sweetheart-mine

 

My wife has zero patience for politics. She avoids the topic as much as she can (although I give her credit for having an astonishingly good BS-detector without having to spend hours on end obsessing about it, like we've all been doing around here lately). But I guess since I'm usually pretty level-headed, she hates election season because it never fails to push every last button I have.

that sounds familiar in many ways, and i'm with ya. my husband has to deal with politics in his peace work, of course, but he thinks about it all on a more cosmic, the-whole-system-needs-a-major-overhaul level -- which i absolutely agree with and admire, but it doesn't stop me from paying attention to the ever-changing details every day or week, and allowing my buttons to be pushed, sometimes by nasty machiavellians. say, maybe we could start a movement promoting agnosticism in one's political outlook, with detachment a requirement! think it would work?

a couple of weeks ago a gay friend of mine who owns a shop refused my suggestion to go ahead and make his ranch house into a cottage-type place like his shop is, who cares about the house's era. he said "that would be like putting lipstick on a pig." therefore, obama must be gay. pass it on.

Coffee with a shot of valium figures to be my beverage of choice for the next couple months.

it's not a bad idea, is it (thanks, tom friedman). maybe even leave out the coffee! i don't remember an election with so much at stake in my lifetime -- been voting since 1972 -- so it's pretty charged.

right this second i'm listening to my level-headed husband, who is on the board of peace action maine in portland, talking on the phone with its director, and my husband is saying, "some people are getting really panicky about this election -- for example, right here in my household."

Tonight Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., said of McCain painting himself as a change agent, "You know, you can put lipstick on a pig, but it's still a pig." ... "You can wrap an old fish in a piece of paper called 'change,'" Obama continued, "it's still gonna stink after eight years. We've had enough of the same old thing! It's time to bring about real change to Washington. And that's the choice you've got in this election."

that's good news! we might not have to worry about the valium in obama's coffee after all (thomas friedman's op-ed in today's nytimes).

Is there an incentive? Perhaps, free stuff? And, is riiiiiight better than right?

 

This Ulster County? http://www.ulstertourism.info/todo/wineries.html

 

Ok, lots of Breweries and wineries..you sold me.

that's the one. don't forget to check out all the intelligent golf courses.

c) This is all getting kind of ridiculous.

agreed. i do have better things to do. i really do thank you for reminding me!

so long now.

I just prefer to actually think whereas you clearly don't.

awesome. not smug at all. typical liberal.

very perceptive once again.

i'm left of liberal.

I'm not buying anything. You said he "worked on" this and that while in Congress like it is evidence of accomplishing something. It isn't.

i'm betting he has accomplished a lot more in his work and made more lives better than you have.

it's very attractive that you've taken on the jeering at "work" that giuliani and palin did at the convention. congratulations again.

Or, because that is what you want to see.

if you think this is fun -- seeing that crap, and seeing that it's most likely to win in november -- you couldn't be more wrong. i don't have your smugness. wish i did. instead i have heartache. go ahead and have a good laugh about that. there, i just did it for you.

yes, Obama is the one real politician we've seen in how long? And of course he doesn't have staff, or PR or image people. And Biden? Well

he wouldn't posture for the media at all.

and i didn't say that either. can you read? let me answer for you, as bobbob likes to do: "no."

"worked on". In other words, didn't really do anything.

congratulations for buying the party line, most recently put forth by guiliani and palin at their convention.

I'm wondering how it is okay to reduce McCain and Palin to caricatures while making the point how it is terrible when people do it to Obama.

you know, i have been watching and listening to mccain for years, and to palin for X number of days. they put themselves on show -- as caricatures. that is what they seem to want to be. apparently it throws people who are looking for substantive change, or even the real views of mccain and palin, off the track. they look like they're enjoying their roles as caricatures immensely. that is what i see, because that is what they've shown me. do you want me to make something up about them, as they do? forget it.

The neocons are destroying the country and not special interest groups? Interesting.

that's not what i said. try reading again.

I personally know people who think this way. They seriously believe Obama is only doing this to take down our country.

do you think they actually believe it or do they just want to believe it because they're uncomfortable with him for other reasons? i'm curious.

it's so funny, because the country is already in the process of being taken down, by the neocons of the last eight years, with plenty more dismantling to come from mccain/palin. i guess these people are among that large group of voters who always vote against their own interests? not until this year was i aware that the number of masochistic voters is so gigantic.

This is a typical post from that board:

 

"This is funny watching the libs hang on every word of Palin....

 

hoping she makes a mistake so they can pounce. I truely have never seen them so afraid of someone.

 

The funnier thing is that it backfires everytime they do it. The American people and especiallly idependents love Ms. Palin"

 

(not edited for spelling)

 

 

Anyone who says anything against Palin is either afraid of her or jealous.

 

Oh and if I hear one more person call Palin a feminist, I'm turning in my feminist membership.

i'm afraid of her all right, for one reason: an awful lot of media and voters out there seem to have fallen in love at first sight because she's good to look at, and she comes across as extremely lively and sparkly next to the corpse-like mccain. great reasons! and they don't seem to give a damn what the views of either of them are or where they'll take the country -- which is not exactly down the same path as bush, it's farther to the right than that, and more lethal.

Click your red heels, Dorothy. All those people get to vote as well.

right. i think i just said that.

But yeah, bobbob’s tone of late strikes me as somewhat frustrated and maybe sometimes confrontational simply for confrontations sake – a position I myself often stake out.

confrontation simply for confrontation's sake -- it adds nothing to the search for truth and the effort to reveal hypocrisy. i think that makes it a waste of time, both the writer's time and the readers' time.

As regards Obama if people believe he's Muslim and hiding it the is/isn't is kind of irrelevant as the important factor is they think he's a liar.

oh. and they think he educated himself at Columbia and Harvard, earned a law degree, served his community as an organizer and as a civil rights attorney, served in the illinois state senate for 6 years, taught at the u. of chicago law school for 12 years (constitutional law), was elected to the u.s. senate in 2004 (where he worked on various issues such as election fraud, global warming, getting better care for returning iraq invasion vets, to name a few), and began his run for president in early 2007 -- plus somewhere along the line wrote two soul-baring books about his life and philosophy -- all so he could either lie about a supposed secret muslim life and, i assume, use it to bring down the country?

if there are people who can't see how laughable that is, and obviously there are many, i guess they'll be voting for obvious liars like mccain and that beauty queen who emerged from the woods with her guns, pelts, and bible to star as his running mate.

makes a lot of sense.

its because people like bobbob and twweedling keep saying it does not matter but still push the issue.

bingo. they and millions of others they pretend not to be like. you'd think they'd have something more important to do, like write letters to their local newspapers about obama's middle name to shore up the doubts and fears of those in their actual communities.

I'm pretty sure "the one" writes in "The Audacity of Hope" that he went to a "predominantly muslim school" while in Indonesia.

 

I'm pretty sure while one of his visits to Kenya Obama had endorsed Raila Odinga who was contesting President Mwai Kibaki for the leadership of the country. Odinga is pro muslim.

 

I'm sorry, I was wrong about Louis. Obamas CHURCH was close to Mr Farrakhan. (leader of The Nation of Islam)

 

Hussein......origin........Arabic

 

Like I said, I do not care to argue about Obamas faith. However, I'm not sure your answers to my questions were entirely true. If the man says he is a christian then I believe him. The American public, in general, are not so convinced.

if obama says he is a christian, not that it should matter, and you believe him -- why do you think it is that the american public "are, in general, not so convinced"? do you think they come to that doubt all by themselves? do you think no one's feeding it to them and encouraging it in them? do you think these are intelligent and important and real issues to be focusing on? one wonders, if this stupidity doesn't matter to you, why you even bring it up.

as for "hussein ... origin ... arabic," what in the world is the matter with people? the shallowness of this and other non-issues brings the pointers-of-fingers-about-nothing to a new low in my book. it's disgusting. i can't imagine why you think anyone should dignify these non-issues, whose origin lies in bigotry, bigotry, and bigotry, by addressing them.

the mentality behind this crap makes the election of bush look like a stroke of genius. and saying that couldn't make me sadder.

In other news, a recent study finds that Americans are easily distracted by loud noises and shiny things.

thank you! i did not know this!

Methinks you missed my point.

then you didn't make it very well. but i can understand why, because you are trying to take on the style of that troll kwall. it wasn't effective when he used it either.

Yeah, and it's nice here.

i'm sure it is.

yah, i said "few" people, not "no" people. i already know you live in your own little world.

Or you agree with some politician's opinions more than others and allow that to shape your view of their "dangerous-ness".

 

That's my guess.

few people, including republicans, now argue that the people responsible for leading our country for the past 8 years have not been dangerous. it isn't just MY view, and my view absolutely is not shaped by my agreement with another politician's opinions in this case. where have you been???

Again, I do not believe he is muslim and I'm not trying argue this but what I am saying is the Democrats had to know that all of his past, ALL of it, would come into play at some point. Just as McCains age and rage would for the Republicans. You can't be surprised......can you?

"at some point" would have been nice. but on and on and on it goes. it's fearmongering, and you're an intelligent person, so i think you know this.