PrinceHal's Comments (84)

“Does this go for polio too, Erdgeist?”

“Bravo, Dylan Ratigan! Yes indeed, Geithner must go, and Summers with him.

They represent the worst of the Barack Obama who showed up to govern after hiding out during last year's election campaign. Yes, the same Obama who sold out to that campaign's biggest donors while promulgating the lie that his biggest donors were ordinary Americans, paying Mr. Obama's way by the number, not the size, of our contributions.

And Bravo to Huffington Post for publishing Mr. Ratigan's essential call to reason. But why isn't this the lead story on Page 1? And why shouldn't it stay there until the President demonstrates that he knows he's being watched by those who voted for him, even though he let rich corporations (like No. 1 donor Goldman Sachs) pay the real freight for his campaign?”

“You conservatives are a hoot, Mike. Like Pinocchio, all you folks need is a conscience.

Has Jiminy Cricket got a job these days, do you think?

You've already got a constitution, and your guys pay no attention to that either -- unless you think a Democrat is stepping outta line.

Hey, 20 percent of GDP sounds GREAT! Twenty is the same age I was the day I stopped being 19, and I've been a pushover for it ever since. But maybe that was just me.”

“Judging by your reply to Brian's reply, you're the one who's got everything down pat and anybody who doesn't just sit there and let johnashman tell 'em how the world works qualifies for a dunce-cap.­.

Here's a couple of your best shots, for example, and they're your basic Jim DeMint brand of baloney. But you're right proud of 'em, I can tell.

1. "Nice swipe on the Oral Roberts thing, but it's stupid enough to disqualify you from blogging on most sites."

2. "Liberals seem to continue living in the theoretical world of college and never learn how the world really works."

But alas,I don't think anybody will ever talk you out of either idea, any more than they're gonna talk you out of your definition of socialism -- a real doozie, I'm sure. Where you get these ideas, and why you believe 'em, would be interesting to hear, but probably really bad for my acid reflux.”

“I forgot to mention that besides amplifying the readership of Brian Ross, your messages do a damn good job of peacefully clarifying important points, as well as straightening people out -- that is, if they're straighten-able. On which score, I'd say it's encouraging that you don't get a lot of back-talk. But I was bummed not to get one of your replies after my own recent message, below. Do only the obstreperous make your reply list? Whatever, keep it up. I think it's working..”

“Brian Ross, you sure have found a way to get people's attention! About 10 times a day, HuffPo sends me an email saying somebody I liked has made a comment I should read. Virtually every time, that somebody turned out to be you. Well, finally, I bit and linked straight to this piece, where I recognize that every comment you make will turn into another email in my in-box (or already has). But then I also found you had written a damn good piece that I can get behind three hundred and sixty-eight percent, so it all came out all right for me, and if other people do the same, for you too. I've forgotten why I first clicked one of your "I'm a fan of Brian Ross" buttons, but it turns out to have been one of my better, smarter and more useful online moves.”

“I'm sure you're a wonderful physician, Dr.Ornish, but you're WAY ahead of yourself here. We need the insurance NOW. You may change the behavior of doctors and patients later -- MUCH LATER! -- and of course, only IF YOU CAN! BUT --- first things first!

I know this isn't Twitter, but may I "re-Tweet" the meat of Hansharriet's message of about an hour ago (11:37 p.m.)?

"The people don't have the money to buy off Congress, but we have the power to remove an unresponsive corrupt Congress. If Obama does not want to stand by his campaign rhetoric and transform it into action and leadership, we will find another leader who will."

Any way that can happen, I'm for it! Hansharriet , whoever he or she may be, says this: "There is only ONE solution: A massive March on Washington and March on the Capitol and the White House."

ANYBODY GOT ANY BETTER IDEAS? I hope so, actually. But if not, when do we leave?”

“Bravo for calling the world's attention to this egregious offense to good journalism at what surely was once the top of good journalism's totem pole.

You write: "One has to wonder -- what in this story merited such prominence? Only this -- that it allows the Times to portray itself as attuned to the concerns of an authentic American -- a conservative, Christian, rural Georgian family man."

I think there's more to it than that: I think if you've been following the New York Times's alleged NEWS coverage of the healthcare carnival in and out of Washington these past months, you might theorize, if not actually conclude, that the Times is getting in its anti-health-care licks in very peculiar places.

To what end, I have no idea, but the best that can be said about Times health-care writing off its op-ed pages is that it seems cold-blooded, with a negative twist away from not just the possibility of reform, but the idea of it.”

“Who the heck IS this guy that I wanted so badly to put into the White House, and who is now in the White House, and who I no longer recognize?

He looks just like that other fellow, the one I rooted for with every corpuscle, but I don't think that's who he is any more.

Where did that other fellow go? Wherever it was, I hope he can find his way back.

knows the way back.”

“So I guess you know somebody who WILL make his/her own health care choices but can't pay for the doctors, the pills or the hospital? Tell me more.”

“Arianna, surely you should be getting (& giving) bigger, better play for this piece on your own website.

Did anything more important than this become so absurdly crystal clear today?

Surely we who were counting on this "health care reform" effort -- for ourselves as much as for unfortunate millions who need it even more -- had our hearts broken more than once in the last few days.

Apparently it's all over but the shouting, and the Big Cheese himself can't veto it, because he's signed on to every comma before the opportunity to veto even presents itself.”

“A good piece, Mr. Palermo, especially after the brouhaha on whether or not Keith is deluding the public about what happened.

How much ink, or how many pixels, can that story possibly be worth?”

“I see no sign that Obama has heard a single word of the thousands written to save us from his two Treasury guys, who seem to have all things their way in perpetuity.

Can this be the same man who wants "bi-partisan" health care? How about a second opinion on how to rescue us from these two -- or, counting Obama, these three?”

“"Stupid" doesn't begin to describe Today Show staffers' offenses against their calling, which even they probably think includes news judgment and/or journalism.

But what the heck, they commit similar offenses frequently and never seem to get flunked out by either their NBC bosses or the Great Public.

So why bother doing the right thing? After all, even at that hour, they have to compete with Fox News.”

“"Some officials say it should not be taken seriously. First, he was talking while people were drinking in a bar so his account was hardly reliable. Second, he'd just returned from one of the toughest war zones of recent memory."

Hell, if he hadn't been talking out loud in a bar, nobody would even know about this. Now somebody's saying people don't tell the truth in bars "while people are drinking"?

And what do people normally do in bars? Speak under oath?”

“"Timid, half-hearted measures" would be an improvement over what I'm hearing.”

“But the guy is DEAD -- that's the story! Just like all the rest of us when our time comes, he's never coming back!.

It is DEATH we are stepping back for here, every bit as much as it is Michael Jackson. And we always understand death just a little better when it happens to someone we think we "know." .

And especially when it happens to someone so many have puzzled over, about whom we've heard and felt so much, positive and negative. Especially when it's someone who has been treated so kindly by the Great Distributor of Talent, and so badly by the Great Distributor of Success, who gave him much more of it than he could handle.

And what a story he was when alive! Is there a more self-contradictory personality we've followed through more incredible transformations for virtually his entire life?

Let Michael Jackson's rendezvous with death alone, I say. Let the press mis-handle it as much as it mis-handles other stories, many seemingly of much greater import. For-instance, the ongoing story of the current president of the United States, a man almost as self-contradictory as Michael Jackson.”

“So racial and religious hatred are no longer right-wing positions, huh?

Did hate and the right decide to end their long, happy marriage on Glenn Beck's show, or what? Strange place for them to separate, no?

Thanks for making everything crystal clear, JD.”

“This is what you decided to focus on in this enormously well-argued and absolutely essential response to an out-of-control broadcaster and his frequently depraved "news channel, " both of whom would probably be very proud to realize they're well past the stage of becoming a modest threat to the American way of life they claim to represent?

And who the rest of keep silently watching as they reach for "greater heights"?

That "objectionable" line you refer to --- does it misrepresent Glenn Beck's audience? I doubt it, and of course this is a level of discourse to which they do not stoop but adhere. Your point seems to be that only good, rational, PC talk, which they loathe, shuuld be used to combat them. Well, maybe. But I'm not so sure, are you?”

“Don't get me wrong --- I know it's too much to expect. But . . .

I wish Mr. Bronfman and all allegedly smart people who take Israel's side of virtually every argument would spend some time reading ALL of these comments.

If they pay close attention to those they least want to hear, it might help them understand where their thinking is leading all of us.

Clue: I don't think it's a place any of us, or any of them, really wants to go.”

“Thanks, Greg, but even you are too easy on the Times here -- first, because the original Times sin is a good deal more extreme than billed. And second, because the Times "correction" is so careful to avoid admitting what went wrong in the first place. Thus it dances all the way around much more than half the story, leaving Tricky Dick Cheney standing all smiles in a wide, dry, sunny place, presumably with his lovely daughter by his side.

In other words, the editors fail even to clarify "what we got wrong" --- which effectively prevents them or the Times from actually apologizing. How can the paper even stand corrected if it won't spell out, in full, the entire foul-up it's half-heartedly pretending to bring out of the shadows two weeks after it hit print?”

“I usually agree with Bill Maher -- say about 90 percent of the time -- and consider myself a devoted fan. But there's about five or 10 percent of Bill's stuff that leaves you wondering (in the slightly cleaned-up language of my childhood) whether to go to the bathroom or go blind.

The banks want to give the money back (and not all of it, either) only because they (1) have already benefited from the loans, and (2) they don't want to live by any government rules that might make them behave better in the future.

Rule of thumb for Bill: If the banks want to do it, it's almost certainly wrong. If Timothy Geithner then says he's against it, it's certainly WAY wrong. That's because Tim is, practically speaking, our designated banker-in-­residence. Thus he occasionally has to say something that sounds like he isn't entirely the other bankers' go-to guy.

Tim's main mission in life is making life easier for the banks. The fact that he holds high office is the principal reason the big banks and their executives are still sitting there, claiming profitability when they are in fact as abject failures as GM, which has no automaker-­in-residen­ce to save it,

NO, Uncle Sam, don't take back the banks' money until we're sure we have the authority to clean up their very bad act some day. And then let's pray there's somebody around to put that authority to good use.”

“Oh, Gee Whillikers, SnapShots, I guess you're right, If the Times isn't smart enough to hire ypu and me, or treat us like royalty, it deserves to fail, and this country deserves to lose its best and most important newspaper,

Too bad the Times doesn't have more unbiased, self-effacing folks like you, me and John Ridley contributing to its daily news report.”

“Now here's a one-sided argument written by somebody who either loves the internet half to death and hates newspapers, or just accidentally sounds that way. And he's too considerate of the Washington Post's website traffic to give his readers a link to whatever made him so angry in the first place.

But why bother to tell us what the other guy said when you don't have to? The usual "change or die" crowd is right behind you anyway, yelling about how newspapers think they're "entitled.­"

As near as I can see, the prevailing sentiment about print journalism out here in Cyberland is "Drop Dead."”

“George Washington said a moutful!

In fact, 2 mouthfuls --- counting only the ones you cite here.

Kudos to TommyJ for these quotes. The father of our country couldn't foresee Israel, but he clearly foresaw the situation.”