Political discussion thread

Slartibartfast wrote: Collapse Of Antarctic Ice Sheet Would Likely Put Washington, D.C. Largely Underwater University of Toronto and Oregon State University geophysicists have shown that should the West Antarctic Ice Sheet collapse and melt in a warming world – as many scientists are concerned it will – it is the coastlines of North America and of nations in the southern Indian Ocean that will face the greatest threats from rising sea levels.The catastrophic increase in sea level, already projected to average between 16 and 17 feet around the world, would be almost 21 feet in such places as Washington, D.C., scientists say, putting it largely underwater.

Just make sure Congress don't get evacuated when this happens

crimhead wrote: IVNORD wrote: Slartibartfast wrote: Collapse Of Antarctic Ice Sheet Would Likely Put Washington, D.C. Largely Underwater University of Toronto and Oregon State University geophysicists have shown that should the West Antarctic Ice Sheet collapse and melt in a warming world – as many scientists are concerned it will – it is the coastlines of North America and of nations in the southern Indian Ocean that will face the greatest threats from rising sea levels.The catastrophic increase in sea level, already projected to average between 16 and 17 feet around the world, would be almost 21 feet in such places as Washington, D.C., scientists say, putting it largely underwater. Just make sure Congress don't get evacuated when this happens   That would be asking for too much.

Then it wouldn't be a bad idea it they took to the tunnels they built for themselves in case of a nuclear strike.

One for the Ivnord.



Edited by Slartibartfast - February 16 2009 at 15:33

Slartibartfast wrote: One for the Ivnord.

Slartibartfast wrote: IVNORD wrote: Slartibartfast wrote: One for the Ivnord.   Personally, I like Dasche politically, somewhat, other than that whole losing his seat to Republican thing,.  but what's up with dems and all the tax problems?  Wait don't answer that.

  I don't know much about it and the abundance of Ann Coulter's ads makes me a bit uneasy, but is there some thruth to it?

Quote of the Day "God wants me to serve."     -- Norm Coleman (R-Insane)  Link

In Today's Tequila Treehouse... Blame Pelosi for Stumbles  Madness Can't be Real  Our Clever President  8 Busted in Phelps Pot Case  Fox Newser In Kiddie Porn  Whore AP's swimming hoax  A Monument To Zealotry  Catherine Bell Witch

Edited by Slartibartfast - February 16 2009 at 15:33

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Edited by Slartibartfast - February 21 2009 at 07:07

Some  quotes from one of the greatest minds  
 

  John  Kennedy once said to a assembled group of scholars in the White  House, "I think this is the most extraordinary collection of talent, of  human knowledge, that has ever been gathered at the White House - with the  possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone."
 

  The  quotes below could prove his point.
        
       
                      When we get piled upon  one another in large cities, as in Europe, we shall  become as  corrupt as Europe.   
Thomas  Jefferson <http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/t/thomasjeff109181.html>
      The democracy will  cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing  to work and give to those who would not.
Thomas  Jefferson <http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/t/thomasjeff122881.html>
      It is incumbent on  every generation to pay its own debts as it goes. A  principle which if acted on would save one-half the wars of  the world.
Thomas  Jefferson <http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/t/thomasjeff136389.html>
       I predict future  happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government  from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of  taking care of them.
Thomas  Jefferson <http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/t/thomasjeff136410.html>
       My reading of history  convinces me that most bad government results from too much  government.
Thomas  Jefferson <http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/t/thomasjeff157220.html>
       No free man shall ever  be debarred the use of arms.
Thomas  Jefferson <http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/t/thomasjeff125076.html>
      The strongest reason  for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is,  as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in  government.
Thomas  Jefferson <http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/t/thomasjeff100991.html>
      The tree of liberty  must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of  patriots and tyrants.
Thomas  Jefferson <http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/t/thomasjeff109180.html>
     Very Interesting  Quote:   In light of the  present financial crisis, it's  interesting to read  what Thomas Jefferson said in 1802:
Banking  institutions are more dangerous to our  liberties than standing armies.  If the American people ever allow private banks to  control the issue of their currency, first by inflation,  then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow  up around the banks will deprive the people of all property  until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their  fathers conquered.
 Doesn't this sound  eerily familiar to what is happening in America  today?

Edited by Atkingani - February 21 2009 at 10:29

Except for the last one, all those Reagan quotes are awesome.

I'll take your Jefferson and Reagan quotes and raise you by a few:


From one who will surely be regarded as one of our greatest presidents:
48. "You teach a child to read, and he or her will be able to pass a literacy test." -Townsend, Tenn., Feb. 21, 2001

47. "I am here to make an announcement that this Thursday, ticket counters and airplanes will fly out of Ronald Reagan Airport." --Washington, D.C., Oct. 3, 2001

46. "Tribal sovereignty means that; it's sovereign. I mean, you're a -- you've been given sovereignty, and you're viewed as a sovereign entity. And therefore the relationship between the federal government and tribes is one between sovereign entities." --Washington, D.C., Aug. 6, 2004 (Watch video clip)

44. "You know, one of the hardest parts of my job is to connect Iraq to the war on terror." --interview with CBS News' Katie Couric, Sept. 6, 2006

42. "I'm the commander -- see, I don't need to explain -- I do not need to explain why I say things. That's the interesting thing about being president." --as quoted in Bob Woodward's Bush at War

41. "Oh, no, we're not going to have any casualties." --discussing the Iraq war with Christian Coalition founder Pat Robertson in 2003, as quoted by Robertson

37. "I know how hard it is for you to put food on your family." --Greater Nashua, N.H., Chamber of Commerce, Jan. 27, 2000 (Listen to audio clip)

36. "Do you have blacks, too?" --to Brazilian President Fernando Cardoso, Washington, D.C., Nov. 8, 2001

34. "I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees." --on "Good Morning America," Sept. 1, 2005, six days after repeated warnings from experts about the scope of damage expected from Hurricane Katrina

30. "For every fatal shooting, there were roughly three non-fatal shootings. And, folks, this is unacceptable in America. It's just unacceptable. And we're going to do something about it." --Philadelphia, Penn., May 14, 2001

29. "This is an impressive crowd -- the haves and the have mores. Some people call you the elite -- I call you my base." --at the 2000 Al Smith dinner

28. "Families is where our nation finds hope, where wings take dream." --LaCrosse, Wis., Oct. 18, 2000

27. "I know what I believe. I will continue to articulate what I believe and what I believe -- I believe what I believe is right." --Rome, Italy, July 22, 2001

26. "See, in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda." --Greece, N.Y., May 24, 2005 (Listen to audio clip)

24. "I wish you'd have given me this written question ahead of time so I could plan for it...I'm sure something will pop into my head here in the midst of this press conference, with all the pressure of trying to come up with answer, but it hadn't yet...I don't want to sound like I have made no mistakes. I'm confident I have. I just haven't -- you just put me under the spot here, and maybe I'm not as quick on my feet as I should be in coming up with one." --after being asked to name the biggest mistake he had made, Washington, D.C., April 3, 2004

22. "Goodbye from the world's biggest polluter." --in parting words to world leaders at his final G-8 Summit, punching the air and grinning widely as those present looked on in shock, Rusutsu, Japan, July 10, 2008

21. "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." --State of the Union Address, Jan. 28, 2003, making a claim that administration officials knew at the time to be false

20. "The most important thing is for us to find Osama bin Laden. It is our number one priority and we will not rest until we find him." --Washington, D.C., Sept. 13, 2001

19. "I don't know where bin Laden is. I have no idea and really don't care. It's not that important. It's not our priority." --Washington, D.C., March 13, 2002

18. "So what?" –President Bush, responding to a an ABC News correspondent who pointed out that Al Qaeda wasn't a threat in Iraq until after the U.S. invaded, Dec. 14, 2008

17. "Can we win? I don't think you can win it." --after being asked whether the war on terror was winnable, "Today" show interview, Aug. 30, 2004

14. "Major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed." --speaking underneath a "Mission Accomplished" banner aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, May 1, 2003

13. "We found the weapons of mass destruction. We found biological laboratories ... And we'll find more weapons as time goes on. But for those who say we haven't found the banned manufacturing devices or banned weapons, they're wrong, we found them." --Washington, D.C., May 30, 2003

12. "Those weapons of mass destruction have got to be somewhere!" --joking about his administration's failure to find WMDs in Iraq as he narrated a comic slideshow during the Radio & TV Correspondents' Association dinner, Washington, D.C., March 24, 2004 (Read more)

11. "I'll be long gone before some smart person ever figures out what happened inside this Oval Office." --Washington, D.C., May 12, 2008

10. "Rarely is the questioned asked: Is our children learning?" --Florence, South Carolina, Jan. 11, 2000

6. "There's an old saying in Tennessee -- I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee -- that says, fool me once, shame on --shame on you. Fool me -- you can't get fooled again." --Nashville, Tenn., Sept. 17, 2002 (Watch video clip)

5. "Too many good docs are getting out of the business. Too many OB-GYNs aren't able to practice their love with women all across this country." --Poplar Bluff, Mo., Sept. 6, 2004 (Watch video clip)

4. "Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we." --Washington, D.C., Aug. 5, 2004 (Watch video clip)

3. "You work three jobs? ... Uniquely American, isn't it? I mean, that is fantastic that you're doing that." --to a divorced mother of three, Omaha, Nebraska, Feb. 4, 2005 (Listen to audio clip)

2. "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job." --to FEMA director Michael Brown, who resigned 10 days later amid criticism over his handling of the Hurricane Katrina debacle, Mobile, Ala., Sept. 2, 2005 (Listen to audio clip; watch video clip)

1. "My answer is bring them on." --on Iraqi insurgents attacking U.S. forces, Washington, D.C., July 3, 2003
George W. Bush


From one who conservative historical revisionists have and are working hard overtime to portray as one of our greatest presidents:

"I don't believe a tree is a tree and if you've seen one you've seen them all."
--Governor Ronald Reagan, in the Sacramento Bee, September 14, 1966

"All the waste in a year from a nuclear power plant can be stored under a desk."
--Ronald Reagan (Republican candidate for president), quoted in the Burlington (Vermont) Free Press, February 15, 1980.  (In reality, the average nuclear reactor generates 30 tons of radioactive waste per year.)

"I have flown twice over Mount St. Helens.  I'm not a scientist and I don't know the figures, but I have a suspicion that one little mountain out there, in these last several months, has probably released more sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere than has been released in the last ten years of automobile driving or things of that kind."
--Ronald Reagan, quoted in Time magazine, October 20, 1980.  (According to scientists, Mount St. Helens emitted about 2,000 tons of sulfur dioxide per day at its peak activity, compared with 81,000 tons per day produced by cars.)

"Growing and decaying vegetation in this land are responsible for 93 percent of the oxides of nitrogen."
--Ronald Reagan, quoted in the Los Angeles Times, October 9, 1980.  (According to Dr. Michael Oppenheimer of the Environmental Defense Fund, industrial sources are responsible for at least 65 percent and possibly as much as 90 percent of the oxides of nitrogen in the U.S.)

"Approximately 80 percent of our air pollution stems from hydrocarbons released by vegetation.  So let's not go overboard in setting and enforcing tough emission standards for man-made sources."
--Ronald Reagan, quoted in Sierra, September 10, 1980

"I've said it before and I'll say it again.  The U.S. Geological Survey has told me that the proven potential for oil in Alaska alone is greater than the proven reserves in Saudi Arabia."
--Ronald Reagan, quoted in the Detroit Free Press, March 23, 1980.  (According to the USGS, the Saudi reserves of 165.5 billion barrels are 17 times the proven reserves--9.2 billion barrels--in Alaska.)

"Why should we subsidize intellectual curiosity?"
--Ronald Reagan, campaign speech, 1980

"Trains are not any more energy efficient than the average automobile, with both getting about 48 passenger miles to the gallon."
--Ronald Reagan, quoted in the Chicago Tribune, May 10, 1980.  (The U.S. Department of Transportation calculates that a 14-car train traveling at 80 miles per hour gets 400 passenger miles to the gallon.  A 1980 auto carrying an average of 2.2 people gets 42.6 passenger miles to the gallon.)

"I have a feeling that we are doing better in the war [in Vietnam] than the people have been told."
--Ronald Reagan, in the Los Angeles Times, October 16, 1967

"Fascism was really the basis for the New Deal."
--Ronald Reagan, quoted in Time, May 17, 1976

"I know all the bad things that happened in that war.  I was in uniform four years myself."
--President Reagan, in an interview with foreign journalists, April 19, 1985.  ("In costume" is more like it.  Reagan spent World War II making Army training films at Hal Roach Studios in Hollywood.)

"They've done away with those committees.  That shows the success of what the Soviets were able to do in this country."
--Ronald Reagan, quoted in the Washington Times, September 30, 1987.  (Reagan longs for the days of Sen. Joseph McCarthy and the HCUA witch hunts.)

"We think there is a parallel between federal involvement in education and the decline in profit over recent years."
--President Reagan, quoted in USA Today, April 26, 1983

"What we have found in this country, and maybe we're more aware of it now, is one problem that we've had, even in the best of times, and that is the people who are sleeping on the grates, the homeless who are homeless, you might say, by choice."
--President Reagan, defending himself against charges of callousness on Good Morning America, January 31, 1984

"I favor the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and it must be enforced at the point of a bayonet,  if necessary."
--Ronald Reagan, Los Angeles Times, October 20, 1965

"I would have voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964."
--Ronald Reagan, Los Angeles Times, June 17, 1966

"If there has to be a bloodbath, then let's get it over with."
--Ronald Reagan (Governor of California), quoted in the San Francisco Chronicle, early morning edition, May 15, 1969.  (Reagan reveals how he intends to quell student protests in the city of Berkeley, California.  Protesters were teargassed and fired upon with buckshot, killing one, blinding another, and wounding 128.  Reagan would later declare a state of emergency in the city and send in 2,700 National Guard troops.)

"Today a newcomer to the state is automatically eligible for our many aid programs the moment he crosses the border."
--Ronald Reagan, in a speech announcing his candidacy for Governor, January 3, 1966.  (In fact, immigrants to California had to wait five years before becoming eligible for benefits.  Reagan acknowledged his error, but nine months later said exactly the same thing.)

"...a faceless mass, waiting for handouts."
--Ronald Reagan, 1965.  (Description of Medicaid recipients.)

"Unemployment insurance is a pre-paid vacation for freeloaders."
--California Governor Ronald Reagan, in the Sacramento Bee, April 28, 1966

"We were told four years ago that 17 million people went to bed hungry every night.  Well, that was probably true.  They were all on a diet."
--Ronald Reagan, TV speech, October 27, 1964

"But I also happen to be someone who believes in tithing--the giving of a tenth [to charity]."
--Ronald Reagan, from The Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, February 8, 1982.  (He may believe in tithing, but he doesn't practice it.  Reagan's total charitable giving of $5,965 did not approach 10% of total income.  It was more like 1.4%.)

"[Not] until now has there ever been a time in which so many of the prophecies are coming together.  There have been times in the past when people thought the end of the world was coming, and so forth, but never anything like this."
--President Reagan revealing a disturbing view about the "coming of Armageddon," December 6, 1983

"History shows that when the taxes of a nation approach about 20 percent of the people's income, there begins to be a lack of respect for government....  When it reaches 25 percent, there comes an increase in lawlessness."
--Ronald Reagan, in Time, April 14, 1980.  (History shows no such thing.  Income tax rates in Europe have traditionally been far higher than U.S. rates, while European crime rates have been much lower.)

"Because Vietnam was not a declared war, the veterans are not even eligible for the G. I. Bill of Rights with respect to education or anything."
--Ronald Reagan, in Newsweek, April 21, 1980.  (Wrong again.)

From one who will surely remain regarded as one of our greatest presidents by all:

All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent.

Conquest is not in our principles. It is inconsistent with our government.

Delay is preferable to error.

Educate and inform the whole mass of the people... They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty.

Enlighten the people generally, and tyranny and oppressions of body and mind will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of day.

Experience demands that man is the only animal which devours his own kind, for I can apply no milder term to the general prey of the rich on the poor.

Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny.

Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear.

I abhor war and view it as the greatest scourge of mankind.

I am mortified to be told that, in the United States of America, the sale of a book can become a subject of inquiry, and of criminal inquiry too.

I have recently been examining all the known superstitions of the world, and do not find in our particular superstition (Christianity) one redeeming feature. They are all alike founded on fables and mythology.

I have seen enough of one war never to wish to see another.

I hope our wisdom will grow with our power, and teach us, that the less we use our power the greater it will be.

I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial by strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country.

I never considered a difference of opinion in politics, in religion, in philosophy, as cause for withdrawing from a friend.

It is incumbent on every generation to pay its own debts as it goes. A principle which if acted on would save one-half the wars of the world.

Leave no authority existing not responsible to the people.

Our country is now taking so steady a course as to show by what road it will pass to destruction, to wit: by consolidation of power first, and then corruption, its necessary consequence.

Politics is such a torment that I advise everyone I love not to mix with it.

The most successful war seldom pays for its losses.

The spirit of this country is totally adverse to a large military force.

We did not raise armies for glory or for conquest.

When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.

Whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government.

Where the press is free and every man able to read, all is safe.
Thomas Jefferson

Edited by Slartibartfast - February 21 2009 at 07:48