what's the difference?

How much better is it, Mr. Mourdock, to think that God wants a woman to be forced to carry and give birth to the child of her rape, than to think that God wanted the rape in the first place? Why can you not understand that we DO know what you were saying and find it TOTALLY reprehensible?!?!?
And say you could get your way and place these restraints on women. What then? Would you force the woman to raise the child too?? If not, why not? You have already inflicted your sense of morals on her this far, why not go all the way? Or do you think it will be easy to find other parents for this child? Are there couples just lining up to adopt a child whose father was a rapist? From everything I know, most people do the best they can to adopt a superlative child, from the best background they can arrange/afford. Is this not so? So why would they take on the uncertain future of the child of a violent criminal?
Go back and talk to your God again. And keep on doing that til you get a different, more humane answer.

Uncertainty pt. 2

I find it quite astonishing that the story is business owners need certainty. IMO, any business owner waiting for certainty should sell out and get a government job. That, at least until very recently, was the closest you could get to certainty in the working world.
Owning a business was about the farthest you could get from certainty. Did they not know this when they went into business? Have they not figured it out since?
In fact, life itself is uncertainty. This summer, 70 people simply went out to see a movie. Did they have certainty? How much less should one expect when talking about your profit for a quarter?
How can business people portray themselves (or be portrayed) as superior beings - you know, stronger, smarter, harder working, and also be such whiners?
Let's be honest. This is just another way to attack the government on the theory that we (or at least you) don't need it and we can do just fine on our own. Too bad they can't test that theory without messing things up for the rest of us.

Mystery Man

One thing that, IMO, unites all the voters this year is complete uncertainty about just WHAT Mitt Romney will do when he is elected. This is actually more of a problem for Republicans than Democrats. The latter don't care as much because they are doing all they can to keep him OUT of the White House. Of course, there is the possibility they will fail and then all they can do is hope really hard that either he will be the 'old' Mitt, the Massachusetts moderate, or the Congress will be able to blunt some of his more objectionable policies.
The Republicans, on the other hand, have to contemplate the very real possibility that they will have worked SO hard to elect a conservative and still not have one. Lately I have heard that they have decided they are willing to live with this just to get Obama out of office. Maybe so. Or maybe not. Either way they have a difficult decision.
And all of us have to decide just what we are risking and if it is worth it.

Power to the people

We all have merit.
That is the slogan I contributed to my union, Texas State Employees Union, for one of their yearly rallies a few years ago. This simple phrase is the crux of the divide in the US today. Maybe the world.
Mankind has been seeking for at least the last millennium to find and establish a meritocracy. In feudal times they tried genetics. The hope and belief was that extraordinary people would have extraordinary descendents, so royalty and nobility was inherited.
When that proved an error, the dream was equality, but either people didn't know how to ensure the practice, or were simply not determined enough, because instead wealth became the standard.
This is where we stand today.
IMO, one of the major divides, the fundamental differences that lead to the more commonly discussed, superficial differences, between the two parties is their attitude towards meritocracy.
First, let me say, I would be all for meritocracy if I thought it could ever be achieved in our emphatically imperfect species.
As I further see it, Republicans believe in meritocracy and Democrats agree with me. Republicans, at least the economic Republicans and probably many in the other wings of the party, believe that wealth IS evidence of superiority and a valid basis for the decision power over society.
Democrats believe that it is not possible to select some group of people with sufficient merit to have that power and therefore we must extend the decision power to ALL the people.
In just the past month, I have heard a Republican verbally quake at that idea. The attitude of the founding fathers that rights must be restricted to property owners lives in these people.
It's time to get beyond that 18th century attitude.

rights? entitlements?

This may shock some, but I DO consider that ALL human beings are entitled to health care, housing and food.
Apparently Mr. Romney doesn't. Let that sink in for a while. Mitt Romney thinks some people are not entitled to food and housing.
Now of course, everyone believes that people should work for what they get. Society could not continue if most people didn't contribute to the common good. Even communism said from each according to their needs and from each according to their abilities.
But there may be many reasons why someone cannot contribute, especially now. Romney and his ilk seem to think that people who have a hard time supplying those basics for themselves will not be motivated by money, yet people who have enough to never have to work again are deeply motivated by the same. So those at the lower levels of society will choose to make less, just to be lazy.
Somewhere deep in their minds, they live in a fantasy world where everyone controls their own destiny. Don't want to be poor? Have an unwanted pregnancy? Surrounded by drug use and violence?Just rise above it!
They seem to have no concept of having such an out of control life that you need help.
And the worse thing is, they don't see how they contribute to this everyday by piling up goods they don't need and will never use. How they scoop up all the opportunity in life for themselves and their children and leave crumbs at best for the rest of us.
This is the world they call free. Ron Paul came very close to expressing this in one of the debates and the crowd wanted him to go even farther.
Sad to say this group of  'christians', rather than looking to help that beaten stranger along the road, would blame him not only for his own woes, but theirs as well and give him an extra kick or two.
This election will be very telling.

Apologies accepted

Not surprisingly, Mitt Romney is wrong again.
Even beyond the crass political nature of his rushed comments, lies the underlying error of his worldview.
President Obama has not 'apologized for America', but he has granted other countries and their leaders a more equitable standing in the world in his dealing with them.
This is a most correct way to approach other countries.
I'm not sure what I make overall of the concept of American exceptionalism, but I am sure I don't believe it means someone automatically becomes exceptional just by being American.
Does anyone believe Ted Bundy was an exceptional human being? He was an American.
Does anyone believe Mahatma Gandhi wasn't an exceptional human being? He was not an American.
To recognize that America has made some mistakes and to acknowledge our shared humanity with people of other nations does not denigrate our country, it exalts it.
To pretend that we are somehow superior to everyone else is not only insulting and unfair to those others, it makes us look childish and stupid.
No wonder the image of the ugly American is so widespread that even we are painfully aware of it.
If President Obama has begun to lift us above and beyond this awful stereotype, God bless him. Let's not go back to it now.

Better for who?

So Ann Romney says her husband will work hard to make America a better place to live. For most issues, this can be debated. Whoever gets elected will make America better for some, worse for others - on MOST issues.
Economy - better for millionaires, or better for middle/lower class
Sexuality - better for women, or better for strict Catholics
Healthcare - better for consumers, or better for insurance/Pharma
But on one issue, there can be no debate. Mitt Romney's energy policy is strictly fossil fuels. He will increase production of these fuels and decrease or eliminate funding for alternative energies.
THIS WILL MAKE AMERICA AND THE ENTIRE WORLD WORSE FOR EVERYONE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Even the old energy company executives will have a worse world, as the air gets dirtier and the weather as a whole gets more volatile and violent.
So she may have told the biggest lie of the whole damn convention!