A rueters story tells of Pope Benidict baptising a lifelong muslim. One Magdi Allam author and journalist who had been critical of Islamic fundementalism terrorism.
He said that islam is physologically violent and he is now in danger of his life being taken from him for converting to Christianity.
I wonder if Barack Hussien Obama may also be in danger if he did truly convert to christianity. For he too renounced Islam.

If you knew anything at all, you would know that Obama was never a Muslim; therefore he had no more need to renounce Islam than you do. He was not a practicioner of any religion prior to being baptised as a Christian.
You talk about people responding to your "questions" with profanity, yet your continued reference to a U.S. Senator, who also happens to be a black man, as Barack "Hussien" Obama shows that you are a closet bigot. Thirty years ago you probably would have referred to him as "Sambo." Did you ever have the privilege of manning a fire hose in Selma?

His real name is Barack Hussien Obama . And according to what i have found he did go to Muslim schools in Indonesia where he was raised. No i didnt man a fire hose in selma al.
It was democrats like you who did. It was democrats like you who murdered the freedom riders in Miss in 1962. It was democrats who let the murderers go free with congratulations from other demorats. It wasnt democrats like J william Fulbright of arkansa( Bill clintons mentor who helped him dodge the draft) al gore of Tenn. richard russell of ga and every democrat from your south who tried to stop the civil rights act of 1965. It was republicans Like everet dirksen of Ill. who helped :President Johnson pass the civil rights act of 1965.
It was a Republican who ended slavery in the united states Abraham Lincoln not a democrat.

If you mean he went to a school where the students were predominately muslim, you are right. It was a PUBLIC school, in Jakarta, and Indonesians are predominately Muslim. (At least in Jakarta) It was not a religious school. It was in a good nieghborhood, and was one of the better schools in Jakarta. Like most parents, his Mother wanted him to have the best education he could get. She also also enrolled him in a Catholic school for a short time, that doesn't mean she wanted him to be Pope. If his early education explains anything, it explains why he grew up with no religious convictions, until he was baptised into his current church. I went to a public school; but the students were predominately Christians. Do you think maybe, just possibly, the fact that I was schooled in the United States had something to do with that predominance?

Duane,

I don't mean to confuse you with historical facts but I thought you might find this enlightening.

John R...
___________________________________________
The Awful Truth about Republicans
Daily Article | Posted on 3/25/2004 by By Robert B. Ekelund

Anyone who wants cuts in the size and scope of government should be concerned and frustrated with the policies of President George Bush and the Republican-controlled Congress. Government spending has increased enormously and the federal budget has plunged ever more into deficit.

Protectionism, regulation and government power are on the rise, and we are at war or in conflict with a record number of countries around the world. The Republican-controlled Federal Reserve has pushed interest rates to below 1% while it frantically tries to flood the economy with money and credit.

Even mainstream economist Jeffrey Frankel has recently noted (in the Milken Institute Review) that the "Republicans have become the party of fiscal irresponsibility, trade restriction, big government, and failing-grade microeconomics."

However, there has not been a sudden sea change in party platforms and the rampant fiscal irresponsibility of the Republicans is not a mystery; they are merely returning to their historical roots. The Republican Party was established as a party of big government and economic intervention. Their reputation as a party of limited government is of more recent vintage and stands on a flimsy foundation.

The Republican Party that emerged in the 1850s was an amalgamation of historical influences, third parties, and interest groups. One group that entered the Republican Party was the Free Soil Party, whose primary platform was free land and subsidies for farmers. In contrast, most Democrats favored selling off the public lands to finance government expenditures, keep tariff rates low, and prevent deficit spending.

Also joining the Republican Party in the 1850s were supporters of the Know Nothing Party. The Know Nothings were most concerned about immigrants coming into the country, competing against labor, and suppressing wages. They favored restrictive immigration and protective tariffs to keep wages high, while Democrats supported both immigration and free trade.

The Whig Party formed the core of the Republican Party with its economic platform consisting of protectionism for industry, a national bank and currency, a large national debt, and a larger federal government engaged in extensive public works.

Also joining the Republican ranks were the Prohibitionists and the Abolitionists. Members of the Republican Party generally shared an opposition to slavery and advocated policies of containment and colonization.

The ambitious economic agenda of the Republican Party had its roots in the economic platforms of Federalist icon Alexander Hamilton and Whig leader Henry Clay. They advocated protective tariffs for industry, a national bank, and plenty of public works and patronage. The flurry of new laws, regulations, and bureaucracies created by Lincoln and the Republican Party during the early 1860s foreshadowed Franklin Roosevelt's "New Deal" for the volume, scope and questionable constitutionality of its legislative output.

In fact, the term "New Deal" was actually coined in March of 1865 by a newspaper editor in Raleigh, North Carolina, to characterize Lincoln and the Republican Party platform. Lincoln’s massive expansion of the federal government into the economy led Daniel Elazar to claim, " . . . one could easily call Lincoln's presidency the ‘New Deal’ of the 1860s." Republicans established a much larger, more powerful, and more destructive federal government in the 1860s, just as Bush and the Republican Congress are doing today.

In fact, modern Republicans are almost a mirror image of the original party. Protectionism was a high priority of the early Republican Party. They quickly enacted the Morrill Tariff, which raised tariff rates to extremely high levels, and their extreme protectionism continued throughout the era of Republican dominance.

There is really little debate that these Republicans were the primary proponents of protectionism, particularly in the areas of steel and textiles. Modern Republicans, from Reagan to Bush II, have given us protectionism for a variety of favored industries, including steel, as well as the "managed trade" of NAFTA and the WTO.

In the area of deficit spending and the national debt, the early Republicans, like their present-day counterparts, produced large deficits and national debt. Pre-Civil war Democrats had worked effectively to eliminate the National Debt and to close the national banks.

Modern Republicans have built an unprecedented pile of debt. The growth in the national debt really started to take off when Reagan was elected in 1980 and continued to skyrocket through his second term and that of George Bush, Sr. When Clinton was elected in 1992 the growth rate in the national debt began to decline and almost stopped growing when George Bush, Jr. was elected in 2000. Since then the national debt has skyrocketed.

In recent years Republicans have been awful in the area of monetary policy, but that is also a long tradition in the Republican Party. In their early years they nationalized money and banking, a policy that helped big-city banks at the expense of the common citizen, particularly in the South and West.

As Robert Sharkey noted:

As the National Banking System took shape after the War, it was apparent that human ingenuity would have had difficulty contriving a more perfect engine for class and sectional exploitation: Creditors finally obtaining the upper hand as opposed to debtors, and the developed East holding the whip over the undeveloped West and South. This tipping of the class and sectional balance of power was, in my opinion, the momentous change over the twenty-three-year period, 1850-1873.

Looking at the consequences of this legislation, leading monetary economists concluded:

The provision of the Acts of 1863 and 1865 that established the national banking system were designed to remedy two perceived defects of the antebellum state banking system. One was the circulation of a wide variety of state bank notes, often at a discount, which made for an inefficient payments system. The second defect was instability of the note issue; marked by over issue, bank runs and failures, and periodic suspensions of convertibility into specie. To remedy the first defect, national bank issues of U.S. bond-secured currency replaced state bank notes. To remedy the second defect, stringent reserve and capital requirements, oversight, and regulation by the Comptroller of the Currency were conditions for national bank charters. Unfortunately, the remedies did not work as intended by the architects of the national banking system. Instead, the system was characterized by monetary and cyclical instability, four banking panics, frequent stock market crashes, and other financial disturbances."

Favoritism for big business has always been a hallmark of the Republican Party. As a consequence they tend to favor subsidies, public works projects, and regulations that are favorable to incumbent businesses. The biggest public works project in the nation’s history was the building the intercontinental railroads, a policy that truly galvanized the membership of the Republican Party.

Republicans also sponsored the Sherman (Anti-Trust) Act of 1890 and the Act to Regulate Commerce of 1887, which had the stated purpose of protecting the general public but the effect of protecting big business, particularly railroads, from competition. Modern Republicans seem even more in love with public works projects, even in far-away Iraq, and for that matter the moon and Mars.

In the area of regulation, Bush and the Republicans have regulated the Internet in the name of Spam and telephone calls to put telemarketing out of business. Were those temporary annoyances so terrible that they required sweeping and permanent federal regulations? Their malevolent Patriot Act and the nationalization of airport security are policies of power and repression, not security and safety. And of course the Republicans still support states’ rights as long as all fifty voluntarily obey.

The reality is that the Republicans started out as a party that pursued a mercantilist policy agenda, or what today would be called rent-seeking, where interest groups lobby government for special privileges such as monopolies, protectionism from international trade, and government contracts. The massive amount of corruption that occurred after the Civil War supports the contention that the Republicans are the mercantilist or rent-seeking party. The same can be said of the modern Republicans, who are dominant in campaign fundraising.

How did the Republican Party gain the reputation as a free-market, limited-government party? Part of the reason is simply that the Democratic Party adopted even bigger government policies, particularly with the election of Franklin Roosevelt and the subsequent New Deal.

Another reason is that the Republicans of the 19th century were labeled the party of "laissez faire" by historians for their policies that supported big business and led to the emergence of the so-called Robber Barons, but these were hardly the types of policies that would be advocated today as laissez faire by free-market economists or libertarians.

Another murky area of American history in the 19th century was the Greenback and Free Silver movements, which saw an influx of populism into the Democratic Party. Populists like William Jennings Bryan were protesting the severe scarcity of money and credit and the power of big city banks, but these problems were caused by federal control of money and banking, which made currency extremely scarce and loans difficult to procure. The Democrats were protesting against the effects of the federal regulation of money and banking that had been passed by the Republicans.

Again history has been blurred into conformity with modern images. However, from the perspective of historical fact, the Republicans have not mysteriously switched positions with modern Democrats, but are simply switching fully back to their historical roots.

John R are you denying the fact that Abraham Lincoln signed the emancipation proclamation in 1863 freeing all bLack slaves in the united states.
are you denying thie fact that Al Gore, J william Fulbright Ricard russell did everything in their power to stop the civil rights act of 1964 from passing. they were all democrats. it was the republicans who passed the civil rights act for Lyndon Johnson.
Are you denying the fact that it was democrats in Mississippi who murdered the white people who came to Miss. to help black citizens gain their constitutional rights, and it was democrats who found the killers innocent. remmber that. Those are the historical facts that no doubt you refuse to remember
because democrats tried to stop raciaL equality not republicans.

Duane,

As I said, I don't want to confuse you with facts but...."are you denying the fact that Abraham Lincoln signed the emancipation proclamation in 1863 freeing all bLack slaves in the united states"?

Actually, Duane, the Act only freed the slaves in the Southern sucession states. The Yankees got to keep theirs!

John R...

John R name the residents of Mass . New York Illinois who owned black people in 1860 1862.
Give their names,. locations. You just dont want to recognize that it was a good thing to free black people from human bondage.

Say, Duane, who did the so-called Democrats of Mississippi vote for in the last presidential election? Who did those murderous oppressors of liberty see as the truest expression of their contempt for their fellow man? I do believe that you will find that person to be Republican George W. Bush.

Yes, it is true that in the sixties most of the South tended to think of itself as Democrat - but then Ronnie Regan went down there and pointed out to those of them who still missed the joys of slavery that the real party of bigotry and hate was his own and that they belonged with the party of their ideals. That part of the south, by and large, climbed up on to his band wagon and has never left it.

But I do love to see you pretending to care about human beings, no matter how out of character it is for you.

Jack B now the people of Miss. have more or less become republicans . Now the people of Miss alabama Georgis all of those states. have all of the rights of every american. the right to vote the right to be safe in their homes.
Unlike in previous times when the democrats were running things down there. Whjen black people had to fear being lynched , being burned alive with blow torches. ( i have a picture of a black man tied to a tree burned to death with a blow torch and several
white men beside him grinning) the picture came from a life magazine. Thses had to have beeen democrats because then everyone in the south was democrat.

jack b you implied that reagon was an advocate of human slavery. Can you prove that or do you say that because the man is dead and can no longer defend himself. Probably you do.
Reagon was born in iowa in 1911. I will bet you a hundred dollars that you can find none in his ancestry who was a slave owner or who tortured black men women children to deny them their human rights . There is no one in my back ground like that nor George Bushs.
But how about you and your family . Did your grandfather your great grand father own slaves . Did they ride with the KKK. Did they terrorize black people in the middle of the night wearing masks like cowards . Did they torture people. You are from the deep south those things happened there regularly. Tell were you or they in the KKK.

and what does this have to do with the subject of this post may I ask?

What does it have to do with this thread Mike Ivy. Read acouple of posts up Jack B accused Reagan of telling the slavers in Miss. and elsewhere in the south that he would make them able to terrorize the black peopleonce more I pointed out that Reagon nor any of his ancestors owned black slaves didnt ride with the KKK lynching people . I asked if Jack B could say that no one in his family ever owned slaves rode with the KKK. And he didnt answer

Duane, you just keep proving that your ignorance knows no bounds. Are you somehow that that the racist Democrats in Mississippi were all driven out and replaced with good, freedom for all Republicans?

Nope, the racists simply recognized that it was the Democrats who were marching in favor of civil rights, fighting for fair voter's registration, and supporting laws and court cases designed to kill John Crow.

So they turned Republican because they recognized that the Republicans were in favor of the status quo. That, is the plain and simple fact. Regan repeatedly spoke of his belief in states rights. I don't think that Regan really believed in them that much. But it is clear that he was willing to use those words and let the racists think that they were code words for supporting white supremacy - they were, after all, the words used to support seccession from the Union during the Civil War.

Actually, it started with Richard Nixon's policy of "Benign Neglect."

Jack B Mad Doc if you think the present administration or Reagans administrations want citizens of this country denied their rights beause of their skin color . anme the black people who have been denied the right to vote in Miss. alabama arkansa. Florida. How many (and who were they) have been lynched in Florida and the other states of the south while republicans have been in office. And Jack B can you say without a doubt that none of your ancestors did not own slaves did not ride with the KKK hanging blacks in the middle of the night wearing cowardly masks.

Actually, Duane, if you were capable of reading a sentence, comprehending what it said and then retaining what you read all the way to the end of the paragraph, you would realize that what I said was that I did not believe that Reagan was actually in favor of of Jim Crow. But he, and most others in the Republican party leadership, did believe in exploiting the racists belief in it to their political advantage. And that they did, in fact, do exactly that.


Tell you what, though, Mr. Republican. I would appreciate it if you could find me some video of nationally known Republicans attending voter registration rallies, or marching with black people in their protests against what their local governments were doing to them. Show me some of those great Republican speeches in which a naional republican politician spoke out boldly in favor of ending policies that limited black American's rights.

Pull up the proof, you re-writer of history wannabe, before you start telling lies about how the Republicans freed black America.

To answer your questions, no I cannot say that my ancestors did not own slaves. I had one family in my tree that did own slaves prior to the Civil War.

Can you prove that you had no ancestors who owned slaves or committed depredations agains minorities? I know that you can say it - you say lots of stuff that is made up out of whole cloth. Can you prove it?

The Republican Party of the 1860s has almost nothing in common with the republican party of recent history other than the name 'republican'. The people...black and white who fought against the 'separate but equal' discrimination in our southern states were mostly democrats and liberals, daune.
Ask any black person who's old enough to remember, 'which political party fought hardest to end racial discrimination in the South' and I will bet you won't hear even one of them answer 'the republicans'. But you probably know that, you just like to stir the pot, then ignore most of the rebuttals to your nonsense and go on to stir another pot.

~bob

Actually IM shocked that Duane is even talking about the subject of discrimination. I read a couple posts of his on another board one saying that Oprah Belonged on a Pancake Box and refers to Obama as Cake "Boy".

WOW!
The next thing that I guess I will read is that he has some Black "Friends".

Im glad to read that a person from a State that has a 95% all White Population be so in tune with the discrimination and pain of the past and present.

Of coarse after Dropping about 6 Oxys, I hear that Rush Limbaugh talks the same way.

That was funny. Oxycotin. LOL. Sad that someone like Duane thinks his poo is pure.

There WERE a few slaves left in the North in 1860.
On the night of December 31, 1862, President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which freed the slaves of the Confederacy while retaining the slaves in Union held areas.

It is also a historical fact that the Union Army was notorious for it's cruel treatment of blacks who served in the war. They whipped them like slaves. They denied them the same rights, etc. They were not allowed to be with white regiments.

I wanted to point out that the freedom of slaves by Abraham Lincon was in reality NOT when their freedom was given. The Constitution freed all men in the United States. In fact, it was even more apparent in his (Thomas Jefferson's original writing before it was edited and adopted).

"We hold these truths to be sacred & undeniable; that all men are created equal & independant, that from that equal creation they derive rights inherent & inalienable, among which are the preservation of life, & liberty, & the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these ends, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that whenever any form of government shall become destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, & to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles & organising its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety & happiness."

But as we know, this was not exactly how many perceived it and slaves were owned still. Ironically though, some freed slaves owned blacks, as did some Native Americans. Native Americans were also enslaved at one time.

How Duane figures that NO ONE in his history was involved in slavery is a mystery to me. I bet I could find one who did of his.

-Bobbi