Guilty. I would need to be TRULY enlightened for it to be otherwise. I CAN say that around half of the people I love and respect the most in this world disagree with half of what I say. So I don't isolate myself from other views - not even wrong minded boot stomping... uh... nevermind.

I just want to stop the cycle of violence. More violence will not bring that woman's husband back. I grieve not just for the latest incident, but for a history of incidents.

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"Jelly-belly gigglin, dancin and a-wigglin, honey that's the way I am!" Janice the Muppet

I think Robotham's message was more like counseling the widow not to rush out armed and hell-bent on revenge. I think this is a particularly good time for advice like that. And it's not just advice-- we have a right and a duty to insist that our governments behave lawfully and ethically (or failing that, rationally and self-interestedly).

Also, let's not not confuse "America" and "we" with the government in Washington. When we criticize US policy, we're not criticizing the victims, their families, or anyone else who suffered in the attacks of 9/11 and after. Quite the opposite.

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What others say about boorite!

Hahahaha, open-minded Democrats. Try telling a Democrat things like:

* Nixon was the last liberal President

* It took a Republican general to sign an armistice with Korea

* Welfare is not about charity but controlling the poor...

And so on.

Dems I know watch The West Wing without laughing. I can't stand it. I have to heckle. Got thrown out of a TV party that way.

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What others say about boorite!

Not saying I don't VOTE Democrat usually. . .

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What others say about boorite!

Often the lesser of two evils.

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"Jelly-belly gigglin, dancin and a-wigglin, honey that's the way I am!" Janice the Muppet

I agree with just about everything wirthling said in this post, but I find this a little dubious. You have as much power over your religion as you do over the way you happen to want to look. If you want to have long hair, then whether it's for religious reasons or just because you like having long hair is irrelevant. Why is religion always ranked alongside race and health as some intrinsic part of you which is outwith your control?

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Actually, I thought about that while I was writing that. I think the key is that the U.S. Constitution explicitly spells out that religion is protected. Other beliefs are not as strictly protected when it comes to the workplace. For instance, a nudist can be barred from coming to work nude. As long as an employer does not discriminate on the basis of those factors set in law, employers can discriminate as much as they please. I don't necessarily agree with that, but that is the legal precedent that has been established in American law, at least as far as I know.

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My argument is about the hypocricy involved. It just APPEARS TO ME that they are defending minorities that will get them good publicity.
Furthermore, what if I do have long hair for religion? There was no question asked weather I do or not, they simply discriminated on the basis of appearance. It's gender inequality. If they are going to tell me I can't have long hair, tell the women they can't have short hair, or tell them they can't have long hair. One or the other.

I'm still waiting for that job that won't hire you unless you have long hair. :)

Anyway, I never claimed to be open-minded. I just have no pretense of being so.

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Do you want ants? Because that's how you get ants.

Come on, now. There are a lot more than two evils out there.

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The what mentioned above is total fiction. Please don't take it seriously!

Of which I agree completely. I have no delusions about the American government. I think they hide a lot from the American people because they know if Americans found out some of the crap they're pulling, there'd be heads rolling. I hold the opinion that the American military is one of the few sections of the American government that is undemocratic, and that adding a spotlight to its deeds and democracy to its functioning is the only way to cure it.

I'd simply add that the "respectful length of time" of which you spoke hasn't yet passed for a majority of Americans.

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I ate a hooker half a bottle of knife.

"America: proud owner of a voting system that can elect someone who is despised by almost two-thirds of the voters."

I can't remember who originally said that.

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"Only things I approve of should exist." -some guy on the internet

Al Gore.

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I ate a hooker half a bottle of knife.

Come on, now. There are a lot more than two evils out there.

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Hahaha, you're telling Spankling.

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What others say about boorite!

I still have the Al Gore sticker in my car window. Just keeping it there for 2004...

"If you are part of a society that votes, then do so. There may be no candidates and no measures you want to vote for . . but there are certain to be ones you want to vote against. In case of doubt, vote against. By this rule you will rarely go wrong."
Robert A. Heinlein

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...Trot and Cap'n Bill were free from anxiety and care. Button-Bright never worried about anything. The Scarecrow, not being able to sleep, looked out of the window and tried to count the stars.

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With all the women's shoe stores in Chicago you wouldn't think it was so tough to find employment for such a handsome, normal guy!

Thank you W!

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I think you should be thanking Clinton for this. He's the one keeping all the ladies off their feet.

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Oh for the care-free prosperous days of Monica-gate!

;-)

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"Jelly-belly gigglin, dancin and a-wigglin, honey that's the way I am!" Janice the Muppet

I still have the Al Gore sticker in my car window. Just keeping it there for 2004...

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You actually liked one of the two candidates? I thought they were both extremely weak.

Though I was happy to see Bush win, for the reason you stated in your italicized quote above. Plus, it's making you democrats do what we republicans had to do during Clinton's eight years: live with a president you consider a complete joke. :)

Amen, brother. Maybe we can petition Bush to screw Martha Stewart or maybe Britney Spears just to create a scandal that will get our minds off of September 11th. Life seemed so much simpler just a month and a half ago.

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I ate a hooker half a bottle of knife.

Come on, now. There are a lot more than two evils out there.

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Hahaha, you're telling Spankling.

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Yes. Life is good.

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"Jelly-belly gigglin, dancin and a-wigglin, honey that's the way I am!" Janice the Muppet

Hey, we had eight years of Reagan; you only had four of Carter.

And we all still owe the Whigs payback for the 2.5 years of Fillmore.

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ken.kaufman@gmail.com

Amen, brother. Maybe we can petition Bush to screw Martha Stewart or maybe Britney Spears just to create a scandal that will get our minds off of September 11th. Life seemed so much simpler just a month and a half ago.

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Can W even get stiff? I mean besides when he takes a hit from one of the various bottles he keeps stashed around the Whitehouse? It must be so emasculating to be the president and have 51% of the population believe you are not and to have the rest know you aren't. Nobody really believes he's calling the shots, do they?

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"Jelly-belly gigglin, dancin and a-wigglin, honey that's the way I am!" Janice the Muppet

Come on, now. There are a lot more than two evils out there.

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evil_d raises a good point. How come we have 31 flavors of ice cream and only 2 viable candidates for president? It should be a crime to exclude nut-bags like Nader from televised debates! I mean, he was a great defender of public interest but he would make a rotten president. For one thing, he doesn't have the sense to run for a lesser office first. Even The Body figured that one out!

But still he should be heard, along with a dozen others.

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"Jelly-belly gigglin, dancin and a-wigglin, honey that's the way I am!" Janice the Muppet

Hey, we had eight years of Reagan; you only had four of Carter.

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True, it just felt like eight. :)No kidding. I am a pro-life, pro-environment, pro-animal, anti-death penalty citizen that doesn't believe in the welfare state. I am not represented by any of the parties. I call myself republican because the major issue I care about is abortion, and don't feel like writing this paragraph everytime someone asks what my political affiliation is.

I'm hoping someday there forms an Efficiency Party. So much could be gained if governments lived by the simple scientific rule of maximizing output while minimizing input.

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I ate a hooker half a bottle of knife.

I am, in some respects, slightly to the right of P.J. O'Rourke and Attila the Hun in most political matters.
This leads people to believe that I, too, am a Republican, when in fact; I think that the preponderance of the Republican party should be remanded to a Gulag. It is my belief that the job of government is to pave the roads, defend the borders, collect the trash, manage the environment, enforce the law of the land, and then bugger off. Ahhh, one might say; "So you're a Libertarian!". I am not. That would mean affiliating myself with a political party that cannot find it's ass with both hands, a roadmap, a six-way mirror and a proctologist. As stated by others in this thread; I HAVE no party affiliation that I think is a viable choice to represent my views. All forms of government have but one single historically common feature: They have all fallen and crumbled. We're new here, and hanging reasonably tough considering the sort of God-forsaken clusterfuck that our political process has become in this century. Perhaps it's best that our government is run hurly-burly and is up to it's dull, gaping mouth in buffoons and chislers. It keeps things to a point where anybody with the sense God gave small animals the ability to spot most chicanery and call it to the attention of the perpetrators. but my, oh my, wouldn't it be nice to have just one or two administrations from a party that knew what it's job was and then went off to do it quietly, efficiently and cheaply?

Don't hold your breath. Greed, avarice, and cheap behaviour have put a stake into the heart of every political ideology that has come to prominence. Pray, if you do pray, that we somehow evade this fate.

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I wanted my half in the middle and I wound up on the edge.

Heh, Obi, you and I are almost total opposites. I'm fairly pro-animal, so long as it means we get to see more hillarious donkey-sodomy strips.

To further the topoic of discussion, there are many valid canidates, but only two with major financial backing, and a lot of history, as well as popularity. It's kinda like the chess club going up against Mindi Taylor (That hot blonde with blue eyes that always wears just a tad too little) and Jeff Spencer (The big jock/preppy, Mindi's boyfriend of course). Sure the chess club is better, more efficient, and more experienced with the class president, but I mean, come on, who's going to vote for those nerds anyway?

Sorry if I've offended anybillings.

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Do you want ants? Because that's how you get ants.

Let's see.... my labels...

[list]
[*]pro-choice: I don't even want to tell a woman what to do with MY body.
[*]pro-environment: gotta have someplace to live.
[*]pro-animal: I haven't tasted them all yet. Please don't kill them off before I do.
[*]anti-death penalty: See third bullet.
[*]fiscal conservative: which means I believe in educating the populous and keeping them healthy. That is a lot cheaper than this fucked up system we call welfare. I would also call all the tax loopholes the rich get welfare. (That line Chaney used about government having nothing to do with his fortune was a load of crap. He used government connections to get his contracts and government connections to get out of paying his fair share. That fat old boy is on welfare.)
[/list]

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"Jelly-belly gigglin, dancin and a-wigglin, honey that's the way I am!" Janice the Muppet

Ah yes. This characterization brings to mind my experience with a certain third party here in a major mid-Atlantic state. It seems each chapter statewide was keeping its own separate list of members, contacts, and so on, on computers in some cases, in spiral notebooks in others. And so they wanted me to make a web-gatewayed database tying all this stuff together. I talked with them for an hour or two about this before I realized that I was laboring under an erroneous assumption: that they used these addresses and phone numbers to solicit contributions and membership dues. Turns out they don't do fundraising by mail or phone. They just pass the hat at Party events.

Oy! Oy oy oy oy oy!

This is why the anti-capitalist contingent will never win.

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. . .considering the sort of God-forsaken clusterfuck that our political process has become in this century.

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A clusterfuck for us, maybe. A clusterfuck if the ostensible motive were the real motive, or if you expect the forms to function as designed (democratically). But the government is working quite well, apparently, for some-- namely, those who are in a position to influence policy. Sure, the government looks stupid until you stop listening to the speeches and start looking for the money.

Oh, they don't run things. They're just propped up in public for the rubes to throw things at.

I didn't know we had political ideology in this country.

As for greed, avarice, and cheap behavior, isn't that what makes empires in the first place?

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What others say about boorite!

That is the gist of the nub of the crunchy nugget, Boorite! Well doom-said!

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"Jelly-belly gigglin, dancin and a-wigglin, honey that's the way I am!" Janice the Muppet

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[*]fiscal conservative: which means I believe in educating the populous and keeping them healthy. That is a lot cheaper than this fucked up system we call welfare.

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Maybe, maybe not. It depends on questions like "cheaper for whom?" and "what are the real aims of the education and healthcare systems?"

That's a particularly interesting question when it comes to social welfare, by which I mean poverty relief. You call it fucked up, but that's only because you think its purpose is to relieve poverty. Some programs have had marginal success in doing this, but the overall picture was gloomy even before welfare "reform."

If you think instead of welfare (as have social architects from Elizabeth I to Moynihan) as a means of controlling the poor, then you begin to see it as a smashing success. For one thing, it gets people back to work without raising their prospects in life. Back when there was such a thing as AFDC, 90+% of recipients got off of it within two years, despite all we heard about "welfare queens." (But I have met those, too.) This is achieved partly by making such relief programs as mean and degrading as possible, so that even a job at Mickey D's seems vastly preferable.

Welfare is also a way of keeping tabs on the poor and their money. If you're trying to run a country, one thing you absolutely don't want is a vast underground society with its own invisible economy. I admit we have some of that, but not nearly as much as if we left the poor entirely to their own devices.

There are a lot of such points in support of welfare (from the ruler's viewpoint), but this may be the strongest: England made it to the 21st century without a popular revolution; France didn't.

Now, I'm with you, Spankling. I'd rather run social institutions so that they do what they're supposed to, and what most people want them to do, i.e., educate, promote health, etc. We're not stupid-- we know how to do those things. So I have to conclude that actually doing so would interfere with the aims of persons or institutions who are in a position to determine policy. Start from there, and the rest is obvious.

I'd call it a subsidy to the investment biz.

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(That line Chaney used about government having nothing to do with his fortune was a load of crap.

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No kidding. Our supposed market system is entirely dependent on state intervention.

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What others say about boorite!