Thinking Right

By Mid-South Philosopher

December 7, 2007 8:06 AM | Link to this

Good morning, Jim.

I have been away from the blog this week. This thriving Bush economy has required my attention and assistance.

As for today’s topics:

I like your notion of escrow parenting. I am sick of paying for the residue of other peoples’ fun!

This issue weaves nicely into your second topic…school choice. How about we require prospective parents to escrow a little money for the education of their children before the latter are born? Where did we come up with this notion that the rest of us should bear the expense of educating the product of a night of rivalry by some of us?!?

As to the continuing saga of choice, Delk’s idea is fine, so long as NO school is required to accept any PARTICULAR child. In other words, make it truly market negotiable between parents and schools.

Of course, that is NOT going to happen. We have to have somewhere to look after the chaff during the day.

On a couple of topics that you did not address today:

Heaven help us. Less than a month and that monstrosity…the General Assembly…will be back in session. Not a single man or his wife will be safe.

The latest Intelligence Estimate showing that Iran shut down its program to produce nuclear weapons in 2003 is another example of egg on the face of the Bush Administration. With the exception of the one shining moment just after the fanatical Islamist attack on September 11, the Bush Administration has been one SNAFU after another. If he isn’t careful, Georgie is going to make Millard Fillmore look plum charismatic!

Word comes that the state authorities spent a quarter of a million dollars on services for Richard A. Hawkins, the Mall Murderer, over the past several years. He was known to have been highly unstable and had threatened various people in recent times.

The sins of Michael Vick and his legions not withstanding, there is such a thing as a bad dog. For a truly bad dog the only option is to put it down. Richard A. Hawkins was a bad dog. Too bad, he was put down a long time ago.

Until such time as the mental health community can come up with a golden pill or a platinum process for restoring mental health, it may be that permanent incarceration and/or euthanasia will be the only solutions.

By jack

December 7, 2007 8:11 AM | Link to this

Perhaps the 58% of the Republicans that think they are mentally healthy truly aren’t. They are instead, like the ones in power now—ignoring the facts that prove the opposite. .

By jbmlaw

December 7, 2007 8:11 AM | Link to this

Good morning all. I respectfully note one concern with Jim’s plan to escrow for children – who monitors the expenditures from the escrow? Nobody will do that free. The needs of a child vary over time. For every deadbeat dad, there is also a frivolously wasteful mom out there, although admittedly few children suffer both; pity those who do.

Sounds like Mr. Delk, esq., suffers a left-wing disease, good intentions overwhelming his respect for the proper role of the courts. There is no doubt his plan is from the leftist playbook; our leftist brothers may legitimately complain of a right-wing activist judge if his suit is successful.

Re: San Francisco, not that anything that happens there would ever affect my philosophy, judgment, or life generally, but does anyone know whether carrying the card is mandatory? If not, why would anyone care; indeed, why would anyone make space in his wallet for another unused or unusable card?

To the note on immigrants and their children, I am grateful they are coming here; otherwise we would suffer from the falling productivity, due to falling population, now seen in the old countries of Europe. Those problems are far worse than any arising from our immigrant friends.

The Honorable Mr. Macon is unaware of President Lincoln’s aphorism regarding “fooling the people.”

The report on mental health would not surprise anyone who reads the Wooten bloggers’s commentaries on a daily basis.

Jim’s last two observations reflect the Georgia Supreme Court’s aversion to saying directly what needs to be said. Nobody would suggest we suffer a Holmes, Cardozo, or Scalia there.

By Redneck Convert

December 7, 2007 8:13 AM | Link to this

Well, us rednecks get mighty riled up when some guy does You Know What and makes babys. Its a Southren thing and people up North wouldn’t understand. I’m with Wooten on this. Just take everything they own or make so they will have to pay and we won’t have a tax increase. If you make them, you own them. If people won’t use Personal Responsibility we’ll do it for them. We ought to put a big tattoo on the forehead of every daddy of a welfare kid listing the names of the kids and making sure they can’t move away and get by without paying. That way every co. hiring one of them could know to start taking money out of their pay check and sending it in. Some of these bums would need to have tattoos on their cheeks too because there wouldn’t be enough room on the forehead.

I told you already the illegals are ruining this country. Turns out we wouldn’t have all the welfare problems and crowded schools wanting more money if we just got rid of the illegals. Me and about 50 million other rednecks are ready to use our Ford 450 pickups for free if the guvmint will round them all up and throw them in. Kids and all. We don’t care if the kids was born here and are US citizens. Far as we’re concerned, they are still illegals because their daddys and mommys were illegals. If we haul all the illegals back across the Mexico border we won’t have Social Medicine or Peachcare and we can cut our property taxes back because the schools can get by with less money.

I knowed the libruls was all crazy and Wooten proves it. The only sane people are godly Republicans. Probly My President and his people drove the libruls nuts over the past 7 yrs.

So next time you hear some librul spouting off just tell yourself he’s crazy and don’t know what he’s doing. I reckon TFTT and this Captain guy ain’t the only one on this blog that needs some treatment. So I ain’t reading anything by getalife or Peter or JK or any of the other libruls here because they are just raving like the crazy people they are. Its plain as the nose on your face that the conservatives are the only ones making any sense.

And lets get rid of this judge that keeps getting in the way of the Death Penalty for this Nichols guy. We all know he’s guilty. We seen it on TV with our own eyes. I guess we got to have a trial to satisfy the whiny libruls but I say give him 10 minutes in front of a real judge and then shoot the juice to him.

Well, its time to finish stocking up the bars for all the Baptists after church on Sunday. The Southren Baptists are godly people, but they sure keep me hopping. Have a good day everybody.

By ron

December 7, 2007 8:14 AM | Link to this

By jbmlaw

December 7, 2007 8:18 AM | Link to this

Good morning MidSouth @ 8:06, I respectfully suggest you err, in your failure to consider causation, when you write, “The latest Intelligence Estimate showing that Iran shut down its program to produce nuclear weapons in 2003 is another example of egg on the face of the Bush Administration.” As that shutdown was an obvious consequence of some minor activity sponsored by the Bush Administration immediately to the West of the Persian Mullahs, is that not a conspicuous roaring success for the president? Or perhaps you think those who subsequently funded murder of our noble Marines shut down their reactors due to their inherent goodness?

By Craig

December 7, 2007 8:20 AM | Link to this

Thanks Redneck Convert for your always creative take on Wooten’s columns. And thanks to Mid South and THE Captain for discussions of the NIE - yet another day that Jim has neglected to mention it and Dan Bartlett’s comments.

By Captain Freedom

December 7, 2007 8:26 AM | Link to this

Well, Jim, THE Captain wonders exactly who might be kept talking by these cream of wheat topics, especially when one considers the bounty of red-meat issues that face the concerned Right Thinkers of today.

For instance, one (that means you, Jim) could have addressed the heretical commsymps in the intelligence community who have waged a silent coup against Our Leader and his clear wishes for a war with Iran. One wonders if Robert Gates’ middle name might be Hussein or Ahmad, so thoroughly has he done the bidding of his masters in Tehran. See also the revelation of the CIA destroying the tapes of interrogations in Gitmo; why, this footage could have been just the thing Our Nation needed to see to understand the importance of God’s Work We are carrying out in our secret prisons.

Or, you could have fulminated against the State Department quislings who have somehow forged a letter from Our Leader to Leader for Life Kim Jong-il. Every decent American knows that Our Leader does not believe in dealing directly with the evil-doers, so this clear breach in our security demands our attention. Forget Alger Hiss and Wen Ho Lee…this is SERIOUS.

Somehow, Jim, you missed out on the infiltration of the GOP presidential primary by fringe culty Mitt Romney — who like Tom Cruise and his Hollywood cabal — practices the anti-Christian rituals of Mormontology. Luckily, though, the deprogramming of Romney has been successful, and he no longer adheres to the dictates of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion National Park, and has proclaimed that he will be the President to all Americans who worship Jesus. The rest, as we all know and wish, shall be damned for eternity, but with good fortune, we can damn them to suffering, hellfire, and occasional tasing while they’re here, too. Good stuff on the horizon!

Jim, you could have looked at how that “damn the victim, bless the criminal” liberal-in-fundie clothing Huckabee worked overtime to secure the release of a homicidal rapist. Sure, Huckabee is a seminary dropout, and all Real Americans admire that kind of thing, but Mike has shown his liberal tendency in everything from his coddling of bloodthirsty perverts to his message of acceptance to the illegal wetback hordes that plague our very Nation. Aside from that, he actually went on a diet and lost weight, going from a sturdy, Rush-like profile to that celery-crunching wimp that he is today. No, says THE Captain…America cannot bear a man like this at the helm.

THE Captain could go on, but He is sure that you get the idea. The world is filled with great danger, both real and imaginary, and it is up to True Believers with a prominent podium — or even Keyboard Warriors like you, Jim — to gin up the fear and hate machine to keep our Nation a Christian bulwark in times of Islamunistofascist tyrrany. But no, Jim, you choose to piddle about with Michael Vick. Have you suffered a failure of will, a dissipation of spirit, a collapse of heart? Why, THE Captain believes, sadly, that even Sister Dusty could do better.

Truly, Jim, it appears that you have lost interest. Perhaps this column was a late phone-in and you thought nobody would notice. If you are no longer feeling up to the rigors of 500 words (or less) per day, THE Captain stands ready to step into the breach and serve up a heartier dose of True Belief than it seems you have the heart to muster.

More meat, less cream of wheat. Nuff said. THE Captain has spoken.

By Shark Sammich

December 7, 2007 8:26 AM | Link to this

I know 2007’s not over yet, but we have a very strong contenduh in the coveted Most Ignorant Crap Jim’s Published competition today…

Wow! “Immigrants and their U.S.-born children account for 71 percent of the increase in the uninsured since 1989” and “virtually all of the national increase in public school enrollment over the last two decades,” reports the Center for Immigration Studies, an independent research group in Washington. Of the 953,000 immigrants in Georgia, 53 percent are illegals, the center estimates. We should quit using the uninsured as a measure of slippage in economic conditions.

Aside from the slipperiness of this “independent research group” Jim’s chosen to fellate; and aside from the revolting notion that people working and contributing to the American economy are simply non-persons in a “conservative“‘s eyes; the bottom line is, a higher percentage of ACTUAL AMERICAN CITIZENS continue to be uninsured than before, and the trend continues.

And I should add that merely counting the number of uninsured provides only one window into the problem. Those who are actually insured have horrific problems getting the care they need.

But that’s not really the message here, is it, Jim? The message is, most of those uninsureds are probably scary brown Spanish-speaking Mexicans! who we can deport any ol’ time we choose! So stop worrying!

It’s gonna be tough, Jim but there are still a few weeks to go. I have faith that you’ll post something even more ignorant, more bigoted, more clueless and vulnerable to attack by a 5th-grader, than this. Dance, boy, dance!

By Aquagirl

December 7, 2007 8:27 AM | Link to this

ron, you don’t have to go back to a dimly-remembered report to figure that self-reported mental health statistics mean nothing. I’m sure 58% of conservatives would tell you prostitution or cruising the men’s room is wrong. What actually happens in real life has nothing to do with what they say about themselves. Case in point: Dusty is firmly convinced that we’re all crazy terrorist huggers, and Jim and jbmlaw are the only other sane folk in sight. No doubt she’d be included in that 58%.

Gentlemen, you don’t want to pay into escrow when you’re a babydaddy? Afraid some tart will squander your money? Then ask for custody. You can then spend the money as you see fit while raising your sperm donation. Problem solved.

By Mid-South Philosopher

December 7, 2007 8:29 AM | Link to this

Good morning, jbmlaw,

I concur that the “Great Adventure” to the west of Iran very likely played the dominant role in the latter’s decision to put Nukes on hold. Wonder if they would have done it had they known how the Iraqi War was going to have played out.

By the way, all but the most rabid liberals…excuse me…progressives have to admit that the current Surge is working.

Wouldn’t it have been wonderful if Bush and Rumsfeld had used this strategy from the start? Who knows, we might be home by now!

By jbmlaw

December 7, 2007 8:41 AM | Link to this

Dear MidSouth @ 8:29, I agree with your argument.

Dear Ron @ 8:14, in all fairness I believe it reasonable for leftists to question their own sanity.

By Shark Sammich

December 7, 2007 8:44 AM | Link to this

Hey, Mid-south—are you seriously suggesting that the only way we could’ve kept Eye-Ran from developing Nukeyoular weaponry was by p!ssing away over a trillion dollars in the sand next door?

Please keep this up. I smell a winning issue for Republicans!

By jbmlaw

December 7, 2007 8:45 AM | Link to this

Dear Aquagirl @ 8:27, I posted my note to Ron in the hope that most of you would appreciate it as my odd sense of humor only. Please know I do respect most of our nonconservative friends on the blog, and write to only those I deem worthy of my respect.

By Shark Sammich

December 7, 2007 8:52 AM | Link to this

Speaking of winning issues for Republicans:

*”A Republican-sponsored ballot measure that would have changed the way the state apportions its 55 electoral votes will not be eligible for the June primary ballot, its sponsors said on Thursday, in spite of promises a few weeks ago that the initiative would get enough money and signatures to do so.

The sponsors now have their eyes on the November ballot.”*

Bravo! Let’s do keep alive the notion that the only way poor, put-upon Republicans can possibly win a Presidential election is to game the system. What a neato idea!

I think it’ll be awesome for the Presidential candidates to be asked about it, and thus ensure that every California voter knows what’s at stake when they go to vote.

Gotta love that winning GOPee strategery!

By JR

December 7, 2007 8:55 AM | Link to this

Redneck Convert You ceased to be funny long ago. It’s past time to drop that pathetic fake southern crap.

By Aquagirl

December 7, 2007 8:56 AM | Link to this

jbmlaw@8:45, I do respect you as a blogger, but knew you were insane the moment you began to praise Dusty’s posts. Respectfully—-seek help. There are good drugs out there that will stop those irrational impulses.

By MADMOMMY

December 7, 2007 9:05 AM | Link to this

I guess it all makes sense to me now why my child isn’t getting the education that she needs because no one in her class speaks english, they are all using spanish. I say we get all the illegals out, I mean they are ILLEGAL!!!! My family came here through Ellis Island, you know they had to take tests and be LEGAL before they could load another boat into New York, then they had to struggle and adapt. I am glad all of my Grandparents are gone now and they can’t see how humiliating this country has become where illegal immrigrants can just walk across the border, have a child and we are supposted to feel for them.

I also have friends from other countries like South Africa who are college educated who cannot gain entry into this country without spending thousands of dollars to prove that they are needed here.
GOV NEEDS TO GIVE ME A BREAK AND GET RID OF THOSE WHO BREAK THE LAW!!!!

By Shar

December 7, 2007 9:09 AM | Link to this

Good Morning. Mr. Wooten’s description of The Center for Immigration Studies as “independent” is untrue. It was founded as the think tank arm of The Federation for American Immigration Reform, the stated goals of which are to end illegal immigration and to “set legal immigration at the lowest feasible level.” The Center’s website describes the group as a “low immigration think tank”, and its recent study, from which Mr. Wooten draws his statistics, has been criticized for using non-standard statistical and datamining techniques as well as for omitting positive data on immigrant (legal and not) effects on the American economy. Although my personal take on illegal immigration is of the ‘law and order’ sort, it is unfair and misleading to support it with statistics drawn in questionable fashion from a biased source. Mr. Wooten routinely lambastes “liberals” and “Democrats” for precisely this kind of meretricious and irresponsible sourcing; he should be held to the higher standard he demands of others.

On the lunatic quote of the week from Mayor Macon, I have to say that at least it indicates that our own Mayor Franklin actually said something recently. Given her invisible muteness on the high profile absurdities lately running rampant on her watch (the Police Department allowing one of the ‘blue brotherhood’ to prey on young girls for years, the Grady Hospital debacle, multiplying murderers, drought and stalled development) I thought perhaps she had fallen into one of the giant potholes we still contend with daily and got covered up by whatever the goo is that her Brigade uses as its “temporary” fix.

By Rod Johnson

December 7, 2007 9:12 AM | Link to this

Aquagirl, jbm has always had a soft spot in his heart for the challenged.

About the SF indentification cards, why don’t they just have a photo and the word “guess?” It would seem nearly as effective.

By deegee

December 7, 2007 9:27 AM | Link to this

JW’s paragraph about immigrants is disturbing on many levels. First of all, the CIS is one of a number of patently anti-immigrant think tanks and statistics crunchers, see below. JW’s assertion that immigrants and particularly illegal immigrants are unimportant in the discussion of the general health and well being of our society hearkens back to the days when the lives of those that toiled for the privileged were unimportant and unworthy of consideration. Because of my faith in God and my belief in the triumph of good over evil, I am happy to be in the 43% of independents that report a good mental outlook. I am certain that the silent majority of people in this country do not share JW’s low opinion of the underclass of immigrants that are forced to work in the shadows of our society.

““CIS, FAIR, NumbersUSA, ProjectUSA—and more than a half-dozen similar groups that Republicans have become disturbingly comfortable with—were founded or funded (or both) by John Tanton. In addition to trying to stop immigration to the U.S., appropriate population control measures for Dr. Tanton and his network include promoting China’s one-child policy, sterilizing Third World women, and wider use of RU-486.”

By Shark Sammich

December 7, 2007 9:31 AM | Link to this

Oh, and it’s time to say it again: Redneck Convert is a national treasure, and he/she is the main reason I come to this hellhole of a blog.

By hogleg

December 7, 2007 9:41 AM | Link to this

jim-liberals can’t handle the truth.keep up the good work!

By Glenn

December 7, 2007 9:41 AM | Link to this

Good morning, hellions.

Shar, I’v been wanting to axe you sum’n.

The other day when I was enquiring as to whether GA’s schoolchildren receive universal, blanket testing for correctable learning disabilities, a Teacher’s Aide told me of the wonderful public/private program under which needy children receive free eyeglasses. Fine and worthy. Then she told me that teachers hold the pupils’ pupils, as it were, at school lest the tykes misplace them before the next lesson.

What do you make of this, please?

By WFC

December 7, 2007 9:46 AM | Link to this

This is non-partisan. The Brian Nichols case PROVES that our “justice system” is damaged beyond repair. Who in their right mind has ANY confidence in it?

By Shark Sammich

December 7, 2007 9:47 AM | Link to this

MADMOMMY gave us:

I say we get all the illegals out, I mean they are ILLEGAL!!!!

Hey looky, Jim—Mission accomplished!

Spend that thirty pieces of silver for selling out your “Christian” values for political gain wisely; I hear there’s a recession brewin’.

By Aquagirl

December 7, 2007 9:48 AM | Link to this

Shark @ 9:31, are you one of the crazies too? Obviously THE Captain’s posts are the ones that captivate the masses.

By Glenn

December 7, 2007 9:49 AM | Link to this

Mid-South Sophist,

Now I get it! All along you were just being rhetorical when you’d ask “where did we come up with this notion that the rest of us should bear the expense of educating”!

Of course. That explains why, when you keep axing that and I keep a cloggin’ the blog with the answer, you just want to keep axing for effect, just like Socrates accused the Sophists of doing!

Perfectly OK, Mid-South. You might change your name a little, though.

By Van

December 7, 2007 9:54 AM | Link to this

Data from four November Gallup Health and Healthcare polls finds that 58 percent of Republicans report their mental health as excellent, compared to 43 percent of independents and 38 percent of Democrats.

After reading the posts in Jim’s blog, I would have to agree.

Lefties are wackos, independents can’t make up their mind, and a little more than half of the conservatives have not gone stark raving mad at the lefties.

By Glenn

December 7, 2007 9:58 AM | Link to this

Sharky, it is recognized that your notion of the Christian creed is as idiosyncratic as Mike Huckabee’s; notwithstanding which fact, your SharkAttack upon Jim’s wet statistics is much needed.

And just to throw more chum into the water: in the eyes of the law they are all “persons” due equal protection, citizens or no.

A war was fought over that point, and the Georgians lost.

By Shark Sammich

December 7, 2007 10:03 AM | Link to this

Deegee’s wisdom:

JW’s paragraph about immigrants is disturbing on many levels.

When it comes to Jimbo, it helps to lower expectations. Mine are somewhere around the ant’s-knees level.

Conservatives are desperate; their wheels are falling off, they’re going to lose another national election (big-time, I suspect), and their only hope is to stir enough of the faithful to vote against scary brown-people hordes.

“Immigration” (as if that were really what we were discussing, which we’re not) will be their primary wedge-issue topic, and they’ll base it on lies and bigoted stupidity like that on display in Jim’s column today.

By Daedalus

December 7, 2007 10:08 AM | Link to this

When Wooten’s “band of right-wingers” takes over the Cobb County man that yelled slurs and tried to shoot two gay men in Mid-town will get the Medal of Freedom.

We can have our own brand of an intolerant theocracy right here in Georgia if we can just get rid of the last few liberals in the Georgia house and Senate and then Wooten can be the Chief of the Georgia Morality Police.

By Silly Jim

December 7, 2007 10:08 AM | Link to this

When my band of right-wingers take over,

Band? Take over? What a joke……

By Van

December 7, 2007 10:11 AM | Link to this

MidSouth

“The latest Intelligence Estimate showing that Iran shut down its program to produce nuclear weapons in 2003 is another example of egg on the face of the Bush Administration.”

I would have to disagree. If we had invaded and found out later that President Whatshisname of Persia, lied to impress and fool his neighbor, then it would be egg of the face of President Bush.

As we found out in Iraq, Saddam went to great lengths to bluff Iran into thinking he had WMDs. I wonder who President Wahtshisname would be trying to bluff or impress? I do wonder what the 500 metric tons of partially enriched uranium and yellowcake ore, that Saddam had, would be classified as?

This shows that any lead up involves the sissy-boy diplomatic approach. Between the UN sanctions and the weak spine EU approach, President wahtshisname blinked.

BTW, what do you use enriched uranium for? Especially since the EU promised to supply fuel rods if they stopped enriching uranium. ?? I wonder…

By Shar

December 7, 2007 10:12 AM | Link to this

Howdy Glenn @ 9:41 - The program you mention is news to me, and I am about sure that the public school system does not test students for learning disabilities, since they don’t live up to their legal obligation to provide services to those who have been so diagnosed. Why lay out for very expensive tests just to point up your existing deficiencies?

Your description of the eyeglass program made me think of a time when I cleaned a huge pile of clothing from the lost and found at my kids’ elementary school and took the warm items (how do kids not notice when they have left their pants and coats? An ongoing mystery) to a fellow PTA president at a high-poverty K-5 school. She was delighted with the clothing, as many of the kids arrived in dirty clothes, summer weight stuff or without coats, but worried about where she could keep it. Turned out the kids loved the clothing but that many of them didn’t want to take their allotment home as they feared their parents would sell them for drug money. So they rode the bus cold and bundled up for recess.

I hope that is not the reason the schools retain the glasses. If the kids are very young, the loss-to-use rate at home is probably very high, and with replacement unaffordable and retention vital, it would make sense to keep the glasses safe in the place where they are most needed. If we’re talking middle or high schoolers, where the skills of independent study are being promoted, it’s a tougher call. I’d hope that, if the glasses are retained in school, there would be ample afterschool study areas (and corresponding means of getting home later) where the kids could do their homework with the benefit of vision.

One of my son’s friends alighted in our neighborhood elementary school the day before fourth grade began, abandoned by a negligent and peripatetic mother as he had been earlier by his alcoholic dad. He’d never spent more than three months in any school and was failing across all subjects. Within two weeks, the teacher had recommended vision testing, which proved he was extremely nearsighted. He got his first pair of glasses a few days later, and his life literally turned around. Turns out he’s brilliant, and in their senior year at Grady he was admitted to every (very competitive) college he applied to with huge scholarships and grants. I hope that the program you describe can make similarly dramatic changes, and if there has to be a tradeoff between greater accessibility and effectiveness in a place of greatest need, I would have to go with the latter.

Sorry for the run on.

By Shark Sammich

December 7, 2007 10:19 AM | Link to this

Shar @ 10:12

Sorry for the run on.

Never any need to apologize for sharing what I found to be an inspiring story. I need them, as does everyone, to keep from thinking the world’s gone totally scummy.

By Phil o sopher

December 7, 2007 10:19 AM | Link to this

I like Math and Science - two things that I do not use nearly as much these days. So, I have to take advantage of the opportunities as they arise. For example, those pit bulls each get $928073/54 or $17,187 PV (that’s Present Value). Considering the life expectancy and daily needs of a pit bull, that money could make quite a dent in the total cost of providing for these animals - all the way from cradle to grave. I wonder if they’ll have to pay tax on the lump sum settlement as well as on any capital gains, dividends, and interest from future investments? Now what age does a pit bull have to be before its full earnings are subject to taxation? And is that in dog years or equivalent human years?

Speaking of Math, I was looking at my property tax bill and trying to relate in my little mind how these numbers might be related to something a little easier to grasp - say for example purchases. Just for the mental exercise, let’s start with a $150,000 property in a county with a county ad valorem tax of 8.19 mils. Then the county tax would be $150,000 x 0.4 x 0.00819 or $491 for the year. (Don’t pick on me about the tax savings associated with homeowner’s exemptions,the use of sales taxes to offset property tax, etc. Those are insults best left to a different message with proper devotion given to the details.). Now let’s assume that this is an average taxpayer’s county tax (for the sake of just having fun with Math). For starters, how many average taxpayers does it take to purchase an average county manager in an average county for one year? Let’s start by assuming you could get an average manager really cheap - say a total cost including salary, vacation, sick days, 401k, dental, vision, health, legal, and pension of only $100,000 per year. So, the number of average taxpayers would only be $100,000 / $491 or 204 taxpayers. Now wasn’t that fun?

I remember hearing several politicians say something like “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”. Now my translation of this well known phrase is “It serves me just fine the way it is”. How about you?

By Tiny Tim

December 7, 2007 10:20 AM | Link to this

The CIA destroyed their videotape of “moles gone wild” in the most obvious case of obstruction of justice in the history of our republic. Gates should weigh in here, and then we’ll know what happened. It comes down to what bush/cheney knew and when they knew it. They kept asking Nixon why he didn’t just destroy the tapes.

CNN just reported that a baby has been born with a lit cigar in it’s mouth. (Has Cuba has cloned Fidel Castro?)

Wooten claims his mental health is superb, but unfortunately, a patient is not allowed to diagnose himself. A oft- repeated, (and totally wrong), definition of insanity is someone who does the same thing over and over and expects a different result. Wooten blogs everyday expecting his band of rightwingers to comprehend his message, which they nearly always fail to do.

Take Wooten’s original brief of the Ga. Supreme Court’s decision concerning proximity to day care centers of homeowning sex offenders. His band of rightwingers never blogged a word about it not because they didn’t understand it, (which they didn’t), but because they’re afraid that I’ll expose their ignorance, (which I will). They’re like little baby girls with poopoo dydees. Wooten’s attempt at explaining the decision was possibly the most convoluted summation I’ve ever read.

Basically I see the decision as a restraining order concerning the physical presence of a sex offender near any prohibited facility. You can own property anywhere, just stay a certain distance away from the banned facility. He can own his biz, but cant be there. The home he lives in is the exception and the meat of the courts decision. A sex offender cant be ambushed by the sudden, new construction of a banned facility within the restricted distance of the law, because it would subvert the homeowning sex-offender previous compliance with the distance requirement. Thus he is allowed to be present in his home, but he still cant walk past that daycare facility. It’s still a restraining order, but his home is his sanctuary and neutral zone, sort to speak.

Any challenges to this brief? Speak now or forever hold your brief beefs.

score

By Glenn

December 7, 2007 10:22 AM | Link to this

Shar, thanks very much, and I really really want to respond pointedly in a minute, but first I got to point out to Daedalus that the entire country is bound by an intollerant theocracy of ROM/RAMDOSPINKOs so superstitious that they don’t even realize that they are engaged constantly in metaphysical speculations of the most pathetic kind.

To a person, those who liken anything at all in the present-day United States to theocracy, are themselves theocrats. Without fail.

By Van

December 7, 2007 10:33 AM | Link to this

James

Family Values -Larry Craig Ted Kennedy -Jim Galley Barney Frank -David Vitter Bill Clinton

Want to go on?

By deegee

December 7, 2007 10:42 AM | Link to this

Immigration is the wedge issue that republicans can certainly count on to rile their base. In their mind it’s the galvanizing force that will bring the flock together after being scattered by the religious IED detonated by Mitt. The story behind the story referenced today by Shark Sammich@ 8:52 is that California, like the entire US, is processing and approving new US citizens at a record breaking pace, and they ain’t voting republican.

By Shark Sammich

December 7, 2007 10:44 AM | Link to this

Van, do go on. Try to keep it reasonably present tense, and not ancient history (Barney friggin’ Frank? Ted Kennedy?).

The current decade will do.

We’ll wait.

By Glenn

December 7, 2007 10:48 AM | Link to this

Tiny Mimesis,

How come I like what the CIA did?

It’s characteristically pompous of you to assert both that we conservatives can’t understand the jurisprudence of the restraint upon the former sex offender AND that none of us had anything to say about it. Also characteristically full o s**.

I, for one, commended Jim for having the guts to pee on his Amen corner in siding with a [again, former] sex offender. It’s disgusting how we’ve been coming to treat them. It’s so sick that it’s a job for a sicko like M. Foucault to figure.

For your part, privilege the castle over the man, and thereby, like all the others, make of him an object. Our scapegoating must ever be our tocsin, our mineshaft canary. That is true both jointly and severally.

By Diogenes

December 7, 2007 10:50 AM | Link to this

Jim;

You comment that “we should quit using the uninsured as a measure of slippage in economic conditions.” I can’t think of a better standard for determining our health as a nation or a state. What would you suggest?

By Shark Sammich

December 7, 2007 10:53 AM | Link to this

degee, please to explain this “California, like the entire US, is processing and approving new US citizens at a record breaking pace, and they ain’t voting republican.”

Is it really record breaking, the pace of new applicants being processed and approved as new citizens? Serious question.

I’m not looking for raw numbers, but rather these new citizens expressed as a percentage of the population.

Not that I have a problem with it, I’ve just never heard it expressed that way. If anything, what I hear about is what kind of hellish difficulties people experience when they try to enter the country legally, and I assume it’s also a pain in the arse, once in, to obtain citizenship. But I only have friend/acquaintance anecdotes to go by.

By getalife

December 7, 2007 10:54 AM | Link to this

My mental health? Superb

Jim just exposed the flaw in the poll. wingnuts lie.

10 million missing emails, two torture tapes destroyed, Iraq genocide, threatening WWIII for no reason, freedom and election stolen, lying, cheating, stealing and killing are evil doings.

The gop are not religious. They are hypocrites that will burn in hell.

The good folks who have chosen the right path against these evil doers are the liberals.

Real Christians should rethink their party and choose the right path.

By Dusty

December 7, 2007 11:01 AM | Link to this

Well, I am feeling full of good will this morning, hardly angry enough to absolve the fears of our poor misguided liberals like undercover agents Red and Cap, the “ignorance is bliss” pair. But, considering all the nice compliments posted here, I feel compelled to straighten out at least one lib.

Take MidSouth Phil,compassionate fellow that he is. Hmmm euthanize all mental patients, huh? That would take care of about half the libs so that one is open to thought. But, how about cancer patients? Lotsa trouble. Prostate patients? Stop the running. TB patients? Stop the spread. On and on. We can eliminate all kinds of problems.

And then MidSouth seems to believe Ahmajinabad more than President Bush. The President is being cautious. Scientists in Iran have suddenly turned into the likes of Mr. Goodwrench hardly agrees with past facts.

You may want to ignore signs of killer atomic uranium production. But I am pleased that the President is not ready to jump on the band wagon. “Egg on his face”? Better that than in your face quick-cook astral atomics.

By Glenn

December 7, 2007 11:04 AM | Link to this

get, don’t be a git. What the Hell is a “Real Christian”?

By deegee

December 7, 2007 11:05 AM | Link to this

Van@ 10:11, “I do wonder what the 500 metric tons of partially enriched uranium and yellowcake ore, that Saddam had, would be classified as?”

It would be classified as low enriched uranium, insufficient enough to be used directly in a bomb. The 1.8 million tons of yellowcake were again of a low grade commonly used in fuel for commercial power reactors. Iran did not have the centrifuges needed to convert low enriched uranium into weapons-grade uranium.

By Glenn

December 7, 2007 11:08 AM | Link to this

Give it a few minutes, Dusty. They’ll get your back up, all right.

By Shar

December 7, 2007 11:11 AM | Link to this

James @ 10:23 and Van @ 10:33 - Your lists are counterproductive. Playground highjinks are routinely defended by “She did it first! He hit harder than I did!”, and such defenses are just as routinely shot down. Most Americans don’t care what other people do in the privacy of their own bedrooms, as long as it is consensual and not predatory. Craig, Vitter, Frank, Kennedy and a host of others face voters’ judgement on ethics and hypocrisy once “outed”, and overall the voters are pretty good at putting things in perspective.

Most Americans do care when personal behavior translates into public corruption, whether the malefactor bears a parenthetical R, a D or an I. “They’re worse than we are!” is petty, short sighted and ultimately damaging to the country as one side seeks to excuse its criminals by degrading the other. Coming up with positive solutions is more difficult, more persuasive and more important than scoring imaginary points.

By getalife

December 7, 2007 11:20 AM | Link to this

Glenn,

Well, it is not rudy.

Geez.

Pro torture and pro war are the worst of sins.

The gop ♥ both and are not real Christians.

I judge them by their sins.

By Van

December 7, 2007 11:34 AM | Link to this

getalife

Not the worse of sins

19th-century libertarian philosopher and economist John Stuart Mill wrote

“War is an ugly thing but not the ugliest of things; the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feelings which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse.”

And in connection

“A man who has nothing which he is willing to fight for, nothing which he cares more about than he does about his personal safety, is a miserable creature who has no chance of being free, unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. As long as justice and injustice have not terminated their ever-renewing fight for ascendancy in the affairs of mankind, human beings must be willing, when need is, to do battle for the one against the other.”

By TW

December 7, 2007 11:39 AM | Link to this

In this past year we have lost nearly another thousand American soldiers in the Republican abortion of a war in Iraq. While the families of those lost sit with the empty spot at the table every night, it is at least comforting to know that Mr. Wooten’s mental health is Superb.

By Shark Sammich

December 7, 2007 11:47 AM | Link to this

Wonder who John Stuart Mill was trying to bait into fighting when he wrote those words?

Context is everything, ya know.

By Van

December 7, 2007 11:48 AM | Link to this

Shar,

Yes it is counter-productive.

The purpose was to show that neither party can claim ethical or moral superiority. James wanted to portray the left as ethically superior, since they have no morals.

By getalife

December 7, 2007 11:48 AM | Link to this

“Bush under fire for lying about Iran nukes:

The White House Thursday struggled to defend the dire warnings about Iran made by US President George W. Bush even after he had learned that Tehran had likely frozen its atomic weapons program in 2003.”

Damn shame w is not man enough to resign in disgrace like Nixon for his country.

By Glenn

December 7, 2007 11:51 AM | Link to this

TW, how must any writers during previous American wars have managed to ply their trade at all, sane or otherwise, or even bathe themselves in the knowledge of Americans dying by multiples of that number in a single day’s battle?

How indeed.

Get a grip.

By deegee

December 7, 2007 11:51 AM | Link to this

Shark Sammich, Below is a paragraph excerpted from the article in the link. In order to become a citizen you must first be a green card carrying, permanent legal resident. You must wait for five years after you receive your green card in order to apply for citizenship. In order to become a permanent legal resident you must have a US sponsor, either family or employer, and have waited however long it takes for your application to be processed. The time it takes can depend on where you live, and how busy the USCIS service center is in your area. It can depend on whether your sponsor is a US citizen or another permanent legal resident. It can take years for family based visas to be approved and it can take months or years for employment based visas to be approved. The law was changed in April of 2002 to deny anyone that entered without a visa the ability to obtain a change of status and become a permanent legal resident, thereby receiving a green card. Prior to April 2002, an illegal immigrant could pay a fine and apply for permanent legal status

“Citizenship applications from the greater Los Angeles area more than doubled in the four months between February and May – compared with a year earlier – and rose 50 percent nationwide, according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.”

http://www.ocregister.com/ocregister/homepage/abox/article_1767958.php

By Glenn

December 7, 2007 11:53 AM | Link to this

Thank you, Van, for that salubrious gust.

By getalife

December 7, 2007 11:58 AM | Link to this

Here is something the wingnuts can focus their hate in their souls on:

“Most Southern Baptists regard Mormonism as a satanic cult

“Huckabee was honest enough not to deny that he believes the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is a cult — and in fact, many if not most of his fellow Southern Baptists regard the LDS church as a satanic cult.”

Get em wingnuts.

Bwa.

By Shark Sammich

December 7, 2007 12:06 PM | Link to this

deegee, thank you for the link.

The charts presented in this story are certainly of local interest, but given that they chart raw numbers; only reach back to 2001, and only cover the “greater Los Angeles area”, it’s kind of difficult to get a big-picture view of things.

I still don’t know that we’re seeing a higher rate of US citizenship requests in (say) the past five-year period than we’d seen in any other era. I don’t mind people raising this issue—I’m not going to scream “racist” if they do—I just want it to be reality based, is all.

And while I’m here, I’m utterly puzzled by what any of this has to do with the failure to gather sufficient CA petition signatures…

By Glenn

December 7, 2007 12:07 PM | Link to this

Shar,

thank you again for responding on eyeglasses, hearing aids and other simple corrections of the most common learning disabilities. It’s a mark of the ulterior motives of the adults who run the school systems that they do not insist that the People pay for blanket testing.

And you’re right, it’s a “what we don’t know won’t cost us” thing. Almost all the big states evade their responsibility in this terrible way. What’s surprising is that most of the little states, even tax-poor poor ones such as Mississippi, do so test.

That’s a fine story, yours about the warm clothing, and you’re a fine storyteller. Insofar as humans, like all the most intelligent mammals, are narrative beings, storytelling is a vital part of a child’s development. The great linguist Walter Ong observed that this was the key to the educability of the American slaves; it was their necessarily oral subculture, one based on storytelling. The children of the Big House had their McGuffey Readers, the slave children barred from literacy had stories.

I just find that interesting, as it happens that my training is in historical anthropology. What’s so wonderful about stories like yours and the Teachers Aide’s is that they tell of another subculture, the subculture of schooling, in which children are often not only beside the point, but in the way. They are to be seated, not heard. And seated, only for ADA.

These stories tell an enormous truth.

Au fils de fleuve~~~

By getalife

December 7, 2007 12:22 PM | Link to this

The new world headline is this:

[“A Nation of Laws, Not Men by Senator Edward M Kennedy Fri Dec 07, 2007 at 09:01:37 AM PST I’m headed to the Senate floor right now to speak about startling news from today’s newspapers:

The Central Intelligence Agency in 2005 destroyed at least two videotapes documenting the interrogation of two Qaeda operatives in the agency’s custody, a step it took in the midst of Congressional and legal scrutiny about its secret detention program, according to current and former government officials.

The videotapes showed agency operatives in 2002 subjecting terrorism suspects — including Abu Zubaydah, the first detainee in C.I.A. custody — to severe interrogation techniques. The tapes were destroyed in part because officers were concerned that video showing harsh interrogation methods could expose agency officials to legal risks, several officials said.](http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/12/7/11571/3900/923/419108)

How many crimes will be committed by w before you wingnuts demand justice?

By Glenn

December 7, 2007 12:36 PM | Link to this

Well, get, it’s clear by now that you Neocons call us Neocons “wingnuts” because so many of us have metaphysical convictions of which you disapprove—as distinguished from the metaphysical convictions of which you Neocons are unaware.

[Author’s note: henceforth and forevermore I shall refer to all persons as Neocons, as you Neocon bozos have made a Rohrschach of the word.]

As for the Neocon Romney and the equally Neocon Huckabee, while this here Neocon is inclined to the belief that the religion invented by the son of the Neocon Joseph Smith, Sr. in no way constitutes Christianity (else no necessity for the invention), nonetheless I’m equally prepared to conclude that Romney is objectively more Christian than Huckabee.

Both men have stated their creeds in the past 10 days. Romney yesterday said that he reveres Jesus Christ as Savior, and pointedly avoided proclaiming the divinity of the Neoconservative Nazarene, which profession is, of course, prerequite to and definitive of Christian faith, though it be sacrilege in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.

For his part Mr. Huckabee took it upon himself to declare his creed during the recent CNN debacle, in response to CNN’s snide question regarding his position on Biblical inerrancy. Mr. Huckabee departed from CNN’s script to take up his own text, a canned chestnut on what he volunteered was, to him, the essence of the Christian creed: housing and feeding the needy.

Thus, from Huckabee, not a word of Golgotha nor of the Upper Room, nor the Salvific murder of God Himself by such as us. Instead:

• pleasantries and harmless bromides; instead,

• a succinct statement of a Golden Rule so unspecial as to have been embraced by every faith tradition from the beginning of time;

• instead of the religion which comes from God, ethics, the divine punishment of Man;

• instead of the Earth-shaking news of Jesus Christ and Him crucified, a convenient truth.

Because Huckabee chose both this topic and this answer and did so during family hour, it would be better for him were he millstoned and cast into the sea. God damn him.

He is no more a seriously observant Christian than are the ordained Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton or Bill Moyers, or the self-annointed Jimmy Carter, who seemingly cannot let a day pass without tooting the horn of his own good works, his very ethical superiority, as vide his website this day.

[Rudy 08]

By TW

December 7, 2007 12:37 PM | Link to this

Glenn - why so angry/sensitive as of late? Huckabee Blues?

Get a grip yourself, girlfriend :)

Van - “Bravery - Wisdom = Fool”

By Shar

December 7, 2007 12:51 PM | Link to this

Glenn @ 12:07 - Orphans of the storm indeed, and blasted by one after another. The subculture of schooling, the subculture of negligence, the subculture of ignorance - ours of their reality and vice versa. An interesting addendum to the warm clothes story is that the school in question sits in a very, very pricey neighborhood of our fair city and was a high performing community-based school until APS got snarky about its racial composition and started bussing in students from very poor neighborhoods. The PTA raised money for additional tutoring, supplies, computers, etc but asked that APS limit the bussing to 30% of total enrollment so the school could handle the extra demands. APS took offense at this slight to their power and refused, whereupon within one year the school became 100% bussed, all the neighborhooders having been yanked.

All the remedial programs, funded by community donations, were overwhelmed or shut down. These kids, already blasted by poverty and parental neglect, were hit again by APS’s arrogance and then again by local disinterest, to walk shivering into school between towering McMansions.

It is very hard for most of us to imagine these kids’ reality, where a pair of specs or a warm coat can be life changing. Hard to accept that such situations exist at all in America, much less in their substantial numbers, quivering in sight of our terraced lawns or, like my son’s friend, slipping unnoticed in and out of a shredded education. When it erupts into your own focal field, the immediate urge is to gather up the orphans and shield them from the blast, but twist and turn as you may you can’t deflect every assault. School system, parents, economy, social and medical “safety nets” - all point at the other as the biggest culprit as a means of protecting their own self-interest. That’s why the posts of James and Van so annoyed me - petty sniping and generalized posturing by the folks of various alphabetical persuasion with their hands in the till is somehow supposed to distract the rest of us from the face that our collective pockets have been picked. And its particularly hard to take when those pockets are in little shorts on a January day.

By Tiny Tim

December 7, 2007 12:51 PM | Link to this

Glenn, haven’t you graced us all enough today with your dozen odd posts that nobody read? You p-p-presume way too much, you allow yourself indulgences that I wouldn’t give a popular comedian.

You dont understand a word of the supreme court’s decision about homeowning sex offenders, and you certainly didn’t spot Wooten’s convolution of the facts when he first blogged about it. The day you have an original relevant insight into the news, well, sir, THAT’S the day I’ll respect you. Fair ‘muff?

God Bless us everyone.

By Glenn

December 7, 2007 12:55 PM | Link to this

getalife, to say that you “judge them by their sins” is to turn Christianity on its head, in the manner of the Kanaka chieftan who told Twain, “We understand Christianity; we have eaten the missionaries.” [My very favorite Twain joke, not least as I’m an honorary Haoulie Islander to our Kanaka aunties.]

The point is not to judge the sins of others—if by judge you mean to presume to rank them spritually—but rather to know them by their “fruits”, what Brother Bush would call their “results”. This is fair enough, surely, but the creed always has required two things more: that one discern that is oneself who is judged by the results; and that the results are to be achieved in witness of one’s complete love of and devotion to Jesus, the crucified Savior.

Trust me, get, like Twain I’m an anthropologist. It’s no harder to cram for the Christian quiz than it is to cram for the Jewish one or the Hindu one or the Buddhist oneness-of-the-One.

It’s just that Americans, being a perpetually adolescent people, run skeert of things Christian, with the result that they tend to understand that particular tradition—often their own—as a Micronesian understands a B-29.

Now, as to your vicious judgment of all Republicans, phuque you.

I’m going with a freely confessing fellow sinner for President.

By Glenn

December 7, 2007 12:59 PM | Link to this

Mimesis, you have your head up your alimentary canal. The Court’s decision, as usual, is not in the least difficult to construe, nor is it difficult to see its difficulties. If you want to be a pompous obscurantist, go right ahead. And please stop reading my posts.

By Phil H

December 7, 2007 1:05 PM | Link to this

Tiny Tim, I would like to address just one part of your assessment regarding the Georgia Supreme Court’s recent decision regarding Georgia’s restrictions on our Registered Sex Offenders (RSOs). You stated that “Basically I see the decision as a restraining order concerning the physical presence of a sex offender near any prohibited facility.” and “Thus he [a RSO] is allowed to be present in his home, but he still cant walk past that daycare facility.” You seem to be under the impression that RSOs are prohibited from physically going to certain locations. That is wrong.

Georgia has never had any law that prohibits RSOs from physically going anywhere. A RSO can walk around and around a school or daycare all day and all night if he/she desires. The only restriction that has been illegally placed on RSOs is that they cannot “loiter” within 1,000 feet of various locations. This became law on 7/1/06 and the complete list of locations that are restricted for “loitering” is: child care facilities, churches, schools, all public and private parks and recreation facilities, playgrounds, skating rinks, neighborhood centers, gymnasiums, school bus stops, and public and community swimming pools.

Again, there is no restriction on going or being anywhere, the only thing that is illegal is “loitering”. And I can tell you for certain that it is not helping public safety AT ALL and is not preventing RSOs from going to those locations. To the contrary, it has decreased public safety and RSOs go to those locations as they always have. RSOs are not even restricted from going to parks and sitting there all day or from going to swimming pools and relaxing for hours. That is because that is not loitering - the facilities are being used as a normal person would use them in a normal manner. Some members of law enforcement do seem to believe that RSOs are restricted from activities such as those but I promise you that if anyone is actually ever arrested for that, a lawsuit will follow swiftly.

The simple truth of Registration, all these Banishment laws, etc., etc., etc., etc. is that they HAVE NOT IMPROVED PUBLIC SAFETY IN THE SLIGHTEST. If you believe they have, you are a fool. But unfortunately the laws are not just worthless, they are much worse, and they have done a huge amount of damage to our society. That damage is continual and it is increasing rapidly.

By Glenn

December 7, 2007 1:21 PM | Link to this

tftt,

Bummer about Fogerty. Not sorry to have missed it, then.

By MELO

December 7, 2007 1:23 PM | Link to this

We should quit using the uninsured as a measure of slippage in economic conditions. because the unisured popn is largely made up of half decent human beings who do not participate in that economy. Wooten Conservative logic.

By Camus

December 7, 2007 1:27 PM | Link to this

Glenn,

A couple of comments for you.

First off, your boy Rudy is toast. Despite the fact that America inexplicably forgave his (very public) serial adulteries, the latest revelations regarding his providing NYPD chauffeurs for his banging board du jour is causing his numbers to tank. Add to that the daily adjustments to his official explanations, plus the fact that his “word” on this is verified by the likes of Bernie Kerik. All this equals a campaign implosion. Rudy’s skin thin is also on display in this episode, and the rest of the country will soon realize what New Yorkers knew years ago. As I said…toast.

As to your plaint: “Ain’t it great to live in a land where it’s considered sophisticated to mock the religious as lunatics?”

We must live in different lands. I live in a country where it seems that any expression of non-religious belief is met with ostracization. I am very careful to keep my agnostic beliefs to myself where I live and work, for to do otherwise is certain professional and social disaster.

We live in a country where over 75% believe in fairy tales about angels and a physical place called heaven where we will go to live if we are “righteous”, and a physical place called he11 where we will go if we are “sinners”. Yet only 42% believe in the theory of evolution.

I agree that the American public is “perpetually adoloescent”, as you so accurately describe. However, I suggest it is the embrace of angels and fairies and other pleasing fairy tales that define the core of this adolescence, this obsession with triviality and irrelevance that leads our electorate — not to mention our so-called serious media — to dwell on whether a presidential candidate is someone you’d want to have a beer with, or whether he has broad shoulders or gravitas or JFK-like hair.

It has come to a point where any presidential candidate must genuflect to the Christianist superstitions to even have a prayer (sorry) of being elected. Even your boy Rudy kneels before the Christianist elite. And we have a guy like Romney unable to grant that atheists or other non-Christians even have a substantial role to play in our society.

And thus we end up with a sitting president, and at least two candidates for his replacement (Rmoney and Huck) who believe that they receive messages directly from God that will guide their policy decisions. In a civilized world, people who believe that imaginary skygod talks to them are considered, and quite correctly, to be lunatics. Yet in our perpetually adolescent culture, this claim is somehow seen as a plus.

I concede that the US is not a theocracy…yet. However, if one pays attention to the fundie/evangelical crowd, they are quite open in their wish for a theocratically-based governance in this country.

By getalife

December 7, 2007 1:33 PM | Link to this

“Energy Bill in the Senate Right Now [Updated]John Kerry, 12.07.2007

Republicans have a choice: they can join with us in trying to face the challenges of the 21st century, or they can go the way of the Whigs.”

Indeed, this one will show if they can stop suking the t** of big oil and ME oil.

w will veto.

By Glenn

December 7, 2007 1:43 PM | Link to this

Tip top, Shar, your 12:51. It really is a device for the devouring of children. The Moloch of our day.

Because we are almost all its products we seldom see it. The finger-pointing to which you refer is in itself highly significant, of human impulses and of larger forces that are perhaps better surmised than described here, as you know.

The parent bashing in the ed. schools alone tells of an almost Solomonic contest between parents and those whose authority so resentfuly derives in loco parentis. Maternal jealousy, the baby be damned. Hell, cut her in half if it comes to that. As long as I get the title, the power & perks, screw the responsibility of parenting.

A teacher actually surfaced here last month pushing compulsory exams for everything from retirement planning to voting. While such as Tiny Tim stood idly by, Jim actually signed on to a poll exam! How schooled up can we get? Made me embarrassed to be an educator, and especially to have worked for the union, which she proposed administer one or the other of these tests.

The Psalmist sed: “Like as arrows in the hand of the giant, even so are the little children.”

By Dusty

December 7, 2007 2:04 PM | Link to this

Well, whoopee, we have all the nonChristians telling the Christians what they believe, should believe and aint gonna believe, by George.

But nevermind, I am still sobbing over Shar’s story of poor cold children shivering in the schoolyard in their threadbare shorts, between McMansions at that. Dickens could not have done it better. Shar’s Christmas Carol.

And what is your solution, Shar? A turkey in every pot and a nice used coat? No school busing?

Which brings to mind, Tiny Tim, the Christmas gadfly and monitor. Go throw a snowball or fill a reservoir, Tiny lil’ PoFo. If you are good, James will make your list to give Santa. James is good at lists. He hasn’t learned to write sentences yet.

Ah, but the issues, as Wooten wrote. Bring the tissues for the issues!! Or better still..Bring good wishes!!!

By Captain Freedom

December 7, 2007 2:09 PM | Link to this

THE Captain notes with relief the following remark by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), on U.S. casualties in Iraq: “Nobody is happy about losing lives but remember these are not draftees, these are full-time professional soldiers.”

And so, fellow Right Thinkers, THE Captain is relieved to have instruction from above as to how to avoid the occasional sick feeling He experiences when He wakens at 3 a.m., bedsheets soaked with sweat, as THE Captain has had nightmares that perhaps the stories He has heard are true, that Our God is indeed a wrathful God who objects to the killing and maiming of innocents and the sending to-their-early-grave several thousands of our brave and noble young troops, and that THE Captain bears some responsibility for this and will pay the ultimate price in brimstone and damnation.

Well, since it is all about THE Captain, He is quick to engage Our Creator in negotiation. Dismissing the killing and maiming of innocents part was never too hard to bear, as THE Captain just reminded himself (and God) that they are all swarthy terrorists, not really innocents at all, but rather necessary casualties in the Permanent War on Terror.

But the troops, man, that part really stuck in THE Captain’s craw at 3 a.m., Mrs. Freedom snoring gently away as I feared for my mortal soul for my part in sending these thousands to their death. There seemed no way to approach Our Lord to supplicate for forgiveness on this score. The gaping yaw of that physical place called hell (yes, Camus, you pansy Frenchman, it DOES exist!!!!) loomed beneath THE Captain, and he was sore afraid.

But now, THE Captain is chipper, hale, and hearty, and Our Celestial Sovereign is assuaged. As Sen McConnell points, out, these dead troops are, after all, paid professional volunteers. It’s not like they were drafted or anything. Thank God Sen McConnell cleared that up for us. Really. Thanks.

So no worries Dusty and jbm. If one of your loved one falls in battle, the GOP Minority Leader has absolved you from feeling bad about the loss. After all, they volunteered.

Merry Christmas everyone!

By Glenn

December 7, 2007 2:11 PM | Link to this

Camus, what you wrote is marvelous and, to my diseased mind, very important today.

I will of course be sad to see Rudy go, especially when the time comes, as you say it will, when he is overtaken by the likes of Romney and Huckabee, neither of whom I can abide. Give me a Paine or a Franklin or for that matter a Nader over those strange men any day. Tim the Tiny sez it’s licentious to address such matters here, but I don’t think that you and I are taking any liberties not already in our gift.

Rather it is Tiny’s beloved AJC (I say beloved, because he so earnestly and tirelessly assumes the burdens of the blog editor, Lea Donosky) which takes our liberties and trashes them when it deliberately republishes the tortious libels against Giuliani, as distinguished from e.g. the facts you cite.

Of course we should be on guard against theocracy in any form. I have a hunch, for example, that many of the respondents to the Darwin survey sense that that epochal theory has been extrapolated into an all-purpose metaphysical explanation and fundament of repressive dogma, as I would argue it has been. Scientific theory, very good. Academic dogma, very bad. Bad dogma! Bad dogma!

It’s very important for people who know and care about their liberties to learn that secularists are not exactly having a field day, and I for one regret having made it sound so. It would be nice if you’d trust that I would without hesitation make common cause with you were you privately decide to fight such intolerance publicly, as you in part have done here.

It would be similarly nice were the AJC to believe that it is not only possible but legitimate to take its constitutionally abusive defamation of a candidate more seriously than one takes the candidate. But such niceties are not to be expected of the AJC nor the board of the local chapter of Young Democrats.

Like you, I prefer to keep my metaphysical positions to myself, which paradoxically is exactly why I can’t bear to see them trifled with by pantywaist power maniacs. I’ve had enough of it in my life, and am no longer of a mind to remain mute.

Evidently I feel more like you do than unlike you do.

I’ll be damned.

By deegee

December 7, 2007 2:11 PM | Link to this

Shark Sammich, the crush of applications for US citizenship has the USCIS buried in paperwork right now. I can’t find any data to suggest that the rate of permanent residents becoming citizens is unprecedented over, say the last 50 years. However, it is unprecedented over the last say 10 or fifteen years. USCIS have received an estimated 3.5 million applications over a recent two-month period when the agency projected a workload of 3.2 million applications for fiscal years 2008 and 2009. That should give you an idea of what is happening, and how this may shape election outcomes in states like California, Florida, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, Ohio and New York. This should explain why republicans are taking measures in CA in order to prevent all 55 of California’s electoral votes going to the statewide winner. Instead they want to give only two votes to the statewide winner, with the rest allocated to the winner of each congressional district. Even Schwarzenegger is against it.

By Tom

December 7, 2007 2:20 PM | Link to this

Nice work, Camus. It is truly comical to hear the Christers repeatedly portraying themselves as a persecuted and oppressed minority.

By RealRep

December 7, 2007 2:21 PM | Link to this

Mike welcomes aboard those beginning to see the yankee neocon candidates for what they for really are.

Huckabee ‘08

By Dusty

December 7, 2007 2:26 PM | Link to this

Captain Freedom@2:09

Well, the tears are falling. Another Christmas Carol as told by Cap’n Freedom better known as BigHeart.

There is no sorrow like the Captain’s when he realizes that our troops…sob…are winning!! This fractures the captain’s tender nature. Oh the horror of it all. There go all the liberal’s hopes for defeat.

Oh dear, another wet pillow in the captain’s castle. Too much!! Too soon!! Should he even continue his presidential hopes for the ever hippety hop flip flop Hillary?? Oh, more tissues for the tearful!! Poor el capitan…

By Camus

December 7, 2007 2:34 PM | Link to this

Glenn: “I’ll be damned.”

LOL. Apparently, so will I !!

Thanks for your considered reply. We are likely in close agreement here, save that you are a “believer” and I am not. But no matter, an ally is hard to find in this struggle.

What is remarkable about the Romney speech is how it metaphorically disenfrachised the non-belief crowd while simultaneously reducing theological variance and sophistication to a diluted puddle of happy talk.

David Brooks of the NYT captured this nicely today:

The first casualty is the national community. Romney described a community yesterday. Observant Catholics, Baptists, Methodists, Jews and Muslims are inside that community. The nonobservant are not. There was not even a perfunctory sentence showing respect for the nonreligious. I’m assuming that Romney left that out in order to generate howls of outrage in the liberal press.

The second casualty of the faith war is theology itself. In rallying the armies of faith against their supposed enemies, Romney waved away any theological distinctions among them with the brush of his hand. In this calculus, the faithful become a tribe, marked by ethnic pride, a shared sense of victimization and all the other markers of identity politics.

In Romney’s account, faith ends up as wishy-washy as the most New Age-y secularism. In arguing that the faithful are brothers in a common struggle, Romney insisted that all religions share an equal devotion to all good things. Really? Then why not choose the one with the prettiest buildings?

By TW

December 7, 2007 2:35 PM | Link to this

Speaking of Christmas - when’s the official start day for the ‘Strawman War on Christmas?’ Do we wait for Hannakah to finish - or is Hannakah part of ‘The War?’ Gotta love those Republican ‘Wars’ we can ‘fight’ here at home without any worry of retaliation or harm…like those mighty Minutemen ganging up on the helpless immigrant. Republicans are so tough…

By GaLiberal

December 7, 2007 2:35 PM | Link to this

Moron Jim says: Data from four November Gallup Health and Healthcare polls finds that 58 percent of Republicans report their mental health as excellent, compared to 43 percent of independents and 38 percent of Democrats.

Let’s see here. One conclusion is that Rethuglicons are happy with an unnecessary war in Iraq and a multi-billion dollar deficit caused by unchecked spending and tax cuts for the uberrich while the rest of the US isn’t. Or that Rethuglicons do what they always do - they lied. My money is on the latter.

When you vote Rethuglicon, you vote against your own best interests. And Moron Jim is living proof.

By Captain Freedom

December 7, 2007 2:38 PM | Link to this

As much as it pains THE Captain to do so, He wishes to um er uh … okay, to THANK Sister Dusty for her post of 2:26. I now have another reason to not be bothered by the several thousand dead American troops…We Are Winning!!!!

Praise and jubilance. Here’s wishing for everyone a speedy invasion of Iran where we can not worry about a few thousand more Americans dying in a winning cause. Halleleuh!

Joy to the world / A war will come !!

Merry Christmas, everyone.

By Commander Guy

December 7, 2007 2:41 PM | Link to this

Hey RealRep. Care to tell us how you feel about Huckabee’s coddling of a homicidal rapist?

By Commander Guy

December 7, 2007 2:41 PM | Link to this

Hey RealRep. Care to tell us how you feel about Huckabee’s coddling of a homicidal rapist?

By GaLiberal

December 7, 2007 2:46 PM | Link to this

Moron Jim says: Data from four November Gallup Health and Healthcare polls finds that 58 percent of Republicans report their mental health as excellent, compared to 43 percent of independents and 38 percent of Democrats.

Let’s see here. One conclusion is that Rethuglicons are happy with an unnecessary war in Iraq and a multi-billion dollar deficit caused by unchecked spending and tax cuts for the uberrich while the rest of the US isn’t. Or that Rethuglicons do what they always do - they lied. My money is on the latter.

When you vote Rethuglicon, you vote against your own best interests. And Moron Jim is living proof.

By getalife

December 7, 2007 2:50 PM | Link to this

The gop voted against the Energy Bill and did not get the 60 votes to proceed.

w said he did not know of the destroyed CIA torture tapes.

This reeks of Nixon.

By Shar

December 7, 2007 3:01 PM | Link to this

Camus: You and Glenn need to shove over and make room for another of the damned. I’ll take the place by the hearth.

The sentence from Romney’s speech yesterday that sent chills down my spine is “Freedom requires religion just as religion requires freedom.” It makes no logical sense, as the purpose of organized religion is to delineate and enforce certain preferred beliefs and behaviors over others. The scarier inference, as you pointed out, is that those of us who look askance at organized religion somehow do not qualify for freedom.

We also, apparently, do not have adequate moral consciences. Romney said, “no movement of conscience can succeed in America that cannot speak to the convictions of religious people.” I guess that the efforts for equality for women and for gays will never succeed, given that Baptists and Catholics are convinced that women are second class citizens and the Episcopalians are streaming to Ethiopia rather than permit gays in the pulpit.

I’ll bring fixin’s for s’mores if you or Glenn can extricate the skewers that have been stuck into us.

By Mid-South Philosopher

December 7, 2007 3:18 PM | Link to this

A “tip of the topper” to those of you who responded to my diatribes of this morning. I have been unable to remain engaged today as I am attempting to help a family member who has been hit by the collateral damage of the home construction market crash. Seems like the corporatists really screwed-up on this sub-prime lending debacle and, as usual, hard working, middle class folks will need to reach for the Vaseline jar.

By Shark Sammich

December 7, 2007 3:25 PM | Link to this

Shar @ 3:01 - I read a transcript of Mitt’s speech almost as soon as one was available.

What’s really kind of bugging me is that it didn’t send chills down my spine. As someone who regards himself as religious but skeptical that anyone can define God; who only recently became a churchgoer and is very sympathetic to the atheists and agnostics among me, I pretty much expect politicians — both Democratic and Republican, although more often the latter — to utter exclusionary, and sometimes insulting, commentary about those who do not belong to organized religion.

In short, I expected Mitt’s speech to suck in precisely the way that it did. I didn’t expect anyone to raise much of a fuss about its suckage.

I’m a little relieved to see that some reasonable folk are.

By Dusty

December 7, 2007 3:53 PM | Link to this

Well now, Romney’s speech on religion did not relegate me to any fierce position of faith. In fact, I did not listen. I have never planned to vote for Romney and he is free to say whatever he likes. My church seems a better source for religious consideration.

The flip flops of our dear Captain are more entertaining at the moment. He sobs at his fireside while claiming contentment at “winning the war”. Ah well, the Captain does fight valiantly just like Don Quixote..”the windmills of my mind have seen the enemy and he is George W. Bush.”

Let us hope Cap’n will get the nebulous windmills of his imagination turning sweetly at Christmas.

By Get real

December 7, 2007 3:57 PM | Link to this

10 years ago people were crying that only the rich could afford homes. The feds then let 100% financing and also short term loans so people could pay off thier debt and get thier credit straight, INSTEAD they continued to spend more then they had, and did nothing to help themselves now they are crying for help b/c they can not control spending habits. They signed a contract and now they are crying. Get over it, Let them FORECLOSE on thier homes because they do not deserve homes. Illegal Immigrants do not deserve instate tuition, TO BAD. I couldnt do it, so what makes them think they should, work for a living ILLEGALS and stop robbing citizens, or go back to Mexicant.

By RealRep

December 7, 2007 4:17 PM | Link to this

@2:41 Commander Guy,

Your referencing Huffington with an exception to the rule reeks of the kind of thinking that has almost killed the Republican Party.

Rise above petty politics and help return the GOP to prominence.

Huckabee ‘08

By Mid-South Philosopher

December 7, 2007 4:17 PM | Link to this

Get Real

There can be no debate that the corporatists made horrendous decisions in loan authorizations. But they didn’t do it out of the goodness of their hearts. Those ba**ards made a mint.

The folks, who are in need of the Vaseline, are the people in the building trades, (the secretaries, the craftsmen, and the sales people)who had no hand in the making of loan policies. Now that the boom has bursted, they are out of work.

Well, by the Eternal, Georgie Bush said he was going to lower their taxes. I guess if you are unemployed, your taxes are certainly lowered.

By getalife

December 7, 2007 4:25 PM | Link to this

My goodmess, the State IG resigns, torture tapes, Iran fiasco, cover ups, fast and furious.

Interesting times we live in.

Geez.

By Dusty

December 7, 2007 4:29 PM | Link to this

Carnal Canine Kook aka Curious Observer @3:29,

Very cute, indeed. You hit the bottom of the slime barrel with your insidious commentary on Guiliani. Posting nasty insinuations and lies about politicians does not bother you one bit. After all, you carry the blanched banner of the far left fundamentalist menagerie.

By dustbuster

December 7, 2007 4:33 PM | Link to this

Dusty, go sleep it off.

By Dusty

December 7, 2007 4:44 PM | Link to this

MidSouthPhil @3:18,

You are placing no blame on your family member who bought a home with a subprime mortgage. That is like saying the loan officers took the hand of the unconscious buyer and wrote the customer’s name on the contract. That does not “compute”.

The subprime people may have been devious but not illegal. You can call them “evil” but to be fair, you should call the buyer “stupid”.

Bringing the President into these mishandled affairs is pure politics as practiced by Democrats. I didn’t expect you to be quite so obvious.

By Commander Guy

December 7, 2007 4:47 PM | Link to this

Alas for you and the rest of Rudy’s acolytes, Dusty, the pecadilloes of America’s mayor are altogether too well documented to brush aside. He may not have molested Nathan’s dog, but he has completely $crewed the pooch in every other way.

Now Huckabee is ascendant and the scrutiny of his record is underway, it won’t be long until we see that televangelist fall, too.

Romney never had a chance, as your typical TaliBabtist dismissal of him so finely represents the attitude of wingnuttia towards this Hare Krishna in a suit.

Leaving you with who? Thompson? Even he doesn’t want him to be president. Tancredo? Hunter? McCain? He might just be the last man standing, if he can stave off senility long enough to get elected. Worked for Reagan.

Unless you are ready to embrace Ron Paul…hee hee hee hee hee hee.

By Camus

December 7, 2007 4:50 PM | Link to this

MidSouth hits it on the nose…the changes to the lending laws, much like the changes in the banking laws of the 80s and the more recent bankruptcy and pharamceutical bills, were made at the behest of the industry and was tailored to their concerns, not out of any altruism towards the “little guy”. In the end, the average joe takes it in the poop chute, and the suits count their money and laugh.

A few days ago, Wooten declared that all was well in the lending fiasco, and that because a few CEOs got canned, “the system takes care of itself”. Never mind that the axed bigwigs took payments in the tens of millions while the crisis was being sown. The system works you see. Just the way it was designed.

By Glenn

December 7, 2007 4:57 PM | Link to this

Camus & Shar,

That fine three-paragraph analysis from Brooks is sensitive, and also bold in that it calls sham religious posturing for what it is. What Brooks is mocking is the “leveling” tendency of ecumenism, which has come in for rough treatment in other blogs lately, deservedly so.

Chesterton put this nicely at the turn of the last century: in the absence of a belief in God it does not naturally follow that people will believe nothing, but rather that they will believe anything. That is the insight, per Brooks, upon which Romney relied. Huckabee also, as far back at least as his days as head of AK’s Baptist Convention, when he was an up-and-coming “statistical Christian”—a player of the LCD—as distinguished from a Christian.

Ironically my coreligionist Dusty does not get how dangerous this form of hypocrisy can be, while you and columnist Brooks do.

It’s facially obvious from the most commonly accessible texts going to the Framers’ constitutional intent that they had in mind government encroachment on religion, and not especially the other. The Anglican Church never had called the shots in America; the Crown and the Crown Government did. The colonials disestablished that Church anyway, and did so that it and all the others, not least the respected American synagogues, might thrive.

They’d long figured out the hard way (having failed to learn it from the Dutch, the Swiss, the Iroquois) that to survive, the colonists had to learn to circumambulate one another’s metaphysical toes. What was new, by 1776-89, was to lock in a means by which to keep gov’t from stepping on religion.

Oddly enough, that’s exactly what Romney and Huckabee have been doing, not only to the secularists but also, and in the extreme, to the non-secularists.

By Mid-South Philosopher

December 7, 2007 5:01 PM | Link to this

Hi, Dusty

My family member is not a sub-prime borrower. This person is a peon in the building trades industry, which has been slaughtered in this matter. Of course, when profits go down, the peons are first to go. We have to protect the corporatists and since Georgie Bush is the corporatist-in-chief (you aren’t really going to tell me he is a conservative are you?), he must bear some of the responsibility for the economic woes that are about to be unleashed upon us poor fools.

By Dusty

December 7, 2007 5:03 PM | Link to this

Cammander Guy @4:47

Don’t go into hysterical laughing over Republican possibilities. You’ve got your own slate to worry about. And if they are anything like your Congressional leadership, you should be crying the blues.

Should I bring up Reid and Pelosi, king and queen of the comic cuties in Congress? Or your “runners”, Hillary Hun & Leftover Husband, Obama of “I didn’t vote or fight for our American war!!” Edwards, super duper millionaire of the “poor and impoverished” he’s gonna represent!! That’s the best you’ve got????

Keep laughing, buddy. It’s better than crying.

By Camus

December 7, 2007 5:08 PM | Link to this

Glenn and Shar,

My, but it is cozy here by the fire! I never thought I would post approvingly anything from Brooks, so the strange bedfellows phenomena continue to accrue.

I think, Glenn, that you and I might find a way to differ on the critical importance of Darwin and the place of rationalism in our lives. Further, I find it an abrogation of the basic definition of religion per se to assert that Darwinian biology, rationalism, or secularism are in any way becoming established as “religions”. But rather than kick the hornet’s nest, I’d ask that you pass that flask of brandy and open another chocolate bar. Sometimes it is best to enjoy the company of good people and put aside the differences.

Plenty of time to fracas next week!

By TW

December 7, 2007 5:14 PM | Link to this

IG quit? Cut and ran?

Never in bin laden’s wildest dreams could he have imagined the GOP doing his handy work for him as well as they have following 9/11. Coincidence that the GOP couldn’t stand the American government to begin with?

By Dusty

December 7, 2007 5:16 PM | Link to this

MidSouthPhil@5:01

I have watched building contractors stick huge houses on every tiny lot they can get their hands on. They overbuilt and now they are under employed. The big houses took big mortgages. The greed of all is now taking its toll. I am not happy about that but do not blame home construction and subprime loan sharks on the President.

I thought you libs were blaming the oil industry on Bush. Also every downfall known to man and woman. You are the perfect example of the liberal cry that goes up after every problem, i.e. “Bush did it.”

By Commander Guy

December 7, 2007 5:18 PM | Link to this

Dusty, if I thought you had the ability to read and understand polling data, I’d refer you to several that show the Dems’ primacy in generic Pres and Congressional preference, and the numbers for each candidate in the primaries and in head-to-heads with the GOP hopefuls.

So yeah, I’m laughing, because I know the long national nightmare is coming to an end. Alas, then we’ll all wake up and have to clean up the mess made by the Bushies and the blind sheep enablers like yourself.

Something about the grown ups being in charge again after the boy who would be king goes back to Crawford makes me smile even more.

By Captain Freedom

December 7, 2007 5:31 PM | Link to this

Bravo, Dusty, for putting MidSouth in his place. Certainly, if any of his realtions have suffered misfortune, it is their fault alone, probably the result of greed or some other sin.

This is, in fact, an excellent rule of thumb for True Believers to follow…misfortune finds only those who deserve it. Rape “victims” were asking for it. Robbery “victims” should have known better than to flaunt their possessions. Queers that take a beatdown clearly were asking for it.

Why, it even extends to the fallen service men and women in Iraq and Afghanistan. If they had not gone and volunteered, they’d still be alive. But that doesn’t keep the liberal crybabies from wailing, does it.

Blame the victim. It’s the Right Thing to do.

Merry Christmas, everyone.

By Glenn

December 7, 2007 5:35 PM | Link to this

Yeah, Camus, let’s do fracasay next week, and see where Shar and the others come down if you like. Darwinian theory, beginning with Charles’s grandfather, is epochal as I say.

It’s the excesses, the many ways in which it’s been taken into purely magical directions, that are objectionably dogmatic, especially in the secondary and postsecondary schools. [This dogma even destroys the careers of fine scholars.]

But we can go over that after the eggnog wears off. In the meantime be assured my take has little or nothing to do with Creationism, only a watch on the health of the same academic freedom which got a huge shot in the arm with the advent of natural selection theory.

Surely you’re right that I probably couldn’t overstate our debt to rationalism. What is so seldom admitted outside the small circles of scholastic philosophy is the extent to which rationalism is indebted, in turn, to the Church, and by extension to the mullahs and, esp., the rabbinate.

By Dusty

December 7, 2007 5:38 PM | Link to this

Commander guy,

Don’t crawl out from under your bed yet. The facts are gonna hit you like a laser. Optimism is fun. But hallucinations are not real and that is all you’ve got.

By jbmlaw

December 7, 2007 5:42 PM | Link to this

Dear Shark @ 3:25, may I recommend Mortimer Adler’s “How to Think About God” somewhere around 1980? I know an agnostic sounds like an unusual person for the task, but I think Adler did a pretty good job.

By Dusty

December 7, 2007 5:52 PM | Link to this

Oh dear Captain,5:31

You represent your thoughts as mine. Since I am not an undercover liberal like you, I cannot twist and turn the truth into a pretzel of salty suppositions.

Beware and becalm yourself, dear Captain of the Blues and the Bedeviled. I need not your anti-war, troop discouragement and your other disabilites to embellish my posts.

Goodnight, poor prince of the peurile politicos.

By jbmlaw

December 7, 2007 5:54 PM | Link to this

Dear Commander @ 5:18, is it not a fact that all generic polls in 1980, 1984, 1988, 2000, and 2004 also showed comfortable victories for democrats one year before elections?