Copper theft

and

The "darkies" (your word, not mine) wanted to go home and we helped them. Where is the problem? That was still over 100 years ago. Why should we feel any "ownership" of their problems now?

Some of us don't give a rat's ass about what you folks do. I don't even care what they are doing the next state over. None of my business.

That has been true for much longer than "W". It is pretty hard to get close to the president since JFK was shot when Reagan was shot it really got harder. Clinton's people pushed back protestors too. Those hand shaking cheering throngs are carefully screened supporters and have been for 2 decades.

That is a nice area but a little chilly for me.

My problem is they won't let anyone who is not a candidate for the status quo participate in the dabate. As long as it is just the Remocrats and Depublicans we will never see much change

But it's a bit over the top setting up a cage a mile away and carefully labelling it, "Free Speech Zone".

In Arizona, debates are under the control of the League of Women Voters. Every certified candidate is offered the opportunity to participate.

I believe the same thing applies to Presidential candidate... what was that candidate's name... you know, the one who looked like Alfred E. Neuman ?:-)

...Jim Thompson

"It will not be the judgment of any capable of appreciating the Aristophanic comedy of which, restricted as their scale is in comparison, Peacock's fiction is, perhaps, the best modern representative. Nearly everything that can be urged against him can be urged against Aristophanes too; and save that his invention is far less

daring and opulent, his Muse can allege most of 'the apologies of Aristophanes'. "

I wonder where you think you found the reference to pretentious people?

Peacock is a genuinely funny satirist - he's much too much the well-read intellectual for his own good, but that doesn't stop him from constructing good jokes.

I can see how pretentious people might feel the need to claim to like Peacock. but that's not how I choose my reading, which includes much too much science fiction to register as pretentious on anybody's scale. Eclectic I could live with.

Check out Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle some time - Neal Stephenson can do character and plot while being well-read to an almost Peacockian level.

Snipping that paragraph - without marking the snip - wasn't done out if politeness, but purely to allow you to present the negative half of a balanced appreciation as if it were the whole story. This is text chopping, which is anything but polite.

Once upon a time there was also Perot, a crazy ass dwarf:

"Voting for president is like going into the adult novelty store and trying to guess which of the three dildos will hurt the least". -- Bobcat Goldthwaite.

If you ever find yourself in the area give me a call and stop by. I'm about a mile off 441, just north of Belleview. I rarely travel anymore, due to health problems.

It is the price you pay to live in a country that has shot a president every 20 years since the civil war. GW is just overdue.

In 2000 the debates were taken over by the networks and only the two monoparty candidates were invited. Basically just the ones who bought a half billion dollars worth of advertising from them.

He was the crazy assed dwarf who laid out the Clinton economic plan. We did pretty much exactly what he demonstrated in his charts and graphs when we restructured the debt.

If you do come south the same offer is open here. Exit 123 on I-75, I'm in the book We can go for a boat ride and see some nature. No smoking ... I promise ;-)

You're on, if I'm ever able to travel again.

If only we could get the natives to stop holding up illiterate signs and start chanting:

Rumpty Dumpty sat on the wall Rumpty Dumpty had a great fall And all George's horses and all of Dick's men Couldn't put Rumpty together again.

....