were “legal, essential, justified, successful, and the right thing to do”:
Watch Dick Cheney's daughter Liz Cheney's response to the two speeches:
California Assembly Speaker Karen Bass: Voters Rejected Tax-Hike Propositions Because They Were "Confused" And It Was "Too Complicated"
Speaker Bass would actually have you believe that voters rejected tax hikes because it was “too complicated” as opposed to simply taking the message that voters rejected new taxes. She passes the buck to the voters of California when it is the state government that is to blame for the reckless spending far above the already outrageously high taxes that has driven the Golden State into an enormous budget deficit.
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Scientists Declare That "Missing Link" Fossil Not Worth Media Hype
Fox News reports on the new 47-million year old primate fossil unveiled to the world Tuesday saying it "has made waves among scientists and non-scientists. Google responded by working an image of the fossil into the logo of its search page Wednesday. The discovery was presented with much fanfare at a press conference at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, where researchers called the finding a 'missing link' and a publisher from Little, Brown (which put out a related book called 'The Link') called it 'a scientific discovery that will undoubtedly revolutionize how we understand our own evolution.'... The small body represents a roughly 9-month-old female that probably looked a lot like modern lemurs. The researchers who studied the fossil, led by Jørn Hurum of the University of Oslo's Natural History Museum, nicknamed her 'Ida.' Experts are almost unanimous in their praise for the fossil's exceptional preservation: About 95 percent of its bones are intact, and even some fur imprints and stomach contents are visible."
Fox News says that "the authors of the scientific paper reporting the finding in the journal PLoS ONE May 19 claim that some of Ida's features could redraw the 
evolutionary tree of life, and even suggest that Ida might belong to a family that is an early precursor of humans. Humans, apes and monkeys all belong to a group called anthropoids. Debate has raged for decades about the origins of this group, but the prevailing view is that anthropoids likely sprung from either the extinct omomyids or the tarsiers (large-eyed primates with living relatives in Southeast Asia). Hurum and team advocate the minority hypothesis that in fact a third group, adapids, eventually gave rise to monkeys, apes and humans. They argue that Ida (scientific name: Darwinius masillae) is an adapid, and has features more closely aligned with anthropoids than with lemurs, who are thought to be adapid descendants."
However, scientists have already come out in large numbers declaring they are unwilling to agree that this fossil somehow is redrawing the evolutionary tree of life. Fox News reports that "some scientist's are not convinced" and "opinions diverge on how to interpret it."
"On the whole I think the evidence is less than convincing," said Chris Gilbert, a paleoanthropologist at Yale University. "They make an intriguing argument but I would definitely say that the consensus is not in favor of the hypothesis they're proposing."
"What does it tell us about human evolution that we didn't know? Precious little," said Stony Brook University paleoanthropologist John Fleagle.
"They claim in the paper that by examining the anatomy of adapids, these animals have something to do with the direct line of human ancestry and living monkeys and apes. This claim is buttressed with almost no evidence. And they failed to cite a body of literature that's been going on since at least 1984 that presents evidence against their hypothesis," said paleontologist Richard Kay of Duke University.
"The P.R. campaign on this fossil is I think more of a story than the fossil itself. It's a very beautiful fossil, but I didn't see anything in this paper that told me anything decisive that was new," said anthropologist Matt Cartmill of Duke University in North Carolina.
"This fossil has been hailed as the eighth wonder of the world. Frankly, I've got 10 more in my basement," said Chris Beard, a curator of vertebrate paleontology at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh. He disagreed with some of the outlandish claims researchers made during the press conference, such as the suggestion that Ida represents a "missing link" between early primates and humans. "It's not a missing link, it's not even a terribly close relative to monkeys, apes and humans, which is the point they're trying to make," Beard said.
The Fox News source can be seen at http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,520886,00.html.
In fact, curator Chris Beard has already written an article in response to the hoopla surrounding Ida. He wrote in the New Scientist that Ida "retains primitive 
features that commonly occurred among all early primates, such as simple incisors rather than a full-fledged toothcomb, indicates that Ida belongs somewhere closer to the base of the tree than living lemurs do. But this does not necessarily make Ida a close relative of anthropoids – the group of primates that includes monkeys, apes – and humans. In order to establish that connection, Ida would have to have anthropoid-like features that evolved after anthropoids split away from lemurs and other early primates. Here, alas, Ida fails miserably. So, Ida is not a 'missing link' – at least not between anthropoids and more primitive primates. Further study may reveal her to be a missing link between other species of Eocene adapiforms, but this hardly solidifies her status as the 'eighth wonder of the world.'" To read his full article visit http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17173-why-ida-fossil-is-not-the-missing-link.html
Live Science Editorial Director Robert Roy Britt says the disoverers of Ida with the media on their side were "struggling with the knots in their stomachs that suggested something just wasn't quite right. Maybe it was the appearance of New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg at Ida's unveiling. Maybe it was the TV documentary planned around the finding. Or the book that's been written about it. Or the exclusive deal for yesterday's TV and Web coverage with one network. That much hype, and you wonder what they're hiding... [I]t can now be said the findings may well have been significantly overstated. We won't know for sure until further research is done. But if this event causes the public to distrust science and media, that distrust is well placed." To read the Live Science article for yourself visit http://www.livescience.com/culture/090520-ida-fossil-hype.html.
The whole course of events of the unfolding of this discovery is actually very revealing. There is a huge press conference alongside the mayor of NYC,
declarations that the "missing link" has been found, the media then goes with the "missing link" angle of the story and widely reports it, major newspapers make it a front-page story, and fanfare ensues. Then, a couple days later we find out that "it's not a missing link, it's not even a terribly close relative to monkeys, apes and humans," according to a curator of vertebrate paleontology at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh. Other reputable scientists, with not an inkling of a "creationist" motive, come out and say the fossil has been surrounded with what has amounted to a lot of hype. The whole idea that science was turned into just another media circus for what amounted to pure self-promotion is both disheartening and ridiculous. It turns out that many scientists say what is amazing about this fossil is simply how intact it is, but that those researching it were overstating its importance by declaring it "the missing link." This seems to me to be more than enough reason for well-placed distrust of much of the media and science establishment, especially when it comes to the issue of Darwinism.
Further, the response of many scientists declaring Ida's significance to have been overstated hardly got the press coverage that was awarded to the initial announcements that "the missing link" had been found. Nonetheless, credit must be given to the highly qualified scientists that through a sort of informal peer-review had no qualms about deflating this story.
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Wednesday, May 20, 2009
FBI Thwarts Attack And Arrests Four US-Born Islamoterrorists In Plot To Bomb Bronx Synagogues And Shoot Down Planes
CBS reports that "the FBI arrested four men in New York City on Wednesday evening in an alleged plot to detonate a bomb outside a Jewish temple and to attack an Air National Guard Base in upstate Newburgh. Federal authorities tell CBS 2 HD the motive for the attack was revenge over the United States' involvement in Afghanistan. Federal authorities announced the arrests of James Cromitie, David Williams, Onta Williams and Laguerre Payen on charges arising from a plot to detonate explosives near a synagogue in the Riverdale section of the Bronx, and to shoot military planes located at the New York Air National Guard Base at Stewart Airport in Newburgh with Stinger surface-to-air guided missiles. In their efforts to obtain weapons, the defendants dealt with an informant acting under law enforcement supervision, and the FBI and other agencies monitored the defendants' actions up to the time of arrest, including providing an inactive missile and inert explosives to the informant for the defendants. The investigation had been under way for about a year... Since the attacks that brought down the World Trade Center towers on Sept. 11, 2001, authorities have thwarted a number alleged plots against area targets including the Fort Dix military base in New Jersey, John F. Kennedy Airport, the Herald Square subway station and the Brooklyn Bridge."
The Daily News reports that of the four arrested African American men, three "were said to be jailhouse converts to Islam" and "allegedly had what they believed was a working Stinger missile in their car." The Daily News continues stating "that FBI agents posing as militants sold them what they thought was 30 pounds of C-4 and a plane-downing Stinger missile. The weaponry was all phony. The men were arrested as they planted fake bombs in front of the Riverdale Temple in the Bronx and under cars parked in front of the synagogue. They also allegedly planned to blow up a nearby Jewish Community Center. Witnesses said an NYPD vehicle blocked a black SUV outside the temple and then officers broke in the windows and handcuffed the four men inside the car. All four men were US-born."
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Iran Tests New Missile With Range That Can Hit Israel
The AP reports that "Iran test-fired a missile capable of striking Israel, U.S. Mideast bases and Europe on Wednesday... Tehran said the solid-fuel Sajjil-2 surface-to-surface missile has a range of about 1,200 miles. It is a new version of the Sajjil missile, which the country said it successfully tested late last year and has a similar range. Many analysts said the launch of the solid-fuel Sajjil was significant because such missiles are more accurate than liquid fuel missiles of similar range, such as Iran's Shahab-3... Moshe Arens, a former Israeli defense minister who trained in the U.S. as an aerospace engineer, said Wednesday's test was apparently part of Iran's broader quest to develop more advanced missiles and nuclear capability."
"They're increasing their abilities to launch rockets of longer and longer range that go beyond Israel and into Europe and eventually will carry nuclear weapons," Arens said. "They're troublemakers and you have to deal with troublemakers."
Ahmadinejad has repeatedly called for Israel's elimination.
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Stephen Moore And Arthur Laffer: "Soak The Rich, Lose The Rich"
Arthur Laffer is an influential economist who was a member of Reagan's Economic Policy Advisory Board. Stephen Moore is senior economics writer for the Wall Street Journal. The duo argue that there is a "problem for states that want to pry more money out of the wallets of rich people. It never works because people, investment capital and businesses are mobile: They can leave tax-unfriendly states and move to tax-friendly states... Updating some research from Richard Vedder of Ohio University, we found that from 1998 to 2007, more than 1,100 people every day including Sundays and holidays moved from the nine highest income-tax states such as California, New Jersey, New York and Ohio and relocated mostly to the nine tax-haven states with no income tax, including Florida, Nevada, New Hampshire and Texas. We also found that over these same years the no-income tax states created 89% more jobs and had 32% faster personal income growth than their high-tax counterparts."
Be sure to visit http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124260067214828295.html to read the full analysis.
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RINO California Gov. Arnold's 6 Tax-Hike Propisitions Go Down In Flames
Only one of the six propositions on the California ballot passed. The only one to pass was about freezing pay raises for legislators when the state’s running a deficit. California's Governor and his allies outspent critics of his propositions 10 to 1 to gain support for the measures, to no avail. The AFP reports that "California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger was dealt a crushing defeat as voters rejected a series of ballot initiatives designed to help plug the state’s spiraling budget deficit… Schwarzenegger had warned that failure of the proposals would leave California grappling with a budget shortfall of around 21.3 billion dollars. But weary voters were unwilling to heed Schwarzenegger’s deficit warnings and came out broadly against the ballot proposals, by margins of around 60-70 percent to 40-30 percent, local media reported." CBS reports that "an angry electorate soundly defeated a slate of special election budget measures Tuesday, a decision that left Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and state lawmakers holding virtually nothing but a scalpel to deal with California's $21.3 billion shortfall. The results for the ballot propositions mark a new low for the Republican governor, who struggled to live up to a campaign pledge to restore fiscal stability to the most populous state in the nation."
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Whoopi Goldberg To Glenn Beck On "The View": “You’re A Lying Sack Of Dog Mess”
Here you can see Glenn Beck respond to the outlandish ambush from Barbara and Whoopi. As Beck himself says, "I knew it was going to be bad. It turned into seven minutes of the most ridiculous 'Who said hello to whom first' I have ever seen."
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Tuesday, May 19, 2009
Mr. President, That's Not The King Of Saudi Arabia
This actually is an official White House Photograph of President Barack Obama bending over so the son of a White House staff member can pat his head during a family visit to the Oval Office May 8, 2009. The youngster wanted to see if the President's haircut felt like his own.
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RNC James Bond Style Ad On Pelosi Vs. CIA: "Lack Of Leaership. Democrats Galore."
Here is another ad against Pelosi that should be seen:
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RNC Chairman Michael Steele Delivers Speech Laying The Smackdown On The Democratic Party
Michael Steele made a major comeback today as Republican Chairman, delivering a speech in which he declares "the honeymoon is over." That we will take on the President with "class" unlike how they "spoke of and treated President Bush over the last eight years." As Michael Steele argues, it is time for Republicans to "speak truth to power. We are going to speak directly and we are going to take them on, every last one of them." It is time to take on the policies of Barack Obama head-on for "taking us in the wrong direction and bankrupting our country." He is engaged in "spending our country into debt of such mammoth proportions that none of us could even begin to fathom its true cost." Steele points out that "regardless of the President's personal popularity, this is not a game. This is not a popularity contest. This is not American Idol. This is serious. Families are hurting, businesses are closing, wealth is being diminished, opportunities lost, and this should not be the future of our country, but it is the reality of this moment." Steele "knows a left turn when he sees one."
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Monday, May 18, 2009
41% Of Israeli Arabs Deny The Holocaust Took Place And 54% Say Israel Has No Right To Exist
The Associated Press reports that "More than 40 percent of Israel's Arab citizens say the Holocaust never happened, and barely one half think Israel has a right to exist, according to a survey published Monday... The survey found that 41 percent of respondents say the Holocaust never happened, up from 28 percent who said so in 2006 when the question was first asked. Holocaust denial is rampant among Palestinians and in Arab countries neighboring Israel. But Arabs in Israel have frequent contact with Jews and learn about the Holocaust in school... The survey also found that the portion of the Israeli Arab public that believes Israel has a right to exist as an independent country has fallen from 81 percent in 2003 when the study was first conducted to 54 percent today. Arabs make up about 20 percent of Israel's 7 million residents. Unlike their ethnic brethren in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, they hold Israeli citizenship." The survey has a margin of error of 3.7 percentage points.
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The Third Jihad
This is a must-see documentary that serves a reminder of the threat posed by radical Islam. The documentary carefully chronicles the threat of Islamofascism and exposes the violent terrorist jihad as well as exposing the cultural jihad in which the jihadists use the rights of Western society in order to ovethrow it. The following is an abridged version of the documentary, but I urge you to see the full film:
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Sunday, May 17, 2009
Larry Kudlow: "We Can't Afford A 'Public' Health Plan"
Lawrence Kudlow is host of CNBC's The Kudlow Report and co-host of The Call. He is also a former Reagan economic advisor and a syndicated columnist. To read his article about why we can't affored a "public" health plan, visit http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2009/05/14/we_cant_afford_a_public_health_plan.html
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