I've found that too, Pat, mostly the sound of axes , grinding....

Thanks kids for the kind words. I'll try to behave myself

lcj, of course it's good to see you -- but having been offline for the better part of the past six months myself, I hadn't realized you'd been gone, too.

Levi, I couldn't agree with you more when it comes to Pat -- and I, too, wish she'd run for something, and that I could vote for her. I know I'd feel better right away, knowing she was in office. Any office. (I believe I've told her that before, too.) In the meantime, I'm jsut glad she keeps posting, because I love reading what she has to say. Even on the rare occasions when I don't quite agree with her, her clarity and intelligence make her point of view worth paying attention to and thinking about.

Pat, trickle-down economics isn't just a bizarre image to me -- although I certainly find it to be that. It also always struck me as being incredibly patronizing and condescending. It's been proven to be utterly ineffective, but I guess that won't stop anyone from trying to force it on us one more time. (As in, "That horse is only pretending to be dead, out of sheer orneriness. Keep flogging it. It'll get up and go back to the salt mines when it realizes we're not falling for it's act.")

As for the Dow Jones Index -- I'm fairly ignorant when it comes to the stock market, but it wouldn't surprise me much to discover that what's keeping it up has something to do with the "conventional wisdom" that says being at war is inevitably going to be good for business in general.

Why, it's enough to make optimists of us all, this war thing. Isn't it ...?

Thank you all for the kind words, but they're really not justified by the facts. I don't know any more than anyone else. I just get..wound up about stuff sometimes. I don't think running for office is in my future either. I can't even do office politics well.

Oh, I'm glad lcj is back, too. I'm glad you're both back. Life is good..the world sucks, but life here is good at the moment.

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Pat, I guess the reason we feel you'd be a good public servant is your ability to be honest, level-headed, and wise. All at the same time, while trapped in this space with lunatics like me! I don't see you as being able to be boughten off by executives. Rather, I see you in the trenches working for the regular guy.
I'd vote for ya even if you were a Democrat, though there's probably a few openings in the Socialist party

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>
We have a resonant counter-legend: equality, freedom and liberty, we need to do a better job of demonstrating it, as well as "marketing" it
--Bumper
<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
I couldn't agree more. On another thread, there was talk about the blurring of political lines and positions in this crisis. I so hope that political lines are blurring enough over this that more than a few people will realize at least a little of what Bumper said.

But I've always been a Piscean dreamer...

Ceashel

pat posted:

Thank you all for the kind words, but they're really not justified by
the facts. I don't know any more than anyone else. I just get..wound up
about stuff sometimes. I don't think running for office is in my future
either. I can't even do office politics well.

____________

you can't want to cook either..but that doesn't mean i don't find you invaluable in the kitchen.

you lady, with your history and perception, could do it, and effect the changes you are always so cynical about.

Todd, you first. And I want front row seats at your press conferences, please.

ok, Todd, if you run for office, I'll be your James Carville, I won't shave my head, though....

ok, Todd, if you run for office, I'll be your James Carville, I won't shave my head, though....
thank you Ceashell, I enjoy your posts, already

What I find most appalling about the stimulus package is the distribution of funds. In this country the equation for figuring out poverty is ‘cost of the average nutritional diet x3’ any thing below that is poor.
And according to the governments idea of what that is for a family of three they say it is $15,000.00 so if a single mother of two was to have minimum wage job paying 6.15 an hour she would make $12,729.00 pretax dollars. So she is living below the poverty line is not eligible for the trivial $300 dollar tax cut because of the amount of taxes she already was refunded. And can get no public assistance because of reform. Yet the fat cat with the nice home gets ninety percent of the subsidies offered by the government. They can write part of the mortgage off and many other things that I will not even go into.

I find it amazing the ways we torment our own just to keep up appearances to other countries. See we are rich and powerful look at the minute number of poor in our country. It is time we look at the facts and get involved better so we really can have a voice in running this country.