To comply with the wishes of people with moral and ethical values would be in direct conflict with those who are making the bigoted comments here. These bigots think that the beliefs and values of others are vacuous, void of substance. For them to comply with the wishes of these people would give credence to the value of these beliefs. There was a time, at least here in the United States, that we were more tolerable and acceptable to others. Not that we didnâ(TM)t have problems. We had bigoted people, but they were in the minority. Now these bigots are growing in numbers and spouting their venom her on these posts.

from: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/the-great-global-warming-collapse/article1458206/

In 2007, the most comprehensive report to date on global warming, issued by the respected United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, made a shocking claim: The Himalayan glaciers could melt away as soon as 2035.

These glaciers provide the headwaters for Asia's nine largest rivers and lifelines for the more than one billion people who live downstream. Melting ice and snow would create mass flooding, followed by mass drought. The glacier story was reported around the world. Last December, a spokesman for the World Wildlife Fund, an environmental pressure group, warned, âoeThe deal reached at Copenhagen will have huge ramifications for the lives of hundreds of millions of people who are already highly vulnerable due to widespread poverty.â To dramatize their country's plight, Nepal's top politicians strapped on oxygen tanks and held a cabinet meeting on Mount Everest.

But the claim was rubbish, and the world's top glaciologists knew it. It was based not on rigorously peer-reviewed science but on an anecdotal report by the WWF itself. When its background came to light on the eve of Copenhagen, Rajendra Pachauri, the head of the IPCC, shrugged it off. But now, even leading scientists and environmental groups admit the IPCC is facing a crisis of credibility that makes the Climategate affair look like small change.

âoeThe global warming movement as we have known it is dead,â the brilliant analyst Walter Russell Mead says in his blog on The American Interest. It was done in by a combination of bad science and bad politics.

The impetus for the Copenhagen conference was that the science makes it imperative for us to act. But even if that were true â" and even if we knew what to do â" a global deal was never in the cards. As Mr. Mead writes, âoeThe global warming movement proposed a complex set of international agreements involving vast transfers of funds, intrusive regulations in national economies, and substantial changes to the domestic political economies of most countries on the planet.â Copenhagen was never going to produce a breakthrough. It was a dead end.

And now, the science scandals just keep on coming. First there was the vast cache of e-mails leaked from the University of East Anglia, home of a crucial research unit responsible for collecting temperature data. Although not fatal to the science, they revealed a snakepit of scheming to keep contradictory research from being published, make imperfect data look better, and withhold information from unfriendly third parties. If science is supposed to be open and transparent, these guys acted as if they had a lot to hide.

Despite widespread efforts to play down the Climategate e-mails, they were very damaging. An investigation by the British newspaper The Guardian â" among the most aggressive advocates for action on climate change â" has found that a series of measurements from Chinese weather stations were seriously flawed, and that documents relating to them could not be produced.

Meantime, the IPCC â" the body widely regarded, until now, as the ultimate authority on climate science â" is looking worse and worse. After it was forced to retract its claim about melting glaciers, Mr. Pachauri dismissed the error as a one-off. But other IPCC claims have turned out to be just as groundless.

For example, it warned that large tracts of the Amazon rain forest might be wiped out by global warming because they are extremely susceptible to even modest decreases in rainfall. The sole source for that claim, reports The Sunday Times of London, was a magazine article written by a pair of climate activists, one of whom worked for the WWF. One scientist contacted by the Times, a specialist in tropical forest ecology, called the article âoea mess.â

Worse still, the Times has discovered that Mr. Pachauri's own Energy and Resources Unit, based in New Delhi, has collected millions in grants to study the effects of glacial melting â" all on the strength of that bogus glacier claim, which happens to have been endorsed by the same scientist who now runs the unit that got the money. Even so, the IPCC chief is hanging tough. He insists the attacks on him are being orchestrated by companies facing lower profits.

Until now, anyone who questioned the credibility of the IPCC was labelled as a climate skeptic, or worse. But many climate scientists now sense a sinking ship, and they're bailing out. Among them is Andrew Weaver, a climatologist at the University of Victoria who acknowledges that the climate body has crossed the line into advocacy. Even Britain's Greenpeace has called for Mr. Pachauri's resignation. India says it will establish its own body to monitor the effects of global warming because it âoecannot relyâ on the IPCC.

None of this is to say that global warming isn't real, or that human activity doesn't play a role, or that the IPCC is entirely wrong, or that measures to curb greenhouse-gas emissions aren't valid. But the strategy pursued by activists (including scientists who have crossed the line into advocacy) has turned out to be fatally flawed.

By exaggerating the certainties, papering over the gaps, demonizing the skeptics and peddling tales of imminent catastrophe, they've discredited the entire climate-change movement. The political damage will be severe. As Mr. Mead succinctly puts it: âoeSkeptics up, Obama down, cap-and-trade dead.â That also goes for Canada, whose climate policies are inevitably tied to those of the United States.

âoeI don't think it's healthy to dismiss proper skepticism,â says John Beddington, the chief scientific adviser to the British government. He is a staunch believer in man-made climate change, but he also points out the complexity of climate science. âoeScience grows and improves in the light of criticism. There is a fundamental uncertainty about climate change prediction that can't be changed.â In his view, it's time to stop circling the wagons and throw open the doors. How much the public will keep caring is another matter.

-Margaret Wente
Published on Friday, Feb. 05, 2010 6:45PM EST Last updated on Saturday, Feb. 06, 2010 4:15AM EST

Orwell was supportive of individual rights, and saw it as a failing of self-proclaimed solcialists that they so often were not.

We have got to admit that if Fascism is everywhere advancing, this is largely the fault of the Socialists themselves. Partly it is due to the mistaken communist tactic of sabotaging democracy, i.e. sawing off the branch you are sitting on; but still more to the fact that Socialists have, so to speak, presented their case wrong side foremost. They have never made it sufficiently clear that the essential aims of Socialism are justice and liberty.

Orwell saw very well how stifling democracy, especially opposing speech, to protect your cause leads inevitably to facism. He wrote about the Communists taking control of Spain

"The logical end is a régime in which every opposition party and newspaper is suppressed and every dissentient of any importance is in jail. Of course, such a régime will be Fascism. It will not be the same Fascism Franco would impose, it will even be better than Franco's Fascism to the extent of being worth fighting for, but it will be Fascism. Only, being operated by Communists and Liberals, it will be called something different.

There is no Global body that makes laws!
There is no international legislature (the UN ain't it), there is no international monarch. They are the two groups that make laws. When there is a 1:1 correlation between cause & effect, if you don't have the cause (international legislature) you can't have the effect (international law).
So despite the lies that a bandied about, international law doesn't exist.

What people often mean when they say "international law" is "treaties," but they usually have some agenda they are hiding behind and intentionally misleading you. I assume that since God is dead and humans can no longer appeal to the moral authority of God that they feel the need to appeal the moral authority of some other fictitious being. In this case, international law (aka global standards).

Now on to treaties.
Treaties are just agreements between governments to enact laws. They aren't law by themselves. The US Constitution gives the President the authority to make treaties, but Congress gets to ratify and then make laws based upon them.
So, the US & AU make a treaty to do W, X & Y
When it gets run through the AU Parliament they don't like W. So they pass a law that allows for V, X & Y. That law is only enforceable in AU. It is an imperfect implementation of the treaty, but an implementation nonetheless. It is like a standard that is implemented but not fully.
Same thing happens in the US Congress. But they pass law with X, Y & Z.

Now you have 2 national laws. A AU law. A US law. You don't have an international law. Why? No international legislature remember.
You can sue in AU under the AU law, but not the US law. So in AU you are entitled to V, X & Y.
You can sue in US under the US law, but not the AU law. So in US you are entitled to Z, X & Y.
No where can you sue under the treaty. You never are entitled to W. Because te treaty (which entitled you to W) isn't a law, just an agreement to make a law.
You can't sue in NZ under either the AU or US laws. Because NZ, has neither of these laws and their courts don't care about US or AU laws.
Now we mis-use the term "treaty" to refer to both the AU & US laws collectively, but neither of them is really the treaty as negotiated by the PM/President.

Hey what about these international courts?
Well, they are really arbitration bodies.
They have no legal power beyond what the individual nations give them.
The UK may pass a law giving ICC judgments full effect, but that is due to the UK ceding sovereignty to the ICC, not because the ICC is inherently morally superior or because of some international law (which doesn't exist remember).
Now the US doesn't agree to cede its sovereignty to the ICC. So the ICC has no effect in the US.

Why no power beyond what the individual nations give them?
It comes down to a concept called jurisdiction.
See, ultimately might does make right. Not moral correctness, but the right to do something is ultimately based upon your ability to enforce that right.
To enforce a court order to, for example, the ability to forcibly imprison someone, take their personal and real property from them, you need an army and a police system. Nations have these things. NGO bodies don't. Even the UN has no standing military. It relies on borrowing the military of its member nations.
If the ICC has a judgement it wants enforced in the UK, it needs to get the approval of the UK government to use the UK police force to do that. Alone, the ICC is impotent.

Ultimately, every country acts unilaterally. Every country implements their own version of treaties. Every country decides whether or not to cede sovereignty to an international arbitration board.

When you start with the faulty assumption that there is a black and white "Law" you can appeal to, you get incorrect and faulty conclusions. What you get is some fiction that can be molded and bent in order to fulfill the speaker's political addenda. The entire premise of "International Law" is intellectually dishonest. The term is designed to mislead and cloud logical thinking.

The phrase "International Law" should be regarded by lawyers with the same disdain historians/archeologists reserve for "The Chariots of the Gods" or psychologists have for phrenology, the idea that you can tell if someone is a criminal by examining bumps on their skull.

The Three R's of Portland
or
Why Portland Sucks

"Latte Town" was coined a few years back and is the most appropriate term for the City of Portland that I have ever heard. A Latte town consists of mostly white, educated baby boomers and young single people. The inhabitants of the town are usually newcomers who have priced out all the original inhabitants. These towns are usually expensive, pretentious, abound in natural fibers and are laid back on the surface. Latte towns like Portland pride themselves on their most cherished concepts of diversity and inclusiveness. Most Portlanders accept this myth as Gospel but upon close examination Portland's dirty little secret is revealed. Portland is an overwhelmingly white, non-ethnic city. It is as vanilla as it gets so it makes one wonder what all the celebrating of diversity is all about. Drive through any neighborhood surrounding the downtown area and the impression that you get is that Portland is nothing more than a series of elitist ghettos compromised of rich white homosexuals, rich white yuppies, rich white hippies, rich white trust funders, and rich white kids from the suburbs pretending to be street people. Where's the diversity? Well it doesn't exist but the average Portlander likes the concept and in their eyes the different shades of rich whites all constituent diversity. In a series of articles I will attempt to breakdown and explain these subtle distinctions between the various factions of lily white, latte people that make Portland what it is.

The Artist-Intellectual
The visitor or newcomer to Portland is bound to be struck by the sheer numbers that belong to this group. They seem to be everywhere and are in fact everywhere. They are the reason that all the coffee shops have tables and chairs. The artist-intellectual fancies himself as a poet, a writer, a musician, a filmmaker, etc. You get the drift. They spend most of their days idling around the coffee establishments that one finds every 10 feet. They are usually equipped with a notebook that they use for their poems, journals or their artwork. No one ever gets to see the contents of these notebooks. More often than not they have a beaten and weathered paper back copy of some book authored by Kafka or William S. Boroughs. They love to discuss their favorite subject, themselves. Given the opportunity they will prattle on for hours about their poems, art work or the film they are making. You never get to actually see any of their work but you do get to hear about it. Their lives are like one never ending semester in grad school. Initially I believed these losers but then got to thinking. What would an aspiring actor, artist, musician, filmmaker being doing in Portland Oregon, a latte town? Why wouldn't they be in NYC or LA? Because they're phonies, that's why. Here's how it works with these clowns. They flunk out of college in New Jersey so their parents send them to Reed College in Portland in hopes that they will get their act together. They drop out of Reed but stay in Portland while still on Daddy's tab or some trust find. One Saturday Josh or Seth drifts down to one of the hundreds of hippie craft markets downtown. Some hippie is selling didgeridoos that he made I between bong reps. Josh buy one and takes it home where he proceeds to get baked after which he blows a few sour notes into the didgeridoo. The next day he's a musician. Not really but that's what he's telling everyone at the coffee house and pretending is good enough for a Portland artist-intellectual, in fact it's everything. In three months he will switch his designation from musician to filmmaker and then onto to something else 3 months later. As long as it sounds cool he will keep this charade up and no one in his circles will call him on it because they are doing the same thing.

The Activist
This group is usually comprised of people that used to be part of the artist-intellectual group in Portland. They have gotten a little older and may have finally, after 12 years, obtained a liberal arts degree from Portland State or Reed College. They may still run in artist-intellectual circles but have latched onto some "cause" at this time of their life. An activist always lives off some sort of trust fund or inheritance. When you ask an activist what he does for a living he will actually say he is an "activist" with a straight face. I used to look in the want ads and at the state employment office but never once did I see an advertised job entitled "activist". The activist usually lives in some semi communal house with other activist and artist-intellectuals, the kind of place where people sleep on mattresses on the floor and where the walls are covered with hippie tapestries. Oh yeah there are always like 15 cats roaming around the house and it stinks of cat piss, body odor and patchouli. The activist is still a bum at heart but feels the need to pretend that he is productive and feels extremely self conscious about living off some one else's money but not enough to actually get a job. So the activist associates himself with the following types of groups: art councils, school-to-work collaboratives, environmental groups, preservation groups, community-supported agriculture, antidevelopment groups, and other ad hoc activist groups. Affiliation with these groups will change every 6 months or so. It all sounds cool and actually creates the impression that they work.

The Crone
The Crone is a middle-aged woman that lives alone with her two cats. She is extremely bitter and unpleasant to be around. Crones usually populate the SE and NW sides of Portland. Often you can see that the Crone was quite attractive in her day. You can easily envision her twirling around dressed like Stevie Nicks at some Grateful Dead show back in 1978 Nature and time have not been good to her. She's always had a bad attitude but at least in her younger days she had perky breast and booty to match. Nice T&A can go a long way for making up for a crappy attitude but now she's only left with the bad attitude and the Stevie Nicks get up. The Crone is usually involved in several crackpot wymn's organizations that promote some sort of radical and unrealistic form of feminism. They usually have names like the United Front of Sisterhood or Radical Wymin For The Extermination Of The Male Species. Crones usually have jobs in local government or at State Universities, places where their inability to get along with anyone has no bearing on keeping their jobs. I worked with a Crone at City Hall. She filed a sexual harassment charge against me because she was eavesdropping on a phone conversation I was having and I said the word "chick". She filed another sexual grievance against a guy because he displayed a family picture on his desk of his wife and four kids at the beach. His wife was wearing a bathing suit, one piece, and this sexually offended the Crone who viewed this as objectifying women. The Crone wishes she were a lesbian because she hates men so much. She's tried to convert but it never took. Now her only objective in life is to feed her cats, read Tarot cards and make every one else's life a living hell.

The New Age Spiritualist
This could very easily be the official religious doctrine of Portland. All Portlanders fall into one of two groups when it comes to God. They are either atheists or they are new age spiritualists. You can hear them espousing their creed everywhere, "I'm spiritual but not religious", as if this automatically put them on the moral high ground. This belief system can best be described as spirituality without obligation. The new age spiritualist lives in a moral temperate zone where he picks and chooses tenants from all faiths that suit his lifestyle of the moment. Anything self sacrificing or too stringent is discarded and deemed "dogmatic" or "too religious". This way he can have the best of both worlds. In reality he gets little more than a set of watered down moral concepts that do nothing more than validate the liberal sensibilities that may be in fashion at the moment. For example, the New Age Spiritualist eschews judgmetalism. Particularly judgementalism that conflicts with their desires but he will embrace judgementalism when it comes to condemning cigarette smoking or individuals that don't have the right perception on the three R's which are racial sensitivity, recycling and reproductive rights. The new age spiritualist's home will be adorned with religious objects of oppressed people. Amazonian figures, Native American totems, Egyptian deities, animistic shells, or Shinto statuettes abound. The rules is that it's OK to display religious articles as long as you have no real association or knowledge of the said religion. A Crucifix would be seen as something a little too extreme.

The Dude
This is without a doubt the most ubiquitous character roaming the streets of Portland or any other Latte town for that matter. The Dude is usually a young white male that has great enthusiasm for games that are usually associated with extreme sports and the X-Games. He is called a Dude because this is the most commonly used word in his vocabulary. You've heard them before. They are the kind of guys that refer to everyone as 'dude' and use 'dude' as a noun adjective and a verb. When they say 'dude' they put a lot of emphasis on the "u". They say 'duuude' instead of 'dude'. Their aspiration is for life to resemble an extended hobby. Work is playful and play is something they pursue with earnest. Most don't work but if they must you can find them working at places that sell skateboards, snowboards and other thing that are of supreme importance to the Dude. Dudes are usually extremely stupid and have flunked out of all the worst community colleges so they rarely associate with the activist or artist-intellectual unless of course there is some sort of sharing of drugs thing going on. The Dude is held in high esteem in Portland because he is seen as someone who is bucking the system. He will quit a job in a heartbeat if the swells on the Columbia are optimal for shredding. He lives for the moment, the perfect wave and the perfect buzz. Priorities and responsibilities are no more than an after thought for these Portland cowboys.

Hippies
These dirty repugnant characters are the status quo in Portland. They seem to run across three generations and are composed of people who came from privileged backgrounds because no one from the real world could possibly embrace the fairytale concepts that the hippies hold dear. The hippies day is a full day consisting of sleeping till noon, smoking pot, protesting progress and reason, playing hackey sack and seeing how long they can go without bathing before they become infested with ticks. The hippie's biggest fears are work and responsibility so they go to great lengths to paint the "system" as thoroughly corrupt in order to avoid growing up. In their eyes any participation in the "system" is "selling out". This allows the hippy to live a lay about life without any moral quandary. Hippies without trust funds and generous parents must do some sort of work in order to buy pot and overpriced organic hippy food. This is why Portland has so many "markets". These are closed markets in the classic Marxist tradition. The hippies sell their hippy crap to tourist and yuppies with more money than sense. Here you can buy beeswax candles, dream catchers, and soap dishes made out of bird feathers. Bring plenty of money cause this shit ain't cheap. All major credit cards accepted. Hippies are easy to spot in Portland. Just envision the crowd at the original Woodstock in 1969. That's exactly what you will see with the Portland hippy. They will usually go by names like Sunshine, Rain, Heather, Noah, Seth or Jeremiah although the varieties are endless. Some hippies are hard to spot. They are usually 40 and over and have compromised themselves with jobs. Make no mistake about it, they are still hippies and when 5:00 pm rolls around they ditch the suit in favor of Birkenstocks and hemp clothing. These are the ones that make sure that the hippy ethos is forcefully inserted in all spheres of Portland's civic, cultural and business affairs. They are the ones that ensure that Portland remains soft on crime and educational standards and hard on increased taxation, subsidies and cumbersome business regulations.

The Psycho-Feminist
This is usually a young woman in her 20's or 30's. She has attended college and has received some feminist indoctrination in how awful the male species is. The problem is that the Psycho-Feminist still prefers men sexually. Some how she must balance her desire for empowerment with her more natural desire to find a mate. The Psycho-Feminist is truly as confused individual. She really has no idea how to reconcile her place in the world. She cannot balance her professional aspirations with her private life and is in constant turmoil over making any sacrifice between marriage, family and career. If you have had the misfortune to have dated or married such a woman I feel for you. Once you get out of that relationship, and you must get out, you will need years of therapy before you are right again. The Psycho-Feminist will subject you to years of emotional abuse over her gender turmoil. She's not man but doesn't know what it means to be woman. One minute she will want flowers and doors held open for her the next minute she will be cursing you out like a drunken sailor for some perceived slight. This breed more often than not ends up joining the ranks of the Crones. You can usually find the Psycho-Feminist at Powell's Bookstore completely immersed in some feminist manifesto like "Our Bodies Ourselves". Guys do yourselves a favor and find a nice foreign-born girl.

The Sensitive Male
Nature abhors nothing more than the sensitive male yet he proliferates in Portland. You will often be out at the Saturday Market and say to yourself, "Another lesbian couple!?" Upon closer examination you noticed that the more feminine looking partner is not a lesbian but is fact a man, the sensitive male. This is a guy that is really in touch with his feelings and it is not below him to gently weep after reading a poem or a love story. He usually "is not really into sports". He prefers careers in the "healing fields" like massage therapy, teaching yoga or some sort of new age mumbo-jumbo therapy. He is devoid of any passion or a sense of humor. Regular guys horrify him. He is disdainful of them and feels that his sensitive approach to life is superior. A psycho-feminist usually scoops him up and she controls every aspect his life. Eventually he decides, after years of dream remission therapy, that he is a homosexual and he leaves her. The sensitive male likes to read Iron John Bly and participates in events allied with the Men's Movement. He can usually be found pounding on a drum in the woods with other sensitive males. He is best personified by the hippie school teacher Mr. Van Dreesen on the Beavis and Butthead cartoons. Wymn in Portland prefer that all men go down the road of sensitive male and throngs of counselors in the mental health and educational professions have made it their business to castrate young men by turning them into these cream puff, pussies knows as the sensitive male.

The proper way to handle a Marxist.Radical Marxists: No Life, No Critical Thinking Skills, No Class!!
A few years ago the country got to witness firsthand the #1 reason why Portland sucks - Radical Marxists! On simple Thursday, GWB (our duly elected president) came to town for a fundraiser (good heavens!). Predictably, there were be hordes of smelly, ranting, screaming protesters greeting him, reinforcing the well-earned stereotype that Portlanders are childish 60's throwbacks. First of all, let's get one thing clear - no left-wing protester or group is ever what they claim to be (despite the kid-gloves treatment they receive in the local media). Many of these groups are often Trojan Horses for more sinister, anti-American groups such as the World Workers Party (a Maoist Group that supports the likes of that shitstain-with-a-pompadour, Kim Jung Il). Calling your 'gang' an 'Organization for Peace and Justice' does not change what you really are (pro-Communist garbage). But don't expect the local new personalities to tell us this. It's not on their teleprompter. The most notable thing to look for will be the complete lack of critical thinking skills. Many of these dregs have announced that they will be working to 'educate' people about the president's policies before his visit ('educate,' of course, is a convenient euphemism for 'convincing the stupid.'). Anyone who isn't a mouth-breathing Mongoloid is already pretty aware of who George W. Bush is, and how he has responded admirably against the Islamos that want to kill all of us (liberal sympathizers included, by the way). Why would you admit on television that you are seeking out people who don't know what the fuck is going on in the world to help you with your cause? The activists hope (and are often correct) that they will find some unplugged, ignorant, urban-legend-believing street trash who will agree with them that Bush 1) "Stole the election" (despite the numerous Florida recounts after the election which proved conclusively that Bush would have won with or without the Supreme Court decision) 2) "Ruined the economy" (despite the fact that the bubble burst under Clinton in 1999) and 3) gives "Tax cuts to the rich" (despite the fact that everyone gets tax breaks - everyone that is who fucking pays taxes in the first place!). As a result, the professional protester does not respond well to having his or her 'logic' questioned. With no real facts or debating skills to back them up, they will ignore any challenge posed to them and immediately fall back on their "I have a right to dissent" shtick. In fact, in order to avoid being challenged at all, they will noisily chant, scream, block traffic, blow whistles and bang drums (there's even a 'No War Drum Corps' if you can believe it)! This ensures that all Bush supporters are drowned out, and none of the anti-Bush troglodytes will ever have to defend his or her uninformed positions. Their newest tactic will be to stage 'Die-ins' in which the protesters will pretend to actually care about dead U.S. soldiers. This is actually true - the protesters DO hope that our brave troops come back soon (so they can spit in their faces and call them 'baby killers'). Finally, the ignorance of these people will lead them to conclude that since Bush is so poorly received here (and the likes of Hillary can come and go in Portland with no security concerns) then people must actually LIKE Hillary more than Bush. This overlooks the obvious, inescapable truth that people on the Right are actually more tolerant, accepting, and civilized than leftists are. When a Republican president comes to town, he is greeted with violence, hatred, drums, whistles and shit flinging (literally). This has earned Portland the well-deserved moniker of 'Little Beirut.' On the other hand, when a prominent Democrat or Greenie comes to town, the worst they can expect to encounter a well dressed person holding a sign.

al-AP and the MSM are as dangerous as the terrorists. The only reason people still don't see through the Democrat Party is because the media is their right arm. Why else would libs hate talk radio, blogs and Fox News so much. Without the media--PBS, NBC, CBS, ABC, CNN, all big city papers--the Democrat Party would be dead. After all, how else can you survive slavery, segregation, Jim Crow, KKK and horrible president after horrible president (and now Obama!) and still come out looking decent? Lies. Think about how the Dems somehow have most Americans believing "the parties switched in the 60s" and suddenly they cared about black people?

Do they really think Democrats, who grew up hating blacks their entire lives, would suddenly embrace them in 1964... and that Republicans who supported civil rights since 1854 and grew up opposing Jim Crow, the KKK, and segregation would suddenly hate blacks? To rational people, that makes no sense.

School administrators who hated blacks before Brown vs. Board of Education (like those in Los Angeles) still hated them after being forced to accept de-segregation. The present state of Democrat-controlled public education systems proves how well the so-called shift worked. George Wallace would be very proud of the way Democrats continue their proud tradition of destroying young black minds today.

Further proof of black cynicism and contempt is manifested by the way they support Uncle Toms like Al Sharpton and Jessie Jackson, who herd their incompetent black flock to the Democrat fold, while deriding genuine intellectuals like Shelby Steele and Thomas Sowell. It has been this way since Arthur Mitchell (the Democrat's first congressional candidate) was elected in 1936. Democrats loved him because he was willing to marginalize the NAACP. Democrats have since populated it with their own obedient racial hucksters.

Take equality for gays: the constitution clearly bars discrimination, yet there is one group not allowed to enter into the same legal contracts as the rest of us. One day, a case will be brought to the SC for equality, and it will win. And just like other equality cases, it will have come decades too late. The Constitution always guaranteed that right; but the courts have yet to allow that right to be exercised.

No it didn't and doesn't guarantee that right.
This is a case that as a Constitutional student pisses me off. Not because I disagree with you morally, but I strongly disagree you procedurally. And as a lawyer procedure matters.
So, to make clear, we have left the substantive (ends, "should this be the right result?") argument and entered the procedural (means, "is this the right way to do this?") argument.

We tried to get equal rights for gays into the Constitution with the ERA (Equal Rights Amendment) and the inclusion of equal rights for gays was one of the main reasons the ERA got voted down.
The idea was that discrimination based on sexuality was also discrimination based on sex. As Constitutional law scholar Eugene Volokh said:

Many supporters of same-sex marriage, including those who challenge the opposite-sex-only rule as unconstitutional, argue that the opposite-sex-only rule discriminates based on sex. Some (though not most) state judges that have considered the question have indeed concluded that state constitutional ERA provisions mandate sex-blind marriage laws. It seems quite plausible (though not certain) that enactment of the ERA would increase the likelihood that courts would indeed mandate recognition of same-sex marriages. The arguments that the ERA would lead to such a result can no longer be dismissed, as it once was, as a "hysterical" "emotional scare tactic" "canards."

If (and I agree it is highly likely that they will) the SC rules that gays have equal rights, the SC will be adding rights into the Constitution that were never there AND they will be overruling the EXPRESS vote of the American people.

The Constitution is a contract, a social contract, and should be interpreted as any contract would be. You look at the intent of the people signing the contract when the contract was signed (or in this case ratified). Any additional evidence is non-admissible parole evidence.
Equal rights for gays was never in the Constitution. The Founding Fathers would not have put it in or contemplated it in 1787, nor would have Alaskan voters when they updated and entered into the Constitution circa 1948. So, you lose on intent given either the original intent of the original signers or a more forgiving "recent intent" standard for the most recent signers of the contract.

Also, we have an admission by those proposing the ERA that equal rights for gays was never in the Constitution. While Amendments aren't rare they are a non-trivial undertaking. You don't undertake that much work for something you already have. It is ludicrous to assume that they would put the ERA up for a vote (especially with the political liability that gay rights were to the ERA) if the Constitution already include equal rights for gays.

The only way you can rule that homosexuals are covered by the Equal Protection clause (or an equivalent) is to be intellectually dishonest. You have to your desire for the substantive outcome (gay rights) outweigh doing things the right way (passing a new version of the ERA, or more easily passing state/Fed laws).
You have to be willing to take the EXPLICIT will of the people and say "Fuck you, because I wear a black robe I can shit on democracy. While you little people cling to God and guns, I can deny your right to vote."
And you can say "well it happened in 2000". So, your counter-argument is that 2 wrongs make a right?

You want gay rights/marriage? Fine.
The correct way to do that is to pass state laws. Nothing in the Constitution says gays can't marry.
If you can't pass state laws then things aren't happening decades too late, they aren't happening because society doesn't agree with you. Instead, you know society doesn't agree with you and you want to cram your social views down their throats.
You can bitch about the religious right (a weak addled straw man since the late-80s), but they don't go to court to overturn democracy. They aren't going to court to force you to pray, or attend church on Sundays. They don't go to court saying "We know society doesn't agree with this. Fuck society. We are better than them. Help us enforce our will upon them."

The Republican's have more blacks in high offices of the WH administration than any other WH in history.
The only black SC justice is Republican.
Republicans have many strong black candidates at Congress-level (senate & house) over the last few election cycles

Of course, the problem is once blacks leave the Democrat party they cease to become black. And, the MSM refuses to report (positively) on them.
Look at Rice, as soon as she worked for a Rep admin it became acceptable to draw cartoons of her, in national newspapers, as a big lipped spear chucker (yes she had the spear in her hand).
And as for "here comes the raping black man" slander, the last time that was used was by the Dems against Thomas.

The facts are these:
Democrats were strongly against the Civil War.
Democrats were strongly against freeing the black slaves.
Republicans ended slavery in the US.
Republican congresses passed the 1950s/60s civil rights laws.
Affirmative Action (a.k.a. positive discrimination, the keystone of Democrat's social programs) has ruined any achievements made by individual blacks because you are never sure if someone rose to their position in the organization based on merit or preferences.
I have heard the word "nigger" far far more often uttered by Democrats than Republicans.

Under Democrat administrations national & locally, black drug use, jail time, and illegitimacy (all chronic poverty factors) have increased. The Democrats "Great Society" turned out to be a "Great (Racist) Society".

Democrats are vile bigoted people.
They see everything through the prism of race.

Democrats feel that they own black people and when a member of the black community up and leaves the Democrat's plantation, Democrats become threated and start referring to that person as a "house nigger". "Denunciation of black conservatives has become more shrill - and increasingly bitter - as their numbers have grown and they have acquired a voice."
Every time a black votes Democrat they are picking cotton for their masters.

Democrats glory in their soft racism and feel that they are better because of it.
The Democrats literally believe that it is their "white man's burden" to give and give to the poor "victim class".
They de-humanize and infantilize blacks by never allowing them to accomplish things for themselves.

And now for a preview of the Israeli/Palestinian negotiations ...

UN: To understand things, let us have both of you say what you want.

Israel: We want to live in peace. Watch our children grow up. Watch them enjoy their lives and be happy.

Palestinians: We want to kill all the Jews.

UN: Well, I think we can find a compromise. What if we just kill half the Jews?

Israel: What ?!? You can't be serious?

Palestinians: We want to kill the left half of every Jew!

UN: That seems reasonable.

Israel: Are you mad you can't kill 1/2 of a person? This is insane and totally unacceptable. We thought this would be an honest negotiation.

UN: Now we see what the real problem is. We see the unreasonableness of the Jews.

EU: Psst, Palestinians. If you kill off the Jews the Holocaust won't be our fault. If you can't live with them either it must be their fault.

UN: Look, you hook-noses, how you thwart every attempt at peace, and lie and complain about the Holocaust. And, I feel the Palestinians were honest in their desires. You seem not to have been honest in wanting a compromise.

And the EU, the Democrats and Academia nod their heads in agreement.

Little point looking into wave power, environmentalists will just shut it down.
They have shut down wind farms (Nantucket Sound ala Ted Kennedy, and Walter Cronkite)
They are trying to reverse hydro-power (dam removal in the northwest)
They have killed off nuclear (oh, just pick one)

At some point you just give up and keep buying oil.

Really I don't think the environmentalists (a) believe what they say, and (b) actually want to solve anything.
Most of their actions are either just about narcissism and having something to bitch about (usually yelling at society when they really want to yell at their Dad).

If I thought they actually cared and were working to get things done, I'd be more supportive, but close interaction which the people has turned me very very off to their message.

from: http://games.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=387487&cid=21680537

innocent people simply because guilty people use
This is WAR-fare, not LAW-fare.
We are not establishing guilt or innocence.

Tibet decided to get too moral for their own good, and if they are really really good maybe in their next life they will come back as a country.
India decided to go in for a pacifist religion. First they got raped by the Mughals from the north-east; then they got raped by the Muslims from the north-west; and finally the English raped them from the south.
It was so bad even Gandhi said the Jews should have gone gleefully into the ovens (something Europe agreed with but not out of pacifism.)

For a bunch of Leftist who scream on and on about Darwinism, you seem to have missed the point that survival is what matters most.
Of course, to many Leftists screaming on and on is what matters most.

Also with a Europe/Blue State birthrate hovering at 1.2 (versus the replacement rate of 2.1) you seem to have missed the whole reproduction angle of Darwin too.

from: http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/04/25/2040200

One would do well to actually read 1984 (as opposed to just scream its title every time the Right does something you don't like).

1984 was an comment by Orwell on the Communists. Orwell, himself a socilaist, learned to hate and fear the Communists after the Spanish Civil War.

Big Brother was an obvious stand-in for "Uncle Joe" Stalin.

In 1984 you will see:
* The Ministry of Truth, the media manipulation of news and history (ala the recent Reugter's Photoshopping of pictures from the Israel/Lebanon war; Dan Rather's falsification of documents)
* NewSpeak, the changing of language to make certain thoughts impossible (ala the politically correct language redefinition we experienced in the 70s/80s e.g. "differently abled" for "handicapped", in Sweden "husmor" replaced by "hemmafru" or their English cognates "housewife" with "stay-at-home-mom")
* DoubleThink, the simultaneous holding of two or more mutually exclusive ideas (e.g. "homosexuality is something you are born with" and "homosexuality is a personal and private decision"; or "racism is always wrong" and "affirmative action is the right thing to do")
* ThoughtCrime, making the mere ability of thinking something a crime. You see this all the time in Hate Crime legislation (what murder wasn't already a crime ... with a life penalty?) and University speech codes (University "Free Speech Zones" are a wonderful example of NewSpeak, DoubleThink, and ThoughtCrime wrapped into one)
* also the breakdown of the family and sexual relationships (which has less obvious parallels but "PolPot & the child turns their parents in" (like Winston's neighbor) would be an example)
* furthermore the mild anti-semitism, the hatred of Goldsteinism, today you see this all the time however this is mostly thinly veiled as an attack on "Zionism"

We really shouldn't be surprised by the EU and The Left's fascination with this kind of behaviour. Orwell saw and predicted it nearly 50 years ago.

Is your hate politically correct hate?
Do you believe that racism is wrong unless you hate white people?
Do you believe that sexism is wrong unless you hate men?
Do you believe that sexual discrimination is wrong unless you hate heterosexuals?
Do you believe that religious intolerance is wrong unless you hate Christians?
Do you believe that freedom of speech involves censoring offensive non-Politically Correct speech?
Do you believe that DoubleThink is hard and that DoubleThink is easy?
Do you keep such an open mind that your brain fell out or so open that any piece of garbage can blow in?
Are you a hypocrite and a bigot? Do your friends praise you for it and call you morally superior? Do you think that your bigotry makes you a better person than others?

If your hate is politically correct hate then the Democratic Party is the party for you.

In response t: http://varifrank.com/archives/2006/08/you_can_try_mak_1.php

Nice thought.
Unfortunately, it will never happen.

The airlines view their "customers" as an inconvenience. And, passengers respond in kind.

I don't remember when you could go to the airplane without going through a metal detector. Of course, on the upside they have stopped asking the 2 stupid questions: "Did you pack your bags?" "Has anyone asked you to carry items on this flight?". Great great so you are admitting that all this hassle was worthless and you're just going to fall back to honesty as a terrorist prevention measure? Great.
Well, at least with the post-911 regulations they cut those insulting questions out.

What this will result in is not more conveniences, but more selling opportunities. More opportunities to get abused by the angry waitress on the plane. Remember after 911 the "flight attendants" decided to take out their fears and aggressions on the passengers? I do.

I also remember being physically shoved off an airplane because they miscounted; while I tried to explain that my wife had to get off the plane with me (I had the only set of keys to the house BTW.). I wasn't trying to stay; I just wanted to tell that lady in that seat that we're getting off the plane. Now if I had shoved back what do you think would have happened? Probably the same thing that happened to the guy behind me who said "What the Hell" when the stewardess yanked (and I mean yanked) his luggage out of this hand. His ticket was voided and he was "banned" from the airline. He was also told he was NOT allowed to see the manager. And this was pre-911.

All I want on my flight (and in life in general) is to be left alone. I want the pilot to stop acting like a tour guide. If he would just shut up I could go to sleep. I try not to bother anyone. I wish they would try to not bother me.

Yeah, I fear that soon my iPod (with my audiobook) and my physical book will no longer be allowed on the plane. Then I'll have no way to escape the stale air, the smelly seats, and the guy that has reclined his chair to the point that I wonder if I am supposed to give him a shave (more power to the airlines that stop reclining seats).

I check everything. I just sit down, shut up, and read as soon as I can get on the plane. And, I don't stop until I am at the next airport.

I love international flights (aside from LAX security, but you know). International flights at least don't beat you with a stick. I like nothing more than paying $300-$500 for domestic flights only to get abused by the staff. Really wasn't there a "common carrier" legal standard for the treatment of passengers?

The airlines are not going to change who they are. Not as long as Chapter 11 is available to them. (Let them fail and let something else move in.)

I HATE flying. Actually I am OK with going though the air. It is the airport and 25% of the flight attendants I hate.

.

I am looking to change jobs. My wife gets furious with me when I mention that I am thinking of moving back East so I don't have to fly to the relatives. It would save me $1k-$2k per year in tickets. Given the choice between 8 hours in a plane and 8 hours in a car, I'll take the car. Yeah I like the geography in the Northwest but after my last two experiences, I am ready to move to where I don't have to fly.

I want to thank the NFL for making the SuperBowl increasingly unwatchable.

Every year the game becomes more and more packaged, with less and less time actually spent in the game and more and more time in commercials. Add to that that the game has been a blow out for the last 10 years (well maybe not the last 10. I stopped caring ~4 years ago.) Past the first half, the game is effectively over and no one cares anymore. They have moved on to talking with other people at the party.

The party which is never as good as people build it up to being (partially because of the boring game). Unfortunately, everyone and their mother feel that they need to host a SuperBowl party because it is now an "event." Half the people aren't fans of the sport, let alone the game. We just show up because it is the SuperBowl and we are supposed to care (once upon a time I used to care). 2-5 people spend the entire game in the kitchen making fancy party foods (super-pizza, super-nachos, super-subs, etc.) that no one needs. I just need a bag of chip/crisps in a bowl, please. Of course it is a party where no one gets drunk because it is the middle of the day before we go to work on Monday and we also all know the neo-Prohibitionists in MADD are going to have the cops out with the breath-testers. So, if you have 2 beers and decide to drive you're in for a hefty fine and a lecture. Enjoy your sober mid-day party.

What type of cameras are they using to film football? The game on TV is ultra-shiny in a way that real life isn't. I have been to many NFL games in real life, sat 10 rows off the field. The real life games aren't that glossy and shiny. And that is part of why the games now look so fake on TV. They have the SuperBowl in some city that has no chance of actually playing in the game. The entire field is enclosed and climate controlled. It is (was) the middle of winter and it looks like a bright sunny summer day in Florida on the field. We are never going to have another Ice Bowl. We are never going to have another SuperBowl where the weather matters. No more mud on the field. No more snow, forcing a running game. Just a highly packaged, processed, blah. It is like once we got to eat hand-packed hamburgers and now we get McDonald's Quarter Pounders. It is artificial crap.

Also every 3-5 years they push the SuperBowl back another week. The game used to be in the beginning of January. Now it is in February. It doesn't really matter since it is played in the perpetual astro-turfed summer of the domed field, but it just isn't what it should be.

I guess that gives them more time to set up the half-time show. A show everyone traditionally turns the channel on. And in an effort to get as corporately packaged as possible the half time show is always some weird mixture designed to appeal to every demographic simultaneously. It is always some 45 minute extravaganza that combines Country & Hip-Hop music to the gayest, most Tony award winning choreography imaginable. And if that isn't enough let us throw a huge fireworks show in the middle of the field! Let us also not run the lip-synched sound directly to the TV feed. That way the TV feed can make due with mics on the field, which sounds like they are filming in a cave. Of course, the singers can't lip-synch worth a damn because it very hard to do when you are jumping around the cast of Rent with M80s going off 2 feet away from your head.

You can tell the game isn't what it should be. Instead of following the action on the field, we are treated to a never ending montage of reaction shots from the players looking bored on the sidelines. I guess they can't get into the game either with the 6 million TV timeouts, real timeouts, instant replay time outs, referee timeouts, Coca-Cola timeouts, etc.

Here is how bad the game has become a sizable portion of the US watches the game just to see the commercials. Name one other time that you do this?