Among the Green Leaves

whilst reading another group i saw someone slam an opponent of prop 8 with the line i keep hearing about how marriage is defined in the bible as one man and one woman. that got me thinking and delving a bit to find out why that is held to be immutable. i seem to remember solomon having an inordinate number of wives and concubines, as did his father, david (also known for his homosexual affair with jonathon, son of saul, in the book of samuel 18:1-5, 20:3-5, 20:41-42). oh and what about jacob with his two wives and two concubines?

marriage of one man and one woman is only one type of marriage recognised in the bible. there are eight varieties according to a site in ontario canada for religious tolerance.

( marriages - read on for rebuttals to people who want to discuss this amendment to the california constitution as a mandate from god in the bible )

Give people the benefit of the doubt today and you will dramatically increase the chances of having a stress-free day! Just let their grumpiness roll off your back and try to remember how funny or amusing they can be. If someone says something that rubs you the wrong way, just laugh it off. The alternative -- getting all frustrated or angry -- isn't going to make you feel better, and it could start up a fight you don't really want to deal with. Stick to your guns if it gets too tough.

interesting how the mccain campaign is digging deep to find every speck of dirt to fling at the obama campaign.

Obama says he didn't know aunt's illegal status

they find an aunt, the half-sister to his father, who defied deportation orders in his very extended paternal side of the family. the side of the family he really has no familial connection to other than blood due to his father leaving his mother when he was two years old. this woman is a person he has seen only a few times in his life. it isn't as though she is someone he has had dinner with on saturday nights every week.

i am also glad to read "A statement given to the AP by Obama's campaign said, "Senator Obama has no knowledge of her status but obviously believes that any and all appropriate laws be followed."

though i suspect he is seething at the tactics of the other campaign. not because he feels it is proper to violate the law if you are a relative, but because the other side is will to stoop to such a level to root out anything they can to try to derail his campaign.

they are stooping to the level of the campaign between andrew jackson and john quincy adams.

the adam's campaign accused jackson of adultery, cockfighting, gambling, slave trading, drunkenness, theft, lying and the murder of six deserters at the end of the war of 1812.

his mother, it was said, was a prostitute brought to the colonies by british soldiers. she married a mulatto man, the story went, and jackson was the first of several children. in truth his father was a irishman from country antrim who was killed three weeks before his birth. he had two older brothers.

due to the timing of his marriage to a divorced woman, one newspaper asked, "Ought a convicted adultress and her paramour husband to be placed in the highest office of this free and Christian land?"

some things never change, eh?

i have mentioned a blog here before which belongs to two old ladies with attitude, margaret and helen. granted it is helen who does the posting. she brings a smile to my face with each new post where she tells it like it is.

well, with the help of her grandkids and margaret's nephew they have a site on cafe press

i think i need

this is verbatim from a website called in jesus.

read on for the ( batshit crazy )

End of excerpt.

i had noticed a few headlines on news sites regarding "joe the plumber". didn't bother reading as i figured he is an incarnation of "joe sixpack".

as most of you know, i don't own a television so i haven't seen any of the soundbites/news clips.

i have taken this from psyyche to share. she has scrounged up quite a bit of interesting info. (thanks, psyyche!)

Those of you who are following the presidential circus are probably familiar with McCain's new friend, "Joe the Plumber." I'd never heard of Joe before McCain referenced him 25+ times (the official count I think was 26). I didn't think there was a real "Joe the Plumber".. it just sounded like McCain had expanded upon Palin's "Joe Six-Pack" character in a theoretical sense to connect more with down-home, blue-collar values voters. A stretch, I thought, but I could see him doing that.

I learned after watching the debate that there really was a Joe the Plumber. I watched his original random interaction with Obama on the street, and I found it a little contrived. Joe's situation seemed well-tailored to pose a problem for Obama, but... maybe he just was truly concerned. He said he was an undecided voter trying to figure out where each candidate stood on things. I thought it was strange that Joe was ready to drop his dream because any (net) profit over $250k would be taxed at an additional 3% over the current rate. That seemed kind of piddly, and a plumber making more than $250k/year net is doing pretty damned well. Joe the Plumber didn't sit right with me. So I turned to the almighty innertoobs to see if anyone else had felt this way.

Turns out that yes, lots of people got the fake vibe from Mr. Joe the Plumber. And lots of people have been doing a lot of research to figure out who he really is. And wow, did they find stuff. A lot of this is speculation, and speculation from very biased anti-GOP folk. Some of it is passing fact-checks already. I think tonight's news may prove very interesting for McCain's credibiity.

Here's what's been found:

He seems to be Samuel Joseph Wurtzelbacher. If so:

* His plumber's license expired in 2002.

* He owns several businesses already.

* He is a registered Republican who voted for McCain in the Republican primaries on March 4.

* He has a state income tax lien of $1,182.98.

* His ex-wife left him to go to a Battered Women's shelter. (I just noticed the Arizona address. Interesting.)


Here are some loose connections that haven't been confirmed so far (and I know "Wurzelbacher" is a really common name, but...):

* He may be closely related to Robert Wurzelbacher (of Cinncinnati, OH), Charles Keating's son-in-law. Yes, Keating Five Charles Keating. And he's a very active Republican donor.

* There seems to be a Doug Wurzelbacher, active in competitive dog sled racing. In Wasilla, AK. It's a really big town, though..


Also interesting:

* He said in interviews that he had no idea he was going to be mentioned in the debates.

* Despite this, he had camera crews at his house filming his reactions during the debate.

* He did follow-up interviews with mostly conservative organizations post-debate, slamming Obama and curiously very familiar with most aspects of McCain's economic and tax talking points. But he's just a simple plumber?

* "Joe the Plumber," whoever he really is, later compared Obama to a "tap-dancing Sammy Davis Jr." and a socialist in post-debate media interviews. Classy.



now, like psyyche i think i shall fix myself a large bowl of popcorn and sit back to see what else transpires.

"There is a lot of anger. There is anger at the inside dealing and anger at lobbyists and anger at the greed on Wall Street. There is anger at the Washington elite and there is anger at voter fraud," Palin said at a rally in Richmond, Virginia. yahoo news

i am really getting tired of the misuse of the word elite.

look up the word, sarah. your lack of intelligence and understanding of the meaning of it is plainly evident.

American Heritage Dictionary
e·lite or é·lite (ĭ-lēt', ā-lēt') Pronunciation Key
n. pl. elite or e·lites
1. A group or class of persons or a member of such a group or class, enjoying superior intellectual, social, or economic status: "In addition to notions of social equality there was much emphasis on the role of elites and of heroes within them" (Times Literary Supplement).
2. The best or most skilled members of a group: the football team's elite.


because damn it i want there to be elite athletes competing. i want there to be elite instructors and teachers in our schools teaching the children. i want there to be elite soldiers in the military. i want there to be elite businessmen running corporations that employ the population.

what i do not want are idiots running this country.

American Heritage Dictionary
id·i·ot (ĭd'ē-ət) Pronunciation Key
n.
1. A foolish or stupid person.

an easy visualisation of the presidential debates for those of us who preferred not to listen.

thanks to psyyche for this. i love this 82 year old woman's perspective!

sarah palin is a bitch

and

yep. i called her a bitch and i am not taking it back

her name is helen. she is just as feisty as my grandmother helen was.