LeftCoastLefthandedLefty's Comments (60)

“I agree. Private schools that cater to inner-city communities have a long history of being nothing more than revenue streams. My hildhood friends who attended Catholic school can attest to that

This idea would also decimate the public school system, even those that are doing well, as their budgets would be slashed to pay for these vouchers.

The problem is not that public education does not work in minority neighborhoods, it is that it has never been adequately funded. Given a level playing field, with proper and funding and guidelines, public schools will produce at a level on par with their surburban counterparts.

The real tragedy of this neglect of lower income education (not just minorities but poor people across the board), is that gifted children in these areas are being thrown on the collective scrap heap. Minds that could potentially solve the worlds problems never make it out of the educational starting gate.

A stipend program like the author suggests does what conservatives always do. It promotes an individual mindset over the collective, which is great if you are the individual in question. Conversely, if you are not one of the lucky few it sucks.”

“You are obviously not paying attention. Vick has spoke on behalf of animal cruelty prevention, and attended several seminars hosted by animal advocacy groups.

Conditions of his probation include community service in exactly the areas you talk about.

Time to advance the conversation. What are we, as beneficiaries of all the things Jack Donagy spoke about, going to do to be less hypocritical???

I am not quite prepared to go vegan, but I think a national ban on animal product testing would be a great start.”

“Wow. Ridley really rubbed you the wrong way.

Remember that the next time you make a sweeping generalization about another ethnic group. The article was meant to make you aware of this cultural trap not prompt you to demonize the author for making you aware of it.”

“Who calls Black peope "blackie"????”

“You guys, in pointing out the narrow mindedness of the posters generalizations, are actually vindicating his article.

He is attempting to give white males a taste of the negative stereotyping that plagues males of other races every day. The snarkiness was just a vehicle to deliver the goods.

White guys are usually so smart,. I thought you would've picked up on that.”

“I don't know if you watch the Boondocks, but if you do you will get this.

I had no idea Uncle Ruckus' character is based on a real person.”

“B Dizzle

Your activism and leadership as a Professional African-American athelete is admirable. So many modern atheletes have been coached to take an apolitical stance for marketability's sake, but I am glad you have decided that the Black community is worth more than that. God Bless you brother.

We still got love you in the Bay Area. Much continued success”

“I didn't think it was possible, but Ms. Johansson is even hotter to me after reading this article.”

“If Olberman and all left leaning media are so bad, what are you doing on this site?”

“I have no problem with Mr Donagy's criticisms of Keith and Rachael as I have no problem with Keith and Rachaels criticisms of President Obama.

As long as we on the left can remain thick skinned and open to constructive criticism we will all turn out the better for the experience.”

“I'm sorry NoMercy I didn't get all 3 of your points. I couldn't take my eyes off of FINE FIRST LADY!!!!”

“All,

As a Black man I understand the rage at such an outward display of biggotry toward our first lady, and as a true Christian I totally understand the outrage directed at these people who use religion to justify their warped world view. The Christian faith has a lot of positive aspects, unfortunately there are also an equal amount of dubious ones. The people who profess to being Christians, and perpetrate acts like those outlined in this article, only use the faith as a cover for their own selfish, authorititarian agendas.

Please be understanding with the rest of us who unfortunately have to go by the same name. Jesus never intended for his name to be used as a tool to enslave, exploit, or kill anyone. The only time he was shown to be angered in the Bible was when people who called themselves Christians, did things that were un-Christ like. In those instances (money changing at the temple ring a bell?) Jesus called these people what they were hypocrits!!!

As a Christian, I would like to commision all on this thread to remind any religious zealot you come in contact with that the "Christian values" they like to thump their bible about, align much more with Liberal Progressive values than anything expounded by Religeous Right. Then just about the time they are turning beet red ask them to ..."Say it with me, 'Jesus was a Liberal'"”

“The sad part about the drivel being broadcast on 24 is that so-called intellectuals of the right look to the show for insight on how to fight terrorists.

I have never watched an episode and I doubt I ever will.”

“Sorry, I meant to reply to Robert Raleigh's post.”

“People were always distracted. True

All the current technological advances unfortunately give everone an excuse to be distracted and rude.”

“The root problem with these banks is that we failed to regulate them and because of that failure, these organizations grew to an unmanagable level.

These mega-banks have become in a lot of respects more important to the health of our economy than any other sector of our economy. We are literally being held at gunpoint by them with the implied threat that if they don't get what they want then we all will suffer.

Let's all say it together......
Too big to fail = too big to exist.”

“Your suspicions and trepidation are not unfounded annoyed. My wife suggested we both get accounts and our experience has been without incident. We have access to each others accounts and pretty much all my photos are family shots or of me and our daughter.

Conversely several friends of mine had been bugging me to get an account for years and at least 3 of them have had maritial problems, directly as a result of inappropriate contacts they have made with old flames through facebook. , These missteps have resulted in them disabling their accounts which has limited the amount of time I spend on the site, as they were a main reason I finally decided to join.

The problem is that the majority of the contact and the ability to search for old flames is so easy and secretive that even someone with the best of intentions can go astray when friend requested by an old girlfriend who is bored/depressed with her own life.

If it hasn't happened yet, I expect the first Facebook divorce to become a national news story any day now.”

“Pocket Watch,

If the banks were operating in good faith then your suggestion is exactly what they would be doing.

What you are "missing" is that the lions share of these toxic assets are not bad home loans, or even investments in bond offerings on these bad home loans.

The dirty little secret that these financial institutions are trying to hide, is that majority of the toxic debt is actually credit default swaps and other dirivatives that they have no real colateral backing them.

In layman's terms these financial instruments are basically bets on loans to fail. These bets were actually bundled up and sold as bond offerings. People who bought these bets were encouraged to do this by rating agencies who rated these offerings as AAA or extremely safe investments. These same investors in turn repackaged the bonds that they bought new bond into new bond offerings and the process repeated itself multiple times, including the fraudulent rating by the rating agencies.

I am just a layman myself, but take a look at this article which explains it far better than I could.

http://www.portfolio.com/news-markets/national-news/portfolio/2008/11/11/The-End-of-Wall-Streets-Boom”

“Invalid argument

The theory being that if the top execs on Wall Street and other industries like Pro Sports and Movie Studios had a reasonable cap on their salaries based on for example a multiple of the lowest paid employee at their company, they would increase the lower salaries so that they in turn could legally be paid more, is what is at issue here.

Atheletes and Movie stars aren't at the root of this problem, because they don't make up the rules in regard to pay in their industries, Executives are the rulemakers and as of late they are being totally irresponsible in deciding to pay themselves 200x more than the amount they pay the guy who cleans up their office. The end result of the current system is a modern day feudal system where you have the corporate titans of the world and everyone else is a wage slave.

Your involking of Movie Stars and Pro Atheletes (less than 1/100th of 1% of the population) is just a non-productive distraction.”

“Of course you have names and salaries that we can take a look at right?”

“Good points all.”

“Propaganda! Propaganda!

Fannie and Freddie were drawn into this mess because Greenspan (a devout Ayn Rand follower) needed their backing to secure additional loans to prop up the housing bubble that was keeping the economy afloat. When that well dried up, and the only people buying new houses were speculators, these financial institutions started selling short sells (bets on mortgages failing) as bond offering themselves.

These institutions were not "compelled" to give loans to poor people as you wrote out of alturistic motivations, they did it for the same reason everything is done on Wall Street, greed. Ultimately, when that greed was not satiated by shoe-horning people into loans that would leave them homeless in 3 years, they committed out and out fraud, crashed the global economy, and then cried out for the U.S. government to bail them out.

Arianna, keep telling the truth and don't give any concern to these corporate shills who insist on playing revisionist history

Socialmisfit, go peddal your talking point propaganda on the Fox News site.”

“You could. I have a lifelong friend who did it when he became dissattisfied with his careerpath through the Democratic Party.

He has always been a social climber but his ability to put his own selfish interests ahead of his community, has really soured our friendship. His reward for the betrayal: A small chain of filling stations, and a generation of suffering”

“Steele is no Mother Teresa, even by comparision to other GOPers. He and others of his ilk (Clarence Thomas, Alan Keyes, Lynn Swann) have made a calculated bet that their ascention to national prominience could be accomplished more quickly through the Repulican party than through the Democratic hierarchy.

As an African-American man, I can report that there will always be a small sliver of Black men and women who take this route. They are trotted out to the media to spout mindless talking points blaming minorities for all the ills of society, and lauding the GOP as the only viable solution for these comminuties.. They are usually rewarded with a few pieces of silver for selling out the communities they come from, and are treated as pariahs, in those communities, for their trouble.

This recent development doesn't foretell a shift to the right in the African-American community, for all the right reasons. The GOP, despite their recent pandering to minorities and women, still have at their heart policies and ideologies that benefit the rich exclusively, and demonize minorities for political gain.

Steele, and others like him are highly skilled at shilling for their conservative masters, but the communities they come from view them as nothing more than a non-productive distractions, who will have to answer for their disingenuous ways.”

“I don't think Obama and the Democrats "is" doing that ejhickey. You are so busy trying to find holes in the bill you are overlooking what I am guessing most people on your side love $300 billion in tax cuts.

It's OK though, with or without your help the bill will get passed. Have fun for the next 40 years out there in the wilderness.”