Even quoting the New Testament here will not defend the horrifying tragedy what was the Bush adminis

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Or interpreting it correctly either. Can you cite me which passages you are referring to?

I screamed with anguish (I''m a sensitive conservative). If he wears shoes such as those, and people in the United States don't have maps, what are on the feet of his family. I bet he is too self-absorbed to even notice that his little girls are barefoot and Michelle is out back chewing bark off the trees in the yard to due hungerfulness.

Let's count all of the ways that this is simply wrong. But first, some useful background information for those carping from the sidelines.

I address this next especially to the highly sensitive Left, most of whom have never been to Louisiana, and think of it as That state where Mississippi Burning happened, or maybe it was In the Heat of the Night?

If you're from that state, you simply know the levees are a sinking project. For most people, the words Army Corps of Engineers are not part of everyday conversation. If you live there, or trace your family there within a generation, it's stamped on you at birth. You know that they're fighting a losing battle, or if you don't, you're deluding yourself. If you've ever seen any of the relevant bodies of water up close, you have an instinctive understanding that the ACE is fighting a rearguard action.

One might also benefit from knowing things like the fact that the levees are fifteen feet high. When the storm surge is, oh, say, 22 feet, just to refresh your basic math, the water will be carried past the levees. Ponder that for a moment.

Or consider that the pumping stations are maintained by the City of New Orleans, with assistance from the ACE.

Most of these geniuses are also blissfully insulated from what a hurricane is, and have no idea what storm surge is, or exactly how much water and wind is poured onto an area before, during, and in the wake of a Category 4 Hurricane.

Let me share. I live in Florida. Part -- most -- of my job this last year has revolved around the wreckage of the four hurricanes that slammed into my State last year. You don't actually appreciate the power of these things unless you see things like the Escambia Bay Bridge (you know, part of I-10) simply missing in places, or the wreckage that has been Punta Gorda for the last year. Buildings blown up. Parts of streets missing. Trees smashed all the way through houses. Much of Florida is still a set of blue tarp roofs, when seen from the sky.

And those were in areas above sea level.

With the facts nicely out of the way, the Left has decided to use the bodies floating in the streets as a perverse sort of political ammunition, so let's put this little meme into the ground now. With a stake in its heart.

The Left would have us believe that the Bush Administration purposefully underfunded the levees, and that this underfunding directly caused (or at minimum, contributed to) the catastrophe in New Orleans. This is wholly false.

The idea that the White House and Congress should have magically foreseen a Cat4-5 coming down almost head-on onto New Orleans, and should have therefore increased funding for the levees, and that doing so would somehow have stopped this tragedy, is absurd. It wouldn't last five minutes in even the most Plaintiff-friendly jurisdictions in the Union.

Even accepting this idiocy on its own terms, and we'll get to the core of this shortly, from the E&P article that these ghasts are relying on, we learn that they spent $450,000,000 on the levees over ten years, [b]ut at least $250,000,000 in crucial projects remained. At the rate they'd been going (about $45,000,000 per year) that's almost six years' worth of crucial projects yet to be done. The money was reduced starting in FY 2004, so in fact no more than 1.5 years of the remaining six years' worth of projects was incomplete due to funding cuts. All the rest wouldn't have been done yet anyway. But somehow, finishing 25% of the crucial projects remaining would have saved the city. Of course, we don't know what those crucial projects are, but hey, this is still all about Iraq, so who cares?

Now, if we're going to lay blame at the hands of the Federal government -- and why not? They're Republicans -- let's not forget that there were other governments, shall we say, nearer to the scene.

If we're going to get into the politics of this (and they haven't even found all of the bodies yet, so why not?), let's not skew any of the blame from the highly efficient, corruption free government of Louisiana. Their preparation for a disaster they've feared for decades should have them lined up in the street and shot, if we're gonna go this route. That's one hell of a lot of dead Democrats. In New Orleans, they don't bury their dead in the ground; instead, the dead are placed in mausoleums. Why? Well, it can't be religion, as that old Catholic town would have no reason not to place the dead in the Earth. It's actually because they fear more or less precisely what happened here: Massive flooding washing coffins -- wooden air bubbles, essentially -- into the streets.

As the Weather Channel adroitly puts it:

Florence added, So, what you can only imagine happening is that they're burying on the levee, you've got flood levels coming over the banks of the river. You've got floating caskets that are pushed up above the ground. And you can only imagine. These levees sloped down into the city. If there was enough water, you could have caskets floating through the streets of the city.

After experiencing this enough times, residents decided to do something about it, according to Florence. The solution was to begin burying loved ones in tombs above ground. ...

Today, the city owns seven cemeteries that house such tombs, but there are many others in which caskets have been buried underground.

Engineering now allows underground burial in the sub-sea level city, and floating caskets are a thing of the past. That no longer really never happens in New Orleans because the land has been drained since the turn of the century. A system of water pumps... drains water out from under the city 24 hours a day.

And don't get me started on the hurricane evacuation routes. The city of New Orleans lies below sea level; if they want to live there, why couldn't they just raise the $45,000,000 a year locally to maintain their own dikes? They could have covered that with a hotel bed tax and a property tax hike of less than $50 a year. The city's budget is already a half-billion per year. Which $45 million out of that was more important than the levees?

But of course, we shouldn't take them on their own terms, because their terms are simply wrong. From Popular Science in May 2005:

Today, parts of New Orleans lie up to 20 feet below sea level, and the city is sinking at a rate of about nine millimeters a year. This makes New Orleans the most vulnerable major city to hurricanes, says John Hall of the Army Corps of Engineers. That's because the water has to go down, not up, to reach it.

The Saffir-Simpson hurricane scale defines a category-5 storm as one with winds greater than 155 miles per hour and storm surge generally greater than 18 feet. Although hurricanes of this magnitude slamming directly into New Orleans are extremely rare�occurring perhaps every 500 to 1,000 years�should one come ashore, the resulting storm surge would swell Lake Pontchartrain (a brackish sea adjoining the Gulf of Mexico), overtop the levees, and submerge the city under up to 40 feet of water. Once this happened, the levees would serve as a bathtub, explains Harley Winer, chief of coastal engineering for the Army Corps's New Orleans District. The water would get trapped between the Mississippi levees and the hurricane-protection levees. This is a highly improbable event, Winer points out, but within the realm of possibility.

New Orleans has nearly completed its Hurricane Protection Project, a $740-million plan led by Naomi to ring the city with levees that could shield residents from up to category-3 storm surges. Meanwhile, Winer and others at the Army Corps are considering a new levee system capable of holding back a surge from a category-5 hurricane like Ivan, which threatened the city last year.

To determine exactly where and how high to build these levees, the engineers have enlisted the aid of a 3-D computer-simulation program called ADCIRC (Advanced Circulation Model). ADCIRC incorporates dozens of data points�including seabed and coastal topography, wind speed, tidal variation, ocean depth and water temperature�and charts a precise map of where the storm surge would inundate New Orleans. The category-5 levee idea, though, is still in the early planning stages; it may be decades before the new barriers are completed. Until then, locals had better keep praying to Helios.

And that is from May 2005 -- when they were looking at bringing the levees past their ability to withstand a Category Three hurricane.

Of course, if the gibbering yard apes would read their own links instead of trying to throw human corpses at their opponents, they'd note that the budget cut is for a study to examine a future levee to upgrade from Cat3 protection to Cat5 protection.

Katrina was a Cat4-5.

Of course, in the ever-maddening need to lay human bodies at George Bush�s feet, the ghouls can�t be bothered with the facts:

Engineers developed several possible scenarios for what might have caused the catastrophic breach in a levee, which is essentially an earthen berm topped by several feet of concrete.

Corps of Engineers officials said their analysis indicated that a limited amount of water washed over the top of the levee in waves, scouring and weakening the foundation on the levee's dry side.

Suhayda said that's possible. But another possibility is that, during the half-day floodwaters built up in Lake Pontchartrain and the canal, water may have percolated through the earthen part of the berm, undermining it.

That effect, combined with the cumulative pressure over time, may have caused a breakthrough.

There's no question that those kind of conditions might have just reached the limit of what that particular levee could handle, said James Bob Bailey, a flood and wind hazard risk expert with ABS consulting in Houston.

It's also possible the levee was older and had degraded as all earthen and concrete structures do, he said.

A final possibility is that an unknown, massive chunk of debris struck the levee at some point during the night, causing a breach.

Today's breach came after New Orleans had, almost miraculously, survived a hurricane many engineers feared would send water gushing over the long, 15-foot levee that protects the city's north shore from Lake Pontchartrain.

In other words, even if the Federal government had sent trillions of dollars, it wouldn't have made a difference. A 15-foot wall doesn't contain a 22-foot surge. Once the water is over the levee in any quantity, it starts scouring the levee from the face of the earth.

And then of course there�s this, from that arm of the VRWC, the Times-Picayune:

A large section of the vital 17th Street Canal levee, where it connects to the brand new hurricane proof Old Hammond Highway bridge, gave way late Monday morning in Bucktown after Katrina's fiercest winds were well north. The breach sent a churning sea of water from Lake Pontchartrain coursing across Lakeview and into Mid-City, Carrollton, Gentilly, City Park and neighborhoods farther south and east.

Or this, from NeoUltraFascistConCentral, the New York Times:

The levees, which provide a tenuous barrier between the city and the waters that surround most of it, have long had many weak spots and were not designed to withstand the full force of a storm like Hurricane Katrina.

Both major breaches took place along canals built in decades past as conduits for commerce, Army Corps officials said.

The other failure occurred along the Industrial Canal, an 80-year-old channel that had been identified as a weak spot in computer simulations of storm surges from hypothetical hurricanes.

Mr. Hall said that as the surge from the storm swept in through Lake Pontchartrain - actually a broad inlet off the gulf - it began sloshing over the vertical steel and concrete wall and the earthen berm behind it.

Once it got over, it began to scour down at the base of that flood wall on the protected side, he said.

The rising waters in the canal pushed in on the high part of the retaining wall while water cascading over the top ate away at the base, Mr. Hall said, adding: The effect is like a high-low tackle in football. You hit the head and feet at the same time from opposite directions, and it goes down.

In other words:

In the rational world -- which the reality-based community increasingly does not inhabit -- governance is an exercise in prioritization. Was it rational and defensible to shift funding from any source toward defense- and war-related activities in the aftermath of 9/11? Of course. Did that shift leave the levees unready to handle Katrina's deadly burden? No. The levees were inherently unready: even at maximum proposed funding, their design was only for a Cat3 storm, not the Cat4/5 that Katrina was. It is true that in 2004, proposals were floated to upgrade to a Cat4/5-capable levee system; it is also true that even in an ideal situation, the studies -- not the construction! -- necessary to assess what that would entail would not be finished before 2008.

This madness is all of a piece with the Bush was on vacation when this happened idiocy. Yes, we could have used his heat vision to seal some of the levees at weak points, and his superhuman strength might have been enough to save some collapsing concrete. But what we really needed was for him to get the rest of the Justice League out there, especially Green Lantern. Or at least to reverse the Earth's rotation and save us from this disaster.

This is obscene. It's actually worse than obscene, because not all of those bodies floating down there right now are from the mausoleums. How distorted is our political discourse -- excuse me, their political discourse -- that they start pointing fingers before the bodies are in the damned ground? We haven't even buried the dead yet, and they're trying to pin the untold lives and livelihoods lost on an opponent for political gain. I'd say something about shame, but the Left long ago forgot that.

Gee, guys, if you have the courage of your convictions, join the National Guard. They could use a few, ahem, bodies right now. Or at least act out your more lurid dreams and head down to New Orleans or Gulfport. Grab a body floating by. Reporters are thick on the ground -- scream at Bush and shake the body in front of the camera to good effect.

I no longer see the Left as a set of political opponents. I understand them now to be what they are: An uncompromising, barely human mass of malignancy, that exists only to be crushed electorally and culturally once and for all. Or, as a wiser man than I put it, The Evil Party.

Let's count all of the ways that this is simply wrong. But first, some useful background information for those carping from the sidelines.

Or consider that the pumping stations are maintained by the City of New Orleans, with assistance from the ACE.

And those were in areas above sea level.

Now, if we're going to lay blame at the hands of the Federal government -- and why not? They're Republicans -- let's not forget that there were other governments, shall we say, nearer to the scene.

As the Weather Channel adroitly puts it:

Florence added, So, what you can only imagine happening is that they're burying on the levee, you've got flood levels coming over the banks of the river. You've got floating caskets that are pushed up above the ground. And you can only imagine. These levees sloped down into the city. If there was enough water, you could have caskets floating through the streets of the city.

After experiencing this enough times, residents decided to do something about it, according to Florence. The solution was to begin burying loved ones in tombs above ground. ...

Today, the city owns seven cemeteries that house such tombs, but there are many others in which caskets have been buried underground.

Engineering now allows underground burial in the sub-sea level city, and floating caskets are a thing of the past. That no longer really never happens in New Orleans because the land has been drained since the turn of the century. A system of water pumps... drains water out from under the city 24 hours a day.

But of course, we shouldn't take them on their own terms, because their terms are simply wrong. From Popular Science in May 2005:

Today, parts of New Orleans lie up to 20 feet below sea level, and the city is sinking at a rate of about nine millimeters a year. This makes New Orleans the most vulnerable major city to hurricanes, says John Hall of the Army Corps of Engineers. That's because the water has to go down, not up, to reach it.

The Saffir-Simpson hurricane scale defines a category-5 storm as one with winds greater than 155 miles per hour and storm surge generally greater than 18 feet. Although hurricanes of this magnitude slamming directly into New Orleans are extremely rare�occurring perhaps every 500 to 1,000 years�should one come ashore, the resulting storm surge would swell Lake Pontchartrain (a brackish sea adjoining the Gulf of Mexico), overtop the levees, and submerge the city under up to 40 feet of water. Once this happened, the levees would serve as a bathtub, explains Harley Winer, chief of coastal engineering for the Army Corps's New Orleans District. The water would get trapped between the Mississippi levees and the hurricane-protection levees. This is a highly improbable event, Winer points out, but within the realm of possibility.

New Orleans has nearly completed its Hurricane Protection Project, a $740-million plan led by Naomi to ring the city with levees that could shield residents from up to category-3 storm surges. Meanwhile, Winer and others at the Army Corps are considering a new levee system capable of holding back a surge from a category-5 hurricane like Ivan, which threatened the city last year.

To determine exactly where and how high to build these levees, the engineers have enlisted the aid of a 3-D computer-simulation program called ADCIRC (Advanced Circulation Model). ADCIRC incorporates dozens of data points�including seabed and coastal topography, wind speed, tidal variation, ocean depth and water temperature�and charts a precise map of where the storm surge would inundate New Orleans. The category-5 levee idea, though, is still in the early planning stages; it may be decades before the new barriers are completed. Until then, locals had better keep praying to Helios.

And that is from May 2005 -- when they were looking at bringing the levees past their ability to withstand a Category Three hurricane.

Katrina was a Cat4-5.

Of course, in the ever-maddening need to lay human bodies at George Bush�s feet, the ghouls can�t be bothered with the facts:

Engineers developed several possible scenarios for what might have caused the catastrophic breach in a levee, which is essentially an earthen berm topped by several feet of concrete.

Corps of Engineers officials said their analysis indicated that a limited amount of water washed over the top of the levee in waves, scouring and weakening the foundation on the levee's dry side.

Suhayda said that's possible. But another possibility is that, during the half-day floodwaters built up in Lake Pontchartrain and the canal, water may have percolated through the earthen part of the berm, undermining it.

That effect, combined with the cumulative pressure over time, may have caused a breakthrough.

There's no question that those kind of conditions might have just reached the limit of what that particular levee could handle, said James Bob Bailey, a flood and wind hazard risk expert with ABS consulting in Houston.

It's also possible the levee was older and had degraded as all earthen and concrete structures do, he said.

A final possibility is that an unknown, massive chunk of debris struck the levee at some point during the night, causing a breach.

Today's breach came after New Orleans had, almost miraculously, survived a hurricane many engineers feared would send water gushing over the long, 15-foot levee that protects the city's north shore from Lake Pontchartrain.

And then of course there�s this, from that arm of the VRWC, the Times-Picayune:

A large section of the vital 17th Street Canal levee, where it connects to the brand new hurricane proof Old Hammond Highway bridge, gave way late Monday morning in Bucktown after Katrina's fiercest winds were well north. The breach sent a churning sea of water from Lake Pontchartrain coursing across Lakeview and into Mid-City, Carrollton, Gentilly, City Park and neighborhoods farther south and east.

Or this, from NeoUltraFascistConCentral, the New York Times:

The levees, which provide a tenuous barrier between the city and the waters that surround most of it, have long had many weak spots and were not designed to withstand the full force of a storm like Hurricane Katrina.

Both major breaches took place along canals built in decades past as conduits for commerce, Army Corps officials said.

The other failure occurred along the Industrial Canal, an 80-year-old channel that had been identified as a weak spot in computer simulations of storm surges from hypothetical hurricanes.

Mr. Hall said that as the surge from the storm swept in through Lake Pontchartrain - actually a broad inlet off the gulf - it began sloshing over the vertical steel and concrete wall and the earthen berm behind it.

Once it got over, it began to scour down at the base of that flood wall on the protected side, he said.

The rising waters in the canal pushed in on the high part of the retaining wall while water cascading over the top ate away at the base, Mr. Hall said, adding: The effect is like a high-low tackle in football. You hit the head and feet at the same time from opposite directions, and it goes down.

In other words:

Oh, what a tragedy. But, being friends with a
nm
I follow the Old Testament and those rules aren't too
NM
I admire his reaction to this tragedy...sm
I wasn't going to do comparisons with this one, but the only question burning in my gut is why didn't he show up for the Katrina victims. I don't remember a half staff declaration for the loss of American lives then.

***
Classification: UNCLASSIFIED

Caveats: NONE

Honoring the Victims of the Tragedy at Virginia Tech

A Proclamation by the President of the United States of America

Our Nation grieves with those who have lost loved ones at Virginia Tech. We hold the victims in our hearts. We lift them up in our prayers, and we ask a loving God to comfort those who are suffering.

As a mark of respect for the victims of the senseless acts of violence perpetrated on Monday, April 16, 2007, by the authority vested in me as President of the United States by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, I hereby order that the flag of the United States shall be flown at half-staff at the White House and upon all public buildings and grounds, at all military posts and naval stations, and on all naval vessels of the Federal Government in the District of Columbia and throughout the United States and its Territories and possessions until sunset, Sunday, April 22, 2007. I also direct that the flag shall be flown at half-staff for the same length of time at all United States embassies, legations, consular offices, and other facilities abroad, including all military facilities and naval vessels and stations.

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this seventeenth day of April, in the year of our Lord two thousand seven, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and thirty-first.

GEORGE W. BUSH

She's not quoting FACTS

She is pulling racially charged statements out of context. He was raised in an all white family and had to sort through what being different from others meant. If you are even afraid of a black man raised by all whites, you are really beyond hope.

You are quoting Goering!!!!! YIKES!!!!! NM

SS

Limbaugh quoting Moran
You post Molly Ivins...so what's your point? The post is kinda allegorical to what you are posting tonight. You're having party while people are dead and dying.
SHhhh.....you are quoting a source.....
that! Might be something reliable here.
They are quoting Nancy Pulosi from her
little speech yesterday. You are right. It doesn't take a pub to *read it and weep,* I am a registered Democrat and I have wept myself dry! I have great concern for my country and my grandchildren.
I was quoting from a Jewish website publication.
It wasn't "my statement." And it made perfect sense if you had read the article. The Gaza strip pull-out was not instigated by the settlers who were moved but by their government which is ISRAELI and is therefore JEWISH. You should read the news a little more.
You are quoting from the NATIONAL ENQUIRER! Do you remember.....
All of the stuff they printed and continue to print about Clinton. I didn't even believe it. I am sure you didn't either, but it's the old double standard. If they say something YOU want to believe, all of a sudden they are credible. What a freaking joke.
You are quoting Reuters, who have been shown to have doctored photos. TI

You will have to excuse if I don't take this or anything the UN posts as truth.

Read his book, friend....Obama is the one who said it, I was quoting HIM....
he has repeated it in numerous interviews. Thank you for the method of delivery lesson on crack and cocaine (by the way, crack IS cocaine and you can snort it). That being said, I don't think the method of delivery matters. He did cocaine (however he chose to do it, smoke or snort), he says so very openly in his book. He also drank quite heavily for awhile, he also admits drinking. I don't know how he avoided the legal consequences but that doesn't matter. He doesn't say whether he got hooked or not, or how he got un-hooked.

So please do your research before jumping on me.

That being said...I believe him when he says he doesn't do it anymore.

And I have never heard what you just posted about homosexual sex. That is a new one on me.

She is not race-baiting. She was quoting some facts from his book, his own words. sm
She is only putting information out there to try and open people's minds, given them another perspective on the "phenomenon" that is Obama. She is doing the same thing that Sam is doing in other posts on this board, giving information to be used as a reader sees fit. If you think that is race-baiting, then you need to re-think what you consider racist. JMO.
I read the one only true Testament of our Lord Jesus Christ, who was infallible Lord....sm
and I am not, and thank you for calling attention to that; I was paraphrasing Paul in his letter to the Hebrews, but my point is still from my heart, the deceptions that went on during the former administration are still causing ruin and death as we speak, and if you chose laugh at me, that is fine, The flamers on this board love to feign superiority, which I belive is against the Bible as Pride, one of the 7 deadly sins, no? I was asking if posters who want to make inflammatory, ridulous remarks could just TRY to confine their comments and posts to pure facts, and then political discussions can bear fruit and have some intelligence and merit. I am working hard as I am writing this, so forgive me if distracted. It is all just noise, rhetoric, and one-upmanship otherwise, while the country crumbles further. Thanks for correcting me, I will double check Mr. Dunniger's quotes.
Would you defend her?

Thursday, March 9, 2006
Last modified Wednesday, March 8, 2006 11:16 PM PST

Woman sues for alleged firing over talk show bumper sticker

By: TERI FIGUEROA - Staff Writer

VISTA ---- A San Diego County woman is suing her former employer, accusing her manager of firing her on the spot when she saw the woman's car had a bumper sticker advertising a progressive talk radio station.

The suit also alleges that, after seeing the sticker, the employer commented that the woman could be a member of al-Qaida.

In a civil suit filed at the county courthouse in Vista, Linda Laroca is targeting both her former manager, Beverly Fath, and the company she briefly worked for last year, Advantage Sales and Marketing, Inc.

Neither Laroca nor the defendants could be reached for comment Wednesday. Laroca's attorney declined comment.

Laroca, who was hired by the company as a sales representative, is seeking lost wages and damages for wrongful termination for violations of both public policy and the state labor code. She is also claiming state constitutional violations and emotional distress.

The California labor code prohibits employers from controlling or directing the political activities of employees.

According to Laroca's suit, the bumper sticker in question read only: 1360 Air America Progressive Talk Radio.

The nationwide syndicated radio programming from left-wing Air America, which describes itself as progressive entertainment talk radio features show hosts such as comedian and author Al Franken. The network programming is carried locally by radio station KLSD 1360 AM.

A call to Clear Channel-owned KLSD on Wednesday afternoon was not immediately returned.

In her Feb. 21 claim, Laroca asserts that on Oct. 8, three weeks after she started working for the marketing company, Fath called her on a Saturday and requested they meet at a nearby grocery store parking lot so Laroca could pass on some documents Fath needed.

During the brief encounter, Laroca charges, the manager pointed to the bumper sticker ---- the only one on Laroca's car ---- and remarked that it was a new sticker and called it that Al Franken left-wing radical radio station.

Laroca alleges in her suit that Fath then told her, The country is on a high state of alert. For all I know, you could be al-Qaida.

A stunned Laroca laughed nervously at the statement, the suit alleges, and then was dealt the final blow when Fath fired her on the spot.
Not asking you to defend ... just an fyi...
in looking for answers to DW's question as to who was opposing the expansion and why, I ran onto an explanation of the President's health care proposal...which I hate to admit, I did not know the particulars of, because no one in media is reporting it. It was in article by the HEW Secretary. At any rate...Bush proposes a $15,000 tax cut for every American family who buys their own private health insurance. It is estimated that it would cover 20 million more American families...the whole family, not just the children...where the SCHIP expansion would only cover 3 million more, and a good many of those newly eligible kids (under higher income limits) are already covered by private health insurance, according to the CBO study commissioned by the bipartisan congressional committee looking at the SCHIP expansion. What that basically means is that children already covered by private insurance would leave that and go to a public assistance program.

Just some alternative information. You do not need to respond and I am not trying to pick a fight. Just giving information.
AW, I am disappointed that you would defend
anyone on these boards wishing anyone else to burn in hell for eternity, particularly two very young and inexperienced women.

As far as the conservative board, if it is a "cesspool," it is at least in part because conservative posters cannot post conservative opinions there without being attacked relentlessly. I suppose it is fortunate for the liberals on this board that they have not had to experience such conditions when voicing their liberal opinions here.
So, how do you defend Mr. O's back-
the comments, the associations, etc......ROFL.
as usual....can't defend...

//

Do you also defend the innocent

people in our local prisons because I'm sure that there are a few in there who are actually innocent......however, most of them are NOT.

As for me not knowing for sure whether they were indeed tortured or not......how do you know that they were tortured? Were you there? Did you talk to them? Do you have a pin pal at Gitmo, do ya?

I'm sure there are some innocent men at Gitmo but this is war. It was war when the terrorists killed thousands of Americans in one day and then celebrated their actions. We have gone from a 9/11 mentality to a pre 9/11 mentality. We seem to have forgetten that we were attacked and that these people desire nothing more than our death.

You mean you defend all people who
are innocent. You cannot know someone else's heart no matter how much you want to think you do. When it comes to these terrorists, they have only one feeling for America and Americans - cold, calculated, murderous, black, hate! You need to wake up to this fact and accept it. I hope you do not think for a moment they would try to defend you for anything. They would cut your heart out and roast it in a NY minute!
I'm sure you defend Cindy Sheehan just the same, don't you?
Not a bet I'd take.
I certainly don't defend the remarks, but they were taken out of context
Obviously, the example Bennett used of aborting every black child was a very poorly thought out example, but his remarks were also taken grossly out of context by the mainstream media. He went on say it would be a morally reprehensible thing to do. He was commenting on the idiots that said that crime or poverty was down since the legalizing of abortion. He thinks abortion of any kind is wrong...he was turning their logic around on them. He certainly does not think that every black baby should be aborted. GRANTED, there are radical right wingers (the KKK, aryan nation etc.) would think this was a great idea, but they are radical and not the mainstream as Ms. Libby FALSELY stated...
Go ahead and defend a racist
even if it's so out of character for a liberal.
Sheez! How do Repubs defend this?
Boggles the mind! But also learned another curious thing tonight - several people have told me they can't buy any ammunition for their guns, I think they told me AR15's or whatever the civilian model of an M16 is? - they said the rounds are not available by mail or at stores and they are told it's all being stopped at the ports and sent to Iraq. Say what??

Anybody else having a similar experience or know anything else about this? Would be curious to know if the situation in Iraq is really so bad that all civilian ammo has to be confiscated so it can be sent there.

Hard to defend something that isn't happening.
No problem getting ammo here in the great NW.
I am not going to defend Free Republic sm
only because no website knows who it is that is posting on it. I used to post on FR but they banned me because I didn't walk lock-step with their philosophy, which does not tolerate dissent. However, I have seen death threats right here on this site, so linking this guy to a web site isn't really relative. I hope they prosecute him. He is sick.
Not necessary to defend Obama. He's doing just fine
.
Nice try. Once again, only way to defend Obama is
nm
I defend anyone who tried to save thousands of
nm
I defend all innocent people....nm
nm
I hope you're not one of the ones who defend the lies that ...sm
launched the war in Iraq ???

If so, the hypocrisy is reeking.
Even Newt Gingrich can't *defend the indefensible*

if you missed it on Hannity and Colmes, you can see the video here. Newt in his own words. Definitely worth watching.

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2006/05/12.html#a8260

When you can't defend the present why do you always bring up the past?

Why do you defend killing of innocent civilians?

I have never said I defend Hezbollah. I don't defend Hezbollah. They're terrorists, and they're horrible.

But blindly defending Israel, regardless of what they do, doesn't work for me either. What is most disquieting to me is that you defend Israel's placement of landmines to kill innocent civilians, designed to go off at a later date when people least expect it? Why don't you consider that terrorism, as well?

Maybe we can get David Ogden to defend him? LOLOLOL!
Nothing like a hypocrite take a fall to make MY day!
I don't see how a conservative, prolifer could attempt to defend his statements...nm
x
My post ' I defend all innocent people' was a reply to the
question

'Do you also defend the innocent people in our local prisons because I'm sure that there are a few in there who are actually innocent..'

Bush aides challenge Biden's boasts of Bush slapdowns.
Aides to former President George W. Bush are challenging the veracity of Vice President Joe Biden's claim this week of having privately castigated Bush, who does not remember the incident or an earlier episode in which Biden claims to have similarly rebuked Bush.

Biden spokesman Jay Carney declined to specify the dates of his boss's purported Oval Office scoldings of Bush. Nor would he provide witnesses or notes to corroborate the episodes.

"The vice president stands by his remarks," Carney told FOX News without elaboration.
Those remarks include a shot that Biden took at Bush on Tuesday.

"I remember President Bush saying to me one time in the Oval Office," Biden told CNN, "'Well, Joe,' he said, 'I'm a leader.' And I said: 'Mr. President, turn and around look behind you. No one is following.'"

That exchange never took place, according to numerous Bush aides who also dispute a similar assertion by Biden in 2004, when the former senator from Delaware told scores of Democratic colleagues that he had challenged Bush's moral certitude about the Iraq war during a private meeting in the Oval Office. Two years later, Biden repeated his story about dressing down the president.

"When I speak to the president - and I have had plenty of opportunity to be with the president, at least prior to the last election, a lot of hours alone with him. I mean, meaning me and his staff," Biden said on HBO's "Real Time with Bill Maher" in April 2006. "And the president will say things to me, and I'll literally turn to the president, say: 'Mr. President, how can you say that, knowing you don't know the facts?' And he'll look at me and he'll say - my word - he'll look at me and he'll say: 'My instincts.' He said: 'I have good instincts.' I said: 'Mr. President, your instincts aren't good enough.'"

Bush aides now dispute the veracity of both assertions by Biden.

"I never recall Biden saying any of that," former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer said after reviewing detailed notes of Bush's White House meetings with Biden, which include numerous direct quotes from Biden. "I find it odd that he said he met with him alone all the time. I don't think that's true."

Fleischer said that whenever Bush met with Sen. Biden, the meeting also included a congressional counterpart so as to not "antagonize" the House.

Karl Rove, former White House political adviser, also was skeptical of Biden's claim to have spent "a lot of hours alone" with Bush.

"I remember checking on such a Biden exaggeration while at the White House and no one witnessed the meeting and his comments in remotely the same way," Rove said.

Candida P. Wolff, Bush's White House liaison to Capitol Hill, said the only meetings she remembered between Bush and Biden also included other lawmakers. She said such meetings were held in the Cabinet Room or the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, not the Oval Office, and certainly did not last for "hours."

"The president would never sit through two hours of Joe Biden," Wolff said. "I don't ever remember Biden being in the Oval. He was such a blowhard on all that stuff - there wasn't a reason to bring him in."

Andy Card, former White House chief of staff, reviewed the two Biden claims and said: "This does not ring true to me. I doubt that it happened."

A spokesman for Bush declined comment, although a person close to the former president said Bush does not remember either episode.

This is not the first time the veracity of Biden's assertions has been challenged. In 1988, he dropped out of the presidential race after being accused of plagiarizing British Labor Party leader Neil Kinnock. The Washington Post also cited "the senator's boastful exaggerations of his academic record."

Last year, liberal Slate magazine recalled that "Biden's misdeeds encompassed numerous self-aggrandizing thefts, misstatements, and exaggerations that seemed to point to a serious character defect."

Also last year, Biden came under fire for telling a questionable story about being "shot at" in Iraq.

"Let's start telling the truth," Biden said during a presidential primary debate sponsored by YouTube in July. "Number one, you take all the troops out -- you better have helicopters ready to take those 3,000 civilians inside the Green Zone, where I have been seven times and shot at. You better make sure you have protection for them, or let them die."

But when questioned about the episode afterward by the Hill newspaper, Biden backpedaled from his claim of being "shot at" and instead allowed: "I was near where a shot landed."

Biden went on to say that some sort of projectile "landed" outside a building in the Green Zone where he and another senator had spent the night during a visit in December 2005. The lawmakers were shaving in the morning when they felt the building shake, Biden said.

"No one got up and ran from the room-it wasn't that kind of thing," he told the Hill. "It's not like I had someone holding a gun to my head."

Seven weeks after claiming to have been "shot at" in Iraq, Biden again raised eyebrows with another story about his exploits in war zones -- this time on "the superhighway of terror between Pakistan and Afghanistan, where my helicopter was forced down."

"If you want to know where AL Qaeda lives, you want to know where bin Laden is, come back to Afghanistan with me," Biden bragged to the National Guard Association. "Come back to the area where my helicopter was forced down, with a three-star general and three senators at 10,500 feet in the middle of those mountains. I can tell you where they are."

But it turns out that inclement weather, not terrorists, prompted the chopper to land in an open field during Biden's visit to Afghanistan in February 2008. Fighter jets kept watch overhead while a convoy of security vehicles was dispatched to retrieve Biden and fellow Sens. Chuck Hagel and John Kerry.

"We were going to send Biden out to fight the Taliban with snowballs, but we didn't have to," joked Kerry, a Democrat, to the AP. "Other than getting a little cold, it was fine."
Bush aides challenge Biden's boasts of Bush slapdowns.
Aides to former President George W. Bush are challenging the veracity of Vice President Joe Biden's claim this week of having privately castigated Bush, who does not remember the incident or an earlier episode in which Biden claims to have similarly rebuked Bush.

Biden spokesman Jay Carney declined to specify the dates of his boss's purported Oval Office scoldings of Bush. Nor would he provide witnesses or notes to corroborate the episodes.

"The vice president stands by his remarks," Carney told FOX News without elaboration.
Those remarks include a shot that Biden took at Bush on Tuesday.

"I remember President Bush saying to me one time in the Oval Office," Biden told CNN, "'Well, Joe,' he said, 'I'm a leader.' And I said: 'Mr. President, turn and around look behind you. No one is following.'"

That exchange never took place, according to numerous Bush aides who also dispute a similar assertion by Biden in 2004, when the former senator from Delaware told scores of Democratic colleagues that he had challenged Bush's moral certitude about the Iraq war during a private meeting in the Oval Office. Two years later, Biden repeated his story about dressing down the president.

"When I speak to the president - and I have had plenty of opportunity to be with the president, at least prior to the last election, a lot of hours alone with him. I mean, meaning me and his staff," Biden said on HBO's "Real Time with Bill Maher" in April 2006. "And the president will say things to me, and I'll literally turn to the president, say: 'Mr. President, how can you say that, knowing you don't know the facts?' And he'll look at me and he'll say - my word - he'll look at me and he'll say: 'My instincts.' He said: 'I have good instincts.' I said: 'Mr. President, your instincts aren't good enough.'"

Bush aides now dispute the veracity of both assertions by Biden.

"I never recall Biden saying any of that," former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer said after reviewing detailed notes of Bush's White House meetings with Biden, which include numerous direct quotes from Biden. "I find it odd that he said he met with him alone all the time. I don't think that's true."

Fleischer said that whenever Bush met with Sen. Biden, the meeting also included a congressional counterpart so as to not "antagonize" the House.

Karl Rove, former White House political adviser, also was skeptical of Biden's claim to have spent "a lot of hours alone" with Bush.

"I remember checking on such a Biden exaggeration while at the White House and no one witnessed the meeting and his comments in remotely the same way," Rove said.

Candida P. Wolff, Bush's White House liaison to Capitol Hill, said the only meetings she remembered between Bush and Biden also included other lawmakers. She said such meetings were held in the Cabinet Room or the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, not the Oval Office, and certainly did not last for "hours."

"The president would never sit through two hours of Joe Biden," Wolff said. "I don't ever remember Biden being in the Oval. He was such a blowhard on all that stuff - there wasn't a reason to bring him in."

Andy Card, former White House chief of staff, reviewed the two Biden claims and said: "This does not ring true to me. I doubt that it happened."

A spokesman for Bush declined comment, although a person close to the former president said Bush does not remember either episode.

This is not the first time the veracity of Biden's assertions has been challenged. In 1988, he dropped out of the presidential race after being accused of plagiarizing British Labor Party leader Neil Kinnock. The Washington Post also cited "the senator's boastful exaggerations of his academic record."

Last year, liberal Slate magazine recalled that "Biden's misdeeds encompassed numerous self-aggrandizing thefts, misstatements, and exaggerations that seemed to point to a serious character defect."

Also last year, Biden came under fire for telling a questionable story about being "shot at" in Iraq.

"Let's start telling the truth," Biden said during a presidential primary debate sponsored by YouTube in July. "Number one, you take all the troops out -- you better have helicopters ready to take those 3,000 civilians inside the Green Zone, where I have been seven times and shot at. You better make sure you have protection for them, or let them die."

But when questioned about the episode afterward by the Hill newspaper, Biden backpedaled from his claim of being "shot at" and instead allowed: "I was near where a shot landed."

Biden went on to say that some sort of projectile "landed" outside a building in the Green Zone where he and another senator had spent the night during a visit in December 2005. The lawmakers were shaving in the morning when they felt the building shake, Biden said.

"No one got up and ran from the room-it wasn't that kind of thing," he told the Hill. "It's not like I had someone holding a gun to my head."

Seven weeks after claiming to have been "shot at" in Iraq, Biden again raised eyebrows with another story about his exploits in war zones -- this time on "the superhighway of terror between Pakistan and Afghanistan, where my helicopter was forced down."

"If you want to know where AL Qaeda lives, you want to know where bin Laden is, come back to Afghanistan with me," Biden bragged to the National Guard Association. "Come back to the area where my helicopter was forced down, with a three-star general and three senators at 10,500 feet in the middle of those mountains. I can tell you where they are."

But it turns out that inclement weather, not terrorists, prompted the chopper to land in an open field during Biden's visit to Afghanistan in February 2008. Fighter jets kept watch overhead while a convoy of security vehicles was dispatched to retrieve Biden and fellow Sens. Chuck Hagel and John Kerry.

"We were going to send Biden out to fight the Taliban with snowballs, but we didn't have to," joked Kerry, a Democrat, to the AP. "Other than getting a little cold, it was fine."
Bush aides challenge Biden's boasts of Bush slapdowns.
Aides to former President George W. Bush are challenging the veracity of Vice President Joe Biden's claim this week of having privately castigated Bush, who does not remember the incident or an earlier episode in which Biden claims to have similarly rebuked Bush.

Biden spokesman Jay Carney declined to specify the dates of his boss's purported Oval Office scoldings of Bush. Nor would he provide witnesses or notes to corroborate the episodes.

"The vice president stands by his remarks," Carney told FOX News without elaboration.
Those remarks include a shot that Biden took at Bush on Tuesday.

"I remember President Bush saying to me one time in the Oval Office," Biden told CNN, "'Well, Joe,' he said, 'I'm a leader.' And I said: 'Mr. President, turn and around look behind you. No one is following.'"

That exchange never took place, according to numerous Bush aides who also dispute a similar assertion by Biden in 2004, when the former senator from Delaware told scores of Democratic colleagues that he had challenged Bush's moral certitude about the Iraq war during a private meeting in the Oval Office. Two years later, Biden repeated his story about dressing down the president.

"When I speak to the president - and I have had plenty of opportunity to be with the president, at least prior to the last election, a lot of hours alone with him. I mean, meaning me and his staff," Biden said on HBO's "Real Time with Bill Maher" in April 2006. "And the president will say things to me, and I'll literally turn to the president, say: 'Mr. President, how can you say that, knowing you don't know the facts?' And he'll look at me and he'll say - my word - he'll look at me and he'll say: 'My instincts.' He said: 'I have good instincts.' I said: 'Mr. President, your instincts aren't good enough.'"

Bush aides now dispute the veracity of both assertions by Biden.

"I never recall Biden saying any of that," former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer said after reviewing detailed notes of Bush's White House meetings with Biden, which include numerous direct quotes from Biden. "I find it odd that he said he met with him alone all the time. I don't think that's true."

Fleischer said that whenever Bush met with Sen. Biden, the meeting also included a congressional counterpart so as to not "antagonize" the House.

Karl Rove, former White House political adviser, also was skeptical of Biden's claim to have spent "a lot of hours alone" with Bush.

"I remember checking on such a Biden exaggeration while at the White House and no one witnessed the meeting and his comments in remotely the same way," Rove said.

Candida P. Wolff, Bush's White House liaison to Capitol Hill, said the only meetings she remembered between Bush and Biden also included other lawmakers. She said such meetings were held in the Cabinet Room or the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, not the Oval Office, and certainly did not last for "hours."

"The president would never sit through two hours of Joe Biden," Wolff said. "I don't ever remember Biden being in the Oval. He was such a blowhard on all that stuff - there wasn't a reason to bring him in."

Andy Card, former White House chief of staff, reviewed the two Biden claims and said: "This does not ring true to me. I doubt that it happened."

A spokesman for Bush declined comment, although a person close to the former president said Bush does not remember either episode.

This is not the first time the veracity of Biden's assertions has been challenged. In 1988, he dropped out of the presidential race after being accused of plagiarizing British Labor Party leader Neil Kinnock. The Washington Post also cited "the senator's boastful exaggerations of his academic record."

Last year, liberal Slate magazine recalled that "Biden's misdeeds encompassed numerous self-aggrandizing thefts, misstatements, and exaggerations that seemed to point to a serious character defect."

Also last year, Biden came under fire for telling a questionable story about being "shot at" in Iraq.

"Let's start telling the truth," Biden said during a presidential primary debate sponsored by YouTube in July. "Number one, you take all the troops out -- you better have helicopters ready to take those 3,000 civilians inside the Green Zone, where I have been seven times and shot at. You better make sure you have protection for them, or let them die."

But when questioned about the episode afterward by the Hill newspaper, Biden backpedaled from his claim of being "shot at" and instead allowed: "I was near where a shot landed."

Biden went on to say that some sort of projectile "landed" outside a building in the Green Zone where he and another senator had spent the night during a visit in December 2005. The lawmakers were shaving in the morning when they felt the building shake, Biden said.

"No one got up and ran from the room-it wasn't that kind of thing," he told the Hill. "It's not like I had someone holding a gun to my head."

Seven weeks after claiming to have been "shot at" in Iraq, Biden again raised eyebrows with another story about his exploits in war zones -- this time on "the superhighway of terror between Pakistan and Afghanistan, where my helicopter was forced down."

"If you want to know where AL Qaeda lives, you want to know where bin Laden is, come back to Afghanistan with me," Biden bragged to the National Guard Association. "Come back to the area where my helicopter was forced down, with a three-star general and three senators at 10,500 feet in the middle of those mountains. I can tell you where they are."

But it turns out that inclement weather, not terrorists, prompted the chopper to land in an open field during Biden's visit to Afghanistan in February 2008. Fighter jets kept watch overhead while a convoy of security vehicles was dispatched to retrieve Biden and fellow Sens. Chuck Hagel and John Kerry.

"We were going to send Biden out to fight the Taliban with snowballs, but we didn't have to," joked Kerry, a Democrat, to the AP. "Other than getting a little cold, it was fine."
Bush aides challenge Biden's boasts of Bush slapdowns.
Aides to former President George W. Bush are challenging the veracity of Vice President Joe Biden's claim this week of having privately castigated Bush, who does not remember the incident or an earlier episode in which Biden claims to have similarly rebuked Bush.

Biden spokesman Jay Carney declined to specify the dates of his boss's purported Oval Office scoldings of Bush. Nor would he provide witnesses or notes to corroborate the episodes.

"The vice president stands by his remarks," Carney told FOX News without elaboration.
Those remarks include a shot that Biden took at Bush on Tuesday.

"I remember President Bush saying to me one time in the Oval Office," Biden told CNN, "'Well, Joe,' he said, 'I'm a leader.' And I said: 'Mr. President, turn and around look behind you. No one is following.'"

That exchange never took place, according to numerous Bush aides who also dispute a similar assertion by Biden in 2004, when the former senator from Delaware told scores of Democratic colleagues that he had challenged Bush's moral certitude about the Iraq war during a private meeting in the Oval Office. Two years later, Biden repeated his story about dressing down the president.

"When I speak to the president - and I have had plenty of opportunity to be with the president, at least prior to the last election, a lot of hours alone with him. I mean, meaning me and his staff," Biden said on HBO's "Real Time with Bill Maher" in April 2006. "And the president will say things to me, and I'll literally turn to the president, say: 'Mr. President, how can you say that, knowing you don't know the facts?' And he'll look at me and he'll say - my word - he'll look at me and he'll say: 'My instincts.' He said: 'I have good instincts.' I said: 'Mr. President, your instincts aren't good enough.'"

Bush aides now dispute the veracity of both assertions by Biden.

"I never recall Biden saying any of that," former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer said after reviewing detailed notes of Bush's White House meetings with Biden, which include numerous direct quotes from Biden. "I find it odd that he said he met with him alone all the time. I don't think that's true."

Fleischer said that whenever Bush met with Sen. Biden, the meeting also included a congressional counterpart so as to not "antagonize" the House.

Karl Rove, former White House political adviser, also was skeptical of Biden's claim to have spent "a lot of hours alone" with Bush.

"I remember checking on such a Biden exaggeration while at the White House and no one witnessed the meeting and his comments in remotely the same way," Rove said.

Candida P. Wolff, Bush's White House liaison to Capitol Hill, said the only meetings she remembered between Bush and Biden also included other lawmakers. She said such meetings were held in the Cabinet Room or the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, not the Oval Office, and certainly did not last for "hours."

"The president would never sit through two hours of Joe Biden," Wolff said. "I don't ever remember Biden being in the Oval. He was such a blowhard on all that stuff - there wasn't a reason to bring him in."

Andy Card, former White House chief of staff, reviewed the two Biden claims and said: "This does not ring true to me. I doubt that it happened."

A spokesman for Bush declined comment, although a person close to the former president said Bush does not remember either episode.

This is not the first time the veracity of Biden's assertions has been challenged. In 1988, he dropped out of the presidential race after being accused of plagiarizing British Labor Party leader Neil Kinnock. The Washington Post also cited "the senator's boastful exaggerations of his academic record."

Last year, liberal Slate magazine recalled that "Biden's misdeeds encompassed numerous self-aggrandizing thefts, misstatements, and exaggerations that seemed to point to a serious character defect."

Also last year, Biden came under fire for telling a questionable story about being "shot at" in Iraq.

"Let's start telling the truth," Biden said during a presidential primary debate sponsored by YouTube in July. "Number one, you take all the troops out -- you better have helicopters ready to take those 3,000 civilians inside the Green Zone, where I have been seven times and shot at. You better make sure you have protection for them, or let them die."

But when questioned about the episode afterward by the Hill newspaper, Biden backpedaled from his claim of being "shot at" and instead allowed: "I was near where a shot landed."

Biden went on to say that some sort of projectile "landed" outside a building in the Green Zone where he and another senator had spent the night during a visit in December 2005. The lawmakers were shaving in the morning when they felt the building shake, Biden said.

"No one got up and ran from the room-it wasn't that kind of thing," he told the Hill. "It's not like I had someone holding a gun to my head."

Seven weeks after claiming to have been "shot at" in Iraq, Biden again raised eyebrows with another story about his exploits in war zones -- this time on "the superhighway of terror between Pakistan and Afghanistan, where my helicopter was forced down."

"If you want to know where AL Qaeda lives, you want to know where bin Laden is, come back to Afghanistan with me," Biden bragged to the National Guard Association. "Come back to the area where my helicopter was forced down, with a three-star general and three senators at 10,500 feet in the middle of those mountains. I can tell you where they are."

But it turns out that inclement weather, not terrorists, prompted the chopper to land in an open field during Biden's visit to Afghanistan in February 2008. Fighter jets kept watch overhead while a convoy of security vehicles was dispatched to retrieve Biden and fellow Sens. Chuck Hagel and John Kerry.

"We were going to send Biden out to fight the Taliban with snowballs, but we didn't have to," joked Kerry, a Democrat, to the AP. "Other than getting a little cold, it was fine."
Yeah right. Served under Reagan, Bush I and Bush II
x