What a powerful post. Refreshing, too.

• The case of identifying oneself white or black --- - anon
  • Nothing to do with black or white there....has to do - with terrorists associations only....nm
    • When racism fails to gain political traction, switch to - cultural warfare and the politics of fear. sm
  • What a powerful post. Refreshing, too. - Someone who knows EXACTLY what they're talking
  • He was raised by his "white" grandmother. - nm
    • what does that matter? - anon
      • Remarkable how a child's viewpoint can often offer wisdom - far beyond their years. nm
  • interesting..... - PegPeg

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is if politicians would stop this political party crap and do things that will better our country instead of holding off until someone in their party is pres so their party gets the credit.  That is just sad and makes me think less of the dems if that is truly what they are doing.  I highly doubt that this will ever happen but wouldn't it be nice if the politicians were actually out to make a better America instead of just getting elected and making major bucks while the country goes down the drain....and that goes for all political parties. 

This election is particularly scary because of our current circumstances.  People strictly voting for someone because of the color of their skin or someone blindly voting without research......it really scares the crap out of me regarding who and what the next President of the United States will bring.  Heck, we may be screwed no matter which moron we pick to be pres.

There was nothing ignorant in that post.  I agree with oldtimer that the hate being spewed at McCain's and Palin's rallies is scary.  And I don't like the fact that they are encouraging it.  I am afraid for Obama.  He's a good, decent, honest man and there are a lot of crazed people out there. 

The fact is, you don't understand Kyoto at all do you?  It's just another reason to hate Bush and it has to be so because someone says it is so.  Not only is Kyoto suicidal to any economy, the whole premise was based upon what amounts to pushing paranoid stupidity. I mean, how laughable is it to pretend that miniscule amounts of CO2 from human breath, from Dr.Peppers and Hummers give humanity more power over weather than the huge natural CO2 levels and the extreme effects of the sun? And to fight this myth, we need a price-doubling energy-banning treaty? Grrr. What a LOL!

Fact is, there's just no such thing as global warming. Today, over 40% of US states are in cooling trends. The 1930's US decade remains as warm as any since. And no US year is warmer than 1934. Even the 1922 world record for highest temperature is still held by Libya. So forget about the global myth.

Second, no weather chart in the world has ever been able to show a parallel relationship between increases in human CO2 and increases in the regional temperature. NONE. Even in Los Angeles, where large CO2 increases still produce 2004 temperatures 3.5 degrees cooler than the highs of the mid 1950's. So forget about linking man and the CO2 myth as well.

The only proven link between man and climate is in $green$ frauds, where most environmental claims are likely as corrupt as any UN oil-for-food scam.

Recently, it was revealed the UN's lead member used falsified data to hype his claim of the 1990's as the warmest in the last 1,000. As it turned out, this study, although frequently used by the media and UN to accuse human influence, was never peer-reviewed by anyone - until now.

And once it was, the study was rapidly debunked by at least 4 mainstream science publications for it's numerous errors and gross miscalulations that made his wild claims impossible to replicate. So the warmest and coolest years over the last 1,000, still remain the Medieval Warming Period(1000-1400) and the Little Ice Age(1500-1850).

So gt, be careful what you wish for. Bush was not the only President to not sign Kyoto.  For good reason.  You didn't give one cogent reason in your argument about the effects Kyoto would have on economy, especially our economy.  But then, maybe you were just looking for another reason to blame Bush when the economy was TRULY in the crapper. 

Link below:

Pat had better tell them to get their bankruptsy papers turned in before Oct. 17.

Once powerful Christian Coalition teeters on insolvency
By BILL SIZEMORE, The Virginian-Pilot
© October 8, 2005

The Christian Coalition, the onetime powerhouse of the religious right founded by Pat Robertson, is struggling to stay afloat.

The group’s annual revenue has shrunk to one- twentieth of what it was a decade ago – from a peak of $26 million in 1996 to $1.3 million in 2004 – and it has left a trail of unpaid bills from Texas to Virginia. Among the creditors who have sued the coalition for nonpayment are landlords, direct-mail companies, lawyers and at least one former employee seeking back pay.

It has even come to this: The company that moved the group out of its Washington headquarters in 2002 went to small-claims court Friday in Henrico County trying to collect $1,890 that remains unpaid on its three-year-old bill.

It is the latest in at least a dozen judicial collection actions brought against the coalition since 2001. The amounts sought by creditors total hundreds of thousands of dollars.

The reasons for the group’s decline are legion, say supporters, critics and experts who have followed its trajectory. Among them are the loss of key leaders, including Robertson, who resigned as president in 2001; alleged mismanagement by his successors; the cyclical nature of politics; and bitter infighting within the organization and with other political players on the religious right.

CHRISTIAN COALITION TIMELINE

1988 After Pat Robertson’s failed bid for the Republican presidential nomination, he turns to Ralph Reed – a shrewd political operative who became a highly visible spokesman for the religious right – for day-to-day operations of the coalition founded in 1989.

1997 Ralph Reed leaves the coalition and later sets up a political consulting business in Georgia, where he is now seeking the 2006 Republican nomination for lieutenant governor.

2000 The coalition, which had been based in Chesapeake through the 1990s, moves to an office on Capitol Hill in Washington.

2001 Robertson resigns as president, turning over the reins to Roberta Combs, right, who, within a year, closes the Washington office and moves the group to South Carolina. Since its move to South Carolina, the coalition has been pursued by a variety of creditors, including suppliers of services for its 2002 “Road to Victory” rally in Washington.

2004 In a fiscal report to South Carolina, the coalition claims revenue of $1.3 million and expenses of $1.5 million, leaving a $200,000 deficit.

“Their future is really bleak,” said Mark J. Rozell, a professor of public policy at George Mason University who has followed the Christian conservative movement for years. “The Christian Coalition is a shell of its former self.”

In one sense, the group is a victim of its own success, Rozell said. It is widely credited with helping Republicans seize control of Congress in 1994 and the White House in 2000, but with those goals achieved, it has lost much of its reason for being.

“These types of opposition groups tend to do really well when the other party is in power – especially, for a religious right group, when the folks in power are Bill and Hillary Clinton,” Rozell said. “But when Bush is in the White House and the Republicans control Congress, the need for a Christian Coalition as a counterweight to established power just isn’t that great.”

Coalition officials insist everything’s fine. As if to underline the point, last month they announced the hiring of a new executive director, Jason T. Christy, the 34-year-old publisher of The Church Report, a national news and business journal for pastors and Christian leaders.

“The Christian Coalition is going to be around for a long time,” said Roberta Combs, the group’s president. “I really believe that with all my heart.”

The coalition arose from the ashes of a failed 1988 bid for the Republican presidential nomination by Robertson, the Virginia Beach-based founder of the Christian Broadcasting Network.

To run the group’s day-to-day affairs, Robertson brought in Ralph Reed – a shrewd political operative who became a highly visible spokesman for the religious right.

The coalition mobilized millions of conservative Christians with its voter guides – pocket-sized candidate scorecards distributed in churches.

Reed left the coalition in 1997 and set up a political consulting business in Georgia, where he is now seeking the 2006 Republican nomination for lieutenant governor. He has also become a central figure in the American Indian casino gambling scandal surrounding indicted Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

The coalition hit its zenith in 1996, when it pulled in a record $26 million in revenue. By contrast, in its 2004 annual report to the South Carolina secretary of state, the group reported $1.3 million in revenue and $1.5 million in expenses, leaving a $200,000 deficit.

Based in Chesapeake through the 1990s, the coalition moved to an office on Capitol Hill in Washington in 2000. Its Chesapeake landlord sued the group in 2001 for $76,546 in back rent, in a case that is still open in Chesapeake Circuit Court.

Within months of the move to Washington, 10 black employees filed a racial discrimination lawsuit alleging that they were forced to enter the office by the back door and eat in a segregated area. The coalition settled the suit in December 2001 for about $300,000, according to several published reports.

That same month, Robertson announced his resignation as president, saying he wanted to spend more time on his broadcast ministry and Regent University, the Christian school he founded next door in Virginia Beach. He was succeeded as president by Combs, head of the coalition’s South Carolina chapter, who closed the Capitol Hill headquarters in November 2002 and now runs the group from an office in Charleston, S.C.

On its Web site, the coalition still lists a Washington post office box as its mailing address, but it no longer has an office in the capital. It employs a lobbyist who works out of his home.

It was the move from Capitol Hill that left an unpaid bill resulting in the claim against the coalition Friday in Henrico County. The coalition is contesting the claim.

Since its move to South Carolina, the coalition has been pursued by a variety of creditors, including the mailing companies Pitney-Bowes and Federal Express. The group has also been sued by suppliers of audio, lighting, exhibit construction and other services for its 2002 “Road to Victory” rally in Washington, which featured a star-studded lineup of speakers, including Robertson and now-indicted House leader Tom DeLay.

Even the coalition’s longtime Virginia Beach law firm, Huff, Poole & Mahoney, has joined the chase. The firm secured a $63,958 judgment for back legal bills in 2003 that resulted in a garnishment of the group’s bank account and a partial payment of $21,136. The firm has retained a South Carolina attorney to try to collect the rest.

One of the coalition’s most costly legal battles was a 2002 blowup with Focus Direct Inc., a San Antonio direct-mail company that sued the group over a major fundraising campaign that went sour. The case dragged on for two years. Combs said it was settled for $200,000.

One of the coalition’s co-defendants, Northern Virginia fundraiser William G. Sidebottom, declared bankruptcy as a result. His attorney, Kevin M. Young of San Antonio, said it was a messy case.

“My father was a preacher, and I became aware of an old saying: 'There’s no politics like church politics,’” Young said. “This is an example of that. On the outside, everybody’s making a happy face, but behind the curtain, it was pretty unseemly.”

And then there’s family politics.

Combs hired her daughter Michele as communications director and Michele’s husband, Tracy Ammons, as a Capitol Hill lobbyist. When their marriage dissolved into a nasty divorce and child-custody battle, Ammons was fired.

He then sued the coalition for $130,000 in unpaid salary, accusing his mother-in-law of “personal animosity and malice” arising out of a desire to break up the marriage.

Explaining in an affidavit how he went months without a paycheck, Ammons said: “I believed that … I could trust my own mother-in-law.”

In another affidavit filed in the Ammons case, Tammy Farmer, who worked at the coalition as a bookkeeper in 2001, said she found the group’s financial affairs in disarray.

“I witnessed a very consistent and chronic pattern of Roberta Combs intentionally refusing to pay valid debts, salaries and accounts for no discernible reason,” Farmer said.

As the overdue bills piled up, Farmer said, telephone service would be cut off occasionally and vendors would refuse to do further business with the coalition.

Farmer said Combs frequently told her, “Don’t pay … they’ll never sue.”

Debt is nothing new for the coalition, Combs said Friday.

“In 1999, when I came into the national organization, it had debt,” she said. “I had to do a lot of creative things. It has less debt now than it had then.”

The Ammons case is in arbitration, but fallout from it continues. Arlington County Circuit Judge Joanne F. Alper imposed $83,141 in sanctions against Ammons and his attorney, Jonathon Moseley, for improper and frivolous pleadings. Both declared bankruptcy as a result.

The coalition’s attorney, Brad D. Weiss, moved last month to withdraw from the Ammons case, citing an “irreconcilable conflict” among himself, the coalition leadership and its board.

Meanwhile, two other attorneys, H. Jason Gold and Alexander M. Laughlin, who had been representing the coalition in the Ammons bankruptcy proceedings, moved to withdraw as well. Their reason: The coalition had failed to pay them.

News researcher Jakon Hays contributed to this story.

Reprinted in Boston Globe.  Sorry!

objective views. This is a one-sided publication that asks for donations to keep it going. Nothing I read in there posts anything against any democrats, just republicans. It is not a fair-minded reporting.

I like to read both sides of the aisle but this publication spews hatred for anything not democratic in order to sell books.  To those who can't see both sides, this blog, or publication as they like to state, is just up their aisle. I shake my head at one-sided news. Taken from their web site:

"Indeed, a founding idea of the Consortium for Independent Journalism was that a major investment was needed in journalistic endeavors committed to honestly informing the American people about important events, no matter what the political and economic pressures.

Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His new book, Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq, can be ordered at secrecyandprivilege.com. It's also available at Amazon.com, as is his 1999 book, Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & 'Project Truth.' "

article.

And thanks for pointing out all the other "results" of his administration that, as you say, benefit nobody but the rich and/or the corporations or, as he himself once publicly bragged, "his base."

I know for a fact that when he ran for President in 2000, I told every single person I knew that if he becomes President, we're going to go to war with Iraq.  (Nobody's gonna treat his daddy like Saddam did and get away with it.)

I didn't have a crystal ball.  I had common sense and a good memory from the Gulf War when his father was President and how he didn't "finish the job." Seems a lot of other Americans forgot about that.

I really enjoyed reading your post and all the facts you raised that I failed to raise in mine.  Thanks for the mention of the LA Times article.  I'm going to try to look that up on the web.

From your post:

"Did you read Mein Kampf?  Would that be good enough evidence for you, because he wrote about it in there."

Wrote about what?  That the Jews were socialists?

I'm actually feeling sad for you right now gt.  You obviously don't know what Christianity is about.  Pat Robertson does not speak for me, and I don't endorse what he said.  I'm sorry you are so bitter and hate filled that you would wish anyone to burn in hell.  There are some evil people in this world but my first wish for them is that they find Christ and turn from their evil ways with His help.  I too hope one day you find Christ, gt, and quit letting misguided Christians and Christian leaders keep you from HIM.  Their blunders are not worth your eternal soul.

You think there is only one patriot here?  Get a trip on your sour shrivled heart and try not to speak.

Whoops! I made a mistake.  My bad.

This is the post where the NEOCON tells the LIBERAL not to speak ON HER OWN BOARD!

They can't show a post of a liberal telling Army Mom not to speak because it doesn't exist. 

I agree with every single word you said.  America is becoming a very scary place indeed.  I believe, as you do, that there are people who are eagerly awaiting the *Rapture* and indeed believe they have the *inside track* to heaven.  Unfortunately, it look as if this country might actually suffer from their self-fulfilled prophecy if it continues going backwards in time under Bush's completely inept leadership.

Please keep posting.  I really enjoy reading your posts. 

It makes me feel a lot better to hear someone say they're against this.  When express outrage at my posting about the issue, instead of expressing outrage about the issue itself, it truly makes me wonder.

I honestly do not recall any threads on the conservative board about this issue.  All I recall is total silence (or attacks) when the issue is mentioned.

I also wasn't trying to imply that the crime of child molestation is more prevalent in one political party or another.  Obviously, that's irrelevant, and I have a hard time even associating a criminal like that with any political views one way or the other.

It's just that this seems to be a no-brainer, an issue on which virtually everyone can agree, yet the right seems to be eerily quiet when this topic comes up.