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You mean the "one in a million" stories that are akin to fairy tales. Fairytales are great for putting children to sleep who still believe in "if". As a grownup, we reach a point where we realize that there are the one in a million stories (people who start businesses from nothing by being in the right place, knowing the right people or having some other advantage). We also realize there is the average story for the vast majority of people who don't have the option, money, connections, etc.

I never believed Horatio Alger either. I've always believed in where it is "who you know, not what you know" when the rubber hits the road. Then you have other factors like luck, circumstances of birth, your family's economic and social status, race (I think there are far too many bogus cries of racism, but I don't rule the factor out completely), gender (dittos on what I said on race), God, "being there at the right place and right time," and other factors I can't think up and name.

Take Bill Gates for example, he got his first exposure on computers because his mother knew and worked with the movers and shakers of Seattle. Was he born Black and lived in the ghettos of Chicago, or had his mom died while he was in grade school, or he was born in 1945 or 1965 instead of 1955, or if you change any other part of the equation, Bill Gates could be just another name among the masses. Maybe I've read too much David Graham Phillips or Jack London, but when I read them and take a peek on where we are headed to, we are sliding back to those days like they wrote abour 100 years ago. I think we do need someone like a Teddy Roosevelt or a William Jennings Bryan.

If the average story makes your guy look bad, the dishonest approach is to sell the fairytale in hopes that someone will believe that's the average. Is this what you expect us to do? Sell people the fairytale of what a few managed after a severe kick in the teeth and present it as the average case that we should all become Geobbles for the sake of the party? Or do we just deal with the truth and let the party defend itself?

I think we have too much rhetoric here of the Republican Party is always right. What is right is right and what is wrong is wrong, I'll call the Republicans to the carpet as fast as I do the Democrats if they are screwing up. I see myself as an independent conservative. I think there are too many times where we let ideology blind us to reality.

BTW, like your page on Battlestar Galactica, i'll take a look at it, maybe it will make me understand the new series much better since I've alway liked the old one.