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Things I Love About America - 7/2/2011 9:09:08 PM   
dcnovice


Posts: 37282
Joined: 8/2/2006
Status: offline 		In no particular order. I'm sure to forget something, so please add your own lists.

First Amendment
Peace Corps
Manhattan skyline
Golden Gate Bridge
Washington Post
NPR
Batman (the '60s series with Adam West)
Stonewall
Basketball
Black rotary telephones
Facebook
Walt Whitman
Lewis and Clark Expedition
Smithsonian Institution
Delaware shore
Jeans
Montgomery bus boycott
Harriet Tubman
National parks ("The best idea American ever had," according to a British diplomat)
Ken Burns
Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum
National Cathedral
fried green tomatoes
Molly Ivins
Marshall Plan
Jeopardy!
Nathaniel Hawthorne
corn on the cob
Aretha Franklin
1776
Marbury v. Madison
volunteer firefighters and EMTs
Norman Rockwell
Girl Scout Cookies
Apple
Doonesbury
Post-it Notes
1961 Cadillac DeVille
Carol Burnett Show
"Lift Every Voice and Sing"
Hearst Castle
diner waitresses





_____________________________

No matter how cynical you become,
it's never enough to keep up.

JANE WAGNER, THE SEARCH FOR SIGNS OF
INTELLIGENT LIFE IN THE UNIVERSE
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RE: Things I Love About America - 7/2/2011 9:11:43 PM   
Musicmystery


Posts: 30259
Joined: 3/14/2005
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The beauty of the land.
Jazz
Bluegrass
Blue Man Group
Aaron Copland

< Message edited by Musicmystery -- 7/2/2011 9:29:23 PM >

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RE: Things I Love About America - 7/2/2011 9:18:50 PM   
dcnovice


Posts: 37282
Joined: 8/2/2006
Status: offline 		One thing that should be on the list but isn't was one of the momentous decisions ever made in American history. It takes a bit of space to explain.

In 1800, President John Adams ran for reelection and was defeated. He could have caused all manner of trouble, but he accepted the election results and retired to Massachusetts.He wasn't real gracious, snubbing Jefferson and appointing as many Federalists as he could to government positions.

Still, the bottom line is that he abided by the will of the electoral college, setting a precedent that continues to this day. When you hear of leaders in other countries clinging to power even after they've been voted out, remember the thanks we owe to John Adams.

_____________________________

No matter how cynical you become,
it's never enough to keep up.

JANE WAGNER, THE SEARCH FOR SIGNS OF
INTELLIGENT LIFE IN THE UNIVERSE

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RE: Things I Love About America - 7/2/2011 9:20:15 PM   
dcnovice


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Joined: 8/2/2006
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quote:

The beauty of the land.


That's a key one that I neglected, since I tens to be a city boy.

_____________________________

No matter how cynical you become,
it's never enough to keep up.

JANE WAGNER, THE SEARCH FOR SIGNS OF
INTELLIGENT LIFE IN THE UNIVERSE

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RE: Things I Love About America - 7/2/2011 9:24:48 PM   
kdsub


Posts: 12180
Joined: 8/16/2007
Status: offline 		The Republican party....without them politics would be soooooooo boring.

Butch

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RE: Things I Love About America - 7/2/2011 9:26:58 PM   
juliaoceania


Posts: 21383
Joined: 4/19/2006
From: Somewhere Over the Rainbow
Status: offline 		Yosemite National Park
Yellowstone National Park
California
BBQ
Jazz
Rock and Roll
Frank Lloyd Wright
Mark Twain
Jack London
Tiffany Lamps
Arts and Crafts architecture


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Once you label me, you negate me ~ Soren Kierkegaard

Reality has a well known Liberal Bias ~ Stephen Colbert

Great minds discuss ideas; Average minds discuss events; Small minds discuss people. Eleanor Roosevelt

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RE: Things I Love About America - 7/2/2011 9:28:58 PM   
KeriB


Posts: 315
Joined: 10/14/2007
Status: offline 		Nella Larsen
Neal Stephenson
Boston Tea Party

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I've seen honest faces, they usually come attached to liars.

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RE: Things I Love About America - 7/2/2011 9:30:19 PM   
LinnaeaBorealis


Posts: 8595
Joined: 10/5/2008
From: Insanity & beyond
Status: offline 		I love the First Amendment, even though people get confused about what it really means. I love that when it's used properly, I can bitch & complain about the government & they can't throw me in jail for that. Other people in other countries are not nearly so protected.

Most of all I love the beauty in this country. I've been in 47 of the contiguous United States, plus 2 islands in Hawai'i. The only states I haven't seen yet are Vermont & Alaska & I've seen pictures of both & their beauty is nearly overwhelming. Before I started driving a truck all over, I was most definitely a coastal kind of girl. Give me the ocean & the mountains & I was happy. But by the time I quit driving, I had seen the beauty in every state. I'd seen the cacti in bloom one spring in the deserts near the Mexican border. I'd seen the beauty in the brown hills surrounding Los Angeles in the summer. I'd even seen some beauty in Wyoming in the winter, with the snow blowing wildly across the freeways. There were times when I was driving that the vistas before me reduced me to tears, they were so incredibly beautiful.

When I was on the Big Island in Hawai'i, I took a helicopter tour. The pilot said that every type of geology on earth could be found on that one island & I believe that. We saw desert, we saw the active volcano, we saw rain forest, it was all there & incredibly beautiful! The colors have never been reproduced photographically to match what I saw that day.

I know that there is a lot more, but this is what I thought of immediately.

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Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in
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Just one of the yahoo's

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RE: Things I Love About America - 7/2/2011 9:52:51 PM   
KMsAngel


Posts: 17415
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Status: offline 		graham crackers. there are times i miss them and the memories they represent very poignantly.

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RE: Things I Love About America - 7/2/2011 9:57:26 PM   
dcnovice


Posts: 37282
Joined: 8/2/2006
Status: offline 		Continued. Again, in no particular order.

Dr. Seuss
Environmental Protection Agency
Flexible Spending Accounts
interstates
Blue Highways
Milo's search for Betty Crocker in Bloom County
S.S. United States
Ellis Island
Benjamin Franklin
Unitarian Universalism
Broadway






_____________________________

No matter how cynical you become,
it's never enough to keep up.

JANE WAGNER, THE SEARCH FOR SIGNS OF
INTELLIGENT LIFE IN THE UNIVERSE

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RE: Things I Love About America - 7/2/2011 9:59:35 PM   
KMsAngel


Posts: 17415
Joined: 4/13/2007
Status: offline 		squirrels
chipmunks
4th of july when the weather's hot
jell-o with fruit in it
pistachio pudding

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flightless cherub


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RE: Things I Love About America - 7/2/2011 10:08:41 PM   
popeye1250


Posts: 18104
Joined: 1/27/2006
From: New Hampshire
Status: offline 		The rule of law although it's taken a beating over the last three administrations not doing their job.

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"But Your Honor, this is not a Jury of my Peers, these people are all decent, honest, law-abiding citizens!"

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RE: Things I Love About America - 7/2/2011 10:09:46 PM   
DarkSteven


Posts: 28072
Joined: 5/2/2008
Status: offline 		Polyculturalism
The Nine Nations of North America
Opportunity
Donald Westlake novels
The Marx Brothers
Public libraries



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"You women....

The small-breasted ones want larger breasts. The large-breasted ones want smaller ones. The straight-haired ones curl their hair, and the curly-haired ones straighten theirs...

Quit fretting. We men love you."

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RE: Things I Love About America - 7/2/2011 10:11:21 PM   
Arpig


Posts: 9930
Joined: 1/3/2006
From: Increasingly further from reality
Status: offline 		What do I love about America? What it stands for. Not to US citizens, or too foreign leaders, but what America means to the man in the street the world over.

The idea. America is an idea, the idea that freedom can be made to work. That just maybe a country can work based on the idea that a person should be as nearly free as can be arranged, that a man can make his own way, and that a people made up of just such men can as well.

The dream. America is a dream. it is a dream of freedom hidden in the hearts of billions of oppressed people the world over. Maybe they can get to America, or maybe America can come to them, or maybe even, they can make their own America wherever they live.

The hope. America is a hope. The hope that freedom will survive, and that in time it will spread. That like an insidious disease, the germ of freedom spreads out from America.

The promise. America is a promise, a promise made to the people of the world. That as long as it stands, as imperfect and often off track as it may get at times, the idea will not die.

You have probably noticed by now that I haven't really mentioned anything that actually applies to or affects the people of the USA. That's because America doesn't belong to the people of the U.S., it belongs to everybody else. America is not the same thing as the USA. The USA belongs to you, it is your country, yours to figure out and to do whatever you want with. But America, the idea, dream, hope, and promise that is America, that belongs to the rest of us, and you are only the caretakers of America. And no matter how powerful the USA gets, America will always be infinitely stronger.

Do what you will with the USA, but take good care of America, we have entrusted it to you, please don't fuck it up.

Take the idea of America into your hearts and make it part of you, keep the dream of America alive in your hearts, let the hope of America flourish in your hearts. And keep the promise. it's a promise your ancestors made when they wrote those words that echo in the heart of every free person and every person yearning to be free: We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal, ...

Noble words that made a weighty promise, one that has been entrusted to you to keep.

< Message edited by Arpig -- 7/2/2011 10:38:39 PM >

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Ha Ha...Charade you are!

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RE: Things I Love About America - 7/2/2011 10:13:27 PM   
dcnovice


Posts: 37282
Joined: 8/2/2006
Status: offline 		The Wizard of Oz
Snickers bars
peanut butter
Steuben Glass
"Lafayette, we are here!"
Arlington National Cemetery
Tales of the City
Dorothy Day
SSRIs

_____________________________

No matter how cynical you become,
it's never enough to keep up.

JANE WAGNER, THE SEARCH FOR SIGNS OF
INTELLIGENT LIFE IN THE UNIVERSE

(in reply to KMsAngel)
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RE: Things I Love About America - 7/2/2011 10:20:40 PM   
LafayetteLady


Posts: 7683
Joined: 5/2/2007
From: Northern New Jersey
Status: offline 		That was beautiful.

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RE: Things I Love About America - 7/2/2011 10:29:47 PM   
dcnovice


Posts: 37282
Joined: 8/2/2006
Status: offline
quote:

That was beautiful.


Yes, it was. Thanks, Aepig!

_____________________________

No matter how cynical you become,
it's never enough to keep up.

JANE WAGNER, THE SEARCH FOR SIGNS OF
INTELLIGENT LIFE IN THE UNIVERSE

(in reply to LafayetteLady)
Profile   Post #: 17
RE: Things I Love About America - 7/2/2011 10:39:20 PM   
LanceHughes


Posts: 4737
Joined: 2/12/2004
Status: offline 		Thomas Jefferson
Benjamin Franklin
The actual "Star Spangled Banner" as preserved by the Smithsonian
The Golden Spike (meeting of the rails)
The Cherry Blossom Festival in D.C.

The men and women of the Armed Forces throughout our history and that INCLUDES them thar rebs (for they were fighting for their principles as all have.)

Johnny Appleseed and, of course, apple pie!
Carneige and ALL the free libraries he founded.
BIC pens - making it cheap and effective for ALL to be able to write in ink.
Air-conditioning and the movie theaters that promoted it.

Pure food as guarenteed by the FDA. (yeah, yeah, just shut up about some of the problems over the years that are so miniscule by proportion.... just shut up, okay?)

The patent office ! ! !

Fax machines - that came into wide use..... when?  Believe it or not, late 1980's early 1990's - yep, only about 21 years or so.

The Stonewall Riots.

<edited for tiny typo>




< Message edited by LanceHughes -- 7/2/2011 10:41:30 PM >

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"Advice is what we ask for when we already know the answer, but wish we didn't." Erica Jong

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RE: Things I Love About America - 7/2/2011 10:44:25 PM   
dcnovice


Posts: 37282
Joined: 8/2/2006
Status: offline 		Eleanor Roosevelt serving hot dogs to the King and Queen of England
Marian Anderson's Lincoln Memorial concert
Dolley Madison
Kate Smith singing "God Bless America"
Barbara Harris
Jackie Robinson
Jesse Owens at the Berlin Olympics


_____________________________

No matter how cynical you become,
it's never enough to keep up.

JANE WAGNER, THE SEARCH FOR SIGNS OF
INTELLIGENT LIFE IN THE UNIVERSE

(in reply to dcnovice)
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RE: Things I Love About America - 7/2/2011 10:52:49 PM   
LanceHughes


Posts: 4737
Joined: 2/12/2004
Status: offline 		Ethnic restaurants - especially when in enclaves.

Pure tap water - and we are NOT going to get into a flouride battle, 'kay?

Standard electricity.

Being able to pass from one great State to the next without border guards, passports, changing rail guages, currency, or languages.

The Great Lakes and all the recreation facilities around them.  Sure some cleaning is yet to be done, but again, proportionally small.

The Potomac Basin -ditto-

Historic and fabulous hotels.  Too many to list them all, but Coronado at San Diego, Brown Palace in Denver, Hilton in Chicago,  add your own.  Might need a new thread. LOL!

Museum after museum, many with free days.  Zoos, ditto.



_____________________________

"Train 'em the right way - my way." Lance Hughes
"Advice is what we ask for when we already know the answer, but wish we didn't." Erica Jong

10 fluffy points
50 nz points

Member: VAA's posse

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