Typical Conservative White People.

Just a few weeks after Barack Obama told a Philadelphia radio station that his grandmothers racist tendencies were just something that was 'typical' of white people, one of his supporters -- musician John Legend -- told an audience on WashingtonPost.com that it is, apparently, only Conservative or Republican white people that are racists.

In responding to a question about whether or not the United States is ready for the 'son of a black man' to become President and, if so, were young people ready to be inspired by Obama ready to step up and make changes in their lives.

He answered, in part:

And the thing is, the people who wouldn't vote for a person because they're black wouldn't vote for a Democrat anyway.

Really? Since Mr. Legend is clearly a victim of a substandard public school education, let's take a brief walk through American history, shall we?

• 1854 - The Republican Party is founded by anti-Slavery activists to stand opposed to the pro-Slavery Democratic Party.
• 1856 - Senator Charles Sumner (a Republican) is beaten nearly to death by Congressman Preston Brooks (a Democrat) in the Senate chamber after speaking out against pro-Slavery Democrats.
• 1860 - Te Republican Party nominates Abraham Lincoln as their Presidential Candidate.
• 1865 - Republicans in the Congress unanimously back the 13th Amendment, making slavery unconsitutional. Of Democrats, 63% in the Senate and 78% in the House vote against the 13th Amendment.
• 1866 - 94% of Republican Senators and 96% of Republican Congressmen vote for the 14th Amendment, guaranteeing all Americans equal protection under the law. Democrats vote unanimously opposed.
• 1866 - Democrats in New Orleans order police to assualt an integrated Republican meeting, killing 40 and injuring 150 others.
• 1868 - Democrats adopt the party slogan: "This ia a white man's country: Let white men rule."
• 1871 - The Republican-led Congress passes the Enforcement Act, giving black voters Federal protection.
• 1871 - Republicans in the Congress adopt the Ku Klux Klan Act, outlawing the pro-Democrat domestic terrorist group.
• 1871 - Republican Ulysses S. Grant dispatches Federal troops to quell Klan violence in South Carolina.
• 1874 - White Democrats storm the Louisiana Statehouse to oust Governor William Kellogg and his racially integrated administration, killing 27 people.
• 1894 - A Democrat-led Congress and Democrat Grover Cleveland repeal the 1871 Enforcement Act.
• 1898 - Democrats murdered black Republicans in Wilmington, N.C., so that they could stage "the nation's only recorded coup d'etat."
• 1901 - Republican Theodore Roosevelt invites the first black dinner guest, Republican Booker T. Washington, to the White House.
• 1912 - Democrat Woodrow Wilson fires all blacks holding Federal jobs.
• 1922 - Democrats filibuster a Republican attempt to make lynching a Federal crime.
• 1937 - Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt nominates Ku Klux Klansman Hugo Black to the U.S. Supreme Court.
• 1954 - Chief Justice Earl Warren (a Republican) leads the U.S. Supreme Court in desegregating government schools in Brown v. Board of Education. Republican Dwight Eisenhower's Justice Department argued for desegregation on behalf of Brown. John Davis (a Democrat) argued in favor of 'seperate but equal' classrooms.
• 1957 - Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus (a Democrat) used the Arkansas National Guard to prevent nine black students from entering a segregated school in Little Rock in violation of the Brown v. Board of Education ruling. Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower sent the 101st Airborne to escort the students into the building and Federalized the Arkansas National Guard to take them out of Faubus' hands.
• 1957 - Democrat Senators John F. Kennedy and Al Gore, Sr., vote against the 1957 Civil Rights Act.
• 1963 - Democrat John F. Kennedy opposes Martin Luther King, Jr.'s 1963 March on Washington. John Kennedy orders his brother, Attorney General Robert Kennedy, to wiretap and orders the FBI to investigate Martin Luther King, Jr. in order undermine and discredit him.
• 1964 - The revolutionary Civil Rights Act passes Congress. It is supported by 82% of Republicans compared to only 64% of Democrats. Democrat Robert Byrd (a former Klansman) attempted to filibuster, but Everett Dirksen (a Republican) rallied the votes needed to invoke cloture and allow the bill's passage.
• 1967 - Democrat Lyndon Johnson refers to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. as "that N----r preacher."
• 1968 - Civil Rights activist Martin Luther King, Jr., a Republican, is called a 'trouble-maker' by former Klansman Robert Byrd, a Democrat, following a speek in Memphis, TN. When King returns to Memphis a few weeks later, he is assassinated by James Earl Ray. In 2004, Jesse Jackson said that he believes the government, led at the time by Democrat Lyndon Johnson, conspired to kill King.
• 1975 - Republican Gerald Ford promotes Daniel James to become the Air Force's first black four-star General.
• 1977 - Former Klansman Robert Byrd elected leader of the Senate Democrats, and holds the position until 1989.
• 1982 - Republican Ronald Reagan promotes Roscoe Robinson to become the Army's first black four-star General.
• 1983 - Republican Ronald Reagan establishes Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s birthday as a national holiday.
• 1989 - Republican Ronald Reagan appoints Colin Powell to the post of National Security Advisor, making him the first black to hold the position.
• 2001 - Former Klansman Robert Byrd, a Democrat, uses the 'N-word' on FoxNews.
• 2001 - Republican George W. Bush appoints Colin Power to the position of Secretary of State, making him the first black to hold that position.
• 2004 - Republican George W. Bush appoints Condoleeza Rice to the position of Secretary of State, making her the first black woman to hold that position. Former Klansman Robert Byrd (a Democrat) and 12 other Democrats stalled her confirmation, eventually voting against her appointment despite unanimous Republican support.

And, that's just the tip of the iceberg.

Since the Republican party's inception, they have supported the rights of blacks and other minorities in America, often with staunch and sometimes-violent opposition from Democrats.

Yet, somehow, the Democrat party manages to maintain that -- despite destroying black families with their welfare, family, and social policies -- they are the party that best represents blacks and while people John Legend characterize Republicans and Conservatives racists.

And, yet, it never seems to occur to anyone that perhaps the reason we can't have an honest discussion about race in this country is because there's one side that prefers to keep black people locked in a mindset of victimization while calling the other side as racists ...

Scientists: No Global Warming since 1998.

The BBC has an interesting report up this morning.

Global temperatures will drop slightly this year as a result of the cooling effect of the La Nina current in the Pacific, UN meteorologists have said.

The World Meteorological Organization's secretary-general, Michel Jarraud, told the BBC it was likely that La Nina would continue into the summer.

This would mean global temperatures have not risen since 1998, prompting some to question climate change theory.

See that?

"Mean global temperatures have not risen since 1998."

In other words, in the past decade -- the 'warmest decade on record' -- there's been no increase in the average temperatures around the globe, despite Bush's 'non-action' on the Kyoto protocols and China building a new carbon dioxide spewing coal-fired plant every week.

Of course, the BBC is quick to explain that away.

But experts say we are still clearly in a long-term warming trend - and they forecast a new record high temperature within five years.

Because, you know, the debate is 'settled' and no matter what the actual evidence and facts are, we can't possibly be expected to not hold to the party line on Global Warming.

After all, if we dare question Global Warming, Al Gore might call us names and Ted Turner might not save us a juicy human steak.

Scientists: Global Warming killed the Wooly Mammoths.

In an interesting piece posted on LiveScience.com, it would appear that scientists have finally determined that it was a loss of habitat caused by a warming planet that lead to the demise of giant, hairy elephants (aka: the Wooly Mammoths).

Humans may have struck the final blow that killed the woolly-mammoth, but climate change seems to have played a major part in setting up the end-game, according to a new study ...

Scientists have long debated what finally drove the furry beasts over the edge. Researchers led by David Nogues-Bravo of the National Museum of Natural Sciences in Spain used models of the climate, as well as models of woolly-mammoth and human populations, to study the relative importance of various factors leading to the mammals' demise ...

The team found that the brunt of the damage done to mammoths was due to Earth's warming weather around 8,000 to 6,000 years ago. Since Earth was coming out of a glacial period at that time, temperatures were climbing and recasting the planet's landscape, and the mammoth's preferred habitat, steppe tundra, was vastly reduced.

The reduced habitat, of course, forced the Wooly Mammoths closer to the large caveman cities where they were, subsequently, run over by the cavemen SUVs which, in turn, lead to cavemen needing an easy way to purchase auto insurance.

Humor aside, the point is that scientists have just said that the Earth also experienced a period of warming between 8,000 and 6,000 years ago that was powerful enough to melt glaciers, change habitats, and cause the extinction of species. And, unless my comments about the cavemen are, at some point, discovered to be most fact than facetious, this was during a time period long before the advent of industrialization and the automobile.

Forget ANWR, Drill Bakken.

I heard an interesting report yesterday that could solve the nation's 'oil crisis' if we actually wanted to do it, and it wouldn't require us putting a single oil rig in barren, frozen, northernmost part of the Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge. It would simply require us to open up drilling in North Dakota.

Transworld News reports:

The Bakken Formation in North Dakota could boost America’s oil reserves by an incredible 10 times, according to a report Wednesday.

The Bakken Oil Formation, which covers North Dakota and portions of Montana and South Dakota, is believed to have 175 to 500 billion barrels of recoverable oil. The 200,000 square mile reserve that was initially discovered in 1951.

In 2007, EOG Resources of Texas drilled a single well in Parshal N.D. that is expected to have yielded 700,000 barrels of oil. Marathon Oil is investing $1.5 billion and drilling 300 new wells.

To give you an idea of how big this is, when a team from Chevron found a reserve in the Wilcox Reserve 175 miles out into the Gulf of Mexico that contained between 3 and 15 Billion Barrels, it was called 'the biggest [oil] discovery in the United States in a generation.'

Go ahead and compare the numbers there to get an idea of just how big opening Bakken is. The low-end estimate of what's in Bakken is almost 12 times what they thought is the high-end estimate of what is in the Wilcox Reserve which was, at the time, the biggest oil find in a generation.

Now, for those of you without a calculator handy, I'll crunch the rest of the numbers for you ...

In the United States, we use 14 Million barrels of oil per day. If we were able to recover 500 Billion barrels of oil from Bakken, that would give us 100% of our oil needs for 35,714 days which is the equivalent of almost 98 years.

Additionally, at today's prices ($104 per barrel), it would add $52 Trillion dollars to our economy just in oil sales.

And this isn't the only large oil reserve that we're sitting on top of. In election news yesterday, Barack Obama got the endorsement of the Wyoming governor (who just happens to be a Democrat Superdelegate) by promising to NOT allow for oil or gas exploration in Wyoming.

The governor also said Obama gave him an honest answer about putting the Wyoming Range in western Wyoming off-limits to oil and gas drilling, something Freudenthal would like to see the U.S. Senate approve.

Now, I'll agree that -- if we open up Bakken it wouldn't be necessary to drill in the Wyoming Range for quite some time -- but, the next time you're upset about high gasoline prices, keep in mind that we've got the reserves right here in the United States.

For all of the politicians' talk about energy independence, not being subject to the whims of OPEC, or 'funding terrorism' by buying oil from Middle Eastern nations, promising to NOT explore for oil where the resource might be readily available makes them seem more than just a tad hypocritical.

Energy independence is something that we can do, and that we can do right now, if there weren't one certain political party standing in the way.

More Late Night Global Warming Fear-Mongering.

Did you happen to catch The Charlie Rose Show on PBS Tuesday? Yeah, me neither. But, if you had, you'd've heard CNN founder Ted Turner waxing idiotic about Global Warming:

"Not doing [something 'drastic' to correct global warming] will be catastrophic. We'll be eight degrees hotter in ten, not ten but 30 or 40 years and basically none of the crops will grow. Most of the people will have died and the rest of us will be cannibals."

Really? Is anyone (you know, other than David Letterman) making these kinds of outrageous claims about how much increase there'll be in the temperature? Anyone?

Again, the worst case scenario from the U.N. Climate Change Panel was a .7°C (or about 2°F) temperature increase by 2100. And, those claims were made before we had a global temperature drop of .63°C over the past year, and scientists noted that solar activity indicates we might well be headed for a new ice age and the oceans aren't displaying any of the temperature increases they should if global warming were actually happening.

Another odd note, notice that Ted seems to be making the claim that he'll be one of the people still alive and well in 30 years eating other people. Now, Ted's gonna turn 70 this year. That'd make him 100- to 110-years old by the time his nightmare vision of the future occurs, yet he still uses the word 'us' in describing the cannibals.

But, lest you think that Ted Turner is just a moron with a fatalistic vision of someday opening his own human steakhouse franchises based on an exaggerated claim of global climate catastrophe, let me be 'fair and balanced' and give you the rest of his diatribe:

TED TURNER: Not doing it will be catastrophic. We'll be eight degrees hotter in ten, not ten but 30 or 40 years and basically none of the crops will grow. Most of the people will have died and the rest of us will be cannibals. Civilization will have broken down. The few people left will be living in a failed state -- like Somalia or Sudan -- and living conditions will be intolerable. The droughts will be so bad there'll be no more corn grown. Not doing it is suicide. Just like dropping bombs on each other, nuclear weapons is suicide. We've got to stop doing the suicidal two things, which are hanging on to our nuclear weapons and after that we've got to stabilize the population. When I was born-

CHARLIE ROSE: So what's wrong with the population?

TURNER: We're too many people. That's why we have global warming. We have global warming because too many people are using too much stuff. If there were less people, they'd be using less stuff.

... alright, I tried to figure out how he's not a complete moron, but I can't. On the bright side, though, at least he's spouting his moronic things on a show no one watches -- even if it is on a station that my tax money pays for.

Of course, the interview also aired on April Fools Day, which could make this either an ellaborate prank Charlie Rose played on his viewer* or strangely apropos ...


* - Yes, I said viewer on purpose -- because, c'mon, I'm sure Charlie has a family member that switches over to his show during Leno's commercials.

Hillary "Rocky" Clinton.

On my other blog this morning, I posted a quote from Rocky Balboa. It would seem that, like me, Hillary Clinton also took a bit of inspiration from Rocky this morning in a speech in Philadelphia.

"Could you imagine if Rocky Balboa had gotten halfway up those Art Museum steps and said, 'Well, I guess that's about far enough'?

"I know what it means to get knocked down. But I’ve never stayed down, and I never will. Let me tell you something – when it comes to finishing the fight, Rocky and I have a lot in common. I never quit. I never give up."

I hate to be the one to point this out, but the first Rocky movie ended with Rocky -- despite going all 15 rounds and with both fighters beaten, bloodied, and bruised -- losing to a black man in a controversial split-decision.

Perhaps her speechwriters should actually watch the movies they reference. ( Or, you know, perhaps they did ... )