I read the previous thread with some interest and I don't recall seeing anyone else make this particular point.

Even if Trig is Palin's grandchild and not her child it won't hurt her with the fundagelical community, they purely love backsliders who come back to Jesus, if anything I suspect that such an event would actually increase her support with the fundies.

What will be a problem for Palin if the child is not really hers though is the medical insurance fraud that quite possibly has taken place. I'd be quite surprised if Trig Palin were to be covered by Sarah and Todd's insurance if he were the child of Bristol, unmarried minors generally do not get coverage of their children (or pregnancies) under their parent's insurance.

Trig Palin is likely to require a lot more expensive medical treatment than a "normal" healthy child, I'm sure the insurance company writing the checks for his care would be interested to find out that those checks were fraudulently obtained.

Knowing Palin's base the way I do, I really can't think of any credible alternative explanation, they will not turn away from her if she had an abortion in the past or some of the other medical theories put forth on the previous thread. Palin is hiding something that will cause her quite possibly severe legal problems, IMO.

Sarah Palin is a special case in American politics, for all kinds of reasons: I think she deserves at least one loyal, heartfelt defender in a setting such as this.

You made me smile with that one.

Your defense of Sarahcuda is truly Quixotic.

The Christ never mentioned homosexuality at all, not once.

However He *did* mention marriage... And divorce, saying that if you divorce a woman for other than infidelity you are committing a serious sin.

What amuses me the most though is that the more likely the particular Christian sect is to get upset about homosexuality and gay marriage, the higher their divorce rate. Yep, that's true, the more fundamentalist the sect, the more divorces they have. Look it up if you don't believe me.

The lowest divorce rate? Atheists..

Isn't that a hoot? Atheists follow the words of the Christ better than any Christian sect when it comes to divorce.

If you _really_ wanted to defend marriage in a manner consistent with the teachings of the Christ you would ban divorce except in cases of proven infidelity.

But then fundamentalists almost never quote the red words, they are far more fond of Saul of Tarsus and various Old Testament smiters.

I share your lack of enthusiasm for the fourth estate, although I suspect my reasons are somewhat different than your own.

It would greatly please me to see a far more aggressive and intelligent tack taken by the great majority of the people who bring us our "news". Americans on the whole are woefully under and mis informed and I blame the news organizations for feeding us pablum gussied up as information.

There is no such thing as accurate information, only varying degrees of inaccuracy. Unfortunately what we have now is mostly wildly inaccurate. It's been my observation that if a story runs about a subject in which I have some expertise I can almost always find some sort of basic error in either the information itself or in the way it is presented.

Obama has made many excellent executive decisions.. As the head of a campaign that is taking in and spending record amounts of donations from a record number of individual donors.

$150 million in September and still doing $7 million a day, the average donation being $86 if I recall correctly.

I don't even particularly care for Obama and yet I can easily see that his campaign has been run brilliantly, he beat the presumptive Dem nominee, Hillary Clinton, going away and is pounding McCain both in the polls and in fund raising even as I write this.

There is real risk here that downscale evangelicals will say screw it, we'll stick to our churches and let the high income crowd get positively buried for every bill hits the government's doorstep. If that happens, the economic conservatives who voted for Obama are going to find themselves, like the kulaks of old, facing a new kind of government which has a great interest in them and what they are doing.

The rich as kulaks has a certain cosmic irony about it.

What was it Twain said about history rhyming?

Terrorist are only "Terrorists" when you disagree with their ideology.

Word.

Not everything has to be black and white - there is a lot of grey in the world.

Now you tell us.

Legalize, license, and tax the drugs now on the illegal list. By "license," I mean if people want to take a recreational drug, they should take a training class in all the effects of the drug, then receive a license to buy it at the "drug store."

Should alcohol, nicotine and caffeine be treated in this manner also?

If not, why not?

Ooops, I forgot to ask, is nicotine also illegal in Singapore?

Is alcohol illegal in Singapore?

How about caffeine?

If not then you don't really have a "war on drugs" you have a war on *some* drugs, just like the USA.