I would be so convinced if only, for once, i could see someone other than Sarah or W. say something to the effect “We are on a mission from God.”

Yes, taking lands from the Indians, raping their women was a mission from God according to Andrew Jackson.

Burning southern cities, raping white women and slaves was a mission from God according to Gen Sherman

Destroying Japan to the ashes with atomic bombs was God’s will to end the war according to Truman, his Vp, his speaker of the House and his congress.

The RNC made a huge mistake. They had a historic ticket as well. If they had moved the last night to a stadium, no one would have blinked an eyelash. McCain’s “toning down” the convention in light of the hurricane looked all too political. It was a ploy to keep Bush away. That looked insulting. While he is the least favored president of all time, he was still the POTUS for eight years and deserved to speak to his own party’s convention in person. I’m sure that stuck in some Republicans’ minds.

The GOP are not the enemy. They will become the opposition party. We need that. A single party rule (as Karl Rove so proudly kept announcing was his plan) is fascism in the purest sense. The beauty and genius of America is our system of checks and balances, the presence of dissenting voices, the smooth transition of power from one POTUS to the next and the press (yes, the MSM) to do their job and keep the public informed and the public servants honest.

Why did I object so much to the previous eight years and to McCain’s promised administration if elected?

Bush: wanted no checks and balances, but total control. He has had more executive orders than any president before him. There was no room in his administration for dissent. Never an admission of mistake or failure in policy, initiative or response. Hurricane Katrina and the aftermath is a good example of this.

Bush: Karl Rove sought to eliminate the Democratic Party once and for all, and move toward a single party government. From the left, that’s called communism. From the right, it’s called fascism. Whichever direction, it’s not American.

Cheney: circumvented the constitution and was never called on it by the Democrats. They didn’t do their job. The democrats need to atone for that. The reason we are where we are is because neither party did their job right.

Press: they didn’t either. They bought the talking points. Fox News was actually outed as receiving the talking points from the White House and blasting it all over their airwaves. No one questioned Bush and Iraq. No one called the administration to task. Only after Katrina and Anderson Cooper (who nearly lost it on Homeland Security, coming very close to being arrested) did the press start waking up.

Palin: Had no clue what the press is supposed to do and wanted to shut down a free press. Also wanted to circumvent the constitution and turn the VP post into a legislative post actively pursuing policy change in the Senate. She also wanted to shut down any voices of dissent. A questioning of the war in Iraq would always be followed by an accusation of being unAmerican, or unpatriotic.

McCain: Promised to continue the policies of the Bush administration. There really was no change forthcoming with him with regards iraq, the economy, health care, etc. What really did him in was just that he took more of the same and tried to tie it up with a celebrity governor who was exciting at the beginning and continued to bomb during the campaign. That campaign imploded.

None of these people are Satan. None of them are bad people. We might poke fun at them, but we have to admit – they are governors and senators, presidents and vice-presidents – all of them elected to serve the people of their respective states or nation. Believe me, if any of us took a job like that – there would be people on website like this condemning us and also people who would think we were wonderful.

What bugs me here, what really bugs me is this:

You try to have a sane, intelligent conversation and you get called names. You ask someone a question and they return with an insult. How dare we question each other? How dare we ask for some evidence, a news article, or some facts. If this is a website promoting democracy in action, then we need to hear the dissenting opinion, not the venomous insult.

Our conversation on gay marriage demonstrates that, at least in part, a good conversation can happen without everyone joining hands and singing “We are all together now!” We can disagree, remain respectful and be friends.

I, for one, want to try. But I won’t promise a cutting response if I’m attacked or insulted.

Salzman, Rush and others are doing a typical foot dance with this. You see Blacks and Latinos are roasted on this cd for race. Whites are roasted for ethical lapses (affairs and such). The funny thing is, as these mostly white republicans pass these values down to their children, these values become part of what sets them apart from others in this diverse nation. Did you take a look at the crowds at the RNC, at the stops Sarah P & John McCain made? Did you notice how different their crowds appeared to look from Obama/Biden crowds? Which crowd more accurately relfected “Real America” or “Pro-America” to you? Now I’m noy saying anything about the Republican Party, I’m just saying, ain’t much diversity there.

White people reading this: go to a big black dude, and call him a negro versus black. Which will get your butt slammed? To pretend you don’t know it isn’t offensive is silly. That’s part of the humor of the song you idiots.

The NAACP is a strange anachronism.

But to test your theory that the term is just not offensive, go to harlem and use it liberally if you are white. If you are black you can use the word nigger and get away with it so it doesn’t apply.