Boehner likens the environmental impact of burning fossil fuels to bovine flatulence

17 comments April 19th, 2009

 

 If they awarded Nobel Prizes for pseudo-scientific absurdities, House Republican Leader John Boehner would win one for his theories on the sources and environmental impact of carbon dioxide emissions.

 Boehner also deserves some other kind of award for having the audacity to label the scientific consensus on carbon dioxide “comical.”

 Read about it HERE.

The last time Texas tried to secede, the big issue was white supremacy

17 comments April 19th, 2009

 

 In light of the current push by some Texans (but certainly not most of them, as a recent poll indicates) for their state to secede from the Union, we ought to examine the factors behind a similar effort of 148 years ago.

 Here’s the TEXT of a document called the Texas Declaration of Causes of Secession, which was adopted at a state convention on Feb. 2, 1861.

 The key passage in the declaration reads as follows:

 In all the non-slave-holding States, in violation of that good faith and comity which should exist between entirely distinct nations, the people have formed themselves into a great sectional party, now strong enough in numbers to control the affairs of each of those States, based upon an unnatural feeling of hostility to these Southern States and their beneficent and patriarchal system of African slavery, proclaiming the debasing doctrine of equality of all men, irrespective of race or color– a doctrine at war with nature, in opposition to the experience of mankind, and in violation of the plainest revelations of Divine Law. They demand the abolition of negro slavery throughout the confederacy, the recognition of political equality between the white and negro races, and avow their determination to press on their crusade against us, so long as a negro slave remains in these States.

 That’s pretty clear, isn’t it? The problem was those damn Yankees and their opposition to the “beneficent and patriarchal system of African slavery” and their “debasing doctrine of equality of all men, irrespective of race or color — a doctrine at war with nature, in opposition to the experience of mankind, and in violation of the plainest revelations of Divine Law.”

 But today’s neo-Confederates want us to know that slavery wasn’t the principal cause of the Civil War. No, sir. It was really about “states’ rights.”

(Hat-tip to AmericaBlog for the references here.)

Republican senator takes umbrage at Obama shaking hands with Hugo Chavez

1 comment April 19th, 2009

 

 Presidents Kennedy, Nixon and Reagan, among others, had occasion to shake hands with and smile at the unsavory likes of Kruschev, Mao, Chou, Brezhnev and Gorbachev, among other commie leaders — and the only Americans to complain about it were extremists to whom most everybody else paid little attention.

 But now that President Obama has shaken hands with and smiled at Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, Republican Sen. John Ensign of Nevada (above) WANTS US TO KNOW that the gesture was “irresponsible.”

 Yes, it’s becoming downright amusing to watch these conservatives flail about in search of some issue that might cast doubts on this president’s patriotism.

 UPDATE: Obama SAYS Ensign’s criticism “doesn’t make sense.”

Limbaugh says the treatment of John McCain by his captors proves that torture works

6 comments April 19th, 2009

Is there no level of indecency to which THIS CREATURE won’t stoop?

The demise of America’s anti-gay movement

4 comments April 19th, 2009

Frank Rich has a GOOD COLUMN this morning on a turning point in America’s socio-political history.

 POSTSCRIPT: Even the conservative New York Post, owned by Fox News proprietor Rupert Murdoch, seems to be MELLOWING on the subject of gay marriage.