TheIndependenceParty's Comments (3529)

“Oooooh! Time travel!”

“Starting almost thirty years ago the Republicans starting running up a tab under Reagan, ... one of the most profligate spenders in American history, ... eclipsed only by George W Bush!

It seems a favorite trick of that money grubbing party, ... is to order round after round until they get "irrationally exuberant" in their enthusiasm for the benefits of capitalism, ... then walk out the back door of the bar and stick their fellow Americans with the tab.

Only Cheney has the brass to call the next morning and tell us how much he disrespects us!”

“The real question is whether a true patriot would hire someone else to do for them, what they were not willing to do themselves. The answer is obviously "No". Mercenaries in any field go forth with no fervor, and frankly most end up as the Hessians did in Trenton when Washington crossed the Delaware and quickly defeated them. Folks will do what they are paid to do, but without heart, ... it's easier to throw your hands up in the air, ... and pass your American Express Card to the waiter!

I'm certain the lobbyists toasted their benefactors, ... you know, the 70 year old moms and pops who thought they were saving the country when it is more likely they were saving some lobbyist from standing in the unemployment line.

"A fool and his money are soon parted." Sometimes you simply appeal to their patriotism, ... whatever that is!”

“No, I think G(ee), I hope I can even tell where I am by then.”

“First the clementines!”

“If we are at war, Mr. Cheney, then I'd rather stick with the approach our President is taking, ... which has struck at key Al Qaeda leaders in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Yemen. You and your boss were mostly talk, ... and very little appropriate action. You failed to a large extent, and left an incredible mess in your wake.

I will not diminish the importance of the attack attempt on Christmas Eve, ... but it does not surprise me that you are most concerned about those who would attack us in secret through, say, exploding underpants. To refer to that as "war" shows the confusion you suffer from to this day! War is what you did to Iraq, and Afghanistan. These are crimes, ... and potentially deadly ones. But to use the word you love so much to describe them, is to detract from the sacrifices our service members have made throughout our history. You, sir, would understand none of that. It is hard to grasp life when your mind itself is a "secret undisclosed location" in its own right.”

“In a sense, Dr. Mendelson, you violate the law of physics you use as a proof. The energy which is experienced as sound, reaches everyone, everywhere, ... it must. It does not "disappear", as you rightly describe. It may reach us at a level too low for us to perceive, but it reaches us nonetheless. Not all perception is even conscious, of course. Changes in barometric pressure, and other natural phenomena, for example, may cause behavioral changes in people for reasons they do not understand, but nonetheless experience.

The moment before my patients died, they were distinctly "living", ... with energy abounding, in the heart and nerves, muscles and tissues. Those energy patterns that we called by name were unique to that person, ... in their looks and voice, smell and feel. Those energy waves exist forever, and radiate outward forever, like ripples on a pond from a stone crossing its surface. Reflect those waves in reverse, as if we were to look at the focus of the ripples, and we see not only where they were, but who, ... as certainly as we could discern the energy distributed by the stone into the water, and where it fell.

That we do not (yet) have that perceptive ability does not negate the possibility, nor annihilate the energy itself, which will exist forever.”

“An amazing lecture is available on TED, by a neurological researcher which recounts her own experience of having a stroke.

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/jill_bolte_taylor_s_powerful_stroke_of_insight.html

Jill Bolte Taylor describes the behaviors of each hemisphere as they "take turns" at interpreting the experience as it is evolving and the stroke is progressing. It is clear, as you describe, that certain perceptional and mental tasks are assigned to each, by their evolutionary design. Why the right and left evolved distinctly in those positions is a curious consideration for another day.

What Taylor does not mention, but is obvious in her very lecture, ... is that there is a "third" functional entity at play, ... that part of mind which was observing the other two as they went individually about their tasks. It does not reside in the Corpus Colossum, nor distinctly in either hemisphere.

When you can find its location, Dr. Mendelson, I think we could reach conclusions as you seek to do, ... but until then we must admit we do not know very much at all about "mind" , and far less about what we collectively refer to as "spirit".”

“Even better, ... to Federal Credit Unions!”

“House and Senate Dems seem willing to sacrifice everything to show they did not squander four years with their majority in Congress, only to pass this pathetic attempt at Health Care Reform (writ large).

Do they understand that we do not work for them, ... but the reverse? Do they believe we are stu.pid and forgetful? Do they think we will open our purse strings and once again walk the streets with campaign literature to get them re-elected to the offices from which they fu.ck;ed us the last time?

Short answer to each and every one is, ... "NO"!”

“Thank you YC, ... but actually Carper and Biden, DE's senators, received the largest contributions from financial and credit card firms, ... MBNA being the largest in Wilmington back before the Bankruptcy Bill was passed. You are correct that Joe has advocated to safeguard single moms and secure child-support, ... both strong concerns of mine, too.

http://www.theleftcoaster.com/archives/bankruptcy.htm

Joe's approach to credit card lenders' copntribution to bankruptcy was to ask for a "warning label" that borrowing at exorbitant rates could be dangerous to a consumer's economic welfare. This while usury is the greatest single cause of personal bankruptcy, ... after medical catastrophes.

I like Joe, but he snuggles up a bit close to this industry that was, and still is, charging rates as high as 79%. I understand, ... but wish that flaw were something he was as sensitive to fix.”

“Good luck to you both, and your families. Thank you for explaining your situations. Those of us who spent our lives at the bedside have seen the face and cost of illness, ... and there is no "deserving" to any of it. There is no name or face to these issues, until we know a family or a person who has suffered medical loss, ... in the absence of insurance.

You've both given us that. My thanks.”

“No one is carrying anyone! Healthy people who return to work, who raise their families, who contribute to society carry THEMSELVES! This miserly concern for the false economy of denying insurance costs this nation billions in lost productivity, time on the job, social services to support families with an illness, and the effects of medical indigency and bankruptcies. Those are dragging our people under, and the mandates for commercial coverage will only make it worse.

Taken into account, ... public healthcare for Americans would be the single most effect economic strategy we could implement to correct America's economic decline. We are missing that opportunity!”

“When you sit in the doctor's waiting room, are the elderly herded like cattle, ... treated differently? Medicare pays the bills, it does not run the practice of medicine, ... and does it at far lower cost than the commercials ever have or ever will.

The only sane thing to do is cut the greedy middlemen out of healthcare altogether, and put the dollars toward preventive and remedial medicine rather than shipping the profits off to corporations instead.”

“Good point GNC! Makes me want to reach 65 even sooner!”

“Brownstein misses the mark on this, and extends a run of unfounded criticism of liberals and progressives that will persist until Pelosi and Dems in the House cave to Obama, Baucus, Nelson, Landrieu, Lieberman and Reid.

To compare this bill to Medicare and Johnson's shepherding of that law through Congress, is to draw parallels that don't exist. Obama phoned in his requests, so he wouldn't scuff his shoes in the fight. The only way Americans will know he had anything to do with this things, will be his signature at the bottom. History will note that he was AWOL when it might have counted the most.”

“"...Firs t off the stocks were underrated". Your words.

Perhaps that was because there was a chance, however small, that the public option, ... any public option including Medicare, would have provided substantial competition and pressure to adjust premiums, provide better service, and "promote the general welfare" far better than they do now, ... or will have to unde this bill.

This bill is akin to having the Federal government demand we Americans pay thugs at Blackwater (Xe) to act as our security guards. Oh, ... that's right, they do that too!”

“A question, Dr. Siegel, ...

In my clinical training I was always told that patients should be addressed formally, ... "Hello Mr. Smith, ... Good Day Miss Jones", and so on.

In my practice I came to adapt my style to what my patients seemed to prefer, ... and in the circumstances in which I cared for them, ... short of breath and fearful, ... they seemed to prefer their first name when I worked with them. As they struggled or suffered, it seemed the music of their given name gave them more comfort than their formal surname.

It always seemed to me the most natural thing in the world to ask a patient's permission to use their first name in stressful moments. The first comforting words they ever learned surrounded that one word, ... their own name. When my purpose was comfort and my objective was for them to heal, it made no sense to keep my distance by addressing them as "Sir" or "Ma'am", ... when I knew his name was John, or hers Sarah.

I have felt guilty for that for my entire career in medicine, but would not acquiesce to that convention when the moment came again to comfort.

My question? Did you speak to your patients by their first names? Was I wrong?”

“Thanks, Dr. Siegel, ... for your words and your work. I spent nearly forty years in patient care as a respiratory therapist, but also spent a great deal of time in the OR, as our work dovetailed with the Anesthesia department of which we were for so long a part. Early on it became clear that my patients under anesthesia or in coma were far more aware than we assumed, and than we knew.

To this day another immense disservice is that we provide TV to our recovering patients, ... but in very few hospitals do we offer music as an alternative. Cable channels at home almost always include "Music Choice" in their upper ranges, ... but in the hospital these are never available. A patient, whether in pain or simply concerned for their condition, does better eyes closed, with the most comforting music at their fingertips.

Warmth, music, and quiet are both intuitively and objectively, better for physical recovery than cold, fear, visual bombardment and clamor.”

“"the worst thing about christians is they don't have a clue about history"

Broad condemnation, ... with a billion christians out here, ... some of us care and actually know something about ancient history.

Thanks ropeadope for the broad brush approach to the humanities, ...

Next!”

“Thanks for your banalities. You are wrongly informed, ... Why worry about the terms we apply to ourselves when such names are based in foolishness. Christian may hold connotations for you which include "deity" as a pre-requisite for its use. They do not for many who follow his teachings.There is no "load" in the term unless the hearer places it there.

Were you raised in a home headed by people who believed in Christ? Do you wish you had been? What did this man, whether real or apocryphal, ... do to you? How was his message "mixed", ... his personal one and not the Scrapple left us by Constantine's meddling and Paul's hallucinations?

The religions who claim a connection to Jesus have abused mankind, particularly women and children, more than any other in the history of the world. Those acts and the beliefs that selectively drove them, are crimes against Humanity. They continue to this day. I do not excuse them and will not ignore them. Christ did not lead them. Nor Buddha, nor Ghandhi, nor Krishna.

Do you believe that if religion were outlawed, that there would not be some other excuse for one person to dominate, control or even murder another? We need no excuse, ... we are humans and we kill at will.”

“Some of the best scholarly proofs in the world begin with Wickipedia, ... and end with Dawkins. Not many, in my view. And many have the earmarks of religion all about them, ... including the castigation of critics, ... the refusal to consider other possibilities, ... or a blatant cynicism about the subject itself. Absolutism, ... "never", ... and "not" appear in most religions, ... and thery seem to in yours as well.

To worship "NoGod" is no different than worshiping some. Dawkins?!!! He worships at his own altar, which is dedicated to trashing those of every religion ever practiced on this earth. He uses the word "presumptuous", but to whom does the desire presume against? What god is offended if humans imagine a life after this? Dawkins himself? Why should we care what Dawkins thinks?

While I, and others who profess a "faith" often doubt our own, ... it is the hallmark of a devout religionist that you experience no doubt in your beliefs whatever. Be careful my friend you do not make a religion out of believing in the very notion that religion is garbage.”

“Having been with thousands at the moment of death, I can assure you that you are correct, ... the synapses fail, and the earthly identity is lost. The "mind" loses its ability to communicate and the brain begins to die, and then to rot.

All those things can be seen and measured, ... but that is not what is missing when we die. My cells had instructions to keep me intact, ... to replace themselves, year after year, decade after decade, ...until they did not any longer. What failed? What was the master instruction that told my body to shut down in an instant? What was missing after I was declared "dead" that was there prior. My organs are alive, ... and can be used, ... my hair grows, and even my brain can be revived if proper steps are taken. But something else is gone.

Weigh that, ... measure it, and give me its origin and its location, ... and I will discard every belief I hold in something greater than the machine I live in. Until then, I'd like to keep the notion that not all of me is accounted for in this simple bag of bones I call my home.”

“No, ... meaning that some people, both present and past, find something resonant in the stories that are passed down from one generation to the next.

In terms you might agree to, ... you step from your bed in the morning and have faith your feet will touch the ground. You log on to the internet with faith that you can write a post, ... and with faith that I and others can read it. You have faith you can take your next breath, but no proof of any of those things whatsoever. They could change in an instant, ... but you have "faith" that the world will behave as it did yesterday, and as you were taught.

Are you wrong to believe gravity will keep you attached to the earth, that the sun will rise, that the "facts" you were taught in school are correct, and a foundation for your approach to life? The facts have changed in many instances, ... That does not make you wrong, but simply human.

We take many things on faith alone, and seek experiences to confirm they are true. Religious faith takes longer.”

“Close enough for me.”