Tuesday, January 03, 2006

A few brief items (leaving political ones to last)....

NewScientist.com's top 10 news stories of 2005

The most-clicked NewScientist.com story of 2005 was "13 things that do not make sense," dealing with the placebo effect, cold fusion, dark energy, the "wow" signal and bizarre homeopathy results. The story was also on the list of the top 10 most popular news items on KurzweilAI.net's Accelerating Intelligence News newsletter....

Scholars debate whether to limit scientific research
A conference titled "Forbidding Science? Balancing Freedom, Security, Innovation and Precaution" will explore whether scientific research should be restricted - and, if so, how far "too far" might be. It will include research controversies in the areas of pathogens and toxins, nanotechnology and cognitive enhancement and will be held Jan. 12 -...

And, always entertaining, see the Tech Stories of the Year article at the New Scientist:

Finally, how about some gloom about a looming end to humanity’s “spending spree:

Okay, that segues us into politics....

Circumstantial evidence continues to float around my worry about political purge of the US Officer Corps.

Military chiefs drop in Rumsfeld succession, December 29, 2005 By Lolita C. Baldor, The Associated Press

WASHINGTON -- The three military service chiefs have been dropped in the Bush administration's doomsday line of Pentagon succession, pushed beneath three civilian undersecretaries in Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's inner circle. And so it goes... one “little” item after another, any ONE of which would have raised howls, if Clinton had done it... but NONE of which raise even a mutter, when done by the other side...

Well... even if conservatives won’t stand up to defend the republic, common soldiers have started to.

Support for President Bush and for the war in Iraq has slipped significantly in the last year among members of the military’s professional core, according to the 2005 Military Times Poll.

Approval of the president’s Iraq policy fell 9 percentage points from 2004; a bare majority, 54 percent, now say they view his performance on Iraq as favorable. Support for his overall performance fell 11 points, to 60 percent, among active-duty readers of the Military Times newspapers. Though support both for President Bush and for the war in Iraq remains significantly higher than in the public as a whole, the drop is likely to add further fuel to the heated debate over Iraq policy. In 2003 and 2004, supporters of the war in Iraq pointed to high approval ratings in the Military Times Poll as a signal that military members were behind President Bush’s the president’s policy.

And this is happening despite a near total lack of effort by democrats to reach out to our beleaguered men and women in uniform. Imagine, if only a few others, besides Rep. Murtagh, made this an issue....

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5 comments:

Don Quijote said...

And this is happening despite a near total lack of effort by democrats to reach out to our beleaguered men and women in uniform. Imagine, if only a few others, besides Rep. Murtagh, made this an issue....

Considering that this is the way they treated the last democrat who could have helped them, or this other guy don't be surprised if the dems leave them to their fate.



But last fall -- a year after Sept. 11 -- when Cleland ran for re-election, his GOP opponent, conservative congressman Saxby Chambliss, put up homeland security television advertisements that began with photos of Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden, America's two biggest betes noires.

The unseen narrator solemnly intoned that Max Cleland "says he supports President Bush at every opportunity, but that's not the truth. Since July, Max Cleland voted against President Bush's vital homeland security efforts 11 times."

This is what American politics has come to.

It is deemed acceptable -- and advisable -- to attack for lack of patriotism a man who gave up in battle an arm and two legs for his country.


Loyalty is a two way street.

Anonymous said...

"The three military service chiefs have been dropped in the Bush administration's doomsday line of Pentagon succession, pushed beneath three civilian undersecretaries in Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's inner circle"

Leaving aside the way this is reported - surely this is a more democratic system than the current one, and actualy goes against your thesis that the neocons want to take over the military after all the dems could win the next election

Could have been reported as :

"The role of the three military service chiefs has been repositiend further down the doomsday line of Pentagon succession, beneath the three civilian undersecretaries to the Defense Secretary is also a civilian"

Anonymous said...

OK

Could have been reported as :

"The role of the three military service chiefs has been repositioned further down the doomsday line of Pentagon succession, beneath the three civilian undersecretaries to the Defence Secretary who is also a civilian"

reason said...

The link to the timesonline doesn't work for me.

Woozle said...

The correct Times link is this (dash instead of space - blog software must have interpreted it as a soft hyphen)

Huebner's argument seems flawed to me; should I go into detail, or is it more or less obvious (and/or preaching to the choir)?