I’d never really thought about it, but it makes sense that we elect people based on integrity and commitment - heck, willingness to do more than pay lip service to both law and norms - to one degree or another. If you are flagrant before the fact, that’s probably it for you, when it’s a marriage.

It doesn’t even matter whether you and your spouse are differently normed and have a relationship you might consider more open than others, or if your marriage has alteady undergone zombification. Public perception is everything.

It may be old-fashioned, but there it is.

After the fact? Then it’ll look bad, as with Clinton, but performance matters and, frankly, perception of your spouse and relationship matter as well. If yours is widely perceived as a marriage of power and convenience, the sting might be less. And even so, look at the frenzy over Monica.

It may not be right, but it’s reality. Speaking of which, Republicans need to tout less morality and more reality, if they are to have a chance.

On some level, I can see that. However, I can also see what has and has not worked there and elsewhere to liberalize things. I’m all for a change to engagement, in the case of Cuba.

Trouble is, that potentially messes with the sugar and corn lobbies in the United States.

The price of sugar is artificially propped up here, tied into the whole Cuba thing, and who is more involved in the US sugar industry than ex-pats. In turn, this creates demand for corn syrup as a substitute, and all that it implies, including suspicion of a connection to the “obesity epidemic.” I question the timing.

There are powerful forces who hear sweet music to their ears when they hear folks who might otherwise be onto them cheer on the continued economic embargo of Cuba.

Just like McCain-Feingold.

Just like the Kelo taking.

Not like the “conservative” Court is going to save us.

At least the draft can be reasonably argued as a sometimes necessary evil, despite it being the also unconstitutional slippery slope that’ll probably give the Supremes “justification” to roll over and play dead. Or illiterate, anyway.

This is merely the Palin/Biden debate. How could she be impartial if her buddy isn’t in it? Not like the appearance of impropriety matters. And how could she possibly be doing anything inappropriate? She isn’t a Republican! Or even a conservative. Sheesh.

Because I’ve been turned away from help for suffering “realistic” depression, and it was one of the most staggeringly painful, humiliating, and damaging things that ever happened to me.

So there you go.

It’s painful. They are so heartbreakingly close to making sense, but they cannot ask the question of themselves, and without that…

*sigh*

(To clarify: They’re exactly right on the topic of abortion. It’s nobody’s business at all. The terrible thing is that they cannot seem to generalize from that observation. If one may not give one’s opinion of abortion the force of law, then why can one give one’s opinion of motorcycle helmets the force of law? Or one’s opinion of proper income distribution, for that matter…they are so damned close to the root of the thing, they could see it from where they are, but they never will. There’s a beam in the way.)

*headdesk*

That link takes you to a nice concise explanation of why it’s a bad idea, btw.

When you just can’t pay, what good would it do?

And even if you could pay something, the prevailing image of lenders of all types is that they aren’t willing to take that. Perhaps that is incorrect, or perhaps things have changed, but my impression has always been that you’d do better talking to a wall, and it’d be less humiliating. If that impression is incorrect, they might want to publicize the fact.