It might be a Portland beer geek kind of thing. I almost always have a church key available. But, then, most people don't know of Portland as Beervana in the forest nation of Cascadia.

Without necessarily disagreeing with the remainder of your post, your statement about the NAACP being a money-making enterprise is just dead wrong. It has been a money-losing enterprise for decades.

First, Iraq invaded Iran in 1980, not the other way around. Second, who cares about who supplied weapons after 1981. Iraq was using weapons against Iran acquired before 1981. Third, Iran did engage in mass attacks in that war, because the Iraquis were using Phosgene, mustard gas and Sarin on Iranian troops. Absent extreme measures, Iran would have been defeated and millions more would have died. You really should get your facts straight.

BTW, Israel would lie, cheat, steal, murder, anything to get the U.S. to attack Iran, including lying about the status of Iranian nucleur weapons making, if such activity is even occurring. Show me the evidence.

Exactly correct. And it doesn't matter if they are from other countries either. More than 1500 Americans fought with the British during WWII, and even Hitler treated the few who were captured as POWs - treated them poorly but didn't treat them this poorly.

I have to take issue with your implication that Nietzsche espoused the idea of transcending morality and doing as one pleased. In fact, much of his writing was quite specifically in opposition to that view.

The Chicago Manual of Style has, unfortunately, been 'out of vogue' for some time now, both here and most everywhere else.

I was, perhaps, too quick to pull the trigger, as it were, but much of the popular reading of Nietzsche is based on the posthumous editing and publication by his sister of selected portions of his journals to support her anti-semitic causes. Nietzsche was vehemently opposed to anti-semitism and terminated his friendship with Wagner and others over that issue.

Nietzsche did believe in noble moralities but also believed that all people were capable of achieving them. He did believe that the greatest evil hid behind populist versions of these noble moralities, but he also believed that the populist versions were anything but noble. I can't remember the exact quotation (i'd have to look it up), but something like: Take care that when we search for monsters we don't become monsters ourselves. Not quite the Nietzsche that the popular reading seems to indicate.

A couple of things:

1- I visited France for extended periods in 1964, 65, 66, 67 and 69. I was not spit upon nor was I treated poorly with two minor exceptions in restaurants. It probably helped that I was young and spoke decent French, but your observation is just hyperbole. I was treated far, far worse during spring break in 1968 while playing golf at Calloway Gardens in Pine Mountain, Georgia.

2- You are certainly correct that racism and bigotry are ubiquitous in the U.S., but, just for the record, I have never enocuntered a more racist and bigoted group of people in the U.S. than the Chassidim, and I'm Jewish.

My wife has been struggling with Stage 4 ovarian cancer for more than two years now. She achieved full remission for a time, but is now experiencing her first recurrence and is back on chemo. She and I are both thankful that we live in Oregon where, when the end time is close, she will have options to consider. She may never avail herself of that option, but she will have a choice. The law is quite specific, however, in that only she can make the choice and only if physicians certify her as of sound mental capacity to make the decision. All people with terminal illness should have the choice.

Then, you didn't know many leftists in the 1960s. The left, at least the hundreds of people I knew, was very supportive of environmental protection.

BTW, I had malaria in 1965 and still cannot give blood. Got it in Colombia which was using DDT. The problem today is not lack of DDT, it is lack of adequate medical care.

Isn't it interesting that ALL the raids focused on Latino immigrants. There are more than 200,000 Irish illegals in the U.S., mostly in New England, and they have been coddled for decades. When we start treating all illegals in the same way, then and only then will I believe that this is something other than the pure racist filth that I believe it is. Deport the whites first, then the browns, then I might believe.

What pathetic drivel. Gary didn't actually the things you claim: "the uncomfortable truth is that most of their people respect the "extremists" for standing up to America and Israel." That's the whole sentence, not just the piece that you cherry-picked and then claimed Gary believes it. Dishonest in the extreme. You are blinded by your own hatred.

Oh yeah, BTW, I have a lot of friends who are Jewish along with my mother and her entire family.

The comparison of Veitnam and Iraq is accurate, but not in the way the GOP fascists mean. In both cases, we shouldn't have stayed longer, we should never have gone.

BTW, Reagan hated the Vietnamese so much that he provided aid to the Khmer Rouge when Vietnam invaded.

U.S. involvement in Vietnam existed for far more than 15 years. Truman violated the U.S. commitment to Ho Chi Minh to recognize an independent Vietnamese government in 1945, and he gave the green light to the French to reassert colonial rule in 1946. We were providing 75% of the financing for France's Vietnam war by 1950. The U.S. sabotaged the Geneva Accords in 1954 by forcing the creation of South Vietnam, and then we sabotaged the scheduled elections of 1956 because Ho Chi Minh would have won in a landslide in both the North and the South.

His name is Earl Butts not Butz. You may not like that but use Google before you open your mouth.