Artful Dodger: I think in hindsight he could have done better, but at the time there was little uproar.Most were duped into thinking BP had things under some degree of control.

Tuesday: I think it would be foolish to think many Republicans aren't putting a little more mustard on the fastball when opportunity presents itself towards Obama.They got hammered from the left regarding GW,it's payback time in many of their minds.

Jim Dandy: You're probably right. I don't think we get the straight story from anywhere. I don't think the main stream media reports accurately, nor the left wing blogs, and it would be crazy to believe that right wing blogs are any more credible. I have to admit I do think Fox is the best. The shows I watch ALL have both sides of any issue represented. Still, it's hard to sort out conflicting stories. So many different slants on the news.

But I think it's clear that Obama has botched many things in his reaction to this spill. And I'm very confused with his latest action. Explain this:

"Feds halt work on LA sand berms
Jeannie DeAngelis
Sand berms are an insurance policy meant to protect the Louisiana coastline from oil spill damage. The Louisiana sand berm venture involves moving "sand from a mile out in the Gulf of Mexico and pumping it closer in to shore to build manmade barrier islands."

Nevertheless, lacking a more formidable idea and one week into the project the federal government decided to shut "down the dredging that was being done to create protective sand berms in the Gulf of Mexico."

Louisiana's Republican Governor Bobby Jindal staunchly supports protecting the coastline with a sandy barricade, which may explain why the "berm issue has created its own toxic friction between Louisiana and the Obama Administration."

It seems that ever since Obama took over the reins of reason the government's first-and-foremost effort is directed at implementing the illogical, obstructing progress and public wellbeing and placing the vulnerable at risk."

It's an emergency crisis. Why halt anything that will help? That's a part I don't get.

June 24, 2010
Al Gore’s masseuse
Richard Baehr
After you read through this 70 plus page report of the Portland, Oregon police interview with the licensed massage therapist who claims she was sexually attacked by Al Gore in his hotel room, I think any doubts about whether this story is true or not, will disappear.

The wonderful part of this politically (other than that it will greatly slow any momentum for climate change legislation, and further cheapens all the Nobel Prize winners) is that with Obama not useful as a salesman for Democrats running this year, Clinton was going to be the substitute campaigner. With the Gore story, the Lewinsky/Paula Jones stories will immediately be back in view.

Was Clinton a mentor to al gore on sexual assault and adultery?

No Palin Setback Too Small for Couric Who Skips How Palin 'Acted in Good Faith'
by Brent Baker
Demonstrating that no setback for Sarah Palin which can be portrayed as a rebuke is too insignificant or relevant for Katie Couric, she made time on Thursday's CBS Evening News to inform her viewers about a disputable technical violation of arcane law:
One little word will cost Sarah Palin a small fortune. Today, state investigators in Alaska said a legal defense fund she set up while she was Governor was illegal. They said the use of the word “official” on the fund's Web site implied it was endorsed by the office of the Governor. Palin's lawyer says she will return the fund's nearly $400,000.

Unmentioned by Couric? How Timothy Petumenos, the investigator/counsel for the Alaska Personnel Board which issued the ruling, absolved Palin of blame. “Petumenos found the 2008 GOP vice presidential nominee acted in good faith and relied on the advice of lawyers when setting up the fund,” the Anchorage Daily News reported in an afternoon posting.

PDF of the board's report, which noted: “Governor Palin complied fully with AS 39.52.210(a) by declining to take any proceeds from the Trust once the Complaint was filed pending resolution of this matter.”

Artful Dodger: For someone who tries to come across as both niave and street smart, she sure took alot of abuse and came back for more.I don't buy her story for a second

Artful Dodger: Our MP's over expenses said they were acting in goof faith and in compliance with the rules.... Lot's found voters did not think it was so good, nor their parties or constituents.

Jim Dandy: That you don't buy her story doesn't mean she's not telling the truth. In this country, we consider people innocent until proven guilty. But it doesn't matter. She's not really a contender for the crown so the media is wasting it's time trying to discredit her. They'll move on to others eventually. But that she is a powerful force is evident. That's why the left wing clown try so hard to discredit her. So much so that one idiot moved in right next door to her.

That's creepy.

Artful Dodger: Her story is full of inconsistancies.I read the report with an open mind, but it just doesn't pass the smell test

Jim Dandy: are you reading it with your left or right brain?

June 25, 2010
Town Jeopardizes Health of Sexually Active Preschoolers
Peter Wilson
Provincetown, Massachusetts "to rethink condom policy," reports the Boston Globe. After Governor Deval Patrick "expressed concern" the School Committee will revisit its policy of providing free condoms to "the Cape Cod community's elementary school, which serves preschoolers to sixth-graders."

A measure of sanity taken by the town famous for its flamboyant gay parades and S&M shops? Not exactly. The conservative new regulations will limit free condom distribution to the preschool through fourth grade, but will offer protection to all sexually active fifth and sixth graders:

"If parents are that upset, and we have to revise it to fifth- and sixth-graders, then that would be fine with me,'' said [School Committee member Carrie] Notaro, who has a preschooler and a second-grader in the elementary school.

Parents however will have no say in whether their fifth-grader is authorized to get a condom, Notaro noted, since kids aren't "going to ask their parents anyway."

Things sure have changed since the Pilgrims landed in 1620.

Last month the UN conducted a world-wide survey by phone.

The only question asked was:-

"Would you please give your honest opinion about solutions to the food
shortage in the rest of the world?"

The survey was a huge failure because of the following:

1. In Eastern Europe they didn't know what "honest" meant.
2. In Western Europe they didn't know what "shortage" meant.
3. In Africa they didn't know what "food" meant.
4. In China they didn't know what "opinion" meant.
5. In the Middle East they didn't know what "solution" meant.
6. In South America they didn't know what "please" meant.
7. In the USA they didn't know what "the rest of the world" meant.
8. In Australia they hung up as soon as they heard the Indian accent.

Bernice: LMAO they missed CANADA or don't we matter

Bernice:

June 26, 2010
Democrat says Arizona isn't on southern border
Greg Halvorson
Friends, if you don't think Liberty is in deep doo, then you're not paying attention. Elected officials - notably Barbara Boxer - have become so patently and publicly thick that you half expect them to pass laws in crayon. The U.S. House, in particular, is packed with members (Hank Johnson, Bob Etheridge, Maxine Waters) who seem incapable of speaking without calling into question whether they're gunning for laughs.

What's troubling isn't their idiocy, however, but its prevalence beyond the Beltway. The failure of citizens to participate in elections has handed nimrods wide powers. Take Peggy West, an elected official from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. A graduate of _________ (Har-Harvard?), she recently made her case against Arizona's immigration law, saying:

"If this were Texas, which is a state that is directly on the border with Mexico, and they were calling for a measure like this, saying they were having an issue with undocumented people flooding the border, I would look twice, but it's Arizona, a state that is a ways removed from the border...."

Shocked? Don't be. Liberals, in a recent survey by Zogby International, scored lower than conservatives on eight of eight questions. Eight routs, the intellectual equivalent of the Pittsburgh Steelers crushing Peafop Middle School. Zogby addressed economics (Where does money come from? Liberal: "trees") but the subject doesn't matter. Liberals are numb on every subject in which they profess knowledge.

Plato, on the other hand, was decidedly brilliant. The Greek philosopher once quipped that, "One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors."

Who in Milwaukee would argue with that?

Bernice: LMAO at least NASCAR likes us

Q. How many Democrats in Congress voted to abolish slavery?
127
95
34
0

Artful Dodger: How many Conservatives wanted to keep slavery back then in a different age.. Women didn't have the vote.. Over here in the UK working men didn't have the vote.

Other old history was that the founders of the Protestant churches wanted the genocide of all Jews as they crucified Christ.

(V): The answer Jules, is ZERO. There wasn't ONE Democrat who voted to abolish slavery.

Get a clue.

Supreme Court: Second Amendment applies to states and localities, too
Thomas Lifson
A huge civil rights victory today from the Supreme Court, as the Justices voted 5 to 4 that constitutional protections for the right to bear arms apply to state and local governments, as well as the federal government.

This should not have been a difficult case to decide, as the Court has previously held that constitutional restraints on the federal government also apply to states and localities when other civil rights are in question. Nonetheless, the four liberal justices found reason to make exceptions for the civil right they personally disagree with.

Australians are learning the lessons of indiscriminate, draconian gun control laws the hard way. In 1996, a criminally insane man shot to death 35 people at a Tasmanian resort. The government immediately responded by passing stringent gun control laws, banning most firearms, and ordering their confiscation. More than 640,000 guns were seized from ordinary Australian citizens.(10)

As a result, there has been a sharp and dramatic increase in violent crime against the disarmed law-abiding citizens, who in small communities and particularly in rural areas are now unable to protect themselves from brigands and robbers. That same year in the state of Victoria, there was a 300 percent increase in homicides committed with firearms. The following year, robberies increased almost 60 percent in South Australia. By 1999, assaults had increased in New South Wales by almost 20 percent. Two years following the gun ban/confiscation, armed robberies rose by 73 percent, unarmed robberies by 28 percent, kidnappings by 38 percent, assaults by 17 percent and manslaughter by 29 percent, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics.

Interestingly, the same thing occurred in Great Britain. Following a 1996 massacre of school children by a madman in Dunblane, Scotland, the British government banned and ordered the confiscation of most firearms. Since then a horrific crime wave has taken place in England and Scotland. In 1998, the U.S. Department of Justice declared that the rate of muggings in England had surpassed that in the U.S. by 40 percent, while assault and burglary rates were nearly 100 percent higher in England than in the U.S.

To make matters worse for England --- and this is also true for Canada --- in those countries where citizens are disarmed in their own homes, day burglary is commonplace and dangerous because criminals know they will not be shot at if caught flagrante delicto. Not so in the U.S., where burglars not only prefer night burglaries but try to make sure homeowners are not at home to avoid being shot at by the intended victim.

The rising tide of thievery and burglaries in England has dubbed Britain "a nation of thieves," wrote the London Sunday Times (January 11, 1998), which noted: "More than one in three British men has a criminal record by the age of forty. While America has cut its crime rate dramatically

Britain remains the crime capital of the West. Where have we gone wrong?"

A study by the U.S. Dept. of Justice's Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention tracked 4000 juveniles aged 6-15 inDenver (CO), Pittsburgh (PA), and Rochester (NY) from 1993-1995. The investigators found that children who use firearms with parental supervision, as far as hunting and target shooting, are less likely to commit acts of violence and street crimes (14 percent) than children who have no guns in their homes (24 percent); whereas children who obtain guns illegally do so at the whopping rate of 74 percent.(13)

Gun Control Doesn't Work.

Little Miss "No-Fly List"
Jeannie DeAngelis
It is comforting to know that even though registered sex offenders may show up at your door wearing Census 2010 credentials, at least Americans can rest easy in the knowledge that, if flying, Homeland Security is profiling potential terrorists like six-year old Alyssa Thomas.

Little Miss "no-fly list" Alyssa found out she was under Big Sis and DHS surveillance when she and parents, Doctor and Mrs. Thomas, boarded a Continental Airlines flight from Cleveland to Minneapolis.

The ticket agent at Hopkins Airport alerted the family that Alyssa was on the TSA "no-fly list." The Transportation Security Administration, which has also been known on occasion to hire felons, employs airport security personnel to identify potential terrorists before they board the airplane.

...

A census worker raped and bludgeoned a handicapped woman in Indiana after getting a job working for the same federal government that put a first grader on the terrorist "no-fly" list, and these people want to run national health care?

Yeah, and they will run it into the ground.

Bozos

Artful Dodger: Was this when Democrats were Republicans?? Or like the age of Korea.. North Korea were the 'bad' guys but it didn't stop the Southerners killing 100's of 1000's in weeding out exercises or the USA forces being ordered to shoot civilians in case they were Northerners.

Artful Dodger: ... where do you get this C&P's from.. the NRA...

Where's your proof man... real stats, not propoganda.

To think in the 1950's the thing that brought 'peace' to the Korean conflict was the A-bomb. 26 warheads sent to Japan for use if McCarthy thought defeat was inevitable.

(V): You don't know your US political history

The modern Democratic Party truly arose in the 1830s, with the election of Andrew Jackson.

From Wikipedia: From the end of the Civil War, African Americans almost unanimously favored the Republican Party due to its overwhelming political and more tangible efforts in achieving abolition, particularly through President Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation. The south had long been a Democratic stronghold, favoring a state's right to legal slavery. In addition, the ranks of the fledgling Ku Klux Klan were composed almost entirely of white Democrats.

(The Republican Party was...)Founded in northern states in 1854 by anti-slavery activists, modernizers, ex-Whigs and ex-Free Soilers, the Republican Party quickly became the principal opposition to the dominant Democratic Party. It first came to power in 1860 with the election of Abraham Lincoln to the Presidency and oversaw the American Civil War and Reconstruction

Early Republican ideology was reflected in the 1856 slogan "free labor, free land, free men.

The Party had the goal of containing the expansion of slavery, which would cause the collapse of the Slave Power and the expansion of freedom.

The party took on the mission of saving the Union and destroying slavery during the American Civil War and over Reconstruction.

So bite me. The answer is that the history of the CURRENT Democratic party is one of pro-slavery, Klu Klux Klan membership and anti-union.

Artful Dodger: Was it before the parties swapped ideologies or before the liberal republicans moved to the Democratic party..

enlighten me.. tell me the real story of the formation and changes within the parties.

... war democrats.. peace democrats..some voted for Lincoln.. some didn't.

(V): I did.

(V): There wasn't ONE Democrat who voted to abolish slavery. Only Republicans were on the side of abolishing slavery.

Artful Dodger: Nope... too little detail of the history. Large bits missed out.. If you were running an archive.. I'd sack ya.

Artful Dodger: what you dont say is how many have illegal weapons. People who live in the country and need guns to get rid of feral animals and such have unregistered guns. The crime rate hasnt dropped etc as you pointed out, but the trade in illegal weapons has increased. We still dont have drive by's as you do in the USA (thank god) but are starting to get idiots in schools with weapons. typical male testosterone kicking in....these BOYS, and they are only children think they are invincible.
it is so easy to get a license for a gun, but one gun isnt enough for some households, so they revert to illegal purchases.

Bernice: There have been many independent studies and they all show that if you take away the rights of the people to own a gun, most won't. Many will. But ALL of the criminal elements will find a gun. They will have them, law abiding citizens won't. Where there are gun control laws, there is an increase in crime.

In some towns in the US you can wear your gun (like in the old West). Safest places to live on the planet. Everybody has a gun and if a dude wants to rob a bank, he may not get to the door without a few holes in his sorry arse. ;)

There is no reference to the number of Democratic Party platforms supporting slavery. There were six from 1840 through 1860.
There is no reference to the number of Democratic presidents who owned slaves. There were seven from 1800 through 1861

There is no reference to the number of Democratic Party platforms that either supported segregation outright or were silent on the subject. There were 20, from 1868 through 1948.

There is no reference to "Jim Crow" as in "Jim Crow laws," nor is there reference to the role Democrats played in creating them. These were the post-Civil War laws passed enthusiastically by Democrats in that pesky 52-year part of the DNC's missing years. These laws segregated public schools, public transportation, restaurants, rest rooms and public places in general (everything from water coolers to beaches). The reason Rosa Parks became famous is that she sat in the "whites only" front section of a bus, the "whites only" designation the direct result of Democrats.

There is no reference to the formation of the Ku Klux Klan, which, according to Columbia University historian Eric Foner, became "a military force serving the interests of the Democratic Party." Nor is there reference to University of North Carolina historian Allen Trelease's description of the Klan as the "terrorist arm of the Democratic Party."

There is no reference to the fact Democrats opposed the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments to the Constitution. The 13th banned slavery. The 14th effectively overturned the infamous 1857 Dred Scott decision (made by Democratic pro-slavery Supreme Court justices) by guaranteeing due process and equal protection to former slaves. The 15th gave black Americans the right to vote.

There is no reference to the fact that Democrats opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1866. It was passed by the Republican Congress over the veto of President Andrew Johnson, who had been a Democrat before joining Lincoln's ticket in 1864. The law was designed to provide blacks with the right to own private property, sign contracts, sue and serve as witnesses in a legal proceeding.

There is no reference to the Democrats' opposition to the Civil Rights Act of 1875. It was passed by a Republican Congress and signed into law by President Ulysses Grant. The law prohibited racial discrimination in public places and public accommodations.

There is no reference to the Democrats' 1904 platform, which devotes a section to "Sectional and Racial Agitation," claiming the GOP's protests against segregation and the denial of voting rights to blacks sought to "revive the dead and hateful race and sectional animosities in any part of our common country," which in turn "means confusion, distraction of business, and the reopening of wounds now happily healed."

There is no reference to four Democratic platforms, 1908-20, that are silent on blacks, segregation, lynching and voting rights as racial problems in the country mount. By contrast the GOP platforms of those years specifically address "Rights of the Negro" (1908), oppose lynching (in 1912, 1920, 1924, 1928) and, as the New Deal kicks in, speak out about the dangers of making blacks "wards of the state."

There is no reference to the Democratic Convention of 1924, known to history as the "Klanbake." The 103-ballot convention was held in Madison Square Garden. Hundreds of delegates were members of the Ku Klux Klan, the Klan so powerful that a plank condemning Klan violence was defeated outright. To celebrate, the Klan staged a rally with 10,000 hooded Klansmen in a field in New Jersey directly across the Hudson from the site of the convention. Attended by hundreds of cheering convention delegates, the rally featured burning crosses and calls for violence against African-Americans and Catholics.

There is no reference to the fact that it was Democrats who segregated the federal government, at the direction of President Woodrow Wilson upon taking office in 1913. There \is a reference to the fact that President Harry Truman integrated the military after World War II.

There is reference to the fact that Democrats created the Federal Reserve Board, passed labor and child welfare laws, and created Social Security with Wilson's New Freedom and FDR's New Deal.

There is no mention that these programs were created as the result of an agreement to ignore segregation and the lynching of blacks. Neither is there a reference to the thousands of local officials, state legislators, state governors, U.S. congressmen and U.S. senators who were elected as supporters of slavery and then segregation between 1800 and 1965. Nor is there reference to the deal with the devil that left segregation and lynching as a way of life in return for election support for three post-Civil War Democratic presidents, Grover Cleveland, Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt.

There is no reference that three-fourths of the opposition to the 1964 Civil Rights Bill in the U.S. House came from Democrats, or that 80% of the "nay" vote in the Senate came from Democrats. Certainly there is no reference to the fact that the opposition included future Democratic Senate leader Robert Byrd of West Virginia (a former Klan member) and Tennessee Senator Albert Gore Sr., father of Vice President Al Gore.

Last but certainly not least, there is no reference to the fact that Birmingham, Ala., Public Safety Commissioner Bull Connor, who infamously unleashed dogs and fire hoses on civil rights protestors, was in fact--yes indeed--a member of both the Democratic National Committee and the Ku Klux Klan.

June 28, 2010

Former KKK Clansman Senator Robert Byrd Dies, Age 92

Black GOP Republican need not apply for membership in Black Caucus
Ethel C. Fenig
Years ago Groucho Marx proclaimed he wouldn't want to be a member of any organization that would actually admit him. Perhaps Tim Scott, a black Republican from South Carolina who has a good chance of becoming a representative to Congress by winning the general election in November, feels the same way about joining the Black Congressional Caucus. As John Steele Gordon of Commentary Magazine's Contentions blog points out
But assuming Scott is elected, he needn't apply for membership in the Congressional Black Caucus, of course. It's a measure of how little the left in American politics has changed in the last 50 years that the Black Caucus - devoted to race-based politics and victimology - admits only liberal Democratic members.
Scott is black; Scott is not a liberal.
Could he sue for discrimination?

I'd like to know what those on this forum think of Glenn Beck---just curious. Comments?

Will the right wing right now blame that women didn't have the vote on the democrats??

.. what about the point that da bad un's have guns because they know the occupier might have guns or the cops.. so as such things get potentially lethal more quickly.

Killed over $100..

Jump This: I'm probably the only one here that like Glen Beck

(V): "Clueless In England"

The Democratic Party traces its origins to the Democratic-Republican Party, founded by Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and other influential opponents of the Federalists in 1792. However, the modern Democratic Party truly arose in the 1830s, with the election of Andrew Jackson. Since the division of the Republican Party in the election of 1912, it has gradually positioned itself to the left of the Republican Party on economic and social issues. Until the period following the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Democratic Party was primarily a coalition of two parties divided by region. Southern Democrats were typically given high conservative ratings by the American Conservative Union while northern Democrats were typically given very low ratings. Southern Democrats were a core bloc of the bipartisan conservative coalition which lasted through the Reagan-era. The economically activist philosophy of Franklin D. Roosevelt, which has strongly influenced American liberalism, has shaped much of the party's economic agenda since 1932, and served to tie the two regional factions of the party together until the late 1960s. In fact, Roosevelt's New Deal coalition usually controlled the national government until the 1970s.

In 2004, it was the largest political party, with 72 million voters (42.6% of 169 million registered) claiming affiliation. By comparison, the Republican Party has 55 million members.[5] During the first quarter of 2009, 52% of Americans identified more closely with the Democratic party while 39% leaned Republican.[7]

(V): Exactly Jules. I posted some of that same information. The Democratic party arose in the 1830 and is the SAME party today. They are the SAME party that joined the Klu Klux Klan, voted to keep slavery legal, and these days they use race to gain political points. The democrats USE blacks to gain power. They KEEP blacks believing they are discriminated against so that they (the democrats) can come to their constant rescue. They are a corrupt and vile party.

Artful Dodger: They are not the same party, neither is the Republicans. To say so looking at various histories from several different sites is madness. You keep harping about the Republicans going back to Conservative values... yet there is no such thing as 'Conservative' values as they vary from country to country from region to region.

It's like saying socialism is just communism by another name. That there are several types of socialism. Some work.. some don't.. some have had their name misused and made into evil to justify spending billions upon billions on weapons that will never be used.