Tuesday, September 25, 2012

Winston-Salem Journal LTE TU 09/25/12


That’s enough
Frankly, I am mad as hell, and I'm not going to take it any more. No more telling me that I don't know enough to take care of myself! No more calling my retirement insurance (better known as Social Security) an entitlement, a handout, after my employers and I paid premiums for it for years! No more telling me that I consider myself a victim who expects the government to take care of me! I worked hard all my life, paid my taxes, saved some money and spent some on necessities that were made here in the United States. I donated to charities, supported my church and volunteered where I could be of help.
I voted in every election since I was 21; sometimes for Republicans, sometimes for Democrats, in a time when both could be relied upon to work together to achieve what was best for the country.
What I didn't do was hide my money in the Cayman Islands and Switzerland so I could avoid paying the taxes that build infrastructures that keep the country operating, as well as paying the police, firefighters, teachers, etc., who protect and educate us. I didn't buy up companies so I could close them down and send the work overseas. I didn't consider myself superior because of my hidden assets.
What I did for 79 years was consider myself, and act like, an American citizen. Which is more than can be said for Mitt Romney.
PATRICIA A. RECK
Winston-Salem
Works for the citizens
Over 50 percent of North Carolinians don’t know that state court judges are elected. I write to educate your readers regarding David Sipprell, an assistant district attorney in Forsyth County who is running for election to become a Forsyth County District Court Judge.
I have practiced law in Forsyth County state and federal courts for over 30 years. I know David and have worked with him. He is a well-educated, hardworking former Air Force officer and family man who works to protect the citizens of Forsyth County on a daily basis. He will make an excellent judge.
Please vote for David Sipprell on Nov. 6!
MICHAEL ROBINSON
Winston-Salem
Romney defended?
The front-page article “Romney remarks defended” (Sept. 19) turned our appreciated local newspaper into a cheap campaign circular in one fell swoop. Shame!
JAMES M. DUNN
Winston-Salem
Conservative policies
We should correlate take-home pay per personal cost of living as related to all other classes of take-home pay with the cost of living. Then, the usable difference in per-capita income and purchasing power emerges.
Ten percent of $100,000 to $1 million to $10 billion leaves $90,000, $900,000 and $9 billion of purchasing power. Even graduating the tax to 50 percent and 90 percent, the remaining $50,000, $500,000 and $5 billion still amounts to gross income and tax inequality.
The U.S.’s $14 trillion per annum economy is the richest in the world by far. Our personal debt of about 7 percent per person is among the average of nations. The right-wing’s effort to displace debt on the general population is treacherous. Our economy and wealth is not the problem; our failure to tax the overpaid and under-taxed upper classes fairly is the problem. Coupling this with overtaxing and underpaying the lower classes render economic inequality a major social problem. For we fail to provide all the people with the universal health care, education and supportive socio-physical infrastructure we should.
Conservatives’ social policies have only made the rich richer at the peoples’ and nation’s expense. Communism is not the answer. The mixed economy with its social diversity is.
MARCIALITO CAM
Winston-Salem

83 comments:

  1. I can, however, remove my own posts. I looked at the picture several more times and finally saw what I'm sure Bucky saw the very first time. It looked like the dog was peeing into Mitt's Mouth.

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    1. That's what I liked about the picture.

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    2. You liberals would have been squealing like little pigs if I'd put a picture of Obama like that up, and you know it.

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    3. Dunce, Dunce, Dunce, repeats, repeats, repeats, ad, ad, ad, nauseum, nauseum, nauseum... ... ...

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    4. Ah, the squeal of little pigs, music to my ears. Teacup pigs are so cute when they are born.

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  2. LTE #1: She gets it. Those that don't get it are actually the ones that use the "victim" card the most: "wah, wah ~~ they're drawing from their Social Security funds, WHY CAN'T I?", etc. In fact, when NOTHING goes Right, the Left is blamed.

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  3. What a wonderful morning. 43degrees, Venus shining brightly in the southeast and Jupiter at the zenith, as the predawn sky ribbons the horizon with it's brilliance and patches of fog lift gently from the valley, the cock crows 3 times. Well more like 3 cocks crowing incessantly but occasionally one must use poetic license.

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  4. That's enough! You're mad as hell and not going to take it anymore? Yes you will. We're all mad as hell. Your blessed SS ponzi plan is drying up faster than the overseers can report its status accurately. They say 2033, next year when the status of the ponzi is reported, watch and see if it isn't more like 2025. Like the late congressman Claude Pepper D-Fla used to say "tax the young".

    A lot of us have voted every election but what is "best" for the country is now in doubt. No money was "hidden" in the Caymans. These tax havens are legal and kept that way because they have bi partisan support in DC. There should be more of them.

    Mr Romney no more feels superior to you than you feel inferior to him. When all else fails, be a good New Dealer: tax the young, tax the rich. Works all over the world...didn't it?

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    1. Social security is not hidden and is legal unlike a Ponzi scheme. ah yes, people should have the best nation on earth and the best military, the only superpower, but not pay for it. Just because something is legal does not make it good for the nation. If Americans don't want to be a superpower anymore, fine, put the money in tax havens, but don't complain about losing status.

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    2. Mitt talks a good Patriot game, but his actions speak much louder than his words.

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    3. As I mentioned to you the other day, offshore havens have always been a hedge against bad monetary and economic policy the world over. It also is a safe place in a time of political uncertainty which is a new experience here in modern America. SS, while legal, is nothing more than an intergenerational ponzi.

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    4. Political uncertainty new? the 60's and 70's where politically uncertain. I think you will find political uncertainty accompanies long protracted wars. Same happened to the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. I believe we were lured into wars with the intended outcome being to ruin our economic and political stability.

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    5. Do you sense the revival of "Critical Legal Studies", speaking of the 60s and 70s? New Left is out of sellable ideas. Change is coming soon enough.

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    6. It seems that everyone is out of ideas because we've built a world full of institutions too complex to manage.

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    7. Too complex for Democrats to manage.

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    8. Europe (EU) is trying to put a 'carbon' tax on our airlines in order to dig european countries out of their economic hole, made by their liberal leaders.

      Liberals never stop taxing. They're like the Energizer Bunny.

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    9. And conservatives never stop whining, it's in their DNA. Would you care for some goat cheese with that whine, sir? With perhaps some caviar d'crappie?

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    10. You'd be squealing like that man in 'Deliverance', if I was allowed free reign in here Bob.

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  5. Conservative policies. Good grief. More of Cam's psychobabble. At least he knows Communism is not the answer. But what he invisions will gradually lead to it because the Statists will always have to serve up a little more each election cycle to keep the beggars happy. When happy, a beggar is easy to please.

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  6. Ronald Reagan once asked: "Is it fair that millionaires pay a lower tax rate than bus drivers?" and the Republican crowd shouted: "NO!!"

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    1. We are a lifetime away from 1980 and one massive financial collapse removed as well. How is it we assume the bus driver might not also be a millionaire?

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    2. yet, some still use the "Reagan Recovery" as a yardstick for the present.

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    3. It's like comparing the internet to rotary phones.

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    4. It's like saying Al Gore invented the internet.

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    5. We can always count on Dunce to jump into a discussion and say something trite* and stupid.

      * trite - hackneyed, dull, already said in exactly the same way so often that it no longer has any worth.

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  7. True. the 1980s recovery is no more relevant to right now than the 1990s recovery/expansion. A financial collapse changes everything.

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  8. I don't know how that last post got out of alignment.

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  9. The cold hard truth which few are willing to say is we spend most of our wealth on keeping people alive well beyond what mother nature intended. I know from my own experience. It's a moral/fiscal dilemma. I once went off my medications for 18 months and told my doctor I wanted to just let nature take it's course, and She did. I'll spare you the gruesome and unpleasant details. I'm just thankful to live in a nation where citizens actually do care for each other.

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    1. I know what you mean, kind of. Last month I became three and a half years cancer free. Eighteen more months and according to my Dr, I'll be completely cancer free.

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  10. Technology and communications have fundamentally changed civilization and we are just experiencing its embryonic stage.

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    1. You're correct. We've had an invasion of illegal immigrants in recent years, and it's the fault of both parties' administrations.

      If we'd cut off the spigot of a free ride for those folks long ago, we wouldn't be in this predicament.

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    2. We can always count on Dunce to jump into a discussion and say something trite* and stupid.

      * trite - hackneyed, dull, already said in exactly the same way so often that it no longer has any worth.

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  11. State officials announced that the high school graduation rate for 2012 was 80.2 percent.

    Republicans, who won control of both chambers of the General Assembly following the 2010 election, were quick to praise their approach to education policy and funding while also giving a pat on the back to students, parents, teachers, principals, and superintendents.
    SAT scores for North Carolina high school seniors slid again this year, following a national decline as greater numbers of students take the college entrance exam.

    The combined critical reading and math score for North Carolina students averaged 997 this year, a four point drop from the average score in 2011.

    I wonder if they'll jump to take credit for that too?

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    1. Bob, the Republican General Assembly is digging the state out of a plethora of ditches and holes, the Democrats left for them. The state educational system is just one of many. Republican leaders are good, but they can't correct in two years, what it took Democrats to do in a hundred.

      Obama has take four years to make our economic matters worse, and he has the audacity to ask for more time.

      At least we're moving in the 'right' direction with state Republicans.

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    2. Matters are not worse. That is false. The only thing that is worse is the attitudes on the 'right.'

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    3. 'Most' people don't want to take one up the whazzzoooooo in the form of higher and more taxes, 401K and real estate losses, okay, Bob?

      THAT's what we've been through under Obama's leadership.

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    4. Yeah, those high taxes are killing me...I wanta go back to the 1980s.

      And my 401Ks are only about 20% higher than they were in 2009...pretty soon I'll be on welfare.

      "Henny Penny, Henny Penny...help!!!"

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  12. At the state level, one of the most striking results came from North Carolina, where a new survey by the Civitas Institute gives Obama a four percentage-point advantage (49 to 45 percent).

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    1. Good luck with that holding. McCrory (R) has a 12.5 point lead over Dalton (D). There's going to be a lot people pulling the lever (voter speak for you liberals) for at least one Republican.

      Thanks Bev. You did a fine job of helping Republicans by the way, and probably helped pass the Constitutional Amendment to prohibit gays from marrying.

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    2. Gays can still get married. Just not in this state...yet.

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    3. It'll be a while Bob. That's my prediction.

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  13. Where's that idiot, Rush, at? He's usually in here, and got a few stupid posts posted by this time of day.

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    1. My grandmother always said "Don't say the name of the devil; if you call him, he will come."

      Le Bec-fin

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  14. Bucky, do you believe the Universe is infinite? If you do, I have some bad news for you. If you take the observable universe, a sphere now about 90B light years in diameter, there are a finite number, very large, of quantum states (positions of subatomic particles and their energies) that can exist in that sphere. Now, if the universe is infinite, then there are an infinite number of similiar volumes of space.

    At some point in this infinite vastness, the quantum states will start to repeat themselves, finally the repetition leaves with another Earth, populated with humans, including a Bucky identical to the one who posts here, who is indeed posting on an indentical blog. But in the repetition of quantums states, there will be all sorts of one-offs. Can you see where this is going?

    Yep, in an infinite universe, somewhere there is an election ongoing where Bob and Arthur run as Republicans; where OT contributes to the NRA and the National Right to Work Committee; where WW is the keynote speaker at the DNC; where I am head of the SEIU; where Marcelito and Boon assail Harvey for being a commie. And Bucky, I'll leave him to your febrile imagination, but I sure a scenario can be imagined.

    I do not believe the universe is infinite, but a lot of leading edge physicist, astronomers, and cosmologists do. The info about quantums states, etc., comes from Brian Greene, one of the more prominent contemporary physics.

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    1. STAB;;; HUSH YO MOUTH!!

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    2. Stab, how did you find out about those NRA contributions? Shhh...I'll be drummed out of the Extreme Left Liberal Commie Socialist Welfare and Labor Union Club (ELLCSWLUC).

      At least he didn't mention that in that other universe I'm also a fundamentalist Baptist preacher.

      I'm sorry to report that the other day in that same universe, I saw Dotnet, who is a drooling, babbling fool just like you-know-who is in this universe; LaSombra, who is a shoot to kill border guard and Wordly, who as Secretary of State to President Gore, helped to start not two, not three, but four wars...on Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran and South Carolina, which had just seceded from the Union. Since general McClellan is in charge of all four, they have been going on for decades...no actual battles have yet been fought except for a brief skirmish known as the Battle of James Island between two US postal clerks and a Charleston alderman over a parking space at the James Island Chick-fil-A.

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    3. Egads, in that universe I'm a dookie >-p

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    4. My GOP doppelgänger is like evil Spock. He even sports a goatee.

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  15. Yes, if the universe is infinite, somewhere out there, Bucky is demonstrating in favor of gay marriage.

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    1. Yep, saw him. Sign said "I'm a gay caballero looking for a bucking bronc!"

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    2. Yeah, and Rush is out there using common sense and rational thinking too. Pleeeaaaaaase!

      Stab, I believe 'almost' anything is possible, but somethings are not.

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  16. OT, we're really giving infinity a tough time.

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  17. “Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the the universe." AE

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  18. Good afternoon folks!
    LTE 1: Well, avoiding taxes like Romney is the American way. I will also grant that Romney did speak the truth when he disregarded and dismissed all those who "don't pay taxes", since he hasn't shown he actually has any regard for the non-millionaire set.

    LTE 2: Endorsement.

    LTE 3: I'm generally not a Monday morning editor, but I will admit to being a little surprised the Journal had the article "Romney remarks defended" as opposed to "Reactions to Romney remarks" containing an equal number of reactions from local R's, D's and I's.

    LTE 4: What constitutes a "fair" wage and a "fair" taxation rate has been debated for centuries and has served as the ignition for revolutions in countries such as France and Russia. The world has mostly decided on letting the markets determine what constitutes a "fair" wage which doesn't always seem fair when you have some people who play sports or pretend to be someone else making far more than those who educate our children. It is true, however, that in comparison to other countries, the US does have a low tax rate as well as a comparably low to average debt.

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    1. Of course, it could also be that the good folks at the Journal were so surprised to find people who actually supported Romney's remarks that they considered it to be front-page news.

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    2. They shouldn't have been surprised.

      I know quite a few "rich" people, born and self-made. Most are pretty decent, generous human beings, who spend a lot of time and money helping others.

      But there are a few who have the same selfish attitude that Mitty expressed in Boca. What Mitty said is normal talk for them...they have contempt for anyone not like them, even though most of them had exceptional advantages from birth.

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  19. Obama STILL blames the film. Got keep the lies goin, right Baby?

    http://news.yahoo.com/obama-condemns-violence-tied-anti-muslim-film-145204587--election.html

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    1. There are three known levels of dumb...dumb, dumber and dumbest.

      We're going to have to come up with a better one for Dunce...I know, how about "uber dumbest"?

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  20. University of Tennessee student admitted to hospital with a BAC of .40.

    Officials say that the student received the alcohol through an enema. They are attempting to determine if it was some type of new 'gay' recreational, college activity.

    Marvelous, it just never stops.

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    1. Yea, 'cause everyone loves having alcohol up their ass. The PKA's at UT are not known for gay tolerance. You're just a liar. They who?

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    2. The owner of the farm here just graduated from UT-Knoxville in 2002. He just died laughing at your comment on the Pika's.

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    3. I opened the Darryl's in Knoxville in 1979 and spend 2 years there. We had some PKA's that waited tables for us.

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    4. That's an old perverse fraternity hazing activity.

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    5. Okay Bob, I'll take you at your word. You seem to know what you're talking about, as usual.

      If Rush had made the same comment, I'd have to investigate it further, however.

      I've spent many at day AND night on the AT near where you're at.

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    6. "I've spent many at day AND night on the AT near where you're at."

      Now there's a good laugh...note how Dunce says "AT" like he's ever been there or even knows where it is...which he clearly doesn't, because Bob is nowhere near the "AT".

      Dunce = Romney, Jr.

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  21. Military leaders: We're still too fat to fight

    http://thechart.blogs.cnn.com/2012/09/25/military-leaders-were-still-too-fat-to-fight/?hpt=hp_t3

    _________

    These military leaders must have known Rush back when he was in the Navy.

    In the Navy.....hee hee....sing it. The Village People....

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  22. Bucky, OT served in Viet Nam. Politics aside, you and I owe him thanks, and hundreds of thousands of others. Well, millions actually, from 1775 to now.

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    1. Stab, given your age, you should know about the men that were afraid to fight in Vietnam. They tried to weasel out of their military service under the draft through any means possible. Many of these Vietnam 'veterans' looked for the least risky method of military service.

      Rush, having little, to no character, was, obviously one of them.

      Like I've said before, I know Rush, and people like him, TOO well.

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  23. .40 BAC. That's nothing. A few years ago, some alcoholic old bat in OR plowed into a snowbank. They took her to the hospital where they drew blood with a .72 BAC. Do you know what you would call me with a .72 BAC?

    Dead and buried.

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    1. A blood alcohol content of that level is usually lethal.

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    2. Now there is probably the most brilliant statement ever made on this forum.

      Please tell us more, oh Dunce the King!!!

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  24. I suspect OT did not try to weasel out of service. And serve he did, and my thanks to him and all the others. That's my story and I'm stickin' to it.

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  25. Takes a lot of training to be able to sustain a .72 BAC, to be sure, and the less trained kid with the .40 was probably within hailind distance of heaven before they dragged him back.

    There was another gal in OR who registered .69. How they managed to stumble to their cars is a mystery to me.

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  26. Madonna says she'll strip on stage if Obama wins second term. Let's hope he doesn't win. I don't think anybody wants to see Madonna naked at 54 years of age.

    http://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/2012/09/25/madonna-calls-president-obama-black-muslim-says-shell-strip-onstage-if-wins/?intcmp=features

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    1. Poor little dunce-in-the-closet boy has never been within five miles of a woman as good looking as Madonna.

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  27. I see a Florida school system, Marion County, is considering reinstituting corporal punishment. One proponent says it is more effective than suspension. I don't doubt that, but that is irrelevant; hanging would be more effective, too, but is a bit out of proportion, 'twould seem. I find it astonishing that a government organization would want to employ a form of punishment that would be called cruel and unusual if handed out as a sentence in a criminal trial.

    I'm all for discipline. And the way to hit 'em where they live is with Saturday AM detention, as in 730 or 8AM detention: no sleeping in, no Saturday AM TV, and probably angered parent(s).

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    1. Cracker country. Have relatives who live around there who still chew tobacco.

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