WIP

Many years ago, there was a book by an anthropologist who theorized that the Age of Agriculture was actually a step backward except for the ability to support city-states and enable the accumulation of knowledge that made civilization possible. Based on skeletal evidence, the transition to agriculture saw most populations studied in Europe and Asia decrease in size, with earlier deterioration of teeth and other signs of poor health. As population densities increased, there wasn't enough land available to live as hunter/gatherers, except in marginal areas that were difficult to survive in, but it's not like agriculture was a progression for those early farmers. They had to work long hours to enjoy a less varied and poorer diet than they enjoyed generations earlier, when they were living in the wild! Many years ago I read a biography about Joseph Brant, the Iroquois grand chief who fought against the Americans on the side of the British, and accepted a tract of land along the Grand River as payment. The Iroquois did some farming long before Europeans arrived, but took no interest in raising livestock since there was plenty of meat available by hunting. But when the Brant's tribes moved to the Grand River Settlement, he discovered that the tract of land wasn't big enough for bush hunting and more than enough if they adopted the European model of farming. And since at the time, they were land rich and cash poor, he suggested selling off land to buy livestock and supplies needed for the new farming system. So, in a nutshell, you can see how there was no economic advantage to adopting European farming methods as long as they were living in the Finger Lakes region of Upstate New York where wild game was plentiful. I wish I had bookmarked the links because there have been a number of recent research papers analyzing Y-chromosome and mDNA from various aboriginal population groups in North and South America, and they are leading away from the long, slow march across the continent theory of migration. Now it appears that human habitation down the coast was too rapid to have occurred by a gradual land migration. Some groups would have had to travel by small boat along the coasts and may have arrived long before Bering Land Bridge appeared. Genetic evidence finds common alleles among South American tribes with Polynesian islanders, raising the possibility that there were large migrations across the Pacific Ocean. It will take time to sort out and evaluate all of the data, but the picture is beginning to look like settlement of the Americas was much more complex than originally believed.

Yep, it would have been simpler! Now tell me how the occupation of Iraq has reduced the likelihood of future terrorist attacks? And there you have it! First, we're told Islamofascism is a different kind of enemy based on a religion that's incompatible with Western values, and then we're told that all we have to do is occupy them and sprinkle on democracy and voila! - Iraq and Afghanistan will turn into West Germany and post-WWII Japan! Every time Rumsfeld or one of Bush's other clowns was asked how long the occupation would last, the reporters were reminded that it took ten years before a democratic state was ready in West Germany; ignoring the obvious fact that the major reason those occupations were so harmonious was that both the occupiers and the occupied faced a common enemy -- the Soviet Union. But if there is one truism about the study of history that's guaranteed, it's that nations go to war thinking they are going to fight the same kind of war as the previous one. And after all of the bluster about War on Terror, oil has more than tripled in price( guess where a lot of those profits are going?), Iran has control of most of Iraq, and the Taleban is making a comeback in Afghanistan. If you're going to go to war, at least make sure that you're going to win!

Can't you figure it out that these people consider everyone who questions their reasons and evidence for going to war, to be lacking willpower. Everyone who questioned the logic behind the "war on terror" was called unpatriotic. Mark Steyn and his cohorts informed us that Islam was incompatible with Western values and had invaded Europe and would conquer Europe in half a century; and yet out of the other side of his mouth, he claimed that the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan would democratize the MiddleEast! How could both of these propositions have been true? If you can't democratize Islam in Europe, why would any sane, rational person believe you could do it in Iraq? The argument wasn't an honest one in the first place! Steyn was willing to support a U.S. effort to control access to MiddleEast oil, when the sensible policy would have been to disengage from the MiddleEast and save those billions wasted on a fruitless war effort to make an easier transition towards the inevitable post-oil economy.

And you're just as depraved as the crackpot who started this thread and considers a woman being stabbed to death by her grandson to be "poetic justice." I guess you clowns are incapable of coming up with better arguments against gun control than this!

You have answered nothing except the extraneous points you created by invoking Einstein and the Nazis! It's all fine and well to bitch, but if you're going to make a charge of moral relativism, you better have something to back it up! I don't know how much more clearly I could have made the point that I did not accept advanced genetic manipulations that could allow parents to choose the sex of their child, provide an already healthy fetus with enhancements. Now, aside from stating that genetic enhancement is equivalent to eugenics, you didn't specify whether that means a blanket ban on all forms of gene therapy that would not only include genetic enhancements, but would also include gene manipulations that might prevent Down's Syndrome, hemophilia, muscular dystrophy etc.. The opening post, 26 pages ago quoted from an article calling for advanced genetic screening for pregnant women so that they could identify genetic abnormalities such as Down's Syndrome earlier.....and many would obviously choose to abort the unhealthy fetus; so would a gene therapy that removes the additional genes in chromosome 21, which causes the disease, be accepted by the pro-life viewpoint, since it would fix an abnormality that might otherwise lead to an abortion? Would the pro-life movement distinguish between these therapies and the ones used to provide a genetic advantage: In fact, if gene therapy lives up to its promise, parents may someday be able to go beyond weeding out undesirable traits and start actually inserting the genes they want--perhaps even genes that have been crafted in a lab. Before the new millennium is many years old, parents may be going to fertility clinics and picking from a list of options the way car buyers order air conditioning and chrome-alloy wheels. "It's the ultimate shopping experience: designing your baby," says biotechnology critic Jeremy Rifkin, who is appalled by the prospect. "In a society used to cosmetic surgery and psychopharmacology, this is not a big step." http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/...,989987,00.html

Why should I bother answering your questions when you have ignored mine? What kind of a question is " Can you not simply look at the way things are today and say it's not good?" anyway? Is that even worthy of a response? Anybody can bitch about the way things are, what are you proposing to do about it? You complain that I dragged I brought up pro-life and religion, when you advanced arguments for your prolife beliefs and then tried to deny them! And then you accused me of moral relativism because I want a rational approach to future ethical dilemmas that could be raised by new technology. I know where those cards come from when the charge of moral relativism is made against everyone who doesn't accept the notion of transcendent sources of ethics and morality, and I'm going to insist that they are played out in the open where they can't be protected from direct challenge!

And every free, liberal democracy should have a "lack of Will!" That's the key to preventing would be fascists from carrying out their dreams of conquest on the world stage! Fascists and pseudofascists want a continuous state of war to "toughen" up the liberal democratic societies they feel contempt for! Too bad a fearful population in America was stampeded in to war by alarmist rhetoric and disinformation from the government and pro war advocates like Mark Steyn. Choose your wars wisely!

Exactly what do you consider "absolute pro-life?" What was this paragraph supposed to mean then: So, you're not absolute pro-life! Then at what stage of development does the fetus change from a tumor into a baby? Now this is putting words in peoples mouths: Everybody who thinks there is no morality without their god or their religion eventually gets around to accusing unbelievers of relativism! You didn't notice that I was attempting to make an argument for an objective set of principles to deal with moral dilemmas created by new technology? Your holy books provide no answers as to whether there should be limits on gene therapy treatments! And what exactly does that accomplish?

This is an apples and oranges situation since the growth of Orthodox Jewish fundamentalism and dangerous subgroups like the Temple Movement are a threat to Israelis and Israeli democracy. The only possible threat that will draw in the rest of the world is if the Temple Movement followers actually try to blow up the Dome of the Rock Mosque, so that they can build that third Jewish temple in Jerusalem and restart the program of sacrificing goats and sheep etc.! It's easy to see a scenario where they could start WWIII, but even here, they would not be a major threat if it wasn't for the support they get from Christian Zionists in America. I can't find the link now, but believe it or not there are Christian Zionist farmers in America who are trying to breed a perfect red heifer that will be needed for the rebuilding of the Temple and be the first sacrifice! I wish I was making this up, but sometimes crazy apocalytic believers of different religions can feed off each other! Anyway, if the point of your irony is that fear of Muslims has been overplayed for mischievous intent, you are absolutely right; but that doesn't mean we in the West have no reasons to fear Islam, as most of the Left would like us to believe! Islam is a religion that controls more than the religious life in the countries where it is the predominant faith; it comes with an exhaustive set of laws and codes that can't be harmonized with modern civil law, and it demands governing authorities adhere to the religious authorities for guidance. Can Muslims live in harmony with Western secular societies? Not yet apparently, if you examine the Western European nations that have significant Muslim minority populations. Even here in Canada and the United States, where everything is supposed to be working out harmoniously, you can't ignore the fact that most Muslim minorities isolate themselves as much as possible by creating their own institutions to limit their contact with the non-Muslim majority. This isn't totally unique; many fundamentalist religions build walls around their communities, but until a real acceptance of secular government and secular law occurs, there could be problems.

My objection is not whether the Hitler and the Nazis were left or rightwing; it's a pointless argument since what defines left and right politics depends on the what country and what era we're talking about. My objection is to the way Hitler or Nazis gets tossed in almost as an exclamation point by all sorts of groups to bolster their arguments. Here's an example of invoking Nazi Germany where it has no application: Ben Stein narrates a recent documentary attacking scientists and the theory of evolution, he invokes the collective memory of the gas chambers to try to make his point: Stein: When we just saw that man, I think it was Mr. Myers [i.e. biologist P.Z. Myers], talking about how great scientists were, I was thinking to myself the last time any of my relatives saw scientists telling them what to do they were telling them to go to the showers to get gassed … that was horrifying beyond words, and that’s where science — in my opinion, this is just an opinion — that’s where science leads you http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=N...zFiZDE2NjM3NWE= Even National Review cut him loose for this overreach, and the ADL, which is getting annoyed at everyone playing the holocaust card, issued this statement to let Stein know that just being a Jew doesn't entitle him to misuse the Holocaust The film Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed misappropriates the Holocaust and its imagery as a part of its political effort to discredit the scientific community which rejects so-called intelligent design theory. Hitler did not need Darwin to devise his heinous plan to exterminate the Jewish people and Darwin and evolutionary theory cannot explain Hitler's genocidal madness. Using the Holocaust in order to tarnish those who promote the theory of evolution is outrageous and trivializes the complex factors that led to the mass extermination of European Jewry. http://adl.org/PresRele/HolNa_52/5277_52.htm Nuff said! Why not leave the past history of the eugenics movement, which was supported by a broad-based acceptance of racial superiority, in the past? The new ethical dilemmas that could result from genetic testing and gene therapy treatments on fetuses in utero, are being proposed to improve the physical traits of the child, and some critics feel it could lead to "designer babies" with enhanced features that the parents desire; and more advanced genetic testing may identify relatively minor defects in the fetus that increase the use of third trimester abortions. As long as there is a stalemate between the right to life and the rights of personal autonomy, there is no process to determine whose rights should take precedence under possible future scenarios. Should parents have the right to determine the sex of their child? Should they have the right to go beyond preventing genetic abnormalities, and make their child superior than average? Does the fetus have the right not to be tampered with by parents who want to make alterations that could determine the future of that child? There may be other challenges to come along in the future and it would be nice to have some sort of guidelines that have general agreement. The question still remains: when does it become a human life that should be guaranteed personal rights? I don't know where an exact dividing line would be, but it's not at the stage of a fertilized egg, when there is not even the most rudimentary conscious awareness or other qualities that we identify with being human. In the early stages of development, you can't tell the difference between a human embryo from that of a pig, chicken, fish etc.! They all have tails and gill slits in the side of the neck area -- the only thing you could say for sure is that it is a vertebrate animal with a backbone. The DNA blueprint that the embryo has, is not an absolute determining factor telling us what the future would hold. Identical twins have the exact same genetic code, since they develope from an egg that splits after the fertilization stage has completed. The twins appear and act so similar that non-family members have trouble telling them apart; but as they grow older, gene-expression from environmental factors causes them to look and act more differently even though they are raised in the same household. So I would see that early stage as having potential of a human life and would not consider it a baby! Okay, but do you realize that even if you want an absolute pro-life system, that does not provide guidelines for how to deal with parents who want to determine the sex of the child or provide genetic enhancements? The majority are never going to accept the logic of the strong pro-life position, and if it was imposed on society, there would just be one more business on the blackmarket - abortions!

But you did say:"We seem to be in danger of paralleling the 1930s era Germany who wanted a certain type of baby." And which political party was ruling Germany during the 30's, and makes a useful exclamation point for any argument seeking dramatic effect! And it is also the most misused debate point, since Hitler and the Nazis are tossed in where they don't belong. We know all about the Nazis enthusiasm for eugenics, but abortion was a capital crime in Germany that could result in the death penalty! That was likely a law that applied to the German population, it's not likely they objected to abortions among the populations they wanted to exterminate! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abortion_in_Germany That "elsewhere" was primarily the U.S.A., which had the largest and most active eugenics organizations. But what is the evidence that Albert Einstein supported eugenics? Keep in mind that before about 50 or 60 years ago, very few people thought eugenics was an objectionable concept. Farmers practise eugenics all of the time breeding the healthiest and most desireable livestock, and since most people of European ancestry believed that the darker races were inferior, the idea of preventing breeding among undesireable populations was considered a good idea before WWII. Germany + 1930's = Nazis. Right and left are meaningless terms without a frame of reference! Nazi was the German slang term for a member of the National Socialist German Workers' Party -- their full name doesn't sound very right wing! And in most aspects the Nazis were a socialist populist party that believed in a state-planned economy that only allowed business to play a supporting role as long as they followed the guidelines of the Party. In other words - crony capitalism! The major points that set the Nazis and other fascist parties in Europe apart from the Communists was nationalism and racial and/or cultural superiority I didn't say a man has no right to speak on the subject -- hell, I'm a man and I'm speaking about it! But I do think that a woman who has gone through pregnancy and had babies, has a deeper, emotional connection to this issue that a man can't grasp. It's more than a little patronizing to assume that a personal understanding of the birthing process will limit the ability to think rationally on the subject. The emotional attachment may cause someone to hold more strongly to their positions, but that doesn't make it irrational thinking. If a person can put themselves in the position of a woman who is weighing the options of whether or not to have an abortion, it's more likely that more care will be put in to the opinion that has been formed than someone who's deciding with the detached perspective of never having to be in that situation personally! It's worth mentioning that gender has little bearing on which side of the issue they support -- the polling data from the U.S. usually shows almost the same percentages of men and women supporting pro-life, pro-choice and the compromise positions in between. The difference is how the argument is framed. A woman might first ask a rhetorical question of whether they personally would ever consider an abortion, men will just write about whether the procedure should be allowed. So a man might develope an informed opinion, but it won't have an intuitive connection with the subject. Does it matter? I don't know! But it could be a barrier to gaining a full understanding of the issue.

The McCain/Bush argument against talking to the enemy, falls flat when the real picture reveals that the U.S. is negotiating a deal with North Korea (didn't they used to be part of the Axis of Evil?) and Israel is talking to long-time enemy - Syria! Honestly, if you're already talking to the enemy, how much credibility do you expect to have for criticising Barach Obama when he says the U.S. must be open to having talks with enemies such as Iran?

There may very well have been abortions that I wasn't informed about, but my point is still the same -- since I didn't know about them, I hadn't given the abortion issue much thought until George Bush threw a bone to the pro-life movement in the form of cancelling the development of new lines of embryonic stem cells a couple of years back, and I discovered how obsessed some people can get over fertilized eggs that would otherwise be locked in a freezer until they had to be discarded.

If you're going to play the irrational fear card, which usually takes the form of "Nazi Germany" these days, you shouldn't complain if you get a response that's emotion-based from the other side. And you might call it playing the female card, but the fact is MEN DON'T GET PREGNANT, so there is a subjective understanding of this issue that we cannot understand and can only look at from the outside. I don't know how much weight this gives the female perspective, but it's worth considering before you start telling women how to handle their pregnancies! But honestly, "Nazi Germany!" Is the Nazi Germany card the ultimate conservative trump card to play for every issue from abortion to teaching evolution to fear of terrorism? Every time facts aren't enough and irrational fear becomes necessary to make the argument work, out comes Nazi Germany!

The prospect of gene therapy on fetuses to make "designer babies" is a good reason to start forming some ethical guidelines before in vitro genetic testing can detect the likelihood of ADHD, low I.Q. or same-sex orientation! Right now, medical ethicists are concerned about sex-selection, but the future could provide a whole new list of possible reasons for gene therapies to change the sex of a child in utero or abort fetuses which will be less than perfect! I believe that the likelihood of severe defects should give parents the option to choose abortion, but where should the cut-off line be? http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/...,989987,00.html The way I see it, what makes the abortion debate contentious is that a choice must be made between the rights of two competing interests. The majority of people instinctively don't find the right to life argument compelling until a fetus is getting in to the later stages of development, where it is developing the systems that will provide conscious awareness and make us human. But the advocates on either side don't recognize the right's of the other! Pro-life says a woman has no right to privacy as soon as she has an egg starting the fertilization process (and even earlier, if you consider Catholic pro-life's opposition to birth control), while pro-choice says it's not a human with any personal rights until the umbilical cord is cut! My gut feeling is that a sensible solution will have to recognize both rights and set the conditions where one set of rights takes precedence over the other. And what if they were wrong? Do you know any people who are struggling to raise children with severe disabilities? Not everyone has the patience or resources to deal with added pressure of trying to give the other children adequate attention while dealing with a child that needs 24/7 care. And, needless to say the parents have no time for each other and the marriage often cracks under pressure after a few years. Your friends took that risk! It's good that the doctor was wrong, but the doctor was likely giving advice based on an acute possibility of abnormalities, not absolute certainty, and he may have been right -- and their lives may have ended up a living hell! How do you know women in outlying areas can easily book an abortion? Many remote areas of this country have enough problems providing basic health services, let alone abortion. And according to this, http://www.prochoice.org/canada/access.html there are no abortion services in P.E.I., and New Brunswick demands puts up a number of barriers before the province will pay for it. But the situation is even more difficult in America, where restrictive policies delay abortions needlessly into later stages of pregnancy: Making abortion access more difficult and dangerous is a key tactic in the anti-choice movement’s strategy. Today, 87 percent of U.S. counties have no abortion provider, yet anti-choice lawmakers continue to impose a broad range of restrictions on women’s access to abortion. * Refusal clauses and counseling bans ("gag rules") limit women's access to honest information and medical care, making it virtually impossible for some women to access abortion services altogether. Learn more by clicking here. * Congress has imposed restrictions on abortion care for women who depend on the government for their health care needs, including women serving in our military. Learn more by clicking here. * Numerous federal and state laws aggressively limit young women's access to abortion care and information. Learn more by clicking here. http://www.naral.org/issues/abortion/access-to-abortion/

Thanks for the clarification! I think I got your posts mixed up with Sharon or Melanie. From what I've read so far, the requests for third trimester abortions are usually from women who were planning to have the child, but major health issues have come into play such as major birth defects or that the pregnancy is going bad and the woman's health is at risk. If it's for more frivolous reasons like the previously discussed sex-selection, these sort of reasons should be dismissed! If the baby isn't wanted, it could be adopted by a couple who are on a waiting list to adopt a healthy baby. I have to disagree with you on this issue. I would rather be intrusive and protect the health of the fetus, than prosecute the mother for causing harm to her baby afterward. If a woman is careless and irresponsible enough to drink or take drugs during pregancy, I doubt the threat of prosecution afterward is going to influence her to go in to treatment for addiction problems.

Yes the Code of Hammurabi is worth looking at if you want to know where the Ten Commandments cam from! The point is traditional Judeo-Christian ethics developed from a patriarchal system that viewed women as the property of men. Be fruitful and multiply is the guiding principle. The idea of having women, not only having access to abortion, but also birth control, and picking and choosing when to get pregnant and how many children to have, runs counter to the principle that all sex acts be open for procreation -- still the Catholic Church's official position today! I don't know how much of the effort to control women's fertility is consciously planned, or how much is an unconscious desire, but attempting to claim that the only motive behind pro-life is to protect the unborn is totally dishonest and prochoice advocates are justified to be suspicious of the real motives behind the prolife movement. 1%. sure it's 1%! I'll believe that if you happen to have some numbers to back it up. The truth is that religious fundamentalism ebbs and flows with the zeitgeist of the times we're living in. In good times, even the religious forget their devotions. But in bad times, everybody finds religion and wants to appease an angry god who has brought war, pestilence and famine upon the land. Judging from what's happening with the World economy going down the crapper and the possibility of resource wars in the future, I'd say that the people who want to turn the clock back are going to be increasing their numbers significantly over the coming years! And at what point does abortion constitute "killing?" It's totally bogus if you consider destroying a fertilized egg as the equivalent of killing a baby!

Take a look through your Old Testament sometime if you don't believe me! I don't know what the exact breakdown is today, but not everybody is what you would describe as "modern!" Especially a notable previous post comment that the world was a better place before women had rights! Sometimes you can focus so much attention on your enemies, you ignore what your allies are up to! As long as there are Christians who claim our moral values are based on the Ten Commandments, there is a strong constituency to turn back the clock to the good old days.

Well the Shah is ancient history now! I remember that story well, and the problems didn't begin with Carter's efforts to remove the Shah and replace him with a lackey that was supposed to appease the Iranian masses -- the problems then, just as now, is that the Carter Administration never bothered to try to get more than a superficial understanding of what was going on inside Iran. The unrest had been going on for several years, and the Shah was opposed from all sides within the country for autocratic rule, for attempts to promote the traditional Iranian religion of Zoroastrianism, for spending most of Iran's oil wealth gained during the 70's, on the military and new weapons -- this is a point that's lost on conservatives today, but even though the Shah was considered a strong U.S. ally, there was a great deal of anger because Iran was the point-man in the OPEC strategy to drive up oil prices as far as possible! The Shah was only a U.S. ally of convenience, and just like Saddam, he would have turned on the West as soon as he felt he was strong enough to achieve his goal of making Iran the regional power in the Middle East. He was intending to take military control of the Persian Gulf, which would have given him control of most of the OPEC countries' oil shipments....and of course his goal was not to provide American motorists with cheap gasoline! If the Shah's strategy was successful, we would be talking about him in the same exact terms we discuss the rule of Saddam Hussein today! Enough of that! Carter's first mistake was trying to support the Shah at all costs early on, and only giving in to the replacement strategy after the horses were out of the barn and Ayatollah Khomeini had already made the plane ride from his exile in Paris to land right in the Iranian capital, and find no Iranian police or military units willing to challenge the Ayatollah and his supporters. In other words, the game was over even before Carter tried to depose the Shah! But enough of disasters of the past! Let's focus on the present tsunami!

I thought it was more recent, but it seemed you were more intent on attacking the person than attacking the argument. And in the latest round, your comments about this post: QUOTE(Drea @ Jun 2 2008, 07:35 AM) * That is correct. The WOMAN holds all the cards -- the life or death of the fetus is in her hands. don't inform any of us on the sidelines what your objections to the strong pro-choice position are! That is not as unique or bizarre a position as you are trying to frame it. Since a lot of men don't regard the woman's rights to make decisions at any stage of pregnancy, it's not surprising that a lot of women don't want outside interference under any circumstances. Any argument for situations where right to life might override right to privacy are DOA as long as they ignore or dismiss a woman's rights to control what to do with her own body at all stages of pregnancy. Historically, the traditions of patriarchal rule branch out from man's desire to have complete control of their women's sexuality. Pro-life supporters aren't going to even start to broaden their base of support without at least acknowledging the real reasons why many are supporting right to life arguments.

That must be the story I was trying to recall! I'm looking at this situation more from an ethical standpoint than a legal one, which are often unrelated! I just had a notion that if there was some legal sanction against causing deliberate harm to the fetus, the courts wouldn't have had to struggle to come up with creative legal means to force her to stay in rehab. I know my opinions on the abortion debate are anything but definite! On a personal level, the only woman close to me who had had an abortion was a sister-in-law who died about 10 years ago( not because of the abortion of course). I never really got into the details of the abortion debate until I joined a couple of American conservative forums and discovered that abortion is just about the only social issue they care about! After they're born, they want the welfare payments cut, the school lunch programs cut, daycare programs cut...........but at least they care about the child while it's still in the womb! This problem of aborting children over issues like sex-selection seems to indicate to me that there may be situations where the right to life should take precedence over the right to privacy. I wouldn't advocate a ban on third trimester abortions! Most women who want an abortion, want it done as early as possible, so third trimester abortions are usually sought for serious reasons like birth defects or when it's discovered that the woman's life may be at risk.

Maybe he just feels the need to attack every post you write!

Even if there is no option for state criminal prosecution, I can see how this sort of situation would be grounds for a child who was damaged by his/her mother's drug abuse or alcoholism, to take her to court for negligence.

What colour is the sky in your world? It must be a world where the U.S. still has excess capacity to carry out more regime change operations, but that's not the world the rest of us are living in! Every military analyst, whether supporters or detractors of the War, are realistic enough to be aware that aside from a bombing run, there's nothing else the U.S. can do with Iran! And after the intelligence mess in the lead up to the Iraq Invasion, everyone besides Dick Cheney is doubtful that a bombing mission can succeed in destroying all possible nuclear targets. And since there is no option to put boots on the ground, there is no way of verifying the success of a Iran bombing mission! It looks like the U.S. is going to have no choice but to try to negotiate the best deal possible with the Iranian theocracy that America strengthened by removing their number one enemy - Saddam Hussein. Some day, even you diehard Bush supporters are going to have to wake up to the mess your dear leader has left for his successor, and hope the next president can repair some of the damage!

Fascinating concept! But why is the Republican-pandering American Thinker focusing attention on Black resentment, while ignoring the White racism against Latinos which is fed by right wing pundits like Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly, Lou Dobbs etc. under the poorly disguised concern over illegal immigration! Read the posts on American conservative forums by the rank and file Republican supporters, and protecting the border is a distant second to "there's too many damn Mexicans coming here", and making sure that America remains a White nation! On balance, I would say the right is feeding more off of the ugly side of human nature than the left is! Conservatives try as subtly as possible to appeal to White voters' fears of visible minorities, less than visible ones like homosexuals, non-Christians, women of all colours - since they tend to support government programs, fear of terrorism, fear of losing world power status.....every plank of the Conservative and Republican platforms now is an appeal to White insecurity! The biggest mistake angry leftists make comes from the utopian desire to level outcomes -- success is intrinsically interpreted as ill-gotten gain. For the rich to get rich, someone had to do without because there's a fixed supply of money or wealth in the economy (many on the left do think in these terms) But Rev. Wright is a bogus example of angry leftists, since he represents an angry segment of a marginalized population that the White majority can ignore as long as they don't have to drive through their neighbourhoods! Wright is a preacher of old style Black Liberation Theology, which comes in many forms, but insists that Blacks cannot achieve success in the White Man's World individually, so they have to remain part of the collective struggle for equality -- and that's why I am very partial to a theory advanced by a few observers familiar with this belief system, that Wright does not want Barach Obama to succeed in his goal to become president! A Black man (or if you prefer, a mixed race man) who is able to single-handedly build a broad based coalition of mostly White voters, with no help from Black community leaders at the start of the campaign, is a repudiation of Liberation Theology and Wright's core message! Many Black media pundits have talked about a generational divide between the older community leaders who marched with Martin Luther King, and a younger generation of leaders, who they feel, take their struggle for granted because they have more doors opened for them now! If Obama was an angry leftist in the mold of Rev. Wright, as the Republican smear machine is trying to paint it, he would have never run for president in the first place!