georgesbluegirl

Guess you missed this part of it: Yup ... I did ... sorry. We all, like it or not, are told to submit ourselves to our government. This does not tell us that we have to agree with them, but abide by the laws set down to us. We may not like those in power, but were are to submit, as a slave does to their master. Nothing is said that we have to agree with them. Remember, God is in control, even if we can not see His hand in motion. OneLight The "war crimes" label is one the article sticks on, though (aka spin). The way the citizens phrased it is what you should pay attention to. As for the rest of OL's quote: "Dissent is the highest form of patriotism." - TJ

I promise I'm not a horrible person, but when I saw the title of the thread I immediately thought "what if I don't have a freak accident to talk about?" Knock on wood, that is.

I got MIKE GRAVEL. So clearly this quiz is fatally flawed.

http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5gpp6vL...XrzgRMxDLJXoq-A One of a few of these cases that has emerged recently. Haven't seen any discussion of this, so I thought I'd keep everyone informed. I don't feel I need to editorialize here - the information speaks for itself. Sigh. Disgusting.

I actually think reading "The Magician's Nephew" later works best - LWW works better in terms of being immediately compelling. I personally can't wait for "Voyage of the Dawn Treader" - Eustace becoming a dragon might be my favorite section of any of the books.

I'm not saying Conservatives are racists. I'm saying racists that I have observed tend to be conservative. There is a difference. On the most prominent White Nationalist/White Supremacist website, do they root for the Democrats, who have a female and a non-white running for the nomination for president? No. Do they do fundraising for a Democratic or Republican candidate? Republican. On their radio, do they advertise for liberal causes, equal rights, affirmative action, and universal healthcare? Heck no. They advertise for the Council of Conservative Citizens. Nary a communist among them, the general consensus on their forum is short of having their own party, they would vote Republican or for the Conservative Party of Canada, not the Democrats or the Liberal party, or the NDP. They resist change quite a bit. SO much in fact, that they are stuck in the 1950's. I would mention that racism takes many forms, and there is certainly the issue of liberals acting in a racist way or perpetuating racial (/ethnic/gender etc.) stereotypes without realizing it (ever heard of the term "white liberal guilt?"). But that goes more toward the issue of biases inherent in our society. It's important to note that what Burning Ember is saying - and what I am saying by agreeing, based on my own observations - is NOT that Conservatives are racist. It is that, when racists - at least the most blatant, offensive kinds - choose a side of the (I mostly mean American) linear political spectrum, Republican or Democrat, with which to affiliate themselves, they go for the Conservatives. It makes sense. A hallmark of the Republican party is the idea that we should preserve (and I'm not saying I agree with how this term is used) "traditional values." To some people, that includes institutionalized notions of race, whether or not the Republican party actually literally stands for that. Once again, I'm not saying the Democratic party is without its racists - it's just they're either not as loud or don't know it. When you come down to it, politics in general is still dominated by rich white men, on both sides. How many female Senators have we elected (until disturbingly recently - as in this decade - more women who'd served on the Senate had been appointed there, generally following the death of a husband or father)? How many black Senators have we elected?

Yeeeeeeeargh!!!! When my dad was talking about how Obama was stuck far behind Hillary this summer, I reminded him that, at that time four years prior, the two Democrats leading the polls were Dean in second, and Dick Gephardt in first....

The "wealth" of oil you refer to isn't really a wealth. Tapping into places like ANWR would literally make a difference of one or three percent in terms of our foreign oil consumption. Domestic drilling will never be the answer. Coal treatment may be, in the short term. But if we open up Alaska, it won't do much AND we'll lose one of our last untouched (or, realistically, barely-touched) landscapes. How about we do the smart thing and start thinking about alternatives? I do agree that us being "in bed" with the Saudis leads to our lack of response to morally reprehensible situations like this one. Ugh.

Update: The Saudi government has attempted to say that the woman "confessed to having an affair." Which a) still leaves the little matter of the rape, b) shouldn't justify an awful sentence anyway, and c) is entirely suspect, given that the court system often pushes trials through without lawyers, women aren't allowed to speak, and who knows under what situation the woman would have "confessed" to having an affair anyway. If she said anything of the sort at all. The fact that her husband is willing to talk to the press says it all for me...

Okay, the human body is a beautiful thing and I see no reason why either a man or a woman should have to be covered up with folds of fabric in order to enjoy swimming in the ocean. That said, I get the modesty bit, too. There are "private bits" that we as a society collectively think should be covered, and then there are body parts - mostly I'm referring to women's chests - that have been sexualized to the point that they draw male attention when somewhat exposed. So: if you're concerned about modesty, wear a one-piece, as others on here have said. You should be able to be **COMFORTABLE** at the beach while also feeling okay about what your attire is saying. And if you're worried about being looked at, don't worry; plenty of young ladies, for better or worse, will be wearing far skimpier outfits. Ladies, basic Speedo suits don't garner that much attention. And that said, I'm a bikini girl myself. I like showing my (pale, pale) skin the sun every once in a while. As long as I'm not out there to "strut my stuff," I don't see it as a problem.

OH absolutely. The story has been everywhere, on every feminist website and in the news. You can bet every feminist around - regardless of race, creed, age, or gender - is up in arms about this. There have already been protests all around the word. Start talking about this IMMEDIATELY to get people up in arms and force the administration to pressure the Saudi government. As I'm sure most of you know, the US - sorry for being blunt, but especially the Bush administration - has a history of turning a blind eye to all that goes on in Saudi Arabia because nominally they are our partners/allies. That's not to say that atrocities - including judicial horrors like this one - happen on a much lesser scale, but we like to pretend that they don't. Plus the general sentiment of the population is anti-US, but the wealthy families are tied to the government so here we are. By the way, her sentence was upped on her appeal . In other words, when she tried to fight back in the court system for her basic rights as a person, she was whacked down some more. Fortunately, she has a husband who's speaking out to international media for her and advocating - that's a pretty rare thing in cases like this, so thank God for that. Also, under the Saudi legal system, the judge doesn't even address women in court, and women aren't allowed to speak (so she wasn't allowed to testify on her own behalf). All speaking is done back and forth with her male chaperon - her husband or father. We still have a huge problem prosecuting rape cases in this country - only 1 in 20 cases turns up a conviction. There's a lot of institutionalized sexism around the issue. But at least something like this is met by most Americans as it should be - with outrage, sympathy, and compassion.

You can hack around that on your DVD player if you want (computers I think may also play DVDs from multiple regions). UK has region 2 or 4 players, right? US is 1. I had to deal with this a couple of years ago because I had a region 3 disc from Japan given to my for my birthday. I'm pretty sure at this point you can just wikipedia DVD region stuff and it may tell you there how to reset your DVD player to accept discs from any region. Or if you have an old DVD player (like from the earliest days of DVDs), they weren't built to enforce regions back then, so it might work.

Clearly the holiday is all about giving thanks, but I think it sounds funnier to call it "Turkey Day"...so I do, sometimes. By the way, Thanksgiving isn't explicit for Christians. It's an American holiday...my Jewish, Buddhist, atheist, Muslim, etc. friends all celebrate it, too. I noticed people equating it to "taking Christ from Christmas" and while I agree we should be careful always to treat the holiday as an opportunity to give thanks for all we have, everyone does that differently.

Too bad this wasn't up yesterday, or my family could have given thanks for it at the dinner table!

Every little bit might help in the short run, but you can't get back a landscape.

God asks that you give from your means - and if you can't get to work to make a paycheck, it's a moot point anyway, isn't it? But more importantly, I don't think God works in financial terms. We do. Buy the bike and give another way - volunteer your time or energy somewhere. That's just as useful and probably will hold more meaning for the person giving, anyway.

That's a little melodramatic. I don't think anyone - certainly not myself - is suggesting that by voting for Hillary Clinton you'd GET another Bill Clinton presidency, or that people actually think that voting for Hillary = voting for Bill (well, some people might, but that's lame). It would be that people feel wistful for those days given the general downward turn in the years of the Bush presidency. Nobody actually working to get Hillary elected is going to sell her presidency as "more terms for Bill." That would be both disingenuous and counterintuitive. And as a point of fact, there wasn't a limit on presidential terms until after FDR, who finished up around 60 years ago. So - while I am emphatically supportive of the two term limitation - it's definitely incorrect to call a 2+ term presidency a violation of original principles of liberty. The founding fathers didn't much have that in mind (actually, Washington was more or less asked to be king. Not necessarily relevant, but interesting).

Quite true. Glib and appealing. I do miss having a President who understood the English language...I was too young to really understand how good I had it back in the Clinton years!

I actually agree with you on your general point - Bill shouldn't be as big of a factor in this decision as people are trying to make him (and I'm guilty of it too, a little bit). Although like it or not, people tend to factor presidential spouses into their decisions, Hillary is the person to be thinking about. And I will vote for her, regardless of what Bill did or didn't do, if she gets the Democratic nomination.

Oh, come on. That attempt at impeachment was a joke. And an adulterer Clinton might have been, but a) he still oversaw generally good policy as a president (I'll leave the Bin Laden question to the side) and b) we've had presidents who owned SLAVES. And presidents who openly spoke against women being able to vote or work. And presidents who led us into/kept us in unjust wars that resulted in astronomical numbers of American soldiers killed, not to mention innocent citizens of other countries. So yeah, Clinton (like all too many politicians, it seems) fooled around, and honestly I respect Hillary a little less for sticking with him through ALL of it, and never once leaving to take some time and think about what she wanted and what she was getting from her marriage (...political gain...). But in the scheme of things, in the scheme of immorality? FAR. Worse. Things.

Annapolis will destroy the US? I always knew my ornery little state would end the world!

Ehhh, sort of. Eventually, distinctions between the self and others break down - the example that I usually go to is compassion. Compassionate action is natural (the "pre-reflexive response") because ultimately, there isn't "my suffering" or "your suffering." You get past discrete terms and suddenly there's just "suffering," so you work to alleviate that. It's really the opposite of watching out first of all for your personal well-being in the larger sense - while dialectical Buddhism deals with balancing the "non-dual dualism" of recognizing the true lack of distinctions in a relative world defined by distinctions, a lot of practice in most schools has to do with loosing attachment to the world, including the self.

Ummm who was president that set up the economy that Bill so non-chalanty walked into? Yeah, the Reagan economic plan was to leave office adding trillions to the national debt, achieving the worst decade of real private sector GDP growth since the 30s, and bringing about a recession in the early nineties with unemployment reaching nearly 10%.......and then, after all that, a Democrat being elected that made a complete departure from the Reagan era economic policies, experiencing a huge economic boom. Yeah, it was all Reagan's idea. The fact is even Alan Greenspan credits the economic boom of the nineties to the Clinton Administration's economic policies. Yeah...Reaganomics, the trickle-down theory? Not so good for most people, especially if you didn't have much money.

Buddhists don't worship the Buddha. Buddha simply means an enlightened one. There have been several buddhas. Buddhism is in many ways more philosophy than religion. The moral values of Buddhists are not incompatible with Christianity at all. The problem is how Buddhists look for redemption: