In which the middle-aged Peacenik mouths off about War Drones--and all the other things that make him cranky.
Mr Mahatma--who is a Mr in real life--lives in the valleys of Southern California with his wife, a herd of Dears, and an impressive collection of books. Pnorny!
He is reachable at: littlemrmahatma@yahoo.com
All writings are copyrighted 2003-2008 and trademarked: Little Mr. Mahatma
Saturday, October 29, 2005 BlogSpam While reviewing the comments on my main blog site I noticed that two of the comments were actually BlogSpam, that is, irrelevent postings that are unwanted ads.
So now, in addition to email, I have to review all comments for such garbage or leave them intact. Sure, I could restrict comments to users og Blogger or tBlog but it's more fun to have the blogs open. Plus I get more readers.
I could retaliate and spam these people back but they're so pathetic, it doesn't seem like it'd be fun. Any ideas what to do?
Friday, October 28, 2005 Fall of the House of Bush As yet another member of the Bush Administration comes under investigation, you have to wonder where the buck stops. With Libby going, going, gone you have a direct pointer to Cheney that something is amiss. How long will Rove run interference for Dubya? How long before someone takes a cue from the U.N. investigation of mishandled funds and asks where the $300 billion of our money is going in Iraq?
It shouldn't take this long to nail the Bush Administration for gross violation of something! Their blatant mishandling of funds, lies and ethical distortions, cronyism, should easily give an ambitious reporter or two plenty to investigate.
But how about that oil? Only now is anyone questioning why the oil companies are reaping obscene profits. Maybe, perhaps, the oil companies are jacking up prices because they have a tacit government approval to do so. Let's see...invade Iraq but not for oil. Jack up prices claiming (1) rare refinery repairs, (2) hurricanes, (3) terrorists. Yet, the oil companies are making massive profits.
And Bush has the gall to suggest government help for those who can't afford heating oil for the coming winter. Screw us at the pumps, screw us through pro-oil legislation, and screw us again through taxes. Yo Georgy, why not tell your buds to reduce the price of gas?
Does anyone other than the oil billionaires and the fanatical Jesus-jumpers think Bush is a decent President? Please tell me why? Bush's incompetencies are beyond scary.
Wednesday, October 19, 2005 Doubleshot for the Religious Braindead For all you fervent religious wackos, just a couple of little items to think about. First up a little Science news that may threaten the idea of Intelligent Design and that we're alone and something special. Note that it's not definitive proof but the making are all there.
Life's Building Blocks 'Abundant in Space'
Bjorn Carey Staff Writer SPACE.com Tue Oct 18,12:00 PM ET
The idea that comets and meteorites seeded an early Earth with the tools to make life has gained momentum from recent observations of some of these building blocks floating throughout the cosmos.
Scientists scanning a galaxy 12 million light-years away with NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope detected copious amounts of nitrogen containing polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), molecules critical to all known forms of life.
PAHs carry information for DNA and RNA and are an important component of hemoglobin, the molecule that transports oxygen through the body. They also make chlorophyll, the main molecule responsible for photosynthesis in plants, and – perhaps most importantly – they're the main ingredient in caffeine and chocolate.
"There once was a time that the assumption was that the origin of life, everything from building simple compounds up to complex life, had to happen here on Earth," said study leader Doug Hudgins of Ames Research Center. "We've discovered that some very biologically interesting molecules can be formed outside our earthly environment and delivered here."
Wherever there's a planet ...
While organic compounds have been discovered in meteorites that have landed on Earth, this is the first direct evidence for the presence of complex, important biogenic compounds in space. So far evidence suggests that PAHs are formed in the winds of dying stars and spread all over interstellar space.
"This stuff contains the building blocks of life, and now we can say they're abundant in space," Hudgins said. "And wherever there's a planet out there, we know that these things are going to be raining down on it. It did here and it does elsewhere."
Using the Spitzer Space Telescope, Hudgins and his colleagues detected the familiar chemical signature of regular polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in the spiral galaxy M81, as well as a similar, but unknown signature.
"There were a few anomalies in the spectrum that we couldn't explain," Hudgins told SPACE.com. The researchers compared their readings to the infrared signatures of similar molecules, finally settling on nitrogen containing PAHs because their data showed there was nitrogen in the regions they were investigating.
"When we did that, we found that by putting a little nitrogen in these molecules explained the troubling molecules," Hudgins said. "This discovery takes this reservoir of molecules that we didn't think were interesting and transforms all this stuff into something of biologic interest."
The chicken wire of life
PAHs are flat, chicken-wire shaped molecules made up of carbon and hydrogen, interesting to scientists because life on Earth is carbon-based. However, PAHs are not used in human biochemistry. In fact, they're better known as cancer-causing carcinogens and environmental pollutants.
But swap a carbon atom with a nitrogen and a PAH becomes a PANH, a class of molecules critical to humans. Without nitrogen, it would be impossible to build amino acids, proteins, DNA, RNA, hemoglobin, and many other important molecules.
Here on Earth, Nitrogen makes up 78 percent of the atmosphere and is a key member of CHNOPS – carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus, and sulfur – the group of ingredients most important for making life and staples of organic chemistry.
It's also the main component of ammonia, which is used in fertilizers and explosives on Earth, but has also been detected in Jupiter's atmosphere and possibly in Titan's icy lakes.
PAHs aren't the first of life's building blocks to be discovered in space – amino acids, the nuts and bolts of proteins, have also been found in the tails of comets. Meteorites that have landed in Australia and Antarctica also contain amino acids and PAHs.
"This tells us that these things that we see out in space can survive interstellar space and successfully be delivered to the surface of a planet," Hudgins said.
Does not mean life
Some scientists even think that a Martian meteorite found in Antarctica shows signs of extraterrestrial bacteria and that sugar-loaded asteroids may have fed early life on our planet.
While PAHs are abundant in interstellar space, Hudgins says this doesn't prove that terrestrial life has extra-terrestrial origins. But, to paraphrase Occam's Razor, given two equally likely theories, choose the simpler.
"This isn't proof that they were used, but a likely suggestion," Hudgins said. "They were present in abundance at the dawn of time and could have been useful in creating the first life form."
OK, you've pooh-poohed that off with a wave of your self-righteous hand but if you would indulge me a bit more.
"In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth."
The first sentence of the most famous book in the world and arguably in our history. To many people it's the Truth, a fact: undeniable and indispustable. But that one sentence raises some questions and if any of the more religious of my readers would please answer them I'd be grateful.
1) Who created God?
2) What did God do before creating the heaven and earth?
3) How long did God wait before creating the heaven and earth?
Bush claimed God told him to invade Iraq, Afghanistan: BBC
LONDON (AFP) - US President George W. Bush allegedly said God told him to invade Iraq and Afghanistan, a new BBC documentary will reveal, according to details.
Bush made the claim when he met Palestinian leader Mahmud Abbas and then foreign minister Nabil Shaath in June 2003, the ministers told the documentary series to be broadcast in Britain later this month.
The US leader also told them he had been ordered by God to create a Palestinian state, the ministers said.
Shaath, now the Palestinian information minister, said: " President Bush said to all of us: 'I'm driven with a mission from God.
'God would tell me, 'George, go and fight those terrorists in Afghanistan'.'
"And I did, and then God would tell me, 'George, go and end the tyranny in Iraq...' And I did.
"'And now, again, I feel God's words coming to me, 'Go get the Palestinians their state and get the Israelis their security, and get peace in the Middle East.' And by God I'm gonna do it'," said Shaath.
Abbas, who was also at the meeting in the Egyptian resort of Sharm al-Sheikh, recalled how the president told him: "I have a moral and religious obligation.
"So I will get you a Palestinian state."
A BBC spokesman said the content of the programme had been put to the White House but it had refused to comment on a private conversation.
The three-part series, "Elusive Peace: Israel and the Arabs", charts the attempts to bring peace to the Middle East, from former US president Bill Clinton's peace talks in 1999-2000 to Israel's withdrawal from the Gaza strip.
The programme speaks to presidents and prime ministers, their generals and ministers, about what happened behind closed doors as the peace talks failed and the intifada grew.
C'mon people, this is our President! So much for keeping church and state separate. Bush wasn't joking when he commented that he was on a crusade. The man is a freaking religious fanatic and is no different than the religious fanatics that he's fighting. Well, a few differences. Instead of boom-boom vests Bush has nukes at his disposal. Instead of a few million dollars like bin Laden, Bush has BILLIONS of our taxpayer money to spend. Instead of a ragtag yet determined bunch of muslim followers, he has a well-disciplined military.
You should be extremely scared, especially if you're not a follower of Bush for he has said repeatedly that if you're not with him then you're against him and therefore a terrorist. This is OUR President, circa 1391.
The Next Big Enemy After World War II, the Soviet Union was our enemy. Because they were going to nuke us any time now we built up our arsenal and forced them to bankrupt themselves into oblivion. Yay, we won! Reagan was the White Knight and all was well.
But it wasn't. Reagan said we were at war again, this time with DRUGS. Boo hiss! And because of this war certain civil liberties (like privacy) had to be curtailed. Mind you, this war was pervasive, nebulous, and with no end plan. It was an ongoing war. We sank billions of dollars in this war. Remember "Just say no!"? And as far as I know this war is still on.
But the war on drugs had a problem. It wasn't sexy. There wasn't a Big Evil to point to.
Then came bin Laden and the War on Terrorism. The Big Evil but Bush let him slip away into the hills of Afghanistan because Bush wanted Hussein to be the Big Evil. And certainly Hussein was a Big Evil but the reasons for taking him on and out weren't quite, shall we say, legitimate.
So now we have two vague, neverending wars: Drugs and Terrorism.
Neither of which is sexy. No, America is best when it has a Big Evil that it can point to on a map. And we have one - a Big Evil that we're cultivating and holding in the sidelines to when the people stop caring about the War on Terrorism, which was about a year ago.
No, it's not North Korea or Iran. It's China. Yep, they will be our next Big Evil. They will atack us economically, technologically, and finally militarily. Frankly, there may not be much we can do about it. But it will serve if anything to show the world that the U.S. is like any other country: open and vulnerable, and that it's better to work with other countries than to systematically alienate them. Bush did our country a great disservice but acting like the Big Bubba, Big American Tough Guy who does things His Way and the rest of the World be damned.
Don't believe me? Better brush up on your Chinese.
WASHINGTON - President Bush, trying to reverse a slide in public support for the war in Iraq, said Thursday that Islamic radicals are seeking to "enslave whole nations and intimidate the world," and called that a prime reason not to cut and run in Iraq. "There's always a temptation in the middle of a long struggle to seek the quiet life, to escape the duties and problems of the world and to hope the enemy grows weary of fanaticism and tired of murder," he said, seeking to address calls from anti-war activists for a U.S. troop withdrawal.
He just doesn't get it.
More Bush Cronyism It's kind of scary.
I'm reading histories of both Hitler and Stalin. The two were quite similar in that they surrounded themselves with cronies and "Yes"-men. They refused to consider other opinions and refused to accept that they could be wrong.
Not to imply that Bush is among those Elite of Dictatorial Bastards but he could be on the way. Considering that the branches of the Government no longer enjoy "checks and balances" and are under the mercy of the Presidency bears witness that our Democracy is nearing an end. That Bush could appoint Bolton by simply waiting out Congress, that Bush plans to get Miers on the Supreme Court without releasing records of her abilitiies, that no-bid contracts are still being given out to "friendly corporations, that the Iraq Scandal is back at the pig trough for more money, that Bush went out of his way to make sure Texas was ready for a hurricane but New Orleans...well, oops.
What will it take to wake America up that Bush may be the singularly worst President ever?
