LeeScho's Comments (103)

“Then look again. The position of the couples on the left and right have actually been reversed, and the main couple is more out of the water. Even Universal has acknowledged that the Black couple cut was deliberate.

This was a conscious decision, and the progressive, non-racial society that the UK might be is not the one this poster change depicts.”

“8%? Don't tease me, now! My company pays full health insurance for eight employees. We each have a $3,000 deductible, which none of us has ever reached. So each year, we pay the health insurance company more than $35,000, and they pay out not a dime in claims because none of us meet the deductible amount. Yet, in the past three years, our premiums have gone up 13%, 18% and now 23.5%. So if health reform can get that down to 8%, sign me up now!

Oh, wait. The WSJ? Yeah. I believe you.”

“It's idiomatic. Vernacular. ...don't need . . . . Should have been "....don't need no purpose." for authenticity.”

“There were times in our history when the Ku Klux Klan was on the ascendancy, when Father Coughlin held forth. Are those our standard for progress and decency and justice?”

“How interesting that Ms. Morrison is put at the same level of artistic achievement and cultural regard as Ms. Knowles and Ms. Turner. Perhaps they can do all of this over pancakes served by Aunt Jemima.

Such a reading has reference in African-American history, and would be historic in having the first African-American literary Nobel Laureate reading her work of hstoric culture references to the first African-American President.”

“Perhaps President Obama or the First Lady might find a copy of Toni Morison's 'Jazz" and read it in one sitting by a window looking out on a pastoral seting, or while actually sitting outside within it.. i did that one day on Martha's Vineyard and the experience stays with me nearly two decades later. Sure, some knowledge of Africah-American history, like the St. Louis riots of 1917 and the photography of James van der Veer, would be enhancing, but not essential.

Better yet, call Ms. Morrison and ask her to come and read it to them.”

“Ensign just told his wife and family and constituenst that he is likely to do it again.”

“This from the Tonight show with Johnny Carson:

A couple from the big city were driving through the countryside and happened upon an idylllic little town. They walked around for awhile and encountered a resident sitting on his porch.

"Great town you have here," said the visitors.
"Well, thank you. We like it all right," replied the resident.
"Can you tell us," asked the visitors, "what is the death rate here."
"Oh, same as elsewhere," replied the resident, "one per person."”

“I am African-American and vacationed on the vineyard many summers in the 1980's and '90's with family and friends. I was there when the Clinton's came and when former Yale President Bart Giamatti died at the vineyard hospital. I called several of my younger friends who had been students under his tenure and thought the world of him. I remeber walking past Dorothy West's house to the beach with her book, The Wedding, under my arm and seeing the sign cautioning would-be visitors to call for an appointment with the aged lady rather than just dropping in. Just several steps away was the home of a former wife of Adam Clayton Powell Jr. They bought it together in the 1930's, and his biography revealed that his fishing pole still hung on the wall there where he left it 50 years earlie before going off to become the congressmanf from Harlem.

Oak Bluffs is the intensely historically Balck part of the island, and some blacks chose to live in other parts of the island for reasons I will not share here. But I am glad that so many academical­l-oriented blacks have chose to live there and advance the history of Oak Bluffs. And I am thrilled that the Obamas will have the vineyard experience.”

“This leftist remembers when he use to read the NR for its articles. Now it seems that like Playboy, people read it for its pictures.”

“Yeah. The Gitmo detainees will be in isolation even from each other. So that conversion thing that they will do through telepathy and osmosis should be seized by some American company and patented. It will solve the American deficit and the debt on the taxes alone, and it will end forever this namby-pamby democracy stuff that these pie-in-the-sky Americans have been fawning over these few recent centuries.

If a gitmo detainee can convert an otherwise non-violent extremist to his cause, then the fault lies not in the stars, but truly in us.”

“Republicans, conservatives and the political right generally are so fond of telling us how inefficiently the government runs things and how the private sector does it so well. If that is true, then what is the private sector afraid of with a public option? Let the two compete for consumers and see who wins. One will be out to make the biggest profit and the other will be out to make the biggest difference. One will be trying to find ways to get around giving coverage to people with prior health condiitions and the other will not. One will tell your doctor what he or she can treat and the other will not. One will toss claims in the garbage, saying they never got them, and the other will pay the same claim twice (and then set up a sub-bureacracy to get the money back, which they will, but only after outsourcing it to the private sector for a percenatage of the recovered monies.)

How do you get a single payer system? Start with a public option.”

“Protest too much.”

“You are right. The media obviously felt considerably more respect for President Obama than they did for President Bush, and they spontaneously showed it.

I don't blame liberals or conservatives or neocons for that, I blame the two presidents and how they conducted themselves in office. Perhaps you should, too.”

“A one issue litmus test makes for the smallest political tent I have ever seen.

President Obama never claimed to be a liberal. He clearly is a Democrat (Big "D"). If he is not a democrat (small "d"), then what is he? A socialist? A communist? A fascist? Any day now, some progressive is going to delcare that he is a Republican.

Liberals and Progressives remind me of a cartoon from the '60's of two American soldiers standing back to back with rifles poised as one says, "I'll guard us against the Viet-Cong while you guard us against the homefront.­"

My political, socio-eceonomic views mark me not as just some wishy-washy liberal (forgive the redundancy) but as a radical. I, too, disagree strongly with President Obama on this isssue - but I remain aware that I am disagreeing with a man who is likely to be the greatest of the ten American presidents serving in my lifetime, and perhaps the fourth or fifth greatest of them all.”

“Defendant's have the right to have a lawyer present when questioned by police or prosecutors. Why would a defendant "want" to talk without a lawyer present to authorities clearly out to make a case against him? Defendant's don't generally know that they do not have to talk to authorities without a lawyer present, and so they do, either because they are innocent and have nothing to hide or because they are guilty and think they can outsmart the authorities. The idea is not to protect the latter from their arrogance, but the former from their ignorance.­.”

“"Plump." All credibility gone.”

“One of the greatest failings of the NeoCons and the Bush administration was that they gave no quarter or nod to anyone not totally in lockstep with them. It has led to the partisan hatred and alienation that has immobilized our national government since Reagan. Look at what it has done to our country.

I do not want the right-wing evangelicals shunted aside and shut out of our national presence for 4 or 8 years. I want them out front and present, campaigning for their views and policies and practices. I want that dialogue and that engagement. They are by-and-large ill-informed, self-contradictory, self-righteous, ego-maniacal, and highly selective of what "Christian" scriptures they are going to support and advocate. Let them expose themselves for the hypocrites they are. And let us help them do that.”

“Thank you for that correction of my comment.”

“It sucks? Is Slate paying him or is he paying them for the job?”

“Oh? Would they have been Western Union outlets?”

“She could have simply taken her millions and sat on the beach at Hyannisport.

Perhaps had to go to college. But law school? Her mother and father were not lawyers; they had no graduate degrees at all.

Certainly, the futures of her own children did not require that she fight most of her life for quality, public school education.

Caroline Kennedy has led a productive life beyond what anyone could demand of her. Why she wants to continue to do so as a U.S. Senator from New York is beyond me.

And that is my point: she is beyond us all. She has allowed New York State to play catch-up.

This is not a test, Governor Paterson, it is an acutal alert.”

“Shouldn't we wait and see if there is a windfall profit by oil companies before we insist that President (not President-Elect) Obama tax it? He made the pledge when oil was at $140+ a barrel. It is now below the benchmark of $60 a barrel.

Remember how the auto industry could not adapt to the changing environment in which they had to compete? Do you see what it got them? Give PE Obama credit for his flexibiltiy, his skill to adapt to the current market forces that inform his policies.

In other words, relax, folks. The Pe is on the job.”

“Is Campbell Brown suggesting that it is not fun for the press to find and question perceived contradictions by politicians and elected officials? I know dozens of members of the media (I am one of them) and they all find it great fun. Perhaps Campbell will someday have some fun in her job, because watching her dire and dour, self-important presentations are vexatious.

And she should be honest. In chiding the "press" about their fun, President-Elect Obama did not seem annoyed - that's Campbell word and characterization. He was actually smiling and having a litte fun with it himself. He doesn't need a more substantive answer to the question. He needs more substantive questions.

.”

“I just ordered my company to close our Home Depot commercial account. It is not that Mr. Marcus supports the GOP, it's that he thinks people who don't should be shot. Capitalists are, by nature, anti-democratic.

I am a Democrat who is also a retailer who thinks it is a privilege and patriotic to pay taxes for education and infrastructure and social security. That may be less money in my pocket, but my needs are more than met by what is left over. If I die with a large sum of money in the bank while someone is hungry or homeless, then I should go straight to hell if there is one.”