Pangloss

I heard Bush actually called Osama on the phone and told him where he could find American soldiers to shoot at. Then he ordered all their protective gear removed and sold on Ebay, and gave the money to his friends at Halliburton. Also, something about sacrificing small children. Yeah, small children.

The result of BSA v Dale was that the BSA was ruled a private organization, and therefore had the right to discriminate in its membership (the same position that allows, for example, the Augusta National to prohibit female members). Because of that decision, a number of local governments have taken the step of prohibiting the use of public facilities by the scouts, which allows these governments to protect themselves from discrimination lawsuits. That sounds like bad news for the scouts, but it's actually no big deal -- most troops are based on church grounds anyway. Troops that use public buildings have always been an rare oddity. Scouting has always been a religious organization. It's not ABOUT religion, and there's never been any serious indoctrination in their work. It's actually about building personal character. But religion is an important part of their process, and that does rub a lot of people the wrong way. Especially the avowed secular, anti-religious crowd. There is some logic in the prohibition against gay scoutmasters, given the trusting nature of children and the fact that the benefit of the doubt should go to THEIR safety, not an adult's rights. But I beleive some compromise could have been reached, and I'm disappointed the BSA was unable to work something out in the Dale case. Nevertheless, I respect their stance. Of course, I'm biased in this, being not only a member of that organization since 1976, but an Eagle Scout as well. I was a scout for a while at an inner-city, 99.9% black church, and I saw what a strong influence it had on young boys from that housing project. There was no religious indoctrination going on. That was about keeping kids off the street and off the drugs. And it WORKED. That was one of the highlights of my youth, and a big part of why MLK is one of my heros, and so forth. So when I see Scouting taking a beating over what amounts to trivial nit-picking, it bothers me a great deal. On the other hand, some of that criticism is justified. Some of the stories I've heard about other, predominently rural and suburban troops, dovetail very well with my own experiences in scout troops in those environments, where religion is sometimes a more important aspect of the program. So you might say I'm a bit conflicted about it. In the end, though, I believe Scouting has been extremely beneficial to society, and opposition to it is largely a matter of far-left ideology.

Mol, what kind of a crazy Beverly Hills resident are you? I thought that was serious hinter-lands, tin-foil-hat territory, but you sound WAY too open-minded.... ;-)

I predict that one of the casualties of the 2004 election cycle will be missile defense, no matter which candidate wins. If Kerry wins, he'll just nix it completely. That much is fairly obvious. If Bush wins, I think he'll have to cave on the issue, because of two factors: 1) The deficit. Democrats are going to keep hammering away about this, even though it's equally their fault, and they're going to start winning the perception game on this, because Republican control of both houses *and* the White House for 8 years has, in political terms, *more* than double the impact of a single term. You start hearing phrases like "legacy" and "the Bush years", and characterizations of that nature. That positions Democrats to become the "defict recuers" in 2008, and you know Hillary's going to love to grab that banner and run with it, because there is no down side. 2) The tech sucks, and it's not getting any better. And even here the politics come into play, with Democrats (and a lot of Republicans) continuing to point out that spending the same amount of money on PORT security will have a far greater impact on overall security than pie-in-the-sky missile defense. I've been pondering this position for a while, but this article at UPI nudged me into going ahead and writing something up on it. http://about.upi.com/products/perspectives/UPI-20041030-024405-1244R They get to the issue about halfway down the page. An interesting quote: Some background reading: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Missile_Defense http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-ballistic_missile http://www.al.com/news/huntsvilletimes/index.ssf?/base/news/1098868722252580.xml http://www4.army.mil/news/article.php?story=6496

Well, if that were true we'd be looking at thousands of people in prison without due process instead of between ONE and SIX (depending on who you ask). Spinning the issue off into the hinterlands resolves nothing. That's how we end up divided and unable to resolve issues.

I agree with that.

I agree. I think it's a subtle problem, and we should continue to work on it. But I don't actually have a problem with some leftist bias in the classroom. So long as students are being taught to think for themselves and make up their own minds, and not actively bring brainwashed or something, it's really no big deal.

Shelby Foote, in Ken Burns' Civil War documentary, quotes Falkner in "Intruder in the Dust", saying that all southern men can picture themselves standing in the ranks at Gettysburg, when the war could still be won. That's a powerful dynamic in that society, even today. That's the kind of thinking that drives the confederate flag movement. I agree that it really has nothing to do with racism. But that doesn't make it right, either.

I believe you. Most of the gun-toting, pickup-driving crowd (I think the term "redneck" is derogatory and I try to avoid using it) isn't racist either. For what it's worth, one of my ancestors is Nathan Bedford Forest, who founded the KKK. So the conflicted emotions of southern men are quite familiar to me. I grew up in that environment. I know how frustration can turn into ill-considered racist comments that don't actually indicate racism. That's what the flag sticker on the back of a pickup really is -- an ill-considered statement.

I do. And so should you. Almost all candidates for any public office support Patriot Act, including both of Florida's senate candidates, and both of the current presidential candidates. Kerry even voted for it. PA's not perfect, but it's not the repressive 1984 scenario that the far left crowd makes it out to be. And it certainly doesn't do this: Patriot Act has nothing to do with my decision to vote for Kerry, and if anything what it is is a logical exploration of how legislation can proceed to further the war on terror. The fact that it's become a buzz-word for fear-mongering by one extreme shouldn't scare you away from it, it should tell you that there's something there worth having.

So? One person's opinion, which I don't even entirely disagree with. (shrug)

One could make the same hypothetical extrapolation about Sinclair, but *you* would never make that extrapolation. What does that say about *your* objectivity, bud? Unless something has happened that I don't know about, he removed it from selection for the *documentary* award. He did that not so that it would be seen before the election, but so that it would be considered for *best picture*. He wants to upset the entire Oscar applecart, no less.

By the way, I have no problem with the reasoning that we've screwed up plenty of times in the Middle East. The point I'm making above is that there is NO justification for terrorism. I'm no Israeli Defense Minister -- I'm not suggesting action-reaction. I'm simply saying let's call a spade a spade.

Just to throw a little logic into the mix: It wasn't like that when I went to vote in 2000, and we didn't even have early voting then. There was something like a 50% voter turnout in 2000, with both candidates setting records for total numbers of votes. Even if we DOUBLE that and get 100% turnout in 2004, given the fact that we have early voting, it's not logical to conclude that the polls will be packed 100% of the time. The polls are crowded because there are relatively few early voting locations, and people are taking advantage of it in unexpected numbers because it's just easier to vote that way if you're working. That's all it is. I am taking full advantage of early voting.... by waiting until election day, and voting at my standard polling place. I think it'll be a breeze.

I can. And I'll bet I can find 2,992 families who agree with me. The argument that we deserved the action taken against us is a very poor one, and its origin is entirely partisan in nature. We'd be hearing exactly the same argument if our president were Al Gore right now, but it would be coming from the opposite side. That fact alone should tell everyone EVERYTHING they need to know about the validity of that argument.

Oh no, it was definitely about slavery. Slavery WAS the "states rights" issue that the southern states seceeded over. So the war was about slavery. I do agree that "states rights" is an often-overlooked issue that was, in fact, resolved by the civil war. Before the civil war people referred to the United States in the plural, as in "the United States are going to...". Now they are referred to in the singular, as in "the United States IS...." We have the civil war to thank for that. But you knew that. Right, Mr. "States Rights"? Sure you did. It's funny, I really don't think most modern pro-confederacy people really understand what it is they're saying in favor of. Ah well. There were no skin heads around when I was growing up in suburban Atlanta and rural Georgia. I know exactly what the dynamic was of people who had Confederate flags on their vehicles, and clearly you have no idea what motivated such people. I know quite a lot about the shotgun-racked Ford pickup crowd. It is a very familiar dynamic to me. VERY familiar. It was common when I was growing up to hear the N word quite often. I was lucky -- my parents didn't approve of that sort of thing. But I had non-immediate family who used it (and some still do). They had children. Those children were influenced by that word. There is no positive context for the use of the confederate flag in modern times. It was added to the Georgia flag almost a century AFTER the Civil War, as a pro-segregation statement. People slap it onto their pickup trucks out of either rebellious *biggotry* or rebellious *ignorance*. There is no other dynamic for that act. It is NEVER a statment about "states rights". Ever.

My wife broke a fuel line once, or rather I thought she had. I walked outside when I heard her pull into the driveway and saw that her car was literally spewing gasoline onto the ground as if a faucet had been turned on. While her uncle fixed it, I got in my car and followed a trail of gasoline two miles to the tire change business and reemed the manager there for 20 minutes. (chuckle) He'd put her car up on a jack to change a tire, and you can guess the rest.

The danger here is not in my expression of caution when dealing with other nations (even ones that appear friendly), but in your expression that terrorism is "mostly BS".

I just think it was bad timing to do early voting in the 2004 election. We've got enough problems right now with the new electronic voting machines. Adding early voting into the mix just made things worse. It should have been held up until 2006. As for the long lines at the voting places, I'm not sure I understand why people don't just leave and come back on a different day. It seems very odd to me that someone would wait five hours to vote, when they can just leave and come back another time.

(Only thing you're missing there is a closed-bracket on the first "quote" tag, by the way.) Yeah that was the case when I was growing up in suburban/rural north Georgia in the 1970s. Well put. Most of those soldiers who died for the Confederacy in the Civil War weren't slave owners, just kids trapped in a bad war, and I have no problem remembering them with honor and respect. But that's not what the confederate flag is a symbol of, even to the people who wave it.

Not exactly, it's a procedure to allow the young woman a chance to tell her story to a judge, who can then decide whether telling her parents institutes a danger to her. I can see that you feel that it's an invasion of privacy, and I respect your opinion. Mine differs. But getting back to the point, the issue I raised was that Betty Castor is in favor of telling the parents. She's just not comfortable with the wording of the amendment. Of course, if you feel that she's lying, and what she actually believes is that the parents should not be told, then I would suggest that what you actually have there is another reason not to vote for Betty Castor, because she'd be a liar. I prefer to believe she's telling the truth. Note that I'm also voting for her, because I liker her positions better than those of her opponent.

(Close, Dierdra, all you need to do is add a {/quote} tag to the end of the quoted area. Note the slash. But use straight brackets instead of the curly ones I used here.)

You're right, they're all our friends. Why are we so mean to them? It must be all our fault that they hate us. Somebody give me a dagger, I feel an attack of self-loathing coming on. "Well pardon me for breathing which I don't do anyway so I don't know why I say it oh GOD I'm so depressed...."

But Amendment 1 specifically says that such a procedure is included. Amendments are *never* more specific than that. That's why it's a cop-out.

Sorry to hear about your wife, Ophiolite, I hope she's okay. Tell her to stop driving on the left side of the road, that's your problem right there. ;-) Actually, as I understand it, it's the other way around. Slavery was on its way out until the gin *revived* it, giving the plantation owners something to do with those slaves (collecting cotton to put in the gin).