TracyLee

I thought it stood for Piss-Poor-President!!!

A Stanley Cup.

Thanks, I will!

Here's to a safe & speedy return . If you don't mind my asking, how much does a round trip ticket to the Netherlands run these days? My ancesters (the Van Valkenburg's) hail from Valkenburg and I've always wanted to see the castle ruins there.

ICE, get used to it. I have a soon to be fifteen year-old son who's been playing travel hockey since he was seven. There's always going to be complete and total idiots at the games, whether it be the parents, the coaches or the refs. I've learned just to keep my mouth shut. I've learned that if you have a problem with a particular coach, let it go, because your kid will more than likely pay the price if he isn't already. If a coach has a kid on the team, more than likely he gets more playing time than any other player, even if his kid sucks royally. It's just the way it is. As for refs, there's some good and some bad. For instance there's one particular ref whose son was cut from a team a few years back to make room for my son. Well, everytime he happens to ref a game my son is playing in, he makes on average 3 phantom penalty calls against my son without fail. Last time he reffed a game (last week) the other team scored three goals on my sons three penalties, costing them the game. Luckily the coach knew they were bad calls. Even with all the BS you have to put up with, its all worth it. I wouldn't trade watching my son play hockey for anything in the world. There's been some rough times in hockey, but he never quit, even when I wouldn't have blamed him one bit if he did quit. I'm so proud of him, he's playing AAA travel hockey, is on the JV hockey team and is on the Varsity team practice squad as a freshman trying to make their roster. As my grandmother would say, sometimes you've gotta bite your tongue!

PREEMIES Darin, PREEMIES!!

Survives on its own, truly survives on its own outside the womb? Or survives with life support and feeding tubes? Most significantly early preemies can't make it without medical intervention. They'd die.

I don't support sexual promiscuity. But tell me something, how many different sexual partners do you think a person must have to be called sexually promiscuous? Say a thirty-two year old woman or man who is getting married for the first time? How many sexual relationships or just sexual relations must said woman/man be involved in prior to marriage, before you would deem him/her promiscuous? I'm sure my idea and your idea of promiscuity differ. Everyone has their own idea of what constitutes as sexual promiscuity. I didn't say that my 'solution' "was having sex to test out a potential spouse"! I said I don't recommend "saving oneself" until marriage. I just think its a good idea to know if you're sexually compatible before you spend the rest of your life with an inadequate or lousy lover and wind up in divorce court anyway. Couples who aren't happy in the bedroom usually wind up looking for satisfaction elsewhere which helps contribute to this abortion problem all over again. So, no, I don't think saving oneself for marriage is the answer either. That just creates a whole 'nother set of potential problems. Abstinence IS a valid solution to avoid abortion, I agree. BUT, I don't believe it is realistic or even commonplace. And what reality are you referring to? As for what history shows, I see a whole lotta cheatin' and runnin' around and children born out of wedlock in our history! Wasn't it George Washington who fathered children with one of his slaves? As for AIDS, you will still have homosexuals, needle sharing etc. It's unrealistic and pure fantasy to think that an entire generation would ever practice abstinence. It's just not gonna happen. Let me just say this, I am pro-choice, to a point. I am against abortion as a method of birth control. But there are instances where abortion should be an option. No government should have the right to tell a person what they can and can't do with their own body. In my opinion, that grouping of cells at conception is not a human, if it looks like a group of cells, it is a group of cells. If it ain't got a beating heart, it ain't winking at me and it ain't wiggling any fingers or toes at me, then it ain't human....yet. When it begins to take on those characteristics, that's where I draw the line. At that point, barring extenuating circumstances, I'm against it. Up until that point, there should be an option.

What if she was raped? What if a thirteen year old girl gets pregnant and her parents force her to have an abortion? She should be fixed so she can't have kids in the future? Where are the irresponsible fathers in all of this? Not their body, not their problem? What if he says its not his kid at the time of the abortion to avoid the "snippity-snip"? Who pays for DNA extraction to prove he is or isn't? What if the mother won't say who is the father? You cannot sterilize children under the age of 18. Kids make mistakes, that's why they're kids. That's why they need direction and guidance from their parents, even well past the age of 18. Even then, there are no guarantees that our kids will not make major mistakes somewhere along the way. They'll probably make bigger mistakes as adults then they would as kids. Like get divorced, be sued, get arrested, go to jail. Have five kids with five different people. Stuff like that. Everybody makes mistakes. Abortion is not a cut and dried issue. No one really knows exactly when life begins.

stevestojan happens pal. People can take every precaution and still get pregnant. I have a friend who is married with three kids. After the third one she got a tubal ligation. Guess who's pregnant? Oh, yeah, she's happily keeping the baby. But, what if they couldn't afford another baby or there were some other extenuating circumstances, like an imminent divorce or a catastrophic illness? But it's her own fault for having sex with her husband, right? I guess she shouldn't have been so carelessly having sex if she didn't want any more kids right? Riiiiiight. No birth control is foolproof, not even tubal ligations obviously. People don't just have sex to have babies in case you didn't know. Abstinence? Keep dreaming. I do not know one single person in my lifetime that saved themselves for marriage. I don't recommend it either. Better to know if you're compatible before joining in eternal matrimony eh?

LMAO

Sounds like something Bush would say, "If you don't vote for me, you're not a 'real' american"

(See, I can laugh, I have a sense of humor! (Which is more than I can say for most of the righties on this board ) )

Bush is a mere puppet, Charlie Brown .

Dang!! No pom-poms? I think I like the pic I conjured up in my head better!

his cheerleaders uniform? I could use a good laugh at his expense today! I've never actually seen a picture of him as a cheerleader but everytime someone mentions it on these boards I imagine what he looks like in a skirt waving his pom-poms and I just can't stop from giggling out loud! (I know, I know he probably wasn't wearing a skirt but it's much more hilarious to imagine him in a skirt.).

480 - 100% positive. I have a rule, I do not leave feedback until the other person has done so first. Otherwise you leave yourself open to negs. The other person will think twice about leaving you a negative if they haven't yet received feedback from you. I have had to deal with deadbeats, but if they haven't left me feedback, then I'm not going to risk getting a neg in return. Not worth it imo. If you pay promptly and ship promptly, you won't have any problems. As a seller, I haven't always gotten paid for auctions, but I've always gotten what I paid for as a buyer. And I never buy anything from anyone with less than 25 feedback or from someone with high ratio of negs (more than 2 for every 100).

Houston. Go Clemens! Can't root for the Yankees might as well root for a former Yankee. Or two. How's Pettitte doing these days? Still on DL?

Okay, I read it. I'm not quite sure which points of view you were referring to though. Well, I know you didn't ask for my opinion but since I just read three pages here it is anyway. As for defining victory, I would have to say that there are different "levels" of victory, which more often than not is a result of compromise between warring factions. As for winning the war on terror, I don't believe that will ever happen. It's never going to stop. The only thing we can do is try our absolute best to deter terrorism. Keep it down to a minimum. Tightening up our borders for starters. I'll probably get flamed for this, but how about not letting every (insert foreign names if you wish) Tom, Dick and Harry from (insert foreign country) eastahungaland come in and become a US citizen when they don't speak english and think that americans are evil. Call me prejudiced if you want, but I only live about 10-12 miles from where the Lackawanna 6 were sleeping at night. Those kinds of people don't belong here in the USA. Don't let them in in the first place, send them back home. Whatever countries, be it France or whomever, "chimes" in, why would the US or Kerry turn them away? The US needs as many "friends" as she can get. We don't need the current alienation from other countries to continue. Even Tony Blair is distancing himself from Bush. Honestly Bib, who do you think will improve our world relations starting on Nov. 3rd? Bush or Kerry? Don't you think world relations are important?

She would have to be!

Where do opinions stop and rants begin? Everyone is entitled to an opinion, obviously. The rants begin when someone loses their self-control. In my initial post, I am guity of sarcasm. In my second post I was responding to personal attacks. I was raised to respect others. I also respect their opinions (when they are logical), be it you or tenny or whomever. I rarely, rarely resort to personal attacks, and if I do, well, I probably had a couple drinks that night (and no, I'm not an alcohlic, I just like to have a couple drinks once in awhile). Personal attacks need not be a part of any forum. Humor and sarcasm are the norm. Telling someone they are stupid or an idiot because they don't agree with you is not necessary, and in my opinion, childish. As an aside, both of my parents and my sister are republican. I'm a democrat. We all disagree on many issues. I don't think they are stupid or that they are idiots. Quite to the contrary. I love my family very much, I just don't agree with them. None of the three of them will vote for Kerry. But they aren't voting for Bush either. I think it's a case of republican (but not Bush) or nobody. Simply because he/she is a registered republican and cannot/will not vote democrat.

Believe it or not, I wasn't referring to you. I read here somewhere (correct me if I'm wrong) that you recently got married (congratulations!), so you must be happy and at least somewhat well-adjusted since you convinced her to marry you! Just kidding!! You haven't attacked me personally thus far, so no, I wasn't referring to you. Sorry ! Actually Tom, I will say that I do respect your opinions, I don't doubt that you know what you're talking about, and I don't profess to know more than you do about certain things. But then, I don't get involved in threads that I know little about either, nor do I get involved in threads that don't interest me. What I can't stand is those people who come into a thread just to launch a personal attack. It just sucks when an interesting thread is invariably reduced to a pissing contest because people refuse respect one another's opinions. It's childish.

No, I haven't had a chance, but I will. I assumed that because it was a "know it all" thread that it just consisted of republicans trying to one up each other! Just kidding ! Relax people! Sometimes I forget that happy, well-adjusted people aren't welcome on this board, and therefore I really shouldn't try to be humorous, lest I upset the angry, bitter and nasty people who get their jollies out of trying to demean others. Speaking to those same angry, bitter and nasty people (you know who you are), don't you get called a complete !@#$ in your daily life sometimes? Or do you have respect for other's opinions when you are face to face and not hiding behind a keyboard ?

Hmmm, "the new school system"? How young do you think I am VA?

And you know me because you've been here since yesterday ? Like I said, you have nothing better to say so you attack me. It doesn't bother me EB, as a matter of fact, I find it amusing . Have a nice day in your rotten little world with AD .