I knew better than to go down to the cafe.

<p>I feel weak and dizzy, like Clark Kent near "meteor rocks" (kryptonite - i'm talking about Smallville, not the old DC comics!).</p>

<p>Why, why, why did I look? I get nightmares from the simplest scary movies (Pet Sematary etc) and know NOT to watch, so why oh why did I look at the Cafe?</p>

<p>Well, I can't say I didn't have a clue. On the kids' board, I accidentally got involved in a few discussions. Remember Martin Luther King's "Letter from Birmingham Jail?" Some conservative ministers accused him of inconsistency for saying one should obey the law, but also break the law.
You can't logically hold both "A" and "not A." King argued back that he distinguished between just laws and unjust ones, so he was not being inconsistent: he was really arguing "A" and "B" (keep just laws; break unjust ones).</p>

<p>Clear enough. But if you argued anything remotely that logical on the kids board, you'd get back "Oh yeah? Well you can't argue 'A' AND 'Not A' so Explain THAT! " It's like falling into Wonderland, or some DLG (de-logicized zone).</p>

<p>As a poster above said, it's as if they don't see or hear the argument at all.</p>

<p>And this is a message board where kids aspire to the Ivies....</p>

<p>Lest anyone argue that kids are just learning to think and reason, so I shouldn't be hard on them, I would say that I do NOT think my home is unique. In our family, there are no idealogues, not among the kids OR the adults. Every possible position gets a hearing, and people actually (gasp!!!) sometimes CHANGE THEIR MINDS!</p>

<p>Angstridden: If you are anything like your name suggests, you'd better get the H-ll outta HERE! This is for the "Angsthandlers"!</p>

<p>We are soooo bad :) :p :D shame shame shame</p>

<p>The Cafe.</p>

<p>Where the weak are killed and eaten.</p>

<p>Come on in and join us!</p>

<p>Vancat-</p>

<p>Solicitation of the Cafe within the Parents Zone is punishable by up to 4 years in a Tier 4 college. You've been warned...</p>

<p>I never ventured into the cafe before the recent day of gloriosity. The "What Happened?" thread seemed to be almost entirely fogies....was I missing something?</p>

<p>EK4, yes, MSFT donates to both sides. I was talking about individual $2000 donations within the Gates family, which you can research at <a href="http://www.opensecrets.org/%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.opensecrets.org/&lt;/a> which is a lot of fun, since you can search by zip code and other such exciting things, thereby finding out which of your neighbors.... etc.</p>

<p>!!! Total giving from my zipcode is over $200,000!
I thought I lived in a bluecollar neighborhood.
<nevermind i="" just="" checked="" my="" previous="" neighborhood,="" giving="" there="" is="" $1,571,354=""></nevermind></p>

<p>I live in a blue collar neighborhood - total giving $90000, actually down from the 2002 cycle when our Congressman retired after 24 odd years and there was a hotly contested race to fill his seat. Largest single contribution was $4000 (not going to win a lot of influence there! or tickets to the inaugral ball!), although I noted one family gave about $25000 in multiple small parcels from $2000 to $250. The interesting thing to me, maybe its like this everywhere - we live in a heavily Republican zip, but the contributions to the actual Presidential campaign were about equal - Reps and Dems, with most of the Dems being attorneys, and most of the Reps being realestate people. Most of the donations went to Senate and Congressional races.</p>

<p>Are all of the CC parents on OpenSecrets.com or something? The site is so slow and I can't download the zip code info. The server times out...</p>

<p>Anyone else having this problem? Or maybe they are timing me out while the search for the Republican donations from my zip....of which there are probbaly none.</p>

<p>Never mind...it finally came up....
"Your search has generated too many results. Only the top 1000 records are being displayed."</p>

<p>No total given...</p>

<p>I did it. I managed to make it through the entire day without doing any table-dancing in the cafe. But then I read crumudgeon's post about post number 390...and now I feel myself being called into the dark place yet again.</p>

<p>Carolyn...I too had to go look at that one. But look at how well we did. I was helped by being in court all day, however. That was the funniest thing I have ever read here (curmudgeon's post). </p>

<p>We should probably have an awards ceremony for such things on CC. BTW, if you'd activate your private message function (even for a moment) I have something to ask you (NOT political or personal, don't worry).</p>

<p>I appreciate Collegemom's input and I hope that we can have a parents' cafe, because I dearly want to post a link to the halting of the Guantanamo Bay hearing on Osama bin Laden's driver. The lawyers handling this case were profiled in the NYT Magazine a few months ago in a fascinating article. For all those who hate the legal system, what these lawyers are doing for the people kept there with no legal due process is "lawyering" at its very best. But if I post it on the Cafe now, I know that there will be all kinds of potshots and I'll start to cry. But go read the AP article if you can.</p>

<p>Oh my gosh. That has got to be one of the funniest things I've read in a long time --- from Cupboard's rant to Sgvionic's "Are you the Unabomber" (sputter) to Susan's Essay advice to Curmudgeon's interpretation...surely this is a classic of CC humor, right up there with the great "Pencil" thread.</p>

<p>PAtient, I turned PM on. Carolyn</p>

<p>LOL, Curmugeon, et al. Reminds me of The House of the Rising Sun. "Now mothers, tell your children, not to do what I have done..."</p>

<p>Hmm, I tried, it says not working. Maybe it takes a while or something. Not hugely important.</p>

<p>not only that, but I fell off the wagon into the dark hole. Time to go wash the dishes or something.</p>

<p>Ahh, the cafe isn't that bad :-)</p>

<p>Great thread. I've had a smile on my face, chuckles, and some guffaws all the way through. You've all made my day. Now I'm off on my maiden voyage to......(the place which shall not be named) with a nod to Harry Potter. I feel slimy already.</p>

<p>That didn't take long. Years ago, my dad used to refer to TV as the "vast wasteland." Now I've got another application.</p>