Make It So?

By PatD, a Trail Mix Contributor

Hate to bring this up in case you haven’t noticed but it seems that almost every response nowadays from an interviewee starts with the word “so”? Like it’s become SO prevalent, SO awesomely annoying and SO bigly distracting that it’s like worse than the overuse of “like” and “awesome” and Trump tweets. Like.

Geoff Nunberg at NPR noticed it three years ago but had a different more tolerant take:

So, What’s The Big Deal With Starting A Sentence With ‘So’?

To listen to the media tell it, “so” is busting out all over — or at least at the beginning of a sentence. New York Times columnist Anand Giridharadas calls “so” the new “um” and “like”; others call it a plague and a fad.

It’s like a lot of other grammatical fixations: Not everybody cares about it, but the ones who do care care a whole lot. When NPR’s Weekend Edition asked listeners last year to pick the most-misused word or phrase in the language, that sentence-initial “so” came in in second place, right behind “between you and I” and ahead of venerable bugbears like misusing “literally” and confusing “who” and “whom.” That’s a meteoric rise for a peeve that wasn’t even on the radar a decade ago.

NPR itself has been singled out for overuse of “so” by both interviewees and hosts. That prompted the NPR head of standards and practices to calculate how many times the hosts and reporters on the major NPR news programs had started sentences with “so” in a single week in August of 2014. When the total came to 237, he urged them to look for alternatives.

But not so fast. When you break that weekly figure down, it only comes to one sentence beginning with “so” every eight or 10 minutes. That isn’t actually very many, particularly when you’re running a lot of interviews. After all, “so” is a conversational workhorse. It announces a new topic, it connects causes to results, it sets up a joke. “So, what’s it like being Justin Bieber?” “So, do the low interest rates help farmers?” “So three gastroenterologists walk into a bar.”

Starting sentences with “so” isn’t a trend or a thing. However it may strike you, people aren’t doing it any more frequently than they were 50 or 100 years ago. The only difference is that back then nobody had much of a problem with it. When F. Scott Fitzgerald’s editor Maxwell Perkins sat down with him to go over the manuscript of The Great Gatsby, he didn’t say: “Scott — this last line. ‘So, we beat on, boats against the current’ etc. etc.? I think we need to go with ‘thus.’ ”

So, why the recent hue and cry about those sentences beginning with “so”? In part, you could blame the quirk of perception I think of as the Andy Rooney effect, where you suddenly become keenly aware of a common word that’s always been part of the conversational wallpaper. Somebody says, “Have you noticed how everybody’s saying ‘OK’ before they hang up the phone?” and all at once the word starts jumping out at you, even though people have been using it that way forever.

Many of the complaints about sentences beginning with “so” are triggered by a specific use of the word that’s genuinely new. It’s the “so” that you hear from people who can’t answer a question without first bringing you up to speed on the backstory. I go to the Apple Store and ask the guy at the Genius Bar why my laptop is running slow. He starts by saying, “So, Macs have two kinds of disk permissions …” If that “so” were a chapter title in a Victorian novel, it would read, “In which it is explained what the reader must know before his question can be given a proper answer.”

Scientists have been using that backstory “so” among themselves since the 1980s, but its recent spread is probably due to the tech boom. In his 2001 book The New New Thing, Michael Lewis noted that programmers always started their answers with “so.” That’s around the time when I first heard it, working at a Silicon Valley research center. Mark Zuckerberg answers questions with “so” all the time: “So, it comes down to the economics …” “So one of the services that the government wanted to include …” But by now that backstory “so” is endemic among members of the explaining classes — the analysts, scientists and policy wonks who populate the Rolodexes of CNBC and The PBS NewsHour.

To my ear, that backstory “so” is merely a little geeky, but it rouses some critics to keening indignation. A BBC host says speakers use it to sound important and intellectual. A columnist at Fast Company warns that it undermines your credibility. A psychologist writes that it’s a weasel word that people use to avoid giving a straight answer.

That’s a lot to lay on the back of a little blue-collar conjunction like “so.” But that backstory “so” can stand in for people’s impatience with the experts who use it. When you hear a labor economist or computer scientist begin an answer with “so,” they’re usually telling us that things are more complicated than we thought, and maybe more complicated than we really want to know. That may be why they were called in in the first place, but as Walter Lippmann once said, the facts exceed our curiosity.

That backstory “so” puts me on guard, too, even when I hear it coming out of my own mouth. Usually it just introduces some background qualification that the question calls out for, as in, “So … German isn’t actually a romance language.” But sometimes it announces some nugget of specialized linguistic knowledge that I feel the need to share. If that “so” were a chapter title in a Victorian novel, it would read, “In which the reader is asked, ‘Are you sitting comfortably?’ “

So, Captain Picard, please…. make it a little less so.

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77 thoughts on “Make It So?”

  1.  

    the guardian:
    Wilmington cut off from North Carolina by Florence flooding

    Officials are planning to airlift food and water to Wilmington after the city of nearly 120,000 people became cut off from the rest of North Carolina by rising flood water from Florence.

     
    At least 17 people have died in North and South Carolina, as rescuers in pulled residents from homes threatened by swollen rivers.
     
    The US’s highest emergency official said other states were in the path of Florence. “Not only are you going to see more impact across North Carolina this week … but we’re also anticipating you are about to see a lot of damage going through West Virginia, all the way up to Ohio as the system exits out,” said Brock Long of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
    In Wilmington, the state’s eighth-largest city, residents waited for hours outside stores and restaurants for necessities such as water. Police guarded the door of one store and only 10 people were allowed inside at a time.
     
    Woody White, the New Hanover county commission chair, said officials were planning for food and water to be flown into the coastal city. “Our roads are flooded,” he said. “There is no access to Wilmington.”
    […continues…]

  2. sooo, trail friends, you say you’ve had enough with fake news, floods and fools?  well, what’s your take on the fairness of fake fair catches?

    usatoday:
    North Texas kick returner Keegan Brewer went nearly the length of the field for an early touchdown in Saturday’s contest against Arkansas.
    Razorbacks players never saw it coming because they thought Brewer signaled a fair catch. Except he didn’t. No whistle was actually blown.
    Catching the ball at North Texas’ 10-yard line, Brewer caught the ball and began casually walking — as if he was executing a fair catch. Then after Arkansas players walked passed him he darted off towards the end zone, leaving his opponents no time to recover from the spoof.
     
    There’s no NCAA rule permitting what Brewer did, as sneaky as it was. There are rules against signaling a fair catch and then running with the ball (that’s a delay of game). The key, though, is that the returning team has to make a valid fair catch signal, which Brewer made none. Arkansas players just expected him to.
    It’s unclear if Brewer executed the play intuitively on his own or if coaches instructed him to do so.
     

     

  3. So, ? I just caught a replay of Chuck Todd’s interview with FEMA administrator Brock Long on MTP yesterday. What a worm. He’s like an incompetent KellyAnne Conway.   Talk, Talk, Talk, ignore the question, dismiss the data, Talk, Talk, Talk.

  4. so, pogo, what do you make of this talk, talk, talk by brock?

    “Not only are you going to see more impact across North Carolina this week … but we’re also anticipating you are about to see a lot of damage going through West Virginia, all the way up to Ohio as the system exits out,” said Brock Long of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

  5. so here’s what WVVA reported last night:
    7:05 p.m.
     
    Flash flood watches have been posted in parts of southern West Virginia as the remnants of Hurricane Florence fall on saturated ground.
     
    The National Weather Service has issued the watch through Monday evening in Greenbrier, Mercer, Monroe and Summers counties.
     
    The weather service says 2 to 4 inches (5 to 10 centimeters) of rain are expected in the watch area with 5 inches (12.7 centimeters) or more possible in parts of the Greenbrier Valley.
     
    A flood warning has been posted in Virginia along the New River, which flows north into West Virginia.
     
    In June 2016, 9 inches of rain fell in 36 hours in parts of West Virginia, leaving 23 dead statewide and destroying thousands of homes, businesses and infrastructure. Fifteen people died in Greenbrier County alone.
     

  6. So, my real pet peeve is “uh”.  Two or three words … Uh … two or three more … Uh … may or may not actually getting around to saying anything useful or of interest while thinking about what to say next.

  7. Although my electronic device is holding the rain event for Florence open, it is stable at 4.39-inches since things started on whatever day it was. The pressure is rising along with the clouds and is now back to 29.83-inches.

    We experienced no power outages nor any wind damage. Kumcho’s forest appears unscathed from where I’m sitting. Would others have been so fortunate.

  8. I think that particular talk from Long is nothing more or less than a recitation of the Weather Channel’s forecast and a reasonable inference about what could happen IF TWC is correct.  My beef with him is repeating and buying the SFB bullshit about the estimates of PR deaths following the two hurricanes somehow being bogus.  That said, he appears to be a competent administrator trying to keep his job.

    What’s left of Florence came knocking last night and looks like she intends to stay for a day or two.  Luckily at least in our area she’s lost a great deal of her power and moisture.  We’re having moderate rains from downpours to drizzle.  Southern WV is flood central in WV. If they get 2-5 inches of rain there will be a load of lawsuits from people whose homes flood – which is inevitable – they are built alongside the rivers – it’s about the only flat land in the southern counties.

  9. Jamie, agree with you on “uh” and another of that sort is “you know” the overuse of which, you know, may have been what initially hurt caroline Kennedy’s inchoate run for office.

  10. Text of my letter to the editor
    During these past several days of great uncertainty caused by Florence, there were at least two things on which my neighbors and I were able to rely. Those two things were the presence of our morning newspapers in front of our homes and, the daily delivery of our mail.
    These achievements reflect the total commitment to service of all the people in and supporting these organizations. My hat’s off to you all.

  11. So… So… SO great having another weekend sans politics!

    patd…  didn’t that happen in college football?  As an NFL fan I have only one thing to say….   so.

  12. Jack… thanks for that last video with Paul Simon and Ladysmith Black Mambazo.  I’ve seen Ladysmith live several times…  they are stupendous!

    Glad I watched the entire video until the end…  what a nice surprise.

  13. more opening sentence pet peeves:

    • “Look, …” or “Listen, …” — Sounds condescending
    • “Let’s take a step back” — Let’s not
    • “Honestly” or “To tell you the truth” — You were lying before?
  14. Judge Kavanaugh, of course you would be willing to sit now and take a lie detector test performed by the FBI.

  15. Patd, if it had been a Bama player doing it I’d say it was genius. If it’d been an opponent I’d be stamping my feet and screaming. It was neither, so… I thought it was amusing. When I played high school football, which is the last football I played, we were told to play until the whistle blows.

  16. I have been trying to think if there is one thing that SFB has done as president that I think is a good thing

     

    I cannot think of one thing,

  17. Well there’s that but I was trying to think of something he has done on purpose that I might like

  18. andy marlette at  Pensacola news journal:

    Marlette: Huckabee pirates beach from the peeps!
    What kind of big-government, power-hungry, liberal elitist would try to use abusive, overreaching laws to strip hard working Floridians of our most precious freedom to simply step foot on the beach and in the Gulf of Mexico?
    Mike Huckabee is that kind of liberal elitist, apparently.
    Thanks to news last week from the Tampa Bay Times’ Steve Bousquet, we now know that the former Republican governor from Arkansas pushed for a state law that has caused chaos in Northwest Florida by banning average folks from accessing beaches in Walton County.
    But our beaches are sacred, right? What kind of big-government elitist would want to ban average folks from our beautiful, God-made shoreline?!
    Elitists like Mike Huckabee, that’s who.
    Bousquet revealed that Huckabee wrote to a South Florida state senator about HB 631 — the law that has now banned folks from being on beaches in Walton County. In the email, Huckabee sounds like the most sensitive of snowflakes as he complains about everything from taxes to music to “dog feces.”

    “Large tents with large groups with boom boxes make using my own property very difficult during high season,” wrote Huckabee, who built a multi-million dollar compound on beachfront lots in Walton County. “I’ve had underage kids smoking pot and openly drinking,” he added, before detailing a list of other gripes, regulations and rules.
    Playing the victim card is a classic tactic of big-government elitists who want to abuse the law to restrict the basic rights and freedom of others.
    While true freedom-loving, American beach lovers like Jimmy Buffett and Kenny Chesney celebrate things like music, fun and fellowship on our beaches, angry elitists like Huckabee want to control and punish it. Typical!
    Bousquet’s revelations about Huckabee’s email add new context to a document that a reader sent to the PNJ in recent months — an email allegedly authored by Huckabee to an undisclosed Walton County commission candidate. The identity of the recipient is blacked out in the document. And calls to both Huckabee and multiple candidates to confirm the email were not returned.
    However, many of the same laments and specific language from his email to the state senator are present in the message to an unconfirmed candidate.
    “I know you are running for Commissioner, and I would like to get clarification on your views regarding ‘customary use,'” reads the email. “It’s more like customary theft. … I daily pick up trash, glass bottles, cigarette butts, dog feces, plastic wrappers and even used condoms left on my walkdown.”
    At one point, the email even alleges pornographic activity on a waterboard. “Two weeks ago, a young couple stripped naked and conducted various sex acts including intercourse on a YOLO board in clear sight of the beach in front of my home at 2 in the afternoon … . Is this ‘customary?’”
    […]
    Yet this is the recurring tale of two ideologies — the one that’s often preached by phony Panhandle political types and the one they actually practice. They love to talk a big game about liberty and freedom, until it’s wearing board shorts, baiting a hook and cracking a cold one in front of their Gulf-front mansion.
    The lesson? The politics professed by some of these people is about as cheap as the Arkansas carpetbag they moved to Florida with.
    HB 631 is a clear cut case of big-government gone wild and it has attacked one of the most treasured common experiences of everyone who lives here on the Gulf Coast. Forget differences in personalities or politics. Some truths are universal and self-evident and so simple we all get it — beaches belong to the people.
    God made it. God gave it. To all of us.
    Maybe if Mike Huckabee quit yapping about “dog feces” and listened to the Almighty a little more often, he’d understand that. Can we get an amen?

  19. After illness caused the retirement of leader of Ladysmith Black Mombazo, Joseph Shabalala, Paul Simon wrote this song for him and for his friend Linda Ronstadt who is on the recording.  It is still one of my all time favorites.

    I love two lines “the stars of the southern hemisphere” and “the pale yellow moon shown in his eyes”.  Not sure but this may refer to the yellow in the eyes of people who have had malaria.

     

     

  20. Again something he did on purpose   As for Mike Suckabee — he should want to keep people away from his sociopath family.

  21. Well, KGC your criteria is too tough for my mind. Something good done on purpose? Nada. At least we can give George W credit for Medicare Part D drug benefit over the objection of his right wing, that was actually huge. Certainly nothing like that to celebrate.

  22. I just got off a conference call that began, “So, yeah, uh, so…”

    I’ve been MIA for a bit due to a number of things. Atop the list is a relocation from Washington State to Arizona that took place from the end of May through mid-June. We’re mostly settled now and starting to pull together some Halloween decorating. We sold our condo high and bought an amazing townhouse outside of Mesa that is twice as big and $100k less that what we had up north. Our neighbors are mostly 10+ years older than we are and retired, so we’ve got plenty of examples for our future.

    Pam sold out her interests to her business partner and is essentially semi-retired. I’m working from home and planning to be fully retired in 6 years. The heat has been…eye opening. I feel compensated against that discomfort by the spectacular thunder boomer and light shows we saw during monsoons.

    All in all, summer 2018 has been pretty eventful personally.

  23. So, i use “so” in my posts a lot, and it’s to make the tone perceived by the reader seem more conversational.  I guess I can be more formal if it bothers you so much, patd.  Geez.

  24. I also will use the opening phrase which bugs Craig…  “honestly”.  Not because I lie … but because I tease or am kidding around and want to distinguish when I’m being serious.

    TravisC… sounds like a nice set-up…  good on you!

  25. I care about “so” when it’s given in response, as in..,

    So, you’re not the 1% and, therefore, are not my true constituency.

    So, Trumpsky is ransacking our democracy.  Until such time as he negatively impacts the GOP losing seats, we’ll keep mum.

    So, folks don’t have access to affordable healthcare.  Sounds like a personal problem to me.

  26. “So” was not an acceptable response on the playground & was met with its own response of, “So, so, suck your toe.”

     

  27. …planning on incorporating “lo”, “woe”, and “whoa” more, now that “so” is sooo passé.  Woe.

     

    Meanwhile, people can abuse the ellipsis, using it when a period would suffice, adding in extra dots for no good reason, pounding that period button when the larger and more appropriate space bar is right ******g there, but let’s oppress all the quaint conversationalists, instead.  So unfair.

  28. oh brother…..  I misuse the ellipses and use “so” all the time both in writing and in speech

     

  29. patD – Now I will never get the image of Mike Suckabee picking up used condoms from the beach, so…

  30. so, bink, if you look closely at the thread intro, you would see that my andy rooney complaint was about the prevalence of interviewee responses which start with the word “so”.  let’s expand that to include the panel participants on cable news.  the NPR analysis addressed the other uses.

    as for your posts, so-full or so-less, they are always welcome and challenging…… 🙂 …. so no problem here.

  31. RR – Thanks!

    Craig – This particular change is up to and including fantastic! We’re cruising right along and enjoying all the new stuff as we go.

  32. Hey Jamie! I suspect that if this had been a hug, I’d be flat on my back with your enthusiasm. 🙂

    Oh blogging. Thought about doing that again, but I just feel like I’ve said it all. Plus, time is definitely a factor. I’m doing my retirement internship, you know. Getting all the homework and special projects done for that takes up a lot of time. Hehehe!

  33. TRAVIS !!!!!

    Hello.  Will you be back on your blog????  We Wondersss

    Washington will miss you, but I’m sure Arizona is better for the addition.

  34. Travis,

    Consider yourself thoroughly flat on your back hugged and give Pam one to join you there.  Only asked about the blog because Mimi is recruiting peace bloggers.  Even if you don’t write regularly, you might want to tell her hello because you are genuinely missed.  I only blog irregularly myself plus doing an occasional post here.  I’m sure Craig would love to have something to start a good conversation here if you wanted to do it.

     

  35. Alexandra petri in wapo:
    “If somebody can be brought down by accusations like this, then you, me, every man certainly should be worried.”— A lawyer close to the White House, speaking to Politico
     
    Look, who among us?
     
    If, apparently, a single alleged assault at a single party decades ago is to be frowned upon, then no man is safe, right?
     
    What’s next? You can’t harass a colleague and serve on the Supreme Court? You can’t pick up high schoolers outside custody hearings and serve in the Senate? You can’t have a meat locker full of female femurs and expect to breeze through your confirmation as interior secretary?
     
    How are we going to fill our offices if this is the new rule? I bet you will say I cannot shout at women as they pass on the street before dragging them to a concrete bunker and then still expect to become governor! What next? I’m supposed to make sure everyone I have sex with is willing?
    [….]

    I mean, it’s not as though they’re people, are they? At the moment of conception, yes, but then they come out Daughters, not people! They grow into objects; some become Wives or Mothers, others Hags or Crones. Then they die! If they were people, we would not expect dominion over their bodies, surely; if they were people, we would not feel entitled to their smiles. If they were people, I could read a novel with a female protagonist and not be instantly confused and alarmed.
    No. They are an unintelligible something else. They are to be put on pedestals, as John Kelly urges, or groped, as the president urges. They are impervious to cold, capable of wearing a bikini on the most frigid day to please us; they can run great distances in heels without discomfort; they were created for us from a rib and designed as our companion. If they have wants of their own, there is really no way of knowing. They say words people might say (You would be forgiven for thinking them people), but remember, they do not mean the words they say. If what they said was what they meant, then they have not wanted anything I have ever done to them!
     
    It would just be too terrible if they were people. Then you could not harm them with impunity. Then if you made a mistake (Boys will be boys), you would have harmed a person. Then something else would be at stake in addition to your career, and that cannot be.
    Besides, if this is wrong, if you have to go through life inconveniently believing that the other half of the world is made of people, too, then what will boys do for innocent amusement? Who among us was not once 17 and partook in a little roughhousing? How were we to know there was — purportedly! — a person in there? Who cannot, in retrospect, be accused of something dreadful? This isn’t just me, I hope.
     
    No, if this is the rule, no man is safe. Not the man who shouts at you as you walk down the sidewalk, or grabs you, or puts something in your drink. As all men do, I think.
     
    If assault renders a man unfit to serve on the Supreme Court, then how are we to discern the Founders’ intent? I mean, Jefferson, hello? And what is going to become of the presidency? Who wants to live in that world?
     
    Every man should be worried. If boys cannot be boys, then how can boys be men who rise to the highest offices in the land? If this stops being something you can get away with, then will anyone still be above the law?
     
    Every man should be worried.
     
    At least, I’m worried.

  36. patd, apparently Scott put his finger in the air and it came back blue.  On July 13 he signed an executive order that in effect told local governments not to enforce his dumb law.  I’m guessing that he figured our that more Floridians wanted to use the beaches than own property fronting them. Thus the petition to repeal the dumb law.  If anyone knows where Huckleberry’s compound is at Fort Walton, I’d be happy to let my sis know and ask her to take her dogs and adult kids down there to bespoil the beach in front of it.  My niece’s husband and my nephew would probably love to get in on the action.

  37. Hey, watch it with the ellipsis criticism.  I’m quite fond of that writing convention. That  said I must admit that after watching Colbert eviscerate IMPOTUS and his use of ellipses in his tweets, I may rethink my own us of it – or not. 

    The objectionable “so” has to be with respect to speaking.   (And when I’m trying to express my “consideration” of ridiculous statements I typically start my responses with “Soooo….”  I like to think it is the equivalent of looking to the sky with a puzzled look on my face, which is hard to do in blog comments, etc. with the ellipsis being my own shorthand for “let me make sure I understand what you just said”.

  38. Not bad for a country bumpkin Baptist preacher. Hope he enjoys trying to pass through the eye of a needle – he does kinda resemble a camel.

  39. I’m a so-ist so-and-so…..and sometimes quite eelliptical

    And that’s the way ( uh huh uh huh ) i like it.

    not that it matters………

    I figure an ellipses is 3 dots is why I always try to use 4 or more.

    Now on to more pressing matters.

     

  40. I’ve lived in panhandle Florida…….good luck keeping those people off your beach, fatso….

    What a creepabee.

  41. Sturg, the Florida Panhandle and extending over to Gulf Shores Alabama was my childhood vacation place. I also went there as an adult. The attitude was “yeah it’s flat here, let’s set the canopy up.  Gimme a beer.”

  42. Damn – I am so tired now.

    Life is good finally sleeping in my own bed.  You spend a week trying to sleep nights in various hotels and it does not take long for you to want your own worn out mattress.  At least it fits your lumps.

    N.C. is in a hurt.  I wish them well.

  43. Too many people who were around when I was in my teens and twenties are still alive. Therefore, I must respectfully decline your nomination to the Supreme Court. Had I killed them all, I should be able to accept. However, I didn’t plan ahead.

  44. be interesting to see data on how many 17 year old males are currently under arrest or incarcerated (either as juvies or adults) in the d.c. Maryland area for similar assaults on teenage girls.  might have a bearing on how this will look to them and their families if Kavanaugh gets confirmed.  “boys will be boys” may only apply to those boys from elite prep schools.

    a lot is riding on what the sidekick says under oath.  if both young men at the time were heavy drinkers to the point of black outs, it’s plausible they can testify truthfully they have no recollection.

  45. As Hall & Oates once said, “Say it isn’t so!” Thanks Jack! Was thinking of you recently. Still following politics and the good and bad in the USA. I’ve been working 6-7 days a week the last few months. Making a storage bin for the Tesla Model 3. Hope all is well with everyone here!

  46. the guy allegedly with the sexual predator’s appointment to the court has already said he doesn’t remember which contradicts the sexual predator’s testimony that he wasn’t at the party

     

     

  47. Cory was thinking about you too, just last Sunday Mrs Jack and I were headed home down 12th street. we passed the 12th and vine sign and there were a couple of crazy ladies taking a selfie with the sign.  Made me remember your trip to our world. Glad the world is doing well.

    Jack

  48. A thought  on the subject of the day.

    Using so to begin a sentence can’t be a passing fad, it may be a colloquialism. The person I most remember using it is my Aunt Pauline, The sweetest most lovely woman ever to grace this planet. Why I remember it is because she is from  northern  New York  and was half Canadian, Her “so” had a Canadian flavor to it. She is currently living in  assisted living and her husband(my mothers baby brother) get up every morning and drives the 15 miles through rain snow and blizzards to set with her.
    After the place where she lives wouldn’t help him get her in his car, he bought a van with a wheel chair lift. Now he gets her in the chair by  himself wheels her out to the van for a spin around town  and lunch. My uncle turned 90 last March and like the rest of my family is stubbornly independent.

    So, I have no trouble with starting sentences with irrelevant words. Now if  My mothers older brother was alive he would say something along the order of “well, …….” But he was raised up in Kansas.

    Jack

  49. Which means if you have a problem with starting a sentence  with “So” then you have a problem with my Aunt Pauline which means that the next sentence won’t start with “so” but something much  more likely to cause trouble. So that  makes me think we have many more problems then objecting to somebodies speech patterns,

    just a sayin’ };-)

    Jack

  50. kavanaugh changed his story. That a reeeeeeeaaally bad sign for his supporters. Of course, it is hardly conclusive, but it doesn’t look good. And, the rippers can only make things worse for kavanaugh/mcconnell/trump.

    The accusation against kavanaugh is important to the election in November. It is also important that all the repug members of the Judiciary Committee are male. That will make a great picture for the Dem’s late October/early November tv ads that they will aim at Indie women. What woman has not been physically pressed to submit to a guy’s lust ? Further, this matter will reverberate most strongly in the Senate contests, where Kavanaugh stands as a nominee, and where Dems face an uphill climb.

     

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