ChasingBlueSky

Or worse, Coburn will be on the RNC ticket in 2007. _________________________________________ you can burn the land and boil the sea, but you can't take the sky from me.... I WILL fly again.....

Tom Coburn is on record saying this stuff already JP. Rove announced yesterday that Bush is going to try to push for a gay-marriage ban amendment, creationism was on the ballot Nov 2. This stuff is very real. _________________________________________ you can burn the land and boil the sea, but you can't take the sky from me.... I WILL fly again.....

Tom Coburn is on record saying this stuff already JP. Rove announced yesterday that Bush is going to try to push for a gay-marriage ban amendment, creationism was on the balloton Nov 2. This stuff is very real. _________________________________________ you can burn the land and boil the sea, but you can't take the sky from me.... I WILL fly again.....

See, there goes that logical stuff again. You just won't find it on the Hill. _________________________________________ you can burn the land and boil the sea, but you can't take the sky from me.... I WILL fly again.....

I'm surpised no one made a comment on this one. Guess this is part of that moral, Christian Right. How does someone like this get voted into office? Widely seen as the kookiest candidate in the recent election, Oklahoma's new Senator-elect Tom Coburn is so conservative it actually pains him to request federal money for his home state - usually the number one job of any elected representative in Washington. On his campaign, he advocated the death penalty for abortionists and "other people who take life" - not, presumably, executioners or US military personnel in Iraq. He loves guns so much that after the Columbine High School shootings in 1999 - when he was a Congressman - he said he saw nothing wrong with people having access to bazookas and using them "in a limited way". And he loathes homosexuals. "The gay community has infiltrated the very centres of power in every area across this country, and they wield extreme power," he said. "That agenda is the greatest threat to our freedom we face today. Why do you think we see the rationalisation for abortion and multiple sexual partners? That's a gay agenda." Interestingly, Coburn is a doctor - an obstetrician, to be exact, who once admitted sterilising a 20-year-old woman without her written consent. _________________________________________ you can burn the land and boil the sea, but you can't take the sky from me.... I WILL fly again.....

And we have the resources to be the police of the world? Where do you expect to get all these troops and monies to protect us from such evil countries that just want to be on the same scale as us? Wait a minute! Maybe we could put together an organization of countries united against such things - now, I wonder where we could get one of those? _________________________________________ you can burn the land and boil the sea, but you can't take the sky from me.... I WILL fly again.....

Well, then you should shoot everyone that looks at you funny, because they could stab you in the back when you are not looking. That is being proactive on your own safety, isn't it? _________________________________________ you can burn the land and boil the sea, but you can't take the sky from me.... I WILL fly again.....

what would your answer be if it is an extreme Muslim school? And the schools today aren't more social indoctrination camps than education centers? How about if we go back to teaching the damn basics instead of all the crap that's pushed on them now? I'm sorry - what crap would that be? I have a few friends I would like to call tonight to let them know they are pushing crap onto their students. _________________________________________ you can burn the land and boil the sea, but you can't take the sky from me.... I WILL fly again.....

Residents in Utah were just notified that we are about to restart underground testing of nukes. _________________________________________ you can burn the land and boil the sea, but you can't take the sky from me.... I WILL fly again.....

The new Republican reality: no policy is too right-wing Conservative pipedreams are suddenly part of America's mainstream. Andrew Gumbel reports from Los Angeles 08 November 2004 Where should the United States invade next? Iran, Syria, or Cuba? Will George Bush merely slash taxes on the rich even further in his second term, or will he have the courage to abolish income tax altogether? Will gay marriage simply be outlawed state by state, or will a much-threatened constitutional amendment come into being? These might once have been idle questions for conservative Washington think-tanks. But now, with President Bush safely re-elected for another four years and increased Republican majorities in the Senate and House of Representatives, such radical right-wing notions are no longer pipedreams. They are the active stuff of policy discussion. Grass-roots conservatives, many of them religious fundamentalists who paved the way for President Bush's victory in the suburbs and the rural heartland, are positively salivating at the prospect of having their efforts rewarded. "I don't know if we're going to abolish the prescription drug benefit [for senior citizens], but we'd like to. It's just an expansion of government," the Republican strategist and direct-mail guru Richard Viguerie said over the weekend. "We'd like to see oil and gas exploration increased in the continental United States. We want a constitutional amendment on marriage. We want the culture of life expanded." This wish list and others like it now face little or no opposition in Congress, in the White House or - as the federal bench is increasingly filled with ideological conservatives - the courts. The rest of the world may have thought the first four years of Mr Bush's presidency were quite radical enough, but they could turn out to be just the hors d'oeuvre to a radical-right beanfeast. The New York Times reported yesterday that Vice-President Dick Cheney was supporting the idea of abolishing income tax and replacing it with a flat national sales tax - a highly regressive notion that would effectively shift the tax burden drastically away from the rich to the dwindling middle class and the working poor. In Cuban exile circles in Miami, meanwhile, hardline anti-Castro leaders are getting very excited by a pledge President Bush made in one of his last campaign appearances in Florida to liberate their homeland. Career diplomats at the State Department are getting concerned this might be an indication that military intervention - the first since President Kennedy's disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961 - might be seriously contemplated. State Department stalwarts are getting equally alarmed at the prospect - yet to be confirmed - that Colin Powell will depart his post as Secretary of State and open the door to a neo-conservative takeover of foreign and national security policy. A senior State Department official, writing anonymously in the online magazine Salon.com last month, laid out a stark future for US policy in the Middle East in a second Bush term, the first part of which appears to be close to fruition already. "The neo-cons, working in tandem with a similar staff in the office of Prime Minister Sharon of Israel, have a three-part agenda for the first part of Bush's second term," he wrote. "First, oust Yasser Arafat; second, overthrow the secular Baathist al-Assad dictatorship in Syria; and, third, eliminate, one way or another, Iran's nuclear facilities." The Republicans' domestic agenda is likely to contemplate the further delegation of social services to religious charities, the further concentration of media ownership in a few corporate, largely pro-Republican hands, further moves to restrict or even outlaw abortion, restrictions on the civil rights of gay couples (for example, their right to bequeath property to each other) and increasing challenges to Darwinian evolution in school classrooms. Some of the new faces in the Senate gave a flavour of the kind of politics we can expect out of Washington in the next political cycle. Tom Coburn, newly elected Senator from Oklahoma, is on record saying he thinks doctors who perform abortions should be executed. (So much for the "culture of life" behind the anti-abortion movement.) Jim DeMint of South Carolina said during his campaign that homosexuals and unmarried pregnant women should not be allowed to teach in public schools. Democrats and many Independents are appalled at the prospects ahead. Since moderation seems unlikely in the immediate future, some of them are left hoping the Republicans will overreach so drastically that it will create a large political backlash. California: Three strikes and jail for life Petty criminals who steal a slice of pizza or a pack of batteries are still liable to be sentenced to 25 years to life under a notoriously draconian piece of legislation known as California's Three Strikes law. First introduced in 1994, it was sold to the public as a way of ensuring that violent repeat offenders are kept out of harm's way. But it rapidly became clear that the law applied to offenders of almost any kind. As a result, thousands of shoplifters, welfare frauds and other small-time offenders found themselves on the receiving end of a judicial sledgehammer. A modest proposal to amend the law and exempt the pizza-stealers was well on its way to success at the polls last Tuesday until a coalition of prosecutors and prison guards managed to talk Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and four former governors into campaigning to defeat the measure. The airwaves were bombarded with adverts falsely claiming that thousands of violent offenders would be released if the ballot initiative passed. Result: Three Strikes will stand unamended for the foreseeable future. Arizona: Immigration Arizona voters resoundingly endorsed a ballot initiative requiring immigrants to show proof of citizenship when seeking government benefits - potentially barring all foreigners from the public schools and health programmes. Quite what the initiative known as Proposition 200 means is not clear because its language is vague, but already it has spooked the state's large Latino population, most of whom did not vote. Attendance at public pre-schools in Phoenix has already dropped - numbers at one visited by a reporter dropped from 20 to just 2 at the end of last week. Supporters of Prop. 200 say it is time to crack down on illegal immigration. (This is a state where ranchers take pot shots at Mexicans sneaking across the border.) Statistics show undocumented workers pay more into the system in taxes than they take out of it. Opponents hope they can strike the measure down in court before it spreads to other states. A slightly less draconian measure was passed in 1994 in California but later deemed unconstitutional. Oklahoma: Death penalty for abortion doctors Widely seen as the kookiest candidate in the recent election, Oklahoma's new Senator-elect Tom Coburn is so conservative it actually pains him to request federal money for his home state - usually the number one job of any elected representative in Washington. On his campaign, he advocated the death penalty for abortionists and "other people who take life" - not, presumably, executioners or US military personnel in Iraq. He loves guns so much that after the Columbine High School shootings in 1999 - when he was a Congressman - he said he saw nothing wrong with people having access to bazookas and using them "in a limited way". And he loathes homosexuals. "The gay community has infiltrated the very centres of power in every area across this country, and they wield extreme power," he said. "That agenda is the greatest threat to our freedom we face today. Why do you think we see the rationalisation for abortion and multiple sexual partners? That's a gay agenda." Interestingly, Coburn is a doctor - an obstetrician, to be exact, who once admitted sterilising a 20-year-old woman without her written consent. Kentucky: The terrorists are out to get me The republican Senator Jim Bunning achieved re-election by a hair, but not before spooking many of his constituents into thinking he had lost his marbles. He insists that all rumours about Alzheimer's or another degenerative disease are nonsense. One can be forgiven, though, for thinking him a touch paranoid for insisting on a massive security detail in the less than high-profile Bluegrass State. ("There may be strangers among us," he said a few months ago, hinting that al-Qa'ida was out to get him.) Ditto his assertion - entirely unsupported by the facts - that campaigners loyal to his Democratic rival beat up his wife until she was "black and blue". The Washington rumour mill suggests that, having won re-election, Senator Bunning - a former baseball star - may now quietly retire. Nationwide: Replace income tax with a levy on sales Extreme policy ideas begin in the White House itself. Dick Cheney, the Vice-President, was reported yesterday to favour the kind of tax reforms that would make even the most radical fiscal wonk blush. Mr Cheney is said to be among a powerful lobby with the President's ear whose recommendations include the abolition of income tax, the cornerstone of a progressive tax policy. In its place would come a national sales tax, in effect replacing a tax on income with a levy on consumption. The idea that a Bush administration would use the tax system to favour the rich is hardly an outlandish one. Much pre-election debate centred on tax cuts implemented during his first term, which were heavily weighted towards the better-off. Nor would he be the first leader to try to tip the balance of taxation from direct to indirect levies: Margaret Thatcher cut income tax and raised value-added tax. But the latest proposals would be something else entirely, and a sign that the election victory has given Mr Bush the mandate to rip up the rule book and start again when raising revenue. Mr Cheney's is not, however, the only voice advising the President on this subject. Creationists rule in Kansas, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania The last time there was a conservative majority on the Kansas state school board in 1999, they voted to change the science curriculum and present Darwinian evolution as just one theory among many to account for the bio-diversity of the planet. Back then, the move provoked national ridicule, led to a defeat for the conservatives at the next school board election and eventually caused their ruling to be reversed. That, though, was before the conservative tidal wave heralded by the re-election of President George Bush. Now the creationists are back in the majority in Kansas and have every intention of re-opening the debate sometime in the next nine months, according to local newspapers. And Charles "it's only a theory!" Darwin appears to be under siege in other parts of the country too. In the small town of Grantsburg, Wisconsin, the school board just voted to introduce a very similar change in biology teaching. The local schools superintendnent, Joni Burgin, argues the science curriculum "should not be totally inclusive of just one scientific theory". More than 300 biology and religious studies teachers have written to the board to protest, so far without result. In Dover, Pennsylvania, the school board last week approved the teaching of a newish twist on creationism called "intelligent design" - a theory that does not entirely reject Darwin but says the process of evolution and natural selection is too complex and too wondrous to have occurred without the guiding hand of a divine force. The evolution debate has never entirely gone away in the American heartland, but until very recently, it was deemed too ludicrous to make its way into public school rooms. The notorious Scopes monkey trial in 1925 turned the United States into a global laughing-stock that has haunted public administrators ever since. Two things have now changed, however. First, religious fundamentalists are succeeding in making their influence felt on school boards across the nation - everywhere from Colorado Springs in Colorado, to Tulsa, Oklahoma, to the rural Midwest (not only Wisconsin but also Ohio). Secondly, hardline creationists are now taking a back seat to the proponents of "intelligent design", or ID, which can be seen as a paradoxical form of evolution within the creationist movement. Unlike the cruder, God-made-the-world-in-six-days brigade, ID proponents are trained scientists with degrees from respectable universities. They do not so much challenge Darwin as chip away at him piece by piece. South Carolina: Ban gay teachers homosexuals South Carolina's new senator-elect, Jim DeMint, runs only a short distance behind Tom Coburn when it comes to extreme positions. "If a person is a practising homosexual, they should not be teaching in our schools," he said during a televised campaign debate a month before the election. Two days later, he told a newspaper reporter he didn't think pregnant single women who live with their boyfriends should be allowed to teach either. The comments created a furore and led to Republican aides begging him to tone down his rhetoric. DeMint agreed not to repeat them and told subsequent interviewers that the issue was one for local school boards, not the US Senate. But he refused to retract his remarks, much less apologise. He is also an advocate of a flat sales tax in place of income tax, something that might endear him to certain fiscal radicals in the new Bush administration. _________________________________________ you can burn the land and boil the sea, but you can't take the sky from me.... I WILL fly again.....

A man fatally shot himself at Ground Zero of the World Trade Centre in New York, and friends believe the tragic suicide was a political protest against President George W Bush's re-election and the war in Iraq. The body of Andrew Veal, 25, a university research worker from the southern state of Georgia who was engaged to be married, was found on the site of the September 11 terror attacks yesterday morning, his family and officials said. Veal didn't leave a note, but those who knew the sensitive young man said he sent a grim message by choosing to end his life where almost 3,000 people perished. "I'm absolutely sure it's a protest," said Mary Anne Mauney, Veal's supervisor at the University of Georgia survey research lab. "I don't know what made him commit suicide, but where he did it was symbolic." "I see it as a political statement," agreed co-worker Stacey Sutherland. "He was so opposed to the war." When Veal failed to show up at work on Wednesday, his pals assumed he was upset that Bush had beaten John Kerry in the race for the White House and was taking a few days off. "We figured he was just devastated," Mauney said. But fears for his safety grew when he didn't returns calls from his mother and his fiancee, an Iowa college student who was supposed to meet him in Seattle this weekend for a family wedding. Hope turned to heartache yesterday when Veal's body was found. He had a head wound and police recovered a shotgun nearby. "Andy was so anti-violence, I can't even see him holding a gun," Sutherland said. Mauney said that other than the war and the election, she didn't know what might have been troubling Veal. "I told his mother there are some people so sensitive and intelligent and passionate they don't belong in the world the way it is today," she said. _________________________________________ you can burn the land and boil the sea, but you can't take the sky from me.... I WILL fly again.....

Vanishing krill threatens Antarctic life By Andrew Darby November 8, 2004 Rapid climate warming is emptying the breadbasket of Antarctica, putting whales, seals and seabirds at risk of food shortages. The science journal Nature has reported an 80 per cent decline in krill - the shrimp-like staple of the polar diet - in the Southern Ocean's most productive waters, off the Antarctic Peninsula. A senior Australian krill scientist, Steve Nicol, said: "It's definitely a warning bell that there are serious changes going on out there." A team led by Angus Atkinson of the British Antarctic Survey pooled data collected by nine countries between 1926 and last year to take the first large-scale view of change in krill numbers around the frozen continent. Almost 45 per cent of world stocks of the prolific Antarctic krill, Euphausia superba, is found in the south-west Atlantic. The Antarctic Peninsula and nearby waters have seen spectacular change because of rapid climate warming. Over the past 50 years, air temperatures in the peninsula have risen more than 2.5 degrees - five times faster than the global average. The rapid break-off of giant ice shelves such as Larsen B in 2002 has also been accompanied by what the survey described as a striking decrease in floating sea ice. Krill feed on the algae found under the surface of the sea ice, which acts as a kind of nursery," Dr Atkinson said. "We don't fully understand how the loss of sea ice here is connected to the warming, but we believe that it could be behind the decline in krill." The letter to Nature said krill stocks had declined by about 80 per cent since the 1970s. It may also explain declines in several species of penguins in the region, the survey team said. Other Antarctic life such as the tiny jellyfish-like salps may have benefited from a tolerance of warmer waters. Dr Nicol, a program leader at the Australian Antarctic Division, said he was sceptical about the magnitude of the decrease found by the research. "You would not see this without major declines in the higher predators, and it's a very mixed picture for them," he said. "Some predator numbers are actually increasing; for example fur seals, which live almost exclusively on krill." Dr Nick Gales, a principal research scientist at the division, said many large whales were entirely dependent on krill for food and the evidence showed that some of these species were making strong comebacks from 20th century whaling. "Whales like humpbacks are showing increases in the range of 10 per cent each year," Dr Gales said. Minke whale numbers, however, were decreasing, he said. _________________________________________ you can burn the land and boil the sea, but you can't take the sky from me.... I WILL fly again.....

wow - hit a soft spot did I? How about delve? Inquire? Bulldoze? Guess those aliens really got to ya! the better question is "do you have the webcam on?" _________________________________________ you can burn the land and boil the sea, but you can't take the sky from me.... I WILL fly again.....

You sure about that? I heard a rumor about a probe. _________________________________________ you can burn the land and boil the sea, but you can't take the sky from me.... I WILL fly again.....

This made me laugh out loud. Must be my well honed sense of irony... Haven't you heard? He is leading up the next "Hands Across America" _________________________________________ you can burn the land and boil the sea, but you can't take the sky from me.... I WILL fly again.....

Why is this an apple v. oranges comparison? Both issues are clearly the choice of the government taking the rights of a given group because the majority deems so. Seems like apples v. apples. Please provide a valid reason as to why you feel its apples v. oranges. Because if he sticks his fingers in his ears and goes "lalalalalalala" then no one can argue against his point of view. Essentially this is what he is doing by blindly claiming everyone but him is wrong. _________________________________________ you can burn the land and boil the sea, but you can't take the sky from me.... I WILL fly again.....

Both men are flaming liberals. Hmmmmmm. Tuna, your replies always look the same. Indeed. Also, he can't seem to recognize comedy. It's pretty sad commentary on the news when the two best commentators are comedians. Also, both shows bring on opposing viewpoints and allow them to loudly proclaim their point of view. _________________________________________ you can burn the land and boil the sea, but you can't take the sky from me.... I WILL fly again.....

It's Monday _________________________________________ you can burn the land and boil the sea, but you can't take the sky from me.... I WILL fly again.....

Seperation of Church and State was for the protection of the State, not the Church. _________________________________________ you can burn the land and boil the sea, but you can't take the sky from me.... I WILL fly again.....

That's the liberal mindset. Negativity is a way of life for liberals. Instead of coming together and support the POTUS and try and make America better they throw a wedge into everything they can. These are angry, bitter people who stop at nothing to complain at every moment they get. It's time America comes together instead of being divided. I see you are leading the pack on being the peacemaker? _________________________________________ you can burn the land and boil the sea, but you can't take the sky from me.... I WILL fly again.....

Best show on tv. Best political commentator on tv as well. Next in line would be Real Time with Bill Maher. I Tivo both of those! _________________________________________ you can burn the land and boil the sea, but you can't take the sky from me.... I WILL fly again.....

While I am not a fan of the xmas holiday season for a few reasons: 1) The real meaning isn't celebrated 2) I've hardly seen any real cheer or good will connected to it in a long time 3) Pure commercialism and 4) I haven't had a good/real happy Xmas in many years (didn't help that last year had something very painful happen). But, despite all that, and being annoyed with the songs this weekend when I went shopping for some new socks....I wouldn't sign it. Who am I to ruin this junk for others? _________________________________________ you can burn the land and boil the sea, but you can't take the sky from me.... I WILL fly again.....

You should take your own advice. There are two major schools of thoughts on the war. Some say black, others say white. Within each group there are variations. I've listened and heard what all sides have said - have you? _________________________________________ you can burn the land and boil the sea, but you can't take the sky from me.... I WILL fly again.....

You are kidding, right? Bush said he would try to mend the rift by getting the liberals to see it his way. lol Diplomacy in action. btw - I never said Kerry stood for what I beleived in. What I do know is that he may have tried to find common ground with the citizens he represents, instead of telling them that he knows better. _________________________________________ you can burn the land and boil the sea, but you can't take the sky from me.... I WILL fly again.....

No, I doubt that's what he meant. Split as in divided, with each side accentuating differences rather than similiarities; with the side with the power saying "we have the power -- you are welcome to do whatever we want and call it cooperation;" with the side with less power sniping, and with each side calling each other stupid. Politics at the national and bigger state level seems to be more and more about establishing and maintaining power than about identifying problems which actually need national attention, and then finding solutions which keep more than your own buddies happy. Split is rejoicing that you have the majority now and don't have to listen to the minority any more. It's about saying someone else is irrelevant. That's split and divisive. Wendy W. Exactly. There are two very diverse schools of thought in this country. Those that want war, those that don't. Those that want faith based constitutional decisions, and those that don't. Etc. With the current administration, nearly half of those that voted no longer have a voice or true representation. In fact, religion is being forced down their throats, despite what their own faith and beliefs may be. The ironic part about that? That is the same reasons the Pilgrims for came to this country. Guess we have come full circle _________________________________________ you can burn the land and boil the sea, but you can't take the sky from me.... I WILL fly again.....