Today is The Day – we’ll find out if our nine Justices can read the Constitution. If at least 5 of them can, then ObamaCare will be struck down because it is patently absurd that government can compel us to buy something (which, by the way, will pave the way to abolishing the absurd laws mandating auto insurance…what a scam that is: insurance companies got people to pass laws to force people to buy insurance). If 5 or more can’t read the document – and it is only a few pages long – then we’ll get some tortuous, involved opinion about penumbras and how if you have you Law Professor Secret Decoder Ring and read the Constitution in half-light with the Moon over your left should then you can see the fine print put in there by Madison which says “Congress shall make laws forcing people to buy stuff”.
I hope it is struck down – but, honestly, Obama has used the law already to insert a huge amount of ObamaCare in to our bureaucracy. The only sure cure is a complete repeal – with the repeal including a specific provision voiding all regulations implemented since passage under the authority of the ObamaCare statute. So, even if it is upheld, repeal is still the answer.
And repeal can only happen under President Romney – remember that if for a moment you lack enthusiasm to vote Romney on November 6th…only Romney means the end of ObamaCare.
Blogs For Victory 
Brimstone posters are in a time out due to the vicious nature of some of you in disregarding blog policy. Every post attempted during this time adds to the length of the time out. //Moderator
The only portion that will be struck down is the individual mandate and that will be a good thing because it will pave the way for a public option in two years.
Well, except the individual mandate represents a substantial portion of the funding mechanism. Without that the law can’t survive on it’s own.
After the Democratic Party takes back the House in 2014 They’ll push a public option through with widespread American support.
Funny and funnier.
The federal government is already the largest health care insurance provider in our country, and costs have sky rocketed and the quality of care has declined, so how is giving them more power over the industry going to improve things?
Romney is the only candidate to hopefully bring back sanity and common sense. Obama and his minions are insane and simply wrong on every single issue and it is futile to try and work with them, or compromise with them. Let’s just defeat them, give them some free condoms, and send them back to their dysfunctional lives from which they came.
I suggest reading this guy’s blog. He makes some interesting points.
http://mychal-massie.com/premium/obama-and-holder-twins-separated-at-birth/
Brimstone posters are in a time out due to the vicious nature of some of you in disregarding blog policy. Every post attempted during this time adds to the length of the time out. //Moderator
upheld under the taxing clause of the constitution.
well Mark, Cluster, Amy and Spook…what say you?
Brooke,
As this now opens up the ability of the federal government to tax behavior, I see it as a tipping point in American history. Now they can tax you if you don’t buy the right kind of car, if you don’t eat the right kind of food, if you don’t raise your children in a certain way, if you don’t heat and cool your house with “approved” methods. I see MASSIVE civil disobedience coming in the near future.
Your personal attacks on another blog poster mean that from that point on every one of your posts will be deleted in full. //Moderator
Brooke,
The government now has the power to levy a “tax” penalty on you if you don’t buy a gun. How do you feel about that?
Spook, I could not agree more. Even a cursory reading of history, and not even ancient history at that but mid-20th-Century history, shows what happens when a central government takes on the authority to dictate what citizens may and may not do, and what the government mandates that they do.
The inner decay of the USSR was due in great part to the civil disobedience of its people, and their efforts to circumvent the power taken on by the central government. Certainly the fatal flaws of the economic and political systems of the republic played the greater roles, but when the government is seen as the enemy, and when citizens are focused on circumventing government controls, the entire system starts to rot from the inside out.
This ruling is a ruling that declares that the government controls the people, instead of the people controlling the government, and this is not only in direct contradiction to the stated intent and content of the Constitution, it is exactly what has led to the downfall of every government in history.
I have to say, I am quite surprised. I had a lot of respect for Roberts, and am baffled by his sudden spin into big-government control and erosion of individual rights and state sovereignty. It appears he has either had an epiphany and realized that he truly believes in the Leftist ideology of a central government massive in both size and scope (rather than the Constitutional model) or he lied to be approved for his position.
I wonder what George W. Bush thinks of his appointment now. How odd that this, of all the other choices, may turn out to be his biggest mistake.
Unfortunately, the taxing power of the government is pretty much unlimited thanks to the income tax amendment – but there is the good news that commerce doesn’t cover all.
More importantly, as I pointed out, repeal was, is and always will be the proper response to ObamaCare.
I can’t figure out my favorite part of this: The fact that SCOTUS upheld the law or the fact that the key vote was Justice Roberts. High-larious.
Your personal attacks on another blog poster mean that from that point on every one of your posts will be deleted in full. //Moderator
It certainly lays to rest the liberal screed of the SC being right wing, does it not?
On the road to repeal now.
Jack, I think your favorite part is that it lets you and people like you do the Monkey Dance of Joy as you do what people like you love the most, and which you substitute for actual political dialogue. That is, to celebrate whatever you think represents misfortune for others.
Jack, I think your favorite part is that it lets you and people like you do the Monkey Dance of Joy as you do what people like you love the most, and which you substitute for actual political dialogue. That is, to celebrate whatever you think represents misfortune for others.
Hey, when you translate that into English, gimme a holler, okay? This is a great victory for everyone who needs health coverage, no matter your political stripe. I have a young Republican girl working in my office who is celebrating this decision because it allows her to stay on her parents’ insurance plan. No one suffers because of this decision. No one.
The problem is, Amazona, you forget that the mandate was originally a REPUBLICAN plan, devised in response to Hillary’s early 90’s legislation for health care overhaul. But (like cap and trade and other GOP plans that the Democrats eventually embraced) the minute the Dems started to like it, the GOoPers had to do a 180. Typical, hypocritical Republican b.s.
Well,not today. Today? We win.
This is a great victory for everyone who needs health coverage, no matter your political stripe.
Translation: This is a great victory for everyone who is willing to trade freedom for substandard government-quality health care. Check out the reality of single-payer health care in Canada and the UK.
I have a young Republican girl working in my office who is celebrating this decision because it allows her to stay on her parents’ insurance plan. No one suffers because of this decision. No one.
Really? Does her parents’ plan now cost more because Big Brother has redefined “child” to include adults up to and including 26 years of age? SOMEONE is paying for that extension. Do you people really think that insurance companies just said “Sure, we’ll add on all of your offspring up through the age of 26 years, at our cost”? So you know a girl who proves that identity is not the same as ideology, as she calls herself a Republican but disdains Constitutional restrictions on the size and scope and power of the federal government when it benefits HER, and is willing to let someone else pay to take care of her. Big deal.
Nothing is free.
Jack, you really are dominated by your negative emotions, aren’t you? Take this for example: “But (like cap and trade and other GOP plans that the Democrats eventually embraced) the minute the Dems started to like it, the GOoPers had to do a 180. Typical, hypocritical Republican b.s.”
For one thing, a bad idea is a bad idea. Intelligent people look at an idea and evaluate it on its merits, not on the identity of who presented it. So who cares if a Republican or even several Republicans floated an idea? If it was a bad idea it was a bad idea.
You people are so hung up on Identity Politics, you just can’t see past the labels to the underlying ideology.
Do you really, truly, subscribe to the juvenile concept that the GOP likes an idea till the Dems like it too, and then out of spite or mindless opposition turn against it? Really? This is your summary of political ideology? THIS is how you see things?
Hmmmmm. that explains a lot.
What you people either can’t or won’t accept is that the word “REPUBLICAN” no longer automatically means Constitutional Conservative, and hasn’t for a long time. What you people either can’t or won’t accept is that there is a movement in this nation, that of the 21st Century Constitutional Conservative, which is essentially telling the GOP to either get back to constitutional governance or get out of the way for a party that will. Conservatives now vote GOP because there is not, yet, a real option.
I get it, that people like you are so ignorant of ideology, and so sucked into the TMZ level of Identity Politics, that you either can’t or won’t see the difference, but at some point you need to recognize that what someone identified as REPUBLICAN did or did not do, or say, in the past, is irrelevant to the determination to return this nation to its Constitutional roots.
You flaunt your Identity Politics, uber-emotional basis for what you posture as political thought, in one statement—-the supposedly darling use of the word “GOoPers” and the whine that all Republicans are “typical” hypocrites. Yep, real political commentary depends on isolating a group of people with a certain public label, subscribing to a blanket insult for all of them, and depending on mindless personal attacks and snotty sneering about events.
If you are a PL dupe, that is.
“Translation: This is a great victory for everyone who is willing to trade freedom for substandard government-quality health care. Check out the reality of single-payer health care in Canada and the UK.”
Both canadians and Britons out live Americans by more than 1.5 years; Israelis by nearly 4 years and they all have single payer health care. Can you explain this in some way other than “They all come to US for treatment?”
1.5 years? Really? That’s huge, and certainly worth paying more in taxes. Good call.
consigliere:’Can you explain this in some way other than “They all come to US for treatment?””
hey FORKER, have you heard the saying: “Figures lie and liars figure”???
Where did you get these figures? W.H.O.? The same people that don’t count infant mortality the same as we do, therefore their “statistics” are better than ours?
Both canadians and Britons out live Americans by more than 1.5 years; Israelis by nearly 4 years and they all have single payer health care. Can you explain this in some way other than “They all come to US for treatment?”
consigliereciucava, is that you, Frog? I know you know the answer to your question, but I’ll provide you with a link anyway. There have been dozens, perhaps hundreds of studies and articles that refute your assetion, but then you also knew that, didn’t you?
tiredoflibbs,
Those figures came from the 2011 [the most recent] CIA World Factbook.
Oh, THE CIA FACTBOOK!!!
Where do they get their data? Just curious………
I mean, we already know how infant morality rates are skewed to make the US look bad—we start our data at birth, while the supposedly more advanced countries don’t count a birth till the baby has reached a certain age, beyond that of early infant deaths.
I’m just curious about the data collection and editing that form the basis of this conclusion of THE CIA FACTBOOK.
consigliere (forker): CIA World Factbook
Link please?
I do know that your havens for “single-payer health care” in Canada and the UK, RATION CARE. Citizens wait for MONTHS for treatment.
http://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/peter-roff/2009/07/28/statistics-show-canada-healthcare-is-inferior-to-american-system
Plus, government care vs private care using private insurance – citizens of these countries PREFER this option to the government option. For one, the PRIVATE option is better and more timely care than the public one.
You, FORKER, have been drinking too much proggy and socialist kool-aid.
Fredrick your blatant racism and efforts to smear another poster have you permanently banned and your fellow Brimstone posters removed from the blog for a couple of weeks. Every time you or any of them ignore this the time out period for the rest is extended. They can thank you for this situation and the extended period where they can not post. // Moderator
“only Romney means the end of ObamaCare.” Right, the man who started it all is the only one that can end it. Believe me you, he is as happy as can be right now, Romneycare’s beloved mandate has survived and he can pretend he’s angry it did.
Are your heads exploding yet? Once again, the narcissistic musings of Mark Edward Noonan influence no one. The Supreme Court upheld universal healthcare. They eviscerated the Arizona “show me your papers” law. Darrel Issa admitted that he had no evidence of the White House being involved in a cover-up of Fast and Furious; a program that goes back to the Bush administration. Furthermore, Fortune Magazine has an article that exposes the contempt charges against Holder as being nothing more than a crude,mean-spirited, grossly partisan effort to retaliate against the Justice Dept for inforcing laws that fight voter suppression. The congresional investigation is divorced from reality, but the right could care less. They are so afraid that the President will win another term that they have reduced themselves to being an subject of universal contempt. Let me also mention that Romney’s likability and unfavorable ratings are at an all time high. He doesn’t stand for anything and he is petrified to take any definitive position, from what cereal he like to eat to what he would do if aliens landed. He looses amongst women, Latinos and younger voters. But hey! Good luck in the fall.
And Neo; in case you don’t know already, George Zimmerman’s bail was revoked, his wife was arrested for fraud and the police chief was forced to resign. But I admire your tenacity in being one of his miniscule defenders. Reality won’t chump you, chump.
They eviscerated the Arizona “show me your papers” law.
No, they didn’t. The important component of the bill was upheld. Police do have the right to determine immigrant status upon a lawful detention. Did you miss that?
Oh, mitche, you ought to apply for a special award for packing 50 pounds of crap into a five pound bag. What a good little footsoldier you are!
As usual, your rants revolve around the fringes of every issue. What do the subsequent charges against George Zimmerman and his wife have to do with the fact that all the evidence regarding the attack on him by Trayvon Martin shows that he acted in self defense? You lemmings are so predictable. You were so eager to lynch a man with no evidence, so eager to damn him as a violent racist, that you ignored all evidence and spouted lie after lie after lie, and now you are gloating with glee about something that is totally unrelated to the event in question. What an odd and twisted and bizarre perspective you people have.
Fortune Magazine “exposed” nothing. Fortune Magazine printed an opinion piece defending the man, and the agency, responsible for putting more than 2000 weapons in the hands of vicious criminals, weapons used to kill hundreds of expendable Mexican citizens and two Americans.
There was no evidence of a White House involvement in F&F—not till Obama presented one, by claiming executive privilege to keep important documents out of the investigation. Till then I believe that Issa only asked if Obama or other WH people were involved, and did not make that accusation.
Your shrill and acrimonious rant does nothing but illustrate the drastic efforts the Left are willing to employ to try to distract from the utter failure of the Obama regime. You guys have pulled out all the stops, throwing up such a huge amount of chaff, in your frantic attempts to generate emotional backlash to substitute for actual support, but all you are doing is spotlighting your panic.
I don’t understand the recent Supreme Court rulings, particularly the role Robers has played in them. They fly in the face of constitutional law as I understand it, and seem to be based on personal agendas rather than objective analysis of the Constitution. But my position has never been based on agenda, or personal desires, merely on my understanding of the law. We’ve seen the Court held up to scorn and ridicule by future historians, looking back at grotesque rulings that stood for years, and I have a feeling the 2012 Court will be in the same position, as these recent rulings appear to be agenda-driven.
But you just keep on tittering and giggling and wallowing in your spite and malice, and Constitutionalists will continue trying to restore the Constitution as the law of the land.
So mitchie, when did obAMATEUR LIE????
Then:
STEPHANOPOULOS: But you reject that it’s a tax increase?
OBAMA: I absolutely reject that notion.
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2009/09/obama-mandate-is-not-a-tax/
or now????
You or obAMATEUR can’t have it both ways!!! I know it is hard for you mindless drones to want what you want despite the Constitution.
mitchiethe drone: “Darrel Issa admitted that he had no evidence of the White House being involved in a cover-up of Fast and Furious; a program that goes back to the Bush administration.”
Fast and Furious was an operation so cloak-and-dagger Mexican authorities weren’t even notified that thousands of semi-automatic firearms were being sold to people in Arizona thought to have links to Mexican drug cartels. According to ATF whistleblowers, in 2009 the U.S. government began instructing gun storeowners to break the law by selling firearms to suspected criminals. ATF agents then, again according to testimony by ATF agents turned whistleblowers, were ordered not to intercept the smugglers but rather to let the guns “walk” across the U.S.-Mexican border and into the hands of Mexican drug-trafficking organizations.
Bush was President in 2009? What a good little mindless drone you are for regurgitating leftist dumbed down talking points!!!
you should be proud!!!!
No, you silly twit, Romney’s STATE healthcare mandate was already on firm footing, IN MASSACHUSETTS, where the United States Constitution says (in the 10th Amendment) it is perfectly legal if the citizens want it.
What is it about you people and your inability to tell the difference between state and federal government, and the different laws applying to each?
I’m still amazed that since the ruling so many ‘conservatives’ bring up this state vs. federal issue, it’s like some inner need to defend their support of that closet socialist Romney.
As the Supremes ruled, it is a tax, rather than a mandate. As such there is no difference in the boundaries the governments must follow unless a State has a STRICTER tax requirement in their constitution. Obamneycare is not a 10th amendment issue, the issue is whether or not a government can force people to purchase a private industry product via tax code.
Mitt Romneycare believes that it is okay under our Federal Constitution for the government to do just that. (you must remember that a state constitution can only be stricter on the tax matter, not less strict, so his state could only do it if it passed Federal Constitution muster).
Barack Obamacare believes that it is okay under our Federal Constitution for the government to do just that. Olympia Snowe and Benedict Roberts both believe the same as Romney and Obama.
It is not a 10th amendment issue, and now all you Romney supporters from the Primary get your one true wish and that is to make Romneycare the law of the land and put Mitt Romneycare in power of every detail of your life.
What’s really funny is how liberals are all of sudden embracing the SC when just a few days ago, they were calling them activist judges.
Let’s once again revisit liberal land – Obama said that the mandate was not a tax, yet the SC upheld the mandate saying that the federal government has that taxing authority. So which is it?
Also it’s important to note that with this decision, Obama has just raised taxes on everyone in this country. Especially those making less than $250,000 a year, which is another broken promise.
Your personal attacks on another blog poster mean that from that point on every one of your posts will be deleted in full. //Moderator
You are a strange little man James. This decision doesn’t effect me at all, I just like pointing out the contortions liberals like you have gone through on this issue, from calling it a tax, to not calling it a tax, to haranguing the SC as a “conservative” bench, to saying that conservatives want people to die early – it’s really been quite the display of childish tantrums.
But in the end, liberals have just raised taxes on everyone in this country, with the exception of those who received waivers; ie, union members, and have diminished the prospects of quality health care. That’s all. Something to be proud of for sure, right?
“to saying that conservatives want people to die early – it’s really been quite the display of childish tantrums.” cluster
Refresh my memory – who started the “death panels” debate?
The Rabidly Radical Left and its Pseudo-Left minions like you, Velma, tried to turn a simple comment into a “debate”. But it was never a debate. It was a strident and hysterical attack on a simple comment, which was by the way a quite accurate summary of the decision-making ability and responsibility of health care provider committees, or panels.
The problem for you people was that you didn’t WANT people to think about the fact that life and death decisions for family members as well our ourselves would be put in the hands of bureaucrats looking only at the bottom line. The last thing you people could handle was awareness of the actual consequences of handing over health care to the government, so you and your kind tried to make a big deal out a two-word phrase, hoping you could shift attention to the wording and away from the reality.
A reality that has, since then, been illustrated in story after story of health care denied to people by such panels.
By the way, Velma, I see you are still barging in on a conservative blog to toss out snot-nuggets—-evidently you are so accustomed to being identified as a low-class boor that it doesn’t faze you.
Refresh my memory – who started the “death panels” debate? – freethinker
It was actually Donald Berwik, the health care czar, who is a big proponent of such panels.
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2017626,00.html
Well freestinker, the proggies have always said that conservatives want to throw grandma from a cliff, have them die in the gutter, die early for lack of government health care, etc. etc. etc.
Death panels were brought up long after these crazy accusations. But then again, you are too weak-minded to see the forest through the trees when it comes to proggies’ lies.
The LIE is that the obAMATEUR administration likened this too taxes and as I have shown on ABCs interview with Stephanopolous obAMATEUR DENIED that it was a tax!!!
So which is it and when did the obAMATEUR LIE AGAIN to get his way?!?!?!?!
What did you regurgitate before? Was it not a tax? and now, is it? You can’t have it both ways to get what you want.
Velma, you are such a drone and far from the “free thinker” you claim to be. Hint: “freethinkers don’t regurgitate the mindless BS that you post, which is nothing more than proggy propaganda.”
freestinker, can you tell me that the government healthcare programs already in place (VA, Medicare, Medicaid, SCHIP, etc. etc.) DO NOT DENY CARE OR TREATMENT????
WHO MAKES THE DECISION? A bureaucratic “panel”? An individual?
Well? Answer if you have the guts…..
Certain vulgarities have always been unacceptable here and always will be. // Moderator
Your personal attacks on another blog poster mean that from that point on every one of your posts will be deleted in full. //Moderator
It will be interesting to see if this decision motivates conservatives to change directions of this country in November.
One: what vulgarities? The truth is now vulgar? And my dear friend Ama, you constitutionalists aren’t doing a very good job. And yes, I admit wanting to get a jab into Neo, since I find his conviction that Zimmerman is innocent a real vulgarity. Just wanted to point out the obvious to him. And perhaps enjoy his rant defensive rant about how “liberals” have conspired against poor lonesome George.
I really doubt that cutting you off for the use of vulgarity involved taking offense to some “truth” you presented. Much more likely is that you use vulgar expressions so often you don’t even recognize them as vulgar.
I think the Constitutionalists are doing a great job, given the short amount of time since this issue achieved more attention on a national level. Sure, we haven’t been able to overturn the Liberal assaults on the Constitution, but we have been pretty good at getting Constitutionalists into office, forcing others to address the issue, and bringing it to the attention of millions of Americans.
You guys have done so much damage to the nation, and undermined the Constitution in so many ways, that it will take a long time to fix it, and some of it, like Social Security, is so deeply embedded that it will probably always remain. But the first step is in getting people to think in terms of how laws and policies and programs either fit or do not fit into Constitutional law, and this awareness has been growing quite rapidly and steadily.
The Left has always had a long-term plan for gaining absolute power, and we can’t expect to halt it, much less reverse it, in just a few short years. Although the recent overreach by an arrogant Left which has overestimated its acceptance AS the Left in the United States will make this job easier. What the Left has failed to understand is that Americans have accepted the superficial stalking horse illusions of the Left, but not the underlying core ideology, and as that is exposed the Left will lose ground.
Nice that you admit to attacking neo because you are offended by his stance that a United States citizen is innocent until proven guilty. Not a surprise that you object to this position, but a surprise that you admit it, and that you admit to finding the concept “vulgar”. You are usually more coy about revealing your true opinions, sticking instead to general attitudes of hostility and vitriol.
Perhaps you will defend against the belief that Liberals have mounted attacks on Zimmerman. That might be interesting, though quite a departure from your usual M.O., which is to hit and run, hurling insults and attacks and then not sticking around or backing them up.
But yet Amazona you live in a country where you can worship as you please, legally own a firearm, move about the nation without hindrance with an abundance of food and shelter to hand. What else in Hades do you want?
Yeah, I can worship as I please, as long as my religious views do not cross government agendas, at which time my own convictions are to be put aside as I am forced to financially support programs which violate my religious beliefs. I can also not have public displays which relate in any way to my faith, even in general and nondenominational ways referring only to the overall concept of a Supreme Being.
i can legally own a firearm (for now) as long as I register it, and make sure the government knows what I own and where it is and gives me permission, through an FBI check, to buy it in the first place.
I can go from one place to another. Is this the only way you can define “freedom”?
As for plenty of food and shelter, the same can be said of my livestock.
The Left is now apparently trying to redefine “liberty” by reframing it in very limited and specific areas. I think this is just another take on the plantation approach to warehousing the poor—-give them shelter, credit cards to buy food, poor education so they are less likely to break out of the boundaries if their limited existence, keep them on edge and suspicious of people who do not look like them by constantly telling them that these other people really hate them and want to harm them, and threaten them with starvation, homelessness and violent attacks if they fail to vote in their handlers.
And I want nothing from or related to Hades, thank you very much.
con, you appear to be saying that if I can be fed and housed and go see Grandma without a travel permit, I should settle for that and not be so picky about the individual freedoms guaranteed by our Constitution.
This appears to be the heart and soul of Leftism—–the tradeoff of “security” and the illusion of liberty for liberty itself.
Liberals have proven over and over again, that liberty takes a back seat to security.
What Zimmerman did is neither has nothing to do with liberals. Unless of course you think it’s OK to shot 1st and ask questions after. The fact is the credibility of both Zimmerman and his wife have been brought into question. Zimmerman deceived the court and now is in jail. With bail revoked. His wife has been arrested for fraud in regards to their financial situation.Behaviors which are not the highlights of someone who’s facing trial. And what about the innocence of Trayvon? I suppose his didn’t matter.
As far as “the left” you keep making these predictions about the imminent demise of this point if view and yet it keeps failing to materialize. I wish you would (or could) admit that you are a zealous ideologue who dismisses out of hand any challenge to your world view. When you so often try to describe me, it sounds very much like projection. In my mind, by Tea people and the religious right have utterly destroyed the Republican Party as it once was. As Mitch McConnell said, the only goal of the party for the past 4 yrs is to make sure that the President didn’t serve a 2nd term and the good of the nation be damned. (Uh oh! Vulgarity!) The irony is that what they have undertaken will have the opposite effect. The right will lose and only then will they be able to rebuild. With the exclusion of self-serving anarchists who have contributed nothing.
Mitch,
This most recent post of yours is less coherent than your usual drivel which, I admit, is saying a lot. But more importantly, who are you talking to?
“What Zimmerman did is neither has nothing to do with liberals. ”
True, but it was Liberals who rushed to judgment that he was guilty, that he had committed MURDER, that he stalked a poor sweet innocent naive sweetheart of a kid and SHOT HIM DOWN LAHK A DAWG!!!
And it is a Liberal who just stated, on this blog, that he finds the concept of “innocent until proven guilty” to be vulgar.
“Unless of course you think it’s OK to shot (sic) 1st and ask questions after. “
Which question(s) would you suggest? “Why won’t you stop beating me in the face?” “Did you really mean it when you grabbed for my gun and told me I was going to die?” “How long are you going to hit me?”
The funniest thing about self defense is that there is no requirement to enter into a dialogue with someone you feel is a threat to your life.
“The fact is the credibility of both Zimmerman and his wife have been brought into question.” Regarding informing the court of funds deposited in their account for defense expense, yes. But not regarding his account of being attacked by a stranger, thrown to the ground, and savagely beaten before managing to get hold of his gun and firing a shot to, as he believed it, save his life.
“And what about the innocence of Trayvon” Back to the issue of not being required to enter into a discussion with one’s attacker before defending oneself. All the evidence seems to support Zimmerman’s account that he never accosted Martin, merely followed him at a distance till he lost him in the shadows of the neighborhood, and was returning to his vehicle to wait for police when Martin attacked him from behind, threw him to the ground, and proceeded to beat on him.
Trayvon was safe, he was out of sight, the man following him had turned back and was leaving. The fact that he chose to engage the stranger in a violent attack pretty much establishes a degree of guilt in, at the very least, creating a situation in which someone was likely to get hurt—-a situation which would not have occurred if Zimmerman had been able to get back in his vehicle and wait for the police.
Yes, I am a “zealous ideologue”. I think zeal is a good thing, and having a carefully developed and coherent political philosophy (an ‘ideology’) is a lot better than aimlessly drifting along being lured into one emotion-based “position” after another with no thought or awareness of actual political ideology.
I ask, and ask and ask and ask and ask and ask, for some Liberal to give me a reason to find the Leftist political model superior to that of the United States Constitution. So far, none have. Are you ready to do this?
Without a single example of the alleged superiority of the opposing political model, and with ample proof of the success of the one I believe in, there is no reason to change what you refer to as my “world view”.
As it has never been “challenged” but merely sneered at, I have absolutely nothing to go on, regarding a re-evaluation of my own. But feel free to enter into a discussion on the competing ideologies of Left and Right. Make a compelling enough argument and who knows, I might admit to being wrong.
I just admitted to being wrong in my initial response to the Roberts ruling, and I have often admitted to having made a mistake. It’s just that all you people do is hurl insults, occasionally engage in some wistful longing for a Utopia that always sounds like a beauty pageant interview, and then refuse to actually state what political model you think is the best way to govern the United States, much less why.
BTW, mitche, you made a comment that really sums up your total lack of comprehension. Either that or your willingness to simply lie and restate a comment to claim it was something it was not.
To wit: “As Mitch McConnell said, the only goal of the party for the past 4 yrs is to make sure that the President didn’t serve a 2nd term and the good of the nation be damned. ”
No, this is NOT what Mitch McConnell said. You either know this and lied, or you run everything through the mitche filter till it comes out twisted enough to satisfy you and then you choose to believe it.
McConnell said he wanted to make sure Obama had only one term because he thought that Obama, and his ideology, and his agendas, were so bad for the nation. It was the opposite of "the good of the nation be damned". It was quite clearly and precisely and succinctly explained, over and over, that McConnell and many others believed that an Obama presidency must be limited to allow it to cause as little harm to the nation as possible.
And McConnell and the rest of us have been proven right, on all counts. It now appears that you and people like you are the ones determined to keep your party in power, and the good of the nation be damned.
I ask, and ask and ask and ask and ask and ask, for some Liberal to give me a reason to find the Leftist political model superior to that of the United States Constitution. So far, none have. Are you ready to do this?
Yeah Amazona, post on some sites that are not as obscure, remote,intellectually isolated and enconsed as this one! Try to be a smaller fish in a much MUCH bigger pond. With that said:
GOOD LORD AMAZONA! The freakin constitution IS FREAKING LIBERAL!!!!!!!!!!!!
You, in your zealotry, conflate the most extreme form of liberalism,(which is identical to the most extreme form of conservativism; that is anarchy) as being one and the same! The constitution was written by students of THE FREAKIN ENLIGHTENMENT!!!!! How much more “liberal” can you get than THAT????
What you fail to understand, and is the wellspring of your certainty, is that at it’s core, the “leftist liberalism” that you despise is the exact same as the hard core, intractable,unconsciousable and inhumane contemporary conservativsim . And don’t you dare critique my spelling. It sucks and I know it. 🙂
mitchiethekid babbles on and regurgitates more nonsense: “GOOD LORD AMAZONA! The freakin constitution IS FREAKING LIBERAL!!!!!!!!!!!!”
Uh, mitchie, our founding fathers were CLASSIC liberals. You do know the difference between “classic liberalism” and the bastardized “liberalism” (progressivism renamed, progressive was used because socialism was not accepted) of today, don’t you??? From your posts, obviously you do not. Time for you to be educated….
Classic Liberalism – Classical liberalism is a political ideology that advocates limited government, constitutionalism, rule of law, due process, individual liberties including freedom of religion, speech, press, assembly, and free markets.
You cannot compare the “liberals” of today with that form of ideology. “Limited government” and “constitutionalism” are hardly part of the ideology of today’s “liberals” or proggies. Obamacare is proof of that – obAMATEUR’s massive regulations, costing billions to American business is more.
“Rule of Law”, wow, don’t get me started! Between the AG Holder and the pResident’s actions towards ILLEGAL immigration and acting over the heads of Congress shows that they are not among the “classic liberal”.
“due process”, “individual liberties” and “free markets” are hardly in the realm of the pResident’s health care law as among forcing Catholic hospitals to cover contraception and perform abortions.
You have a distorted view as to today’s proggies – the leftists of this country. Did you receive that little nugget you posted from one of your leftist sites you visit? If so, they are hardly the “intellectual” blogs you claim to exist and certainly not intellectually comparable to this one. We conservatives have run circles around you and your regurgitated dumbed down talking points (that is when you come close to making sense) if you even get that far. From your recent posts, you have hardly made any coherent arguments – they were more like someone screaming in a crowded room, begging to be noticed.
tired, have you noticed the rapidly increasing hysteria of mitche? He’s nuts when the Left is staggering under the weight of gaffe after gaffe from The One We Have All Been Waiting For and then he goes even more crazy when the Right takes a hit. And not just crazy, but hatefully and distastefully so. The Brits would call him “barking mad”.
How many times have we gone over that favorite rant of the most deeply ignorant of the Leftist Lemmings—-that the Constitution is not conservative because it was written by radicals? True, we shouldn’t have had to explain it at all, but given the mentality of these people, it’s been necessary.
(Sigh…..) One more time, for the most ignorant of the ignorant, our own knuckle-dragging mouth-breathing mitche.
mitche: This is a 21st Century political blog, directed at and for 21st Century political conservatives. This is why I usually use the explanatory term 21st Century Constitutional Conservative. While it may entertain the small-minded to drag in historical references, and even to try to substitute them for today’s reality, in fact this is just silly, and irrelevant.
The words “conserative” and “radical” are extremely context-dependent, as are the words “liberal” and “progressive”. They all mean quite different things depending on the context in which they are used, and in the case of “liberal” and “progressive” the dictionary definitions are nothing like the political use of the words. This can be quite confusing for small minds such as yours, as you repeatedly illustrate when you randomly substitute one word for another. I don’t have time to go into all the various meanings of these words, and I realize that no amount of effort would dislodge the hate-based perceptions that you love so much, so I’ll just focus on a couple.
A 21st Century Constitutional Conservative is one who believes that the Constitution of the United States is not only the best blueprint for governing the United States of America, it is also the law of the land.
In the 18th Century (that is, for the benefit of mitche, the 1700s) in the colonies, a conservative would have been a royalist, and the radicals were those trying to achieve freedom from the crown. That was then.
The radicals prevailed, independence was won, and the radicals invented a new and, yes, radical form of government, which they outlined in the Declaration of Independence and formalized in the Constitution of the United States, which was ratified and passed into law as the governing rules of the new nation.
Now, in this time, in this place, there are people who want to consider the Constitution nothing more than a vague collection of mild suggestions, a “guiding principle”, but not binding. These people, in this time, in this place, prefer a form of government which is antithetical to the principles of the Constitution and the laws it created, wanting instead a large, powerful, central government with great authority over nearly all aspects of life in this country.
Now, in this time, in this place, these people are the radicals, and now, in this time, in this place, they represent the political definitions of Liberal/Progessive. In other words, they want to replace the Constitutional model of small and limited federal government, severely restricted as to size, scope and power, with a large and extremely powerful central government, shifting authority from state and local government to the federal government.
Now, in this time, in this place, the people who still believe the Constitution of the United States is the best blueprint for governing the United States of America, it is also the law of the land, are the conservatives of the 21st Century.
It might make you appear less unhinged if you could manage to keep your psuedo-political hysteria in the right century.
Fredrick your blatant racism and efforts to smear another poster have you permanently banned and your fellow Brimstone posters removed from the blog for a couple of weeks. Every time you or any of them ignore this the time out period for the rest is extended. They can thank you for this situation and the extended period where they can not post. // Moderator
Not that there is any need to spotlight any more of mitche’s goofiness, but this is too good to pass up.
“You, in your zealotry, conflate the most extreme form of liberalism,(which is identical to the most extreme form of conservativism; that is anarchy) as being one and the same! ”
Wow. I didn’t think it was possible for mitche to come up with a newer, deeper, level of abject stupidity than he already has, but the lad is just one surprise after another, isn’t he?
OK, skip the part where he misrepresents conservatism as a continuum leading to anarchy—we’ve debunked that silly lie way too many times to bother with it now. It’s the claim that if taken to their logical conclusions both Liberalism and Conservatism would result in no government at all.
Yeah, right. Take one idea, which is no government at all, take another idea, which is all-powerful massive and controlling government, and then claim that they mean the same thing.
There could be no better illustration of mitche’s disconnect with reality, as well as with politics, than this.
But he goes on….
“What you fail to understand, and is the wellspring of your certainty, is that at it’s (sic) core, the “leftist liberalism” that you despise is the exact same as the hard core, intractable,unconsciousable (sic) and inhumane contemporary conservativsim.”
Yes, once again he declares that a totalitarian government is the same thing as no government. Oh, he throws in some more of his nonsense, such as the term “leftist liberalism” (from the department of redundancy department) and some big words he heard somewhere but never bothered to understand, like “intractable” and “unconsciousable” (sic) and he tries to reframe a political system based on personal liberty as “inhumane” but that’s all just the clueless babbling of a hate-driven PL dupe.
What is really so interesting is that he not only has no concept whatsoever of the ideology of either side, he is so lacking in personal dignity that he goes out of his way to come here to expound upon, illustrate, and brag about his ignorance.
He starts off this post by refusing to respond to this: I ask, and ask and ask and ask and ask and ask, for some Liberal to give me a reason to find the Leftist political model superior to that of the United States Constitution. So far, none have. Are you ready to do this? He tries to duck this by instructing me to go somewhere else for an answer, a tacit admission that he, himself, has no freaking clue.
And then he goes on to prove this point by claiming, not once but twice, that taken to their extremes no government and totalitarian government are really one and the same.
OK, not even mitche is THAT stupid. What these wackadoo claims really say is, mitche has absolutely NO IDEA of what either ideology is, what it means, how it is defined, and what are its goals. None.
And obviously doesn’t care, as his motivation is so clearly not to advance a political ideology but just to spew his mental excrement and expound upon his irrational hatred of an invented Other.
He has listened to people like Ed Schultz and Ranty Rhodes, who can link the unlinkable and make it sound superficially reasonable, he has tried soooo hard to regurgitate their swill here, and all he has done is show us that he is not only ignorant, he is too bone-deep lazy to even find out what he is ranting about.
Oh gee. You are making me have a sad. 😦
You are a pontificating, self-absorbed gasbag who is enamored with the delusion of her own brilliance. You give new meaning to the term narcissist. Since you are so much more informed than the rest of us, and operate only within your self defined parameters of a political template, how come you’re not implementing these grand ideas on the rest of our country? How come no one seeks you out to set things aright?
You’re a big fish in a teeny tiny pond and you must get some perverse satisfaction out of impressing the folks here with your studied opinions. You have the sorry habit of snide dismissiveness to anyone with whom you disagree. You must be one miserable spinster.
Wahhhh wahhhhh wahhhhh.
I am not more informed than EVERYONE, just vastly more informed than you. And I am the first one to admit that bar is awfully low.
This is probably why I can, and do, address specifics and don’t just drop in to insult and attack and then scurry off when asked a real question.
I am quite happy—-and why shouldn’t I be? I have a wonderful life, I have a spectacular property, my new business will be launched soon so I can have a break-in period before everything starts to boom once the nation has a real businessman in the White House, I am getting used to living in a rather grand house after my temporary post-fire digs in Wyoming, I’ve got the hay almost completely in, my new fencing is gorgeous, I have two new baby yaks that have to be the cutest of all bovine babies and which will, I think, soon be bottle-fed (which sounds like fun) and all is well here. My amazing view of the Rockies also makes my huge west-facing deck area way too hot till the sun goes down, but I designed a rather dramatic kind of pergola that will go up next week, as well as a more standard pergola, so I can have some shade and a place to put a mister system, and am looking forward to entertaining outside as soon as that is done.
I’m meeting so many new people here and making new friends, and trying to get some projects wrapped up so some of us can start the conservative book club I suggested not too long ago.
Fish are jumpin’ and the cotton is high. As far as fish go, I am in a parnership with some cousins on a Wyoming cabin and I can use any of their several boats, and of course I have my little Minnow, so after the middle of July when some of my projects here are wrapped up I can also get back to time on the water.
Yep, it’s a good life.
And on the blog front, I still have not encountered a single Lib, real or PL, who can present a single coherent argument for the system of Liberalism, so there is the ongoing amusement of watching the impotent thrashing around of impotent rage on the part of people like you who want so desperately to make a compelling argument against an imaginary system you hate but just can’t manage to spit out more than spite and malice.
I am not a spinster. I am a widow. But that does not define me, it is merely one characteristic of my life. It is odd, though, that you guys focus so much on my not having a spouse, and seem to gloat over it. What an odd and perverse and sour way to look at life!
We’ve had this discussion countless times.It is pointless but to claim that you are more informed than I is laughable. You are more certain than I, and more convinced of your superiority. That’s it. I am not “a” liberal, I am liberal. But don’t piss down my back and then tell me it’s raining. If you truly were the enlightened conservative that you imagine yourself to be, the path of conversation that we have had over the yrs would be vastly different. You might have admitted to some failings of the dogmatic ideology that you are so defensive about. And I might have been more receptive to yours if you didn’t use a bludgeon every time you converse. It seems to me that you have a character flaw in that you always have to be right. And I mean that as in a weak absolutism. The conservativism that you…and those like you…taut is reactionary and not adaptive. It is rooted in negativity and whether I think that government has a role to play in peoples lives or not is irrelevant. Let me give you an example. For yrs now, the right has railed against policemen, teachers and firefighters. Texas has defunded firefighters and the state burned to the ground (I’m being euphemistic a bit here) last yr. Same now in Colorado. And the underlying cause of these fires…global climate change…you scoff at. Doesn’t matter that there is reams of emperical evidence to support it, your “conservativism” won’t allow you to accept that reality. So your really not conservative. You are a smug radical yelling at cluds.
No, mitche, we have never had a discussion. You have stormed in here ranting about this, that and the other, and when asked to explain what the hell you are talking about you just hop over to a different rant. That may qualify as “discussion” on Planet Mitche, but not here.
You make absurd and ridiculous allegations, which originate only in the feverswamp mentality of a (thankfully) very few, and then when these are denied and repudiated and debunked you just find something else to squeal about.
An example of your strident and hysterical commentary based on total falsehood? “For yrs now, the right has railed against policemen, teachers and firefighters.” Not just a lie, not just a complete and utter lie, not just a vile and vicious lie, but one without the slightest shred of evidence to allow one to believe it.
Cite just one attack from anyone on the Right on policemen, teachers and firefighters.
You assert that the fires we are experiencing today are the result of “global warming”. Well, when a record high temperature is noted, it is always just a degree or two higher than the last record high, and the last record high is often more than fifty years ago.
One fire was caused by lightning, one by a spark from a target shooter hitting a rock and one may have been due to a discarded cigarette.
I live in Colorado, within sight of three smoke plumes from three major fires. Unlike you, I live with and around National Forest land, day in and day out, and I know a lot more about the conditions here than you do.
The National Forest system was established to provide an ongoing source of timber for America and to protect our watersheds. It was never supposed to be a wilderness area, or roadless. Pretty hard to harvest timber without roads. The National Forests are under the Department of Agriculture, specifically BECAUSE they were designed to be part of harvestible agricultural material—-trees. But the eco-nazis started in, whining and carrying on about roads being cut into the forests, and complaining that (gasp!!) CORPORATIONS were (gasp x 10!) MAKING MONEY OFF OUR NATIONAL RESOURCES and there was incredible pressure to cut back on timber cutting.
So the forests stopped being managed, which meant that weak trees, diseased trees, old trees taking up too much sunlight and water to let stronger young trees flourish, and crowded trees were left standing. So young healthy trees were never able to develop, and older trees were vulnerable to disease and parasites like the pine bark beetle, which not only feeds on weakened trees but flourishes when trees are close together so they can move more easily from one tree to another.
The overburden, or amount of material on the forest floor, was allowed to accumulate, creating a huge stockpile of combustible material at the bases of trees.
In managed forests, with the ground kept relatively clear, fires tend to crown, or burn at the tops of the trees, racing from one tree to the next in the canopy, high above the ground. While this looks scary, it means that very often the trees survive.
In wild forests, the fires burn on the ground, burn much hotter because of the amount of fuel for them, burn longer in one place which means sterilizing the soil and baking it till it resembles concrete. They also burn UP the standing trees, killing them and often leaving the dead trees standing—unstable and death traps for anyone trying to go into the burned area to work on the problems of hard soil, etc.
So the intensity of the fires we see now can be directly related to the efforts of the so-called enviromentalists, who have worked so hard to destroy forest management and create huge basins of combustible material waiting for lighting or other causes.
So far none of them have spontaneously combusted due to the earth suddenly becoming Too Damned Hot.
Nature’s way of dealing with overcrowding, old trees choking off new growth, etc, is forest fires. And when you count time in eons, this is perfectly fine. When you are dealing with property, homes, and lives it is a less than ideal way to address the problems.
A few years ago there was a huge microburst in the skies near Steamboat Springs, Colorado, which blew down square miles of trees. The Forest Service and others who actually understand how things work wanted to take bids from lumber companies to come in and harvest these downed trees, knowing that they would become a breeding ground for parasites and disease, but the eco-nazis had such hissy fits about the very IDEA of anyone MAKING A PROFIT OFF OUR NATIONAL RESOURCES that they shouted down such efforts and eventually prevailed.
In the meantime, there were square miles of downed trees, still with needles, still with sap, and quite predictably these became a feast for pine bark beetles. When the downed trees dried out and there was no more sap to feed the exploding beetle population, it moved out from the blowdown. There are internal Forest Service memos documenting this, documenting the efforts of some to allow (gasp!) PRIVATE ENTERPRISE to come in and clean up the dead trees before a problem developed, documenting the warnings of impending disaster, and documenting the objections from the Left to doing anything about it.
Well, we eventually lost hundreds of thousands of square miles of beautiful forest to the scourge of uncontrolled pine bark beetles. Every effort to halt the invasion was met by objections from the watermelons—green on the outside, red in the middle—-whose antipathy toward the free market and private enterprise overrode any semblance of common sense.
Now, instead of healthy, thinned, forests with little overburden, we have dense overgrown forests of trees standing in thick layers of dead trees, branches, leaves and other organic debris, all of which are tinder in a year like this and all of which burn so hot, for so long, that any fire is uncontrollable and the results devastating.
My mountain ranch is surrounded by red mountains—–red because that is the color of the trees that are killed by pine bark beetles. A road across the highway from my ranch, leading across a low mountain pass to towns forty and fifty miles away, is lined with dead trees, from the roadway to the ridgeline, on both sides.
And the strident Left blames GLOBAL WARMING!!!!! Why not blame Bush while you’re at it?
mitche, sometimes you are just plain crazy but sometimes you are so toxic you reek of vitriol and hatred.
And after all your whining, sniping, attacking, name-calling, insults and so on, you still have never, EVER, defined “conservative”.
You try to weasel out of identifying a political ideology with the silly excuse that you are not A Liberal, you are just “liberal”.
Well, if you insist on using the word “liberal” in its non-political sense, then you are a liar, because the word means open, flexible, adaptable, tolerant, accepting—-all things which you most definitely are NOT.
You are a tight-assed, rigid, hate-driven bigot, and to see you claim to BE “liberal” is just plain nuts. Every word you type is so blatantly ILLIBERAL it is a joke to see you try to make the claim.
What you are is a vicious personality looking for something that will validate your pathology, and the Rabidly Radical Left recruits people like you to be their intellectual cannon fodder, telling you that you are not crazy, you are just passionate in your hatred of the Evil Other—-which, of course, you can’t define and can only describe in the most cartoonish efforts at demonization.
“…whether I think that government has a role to play in peoples lives or not is irrelevant”
Yeah, “irrelevant” as in the essential definition of politics.
That kind of irrelevant.
Like totalitarianism is the exact same thing as anarchy?
You’ve spun way out of the gravitational pull of sanity, there, mitche. Enjoy the trip.
And BTW, belief in the United States Constitution as the best blueprint for governing the United States is in no way related to the rejection of bogus pseudo-science.
You are just determined to keep slapping the word “conservative” on everything you don’t like, don’t you? But why let facts get in your way at this late date, after so many years of emoting over fantasy and invention?
mitche, name a failure of the Constitutional model of government.
Yes Mitchum, as Amazona said you are GROSSLY uniformed. What is worse, you mindlessly regurgitate the proggy propaganda: “For yrs now, the right has railed against policemen, teachers and firefighters.”
ObAMATEUR defunded the arial fighting fleet and not the right. You know, the fleet that is so desperately needed in Colorado?
http://www.weeklystandard.com/print/blogs/colorados-epic-firestorm-reveals-danger-air-force-cuts_647897.html
BTW, Lovelock, the “godfather” of global warming said “it’s now clear the doomsday predictions, including his own (and Al Gore’s) were incorrect.”
Other observation by Lovelock:
(1) A long-time supporter of nuclear power as a way to lower greenhouse gas emissions, which has made him unpopular with environmentalists, Lovelock has now come out in favour of natural gas fracking (which environmentalists also oppose), as a low-polluting alternative to coal.
(2) Lovelock blasted greens for treating global warming like a religion.
(3) Lovelock mocks the idea modern economies can be powered by wind turbines. (obAMATEUR’s “green energy” plan is a joke!!!! -which we knew all along).
(4) Finally, about claims “the science is settled” on global warming: “One thing that being a scientist has taught me is that you can never be certain about anything. You never know the truth. You can only approach it and hope to get a bit nearer to it each time. You iterate towards the truth. You don’t know it.”
The link is in another thread. I did not want to post it again and have my post waiting in moderation since it was so easy to debunk your drivel.
You are so misinformed mitchie it is pathetic. It is you who are intellectually stagnant. Again your post is rife with dumbed down talking points and baseless ASSumptions.
That was too easy.
re: mitche’s temper tantrum about the forest fires in Colorado and his shrill assertion that they are the result of GLOBAL WARMING !!!!!
I’m not sure when this GLOBAL WARMING was supposed to have really started to become serious, but the hysteria seems to have it really hitting its stride in the mid to late 20th Century.
Yet the biggest wildfire in the recorded history of this continent took place in 1910.
THE 1910 FIRE
By Jim Petersen
Evergreen Magazine, Winter Edition 1994-1995
It was the largest forest fire in American history. Maybe even the largest forest fire ever. No one knows for sure, but even now, it is hard to put into words what it did.
For two terrifying days and night’s – August 20 and 21, 1910 – the fire raged across three million acres of virgin timberland in northern Idaho and western Montana.
Many thought the world would end, and for 86, it did.
Most of what was destroyed fell to hurricane-force winds that turned the fire into a blowtorch. Re-constructing what happened leads to an almost impossible conclusion: Most of the cremation occurred in a six-hour period.
A forester named Edward Stahl wrote of flames shooting hundreds of feet in the air, “fanned by a tornadic wind so violent that the flames flattened out ahead, swooping to earth in great darting curves, truly a veritable red demon from hell.”
Among the 86 who perished were 28 or 29 men – no one knows for sure – who tried to outrun their fate in a straight upstraight down canyon called Storm Creek.
Two men too terrified to face death took their own lives. One jumped from a burning train and the other shot himself when he feared an approaching fire would overtake him. Two fire fighters fled into flames before the very eyes of horrified comrades huddled in a nearby stream.
Hundreds more survived, many by the grace of God. Ranger Edward Pulaski, who became a hero at a place called the War Eagle Mine, led men with prayers on their lips through a pitch-black darkness punctuated by exploding trees and waves of flames that arced across the night sky.
Perhaps, Edward Stahl would later say, “the men thought the small fires flickering dimly in the darkness were candles burning for the dead.”
“The fire turned trees and men into weird torches that exploded like Roman candles,” one survivor told a newspaper reporter.
Depending on who was doing the counting, there were either 1,736 fires burning in northern Idaho and western Montana on August 19, or there were 3,000. It did not much matter which number you picked because on August 20 it seemed like there was only one fire burning, and it was the sum total of all the others that had been. burning the day before.
****************************************
From wikipedia: (emphasis mine)
Location Washington, Idaho, Montana
Date August 20–21, 1910
Burned area 3,000,000 acres (12,000 km2)
Ignition source not officially determined
Land use logging, mining, railroads
Fatalities 87
The Great Fire of 1910 (also commonly referred to as the Big Blowup or the Big Burn) was a wildfire which burned about three million acres (12,000 km², approximately the size of Connecticut) in northeast Washington, northern Idaho (the panhandle), and western Montana. The area burned included parts of the Bitterroot, Cabinet, Clearwater, Coeur d’Alene, Flathead, Kaniksu, Kootenai, Lewis and Clark, Lolo, and St. Joe national forests. The firestorm burned over two days (August 20–21, 1910), and killed 87 people, including 78 firefighters. It is believed to be the largest, although not the deadliest, fire in recorded U.S. history.
The fire was blamed on the drought. Twenty-some years later another huge drought slammed the US, creating the infamous Dust Bowl during the Depression. The problem here in Colorado now is the dryness. We had a remarkably dry winter, with little snow, and have had next to no rain this spring.
BTW, wet/dry cycles are as old as the Earth itself. The Rocky Mountain West is really dry this year, while other parts of the nation are being flooded. In a year or two, the southeast may have another serious drought, like the one that nearly dried up the water supplies in Georgia a few years ago, and we will be trying to deal with flood conditions due to massive snowmelt.
In 2002, one Colorado reservoir was so depleted that “experts” predicted it would take seven years for it to recover. “Experts” decided to take advantage of the low water level and reduced stream flow below the dam to do some work in the river, and had to scramble to get their equipment out of the river after spring rains filled the reservoir nearly to the overflow point because the flow through the dam had been slowed for the work. The reservoir was refilled in one season, with downstream stream flow greatly increased to keep the reservoir from flowing over the dam.
All of these predictions and pronouncements and so on are just noise.
And, of course, in true mitche fashion, mitche has just ignored the fact that his posts make no sense. Every time a point is made, his “response” it to try to top his latest effort at biting insult.
Yeah, nice political discourse, there, mitche.
As I so accurately point out, with such ample proof, your “…motivation is so clearly not to advance a political ideology but just to spew (your) mental excrement and expound upon (your) irrational hatred of an invented Other.”
Thanks for adding to the body of proof of that observation.
You folks are absolutely insane. Year after year, temperature measurements keep going up. (I know, the thermometer’s are liberal). On both coasts they are discussing what happens not if, but when, the sea levels rise. Tornado’s in January. Catastrophic rain and snow storms. Excessive drought which leads to the fires we’ve seen just this week in multiple states, and yet you all…in your divine wisdom scoff at it??
All of you are freakin’ f’n nuts.
But keep holding onto your life raft of an intractable ideology. I hope it freak’n drowns you one by one. You deserve to be the first to go because you are the primer weight on society. Praise Jesus. Apocalypse Now.
Mitch – perhaps if you weren’t a kid you could remember the equally bad fires of 1988 at Yellowstone. I know, its a really hot summer out there right now so the global warming alarmists will be milking it for all its worth…but the sad fact for the global warming theory is that global temperatures haven’t risen in more than 10 years, at a time when CO2 emissions have shot up. if global warming was real, we’d have seen significant rises in average global temperatures over the past ten years and we haven’t – ergo, the concept that CO2 is a prime mover in average global temperatures is false.
But thanks for your the loving and merciful way you view those who disagree with you.
Well, some years it is hotter in some places. And some years, not. I see you just ignored the drought/fires in 1910, and the Dust Bowl, and the Colorado drought of 2002. Pshaw—–of no import.
Morons can discuss anything they want—you are proof of that. While the watermelons were working on their “THE EARTH IS MELTING” scam, a bunch of legitimate scientists from all around the world were warning us of coming Little Ice Age as the Earth moves away from the Sun and temperatures cool. While the pseudo-scientists and their baying-at-the-moon minions were ignoring the effect of being close to a giant ball of fire in the sky, and denying its impact on temperatures, some polar ice packs were growing and some areas of the world had record snowpacks and low temps.
But nice freakout, mitche. That meltdown into unintelligible gibberish at the end, with the f’n this and f’n that and hoping for people to die because they have different opinions than the ones you regurgitate and the religious bigotry, all make a fascinating juxtaposition to the claim that WE are insane.
You’re like a case study, you know? Wipe the spittle off your monitor, change your shorts, and come back real soon, y’hear? We just love to see what passes for political discourse, civility and even sanity on the Left.
Believe…..what? That being close to a giant ball of fire will make you warmer? Only ignorant people believe this? Or dishonest people?
This would go a lot more smoothly if you would at least try to make sense.
Davey, please give us some examples of AGW theorists crediting our proximity to the Sun for the slightly increased temperatures of a decade or so ago, and their assurances that as the distance increases, temperatures will go down.
We’ll wait. Cluster, I think we have time to go get a beer……..
In Nome.
Driving
Well davey, Lovelock, the “godfather” of global warming said “it’s now clear the doomsday predictions, including his own (and Al Gore’s) were incorrect.”
Other observation by Lovelock:
(1) A long-time supporter of nuclear power as a way to lower greenhouse gas emissions, which has made him unpopular with environmentalists, Lovelock has now come out in favour of natural gas fracking (which environmentalists also oppose), as a low-polluting alternative to coal.
(2) Lovelock blasted greens for treating global warming like a religion.
(3) Lovelock mocks the idea modern economies can be powered by wind turbines. (obAMATEUR’s “green energy” plan is a joke!!!! -which we knew all along).
(4) Finally, about claims “the science is settled” on global warming: “One thing that being a scientist has taught me is that you can never be certain about anything. You never know the truth. You can only approach it and hope to get a bit nearer to it each time. You iterate towards the truth. You don’t know it.”
http://www.torontosun.com/2012/06/22/green-drivel
Hmmmmmmmm……..
….interesting. Algore must be livid!
And davey’s dumbed down talking point based on the “settled science” has been debunked by the man that started it all.
The highest recorded temperature recorded in Denver was 105 degrees F which was recorded on 8 August 1878 and again on 20 July 2005.
In other words, a record high temperature was set in Denver, 154 years ago, which was not equaled for 147 years.
But “….temperature measurements keep going up…”
And, evidently, down.
Posted: 02/01/2011 06:44:45 AM MST
Updated: 02/01/2011 08:14:38 PM MST
By Kieran Nicholson
The Denver Post
Denver could set a new record low temperature early Wednesday if the mercury plunges below minus 18 degrees.
Forecasters with the National Weather Service call for the overnight low in Denver to be between minus 16 and minus 22.
The record-setting minus 18 mark for Feb. 2 was set in 2007, according to the weather service.
Up, down, wet, dry—WHEN WILL THE MADNESS END???
Evidently when the government steps in to fix it……..
Mitchie, you don’t read very well or just ignore facts. The doom and gloom predictions of global warming have been denied by the godfather of global warming!
Lovelock, the “godfather” of global warming said “it’s now clear the doomsday predictions, including his own (and Al Gore’s) were incorrect.”
http://www.torontosun.com/2012/06/22/green-drivel
INCORRECT mitchie. So please stop regurgitating the dumbed down talking points.
Ronald Reagan once said “…the trouble with our liberal friends is not that they are ignorant, but that they know so much that isn’t so.”
Amazona,
I think in Mitch’s case it’s ignorance.
Can you imagine if these kind of liberals were around during the dust bowl? The entire mid west was nearly uninhabitable, yet today it flourishes absent any new taxes, or government intervention.
Weird