csavage's Comments (1129)

“And what makes you think the DoD has any interest in removing their overseas bases? Fifty years after WW2 and 20 years after the fall of the USSR, we maintain military bases in Germany.
The only nation that has successfully rid itself of our military is the Philippines and that was only after Mt. Pinatubo destroyed Clark AB and Subic Bay”

“We are an empire now....Our number one export is the defense industry. You are an absolutist and you've decided that the example of an empire is the USSR. What about Great Britain, or France, or the Romans?”

“Hmmmm...th­e US is populated by infidels who have a penchant for drugs, music, dancing, sex, and exploitative business practices. I see plenty of values antithetical to the Afghan people....­Our American Exceptionalism rears it's ugly head again...”

“You aren't likely to get it. Last year, I was attending a board certification review in Dallas about the time Hank Paulson was saying he needed $1 Trillion by Thursday and no questions asked. The topic on NPR that morning was the sad state of finance/economic journalism and how Columbia was cancelling classes due to low demand. If we can't have trained journalists reporting the issues to laymen, how is the public going to know or understand. And, for those dissing Krugman, economics is a soft science and open to lots of interpretation. For every Keynes, you have a Friedman..­.”

“How has the government made my life better? Well, since 46% of my patients are on Medicare, the government funds a large percentage of my practice. Medicare also is responsible for funding a majority of hospitals in the country, so, if you were in a hospital, or in an ER, thank your government for providing the backbone of funding that allows the health care system we have in this country to function. I drove on a highway to get to my job and that highway's construction was funded by a statewide funding system driven by taxes imposed on each gallon of gas. At my job, I used an excellent education provided by the University of Texas-a state run institution-and paid for by the US government in exchange for my service to the country. I prescribed many drugs today and those drugs were discovered through funding by the National Institutes of Health. Some of my patients have the flu and I was able to tell them that using guidelines provided to me by the CDC.
My government does alot for me and you, except I'm cognizant enough to connect the dots and you, in your intellectual laziness, buy everything someone tells you.”

“We have a serious problem in this country-our campaign financing. TV covers candidates directly commiserate with their ability to sell ads, so, an attractive candidate gets more coverage that someone not so photogenic. We are shown a cast of possible presidential candidates that are differentially promoted. Ever wonder, after years and years of mediocre choices and general voter dissatisfaction, why our choices never seem to improve? Why candidates not plugged into the entertainm­ent-milita­ry-industr­ial complex don't get highlighted-like Ron Paul or Dennis Kucinich.
Does the media really think we want someone who we can have a beer with to be president? I'd prefer to have someone intelligent run the country. But alot of people are entranced by "the girl next door" quality Sarah brings. If they vote for her for president, though, it will be obvious that our slide to a banana republic is complete.”

“His hypothesis doesn't make sense. All languages are invented and evolve over time. If he wanted to see how his son would do learning two languages phonetically dissimilar, he should have taught him English and Mandarin”

“This is straight outta "Fight Club"...an­d you know what the first rule of Fight Club is, don't you?”

“We're down to #14 of the top 50 fattest states...”

“He's the chief buyer for McDonald's Corp.”

“I'll listen for this storyline to get picked up by Beck, et al.”

“The ACP has long recommended mammograms not start until age 50, so one of my internists friends who told me she wasn't going to get one until she was 50 is completely justified now. As for pap smears, it makes little sense for me, as a 46 year old woman, HPV negative, in a monogamous relationship, to get one every year. Ovarian cancer is another thing, and one not screened for with a pap smear-and, one with no good screening protocol in 2009. As for mammograms, I've had one every year for the last 6 years and I'll discuss it with my OB/gyn. As for mammograms catching everything, one of my nurse friends was diagnosed with Stage 3 B breast cancer after having a screening mammogram yearly. She took all the previously read "normal" mammograms with her to MD Anderson and the radiologists there saw her cancer in every one of them. A mammogram reading depends on the competency of the radiologist, too.”

“No one here should forget that the Repubs are the party of "screw you, I got mine". They think that everyone thinks like they do. They cannot comprehend that someone would choose to vote Democratic on principle. ACORN and SEIU are their 'Boogeymen" and that we were deluded by those agencies' propaganda. They do not think that Bush lost the popular vote in 2000-they think that Florida result was inconsequential to the election. They really believe the government was only going to wiretap terrorists with the Patriot Act, although the law didn't define what a terrorist was. They think the international reputation that the US should have is "international strongman" not global participant. They really believe that their ideas lead to less government despite the fact that the only president who saw the government shrink in terms of GDP was Clinton. They think their party is the party of privacy, despite the fact their hero Hamilton didn't think the US needed the Bill of Rights to limit government. They believe the race and gender roles of the 50s should return-no wonder they're stunned to find out white people voted for Obama. The wingnut media has successfully merged the concept that Democrat/liberal means "minority"”

“This gun owner is. I have a .243 and a 9 mm I use to hunt deer. My plan for any home invasion is to get my kids and run out of the house. Semi-automatic weapons are just designed to kill people, not game. Competitive shooters shoot guns that would never be carried at these gun shows. Those feelings are the same as 85% of the gun owners in this country. Only a wingnut would connect "the dots" between the Fort Hood shooting, Columbine, the shooting in Florida and 9/11 to say that we are being overrun by Muslim extremists. Sensible people see unchecked access to guns as uniting 3 of the 4 events. I've been to these guns shows-it's actually sad. You pass table after table of vendors plying on fears to sell their products-fear of blacks, immigrants, Muslims, "criminals" (ironic considereing the source). These gun dealers are the ones promoting the drug war in Mexico. Ninety percent of cars driving into Mexico from the US aren't searched and a fair number of them are driven by gun runners. It's just a matter of time that the Mexican drug war becomes the American drug war...”

“So you think it was appropriate for the RNC to push Palin as a VP candidate based on the fact they considered her "f*ckable"? Is that the image you want the US to portray to it's enemies? Boy, you guys really do hate America”

“Gee, I remember it being GEORGE WALKER BUSH who was willing to detain them indefinitely. Obama sought to close Gitmo and transfer them to prisons here and the neo-confederates were so incensed and claimed that, somehow despite the fact we are able to imprison pedophiles, rapists and murderers, we could never house them here-they essentially made it impossible to get other countries to take them, too. You may fault obama for admitting that we may have to house them indefinitely, but never forget it was people like you who poisoned that pot to begin with”

“I agree....t­he boogie man's going to be found out to be on the CIA's payroll and it scares the bejeesus out of his former employers.
I don't necessarily pin in on Bush. I pin it on our foreign policy for the last 30 years-ever since the Soviets invaded Afghanistan. The American public, in their concrete thinking majesty, will see al-Queda for what they are/were-the mujahideen that we armed and trained in 1979....
Oh, that and the fact that the Bushes and Bin Laden family are business associates­...”

“It also describes most "Tea Partiers"”

“I agree-Toyota owners have their own cult. They handle like boxes with wheels attached and their interior looks trashed within 3 years. Lexus owners are even more deluded-they're buying a Toyota with an inflated price tag.
I'll stick with my BMW any day.”

“Coloradoans love their Subarus. Actually, I got stuck in our cabin with the big snow of 2003. I couldn't get my Expedition out but I watched a Sabaru driver start driving forward until he couldn't go any further in a snow bank, back up, pick up some speed and push the snow bank a little further and repeat this for 2 hours until he cleared out the road. If they pulled 5000 lbs trailers, I'd get one!”

“I have an even better suggestion. Depression is a learned behavior, we'd be far better off examining the circumstances that led to a person learning that behavior. Another of my fav models of depression (developed by Overmier and Seligman) fits completely with my experience as a doc with depressed people in my practice. Most people seek care for their depression with their primary care doctors. I agree that SSRIs do not "cure" depression but people expect a drug, based on their overwhelming exposure to TV and print ads. The one bit of advice I find myself giving patients is both the Serenity Prayer and the statement that we cannot control someone else's behavior, we can only control our response to that behavior. As a counselling, the insurance companies do not pay for counselling, they pay only for med checks-so you can see where the bias lies...”

“That started off as wingnut fearmongering-or do you not remember Hank Paulson telling Congress they had 4 days to approve TARP in Oct 2008 or the whole financial sector would collapse? No?”

“Take the money out of the campaigns.­...”

“Don't worry, we're not "out of the woods" yet...”

“I was going to say, I've been saying "Privatize the profits, socialize the risks" for a long while now...”