In Denton, Texas, voters approve 'unprecedented' fracking ban

[UNT90]

The reason Romney supported the Mass heath care initiative as governor was because it was a good idea. It was still a good idea when Obama signed the national version into law. Conservatives have been wrong about every big issue in the last half-century - e.g., social security, civil rights, & the environment. They're wrong about health care too.

And so are a majority of Anericans, right?

I guess the only people who are ever right about anything are far left democrats like yourself, right?

Even though you are in the minority on this issue.

This really does explain your religious-like devotion to global warming, though...

[UNTDoubleAlum]

I don't have anything against fracking, per se, at least until there is a true scientific consensus on the issue. Working in Emergency Management, I can't ignore the link (as recognized by the US Geological Survey) between fracking and the rise of earthquakes in an area, but that is kind of a peripheral point.

That being said, I'm glad it got voted out of Denton, and I'm sad I no longer live there to have helped vote it out myself. Even if the process is not inherently wrong (and it may be), it's wrong for Denton. If nothing else, we should support the rights of voters in cities to have control of their local affairs. I read that the Texas Land Commissioner immediately filed a lawsuit against Denton, which I took issue with when I wrote him a strongly-worded letter.

[gradumacated]

And so are a majority of Anericans, right?

I guess the only people who are ever right about anything are far left democrats like yourself, right?

Even though you are in the minority on this issue.

This really does explain your religious-like devotion to global warming, though...

At least during Presidential cycles, the number of Americans who vote a Democrat/liberal ticket far outnumber those who vote a Republican/conservative ticket - but due to vote diffusion/concentration isn't visible in the House of Representatives, which has seen a tightening grip by the GOP. I haven't analyzed the results of the most recent elections to see if the pattern holds.

Climate change is real whether you want to admit it or not. That doesn't necessarily mean global warming as localized climates record below-average temperatures, but the vast preponderance of evidence suggests that Earth's climate is changing, and the rate of change can only reasonably be explained by man's actions.

There's a reason why every other western nation has a form of national health care system and higher life expectancy and mother outcomes along with lower infant mortality. Part of the reason why the ACA garners as much hate as it does is because some don't think it goes far enough (i.e. a single payer system is necessary: like Medicare). The other interesting yet contradictory point is nearly every central tenet of the ACA, when taken in isolation, is approved by a vast majority. It's only when it's tied to the ACA./"Obamacare" that disapproval rates skyrocket. Given the almost 60 straight months of private job-sector growth (while government hiring has slowed or decreased over the same period) provides evidence that the ACA probably isn't having much, if any, effect on hiring.

We're talking about the issue of the fracking ban, not generally the midterms, but on that the GOP ought to have expected to pick up the Senate given the electoral map they faced - though Democrats ought to have done better in terms of absolute number of votes cast and the gubernatorial races. Losing Illinois, Maryland, and Massachusetts governor mansions is inexcusable. Messaging and GOTV efforts stymied the Democrats this cycle, but it's interesting that even in a wave election for the GOP near every progressive ballot initiative passed by a wide margin - the only reason Florida's attempt to legalize medical marijuana failed was it fell 2% short of the 60% mark needed.

The flip side is that all the fetal personhood amendments failed.

So we have the ironic and contradictory situation where the conservative candidate near-swept the available seats running on a primarily "we're not Obama" platform while all the progressive issues that could have been a central party platform for the Democrats (but weren't, for various reasons) passed. The GOP should be cock-a-hoop that their election campaign dovetailed with a Democratic implosion to give them historic number of seats in Congress. But most warn that they now need to do something with the majorities they hold that benefit the majority of Americans rather than the perceived narrow band. If they don't, 2016 could be just as ugly for them as 2014 was for Democrats.

Edited November 10, 2014 by gradumacated

[Coffee and TV]

Good luck and godspeed Gradumacated. You're entering a black hole of talking points, projection, and labeling that'll make your head spin.

[UNTFan23]

There's a reason why every other western nation has a form of national health care system and higher life expectancy and mother outcomes along with lower infant mortality. Part of the reason why the ACA garners as much hate as it does is because some don't think it goes far enough (i.e. a single payer system is necessary: like Medicare). The other interesting yet contradictory point is nearly every central tenet of the ACA, when taken in isolation, is approved by a vast majority. It's only when it's tied to the ACA./"Obamacare" that disapproval rates skyrocket. Given the almost 60 straight months of private job-sector growth (while government hiring has slowed or decreased over the same period) provides evidence that the ACA probably isn't having much, if any, effect on hiring.

America's life expectancy would go up if America went on a diet and started an exercise program. More than a third of American adults are overweight or obese. Losing weight and leading a more active lifestyle would do a ton in reducing America's healthcare costs. Most costs are incurred after an illness has occurred whereas preventative care tends to be less expensive over the long run.

[oldguystudent]

America's life expectancy would go up if America went on a diet and started an exercise program. More than a third of American adults are overweight or obese. Losing weight and leading a more active lifestyle would do a ton in reducing America's healthcare costs. Most costs are incurred after an illness has occurred whereas preventative care tends to be less expensive over the long run.

Agree. Now let's talk about Food Inc. and the grain and sugar lobbies.

We are at fault ourselves for living out of our cars, never walking anywhere, but we also have mostly unhealthy foods available to us. Yes, we could all drive to the Cupboard in Denton and purchase organic raw ingredients and live off kombucha and quinoa smoothies, but we don't. Admit it. There are hotpockets in your freezer and boxed mac and cheese in your pantry. It's quick, it's easy, it's killing us all.

[GreenMachine]

Agree. Now let's talk about Food Inc. and the grain and sugar lobbies.

We are at fault ourselves for living out of our cars, never walking anywhere, but we also have mostly unhealthy foods available to us. Yes, we could all drive to the Cupboard in Denton and purchase organic raw ingredients and live off kombucha and quinoa smoothies, but we don't. Admit it. There are hotpockets in your freezer and boxed mac and cheese in your pantry. It's quick, it's easy, it's killing us all.

It's all a choice. There are many healthy Americans because they choose to eat right and exercise regulary. There are overweight American's that eat poorly and don't exercise. It's really not that hard to stay in shape and live a healthy lifestyle but you gotta make that choice.

[GTWT]

And so are a majority of Anericans, right?

No, not usually. A majority of Americans believe in Creationism, a 6,000 year old earth, & that 'Survivor' is classy entertainment. Many believe our president is a muslim who was born in Kenya, Indonesia, Hawaii, or some other foreign country. The same folks believe in flying saucers, Big Foot, and the cupracabra.

https://www.google.com/search?q=Brian+Burns+Urban+legends

This really does explain your religious-like devotion to global warming, though...

Project much?

[FirefightnRick]

The reason Romney supported the Mass heath care initiative as governor was because it was a good idea. It was still a good idea when Obama signed the national version into law. Conservatives have been wrong about every big issue in the last half-century - e.g., social security, civil rights, & the environment. They're wrong about health care too.

You seem to be confused as to which is the party of Civil Rights. Here, educate yourself.

http://m.nationalreview.com/articles/300432/party-civil-rights-kevin-d-williamson

This magazine has long specialized in debunking pernicious political myths, and Jonah Goldberg has now provided an illuminating catalogue of tyrannical clichés, but worse than the myth and the cliché is the outright lie, the utter fabrication with malice aforethought, and my nominee for the worst of them is the popular but indefensible belief that the two major U.S. political parties somehow switched places vis-à-vis protecting the rights of black Americans, a development believed to be roughly concurrent with the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the rise of Richard Nixon. That Republicans have let Democrats get away with this mountebankery is a symptom of their political fecklessness, and in letting them get away with it the GOP has allowed itself to be cut off rhetorically from a pantheon of Republican political heroes, from Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass to Susan B. Anthony, who represent an expression of conservative ideals as true and relevant today as it was in the 19th century. Perhaps even worse, the Democrats have been allowed to rhetorically bury their Bull Connors, their longstanding affiliation with the Ku Klux Klan, and their pitiless opposition to practically every major piece of civil-rights legislation for a century. Republicans may not be able to make significant inroads among black voters in the coming elections, but they would do well to demolish this myth nonetheless.....

Rick

Edited November 10, 2014 by FirefightnRick

[aztecskin]

I think the party of civil rights at the moment is the one allowing people to vote and not preventing women folk from exercising abortion rights but [kermit pic]

[Coffee and TV]

You seem to be confused as to which is the party of Civil Rights. Here, educate yourself.

http://m.nationalreview.com/articles/300432/party-civil-rights-kevin-d-williamson

Rick

You highlighted the fact that he said "last 50 years" and then posted a quote from a (laughable) source that highlights Republican work done decades & a century before then.

[meangreendork]

You highlighted the fact that he said "last 50 years" and then posted a quote from a (laughable) source that highlights Republican work done decades & a century before then.

In which he's forgotten about the Southern Strategy and the R/D demographic flip that came along side it. The labels may have changed, but the ideology looks to have stuck around.

[FirefightnRick]

You highlighted the fact that he said "last 50 years" and then posted a quote from a (laughable) source that highlights Republican work done decades & a century before then.

It's laughable because you disagree with it. I got it. At least the name calling hasn't hit yet.

Tell me, which party voted in the first black Supreme Court Justice or appointed the first black female Secretary of State? Which party used the dispicable and demeaning race card in Georgia last week in their ads? Which party just elected the first black female from Utah to the House and first black Senator from South Carolina to the Senate?

And it's been 50 years but still not that long ago when Klan Democrat Byrd and segregationist Al Gore Senior supported the Democratically led 57 day fillibuster against the '64 Rights Act.

Rick

[FirefightnRick]

In which he's forgotten about the Southern Strategy and the R/D demographic flip that came along side it. The labels may have changed, but the ideology looks to have stuck around.

Read the article, the whole article, then tell me about the flip.

Ric

[meangreendork]

There was a flip around the time of the Nixon administration. At that point, the Republicans were able to pull a very nice portion of the African American vote, and with being the party that helped to drive the civil rights changes of the time, they rightly deserved the vote of African Americans. I'll never dispute about what the Republican party did up until the Nixon administration. What made it so bad was that Nixon was among the Republicans warning others in his party about the direction they were going at the time - drawing in southern voters that would vote on race and religion.

Nixon was smart when he got the vote of the South - he appealed to the conservative values, ones he generally agreed with. He was worried that in courting the South, the party would end up courting racists and highly religious people, and then inadvertently welding them together.

The problem was that while Nixon was doing all of the things he should've done in the realm of civil rights, other republicans started drawing the crowd that Nixon advised them against - basically types like George Wallace (mind you, this is Wallace in his "I hate civil rights" version). 0

[UNT90]

Good luck and godspeed Gradumacated. You're entering a black hole of talking points, projection, and labeling that'll make your head spin.

Glad to see you have reached a new level of self awareness.

[UNT90]

It's laughable because you disagree with it. I got it. At least the name calling hasn't hit yet.

Tell me, which party voted in the first black Supreme Court Justice or appointed the first black female Secretary of State? Which party used the dispicable and demeaning race card in Georgia last week in their ads? Which party just elected the first black female from Utah to the House and first black Senator from South Carolina to the Senate?

And it's been 50 years but still not that long ago when Klan Democrat Byrd and segregationist Al Gore Senior supported the Democratically led 57 day fillibuster against the '64 Rights Act.

Rick

Dems love black people. As long as they stay poor, know their place, keep it "real", and vote democrat.

[GreenBat]

Dems love Most Republicans dislike black people. As long as they stay poor, know their place, keep it "real", and don't vote. democrat.

Fixed

[FirefightnRick]

Dems love black people. As long as they stay poor, know their place, keep it "real", and vote democrat.

"My life has been hurt by Democrats"

http://youtu.be/BUSRZo1BE5o

Rick

[FirefightnRick]

There was a flip around the time of the Nixon administration. At that point, the Republicans were able to pull a very nice portion of the African American vote, and with being the party that helped to drive the civil rights changes of the time, they rightly deserved the vote of African Americans. I'll never dispute about what the Republican party did up until the Nixon administration. What made it so bad was that Nixon was among the Republicans warning others in his party about the direction they were going at the time - drawing in southern voters that would vote on race and religion.

Nixon was smart when he got the vote of the South - he appealed to the conservative values, ones he generally agreed with. He was worried that in courting the South, the party would end up courting racists and highly religious people, and then inadvertently welding them together.

The problem was that while Nixon was doing all of the things he should've done in the realm of civil rights, other republicans started drawing the crowd that Nixon advised them against - basically types like George Wallace (mind you, this is Wallace in his "I hate civil rights" version). 0

The principles of the conservative base of the GOP has never changed. This base wants economic freedom for everyone. To quote Condi Rice in her interview with Fox.."America....is the best place to be on earth for minorities". You certainly don't hear that in the rhetoric from the left. Why? Because they don't believe it.

Rick

Edited November 10, 2014 by FirefightnRick

[Coffee and TV]

Oh Rick, where to start.

It's laughable because you disagree with it.

It's laughable because it's Jonah Goldberg. A guy who any self-respecting scholar has laughed at his revisionist version of history to sell books to guys like you. That's all there is to get.

Tell me, which party voted in the first black Supreme Court Justice

Both parties could take credit seeing as how he only got 11 dissenting votes, and he was nominated by LBJ. But again, that was 47 years go.

or appointed the first black female Secretary of State?

Definitely a fine thing to brag about.

Which party used the dispicable and demeaning race card in Georgia last week in their ads?

You're cute sometimes.

Which party just elected the first black female from Utah to the House and first black Senator from South Carolina to the Senate?

Arbitrary measurements are arbitrary. And you named possibly the most arbitrary examples you could. The first black female congresswoman was none other than a Democrat, and she was elected to her seat 40+ years ago.

South Carolina has been a deeply red Republican state since the removal of Jim Crow laws that prevented them from voting or running for office in the first place. Of course no black Democrat is going to win with a D next to his name in South Carolina in 2014. They could have run MLK Jr as a Democrat and it wouldn't have mattered.

And it's been 50 years but still not that long ago

lelz.

[Coffee and TV]

The principles of the conservative base of the GOP has never changed. This base wants economic freedom for everyone. To quote Condi Rice in her interview with Fox.."America....is the best place to be on earth for minorities". You certainly don't hear that in the rhetoric from the left. Why? Because they don't believe it.

Rick

And because we don't buy into that jingoistic horseshit that makes us what, racists? Race-baiters? What's your point in saying we see outside of that narrow scope and can see the issues facing minorities that they don't face in other countries?

[FirefightnRick]

Oh Rick, where to start.

It's laughable because it's Jonah Goldberg. A guy who any self-respecting scholar has laughed at his revisionist version of history to sell books to guys like you. That's all there is to get.

Both parties could take credit seeing as how he only got 11 dissenting votes, and he was nominated by LBJ. But again, that was 47 years go.

Definitely a fine thing to brag about.

You're cute sometimes.

Arbitrary measurements are arbitrary. And you named possibly the most arbitrary examples you could.The first black female congresswoman was none other than a Democrat, and she was elected to her seat 40+ years ago.

South Carolina has been a deeply red Republican state since the removal of Jim Crow laws that prevented them from voting or running for office in the first place. Of course no black Democrat is going to win with a D next to his name in South Carolina in 2014. They could have run MLK Jr as a Democrat and it wouldn't have mattered.

lelz.

The truth hurts, whether you think it's arbitrary or not. What part of the article is incorrect? Was there a democrat in the house that voted for the 14th and 15th Ammendments?

Oh, and reading can be tough at times.

Which party just elected the first black female from Utah to the House

.The first black female congresswoman was none other than a Democrat, and she was elected to her seat 40+ years ago.

I wasn't speaking of Shirley Chisolm from New York.

Rick

Edited November 10, 2014 by FirefightnRick

[FirefightnRick]

And because we don't buy into that jingoistic horseshit that makes us what, racists? Race-baiters? What's your point in saying we see outside of that narrow scope and can see the issues facing minorities that they don't face in other countries?

LOL!!! If you knew the context of the answer she gave that quote in you might find your answer I guess?

Rick

[Coffee and TV]

The truth hurts, whether you think it's arbitrary or not. What part of the article is incorrect? Was there a democrat in the house that voted for the 14th and 15th Ammendments?

Good job moving the goalposts again. The original point was that Republicans haven't been the progressive party on civil rights when that they once were, nobody is arguing the great deeds done by Lincoln or Teddy Roosevelt or any Reconstructionist Republican congressman that were considered radical leftists in their time.

Oh, and reading can be tough at times.

I wasn't speaking of Shirley Chisolm from New York.

I know what you meant, I didn't miss the point. You can beat your chest about Utah electing a black Republican all you want, but they're a deep red state who will elect just about anyone with an R next to their name, especially in a conservative-leaning district. That's really nothing to crow about when Democrats have been electing black congresswomen, senators, governors and even a President for 50 years. Not to mention they'll be the first to nominate and elect a woman for President in 2 years too.