politicalpartypoop.com

 This was the front page story in the Kansan, KU newspaper.
Apparently some dudes were preaching some anti-gay stuff, ho hum…
What was interesting that over a thousand students pissed off a part of their day to give these dudes some grief.
I find it odd, with the crap being perpetrated in the media about Rush and the Michael J. Fox scam ad, as being “hateful”, the Harold Ford ad being “racist” and now you have these student bitching and moaning about someone else exercising “free speech.”
My anger may be exacerbated by the fact that I am in an exceedingly fucked up mood, but I am so sick of fucken liberals and their wining and bitching and moaning.
These idiot students obviously did not have the fucken common sense to just leave these people alone.
These dudes got what they came for, an audience!
But I find it ironic that liberals keep constantly talking about how they are people who believe in free speech and don’t engage in hateful rhetoric.
They are documented in thousands of pictures with “we hate Bush”, “Kill Christians” “Kill Jesus if he returns”, Bush is a “punk ass”
Ah hell, although I love blogging there are just some days that I wonder why I bother with all the keystrokes ranting about liberals.
It tis obvious that much of their stupidity is innate. 

 

 From the University of Kansas, Kansan 

Students cursed, screamed at, spit on, threw eggs at and chucked Bibles toward two men who spoke on Wescoe Beach Wednesday with a message that homosexuals, Jews, Muslims, people who masturbate and people who listen to rap or rock and roll music are going to hell.

More than one thousand students gathered around Michael Venyah and Chris Lemieux on Wescoe Beach at the height of the disagreement. The two men, both in their 30s, wore red T-shirts with yellow writing that said “No Homos go to Heaven -1 Corinthians 6:9-10” on the front and “All Homos go to Hell -Corinthians 6:9-10” on the back. Lemieux said the two men from Michigan had been preaching at colleges for two years.

Students stood shoulder-to-shoulder, filling the front steps and the patio of Wescoe Beach. Most laughed at Venyah’s remarks or yelled back at him. Several times the chant “Let’s love, not hate” echoed through the crowd. Several students said they had missed class to see the protest.

At one point two women broke from the crowd and ground against one another and against Venyah as he spoke. A few students waved condoms and hot dogs in his face, others held signs in front of him, blocking his view of the crowd. People in the crowd held signs with things like “God hates Books” and “I ate chili for lunch” written on them. Venyah was constantly surrounded by students asking him questions or trying to disrupt his message.

The men began speaking about 10:30 Wednesday morning and stayed until 3:30 in the afternoon. Some of the things Venyah said included, “Tupac and Biggie Smalls are in hell,” and “You people don’t obey Christ, you obey your lust.”

Sarcastic shouts from students could be heard throughout the crowd. One student yelled, “We’re all going to hell and then we’re all going to Disneyland!”

Cameron Baraban, Overland Park freshman squirted ketchup packets on Venyah’s shirt as he spoke. “Anything to deface the lie that’s on his shirt,” he said. “His message is driven by hate.”

Lemieux, who video taped Venyah, but didn’t preach himself, said they were with a group called Soulwinners Ministries International. According to the group’s Web site, Venyah founded the group with his wife Tamika in 2004. Lemieux said she usually preached too, but couldn’t be there yesterday.

“This is our job,” Lemieux said. He said God provided for them as they preached their message at colleges across the country.

Liney Pugh, Washington, D.C., freshman said, “I think it’s really wrong to preach hate like they do.” Pugh and another girl approached Venyah together and kissed “just to piss him off.” She said Venyah then called her a whoremonger.

Lemieux said he thought they had converted 30-40 people to Christianity in the two years they had been preaching at colleges. He said he believed homosexuals were harming Jesus Christ by sinning against him.

“Most homosexuals don’t believe what they’re doing is a sin and most people in society don’t believe homosexuality is a sin,” Lemieux said. He said telling people they were going to hell helped them to develop a fear of the Lord.

Lemieux said someone preached to him and told him he was going to hell, turning him into a Christian.

Renee Burnett, a Kansas City, Kan., junior who is bisexual, said she thought the idea that God wanted homosexuals to burn in hell was absolutely wrong. She stood across from Venyah holding a rainbow flag with several other students. “I came here to stand up for the people I love,” she said.

Spencer Davidson, Linwood freshman, is a Christian. He said he disagreed with Venyah and Lemeieux’s message, but he also disagreed with KU students’ response to the men.

“They’re giving him what he wants by making this into a big event,” Davidson said. “By calling him things like a bigoted asshole, they’re not countering his argument at all and it’s not doing anything to help the Christian community or to help people reach Christ.”

(Newsmax) It’s called the “Google bomb” and liberals are using it to attack 50 Republican candidates they have targeted for defeat in the Nov. 7 elections.

Using complicated computer geek programs, the Google bombers are able to direct Web searchers to selected articles about specific GOP members of Congress meant to disparage them.

In examples cited by The New York Times, anyone using the Google search engine for information about Arizona Republican Sen. Jon Kyl will be directed to an April 13 article from The Phoenix New Times, an alternative weekly which says that Kyl “has spent his time in Washington kowtowing to the Bush administration and the radical right, very often to the detriment of Arizonans.”

A Googler looking for information about “Peter King,” the Republican congressman from Long Island, would bring up a link to a Newsday article headlined “King Endorses Ethnic Profiling.”

The Google bomb ploy is the brainchild of Chris Bowers, a contributor at MyDD.com (Direct Democracy), a far-left group blog.

 Here is a portion of an update on the site (Link)

Google Bombing Progress Report 10/26

by Lucas O’Connor, Thu Oct 26, 2006 at 08:24:44 AM EST

So I gave it a go yesterday and apparently google was trying to give me the results I wanted. So I did everything I could think of to get Google out of my head and give me generic results, and here’s what I’ve got. Of course, let me know if you’re getting different results- hopefully we can figure something out.

I conducted a google search between 7am and 8am Eastern today, and found 28 appearing on the first ten pages, with 14 of those appearing somewhere on the front page. It’s still early, but we’re certainly seeing some of these rise to the top, which is a good start. On the flip, lessons learned thus far and the overall results:

So far, in checking in on progress, I’ve noticed the following areas to improve on our part that we can roll into a next time (if there’s a next time):

*We’ve got to have the candidate’s name in the title.
*Probably, we should google the name in the first place and choose something that comes up in the first 15-20 pages.
*We should choose articles with local resonance. The articles can also have national focus, but they absolutely should be local.
*We need to be conscious of shared/common names. Charles Taylor and Peter King are names shared by lots of noteworthy people, all the more reason to find a preexistingly popular article.
*If we do this again in 2008, we should start early, expand the field, and introduce articles on a rolling basis before dropping the complete list a few weeks ahead of the election.

And so, without further rambling, my (hopefully accurate) results for 10/26:

–AZ-Sen: Jon Kyl is currently #6

–AZ-01: Rick Renzi wiki is currently #3

–AZ-05: J.D. Hayworth is currently not in the first ten pages

–CA-04: John Doolittle wiki is currently #2

–CA-11: Richard Pombo wiki is currently #3

BACK TO THE NEWSMAX ARTICLE:

He told the Times that the articles chosen “Had to come from news sources that would be widely trusted in the given district. We wanted actual news reports so it would be clear that we weren’t making anything up.”

The tactic works by flooding the Web with references to the candidates and repeatedly cross-linking to specific articles and sites on the Web, making it possible to take advantage of Google’s formula and force those negative articles to the top of the list of search results.

It has long been used by Web sites seeking to advance their rankings by attracting more viewers to their sites.

Bowers explained that his project was originally aimed at 70 Republican candidates but was scaled back to roughly 50 because Bowers thought some of the negative articles were too partisan.

According to the Times, each name targeted is associated with just one article, which is embedded in hyperlinks that are now being distributed widely among the left-leaning blogosphere. In an entry at MyDD.com this week, the Times quotes Bowers as saying “When you discuss any of these races in the future, please, use the same embedded hyperlink when reprinting the Republican’s name. Then, I suppose, we will see what happens.”

The tactic is not really new. The Times recalled that the ability to manipulate the Google search engine’s results has been demonstrated in the past. Searching for “miserable failure,” for example, produces the official White House Web site of President Bush.

“We don’t condone the practice of Google bombing, or any other action that seeks to affect the integrity of our search results,” Ricardo Reyes, a Google spokesman told the Times. “A site’s ranking in Google’s search results is automatically determined by computer algorithms using thousands of factors to calculate a page’s relevance to a given query.”

Google, however, says it won’t interfere with anyone using Bower’s tactic, telling the Times that Google’s faith in its system has produced a hands-off policy when it comes to correcting for the effects of Google bombs in the past. Over all, Google says, the integrity of the search product remains intact.

Writing in the company’s blog last year, Marissa Mayer, Google’s director of consumer Web products, suggested that pranks might be “distracting to some, but they don’t affect the overall quality of our search service, whose objectivity, as always, remains the core of our mission.”

Still, some conservative blogs have condemned Bowers’s tactic. These include “Outside the Beltway,” which has called him “unscrupulous,” and “Hot Air,” which called it “fascinatingly evil.”

Bowers tells the Times that despite the obvious intention to damage the re-election chances of his targets, he does not believe the practice would actually deceive most Internet users.

“I think Internet users are very smart and most are aware of what a Google bomb is,” he said, “and they will be aware that results can be massaged a bit.”

 By Bob Unruh -  WorldNetDaily.com

Critics charge Muslim radicals determining textbook content 

Islam is being taught in the nation’s public schools as a religion to be embraced because “organized Islamists have gained control of textbook content,” according to an organization that analyzes textbooks.

The American Textbook Council has concluded that the situation is the consequence of “the interplay of determined Islamic political activists, textbook editors, and multiculturally minded social studies curriculum planners.”

It has gone so far that correcting the situation now becomes a problem, because “educational publishers and educational organizations have bought into claims propounded by Islamists – and have themselves become agents of misinformation.”

That comes from Gilbert T. Sewall, who not only wrote the organization’s report on Islam and textbooks, but also generated a response to the flood of criticism he encountered.  

William J. Bennetta, author of The Textbook Letter and a fellow of the California Academy of Sciences, also has documented dozens of instances of advocacy for or against a belief system, and has produced a list of books where the “religion preaching” leaves them “unfit for use.”

Indeed, Middle East Forum director Daniel Pipes even has repeatedly expressed concern about the “privileging of Islam in the United States” and warns the stakes go well beyond 7th-grade texts. His opinion of Houghton Mifflin’s “Across the Centuries? Full of “apologetics” and “distortions.”  

WND recently reported on a case in Oregon, where parent Kendalee Garner objected to having her son being taught Islam, including the memorization of the “Five Pillars” of Islam and dressing up as a Muslim.

(more…)

Sphere: Related Content

By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK

WASHINGTON, Oct. 25 — A liberal gay rights group said Wednesday that one of its employees, acting anonymously, had created the Web site that first published copies of unusually solicitous e-mail messages to teenagers from former Representative Mark Foley, which led to his resignation.

A spokesman for the group, the Human Rights Campaign, said it first learned of its employee’s role this week and immediately fired him for misusing the group’s resources. The scandal surrounding Mr. Foley, a Florida Republican, has been a burdensome distraction for members of his party in the month before the midterm elections, and some Republicans have speculated that the e-mail messages were planted by a Democrat.

The rights campaign’s spokesman, David Smith, said the employee, whose name he declined to disclose, was a junior staff member hired last month to help mobilize the organization’s members in Michigan. “The minute we learned about it we took decisive action,” Mr. Smith said.

The Miami Herald and other news organizations have acknowledged obtaining copies of the same e-mail messages months ago but declining to publish them because of their potentially ambiguous contents.

After the messages appeared on the Web, at stopsexpredators.blogspot.com, the Web site of ABC News followed with its own independent report. The ABC News report resulted in the disclosure of more sexually explicit electronic messages that Mr. Foley sent to other former Congressional pages.

In the aftermath of the scandal, the creator of the sex predators Web site declined requests sent by e-mail to identify himself. Instead, he posted a message urging the news media to ask questions about “when the Republican leadership knew about it, what they did, how they were connected, what favors took place, etc.”

The posting continued: “The true hero here is the page who reported the e-mails in the first place.”

 Some quickie reads from Bortz

With just under two weeks left to go before Election Day, Michelle Malkin says that despite all of her differences with the Republican Party and the White House, voting for the Democratic Party would be much, much worse.

And now it’s time for a little environmental hypocrisy, courtesy of the website TMZ.com.  Here is a list of celebrities who claim they’re green, but actually guzzle gas in their daily lives.  Sure….they drive hybrids…but also burn through thousands of gallons of jet fuel.

It’s looking more and more like the Senate might go 50-50, meaning Dick Cheney would be called in as the tie-breaking vote if needed.  Democrats would be looking for that power-sharing agreement that was in place the last time there was an even split, but they might find that offer not available this time.

When a Democrat has run out of ideas….and has no other way to challenge his or her opponent, they do one of two things.  Call you a Nazi or take the remedial step of comparing you to Richard Nixon.  And that’s just what Ned Lamont did in Connecticut to Joe Lieberman.

The Democratic excuse-making has already begun.  The media is already pushing stories about how voting machines aren’t working…..in order to sow enough doubt in the even that Democrats don’t do as well on November 7th.  Remember:  if someone is too dumb to use a touch screen voting machine, they’re being “disenfranchised.”

Just in time for the Republicans’ slight turnaround in the polls, the Pentagon is saying more troops are needed in Iraq.  What timing!  Then again, the generals over there are trying to run a war…not win elections. 

The principal of a Montana high school was suspended 6 days for giving a student a wedgie.  The school board sent him home to think about what he had done.  The news story never says exactly what the kid did to deserve the wedgie.

If you had an extra $2.6 billion laying around, what would you do with it?  Yet that’s exactly how much is being spent on the current election cycle….and could be the costliest in U.S. history.

Michael Barone takes a look at the latest polls for House races in an attempt to predict whether or not the GOP will maintain control.  His verdict?  It’s hard to tell…but it looks like it may be a close one.  Read on to find out.

John Stossel has a great column today about how employer-provided health insurance is a terrible idea.  He says the fact that somebody else pays for your health insurance is exactly why there is so much waste, fraud and abuse in the current system.  Don’t miss this one.

With so much opposition in the world to free trade, Walter E. Williams wonders if we should be doing any trading at all?  After all, we could produce nearly all of the products we get from other countries.  So why not?

Found this on Hot Air, ( Video: Harold Ford Sr. calls pro-life activists “crackers“; Update: “trackers” was the word) Watch the video and see if you can figure it out.

Snoop is an expert on these things, he did not say crackers or truckers. He said
“CRACKAS” as in the slave master who would crack that whip on disobedient negros.
On issues such as these you should as a professional negro linguist to decipher, negro slang.
Just give me a holla, NOT HOLLER, holla as in ax not ask, well ya know. 

Harold Ford Sr., the father of Tennessee Democrat Senate candidate Harold Ford Jr. (D), called pro-life activists who were outside of his son’s campaign headquarters “crackers”. Ford Sr. was on a cell phone telling the recipient “we have a cracker here with the Corker people.”
Update (Allahpundit): KP e-mails to say she thinks Ford called them “trackers,” i.e., people who follow a campaign around a la the Webb staffer whom George Allen called a “macaca.” Listen and decide for yourself. If she’s right, will this help get her back in the left’s good graces?
Probably not, no.
Apologies to Mr. Ford, though, for the error, if it is an error.

 

UPDATE: The word used was “trackers”, not “crackers”. I apologize for the error.

The popular and appealing actor Michael J. Fox has taken to the airwaves in Senate battleground states Missouri, Maryland, and New Jersey with a highly misleading ad urging defeat of Republican Senatorial candidates opposing the use of taxpayer dollars to fund new embryonic stem cell line research. He states,

“Stem cell research offers hope to millions of Americans with diseases like diabetes, Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s…. But George Bush and Michael Steele would put limits on the most promising stem cell research.”

Mr. Fox and his ads’ sponsors are guilty of conflating embryonic stem cell research, which the GOP candidates and many Americans oppose for destroying a human life in the name of curing other people’s diseases, with stem cell research in general, which includes adult stem cell research and umbilical cord blood stem cell research.

The only limits in question are on federal funding of new embryonic stem cell lines, requiring the sacrifice of new embryos. Private and state-funded research (California voters are spending six billion dollars borrowing money to fund this) is ongoing. The implicit claim that research based on new embryos is “the most promising” is absurd, completely unsupported by the scientific literature, and an insult to voters, based as it is on the assumption that they are incapable of understanding the issue. Too stupid to tell the difference, is the elitist assumption underlying this campaign.

Flim-flam is a charitable description. Why would federally-funded research be more promising than state- and privately-funded research? And on what possible basis can the claim be made that embryonic stem cell research is more promising than adult stem cell research?

The plain fact is that embryonic stem cell research is proving to be a bust. There are currently 72 therapies showing human benefits using adult stem cells and zero using embryonic stem cells.  Scientifically-minded readers can review this medical journal article on the status of adult stem cell research. Adult stem cell therapies are already being advertised and promoted while no such treatments are even remotely in prospect for embryonic stem cell research.

The fact is that adult stem cells have already produced remarkable cures, whereas embryonic stem cells have failed. This should come as no great surprise to anyone with a background in high school biology. When an embryo is created by the union of the sperm and egg, the cells begin to divide, creating embryonic stem cells from which all future tissues and organs are derived. Within days, the embryonic cells differentiate into three cell layers – ectoderm, mesoderm and endoderm. Cells in these layers continue to differentiate into tissues and organs. As the embryo matures into a fetus, child, and adult, some undifferentiated cells of the three types remain in various tissues such as bone marrow, fat, skin and olfactory tissue.

These adult stem cells are multipotent: they have the ability to turn into a variety of types of tissues. Successful stem cell therapies cause the DNA in the adult stem cells to further differentiate into more specific types of cells. There is no point in getting the adult stem cell to turn into a less differentiated type of cell, or using the more primitive embryonic stem cells. This would be going backward, in the opposite direction of providing a clinically useful therapy. Difficulties abound with proposed embryonic stem cell therapies. The growth of the more primitive embryonic stem cells is more difficult to control and leads to tumor formation. Recent research suggests brain tumors may result. Additionally, the use of embryonic tissue foreign to the patient can potentially lead to problems with immune rejection of tissue, a problem not encountered in using a patient’s own adult stem cells.

America is the most formidable medical research center in the world, but it is far from alone in pursuing the potential of adult stem cells. The worldwide effort is impressive and growing. For non-adult stem cell research, a morally unquestionable alternative source exists: stem cells drawn from umbilical cord blood. Already a bank exists in Dubai collecting cord blood stem cells.

In short, the claims made in the Michael J. Fox political ads are false and reprehensible, an insult to the voters of Maryland, Missouri and New Jersey, and to all Americans.

Mary L. Davenport, MD is an obstetrician and gynecologist, and a Fellow of the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology.

 This is NOT a Republican or a Democrat thing, this is a society thing.
This is why I said below about Obama and all of the hoopla surrounding his bid to run for president.
A black man has absolutely no chance of being president, zero, none nada.
Because this type of bullshit would be all over the airwaves.
Republicans will use it against a black Democrat candidate.
But on the flip side Democrats will throw out the Sambo references, uncle toms crap and lord help the black Republican candidate if he is married to a white woman.
But articles like this and the MSM will never point this out.
But hey many have told me that I focus WAY too much on race issues, but then again you know I just don’t give a damm, I is gonna tell it like it tis.

 Article Link

WASHINGTON - A new Republican Party television ad featuring a scantily clad white woman winking and inviting a black candidate to ‘call me’ is drawing charges of race-baiting, with critics saying it contradicts a landmark GOP statement last year that the party was wrong in past decades to use racial appeals to win support from white voters.
Critics said the ad, which is funded by the Republican National Committee and has aired since Friday, plays on fears of interracial relationships to scare some white voters in rural Tennessee to oppose Democratic Rep. Harold E. Ford Jr. Ford is locked in a tight race, hoping to become the first African American senator since Reconstruction to represent a state in the former Confederacy.

‘It is a powerful innuendo that plays to pre-existing prejudices about African American men and white women,’ said Hilary Shelton, head of the Washington office of the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People, the country’s oldest civil rights organization.

A former Republican senator, William S. Cohen of Maine, was more blunt. Cohen, who was also Defense secretary under President Clinton, said on CNN that the ad was ‘a very serious appeal to a racist sentiment.’

The 30-second ad features fictional characters satirizing Ford.

A black woman notes that Ford ‘looks good’ and asks, ‘Isn’t that enough?’ Others suggest Ford backs privacy for terrorists, accepts money from the pornography industry, wants to raise taxes and backs letting Canada deal with the North Korea nuclear threat.

The character who has raised complaints is a blond woman who speaks in a hushed, suggestive tone and says that she met Ford at ‘the Playboy party.’

At the end of the ad, she reappears and says: ‘Harold, call me.’ She winks and holds her hand up as if holding a phone.

Shelton said the ad contradicted the spirit of remarks delivered at last year’s NAACP convention by the Republican National Committee chairman, Ken Mehlman, in which he decried those in his party who had tried to ‘benefit politically from racial polarization.’ He was referring to the party’s so-called Southern strategy of energizing white voters with race-baiting messages about integration and civil rights.

‘I am here today as the Republican chairman to tell you we were wrong,’ Mehlman said in the July 2005 address, in which he also said the party would now use positive messages to draw African Americans to the GOP.

Ford’s Republican opponent, former Chattanooga Mayor Bob Corker, has asked Tennessee television stations not to run the spot, calling it ‘over the top.’ But the ad has continued to run - and on Monday the Republican National Committee was unapologetic.

‘I won’t even entertain the premise’ that the ad is racially offensive, said Danny Diaz, a Republican Party spokesman. He said the allegation was ‘not fair and not serious and not accurate.’

Diaz said the ad was an ‘independent expenditure’ produced by an arm of the Republican National Committee that is legally prohibited from coordinating with Mehlman. Because of this, Diaz said, Mehlman did not see or approve the ad before its release.

Democratic strategist Donna Brazile said Monday that she was shocked by the ad. Brazile, an African American who has forged a friendship with Mehlman and White House strategist Karl Rove, said she intended to call Mehlman to request that the Republican National Committee discontinue the ad.

‘With this ad, Mehlman’s apology rings hollow,’ she said, referring to the 2005 speech.

John Geer, a Vanderbilt University political scientist who published a book this year on attack ads, ‘In Defense of Negativity,’ said he had watched the anti-Ford spot repeatedly in recent days.

‘I just couldn’t believe what I was seeing,’ he said. ‘I don’t see how you can think it’s not playing a racial card. It’s making references to interracial sex. It’s an ad that is in some sense breaking new lows.’

For Mehlman, such criticism is unusual. He has won accolades from African American leaders for aggressive outreach efforts, speaking to more than 50 black organizations since becoming chairman in 2005.

His remarks on the Southern strategy were viewed as a milestone in the GOP effort to diversify the party base by attracting blacks with messages of economic empowerment and appeals to faith.

The party is fielding black candidates in three major races this year in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Maryland.

Ford, though, has proved a challenge for the GOP. He has run as a hawkish Democrat, opposed to amnesty for illegal immigrants and a supporter of banning gay marriage. His race with Corker is considered to be neck-and-neck.

A new response ad by Ford that began airing Monday features the candidate, talking to the camera, accusing Corker of unleashing attacks rather than talking issues.

‘If I had a dog,’ Ford says, ‘he’d probably kick him too.’

This is a 2005 article by Alicia Colon originally published in the The New York Sun contrasting Rep. Charles Rangel with Herman Cain, two influential African American leaders, one still lives on the “Democratic plantation,” and works every day to keep others enslaved there, while the other has risen to become a star in the conservative movement and tirelessly works to free people from the chains of the Democratic plantation.

Why do I post this old article, because it’s tis still relevant, and remember Charles Rangel if the Democrats take control would be Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee.
You people have short memories so I’ll remind you:

Has opposed major income-tax cuts ever since he was elected in 1970. Voted against the historic Reagan tax cut of 1981. Voted against each of President George W. Bush’s tax cuts. Meanwhile, he voted for President Clinton’s record-setting tax increase in 1993. If Rangel becomes chairman, he is certain to preside over new tax increases — at a minimum allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire without being renewed.

Rangel is a one of the oldest Democrat Party plantation poverty pimps in the House. 

Graduating From ‘Stupid Anonymous’

ALICIA COLON

Two years ago, I attended an AARP women’s luncheon at the famed 21 Club restaurant. The wife of Rep. Charles Rangel, Alma Rangel, also attended, and one of the organizers offered me the opportunity of an introduction. I declined as politely as possible, fearing I might inadvertently blurt out to her, “Oh, you poor dear. You have my deepest sympathy.”

At the time, Mr. Rangel had been making comments that defied comprehension and I had been so shocked at his injudicious remarks about our military that I wrote a column about it. In a television interview, he more or less accused our soldiers of deliberately killing innocent Iraqi women and children. In another interview, with radio host Steve Malzberg, he called the Iraq war “the biggest fraud ever committed on the people of this country. … This is just as bad as the 6 million Jews being killed.”

Apparently emboldened by the fact that his outrageous remarks outraged only conservatives, Mr. Rangel has now demonstrated that when it comes to smearing the president, he has carte blanche with members of his party. At a town hall meeting of the Congressional Black Caucus, Mr. Rangel said to the cheering crowd, “George Bush is our Bull Connor.” Local black community leaders (I use that term very loosely) like the Reverend Al Sharpton, Rep. Major Owens, and Council Member Charles Barron not only supported Mr. Rangel, they went even further. Mr. Owens said President Bush was even more diabolical than Connor. Mr. Barron added, “To be a racist in the richest, most powerful country in the world is lethal. Look what he’s doing to communities of color all over the world. He’s a lethal racist.”

Mr. Rangel was referring, of course, to the infamous Alabama police official who turned hoses and police attack dogs against innocent, unarmed, nonviolent civil rights protesters. What Mr. Rangel and his fellow Democrats have not pointed out, of course, is that Connor was a Democrat, as were George Wallace and Lester Maddox. In fact, the 1964 Civil Rights Act needed the support of Republicans to get through the legislature because the Southern Democrats were vehemently opposed to it.

Mr. Rangel and many in his party are part of the black leadership that has long taken the black community for granted, and that’s probably what inspired the title of Herman Cain’s book, “They Think You’re Stupid.”

Mr. Cain is a Southern man, born in Georgia, who probably has a better understanding of the Bull Connors of the world than the Harlem native Mr. Rangel. Mr. Cain was in New York recently on a book tour promoting what has to be the definitive book on where the black community stands in the eyes of both parties. Mr. Cain refers to many in that community as the politically homeless.

He charges that the Democratic Party is losing voters because its usual rhetoric has been exposed as empty. Republicans can’t get these voters because its rhetoric doesn’t resonate with many of them. Voters, Mr. Cain says, are hungry for common sense, a sense of urgency, and real leadership.

He is a rarity in politics, a black Republican, but that description does not connote any allegiance to a political party.

I contacted Mr. Cain to get his reaction to Mr. Rangel’s remarks. He said, “Rangel’s comment is another perfect example of how prominent Democrats think their constituency is stupid, in an attempt to keep them on the Democratic plantation. The comparison is ridiculous and an insult to anyone who thinks for themselves.”

In the introduction to his book, Mr. Cain writes, “My name is Herman Cain and I used to be stupid. This is because I did not know the history of the Democratic Party, nor did I know the history of the Republican Party. Like millions of voters, I used to make my voting decisions based on news, sound bites, political labels, distortions, misinformation, and sometimes no information at all. … I am now a graduate of ‘Stupid Anonymous’ and want to share my awakening with others.”

How I wish that Mr. Cain were a New Yorker. Perhaps he could awaken the black voters who continually vote for representatives like Messrs. Rangel, Owens, and Barron. These are politicians who always resort to interjecting race into issues rather than offering real solutions. Because the most powerful black man and woman in American history are not Democrats, Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice are regularly denigrated as race sellouts. That the black community in New York hasn’t recognized the absurdity of that calumny means that some are just plain “stuck on stupid.”

A Nazi-era law requiring all children to attend public school, to avoid “the emergence of parallel societies based on separate philosophical convictions” that could be taught by parents at home apparently is triggering a Nazi-like response from police.

The word comes from Netzwerk Bildungsfreiheit, or Network for Freedom in Education, which confirmed that children in a family in Bissingen, in the state of Baden-Wuerttemberg, have been forcibly hauled to a public school.

“On Friday 20 October 2006 at around 7:30 a.m. the children of a home educating family … were brought under duress to school by police,” the organization, which describes itself as politically and religiously neutral, confirmed.

A separate weblog in the United States noted the same tragedy.

READ MORE HERE

From Swoosh

 Posted by Megan McCormack - Newsbusters

Rosie O’Donnell took another vicious swipe at the Bush administration and its efforts to combat terrorism during Tuesday’s ‘The View.’ Liberal actor Tim Robbins appeared on the program to promote his latest film ‘Catch a Fire,’ set in apartheid-era South Africa. In the film, Robbins portrays a white police officer who tortures a black South African man, wrongfully accused of sabotage of an oil refinery. While discussing the film and his character, co-host Rosie O’Donnell equated the brutal tactics used against the people of South Africa by its own government with the Bush administration’s Patriot Act.:

Rosie O’Donnell: “They were seeking out terrorists, which is what they called the people in South Africa who actually lived there, who were the majority. The blacks in South Africa, who were trying to fight for their own civil rights, were called terrorists and the government was allowed to arrest them at will and interrogate them, no matter what they did, just on the suspicion. Very similar today to what we have in the United States, thanks to the Patriot Act.“

Elisabeth Hasselbeck briefly defended the anti-terror legislation, before being cut off by Robbins and O’Donnell, who went on to compare further “similarities” between South Africa under apartheid and President Bush’s America:

Elisabeth Hasselbeck: “Well, and the Patriot Act, I’m sorry, protects us. But that’s a whole different story, but this–”

Robbins: “What they did–what they did that was similar was, they threw out due process. They threw out the right to attorney.“

O’Donnell: “Habeas corpus.”

Robbins: “And they allowed the, the government and actually required people like this guy I play to torture people. And I’m, so, so what it does to the individual is it, it puts an incredible moral burden on the agent of the government, the, the soldier or the policeman–”

O’Donnell: “Lynndie England.”

 Posted by Tim Graham - On Newsbusters

I was a little stunned to hear one of leftist radio host Stephanie Miller’s crew today hype that a new Newsweek poll shows 51 percent of Americans now favor impeaching George W. Bush. What? Perhaps they “learned” from the Daily Kos, which today tried this game of statistical wizardry: if 28 percent say impeaching Bush is a “top priority,” 23 percent say it should be a lower priority, a stunning majority now “supports” impeachment. But the poll did not ask impeachment, yea or nay. Would an actual up-front question draw a lower numbers, since 23 percent chose an option that suggests ”not so hot on that idea”?

Newsweek actually reported:

Other parts of a potential Democratic agenda receive less support, especially calls to impeach Bush: 47 percent of Democrats say that should be a “top priority,” but only 28 percent of all Americans say it should be, 23 percent say it should be a lower priority and nearly half, 44 percent, say it should not be done. (Five percent of Republicans say it should be a top priority and 15 percent of Republicans say it should be a lower priority; 78 percent oppose impeachment.)

If you see the actual poll results, “impeachment” comes in dead last on Newsweek’s list of top priorities. Obviously, it’s nowhere to be found on the first question, deciding which issue is most important to based your vote on, which you can see just above that.

Newsweek preceded that by hyping how the Democrats will have a mandate, Newsweek’s agenda for America:

Most worrisome for the president, should the Democrats retake one or both houses of Congress, the American public supports their proposed “First 100 Hours” agenda. An overwhelming majority says allowing the government to negotiate lower drug prices directly with pharmaceutical companies should be a top priority for a Democratic Congress (74 percent, including 70 percent of Republicans); 68 percent want increasing the minimum wage to be a top priority, including 53 percent of Republicans; 62 percent want investigating impropriety by members of Congress to be a top priority; and 58 percent want investigating government contracts in Iraq to be a top priority. Fifty-two percent say investigating why we went to war in Iraq should be a top priority (25 percent say it should a lower priority and 19 percent say it shouldn’t be done.)

Despite the media claiming that “Speaker Pelosi” would never allow an impeachment inquiry, if 47 percent of her base are listing that as a “top priority,” can we really believe that she won’t be hard pressed to allow it to start?

From Jason 

 

EXCLUSIVE: Ad Response To Michael J. Fox running in Missouri tomorrow night; stars Jim Caviezel of ‘The Passion of Christ’ and Cardinals pitcher Jeff Suppan, who pitches Game 4 of World Series… MORE…

*VIDEO…
**Original Fox Ad…

 Ah the war of words, brought on by the piece of shit, manipulative liberals vs Average Americans.
The fight about Michael J. Fox continues.
Rush pointed out on today’s shot that the media attack dogs are out to get him making this a twisted fight of “Republican are bad, they want you to die” typical bullshit.

If found this outrageous bullshit on Democratic Underground. Let me tell you crazy fuck liberals something, fuck off, Rush nor anyone else who saw through the fraud of Fox need to apologize.
Rush can’t say it by I will, kiss my black ass (my ass is a tad bit darker than Rush’s). 

(more…)

By Mona Charen - Townhall.com

You’ve probably never heard of Teachers College, but it has profoundly affected your life and is now affecting your children’s lives. TC is the graduate school of education at Columbia University and laboratory of most of the “reforms” that have corroded K-12 education over the past 50 years. New math, whole language, open classrooms, outcome-based education — you name the fad and it probably originated in Morningside Heights in New York.

Teachers College is the most influential graduate education program in the country, and like so many leading schools, it is probably irredeemably PC. Still, Columbia University professes to uphold free inquiry and open-mindedness, so it was heartening to see a watchdog group zing the school for its ideological rigidity.

The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) got hold of TC’s new “Conceptual Framework” for its students. You might ask: Why does a graduate school need a “conceptual framework”? Isn’t the point to train teachers to teach? (Actually, some skeptics think teachers colleges themselves are unnecessary, but let that pass.) Well, perhaps someone in the publicity department is being paid by the word at TC, because the Conceptual Framework is the length of a novella. Most of it is the usual boilerplate and reads like this:

“We are an inquiry-based and practice-oriented community. We and our students and graduates challenge assumptions and complacency and embrace a stance of inquiry toward the interrelated roles of learner, teacher, and leader in P-12 schools.”

Okay, but then there is this: “We see teaching as an ethical and political act. We see teachers . . . as participants in a larger struggle for social justice. . . . Schools and society are interconnected. Social inequalities are often produced and perpetuated through systematic discrimination and justified by societal ideology of merit, social mobility, and individual responsibility . . . ”

And it gets worse: “Traditionally organized schools help to reproduce social inequalities while giving the illusion that such inequalities are natural and fair. Schools purport to offer unlimited possibilities for social advancement but they simultaneously maintain structures that severely limit the probability of advancement for those at the bottom of the social scale. Research has shown that the majority of teachers in the United States are European American and middle class and that many of these teachers do not see the invisible yet profound social forces at work that bring about inequality among different cultural groups in society and in schools.”

You know, I actually agree that some of our school systems limit social mobility by failing to provide a quality education to poor and minority students. But I think the teachers unions and resistance to school choice are a big part of the problem. Somehow, I don’t think that point of view is considered legitimate at TC. Isn’t it shameful to heap scorn on teachers because they are “European American” and “middle class”? What if someone pointed out that most inner city teachers are African American and Hispanic? Is that legitimate criticism according to Teachers College?

Further, Columbia now maintains that “merit, social mobility, and individual responsibility” are mere “ideologies” used to justify discrimination. On the contrary, these are the steps on the ladder for those at the bottom. A kid who excels in school, no matter what his background, can expect to thrive in America. All too often it is the PC crowd who eschew high standards for kids from poor neighborhoods. It is they, not “the system,” who constrict the life prospects for those kids.

Students at TC, according to the Conceptual Framework, are required to endorse the view that “To change the system and make schools and societies more equitable, educators must recognize ways in which taken-for-granted notions regarding the legitimacy of the social order are flawed, see change agency as a moral imperative, and have skills to act as agents of change.”

The president of Teachers College penned a platitudinous response to FIRE, arguing that they really, truly are committed to academic freedom, and that quotes had been taken out of context. I’ve read the context — they weren’t.

Elsewhere on the Columbia campus last week, a screaming mob of students rushed the stage and shouted down a speaker invited by the College Republicans (a representative of the Minutemen). Video of the melee is available on the Columbia Spectator website. Columbia’s President Lee Bollinger has sent letters to some of the students involved suggesting they might have violated the university’s rules and might have to meet with the senior vice provost.

And so the commitment to free inquiry slides downhill.

 A visitor to the site David, e-mailed me the following:

Just in reference to something on your site:

Christians put a quote about liberty from the
Torah on the Liberty Bell.   No.  The inscription on the Liberty Bell at Independence Hall in
Philadelphia is a direct quote from Leviticus 25:10: “Proclaim liberty throughout the land
unto all the inhabitants thereof.”   That is not from the Torah.   And that false statement

is going all over the Internet now.    Go figure. 

Found in this paragraph: 

As for the difference between fundamentalist Muslims and fundamentalist Christians, a Christian mailman in Denver called my radio show to say that despite his profound religious objections to pornography, he could not imagine objecting to delivering even the raunchiest porn to homes that ordered it. First, religious non-Muslims, especially in America, believe that liberty, too, is a religious value; that is why Christians put a quote about liberty from the Torah on the Liberty Bell. And second, they have no doctrine that holds outsiders bound to their religious practices.

in THIS post, the direct link here:By Dennis Prager - FrontPageMagazine.com - Link.

El Borak, can you clear this up? Since he did comment on the post on his site as well. 

Strange day in the news.
I’m reading my usual blogs and news sites and nothing grabs me.
The liberal blogs are posting the same old shit, more discussion on Michael J. Fox and his exaggeration ads, Pelosi, did Billiary have a facelift, Bush is evil yada, yada, yada.
Nothing really grabbed my attention so far.
So I decided to look for some posts to recycle and I found one of the funniest examples of Democrat lunacy, my 200,000,000 post at Rep. Major Owens in New York. I added some stuff too.
As the Democrats get excited at the possibility of taking over things in Washington this is a good reminder of just how dangerous the lunatics on the Democratic side can be.
If people like Major Owens is who you want leading the country, feel free to vote DEMOCRAT in November.
——————
While driving home the other afternoon, I laughed so hard I almost got into a wreck. I literally had to pull my car over.
Rush repeated (my first time hearing) a clip from Rep. Major Owens (D-NY) that he first aired in 1996. He currently has an article on his website (for subscribers) but hell Snoop has the gist.
Anybody who is a long time listener to the Rush Limbaugh show or listened to the show back in the Clinton era may remember this information about Rep. Owens.
Rush highlighted in his show an ABC World News Tonight report in June of 1996, by Carole “Jennings” Simpson reported that 100 million slaves were thrown overboard during the slave trade.
This is what Rep. Major Owens (D-NY) claimed in a speech a year earlier on the house floor, in an except he said

200 million slaves were thrown overboard and that this genocide changed the ecology of the ocean so much that the sharks still swim the slave routes!

I thought OH MY GOD! You know I hear and read a whole lot of stupid shit but to hear it come out of an elected officials mouth and the dumbass said it on the house floor was nothing less than stunning.

This idea was first expressed by Owens during Special Orders a year earlier 1995.
So dude had been processing this info for quite some time.
Owens insisted that 200 million slaves on their way to America had been thrown overboard during the slave trade and that this had changed the ecology of the ocean to the point that sharks still swam the old trade routes in the hope of finding more bodies to feed upon.

You do the math, if the slave trade ran from 1550 to 1850. That’s 300 years. Multiplying 300 x 365 gives us 109,500. Dividing that into 200,000,000 gives us 1826.484. That means that over 1800 dead blacks would be thrown overboard every day! 

Rush’s staff ran the numbers and found that to be have 100 million drowned slaves, the slave traders would have had to put out nine ships a day with 152 slaves in each ship. This would have had to continue every day for 200 years, which works out to 1,370 slaves a day and 499,977 slaves per year thrown overboard, not counting leap years.
No matter how the numbers are worked, this figure of 100 million drowned slaves would still be impossible, especially since some of these slaves had to reach the New World alive. And Owens originally claimed that the number of drowned slaves was 200 million, which means all of these numbers would have had to have been doubled.

Evidently someone told Congressman Owens that his numbers were a little high so he went to the House floor the next day and changed the number to 20,000,000. That’s a little better because then it’s only 182 blacks thrown overboard every day for 300 years. 
Rush of course found this claim of 200 million a bit absurd. The population of North America at the time was far less than 100 million, and it is hard to imagine that 200 million slaves could have been transported across the Atlantic over 200 years.
Owens reworked the figures down to 100 million, claiming he had gotten some “bad data.” (no he pulled it out of his ass) However, even 100 million drowned slaves is hard to imagine, but ABC reported this as fact.
Yes ABC was as stupid as Owens was. Where the hell was Peter Jennings then!?
The population of the world at this time, though, was only 400 million, which means that the slave trade would have killed nearly a quarter of the world’s population over these 200 years.
This simply is not possible, so Rush has to wonder if he could check these numbers so easily, why couldn’t ABC?

My point to all of this is people process information all the time and come up with all kinds of bullshit to make their position more sound. Few of us actually process and challenge what we read and what we hear.
This is why we are a country of tired bullshit cliches. Major Owens trying to prove a point to forward his agenda on the supposed behalf of his constituents ended up tarnishing his reputation and permanently making him into a laughing stock.
But what is worse is that this crazy bastard is still in office!

I looked long and hard for credible information on just how many slaves were lost. After exhaustive Google University Research I determined that……..we have no fucken idea. And what the hell difference does it make today.
Regardless of where you fall on the political spectrum, whatever information you process be sure to study BOTH sides of an argument.
I state over and over that the reason why I STUDY liberals, not only what they say but how they say it is what consistently drives me to the conclusion that liberalism is not only wacked but sociologically corrosive. To make their points liberals will do what Major Owens did and do it with a straight face hoping nobody is paying attention.
Can you begin to comprehend how either out of touch or flat ignorant the constituents in the 11th congressional district of New York must be to have kept this idiot in office for so many years?

Here is another example of liberal excess:
Jesse Jackson had been running his mouth about how 1,000,000 blacks were kept from voting in the 2000 election. Needless to say, the media, who many people swear are not biased, did not check this number. Where did it come from?  He probably got this number from the same place that Major Owens got his 200,000,000. He made it up because it sounded good. But go over to the Census Bureau and run some numbers.

In the year 2000 there were about 35.7 million blacks. The overall population breaks out like this: Age 18-24 39.9%. Age 45-64 22%. Age 65 and over 12%. So if we use these numbers the overall voting age population is 73.9%. 73.9% of 35.7 million comes out to 26.3 million. When you consider that half the population doesn’t even bother to vote in the first place and I’m sure that apathy exists among blacks, but let’s just say the apathy only affects 25%, that gives us 19.7 million blacks who want to vote. Jesse is stating that 1 out of every 20 black people in this country were DENIED the right to vote.

We are about to go into another election where I continue to read about Democrats claiming that blacks are being DENIED the right to vote when the bullshit from 2000 was never proven.

I bet you did not know that the Civil Rights Commission that was set up in Florida specifically to find examples of blacks being prevented from voting could not find one case where this actually happened? But the truth doesn’t matter to liberals. Angering the base by making things up and Jesse is good at making things up.
You don’t think that’s going to happen come next election.
If the Democrats don’t at least take the house, there will be lawsuits galore.
The Democrats will not accept defeat, Jessie will add that blacks folks were thrown into the Atlantic by Republicans to help Owens make the old case for 200,000,000. 

The potential to be enslaved and to make our tentative way to freedom is perennially within us. It’s not simply that each generation is commanded to feel as if it was personally brought forth from Egypt, but that at every moment we are presented with the opportunity to liberate ourselves

Roberta Israeloff

 CNN’s terrorist public relations
Rep. Hunter: Remove CNN embeds
CNN’s Eason Jordan resigns
CNN retracts Tailwind story

WATCH HERE

 I thought I could not think less of liberal Democrats until I saw this…  From Drudge:

Michael J. Fox 00:37

I’m not going to add any other commentary. If you watched this video and did not think something was a little odd then… ah hell screw it. I don’t know whether or not to laugh or be outraged. 

I’M BACK ON THIS….

When I first saw this video my deep skepticism of Democrats came straight to the forefront and I saw immediate red flags with this ad.
I then asked a few people to watch this and I was surprised that they did not pick up on my issue with the ad.
Now keep in mind all of these people were very familiar with Fox.
I will freely admit none of the individuals who watched the video said anything and did not see what my problem was.
But after I told them of my beef, they all said, yeah, that did seem funny.
I read several blogs bitching and moaning about what several pundits on the right including Rush said about the ad. BUT RUSH WAS RIGHT.
This ad was complete and total bullshit, and anyone who thinks otherwise is either naïve, a dolt or just totally stupid.
I have no issue with Fox promoting his cause and I even don’t have an issue with a political candidate using another individual to promote a political agenda to fight something that is personal to them whether it’s breast cancer awareness, heart disease, whatever.
What Fox did was GROSSLY misleading and you liberals know it.
Reading these silly ass liberal bloggers and Media Matters bitch about what Limbaugh said is stupid.

I’ll say it because I don’t give a fuck what you idiot liberals think, it was a fucken act. (GOD I LOVE BLOGGING)
I’m so sick of you idiot liberal Democrats I can’t see straight.
Jesus H. Christ can’t you Democrats do any fucken thing without total and blatant deception?

I was with you Fox and supported you.
Now I have to separate my anger of this from this bullshit campaign ad from the needs of the people suffering from Parkinsons.
Thanks Fox for injection partisan politics into a legitimate issue and setting the cause back a few steps.
I’m certain I’m not the only angry one out there.                                                                                                            But you sure as hell are not going to guilt me or bully me into supporting your cause. 

On That Michael J. Fox Ad

Posted by Dean Barnett 

There’s a new Michael J. Fox ad on stem cell research that supports Claire McCaskill’s campaign. Click over and watch it. It will take you only 30 seconds, and I promise I’ll still be here when you get back.  

By way of response, let me first say that I think almost any kind of ad in support of a political campaign is fair game. If a candidate goes too far, the public will punish him or her. So while I find the Michael J. Fox ad crass, tasteless, exploitative and absurd, I fully support Claire McCaskill’s right to shoot herself in the foot.

The most distasteful aspect of the ad is the way it exploits Michael J. Fox’s physical difficulties. Fox is an actor, and clearly knew what he was doing when he signed up for the spot - no victim points for him for having been manipulated by the McCaskill campaign. The ad’s aim is to make us feel so bad about Fox’s condition that logical debate is therefore precluded. You either agree with Fox, or you sadistically endorse his further suffering as Fox accuses Jim Talent of doing.

This is demagoguery analogous to the pernicious and pathetic chickenhawk argument. The whole “chickenhawk” logic is that only people who have served in the military are entitled to have an opinion on military matters. Thus, the ideas of non-veterans don’t warrant a hearing and thus don’t need rebutting.

While Michael J. Fox (like me) has some skin in the stem cell game that most people don’t, that doesn’t give him any special appreciation of the moral issues involved with embryonic stem cell research. Sick people may want cures and treatments more than the healthy population, but that doesn’t make them/us experts on morality.

The ad’s disingenuousness also merits consideration. While Fox mentions “stem cell research,” the word “embryonic” is strangely lacking. Given that the entire debate centers on the ethics and morality of embryonic stem cell research, this omission is noteworthy.

AS FAR AS FOX IS CONCERNED, I feel bad for him. The ad is shot to carefully record the sounds of the spasticity brought on by his condition. It’s gut-wrenching to see the star in such a condition.

But it’s strange that Fox has so eagerly bought the promises of the stem cell research community. If Fox thinks that stem cell research offers him (or me) hope, he’s mistaken. Stem cell research, both embryonic and otherwise, right now represents nothing more than a promising theory. If it bears fruit, and that’s a huge “if”, it will likely do so too late to benefit Fox, me, and our contemporaries. In spite of the silky rhetoric of John Edwards-type politicians, dramatic medical innovations come slowly and take decades to pan out, not months.

Nonetheless, there’s no reason to doubt the sincerity of Fox’s position. He truly does seem to have convinced himself that embryonic stem-cell treatments hold an imminent medical cure for him. Unfortunately, medical science doesn’t work that way. Believe me.

One last note on Michael J. Fox. Unlike Fox, I’ve been a sick person all my life. Like most sick people who try to define their lives by something other than their illness, I’ve always recoiled at pity and even sympathy.

Personally, I find there to be something extremely disquieting about the way Fox has chosen to use his condition to bully voters into feeling bad for him and thus support his political positions. People know when they’re being manipulated. This ad with its heavy-handed emphasis on Fox’s suffering will succeed in making Fox an object of sympathy and pity, but because of its naked crassness, it will not be a political success.

As for Claire McCaskill, who has chosen to conclude her campaign in this manner, she will get no sympathy or pity from these quarters. Only contempt.

 By Tom Kovach - The Sierra Times

This column was inspired by a recent Letter to the Editor in the Nashville area’s Left-leaning, Gannett-owned, major daily, The Tennessean — often nicknamed “Pravda on the Cumberland.” The letter writer extolled readers to toss out all Republicans, because it is allegedly their fault that gasoline prices are high. (By the way, at the time of the letter’s publication, gasoline prices in this area had fallen about 50 cents per gallon in the past month.) Instead of posting my reply in the newspaper’s online forum, I decided to publish this as a column, because these principles apply nationwide. I grew up in south Texas, where people paid attention to fluctuations in gasoline prices back when those fluctuations were only a penny or two. (Of course, when I was an adolescent, two pennies equaled almost ten percent of the price of a gallon!) So … the Democrats will keep gasoline prices down, huh?

When the Democrats were in total control of Congress, and a Republican (Gerald Ford) was president, our country went into an “energy crisis.” Gasoline prices went up from 27 cents per gallon to 42 cents per gallon.

People were so outraged that they voted Ford out, and Jimmy Carter in.

Then, when Democrats controlled both houses of Congress, plus the White House (as the Republicans do now), gasoline prices almost tripled from 42 cents to $1.14 per gallon. But, if you remember that the Democrats also controlled both houses of Congress, and the White House, in the mid-1960s when gasoline was at 25 cents, then the gasoline price actually went up almost five times its original price.

Now, let’s do the math. Gasoline was $1.14 per gallon when Ronald Reagan became president. It went up slightly, to about $1.25 per gallon. It remained stable until President Bill Clinton (Democrat) got bogged down in Somalia (which borders the Gulf of Aden, where American-bound tankers travel between the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea), and started dropping bombs in the Balkans. Then, gasoline went up to about $1.55. (Has anyone ever heard of the oil fields of Ploesti? One of the largest refining regions in Europe has pipelines radiating out from it, and Clinton was bombing the Balkans. Gasoline prices went up.) Then, gasoline prices remained stable until President G. W. Bush took offices. Then, gasoline prices went down. When I moved to Nashville in early August of 2001, I paid 99 cents per gallon for gasoline for a couple weeks, during a “gas war” (at the Golden Gallon on Haywood Lane). The price stabilized at about $1.29 per gallon.

After the “9-11″ attacks, and the subsequent invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, gasoline prices jumped dramatically. Given that much of the world’s oil flows through the Persian Gulf, which was then put in an unstable position by the war (started by terrorists … hello, Democrats!), the price of gasoline began to rise dramatically. For those in the media that were victims of Outcome Based Education, it costs the oil companies and the shipping lines a lot of extra money to protect the oil during a war.

In summary, during a war, gasoline went from $1.29 per gallon to about $2.99 per gallon. That’s an increase of about 115 percent under the Republicans. In comparison, during peacetime (the energy crisis began after the US withdrawal from Vietnam had begun), gasoline went from 27 cents per gallon to $1.55 per gallon. (Gasoline prices remained fairly stable during the presidencies of both Reagan and “Bush 1,” when Democrats controlled the House. Gasoline prices rose sharply under Clinton, when the House changed hands from Democrats to Republicans. Therefore, the long-haul changes balance each other out from 1974 to 2000. Thus, the Democrats must take the blame for the overall increases, because they controlled most of the power most of the time.)

Liberals have such short memories when it comes to facts.

They try to sing the right song with the wrong lyrics. Hopefully, the voting “audience” here in Music City — and across this great nation — will catch the error, and dismiss the Democrats’ siren song of class envy. Elected officials do not vote on gasoline prices! However, elected officials do vote on environmental laws that tie the hands of American oil companies. Those laws, which prevent us from refining the oil beneath our own feet (or beneath the waves in American territorial waters), were ushered in mostly by Democrats.

To borrow an analogy from attorney and talk-radio giant G. Gordon Liddy, that is like killing one’s parents, and then throwing one’s self upon the mercy of the court on the grounds of being an orphan! The Democrats routinely blame Republicans for high petroleum prices, in an attempt to win elections. (But, if the Democrats lose an election, they simply turn around and claim that the Republicans used their political connections to bring the prices down just before the election. It’s the old, “damned if you do, and damned if you don’t.”) It seems that high prices produce low politics.

By Thomas Sowell - Townhall.com

There are very few saints among people of any race, religion, national origin, or sexual orientation. None should be above criticism.

Increasingly, however, there are tighter and tighter restrictions on what you can say about more and more groups. San Francisco radio talk show host Pete Wilson discovered this recently when he criticized a city Supervisor and his female friend — but not lover — who had a baby together.

The man is gay and the woman is a lesbian, so they are not lovers in a committed relationship.

Raising a child is no piece of cake, even when the parents are married and committed to staying together. Raising a child where there is no stable, committed relationship may be cutting edge stuff but Pete Wilson’s point was that a child is not an experiment.

The same could be said of heterosexuals like the woman who recently had a baby in her sixties. That’s great for making a splash in the media but what is going to happen when the baby becomes a teenager and the mother’s energy level has declined with age, if she is still around at all?

The real issue, however, is neither heterosexual or homosexual, and it extends even beyond the important question of the best interests of the child.

The larger question for American society is, as Joan Rivers has often said: “Can we talk?”

Political bigwigs in San Francisco say “No.” They are demanding that Pete Wilson resign. In San Francisco, no one is supposed to criticize anything done by homosexuals.

Moreover, this attitude is not confined to San Francisco or to gays. On the other side of the country, Columbia University students stormed the stage when one of the Minuteman critics of our lax immigration laws was trying to speak.

At many other