Reidblog [The Reid Report blog]

Adam, Eve and T. Rex
Giant roadside dinosaur attractions are used by a new breed of creationists as pulpits to spread their version of Earth's origins.

By Ashley PowersTimes Staff Writer
August 27, 2005

CABAZON, Calif. — Dinny the roadside dinosaur has found religion.The 45-foot-high concrete apatosaurus has towered over Interstate 10 near Palm Springs for nearly three decades as a kitschy prehistoric pit stop for tourists.

Now he is the star of a renovated attraction that disputes the fact that dinosaurs died off millions of years before humans first walked the planet.

Dinny's new owners, pointing to the Book of Genesis, contend that most dinosaurs arrived on Earth the same day as Adam and Eve, some 6,000 years ago, and later marched two by two onto Noah's Ark. The gift shop at the attraction, called the Cabazon Dinosaurs, sells toy dinosaurs whose labels warn, "Don't swallow it! The fossil record does not support evolution.

"The Cabazon Dinosaurs join at least half a dozen other roadside attractions nationwide that use the giant reptiles' popularity in seeking to win converts to creationism. And more are on the way.

"We're putting evolutionists on notice: We're taking the dinosaurs back," said Ken Ham, president of Answers in Genesis, a Christian group building a $25-million creationist museum in Petersburg, Ky., that's already overrun with model sauropods and velociraptors.

"They're used to teach people that there's no God, and they're used to brainwash people," he said. "Evolutionists get very upset when we use dinosaurs. That's their star."

The nation's top paleontologists find the creation theory preposterous and say children are being misled by dinosaur exhibits that take the Jurassic out of "Jurassic Park."

"Dinosaurs lived in the Garden of Eden, and Noah's Ark? Give me a break," said Kevin Padian, curator at the University of California Museum of Paleontology in Berkeley and president of National Center for Science Education, an Oakland group that supports teaching evolution. "For them, 'The Flintstones' is a documentary."

Tyrannosaurus rex and his gigantic brethren find themselves on both sides of the nation's renewed debate over the Earth's origins and the continuing fight over whether Charles Darwin's "The Origin of Species" or Genesis best explains the development of life.

Science holds that dinosaurs were the Earth's royalty for about 160 million years. Their reign ended abruptly, possibly after a meteorite smacked into the planet, but they're considered the forebears of birds.Unearthing dinosaur bones that are millions of years old "doesn't prove evolution, but it shows the Genesis account doesn't work," said Nick Matzke, a spokesman for the National Center for Science Education.

Drivers who pull off Interstate 10 in Pensacola, Fla., are told a far different story at Dinosaur Adventure Land. Its slogan: "Where Dinosaurs and the Bible meet!"The nearly 7-acre museum, low-tech theme park and science center embodies its founder's belief that God created the world in six days. The dinosaurs, even super carnivores such as T. rex, dined as vegetarians in the Garden of Eden until Adam and Eve sinned — and only then did they feast on other creatures, according to the Christian-based young-Earth theory.

About 4,500 years after Adam and Eve arrived, the theory goes, pairs of baby dinosaurs huddled in Noah's Ark, and a colossal flood drowned the rest and scattered their fossils. The ark-borne animals repopulated the planet — meaning that folk tales about fire-breathing beasts are accounts of humans battling dinosaurs, who still roamed the planet.

Kids romping through the $1.5-million Florida theme park can bounce on a "Long Neck Liftasaurus" swing seat; launch water balloons at a T. rex and a stegosaurus, and smooth their own sandbox-size Grand Canyons, whose formation is credited to the flood. A "fossilized" pickle purports to show that dinosaur bones could have hardened quickly. Got an upcoming birthday? Dinosaur Adventure Land does pizza parties."Go to Disneyland, they teach evolution. It's subtle; signs that say, 'Millions of years ago' " said evangelist Kent Hovind, the park's founder. "This is a golden opportunity to get our point across."

Patiently awaiting the next dispatch from the strange world of former GOP presidential candidate and non-influential head of the 2-plus million-strong 700 Club, whose frustrated call for the head of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has brought shame on the nation, and Christianity as a whole.

Previous Robertson 'Patwas':
2005: Patwa against Judges, who are 'worse than al-Qaida'
2005: Patwa against the prospect of Iraq casualties
2004: Patwa against Disney World over 'gay days'
2003: Patwa against the U.S. State Department
2003: Patwa against the Supreme Court
2001: Patwa against America for the 9/11 attacks
1985: Patwa against Hurricane Gloria

Negotiators here described American officials as playing a major role in the draft. U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad shuttled among Iraqi leaders, pushing late Monday for the inclusion of Sunnis in talks, negotiators said. U.S. Embassy staff members worked from a Kurdish party headquarters to help type up the draft and translate changes from English to Arabic for Iraqi lawmakers, negotiators said.

The opponents also said women would lose gains they made during Hussein's rule, when they were guaranteed equal rights under civil law in matters including marriage, divorce and inheritance. The draft constitution says individuals can choose to have family matters decided by either religious or civil law. Supporters say a separate bill of rights would protect women, and provisions of the constitution say no law can contradict democracy or that bill of rights.

Khalilzad, speaking to CNN early Tuesday, called the proposed constitution a "very good" draft that guarantees equal rights for all. An American serving as adviser to the Kurds, Peter Galbraith, disagreed that the charter protected women's rights and condemned what he called the Bush administration's "hypocrisy" on that issue in the constitution.

Aides said they discussed Sheehan several more times in the days that followed, and Bush said when he and his national security team met with reporters: "I sympathize with Mrs. Sheehan. She has every right in the world to say what she believes. This is America. She has a right to her position. And I've thought long and hard about her position."

Two days later, Bush explained his approach to journalists invited to ride mountain bikes on his ranch. "I think it's important for me to be thoughtful and sensitive to those who have got something to say," he said. "But I think it's also important for me to go on with my life, to keep a balanced life."

"Our troops know that they're fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere to protect their fellow Americans from a savage enemy," the president said in the recorded broadcast.

"They know that if we do not confront these evil men abroad, we will have to face them one day in our own cities and streets, and they know that the safety and security of every American is at stake in this war, and they know we will prevail."

Same Al Qaeda group that bombed Sharm el Sheikh and Taba claims rocket attack on US ships in Aqaba

August 19, 2005, 5:00 PM (GMT+02:00)

Signed Abdullah al-Azzam Brigades of the al Qaeda Organization in the Levant and Egypt, the Web site statement claims firing three Katyusha rockets targeting “US vessels in Jordan and (Israel’s) Eilat port” before “returning safely to base.”
“Zionists are a legitimate target and we warn the Americans… to expect even more stinging attacks.” Soon we will reach Tel Aviv.

“This is our debut operation in Jordan,” said the statement. “As we have begun to destroy the throne of the Egyptian tyrant, we warn the Jordanian tyrant to release our jailed brothers and abdicate before we force you to go.”

A Jordanian al Qaeda team controlled by Abu Mussab al Zarqawi carried out the Katyusha rocket attack that killed a Jordanian soldier in Aqaba but missed two US naval vessels docked in the port. The rocket fired at Eilat left no casualties either.

August 19, 2005, 11:47 AM (GMT+02:00)

Jordanian police discovered the rocket launcher on a rooftop, cleared the port of shipping and placed part of the town under curfew to hunt for three perpetrators.
The coordinated attack was directed at three targets:

1. Two US warships anchored in Aqaba. One, the USS Ashland landing ship with elements of the 26th Marine Expeditionary Force aboard, was just missed and damaged. The rocket struck a warehouse on a nearby pier. No US marines or sailors were hurt. Both ships have put out to sea.

2. Another rocket exploded on the Emir Haya base parade ground during drill practice and killed one Jordanian soldier and wounded others.
3. The Katyusha aimed at Eilat landed on a road outside the airport, exploded partially and injured one Israeli.

Israeli and Jordanian security are cooperating in the investigation.

• Extremism everywhere

August 11, 2005

ABLE DANGER....Here's a funny thing. Last Friday I got an email from a PR guy for Government Security News telling me about a story they were preparing to publish later that day (link here). The story was about a U.S. Army military intelligence program called "Able Danger" that had supposedly used data mining techniques to identify the al-Qaeda cell run by Mohamed Atta a year before 9/11. Unfortunately, as the story went, nothing was done about it because Defense Department lawyers prevented the Able Danger team from telling the FBI about the Atta cell.

For better or worse, I scanned the email briefly, saw that the primary source of the story was Pennsylvania congressman Curt Weldon, and decided to pass on it. On Tuesday, though, Douglas Jehl of the New York Times ran a piece about Weldon's accusations (here) and then followed it up on Wednesday with another piece (here) that quoted a number of people wondering why this information was only being made public now and why the 9/11 commission hadn't investigated it last year. That's an especially good question, Laura Rozen says (here), because Weldon has been beating the Able Danger drum since at least 2002, when she heard him give a talk about it at the Heritage Foundation.

So who's the culprit? Why didn't the 9/11 Commission investigate this? Weldon's source for his story is a "former defense intelligence officer" who worked closely with the Able Danger program, and he told GSN exactly where he thought the fault lied:

“I personally talked with [Philip] Zelikow [executive director of the 9/11 Commission] about this,” recalled the intelligence officer. “For whatever bizarre reasons, he didn’t pass on the information.”The State Department, where Zelikow now works as a counselor to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, said he was traveling and unavailable for comment.

Our current political leaders would suffer greatly if either house of Congress changed hands in 2006, or if the presidency changed hands in 2008. The lids would come off all the simmering scandals, from the selling of the Iraq war to profiteering by politically connected companies. The Republicans will be strongly tempted to make sure that they win those elections by any means necessary. And everything we've seen suggests that they will give in to that temptation.

Iran's role as both an oil producer at a time of record prices and as a player in the politics of neighboring Iraq have made it trickier for the Bush administration to get tough on Tehran in the nuclear showdown. The administration has threatened to seek United Nations sanctions against Iran in the fall if the country refuses to accept international oversight of its nuclear program.

For their part, Iran's leaders seem to sense their advantages. In recent weeks, they have made clear they believe they have plenty of leverage and are less vulnerable to economic pressures from the outside. The country's new, hard-line president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, recently said "no economic or political incentive can dissuade us from getting peaceful nuclear energy."

...

The nuclear standoff comes at a particularly inopportune time for the Bush administration. In Iraq, the administration is scrambling to help the country's factions overcome differences and hammer out a constitution, taking a crucial step toward solidifying the country so U.S. troops might eventually withdraw.

Iran, which shares a long border with Iraq, has huge sway over much of Iraq's now-dominant Shiite population, and it could disrupt the constitutional process if it so chose. Western diplomats in Tehran say Iranian officials have been blunt in recent weeks on that point, threatening to cause problems in Iraq if the Bush administration tries to punish Iran with international sanctions.

The most influential man in Iraq, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, a Shiite leader whose approval has been central to every political twist and turn, is Iranian. When Iran's foreign minister, Kamal Kharazi, visited Iraq recently he visited Mr. Sistani -- an audience so far denied to top U.S. officials. "It didn't exactly please us to see the Iranians getting face time with Sistani," said a senior American diplomat in Iraq.

At the same time, oil prices have become a domestic thorn for President Bush, and any move that might push them higher could cost him support. Oil hit a nominal record of more than $66 a barrel last week before slipping slightly to $63.25 a barrel yesterday in New York trading.

Iran pumps around 3.5 million barrels a day, or about 4% of global oil production. It is the second-largest producer of oil in the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries and has the world's second-largest natural-gas fields. Analysts are divided over whether Tehran would openly use its energy leverage in a diplomatic standoff, if only because the Iranian government is so dependent on oil revenue.

- economic fairness (decent wages, jobs that stay in America, small business flourishing amid big corporations, and a decent immigration policy);

Cindy Sheehan: Antiwar Catalyst

When he flew off to San Clemente, Calif., in the summer of 1969 for his August vacation, Richard Nixon was riding a wave of popularity.

He had announced the first troop withdrawal from Vietnam. He had met the Apollo 11 crew of Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins on touchdown in the Pacific. He had become the first president to visit a captive nation with a triumphal tour of Bucharest. And he had just proposed a sweeping reform of welfare praised by both parties.

But when Nixon returned in September, a storm had broken. Wrote David Broder: “It is becoming more obvious with each passing day that the men and the movement that broke Lyndon Johnson’s authority in 1968 are out to break Richard Nixon in 1969.“The likelihood is great that they will succeed again.”

They did not succeed in breaking Nixon’s presidency. He broke them. The crucial moment was his “Great Silent Majority” speech of Nov. 3, 1969, which rallied Middle America behind his war policy.

George W. Bush is approaching a similar moment of truth. And Cindy Sheehan may be the catalyst of crisis for the Bush presidency.

As a Gold Star mother of a soldier son slain in Iraq, Sheehan has authenticity and moral authority. Wedded to the passion of her protest, these make her a magnet for a bored White House press corps camped in Crawford for August. Cindy and the president are the only stories in town. And as a source of daily derogatory commentary on the president, Sheehan is using the media, and the media are using her, for the same end: to bedevil George W. Bush.

They are succeeding. When one considers the non-stop cable TV coverage given the mother of Natalie Holloway, the Alabama teen missing in Aruba, Cindy Sheehan will soon be a household name. The more media she attracts, the more people she draws to Crawford. The more people who join Cindy in Crawford, the more media coverage they will attract. It is hard to see what breaks this cycle before Labor Day and the president’s return.

The purity of Sheehan’s protest has lately been diluted by her association with the far Left, the extravagance of her language and the arrival of political operatives to manipulate and manage her. But in a slow news month, Cindy Sheehan has helped turn the focus of national debate back to the war, at a moment of special vulnerability for the president.

According to Newsweek, support for Bush’s handling of the war has fallen for the first time below 40 percent—to 34 percent, with 61 percent now disapproving of his war leadership. Compare these numbers to the 68 percent support Nixon commanded on Vietnam after that November 3 address, and the gravity of Bush’s condition becomes evident.

Put bluntly, the bottom is falling out of support for the commander in chief. What is remarkable is that no Democrat has stepped forward, as Gene McCarthy did, to lead an antiwar crusade and call for a date certain for withdrawal of U.S. troops. Cindy Sheehan is filling that vacuum.

... Americans do not want an endless no-win war, but they also do not want to cut and run, or walk away and leave a debacle, when they believe that 1,850 Americans have died and 13,000 have been wounded in a noble cause If President Bush cannot describe “victory” in terms convincing enough to Americans willing to spend blood indefinitely, he will have to persuade them to stay the course by describing what a disaster defeat will mean for Iraq and for the America’s position in the world.

But to do that would raise a question: Why, then, in heaven’s name, did America take such a risk, when Iraq was never a threat?

In May of 1970, right after the Kent State shootings, when civil unrest across the nation had reached a fever pitch and opposition to the war had roared again to the forefront, Nixon woke his personal valet in the middle of the night. He grabbed a few Secret Service agents and set off for the Lincoln Memorial. There, he spent an hour talking with a large gathering of war protesters encamped around the monument.

The Time Magazine article from May 18, 1970, recalls the scene this way: "When the conversation turned to the war, Nixon told the students: 'I know you think we are a bunch of so and so's.'" Before he left, Nixon said: 'I know you want to get the war over. Sure you came here to demonstrate and shout your slogans on the ellipse. That's all right. Just keep it peaceful. Have a good time in Washington, and don't go away bitter.' The singular odyssey went on. Nixon and his small contingent wandered through the capital, then drove to the Mayflower Hotel for a breakfast of corned beef hash and eggs - his first restaurant meal in Washington since he assumed power. Then he withdrew to his study in the Executive Office Building to sit out the day of protest."