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As has been quoted and cliched many times, the only really dangerous nuclear power is the US and still the only outfit to use nukes on civilian populations. Hereiam is absolutely correct. For example, If Bush had really believed that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction, he would never have invaded, too f@ckin risky. His da conned Saddam into invading kuwait the first time round ffs!!
Notice he hasn't made too many moves on Korea...much as he'd like to. Scared shitless of them, that's why. I've no big time for Iran, but i hope they do have nuclear capabilities, if thats what it take to keep those money hungry, corrupt animals from gaining absolute power.
I think it was Orwell (though i'm open to correction here) that said, one thing worse than 2 super powers, is 1 super power.

Saddam was conned into invading Kuwait? Please do elaborate!

I think you need your head examined if you want to see a regime like Iran gain nuclear weapons capability. It will also be interesting to see if it was a coincidence that Iran suspended their programme around the time Bush invaded Iraq. If so, its about the only benefit to be gained from that debacle.

Regarding North Korea, they're in the process of dismantling their nuclear weapons programme in exchange for aid, after they reached an agreement with the U.S., China, Japan, Russia and South Korea. Thankfully after all Bush's bravado in the early years of the decade regarding Kim Jung Il, saner heads prevailed in his administration.

It will be a long time before a US president does again what Bush did in invading Iraq. For starters, they're probably going to be stuck there for years trying to fix the mess. Second, barring another major terrorist attack, I doubt very much if the US public is going to be cowed and manipulated again by an administration in the manner that they were in the years following 9/11. Even if the threat is very real (and ignoring it potentially very costly), its going to take a hell of a lot more than "classified intelligence" and "freedom fries" to raise support amongst the American public, although the drumbeat has already started in the right-wing media that Iran is still very much a threat! Thank f**k there is only 13 months of one of the worst administrations in US history left!

Is the alternative any better?

Not in terms of morality but in terms of ability to run the country?

They did a very good job in the mid-90s. No reason why they shouldn't be given another chance. Its not as if, even disregarding corruption, Fianna Fail's performance is superlative.

i have to say as a lifelong member of fianna fail and long time bertie fan, i dont even believe him. standards in public life in the roi are not what they should be and hopefully when this lot retire (cause they wont quit) things will be better.

They serve at the people's pleasure. Why would they retire when they know they're going to be re-elected no matter what?

Must have missed it J70 the same way the major outlets seem to have missed this one,
Works both ways i suppose. I do know his though, Gores rhetoric gets a damn site more air time
than my media-conspiracy-alleging blogger sites do as you put it!

Just another thought Tyrone's Own. I'd give it a bit of time to see what kind of reception this piece of work gets among the scientists. If it passes the credibility test among Morison's peers, and the media still doesn't report it, I'd say you'll have a very legitimate complaint. However, the media hyping or ignoring a particular scientific finding doesn't mean much in the long run in terms of where science goes. And for every study that is ignored, you get another, like the MMR-autism situation or "toxic black mold" or high-voltage power lines, which is hyped up beyond all reason, pointlessly scaring the shit out of everyone. Most journalists (and bloggers, especially the political kind!) don't know their ass from their elbow when it comes to science, so I wouldn't pay much mind to what they say. The science will go where the data leads, so Morison's and other alternative hypotheses will be upheld or discarded depending on the data, not on whether Katie Couric or the NY Times reports a particular study.

vile, repugnant Ann Coulter

Yes, we are familiar, she 'appears' on Matt Cooper on Today FM now and again.

What kind of reception does she get? She is about the most divisive political "pundit" (using that word very loosely!) in the US, although I think she is progressively losing more and more credibility, even among conservatives, with each obnoxious outburst.

Deep Purple's version of Hush (which Kula Shaker's was based on) is the best, IMO.

Christ, Catatonia! Awful stuff.

And that Ace of Base song was so dreary and dull. I could never understand how people liked it so much.

I liked the Shakespear's Sister song though.

And the Roxette chick.

Was at the final last year - amazing game which Derry won 4-3. I know its easy to knock the Eircom League but ya havta give credit to the lads who go week in week out to support their local team.

Absolutely. Finn Harps were getting crowds upwards of 3,000 towards the end of the season. It might not seem like much, but this is a provincial team playing Division 1 football, in a league where some teams would be lucky to get 100 people through the gates. I used to go regularly when I still lived in Donegal, and aside from one or two seasons when they were broke and hopelessly adrift in the first division, the standard of entertainment was not that bad at all. There used to be some thrilling nights of football, especially when the big Dublin teams or Cork City came to Ballybofey. One of the best games of soccer I've ever seen was the promotion playoff when Longford hung on to win on penalties (Harps had a strikeforce of Kevin McHugh and Brendan Devenney that night). Derry always seemed to be able to beat us, no matter what, so those nights weren't quite as good!

Is "Tir Eoghain" still written on the back?  I could never understand the need to put the county name on the back of the shirt.  How the fcuk would people watching not know which county it was??

Nice jersey (the grey one is rank though!).

Hopefully whoever chooses Donegal's design puts their glasses on this time around.

J70 - if you don't mind me asking, what do you work at ?
You seem to more up to date about evolutionary biology than i ever was even when it was 1 of my 4 final year subjects.

PM'ed you.

Must have missed it J70 the same way the major outlets seem to have missed this one,
Works both ways i suppose. I do know his though, Gores rhetoric gets a damn site more air time
than my media-conspiracy-alleging blogger sites do as you put it!

Well he does this year because he had a major film out on the subject and so was in the news quite a bit. Throw in the speculation regarding a possible presidential run several months before the start of the primaries, and there you have it.

I can see quite a few faces and even an animal or two in that picture. It must truly be blessed!

How about this one of JFK in Hawaii (although it could pass for Bobby too!):




Then there is the very famous apparition of Darwin in a postdoc's frying pan:

Revere him...

I don't suppose your media-conspiracy-alleging blogger saw this article?

[I'm pretty sure NASA research was mentioned then, including attributing much of the loss of the ice to it being shifted out of the basin by currents.]

 

Where did I say that some count and some don't?

Is every single study on global warming/Arctic ice mentioned in the media? Besides, a month or two ago, the NY Times Science supplement did a series on the subject, some of it dealing with the Arctic. I'm pretty sure NASA research was mentioned then, including attributing much of the loss of the ice to it being shifted out of the basin by currents.

As deiseach would say,  Did they get a mention? I honestly don't know but it might be an idea for you to find out

nytimes.com is the place to look.

Its actually from October 2nd.

... Complicating the picture, the striking Arctic change was as much a result of ice moving as melting, many say. A new study, led by Son Nghiem at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and appearing this week in Geophysical Research Letters, used satellites and buoys to show that winds since 2000 had pushed huge amounts of thick old ice out of the Arctic basin past Greenland. The thin floes that formed on the resulting open water melted quicker or could be shuffled together by winds and similarly expelled, the authors said.

The pace of change has far exceeded what had been estimated by almost all the simulations used to envision how the Arctic will respond to rising concentrations of greenhouse gases linked to global warming. But that disconnect can cut two ways. Are the models overly conservative? Or are they missing natural influences that can cause wide swings in ice and temperature, thereby dwarfing the slow background warming?

... Arctic experts say things are not that simple. More than a dozen experts said in interviews that the extreme summer ice retreat had revealed at least as much about what remains unknown in the Arctic as what is clear. Still, many of those scientists said they were becoming convinced that the system is heading toward a new, more watery state, and that human-caused global warming is playing a significant role.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/02/science/earth/02arct.html?_r=1&oref=slogin