I have to laugh about this thread. It's very sad seeing angry posters criticizing another posters misspelling.

When, in past, I mentioned that some posters were challenged by basic sentence structure and spelling I received a five day ban.

So, here it goes! I only hope if I am banned for pointing out the obvious the other offenders will be banned as well.

Until you can write a readable sentence please do not criticize your fellow posters spelling, sentence structure or choice of words.

It really says more about you than about the person you are attempting to criticize when you sloppily post those sorts of attacks. Oh, and what it says isn't positive.

I have a little trouble with the aren't they related stuff.

Female DNA can be traced back to...I may be wrong on the numbers...approximately seven women world wide. Lots of connections there.

Once you narrow the connections to North America any enterprising genealogist can connect through marriage and the rest all sorts of people.

However, if you can prove a familial connection between people it might get my attention. Were they sitting down to dinner regularly? Were they involved in a family business?

If who you are related to is an issue then...ummm well we've had that discussion here already.

Here's some more food for thought.

The Libertarian Case for Obama
Seven potential upsides to a hope-monger presidency

Terry Michael | September 19, 2008

For those who recognize that "libertarian Democrat" is no more oxymoronic than "libertarian Republican," a solid case can be made for Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) as a Leader of the Free World who won't take that American Exceptionalism conceit as seriously as "Country First" Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.).

Sure, we'll have to endure four or even eight years of warbling by Barbra Streisand at White House dinners. And I am under no illusions: Obama has more Populist-Progressive than Madisonian inclinations. But, guys and gals, Ms. Wasilla is no less stomach-churning than Babs. And the actual Republican presidential candidate is even more authoritarian than his Progressive hero, Teddy Roosevelt. John McCain is no friend of Friedman.

Thus, seven reasons libertarians can hope for the best from Obama.

1. Sen. Obama has met at least one war he doesn't love. His early pronouncements against the criminal enterprise in Iraq are enough reason, in themselves, to vote his way on November 4. Anyone paying the least attention must conclude that Lt. McCain's "cause greater than self" always involves the Army, the Navy, and the United States Marines (not necessarily in that order.)

2. The election of an African-American will end liberal racism as we know it. If an overwhelmingly white nation chooses a black leader, the Jesse Jacksons and other Mau Mauers for identity-based group preferences will be put out of business, as I explained here.

3. One word: Osmosis. You couldn't live in Hyde Park or teach at the University of Chicago with the intellectual curiosity of a Barack Obama without gaining at least some understanding of libertarian economics. That can't be said for most of the reactionary left-liberal wing of the Democratic Party dominating Capitol Hill. But I believe Obama is educable on free markets and I'm convinced that Democrats are ripe for a return in the next decade to the liberalism of our party's founder, Thomas Jefferson (I made this case two years ago in my libertarian Democrat manifesto.)

4. Obama is the best hope for keeping government out of your bedroom and away from your body. As would any Democratic standard-bearer, the senator from Illinois represents the pro-choice, pro-gay rights side of the cultural divide. And he has at least made interesting soundings about reducing America's status as the world's number one jailer, much of which is tied to drug offenses and other crimes without victims. No libertarian can feel comfortable with a Republican candidate who doesn't echo the personal choices demanded by his supposed hero, Barry Goldwater.

5. The hidden hand did well this month punishing stupidity. But libertarians committed to free markets, not corporate oligarchs, must pause to consider the need for field-leveling regulation. More precisely, we should ask whether there was sufficient enforcement of reasonable restraints already in place. We need Republicans to stand against excessive tinkering in markets, of course. But my modest retirement fund may be safer with Democratic regulators in charge than rogue elephants.

6. R-E-S-P-E-C-T. Yes, we need to restore America's reputation around the world. Anybody who's traveled beyond the Atlantic and Pacific in the past eight years knows America needs a makeover. Whatever you think of Barack Obama—unless, like the mindless U!S!A! crowd, you don't care what the world thinks—he will restore much of the goodwill we have lost when he raises his hand on January 20, 2009. That's significant for libertarians who believe in the importance of the nation most committed to free markets and free minds—ours—leading by example. More-of-the-McSame in foreign policy is something we can't afford.

7. Finally, Barack Obama is smart enough to follow the aspirations of the Gen Y, Millenials, and Echo Boomers next up on the American political stage. They want choices in both their bank accounts and their bedrooms. I don't have much empirical evidence for that, though the college students I teach suggest that such libertarian leanings are on the rise. After all, a generation growing up with an explosion of mega-data-informed choices literally at its keyboard fingertips will resemble the self-sufficient, liberty-loving founders of the Agrarian Age more than they'll resemble the social welfare liberals of the Industrial Era who gave us one-size-fits-all central authority mandates.

The oldest candidate in American history won't inspire such potentially libertarian change—but the senator from Illinois can. It's change in which you and I can believe, whether or not we believe in any candidate, including Barack Obama.

Terry Michael is Director of the non-partisan Washington Center for Politics & Journalism and former press secretary for the Democratic National Committee. He blogs at www.terrymichael.net.

haha Excellent tmgx165!

My dog wants a steak!

How can I tell? She's has her back turned (because she knows begging is unacceptable), pretending not to care while she steals backwards glances, drools and some what subtly threatens the cat to keep her out of begging range.

Humm perhaps the dogs and cats are just waiting for us all to kill each other in a storm of stupidity and violence? hehe

New Hampshire also has made some noise about holding Bush and Cheney up to charges.

Nice to see some people in this country still have principles.

The Foley situation is pretty stinky. I suspect the parents of the children involved may not want to expose the kids to the media circus that would grow out of a prosecution. If that's so don't think it's a good decision but I do understand.

No matter our political affiliation I think there may be some agreement that adults who prey on children are scum. It's pretty clear he is scum. I was sad to hear he will not be held accountable.

But...that's not a decision made in Vermont.

There's and interesting article about McCain, Obama and the issue of executive power. The full text can be found at http://www.slate.com/id/2200408/

Because the issues of wiretapping, executive power and FISA have come up on these forums I grabbed this little snippet that makes some mention of the issue to post for discussion.

McCain pledges never to use a signing statement—the somewhat symbolic but nevertheless crazy-making evidence that the Bush administration was doing its utmost to supersede Congress. McCain also says that if Congress definitively says that a "specific interrogation technique" is off-limits, the president can't approve its use anyway. But McCain also declines to name a single use of executive power by the Bush administration that is unconstitutional or even just "a bad idea." And in May he went on his infamous tear about the federal judiciary, blasting the judges "common and systematic abuse of our federal courts"—never mind that at this point the majority are Republican appointees. (If anyone was wondering whether McCain would toe the line and appoint archconservative justices in the model of John Roberts and Samuel Alito, as he'd promised, this should have quelled such doubts.)

As for Obama, he has been consistently strong in saying the president can't hold detainees he decides are enemy combatants without charges, and on preserving the right to habeas corpus—the means by which the Guantanamo detainees might actually challenge their enemy combatant status in court someday. The Bush administration has cast all of this as a fight for supremacy between the executive and the courts, so Obama's position would be a major easing of tensions. Obama also told Savage that "the President does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation." And he said the president can't ignore Congress on troop deployments, while McCain complained about Congress micromanaging wars. Given how imperial the American presidency has become over the last half-century, Congress isn't good at taking power back for itself. So, Obama looks like he has the legislature's back.

*COUGH*

Random or not so random comment of the day....you decide!

Almira Gulch! Just because you own half the county doesn't mean you have the power to run the rest of us. For twenty-three years, I've been dying to tell you what I thought of you. And now, well, being a Christian woman, I can't say it.

I haven't been waiting twenty-three years.../smirk

We are the American people.

Let's let that soak in a sec...haha like it will.

I am not willing to give much more personal information on this site than I already have.

Why? Well, first of all there is no reason for me to reveal anything to the likes of you.

What I or what my family have given to this country for generations is a private matter. I don't have to crow about my or our service, education, public service or sacrifice.

Why? Because I consider it a privileged to serve and sacrifice and I find it cheap and hollow when others crow about it theirs as if it makes them some how better than other Americans, who they know nothing about.

There's another reason I don't want to share much more information here on this site. The aggression and hatred shown towards those who don't toe the right wing line here is getting alittle worrisome.

I love it.

If you think about it each character is is pain in the ass. They are all flawed but friends none the less.

Here's a bit with Bruce Campbell for fans who may not have seen it.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/14/arts/television/14rhod.html?_r=3&ref=arts&oref=slogin&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

This article is mind-boggling to me.

People so offended by women of faith being pastors they magazine is hidden under the counter?

We hear stories of women subjugated in Muslim countries and feign outrage while we have this sort of thing going on int he U.S?

100 Christian bookstores remove "Gospel Today" magazine from stock because there are fully clothed women on the cover

Smiling women on the cover of a slick magazine. Sold from under the counter. Must request it from store clerk.

That’s not something a buyer would typically find in a Christian bookstore. Not unless it’s one of the more than 100 Lifeway Christian Bookstores across the United States, including about six in metro Atlanta.

Gospel Today, the Fayetteville-published magazine, was pulled off the racks by the bookstores’ owner, the Southern Baptist Convention. The problem? The five smiling women on the cover are women of the cloth — church pastors.

Southern Baptist polity says that’s a role reserved for men.
Teresa Hairston, owner of Gospel Today, whose glossy pages feature upbeat articles about health, living, music and ministry, said she discovered by e-mail that the September/October issue of the magazine had been demoted to the realm of the risque.

“It’s really kind of sad when you have people like [Gov.] Sarah Palin and [Sen.] Hillary Clinton providing encouragement and being role models for women around the world that we have such a divergent opinion about women who are able to be leaders in the church,” Hairston said. “I was pretty shocked.”

Chris Turner, a spokesman for Lifeway Resources, which runs the stores for the Southern Baptist Convention, said, “It is contrary to what we believe.”

It bases those beliefs on their interpretation of New Testament Scriptures.

Southern Baptist representatives at national meetings have adopted statements saying women should not be pastors, but each church is independent. A few churches have selected women, such as Decatur First Baptist, where the Rev. Julie Pennington-Russell preaches each Sunday from the pulpit.
Pastor Tamara Bennett of California is one of the featured pastors on the magazine cover and talks in the article about the challenges of breaking through the stained-glass ceiling.
“God’s assignment is that no souls are lost and all are saved,” Bennett said. “Gender is not how God sees it. We are about winning souls, period.”

Southern Baptists are not the only ones to frown on women preachers. Catholics, the largest Christian denomination in the nation, do not allow women priests. And some conservative evangelical groups, such as the Presbyterian Church in America, do not ordain women.
“We weren’t trying to pick a fight,” Hairston said. “We just did a story on an emerging trend in a lot of churches.”

QS you don't have any idea what the administration is using the Patriot Act for. No one really does unless they are working inside the government agencies that oversee it's programs. Even those that are working within government agencies only know bits and pieces.

Neither you nor I know if we are more or less safe as a result of these programs.

Has there been a major attack on U.S. soil since 9/11? No, but the damage has been done.

We've traded away the liberties and the basic foundations of law that have served us making us a great and hopeful people and transformed our society into something ugly for a false sense of security.

The terrorists have won.

haha I sure do!

Anthropomorphism, assigning human attributes to non-human animals is a silly human thing many animal owners do but I have to say I never knew anyone before who's pet had a political affiliation.

Somehow I am not surprised. Limited thinking and the denial of choice....I know my dog is a Republican!...I really shouldn't say more should I? Not when it's so entertaining to see some of these posts.

As for "NOW THAT MAKES ME WONDER WHY SO MANY NON-CONSERVATIVES AND NON-REBULICANS ARE SO 'PARANOID' ABOUT WIRETAPPING HMMMMMMMMMMMM" Wasn't one of our rabidly right wing posters here who was indignant about a privacy violation?

Please...decide what your standards are and stick with them.

There is absolutely no reason for warrant less wire taps. The federal courts have a mechanism for granting the government warrants in the case of immanent danger or possiable terrorist activity but the administration has ignored and by-passed the courts.


You know, someone would almost had to have been living in a cave without any media to not see a thing about warrant less wiretaps and the government accessing the net activities of Americans who have never been charged with a crime.

Has anyone living in a cave seen Bin Laden lately?

I don't have the ambition to provide links to the many thousands of stories on the subject or I would.

Please, quit being sheep. You may think it's fine while you support this administration but if the tables turn and you, your churches, your political meetings are suddenly the target you will be singing a different tune.

Unable to respond the the original thread the same old posters post the same old crap.

Please, respond to McCain ad misrepresenting Obama's tax plan. You might also consider reading the Obama tax plan as well.

Not that...oh never mind.

Here's some new info on decreasing levels of violence in Iraq.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Satellite images taken at night show heavily Sunni Arab neighborhoods of Baghdad began emptying before a U.S. troop surge in 2007, graphic evidence of ethnic cleansing that preceded a drop in violence, according to a report published on Friday.

The images support the view of international refugee organizations and Iraq experts that a major population shift was a key factor in the decline in sectarian violence, particularly in the Iraqi capital, the epicenter of the bloodletting in which hundreds of thousands were killed.

Minority Sunni Arabs were driven out of many neighborhoods by Shi'ite militants enraged by the bombing of the Samarra mosque in February 2006. The bombing, blamed on the Sunni militant group al Qaeda, sparked a wave of sectarian violence.

"By the launch of the surge, many of the targets of conflict had either been killed or fled the country, and they turned off the lights when they left," geography professor John Agnew of the University of California Los Angeles, who led the study, said in a statement.

"Essentially, our interpretation is that violence has declined in Baghdad because of intercommunal violence that reached a climax as the surge was beginning," said Agnew, who studies ethnic conflict.

Some 2 million Iraqis are displaced within Iraq, while 2 million more have sought refuge in neighboring Syria and Jordan. Previously religiously mixed neighborhoods of Baghdad became homogenized Sunni or Shi'ite Muslim enclaves.

The study, published in the journal Environment and Planning A, provides more evidence of ethnic conflict in Iraq, which peaked just before U.S. President George W. Bush ordered the deployment of about 30,000 extra U.S. troops.

The extent to which the troop build-up helped halt Iraq's slide into sectarian civil war has been debated, particularly in the United States, with supporters of the surge saying it was the main contributing factor, and others arguing it was simply one of a number of factors.

"Our findings suggest that the surge has had no observable effect, except insofar as it has helped to provide a seal of approval for a process of ethno-sectarian neighborhood homogenization that is now largely achieved," Agnew's team wrote in their report.

Agnew's team used publicly available infrared night imagery from a weather satellite operated by the U.S. Air Force.

"The overall night light signature of Baghdad since the U.S. invasion appears to have increased between 2003 and 2006 and then declined dramatically from 20 March 2006 through 16 December 2007," their report said.

They said the night lights of Shi'ite-dominated Sadr City remained constant, as did lights in the Green Zone government and diplomatic compound in central Baghdad. Lights increased in the eastern New Baghdad district, another Shi'ite enclave.

Satellite studies have also been used to help document forced relocations in Myanmar and ethnic cleansing in Uganda.

(Reporting by Maggie Fox, editing by Ross Colvin)

/shakes head

Some peoples kids...

*SIGH*

This is a chuckle worthy item coming out of the market mess.

While denouncing America and capitalism Chavez apparently wasn't paying attention to where Venezuela was investing it's nest eggs.

Maybe when he was busy nationalizing industries there he became distracted? Know who else nationalizes....umm never mind.

CARACAS, Venezuela -- The Venezuelan government, which this week mocked Lehman Brothers Inc.'s woes as a sign of capitalism's imminent demise, could become a victim of the investment bank's failure.

The government of Hugo Chávez holds about $300 million in debt instruments that Lehman had agreed to cash, according to three analysts who calculated the holdings separately. With Lehman in trouble, Venezuela will have a hard time selling the debt.

Excellent thread!

haha

Some days I read these forums shaking my head as the stunning idiocy, repetitive name calling and fear mongering roll by. I fear for my country and for the world.

Then, out of the blue comes an encouraging word and I grow hopeful again.

Now it's my turn to thank folks.

Thank you to all,no matter what side of an issue you may support, who chose to post facts, points to ponder and real arguments instead of fear, hate and name calling.