Central Scrutinizer

Looks like I will be looking into the Libertarians to see what their platform is and who they will field as a candidate. That post/quote was spot on and exactly what I believe myself. I'd love to see a real third party with some clout, some balls and brains, no religious bullshit, and a chance of winning or at least forcing the other parties to start behaving intelligently and responsibly toward the country and the citizenry/taxpayers due to a growing influence and popularity among the citizens of said third party.

Flash, They seem to think that if a 'law enforcement officer' thinks he needs to enter your home, your castle, and search it... well, how could that be seen as unreasonable? He's a cop and smarter and better than us common criminals, errrr citizens I mean. In otherwords, they be de good guyz, we all left over is de bad guyz. It's the 'us against them' mindset many in law enforcement come down with. And they, of course, being the good guys, are always right, and should be able to do anything that makes their job safer and easier... never mind those bothersome and ancient rights and such the citizens of these here united states have. That there shit was written long ago when everyone had a muzzle loader, not an uzi, you see. So, the judge is right and righteous, brother. Bend over and spread them. Do you like 'confinement loaf' for dinner? Welcome to the United Police State of America. Feel safe. We'll take care of you. Place your nail clippers in the basket and get on the floor you piece of shit terrorist scumbag. Where's the sarcasm emoticon?

'Kill the Irishman'. Good flic. Worth a look. Based on a true story. Watched it today.

About time this stuff was stopped (Feds will not though). Good to see these legislators taking on the Homeland Security gestapo and standing up for the citizens. With all they have to check a person for weapons and bombs there really is no need for these degrading grope fests at the security checkpoints. Sniffer dogs, xray machines, sniffer machines, full body scanners, metal detectors, bomb material detecting swabs, etc etc etc. WTF? With all that they still need to feel up your stuff and stick a finger in your ass? I don't think so. They've gone completely nuts. I'll take the radiation from the full body scanner rather than get felt up by these overpaid goon squads.

Ah' date=' it is so easy to calls anyone who disagrees with you a racist. You don't have to prove it, just say it. BTW John McCain was required to provide his full birth certificate, since he was born in Panama. It was irrelevant anyway, since both of his parents were US citizens,but he was required to show it and did so promptly. As to Pailin, I don't think she has ever set foot outside the USA, even if she can see Russia from her window. I remember a fuss years ago, when George Romney decided to seek the presidency. Romney was born in Mexio in a colony of ploygamous Mormons who had left the US rather than give up their "extra" wives. The US courts ruled than hisforeign birth did not exclude him, since both of his parents were US citizens (if lawbreakers). This made the questions about McCain's birth odd, since the courts had already ruled there was no problem. [/quote'] Wouldn't the fact when McCain was born that Panama was a US possession make a difference? US parents, born on what could be seen as US soil? Was Panama still then a US possession, like the the Phils and PR were at one time? Gotta Google that.

I read a very good biography on Washington a decade or so ago. Wish I could remember the author's name now. Excellent book on the man.

@CS, From a religious perspective, George Washington was a controversial figure. Like many of the founding fathers, he was a Deist – believing in God, but not believing that God intervenes on a day to day basis. Before the Revolution, he served as a member of the laity of two Episcopal churches in Virginia. Many of Washington’s talks and personal affairs had to do with his deeply engrained religious and Masonic beliefs. Most of “Washington’s Prayers†are regarded by historians as having been edited or written by other authors entirely. Washington was an early supporter of religious pluralism. In 1775 he ordered that his troops not burn in the Pope in effigy on Guy Fawkes night. In 1790 he wrote that he envisioned a country "which gives bigotry no sanction...persecution no assistance.... May the Children of the Stock of Abraham, who dwell in this land, continue to merit and enjoy the good will of the other Inhabitants; while every one shall sit under his own vine and fig tree, and there shall be none to make him afraid." This letter was seen by the Jewish community as a significant event; they felt that for the first time in millennia Jews would enjoy full human and political rights.

4 Flash, Surprising Facts About George Washington --Washington was the only major founder who lacked a college education. John Adams went to Harvard, James Madison to Princeton, and Alexander Hamilton to Columbia, making Washington self-conscious about what he called his “defective education.†--Washington never had wooden teeth. He wore dentures that were made of either walrus or elephant ivory and were fitted with real human teeth. Over time, as the ivory got cracked and stained, it resembled the grain of wood. Washington may have purchased some of his teeth from his own slaves. --Washington had a strangely cool and distant relationship with his mother. During the Revolutionary War and her son’s presidency, she never uttered a word of praise about him and she may even have been a Tory. No evidence exists that she ever visited George and Martha Washington at Mount Vernon. Late in the Revolutionary War, Mary Washington petitioned the Virginia legislature for financial relief, pleading poverty—and, by implication, neglect by her son. Washington, who had been extremely generous to his mother, was justly indignant. --Even as a young man, Washington seemed to possess a magical immunity to bullets. In one early encounter in the French and Indian War, he absorbed four bullets in his coat and hat and had two horses shot from under him yet emerged unscathed. This led one Indian chief to predict that some higher power was guiding him to great events in the future. --By age 30 Washington had survived smallpox, malaria, dysentery, and other diseases. Although he came from a family of short-lived men, he had an iron constitution and weathered many illnesses that would have killed a less robust man. He lived to the age of 67. --While the Washingtons were childless—it has always been thought that George Washington was sterile—they presided over a household teeming with children. Martha had two children from her previous marriage and she and George later brought up two grandchildren as well, not to mention countless nieces and nephews. --That Washington was childless proved a great boon to his career. Because he had no heirs, Americans didn’t worry that he might be tempted to establish a hereditary monarchy. And many religious Americans believed that God had deliberately deprived Washington of children so that he might serve as Father of His Country. --Though he tried hard to be fair and took excellent medical care of his slaves, Washington could be a severe master. His diaries reveal that during one of the worst cold snaps on record in Virginia—when Washington himself found it too cold to ride outside—he had his field slaves out draining swamps and performing other arduous tasks. --For all her anxiety about being constantly in a battle zone, Martha Washington spent a full half of the Revolutionary War with her husband—a major act of courage that has largely gone unnoticed. --Washington was obsessed with his personal appearance, which extended to his personal guard during the war. Despite wartime austerity and a constant shortage of soldiers, he demanded that all members of his personal guard be between 5'8" and 5'10"; a year later, he narrowed the range to 5'9" to 5'10." --While Washington lost more battles than he won, he still ranks as a great general. His greatness lay less in his battlefield brilliance—he committed some major strategic blunders—than in his ability to hold his ragged army intact for more than eight years, keeping the flame of revolution alive. --Washington ran his own spy network during the war and was often the only one privy to the full scope of secret operations against the British. He anticipated many techniques of modern espionage, including the use of misinformation and double agents. --Washington tended his place in history with extreme care. Even amid wartime stringency, he got Congress to appropriate special funds for a full-time team of secretaries who spent two years copying his wartime papers into beautiful ledgers. --For thirty years, Washington maintained an extraordinary relationship with his slave and personal manservant William Lee, who accompanied him throughout the Revolutionary War and later worked in the presidential mansion. Lee was freed upon Washington’s death and given a special lifetime annuity. --The battle of Yorktown proved the climactic battle of the revolution and the capstone of Washington’s military career, but he initially opposed this Franco-American operation against the British—a fact he later found hard to admit. --Self-conscious about his dental problems, Washington maintained an air of extreme secrecy when corresponding with his dentist and never used such incriminating words as ‘teeth’ or ‘dentures.’ By the time he became president, Washington had only a single tooth left—a lonely lower left bicuspid that held his dentures in place. --Washington always displayed extremely ambivalence about his fame. Very often, when he was traveling, he would rise early to sneak out of a town or enter it before he could be escorted by local dignitaries. He felt beleaguered by the social demands of his own renown. --At Mount Vernon, Washington functioned as his own architect—and an extremely original one at that. All of the major features that we associate with the house—the wide piazza and colonnade overlooking the Potomac, the steeple and the weathervane with the dove of peace—were personally designed by Washington himself. --A master showman with a brilliant sense of political stagecraft, Washington would disembark from his coach when he was about to enter a town then mount a white parade horse for maximum effect. It is not coincidental that there are so many fine equestrian statues of him. --Land-rich and cash-poor, Washington had to borrow money to attend his own inauguration in New York City in 1789. He then had to borrow money again when he moved back to Virginia after two terms as president. His public life took a terrible toll on his finances. --Martha Washington was never happy as First Lady—a term not yet in use—and wrote with regret after just six months of the experience: “I think I am more like a state prisoner than anything else...And as I cannot do as I like, I am obstinate and stay home a great deal.†--When the temporary capital moved to Philadelphia in 1790, Washington brought six or seven slaves to the new presidential mansion. Under a Pennsylvania abolitionist law, slaves who stayed continuously in the state for six months were automatically free. To prevent this, Washington, secretly coached by his Attorney General, rotated his slaves in and out of the state without telling them the real reason for his actions. --Washington nearly died twice during his first term in office, the first time from a tumor on his thigh that may have been from anthrax or an infection, the second time from pneumonia. Many associates blamed his sedentary life as president for the sudden decline in his formerly robust health and he began to exercise daily. --Tired of the demands of public life, Washington never expected to serve even one term as president, much less two. He originally planned to serve for only a year or two, establish the legitimacy of the new government, then resign as president. Because of one crisis after another, however, he felt a hostage to the office and ended up serving two full terms. For all his success as president, Washington frequently felt trapped in the office. --Exempt from attacks at the start of his presidency, Washington was viciously attacked in the press by his second term. His opponents accused him of everything from being an inept general to wanting to establish a monarchy. At one point, he said that not a single day had gone by that he hadn’t regretted staying on as president. --Washington has the distinction of being the only president ever to lead an army in battle as commander-in-chief. During the Whiskey Rebellion of 1794, he personally journeyed to western Pennsylvania to take command of a large army raised to put down the protest against the excise tax on distilled spirits. --Two of the favorite slaves of George and Martha Washington—Martha’s personal servant, Ona Judge and their chef Hercules—escaped to freedom at the end of Washington’s presidency. Washington employed the resources of the federal government to try to entrap Ona Judge in Portsmouth, New Hampshire and return her forcibly to Virginia. His efforts failed. --Washington stands out as the only founder who freed his slaves, at least the 124 who were under his personal control. (He couldn’t free the so-called ‘dower slaves’ who came with his marriage to Martha.) In his will, he stipulated that the action was to take effect only after Martha died so that she could still enjoy the income from those slaves. --After her husband died, Martha grew terrified at the prospect that the 124 slaves scheduled to be freed after her death might try to speed up the timetable by killing her. Unnerved by the situation, she decided to free those slaves ahead of schedule only a year after her husband died. --Like her husband, Martha Washington ended up with a deep dislike of Thomas Jefferson, whom she called “one of the most detestable of mankind.†When Jefferson visited her at Mount Vernon before he became president, Martha said that it was the second worst day of her life—the first being the day her husband died.

Ran across the story. Here's the link on Abe's religious beliefs: http://news.discovery.com/history/president-abraham-lincoln-religion-god-110415.html

"Too many voters would not vote for an admitted atheist." Yup. I believe many politicians just do lip service to religion for the votes it will bring them from the brainwashed religious 'believers'. Saw some articles recently on Abe Lincoln's religious beliefs/nonbeliefs. A letter from an old lawyer friend/partner of Abe's before he went to the White House was brought up that showed Abe had a lot of misgivings about religion, but Abe always played the religion card. An interesting article. I'll see if I can find the links.

To tell the truth Hugh, I don't think many of us who voted for Obama thought he would be able to do much his first term after what he was left by W and his motley crew to deal with. The country is fucked not because of Obama's shortcomings, but because the Repubs had 8 years to totally destroy the country. Hard to fix in just 2 years or so what the W krew fucked up totally in 8. In fact it will probably take the Dems three more administrations to fix what the Repbufoons wrought in 8 years. Why so long? Because your guys truly screwed the pooch and drove the economy to the brink and over playing their war games for profit and fun and other assorted crimes for financial gain, to the severe detriment of the country and the American people. If the Repubs were in again it would be just as bad, or worse for the majority of Americans. Please do tell us what the Repubs could/would have done that would have us doing better. I'd love to hear it. Share your solutions. Tell us what platforms you would endorse that would save the country now after W's Follies of the 8 years he was in office.

"The mistake is odd enough to call into question just what Obama’s priorities are." Not really. Just a mistake of some staffer who is supposed to be on top of the voodoo religious shit and PC stuff. I'd say OB's priorities are tilted toward much more important things than the Great Pumpkin and it may have slipped his mind, but it was the responsibility of a staffer who fucked up I would think. But, yeah, let's use this silliness to bash the man some more and try to prove he is a muslim radical cunt and not a 'true' Xtian fruitcake full of nuts. The press is full of wankers who need to make some more news. Good catch Faux News. Christ these people are such dipshits. Anything to bash the man with. Truly pathetic. (Not aimed at you, Flasher. Just the faux news people and others who try to use this sort of cock up against the man. Jeezus.)

Shame on the government and school officials for even thinking of prosecuting the poor woman. 20 years and thousands in fines. She would be given less for killing someone for chrissakes. It's enough to make you

Bring him some paper PJs like they give you in some of the hospitals these days. No need for him to be sleeping naked. And, he can't hang himself with the paper PJs (likely the excuse for him being kept naked at night).

Steve, The thing is, if the dollar goes kaput, and supposedly the Chinese and others are trying to get the dollar no longer to be the world currency petro exchange... when the dollar collapses who will buy the Chinese products when we can no longer afford to?

All right. Now those are worth something! Love those gold covered chocolate coins! Can I trade in baht for them?

Cav, Yes, they are doing this. 2.7 million so far used. Here: Berkshares

So, Phil, how the hell did you get to Thailand when you went there? On a banana boat? As crew?

These people are not true unbiased judges. They are political appointees who owe their political bosses their jobs and vote the party line for the most part. Few actually vote and find as a real judge should. It is disgusting really. Bring back Solomon. There was a real judge.

"As soon as the U.S. Supreme Court invalidates Obamacare, the GOP will be offering a better law." 55555555555555555555555555555555555555555555555555555555555555555555555555555555555555555555555555555555555555555555555555555555555555555555555555555555555555 Damn it. I think I hurt myself from laughing so hard.

Actually next to nothing does. As to your example' date=' you have to own or drive a car to "have" to have ins., so there are millions of people that are exempt from it. [b']With the new health care law.... you just have to be alive to have to buy insurance.[/b] Exactly the same thing. If you have a car, you must buy insurance. If you get sick, then you must buy insurance. Don't want to? Then prove to me you are not even going to get sick. No, your word is not good enough. If we had the public option like most of us wanted, we would not be having this discussion. But the righties didn't like that, and wrote this mess instead (reference Heritage, Bob Dole, 1994) which the Dems picked up complete to pacify the GOP. And there is precedent too: waaaayyyy back in 1798! Excellent, and an interesting read. Seems even way back then the founders and others saw a need to have healthy citizens covered by a mandated tax and health coverage to have a healthy economy and a tax which made it possible to care for these citizens who for whatever reason became ill or injured in that job. Thanks for that link.

Yup, the rest of the first world can do these things, but the states can't because it has too many brain washed Fucked News righties that think it is a communist plot to take over the country.

Ah, the one world, one government theory? Unworkable for the foreseeable future I think. As nice as it sounds, and I do feel it would be a wonderful thing if we were all one big happy world human family, all paying taxes to help our children have a bright future, no more wars over silly boundaries (much like this stupid horseshit the Thai Yellows are stirring up with Cambodia at the moment), free education at the lowest to highest levels for all, etc, etc. I just do not see this becoming even close to a reality in even my grandkids lifetimes.

55555. Well, those children of the illegals from previous administrations and from years gone by would have grandfathered rights, and as said, once born on US soil they were, and are, legal US citizens, but... laws can be changed, and are all the time if they are found to be no longer desirable or workable. No?

Steve, Well, maybe to some it is an Hispanic issue, but to me it is not. As long as they come in in a legal fashion I have no issues with their being in the country. I do truly believe immigration and the melting pot (supposedly, slowly, over time) is one of the things that does make the US a great place. And, over the past couple of centuries there were always certain immigrants that were considered more desirable than others (yes, some having to do with racism and anti-catholic and anti-semite sentiments in previous decades/centuries). There still are quotas in place I believe. At one point more recently I do believe, if my memory serves, they tried to 'even the playing field' and stopped giving so many visas to the Irish and Italians, and started giving more to other nationalities. The thing is most all countries have quotas and limits for immigration. Most immigration policies these days are well thought out and planned and limited immigration is an intelligent way to go about it. Illegal immigrants are a severe burden to many countries in the world that people wish to immigrate to. Illegals stress the resources of many a western country and bring down the quality of life for all (except maybe the rich and/or those that take advantage of the illegals). I sympathize with their plight and their desire to make a better life for themselves. But really, most illegals should stay in their country and try to change THEIR country for the better, by trying to fight the rampant corruption or repressive governments they are trying to flee from that cripples their own economies and takes away their personal freedoms. They need to fight to make their place and governments better and their lives and their childrens lives better, for a better future for them. The US and other countries that have this problem just cannot let in all the people wanting to go where the economy is better (or was better), and the freedoms of the people are more firmly established. It is unsustainable. No country can afford to leave this unchecked, and the US can no longer afford to let this continue unabated. JMHO. P.S. Hell, I think there should be a moratorium on all immigration as long as the states has so many people unemployed and underemployed.