Ann Coulter (Is she hateful?)

I suppose this is just one of your typical rhetorical put downs that you don't expect an answer to but those are not my words that you impute to me. I don't recognize such terms at all. "Hateful, reactionary and homophobic" are all liberal flag words that pack a liberal agenda, starting with slandering and discrediting conservatives, which is how you are using them too.Second, this isn't about "people" as in "some people who are..." it's about university POLICY, their idea of what should be addressed in their extracurricular forums or however they structure those things. It's an institutional position, and as described, using all those terms I called "liberal flag words" it's a fine definition of a liberal institutional position.Again what ARE you guys objecting to in my characterization? It IS a liberal institutional position, those ARE "liberal flag words," a conservative institutional agenda would not have any of that in it. In today's political environment they no doubt have to address some of those questions from a conservative perspective, but otherwise, as I said, in the place of such an agenda I would expect them to have more academic and practical community focused extracurriculars.Again, what on earth ARE you guys objecting to in all this? It looks to me like a simple factual matter.And third, why are you attributing this to ME personally, as if I invented these concepts? You can find this point of view expressed throughout conservative discussions anywhere, I simply put it into the context of this discussion of the political position of Fordham Univerity.Is there a liberal policy at Fordham that explains why Ann Coulter was ultimately rejected? I think the evidence of this thread has added up to "Yes." The characterization of her as a provocateur spreading hate is pure liberalism. This ought to be indisputable.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Well said. Thank you. Quite. And it DOES happen with regularity. There is no OTHER kind of argument I've ever encountered when I'm in a liberal camp though much of the time, as on this thread, I fail to anticipate it since I think I'm simply speaking factually. I appreciate your effort very much and hope it might be possible to pull this discussion up out of the emotional quagmire which seems to be your aim. Fair enough. This would take some very careful reconsideration of what has been said on this thread all the way back. I can accept that you are describing how I am READ but I'm not ready to accept that it's what I've been DOING. "Liberal" CAN be used that way and I probably use it that way sometimes, but it's ALSO a simple factual label, like "conservative." You may want to dispense with these labels but I don't think they can be dispensed with, we simply have to aim to rigorously exclude the emotional baggage if we're serious about what you seem to be aiming for here.This would probably require a new thread. Well, how are we going to deal with this then? I do think liberalism is a bad thing just about in its entirety just as the liberals think the same of conservativism. But I don't think I'm using the term as merely a put down and I'm not attributing false emotional content to it as Dr. A has done in characterizing my position. I really do not think I have done so. The terms listed at Fordham are public terms, I merely identified them as liberal. Yes, I object to them, but they are simply liberal terms for liberal concepts and a liberal agenda, that's a fact. Again, I have not imputed any emotional content to them as the opposition has done in replying to me, or simply in describing Ann Coulter and the subject of this thread. That happens but I'd really LIKE to talk about the issues behind the flag words. Unfortunately I'm not all that politically focused these days but I think I have a basic grasp of the issues. OK, we can try to unpack this if you like. Um, maybe. Unfortunately I think these days the issues are so polarized there really is a gathering of extremes on both sides that more or less characterizes all of us who accept either of these labels as a self-description. But again, if you'd like, maybe it would be possible to try to unpack all this on another thread. Again, I'm not really up on the political issues, I got disgusted with the whole thing a while back and pretty much just stopped reading much more than the daily headlines on the internet and occasionally a conservative blog post on a big headline issue, but I'm willing to see what might come of the effort. This one is probably way too big and deep and incendiary to discuss to much productive outcome, but give it a try if you like. For me the issues revolve more around what has been called The Culture War and nuclear power is decidedly a secondary concern. Well, those are issues that are described in liberal versus conservative terms but they aren't issues that grab my attention much personally. My concerns are more about the deterioration of culture as I see it from a Christian and conservative point of view, that got its big kickoff in the sixties although of course the issues have been around for much longer than that. This includes the growth of socialist ideas and to some extent their REAL history in REAL Communism, which isn't just namecalling but REAL history.Is it possible to discuss THESE things without the emotional baggage? All I did was call a list of terms at Fordham "liberal" and everybody was up in arms at that simple description, which to me is STILL merely a factual description, so I've got my doubts a simple factual collegial type discussion is possible, but it would be nice to see an attempt. It's a complex subject but the push for Gay Rights is a political agenda that has philosophical roots that have nothing to do with protecting a gay kid from harm. Can THAT be discussed or is it always going to come back to the suffering gay kid?The vast majority of conservative thought is compassionate toward the gay kid and has nothing whatever to do with "homophobia." Does anybody even know the root of that concept and how it's been twisted to become an anti-conservative put down? It originated in Freud's psychoanalysis to describe a certain personality constellation that was fighting against real homosexual impulses. Perhaps The Schreber Case is online somewhere. I think that was Freud's big case on the concept. Making a political epithet out of that was a political move to destroy conservatism and really, Western Civilization. I hear groans from the Left here already. So pile on the Jeers. I know it had Marxist-Communist roots among other things but if you demand evidence for that from me you'd be requiring time for research I doubt I'm ready to put in right now. Anyway, there is a Gay Agenda that is part of a much bigger political agenda. Is it possible to even CONSIDER that from the liberal side? Well, I agree, and I HAVE seen that from the conservative side as well, but honestly, I don't think I have indulged in it here and that if I say for instance that there is a Gay Agenda and it does have Communist roots, that those on the other side are going to call that "hate speech" although it's merely a factual statement that can be investigated as to its historical reality. It may be too big for a thread on a forum of course, probably is, but nevertheless it's a simple factual idea and not just namecalling. I'm focused on a bigger historical trend than today's unemployment and fiscal problems, all of which I see as a practical outcome of a lot of historical trends and not something I'd be capable of analyzing in terms of current political policies. So if you were to start a thread along those lines I probably wouldn't participate just because I'm not capable of focusing down on the practical issues that concern you.Much as I appreciate your attempt here and wish/hope it might be possible and would love to see it tried, I'm ending here on a note of pessimism that it's possible.But I look forward to your response to all this.

I thought there was something bigger going on with you than a stint on a difficult forum. Please, if you are a Christian or want to be, go see a good pastor, not just a school counselor. Also find a doctor outside school if you really need the meds. You can get a therapist on Medicaid too. Write me at my email if you like. I'm no counselor but I'm sympathetic and think you've been given an unnecessarily hard time here.

THAT sort of frustrating response is pretty much guaranteed from any of us, I'm afraid, at least the shallow understanding part, even with the best of intentions. It might make you feel better to know some of what I've been going through along similar frustrating lines -- not being able to get across my situation to anybody no matter how hard I try -- just because our miseries fade in the light of others' miseries, but I'm not going to tell you about them. I take them to the Lord more and more now because I'm finally learning that people can't help but fail. And besides, I'm sure I'm old enough to be your grandmother, could join Buz pretty soon, and should have learned to manage such things by now. But you need a good counselor, a really really good counselor. I can only hope and pray for you to find what you need.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : correct a bunch of incomplete thoughts and bad writing

Well said, Forever. Dr. A enjoys his rhetoric too much. He's not really arguing a case, he's just exercising his finely honed barbed wit on behalf of his liberalism. He likes to make it sound as if there couldn't possibly be any other view than his own. Quite amazingly it seems to succeed around here. Well, he's good at it.

Don't know if I'm up to answer another long post tonight, but here goes a try. Me too. I really DO care about that subject, it's been on my mind for some time that I need to get a better grip on DNA than I seem to be able to get from forays into Wikipedialand. I had the silly idea I wouldn't get sucked into other threads if I allowed myself to participate on that one. Yeah but that was unusual I thought. But anyway, if you mean how you talk among yourselves, that's true of conservatives too. Public statements are something else. As a conservative I see the usual media presentations as NORMALLY giving Obama a pass, presenting a liberal position across the board, but Republicans get bashed a lot. I'm sure you disagree, liberals usually don't see it that way. (As for the Obama first debate, he was apparently very lackluster, but I actually cynically thought that might have been planned, so cynical have I become. I noticed that the media seemed to be trying to give an impression of impartiality for a change lately, and I also had the cynical thought more than once that they're trying to make this election process seem fair when we know it's manipulated for Obama, playing him down and giving a pretty picture of Romney to some extent. Some Republicans were apparently misled by that into thinking Romney had a real chance, but I wasn't surprised when he lost and I'm not surprised by all the revelations of voter fraud on behalf of Obama I've been hearing about lately either. Perhaps you haven't heard about them or if you did you'd chalk it up to conservative lies. Yeah, I'm a paranoid cynical conservative these days. Yeah, I believe America no longer exists. Yeah yeah yeah. The divide between Liberals and Conservatives these days is wide and deep. We live in separate universes these days, not even parallel).I'm going to skip over the Coulter quotes for now and get back to them later because I need to get more sense of the context. Told you, I've been politically out of touch. They don't offend me, though, on first reading. I just want to know the context to judge how true I think her view is. Well, you aren't reading the histories I've been reading and hearing about. Whether it will happen or not I don't know although I know there is plenty of effort to make it happen that I know you don't know about. I was pretty shook up when I first encountered this information in the last few months, who'd a thunk it? You mean after all these centuries they are still nursing this hatred of the Reformation and still actively plotting against it? And succeeding beyond my wildest imagination in ways I NEVER would have suspected. Patient and dogged these plotters, plotting centuries ahead yet. And masterful at hiding their tracks.No, of course you aren't in a position to see it, and I shouldn't be wasting time at EvC right now either, I should be continuing my research on all that stuff. At the moment my favorite source isn't available, I have that excuse. Yeah yeah yeah. Wait and see. If we live so long. And I'm thinking we might, actually. Uh, I guess you aren't up on the defection of Protestants into the Catholic Church. Lot of "Protestants" with no sense of history and less sense of theology these days. Or aware of the disarray among the churches either, where Catholic ideas have been infiltrating and there's a growing chorus of people out there trying to keep tabs on these events but getting swamped by it all. Catholicism gets a good press these days. A hundred years ago there was still a true Protestant view of things that wouldn't have allowed that. Oh there's too much to even begin to mention and you aren't in a position to assess it or care much anyway. Oh I know you're aware of it. I've continued to follow EvC. I'm not sure how to explain it. You'd think the creationist ministries would be the inspiration for the creationists who come here, because they do all agree on most major issues, but for some reason we all come here as loners with our own favorite arguments.But maybe what surprises me most and has all along is how few Young Earthers there are here. I'm pretty sure I'm the only one here at the moment. There may be some YEC's who come here but don't post on creationism for some reason. Iano who hasn't been around in a while, and Jaywill, come to mind. I don't know if they're YECs but they both seem to be pretty solid Bible believers. I could get a surprise there too of course.I don't want to argue evolution on this thread. Fordham has a liberal page, I showed that, and their President gave what any conservative would recognize, ANY conservative, as a liberal opinion of Ann Coulter. If you still think they're conservative they've done a good job with their image-making. It's discouraging to keep discovering this, but apparently liberals DON'T recognize the obvious liberal flags as liberal. The very term "multiculturalism" is screamingly liberal, but apparently you don't know that. You've bought the silly excuse that "you can't bring a lot of people together ..." as you said. Multiculturalism is NOT about bringing a lot of cultures and races together. That's happened in America from the beginning. But America USED to be a Melting Pot where everybody BECAME American. Multiculturalism is the philosophy of keeping us from melting together as one society, keeping us fragmented and divided by our ethnicities. Or our race or our "gender" or our sexual identity or all the other stuff on that list at Fordham. "Diversity" is just another way of keeping us divided, it's NOT what you think it is. Keeping us all in a stew over some usually provoked violation of "social justice" and on and on. It's really a diabolical plot and it's working and oh groan, you guys haven't a clue. Huh? You don't see it as liberal because you don't know the history of these things. You've swallowed the Kool Aid as they say.

Aaaargh. You liberals are so LITERAL. Ann's remark about Oklahoma was not a desire to see people murdered, good grief. She is making a POINT, using HYPERBOLE. She's a polemicist, she exaggerates for effect, she likes to make sensational statements. She IS a humorist, humorists use strong contrasts and sometimes shocking contrasts and similarities, to get their point across. Sometimes a laugh is wrenched out of the sheer audacity of her comparisons. Sardonic wit. NOBODY on the conservative side reads her the way you liberal literalists do. You're no bleeding heart, Dr. A. but it seems to serve you to pretend you are in this case.I'll say she may sometimes exceed the bounds of what used to be called "good taste," but the "hate speech" put downs are just liberals doing their usual huffyhuffy holier than thou number, only in their case it IS hateful and hurtful because it's so deadly pointedly SERIOUS, so witheringly morally indignant about NOTHING, whereas in hers it's just exaggeration. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

What she HATES is their LIBERAL policies and lies, Dr. A. You know, the printed word of the NEW YORK TIMES. And yes, she hates that with a righteous passion. Not "the PEOPLE of the NY Times" but THEIR LIBERAL POLICIES. You liberals like to make this a personal people thing so you can wring your hands and bleed all over the place for their hurt feelings or get all offended and huffy about us "haters" and look down your noses at us morally deficient Conservatives for our Lack of Sensitivity which seems to be all Liberals care about, or even accuse us literally of murderous intentions. We conservatives on the other hand deal on the level of IDEAS. I TOO would like to "murder" all sources of Liberalism in this country. I try to do it WITH ideas because it IS ideas I'd like to "murder" which is also her desire. But not hate toward HUMAN BEINGS, for pete's sake. Not that we can't lose our temper and want to punch the daylights out of a liberal sometimes, and I'm sure you've wanted to do the same to a conservative -- your clenched fist is in your barbed words you know --, but we don't do we? And not just because we know we'd get the worst of it either. But you guys treat this as if it were a real desire to bomb a building and see people die. I found a liberal's page on Ann's quotes that kept saying how "terrified" he felt of her remarks. You guys are insane LITERALISTS. THAT's scary. This is an absurd comparison which simply demonstrates how you literalize Ann's purely verbal war on liberalism, which she does indeed hate with a fiery passion and would like to see dead and buried. It is not EVER anywhere close to what that soccer fan did to a real human being. The fact that liberals hear it that way is what is scary. And frankly I'm surprised at YOU for thinking this way, though I suppose I shouldn't be, I guess because I usually think of you as a passionately verbal type yourself who ought to know better. No, there was plenty of hate in her remarks, but hate for the ideas which are represented by the New York Times Building, which you liberals seem to fail to grasp. The hyperbole is in the comparisons she makes that liberals stupidly take literally. I can almost not believe that anyone would but I'm finding out that you do. Incorrect because you identify the target of the animosity wrongly. Her exaggeration and hyperbole are in the service of IDEAS. Your accusations of her are hateful and hurtful because you are accusing her of things she couldn't possibly mean because you take her to be targeting people instead of their ideas. "Hate speech" is meant by liberals to attribute literal hatred and violent motives toward other human beings to conservatives who are in fact objecting to ideas and political policies. You demonize, you criminalize the PERSON by such terms because to you it's all about PERSONS. The concept of "hate speech" has already landed some people in jail, for nothing but their opinions, so much for Freedom of Speech, and if the liberals keep it up more of us will no doubt fall under Big Brother's tyrannical desire to eliminate socieiy of all Biblical beliefs and traditional morality and complaints about the tyrannies of Political Correctness. Meanwhile the "speech" that is protected turns the whole concept of freedom of speech upside down. ONLY the speech that condemns "haters" and "reactionaries" and conservative "provocateurs" will be protected, along with the "right" to pornography, but dare quote from the Bible about God's law against sexual sins, all of them but also homosexual sins, THOSE will no longer be protected, because liberals already want them gone. I hope I'm accurately characterizing your words as hateful and hurtfulk, which I believe they are because you are imputing a PERSONAL element to Ann's words which is not there, that's what makes yours hateful and hurtful. I can't find anything similar to Ann's statements in your comparison so I'm not sure what to say. It sounds like a crude literalminded way of hating her ideas perhaps that you can't distinguish from her person just as literalminded liberals apparently can't. Again you are personalizing something that she did not personalize in her reference to the New York Times building.When she personalizes something it's like her remark about John Walker the traitor who I agree with her should have been executed because traitors who conspire in the death of Americans should be executed, and maybe it would serve as a deterrent to others with traitorous inclinations which was her point. But even there what she's talking about is not hating John Walker or the wouldbe traitors so much as the social policy that allows traitors to live and thereby encourages more traitorous people, because it is a betrayal of the innocent and of the nation.You on the other hand in your example would be talking of a personal desire to see Ann Coulter herself die a miserable death, someone who is not guilty of anything even remotely similar to that.I've been writing my heart out today on things that matter to me but I wonder how much good it has done if any, and I'm too tired right now to even review what I wrote here so I hope it's coherent.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

I see a HUGE HUGE distinction but I'm struggling to get it said clearly and right now I'm too tired to make the effort but I wanted to say this much and I'll have a go at it again tomorrow.

It would have to be said the WAY Ann Coulter says such things if you are intending a comparison with her. My objection to Dr. A's comparisons is that they literalize or personalize what she doesn't intend that way.He compares her hyperbole with someone's belligerently saying something angry or threatening to a person's face, which is a stunning mischaracterization of her intent. I guess I'm finding out how liberals read this stuff, which is enlightening, but it is appalling to say the least. The NY Times building is a symbol she's using for Liberalism, but some here keep literalizing it as her wanting to hurt the people who are in the building.Your comparison is similar to his, in that you seem to think a "wish to blow up Fox News" has anything in common with what she said, which it doesn't. She has not the slightest "wish" to blow up the NYT building which is what your comparison implies. It's purely a symbol for Liberal Media influence. Hurting people and blowing up buildings is not going to get rid of Liberal influence, which is her real aim. Such a wish wouldn't even cross her mind. Like Dr. A, you miss her sarcastic hyperbole and get perilously close to a literal idea of a wish to blow up Fox News.Again, she could be accused of bad taste in some of her comparisons, but the accusation of "hate speech" or any similar accusation implying a desire for literal personal violence of any sort utterly -- staggeringly -- misses her kind of humor.And by the way I'm no fan of Fox News.Added edit: Look, I know there ARE some conservatives who talk violence in a literal way, I encounter them on conservative blogs. I disapprove of it, but I don't see it as any different from the Leftists who went around blowing up things back in the sixties and seventies and still think such actions are "revolutionary." The violent mentality on both sides is out of bounds.But Ann Coulter's humor has nothing to do with that.Another edit: Here's another thought. The violence in her symbols actually has the effect of dispelling or dissipating any real urges to violence that may accompany our polarized politics and makes it possible to channel such feelings more productively. Jokes "blow off steam." Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : subject verb disagreement corrected

This is all I read of your post for now. Ann Coulter did NOT say she wishes McVeigh had KILLED PEOPLE, that's your literalizing that makes it personal people thing.But I guess you're going to stick to it.

OK now I have to prove to you literalists that editors and reporters are also symbols of liberal influence and not people she wishes to hurt. I'm not even going to try. I don't believe this craziness. But have it your way, I've done all I can do, and I think I need a nap.

OK, Crash, I'm going to respond to your list of Coulterisms way back there that I left for later, though I'm not going to go track down the original post.I've said my piece, I've made my case, everyone remains glued to their same position, and I've been called ignorant and a liar a few too many times for easy tolerance so I'm answering this and leaving the thread.I saved your list of quotes and here they are.The first thing to say is that if I took her literally as you guys do I'd probably be censuring her too, but I don't, so what you're going to get here is the reading of someone who is not literalminded as the rest are. John Walker Lindh, I believe, who went and fought with the Muslims against Americans, right? What is your objection to this quote? We shouldn't execute traitors? They used to, you know. I don't know if he killed anyone but he was at least complicit in any killing of Americans by those he fought with and should have been dealt with as a murderer himself. I'm for the death penalty and think keeping murderers in prison instead is a betrayal of the innocent victims, abd in this case a betrayal of the whole nation. Executing murderers is definitely a deterrent to other would-be murderers, and that's what she's saying here. Yes, she's accusing "college liberals" of being incipient traitors. Most conservatives see it that way and I'm one of them, so as usual she is making a shocking comparison in order to dramatize her point. We need a deterrent to those who already talk traitorously as a deterrent against their turning into actual traitors. I agree with her. I've often thought this myself, at least the literacy test part, though I admit I haven't thought it through thoroughly and could change my mind. This of course comes from hearing the absolutely idiotic opinions of so many who vote, who know absolutely nothing about American history or world history or current events. It's discouraging to know people are voting against you for all the wrong reasons. Don't you agree?But this is all academic since so much of the vote is rigged anywayl. This is a case where she went way over the line. God said no such thing, He charged us to care for the Creation. But it's easy enough to guess what led her to this misstatement. She's objecting to the environmentalist extremists who seem to care more for the spotted owl than for human wellbeing. People who love animals and trees so much they'd throw people out on the street if it came to that choice. That IS how they often sound.And they talk that way in tones of high dudgeon. Liberals seem to ALWAYS be talking in tones of high dudgeon, huffy moral indignation, shrill tones of denunciation as if they were the arbiters of all that is good and right and anyone who disagrees is, well, merely a "hater" or a "reactionary." Yes, they sound like a bunch of Victorian matrons passing judgment on some offense to their moral sense. Things of little real importance, in fact things that are CONTRARY in many cases to what's important and right. No sense of proportion, no sense of looking for compromise or respecting the views of the opposition, just total condemnation.I'd agree that the Right then goes over the top too, as in this statement by Ann and in some things Rush Limbaugh has said along the same lines that suggest we can just destroy the environment without thought. But at bottom the point they are making is about whether human wellbeing is to be compromised by extreme notions about how the Creation is to be protected. It's another case where we're polarized but we shouldn't be. We should be able to take care of ourselves AND serve the Creation. Now here is where I think Ann is Doing Her Thing to perfection. I found this really funny because it's so true and I've thought the same myself and then had to try to push it out of my head. Bad taste I'd say. But she's insisting on her right to violate the canons of Political Correctness by using the term "faggot" risking being put in the prison of rehab for it. Well, we choose the hills we're willing to die on. If you miss the joke you're a liberal. I'm not in favor of talking this way myself, and it's one of the reasons I don't listen to her much. But I can appreciate the point she's trying to make. Is that John Edwards she's talking about? She's saying he's effeminate? Well, he is sort of. I'm going out of my way to defend her because I hate the way she's taken by liberals and I see what she's trying to do. She's trying to face down Political Correctness which is the basis for all that misguided moral indignation the liberals keep condemning us by, which is nothing but their own political agenda. I never saw the widows talk about these things but I would guess that I might have seen their general demeanor as Ann did, as more interested in their rights than in the gravity of the situation and even their own loss. I might have, I don't know, but I usually find her insightful about such things. That's silly, they've got plenty of people to defend them, apparently the whole anti-Coulter crowd for starters. And of cousre she wouldn't talk to them to ther faces this way because she's targeting an attitude, not people, their indoctrination into the entitlement view of life. She's NOT doing anything like what is being ijmnputed to here that imnplies it's the same as verbally abusing people to their face. But you guys will never get it and I'm out of here.See you on the DNA thread.

Isn't the "physical intimidation" the execution of a traitor as an example? What other physical intimidation are you talking about? You seem to have something else in mind than the example of executing a traitor.

Yes I suppose that would be offensive but I agree with her that there's plenty of traitorous talk among what she called "college liberals" even if that category doesn't include all of you. As usual she's making a point that liberals have trouble appreciating because, well, you aren't conservatives who are really depressed by what we see as traitorous thinking in your camp.As for the Muslimized America traitor, what on earth makes him "conservative?" But I won't argue the point that executing a traitor should be a warning to ANY traitor on either side of the political spectrum.We could disagree about what constitutes traitorous thinking of course. Even BEING a Communist in America, where that ideology is in direct contradiction to the philosophical foundations of our nation, certainly can be thought of as traitorous in itself. But Annie's comparison was only directed against preventing, if possible, actual physical treachery such as joining with our enemies and shooting at our soldiers. Now MOST Americans wouldn't do that, even Communists, I agree. But as usual, dear Annie (I'm coming to love her more and more as a great warrior against political corrrectness as I see the kind of demonization she is so unfairly attracting here) is making a polemical point about something that is basically true, and it hurts liberal sensitivities. I guess that can't be helped.Might as well add here since I never got back to your very nice offer to try to discuss these things amicably -- the thread just keeps rolling on and it's easy to get lost in it -- I'll just say here that I still wish it were possible but I'm not up to it, at least not now. I nevertheless would like to keep ALL our discussions as amicable as possible.