DISQUS

His moose/caboose trotter ( http://timrosswsmv.wordpress.com/2008/05/12/a-l... ) was IMHO funny enough to merit forgiveness of his attribution of migratory habits to bees (http://timrosswsmv.wordpress.com/2008/05/20/its...).

Fifty years ago in a North Carolina tobacco field, my Grandfather George Frink warned me to be careful where I chose to say "yes mam" to a black woman, because if I were not, the KKK would ultimately kill me.
He was proud of my respectful defiance of convention at the time, and was simply trying to tell me what I had to know in order to protect myself.
That same day a 63-year-old woman named Susan Boone told me I was the only "white boy" ever to say "yes mam" to her.
I would give a great deal to have a moment with each of them tonight.

Bill drifted through the NC county of my birth day before yesterday, arriving late and leaving early for another destination where the campaign donation pickings were better. One manipulation too many for some old friends there, who are now no longer in the Billary camp. & if HRC gets the nod, they'll vote McCain without so much as blinking.

You're crackin' me up, Karoli.
Hillary and her nukes, though.
As the Young and Barefoot neighbors of my rural North Carolina childhood used to say in the most quietly persuasive Honeyhill Road way, "That ain't funny."
When a candidate's, er, appeal to potential electorate goes that far and frightens our allies, the "withdraw" words do come sneaking into my mind.
I want my grandchildren to play Survivor Earth, and their grandchildren.
Yes, that Slate guy needs his erasers cleaned.

Excellent analysis of Hillary Rodham Clinton's strategies. He willingness to engage in such strategies has earned her the distrust of a substantial and growing portion of the electorate.
Regarding caucuses, had caucuses not existed, Barack Obama would not have invested time, energy and resources in them. He would have invested those resources in the approach to delegate selection that did exist.
Given the downward trajectory of Ms. Clinton's approval ratings and other outcomes, it is reasonable to argue that the outcome would have been essentially the same. She was doomed by her personality, not caucuses.
If through some fluke she still wins the Democratic nomination, her untrustworthiness will prevent even McCain's absent-mindedness from keeping him out of the oval office.
At this point, the Democratic Party might be better off to run that fabled yellow dog for president than to offer Ms. Clinton to the voting public.

Fulfilling a moral imperative, again, eh?
Something about how all that is required for evil to triumph is for the good to remain silent. Unsilent, and if I read you correctly, your use of speech embraced the spirit of nonviolent civil disobedience, whose goal IMHO is through love to save the soul of the violent sinner and of the fallen society.
Therein I think we find the true key to the locked door.

Imagine 1961 if you can, and a crew-cut Southern farmer's son at dinner with parents and grandparents, facing down adult ridicule of his view that he would live in a world where computers would be as small as the vacuum-tube radio sitting on a nearby sideboard, and almost everyone would have his own.
To their credit, forty-two years later the living survivors of that conversation, though not provoked to do so, apologized.
Your daughter is fortunate to have a mother who dreams with her, rather than against her.