Hell, just reading some excerpts from their book is enough to convince me of that. I do not necessarily think he ever raised a hand to her, but there is some damn lopsided emotional authority going on there. His wife wrote spending about how once she went and got a haircut without consulting him first, then came back…

Thank you. I had never patronized those places and I know now I never will.

During 2014, I worked in Bellevue, WA, literally in the lot right next door to Mars Hill’s primary (but not original) facility. I would have to pass that place six days out of every week when I went in and out of my work.

The people who claim it should be run “like a business” generally mean that we should fire the incompetent people who keep screwing the system up and not performing optimally.

That would explain a lot of Trump’s appeal. I mean, you would have to be huffing paint pretty often to willingly follow a guy like that.

Okay, who here now thinks that Trump is running for president simply to get away from his creditors, because no one in his industry is willing to give him any more money?

I find it ironic that early in Oregon’s history the state constitution actually forbid non-white people from immigrating there to settle, and that was not amended out until the early twentieth century.

I still think that compulsory voting is a good thing, provided you can simply vote to abstain.

Same goes for Washington State. If you have a mailing address and are registered, you have a vote. You have a window of a few weeks to fill out the ballot, seal it in the specially provided envelope, and put it in the mail. Yeah, you pay postage but it is hard to argue that $0.35 cents is an onerous fee, and even that…

My parents got engaged three weeks after they started dating... but did not marry until another three years after that.

Okay, he had me going on the first part of that letter, about how he should not have to see hopeless and desperate people in the street, living in degrading and unsafe conditions. I thought, “Of course! No one should have to live like that. If anyone does it is because we as a society have failed them, let them fall…

Though in practice Scalia’s conception of the original intent of the constitution is “Whatever I happen to want it to mean at the present time.”

I blame that on a habit established in the Bush White House press corps. If a news outlet starts printing actual facts in response to White House releases (other than maybe some “balanced” he-said/she-said piece) then they get denied access, and everyone else gets to break the story instead.

One speculation I have made is that the Republicians are intending to delay until after the election to energize the voting base, give them something to fight for, even though this is a huge risk, because frankly none of their enthusiastic candidates are electable in a general election, and the few candidates who are…

Yeah, erectile dysfunction is God’s way of saying, “Hey doofus, use your mouth more!”

Also, in the context of the law at the time, homosexual persons were barred from military service (a restriction that goes back a long way) and coming out while serving (or even someone in authority just discovering that someone serving was homosexual) was grounds for dismissal. Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell may seem…

It also makes sense in terms of Christian theology, but only if you recontextualize all those lines about unconditionally supporting the poor as being about “spiritual” poverty as opposed to temporal poverty.

I suspect Carson was asleep in his chair when they were announcing the cut. Ignorant he was dismissed, he just keeps showing up, and the others just humor him.

Her published statements there sound almost credible. If it were not for the context of her earlier actions putting the lie to them, I would have applauded her for a step in the right direction (my expectations for any GOP candidate are pretty low at the moment so it is not a hard bar to clear if they actually tried.)

She looses some value if she gives up too early into the fight. Even when she did close her campaign, she did so with the rhetoric of someone wanting to carry on the fight by other means.