Any info on credit cards other than this topic?…

Well, you can also can me. I work as a proofreader sometimes?! Don’t tell my clients.

Huckabee seems to just along for the ride on his own bandwagon, and I think that’s kinda cool, even if it means he’ll probably step off quickly when it seems to be headed for the ditch. After that departure (it seems inevitable), this campaign season, which has already started WAY too early, will grind on mercilessly, without relief, a juggernaut of grim determination from the remaining candidates.

Why, the other day, I actually *forgot* John Edwards’ name, and had to resort to the circumlocution of “y’know, that glorified ambulance-chaser?” Perhaps my memory will fail me even more delightfully from now on … “y’know, that woman who used to be married to, um, that other president who DID NOT have sex with that woman, what’s-er-name, starts with an ‘M’?” “Um … I forget now, Italian surname, inhaled a lot of 9/11 wreckage fumes, still dizzy from it?” “Y’know, that Mormon who got knocked on the head with presidential ambitions, and now has amnesia about the fact that he used to almost be a liberal?” (Somehow, I can’t quite consign Obama to anonymity at this point, so I’ll let Woody make something up for me.)

By the way, am I alone in thinking there’s something pathetic about conservatism in America because a certain brand of it distinguishes itself as “Compassionate”? If “conservative” is a good predictor of being Christian, and if being Christian is a good predictor of being more compassionate than most, why the qualification? Maybe because they can’t so easily practice what’s been preached to them?

Put me down n favor of classifying abortion as Involuntary Manslaughter, with the mandatory punishment being a lifetime free supply of contraceptives and ob/gyn checkups. It’s a terrible, terrible crime, and I can think of no better punishment.

“His rise on this brand of populism is a phenomenon Democrats should be well aware of if they want to win the White House in 2008.”

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/8/14/105631/146

A) Bullshit
B) Even if it were true, helping people is the job of a just society, regardless of one or two parents.

—

MY NEW TRUCK

I bought a new Ford F-350 crew cab and returned to the dealer the next day because I couldn’t get the radio to work.

The salesman explained that the radio was voice activated.

“Nelson,” the salesman said to the radio. The radio replied,”Ricky or Willie?” “Willie!” he continued and “On The Road Again” came from the speakers.

Then he said, “Ray Charles!”, and in an instant “Georgia On My Mind” replaced Willie Nelson.

I drove away happy, and for the next few days, every time I’d say, Beethoven,” I’d get beautiful classical music, and if I said, “Beatles,” I’d get one of their awesome songs.

Yesterday, a couple ran a red light and nearly creamed my new truck, but I swerved in time to avoid them. I yelled, “Idiots!” Immediately the French National Anthem began to play, sung by Jane Fonda and Barbara Streisand, backed up by Michael Moore and The Dixie Chicks, with John Kerry on guitar, Al Gore on drums, Dan Rather on harmonica, Nancy Pelosi on tambourine, Harry Reid on spoons, Bill Clinton on sax and Ted Kennedy on Scotch.

I LOVE this truck!!!

—

I know that many of you are now begging to get on some of my friends’ email lists.

No Samuel. It’s not partisan ideology, it’s simple logic and basic observation.

Name one single piece of legislation any GOP member has every sponsored–that didn’t share enthusiastic Democratic support–that was written to help urban poor families.

You can’t, unless you think measures to make abortion more difficult, ban condom distribution in schools and jail minor drug offenders are actually HELPING urban poor families.

Yet there is GOP-backed legislation aplenty to serve the anti-gay, anti-abortion rights political agenda that the GOP promotes under its “family values” marketing slogan.

The big lie here is that the widening disintegration of the traditional American family is the result of liberal values displacing traditional ones. Thus the bromide that a return to conservative women-stay-at-home-and-have-babies values would solve the problem.

To be sure, certain welfare policies have accelerated the rise of single-parent families, but that trend was well established and would exist regardless. Clinton, to his credit, addressed some of that and had much, though not all, of his party’s support for their effort.

Family values are important and it’s well worth having an open, honest debate about what the government can or can’t do to help. But as long as the GOP uses the phrase as a code word to bash gays and working women, there can be no such discussion.

“What I was trying to say (and perhaps bunkerbuster stated it better) is that the whole “family values” charade is nothing more than disguised homophobia and excuses for censorship.”

It’s hard to know where to start here. In many poverty zones, the percentage of of fatherless households (never mind the question of marriage) approaches 60 percent. The poor are overwhelmingly single females with fatherless children. This is beyond dispute.

Back when Daniel Patrick Moynihan issued his Moynihan Report he was widely reviled as a racist (and with perfect irelevance to his arguments), but his predictions have come to pass. The trend he warned against in the American black community is now going full throttle in the white community, with the same results, but for reasons that are purely ideological and partisan you have to insist that talk about “family values” is only about hating gays and subverting the Constitution.

Tacking on “ophobic” to your chosen noun doesn’t illuminate anything but remains a favorite tactic, if not strategy of the Left.

“Islamophobia!” “Homophobia!” As charges these are unanswerable becasue they contain neither questions nor substantive criticism.

How would you like being called Christianaphobic? It reduces your opposition to the political agenda of many Christian fundamentalists and evangelicals to a psychological motivation, and implies that you aren’t willing to live in peace with these groups, under any circumstances.

I will believe that “multi-culturalism” isn’t a bad joke and an abbreviation for a set of irrational prejudices when I see Western Leftists engaging their domestic political enemies on the substance of their arguments.

The religious have the right to argue from their religion, just as ideologues have the right to argue from their ideology.

The silliest thing about this discussion is that you apparently think a pack of fleck-mouthed Christians are working to take away your rights and that we are on the 11th hour. Try to keep calm and cultivate liberality. The Christian tradition is the same as the American Christian tradition—overwhelmingly secular and liberal. Lighten up, Francis.

I don’t know about you personally Eric, but most of the people I know personally who think like this are urban and college town provincials who know few to zero American Christian fundamentalists and evengelicals,

Skynyrd were good, but I prefer the Allmans. But the country/rock fusion was perfected by Canadians – and an Arkansan – in a Band, of whose name I don’t recall…

However, I absolutely will not listen to anything by Barbra Streisand. Likewise, you don’t hear a lot of Lee Greenwood music at Democratic gatherings.

Oh well, there’s always South Carolina.

“What I was trying to say (and perhaps bunkerbuster stated it better) is that the whole “family values” charade is nothing more than disguised homophobia and excuses for censorship.”

It’s hard to know where to start here. In many poverty zones, the percentage of of fatherless households (never mind the question of marriage) approaches 60 percent. The poor are overwhelmingly single females with fatherless children. This is beyond dispute.

Back when Daniel Patrick Moynihan issued his Moynihan Report he was widely reviled as a racist (and with perfect irelevance to his arguments), but his predictions have come to pass. The trend he warned against in the American black community is now going full throttle in the white community, with the same results, but for reasons that are purely ideological and partisan you have to insist that talk about “family values” is only about hating gays and subverting the Constitution.

Tacking on “ophobic” to your chosen noun doesn’t illuminate anything but remains a favorite tactic, if not strategy of the Left.

“Islamophobia!” “Homophobia!” As charges these are unanswerable becasue they contain neither questions nor substantive criticism.

How would you like being called Christianaphobic? It reduces your opposition to the political agenda of many Christian fundamentalists and evangelicals to a psychological motivation, and implies that you aren’t willing to live in peace with these groups, under any circumstances.

I will believe that “multi-culturalism” isn’t a bad joke and an abbreviation for a set of irrational prejudices when I see Western Leftists engaging their domestic political enemies on the substance of their arguments.

The religious have the right to argue from their religion, just as ideologues have the right to argue from their ideology.

The silliest thing about this discussion is that you apparently think a pack of fleck-mouthed Christians are working to take away your rights and that we are on the 11th hour. Try to keep calm and cultivate liberality. The Christian tradition is the same as the American Christian tradition—overwhelmingly secular and liberal. Lighten up, Francis.

I don’t know about you personally Eric, but most of the people I know personally who think like this are urban and college town provincials who know few to zero American Christian fundamentalists and evengelicals,