I’m paying attention. As well as the message you’re replying to. I’m not used to throwing a vote for the sake of political tactics. I like voting my conscience and the best candidate for the job.

My conscience says Barney Frank, no question. But I hate that fucking Brown far more than I’m able to hate Warren.

Talk to me.

Alabama?

Ha! I got hooted out of a breakfast-stop restaurant in rural Alabama in 1999. (“Hooted out” is all I can think of for a growing crowd with intensifying and directed intimidation. No direct statements or physical contact.)

I did not even have to be Black or exhibit anything particularly effeminate. All I needed was a car with marker plate from a New England state and a heavy Yankee accent. I totally understand how and why Hispanics are in an exodus now. Is there any intelligence there at all? It’s like a class B horror movie.

I hate to be the one to tell you, but if this is what you believe, I think you’re pegged as a white person who can’t handle, or be trusted with, reality. So you only know black white-face, sort of a reverse Al Jolson but for real. You probably need to grow up.

Hopefully, legalization will be only the first step.

The second step is people coming to realize that recreational use far outperforms and outclasses recreational use of alcohol.

The third step is making alcohol illegal. Leaving us with happier recreation, far less violence, much fewer roadkills, much less health risks and costs, great reduction in crime by removal of a profit motive and scarcity (anyone can grow it on their windowsill), etc. etc.

Nice article.

My caveat–this reply is from an old white guy.

My opinion–the NAACP will prevail. And if shit comes to shove, it will favor movement further to the left, not right.

In my 60′s youth, I started trying to do my part by joining the NAACP. But it was not moving fast and hard enough for me and I switched allegiance to CORE. And from MLK to Stokely Carmichael. (MLK came out against the Vietnam War too late for me.) My sympathy was for the Panthers but I thought they were better off without a white contingency.

I know times have changed but I can not believe the Black consciousness is far off from its roots. And this little move by the NAACP for Gay Rights has re-kindled my interest and respect for it after all these years.

This asshole should be thanking his god that they didn’t allow picking the litter over when he was born. He’d still be at the bottom of the river in a burlap bag and the world would be so much better today.

“disingenuous”. The word that makes itself be itself, forever circular.

Whales? Bighorn sheep? Life sustaining water? …What Greenpeace? We don’t need no steenking Greenpeace!

This is a small lens reply, but I think has a larger ring to it.

I have mentioned before that I love Michelle Martin’s “Tell Me More” on NPR. I don’t think she’d deny that her political effort is to present a centrist/balanced/informed viewpoint.
In recent episodes she’s had Black clergy guests with less-than-Progressive views. But her regular participants (eg Friday’s barbershop segment)have been consistent with Ben Jealous as well as understanding/sympathetic with Obama’s defense of “evolvement”. These are spokespersons who are normally critical yet give benefit of doubt to Obama, much like Smiley and West.

My conclusive take, to be optimistic, is that the far right will not get their fucked up version of Christianity to stick in the Black community.

It might be well to watch the spin on the war on immigrants too. I just got back from what was my favorite nursery for spring plants. No one can believe the downgrade in the quality of plants. Totally gone are the Hispanic crew workers we were used to seeing. (Hondurans, I believe).

Those guys worked as a team, a well-oiled machine, and it was a pure joy to go there. They sang as they worked, there was laughter and Spanish music everywhere. And the plants thrived like no other nursery. Now we have a few Anglo teenagers who obviously do not want to be there working on a weekend and half the plants are near dead.

Nice input. I know where you’re coming from regarding Vietnam.

I’m grateful for experiencing an unintended self-rescue back then. Just before I started to seek enrollment in a Christian seminary for preacher education. I was questioned about my various views on many matters and when finished, was told that I was not only unfit to become a preacher, I was not even a Christian (in their estimation).

What a fucking relief that turned out to be.

Pam, my sense is that you could start collecting the differences, one by one, you’ve made in individual lives and never live long enough to finish. I still recall your response to an issue on bisexuality some time back that was so right on. You may have no idea how unique that is.

Sometimes I really believe we are the least understood population in LGBT. Even the transgender experience enjoys more understanding in the general population, even if the most victimized. Not only is bi the least understood, but the most distrusted by all, including the others of LGBT. If people don’t just throw us into the category of G/L for having had an intimate same-sex experience, they throw you into “untrustworthy” believing you cannot be “fulfilled” by anyone else by reason of nature’s gender specificity.

Just because you fully enjoy intimacy with either gender does not mean you cannot be committed to, and completed by, one person of one gender, any more or less than anyone else. And betrayal, too, is no more or less characteristic than anyone else.

Even I did not fully understand for most of my life. I’m 70 y.o. and “bi” has not been around for more than a generation. (When AIDS broke out and response was debated, the common wisdom was that bi-sexuals could be discounted because we were “statistically insignificant” or “aberrations”.) Through my adolescence and young adulthood, I was just referred to as “over-sexed” and I accepted that. Some kind of sexual freak. So it has taken a whole lifetime to understand myself and the population I belong to. I’m grateful to arrive at a point where I even feel blessed and more fortunate than non-bi people.

For one individual, I thank you.

Does anyone know what kind of severance packages these bastards walk away with, besides no accountability charges?

Hats off for Clyburn from another angle: the stupid prejudices of black clergy. Which, like white clergy, is far worse in the South, which Clyburn has to deal with.
This was really brought home to me by a recent airing of NPR’s program “Tell Me More” hosted by Michelle Martin. (I love this program, never miss it.) She had black clerical guests to respond to this development and they made me throw up. Apparently Christian hatred trumps all decent human social functioning, regardless of race and regardless of historical experience with injustice and prejudice.
I was a bit surprised. My lens was clouded by the NAACP’s efforts in behalf of trying to defeat Amendment One in NC.

Just thinking of Michael Steele. I never did, and still don’t, have much agreement with him. But after he got kicked out of his RNC job and became a correspondent on MSNBC, I gained a lot of respect for him as a thinking person. But this jackass? I cannot conceive of him managing to ever climb out of the cesspool in his head that passes as a mind.

“rather radical”? Maybe you’re just getting smart.
I was divorced in 1972 at age 30. I learned to live without credit rather than go back to square one. Then had a weird encounter in 2000 at age 58, in which an anasthesiologist (sp?) did not show up to collect his due from my insurance for an emergency surgery. When I could not pay the bill, and the insurance would not pay 2 yrs later, they retaliated by destroying the credit I did not have anyway. Now I’m 70, retired, making 40 years living without credit. End of story.
Well,no, I applied for credit at Radio Shack 5 yrs ago to see what would happen and got a letter denying me on the grounds of “No credit history at all, except one report that was very negative”. Pretty bad when you can’t get credit from Radio Shack, huh? Maybe I should see it as a badge of honor?

Oops, excuse me, #88 was in reply to DrDick @ 5

Contrition for what? According to Wikipedia, about his experience in prep school, “Romney was an energetic child who enjoyed largely innocent pranks.”

Are you suggesting he might have experimented without inhaling? lol. That struck me both humorous and provocative. I’m only 5 years older than Mitt and I know the lower class experience with pot but not savvy on the prep school crowd’s experience.
I did not know where his school was so I quick-checked Wikipedia and found this interesting piece of info regarding his prep school experience: “Romney was an energetic child who enjoyed largely innocent pranks.”