RButler's Comments (679)

“Cheesecake??? When I was a teenager, I could wolf down several plates of rich Thanksgiving Day style food. But, now I look for flavorful yet light dishes, so I don't feel so miserable afterward.”

“Why not a Bluetooth cellphone earpiece/mic or haven't those been invented yet?”

“As the technology improves, the culture deteriorates, it seems. I'm guessing that explains why it took 3 high school age people 5-7 minutes to order a simple, late night breakfast from the menu at Denny's in the booth behind me. This wasn't ordering a multi-course meal at a 4 star restaurant complete with a wine selection. I bet these young people could text and twitter with their eyes closed but reading a menu with pictures, making a selection and communicating that to a server were simply beyond their social skills. Sarah Palin for President anyone??????????

Are 'gadgets the message now'? When I read about future refrigerators with built in computers that tell you when the milk has expired or other nonsense, I wonder if that kind of technology with be the new VCR flashing 12:00 metaphor for appliances that didn't really work out that well for people in use.”

“Octomom, Carrie Prejean, Sarah Palin, Jon and Kate, Levi Johnston, balloon boy. It's all starting to blur together.”

“I know. I live next to one called Lancaster,­California where the mayor and city council want to start meetings with prayers that include the name Jesus Christ. The ACLU is suing so the town is going to vote on it in the next election. I don't know how that makes it constitutional. That town is a horrible neighbor as well to surrounding cities and towns.

Now, get this. The mayor is a republican personal injury attorney. You know, the kind republicans love to demonize yet embrace when it's one of their own. The hypocrisy is endless.”

“Something I've always wondered about in the First Amendment is the phrase 'establishment of religion'. Now, religion is a word like 'language'. It can mean a specific religion like Catholicism, a specific language such as English or it can mean the whole category of religions or languages. So, I've thought that the interpretation that the First Amendment only meant 'a state church' was too narrow. It could mean that Congress can pass no laws establishing anything 'religious' at all rather than just one specific religion.

For example, does allowing 'prayer in schools' establish 'religion' in its broader sense of anything at all religious? Or, if it said Congress may pass no law respecting the establishment of 'partnerships' which could mean no marriages, civil unions, business partnerships or any other partnership arrangement. The whole subject would be off limits.

Any ideas?”

“Those crazy Christians. They will always remind you that 'separation of church and state' is not found in the Constitution. Then, they go on to claim that US was founded as a Judeo-Christian country, Really? Judeo-Christian is nowhere in the Constitution. Neither is God nor Jesus Christ. If the founding fathers really wanted that they would have written it in the document. Christians just make up their own reality and expect us to live in it. H*ll, they don't even live in it, the hypocrites.”

“Animals such as elephants, meerkats (which I adore), wolf packs, lion prides and others have societies or groups that appear to have benevolent behavior amongst themselves, taking care of the young of other's, sacrificing for the sake of the group and so on WITHOUT THE BENEFIT OF RELIGION. How about that? Humans that are considerate or generous to other humans also without the benefit of believing in a god or an afterlife would seem to be more highly evolved than those that 'need' religion to compel them to do things for the sake of others. That seems to be overlooked by the high and mighty, self righteous faith based religious folk.

I'm more inspired by an atheist who would donate a kidney than a Christian who tells me what I should do or believe to get into heaven.”

“If Catholics have to strictly toe the line as legislators and/or other elected or appointed officials, then it would seem to be inappropriate for them to be in politics at all. That's what separation of church and state is all about. Making laws that establish religion is prohibited even if the laws don't specifically establish as 'state church'.

I wish we could really clean house and remove 'in God we trust' from our currency, 'under God' from the Pledge of Allegiance and prayers and 10 Commandments from public meetings or facilities. Religious folks can do all that at their tax exempt churches and other houses of worship. I can't wait till increasing Muslim political clout starts demanding their so-called rights to have their religious practices and beliefs included in government and see how the Christians react to that. Christians insist on saying that atheism is a religions, so I'd like to see atheists exert their influence in politics and government too.”

“I don't know about that. For a religion (like most Christian religions) that likes to call all of us 'sinners', the Catholic Church is awfully thin-skinned about being on the receiving end of criticizm. I am under no obligation to hold the Church's beliefs or practices sacred, especially when they like to intrude into the political sphere forgetting their tax exempt status.

I'm still amazed at how a corrupt, anachronistic, rigid institution such as the Catholic Church has survived for two millennia when many nations and civilizations have come and gone during that time. It's as though the truth is a fragile, short lived thing while a lie can live forever.”

“Hannity is a pathological liar. He lies when the truth would do. This isn't the first nor the last time.”

“After the Dan Rather false document episode, there was a shakeup at CBS and Rather was gone. When David Schuster said Hillary was 'pimping' Chelsea during last year's campaign, he was suspended for 2 weeks by MSNBC. But, at Fox, Beck can simulate offering a glass of poisoned wine to Speaker Pelosi or call Obama a racist who hates white people, O'Reilly can call a doctor performing legal late term abortions 'Dr. Tiller the baby killer' dozens of times up until the doctor was murdered IN CHURCH, O'Reilly can suggest that if al Qaeda wants to bomb Coit Tower in San Francisco, to go ahead and other outrageous statements and NOTHING HAPPENS TO THEM.

Integrity is not just never making mistakes but when you make them, you clean it up. And in journalism you should be rigorously fact checking yourself and checking again. Fox has no integrity.”

“Exactly. People seemed to ignore that there were missing or no attendance records for his last year in the Texas Air National Guard which was the point of the whole report. I couldn't believe that people bought that BS the Bush team was shoveling.”

“I recently read about a lawsuit the Fox won on appeal claiming it was OK for a news outlet to put out false information. They argued and won the right (in Florida in 2000) to make sh** up. That's Fox News for you.”

“If they allow billboards in D.C., someone should put up big, electronic ones with those quotes from republicans so that anyone driving near the Capital can't miss it.”

“If you forced those folks at Fox to read this article, they would simply deny it, even quotes from 2001 which are on video. Amazing.”

“Be happy when you're happy, sad when you're sad, angry when you're angry and so on. That's what infants do, crying one minute and laughing the next. As we grow into adults, we try to force 'happy when we're not', suppress anger when it's there' and so on. Some of these comments are so complex as to be unworkable. It's pretty simple.

If you have serious, important, hard work to do it's OK to be serious and focused. You don't have to be positive or negative just present to what's in front of you and take the appropriate actions. Think of the most challenging tasks whether it's in sports or an astronaut fixing the Hubble. If he's trying to be positive or negative or anything but being fully present to what he's doing, he'll likely make a mistake. Being present displaces any notion of positive or negative and allows one to be the most effective.”

“I just saw Plouffe on Jon Stewart's The Daily Show and he was saying how Obama was thinking long term, playing 3 dimensional chess, etc. I thought 'hmmm, this sounds familiar'. Oh, that's like Bush telling us history will judge him in the distant future even if things don't look good now. So, for both of them, things are left to a non specified time in the future to be assessed. Will that date ever arrive or will it always be in the future; the 'someday' that never comes.”

“I think a dress or outfit should flatter a woman and not be an advertisement for the designer to feed his ego. That black dress with the red spots was just plain weird and would be fine for an entertainer such as a comedienne but not a First Lady. I don't understand why women allow themselves to be used that way as walking billboards for the designers.”

“During the campaign, Hillary said that although MLK was a great speaker, it took LBJ to get civil rights legislation passed through a reluctant Congress and then losing the southern Democrats on top of that. Well, Hillary took a beating for saying that. Whenever I wrote about it on the HuffPost, I would get hammered as well. But, it was a glimpse into the future in that Obama depended too much on speech making and wasn't skillful at getting legislation through Congress, not even with Democratic majorities in both houses. Amazing.

His muddling through this first 10 months was predictable. Is he for a public option today or not?”

“Thanks. During the summer town hall with their loud protesters, I thought Obama should have just said that he was putting universal health care on hold and if the public wanted it, they had to demand it. It seemed that the opponents were louder and more organized than the supporters of health care legislation. Well, if you really want something, don't just sit there waiting for it to happen or you get exactly the kind of sausage making we've seen for months.”

“I agree. The thing about being a 'transformational leader' is that you have to transform the thing itself, whether it's a nation, an institution or a company. It seems that Obama and his supporters are committed to him being a 'transformational leader' independent of any actual transforming results in the country. It's like being a 'great actor' who has never made a movie. You can't have one without the other.

I'm conflicted though. They would say Clinton could charm republicans when they were in a room with him. Now, that was what Obama promised, that he would be a uniter, work across party lines and all that which he hasn't been able to do. But, the republicans have been so uncooperative and have worked against him, that it can't all be blamed on him.”

“Arianna, when are you getting your own show? How about replacing Chris Matthews second repeat on MSNBC which we can do without. We need you and your intelligent, original thinking. No body does it better.”

“Great. And why do I read more intelligent commentary on these blogs than I ever hear on the so-called political talk shows?”

“Sex is, by design, a pleasurable activity or humans wouldn't bother doing it. Why should watching it, paying for it, engaging in it all be condemned in one way or another. Who do we thank for making sex a bad thing?”