Carlene

I figured it had to be something on the primal level. I knew it wasn't his irresistible wit, or his charming delivery.

You think family values are threatened by gay people? How, exactly, do they accomplish that? Are they corrupting people left and right.....signing them up for the gay/lesbian lifestyle and luring them away from their conventional families? I don't think so. People do not "become" gay/lesbian at some point, and certainly not because some recruited them. And adding life partners to the insurance plan at your work isn't the only thing that has impacted premiums. Are you equally angry at the smokers? And the people with body piercings and/or tattoos(increased risk of all blood-borne diseases). How about all the fatties? Obesity is way more costly to your employer (and you) than homosexuality. Besides....very few companies provide coverage for spouses/partners for free. Those people are forking over big bucks for the privilege of insuring their partners. What about the guy who has six children....he often gets a good deal because both he and the employee with a wife and only one child pay the "family rate". Are you mad at him, too? Nothing in life is absolutely fair and equitable, Porkchop. Deal with it.

RUN, 396....while your man virtue is still intact!!!!!!!!!!

That was TOM, wasn't it?????????????? Jack was another member altogether. Maybe he ran off with Wheetsin. I haven't seen any posts from her in a long time, either.

Green.....I hope your tongue was planted firmly in your cheek when you posted this. She is DH's MOTHER....you can't expect him to "dump" his mother! Every time they have a tiff for the next 50 years, he will come back with, "I gave up my mother for you. The least you could do is ___________(fill in the blank) for me." NO...NO...NO Do not make your DH choose between you and his mother. You may win in the short term, but eventually you will wish the old bat was back in your life, because you will have handed him the biggest bargaining card there is! She is his mother, and no matter what, he loves her. Just as you love your mother. It matters not if your mother is a saint and his is a fruitcake. And besides....would you really want a man who would cave in and dump his own mother that easily? Wouldn't that worry you, just a little? Like....maybe it wouldn't be much harder to ditch the wife and kiddies?

I am totally supportive of gay rights, but I don't think a straight person could sign up on outinamerica.com if he/she wanted to. I checked, and the only options given are "male seeking male" and "women seeking women". I'd say it's a tie....both E Harmony and Out in America are discriminatory because neither offers a complete choice. Having said that, I really don't see the issue here. Sometimes a failure to include the whole human race isn't discrimination - it's simply common sense.

At least the two of you would not be able to reproduce.

I have a friend who paid to join E Harmony for several months. It was a real downer for her. She is a few years older than me and somewhat overweight, but not obese, and not unattractive. She's also a very good person. But all the men they matched her with seemed to be looking for trophy girlfriends. E Harmony goes in stages....first you send a couple of messages back and forth, and finally a photo. At any point, either of you can break off communication, and that's what happened to her. As soon as they saw her photo, they were gone. Mind you, none of them were Robert Redford, but they evidently thought they were. If I were going to use an online matchmaker, I would choose one that showed the photos right up front. What you see is what you get!

I wonder what kind of drugs she took back in the 60's?

And it certainly won't be addressed under this administration. Bush's proposal amounts to another amnesty fiasco, almost exactly like the one we saw in the mid-80's, only much,much worse and far-reaching, as far as impacting the future of America. I did not think he could do more damage in the time he has left in office, except for the death toll in Iraq continuing to rise. Evidently, I was wrong.

I could not agree more. Enact VERY stiff penalities against employers who hire illegals. And I would add to that....legislation that prohibits illegals from receiving any public assistance whatsoever - including the right to send their children to public schools. AND end the "anchor baby" tactic by granting citizenship only to children born of legal immigrants. Also, once deported, never let them back in (legally). Do it right the first time or lose your chance at becoming an American citizen. I am guessing here, but I think about 90% of all illegal aliens would leave voluntarily if these policies became law - and were strictly enforced. Liberals who want to coddle illegal aliens for humanitarian reasons need to realize that they are, in the long run, hurting other Americans - the least skilled and the poorest educated Americans - by keeping unskilled wages artifically low. Americans WILL wash dishes and dig ditches, but they need to be paid a living wage if we expect them to survive on "honest work". As long as business owners can hire illegals to work for half the cost, they will continue to do so.

Mexico has strict immigration laws, and a serious problem with illegals sneaking across its southern border from Central America. Their solution is to arrest and deport every single illegal alien they can catch, after roughing them up a bit to discourage them from re-offending. I am not advocating police brutality, but they do seem to have a better handle on the situation than we do. What keeps poor Americans from invading the wealthiest suburbs....crossing city boundries and living 10 families to a (nice) house so they can enjoy the best schools, an in-ground pool, and easy access to menial, low-paying jobs? City code enforcement, for one.....a "mousetrap", if you will. After they rack up lots of unpaid fines, they would be unceremoniously arrested and taken off to jail. The city can write as many citations as it takes, and arrest people until they finally get tired of being locked up. My point is that enforcing the law is a really, really good place to start, if you want people to comply. Otherwise, they will just thumb their nose at you and keep on doing whatever the hell they like.

Boy, wouldn't we all! We have a whole, large bureaucracy that is supposed to do that - separate the deadbeats from the needy - but it sucks, to be perfectly blunt. There are illegals beating the system with anchor babies and forged documents, etc and there are others, both US citizens and legal aliens, who really deserve the help but can't get it for all the red tape. How do we tell the good guys from the bad? I don't know what I would do. And I don't know that they have "no other choice". Mexico is not a third world country. It has huge reserves of gas and oil, as well as a multi-billion dollar tourist industry. Medical care is cheap in Mexico, as compared to the US, as is the cost of living. That's why so many Americans take their retirement $$$ and move to Mexico.

Some more data....you can Google any of these names and get the full story: Sweethearts Amy Grossberg and Brian Peterson of New Jersey delivered their baby in a motel room, killed him and left his body in a dumpster. 18-year-old, Melissa Drexler, also from New Jersey, arrived at her high-school prom, locked herself in a bathroom stall, and gave birth to a boy. She then left him dead in a garbage can. Next: she touched herself up and returned to the dance floor. New Jersey might just be the "Killer Mom" capital. In Monmouth County, NJ, where Drexler left her baby, there were 12 abandoned babies in the past 10 years. Four New Jersey teenagers abandoned babies in one six month period. California is pretty bad, too. In Los Angeles County in one year there were 10 newborns left to die. Texas women, by my count, are no more cold-bloded than any others.

I'm fine with it, too....just as soon as we have provided medical care for all the children who are US citizens, or who came to the US legally. If we have surplus Medicaid funds after that, then we should definitely pay for the care of illegals. Same thing for food stamps, housing assistance, etc. Would you put your kids to bed hungry night after night so you could feed the neighbors' children?

Yes....always at night, even though I did not eat after 7 or 8 PM, and it burned like crazy (tasted awful, too). I had to keep a plastic cup beside the bed because of the "spit up".

I'm sorry you find my replies "oppositional". The fact is, you started a thread titled "Why Texas Mothers Kill Their Kids?" and, to me, the "face value" of that is erroneous. Texas mothers do not kill their children any more often than women from other states. Here is the link to the American Anthropological Association's paper on mothers who kill their children: WHY WOMEN KILL THEIR CHILDREN Here is a link to a study on women on death row. Please note that 11 were convicted of killing their children, but only 2 of those were from Texas. Alabama, a much smaller state, has 2 women on death row who killed their children. Arizona has one. California has 4 (plus a woman who killed her niece), Ohio has one, and Pennsylvania has one. Case Summaries for Current Female Death Row Inmates As to why it would "seem" to you that Texas women are more apt to murder their own children than anyone else, I cannot be certain, but I suspect it is because of the media coverage. Almost everyone has heard of Susan Smith, but that doesn't really say anything about the women of South Carolina in general. Same for Mary Beth Tinning (of NY) who killed her NINE children, one after the other.

Are you not able to read the stats? Again...more than 200 women kill their children in the United States each year. The vast majority of those are NOT from Texas. Therefore, common sense would dictate that Texas mothers are no more prone to killing their young - per capita - than anyone else. You have to remember that Texas is a very BIG place.

I'm about as bleeding heart Liberal as you can get, but if you live in a border state, the whole issue of illegal aliens becomes much more personal. On a national level, the tide of illegal immigrants may not be devistating, but to border states, it has created financial and social chaos. Mexican nationals do not, as a rule, swim across the Rio Grande and keep going until they reach Chicago. They stop just across the border and set up housekeeping, along with millions just like themselves. We (Texas and Arizona) end up supporting way more than our fair share of illegal immigrants. And it pisses us off. Just my shiny dime's worth, but if you are too far away to feel the heat, you have no idea how hot it is in the kitchen.

I used to know a woman who worked in Pat Robertson's mail room and she was treated the same way. She also said that most of the letters contained prayer requests. They were instructed to remove the cash/checks and throw everything else away. No one ever read them, let alone prayed over them.

Same thing happened to a friend of mine years ago. She took her daughter, who was born with CP, to an Oral Roberts revival. Roberts himself laid hands on the child, but no miracle cure was forthcoming. He told my friend that it was her fault - that she did not truly believe. What a jerk.

I do not know the family of the mom who hanged herself and her 4 daughters, but I know the children's godmother quite well - the one who was quoted in the story and was pictured on the front page of this morning's paper. This poor woman just must have felt so hopeless. She had tried for months to get food stamps and Medicaid, but the caseworkers did not believe her when she told them her husband had not given her a dime since before the youngest child was born. She worked two jobs - full time at Wendy's and part time cleaning houses - but never had enough money to stay ahead of the rent and utilities and child care expenses, food, etc. (She was here legally, by the way.) Andrea Yates was, IMHO, a victim of post-partum depression and her own fanatically religious community, whose standards she could not live up to. I think it's a terrible miscarriage of justice that her husband, who refused to heed the doctor's advice before the last baby was conceived, isn't serving time, as well. According to the American Anthropological Association, more than 200 women kill their children in the United States each year. Most of them are from somewhere other than Texas: Patricia Blackmon was 29 years old when she killed her two-year-old adopted daughter in Dothan, AL in May 1999. Debra Jean Milke was 25 when she killer her four-year-old son in Arizona in 1989. Dora Luz Durenrostro killed her two daughters, age four and nine, and her son, age 8, when she was 34 years old in San Jacinto, California in 1994. Caro Socorro was 42 years old when she killer her three sons, age five, eight and 11, in Santa Rosa Valley, California in 1999. Susan Eubanks murdered her four sons, ages four, six, seven, and 14, in San Marcos, California, in 1996 when she was 33. Caroline Young was 49 in Haywood, California when she killed her four-year-old granddaughter and six-year-old grandson. Robin Lee Row was 35 years old when she killed her husband, her 10-year-old son and her eight-year-old daughter in Boise, Idaho in 1992. Michelle Sue Tharp was 29 years old in Burgettstown, Pennsylvania when she killed her seven-year-old daughter. Teresa Michelle Lewis killed her 51-year-old husband and 26-year-old step son in Keeling, Virgina when she was 33 years old.

Same thing happened to my daughter. The doctor told her it was from shaving her bikini area. He suggested she use use Nair instead. He lanced hers, too. She said she'd seen smaller wounds that they stitched.

Back when my kids were growing up, I took in a lot of strays....stray kids, stray dogs, stray cats. A few lived with us (a few kids....LOTS of dogs and cats) but most of them I just fed when they were hungry, rescued them when they needed a ride or a loan. I spotted many a ten or twenty til payday. Sometimes I got it back, sometimes not. Yesterday one of my stray kids ran into my youngest son. I had not seen him for about 15 years. He got my address and showed up on my doorstep, with flowers! He's married, with kids, and owns his own business. He told me that he has thought of me often and would never forget what I had done for him when he was a teen. He did not have a mom in his life and I was there for him, like a mom, he said. It made me feel great! Anything I invested in this kid, and a dozen others, I got back today - with interest.

My MIL is 87 years old (though in great shape....she walks 2 miles every day) and she lives with me. She is also very negative and bitter. She worked for Kroger 36 years and retired just shortly before her husband died. She is very thrifty. How thrifty is she? She managed to save, on her own, over $400,000 during the time she worked and since. That's pretty good, considering she never made a huge salary. She has figured out that eventually she will die, and her daughters-in-law will spend all her money. It drives her nuts. She complains ALL the time about how much things cost, how other people spend their money, etc. She won't take some of her meds because there is no generic and they cost $30 per month. It just makes us all crazy. My advice is to ignore as much as you possibly can, including the e-mail. If you make a big deal out of it, she will just say she didn't mean anything by it, and you will end up looking like you are just spoiling for a fight. A son is a son til he take a wife; a daughter is a daughter all of her life. That's an old saying, and it's true. If you are the mother of boys, chances are that someday you will be on the receiving end. Practice building good Karma while you can.