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Always Positive, Sometimes Right - July 2007

We are so excited . . . and ask for help

July 31st 2007 15:58
Joan, my Trophy Wife of 49 years, and I are already planning for our 50th anniversary next summer. We had discussed throwing a party or some celebration but realized that such an affair would take three or four hours and be forgotten.

So, next July 22, we will be taking our four adult children, spouses and kids on an eight-day cruise from Tampa on Carnival’s Legend. We have made the down payment and that makes it official. I plan on keeping a journal of the trip and, perhaps, its contents will make their way to these pages


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Moxie: “You’ve Got Spunk . . . I Hate Spunk”

July 30th 2007 15:12
Lou Grant could have been addressing a bottle of Moxie, instead of Mary.

Moxie, trade name for a soft drink, has become a noun meaning courage, fighting spirit, nerve and, yes, spunk. It took all that to swallow what was America’s most popular drink and remains in some quarters, a much admired and lusted after quaff


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Party Loyalty is not a Virtue

July 29th 2007 23:19
Does this sound familiar?


"Why did we enter Iraq? I answer, for no very good reason, and we have remained for no reason at all. And what is our policy toward Iraq? I answer we have no policy. We have engaged in a miserable misadventure, stultifying our professions, and setting at naught our promises. We have punished no guilty; we have but brought misery and starvation and death to the innocent. We have garnered none of the fruits of the victory of war, but suffer the odium and infamy of undeclared warfare. We have sacrificed our own blood to no purpose, and into American homes have brought sorrow and anguish and suffering. Bring the American boys home from Iraq."

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How to Win the War against Terrorists Without Losing Everything – Part III

July 29th 2007 11:37
A “pyrric victory”, named after King Pyrrhus of ancient Epirus, an area on the Baltic, has some present relevance. The King defeated the army of Rome, but at a horrible cost in casualties. While it is most closely associated with a military battle, the term is used by analogy in fields such as business, politics, law, literature, and sport to describe any similar struggle which is ruinous for the victor.

In the first post on the Iraq, middle-east quagmire and terrorist threats, I discussed my views of what immediate action the United States must take to extricate ourselves from the civil war in Iraq


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Terror, Iraq and the Future; How Do We Fight and Win? – Part II

July 28th 2007 12:21
In my previous post on this site, I suggested that the West was in a monumental struggle against fanatical Islamic terrorists who are determined to reject our values, our society, our freedoms, our diversity – in short, everything we hold dear.

Moreover, unlike historical past threats, as Germany’s desire to take over Europe, Great Britain and, perhaps, eventually the rest of the freedom-loving world, in the 1930’s, this time the threat is brought to our homes and shores. Terrorist attacks have been successful in the United States, Great Britain and Indonesia, seemingly at will, and thwarted at the last moment in Canada and elsewhere


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Iraq: Same old, Same old

July 27th 2007 18:18
I do not claim omniscience; what was clear and inevitable to me last September, ten months ago, remains clear and inevitable. The only thing that has changed is that my views are nearly universally accepted by all save Messrs. Chaney, Rove and Bush. Of the three, only the vice-president is acting on principle, Rove has no principles whatsoever and the president is acting out Albert Einstein’s famous definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

Last fall, in another forum, I summed up what I felt to be the dilemma to which we had arrived in Iraq


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Just what we need…another blog!

July 27th 2007 17:47
This site is named PoliticalCertainty.com because my interests, for the most part, are related to “politics” , defined in the dictionary as “(a) of or relating to government or the conduct of government or (b) of, relating to, or concerned with the making as distinguished from the administration of governmental policy. My interests lie in both areas. I am fascinated by the conduct of governments and the administration of governmental policy.

As a retired attorney, I am also cognizant of the manner in which court rulings and statutes often have consequences far beyond, and sometimes, opposed to that which was intended. Attitudes and beliefs in moral imperatives have changed over the years; what was accepted fifty, or even twenty, years ago is no longer acceptable


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An alternative source for ethanol or bio-fuels.

July 27th 2007 11:51
On February 20th and on July 21st, Populist Conservative, under the blog, Angry Electorate, posted two thoughtful essays on the need for non-petroleum sources for fuel, the possibility of wide-spread utilization of ethanol, now primarily created out of corn. The utilization of corn, while it reduces the need for oil and dependence on basically unfriendly foreign regimes, unfortunately, it has consequences that are not socially or economically acceptable.

We have a serious energy/foreign policy crisis in this country. Even our President, an "oil man" with an oil background and friends, acknowledges that we have an addiction to oil. In many and obvious ways, our foreign policy in the Middle East has been dictated by our use of petroleum products. We in the United States use almost one-quarter of the petroleum available worldwide each year. The oil producing countries manipulate the production of oil to further their political aims and to keep the prices high and, as a bonus, to bring discomfort to the Western countries. Oil refiners and distributors are recording obscene profits by keeping the amount of refined fuels low, the American people are burdened with high gasoline prices at the pump


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Democrats Must Appeal to Emotions, not Issues

July 26th 2007 02:04
I have just completed reading an interesting, fascinating book by Drew Westen, a professor of psychology at Emory University in Atlanta, “The Political Brain.” The sub-title of Professor’s book is, “The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of the Nation”. His theories, developed over the past twenty years, explore a theory of the mind that differs substantially from the more "dispassionate" notions held by most psychologists, political scientists, and economists—and Democratic campaign strategists. The idea of the mind as a cool calculator that makes decisions by weighing the evidence bears no relation to how the brain actually works. When political candidates assume voters dispassionately make decisions based on "the issues," they lose. That's why only one Democrat has been re-elected to the presidency since Franklin Roosevelt—and only one Republican has failed in that quest.
In Professor Westen, Democrats have available a prophet who can deliver the Promised Land of winning national elections. In an earlier post on this site, I suggested that, “Liberal-progressives have, for too long, allowed the Republican right to frame the issues in the debate. This put Liberals always on the defensive. It is time to re-assert all of the human values that are the cornerstone of liberalism and that, deep down, are the principles of America.”

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Bush’s Legacy will Endure – to our Detriment

July 23rd 2007 00:49
A Supreme Court decision on June 25th, 2007, Hein v Freedom from Religion Foundation, Inc. points out just one of the areas in which Bush administration may have caused irreparable harm to the very fabric of our society.

When President Bush finally leaves office in January 2009, he will leave behind many legacies. One will be a nation stripped of its moral bearings. Once we did not torture and were a nation of law; that is no longer true. Bush will also leave us in far reduced international standing and with a disabled military. He will leave an exhausted treasury with a national debt of many trillions of dollars more than he found it


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Poll of Young Americans encouraging

July 22nd 2007 18:58
The New York Times, CBS News and MTV conducted a poll of young (ages 17-29) adults over the period June 15-23, 2007, dealing with the respondents’ political opinions and viewpoints regarding the present and probable future conditions in this country and their personal viewpoints as to their individual futures.

In many respects, the results, when compared with the opinions of all adults, were to be expected; in other respects, in my opinion, the results are a surprise


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Flaws in Capital Punishment

July 21st 2007 17:48
As a self-confessed Liberal, I find it difficult to evaluate most issues as an either “for” or “against” matter. This is where I have a disadvantage to those of the “other” persuasion—I refuse to call these activists “conservatives” on causes with which I disagree. Often, those usually described as “conservative” are extremely activist in a desire to regulate much private behavior. As I noted in another context, “Liberals are very broadminded: they are always willing to give careful consideration to both sides of the same side.” And then there is Robert Frost’s well known quote: “A liberal is a man too broadminded to take his own side in a quarrel.”

While I have serious doubts as to the efficacy of capital


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A matter of hypocrisy

July 18th 2007 22:46
Years ago when our children were young, my wife and I swore that we would never say, “Our child will never. . . “. Anything could complete that sentence, “marry out of our race or faith” or “drink and drive” or anything else. The theory was that a statement such as this could, actually would, come back and bite us someday. Since then, many of our friends have had reason to understand that concept!

And now we come to David Vitter, United States Senator from Louisiana, and his wife, Wendy. It happens that Senator Vitter is a conservative Republican and has been a strong supporter of the Federal Abstinence Education Program which provides $50 million in grants to promote sexual abstinence. In a letter in support of the program, Senator Vitter wrote, “We must reauthorize this program so we can continue the incredible strides we have made in teaching teens about both risk avoidance and protecting themselves from potential abuse.
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The Foul Mouth of Ann Coulter

July 16th 2007 15:55
There is a certain irony in having an advertisement for Ann Coulter’s messages being available via e-mail on this site and my homepage! In an earlier post, I complained that the Ann Coulters of the world refused to debate positions on their merits but, instead, engaged in silly ad hominem arguments that added nothing to intelligent political discourse. Ms Coulter has done it again, with the same results.

Leonard Pitts is a syndicated columnist who writes for the Miami Herald. His column the other morning discussed Ms Coulter’s equating Barack Obama (whose middle name is “Hussein”) with terrorists and those who would attack our country


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Finally, a Liberal's Beliefs

July 13th 2007 16:08
This is my third, and last, posting on my perceptions of the conservative/liberal split in the United States. The first pointed out that modern Republican conservatives govern poorly because they dislike and distrust government. My friends to the Right often equate bigger government with less efficiency and more waste. There is some validity to that position, but not always and not necessarily.

The second post stressed the need for a reconstituted conservative movement in this country, one that was truly conservative and reluctant to use government to enforce personal views of morality and propriety on the rest of us


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Friendly advice to the Right

July 12th 2007 16:04
In a prior post I postulated that the Bush (#43) administration and its followers had failed, not because of a unique amount of venality or stupidity (they do not have, after all, a monopoly), but because, at least in part, because they dislike and distrust government and governing. If your core value is that government is the problem in all things civic, then you’re probably not going to be good at utilizing it for the commonweal.

And that’s a shame, because, as a liberal, left-leaning kind of guy, I readily acknowledge that the Conservative movement is necessary


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Problems from the Right

July 10th 2007 20:23
I have strong views and opinions related to politics and the manner in which our leaders lead.

As of today, July, 2007, the mid-term elections in the United States have been taken place months ago, the present Administration had been repudiated by the majority of the American public and we are now in the process of waiting around while Mr. Bush and Mr. Chaney and their cohorts clean out their respective desks


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Paranoia is bad for your health!

July 9th 2007 17:17
I know, as a brand new member of the Community, that I should begin by posting autobiographical materials so that readers will know from whence I come. (Already you can see that I am a grammar purist; the use of less rather than fewer is like nails on a chalkboard.) I fully intend to write about my Trophy Wife, Joan, of 49 years, our four daughters, assorted sons-in-law, 14 grandchildren, etc. As is the case at Lake Wobegon, all of our women are strong, the men good looking and the children above average.

But first, a few remarks about things that go bump in the night, are likely untrue, but seem to be seriously considered by otherwise rational and sober people


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Hate crime legislation is both popular and unnecessary

July 8th 2007 13:12
Your text goes here
Let’s start with a few “givens”, as professors in law school like to say. I do not justify or excuse any person who commits a crime against any person or who injures any person or steals property of another. A person arrested for a violation of law is entitled to a fair trial and, upon conviction, deserves to be incarcerated or suffer other punishment as the law might direct.

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I really am a Curmudgeon, I guess

July 8th 2007 12:57
I am firmly ensconced in the mid-twentieth century. Apparently graduation from college and law school made my social development cease.

For example, even after reading a number of essays on point, I still do not understand “Bye, Bye, Miss American Pie”. I don’t have a Chevy, do not live near a levee (I do know people named Levy, but that’s probably not the same) and aren’t levees supposed to be “dry


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Hello. Have patience

July 8th 2007 11:19
This is my first attempt to join Orble, having been a follower of several writers whose opinions I do not always share but admire and appreciate.

I am a retired New York attorney, have worked for the Florida Department of Revenue for nearly 25 years and now live in a suburb of Tampa, Florida. I have a wife of 49 years, who is referred to either as my Starter Wife or Trophy Wife, depending on my mood, have 4 children and 14 grandchildren


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