I say yes, you say no, OR People are Strange

The Netanyahu thing pisses me off so much.  He is playing politics here, trying to help his buddy Romney into the presidency.  And as a Jew, I'm particularly offended by the idea that we will fall into lock step with whoever spouts the most right wing position on Israel and therefore getting the Jewish vote for Romney.  There are many voices in Israel cautioning against a rush to war, which may in the long run do more harm than good.   Yeah for Roger Cohen for calling it correctly.

Sun, I agree with you on what happened to me.  

Athena, I might be in Silver Spring on Thursday.  Are you available at any point?  PM me.

I get so confused sometimes, as what I always thought were supposed to be guiding Christian principals included love of neighbor, but these people who claim the high moral ground because they are "Christian" are so incredibly hateful.  I really don't get it.  And to be clear, it's not that I don't "understand" the mind-set and teachings, because I was raised in a fairly hard-core fundamentalist type religion.  What I don't get is that the people who are in the religion cannot see the gigantic gap between what Christ taught and what is coming from their pulpits.  Though, to be honest, my "gotcha" moment was caused by someone outside of my former faith.  Maybe it simply cannot come from within.  Maybe the control is too complete.

Alexandria - I wanted to share with you that my two nieces are novelists. From what I understand, it is the getting published part that is difficult and they both found unique ways to arrive there.  One of my nieces has a passion for India and British history and romance novels.  She put them together to write historical romance.  She had sent off manuscripts, but no takers.  Then, her younger sister entered one of her manuscripts into a Romance writing contest and the prize was a book deal.  She's now on her 7th or 8th book and seems to have a deal for life.  Honestly, these are paperbacks, so not sure how much money she makes at it, but she is also pursuing a Phd, so she has a different lifelong career in mind.

So the younger sister, who entered her older sister's book into this contest, was apparently secretly writing her own manuscripts, but unlike her sister, not really telling anyone about it, including her parents or her sister! One day on Twitter, an agent was soliciting for YA novels and my niece thought her writings fit, so she sent one in....they asked her to submit anything she had written and after asking her to rewrite this bit or that, they bought a trilogy from her.  This one is a hardback and 20th Century Fox has bought the movie rights (I think this was the more lucrative part of the book deal.)   The movie would be along the lines of The Hunger Games - no guarantees the movie will be made, but if the book sells well.....

Maybe you already have an agent? I don't know.  My brother (their father) wrote a couple of books, decades ago, and I remember he used my father's connections (way pre-internet) to get them read by an agent at Double Day. One was published. He never really made a career out of it.

Romney really came off as ... 'would have been nice if she could just have opened the window to air out the place - but airplane windows don't open so that caused a problem.'   Not that he didn't know why the windows don't open ... but not a 'jokey' delivery either.  More like just stuff that was percolating in his brain and shooting out through his mouth without much thought.  And if anybody was going to even try to joke about an experience that no doubt scared her badly it it should have been her not him IMO.

Raining here this morning too.  I'm still glad to see the rain even though we have been all greened back up for quite a while now.

lassie ... I too grew up in a military family and worked for the Navy for several years.  Both ex and current husbands served (Marine and Army) during Vietnam.  I get incensed at the idea that we should send our military men and women out to maybe get maimed or die ... on a whim or just because some other country thinks it would be nice if we did so for them.  That is a sacrifice that should only be asked after it has been determined that it is absolutely necessary and there is no other alternative.  We've had enough experience (Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, now Afghanistan) with no-win situations that we certainly should know better by now than to think we can just blast in and out with no problem.  

ETA ... I go get coffee and then get sidetracked in the middle of a post and by the time I get back and submit you guys are 2 pages down another road    

lindasa - I've long thought the churches in the US should be paying income taxes.  The church people want to pretend that the "separation of church and state" was supposed to protect the churches from the state.  Not so.  The intention was to protect the state from the church.  Who owns the people's minds and hearts and thereby controls their actions?  For sure it's not the state.....

I believe Gore had the highest favorability rating for any candidate, Republican or Democrat, from WWII til now.  Part of this can be explained because 2000 was a good year for America (soon to be ruined by Dufus), and he definitely had the Clinton glow.  In any case, he won the election, but Katharine Harris, Jeb Bush et al and the SCOTUS stole it from him, and America.

Afghanistan was long part of "the Great Game," between the British Empire and the Russian Empire for supremacy in Central Asia. Known as "the graveyard of empires," the old saying about Afghanistan was "you can swallow Afghanistan but you can never digest it." That has proven true for millenia, even with modern weapons.





L

Yorkie - do people think Romney is a good debater because of those crazy Republican debates?  He may have won the nomination - but that was mostly because of attrition.  I actually didn't think he "won" a single debate (and I watched them all).  My brain just died on me, so I can't remember his name - oh yeah - Newt Gingrich.  He probably won most of the debates he was in - but even though he cannot abilde Romney, he still threw in with him in the end.

I credit Ralph Nadar and wrongheaded progressives with the Bush years.  I do think that Gore won the election which SCOTUS gave to Bush, but had Nadar not been in the race, enough of the 90,000 votes that went to Nadar in Florida should have gone to Gore to prevent the issue from even going to the Court.  I think one of the problems in that election is that some progressives thought there was little difference between Gore and Bush - so they voted for the third alternative - a disasterous mistake in judgment.  I personally knew a number of people who voted for Nadar here in Jersey, and I couldn't persuade them otherwise.  Gore would have made a great president in so many ways.  We would not have gone to Iraq.  He wouldn't have been able to stop global warming, but we might be further on the road to fighting it.  It just makes me ill to think what could have been.

Also,  if Palm Beach county had designed its ballots differently, hundreds of elderly folks would not have voted for Buchanan. Remember the "butterfly ballots?"

It really took a perfect storm for Bush to become president. The wreckage will be with us for a long time.

To bounce of Yorkie's post, EVERYTHING depends on the debate questions.  For instance, last night on The Last Word, Lawrence O'Donnell brought up 3 different videotapes of Romney contradicting his position on getting medical care from Emergency Rooms.  There was nothing unclear about the three statements, nothing taken out of context.  O'Donnell usually follows this sort of segment with a suggestion this should be asked about at the Debates.  

I think Bob Scheaffer and Marth Radich could go there, but I think Candy Crowley will just cave.

The problem is, and as Lawrence O'Donnell said last night, how do you pick amongst Romney's lies?  How do you make one lie/flip flop more important than another, there are so many they drown each other out.  How as a Debate questioner do you not appear like you are not bullying Romney with all of his contradictory remarks because while Obama may have made some of these, they are born of rationality - for  adjusting his policy to fit new information, rather than Romney who adapts to polls or the rightwing base by out and out lying.

BTW, speaking of the perfect storm - don't forget the various actions in Florida under Jeb Bush to suppress the black vote in 2000, people taken off the roles, road blocks, etc.  that also contributed to the storm.  And the worry for me is that  we don't know what will happen with the various voter suppression actions across the country.   One nightmare is that the Republicans actually steal the election by suppressing Democratic votes.

WR - yeah, who knows.  This is the problem the Republicans have these days, why their party is imploding.  They are trying to walk the line between the traditional economic conservatism of the 20th century and this "get this government off my back" hate ideology.

How can someone vote for Romney because they'd have to wonder where he stands on anything.  They like to think they know (e.g. believe him), but what version are they choosing to believe?  I don't get their vote - other than hating Obama.

Alexandria - look up "True the Vote"

The true voter fraud happens during the count of the vote (not directed to members of this thread).  Look at 2000. 

Think about it ("you people").  The incentive of one person (one vote) illegally voting up against the incentive of a local voting official changing many votes.