What Is Faith?

Faith is a means of controlling the central nervous system, specifically the production of neurochemicals which cause a person to have feelings such as joy, bliss, idefatigableness, a sense of peace, a sense of destiny, etc.

This is why people are willing to give themselves over to what appear to be charlatans and thieves, because those charlatans and those thieves provide the service of helping their "believers" maintain a steady flow of the neurochemicals to which they often become addicted.

Like They Didn't See This Coming?

The White House cabal

By Lawrence B. Wilkerson, LAWRENCE B. WILKERSON served as chief of
staff to Secretary of State Colin L. Powell from 2002 to 2005.

IN PRESIDENT BUSH'S first term, some of the most important decisions about U.S. national security - including vital decisions about postwar Iraq - were made by a secretive, little-known cabal. It was made up of a very small group of people led by Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

No! Who would have thought it! And Cheney and Rumsfeld seem like such nice men. It's always the quiet ones, they say. Unless it's the gruff, loud-mouthed know-it-alls.

But it's absolutely true. I believe that the decisions of this cabal were sometimes made with the full and witting support of the president and sometimes with something less. More often than not, then-national security advisor Condoleezza Rice was simply steamrolled by this cabal.

My goodness! Will surprises never end? Our own president incapable of making his own decisions?

Its insular and secret workings were efficient and swift - not unlike the decision-making one would associate more with a dictatorship than a democracy. This furtive process was camouflaged neatly by the dysfunction and inefficiency of the formal decision-making process, where decisions, if they were reached at all, had to wend their way through the bureaucracy, with its dissenters, obstructionists and "guardians of the turf."

And to think, looking at it from the outside, it all seemed so smooth and transparent!

But the secret process was ultimately a failure. It produced a series of disastrous decisions and virtually ensured that the agencies charged with implementing them would not or could not execute them well.

I never would have guessed it.

[...]

Both as a former academic and as a person who has been in the ring with the bull, I believe that there are two reasons we should care. First, such departures from the process have in the past led us into a host of disasters, including the last years of the Vietnam War, the national embarrassment of Watergate (and the first resignation of a president in our history), the Iran-Contra scandal and now the ruinous foreign policy of George W. Bush.

Ruinous? How could that happen? People say George W. Bush is the best president ever. They say his policies and decisions are guided by God himself!

[...]

It takes firm leadership to preside over the bureaucracy. But it also takes a willingness to listen to dissenting opinions. It requires leaders who can analyze, synthesize, ponder and decide.

I was going to say something very similar to that, about oh, I'd say 5 years ago, and then again last year, but I held my toungue. No wait, actually, I was quite outspoken and so were a lot of other people, and many of us voted for someone who is not the current president because of what we saw.

[...]

It's a disaster. Given the choice, I'd choose a frustrating bureaucracy over an efficient cabal every time.

I hate to say I told you so, but.... no, actually I LOVE to say I TOLD YOU SO!

How could anyone not have seen this? I saw all of it, does that make me some kind of genius? No, I refuse to believe that. And yet, I know that many who voted for Bush are incredibly naïve, and in 2004 a poll showed that most Bush supporters actually attributed to him policy positions which were in direct opposition to those he had demonstrated to hold. They truly are like those hapless citizens of the fable of the Emperor's New Clothes, seeing only what they want to see.

Irony of Ironies

W pals bushwhack CIA leak prosecutor


BY THOMAS M. DeFRANK and MICHAEL McAULIFF
DAILY NEWS WASHINGTON BUREAU

WASHINGTON - As the White House and Republicans brace for possible indictments in the CIA leak probe, defenders have launched a not-so-subtle campaign against the prosecutor handling the case.

"He's a vile, detestable, moralistic person with no heart and no conscience who believes he's been tapped by God to do very important things," one White House ally said, referring to special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald.

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Need I say more?

Yet More Politics

The saddest part of all this isn't that Bush misrepresented the justification for war...although that caused us credibility, our surplus and lives.

The saddest part of all this isn't that we alienated our allies around the world... although that may take years to repair.

The saddest part of all this isn't that attacked a nation for the first time in our history without provocation.... although that has destroyed our credibility and reputation as a peaceful power.

The saddest part of all this isn't that people are still being killed... although that is the ultimate sadness for their friends and families.

The saddest part of all this isn't that we have squandered the national treasury... although that will take years for us and our children to repay.

The saddest part of all this isn't that we have allowed Corporate Criminals to prosper... although that has hurt retirees and small investors who trusted the system.

The saddest part of all this isn't that we have raped our natural resources for profit and allowed the destruction of our drinkable water and breathable air... although the effects will be dire and long lasting.

The saddest part of all this isn't that we have created a divisive atmosphere where rage and hate prosper....although that affects our lives in many ways.

The saddest part of all this isn't that our jobs are outsourced for corporate profit at the expense of the American Worker.. Although without a job based economy we are destined to devolve into a 3rd world economy.

The saddest part of all this isn't that economic measures are making it harder and harder to get a good education.... although the future costs are incalculable.

The saddest part of all this isn't that we do not provide affordable health care so some of us are forced to choose between food and medicine... although that is an embarrassment that we are the only industrialized country not offering universal health care.

No, the saddest part is that there are still those that think this makes sense.

More Political Stuff

Joe gets up at 6 a.m. and fills his coffeepot with water to prepare his morning coffee. The water is clean and safe because some tree-hugging liberal fought for maximum water-quality standards.

With his first swallow of coffee, he takes his daily medication. His medications are safe to take because some stupid commie liberal fought to insure their safety and that they work as advertised.

All but $10 of his medications are paid for by his employer's medical plan because some liberal union workers fought their employers for paid medical insurance - and now Joe gets it, too.

He prepares his morning breakfast, bacon and eggs. Joe's bacon is safe to eat because some girlie-man liberal fought for laws to regulate the meat-packing industry.
In the morning shower, Joe reaches for his shampoo. His bottle is properly labeled with each ingredient and its amount in the total contents because some crybaby granola liberal fought for his right to know what he was putting on his body.
Joe dresses, walks outside and takes a deep breath. The air is clean because some environmentalist wacko liberal fought for laws to stop industries from polluting our atmosphere.

He walks to the subway station for his government-subsidized ride to work. It saves him considerable money in parking and transportation fees because some fancy-pants liberal fought for affordable public transportation, which gives everyone the opportunity to be a contributor.

Joe begins his work day. He has a good job with good pay, medical benefits, retirement, paid holidays and vacation because some commie leftist union members fought and died for these working standards.

Joe's employer pays these standards because Joe's employer doesn't want his employees to call the union. If Joe is hurt on the job or becomes unemployed, he'll get a worker compensation or unemployment check because some ridiculous liberal didn't think he should lose his home because of his temporary misfortune.

It's noontime and Joe needs to make a bank deposit so he can pay some bills. Joe's deposit is federally insured by the FDIC because some godless liberal wanted to protect Joe's money from unscrupulous bankers who gamed the banking system just before the Great Depression.

Joe has to pay his Fannie Mae-underwritten mortgage and his below-market federal student loan because some liberal whiner decided that Joe and the government would be better off if he was educated and earned more money over his lifetime.

Joe is home from work. He plans to visit his father this evening at his farm home in the country. He gets in his car for the drive. His car is among the safest in the world because some America-hating liberal traitor fought for car safety standards.
He arrives at his boyhood home. His was the third generation to live in the house financed by Farmers' Home Administration because bankers didn't want to make rural loans. The house didn't have electricity until some big-government liberal (FDR) stuck his nose where it didn't belong and created the rural electrification act.

He is happy to see his father, who is now retired. His father lives on Social Security and a union pension because some wine-drinking, quiche-eating liberal made sure he could take care of himself so Joe wouldn't have to.

Joe gets back in his car for the ride home, and turns on a radio talk show. The radio host keeps saying that liberals are bad and conservatives are good. He doesn't mention that the beloved conservative Republicans fought against every protection and benefit Joe enjoys throughout his day.

Joe agrees: "We don't need those big-government liberals ruining our lives! After all, I'm a self-made man! All Americans should take care of themselves, just as I have.

Top Ten George Bush Utterances

10. "I just want you to know that, when we talk about war, we're really talking about peace." —Washington, D.C. June 18, 2002

9. "I trust God speaks through me. Without that, I couldn't do my job." —to a group of Amish he met with privately, July 9, 2004

8. "Major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed." —speaking underneath a "Mission Accomplished" banner aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, May 1, 2003

7. "We found the weapons of mass destruction. We found biological laboratories … And we'll find more weapons as time goes on. But for those who say we haven't found the banned manufacturing devices or banned weapons, they're wrong, we found them." —Washington, D.C., May 30, 2003

6. "Those weapons of mass destruction have got to be somewhere!" —President George W. Bush, joking about his administration's failure to find WMDs in Iraq as he narrated a comic slideshow during the Radio & TV Correspondents' Association dinner, Washington, D.C., March 24, 2004

5. "If this were a dictatorship, it'd be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I'm the dictator." —Washington, D.C., Dec. 19, 2000

4. "There's an old saying in Tennessee — I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee — that says, fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can't get fooled again." —Nashville, Tenn., Sept. 17, 2002

3. "Too many good docs are getting out of the business. Too many OB-GYNs aren't able to practice their love with women all across this country." —Poplar Bluff, Mo., Sept. 6, 2004

2. "Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we." —Washington, D.C., Aug. 5, 2004

1. "My answer is bring them on." — on Iraqi insurgents attacking U.S. forces, Washington, D.C., July 3, 2003

Evolution Is Useful

From an article somewhere else,

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Darwinian evolution, unlike true sciences such as chemistry and physics, cannot be employed to predict anything or to make exact classifications of anything. It is nothing more than a speculative hypothesis with no way to employ normal scientific tests to assess its validity. Believers have nothing to cling to beyond the word of Darwinians that things "could have been" as they hypothesize.
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This is just a typical bald-faced lie often told by pseudochristian narcissists. Easily refuted, take a look at this article.
http://tinyurl.com/bar24

Here's an exceprt.
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If Darwin was right, for example, then scientists should be able to perform a neat trick. Using a mathematical formula that emerges from evolutionary theory, they should be able to predict the number of harmful mutations in chimpanzee DNA by knowing the number of mutations in a different species' DNA and the two animals' population sizes.

"That's a very specific prediction," said Eric Lander, a geneticist at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard in Cambridge, Mass., and a leader in the chimp project.

Sure enough, when Lander and his colleagues tallied the harmful mutations in the chimp genome, the number fit perfectly into the range that evolutionary theory had predicted.
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Or this,
http://tinyurl.com/bs7q6
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In a 1995 article in Science, Douglas Futuyma listed several ways that evolutionary biology is being utilized:

* Biodiversity and conservation: Analysis of risk of extinction due to "inbreeding, reduced gene flow, specialization, and constraints on genetic and ecological responses to global change."

* Phenotypic expression in novel environments: Use of tools already in use in studies of natural systems, like "molecular markers of gene flow, gene geneaologies as evidence of gene exchange, analyses of phenotypic plasticity, and the 'costs' of adaptation".

* Novel processes and products: This includes production of antibiotics, flavors, pigments, biopolymers, and enzymes.

* Bioremediation: Production of tolerance to waste products as well as bacterial strains to decompose hazardous materials.

* Wildlife management: Identification of stocks by genetic analysis.

* Agriculture: Identification of disease resistance factors in related wild plants, pesticide resistance, management of pest adaptation to pesticide, pest resistant cultivation.

* Health sciences: Causes of senescence, treatment of fever, tracing origins of pathogens, evolution of virulence in viruses and other pathogens, measurement of genetic diversity in pathogens and hosts, mechanisms of drug resistance, evolutionary epidemiology.
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