on PolicyMic
Susan Kraykowski Indeed. It seems the Republicans are brewing a bunch of scandalous little tempests in their teapot to distract Americans from the lowering (dropping like a rock!) deficit, rocketing Dow Jones Industrial Average (don't give me all that Obama is a Socialist crapola!) and over all improvement in the economy. My, my, my...they just cannot stand good news. I'm sorry Shwetika. Now all my little fan club is going to notice that I'm online and zip over here to hijack your thread. The good news is that you'll get lots of comments as they refute me and tell me what a dumbass I am.
Susan Kraykowski Andrea: Oh dear. What's up in NYC this afternoon with all the provocatively hilarious stories? The Pig Bang Theory, indeed. This is serious stuff .\/. It didn't happen before industrialized farming concentrated hogs into those enormous and abusive corporate farms. When individual small farmers each owned a few hogs, which they fed from their table scraps and which otherwise grazed with the cattle, this stuff didn't happen. And the hogs didn't need all those antibiotics, either. And when small farmers used to raise hogs, we didn't have enormous godawful smelly pits of expoloding pigpoop, either!
Susan Kraykowski Krystian: I complimented you a couple of days ago for being adult enough to admit making a mistake and courageous enough to admit it publicly. This little interchange caught my attention in the feed. I would normally not interfere, but I rather like Robin and I've been somewhat impressed with your writing, so here I am - unwanted motherly admonition teed up and ready to roll all over your butt: You're not doing yourself any good, right now. Don't have a public temper tantrum. Take a break. Go outside for a walk, think about something else, cool off. And, by the way, avoid dragging debate threads off into the weeds of your personal stuff (now, I'll get all my "fan club" over here, giving me the business - watch).
Susan Kraykowski Frank: just an observation - if one's group goes around vociferously protesting paying taxes for several years, don't you think it's perfectly logical that the IRS would want to investigate said group?
Susan Kraykowski Good grief...what a bunch of goofballs you guys are! Thanks for the laughs but could you be serious about this for one minute? Hannah wrote a perfectly good article about whether or not female toplessness is any of the following in NYC: 1. legal? 2. safe? 3. relevant to feminism? 4. desirable in some way other than the obvious one to the opposite sex? 5. enforceable? 6. supportive of the social fabric? Discuss amongst yourselves. By the way, while female toplessness is acceptable in many places in Europe, most women limit their exposure to sunbathing at resorts.
Susan Kraykowski JK: Do you want to know what p's me off more than just about anything else on PolicyMic? What you just did, ole buddy...blaming me for that hypothetical case, when, if you'd bothered to read the previous comment, you would have known that Marc made up the hypothetical and all I did was take it to its logical conclusion. Why is it that conservatives tell me that I have no balance and that "some of my hypotheticals are lacking" when I no longer use them - because I'm sick and tired of all y'all jumping down my throat about them? But when one of your guys does it it's OK? Now, what I suggest is a nice little time out: you go to your corner and I'll go to mine and we'll cool off and remain friends.
Susan Kraykowski Tami: did you read my full comment to Marc, as well as my original comment? I poesed a question and then, when he played hypotheticals, joined him in taking the hypothetical game to its logical conclusion. All of you conservatives *hate* hypothetical situations when I pose them...how come when one of you poses a hypothetical situation, it's suddenly an OK method of debate? Hmmm? The only thing to be learned from Marc's hypothetical example is exactly as I stated: the law of averages eventually catches up. Look, I don't mind logical and thoughtful debate - in fact, I encourage it wholeheartedly and I know you agree with me on that point. What I really dislike is being mobbed by a group of fellow travelers who drag something off into the weeds and don't stay with one issue and/or don't follow the rules of logic. That way lies rancorous discord...and we've seen way too much of that!
Susan Kraykowski When I first read this news story, I literally did the ::facepalm:: and thought, "what next?" The North Carolina State Assembly is more or less a wholly owned subsidiary of Art Pope and ALEC. With the exception of the female protegees of Lillian's List - who stand up for women's rights - just about all of them are bound and determined to return our state to feudal civilization: complete with privileged nobility who can grant patents and who patronize the trade guilds and the majority serfs who do the work and pay the taxes and are otherwise ignored. We will remember in November, 2014!
Susan Kraykowski Marc: read Ethan's more detailed and knowledgeable explication of the actual questions the IRS needed to ask to determine whether or not the individual organization is/is not fulfilling its purpose for which it filed tax-exempt status. My example - and I just wish all of you could think more flexibly and connect dots from one type of example to another - was intended to illustrate that you cannot expect government to stay "out" of your lives if you give it prior permission to be "in" your lives.
Susan Kraykowski Marc: you've never applied for a government security clearance, have you? Good lord! They want to know *everything* back unto the 3rd generation! Talk about intrusive! It is part of what is called "vetting." Look, you can't have things both ways. If you want the government to protect you from terrorism and bad guys, you have to allow it to do what it does. We The People allowed ourselves to be scared into creating the Department of Homeland Security and the Patriot Act, after 9/11 - both of which I opposed - and, thus, our security requirements have become even more onerous than they used to be. We did this to ourselves. The terrorists won.
Susan Kraykowski Marc: guidelines...hmm. Search guidelines, as in line a Google search? God forbid anyone ever looks at a writer's search history (I'd be arrested on the spot)! You have to specify something in the search, right? So, let's play hypothetical: just like you did, above. Suppose that we're the IRS guys and we put in "Tea Party," "Patriot" "teaching the Constitution," *as well as* "pro-choice," teaching tolerance and diversity," etc. The search results in the 501C3 filings database come up something like 1098 in the first set of specs and 41 in the second set. What do we do with that, eh? We investigate all of them, of course. And what do we find? Some violations in some cases, of course. The key question is: where do the preponderance of investigations and violations fall? The law of averages is going to catch up with you - even in hypotheticals.
Susan Kraykowski Frank: It most definitely *is* a case of selective memory - compounded and exacerbated by the 24/7/365 WorldWideInterwebbery of vicious gossip that is now in effect - which wasn't during Nixon's Administration. I remember; I was alive and kickin' then. President Nixon, for all his pragmatically hardnosed qualities of good governance - and he had them - *was* also a crook. His minions did, indeed, break campaign finance laws as well as lie both to Congress and in court about their activities...and he both knew about it and masterminded the coverup. This ur-scandal is where the suffix "-gate" originates, kiddies: Watergate. It has also been recently proven - with release of previously classified material by the LBJ Library - that Nixon's campaign committed treason by interfering with the peace negotiations to end the VietNam war. Now, PolicyMice, I didn't like President Nixon and I was certainly pleased and relieved when he resigned (to avoid certain impeachment and removal from office, btw), but I didn't hate him with the insanity that current Obama haters hate President Obama. There is no reason to impeach President Obama. All he has done is see America through a terrible recession and repair our economy, despite determined obstruction and resistance at every turn by the opposition. Throwing these serious words around with nothing serious behind them to back them up only makes you look ridiculous, petty, unintelligent and prejudiced.
Susan Kraykowski When a large group of organizations registers for tax exempt, charitable status all at once and suddenly - just possibly maybe perhaps? - they're more interested in *not* *paying* taxes* than they are in making charitable donations...just sayin'. One other item of note: Douglas H. Shulman was IRS Commissioner during the time of these investigations. His previous position was on the Congressional Commission to Restructure the IRS - where he served with such folks as Senator Portman and Grover Norquist: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Shulman http://www.house.gov/natcommirs/member.htm
Susan Kraykowski Welcome to PolicyMic, Keith!
Susan Kraykowski Well done, Frank. I don't really think Hillary Clinton will run in 2016, so the Republicans can witchhunt all they want with this one and it won't disturb me in the least. I do agree with you that the stalwarts run a very grave risk of overdoing it. They still haven't realized how much magnification the Internet offers to every little political nuance - i.e. I think they always did use this sort of overblown rhetoric behind closed doors and to each other but it never got much exposure until the 24/7/365 WorldWideWeb gossip trail took hold.
Susan Kraykowski A thoughtful piece, Hetali. You've covered the basic outlines of the GMO issue. I admit that my thinking on the subject underwent evolution as time went by. I grew up thinking in terms of agribusiness development and hybridization of crops as desirable things but my thinking has changed with the development of corporate farms and vast areas of monoculture. That sort of agribusiness has impact on more than our food choices. One crop coming into bloom over wide areas at the same time - followed by no other sequence of crops, flowers, fruit, wildflowers, etc., has led to the destruction of bee colonies - bees which are necessary for the pollination of almost all crops. Also, Monsanto, as a corporate entity, is a member of the American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC, which is responsible for the plethora of similar sounding rights-restricting and corporation-coddling legislation in nearly every state - as well as for the "Monsanto Protection Law." So, for those 2 reasons as well as for the preservation of the original heirloom crop genomes and for the protection of the natural environment, I have come to support the campaign in the US to restrict GMO products as much as possible.
Susan Kraykowski Well, Krystian, I'd say you've learned quite a lot and grown up over the past few months...congratulations. It was hard, wasn't it? It took a lot of courage to admit a mistake publicly the way you have done and you're going to receive excoriation from both sides...looks like some representatives of both are already making their cases. Here's the thing: primary sources are the best place to go for information and facts. If one wants to know what's in a bill, read the bill. If one wants to know what was said or written at some time or another, read the actual transcripts or listen to the recordings. Someone else's analysis of what happened is open to interpretation and glossing - i.e. opinion, shading, spin, or whatever you want to call it. The primary sources have always been out there. We all just have to quit being so lazy and allowing other people to do our thinking for us.
Susan Kraykowski You don't read very well, do you, Shoosh? I asked you a question - which you have not answered. Then I told you to get your facts straight - which you have not done. In fact you have repeated your incorrect information. Therefore, the only conclusion I can possibly draw on this limited amount of data is that you cannot read very well. Now, supposing that you are *not* a former member whose account was deactivated, here under a false flag, I shall offer some advice: leave me alone. I don't appreciate being stalked and harassed. I'm perfectly willing to engage in thoughtful debate with intelligent people who disagree with me - but you have to have some logical basis from which to argue. So far, you have only shown uninformed talking points. Not interested.
Susan Kraykowski Zainab: as Benjamin and Hannah have researched, to claim the gun, the winner must submit to a background check - the like of which Rep. Stockman probably voted against. Oh, the irony! Ah well. It looks like the usual suspects have shown up to give their usual pushback. I'm getting bored with all this stuff. How about this for a change: we put the Congress in direct charge of firearm distribution, via their websites...just like Stockman is doing? Anyone who wants a gun of any sort can apply to their elected Representative. All background checks, permitting, insurance requirements, licensing, go right through one of only 435 Congresscritters' offices, directly to their own constituents. That'll larn 'em!
Susan Kraykowski JDM EAC: Ridiculous. Senator Bernie Sanders is a Socialist. I have some socialist tendencies, in that I support a much higher rate of taxation and social safety net of services than is presently offered by our government, but President Obama is *not* a Socialist. Not even remotely. Under his administration, the Dow Jones Average has never, ever been higher and the wealth gap between those 1% white folks that we're talking about and everybody else has never been greater. Socialist, my left hind foot.
Susan Kraykowski The haters will hate and the nay-sayers will say nay, Darryl. Those of us who have been studying this phenomenon for lo, these many years, however, do know the truth and aren't afraid of pinning the correct name upon it: racism. I wrote this one 3 weeks ago: http://www.policymic.com/articles/34123/waco-anniversary-domestic-terrorists-have-been-hiding-amongst-us-the-whole-time
Susan Kraykowski Now *this* is cool. Good work, Anthony. On another issue, I had a lot of trouble with the List option with my latest article. I simply could not get it to function correctly, number list items or insert pix. I went back and tried doing the entire article the old way and managed to finish but didn't have any better luck with the pictures.
Susan Kraykowski James: then Scouting has changed in the 50 years since I was a Girl Scout. My troop met on an Army post, too. We never came within smelling distance of a gun but learned solid character values any way.
Susan Kraykowski Actually, reading War and Peace won't hurt you, either. Also, every book mentioned in Julianne Ross' article about the books wrongly accused of being pornographic. Read anything by Tad Williams, Sherri Tepper, Jaqueline Carey or Michelle West that you can get on your Kindle. Read Edwidge Danticat's Create Dangerously.
Susan Kraykowski Oh good grief. These people who ban books do not have enough else to do with their lives. None of these books are pornographic in the least. Some of these books deal with serious adult or clinical sexual material but just because they do does not make them pornographic. Some of these books describe fictional situations in such lush detail that one can use one's imagination quite liberally but *that* does not make them pornographic. If anything, the imagination of the reader who thinks that way needs a little examination!
on PolicyMic
Susan Kraykowski Indeed. It seems the Republicans are brewing a bunch of scandalous little tempests in their teapot to distract Americans from the lowering (dropping like a rock!) deficit, rocketing Dow Jones Industrial Average (don't give me all that Obama is a Socialist crapola!) and over all improvement in the economy. My, my, my...they just cannot stand good news. I'm sorry Shwetika. Now all my little fan club is going to notice that I'm online and zip over here to hijack your thread. The good news is that you'll get lots of comments as they refute me and tell me what a dumbass I am.
Susan Kraykowski Andrea: Oh dear. What's up in NYC this afternoon with all the provocatively hilarious stories? The Pig Bang Theory, indeed. This is serious stuff .\/. It didn't happen before industrialized farming concentrated hogs into those enormous and abusive corporate farms. When individual small farmers each owned a few hogs, which they fed from their table scraps and which otherwise grazed with the cattle, this stuff didn't happen. And the hogs didn't need all those antibiotics, either. And when small farmers used to raise hogs, we didn't have enormous godawful smelly pits of expoloding pigpoop, either!
Susan Kraykowski Krystian: I complimented you a couple of days ago for being adult enough to admit making a mistake and courageous enough to admit it publicly. This little interchange caught my attention in the feed. I would normally not interfere, but I rather like Robin and I've been somewhat impressed with your writing, so here I am - unwanted motherly admonition teed up and ready to roll all over your butt: You're not doing yourself any good, right now. Don't have a public temper tantrum. Take a break. Go outside for a walk, think about something else, cool off. And, by the way, avoid dragging debate threads off into the weeds of your personal stuff (now, I'll get all my "fan club" over here, giving me the business - watch).
Susan Kraykowski Frank: just an observation - if one's group goes around vociferously protesting paying taxes for several years, don't you think it's perfectly logical that the IRS would want to investigate said group?
Susan Kraykowski Good grief...what a bunch of goofballs you guys are! Thanks for the laughs but could you be serious about this for one minute? Hannah wrote a perfectly good article about whether or not female toplessness is any of the following in NYC: 1. legal? 2. safe? 3. relevant to feminism? 4. desirable in some way other than the obvious one to the opposite sex? 5. enforceable? 6. supportive of the social fabric? Discuss amongst yourselves. By the way, while female toplessness is acceptable in many places in Europe, most women limit their exposure to sunbathing at resorts.
Susan Kraykowski JK: Do you want to know what p's me off more than just about anything else on PolicyMic? What you just did, ole buddy...blaming me for that hypothetical case, when, if you'd bothered to read the previous comment, you would have known that Marc made up the hypothetical and all I did was take it to its logical conclusion. Why is it that conservatives tell me that I have no balance and that "some of my hypotheticals are lacking" when I no longer use them - because I'm sick and tired of all y'all jumping down my throat about them? But when one of your guys does it it's OK? Now, what I suggest is a nice little time out: you go to your corner and I'll go to mine and we'll cool off and remain friends.
Susan Kraykowski Tami: did you read my full comment to Marc, as well as my original comment? I poesed a question and then, when he played hypotheticals, joined him in taking the hypothetical game to its logical conclusion. All of you conservatives *hate* hypothetical situations when I pose them...how come when one of you poses a hypothetical situation, it's suddenly an OK method of debate? Hmmm? The only thing to be learned from Marc's hypothetical example is exactly as I stated: the law of averages eventually catches up. Look, I don't mind logical and thoughtful debate - in fact, I encourage it wholeheartedly and I know you agree with me on that point. What I really dislike is being mobbed by a group of fellow travelers who drag something off into the weeds and don't stay with one issue and/or don't follow the rules of logic. That way lies rancorous discord...and we've seen way too much of that!
Susan Kraykowski When I first read this news story, I literally did the ::facepalm:: and thought, "what next?" The North Carolina State Assembly is more or less a wholly owned subsidiary of Art Pope and ALEC. With the exception of the female protegees of Lillian's List - who stand up for women's rights - just about all of them are bound and determined to return our state to feudal civilization: complete with privileged nobility who can grant patents and who patronize the trade guilds and the majority serfs who do the work and pay the taxes and are otherwise ignored. We will remember in November, 2014!
Susan Kraykowski Marc: read Ethan's more detailed and knowledgeable explication of the actual questions the IRS needed to ask to determine whether or not the individual organization is/is not fulfilling its purpose for which it filed tax-exempt status. My example - and I just wish all of you could think more flexibly and connect dots from one type of example to another - was intended to illustrate that you cannot expect government to stay "out" of your lives if you give it prior permission to be "in" your lives.
Susan Kraykowski Marc: you've never applied for a government security clearance, have you? Good lord! They want to know *everything* back unto the 3rd generation! Talk about intrusive! It is part of what is called "vetting." Look, you can't have things both ways. If you want the government to protect you from terrorism and bad guys, you have to allow it to do what it does. We The People allowed ourselves to be scared into creating the Department of Homeland Security and the Patriot Act, after 9/11 - both of which I opposed - and, thus, our security requirements have become even more onerous than they used to be. We did this to ourselves. The terrorists won.
Susan Kraykowski Marc: guidelines...hmm. Search guidelines, as in line a Google search? God forbid anyone ever looks at a writer's search history (I'd be arrested on the spot)! You have to specify something in the search, right? So, let's play hypothetical: just like you did, above. Suppose that we're the IRS guys and we put in "Tea Party," "Patriot" "teaching the Constitution," *as well as* "pro-choice," teaching tolerance and diversity," etc. The search results in the 501C3 filings database come up something like 1098 in the first set of specs and 41 in the second set. What do we do with that, eh? We investigate all of them, of course. And what do we find? Some violations in some cases, of course. The key question is: where do the preponderance of investigations and violations fall? The law of averages is going to catch up with you - even in hypotheticals.
Susan Kraykowski Frank: It most definitely *is* a case of selective memory - compounded and exacerbated by the 24/7/365 WorldWideInterwebbery of vicious gossip that is now in effect - which wasn't during Nixon's Administration. I remember; I was alive and kickin' then. President Nixon, for all his pragmatically hardnosed qualities of good governance - and he had them - *was* also a crook. His minions did, indeed, break campaign finance laws as well as lie both to Congress and in court about their activities...and he both knew about it and masterminded the coverup. This ur-scandal is where the suffix "-gate" originates, kiddies: Watergate. It has also been recently proven - with release of previously classified material by the LBJ Library - that Nixon's campaign committed treason by interfering with the peace negotiations to end the VietNam war. Now, PolicyMice, I didn't like President Nixon and I was certainly pleased and relieved when he resigned (to avoid certain impeachment and removal from office, btw), but I didn't hate him with the insanity that current Obama haters hate President Obama. There is no reason to impeach President Obama. All he has done is see America through a terrible recession and repair our economy, despite determined obstruction and resistance at every turn by the opposition. Throwing these serious words around with nothing serious behind them to back them up only makes you look ridiculous, petty, unintelligent and prejudiced.
Susan Kraykowski When a large group of organizations registers for tax exempt, charitable status all at once and suddenly - just possibly maybe perhaps? - they're more interested in *not* *paying* taxes* than they are in making charitable donations...just sayin'. One other item of note: Douglas H. Shulman was IRS Commissioner during the time of these investigations. His previous position was on the Congressional Commission to Restructure the IRS - where he served with such folks as Senator Portman and Grover Norquist: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Shulman http://www.house.gov/natcommirs/member.htm
Susan Kraykowski Welcome to PolicyMic, Keith!
Susan Kraykowski Well done, Frank. I don't really think Hillary Clinton will run in 2016, so the Republicans can witchhunt all they want with this one and it won't disturb me in the least. I do agree with you that the stalwarts run a very grave risk of overdoing it. They still haven't realized how much magnification the Internet offers to every little political nuance - i.e. I think they always did use this sort of overblown rhetoric behind closed doors and to each other but it never got much exposure until the 24/7/365 WorldWideWeb gossip trail took hold.
Susan Kraykowski A thoughtful piece, Hetali. You've covered the basic outlines of the GMO issue. I admit that my thinking on the subject underwent evolution as time went by. I grew up thinking in terms of agribusiness development and hybridization of crops as desirable things but my thinking has changed with the development of corporate farms and vast areas of monoculture. That sort of agribusiness has impact on more than our food choices. One crop coming into bloom over wide areas at the same time - followed by no other sequence of crops, flowers, fruit, wildflowers, etc., has led to the destruction of bee colonies - bees which are necessary for the pollination of almost all crops. Also, Monsanto, as a corporate entity, is a member of the American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC, which is responsible for the plethora of similar sounding rights-restricting and corporation-coddling legislation in nearly every state - as well as for the "Monsanto Protection Law." So, for those 2 reasons as well as for the preservation of the original heirloom crop genomes and for the protection of the natural environment, I have come to support the campaign in the US to restrict GMO products as much as possible.
Susan Kraykowski Well, Krystian, I'd say you've learned quite a lot and grown up over the past few months...congratulations. It was hard, wasn't it? It took a lot of courage to admit a mistake publicly the way you have done and you're going to receive excoriation from both sides...looks like some representatives of both are already making their cases. Here's the thing: primary sources are the best place to go for information and facts. If one wants to know what's in a bill, read the bill. If one wants to know what was said or written at some time or another, read the actual transcripts or listen to the recordings. Someone else's analysis of what happened is open to interpretation and glossing - i.e. opinion, shading, spin, or whatever you want to call it. The primary sources have always been out there. We all just have to quit being so lazy and allowing other people to do our thinking for us.
Susan Kraykowski You don't read very well, do you, Shoosh? I asked you a question - which you have not answered. Then I told you to get your facts straight - which you have not done. In fact you have repeated your incorrect information. Therefore, the only conclusion I can possibly draw on this limited amount of data is that you cannot read very well. Now, supposing that you are *not* a former member whose account was deactivated, here under a false flag, I shall offer some advice: leave me alone. I don't appreciate being stalked and harassed. I'm perfectly willing to engage in thoughtful debate with intelligent people who disagree with me - but you have to have some logical basis from which to argue. So far, you have only shown uninformed talking points. Not interested.
Susan Kraykowski Zainab: as Benjamin and Hannah have researched, to claim the gun, the winner must submit to a background check - the like of which Rep. Stockman probably voted against. Oh, the irony! Ah well. It looks like the usual suspects have shown up to give their usual pushback. I'm getting bored with all this stuff. How about this for a change: we put the Congress in direct charge of firearm distribution, via their websites...just like Stockman is doing? Anyone who wants a gun of any sort can apply to their elected Representative. All background checks, permitting, insurance requirements, licensing, go right through one of only 435 Congresscritters' offices, directly to their own constituents. That'll larn 'em!
Susan Kraykowski JDM EAC: Ridiculous. Senator Bernie Sanders is a Socialist. I have some socialist tendencies, in that I support a much higher rate of taxation and social safety net of services than is presently offered by our government, but President Obama is *not* a Socialist. Not even remotely. Under his administration, the Dow Jones Average has never, ever been higher and the wealth gap between those 1% white folks that we're talking about and everybody else has never been greater. Socialist, my left hind foot.
Susan Kraykowski The haters will hate and the nay-sayers will say nay, Darryl. Those of us who have been studying this phenomenon for lo, these many years, however, do know the truth and aren't afraid of pinning the correct name upon it: racism. I wrote this one 3 weeks ago: http://www.policymic.com/articles/34123/waco-anniversary-domestic-terrorists-have-been-hiding-amongst-us-the-whole-time
Susan Kraykowski Now *this* is cool. Good work, Anthony. On another issue, I had a lot of trouble with the List option with my latest article. I simply could not get it to function correctly, number list items or insert pix. I went back and tried doing the entire article the old way and managed to finish but didn't have any better luck with the pictures.
Susan Kraykowski James: then Scouting has changed in the 50 years since I was a Girl Scout. My troop met on an Army post, too. We never came within smelling distance of a gun but learned solid character values any way.
Susan Kraykowski Actually, reading War and Peace won't hurt you, either. Also, every book mentioned in Julianne Ross' article about the books wrongly accused of being pornographic. Read anything by Tad Williams, Sherri Tepper, Jaqueline Carey or Michelle West that you can get on your Kindle. Read Edwidge Danticat's Create Dangerously.
Susan Kraykowski Oh good grief. These people who ban books do not have enough else to do with their lives. None of these books are pornographic in the least. Some of these books deal with serious adult or clinical sexual material but just because they do does not make them pornographic. Some of these books describe fictional situations in such lush detail that one can use one's imagination quite liberally but *that* does not make them pornographic. If anything, the imagination of the reader who thinks that way needs a little examination!