Thank you so much, everyone.  Some of mine:

Kindness is in our power, even when fondness is not.  (Samuel Johnson)

Forgiveness is the fragrance the violet sheds on the heel that crushed it.  (Mark Twain)

Reality is when something is happening to you and you know it and can say it and when you say it other people understand what you mean and believe you.  (Andrea Dworkin)

Thank you, Candice.  I enjoyed your description far more than the actual event.

Do the next right thing.

I find Palin’s ongoing absurdities useful, Nanny. She’s absorbed a lot of my nasty thoughts and feelings. Like one of those toy clowns with the weighted base, she just keeps coming up with things that I get to rip to shreds in my mind, without saying anything that could hurt any real people.

Exactly. Anyone Constitutionally qualified can run for President. But let’s save this until 2016, after Obama’s had his two terms, so we can have Palin running against Clinton.

And we waste ours commenting on it. With ya, Southern Girl. But the thing is, we read stuff like this, and that’s what the advertisers like to see, so that’s what people waste their time writing.

I cried too, Phyllis. All those cool people who made that video cared enough to get in the same place at the same time and do something.

Flora, the only way you lose actual money is by selling your investments while the market is down. Eventually the markets will come back up, or at least they always have. Then, everything that’s still in your account will increase in value.

Do you suppose McCain is making his falling apart so blatant in order to throw the contest? He seems to have realized that he’s not going to be able to handle the Presidency, since he can’t handle doing his jobs during the day and doing a debate in the evening. He can’t very well say *that*, though. I can’t fault him for not being able to do everything he has to do. I do fault him for knowing he can’t, and persisting.

“How do you KNOW what God has to say?” Great question, MaryPage. For the purposes of this, ahem, discussion, the answer is that it doesn’t matter what God might have to say. God doesn’t write the laws in the USA.

Thank you, DeBúrca. Obama had reasons for not choosing Clinton, and he was, and is, ethical enough not to tell us what they were. McCain et all had multitudes of reasons not to choose Palin. As you said, McCain didn’t put the country first.

I speak English, French, Spanish and German. (I’ve studied Hebrew, Japanese and Russian, but I don’t keep them up.) I’ve found that knowing French and Spanish lets me understand the other Romance languages and respond in French or Spanish, so I can have slow but clear conversations. Same thing with the other Germanic languages - respond in German. Most of this happened in Europe, where I found people far more open to working with languages than in the USA.

Phyllis, that’s a big part of why I gave up on the Friday night interview after 15 minutes. As you said, Palin called him “Charlie” a lot. And she *touched* him a lot. Ick. And smiled into the camera, and fluffed out her hair. The response that got me to switch channels was when he asked her which three things she’d do to improve the economy. She said, “Well, let me tell you about what I did in Wasilla.”

Right now I don’t have any pet chickens, Alias. Do you? I’ve kept some in the back yard from time to time, one or two or three. The most recent couple were better fliers than I expected, and did a lot of touring of the neighborhood. They always came home when they were hungry or tired, but I decided to give them to someone with more land for their flights. Now I need to put a cover on the chicken run, but I can’t do it by myself.

Do I know something I can’t say that inhibits friendship? Yes. Some of the effects, and secondary effects, of my friend’s autism on our friendship, and therefore on all my friendships. People who aren’t familiar with autism or Asperger’s don’t understand why I maintain this friendship. This friend isn’t wired to recognize how some of his wiring prevents some kinds of sharing that, of course, he doesn’t recognize.