The amount of vitriol and stubborn blindness/closed mindedness by people who consider themselves "the moral majority" is appalling on these boards.

Honestly its why I come here about once every 3 months.  If I wanted to listen to bitter crazy people I’d go work for Palin.  Rush at least has the common sense not to believe what he says (along with Hannity and Beck).

The sad part is that people who consider themselves (and no one else) to be "in the right" are just being played by these entertainers and Palin.  Palin’s too dumb to realize that anyone else who spews the crap she does is just doing it for ratings and the people that worship her are too stupid to figure out the entire game.

Its sad.  I’m truly embarrassed that we have such lunatics in the US.  People, many of whom here it directly applies, consider their senior entitlements as a right that dont give one whit that its bankrupting the country that turn around and rail against ANY spending of money that isn’t done for their direct benefit.

I am oh SO tired of hearing it.  If you think this country is headed in the wrong direction or going communist/socialist/w/e you’re afraid of, seriously GTFO.  If you think its better elsewhere go ahead and leave.  We won’t miss you.  We want people that take problems seriously and are interested in solving them instead of making others afraid of completely ancilliary side issues.  This country isn’t perfect by a long shot but I grow ever so tired of hearing people complaining about problems (and non issues) without offering ANY solutions or taking ANY responsibility for the actions of their past candidates of choice.

From a 28 year old - grow up.

PS - thank you Margo for giving the view that relatives are just DNA linked people in your life…..if people in this world used "but they’re family" as an excuse for putting up with crappy behavior of any sort we could use the same excuse to encourage victims of incest to continue to have relationships with their attackers, or even take the next step and use the same line of reasoning to encourage women to stay in abusive relationships with their husbands.

Slippery slope.

Debra I think you assume that this card bothered her.  She doesn’t say shes upset - she’s feeling guilty for not feeling upset.

Having been in this EXACT situation (3 years not 12 though) I understand what she’s going through.  I was upset my father tracked my address down after we stopped talking and I moved because I feel its disrespectful; he knows he’s out of my life for good.   But I have been completely indifferent to the cards he sent me at my mother’s house.

 He could die tommorow.  I wouldn’t be happy (except that it would mean my mother could finally have some peace), I wouldn’t be sad. 

 If the letter writer is anything like me once you get to the point of actually not caring the only feeling you have are guilt - as in "does this make me a bad person?"…which is an entirely separate issue from whether someone feels anything for the estranged family member. 

Any and all feelings I had stopped after the first year with regard to the first kind of guilt I described.  I don’t even care enough to write "return to sender" on the cards.  They just go in the trash.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090320/ap_on_bi_ge/mortgage_giants_bonuses

 Oh snap son!  What will the rabid masses say now?

Waiting.  Waiting……..

As a country, maybe.

Northern Virginia/DC is still pretty much like "what recession?"  The economy here is expected to grow by 2% this year so we’re kind of this insulated little community.

Demand for my profession is such that I get 2-3 calls a week from recruiters.  *shrug*

1.  I think you missed the sarcasm.

2.  Yes, I did quote a movie because it does remind me of whats going on.  The republican party isn’t interested in solutions.  They’re interested in scaring people and laying blame; not fixing it.  I thought the irony of a movie being right about a party would be funny.  I’ll try to spell it out next time.

Because OBVIOUSLY there were no problems with the economy until Obama took office! It was ALL fine until then!  And the ONLY person capable of inheriting, not causing, a crap economy is Reagan.  No one else.  Please get your facts straight. ;)

I’m reminded of part of the finale speech from The American President:

I’ve known Bob Rumson for years, and I’ve been operating under the assumption that the reason Bob devotes so much time and energy to shouting at the rain was that he simply didn’t get it. Well, I was wrong. Bob’s problem isn’t that he doesn’t get it. Bob’s problem is that he can’t sell it. Nobody has ever won an election by talking about what I was just talking about. This is a country made up of people with hard jobs that they’re terrified of losing. The roots of freedom are of little or no interest to them at the moment. We are a nation afraid to go out at night. We’re a society that has assigned low priority to education and has looked the other way while our public schools have been decimated. We have serious problems to solve, and we need serious men to solve them. And whatever your particular problem is, friend, I promise you, Bob Rumson is not the least bit interested in solving it. He is interested in two things and two things only: making you afraid of it and telling you who’s to blame for it. That, ladies and gentlemen, is how you win elections. You gather a group of middle-aged, middle-class, middle-income voters who remember with longing an easier time, and you talk to them about family and American values and personal character. And you hold up an old photo of the President’s girlfriend. You scream about patriotism and you tell them she’s to blame for their lot in life, and you go on television and you call her a whore.

Substitute President’s girlfriend with "First Lady" and you’ve wrapped up Obama’s first 100 days in office complete with "SLEEVELESS SHIRT GATE".

Why is it that the same people who villified ANYONE who disagreed with the war in Iraq as "unpatriotic" or "anti-american" are the same people now screaming about voices and freedom? 

Can someone explain this to me?  From where I’m sitting it looks like nothing more than same old hypocritcal bs from the party of old hypocrites.

Bristol Palin and Levi are going to be the new "Speidi/Lilo/BritBrit/Paris".

Get ready to know everything about these kids including their second favorite color.

No one wants Obama to fail.

 Really?  Not even Rush?  Not even the legions of his followers here who have said the same?

I don’t care what my posts "seem" like.  I care that the facts aren’t wantonly misrepresented.  I’d rather be accused of being emotional than accused of being dishonest…because frankly honey if I said something to you it would go something like:

Your posts seem to be more, (at best) grossly biased (and at worst dishonest) than based in reality and facts.

What the hell kind of a balance do you have at a 700 dollar a month payment?

If most of that is interest then I’ll go ahead and guess that "ordinary person" didn’t have the kind of credit score to earn them a "low interest rate" for an extended period of time and they might have missed some fine print somewhere.

My stupidity in college bought me 5 figures of credit card debt.  I STILL owe around 20k right now.  And my payments are NOWHERE close to to 700/month.

I don’t feel bad for people who got themselves into trouble.  I did the same thing and I’m paying it off.  I didn’t ask for a bailout.  I didn’t say "oh I got tricked into spending money".  I buckled down, did research, and locked most of it up into a personal line of credit with MBNA (now BOA) some years back with a fixed interest rate that they, by their own contract, cannot touch. 

That is to say until I renegotiated it last fall.  Not because I was close to defaulting, not at all.

People who pay interest who are 750 credit scores in TODAYS economy can command it.

No one held guns to peoples heads when times were good and credit was available to anyone and everyone and said "you must go buy a BMW or make sure to get the newest ipod/widget/lifestyle item." 

Personal responsibility is my mantra; I’m an independent.  Who hasn’t looked for someone to fix her problems and when others are seeing their credit limits drastically decreased and/or credit rates increased, my banks are treating me oppositely.

My rates are going down, and my limits are staying the same or going up.

I get tired of people saying "well the banks were morons so that means my moronic actions are ok!".  No.

She doesn’t know wtf she’s talking about.  She rails on and on about spending but forgets she has, and will continue to be until they disband the SBA, a direct beneficiary of a LOT of government spending.  (I believe the number was 737 million to be precise).

But she wont answer me on why we can’t cut that out of the budget ;).  Better to eliminate things like child care for military families than touch her precious small business set asides.