JohnSawyer's Comments (2043)

“The "if it bleeds, it leads" approach to news, to get viewers (and thus ad revenue), was even worse on some TV stations when I was a kid in the 60s.”

“That was just a helpful HP mod checking your math, and giving you a chance to fix it!”

“Thanks for the alternate viewpoint. I agree people shouldn't hop all over a headline and an article's singular take on things, but instead should read at least a couple other articles on something before coming to a conclusion.”

“You may be right--we sometimes see proof of that--but I'm not certain whether that's always the case (he probably does many things without as much forward-game-looking as some people ascribe to him); and even when he does, I wouldn't be certain that the game he may be playing, is one that would have the same impact as playing a more standard game--at least some of it may be too refined and "clever" to actually be effective. For many things and people, like politics, I don't believe in "trust but verify"--I believe only in "verify".”

“Re the jobs bill that just passed in the HouseI (sorry I didn't catch the bill's number)--it passed 217-212, with the deciding votes cast in the very last minutes. I think the only Republican to vote for it was New Orleans' Cao. I don't know if this will help Detroit, but there you go. All I've heard about it so far is that it contains funds for infrastructure jobs, paid out of TARP funds originally intended for "Wall Street".”

“Oops, wrong thread. You may find it interesting anyway.”

“The jobs bill in Congress (sorry I didn't catch its number) just passed, 217-212. I don't know if this will help Detroit, but there you go.”

“I've always thought more Americans should travel to other "first world" countries to see how other countries are run, rather than invent fantasies about it or listen to someone in a bar (who hasn't traveled either) try to hold forth, like Norm in "Cheers" (and his high-profile political equivalents), about how those countries are sinister socialist dens of iniquity and goofiness. I know a lot of Americans do travel to these countries, but apparently it's still not enough. I'd guess that a far smaller percentage of Tea Partyers have done such traveling, than the general American population.

I suppose one of the side benefits that Bush Jr's "war on terror" garnered for him, was a decrease in American travel to other countries. I'm guessing that this effect was temporary though, but still added a few percentage points to the population of the uninformed we're living with today.”

“sonofsam:

Thanks for articulating a less paranoid view of this story, in your reply to my earlier comment about whether Obama is trying to replace the right as Wall Street's benefactor, to extract concessions from them. So there are at least two sides to this story--I'll try to determine which is closer to the truth. Normally I don't like to jump at a headline, but guess I did tonight.

Your reply to my comment has disappeared, however--I wonder how that happened.”

“Things like this make me wonder if Obama is trying to replace the right as Wall Street's benefactor, in order to extract concessions, etc from them at some (near?) future date.”

“As a California citizen since 1966, I can tell you that Whitman will never be governor of California. Though she probably WILL get a very large percentage of votes. Lots of people anywhere like to be fooled.

At least, during the election campaign, a lot more people will be exposed to who she really is, and this will further assign her to oblivion.”

“Donny knows coat hangers were used in a few cases. He's just getting some kind of perverse charge out of taunting people from the safety of his keyboard.”

“I know what you mean. Which is why I was horrified a few years ago when I realized, while looking at a picture in a Life magazine of some dapperly-dressed Soviet schoolgirls, that the US had plans to kill hundreds of thousands of them, or more, using nuclear weapons as few as 25 years ago. Non-giggity.”

“The article doesn't say that drug dealers kept their money in jars, and put it into banks only after the financial collapse--it says it's been flowing into banks for years, and hence was there when the collapse hit.”

“No, they work overtime on all this stuff.”

“I think you missed poco's point that what he describes, is already here, courtesy of the insurance industry and the politicians that have supported it over the years.”

“They won't be able to, because Lieberman will have taken away their chemo treatments. Always one step ahead, that Lieberman!”

“Over-the-line, "sexually edgy" ads have become the new frontier for unimaginative ad producers:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/12/03/when-sex-themed-ads-go-wr_n_378558.html

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/12/12/i-need-a-handjob-the-cree_n_390051.html”

“And those are his GOOD qualities!”

“Now we know how long it takes the CIA and their friends to wipe incriminating evidence from that many emails, and cover the traces of their tampering.”

“They brought them back from the future via the time machines that H. G. Wells had invented years before.”

“And if, in addition to equal civil unions, gay people also want to follow up with a wedding ceremony performed by a representative of a church, it won't be too difficult to find one before long.

But I would argue with Demint's contention that marriage is "a religious institution". A little studying of history will reveal that for most cultures for most of history, "real marriage" hasn't been considered as requiring religious approval. It's been considered a religious institution primarily among Christians and Catholics, and since DeMint probably recognizes only one or the other or both of those as valid religions, I can see where he gets his ideas. Civil institutions, with no representative of a religious institution present, have been officially marrying people in most cultures for thousands of years--they're called civil marriages. One can't argue that such marriages were assumed to be OK by "religion", on the basis that surely only heterosexual couples would even try to get married, because that's a pretty flimsy line of logic, and if nothing else now disproven by the fact that it's obviously not true. If it were to be considered true, then people could no longer be married in courthouses, etc., but only joined in civil unions (not civil marriage), and if they wished, they could also have a marriage ceremony in a church of their choice. Which, as I said, is going to become increasingly an option.”

“You're presenting a straw argument to try to make the case that most Obama supporters thought everyone would get free or low cost insurance.

I think you'll find few "Obamabots" were claiming, or even implying, everyone was going to get free or low cost insurance, if by the term "Obamabots" you mean "most Obama supporters". If by "Obamabots" you meant "only a tiny number of Obama supporters", you'd have said so. Very few Obama supporters (and certainly never Obama) have ever said they thought "everyone was going to get free or low cost insurance", because very few people are so dumb--nearly everyone has known all along that they'd still be paying for their own insurance, and that only people who couldn't afford it would be partially or fully subsidized.”

“Yes, sun cycles do heat or cool down the planets--nobody denies that--but those in-synch temperatures between the sun and the planets, appear to be simply riding on top of another heating factor: man-released greenhouse gases. If you look at a graph comparing solar cycles to the temperatures of the planets, you'll see a close correlation, as both go up and down in sync as the sun heats and cools. But if you look at the whole graph--not just those squiggles--you'll find that this series of squiggles is being raised higher in recent years by greenhouse gases than it would otherwise be. In other words, other factors causing global warming besides the sun will not interfere with that in-sync squiggle. Another way to think of it is like this: if you have a flag on a flagpole, the wind will whip it around, and if you raise it higher, the wind will still whip it around--you can't expect that raising the pole and the flag will mess with the impact that the wind is having on the flag, and use your expectation as a basis to tell you whether the flagpole is really being raised up--instead, you just measure how high the pole plus the flag is being raised using standard methods, instead of looking at the whipping flag as a method of telling you whether the flagpole is being raised higher.”

“Everyone knows that giving health insurance companies the ability to sell across state lines, and tort reform, will contribute little to reform. You need to research the actual figures. The biggest health insurance companies already sell policies in several states, and they're among the worst exploiters of their customers, and they'd gobble up smaller competitors anyway, as they already do. I realize tort reform is needed by many doctors, but when you talk about the real figures, it would reduce health insurance/care costs by only a low, single-digit percentage.”