StuartH's Comments (89)

“Imagine how much insight we will gain into how many people wear Depends undergarments for incontinence or are transgender or other such private parts related statistics.

Can't wait to find out.

Seriously, though. It seems like when the security professionals fail to make their systems work, we all get made to suffer the consequences.”

“Progressives can't afford to be stupid. That is the lesson from progressive coalition building in Texas years ago. Not enough margin for error.

The problem is not Obama. As President of the United States, he has wide responsibilities. The problem is Congress. When you absolutely need 60 votes, and people like Lieberman, Landrieu, Lincoln emerge from the math as the center of attention they are empowered above everyone else.

The rules in the Senate that made that happen need to be addressed. Also, progressives need a better analysis of the history. It took 30 years to let things get this fouled up. Unsnaggling the snaggled policy tangles will take a bit of skill. Being skillful requires looking at the situation more strategically and less emotionally. Running hot and cold creates the impression that progressives cannot be relied on to be consistent from one issue to the next. That reduces credibility and the ability to gain traction. What is required is steady nerves and brilliant analysis grounded in experience.

What I wonder is how come the pundits who pretend to speak for progressives are people who have never really been involved at the community level in actually working to create progressive policy? I thought that the alternative to the MSM was supposed to be less punditry and more realism.”

“There are a very great number of evangelicals in Colorado. There are also a lot of very independent thinkers there as well.

The right wing might as well control the Republican Party, considering that the incumbent Democratic Senator is likely to overcome the challenge.”

“What's really sad is that mental health is such an afterthought in the US. Self aggrandizing delusions that create attention are part of the phenomenon of mental illness. One might call the bomb squad because of stress over a relationship with a relative, suspecting that a package from them might not be a gift, but a bomb. Confusing stressful feelings with threats with the difference between anything and anything else is the loss of ability to cope with reality.

Once a threat like this is made, there is no going back. She will probably wind up in a prison for the criminally insane. Not a great place to wind up. It is too bad that along the way she could not have been given more enlighened treatment. This was most likely really a call for help and a bid for attention.

This situation does, however, exemplify a way that the dogwhistling from the far right wing will get turned into real threats against the President. The Secret Service has no choice except to take them seriously.”

“This is a good idea. I see a whole lot of people in there whenever I go and lately, I have been there quite a bit. We recently went shopping for a washing machine and found that Home Depot is a place to look at what is going on with appliances such as washers and hot water heaters. The industry is beginning to move in the direction of electric and water efficiency. We decided to wait a bit, because the same level of quality that our parents expected back in the '60s doesn't seem to quite be there.

Highlighting Home Depot as the place where home energy efficiency ought to be a consideration is really spot on. Yes! More of this.”

“This should not be at the top of the Huffington Post news column.

I hope you guys put this to rest. This site was doing great work as an
alternative to the MSM tendency to trivialize the important and to
raise to high level of importance, what is really trivial. Sorry to see
this in my face as I scan here for newsbits.”

“This speech was more complex and nuanced, as a sophisticated work of international leadership than academics are apparently prepared to appreciate. It seems to have gone over a lot of people's heads.”

“This gets more media play than the really important issues we are dealing with.

Really, what Tiger Woods does in his private life is of no importance at all.

It is easy for the media to dig on this because there is no effort involved. Huffington Post
should not bother with crap like this. Isn't this supposed to be an alternative to the MSM
and the way the media generally trivialize what is important and create importance
around the trivial?

This certainly shouldn't be at the top of the column.”

“Great comment. Really, the most salient point that could be made.

Sheine shines the light right where it needs to shine.”

“These people have to be taken seriously. There are enough of them that they could do some real harm to the effort to ensure that America's children are educated sufficiently to actually be competitive in a world where countries like Malaysia are educating engineers.

The logic of this is questionable. Christmas is partly the creation of the advertising industry, and partly a Christian celebration of the birth of Jesus. It isn't a Jewish holiday. It isn't a Muslim holiday. It isn't necessarily a holiday that reflects every Christian's culture. In the Russian Orthodox Church, for instance it is celebrated in January.

The purpose of this exercise is to use state power to gain ascendancy of a particular sect of evangelical Chistianity over everyone else. The basic problem is that they mean business and will get their way if the adults don't watch the playground. Next stop: rewriting textbooks so that the Church and State separation concept can be edited out of the history books. Don't laugh. There is a drive on to get textbooks to be re-written for just that purpose on the part of the Texas State Board of Education, which influences the publishing industry.”

“From this article, what is really the bottom line in this is not all that clear.

What is clear is that there are enough people in the US who were successfully gamed by the insurance industry that it will take a lot longer than previously thought to achieve full public comprehension of the problems involved and what the solutions ought to be.

The current system is a nightmare and to the extent that reform is still needed, this situation will continue to escalate out of control. Those people who are essentially playing into the insurance industry's hands will sooner or later discover themselves to be advocates of further change, or those who are will replace them. This isn't over by a long shot.”

“This was not just a speech. This was a re-positioning of US foreign policy, away from the Bush doctrine and towards an international cooperation. It is based on a realistic assessment of the balance between hard realities we face as humans and the best ideals we can aspire to.

That he articulated this in the context of accepting a Nobel Prize makes this really interesting.

There are a lot of people with small perspectives looking for something snarky to diminish this with, but it really rises to a great statement of perspective, embracing history and the future.

This is really what made me feel so depressed when Bush spoke. He was always being pretty small.
Obama is able to grasp the full dimension of our predicaments and our aspirations. I look forward to seeing how he negotiates this through his two terms. Right now, he is still having to deal with undoing a great deal of damage that Bush created.”

“I am really glad to see Al Gore contributing to every possible venue for his message.

I am also glad to see that he seems to be doing a good job of rising out of the crowd of yahoos to be heard. Jonathan Swift depicted humans as "yahoos" who reacted to anything by shouting irrelevancies, shitting and pissing on each other and generally being stupid. That was satire from hundreds of years ago.

Humans have never considered acting on a truly planetwide, or human race wide basis before. A million years from now, this time we live in, will be studied as the time when Cro Magnon man built a planetary communication system and began to use it as a means of facilitating a species wide ability to identify and study problems and then to implement ways of dealing with them.

E.O. Wilson and other scientists are warning of a bottleneck period that we are NOW ENTERING. The question is whether we will learn to anticipate worldwide problems and deal with them as a whole human race, or whether we will have to suffer the consequences of a crash that may devastate human populations to the point of extinction. If mankind survives all the problems we have created from nuclear proliferation to ways to kill the oceans, our evolution will have reached a new stage.”

“I am really glad to see Al Gore contributing to every possible venue for his message.

I am also glad to see that he seems to be doing a good job of rising out of the crowd of yahoos to be heard. Jonathan Swift depicted humans as "yahoos" who reacted to anything by shouting irrelevancies, shitting and pissing on each other and generally being stupid. That was satire from hundreds of years ago.

Humans have never considered acting on a truly planetwide, or human race wide basis before. A million years from now, this time we live in, will be studied as the time when Cro Magnon man built a planetary communication system and began to use it as a means of facilitating a species wide ability to identify and study problems and then to implement ways of dealing with them.

E.O. Wilson and other scientists are warning of a bottleneck period that we are not entering. The question is whether we will learn to anticipate worldwide problems and deal with them as a whole human race, or whether we will have to suffer the consequences of a crash that may devastate human populations to the point of extinction. If mankind survives all the problems we have created from nuclear proliferation to ways to kill the oceans, our evolution will have reached a new stage.”

“The web is very wide but not real deep. When you get into serious discussions about the true nature of the paradigm we are suffering under and how truly profound change might occur, it tends to be beyond the bounds.

This would seem to be a great subject for a seminar on the future of the economy, except that academic discussions aren't necessarily any better. People tend to want to show off how smart they are be going into ever more abstractly complex language.

Individual efforts to find new ways are fraught with the same problems that face any entrepreneurial departure from the conventional path. Solutions to the available dillemmas are not apparent and must be discovered by brave people who believe they are smart enough to step out onto thin ice.

Most people would rather contemplate this from the safety of a comfortable armchair with a warm cup of coffee. This gets left behind when it is time to go back to that corporate cubicle.

There really are opportunities to create a new economic way. They are, however, not easy to understand or find engagement with. Few people have a real handle on it, and fewer still are able to find a way to monetize their pioneering.

MoveOn is probably not a bad example, on the non-profit side.”

“These people are hysterical over the idea that the "go it alone" cowboy way of the Bush years is history. They hate internationalism in any form. They hate foreigners. The problem with the world is that it is full of people who are not white and Anglo. Christ, how did the world get so full of brown people?”

“Well, if Palin is any measure, this could qualify them as leaders in the Republican party.”

“It may take some courage on the part of some Senators who think that the power of money in the hands of insurance industry giants is a fearsome thing. They apparently do not realize the even more fearsome power of voters who see what is really going on and want government for the people, by the people, and of the people - not of, by and for special interests.

Landrieu and Lincoln are on history's hook to come through for the people and not cave to the pressure of all the moneyed interests and all those misled by them.”

“Lieberman is an ass and a cruel one. He is the Senator from Aetna. Comes from a state heavy with insurance industry interests.

Anyone who has contact with reality beyond their own selfish bubble knows that the only solution to the direction we are headed in is in a public option, if not single payer sort of system.

Anything else gives the insurance industry a mafia like control over our money, and they are holding us hostage in a die-or-pay vise grip. There is nothing about it that is free enterprise unless you are content to look only at the facades the PR professionals project.”

“This is a Profiles in Courage moment for each Senator. Health care reform, with a public option, must pass or chaos will ensue. The question will be whether anything can be accomplished that is really significant and whether the lobbyists are indeed too powerful in a match against the public interest.

If Senators fail to realize the true nature of this moment, there will be hell to pay as chaos rises and various consequences, some of them unintended come about in the next election. The Senate collectively and individually will be taken to the woodshed and switched. None of us may be happy with the result. That is how politics works. So, get some courage.”

“This is a Profiles in Courage moment. Health care reform, including a public option must pass. If the Senate fails to do this, the question will be whether the Senate can actually accomplish anything significant and whether lobbyists are too powerful.

There will be some kind of hell to pay, possibly unpredictable, possibly full of unintended consequences, but a spanking in the woodshed will be due.”

“How many of us wouldn't want a chance to put ourselves forward in a major national forum to show our best stuff?

She had a great opportunity here to put forward some substance. Instead she is obsessing about non-issues and lying to herself about why the campaign failed. Old News.

She took her moment and blew it. She confirms that she has no substance, and doesn't know what it is.

This woman does not deserve the attention she gets. She is stupid. Her fifteen minutes of fame should be just about up.”

“Hooray. Someone said it.

It is way past time to call stupid people out for what they are.

When you have Republican politicians saying stuff with a straight face to obviously pander for the votes of the most stupid people in the population, what is really going on is that no one is willing to say what is really going on.

Stupidity. Brain cells lacking or deliberately turned off. Knuckle dragging backwardism.”

“From the comments, it seems a small number of people actually read history in any depth.

Soldiers or ex-soldiers "going off" is not a frequent occurence, but it is one that happens consistently down through history. Modern rapid-fire weapons make it more dramatic than it was when musket had to be re-loaded by a time consuming process, but the same issue is at stake.

There is a certain stress that comes from the contradiction between civilized society and military training. For some people, this is apparently nearly impossible to deal with.

For a psychiatrist to have developed this problem is very significant. It means that there is some very needed scrutiny into how the military is helping service members deal with the contradiction inherent in military service. Mostly, one gets the impression that there is grudging admission that there is such a contradiction and that "Suck It Up" isn't necessarily the solution. The fact that there are people hired to work as psychiatrists says that there is progress being made, but when it is one of the medical professionals trained to deal with this contradiction that "go off" it is obvious that the military is really missing something in its protocols.

This aspect needs to be delved into, and the religious angle, which is simply sensational, needs to get a rest.”

“If you read local newspaper reports, these military shooting incidents have been a part of life ever since there have been soldiers or ex-soldiers.

The problem has nothing to do with religion. This is about a military mind set that is the same as it always ever was. The source of this isn't hard to understand. Civil society and the education around the conventions that make it possible to live in a civilized manner are essentially in contradiction to military training and conditioning. The contradiction is, for some people, very hard to deal with.

The modern military has not done a very good job of figuring out how to deal with the psychological stress associated with the contradiction. It may not ultimately be possible to create comfort with this situation, but probably improvements could be achieved. For a psychiatrist to fall prey indicates that there is still a ways to go.”