B.A. Aquatic Biology, University of California, Santa Barbara
M.A. Organismal Biology, University of California, Santa Barbara
Ph.D. Neurobiology and Behavior, Cornell University
NIH Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Psychology, Yale University
Grass Fellow, Marine Biological Laboratory, Woods Hole
S.W. Kuffler Fellow, Marine Biological Laboratory, Woods Hole
Excellence in Teaching Award, University of Miami
Board of Directors, Catskill-Hudson Area Health Education Center (CHAHEC)
Charter Member, Woods Hole Branch of Tappa Kegga Bru
Family Genealogy: The Nolens and the Tillmans

"In religion and politics, people's
beliefs and convictions are in almost
every case gotten at second-hand, and
without examination."

- Mark Twain

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The Low Down on Osama Bin Laden: The letters in his name can be re-arranged to spell
'A Snail Abdomen'
-- you can't get any lower than THAT!

"George W. Bush: Our Greatest President Since Bill Clinton!"

"One word sums up our attitude concerning terrorism,
and that one word is 'to be prepared'."

- "Gee DubYuh" iBush

"WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The White House 'screwed up' by not requiring e-mails from Republican Party and campaign accounts to be saved and is trying to recover any documents that may have been deleted, a spokeswoman said Thursday... Congressional investigators have questioned whether White House aides used e-mail accounts from the Republican Party and President Bush's re-election campaign for official government business to avoid scrutiny of those dealings... Perino said Thursday that 22 aides in the political arm of the president's office use party or campaign e-mail accounts, which were issued to separate official business from political work. Some of those accounts were used to discuss the December firings of federal prosecutors in eight cities, a shakeup that has triggered a spreading controversy on Capitol Hill... 'The issue here is not the president's ability to fire. It's not even the president's ability to fire without any cause,' Schumer said. 'The issue is, were people fired explicitly for political reasons because they wouldn't pursue political cases?'" -- CNN.com 4/12/07

"Some 50 past and current White House aides had the RNC accounts, according to the administration, to avoid using government resources to conduct political business." -- CNN.com 4/13/07

OK. So if the firings WEREN'T politically motivated, why then were emails ABOUT them sent on the RNC financed, separate-from-government-business, "political business" email accounts? Huh? -- TGN 4/13/07

Rhetorical Nots

"Another argument now under attack is the President's claim that Iraq is the 'central front in the war on terror,' when this report and others suggest that Pakistan is a safe haven for al Qaeda.
When my colleague Kelly O'Donnell of NBC News pressed that point today with White House spokesman Tony Snow, asking why the U.S. military won't go into Pakistan, she got a most intriguing answer.
'When you talk about the U.S. going in there, you don't blithely go into another nation and conduct operations,' Snow said.
'Well, the president went into a sovereign nation in 2003,' O'Donnell noted, in what seemed like an 'aha!' moment. 'Well, he went into a sovereign nation that was in fact -- he also had with him the support of 17 U.N. resolutions, including Resolution 1441,' Snow responded.
That exchange shows how the fight over the war in Iraq has twisted the White House into rhetorical knots."

-- CNN White House Correspondent, Ed Henry
discussing today's National Intelligence Estimate report.
CNN.com 7/17/07

---

"The United States, to my knowledge, has never ruled out the use of nuclear weapons."

-- Sect'y of Defense Rumsfeld, when asked if their possible use against Osama bin Laden had been ruled out. CNN, 9/23/01

---

"I have a feeling that 60 percent of what you say is crap."

--- David Letterman to Bill O'Reilly, cited by Daniel Kurtzman

---

--- Thanks to Wendi Neckameyer!

Search for: Weapons of Mass Destruction

"Make no mistake about it, I understand how tough it is, sir. I talk to families who die."

-- George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., Dec. 7, 2006

"The war on terror involves Saddam Hussein because of the nature of Saddam Hussein, the history of Saddam Hussein, and his wilingness to terrorize himself."

-- GW Bush, 1/29/2003, Grand Rapids Michigan.

"War is God's way of teaching Americans geography."

-- Ambrose Bierce

"I like to tell people when the final history is written on Iraq, it will look like just a comma because there is -- my point is, there's a strong will for democracy."

-- George W. Bush, interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer, Sept. 24, 2006

"You know, one of the hardest parts of my job is to connect Iraq to the war on terror."

You can send me email! Tom's email address
(please put the words "Ot-nay Am-spay" in
the Subject line -- I'm having to filter out junk
e-mail!!! ... what is this world coming to?)

Snail-Mail:
SUNY New Paltz
Department of Biology
1 Hawk Drive
New Paltz, NY 12561

~~~~~~~~~~

"No man has a good enough
memory to be a successful liar."
--- Abe Lincoln

Common Usage:
"I am sorry if anyone was offended by the wardrobe malfunction during the halftime performance at the Super Bowl."

--- Justin Timberlake

Boob: See NFL.

Punk'd: See MTV.

Who Said This? GW Bush? Saddam Hussein?

Thomas L. Friedman
NY Times

David Harrison
The Daily Telegraph Online

Everything You Know is Wrong ... When ...

1. The White House counterterrorism coordinator is "out of the loop";
   
2. The president's national security adviser tells all to anyone in the media who will listen to her, but won't talk to the Independent Commission investigating the terrorist attacks of September 11th;
   
3. People actually care what a Vice President says;
   
4. You can no longer trust Colin Powell;
   
5. A thirty-year career Washington Bureaucrat feels compelled to apologize for the failures of the government.
   

The War Against the War Against Terrorism

Specifically, on April 30, 2001, CNN reported that the Bush Administration's release of the government's annual terrorism report contained a serious change: "there was no extensive mention of alleged terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden" as there had been in previous years. When asked why the Administration had reduced the focus, "a senior Bush State Department official told CNN the U.S. government made a mistake in focusing so much energy on bin Laden."².

The move to downgrade the fight against Al Qaeda before 9/11 was not the only instance where the Administration ignored repeated warnings that an Al Qaeda attack was imminent³. Specifically, the Associated Press reported in 2002 that "President Bush's national security leadership met formally nearly 100 times in the months prior to the Sept. 11 attacks yet terrorism was the topic during only two of those sessions"⁴. Meanwhile, Newsweek has reported that internal government documents show that the Bush Administration moved to "de-emphasize" counterterrorism prior to 9/11⁵. When "FBI officials sought to add hundreds more counterintelligence agents" to deal with the problem, "they got shot down" by the White House.

Sources:
1. Press Briefing by Scott McClellan, 03/22/2004.
2. CNN, 04/30/2001.
3. Bush Was Warned of Hijackings Before 9/11; Lawmakers Want Public Inquiry, ABC News, 05/16/2002.
4. "Top security advisers met just twice on terrorism before Sept. 11 attacks", Detroit News, 07/01/2002.
5. Freedom of Information Center, 05/27/2002.

He Said He Said

Furthermore, in response to Clarke's testimony at Senate Committee hearings that while terrorism was an important issue for the administration, it was not an urgent issue, Bush administration spokespersons erroneously asserted all last week that antiterrorism was a TOP priority. However:

"In Bob Woodward's Bush at War, (Simon & Schuster, 2002), the president himself acknowledged that Osama bin Laden had not been a central focus in the eight months before the attacks.

"I was not on point," Mr. Bush was quoted in the book as saying. "I have no hesitancy about going after him, but I didn't feel that sense of urgency, and my blood was not nearly at boiling.""

-- NY Times Online, March 28, 2004
UPDATE: See NY Times Online, April 3, 2004

Scott's revenge: What Happened: Inside the Bush Whitehouse and Washington's Culture of Deception

Bushies in the bushes.

"[The Bush administration reads] the poll numbers, they know most Americans think their policies are failing, so they've responded by changing the person who tells us those policies. It's quite a bold move. ... Every house cleaning starts by replacing the doormat."

--Daily Show correspondent Ed Helms
on Scott McClellan's resignation.

"Change can be helpful."
--Scott McClellan, CNN.com, 4/23/06

White House introduces new press secretary: Meet "Beltway Bob"