Sad, how people who object so much to her brand of vitriol with the same kind of intolerant, sniping, snarky comments. If we want to remove that type of discourse from the public dialog shouldn’t we engage in a higher level of civility ourselves? Take a second look, and try to consider the essence of what she said. We should love our country all the time, and she’s grateful that there have been no more terrorist attacks. Well, fine then. That she said those things in such a way as to intentionally get knee-jerk reactions is the problem, and you all just gave her exactly the thing she thrives on.

Heh. I share a birthday with President Bush, and all I would say is I hope he does the same that I do every year. Consider the year you’ve just completed, and think about how you can do better in the next. There are always ways to be a better spouse, parent, sibling, child, friend, and public servant. Happy Birthday to us (and Sylvester Stallone, too)!

Roe is not a law. It’s a decision that overturned several state laws that banned abortion. What we have a right to is to choose what we will do with our own bodies. It’s enshrined in the 14th Amendment. If anyone wants to realistically overturn Roe, first they have to tackle the Constitution itself. So I don’t really worry much about this one. It’s just the hypocritical crap of railing against judicial activism while swearing to install Justices to the Supreme Court who will rule to overturn Roe that gets to me. It’s dishonest, to both sides of the debate. This issue has come before the court only two times - both times the rulings were nearly identical, and twenty years had passed in between. If I were pro-life, I’d be pissed as hell to find out the politicians had been lying to me about this issue for so long. So they keep perpetrating it. As a pro-choicer, I’m still pissed as hell at the scare-tactic crap purveyed by the left that my ovaries are so threatened by a toothless ghost. But at least I know my reproductive rights are intact.

PJ: Name one good thing? That doesn’t really seem like enough to me. From his website: “In the Illinois State Senate, this meant working with both Democrats and Republicans to help working families get ahead by creating programs like the state Earned Income Tax Credit, which in three years provided over $100 million in tax cuts to families across the state. He also pushed through an expansion of early childhood education, and after a number of inmates on death row were found innocent, Senator Obama worked with law enforcement officials to require the videotaping of interrogations and confessions in all capital cases.” In the U.S. Senate: “His first law was passed with Republican Tom Coburn, a measure to rebuild trust in government by allowing every American to go online and see how and where every dime of their tax dollars is spent.” “Recognizing the terrorist threat posed by weapons of mass destruction, he traveled to Russia with Republican Dick Lugar to begin a new generation of non-proliferation efforts designed to find and secure deadly weapons around the world.” And that’s besides the work he’s done through the years in churches and outreach programs to help those less fortunate, before he decided to seek public office at all.

I’d like to see her as Secretary of Health and Human Services. I really think it would be a good place for her, where she could get things done she’s been trying to get done for a very long time. She could be very happy there.

To the contrary, Senator Obama’s tax plan would decrease taxes for the middle class, get rid of Bush’s tax cuts for the rich and super-rich, and begin bringing the budget back into line. By comparison, Senator McCain has promised to retain all of Bush’s tax cuts, plus add a few more, to the tune of $300 million per year. He says he’s going to pay for this with $100 million/year in curtailing earmarks. Not only does that not even come close to adding up, but the earmarks don’t add up to anywhere near that much - they’re closer to $20 million. In my life I’ve been through five Republican terms, and two Democratic terms (I’m not counting further back than Reagan, since my memory doesn’t extend that far). In all five of those Republican terms they promised to balance the budget and reduce the size of government. None have balanced the budget, and only Reagan reduced the size of government. Oh, and one more irony: The Republican party has been complaining for years about ‘Judicial activism’ - McCain included. So can you please tell me how that makes sense when he also says he’s going to put people on the Supreme Court who would overturn Roe v. Wade? I understand being pro-life, and if that’s what this is about I respect that. But you seem to be saying you want more than one issue on the ballot - personally, I’d really like it if both parties would start behaving as if the Supreme Court were more than a one-issue institution. But this is what we have to work with, we can at least try to see the whole picture. As far as ‘bros before ho’s’ - honey, it’s always been that way. Abolition came before suffrage, civil rights before the feminist movement. They’ve also grown closer together. Right now it’s neck and neck - but are you really going to spite one downtrodden demographic because they beat your own downtrodden demographic to the finish line?

Here’s an idea. Can we stop talking about Senator Clinton not making it, and start talking about the presumptive nominees, what they stand for, what they stand against, and how, if this one or that one is elected, it’s going to affect us, our families, our children? Please? It shouldn’t be about gender, that’s what we all say, right? Just like it shouldn’t be about race. It should be about the person, the individual, who has the best shot of addressing whatever concerns we as voters have about the government, the administration, and the policies of this country. Whoever that may end up being, don’t waste your vote out of some petty, bitter feeling of resentment by voting for the nominee who most contrasts the person you originally supported. That doesn’t get you anywhere, it just sets us all back.

Politicians tell us what they think we want to hear. Yes, that leads to lying, how can it not? Obama said people cling to the familiar when life gets tough. Yes, they do. I know I do, it helps us get through the bumpy bits. But it wasn’t the politic thing to say, and led to this ridiculous debate over who’s more in touch with the regular people. What I notice about that, is the debate is over who is more in touch, not who is one of the regular people. These are Senators, they aren’t Joe Shmoe and while they may be able to empathize (some more than others) none of them could tell you how much a gallon of milk or a loaf of bread costs. In the end it comes down to intelligence and characters. Someone who is both smart enough to understand all the different things they will have to deal with, and a respect for the people of this country and the founding principles and documents (the constitution and our civil rights).

Can I shift this back to talking about people literally starving to death in Haiti and other places in the world? Genetically modified foods can and has helped millions of people. Miracle wheat, for example, which produced twice as much grain per planting, and matured faster so several plantings could be harvested in a single year. Or golden rice, where the genome was modified with a gene from daffodils to produce a grain that was also high in vitamin A, and can prevent thousands of children every year from going blind from malnutrition. There are great advances out there, and yes down the road there may be problems we’ll have to deal with then, but for now, can’t we focus on the immediate problem? And yes, the biggest problem by far is distribution. We live in a capitalist world, and the poorest of the poor can’t pay the costs. In Haiti they are eating dirt to stop the hunger pangs, and in North Korea they strip the bark off trees to make a weak broth (which is also killing the trees). Surely, some weird looking rice or wheat is a better option for them. Neither of which, by the way, are ‘owned’ by some multi-national corporation.