workerbeedrone

I come from a land down under! Where women glow and men plunder! (Thursday Nov 12 | post #434)

Exactly! It was a McCarthy era knee jerk reaction to the Red Scare. In Joe's effort to quell communism, he actually pushed to the U.S. closer to religious fascism. And we're still seeing the effects today. (Tuesday Nov 10 | post #86)

I said Lincoln. I think I'm right about that, but maybe not. It was kind of a play on words. Even though I was raised Catholic, I don't adhere to any organized religion now, and I abhor religious rhetoric by politicians. I consider it pandering to the Christian Right Wing and disingenuous. The founding fathers, for all their faults, specifically made constitutional provisions for separation of church and state. Unprecedented in history at the time, and genius to this day. The fact that a non-Christian has no chance to win high office in the United States really bothers me. In some ways, we have regressed from the founding fathers ideals. (Tuesday Nov 10 | post #84)

Pakistan's fashionistas defy Taliban

Lincoln. When I was a kid, most adults did not say "under God" in the Pledge. Can you tell me why it was added in 1954? (Tuesday Nov 10 | post #77)

World News

Never really thought of fashion as an expression of freedom before. Probably due to my lack of any fashion sense at all. You gotta admire these women giving the finger to the religious zealots. (Tuesday Nov 10 | post #7)

Lone GOP Rep. to Vote For Health Reform Says Was "A Decision Of...

The cost of immunizing people particularly susceptible to flu is much less than the cost of that person walking down the street infecting random people he comes in contact with. Wouldn't you agree? The enemy is the disease, not the person carrying the disease. (Tuesday Nov 10 | post #142)

Lone GOP Rep. to Vote For Health Reform Says Was "A Decision Of...

OMG. According to some posters (like Jones), it's now unAmerican to want health care for all Americans. Worse, in fact it's communist to have a preference for the ability for an out-of-work family to be able to afford a doctor. Wait it's even worse, you're a bloody fascist liberal communist baby-killer if you dare to even think of a homeless person being able to come off the street to get a free flu shot. Yes. It's to the point where anyone with an Obama bumper sticker should be executed, according to people like Jones. (Monday Nov 9 | post #127)

Lone GOP Rep. to Vote For Health Reform Says Was "A Decision Of...

Frikkin genius, Lance. LOL (Monday Nov 9 | post #125)

Obama to Native Americans: "You will not be forgotten"

Wyoming - "Game" might have been a bad choice of wording to describe battles between tribes. Maybe "contest " would be better. Certainly some Indians were man-killers and were very good at it. But I wanted to contrast Indian wars with tactics like biological warfare that whites were using at the time. One thing for sure. It was extremely rare in Indian, or I think any other "primitive " culture, to kill anyone but the warriors in battle. There might have been some attacks where women and children were killed, but extermination was not the goal. That was a concept Indians learned the hard way from the Europeans. (Friday Nov 6 | post #51)

Obama to Native Americans: "You will not be forgotten"

I'm mostly white, but I'm enough Klamath-Modoc to be a registered tribe member (you have to be at least 1/4). I think I can give my 2 cents with with some small amount of credibility. I think Obama's message was a good one. "You will not be forgotten." Some people might call it an empty gesture and in some sense it is, in that there are no promises attached. But at least it's an acknowledgement of what occurred in the past. Firstly, there is no way to change the past. Whether it was intentional in the average American's mind or not, there was genocide. Indians a few hundred years ago (I still say "Indians ") were susceptible to new viruses and alcohol, but mostly they didn't have a clue what Europeans were capable of. At the point of first contact, Europeans had had about 5000 years of civilization built around the never-ending quest for superior weaponry. Completely necessary for them, since any enemy was capable of the worst atrocities in human history. Now contrast this with a people shielded by two oceans from all of this. Indians in those days used stone weapons because there was absolutely no need to use anything else. Population control was part of the culture, and because of this food was extremely plentiful. There was also such an extensive trade economy that there were single-source tribes for many good used across the continent. And on top of this, there wasn't a real concept of land ownership. Some Americans like to believe that there were these bloody battles between tribes, and white people rescued the natives from killing each other off. Logically, that is stupid, but looking back historically, wars between non-European cultures rarely had high body counts. It was closer to a game. There were Sioux warriors for example that never killed an enemy, but would bop them with a coup stick in order to humiliate them. Holy crap! Easy pickings for the Europeans! They're easy to kill and they don't even know they own the land. And they're using stone age weapons to boot. What is surprising is the Indians put up as good of a fight as they did. But the last of the Indian Wars were in the 1880s. What's done is done. You can set back the calendar, and there is no real way to "make it right." Europeans came and conquered as was their MO in those days. Say there was some enemy that had superior weaponry and took over the U.S. Say further they pretty much decimated the existing population and put the survivors into "reservations ". I would hope Americans would fight back like the Indians did. I would hope they would never accept the conquerors version of history, Americans have a lot to feel good about, but there is bad with the good. Obama just acknowledged that and I'm sure most of the tribes appreciated it. (Friday Nov 6 | post #17)

Obama to Sign Homebuyer, Jobless Bill

You didn't see the part of the article pointing out Republican representatives voted overwhelmingly in support of this bill? You're free to give your tax exemption to whomever you'd like. I'm sure the GOP would love it. But realize they voted for this bill also. (Friday Nov 6 | post #27)

Missing Baby Found Under Babysitter's Bed

You guys are being kind of harsh. Who can say they've never misplaced things on occasion? (Thursday Nov 5 | post #7)