Letters to the Editor
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Univeralist?
The Ben and Jerry's religion, where God is Jerry Garcia without the drug problems. No sacrifice, no problem. Have some chamomile tea. The problem with religion and politics, aside from the now New Orleans dike (not dyke) leakage problems between Church and State, is that theology is very involved, very personal, very difficult to reduce to sound bite, or bytes, and is best left alone. Acknowledge the right of what the First Amendment guarantees, and then shut up. It's a red herring the size of Jonah's whale. What does Christian mean? Catholic? Protestant? Born again? Redeemed? Saved? For Christ's sake, literally, our two remaining candidates need to cease and desist in this whole arena. By their fruits shall ye know them. That's all you need to evaluate. One of the detestable parts of the Clinton approach is to wink and nudge about Obama's early "muslim" years, and throw gasoline, at four bucks a gallon, on the whole Rev. Wright dust up. Should we ask Hillary why she goes to ultra vanilla Methodist go along to get along services? No. Hell no. It's her choice. That's the point. It's a good deal of why we started this experiment. Respect others' choices. Quaker? Anti american peacenik? I don't think so? Buddhist: navel gazing out of touch green tea sipper? None of our business. Let the policies and their outcomes tell us what someone believes about God. IF you think America is a Christian nation, walk through the "other side" of any major American city. Poverty that cries out for relief, hunger that aches for any decent food, while we condone a billion a day in Iraq. Those cannot be reconciled. Time for a choice. Time for a radical, not incremental, change.
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@deeper truth
landing under sniper fire does NOT mean there are high flying helicopters firing above you - it means you are being shot at. that you willfully change the meaning of those words made me accuse you of whitewashing hillary's lie. but i see you continue, so, yes, YOU LIE. that DOES NOT mean that ALL WOMEN LIE, though that is the Hillary message (if you won't vote for me you won't vote for ANY woman EVER). i also said, "NO! you are NOT a modern woman - modern women are honest and self-respecting" and by that definition, which includes most of the women i know (of all ages) and specifically my daughter's friends, YOU and AKA Smith are not modern. you are victorian.
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fire this dipshit
fire this dipshit
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before i go to sleep payne, i don't want to hear shit like this -
"Shun Lieberman. Make the asshole declare what he is: the republikan from Tel Aviv." - i've heard "christ-killer" quite enough from your co-religionists and this particular allegation is just too redolent of nazi thinking. this isn't the usual pro-palestinian thread - this is about OUR election. it has no place here.
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Another debate in Philadelphia
The April 16, 1858 debate between Lincoln and Douglas at National Constitution Center in Philadelphia in April 1858, re-imagined with George Stephanopoulus and Charles Gibson as moderators:
http://obsidianwings.blogs.com/obsidian_wings/2008/04/the-lincoln-dou.html
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david
the word genius is meaningless. Yes, our eldest of four is a woman. She's wicked smart, speaks seven languages while having only studied two, and quit a six figure job to raise her two children. I do not presume to hold my family up as anything other than a blessing. All I can say is that I was there, always, and didn't mail it in, or think of monetary things first. All four are amazing, and exquisitely, entirely different (although, apparently, all legitimate). If Shawn is going to vote Democrat, then I must deeply re-evaluate my tone toward him. The only relevance of scholastics, as regards this motley discussion, is that citizenship, in the Jeffersonian ideal, requires keen, knowledgeable, critical thinking. Tee Vee commercials do not suffice. I do know that all four living generations of our family vote, every time, local, state, and national, and take the time to try, again the odds established by the media with our complicity, to arm themselves with the facts. We have Sunday dinner, all of us, almost every week; tomorrow will be an exception, my wife having come out of surgery on Friday and still prostrate, though home). We talk, and argue amiably, about politics, and the environment, and the interconnectedness of things. We give a damn. That didn't happen by accident. I was not genetic. It was inculcated. For what it's worth, and it is entirely apocryphal, every last one of us supports Obama. That covers four generations, seven decades, and 18 votes. I would be proud, if I thought I deserved credit, but I am, primarily, thankful. That does not come across, in the least, in almost everything I post here. I use it as a hybrid punching bag/septic tank. There is nothing admirable in that. when called upon, I do respond in kind. When I hear bullshit, I call it that. There was no particular term of art for that in the Vietnam years. I was not in-country. Friends were, some that never returned, and some that were diminished lifelong. We're doing it again, in spades. Hillary is an incrementalist by trade. That will not do. My choice is made. I've been wrong before, having worked for Robert Kennedy in Berkeley in '68, then voted for Nixon, thinking he'd be less invested in the LBJ war. Wrong. Dead wrong. My then young wife and the aforementioned young lady, then an infant, did precinct work for McGovern. We lost. Fallibility is the most predictable human trait, and I'm human, big time. But I retain some sixties optimism, against all available evidence, and I think Obama is the first chance in a long, long while to have a qualitative difference made. Hillary is not inspirational; she's a plodder, and a damned good one. We may have to live with that. We've done worse. We can't afford another four years of what we've endured. Tipping point? Yes.
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david II
Lieberman is a turncoat. Middle east policy is in the dead center of "our election". I support Israel's right, absolute right, to exist. I don't support their genocide of the Palestinians, their occupation of the west bank, gaza, golan, and basically most of what they have done since sixty seven to poison their own well and concede the moral high ground that should be theirs. It is not. Joe's allegiance to American seems conflicted with his allegiance to Israel, right or wrong. That won't do. You wonder why the Moslem world either hates us or distrusts us? Try " my Israel, right or wrong". Don't wait for an apology. My wording, characteristic of me, is wildly imperfect. But my contempt for Lieberman stands. He makes my flesh crawl.