politicalpartypoop.com

By Lady Guinevere - Guest blog

Snoop rants fairly often about inter-personal things, usually involving the stupidity of someone that results in repeated doses of them experiencing pain of some sort.Often, his remarks are aimed at women who (for a myriad of reasons) are involved with a male who is treating them badly and/or is going to eventually end up hurting them badly. He therefore questions what causes an otherwise sane or desirable woman to seek, stay, keep or otherwise maintain contact with males who are not acting respectfully or kindly towards them.
He has also been known to state that all men are pigs, and advise most women to therefore treat all members of that gender as potential suspects.

So I thought I’d throw my two cents at that topic, and him.

The topic appears to have two components or issues: (1) Why do women with lots to offer settle for relationships with men who have a lot less to offer and (2) If all men are pigs, then should any woman really trust any man to treat her well, long term?

So, let’s address the first issue first.

Why do women settle? For a lot of the same reasons men settle. They are lonely. They have low self esteem. They are too trusting. They think they see potential or can change bad behaviors with enough love.
They love a challenge. They want to help. They need abuse. They are rebelling against someone or something. They are re-living their mother (or grandmother)’s life, trying for better or different outcomes.

Whatever the reason, most people do not hook up with someone who is exactly like them. Many people do not like themselves well enough to want a mate who is their exact clone, in the other gender. So they are attracted to people who have different attitudes or behaviors. And any time there is any kind of disparity, there is the potential for friction on those points of difference.

The one thing that could save a lot of future tears is an insistence that no matter what disparities or differences exist, mutual values and a high degree of respect be present. If a couple has similar goals in life, and each respects the other, that increases the chances they will not end up wanting to escape (or being beat down to an emotional pulp).
 But what about a situation where mutual goals or respect existed (or appeared to exist) but things later change? What do you do when someone is such a good pretender that he (or she) fooled you on even those
points?

This brings us to the second issue. Should any woman ever completely trust any man (or to put it more broadly, should any person ever completely trust any other person)?

If in fact all men are truly pigs, as Snoop often states, then why would any woman with half a brain ever fully trust that any man will be true and stay true? How can any woman who doesn’t implant a listening device on her man’s body believe that he is not wanting to cheat, at the very least? How can she ever trust him to love her, and not hurt her, forever, if his pig nature is always there, urging him to hurt her?
A SNOOP TIMEOUT FOR A VIDEO CLIP……

The relationship pundits are pretty uniformly united in stating that trust is a vital element in any healthy union. Without a lot of trust, few people would be able to relax enough to be themselves and feel truly safe and loved. Trust is a fragile thing; it can be lost forever if abused too often or badly. But without some trust, it is doubtful that any relationship of any kind could ever begin, let alone flourish.
So the basic answer is that trust should exist, and be given, by anyone wanting to be friends (let alone mates) with another human.

But whom should we trust? And why? And when to withdraw that trust? Those are the real questions.

It is a very bad idea to completely trust someone you do not know very well. Just as any prudent parent would not hand their beloved child over to a complete stranger, so too should a mature woman be wary of giving their full faith or whole heart into the hands of someone whom they have not even met face to face yet. It takes time, lots of quality time,
to really get to know someone else. Especially if they are adept at hiding their true nature or motives. So the best advice is for all adults to keep in mind that just because someone tells you something (anything) it is not necessarily the complete truth.

The main things are to pay attention and to talk all kinds of things out, a lot. And don’t just talk to the other person. Also talk with and to the people involved or who care about you. As long as there are two or more human beings, there are bound to be misunderstandings. But some people are just better or more habitual liars. They may not be out-right lying, but the chances are high that there are facts that are omitted. It takes a lot of time for most people to truly “come clean”
and be themselves, all the time. Some people never do it! So you need to have more then one set of ears listening to him. Use your trusted friends or family members, people who are guaranteed to be honest with you about what they think or observe (then listen); they may not be as
blinded by other things (like lust or loneliness). And if you find that your new sweet heart has lied about minor things, the chances are better that he also lies about major issues!

In choosing whom to trust, using just your heart, or your head, or your gut will not insulate you from being conned or misled. You must use all three, and lots of time, to get “to the bottom” of someone else’s psyche. Meet his friends and family; get to know them all, in their familiar setting. If the guy can’t let you into that part of their life (very far) there is definitely something rotten in Denmark!
And take time - a year at least - before making any firm commitments. If you haven’t seen someone when they are truly in ill health, you do not know them all that well! Don’t rush to make judgements, good or bad. But don’t waste a ton of time trying to reform someone. If they treat you badly, at first, their behaviors are not going to get better in the future!

But even with all of those traps set, and run, and all tests passed with flying colors, it is still possible for a woman to trust a man and get badly hurt by him. Sometimes she just gets fooled. He was a good liar, she was too naive to see the truth, etc. Sometimes he just changes. People do change. It happens. Move along.

But people also sometimes let themselves in for a world of avoidable new hurt by making excuses for bad behaviors. If he is rude to you and/or to others, or lies to you or others, right from the start - chances are that is his true nature. Pay attention. Leopards do not change spots. They just manage to hide them from some people. Don’t be stupid. Unless you like pain!

So, if someone has proven to you that they cannot be trusted, what then? When is conduct an act of betrayal or a breach of trust, as opposed to a stupid mistake? Those are the hard ones.

Betraying someone whom you love or who loves you, for purely selfish reasons, is one of the most hurtful things anyone can do to someone else. Everyone is going to do dumb things that disappoint or hurt their loved ones. But an act of betrayal, something that shows your beloved thinks that your well-being is not very important (when compared with theirs) that is harder to overcome or ignore. It becomes a cost benefit analysis. What do you stand to gain by working through the betrayal of trust, versus what would you lose. Is how you are or were treated not so bad, all things considered? Or are you just hanging onto hope out of habit or fear of having nothing else in the wings?

The longer you’ve been together, the harder it is to throw in a towel (for many people). They don’t want to have wasted all that time and energy, without having a lot to show for it. So they hang on and make more excuses. But the larger and more serious the betrayal, or if it’s a repeated conduct, the much more likely it is that the relationship is irrevocably broken or reduced to an unimportant one.

Whatever you do, do not lose your own self-respect. If you do not respect yourself, it is almost impossible to get respect from anyone else. And without respect, no relationship can be happy or healthy.

At some point, the only healthy and loving thing to do is to escape from certain kinds of emotional abuse. And someone who betrays the trust of a loved one is indeed abusing them and the relationship! So don’t put up with a pig and then complain about being in a pig pen mess!
If you put up with enough pain, you may eventually grow to like it, or at least tolerate it.

So the safe thing to do is pay attention, right at the start. If he (or she) is not treating you like you want and need to be treated, the chances are real good that there will not be some big change for the better in the future. Walk away soon and early, while you still haven’t expended too much of your time and heart. Do not settle for a pig.
And if you find yourself hooked on someone who treats you badly most of the time, the only things you can do are admit you alone can control how much longer you will tolerate that treatment and then walk away when you have finally had enough. There are far worse things then being alone.
Besides, no truly great woman is ever alone for long, unless she likes it that way!

Let me be clear I like O’Reilly, he is the number one cable show for a reason.
Shows like Countdown with Keith Olberman are a joke because dude does not even try to be objective.
He falls into the same trap as most flaming liberals, call Bush and Republicans a few crude names, throw in a few familiar phrases like Bush lied people died, Kill capitalism Bush equals Hitler, 9/11 was a lie and you too can earn your tin foil hat.

This clip is from last nights O’Reilly as he admonishes the Daily Kos website and paints it as a hate site using some colorful phrases from some of the more intelligent blog participants.

This is a simple issue despite O’Reilly’s rantings.
Are there a few really stupid people who crave attention on Kos by posting the most outrageous and idiotic comments that can pull out of their asses, of course. However the Daily Kos is a community with all levels of intelligent thought from the knuckle dragger far left lunatic morons to the more sane and reasonable individuals.

I choose not to hide individual stupidity on my blog, because there is a point in highlighting the intellectual vacancy of some individuals. RAVEN!

O’Reilly c’mon on, the world simply has way too many morons and we can’t hide them all. Mrs. Bill is entitled to court these potential voters no matter how idiotic they are.
Blogs gives these people an outlet, it’s better for these liberals to spend their time ranting about Republicans than beating their wives and kids.

Bout time they got rid of this idiot jackass!

Professor Ward Churchill Fired After 9-11 Remarks…

From The Politico via Drudge,  Crap, she is a bigger idiot than her husband, oh excuse me this was just a harmless brain fart right?

The politics of global warming got very concrete, and oddly difficult, In a meeting with local environmentalists in the coastal town of McClellanville today, where Elizabeth Edwards raised in passing the importance of relying on locally-grown fruit.”We’ve been moving back to ‘buy local,’” Mrs. Edwards said, outlining a trade policy that “acknowledges the carbon footprint” of transporting fruit.

“I live in North Carolina. I’ll probably never eat a tangerine again,” she said, speaking of a time when the fruit is reaches the price that it “needs” to be.

Edwards had talked about “sacrifice,” at the meeting, but Elizabeth’s suggestion illustrated just how difficult it is to sell the specifics of sacrifice.

Asked about her comment immediately after the event, Edwards avoided the question twice, then said he isn’t sure.

“Would I add to the price of food?” he asked. “I’d have to think about that.”

UPDATE: Just to be clear, he’s not talking about a food tax. The basic point is that any plan that imposes new costs on carbon emissions is going to make anything that’s transported long distances with fossil fuels cost more. It is, in a way, a moment of clarity in this debate.

While other blogs put up some pics of her in this little pink bikini, I prefer this shot because it symbolizes that while there are lots of women with smoking hot bodies, behind to many of them are tortured, broken and really fucked up women.

Great role model for young women, huh!

From The Smoking Gun

Here’s the mug shot Lindsay Lohan posed for this morning following her arrest in Santa Monica for drunk driving and cocaine possession. The actress, 21, was nabbed after cops spotted her SUV chasing another vehicle at high speed. After Lohan failed a field sobriety test, she was transported to the L.A. county lockup, where a pat down search turned up cocaine in her pants pocket. Click here to see the Santa Monica Police Department’s booking sheet for Lindsay Dee Lohan, accused felon. Last July, Lohan’s hard-partying ways left a Hollywood studio boss so perturbed that he sent a blistering letter to the starlet warning that her “discourteous, irresponsible and unprofessional” behavior was jeopardizing the movie “Georgia Rule.”

First post on this last week: A big ‘Mess’ for BET

Late Monday EUR received notice that BET changed the name of its controversial new show, hosted by Charlie Murphy, from “Hot Ghetto Mess” to “We Got To Do Better.”The program, which premieres tomorrow night, Wednesday, spurred at least two advertisers, State Farm Insurance and Home Depot, to change their minds over mounting criticism that that the then named “Mess” promoted racial stereotypes.

Here is the statement in its entirety:

This week, BET will be launching a new series called WE GOT TO DO BETTER, a half-hour video clip show that, at its core, is pure social commentary.

The show’s original title was HOT GHETTO MESS: WE GOT TO DO BETTER. We’ve decided to change the name because we want to highlight the show’s real intent, which is to offer social commentary in a context that sparks dialogue, debate, and most importantly, change.

Additionally, the early misperceptions about the show and its title were diverting attention from the overall original programming strategy we’ve begun implementing at BET Networks – which is to deliver smart, creative shows that explore the full range of the Black experience. Our 2007 slate is the most ambitious and diverse aggregation of Black programming in television history, and it features a wide range of genres – from inspirational shows like EXALTED!, to animated comedy shows like BUFU, to family entertainment like SUNDAY BEST. As we move into the fall season and 2008, you’ll continue to see the increase in the quality, quantity and breadth of shows that we have to offer at BET.

In his “Journal-isms” column, Richard Prince informed that Gina McCauley, creator of the protest blog Whataboutourdaughters, wrote: “we’ll be watching on Wednesday and writing down advertisers with the rest of y’all, but the WAOD rapid action BET attack force is standing down, but we remain ready to respond in the event this ends up being the train wreck I think it is.”

Speaking of the Whataboutourdaughters blog, a click to the site finds the following headline: BREAKING NEWS!- - WE WON! “Hot Ghetto Mess” is “Hot Ghetto GONE!”

Not quite.

Sphere: Related Content

The university’s governing board plans to hold a closed session on the Boulder campus today, and a decision on Churchill is expected in the middle of the afternoon.

According to the Denver Post, Churchill’s supporters are planning to show their support at an afternoon rally. Churchill and his attorney will address the crowd when the decision comes down, press reports said.

A faculty panel recommended that Churchill be punished, but not fired. However, in a May 25 letter to the Board of Regents, CU President Hank Brown recommended that Churchill be dismissed for “conduct which falls below the minimum standards of professional integrity.”

Read the rest at Ace of Spades

Some reflections on some recent polls, in FrontPage today (news links in the original):

A new Newsweek Poll on American attitudes toward Muslims and Islam has found that 46 percent of Americans believe that the United States is taking in too many Muslim immigrants. 32 percent think that Muslims in America are less loyal to the United States than they are to Islam. 28 percent believe that the Qur’an condones violence, and 41 percent hold that Islamic culture “glorifies suicide.” 54 percent are either “somewhat worried” or “very worried” about Islamic jihadists in this country, and 52 percent support FBI surveillance of mosques, with the same percentage rejecting the claim of American Muslim advocacy groups that Muslims are being singled out by investigators and police.

What are we to make of these figures? Do they mean that American Muslim advocacy groups have to do more to combat “Islamophobia”? That is the likely response: watch now for the follow-up stories about “Islamophobia,” in which the onus for all the attitudes displayed in this poll is placed firmly and solely upon non-Muslim Americans, as if Muslims were an entirely innocent, passive group that was doing nothing whatsoever to make anyone suspicious or angry at all. Newsweek itself led this off by asserting in another article published along with the poll that Muslims in America are “vulnerable as never before.” That story began with an account of a Muslim in Cleveland asking George W. Bush: “What are we doing with public diplomacy to change the hearts and minds of a billion and a half Muslims around the world?” The unspoken assumption behind this question is that Muslim fury at the West stems entirely from the actions of the United States and other Western countries, and not from anything within the Islamic world itself. Daud Abdullah, the Deputy Secretary General of the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB), expressed another aspect of this view after the recent jihad plots were discovered in London and Glasgow, when he suggested that the religion of the attackers was incidental to their plots: “Let’s not create a hypothetical problem…it can be the work of Muslims, Christians, Jews or Buddhists.”

Read the rest here

Looks like he has been taking tips from the Ann Coulter school of “how to become a media whore in 3 easy steps.”
Just start saying “everybody sucks” hmmmm, that sounds like me, lol!

WASHINGTON - Former house speaker and potential GOP presidential candidate Newt Gingrich ripped conservatives and liberals alike Monday at a breakfast sponsored by the American Spectator.

Here’s how Newt unloaded on half a dozen newsmakers:

REPUBLICANS:

Fred Thompson, potential presidential candidate “I’m excited to see whether Fred turns out to be as decisive a front-runner as John McCain…The guy who wasn’t even in the race is now the exciting new name, having decided that he would leave television for the purpose of entering television.”

Sen. John McCain, presidential candidate “The guy who had spent the most on consultants is on the verge, I think, of dropping out of the race, right after he collects his FEC [Federal Elections Commission] money.”

Robert Novak, conservative columnist and author “Sometimes he’s right and sometimes he’s just venomous….He was once a good reporter, he’s now just a personality.”

DEMOCRATS:

Al Gore, maker of documentary “An Inconvenient Truth” “[Not] in touch with reality. … The advertisement for his movie was the most viciously anti-animal advertising that I’ve seen in a long time. They had these little penguins walking on sand. It was terrible.”

Michael Moore, maker of documentary “Sicko” “I find Michael Moore so despicable I can’t imagine looking at a movie by him. It would be like looking at a movie by Goebbels.”

Chris Matthews, host of MSNBC’s “Hardball” “An utterly irrelevant, shallow television celebriity… (who) doesn’t know anything.”

Clinton and YouTube win South Carolina debate

(edited slightly) by Frank James - Chicago Tribune

Will we look back in months on the CNN/YouTube Democratic debate from South Carolina and see it as a turning point in the race?

Doubtful. While the novel use of the YouTube video gave the debate some flavor it wouldn’t have had if it had used the traditional journalistic panel pitching the questions, the debate was another encounter of the candidates that didn’t scramble the Democratic race’s dynamics.

Sen. Hillary Clinton did nothing to hurt herself and indeed put in another strong performance. She was smooth, informed, unflappable and with a touch of humor. Anytime the leader in the polls comes out of a debate unscathed, she or he is the winner by definition.

One of her best moments came at Sen. Barack Obama’s expense. Stephen Sorta of Diamond Bar, Calif. asked the candidates if they’d be willing in their first year in office to talk with the leaders who, from the viewpoint of U.S. policymakers, are considered the world’s troublemakers, including presidents Fidel Castro of Cuba, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran and Hugo Chavez of Venezuela.

Obama answered first and said he would hold such meetings. He didn’t qualify his answer. Big mistake.

SEN. OBAMA: I would. And the reason is this: That the notion that somehow not talking to countries is punishment to them, which has been the guiding diplomatic principle of this administration, is ridiculous. (Applause.) Ronald Reagan and Democratic presidents like JFK constantly spoke to the Soviet Union at a time when Ronald Reagan called them an evil empire. And the reason is because they understood that we may not trust them, they may pose an extraordinary danger to this country, but we have the obligation to find areas where we can potentially move forward.And I think that it is a disgrace that we have not spoken to them.

We’ve been talking about Iraq. One of the first things that I would do in terms of moving a diplomatic effort in the region forward is to send a signal that we need to talk to Iran and Syria, because they’re going to have responsibilities if Iraq collapses. They have been acting irresponsibly up until this point. But if we tell them that we are not going to be a permanent occupying force, we are in a position to say that they are going to have to carry some weight in terms of stabilizing the region.

Amazing answer, clearly dude is either way out of touch with reality or he is simply an idiot, pick one!

Anderson Cooper, the CNN star who served as debate moderator, turned to Sorta who just happened to be in the audience there at the Citadel and asked him what he thought.

If Sorta were a paid member of Clinton’s staff, he could not have tossed her a bigger softball. He said he wanted to hear her position. And, of course, Clinton gave a nuanced answer that was exactly right, downright presidential.

SEN. CLINTON: While I will not promise to meet with the leaders of these during my first year, I will promise a very vigorous diplomatic effort, because I think it is not that you promise a meeting at that high a level before you know what the intentions are. I don’t want to be used for propaganda purposes. I don’t want to make a situation even worse.

But I certainly agree that we need to get back to diplomacy, which has been turned into a bad word by this administration. And I will pursue very vigorous diplomacy, and I will use a lot of high-level presidential envoys to test the waters, to feel the way.But certainly we’re not going to just have our president meet with Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez and, you know, the president of North Korea, Iran and Syria until we know better what the way forward would be. (Applause.)

She had just taken Obama to school and he had to know it. If they had been playing tennis, she would have just scored on him with a passing shot that caught him moving in the wrong direction

It showed off her White House chops and his lack of them. Curiously, after the debate, CNN said some focus group in New Hampshire gave the debate to Obama. It was enough to make one wonder what debate they were watching.

Obama didn’t really have a comeback moment that made him grow in gravitas in comparison with Clinton. He needs such an occasion during a debate if he is to close the deal with many voters who still have trouble seeing him in the Oval Office because of his short resume in national politics. But it wasn’t forthcoming Monday night.

This is a segment from last nights Factor. I was interested in the one dude in the clip Peter Beinart.
He has this book out called “The Good Fight - Why liberals and only liberals can win the war on terror.
Now even before the segment starts I’m trying to process the utter nonsense at how any liberal can make the ridiculous assertion that liberals/Democrats actually have an answer in winning the war on terror.
None of the current crop of Democrats has an answer, other than to say now that “Bush has failed.”

I found an old article of his and he has been trying to play snake oil salesman in trying to convince people that Democrats are not the spineless weasel types all of us Americans know they are.

“if you look at all presidential elections since the Vietnam War, the disturbing reality is the Democratic Party has only won in those moments when the country turned inward. Carter won in 1976, when the country turned inward after Vietnam. It was the first election since 1948 when national security was not the issue that people told pollsters they were most concerned about. Then Clinton won in 1992, in the aftermath of the Cold War.

The truth is this: Unless the Democratic Party can change its image on national security, its only realistic hope of winning the White House is the hope that the war on terrorism is a passing phenomenon that will be over in a few years. Unfortunately, most Americans don’t believe that. Most experts don’t believe that. Most people see this as a generational struggle. And yet, you have to go back pre-Vietnam to find a precedent for how the Democratic Party can respond in a way that will win the country’s trust.”

From his article: Tough Liberalism - October 2005 - Link

This clip is not revealing anything specific, other than to illustrate how liberal Democrats don’t have a true and logical answer to solving the war on terror problem and Iraq. O’Reilly has a former Clinton administration National security “expert” and Beinart, and asks them specifically what would they do in Iraq and they can’t come up with an answer.

First the Democrats failed to get us out of Iraq, oops they did not have the votes, so now they will run the “Bush has failed in Iraq” bullshit.
Do these people think folks are not paying attention to this spin? Well unfortunately most folks are not.

I did not watch the You Tube debate. Frankly I think debates are totally useless.
The only purpose they serve is to briefly increase ratings for the networks.

Until you get down to the two actual candidates on each side of the political spectrum you simply will hear the same bullshit.

This You Tube debate was a good gimmick, but the problem was the people submitting questions likely were not really interested in the answers as they were getting their 15 minutes or 30 seconds of fame.

****

(Sf Gate) CNN billed the Democratic presidential debate it sponsored Monday with YouTube, the online video-sharing site, as “revolutionary” and a “historic experiment.” By uploading a 30-second video to YouTube, voters could directly question a presidential candidate during the debate.

The hope was that this blending of new and old media — with questions from tech-savvy individuals and moderation by CNN’s Anderson Cooper — would elicit less-rehearsed answers than do most debates and bring new people into the political process.

Or, as Zach Kempf of Provo, Utah, the first video questioner, put it to the candidates: “What’s going to make you any more effectual, beyond all the platitudes and the stuff we’re used to hearing? I mean, be honest with us. How are you going to be any different?”

It might have been the first debate in which the questions — 39 chosen from 2,989 submitted — were more important than the answers. They provided a peek into a new media landscape, which can shape opinions well after the initial broadcast. The questions and answers will live online at www.youtube.com/debates and will be debated, dissected and commented on online long after the professional spin doctors and audience have left the debate hall at the Citadel in South Carolina.

Over the past few weeks, CNN and YouTube invited people to upload 30-second videos of themselves asking the candidates a question. Five members of CNN’s political team, plus debate moderator Cooper, chose which questions would be included.

The answers might have included standard boilerplate from the candidates, but analysts said the hybrid format showed the value of giving the public a greater say in questioning the political candidates.

“It greatly exceeded my expectations,” said Michael Cornfield, a professor of political management at George Washington University and author of “Politics Moves Online: Campaigning.” “I think the format was a winner.”

“What worked beautifully here was the combination of the best of new and old media,” said Peter Leyden, an analyst with the New Politics Institute, which melds new media and politics.

It certainly was the first presidential debate in which a question was asked from someone’s bathroom or from a refugee camp in Darfur. Questions were asked by atheists and a melting animated snowman as well as by a man who asked the candidates what they’d do to protect his baby — a large rifle laid across his lap.

Other videos conveyed a poignancy that e-mailed questions often cannot. A man caring for a relative with Alzheimer’s disease asked a health-care question as he sat next to that person. A disabled man held up cards asking his question. A daughter sat next to her mother with diabetes and asked about how people like her could be helped.

A father who had lost a son in combat asked, “Dear Presidential Candidates, see those three flags over my shoulder? They covered the coffins of my grandfather, my father and my oldest son. Someday, mine will join them. I do not want to see my youngest sons join them. I have two questions. By what date after Jan. 21st, 2009, will all U.S. troops be out of Iraq? And how many family members do you have serving in uniform?”

A couple who billed themselves as “Mary and Jen from Brooklyn” asked, “If you were elected president of the United States, would you allow us to be married — to each other?”

The candidates were asked questions that professional journalists — or even people who participate in “town hall-style” debates — wouldn’t. How do the candidates talk to their children about sex? Would they serve as president for minimum wage? Do they send their kids to public school?

While the tone and phrasing of the questions sounded different from the legions of presidential debates, some of the answers sounded like dodges. Even when the questioner asked them not to.

“It’s a question in the back of everybody’s head,” asked Will, an African American man from Boston. “You know, in some people, it’s further back than others, collecting cobwebs. But is African Americans ever going to get reparations for slavery? I know you all are going to run around this question, dipping and dodging, so let’s see how far you all can get.”

Only Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, said he was in favor of reparations.

“I was disappointed how a lot of the time, there was a really heartfelt question asked, but the candidates did a jujitsu to get around it,” Leyden said.

Leyden and others praised Cooper for pressing the candidates to answer the questions, twice asking Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., if she was in favor of sending U.S. troops to Darfur. She wasn’t.

So what’s the difference between a YouTube-style debate and a town-hall one, where viewers can see the questioner’s reaction to the answer?

“The difference is that these questions feel different, they sound different, they have a personal feel to them,” said Sam Feist, CNN’s political director said Monday. He was one of five CNN employees who chose the debate questions. “They are not questions journalists would ask,” and citizen-questioners aren’t as relaxed asking questions live on TV in front of a presidential candidate as they are at home.

Afterward, viewers were invited to comment on the candidates’ answers both on YouTube’s site, www.youtube.com, and CNN.com as well as on myriad other sites.

“The one twist I’d add,” Cornfield said, “would be to enable people to rate the answers right away.”

Cornfield didn’t like the candidate-produced videos. “They seemed like warmed-over versions of their campaign commercials. I’d lose those.”

While videos — produced both by the campaigns and by third-party candidates — have become the buzz of the current presidential campaigns, they’re still a fledgling enterprise. According to a report to be released Wednesday by the Pew Internet & American Life Project, 15 percent of adult Internet users say they have watched or downloaded political videos online and 2 percent report doing so on a typical day.

The aim of this new partnership of new and old media is that it will bring more people into the process. Surveys show that younger people generally glean their political news from online sources, while older folks generally watch the debate on television.

“This is one of those things where you throw things up against the wall and see what sticks,” said Mary Madden, a senior research specialist at the Pew Internet & American Life Project.

CNN began hyping the debate on-air breathlessly before dawn Monday. A “countdown clock” appeared in the corner of the screen, ticking off the minutes until the debate started. As of 1:18 p.m. Monday, the CBS News blog noted that CNN and its affiliate channel Headline News aired 92 mentions or promotional spots of the debate during the day.

“The countdown is on to a presidential politics as you’ve never seen it before,” John Roberts, co-anchor of CNN’s “American Morning” told viewers before dawn Monday.

This kind of hype isn’t likely to change. CNN political director Feist told The Chronicle Monday, “What are you supposed to do? You want people to see your debate. You’ve got to tell them when it’s on.”

(AP)The northeastern city of New Haven will on Tuesday become the first town in the United States to make identity cards available to illegal immigrants, as part of efforts to crack down on crime.

Authorities in the small Connecticut city best known as the home of Yale University approved the plan last month. It is intended to make illegal immigrants more willing to report crimes and enable them to open bank accounts.

Illegal immigrants are considered reluctant to report crimes because police routinely ask for identification and are targeted in robberies because it is known they are unable to keep their cash in bank accounts, officials said.

“We’ve seen undocumented immigrants and their neighbors become the victims of robbery, assault and in one case even murder because thieves know they often carry large sums of cash,” Mayor John DeStefano said last month.

“By eliminating this barrier to banking services, we expect to make New Haven safe for all of its residents,” he added.

New Haven’s approach is unusual, coming at a time when illegal immigrants in much of the rest of the United States are facing a crackdowns and raids.

A small number of anti-immigration protestors rallied against the new scheme when it was approved last month, according to local reports.

 “He was well done.”

That’s what one woman said Monday after helping her son apprehend an alleged child rapist using her barbecue meat fork.

“I stuck him in his butt!” Linda Rhodes told MyFOXdfw.com, explaining how she and her son John Jennings apprehended the 17-year-old suspect Friday night in Garland, Texas.

Click here to watch the video report from MyFOXdfw.com.

Jennings was barbecuing chicken when he heard a 7-year-old boy calling for help. He said he saw the suspect, Deshaun Ridge, on top of the child, allegedly raping the boy.

“He stood up, and I just punched him right in the face,” Jennings said. “He put his hands up and I grabbed him, and we went fighting.”

Rhodes called police and then jumped into the fight to help her son apprehend the suspect. They held Ridge until police arrived.”

They were citizens that jumped in, most definitely, and did a good deed,” Joe Harn, a spokesman for the Garland Police Department, told MyFOXdfw.com. “These people are heroes.”

Found on El Borak, funny!

When Bill Cosby lectures ignorant ass black folks for doing dumb shit, not getting an education, gang violence, and cranking out illegitimate babies he is attacked by black intellectuals, but Obama does it, (as a photo op basically) he is exhibiting “tough love.”
What a fucken joke!

WASHINGTON — A day after release of a poll saying Hillary Clinton has a significant lead over Barack Obama among black Democrats in the race for their party’s presidential nomination, the Illinois senator visited a poor, crime-ridden, largely black section of this city.

There, Obama did something Clinton and the other Democratic candidates wouldn’t dare do: He offered urban blacks both a strategy for improving their lives — and criticism for the way some of them behave.

“We stand not 10 miles from the seat of power in the most affluent nation on earth,” Obama told the crowd packing the auditorium of THEARC, a community building that is a national model for urban renewal. “And yet here, on the other side of the river, every other child in Anacostia lives below the poverty line. Too many do not graduate, and too many more do not find work. Some join gangs, and others fall to their gunfire.”

The remedies he offered were a mix of government programs to attack the unemployment, poor housing and failing schools that afflict too many urban neighborhoods — and an admonition “that the problems of absent fathers or persistent crime” need to be addressed by blacks.

“It makes a difference when a father realizes that responsibility does not end at conception, when he understands that what makes you a man is not the ability to have a child but the courage to raise one,” Obama said. “It makes a difference when a parent turns off the TV once in a while, puts away the video games, and starts reading to their child, and getting involved in their education.”

The senator’s words, which drew cheers and applause from his overwhelmingly black audience, echoed the tough-love speech he gave earlier this month to the black congregation of Chicago’s Vernon Park Church of God. He went there to talk about the violence that had taken the lives of 32 Chicago children during the past school year.

“There is only so much government can do,” Obama said. “We have an entire generation of young men in our society who have become products of violence. And we have to break the cycle. … If we don’t change how we raise our children, it doesn’t matter how many programs come in here, how much money comes in here. It doesn’t matter how many politicians come in here, how many times we pray. It doesn’t matter.”

During his 1992 campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination, Bill Clinton used an appearance at the Rev. Jesse Jackson’s National Rainbow Coalition convention to criticize the behavior of Sister Souljah, a black rapper, who he believed endorsed the killing of whites during rioting in Los Angeles. Clinton’s comments outraged Jackson, who demanded an apology.

Clinton didn’t apologize, which may have contributed to a drop in black support for him on Election Day. He got 82 percent of the black vote, the lowest total of any Democratic presidential candidate since 1960.

Blacks don’t like being lectured to by white politicians. But Obama believes that the more blacks get to know him, the more receptive they’ll be to his message of government obligation and personal responsibility. After his speech, Obama told me he expects his support among blacks to grow.

“I am absolutely convinced that if they know my record, they’ll say this is somebody who has fought and took more political risks on behalf of the African-American community,” said the first-term senator. “It’s not just a photo op commitment. It’s been a consistent commitment all my life that is reinforced when I tuck in my little girls at night because I’ve got to work to make sure they have the same rights and opportunities as anyone else.”

It’s this connection to the black community, both personal and emotional, that allows Obama to deliver dual messages of political hope and social responsibility to blacks — messages that may cause many more of them to embrace his presidential campaign.

Why would black folks support him, remember this: Obama: to support a racist KKK bastard Robert Byrd.

Obama Reaches Out With Tough Love

Russell Simmons calls Obama “a mouse”

Obama’s blackness subject of debate

Barack don’t like you white folks, imagine that!

GREAT!

This was posted by Paul over at Wizbang

I really should not be surprised by the lack of critical thinking skills by the folks on the left. But for whatever reason I keep being shocked by its absence.

Our friends over a Wizbang Blue link a video that has all the liberal children giggling with glee…

You know the video is a loser by who links it (Wizbang Blue and Andrew Sullivan) and that fact is further confirmed when the video opens with that well known political scientist Jon Stewart.

What is sad when you watch the video however is how it appeals to the lower end of the IQ scale. If you’d like to save the 7 minutes, it comes down to Bush “lied” about weapons of mass destruction because we did not find them.

Of course the whole thing is predictably devoid of any reason or thought. No mention of the various times Bill Clinton and a plethora of Democrats said Saddam had WMD… No mention that the governments of France, Israel, Russia, Australia and the U.N. itself all said Saddam had weapons of mass destruction.

Of course no mention Saddam himself said he had weapons of mass destruction but then later said he didn’t. And certainly no mention Saddam had weapons of mass destruction at one point and even used them on his own people.

Perhaps what is most disturbing however, is the perpetuation of logic a 3rd grader would reject. If someone said something that later turned out to be incorrect then they had to be lying. The intelligence couldn’t have been simply wrong. Of course Bush knew -better than the combined intelligence services of the entire planet- that Saddam had no weapons but he lied. We know because we have a poorly cut video.

There is no other way to say it. It’s sad these people are just so damn stupid.

DITTO!******

Since Democrats and liberals like that dumbass Raven can’t come clean intellectually you have to keep reminding them that all of the media and blog misrepresentation of the history behind Iraq cannot be swept under the rug.
You certainly can choose to ignore it, but thanks to You Tube the words and deeds of these dishonest liberal Democrats can be played back over and over.

Frankly all of the Democrats candidates for president are as dishonest as they can be.
Let me make this real simple WE ARE NEVER LEAVING IRAQ, any talk of troop withdrawal and leaving Iraq is a bunch of bullshit and even if Mrs. Bill Clinton is elected president she more than anybody on the Democrat side knows how our military presence in Iraq (with that moronic dictator in Iran) is crucial to our security and national interest.

I love recycling these clips, unless Democrats can successfully blow up You Tube headquarters where these video reside, they can’t run from them, they can’t explain them away.

Bush Lied

Gore criticizes Bush for ignoring Iraq’s ties to terrorism

Democrats Hypocrisy Over The Iraq War

Democrat Hypocrisy on Iraq

Neal Bortz get to the point in this article;

At this point I’m sure that I don’t have to do to much to bring you up to speed on Michael Vick and his latest troubles. A federal grand jury has indicted Vick on charges related to dog fighting. That may be just the beginning. The State of Virginia has yet to be heard from, and as I understand it mere ownership of property on which dog fights are held is a felony under Virginia law. Just one felony conviction and Vick is through with professional football in this country.

Let’s put this “innocent until proven guilty” nonsense to rest right here at the beginning. When you kill someone you are a killer. If you do so in violation of the law; if it is not in self defense, for instance, you are a murderer. A person who kills a girlfriend because she merely wants out of the relationship is a murderer as soon as his victim’s heart stops beating .. you don’t have to wait for a jury to come in with a verdict.

So, where does this “innocent until proven guilty” stuff come in? The presumption of innocence is, in my view, a limitation that is primarily place on government. Generally speaking, only government can use force – deadly force – to deprive you of your property, your liberty or your life. If the government is going to do so as punishment for the commission of a crime, then the government must afford you your constitutional rights and prove your guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. It is the government, then, that must consider you to be innocent until otherwise proven. After the act, the rapist is only innocent in the eyes of government. The victim views him quite differently.

O.J. Simpson is a murderer. There is not one rational-thinking American familiar with knowledge of the facts of his case who honestly believes otherwise. A renegade jury failed to convict him however, so the government cannot punish him for his butchery. If O.J. objects to my characterization of him as a murderer he has civil remedies he can pursue. I, however, am powerless to punish him for the slaughter of his wife and Ron Goldman.

Now .. back to Vick. Personally, I have no doubt that he knew of and was a willing and eager participant in this blood “sport” of dog fighting. I’m an animal lover. I particularly love dogs. I would have no problem whatsoever seeing him serve some time in jail for his crime. I believe that people can be judged by how they treat animals. If what they allege about Michael Vick is true then he is completely lacking any sense of morality and human decency. Jail might be too good for him. Better to baste him in steak sauce and throw him into a cage full of the very dogs he so loved to brutalize.

Read the rest here

This from Atlas Shrugs

Gateway has been following it all here. 

The Weekly Standard Blog has been leading the efforts to find the truth behind the disgusting anti-military hit pieces at The New Republic.

Today, Multi-National Force Iraq responded to the horrific allegations of war crimes at the liberal magazine. It is more evidence that the writer who goes by the name “Scott Thomas” at The New Republic is slandering the troops in Iraq:

Read the rest here

***** 

Michelle Malkin has more anti military from Daily Kos: “KILLITARY” and the Daily Kos Update: Who is “liquidman?” 
The diary has now been deleted. It was cross-posted here and now that post has also been deleted. Ace had a correspondent who was able to save and capture the post’s text. Here’s the intro:

KILLITARY: Are America’s Armed Forces Creating Serial Killers and Mass Murderers?

This article in no way is meant to suggest that all miltary members will become serial killers or mass murderers. It does point out a serious problem with what is happening in our armed forces and seeks a solution to help the brave men and women on their return back home.

According to the July 30, 2007 issue of The Nation magazine, damning photos of a U.S. Soldier using a spoon to literally scoop out the brains of a dead Iraqi and pretending to eat the gray matter were recently acquired.

Of course, everyone is appropriately appalled and make all claims of disgust and finger-wagging. Research shows, however, that such unacceptable behavior happens more often than the United States military wants you to know.

When it comes to training killing machines, the military really does create “an Army of one.”

The list of serial killers and mass murderers borne from the military is astounding.

Read more at Michelle Malkin

Am I missing something, are white people being beamed off the planet without my knowledge?
How intellectually vacant must you be to even ask such a question.

I will say there are a lot of really stupid white men (women too) serving in a politically elected capacity across this nation, however unfortunately you can’t get rid of all of them.

Old white guys stick together and if you think for one minute some of these old white guys would allow their grip on this nation to slip you are sadly mistaken.

What keeps an individual like John Edwards from being president is not that he is a white man, but he is a REALLY STUIPD, shallow and fake ass white man.

These people can’t hide their stupidity anymore and it takes more than a being a nice looking white guy with a good smile and a nice tie to get elected.

ALSO: John Edwards Is The Sexiest Woman Alive

Ann Coulter is right he is gay!

A couple of posts from Moonbattery that caught my attention. 

 Big Raise For Publicly Employed Illegal Aliens

When state officials discovered that Spring Valley, New York Mayor George Darden was hiring illegal aliens, they quickly set the situation right — by commanding him to raise their wages by 300%.

Both federal and state funds are being spent on the urban renewal project for which Darden recruited the illegals. He was paying them $10/hour in cash, in violation of state wage laws. But he won’t be prosecuted, any more than the illegals will be prosecuted — they’re now making $40/hour, courtesy of taxpayers.

So much for getting cheap labor in exchange for our border security — if not our national sovereignty — having been reduced to a joke.

*******

Illegal Alien Molests Little Boy

If you’re an illegal alien, you don’t have to get drunk and crash your car head on into a State Trooper to get the attention of the authorities. Another way to do it is to molest a 13-year-old boy, as foreign derelict Jesus Mora Nava did after luring the kid to his encampment with alcohol.

Nava had already been deported at least once, and had been arrested for the public intoxication characteristic of Harry Reid’s “undocumented Americans.”

Maybe a fence will be in place by the time he gets out of jail, so that after his next deportation he won’t just bounce back again — but I wouldn’t bet on it.

Josh Gerstein - New York Sun 

The Sun caused quite a stir back in March by reporting that a Democratic presidential candidate, John Edwards, might be aiming to go down in history as America’s first woman president.

That story was based on comments from a longtime abortion-rights activist, Kate Michelman. But now look who’s chiming in: none other than Mr. Edwards’s wife, Elizabeth. She tells Salon that her husband could be better for women than Mrs. Clinton.Our March story was criticized in various quarters, including by the liberal media-watchdog group Media Matters, which seemed most upset that Rush Limbaugh picked up on the item to poke fun at Mr. Edwards’s manliness.

Mr. Limbaugh’s use of our material notwithstanding, it seems that the central thrust of the story, namely that Mr. Edwards is intent on billing himself as more of a feminist than Mrs. Clinton, is borne out by Mrs. Edwards’s latest verbal salvo at the Clinton camp.

Lake County’s most notorious party hosts have been found guilty of violating the state Liquor Control Act, nine months after two teenage boys died in a car accident at the end of their driveway during a drinking party in their home.

Jeffrey Hutsell, 53, and Sara Hutsell, 52, were found guilty Saturday of three of the four charges related to the drinking party their son held in the basement of their Deerfield home last Oct. 13.

The Hutsells stood and stared motionless in Lake County Circuit Court as the verdict on each count was read after nearly seven hours of jury deliberations.

• Use of residence in violation of the Liquor Control Act: guilty.

• Endangering the life of health of a minor: guilty.

• Attempt to obstruct justice by providing police with false information: guilty.

• Obstruction of justice by tampering with evidence: not guilty

The convictions underscore the importance of parents being more responsible for what happens in their home, said Lake County State’s Attorney Michael Waller.

“You cannot host underage drinking parties in your home,” Waller said. “It’s a difficult issue, (but) we’re very pleased with the verdicts.”

On Oct. 13, 2006 — the night of Deerfield High School’s homecoming football game — the Hutsells’ 18-year-old son, Jonathan, threw a party that prosecutors say was attended by no fewer than 29 teenagers. A number of them have admitted to drinking at the time, but the Hutsells maintained throughout the trial that they were unaware that minors were consuming alcohol. The Hutsells were upstairs during the party and watched a baseball game.

Around 11:30 p.m. on the night of the party, two 18-year-olds were killed in a one-car crash at the end of the Hutsells’ driveway that Deerfield police linked to alcohol, marijuana and excessive speed. Ross Trace of Riverwoods, a senior at Deerfield High, and Daniel Bell of Bannockburn, a 2006 Deerfield graduate, were killed and three other teens in the same car were injured when Bell drove into a tree, reportedly on their way back to the Hutsell house, after smoking marijuana.

The deaths of Trace and Bell drew immense attention to the case. Press photographers and broadcast news cameramen stalked the Hutsells at each of their preliminary court appearances and throughout the trial. After Saturday’s verdict, the Hutsells snuck out of the courthouse through an underground entrance, along with their attorneys, without talking to the press.

In rare Saturday court action, the jury heard nearly three hours of closing arguments from the defense and prosecution before beginning deliberations.

The judge also decided to allow in evidence the arrests of Jonathan Hutsell in January and June 2006 for on charges of underage drinking.

Prosecutor Ari Fisz told them that the Hutsells had created an environment in their home that condoned underage drinking.

“This is a case about the disturbing lack of parental responsibility,” Fisz said. “These defendants want you to believe they had no idea what was going on in the basement, despite the fact that they were one staircase away the entire night.”

Fisz and lead prosecutor Christen Bishop spent much of their closing arguments on blasting the Hutsells for allowing drinking in their home.

“These are not kids who are flying under the radar screen,” Bishop said. “These are parents who turned the radar off. They were the weak link in the parenting chain that night.”

The Hutsells’ defense attorneys, Robert Gevirtz and Elliot Pinsel countered these claims by telling the jury that their clients did not know the teens were drinking and that they never saw alcohol.

Gevirtz told the jury that his client, Jeffery Hutsell was an upstanding person and would not idly sit by and allow kids to drink.

“The only question is did he know (they were drinking)? It’s not what he should have done. It’s not what he could have done,” Gevirtz said. “The kids made their own decisions. They made the decision to drink, they made the decision to go to the car and smoke dope.”

During the course of the six-day trial, a number of the teenagers who attended the party testified, each giving an account of what they recalled. Some testified they remembered seeing Jeffrey Hutsell in the basement, with booze clearly evident. Others claimed the alcohol was hidden and that Jeffrey Hutsell never visited the basement.

Pinsel spent time Saturday questioning the credibility of Deerfield police detectives, accusing them of twisting information to get a conviction on a high-profile case.

Deerfield Police Chief John Sliozis said after the trial that he was fully confident in his officers’ credibility.

“They acted appropriately,” he said. “We were obviously very happy with the way it turned out.”

From the blog Red State 

There was a vote in the US Senate on the evening of July 19th on an amendment by Susan Collins. The purpose of the amendment was to provide limited immunity for reports of suspicious behavior and response. 60 yea votes were needed for passage, and it fell short by 3 votes. All 39 No votes were cast by Democrats.

Go to Red State for the list of Democrats

 I put an asterisk beside the name of each Senator who is up for reelection in 2008. Maybe some of them have a safe seat, but I think every one of them should called out for their vote. Every one of them should be asked to explain why they want everybody who reports suspicious behavior subjected to facing lawsuits filed against them by CAIR & company. History shows us that terrorist attacks are thwarted by reports of suspicious behavior from ordinary citizens. example: the Ft Dix six. We need to seize on every misstep these Democratic congresscritters up for reelection in ‘08 take, and call them out on them.

By Thomas Sowell - Hey Raven pay attention 

When my research assistant and her husband took my wife and me to dinner at a Chinese restaurant, I was impressed when I heard her for the first time speak Chinese as she ordered food. My assistant was born and raised in China, so I should have been impressed that she spoke English. But I took that for granted because she always spoke English to me.

We all have a tendency to take for granted what we are used to, and to regard it as somehow natural or automatic — and to be unduly impressed by what is unusual. Too many Americans take the United States for granted and are too easily impressed by what people in other countries say and do.

That is especially true of the intelligentsia, and dangerously true of those Supreme Court justices who cite foreign laws when making decisions about American law.

There is nothing automatic about the way of life achieved in this country. It is very unusual among the nations of the world today and rarer than four-leaf clovers in the long view of history.

It didn’t just happen. People made it happen – and they and those who came after them paid a price in blood and treasure to create and preserve this nation that we now take for granted. More important, this country’s survival is not automatic. What we do will determine that. Too many Americans today are not only unconcerned about what it will take to preserve this country but are busy dismantling the things that make it America.

Our national motto, “E Pluribus Unum” — from many, one — has been turned upside down as educators, activists and politicians strive to fragment the American population into separate racial, social, linguistic and ideological blocs. Some are gung ho for generic “change” — without the slightest concern that the change might be for the worse, even in a world where most nations that are different are also worse off. Most are worse economically and many are much worse off in terms of despotism, corruption, and bloodshed.

History is full of nations and even whole civilizations that have fallen from the heights to destitution and disintegration. The Roman Empire is a classic example, but the great ancient Chinese dynasties, the Ottoman Empire and many others have met the same fate. These were not just political “changes.” They were historic catastrophes from which whole peoples did not recover for centuries. It has been estimated that it was a thousand years before Europeans again achieved as high a standard of living as they had in Roman times. The Dark Ages were called dark for a reason

Today, whole classes of people get their jollies and puff themselves up by denigrating and denouncing American society. Such people are a major influence in our media, in our educational system and among all sorts of vocal activists. Nothing illustrates their power to distort reality like the way they seize upon slavery to denounce American society.

Slavery was cancerous but does anybody regard cancer in the United States as an evil peculiar to American society? It is a worldwide affliction and so was slavery. Both the enslavers and the enslaved have included people on every inhabited continent — people of every race, color, and creed. More Europeans were enslaved and taken to North Africa by Barbary Coast pirates alone than there were African slaves taken to the United States and to the colonies from which it was formed.

Yet throughout our educational system, our media, and in politics, slavery is incessantly presented as if it were something peculiar to black and white Americans. What was peculiar about the United States was that it was the first country in which slavery was under attack from the moment the country was created.

What was peculiar about Western civilization was that it was the first civilization to destroy slavery, not only within its own countries but in other countries around the world as well.

Reality has been stood on its head so that a relative handful of people can feel puffed up or gain notoriety and power. Whatever they gain, the rest of us have everything to lose.

My bud El Borak sent this to me, oh man this was Root Beer out the nose funny!

Oh stop yelling at your computer you touchy liberals, get a sense of humor!!

No, respond now you wannabe street thug. BTW, I’m neither a “white liberal” or “Illegal”, you hood rat poser. The political pendulum is swinging and if you don’t like the direction that it’s swinging in, well, you know you can always go back to where you came from. Another dumbass primate falling for the “illegal” american hysteria—raven

Ah Raven I love ya. You are the very reason why I have this blog. I rarely get the opportunity to hav