Why do republicans want to destroy unions?

Your World Without Unions
If you're not union and don't believe the union busting in Wisconsin and other states will affect you; if you believe unions are a problem and not a solution; if you believe unions only help their own and no one else –\Welcome to a country without unions.
No Minimum Wage Law.
No maximum 8 Hour Work Day, 40 Hour Work Week.
No maternity leave job protection.
No pregnancy job protection. If your employer decides to fire you because you're pregnant, he could.
No child labor laws. A return to children in sweat shops, standing on boxes to reach factory machinery.
No mandatory school attendance. It was initiated to save children from forced labor year 'round.
No safety standards in the workplace.
No paid vacations, sick days or personal days.
No pension plans or healthcare benefits.
No salary increases.
No mandatory meal breaks.
No paid holidays.
No unemployment insurance.
No workers compensation.
No overtime pay of time-and-a-half.
No protection from forced work on the sabbath (if this is part of your religion).
There are more, and if you need them, all you have to do is think of working conditions in a third world country. That's what the United States will become, and this isn't hyperbole or exaggeration.

There's a reason why one of the first moves of dictators is to abolish or severely repress unions. Hitler, Mussolini, Franco, Lenin, Gaddafi – the list goes on and on.

Think about it all before you latch onto the lie that unions do more harm than good for the People. Why else would dictators and despots hate them so much?
By the way, I'm not union. But I want to thank them just the same. You should, too.

US Chamber of Commerce caught with its pants down???

US Chamber of Commerce caught with its pants down???

Stolen e-mails reveal plans for a dirty-tricks-style campaign against critics of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The e-mails revealed, among other things, a series of often-dubious counterintelligence proposals aimed at enemies of Bank of America and the chamber. The proposals included distributing fake documents and launching cyber-attacks.

While many questions remain in the unfolding ChamberLeaks controversy, what's clear is that this multitude of emails clearly contradicts the Chamber's claim that they were 'not aware of these proposals until HBGary's e-mails leaked.
Several of the documents focus on ChamberWatch, a union-backed organization that criticizes the business lobby and many of its members.

The documents include personal details about activists who work for the group and suggestions for targeting its reputation, including planting fake documents, tying the organization to radical activists or creating "fake insider personas" on social media.

Making our country more paranoid

read today:
Last October, Glenn Beck was musing on his radio show about the prospect of the government seizing his children if he didn't give them flu vaccines. "You want to take my kids because of that?" he said. "Meet Mr. Smith and Mr. Wesson."

Last April, Erick Erickson, the managing editor of the right-wing RedState blog and a CNN commentator, was questioning the legality of the Census Bureau's American Community Survey on a radio show. "We have become, or are becoming, enslaved by the government. . . . I dare 'em to try to come to throw me in jail. I dare 'em to. [I'll] pull out my wife's shotgun and see how that little ACS twerp likes being scared at the door."

Do right-wing talk show commentators incite violence against the government? Feel free to draw your own conclusions - but to dwell on the rise of violent rhetoric on the right is to miss an even bigger, though connected, problem. Let's focus, rather, on the first part of Beck's and Erickson's observations:

The government wants to take away Glenn Beck's (and by extension, your) kids. The government wants to take a census and will throw Erick Erickson (and by extension, you) in jail if he, and you, don't comply.

Can we see the hands of all the kids taken from their parents because they didn't get flu shots? How about all those people rotting in jail because they didn't cooperate in compiling the census?

The primary problem with the political discourse of the right in today's America isn't that it incites violence per se. It's that it implants and reinforces paranoid fears about the government and conservatism's domestic adversaries.

Much of the culture and thinking of the American right - the mainstream as well as the fringe - has descended into paranoid suppositions about the government, the Democrats and the president. This is not to say that the left wing doesn't have a paranoid fringe, too. But by every available measure, it's the right where conspiracy theories have exploded.

A fabricated specter of impending governmental totalitarianism haunts the right's dreams. One month after Barack Obama was inaugurated as president, Beck hosted a show that gamed out how militias in Southern and Western states might rise up against an oppressive government. The number of self-proclaimed right-wing militias tripled - from 42 to 127, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center - in 2009 (and that doesn't count those that are entirely underground).

As much of the right sees it, the government is planning to incarcerate its enemies (see Beck and Erickson, above), socialize the economy and take away everyone's guns. At the fringe, we have figures like Larry Pratt, executive director of the Gun Owners of America, who told a rally in Washington last April that, "We're in a war.

The other side knows they are at war, because they started it. They are coming for our freedom, for our money, for our kids, for our property. They are coming for everything because they are a bunch of socialists."

But the imputation of lurking totalitarianism, alien ideologies, and subversion of liberties to liberals and moderates has become the default rhetoric of the right. Never mind that Obama is a Marxist, a Kenyan and an advocate of sharia law.

Consider the plight of poor Fred Upton, the Republican congressman just installed as chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, over considerable right-wing opposition.

According to Beck, Upton is "all socialist," while Rush Limbaugh calls him the personification of "nannyism" and "statism." Upton's crime is that he supports more energy-efficient light bulbs.

How that puts him in a league with Marx, Engels and Nanny McPhee, I will leave to subtler minds.

American politics and culture have a rich history of paranoia, as historian Richard Hofstadter and many others have documented. Many of the incidents of anti-government violence over the past couple of years - flying a plane into an IRS building in Texas, shooting police officers in Pittsburgh and carrying out last weekend's savagery in Tucson - came from people who, however individually loony they may have been, also harbored paranoid visions of the government that resembled, though by no means entirely, those put forth by the Becks and the Ericksons.

That doesn't make Beck, Erickson, Rupert Murdoch and their ilk responsible for Tucson. It does make them responsible for promoting a paranoid culture that makes America a more divided and dangerous land.

only for those who love and fought for our country

read today:
When there's talk by Republicans of 'target lists' illustrated by gun sights, when there's talk by Republicans of "Second Amendment remedies" for political problems, when there is talk from Republican Congress persons advising their constituents to be "armed and dangerous" and when windows of the other party's district offices around the country were recently destroyed during the health debate, we see and hear where they are trying to take our country. It and they must be condemned as dangerous and unacceptable by we patriots who love our country.

This week, Republicans in the House of Representatives unveiled a bill that will repeal the Affordable Care Act and take us back to the days when insurance companies controlled the health care people could receive. This doesn’t come as a surprise, as Republican leaders have been threatening repeal since President Obama signed the reforms into law on March 23, 2010.

But what is surprising is how carelessly they are disregarding the consequences of taking away the new freedoms, control over health care decisions, and the cost savings the law provides the American people, including

Unprecedented accountability and transparency in the insurance market;
Reduced prescription drug costs for seniors; tax credits for small businesses to defray the costs of employee coverage;
Protection against double-digit premium increases; preventive care without cost sharing; support for working class families by providing them tax credits to help pay for coverage;
Improved quality health insurance coverage for all Americans by creating competitive new state based health insurance marketplaces called Exchanges; and
Affordable, quality health coverage for all Americans regardless of their age and gender, or if they have a pre-existing condition.

Taking away these freedoms from the American people by repealing the law will put insurance companies back in control of health care—leaving Americans once again to worry about:
Losing their insurance, or having it canceled unexpectedly if they are in an accident or become sick;
Insurance companies raising premiums by double-digits with no recourse or accountability;
Insurance companies denying coverage to children with pre-existing conditions; and
Limiting the amount of care people can receive, even if they need it.

In addition, repealing the law will add more than a trillion dollars to the deficit—money we don’t have and debt that will be forced onto future generations of Americans. And without the additional support that the law provides states, it will be that much more difficult for them to provide their residents with affordable coverage options.
Today, the Secretary Sebelius released an op-ed outlining the devastating impact repeal will have on the American people and the Department of Health and Human Services released state-by-state reports to show just how devastating repealing the law will be.

Republican hypocrites have no shame

After winning election with an anti-Washington battle cry, incoming Republican freshmen have rapidly embraced the capital's culture of big-money fundraisers, according to new campaign-finance reports and other records.

Dozens of freshmen lawmakers have held receptions at Capitol Hill bistros and corporate townhouses in recent weeks, taking money from K Street lobbyists and other powerbrokers within days of their victories.

Newly elected House members have raised at least $2 million since the election, according to preliminary Federal Election Commission records filed last week, and many more contributions have yet to be tallied.

lies about President Obama

http://search.atomz.com/search/?sp-q=lies+about+Obama&sp-a=00062d45-sp00000000&sp-advanced=1&sp-p=all&sp-w-control=1&sp-w=alike&sp-date-range=-1&sp-x=any&sp-c=100&sp-m=1&sp-s=0&x=25&y=11

another republican lie about President Obama

President Obama indeed has expressed his personal affirmation of American exceptionalism. In addition to the world's largest economy and its mightiest military, Obama said, "we have a core set of values that are enshrined in our Constitution, in our body of law, in our democratic practices, in our belief in free speech and equality, that, though imperfect, are exceptional."

He added: "I see no contradiction between believing that America has a continued extraordinary role in leading the world towards peace and prosperity and recognizing that leadership is incumbent, depends on, our ability to create partnerships because we can't solve these problems alone."

Obama was placing the concept in the context of his view that the United States must enter what he has called "a new era of engagement."

Obama has declared exactly that on many occasions - including in his speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, the moment that first brought the then-Illinois state senator to national attention.

"Tonight, we gather to affirm the greatness of our nation not because of the height of our skyscrapers, or the power of our military, or the size of our economy; our pride is based on a very simple premise, summed up in a declaration made over 200 years ago."

Obama told the delegates in Boston. " 'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.' That is the true genius of America."

The new criticism of Obama on the subject says more about the race for the Republican presidential nomination than anything else.

Teabaggers "take our country back"

You want to "take America back" to an earlier time? To a time when segments of our population were oppressed and treated as less an citizens or worse? To a time when the old lived in poverty because our society did not provide social programs to make their lives easier?

To a time when children didn't get balanced nutritional lunches in schools? There may be things wrong with the America of today, but there are also many things that are right... personally, I would rather live in the America of today than the America of yesterday

Democrats should fight back to Republicans

Pelosi and Obama took crap for the past two years and never once fought back, no wonder the outcome.

You can't practice civility with those who are not civil. If you do, you concede the high ground to the protesters and the liars, and the "againers."

I hope you all learned that lesson or we will continue on our path to destruction.

Williams, Fox, NPR

WORTH REPEATING UNTIL THESE RIGHT WING FANATICS GET IT ----Williams has been WAY over the line with his "commentary" on Fox for many years. His recent Muslims-on-a-plane hate blast was just the straw that broke the camel's back at NPR.

Remember Juan's insulting reference to First Lady Michelle Obama as "Stokely Carmichael in a designer dress"? What if Juan had insulted Laura Bush in that way? Would the teabaggers then have defended Juan's First Amendment rights to insult Mrs. Bush? Don't hold your breath.

Let Juan collect his 2 million pieces of silver from Fox and then turn your back on him as most folks of goodwill already do.

Republicans vs. Democrats

These tea-bagger Tea Party Republicans want to 1. “phase out” Social Security and Medicare; 2. make unemployment benefits “unconstitutional”; 3. say that minimum wage should “absolutely” be abolished; 4. question the legality of the Civil Rights Act of 1964; 5. claim that Obama’s new health-insurance law violates the Constitution; and they want to repeal existing Amendments to the Constitution which would take us back to Slavery and Segregation.

AND IN THE SENATE, They RECENTLY all voted to prevent our Country from STOPPING BIG CORPORATIONS FROM TAKING OUR JOBS OVERSEAS. If that is not what you want for our country, now is the time to stand up and vote.

Americans more sane than Tea Bag Republicans

Americans continue to see major areas of government spending as essential. Whether it is Medicare, Social Security, national defense, food stamps, education, unemployment benefits or environmental protection, about nine in 10 call these programs at least somewhat important.

On two government programs, Social Security and Medicare, there have been modest declines in the percentage of Americans calling the programs "very important," but overall the changes have been limited.

Food stamps, which former House speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) has tried to make an issue in the campaign this fall, are seen as vital by more than four in 10 Americans, significantly more than was said in the late 1990s.

When all these big companies gave their high-ranking officials pay raises, it took away from the low to moderate community," she said. "The big-name companies . . . have done it to us little people.
Nearly two-thirds of Americans say the Bush administration's actions made the economy worse.

Whatever dissatisfaction Americans might have about the way Washington works, however, nearly eight in 10 say that whatever its faults, the American system is the best in the world.

So called Tea Party people are really just right wingnut republicans. They run as the republicans that they are.

NRA endorses Democratic candidates

So far this year, the NRA has endorsed 58 incumbent House Democrats, including more than a dozen in seats that both parties view as critical to winning a majority.

The group's most notable move was to choose not to issue an endorsement in Nevada. The NRA has endorsed a handful of Democratic governors, including such embattled incumbents as Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland and Iowa Gov. Chet Culver.

Rep. Travis Childers (D-Miss.), who faces a tough reelection race against Republican Alan Nunnelee, got an A-plus rating from the NRA in June, plus an endorsement.

thinking republicans leave the liars behind

Clinton has been by replaced by Obama as the victim of the malicious rumors circulated on right-wing radio. And if Republicans take over Congress, they will surely seek to embarrass the administration through investigations in the same manner as they did to Clinton.

The republicans have always been successful in demonizing their democratic targets. That is what they always do. AND why is that so? It is because those republicans remaining in the party are ditto heads, they believe what their right wingnut leaders tell them. Thinking republicans have migrated to be either indedpendents or democrats.

the Pledge, the new republican hypocrisy

The so-called republican Pledge is grounded in the same worn-out philosophy: cut taxes for millionaires and billionaires; cut the rules for Wall Street and the special interests; and cut the middle class loose to fend for itself," That's not a prescription for a better future. It's an echo of a disastrous decade we can't afford to relive."

One of the ideas that's drawn the most interest on their Web site is ending tax breaks for companies that ship jobs overseas. When Obama recently closed one of the most egregious loopholes for companies creating jobs overseas, Republicans in Congress were almost unanimously opposed.

Republicans in Congress were oposed to the stimulus, saying that it would not stimulate the economy but later lined up to get stimulus mony saying it would stimulate the economy in their districts. What Hypocrites!

Republican "pledge" is a fraud

The Republican so-called "Pledge" contains no credible plan to reduce this debt. On the contrary, it would increase the debt by $4 trillion -- yes, trillion -- by extending all the expiring Bush tax cuts and adding new ones, including a poorly conceived deduction for small businesses. Talk about picking winners and losers; the tax code is already laden with special benefits for small business. This latest deduction would cost $25 billion over two years.

It shirks the politically sensitive task of explaining where the savings would come from. It tosses out a few, relatively small-dollar ideas -- "cutting Congress' budget" and "imposing a net hiring freeze on non-security federal employees," saving $35 billion over 10 years -- and then resorts to the old waste, fraud and abuse dodge.

The biggest dodge of all involves entitlement spending. The Republicans would repeal the Obama health-care plan, a plan that at least holds out the prospect of slowing the growth of health-care spending in general and Medicare in particular

worth repeating

The republican PARTY OF NO rail against so called "legislating from the bench" and "over-turning precedent." but the Republicans on the Supreme Court do just that.

They recently cast off two precedents and struck decades-old prohibitions on the role of corporations in campaigns. They say one thing and do just the oposite and THAT MY FRIENDS IS HYPOCRISY.

Republicans are good at calling names, demonizing all who disagree, and LYING, as with death panels and all the rest.

We must remember that they brought us 1. the 9/11 atack on their watch, 2. the false war on Iraq, 3. dropping the ball on Afghanistan, and 4. the economic collapse. Lies don't change the facts.

what republicans are going to abolish

Here's what the Patient's Bill of Rights means for you:

No more discrimination against kids with pre-existing conditions. Insurance companies can no longer bar families from purchasing coverage because of a child's pre-existing condition.

No more lifetime coverage limits. Insurance companies can no longer put a lifetime limit on the amount of coverage you can receive.

Young adults can now stay on their parent's plan. Young adults can stay on their parent's health insurance plan up to age 26 if their job doesn't provide health care benefits -- a huge relief for many parents and recent college graduates.

Free preventive care. If you join or purchase a new plan, the insurance company will be required to provide preventive care like mammograms, colonoscopies, immunizations, pre-natal and baby care without charging you any out of pocket costs.
Freedom to choose your own doctor. If you purchase or join a new plan, you have the right to choose your own doctor in your insurer network.

No more restrictions on emergency room care. Insurance companies will not be allowed to charge you more for out of network emergency services if you purchase or join a new a plan.
This is a long-overdue
victory for American consumers and patients. For years, millions of Americans have been at the mercy of their insurance companies as they jacked up rates, denied coverage or dropped patients all together.

Republicans are vowing to take the above away.

republicans,guns, 14th Amendment

Second Amendment as Written
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed. When the NRA and like organizations refer to the amendment and discuss its application, they most often treat it as if it were written as follows:

The right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
What happened to the first part, "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State,? What happened to that first phrase????

Why are those words in there (up front, at that)?
How does including the first part change the content of the Amendment?
What did they mean by including the first phrase?
I have not seen any even discussion of that.
It's as if those 13 out of 27 words are not even there. Why???

We could have a like discussion about the 14th Amendment with those who claim that
they revere the Constitution, "take our country back to the Constitution."
I hear and read that only the radicals that claim devotion to our Constitution want to change it, throw parts of it out.

How ironic. More phony political republican rhetoric, seems to me.

another Republican liar

In a recent interview with Human Events, a conservative magazine and Web site, Barbour gave his version of how the South, once a Democratic stronghold, became a Republican bastion. The 62-year-old Barbour claimed that it was "my generation" that led the switch: "my generation, who went to integrated schools.

I went to integrated college -- never thought twice about it." The "old Democrats" fought integration tooth and nail, Barbour said, but "by my time, people realized that was the past, it was indefensible, it wasn't gonna be that way anymore. And so the people who really changed the South from Democrat to Republican was a different generation from those who fought integration."

Barbour did not attend "integrated schools," if he's referring to his primary and secondary education. Mississippi ignored the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision that was meant to end separate-but-unequal school systems. Eventually, officials implemented a "freedom of choice" desegregation plan -- but black parents who tried to send their children to white schools were threatened and intimidated, including by cross-burnings.

Finally, in 1969, the Supreme Court ordered Mississippi to integrate its schools immediately. The long-stalled change took place in 1970. That was long after Barbour had graduated from high school.

That was long after Barbour had graduated from high school in Yazoo City and gone on to attend the University of Mississippi -- the "integrated college" he mentioned in the interview. The federal government had forced Ole Miss to admit its first black student, James Meredith, in 1962; he had to be escorted onto the campus by U.S. marshals as white students rioted in protest.

The following year, a second black student was admitted. In the mid-1960s, when Barbour was attending Ole Miss, it's no wonder that he "never thought twice" about integration. There were only a handful of black students, and by all accounts -- except Barbour's -- they were isolated and ostracized by their white peers.

The governor's assertion that segregation was a relic of the past "by my time" is ludicrous. He was 16, certainly old enough to pay attention, during the Freedom Summer of 1964, when civil rights activists James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner were murdered by the Ku Klux Klan near Philadelphia, Miss.

He was a young adult, on his way to becoming a lawyer, when the public schools were forced to integrate. I'll bet Barbour could remember those days if he tried a little harder.

Equally wrong -- and perhaps deliberately disingenuous -- is his made-up narrative of how the South turned Republican. Barbour's fairy tale(LIE) doesn't remotely resemble what really happened.

As he signed the 1964 Civil Rights Act into law, Lyndon Johnson is supposed to have said that the Democratic Party had "lost the South for a generation." Among those who voted against the landmark legislation was Sen. Barry Goldwater, who became Johnson's opponent in the presidential race that fall.

Johnson scored a landslide victory. Goldwater took his home state of Arizona and just five others: Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina. It was the first time those Deep South states had voted for a Republican presidential candidate since Reconstruction -- and marked the moment when, for many Southern voters, the GOP became the party of white racial grievance. It wasn't "a different generation from those who fought integration" that made the switch. Integration was the whole reason for the switch.

Now, Haley Barbour is not stupid. Why is he telling this ridiculous story? Maybe this is the way he wishes things had been. You'll recall that earlier this year, when asked about a Confederate history month proclamation in Virginia that didn't mention the detail known as slavery, Barbour said the whole thing "doesn't amount to diddly." Most charitably, all this might be called denial.

It's much more likely, however, that Barbour has a political purpose. The Republican Party is trying to shake its image as hostile to African Americans and other minorities. It would be consistent with this attempted makeover to pretend that the party never sought, and won, the votes of die-hard segregationists. One problem, though: It did.

Beck and Koch brother's Freedom Works

Beck is a liar and one of the false witnesses that we Christians are warned about in the Bible.

Do you believe he and Freedom Works, the group of right wing radicals fincanced by the Koch brothers who organized his event, didn't know the date was that of King's speech?

If you do, then you will believe ALL their lies. Have a nice day now, ya hear.

republicans 2000-2008

The only reason
Bush was ever 'awarded'
The Presidency in the first place-
Was so Cheney COULD BE VP.
The military industrial/Big Oil complex
Understood that Cheney
Could not get elected on his own
Without a 'more attractive'
Ventriloquist's dummy.

And their planning
Was VERY RICHLY rewarded-
With war and de-regulation.
From Enron
To Afghanistan
To the Gulf of Mexico-
It's all about the
Profits.

Republicans Facts

The republican PARTY OF NO rail against so called "legislating from the bench" and "over-turning precedent." but the Rupublicans on the Supreme Court do just that.
They recently cast off two precedents and struck decades-old prohibitions on the role of corporations in campaigns. They say one thing and do just the oposite and THAT MY FRIENDS IS HYPOCRISY.

Republicans are good at calling names, demonizing all who disagree, and LYING, as with death panels and all the rest. We must remember that they brought us 1. the 9/11 atack on their watch, 2. the false war on Iraq, 3. dropping the ball on Afghanistan, and 4. the economic collapse. Lies don't change the facts.

Republican lies

Read today: Far from being the out-of-the-mainstream caricature you seek to create, Thurgood Marshall deserves your unyielding gratitude and respect. Among other things, he saved this nation from a second civil war.

It was Marshall who, with Howard Law School Dean Charles Hamilton Houston, his mentor, conceived and then painstakingly effectuated the jurisprudence that led to the striking down of the odious "separate but equal" doctrine that threatened to destroy this country.

While many decry "activist judges" (by which they seem to mean judges who uphold civil rights for minorities and women), those judges who undermine civil rights often demonstrate the most extreme forms of activism. Judges such as those who declared in Plessy v. Ferguson that racial segregation was constitutionally sound turned the Constitution on its head and made a mockery of equal protection.

Those activist judges subjected an entire segment of Americans to more than half a century of state-imposed degradation, subjugation and humiliation.

A nation thus divided cannot stand. And simmering below the surface was anger, frustration and growing hopelessness. We know what happens to a dream deferred. It explodes.

But Thurgood Marshall did not let that happen. As general counsel for the NAACP, he thoughtfully laid the groundwork for change. He and a cadre of brilliant lawyers, black and white, spent nearly two decades paving the way for the Supreme Court's unanimous ruling in 1954 that "separate but equal" was antithetical to our constitutional principles.

Far from activists, they were protectors of the Constitution. Unlike many of his detractors, past and present, Marshall showed the utmost reverence for the Constitution, digging it out of the trash heap on which Plessy and its progeny had tossed it and helping the nation begin to heal.

Were it not for Marshall and the Brown v. Board of Education decision, the Montgomery bus boycott that introduced the world to Dr. Martin Luther King probably would have been an exercise in futility. Without Marshall, the civil rights movement of the 1960s -- which relied heavily on the protections provided in a series of critical federal rulings based on the precedents he created -- could have gone another way.

Marshall stood up for the rights of millions of ordinary Americans who, were it not for him, would have continued to be second-class citizens, unable to vote, attend state universities or share public accommodations by virtue of the color of their skin. This would have been a very different nation -- had it even survived.

And he carried forth this work on the Supreme Court. "Whether in the majority or in dissent, Justice Marshall's faith in the Constitution encompassed more than the racial issues of his civil rights days. Indeed, he saw the protection provided by the Constitution as extending beyond color and racial constraints to preventing official governmental abuse of any disadvantaged person," members of the Supreme Court bar noted in an unanimous resolution honoring the late justice in 1993. "Marshall staunchly believed that equal protection meant equal -- regardless of color.

In Peters v. Kiff Justice Marshall delivered the opinion of the Court upholding a white defendant's claim that the Constitution was violated by the exclusion of blacks from the petit and grand juries. 'The existence of a constitutional violation does not depend on the circumstances of the person making the claim.' "

Marshall was a great jurist who used his skills to move this country closer to being a more perfect union. As a lawyer and a justice, he protected us from activist judges and the cramped thinking of politicians who tried to keep our country in the muck. And he never forgot how the high court's rulings affect the least of us.

Justice Sandra Day O'Connor wrote: "His was the eye of a lawyer who had seen the deepest wounds in the social fabric and used law to help heal them. His was the ear of a counselor who understood the vulnerabilities of the accused and established safeguards for their protection. His was the mouth of a man who knew the anguish of the silenced and gave them a voice."

But perhaps the most eloquent tribute to Marshall was expressed in two words. During some of the darkest times in our nation's history, when rights were denied, lives were threatened and African Americans knew they could not turn to their government for help, calls would go out to the NAACP.

When the answer came, the words whispered in homes, churches and communities were enough to calm fears, lift despair, assuage anger and give enough hope to hold on a bit longer: "Thurgood's coming."

Thurgood came. And he came through. He taught us all what it means to love our country enough to work to make it a little better, a little stronger and a little closer to what it's supposed to be. That's not activism. That's patriotism.

And for that, Thurgood Marshall deserves respect and thanks, not sneers.

republican strategy

The Republican strategy is clear: Do as little as possible, stop Democrats from doing things, and then complain that nothing's getting done with Democrats in charge.
They are also circulating lies after lies on mass emails.

Ode to Helen Thomas

Had the press and the Bush administration paid heed to Helen Thomas, there would not be 5,000 new graves at Arlington National Cemetery. There would not be 40,000 plus wounded American soldiers. There would not be thousands and thousands more suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and other ailments, who are unable to get proper treatment from an over-stressed Veterans Affairs' system.

There would not have been soldiers left to rot in Walter Reed. There would not be more than a million dead and maimed Iraqis. The Sunnis would not have been massacred, and Iran would not now be in full control of Iraq.

There would not have been hundreds of billions of our tax dollars poured into the sand and into the coffers of Bush-friendly "defense" contractors; they call our current economic situation the "Great Recession," but by rights, it should be called the "Iraq Recession," and it would not be as bad as it is had we listened to Helen Thomas.

Perhaps, these things were inevitable. Bush and his crew wanted a war, and if the entire press corps had been made up of Helen Thomas clones, it is entirely possible we would have wound up mired in that filthy conflict anyway. But Thomas tried when her colleagues did not.

Thomas asked sharp questions when her colleagues refused. Thomas wrote the truth when her colleagues reprinted Bush administration talking points to protect their seats in the press room. Helen Thomas was right, did right, just as she has done with every administration since John F. Kennedy.

Why is Cheeney Silent on the Oil Spill

Halliburton was working on the Deepwater Horizon rig just before it blew up, opening the well and sending oil gushing into the Gulf of Mexico. Some experts have speculated that the company may have been to blame for the explosion. The pro-oil atmosphere (and republican Cheney's continued links to Halliburton) during his vice presidency and beyond, have also come to the fore since the April 20 accident.
He has ankle-bited everything else for the last year.

AZ bad law

Well, at least the countless thousands of Mexican Americans who have fought and died for our Country's "freedoms", including Medal of Honor Winners, will not be detained on the sreets of Arizona until they can produce papers to prove that they are citizens.

President working on fiscal controls

This morning the President’s Bipartisan Fiscal Commission held its first meeting, taking on one of the most difficult challenges facing any government. The Commission was established by Executive Order in February, when the President appointed co-chairs former White House Chief of Staff Erskine Bowles and former Republican Senate Whip Alan Simpson, along with four other members a week later. The other dozen members of the Commission were appointed by Democratic and Republican leadership in Congress
The President talked briefly with the Commission before they began their meeting, and said a few words about the importance of their mission. He spoke about the work he has done already towards trying to restore a stable fiscal path, from asking Congress to restore the “pay as you go” rule, to going line by line through the budget for more than $20 billion in savings, to challenging long-entrenched but outdated defense projects, to proposing a freeze in most of the discretionary budget for the next three years

Arizona vs patriotic Americans

Stopping people on how they dress or look, and they are guilty and will be hauled to jail unless they can on-the-spot prove their innocence is now the law in Arizona --that is how it will work on the streets and highways. It reminds me of what the Nazi's did to the Jews in the early Thirties in Nazi Germany.

Well, as our relatives are in California, we used to make several trips a year, stopping at noon time and overnight in Phoenix, seeking entertainment, etc, and the next day continue on to California.

NO MORE. We will not SPEND ONE MORE DIME IN ARIZONA. (and I am what is called an Anglo) and by the way there is a better solution, just arrest the small business owners who hire the majority of illegals-don't hold your breath on that one. (There comes a time when one must be a man and take a stand for the good of our Country. Now is that time).

Political Party Differences

Republicans are reading people out of the party in droves for lack of ideological purity and that's not a winning or wise electoral strategy, either.

The republicans were strongest when they could accommodate people with a range of views. In that long-lost era, staunch conservatives, such as Sen. Phil Gramm of Texas, coexisted with New Jersey Gov. Christie Todd Whitman, NOW,

There are two types of political parties and churches, one where members hunt for heretics to kick them out(the Republicans)the other where people go out looking for converts to bring them in(the Democrats).


Well these right wingers finally got rid of me, a moderate to most people.

don't you just love these republicans

All republicans are not racists, but when you meet a racist or read their comments, it is likely these days that he/she will be a republican.

We are just thankful we got out of that party after 50 years. When they lie they call us liars. When they hate, they call us haters. When they spew racism, they call us racists.

THAT'S AN OLD GAME AND WE ARE ONTO IT. Moderates are fleeing that party as fast as they can.

government for and by the people

If we had had no Federal government, the South would have been successful (almost was) and there would have been two countries with one still likely having slavery. These right wingers are still "fighting" the Civil War. Even republican Governor Perry of Texas has recently advocated secession ( ssssshhh--- means get rid of a black President.)

Why?-- he is running for re-election and he knows that stuff appeals to redneck people, no matter that that act would be treasonous and anyway it was settled by the Civil War, which many of these people would like to fight again.

Going to televised political meetings with sidearm's, openly carried, is not about rights, it is about intimidation. It substitutes for the white sheets of the Klan used to intimidate others (and by the way they promote violence against not only blacks but Jews and Catholics as well) which along with other so called "christian militia groups" are on the rise. I am like Bush, " I hear the voices" When these fanatics start bombing us all (like Tim Mcveigh--- Okla.) hopefully we have a central government that will respond accordingly.

Healthcare
Taxes that poor people pay (payroll, property, on sales, etc) go into the common good but they cannot access cheaper and necessary healthcare. When they finally go to emergency rooms which is way more expensive, we end up paying the entire bill, they pay nothing, directly.

In the healthcare reform, they pay something into the healthcare system. And If I don't want to participate in the healthcare system, Iand all others am required to contribute something to it on my tax return for the common good. Seems fairer to me.

Law
The Supreme Court is packed with republican conservatives--I call them right wingers (appointed by republican Presidents), with a 5 to 4 majority which soon could be larger. Republican Senators are calling for filibustering even before the President has nominated anyone to replace Justice Stevens. The existing court recently overturned a 100 year old law prohibiting Corporation money from buying and controlling elections. So much for precedence, "legislating from the bench" and "activist judges" from the liberal side.

tea baggers, republicans, religious hypocrites

Doing away with social security, medicare, medicaid for those who cannot get even any medical treatments for their life on their own, civil rights, preservation of park land, all federal taxation, in fact all federal laws would not make our country better or improve the living conditions, provide for the common good or make our /MY country better for its people. Oh it sounds good to the shallow thinking cagle of jackleg rednecks and rightwing fanatics and religious bigots. Real patriots that love our country know better.

Oh, I hear and see the tea baggers and the Fox radio commentator bigotry and racism, and yelling "get the government our of my healthcare"--while those hypocrites are getting medicare---a single payer government program, and the outright lies that they spew and believe., "death panels, pulling the plug on grandma, gov't can take money out of your bank account, and on and on". Lies, lies, lies.

The wealthy have redistributed the wealth of this country UPWARDS by shifting jobs overseas for the cheap labor meanwhile they pocket the difference. If Jesus came tomorrow I believe he would not side with and defend the wealthy and powerful.

I believe Jesus would stand with and advocate for the needy, the poor, the afflicted and the common good, working, spiritual working men and women of all counties, not the privileged or the institutional churches filled with hypocrites.

And who am I?? Just a sinner who deserves to burn in hell for all eternity. If he asks me , "and what was your attitude toward the poor?" I will say, "I did what I could for them. I advocated for them. I cried for them when they suffered." And he will have seen that in my heart. If that is enough, I will be saved. End of story.

Republican/Voyeur morality

AND WE thought the repubs were zombies. From now on they are THE VOYEUR PARTY spending their "stimulus money," and preaching morality to the rest of us. Such hypocrites!

Republican Party should be named the Voyeur Party

The Republican party at the Voyeur night club (which features topless dancers wearing horse bridles and other bondage gear while mimicking sex acts) spent $1,946.25 of donors money for "meals was attended by a group of Republicans who had been at an official party event at the Beverly Hills Hotel the same night. The attendees are part of the Republican National Committee program to cultivate future donors.

How Republicans spend your money

The Republican National Committee's latest expense filings captured widespread attention for expenditures at a risque nightclub: $1,946.25 for "meals" at Voyeur in West Hollywood, which features topless dancers wearing horse bridles and other bondage gear while mimicking sex acts.

They also spent $17,000 for private jet service; more than $35,000 for upscale hotels; and more than $43,000 in expenses, not including airfare, for the committee's winter meeting in Hawaii.

First year benefits of Healthcare Reform

- Health insurance providers cannot deny any child coverage because of a pre-existing condition
- Insurance companies can no longer drop someone when he or she becomes ill
- Young adults can stay on their parents' health insurance plan up to their 27th birthday
- Health Insurers must now reveal how much money is spent on overhead
- New health insurance plans must cover checkups and other preventative care without co-pays
- New measures will be implemented to help eliminate health insurance waste, fraud, and abuse
- Small businesses (fewer than 50 employees) will get tax credits covering up to 50% of premiums
- Seniors on Medicare will get a rebate to fill the "donut hole" in their drug coverage
- Insurers will be required to put more premiums dollars toward actual health care services, not administration, advertising, or profits
- Insurance premium increases will be have to be reviewed and justified
- Lifetime caps on the amount of insurance a person can have will be banned
- A temporary high-risk pool will be set up to cover adults with pre-existing conditions

CBO analysis shows cuts in deficits

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said the legislation awaiting the president's approval would extend coverage to 32 million Americans who lack it, ban insurers from denying coverage on the basis of pre-existing medical conditions and cut deficits by an estimated $138 billion over a decade. If realized, the expansion of coverage would include 95 percent of all eligible individuals under age 65. They are usually conservative in their estimates.

racists protest at House healthcare passage

Rep. Andre Carson, D-Ind., told a reporter that as he left the Cannon House Office Building with Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., a leader of the civil rights era, some among the crowd chanted "the N-word, the N-word, 15 times." Both Carson and Lewis are black, and Lewis spokeswoman Brenda Jones also said that it occurred.

"It was like going into the time machine with John Lewis," said Carson, a large former police officer who said he wasn't frightened but worried about the 70-year-old Lewis, who is twice his age. "He said it reminded him of another time."

Pass the Bill

Congressional Democrats say the final version of their comprehensive health-care plan -- set to be unveiled Thursday and likely to be voted on Sunday -- would cut the federal deficit by $138 billion over the next decade and $1.2 trillion 10 years after that.

The legislation would cost an estimated $940 billion over 10 years and deliver on the White House's top domestic priority: providing insurance to more than 30 million people who currently lack it. The bill would expand insurance coverage through a combination of tax credits for middle-class households and an expansion of the Medicaid program for low-income people.

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) told reporters the legislation is "the largest deficit-reduction bill that members will have a chance to vote on" in most of their congressional careers -- a key enticement for a bloc of undecided Democratic lawmakers who fear that the legislation would run up the mounting federal deficit. The savings estimates came from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

Texas republicans

Historians on Tuesday criticized proposed revisions to the Texas social studies curriculum by the right wing republican controlled State Board of Education as appointed by Texas Govenor Perry (the right wing republican who suggested Texas should part from the Union). Historians say that many of the changes are historically inaccurate and that they would affect textbooks and classrooms far beyond the state's borders.

The board is made up of 10 whites and 5 minorities. It also deleted references to minorities and minority leaders. All this and more in a state, Texas, which is a state where Anglos will be the minority sooner than in most states.

The new curriculum also plays down the role of Thomas Jefferson among the founding fathers, and questions the separation of church and state. Among other things, there were changes that asserted Christian faith of the founding fathers. Historians say the founding fathers had a variety of approaches to religion and faith; some, like Jefferson, were quite secular.

Ex-republican Massa from NY-hypocrite

New York Rep Masssa says he resigned so as to not put his wife through the inquiry but on the radio he says to ask his wife about his sexual preferences. He says the Democratic Leadership was after him but he hits on a male staffer at an after-hours party. He says they were after him but instead of s staying to vote, he resigns in disgrace. We know what he is and it says a lot about what his Republicans buddies like Beck and Limbaugh are--

Republicans AGAIN lie about reconciliation

In a Feb. 23 USA Today op-ed, Republicans wrote that the dastardly Dems were planning to use "special rules to circumvent bipartisan Senate opposition" and "jam this bill through Congress." But that's A LIE, and they know it. Why? Because they were actually in the Senate on Dec. 24 when Obama's bill passed. Sixty yea votes, 39 nay—which is nine votes more than the Dems needed, at least according to the U.S. Constitution. (A few weeks earlier, the House passed its own version of the bill, 220–215.)

Furthermore, the opposition in the Senate was hardly bipartisan: every one of the 39 senators who voted against the bill was a Republican, and every one of the 60 senators who voted for it was a Democrat.

So Obama doesn't need to resort to reconciliation to pass health-care reform. He's already passed it. What he does need it for, however, is passing the revisions necessary to get the House and the Senate to agree on a single version of the legislation.

This means that after the House passes the Senate version of the bill, the Senate will approve what's known as a "sidecar"—a small package of budget-related tweaks designed to make the House happy. These revisions represent the only part of health-care reform that Senate Democrats are seeking to pass through reconciliation, i.e., with a simple majority rather than a supermajority. This is less ambitious than the usual reconciliation process, which typically applies to entire bills, not more.

As it turns out, every major health-care innovation of the last three decades has been done through reconciliation, including COBRA, the popular law that allows people to keep their health insurance after losing their jobs, and the Children's Health Insurance Program, which, together with Medicaid, provides access to health care for one third of American children.

And remember: these bills were passed in their entirety through reconciliation. Obamacare, on the other hand, passed the Senate with a 60-vote supermajority; it's only the sidecar that Democrats plan to pass with less.

Reconciliation has never been used for legislation this substantial? Really?
Last month, Repbulican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said reconciliation "has never been used for this kind of major systemic reform"; later, Republican Lamar Alexander told ABC's This Week that "there's never been anything of this size and magnitude and complexity run through the Senate in this way."

But THAT IS A LIE, as reconciliation has not only been used to pass major health-care initiatives, it's actually been used to pass major initiatives of all sorts, including the Republicans' favorite "major systemic reform" of the last 20 years (the 1996 welfare-reform bill) and at least two bills (Bush's 2001 and 2003 tax cuts) that cost about twice as much over 10 years ($1.8 trillion) as health-care reform is estimated to cost ($950 billion).

Top 30 Reasons to Oppose Gun Control

Read today:
1. In over two hundred years of American history, the courts have never invalidated a gun control law based on the second amendment, but the NRA knows more about the law and the Constitution than the courts.
2. Patrick Henry opposed adding the second amendment to the Constitution. That's why quotations from Henry are used by pro-gun activists to support their interpretation of the second amendment.
3. The Founding Fathers intended to create a libertarian utopia. That's very evident from reading the following quotations:
James Madison wrote, "In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men the great difficulty lies in this: You must first enable the government to control the governed, and in the next place, oblige it to control itself." (Federalist 51).
John Jay explained, "Nothing is more certain than the indispensable necessity of government, and it is equally undeniable, that whenever and however it is instituted, the people must cede to it some of their natural rights in order to vest it with requisite powers." (Federalist 2)
4. Guns don't kill people, they just make the bullets go faster so that they can kill people.
5. It's a good idea to own a gun at home because a gun is more likely to be used to kill a friend or family member rather than a criminal.
6. There have been gun control laws for over 200 years in America, but because of modern day circumstances gun-control is no longer needed.
7. The NRA knows more about American history than historians do.
8. Although firearms are inanimate objects and therefore can't kill people, they do somehow have the magical power to keep a person safe from criminals.
9. Although firearms are inanimate objects and therefore can't kill people, they do somehow have the magical power to protect a person against political tyrrany.
10. Guns are a protection against political tyrrany. For example, private ownership of guns was very common in Iraq while Sadam Hussein was in power. Guns are the reason the Iraqi people have enjoyed so much more freedom than people in England where guns have been banned.
11. It's a good idea to make it easy for criminals to obtain guns.
12. According to the British Crime Survey, crime in England has gone down. However, the NRA is the best source of information about crime.
13. Using Gary Kleck's methodology it could be shown that millions of Americans have seen spacecraft from another planet or have been visited by aliens. Despite this, Kleck's studies reveal the truth about defensive gun use.
14. John Lott is a reliable source of information although he kept changing his story about where he got his information for a study in his book More Guns Less Crime.
15. Gun advocate Gary Kleck commented in his book Targeting Guns: Firearms and their Control, "More likely, the declines in crime coinciding with relaxation of carry laws were largely attributable to other factors not controlled in the Lott and Mustard analysis." Kleck and Lott contradict each other so they both must be right.
16. During the 1980's the NRA tried to convince President Reagan to abolish the ATF, the law enforcment agency in charge of enforcing federal gun control laws. This is because the best way to enforce current gun laws is to abolish law enforcement.
17. It's a good idea to always have a loaded gun around when you lose your temper.
18. Children are safer if they have easy access to guns.
19. The International Crime Victim Survey found a positive correlation between gun ownership and increases in homicide and suicide, but the right to life doesn't matter.
20. Pro-gun propaganda is very good logic. Let's apply pro-gun propaganda to cars to demonstrate this- Cars don't kill people, people kill people. That's why stop signs and speed limits should be abolished.
21. Criminals don't obey laws and that's why all laws should be abolished.
22. Gun violence means more freedom. Just ask the family of any gun violence victim to verify this.
23. James Madison's first draft of the second amendment was "The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed; a well armed and well regulated militia being the best security of a free country: but no person religiously scrupulous of bearing arms shall be compelled to render military service in person." It is clear from this that the term "bear arms" refers to rendering military service and not to carrying guns for personal purposes. However, modern day circumstances have changed the meaning of the second amendment.
24. In United States v. Miller the Supreme Court recognized that the "possession or use" of a weapon must be reasonably related to a well regulated miltia to enjoy second amendment protection. That's why there is an individual right to own any military weapon whether or not its possession or use is related to militia activity.
25. In United States v. Miller the Supreme Court stated that the purpose of the second amendment is to promote an effective militia. That's why the first part of the second amendment doesn't matter.
26. Assault weapons crime decreased after the passage of the 1994 Federal Assault Weapons Ban. Gun crime went down the most in states that didn't previously have their own ban on assault weapons. That's why the ban was ineffective.
27. There is much more gun violence in the US than other industrialized nations, but it's better to face an armed criminal.
28. Chanting a lie over and over again will somehow make it come true.
29. The gun industry should have a special immunity to lawsuits that isn't enjoyed by other industries. The gun industry should not be held responsible when it's negligent.
30. Most murders in the US are commited with guns, but killing is not the purpose of a gun.

the Second Amendment

Amendment II reads: "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."

Read today:--Setting aside the issue of "incorporation" the Second Amendment to our Constition does not say, 'individually armed citizens, being necessary to the security of a free state . . . . ' The Amendment explicitly refers to the 'militia,' a collective organization and a specific kind of militia at that, one that is 'well regulated.' It is hard to imagine individuals being 'well regulated' by the government. They are only 'regulated' as a group. Otherwise, why is the "well regulated militia phrasse in there?

undestanding reconciliation

The republican underlying "principle" seems to be that it's fine to pass tax cuts for the wealthy on narrow votes in reconciliation but an outrage to use reconciliation to help middle-income and poor people get health insurance.

It's not just legitimate to use reconciliation to complete the work on health reform. It would be immoral to do otherwise and thereby let a phony republican argument about process get in the way of health coverage for 30 million Americans.

gun control myths

MYTH: Keeping guns in the home increases personal protection.
TRUTH: Obviously, self defense is not a good argument against gun control since those who own firearms are actually more likely to be victims of homicide. Two studies published in The New England Journal of Medicine revealed that keeping a gun in the home increases the risk of both suicide and homicide.

Keeping a gun in the home makes it 2.7 times more likely that someone will be a victim of homicide in your home (in almost all cases the victim is either related to or intimately acquainted with the murderer) and 4.8 times more likely that someone will commit suicide . Guns make it more likely that a suicide attempt will be successful than if other means were used such as sleeping pills.

MYTH: Guns are used defensively 2.5 million times each year in the US.
TRUTH: Gary Kleck conducted a survey which concluded that 2.5 million people in the US each year use guns to defend themselves. One percent of the US population is between 2 and 3 million. So if only one percent of the survey respondents had answered the survey dishonestly that would make the results of the survey inaccurate by millions. According to the NCVS (National Crime Victim Survey) guns are used defensively less than 100,000 times each year. The NCVS surveyed over 90,000 people. In contrast, Kleck only surveyed about 5,000 people.

Thus it would be reasonable to conclude that the NCVS provides a more reliable estimate of the number of defensive gun uses in the US. An article published in the Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology (Northwestern)87 (1997): 1430 revealed that using methods similiar to Kleck's, it could be concluded that nearly 20 million Americans have seen aircraft from another planet and that one million Americans have had contact with aliens.

MYTH: A decrease in crime in Kennesaw, Georgia after it passed a law which required people to keep a firearm in their homes shows that guns reduce crime.
TRUTH: Philip J. Cook and Jens Ludwig explain, "The case of Kennesaw, Georgia, which adopted an ordinance in 1982 requiring every household to keep a gun, has been prominent. There have been several published analyses of the burglary trends in Kennesaw around the time of the ordinance, with contradictory results. In any event, this is not a good test of the deterrence hypothesis, since the ordinance was purely symbolic.

Most homes in Kennesaw already had a gun before the ordinance, and it seems unlikely the ordinance had any effect on prevalence since there was no penalty specified in the law for refusal to comply." ("Guns and Burglary", Evaluating Gun Policy, pages 81-82)

MYTH: People in Switzerland are heavily armed. There is an assault weapon in every Swiss home.
TRUTH: It's true that Swiss soldiers are required to keep their assault rifles at home. How big is the Swiss Army? 400,000 . There are about 3 million Swiss households . 400,000/3,000,000= 0.133. Therefore, there is a military assault rifle in about 13% of Swiss homes. Switzerland also has rather strict gun control laws. In Switzerland a permit is required in order to purchase a weapon (The permit shows that you are at least 18 and don't have a criminal record).

A permit is also required to carrry a weapon. Such a permit is mostly issued to people who work in security-type occupations. To obtain this permit, you have to demonstrate that you need to carry a weapon and that you know how to handle a gun safely and have knowledge of the law regarding firearms use. Soldiers in the Swiss Army are required to store their military weapons at home under lock and key and to undergo regular training. Strict gun laws in Switzerland minimize the dangers of gun ownership.

However, such dangers can not be completely eliminated as illustrated by the case of Friedrich Leibacher who rushed into a session of parliament in the Swiss town of Zug. He used his Swiss Army assault rifle and a grenade to murder fourteen people. Eleven of these people were lawmakers.

MYTH: The 1976 handgun ban in Washington D.C. caused an increase in crime.
TRUTH: The handgun ban has prevented 47 deaths each year Gun control has saved lives. Let's look at a graph that displays information about the homicide rate in the District of Columbia a decade before the ban and a decade after. There are random fluctuations in the crime rate from year to year so it's best to look at homicide data from many years. In the decade preceding the ban, the homicide rate exceeded 35 per 100,000 4 times. In the decade following the ban this happened only once.

The average homicide rate of the ten years that followed the ban was lower than the homicide rate of the previous decade. Was this part of a general decrease in homicide that would have happened without the ban? If that were so you would expect the non-gun homicide rate to have declined as well as the gun homicide rate. However, there was only a statistically significant decrease in the number of homicides that involved firearms.

MYTH: If you outlaw guns only the outlaws will have guns.
TRUTH: If you outlaw guns, very few criminals will have guns. In America guns start out legal. Then they enter the black market one way or the other . So if you have less legal guns then there will less guns entering the black market and consequently less outlaws owning guns. Think about it. Nations with very strict gun control laws such as the UK, Australia, and Japan have much lower gun crime rates than the US.
The most probable explanation for this is that criminals in the US have much greater access to guns due to less gun control. Saying "If you outlaw guns only the outlaws will have guns" is very misleading and completely absurd. If you outlaw guns, less outlaws will have guns. Would you rather have more or less outlaws owning guns? The answer is obvious.

MYTH:Gun ownership is a protection against political tyranny.
TRUTH: Private ownership of guns was very common under Saddam Hussein's regime .It certainly didn't protect the Iraqi people against political tyranny. Gun ownership was legalized in Germany in 1928, five years before Hitler rose to power. Despite the claims of pro-gun activists, gun ownership did nothing to stop a tyrant like Hitler from seizing power. In 1938, Germany's gun laws were relaxed except in the case of Jews.

Although the gun lobby has tried to associate racism with gun control, white supremacists have often praised the Nazis for being pro-gun and have opposed gun control. An example of that is this quote: "If you register your gun with anybody, you're a nut! When the conspiracy comes for your firearm, give it to 'em like this grand dragon is going to - right between the eyes." -Klu Klux Klan (Richmond Times- Dispatch, July 5, 1967)

real wishes of American People re healthcare

There's anger in the land, no question, but a recent poll from the Kaiser Family Foundation makes clear that that anger is directed more at congressional dithering than at the actual elements of the Democrats' plan.

More than 70 percent of Americans support the establishment of the exchanges, the extension of coverage, and the elimination of lifetime limits on overall coverage and of the "doughnut hole" in Medicare drug coverage. Fifty-eight percent say they'd be angry or disappointed if Congress threw in the towel on health reform.

To those who "speak for God"

In the roughly 4.2 billion years that the earth has been in existence, the nation known as the USA has been in existence for less than 250 years of those 4.2 billion years. (And bits of it have been part of the nation for much less than that.)

If America was such a good idea, why did God wait so long to make it such? And why did God depend on refugees from other nations to make it so? And why did its discovery by disease-ridden riff-raff depend on chance? (They were looking for something else entirely.)

And was it God's intention to have a predominantly white, slave-owning nation (as it was)? Or a multicultural nation with freedom for all and whites in the minority (as it will be, very shortly)?

And what do you think God's punishment will be for those Republicans who insist on the freedom to pollute and despoil God's "chosen" country?

BTW, how did you learn the U.S. was God's nation? Who told you this? And what was the chance of that person being in error? What is your authority to speak for God?

Is Lomborg's climate research a fraud?

Read today: Author Howard Friel has checked every single citation in "Cool It." The result is The Lomborg Deception, which is being published by Yale University Press next month. It reveals that Lomborg's work is "a mirage," writes biologist Thomas Lovejoy in the foreword. "[I]t is a house of cards…Friel has used real scholarship to reveal the flimsy nature" of Lomborg's work.

For example, he argued that no more than two (of 20) groups are declining in population, that their numbers are not falling overall, and, in places where they are, that it is not a result of global (or Arctic) warming.

For his claim that the polar-bear population "has soared," Lomborg cited a 1999 study (scroll down to the paper by Ian Stirling). But that study described declining birthrates and other threats to the bears, blaming warmer spring temperatures that cause the sea ice to break up. Overall, since the mid-1980s polar-bear numbers have fallen, which experts attribute to global warming.

One of Mr. Lomborg's most interesting claims is that global warming will avert more deaths (as fewer people die of cold) than it will cause. But three of the five sources he cites (including this and this) reached the opposite conclusion. Flawed research produces fraudulent conclusions.

Military Commanders responsible shoud be demoted and fired

Some in the military are speaking out and believe the Afghan desire to secure Barge Matal, for whatever reason, may have cost 17 Americans lives: four in Barge Matal itself, five at Ganjgal and eight at the Keating base.
U.S. commanders failed to resume their plans to evacuate COP Keating, and delays seem to have begot more delays which caued the eight deaths at the Keating Base

Also look at the pic to see that the base is surrounded by higher ground. The Military Commanders responsible shoud be demoted and fired.

current republican party

Today's republican congressmen had an idea, put it in a bill, sponsored the bill and ended up voting against their own bill when they found out President Obama was for it.
As an ex-republican that is all I need to know about those now in charge of that party.

republicans trying to re-write history

The Iraq war mistake has cost the United States support from other nations around the world. More than 4,370 U.S. military personnel have died in Iraq since the Republican President ordered the U.S.-led invasion in 2003. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have been wounded or killed. U.S. is likely to bring home from Iraq some 90,000 combat troops by summer's end.

Under Obama 12 of the top Al Queda 20 people have been eliminated and 100 of their associates have been taken out. They are in fact not able to do anything remotely like they were in the past. They are on the run.

Obama inherited a shrinking economy with financial institutions that were on the edge of collapse, threatening to move the world into a depression. The economy expanded at 5.8 percent during the last quarter and the U.S. has "stopped the hemorrhaging of jobs." There is tangible evidence that the economy is moving in the right direction. Republicans like Dick Cheney are trying to rewrite history.

right wingers run moderates out of the republican party

McCain has moved to the right on several issues, Hayworth, who will officially launch his campaign Monday, began using his talk show on conservative radio station KFYI to drum up opposition to McCain. "You have a consistent conservative challenger and an incumbent who calls himself a maverick but in fact is a moderate," Hayworth said, outlining what he views as the central choice for conservative GOP primary voters in August.

It is horrible to wing-nut conservatives who have taken over the republican party if you are a "moderate."

Dick Army's Republican tea-baggers

The Republican tea-party movement is dominated by people whose vision of the government is conspiratorial and dangerously detached from reality. It's more John Birch than John Adams.

The tea partiers are the same old hate filled racists of old. Their villain list includes almost anyone who is not one of them. Their established scripts of New World Order conspiracy theories, which have occupied the dubious right-wingnut fringes of American politics since the days of the John Birch Society.

They spout that Washington, D.C., liberals had engineered the financial crash so they could destroy the value of the U.S. dollar, pay off America's debts with worthless paper, and then create a new currency called the Amero that would be used in a newly created "North American Currency Union" with Canada and Mexico. Nevermind that it started In December 2007 on their republican watch.

At a recent conference, organizers showed a movie to the meeting hall, Generation Zero, whose thesis was only slightly less bizarre: that the financial meltdown was the handiwork of superannuated flower children seeking to destroy capitalism.
And then, of course, there is the double-whopper of all anti-Obama conspiracy theories, the "birther" claim that America's president might actually be an illegal alien who's constitutionally ineligible to occupy the White House.

This point was made by birther extraordinaire and Christian warrior Joseph Farah who told the crowd the circumstances of Obama's birth were more mysterious than those of Jesus Christ. (Apparently comparing Obama to a messiah is only blasphemous if you're doing so in a complimentary vein.)

And they talk of cesession from the Union, which is an idea that was settled in the Civil War with over 600,000 killed. This crowd includes Texas republican governor Rick Perry.

republicans blocking President Obama

Republican Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama has been blocking Senate confirmation of about 70 government appointees nominated by President Barack Obama, his office said.White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said Friday, "If you needed one example of what's wrong with this town, it might be that one senator can hold up 70 qualified individuals to make government better because he didn't get his earmarks."

another Republican hypocrisy

Last week the opposition party wrote a startling new entry in the Annals of Obstruction: Republicans were so determined to deny President Obama an achievement that a group of them voted against their own proposal.

A month ago, a bipartisan group of senators asked Obama for his "strong support" for a commission to solve the national debt crisis. "We don't recommend this special process lightly," they wrote, calling it "the best way to reach a lasting bipartisan solution that will put our nation back on a sound long-term fiscal path."

One of the signatories, Sen. Mike Crapo (R-Idaho), issued a news release trumpeting his sponsorship of the legislation. "Now is the time," he proclaimed.

But when the proposal came to a vote on the Senate floor Tuesday, four of the Republican signers -- Crapo, Kay Bailey Hutchison (Tex.), Jim Inhofe (Okla.) and Robert Bennett (Utah) -- voted no.

So did three other Republican senators who had also been co-sponsors of the legislation -- 2008 presidential nominee John McCain (Ariz.), Sam Brownback (Kan.) and John Ensign (Nev.). An eighth co-sponsor, Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), didn't vote. ANOTHER REPUBLICAN HYPOCRISY

Republicans repeat their lies, I repeat the facts

Lest we forget, all the following were on the REPUBLICAN'S WATCH: 1 the false invasion of Iraq, 2. the financial collapse (begun in Dec 2007)and TARP was started in Sept 2007, and 3. the 9/11 attack. They are entitled to their own opinions but not their own facts.

Call the Republican's bluff

President Obama went to the House Republican Caucus meeting yesterday but insisted that it be televised, and for once stood up for himself. They continuously attacked him with their talking points. He, for once, defended himself and us. He won hands down as they sounded like school children parroting and outright lying, which he rebutted time after time with facts. My advice, don't cave in to the Republican threats to filabuster, make them do it, time after time so the American people can see their party of NO.

republicans continue their hypocrisy

Republican Senator Hatch to Salt Lake Tribune on Thursday regarding health care.....

Hatch said Thursday that using reconciliation would be “one of the worst grabs for power in the history of the country” that would permanently impact relations between the two parties. “It is going to be outright war and it should be, because it would be such an abuse of the reconciliation rules,” Hatch said. “If they abuse those rules it is going to lead to even more heated animosities between not just the two parties, but even between individual senators.”

Which is interesting, because Hatch voted for.....
* The College Cost Reduction Act of 2007, which passed through reconciliation;
* The Tax Increase Prevention and Reconciliation Act of 2005, which passed through reconciliation;
* The Deficit Reduction Act of 2005, which passed through reconciliation;
* The Jobs and Growth Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2003, which passed through reconciliation;
* The Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001, which passed through reconcilation;
* The Marriage Tax Penalty Relief Reconciliation Act of 2000, which passed through reconciliation; and
* The Taxpayer Refund and Relief Act of 1999, which passed through reconciliation.

republican hypocrisy

Since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist strikes, every suspect apprehended on U.S. soil has been initially held under federal criminal law, including shoe bomber Richard C. Reid. David C. Headley, accused of scouting out locations for the 2008 Mumbai terrorist attacks, and Adis Medunjanin, arrested in an alleged plot to target New York, are providing the FBI with intelligence after being read their rights, officials said.

The Republicans arguing that a different action should have been taken in this case were notably silent when dozens of terrorists were prosecuted in federal court by the last administration, and thus are HYPOCRITES.

facts republicans want you to forget

It is a fact that when the President took office a year ago, he faced an array of historic challenges: an economy in freefall; job losses averaging almost 700,000 a month; a middle class under assault; two wars and badly frayed global alliances; and a staggering $1.3 trillion budget deficit.

remember it was the Republicans

Lest we forget, all the following were on the REPUBLICAN'S WATCH: 1 the false invasion of Iraq, 2. the financial collapse (begun in Dec 2007)and TARP was started in Sept 2007, and 3. the 9/11 attack. You are entitled to your own opinions but not your own facts.

conservative and republican heroes

James O'Keefe, who 31 Republican congressmen signed a resolution calling him an American hero, was the leader among four men who created a ruse to enter the lawmaker's downtown office, saying they needed to repair her telephones, according to court records unsealed Tuesday. O'Keefe used his cellphone to take pictures of two men, Joseph Basel and Robert Flanagan, who are accused in an FBI agent's sworn affidavit of impersonating telephone company workers. Stanley Dai is accused of aiding the Jan. 25 plot.

All four were taken to a suburban New Orleans jail and charged with entering federal property under false pretenses with the intent of committing a felony. If convicted, each man faces up to 10 years in prison and a fine of $250,000.

O'Keefe is well-known, but Flanagan, Basel and Dai are not. Flanagan worked last year as a paid intern for Rep. Mary Fallin (R-Okla.); he now works at the Pelican Institute as a blogger.

Dai, who is from Alexandria, is a Chinese immigrant and was president of the Conservative Student Union at George Washington University in 2005, student records show.

Basel, a Mankato, Minn., native, and O'Keefe became friends as fellow founders of conservative newspapers at their respective colleges, O'Keefe at Rutgers and Basel at the University of Minnesota-Morris.

Since Watergate, Republicans have been rewarding their goons with Talks Shows.

republican facts

Lest we forget, all the following were on the REPUBLICAN'S WATCH: 1 the false invasion of Iraq, 2. 9/11 and 3. the financial collapse (begun in Dec 2007). You are entitled to your own opinions but not your own facts.

government by and for big corporations

The Supreme Court on Thursday upended and reversed a century's worth of campaign finance law. The court has moved sharply right. Chief Justice John Roberts has mustered five votes for a conservative rule by corporations. It is hard to remember an instance where the justices reached so far to make major constitutional law. It will have immediate political consequences.

Business managers now will be able to spend, at will, Bloomberg-level sums in congressional races across the country and thus control the congress and create a corporate government. No more government by the people but government by and for the big corporations, banks included.

The Republican gang of five (out of nine) have made law from the bench for and on the beholf of the Republican Party and their corporate giants, not the people.

questions for republicans-- Limbaugh and Robertson,

I visualize God asking each of us his first questions when we arrive at the gates: " 1. What was your opinion on helping the poor people of Haiti?"
and 2. "Did you look for lies and excuses not to help?" Limbaugh/Robertson, what would your answers be?

the GOP spin doctor and his propaganda

The president of Fox News and republican political hack is, by default, the closest thing there is to a kingmaker in Anti-Obama America. And that, in turn, makes him the de facto leader of the GOP. In a relentless (and spectacularly successful) hunt for cable ratings, Roger Ailes has given invaluable publicity to the tea partiers, furnished tryout platforms to GOP candidates, and trained a fire hose of populist anger at the president and his allies in Congress.

While Beltway Republicans wring their hands or write their tracts, Ailes has worked the countryside, using his feel for Main Street resentment to attract and give voice to this year's angriest—and most powerful—voter-viewers: those who hate the Feds, the Fed, and the Ivy League. It was Ailes who put the "party" in the tea parties by giving them a round-the-clock national stage. Next month the Fox propaganda machine will have priority access to the National Tea Party Convention in Nashville.

oh how they lie

Those who think President Obama caused this terrible Republican economic disaster that nearly triggered a global depression must have slept from 2001 to 2009.

The rest of you who are whining and name calling are typical of people with limited intelligence who make up their own facts and are outright liars like Gulianii who yesterday on TV claimed that there were no terror attacks on us during the republicans watch, thus lying about 9/11, the shoe bomber and others.

republicans lie again

on Jan 2, I published (below on this blog) that "9/11 happened on these republican's watch and let them try to lie out of that" and today Rudy Juliannii, ex mayor New York on 9/11, said on national TV that "Obama is weak on terror as the republicans had no terror attacks, but Obama already has had one."

HOLY COW! THEY MUST BE READING MY BLOG!

Cheeney of 9/11

worthy of reprint: The former vice president, Dick Cheeney, a leading republican, has brought dishonor to himself, his office, and his country. I am not aware of another former President or Vice President behaving as despicably as Cheeney has done in the ten months since leaving power, most recently but not exclusively with his comments to Politico about Obama's decisions on Afghanistan. (Aaron Burr might win the title, for killing Alexander Hamilton in a duel, but Burr was a sitting Vice President at the time.

Cheeney has acted as if utterly unconcerned with the welfare of his country, its armed forces, or the people now trying to make difficult decisions. He has put narrow score-settling interest far, far above national interest. This behavior is directly from the republican playbook. Shame on him AND them.

al-Shabab and the Sheikh

Read today: "In Somalia, Sheikh Ali Mohamud Rage, a spokesman for the Somali group al-Shabab, supported the alleged attack on the Danish cartoonist. "We welcome the brave action he did," Rage said. "It was a good and brave step taken by that Somali man against the criminal cartoonist — we liked it."

republican 9/11

just for the record: 9/11 happened on the Republican's watch. Watch them try and lie their way out of that.Ha-

On Jan 9, I added the following comment to this post:

"and they did that just days later after I published this post. Isn't coincidence grand. Ha."

republican family values

It is not Rove's fault. Rove inherited this divorce, from, er, his previous divorce. Er, Newt Gingrich, Guiliani, Fred Thompson, and John McCain's divorces. Lesson: don't throw stones preaching family values if you don't have them yourself.

more republican lies and hypocrisy

The fact is that Obama has said many times that we are at war against terrorists. He said it as a candidate. He said it in his inaugural address: "Our nation is at war against a far-reaching network of violence and hatred." He has said it since.

As Cheeney well knows, unless he has lost even the most tenuous grip on reality, Obama's commitment to warfare as an instrument in the fight against terrorism has won the president nothing but grief from the liberal wing of his party, with more certainly to come. Hasn't anyone told Cheeney that Obama is sharply boosting troop levels in Afghanistan in an attempt to avoid losing a war that the Bush administration started but then practically abandoned?

Cheeney knows this. But he goes on to use the big lie -- that Obama is "trying to pretend we are not at war" -- to bludgeon the administration on a host of specific issues. Here is the one that jumps out at me: The president, Cheeney claims, "seems to think that if he closes Guantanamo and releases the hard-core al Qaeda-trained terrorists still there, we won't be at war."

Interesting that Cheney should bring that up, because it now seems clear that the man accused of trying to blow up Northwest Flight 253, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, was given training -- and probably the bomb itself, which involved plastic explosives sewn into his underwear -- by al-Qaeda operatives in Yemen.

It happens that at least two men who were released from Guantanamo appear to have gone on to play major roles as al-Qaeda lieutenants in Yemen. Who let these dangerous people out of our custody? They were set free by the administration of George W. Bush and Dick Cheeney.

lies keep coming from Repubs

Preventing an economic depression required a great deal of spending on unpopular causes, such as bailing out bankers and automakers. Much of the structural deficit that exists is the result of decisions by previous administrations. All of that is true. So don't let these repblicans tell you otherwise.

President Obama's eleven month record

As the Senate prepares to pass its version of health-care reform legislation, Obama's advisers have portrayed a highly successful year pushing important bills through Congress, comparing his record to those of Franklin D. Roosevelt and Lyndon B. Johnson, even as they note that Obama is operating in a more partisan time in Washington than those Democratic predecessors had.

The most important thing he did this year was to ensure that the financial system did not collapse.

Also, 30 million uninsured Americans are projected to receive coverage, estimated savings of more than $1 trillion over the next two decades, a "patients' bill of rights on steroids," and tax breaks to help small businesses pay for employee coverage. Those elements are in the House and Senate versions of the legislation; their competing proposals will have to be reconciled in conference committee next year.

President Obama has just one term

If socialism is society providing healthcare for all and not government ownership of all assets, then I must be a socialist, which by the true definition I am not.

And the way I read it, so was Jesus by that definition. Why aren't Doctors, Drug Companies, and Insurance Companies, who have the assets and control the healthcare delivery in our country through political donations and activity, pushing for adopting the Kaiser Permanente method of healthcare delivery? The anwer is obvious.

AND they are not going to unless they are forced and how do we do that. Well we haven't been very successful as Presidents have wanted to, since Truman. AND they are still fighting and controlling the actions and dialogue of the debate.

Finally, we are getting a little opening because we have a President that is not caring about getting reelected and is trying to work toward healthcare for all. You can bet their money that they have amassed over the years is going to destroy him by 2012.

AS for the cost, the Republicans spent a lot more in the false war in Iraq when they should have been going after bin Laden. Iraq has oil. Arabs have oil which is why President Obama is pushing for non-oil energy--he is also not in big oil's pocket--and they will be after him, and are already fighting "going green."

Big oil and big Drug-Insurance-Doctors Associations aren't patriots for our country, but patriots for their wallets. They are the "robber-barons" of our time. What was it Jesus said about the eye of the needle and something about the poor? AND what did he say about homosexuals? (not that I advocate converting)

Speical intersts capture of Republicans not new

The threat posed to our democracy by legislators being co-opted by powerful interests, such as Insurance Companies control of healthcare, was warned of as far back as the Founding Fathers. As Alexander Hamilton wrote in Federalist No. 1 "Happy will it be if our choice should be directed by a judicious estimate of our true interests, unperplexed and unbiased by considerations not connected with the public good. But this is a thing more ardently to be wished than seriously to be expected."

republican hypocrisy

On a 63 to 33 vote, Democrats cleared a key hurdle that should allow them to approve the must-pass military spending bill Saturday and return to the health-care debate.

After years of claiming that Democrats don't support our troops, just three Republicans supported the military funding. The republican leadership admitted that they were trying to use denying troop funding as a way to slow down healthcare reform. Talk about hypocrisy!

Our President

“Even as we confront a vicious adversary that abides by no rules,” he said, “I believe that the United Sates of America must remain a standard bearer in the conduct of war … That is why I prohibited torture. That is why I ordered the prison at Guantanamo Bay closed … We lose ourselves when we compromise the very ideals that we fight to defend. And we honor those ideals by upholding them not just when it is easy, but when it is hard

Americans elected him, and the Nobel committee awarded him the peace prize, in large measure simply because he wasn’t the republican, George Bush.

read today: The former vice president, Dick Cheeney, a leading republican, has brought dishonor to himself, his office, and his country. I am not aware of another former President or Vice President behaving as despicably as Cheney has done in the ten months since leaving power, most recently but not exclusively with his comments to Politico about Obama's decisions on Afghanistan. (Aaron Burr might win the title, for killing Alexander Hamilton in a duel, but Burr was a sitting Vice President at the time.

Cheney has acted as if utterly unconcerned with the welfare of his country, its armed forces, or the people now trying to make difficult decisions. He has put narrow score-settling interest far, far above national interest. This behavior is directly from the republican playbook. Shame on them.

the current republican party

There is a difference between holding a particular tax or spending or health-care view and asserting that an American who supports another approach or is a member of a different political party is an advocate of an 'ism' of hate that encompasses gulags and concentration camps.

One framework of thought defines rival ideas; the other, enemies." As a result, "citizens of various philosophical persuasions are reflecting increased disrespect for fellow citizens and thus for modern-day democratic governance. This view is pushed by the current Republican Party.

And more bizarre, significant public figures have toyed with hints of history-blind radicalism -- the notion of 'secession. This is Texas Republican Gov. Rick Perry's effort to ride to reelection by invoking a concept thatwas discredited in 1865.

healthcare reform vs. our republican senators

To our Senators---Right now, insurance companies deny coverage by claiming pre-existing conditions and other excuses to deny coverage therefore they have taken control of our health care away from our Doctors and are effectively denying treatments.

We didn't read that in your canned response. So, you just lost out support by talking around the real problem with healthcare in our country. Thank you

why iraq?

read today: Anyone who believes that the US attacked Iraq to take out a tyrant that we had for years armed, supported and funded is clearly mad, for just like we overthrew the democratically elected government of Iran in 1953 to impose upon the Iranian people a murderous dictator like the Shah, we did the same thing in Iraq for no other reason than to line the pockets of US oil executives (i.e. G.W. Bush and his cronies).

Sure we provided record profits for the US arms dealers and mercenary contractors like Blackwater and other tax dollar thieves like Haliburton(Cheney's company), and killed over one hundred thousand Iraqi civilians, but in the end what we did makes what Saddam did pale in comparison.

why we didn't get Bin Laden???

"Osama bin Laden was unquestionably within reach of U.S. troops in the mountains of Tora Bora when American military leaders made the crucial and costly decision not to pursue the terrorist leader with massive force, a Senate report says."

Maybe they NEEDED Bin Laden alive, when you are down to one boogeyman and you are in the middle of two no-bid, big-profit wars, BOTH based on fear of that one boogeyman, you don't want to kill your boogeyman.

At least until that last no-bid billion has been wrung from the American taxpayer.

republican gut players get us false wars

President George W. Bush once boasted, "I'm not a textbook player, I'm a gut player." The new tenant of the Oval Office takes a strikingly different approach. President Obama is almost defiantly deliberative, methodical and measured, even when critics accuse him of dithering. When describing his executive style, he goes into Spock mode, saying, "You've got to make decisions based on information and not emotions."
It's that Bush's gut that got us into that false war in Iraq.

republican lies

The republican birther movement claims that Obama was born outside the United States and is ineligible to be president. The Constitution states that a person must be a "natural-born citizen" to be eligible for the presidency. Birthers contend that Obama's birth certificate is a fake, and many say he was actually born in Kenya, his father's homeland.

Obama's Hawaii birth certificate along with birth notices from the two Honolulu newspapers were brought forward even before he took office. State officials in Hawaii have repeatedly confirmed that Obama was born in Honolulu.

right wing-nuts not good for our country

In modern memory, Capitol Hill has never been so polarized. With conservatives refusing to reach across the aisle, it will be hard to get even the most modest health-insurance reform through the U.S. Senate, where a 41-vote minority can block legislation. Without bipartisanship, forget about reducing the deficit or doing anything meaningful on the environment, immigration, or tax reform.

The Republican right is hellbent to crush the last scattered remnants of the old moderate GOP establishment--or any Republican who will work with the opposition. The talk-show shouters are cheering on the final purge, demanding purity.

By definition, populist movements run on a fervor that confuses honorable compromise with appeasement. Everything is reduced to us and them. This is particularly destructive when it occurs within parties.

During the Reagan-Bush administration, the Bushes of Texas (but really Connecticut) were never all that comfortable with the Reagans of Hollywood. But they worked at getting along. The easier course is to rant and rail on The O'Reilly Factor. That will get you a big cable-TV audience.

But it risks turning off the larger public to politics altogether. And that can't be good for the country.

republicans are no, no, no on everything

As of last Monday, the Senate majority had filed 58 cloture motions requiring 32 recorded votes. One of the more outrageous cases involved an extension in unemployment benefits, a no-brainer in light of the dismal economy. The bill ultimately cleared the Senate this month by 98 to 0.

The vote came only after the Republicans launched three filibusters against the bill and tried to lard it with unrelated amendments, delaying passage by nearly a month. And you wonder why it's so hard to pass health care?

How special interests are destroying good healthcare reform

One operative tried to enlist trade groups in Maine to oppose government-run health coverage. Another helped a member of a Las Vegas conservative group appear on local talk radio to criticize the proposal. A third persuaded a Louisiana activist to post an opinion piece on a conservative blog.

These below-the-radar activities were the handiwork of a law firm in Charlotte, N.C., that operates a secretive group called Americans for Quality and Affordable Healthcare. The organization's sponsors remain a mystery — its Web site offers no clues, and the law firm won't say.

Hassan's motive is clear to me

We, the Army and taxpayers, paid for his medical education. Now he doesn't want to fullfill his part of the bargain.

Why you ask? Here is the reason>>> "In the Koran, you’re not supposed to have alliances with Jews or Christian or others, and if you are killed in the military fighting against Muslims, you will go to hell.” so said a Muslim.

If that is true, every devout Muslim should be riffed from military service, for his or her protection AND OURS.

What Healthcare Ins. Cos. are costing us

ANNUAL COMPENSATION OF HEALTH INSURANCE COMPANY EXECS (2006, 2007, or 2008 figures):
• Ronald A. Williams, Chair/ CEO, Aetna Inc., $23,045,834; $24.3 million in 2008
• H. Edward Hanway, Chair/ CEO, Cigna Corp, $30.16 million
• David B. Snow, Jr, Chair/ CEO, Medco Health, $21.76 million
• Michael B. MCallister, CEO, Humana Inc, $20.06 million
• Stephen J. Hemsley, CEO, UnitedHealth Group, $13,164,529
• Angela F. Braly, President/ CEO, Wellpoint, $9,094,771; $9.8 million in 2008
• Dale B. Wolf, CEO, Coventry Health Care, $20.86 million
• Jay M. Gellert, President/ CEO, Health Net, $16.65 million
• William C. Van Faasen, Chairman, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts, $3 million plus $16.4 million in retirement benefits
• Charlie Baker, President/ CEO, Harvard Pilgrim Health Care, $1.5 million
• James Roosevelt, Jr., CEO, Tufts Associated Health Plans, $1.3 million
• Raymond McCaskey, CEO, Health Care Service Corp (Blue Cross Blue Shield), $10.3 million
• Daniel P. McCartney, CEO, Healthcare Services Group, Inc, $ 1,061,513
• Daniel Loepp, CEO, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan, $1,657,555
• Todd S. Farha, CEO, WellCare Health Plans, $5,270,825
• Michael F. Neidorff, CEO, Centene Corp, $8,750,751
• Daniel Loepp, CEO, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan, $1,657,555