NO.


just DO as you're told.

Gypsy41 was making a joke, it wasn't hurtful or mean. Infact, KerryO's response (in the email) seems to be playful too. So it's easy to understand why Gypsy41 would have thought they could carry on with their exchange. I have seen mean and hurtful jokes here and this wasn't one of them. I think a little perspective and calm heads are called for.

We have right, left, and center in this country.

We also have FAR right and FAR left in this country.

Why do Republicans insist on painting ALL Democrats with the far left brush?

Why do Democrats insist on painting ALL Republicans with the far right brush?

Less than 10% of right-wingers can be considered "far right".
Less than 10% of left-wingers can be considered "far left".

Yet, this continues on and on and on and....well, you get the message.

One thing we can ALL count on, however......

ALL politicians in Washington, left AND right, are laughing their asses off at us fussing, while they're doing everything in their power to benefit themselves.

Think about THAT!

Knox-

I think they use the extremes for drama. Apparently, it's not worth paying attention to something unless it's highly controversial so they make everything seem more dramatic and divided by using the fathest ends of the spectrum....

And not to be rude but your use of the "ALL" democrats do this and "ALL" republicans do that was a bit dramatic as well... but I guess that's what everyone has to do to get people to pay attention...

Gypsy,

As you know, I wasn't taking JSH email from your account. Bl8ant wrote to me and persuaded me to at least listen to what you had to say regarding this matter. Since I really respect her opinions and judgement, I'm removing the email block and will read what you send. I promise to respond in kind if your email is respectful. Anything else, and I'll just re-institute the block without comment and move on.

Your move.

-Kerry O.

AH ****, quit all the PC drama and cuss each other!

It relieves pressure and is a lot more fun!!!!

Knox I agree with you about the extreme left and right, and about the politicians trying to enrich themselves. I do not agree they are laughing at us about it because I doubt they realize the harm they are doing. So long as they thing they are doing so well for us, why would they be laughing at us about it?

Good point, Philosopher, they probably don't care enough about us to laugh at us .

As for the Senate and the House, two rules apply--we could actually name them the Strom Thurmond/Teddy Kennedy rules:

1-The hardest thing for a would-be Congressman or Senator to do is get elected the first time.
2-The EASIEST thing for a Congressman or Senator to do is get RE-ELECTED.

Unless a Congressman or Senator screws up something fierce, they usually have no problem getting re-elected--over and over and over....well, you get the message. Most promise to serve only two terms, but VERY few(Bill Frist of Tennessee being a notable exception)actually keep that vow. Too many people are allowed to essentially make careers out of being Congressmen and Senators. And with all the issues about health-care in this country, has anyone noticed what "profession" has, BY FAR, the best health-care program in America? FREE, also, I might add. Not to mention their pension plan, which kicks in after only serving ONE TERM.

No wonder The House and Senate, no matter which party's in charge, almost always has low approval ratings.

I think that our national elections are proof that human beings are still herd animals. One member of the herd cries out and the rest blindly follow.

We believe 3rd party candidates cant win because we are told so, and we are just too scared to run away from the rest of the herd.

One trouble with the one term policy is that the new senators and congressman do not really learn the ropes early in the game. Near the end of their first terms they are just becoming well aware of the legislation in the system, and they have no extensive knowledge of the previous term's legislative efforts or successes. They also do not know about the compromises that were made to get certain laws enacted. This means that somebody has to be there to shepherd bills along the path and to keep a continuity of effort focused on important local and national issues.

For this reason first-term legislators usually do not have the leadership positions in committees, and they struggle and vie for positions on committees that interest them in particular.

If you take a libertarian view that no legislation is good legislation then the single term issue may be for you, but for those of us who want congress and the senate to make sensible choices, we need to have some experience in the house and senate.

I think there might be some procedural changes that could help. Consider for a moment that when the Democrats took over control of congress, the first thing they did was declare that in the first 100 hours or some such period, they were going to get some certain number of bills through. I think the approach was greatly flawed.

Probably it would have been better to say, in the first 100 hours we are not going to try to pass any bills but we will spend the entire time discussing which of our bills are worth the trouble and which are special interest lobby matters and should be wholesale scrapped. Then begin the process of prioritizing matters and trying to reach some consensus of which way to go.

It is not always reasonable to promote the hot button partisan issues even though your party has the iron fist control of majority leader. It is more reasonable to make value judgments and intelligent choices, then after evaluation, if the hot button partisan issues still hold water, go ahead, but take care to control lobbyist influence in the writing of bills, lest the single-interest group gain all the benefit from the bill.