Replies

I took yours as a personal attack and an attack on the efforts. So yeah - just slapping back. If I was incorrect I withdraw, the pure typed word is sometimes dangerous.

To get back to the original: I found 'ah, great' to be needlessly and illogically negative. I can probably be criticized fairly for having a knee jerk reaction to that type of thing as it was a feature of my family of origin. But even if that were true, what purpose does it serve to say, sarcastically "ah great" [it's gonna fail] ... that it's bound to fail? That's not guaranteed.

And my follow on comment isn't so much a personal attack as maybe a healthy slap: Sure you wouldn't sign a contract right now which had you betting on the PA legislature doing the right thing, nor would I, but the fact that they made it this far is good news, something to be grateful for, and may indicate a spark of courage that could lead to something. So my point is, if your life isn't all that happy, maybe it's stemming from your style of thinking.

But yeah, I guess I'll hit if I feel another is hitting or dragging down the team. And if I am shown to have misapprehended the hit, then I would be in error, and would withdraw it happily.

I wish you well, am not interested in debate, personal or otherwise, unless I think there might be something to be gained or something needlessly negative removed. I might suck at that for all I know.

I don't know you two, probably we will never meet.

I have gone after you both in a couple comments for being what I saw as negative nellies. Normally I don't care if anyone is a negative nellie, except most of us here, you two included I'm sure, are in an odd kind of fight against something ... negative ... and in most respects our hands are tied. That is, we are not the ones who get to take the decisive action we hope others (pols, legislators, jurists) should take.

If in fact I have wrongly attacked you personally, either because I misinterpreted something you wrote as either illogically negative and hence a drag on the good guys, or because I interpreted something you said back to me as a personal attack on me, which therefore led me to impulsively think 'oh, well, there, they attacked me! Release the Kraken!' ... then if those things are in fact true - I sincerely and fully apologize. I have no way of knowing if those things are true, and we are unlikely to ever meet face to face where the nuance of the discussion would probably reveal that.

So I am in fact offering an apology, with an if, and my 'if' is not part of a weasel apology like many who say 'if I offended anyone.' I get that you were offended. I'm just not sure whether I was in what I consider to be rights, to go for it.

So if I'm wrong, which I can't tell, but if I am, I would ask that you forgive the hits, with my apology, and chalk it up to a misread on my part and perhaps I'm a little trigger happy because I care about what's going on.

I do think it's best if people err on the side of keeping their negativity to themselves IF it's merely a negative outlook and not wired into any facts. There is enough to worry about right now with just the facts. Negative attitudes in addition to those facts hurt the cause (in my opinion).

I do think it's fair to slap back with a personal attack if another has implicitly or explicitly launched the first. And if that's what I did, then I don't feel apologetic. I'm just not sure which is which.

So you know whether an apology is warranted - if it really is, and you really believe you didn't play a part, and God agrees, it's yours without reservation, and I ask you to forgive me.