It’s spunky in here tonight.

One of the top lines ever from a TV show: Lou Grant to Mary Richards on the MTM show:

“You’ve got spunk. I hate spunk!”

Working my way down this tortured thread and stumble on this sparkling gem of knowledge and history.

clip*outstanding and interesting history lesson*/clip

Slavery was a factor. It was just not *THE* factor.

*THE* factor was as Mary Chesnut said: the North and the South just couldn’t stand eachother.

…had the South done as Lee was doing well before the war started and freed their slaves, they’d’ve still fought. Just like today, each side wanted to win the argument at all costs….

Puritan1648 on November 17, 2006 at 4:41 PM

Well done, Puritan!

…back to the thread…

Will the greebster look outside its scope and maybe learn something…?

…naaaaaaaaaaa. it’s here to fight. it gets off on the rush of poking those evil damned republicans. By God, that’s all that matters.

It’s much easier to have disdain for homosexuality when no one you know is gay. It’s harder to do so when it’s your friend or relative.

It’s a pity that Carlson has allowed her disagreement with Republicans to blind her to the fact that many of us have indeed had our views affected by personal experience, and it’s a shame that you endorse her narrow-minded column. — Slublog

…if you put a straw man up to spit and spew at, you’ll never know that the guy you *THINK* you’re talking to and about might not be that guy at all.

Bravely said and wisely pointed out.

It’s too bad that this thread, which had promise there for a little while, had to degenerate…this is a topic which merits discussion…open, honest discussion with open, honest minds.

Have you actually read the piece that Carlson dismisses?

The Washington Post, February 23, 1997
“Test of Devotion; What My Gay Brother Taught Me About Tolerance”

But at the same time, in the 10 years since I learned my brother Curtis was gay, my views and rhetoric about homosexuality have been tempered — not because Curtis proselytizes on gay rights, but because I have seen him and his companion, Richard, lead their lives with dignity, fidelity and courage. By refusing to give in to bitterness or defeat in the face of a relentless disease, they have shown me what C.S. Lewis meant when he wrote that our ideology and faith must leave room for tolerance and empathy. I now regret that at Dartmouth we didn’t consider how callous rhetoric can wound — how someone like Barney Frank must have felt — not to mention how it undermined our political point…

…Where 10 years ago my reaction to the idea of gay marriage was a reflexive, “You’ve got to be kidding me,” I am now less dismissive. Without a legal marriage, Curtis and Richard not only miss out on tax advantages and employer health and pension benefits (outside of San Francisco), there is undeniable emotional strain as well. “I’m his caretaker,” Curtis told the emergency room nurse as we registered Richard in the hospital. Although I understood the word had become part of the AIDS lexicon by necessity, knowing what they had been through together made it sound antiseptic, almost an insult.

Fair use only allows so much, but I encourage you to look it up without depending on Carlson’s spin.

Carlson doesn’t seem to think that moderating one’s views on a subject is related to whether it affects them personally, but she’s quite wrong on that point, especially as it relates to issues of sexual identity.

A number of years ago, I worked at a university and was a member of the GLBT Concerns Committee. In their discussions of coming out week, the point was made and underlined that coming out to one’s homophobic relatives often has a moderating effect on the views those relatives hold. It’s much easier to have disdain for homosexuality when no one you know is gay. It’s harder to do so when it’s your friend or relative.

It’s a pity that Carlson has allowed her disagreement with Republicans to blind her to the fact that many of us have indeed had our views affected by personal experience, and it’s a shame that you endorse her narrow-minded column.

Just because grebok SAYS she used to “out” folks don’t necessarily make it so.

http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/1997/04/14/time/carlson.html

Notorious in her student days for vilifying “sodomites” in the Dartmouth Review–and for sending a reporter to tape a Gay Students Association meeting, then naming names-

Away…Away……

Pelosi in SirMixAlot’s “Baby Got Back”

Work it white girl… — E L Frederick

…you are a seriously twisted individual…the next thing, you’ll have her playing nekkid twister with Hillary and Helen Thomas….

…it’ll take *HOURS* to drink that one off my mind…so, thank you….

I suck at flamewars, so I’d just be resigned to watching and laughing at the wit of others.

And yeah, an india pale ale is going to feel goooood.

Slublog on November 17, 2006 at 4:14 PM

I too am pathetic at verbal fencing or flaming skills so I sit on the bleachers cheering. If y’all intend on drinking, gimme your keys. I’ll be your designated driver…

You consider Malkin, Ingraham and Coulter to be “family”? LoL

I always get a kick out of people like Grebrook that come to Michelle’s house and insult her.

Haha, ok, now we’re down to the AOL-chatroom level of discourse. Please boast about how you’re g/f is really giving you a hummer right now and get it over with.

Oh wait, you’re a conservative. You don’t believe in pre-marital sex. LOL. Chump. — Grebrook

OK….

Look, G. Connie can be just as heated as you, and he still knows when he’s gotten to the brink and it’s time to throttle back. Honie has proven that you can be partisan and still have class.

Class. You can respect someone like that, even if you don’t agree.

I’ve been needling you all day. It’s been fun. That’s what I’ve been doing and that’s why.

I’m going to stop now, because your post above is *WAY* over the top. I apologize to the person you intended it for, and I apologize to you, both for needling and teasing you into all of this.

Throttle back and take Honie’s and Connie’s examples. It’s all just plaintext, man.

You DON’T think it’s hypocritical for a closeted gay person to persecute people for being openly gay? Do you know what the word “hypocritical” means? — Constantine

…more than hypocritical — a *VASTLY* overused word — it’s objectively wrong for someone themselves sinning to stand there and wag a finger at someone in sin.

What was being discussed earlier, however, is that Laura Ingraham was being called a “piece of trash” for outing folks, when it’s one of the tactics used by the activist homosexual community to either shut up those living in unrepentant (or even repentant and recurrent) sin, or to just plain ruin them.

Sin is sin. Homosexuality is sin, per most of the religions and most of the cultures of the world. It may be desensitized, but sin is still sin.

This doesn’t make a sinner worthy of special opprobrium. We’re all sinners, after all. We just don’t have to be OK with it.

I’ve been saying it for years: the homosexual community doesn’t deserve to win their little culture war by virtue of the means they’re willing to use to win it. All may be fair in love and war, but this isn’t *THAT* kind of war.

If folks want to be homosexual, nobody should stop ‘em. I don’t think that, outside of families, any really does nowadays. You can’t legislate morality. In fact, it’s best not to.

It’s about being tolerant. Freedom is being able to sin, to make self-destrucive or just plain stupid decisions. Tolerance is living with the sins of others.

On the other hand, you can’t expect that tolerance means that you have to like, celebrate, or promote the sins of others. Being tolerant means that you let ‘em go…not that they’re going with your blessing.

…so, let’s give the whole “hypocritical” thing a rest, eh?

When all of life is turned into a cypher, an idea devoid of life, which can be tweaked and argued beyond all usefulness…when you’ve reduced live to nothing more than a concept, a hypocrite is the worst sort of traitor. He betrays ideas.

…life is more than ideas. I hope.

Sorry to hear about that. Here’s an idea, next time, don’t vote for Republican presidents that arm maniacs with chemical weapons.

Grebrook on November 17, 2006 at 4:24 PM

For your education.

can go HERE to see who supplied Iraq with Chemical weapons. From the UN itself

http://www.iraqwatch.org/suppliers/nyt-041303.gif

THE* factor was as Mary Chesnut said: the North and the South just couldn’t stand eachother.

…had the South done as Lee was doing well before the war started and freed their slaves, they’d’ve still fought. Just like today, each side wanted to win the argument at all costs….

Puritan1648 on November 17, 2006 at 4:41 PM

I adore MARY CHESNUT’s Diary.

I would hope that folks would just READ MY POST ABOUT THE MEXICAN FLAG that started the flames of whatsisname…

ALLAH has spoken.

Let us let this go for another day—or come spar on MY TURF.

The New GOP Wedge Issue: The PS3.

Liberals, they want to take way your PS3. It’ll be a winner.

Any family without an average income of at least $100,0000/per family member/per year has no business with this game.

I just don’t see how a $600 game machine does a good job of teaching a child (especially a poor child) how to respect money.

…please tell all of us uneducated Yankees about how the South wasn’t fighting because they were afraid the Union would eventually outlaw slavery. No, no, no. It was all about FREEDOM! It was about the Yankee man oppressing the poor Southerner. — Da Greebster

…actually, slavery was an excuse for folks of one frame of mind to dump all over folks they saw as being of an opposing frame of mind…sort of like abortion and homosexuality are today.

Along with slavery, there were 30 years of some rather nasty doings on the abolition side of things, as well, which included conditional loyalty to the very Union which they claimed to support.

Lincoln worked for union. He nearly lost it when he published the Proclamation — which was a stratagem in support of efforts in Kentucky and Missouri and an effort to placate the radical fringes of his own party at least as much as it was any altruistic effort freeing *ANYBODY* — because entire regiments went AWOL rather than fight to free blacks.

The US had, until 1863, a long, tortured history with slavery — legal in *ALL* 13 states in 1787 — and a club used on the South — nearly as stubborn as New England and having none of it — and ultimately paid for in full by the loss of over half a million lives, millions in treasure, and the a *worsening* of the conditions of blacks in America for a hundred years.

…but I won’t blind you with facts.

The South got a raw deal, the blacks got a raw deal, at the hands of a few in the North, which was ultimately fighting to prevent 11, and as many as 13, states or parts of states from leaving the federal union. Tariffs, money collected on largely Southern commerce, went to pay for “internal improvements” like roads, railroads and canals…largely in the North. The South was made to feel hemmed in by not being able to take their “property” to places like New Mexico, where the cotton culture feasible, let alone profitable, until relatively recently.

Slavery was a factor. It was just not *THE* factor.

*THE* factor was as Mary Chesnut said: the North and the South just couldn’t stand eachother.

…had the South done as Lee was doing well before the war started and freed their slaves, they’d've still fought. Just like today, each side wanted to win the argument at all costs….

Grebrook, wake up call. We are at war. All of those countries are involved. Yes the countries you mentioned do come into play. Iran’s scientists were DPRK’s missiles over Japan launching. Iran is likely colluding with DPRK to finish a nuke. I’ve no doubt that once DPRK lights off a serious nuke that IRAN will be right behind them. Yes, Iran is supporting war by proxy in Lebanon and Iraq.As for Hugo Chavez, yes he is friendly with Iran. They are part of OPEC together and Chavez is on record saying that if Iran is attacked he will respond.

Wake up and realize we are war.

Looking forward to having you check in and speak your mind more often. I certainly agree with nothing that you say but hey, who knows, perhaps you can learn a few things by sticking around and you can move a little to the middle. The comments are always sharp and entertaining here but I always thought that it would be better if we could a greater % of differing opinions. I wouldn’t get too excited about this latest election victory though. These things go in cycles as I’m sure you are aware. I remember the right doing their little celebration dances not too long ago. I can promise you one thing though… it won’t be long until the pendulum swings back in the other direction, so enjoy it while you can.

I think this thread’s train of thought just went through a tunnel.

Yeah, for once I agree with Constantine. Let’s stay on topic. Take the flaming to e-mail, please.