Originally Posted by Brian Rush

That was your birth month. I can't remember your birthday, although I suppose I could look it up. And so could anyone else. It's not really private information -- in contrast to some of the stuff you've shared about me, please note. So what's the big deal anyway?

Of course, I know... but I'll keep it private if that's the wish of The Rani....

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

Of course, I know... but I'll keep it private if that's the wish of The Rani....

Too late...

Originally Posted by Eric

Didn't know Jesus had a middle initial. Come on, we all know you're a typical Scorpio

~Chas'88

Originally Posted by The Rani

I think he meant my actual birth DAY, which happened around some supposed time of miracles according to Eric.
Although, I still turned out to be a scumbag ornery Xer, which sort of blows his theories right out of the water.

Yes, it did give me some pause indeed. Generations theory seemed to trump astrology when it came to predictions about the temperament and attitudes of Generation X. Still, your chart is still quite fitting, The. (I know you don't want your real first name mentioned either). It's just that I think it has more potential, as I see it, than you and even other 66ers and early-wave Xers have so far demonstrated; potential to rise above your generation and make some real creative innovations, discoveries and expressions. That this has not happened is the real puzzlement and disappointment, even more than the cynicism and libertarian leanings of Gen.X. But then, Boomers and even War-babies didn't quite measure up to my full expectations either. Things often don't turn out as we hope, but we can still enjoy life as best as we can, do the best we can with what we've got, and appreciate what we have.

The real over-riding trend, that rules over all generations, is this society we live in. It is superficial and money dominated, not to mention often militarist and fanatical, and we don't understand what life is really about. The wasteland continues and endures, despite the protests of some articulate and sensitive silents, outspoken and inspired war-babies, and adventurous, activist boomers in the late 60s and early 70s.

Of course, my writings about Gen X in general pre-date this forum (although not Generations, which I mentioned), and they are pretty much inline with the actual Gen X.

http://philosopherswheel.com/generations.htm

From John Nichols
http://www.thenation.com/article/170...ttle-congress#

The presidency is not enough.
 
If the polling from battleground states is to be believed, President Obama’s re-election chances are now better than even his most enthusiastic backers anticipated just a few months ago. Yet this year’s campaign is about a lot more than an increasingly confident Barack Obama versus a bumbling Mitt Romney. Races for control of the House and Senate will determine the character of the next presidency—no matter who sits in the Oval Office.

“Even if you’re focused on getting the president re-elected, you can’t take your eyes off the congressional races; not if you’re serious about what happens after the election,” says Congressional Progressive Caucus co-chair Keith Ellison. “If Obama wins but gets a Republican House and Senate, which is possible, he could be less able to govern than he is now, with a divided Congress.” Indeed, argues Michael Lighty, public policy director for National Nurses United, a GOP Congress could pressure Obama to accept destructive “reforms” of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. “It’s not as if the Republicans would respect the fact that Obama’s been re-elected and suddenly become supportive,” says Lighty. “They’d push even harder.”

That’s right. Progressives who want Obama to move left in a second term have to recognize that this will never happen if Congress moves right. Is the best we can hope for more of the same—an Obama administration with a narrowly Democratic Senate and a Republican House bent on thwarting the president for the next two years? Or might the shifting electoral dynamics give us the more genuinely progressive Congress that’s needed to prod Obama in a bolder direction during debates about entitlement programs and implementation of the Affordable Care Act? And what are the chances for reforms that have gained little traction in a dysfunctional Washington, like a financial transactions tax, or amending the Constitution to overturn Citizens United? Is it possible to get a Congress that would actually lead a cautious Democratic president to the left?....

Originally Posted by The Rani

I think he meant my actual birth DAY, which happened around some supposed time of miracles according to Eric.
Although, I still turned out to be a scumbag ornery Xer, which sort of blows his theories right out of the water.

He narrowed the range by divulging that tid bit.

Uh... have you read the description of Scorpio?

ETA:

A funny take on the Scorpio stereotype of being able to "hypnotize" people with their stares and persuasive voices.



~Chas'88

Originally Posted by Classic-X'er

You keep speaking as if we will all be going to go down the banana republic road with the left. I don't need much as far as change is concerned. I'm not in love with a male or a slave to free birth control. Have you ever been in a rich big types house or a WFQ's house? There's a major difference between the top end liberals and the low end liberals? Whose issue is that to address, Obama's or Romney's? BTW, there's a major difference between my house and Romney's as well but that isn't an issue between me and Romney.

You would not be exempt from suffering if America reverted to the ways of the Gilded Age. Extreme inequality fosters brutal treatment of workers of any kind -- even skilled workers. Safety devices vanish when employers do everything on the cheap and see workers as expendable objects. Gilded-Age capitalism is the sort that Karl Marx saw both doomed and damnable... and it is still doomed and damnable.

Originally Posted by Chas'88

He narrowed the range by divulging that tid bit.

Uh... have you read the description of Scorpio?

corrected your link

"a nocturnal arachnid that attacks and paralyzes its prey with a poison injected by the long, curved tail, used for both defense and destruction. Its sting is sometimes fatal"

spitting image of The Rani indeed.

Of course, as the description says, Scorpios have a "gentle" side too. They are "ashamed to attack the defenseless."

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

corrected your link

"a nocturnal arachnid that attacks and paralyzes its prey with a poison injected by the long, curved tail, used for both defense and destruction. Its sting is sometimes fatal"

spitting image of The Rani indeed.

Of course, as the description says, Scorpios have a "gentle" side too. They are "ashamed to attack the defenseless."

But of course you would understand her, given that you're neighboring signs. Tell me, do you still have the dizzying experience of having to weigh everything out and looking at every possible angle? Or have you moved past that phase and have found most everything in near perfect balance yet? Perhaps we could get into an argu--I mean "discussion" on the topic later at a more apropos time and place.

I'll bring my little brown jug along and we can have an airy time of it. Though I have to admit I've found the twins more suitable conversation partners than the scales. After a while you just get seasick constantly going up and down, and up again...

~Chas'88

Originally Posted by Chas'88

But of course you would understand her, given that you're neighboring signs. Tell me, do you still have the dizzying experience of having to weigh everything out and looking at every possible angle? Or have you moved past that phase and have found most everything in near perfect balance yet? Perhaps we could get into an argu--I mean "discussion" on the topic later at a more apropos time and place.

I'll bring my little brown jug along and we can have an airy time of it. Though I have to admit I've found the twins more suitable conversation partners than the scales. After a while you just get seasick constantly going up and down, and up again...

~Chas'88

Yes indeed; every angle; in fact the complete circle! It gets dizzy, being so constantly aloft amid the heights of perfect symmetry and proportion.

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

Yes indeed; every angle; in fact the complete circle! It gets dizzy, being so constantly aloft amid the heights of perfect symmetry and proportion.

When the room stops spinning, drop a line. Meanwhile, I'll just keep sitting on my rainbow, fifty years in the future. Living on one is its own dizzy crazy fun.

~Chas'88

Originally Posted by The Wonkette

Gee, everyone is channeling Lloyd Bentsen here.

Surely the greatest moment in the history of presidential/vice presidential debates. I remember it vividly. I could see something was coming, but I wasn't sure what. Boy, what contemporaries I've had on national tickets: Dan Quayle and now Mitt Romney. And Hillary still to come, quite likely.

Originally Posted by Marx & Lennon

Neither of you are old enoug to speak for either generation ... especially the Lost. My parents graduated from high school in 1932. Beleiive me, they werre happy to see anything tha looked like progress. Now I will say that the view in the North was probabaly a lot better than the view in the South. But then, the South has acted against its own best interest for a long time.

If Roosevelt hadn't used the miltary budget as a tool to sabilize the South, the entire region woudl have dried up and blown away. That's why he won big even there.

M & L, the furthest south I've ever lived is Montgomery County, Maryland, but one of the most depressing things of my adult life time is to compare the South of the mid-century to today. Yes, it was segregated, but it also produced Hugo Black, Estes Kefauver, Al Gore Sr., Lister Hill and John Sparkman of Alabama, J. William Fulbright, Claude Pepper, Sam Ervin. . .many great politicians, most of those liberal on everything but race. And it was not just the defense budget that helped the South under FDR--it was TVA and farm programs, too, and relief, which saved people from starvation. Now we have Jim Sessions, Jim DeMint, George Allen in the wings again. . .I could go on and on.. . pathetic. I'm still not entirely sure how it happened although the civil rights movement clearly had something to do with it.

Originally Posted by The Rani

It's not a big deal, but you're a self-centered douchebag and you have no business sharing personal info about me in public.
The only reason I shared stuff about you in the past is because you brought up the subject, and there's plenty more that I could have brought up but didn't.
But I can, if you really want to go there again.

Gentlemen, let me explain something here that some of you may not have enough years of experience to grasp and others with the years but obviously haven't been paying attention.

To reveal a woman's age without her consent is akin to her revealing to all that you have a little dinky. Worse, it gives her the license to reveal to all your little dinky regardless of whether true or not.

You've been warned.

Originally Posted by KaiserD2

M & L, the furthest south I've ever lived is Montgomery County, Maryland, but one of the most depressing things of my adult life time is to compare the South of the mid-century to today. Yes, it was segregated, but it also produced Hugo Black, Estes Kefauver, Al Gore Sr., Lister Hill and John Sparkman of Alabama, J. William Fulbright, Claude Pepper, Sam Ervin. . .many great politicians, most of those liberal on everything but race. And it was not just the defense budget that helped the South under FDR--it was TVA and farm programs, too, and relief, which saved people from starvation. Now we have Jim Sessions, Jim DeMint, George Allen in the wings again. . .I could go on and on.. . pathetic. I'm still not entirely sure how it happened although the civil rights movement clearly had something to do with it.

Jim Webb isn't too bad, though.

Originally Posted by Classic-X'er

Bob, if FDR didn't have the balls to use his power and Veto his crohnies, do you actually believe the United States as we see it and know it today would still be together.

It isn't clear to me wheather great men just happen to come along at the peak of a crisis, or whether a good man in power at the peak of a crisis is required to become great. After Hoover, it seems inevitable that a good man would have won in 1932. I think FDR was an excellent choice, especially given 20 20 hindsight. Who would have won if FDR hadn't been available? Would he have been forced to make similar decisions?

During the late Hoover years, people were hauling judges of the benches of bankruptcy courts in the name of justice. In the 1950s, McCarthy found no lack of people who were once members of the Communist Party. There were reasons people joined the Communist Party during the Hoover years. Yes, it was ugly, and it would have got much uglier if the People didn't perceive something being done.

Does that answer your question?

Today, I don't see that the People are desperate enough to try to overthrow the system, definitely not by violence. There is no spiral of violence. There is only a deadlock of rhetoric. FDR had a working Congress behind him. Obama doesn't. FDR had cojones, and was in a situation where he definitely needed them. Obama doesn't seem to think he needs them, or perhaps he doesn't have em.

It is quite possible, that if the government had not responded to the needs of the people in the 1930s, that the capitalist system might have been overthrown by some communist variation. I have any reason to think the resulting system would have been any better than what Stalin and Mao achieved. Without a strong United States, might Hitler have done better? Lots of what ifs there. Can't say that I'm better than any one else at what ifing.

Originally Posted by playwrite

Gentlemen, let me explain something here that some of you may not have enough years of experience to grasp and others with the years but obviously haven't been paying attention.

To reveal a woman's age without her consent is akin to her revealing to all that you have a little dinky. Worse, it gives her the license to reveal to all your little dinky regardless of whether true or not.

You've been warned.

Fuckin'-A we aren't that fragile, are we ladies? I'm 48 for those that give a shit. Look into some chemical peels fer god's sakes.

Originally Posted by Marx & Lennon

Neither of you are old enoug to speak for either generation ... especially the Lost. My parents graduated from high school in 1932. Beleiive me, they werre happy to see anything tha looked like progress. Now I will say that the view in the North was probabaly a lot better than the view in the South. But then, the South has acted against its own best interest for a long time.

If Roosevelt hadn't used the miltary budget as a tool to sabilize the South, the entire region woudl have dried up and blown away. That's why he won big even there.

Not only that, but going in FDR was a strong advocate for farming reforms. During World War I, a lot of European farming production was off line. The US increased its production to make up for the loss. At the end of WW I, when Europe's farms came back on line, there was a surplus production that killed prices. This, and the replacement of animals pulling plows with tractors was turning things upside down in rural areas.

Today we think of the Democrats representing urban interests while rural folks live a slower more conservative life style, having less need for change. This was not true in 1932. Farm policy was badly broken. What Marx & Lennon said about the south being desperate for change sounds right.

"Fuckin'-A we aren't that fragile, are we ladies?"

Shush!

Originally Posted by playwrite

Gentlemen, let me explain something here that some of you may not have enough years of experience to grasp and others with the years but obviously haven't been paying attention.

To reveal a woman's age without her consent is akin to her revealing to all that you have a little dinky. Worse, it gives her the license to reveal to all your little dinky regardless of whether true or not.

You've been warned.

We can discuss generations, without discussing our birth years? I dunno.....

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

A better challenge would be to challenge your own ideas and question the authorities you have accepted. Learn more about how the world actually works, instead of how the conservative ideologues have painted it for you.

Still, it's fine to have other views represented and to keep we blue meanies on our toes. So, you are to be classic now instead of an exile. How does that change of handle describe your purpose here now?

Eric the green definately describes your purpose here. Exile described my purpose here for a period of time. Classic-X'er doesn't describe anything as far as my purpose here from now on.

Originally Posted by KaiserD2

M & L, the furthest south I've ever lived is Montgomery County, Maryland, but one of the most depressing things of my adult life time is to compare the South of the mid-century to today. Yes, it was segregated, but it also produced Hugo Black, Estes Kefauver, Al Gore Sr., Lister Hill and John Sparkman of Alabama, J. William Fulbright, Claude Pepper, Sam Ervin. . .many great politicians, most of those liberal on everything but race. And it was not just the defense budget that helped the South under FDR--it was TVA and farm programs, too, and relief, which saved people from starvation. Now we have Jim Sessions, Jim DeMint, George Allen in the wings again. . .I could go on and on.. . pathetic. I'm still not entirely sure how it happened although the civil rights movement clearly had something to do with it.

Ah, George Allen - an asshole just like his father, who routinely ran up scores on overmatched opponents while his teams invariably choked in the playoffs every time they got there.

Originally Posted by KaiserD2

M & L, the furthest south I've ever lived is Montgomery County, Maryland, but one of the most depressing things of my adult life time is to compare the South of the mid-century to today. Yes, it was segregated, but it also produced Hugo Black, Estes Kefauver, Al Gore Sr., Lister Hill and John Sparkman of Alabama, J. William Fulbright, Claude Pepper, Sam Ervin. . .many great politicians, most of those liberal on everything but race. And it was not just the defense budget that helped the South under FDR--it was TVA and farm programs, too, and relief, which saved people from starvation. Now we have Jim Sessions, Jim DeMint, George Allen in the wings again. . .I could go on and on.. . pathetic. I'm still not entirely sure how it happened although the civil rights movement clearly had something to do with it.

You could add Texas, which had Sam Rayburn, Ralph Yarborough, LBJ, Lloyd Bentsen, and Ann Richards. Maybe Texas isn't quite so Southern; East Texas (anything east of the easternmost Dallas suburbs is Southern (Greenville, about 30 miles northeast of Dallas on I-30 once had a sign touting itself as having the blackest earth and the whitest people). Neither San Antonio nor Austin is at all Southern.

Originally Posted by Aramea

Fuckin'-A we aren't that fragile, are we ladies? I'm 48 for those that give a shit. Look into some chemical peels fer god's sakes.

It's not a matter of fragility; it's a matter of politeness.

And if you have a tiny dinky; then the politeness becomes a necessity for remaining in the gene pool.

Not as if that is a problem for me, of course!

Originally Posted by '58 Flat

Ah, George Allen - an asshole just like his father, who routinely ran up scores on overmatched opponents while his teams invariably choked in the playoffs every time they got there.

Also, Junior got in trouble for trying to hide the Jewish origin of his mother. Why would anyone do that?

Originally Posted by Seattleblue

"Fuckin'-A we aren't that fragile, are we ladies?"

Shush!

Let's check that fragility - what is your cup size?

A little mystery is usually appreciated by all parties.