auntb93

It claims to be an organization to benefit gun owners. In fact, it is an organization to exploit gun owners and support the interests of gun manufacturers, importers and distributors. The basically responsible gun owners who pay dues are overwhelmingly in favor of reasonable regulations for gun safety. The people who make big money off guns want no restrictions at all.

Yes, local chapters promote gun safety and do all sorts of good things. But like many another national organization, the interests of the local, grass-roots chapters and the interests of the national lobbying efforts are quite different.

It seems a major reason Republicans are bad-mouthing Susan Rice is that they want Kerry to be the nominee for Secretary of State, thereby opening up a Massachusetts senate seat. Apparently they assume Scott Brown could win in a special election. It seems a better response by the Democrats would be to promote a strong contender for the vacancy rather than allowing Kerry to be stuck in place. After all, he is also a good nominee for other cabinet posts.

The Sudoku puzzle in Yahoo! Games was my morning brain exercise for a long time. Just this week it disappeared. I liked it better than any other electronic Sudoku. Does anyone know if it exists anywhere else, or what I could do to get it back?

You know, that crude anti-Muslim video that was supposed to be a trailer. My own theory is that there never was a full-length film, but that the whole thing is a stunt to enrage Muslims with the video. A whole lot cheaper than making a full-length film.

When you hear a politician telling lies and distortions, do you think about shutting him up, or about responding to his comments with your own fact-checking and interpretations? Do you feel there should be limits on free speech because of the extent to which some people abuse it? Or do you take heart that they are just making fools of themselves?

I burned "Made About Baroque" and the listing just said "Track 1 . . . Track 20," rather than the names of the pieces. Not useful. So I went to the list of the files, and painstakingly edited the file names to reflect the actual titles of the music on all 20 tracks. When I went back to the listing, it still said "Track 1 . . . Track 20"! How can I edit that listing to make itself useful?

BTW, there are now several albums in my library with this problem.

Tell whether you are a Republican, Democrat, or other, and include any predictions you might have about how Ryan helps or hurts Romney's chances of getting elected.

I'm asking for your prediction, but you can also tell me your recommendation if you like.

Here we are in the category Religion & Spirituality. We usually talk about religion, but leave the second term pretty undefined. Let's hear your definition.

I figure that had to be one of the reasons.

I got five CDs out of what turns out to be a six disc set. Anyway, they are all named "25 Favorites" plus the name of the composer. Great; they'll stay together in the alphabetical list. However, for reasons I cannot fathom, when I ripped what I thought was "25 Favorites by Tchaikovsky," Windows called it "Tchaikovsky's Greatest Hits" instead, which put it way down near the bottom of the list. I can't seem to find a way to rename the album. Is there a way?

As a bonus, you could include your odds on the top candidate's chances against President Obama.

It seems people throw these terms around as if they were equivalent, or at least different degrees of the same basic concept. Even more annoying, they use the label "socialist" about a particular program or proposal, as if the very term is enough to scare people away. Is this because they do not adequately distinguish between socialism and communism, or is it just a rhetorical trick?

Past or present, authors or speakers or whatever. You might include some description of who they are for the ones who are not all that famous.

I think she put her finger on it. We have always had a few candidates who run just for the fun of it. I'm betting he's as surprised as anyone that he's been taken so seriously for so long.

Several of the other candidates have had their "bubble" and then faded, or been brought down by their own mistakes. It seems Herman Cain's time may be coming to an end. Who's next, and can anyone sustain the challenge? I have my own guess, but I want to see what Republicans think. As a progressive Democrat, I am way too biased.

I see polarization as one of our biggest political problems these days. We seem to be working with love him or hate him, right or wrong, good or evil, black or white sort of approach to politics, instead of Republican or Democrat. OK, we mostly know that minor parties do not win, and a vote for a minor party candidate tends to be to the advantage of the one you like least. But we're still more than a year from the general election, and have plenty of time to examine our options from many angles.

Ronald Reagan's famous dictum about never speaking ill of another Republican seems to have been ignored so far in this election cycle. They clearly need to resolve the primary issues during the primary process if they are to have the slightest chance to defeat President Obama next November. How would you describe the most divisive issues or ideologies?

Someone said all ginger tabbies are male and all calicoes are female. Is this true? My ginger tabby is a male, but I have never known many other cats. Have you ever known a female ginger tabby or a male calico?

I've downloaded a lot of JPEG files, and many are duplicates. When I downloaded them, I gave them different names and therefore did not get the "already exists" warning. Is there some easy little trick that I should know about to check for duplicates? I'd like to be able to decide which of two or three names I want to keep. They are in a lot of different folder names. If I could just scan for duplicates by folder, that would help a lot.

I downloaded them at different times. I get a sample of images every week from Dover Publishing. I don't always remember if I have a particular one, and sometimes they are not exactly the same. For example, one may be from a coloring book that includes a description, another the same image but without the description. I'd like to keep both. And I'm afraid I'm not terribly consistent about which folder I put them in, either.