I am probably going to open a whole new can worms here. I might regret opening later, but some of the topics being discussed really got me thinking about things. One of the things said that really kind of got me going on this was:

Pattygreen: Christians (usually conservative republicans) for the most part try to live moral, virtuous, nonsinful lives.

I am not a Christian and I live a moral, virtuous, and for the most part nonsinful life. I know several people who live the same, and are not Christian, and have conservative beliefs.

Cleo's Mom: First of all, "conservative republican" is redundant, because they are all conservative. I don't think there are any moderate republicans left particularly among those elected to office.

However, I just wonder if it is MORAL to mislead or outright lie, because listen to what these conservative republicans have said:

Dana Perino said on Fox: We did not have a domestic attack during bush's administration.

A month later Mary Matalin said: bush inherited 9/11 from Clinton.

Yesterday, Rudy Giuliani said that we never had a domestic attack under bush but we had one under Obama.

Now, I ask you - do these people think the American public is really that stupid? Apparently. Those on the right just make things up and keep repeating it. And when they repeat it often enough eventually some people begin to believe it.

They reduce things to some emotional, hate filled sound bite: death panels, obamacare, socialism, hitler, nazi.

This is because they are unable to engage in meaningful, intelligent, fact-based discussions. Maybe they don't want to do that because they don't have the facts on their side.

First I am a moderate Republican. I do tend to lean a little more to the right, but on some issues I lean to the left. Some things I can lean pretty right, and others I lean pretty far left. It really depends on the issue. I'd like to think that would make me moderate. I know many people who are moderate Republicans also. So we are still out there. There are some politicians who are still moderate also.

Second just because you are a Republican does not mean that you can not have a intelligent, meaningful, fact-based conversation. That is like saying liberals have their heads in clouds and live in fantasy nerf world filled with rainbows and butterflies.

Both sides sling mud back and forth. Both sides have their hate filled idiots. Both sides have their good and bad points. Both sides LIE, LIE, and LIE some more.

I get so sick and tired of hearing about how the Republicans have screwed everything up...I mean really they did it all alone.....no help from the left at all???

I personally feel that if you lean too far left or right you can't have a very grip on reality, and when our politicans lean too far left or right it's not good for our country either way. I hope someday too see more moderate politicans in office.

It's obvious to most people that preaching to kids to abstain from sex before marriage isn't an effective deterrent.

It's also obvious that giving them sex education doesn't work. So, might as well tell them the truth about sex outside of marriage and the consequences of it bringing hardship upon them.

May I ask why you put the word repercussions in single quotes?

I meant to put 2 quote marks around it.

teaching creationism and Christianity in the public schools here in Texas, if true, is an extremely good argument for me and my family to move as far from it as we can.

Many people are taught evolution in the public school. This is just a theory. It's not a proven fact, any scientist will tell you it's just a guess. If THAT can be taught, then why not creation. Many feel that it is a guess as well. Why not give the children an oportunity to decide which guess is right. What I don't like is when they teach evolution as fact. I have no problem with a teacher telling her students the "theory" of evolution, so long as she points out that it's just that. A theory.

The evidence behind the age of the earth and the age of fossils is fact. We have the scientific ability to measure that. Those who believe in creationism believe the earth is only as old as the current species of man has existed and there are museums that support creationism that show man living at the same time as dinosaurs. Simply not true and scientific FACT refutes that and makes those people look silly.

It's true that some Christians believe that the erath is only as old as Adam, which is about 6-7000 years old. But that is not what all Christians believe. I for one, believe the earth is very old. The first book of the bible and the first verse states that "In the beginning, God created the Heavens and the Earth." When that beginning was, no one knows exactly. The next verse says, "and now the erath was empty and void." This tells me that something happened between verse one and two that made the earth empty and void. He also told Adam and Eve to re-plenish the earth. He said that same thing to Noah and his family when they left the ark. If there was nothing on the earth before Adam and Eve, why would God tell them to RE plenish it? I tend to believe as science teaches, that the earth is millions of years old. But I will never believe that mankind is just as old. God created humans 6-7000 yeras ago. The Earth?, well, no one knows when. Just because some Christians disagree on some things, doesn't make God any less real. It just makes mankind human. God teaches that if you search for wisdom in his words like a buried treasure, he will reveal his truths to you. Those who seek to truly know all these wonders of God will get their answers. Those who don't seek may never know. Even if they are considered the wisest men on earth by other men.

As a scientist (I have a degree in biology) I support science and don't reject it just because it doesn't support a particular religious and/or political view:

The oldest Homo sapiens

Fossils push human emergence back to 195,000 years ago

Geologist Frank Brown, dean of mines and Earth sciences at the University of Utah, crouches on Ethiopia's Kibish rock formation, where Brown and colleagues determined that fossilized bones of Homo sapiens were 195,000 years old -- the oldest fossils of the our species ever found. Credit: Ian McDougall, Australian National University

Full size image available here

When the bones of two early humans were found in 1967 near Kibish, Ethiopia, they were thought to be 130,000 years old. A few years ago, researchers found 154,000- to 160,000-year-old human bones at Herto, Ethiopia. Now, a new study of the 1967 fossil site indicates the earliest known members of our species, Homo sapiens, roamed Africa about 195,000 years ago.

"It pushes back the beginning of anatomically modern humans," says geologist Frank Brown, a co-author of the study and dean of the University of Utah's College of Mines and Earth Sciences.

The journal Nature is publishing the study in its Thursday Feb. 17, 2005, issue. Brown conducted the research with geologist and geochronologist Ian McDougall of Australian National University in Canberra, and anthropologist John Fleagle of New York state's Stony Brook University.

The researchers dated mineral crystals in volcanic ash layers above and below layers of river sediments that contain the early human bones. They conclude the fossils are much older than a 104,000-year-old volcanic layer and very close in age to a 196,000-year-old layer, says Brown. "These are the oldest well-dated fossils of modern humans (Homo sapiens) currently known anywhere in the world," the scientists say in a summary of the study.

This is what needs to be taught in schools.

Yeah Cleo's, that and comprehensive sex education.

If parents actually taught their children about anatomy, physiology and reproduction as well as sexually transmitted diseases, it might be a different story. But they don't and our kids in America pay an awfully big price for their parents' ignorance.

How people can justify keeping this very basic information out of the public school curriculum is beyond me. Basic anatomy and physiology should not be considered something to be feared or afraid of, or something to shield one's children from. It is basic information that all humans should have about their bodies, just like information about nutrition, physical exercise, sleep and all the things that we need to learn about keeping our bodies healthy.

Actually patty, the question should not have been why you put single quotes around the word repercussions, but why you put that word in quotes at all. I'm just curious. I don't understand what you were trying to tell me.

Nevermind that those very parents do not seem to have a solid sexual education themselves which would ensure that their children are as well educated on the topic as they need to be.

Who says? You? Give us parents a little credit, huh? Before the days of sex ed, back when standards of morality were upheld a little more than they are now, parents were teaching their daughters to stay away from boys till they were married. For the most part, they listened. Back in the 30's and 40's and 50's, there were far, far, far fewer premarital pregnancies.

The most recent American teen birth rate of approximately 51.1 births per 1,000 adolescent females is consistent with historical trends and matches the 1920 figure. Nonetheless, since the 1970s, American politicians, policy makers, and social critics have condemned the perceived "epidemic of teenage pregnancy." This label reveals that critics have little knowledge about the incidence of teen pregnancy and parenthood in America's past.

The 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s included the twentieth century's highest teen birth rates (respectively 79.5, 91.0, and 69.7 per thousand). By 1960, nearly one-third of American females had their first child before reaching age twenty.

Vinovskis, Maris A. 1988. An "Epidemic" of Adolescent Pregnancy? Some Historical and Policy Considerations. New York: Oxford University Press.

I've been amazed and mystified over the years to learn how many of my mother's contemporaries "had" to get married. We didn't invent the term "shotgun weddings" it was used long before I was born.

I didn't mean to insult you, patty. Tell me, how did you get your sexual education? How did you find out about sexually transmitted diseases? How did you learn everything there is to know about contraceptives? And at what age did you teach your children everything so that they could be prepared to take care of themselves?

My mother gave me some brochures from the health department. She was embarrassed to discuss sex or contraceptives or veneral disease. She didn't tell us about condoms or birth control pills or foam or any other way to protect ourselves from unwanted pregnancy. It was just too embarrassing for her. And I was very close to my mother. She was a well-educated woman. She was a perfect mother in every other area of parenting.

And no one I have ever known got a good sexual education from their parents. People I know who thought abstinence was the way to handle the topic of sex, taught them just that - abstinence before marriage. Period. They might tell their kids about the horrors of disease or pregnancy to scare them, but as for real meaningful sex ed, forget it.

That's why so many kids of parents who teach abstinence only still have sex, still become pregnant, still get veneral diseases. If teaching abstinence only worked, we wouldn't be having this discussion.

This is also another point of contradiction in the Republican agenda that I can't understand. If sex education is taught and contraceptives are made available to young people there would be less unintended pregnancies which would result in less abortions.

Thanks for your post Leigha. You made the point much more convincingly than I. But I am very passionate about this issue and just can't keep from ranting from time to time.

Btw, not that it means much, but I was a virgin when I got married. I got married at 19, so it's not as if I waited until I was 30. But I was very involved in my church and firmly believed that it was a nearly unforgivable sin to have sex before marriage.

That is exactly why I got married so early. Biological urges made my decision for me. So I was married to the totally wrong guy and it lasted for 4 very long, very desperate, very unhappy years. He was a staunch Baptist too and his sexual education was non-existent.

What a calamity! And we were both convinced by the teachings of the church that marriage was forever. Hence the very long, horrible 4 years. I left that marriage relieved but broken, with feelings of very low self-esteem and failure. And I had a one year old baby to take care of as a single parent.

Ignorance is not bliss!

This is also another point of contradiction in the Republican agenda that I can't understand. If sex education is taught and contraceptives are made available to young people there would be less unintended pregnancies which would result in less abortions.

YES!!! There are so many reasons why sex education in schools is vital, but if right wing extremists want fewer abortions they should be in support of it not against it. Great point, Leigha.

It is really scary to think that white knuckle conservatives can re-write history via control of the textbooks our schools use.

Maybe they'll use Carl Rove's book as a reference point when they write the school books, eh?

If you thought that decisions made by the Texas State Board of Education don't affect you, think again.

Led by far-right ideologues, the Texas SBOE recently gave preliminary approval to a plan that would radically change what children across the country learn in history class.

The ultra-conservative majority on the board (none of whom are experts in any academic discipline and many of whom are explicitly anti-science) took the curricula proposed by teachers and made over a hundred changes to "correct" the perceived left-wing bias.

But it gets worse. Since Texas is one of the largest textbook markets in the country, material written to cater to the Texas curricula will find its way into textbooks across the country unless textbook publishers take a stand.

We can't allow a small group of extreme ideologues on the Texas State Board of Education to re-write history. Click here to tell textbook publishers to stand up to the Texas Taliban.

Children who use textbooks conforming to the new standards will not learn anything about the political philosophy of Thomas Jefferson or his thoughts on the separation of church and state. When they learn about the Civil War, they'll have to study Jefferson Davis' inaugural address alongside Abraham Lincoln's. And when they study the civil rights movement they'll have to learn about the "unintended consequences" of Great Society programs, affirmative action and Title IX. Oh — and Joe McCarthy was right all along no matter what historians actually say about it.

It's outrageous. Education will fail if we can't teach our children history. We can't let these far-right ideologues co-opt our educational system.

Click here to tell the textbook publishers: Don't let the Texas Taliban rewrite history.

Thank you for standing up for the American educational system.

LiAnna Davis, Campaign Manager

CREDO Action from Working Assets

This is so well said and true (and much of what I've been saying) that I had to post it:

from: daily kos

To be sure, Mr. King has a politesse that is impressive under the circumstances, beginning with:

Dear Conservative Americans,

The years have not been kind to you. I grew up in a profoundly Republican home, so I can remember when you wore a very different face than the one we see now.

You've lost me and you've lost most of America

. Because I believe having responsible choices is important to democracy, I'd like to give you some advice and an invitation.

First, the invitation: Come back to us. [Emphasis mine]

Now the advice. You're going to have to come up with a platform that isn't built on a

a foundation of cowardice

:

fear of people with colors, religions, cultures and sex lives that differ from your own; fear of reform in banking, health care, energy; fantasy fears of America being transformed into an Islamic nation, into social/commun/fasc-ism, into a disarmed populace put in internment camps; and more

. But you have work to do even before you take on that task.

He's just getting warmed up...

Then comes the list: it may be "by no means exhaustive", but you might just exhaust yourself reading it. It's a seemingly endless litany, fully sourced and linked, covering the following categories:

Hypocrisy

Hyperbole

History

Hatred

Let's just take a small taste from section 1:

Hypocrisy

You can't

refuse to go to a scheduled meeting, to which you were invited, and then blame the Dems because they didn't meet with you.

You can't rail against using teleprompters

while using

teleprompters.

Repeatedly.

You can't

flip out when the black president puts his feet on the presidential desk when you were silent about white presidents doing the same

.

You can't flip out when the black president bows to foreign dignitaries, as appropriate for their culture, when you were silent when the white presidents did the same.

Bush

.

Nixon.

Ike.

You didn't even make a peep when Bush

held hands

and

kissed

(on the mouth) leaders of countries that are not on "kissing terms" with the US.

You can't preach and try to legislate "Family Values" when you: take

nude hot tub dips with teenagers

(and pay them hush money);

cheat on your wife with a secret lover

and lie about it to the world;

cheat with a staffer's wife

(and pay them off with a new job);

pay hookers for sex while wearing a diaper and cheating

on your wife; or just enjoying an

old fashioned non-kinky cheating on your wife

; try to have

gay sex in a public toilet

; authorize

the rape of children in Iraqi prisons

to coerce their parents into providing information; seek, look at or have

sex with children

; replace

a guy who cheats on his wife with a guy who cheats on his pregnant wife with his wife's mother

Phew. And that was only about 5% of the first f*****g section.

This is starting to wear me out, so we'll just skip past the hundreds of other examples from just the past couple of years (read them for yourself) and go straight to his pithy conclusion:

So, dear conservatives, get to work.

Drain the swamp of the conspiracy nuts, the bold-faced liars undeterred by demonstrable facts, the overt hypocrisy and the hatred. Then offer us a calm, responsible, grownup agenda based on your values and your vision for America

. We may or may not agree with your values and vision, but we'll certainly welcome you back to the American mainstream with open arms. We need you. [Emphasis mine]

Edited March 24, 201016 yr by Cleo's Mom

I'm afraid the extremists will only try to defend the offenses in that article by naming a few Democrats who have had inappropriate sexual relationships. Which only goes to help everyone understand where they are coming from, right?

It's the same as them excusing the behavior of the tea baggers by saying that people demonstrated against Bush and his war. Bush demonstrators legitimize the bigoted, hypocritical displays of emotion so whatever the tea baggers do, no matter how horrific, is excusable. With hearts and minds like that, we don't need foreign enemies to cause us harm, we have plenty of problems within our borders to worry about.

I can just envision the terrorists watching the U.S. melting down on CNN or the BBC everyday. They must be having a great time. What scares me is that those terrorists seem to be smarter, way smarter, than so many of the right wing extremists here in our country.