The fact that Harry Reid’s statements are being used for political leverage by some Republicans is downright sad. Someone needs to tell them that race is nothing more than a social construction, there is no such thing as a "white" or "black" gene, and the only difference between these two races is what we as humans create. Hopefully one day we will realize that we all share a common human identity, and use that to help each other rather than tear each other down with the walls of racism and inequality.

@SueBarlett: If this was about a dead hooker or a live boy in Obama’s past, he should man-up and BE the President regardless. It is not. His voting record while in the Senate showed him to be a just-right-of-center pro-corporatist.

Since I have to pay for wars that I don't believe in, why shouldn't anti-choice people have to pay for abortions they don't believe in?

Remember how the Bush administration was spying on us, the citizens? This surely included Democrats. I wonder if Rove is using that information to blackmail Obama and his administration, primarily not to prosecute Bush or Rove and that would explain both why they are not freeing Gov. Siegelman. This would also explain the tortured logic in the Justice department's logic.

Now back to the light news. Last spring, I boarded an airplane to check the water level when one of those glorified waitresses asked me if I had the swine flu. I didn’t answer, but the look on my face persuaded her to answer her own question: “I was just joking.” Sure. At any rate, swine flu vaccines (despite the terror displayed by a California nursing association) appear to be so effective that most researchers now suspect that this strain of flu is no worse than any other ordinary flu, save for the fact that it is “new.” The obsession about a “pandemic” has turned out to be almost wholly a media creation, helped along by the various phobias concerning Mexico. The fact is that little more than 5,000 have died of it world-wide (and mainly as a complication of more serious illnesses), and even that represents but a drop in the yearly flu-fatality bucket even in the U.S.; in Mexico, where the flu allegedly originated, it seems to have taken an extended vacation. The WHO, moreover, has come under criticism for inventing overblown criteria that allowed swine flu to be declared a potential “pandemic”—kind of like how the Bush administration invented rationales without evidence to raise terrorist “threat” levels at politically opportune times.

In regard to another touchy subject, NAFTA, it would appear that the “giant sucking sound” has claimed another “victim”: Ross Perot. As they say, if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em—and not just in Mexico. Perot’s Systems Corporation recently opened up a “technology center” in Guadalajara, meant to employ close to 300 engineers as primarily out-sourced tech support operators. Shocking, huh? Or perhaps not as shocking as the 6,000 Perot already employed in India (and thousands more in other countries). Indeed, it would appear once again that Mexico is the more convenient target for scapegoating because they are “closer” to the scene. I don’t believe that Perot ever mentioned in 1992 that he made billions in “administering” Medicare in Texas during the 1980s, either. But then again, Perot was always a little off-center; he claimed North Vietnam hired Black Panthers to “assassinate” him, and that Cubans had been hired to kill him over his stance on NAFTA. He also claimed that he was “defeated” during his debate with Al Gore over NAFTA because Gore had been fed “secret” information through a hidden ear-piece—and not because Perot was continuously stumped when confronted with facts and his own hypocrisy. But that was then, and things seem to have changed a bit.

It is interesting to note that in the current Texas legislature, 44 of the 74 Democrats in the House were Latino, and zero who are Republican. So when Thom and his right-wing guests try to out-anti-Latino each other, he ought to take into account that he populistizes at the Left’s peril. But then again, I suspect that many whites who call themselves Democrats will allow their latent prejudices take hold if they feel they are no longer “in control” of the party, like former “lefties” like Michael Medved and Charles Krauthammer who saw blacks “controlling” the Democratic agenda. Rather than attempt to “assimilate” Latinos into their vision of America (like Thom’s bigoted teabagger friends), they will run to the “white” party—especially when those on the “progressive” or “populist” side continuously deploy “Mexicans” as convenient punching bags; perhaps we can only hope that Latinos mistake Thom for a Republican when he engages in one of these rants. Anyways, I feel a need to point these things out because I’m a soldier, not The Man’s strumpet.

chuckle8, I have a diffiicult time that Shooter (Cheney) and the banksters would become upset at the money changers. The only time they would be upset is if the money slipped away from their hands.

I need to share with you a paragraph from Bishop Thomas Gumbleton's homily on January 3, 2010. When I read his homilies in the National Catholic Reporter, some homilies strike me or parts of the homilies.

The very first document of the Vatican Council documents is called “Lumen Gentium,” which means “light of the nations.” This document is all about what the church is and should be. It’s a community of the disciples of Jesus. Jesus came to be the light of all the nations, and we who are his disciples, the community of his disciples, if we really become what he has called us to be, we will be the light of all the nations, and all peoples will be welcomed into our one human family, brothers and sisters, if we really shine forth as this light of the nations. That’s all Jesus asks us to be -- to be like he was, one who draws all people, not forcing them to follow all of our ways, but only to understand that God has entered into human history, the God who is the God of all, and that we are all members of that human family, which is God’s family; we are sons and daughters of God.

Let us not forget that as Christians who believe in Jesus Christ we are His disciples. Yes, we are Jesus' disciples. As His disciples we are called to work for the common good that includes all of His children, Christians and non-Christians.

I don't know if this is viewed by others, it shows as being moderated so:

President Obama, the CIA and the Master of the Cover-Up
Saturday 11 December 2010
by: Melvin A. Goodman, t r u t h o u t | Op-Ed – http://www.truthout.org/article/president-obama-cia-and-master-cover-up?...

The Obama administration quietly announced Friday the appointment of John McLaughlin, former deputy CIA director, to head the internal investigation of the intelligence failures that led to the Christmas Day attempted bombing of a Delta airliner headed for Detroit as well as the events leading to the shootings at Fort Hood in November.
With this appointment, President Barack Obama has assured that the culture of intelligence cover-up will continue. McLaughlin has participated in and sought to cover-up many of the CIA’s most egregious failures and misdeeds of the past decade. When he left the CIA, he then served as the agency’s chief apologist.
So, who is John McLaughlin? Most of official Washington and the mainstream media view McLaughlin as the mild-mannered, professorial CIA bureaucrat, who former CIA director George Tenet called the “smartest man he had ever met.”
Few people understand, however, that McLaughlin played the most important role in making sure that the Bush administration received the intelligence that would be used and misused to justify the use of force against Iraq in 2003.

******************************************************

So let me get this straight, Obama appoints a Bush/CIA stooge to investigate? Whisky Tango Foxtrot!?

Who are these supposed DEMOCRATS?

Maybe we could get Paul Wellstone to mount a primary challenge to Obama. I know, I know…but a deceased REAL Democrat has more life than this group of….
sorry if this shows up twice

President Obama, the CIA and the Master of the Cover-Up
Saturday 11 December 2010
by: Melvin A. Goodman, t r u t h o u t | Op-Ed - http://www.truthout.org/article/president-obama-cia-and-master-cover-up?...

The Obama administration quietly announced Friday the appointment of John McLaughlin, former deputy CIA director, to head the internal investigation of the intelligence failures that led to the Christmas Day attempted bombing of a Delta airliner headed for Detroit as well as the events leading to the shootings at Fort Hood in November.
With this appointment, President Barack Obama has assured that the culture of intelligence cover-up will continue. McLaughlin has participated in and sought to cover-up many of the CIA's most egregious failures and misdeeds of the past decade. When he left the CIA, he then served as the agency's chief apologist.
So, who is John McLaughlin? Most of official Washington and the mainstream media view McLaughlin as the mild-mannered, professorial CIA bureaucrat, who former CIA director George Tenet called the "smartest man he had ever met."
Few people understand, however, that McLaughlin played the most important role in making sure that the Bush administration received the intelligence that would be used and misused to justify the use of force against Iraq in 2003.

more: http://www.truthout.org/article/president-obama-cia-and-master-cover-up?...

************************************************

So Obama appoints a Bush/CIA stooge to investigate? Whisky Tango Foxtrot!?

Who are these supposed DEMOCRATS?

Maybe we could get Paul Wellstone to mount a primary challenge to Obama. I know, I know...but a deceased REAL Democrat has more life than this group of....

oh i am sorry.. i meant "9/11 would HAVE been prevented"

bummer

at first i said "would not have happened".. but then i decided to change it.
thanks Zero.

Regarding the severe winter this year - there have been suggestions from some meteorologist and weather sceitist that this could be mother nature's way of desperately trying to counter balance the rising average temperatures worldwide due to global warming .

Secondhand smoke kills approximately 50,000 people in the US every year.

Using that number, secondhand smoke has killed about 500,000 people in the US in the past 10 years (or slightly less than the population of the state of Wyoming) as opposed to terrorism that has killed less that 5,000 people in the US in the past 10 years.

Why hasn't the right wing called for a war on smoking and called for the torture of smokers to find out what they know about the tobacco-terrorism agenda?

If they are willing to spend approximately $1 trillion on wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, why aren't they willing to spend more on health care to save many more lives?