Jim White @ 2:40PM and again @ 4:52- No jokes! www.alligator.what!.nuts.

sysprog @ 3:18. I think neocons got all the neuropsychoticks and flea bites ills they need.

KB4Hire ought to serve free lemon juice drinks. We can sip from a copper coffer that is passed 'round at the chocolate cupcake meeting in Jamestown NY or Jamestown Virginia? Just so we meet.

I get annoyed to hear lawyers, shrinks, and drip-quack-docs were let-free to prey in the New World. They robbed and re-sold everything. Yea. Tax breaks and land real estate theft! O, the native owners did not work in the neocon world?

Cripes! I wish the American Indians served them sips of coughs-of-culps's-coffee with JUGLANDINE. huh. And toss in a toxic salamander as a merciful dose of true compassion? That would be real tweet? No jokes.

Juglandine was a substance to cure neo-con-ills. The juice was walnut (Juglans regila). It remedied cutaneous and scrofulous diseases; also was good for dying hair black. Many of Americans first cookbooks respected the domesticated ladies. In 1841, "Godey's Lady's Book," and her book, "The Good Housekeeper," INFORMS HOW TO MAKE MACE! ~<~: a accident.

I guess a accident s called a 'accidents' 'cause a accident can happen? Strain juice and some day you will find a good reason for its purpose and 'lethal' accidental euthanasia use.

In youth I hated 9th grade too. If I was to have lived 10,000 years ago and dressed in deer hides, I'd get a 3- day suspension for making-out behind the locker door? I get irked if a gal says,"WE met in Jamestown somewhere before and now we meet at the Salon screen back door??? for a splitting of a bottle of wine and pumpernickel iced cupcakes? gads. I say 10,000 years has passed and all a know is we got to live in the present moment and not sip on neocons constant tonic-propaganda with lime-disease!

KB4Hire. no chew lime peels withorn drinks. a cough of cuppa of anything can make a computer whiz kiss the computer screen with red-wine lips? huh.

It is topical or muggy tropical. If I meet some of you in this Life I'll be happy to split (not spit on the keyboard) a jug of (not juglandine walnut juice or limes) berry juice to hone some good writing ink. Well?

Last night the lights went out in a powerful storm. It was fun to read by candlelight. A few moths did get crackled up in beeswax. The smell, W.T. was moth wings and fur that got burnt.

PA- Turnpike! That road is dangerous. Once a beautiful deer gracefully leaped over the grey-wall-center-medium. I can still see the deer in my mind. What was sad was the deer died as it leaped headfirst into my front right fender. The DOT may have fed it in the early 70's to the No Child Neocon School back then? Road Kills were a delicacy. The VW vehicles red beetle bumped fender got painted by a PA gal. A yellow and green alligator was featured for years on the reliable car. For $2.98 ya' could travel to the moon with a brown eye moo cow. The painted alligators jaws were open wide with the cloud shaped words coming out forth from the alligators mouth...

...OUCH!

What day? A read by candle light is a must.

A yellin' forth for real Justice.

A jittery blush for real commonsense.

And hey! before we get a brain disorder,

A meeting behind the locker doors is okay?

I realize that your call is a rhetorical one, but it set me to thinking. Psychological tests as a pre-requisite to elective office? Mmm.... Sounds good at first hearing, but then....

When we try to think our way out of a collective jam, as individuals or as a group of experts, the first thing we think of is how to get other people to do what we want them to, which generally means resorting to either force or manipulation. We can point a gun at them as tyrants, threaten to fire them as managers, or pull rank on them as experts.

Whatever we decide to do, we console ourselves that we do it because the situation is grave, and demands immediate action, or that our vision will perish if not implemented immediately. The real reason is ego, and an impatience informed, however subconsciously, by our own sense of mortality.

This is probably the real reason why I'm a democrat. Genuine solutions to problems must evolve from the perceptions of a majority. However benighted those perceptions my be at any point in time, the evils which result from hurrying people along, by relying on will rather than persuasion, seem historically to have resulted in things far worse than might have resulted from ignorance or inertia alone.

So...suppose we start requiring these tests of yours. Who designs them? On what currently fashionable definition of sanity will they be based? What incentives will be offered, what punishments threatened if our candidates don't comply?

Do you smell a whiff of infinite regression here? I certainly do.

bush·ing (boo' shing) n.

1. A fixed or removable cylindrical metal lining used to constrain, guide, or reduce friction.

2. Electricity An insulating lining for an aperture through which a conductor passes.

3. An adapter threaded to permit joining of pipes with different diameters.

4. A beating around the head and shoulders of a democratic nation state, usually causing severe damage to its constitution.

Example: The United States in the last six years has taken a severe bushing.

I sent a slightly modified version to Jane Harman, and a more modified version to the NYT public editor, appealing to him to have the paper forego any pledges of confidentiality they might need to in order to let the public know what they know.

I used to live in upstate New York (Utica area), and have parents from Pennsylvania (Reading area), does that count?

did a group of sociopaths become in charge of foreign policy decisions? There should be a mental health test before one can become a government official. The world is too volitile to have crack-pot ideologues suffering from delusions of gradeur, who have no place advising anyone how to tie their shoes, let alone decisions concerning the slaughter of human beings. War is just an academic manipulation of simple-minded cannon fodder. It is incredible that after fifty-thousand years we continue to hit each other over the head to get what we want.

Kagan, Perle, Wolfowitz, Abrams, and their gang of brethren are finally able to live out their fantasy of getting back at everyone who ever picked on them when they were young wimps.

“Radically new perspectives” to me would be broad policy objectives like reallocating military spending to upgrading domestic infrastructure, reducing our military presence overseas, a goal of reversing the job flow away from service to production, which is killing this country on many levels, public works programs, a single payer Medicare or VA style universal health care system, massive aid to alternative energy efforts, a specific program for disenfranchising and shipping all lobbyists, public relations spoke persons, spin doctors, and advertising executives to reeducation camps, the usual pipedreams we see so often on these pages. I realize its hard for a politician to say they will set goals like this because it opens too much room for attack, and pundits will ask “what’s your plan to get there,” but I'd like to hear them put out for discussion, and I’m not nearly as impressed by the signifiers being put by Clinton and Obama and their camps.

Would you like to add something to a very new project started by Gordon, a commenter here...

http://achievingourcountry.blogspot.com/

He's started a post dedicated to a Voters' Platform (disclosure: I asked him to)... so that we can tell the candidates what we want, rather than wait for them to tell us what they're willing to give us in the way of a platform for the election.

You have a lot of good material above.

North or south? I used to live in Jamestown, NY, many years ago... now, those were some winters! Do you remember 1977-78? Yikes!

Southern ... As for the winter of 1977, my family and I were coming home from Virgina Beach and it had started to sleet and snow a little bit when we got on the turnpike at Breezewood for the last leg of the journey home.

Ended up being on the PA Turnpike for 26 hours! I remember my Dad literally having to pry his hands from the steering wheel of his 1972 Chevy Impala. There were six of us in the car. It was a heck of a trip, one we still talk about at family gatherings.

Southeastern PA is a bit more temperate, in fact, almost tropical lately.

Nothing but hot and muggy and lots and lots of rain the past few days ...