csavage's Comments (554)

“The recession started January 2007. The stimulus was passed in 2009. The stimulus has dispensed a fraction of the money allotted, so far.
We are seeing in our economy is the end result forecasted in a book written by Milton Friedman called Megatrends-or how our economy shifts from manufacturing based economy to a service based economy. The variable not accounted for was job outsourcing, but, even then, the book asserts that lower paying service jobs with fewer wages and benefits were going to replace the manufacturing sector, with it's union jobs. So, even without outsourcing, we were looking at falling wages. Friedman is a neo-con darling, their Paul Krugman.
I've already told my kids to not to expect to work in this country. The jobs will come back-once upward pressures on wages in India, China, and eastern Europe make America cheap to do business in again.”

“True....I feel pretty safe in saying that I pay more in taxes than most of those people earn in income.”

“Murdoch probably knows very little about the internet involvement of his empire-he's like many of my senior patients whose eyes glazed over at the thought of technology­.....
I, myself, pay for and read the Houston Chronicle, if anything for the op-ed section so I can see the depths of illinformation my neighbors have regarding current events. I will continue to pay for it but it's becoming increasingly a daily dose of advertisement with carefully culled stories that really shortchange it's readers. Plus, it's narrower, which really irks me because the paper's second job is to be a grease soak/firestarter/ upholstery protector when we go camping.
I've been perusing the Huffpost since 2006 and it's been a sanity saver for me. I'm stuck in "tea partier" alley and, without you guys, I would really start to think that Obama took office early in Oct 2008 and caused the financial crisis and that he's spent more in 10 months than Bush ever did and Sarah's just misunderstood and mean "libruls" are out to ruin her and every other "hard workin' Merikin"”

“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...”

“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.”

“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.”

“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...”

“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 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...”

“They want the Nazi rhetoric to be associated with Obama. Having the Nazi rhetoric (at least, in terms of a flag)associated with them is not what they want. Since they apparently don't know that their rhetoric is actually closer to true Nazism than Obama's, this, again, demonstrates overwhelming failure of the American education system and the movement's complete cluelessness in regards to the direction this country went under Bush. To quote the campaign manager of a Republican targeted by the "Tea Party" in Texas, their "anger" is "misdirected". Gee, you just now noticed. Or was in more convenient not to notice when Obama was the recipient of their anger”

“Their limit apparently involves no freedom of speech for people that don't completely agree with them.
The "Tea Party" is fielding candidates to run in statewide elections in Texas. If anyone's interested the story is in chron.com (the Houston Chronicle's website)”

“It's not that the GOP is the party of stupid people, it's that the GOP decided to condense their message into 30 second sound bites after the Goldwater loss in 1964. So now, you have people parroting the message but not knowing the platform. Nice, black and white, neat explanations for all the world's ill's is far more appealing to a easily frightened populace than the truth”

“I agree, unfortunately, our intertwined economies are more like a pusher-addict relationship than a union of equals. As for being able to pursue an arms race, we're beyond being able to. Our planes and ships depend on computers to function and we have no computer manufacturing base in this country anymore. With no reliable steel manufacturer and most mass-production lines shut down and moved somewhere else, we can't even ramp up to a fraction of the industrial output we had during WW2”

“I agree completely. I do not call these people "conservative"-they are not. As I've posted before, I have spoken with these people and these people are educated, in fact, most are software engineers at HP, engineers at NASA, small businessmen, etc. Today's neo-con does not know that the GOP considers that there is no right to privacy inherent in the Constitution, they couldn't tell me any of the GOP platform for 2008, they have no problem with abortion and dispute the fact that the GOP is actively trying to overturn Roe v. Wade, they do not know what the term "strict constructionist" really means, cannot answer me when I ask them how the "invisible hand of the market" is supposed to work if investment firms hire mathmeticians to figure out derivative formulas and the indvidual investor, operating through a 401K fund, has no means of participating directly in the market. Today's neo-con votes Republican because they've been told that voting that way will keep more money in their pockets-despite the fact Republican lawmakers hide budget requirements for financing by calling them "User fees" instead of taxes. I agree with the fact that there were "low information" Obama voters but today's neo-con has been willfully ignorant about the machinations of government for decades. The "teabagger" movement is nothing but an collective awakening of people who've spent the last 8 years telling the liberal equivalent that we were terrorist sympathizers and, gee, the president's black now”

“It's not just Jessica Lynch that was protrayed as a hero for propaganda purposes, so was Pat Tillman. Evidently, the NY Post has gone one step further and attributed "bringing down a terrorist" to this woman. First off, he'd be described as a troubled person and maybe not make the news for more than a day (like the Florida shooting that happened the next day) if he'd been a white Christian male. Ten suicides happen every month at Ft. Hood-none make the news. Second, much to my dismay, "liberals" in charge have done nothing to stem the advance of fascism in this country. So, Obama or no, the massive propaganda machine that is the MSM is still in place. "Pravda" lives on....”

“Only if you agree to explain cricket to us yanks....a­nd be available for questions.­..;-)”

“Yes! And bring out the Huffpo beer line, as well, to go with our sports section...­..did you guys know that the site most frequently visited during news breaks (by me, at least) was ESPN.com? I'd far rather take a break from reading about quadmires in Afghanistan, Iraq, health care, the financial sector by checking out sports than reading some inanity from Brittney Spears or Amy Weinhouse.­...
Go Steelers! Go Pens!”

“To think that Obama had the most "liberal" voting record in the Senate is to parrot Fox and Rush. Your fellow neo-cons have already admitted here that many of his votes were "present" instead of a "yes" or "no" vote. Kennedy and Sanders had and have far more liberal voting records. As for the mistaken assumption that you have that voters are conservative-the truth is they may label themselves as "conservative" but a fair number of them couldn't tell you any of the GOP platform for 2008, they couldn't identify what constitutes a "strict constructionist" interpretation of the Constitution, they are not anti-abortion (in fact, most tell me they think that Roe v. Wade "certainly" can't be reversed), they don't have an opinion about gay marriage, and they are not particularly keen on the wage suppression that 25 years of unchecked illegal immigration done with lax federal enforcement of I-9 verification (a mandate for employers). They vote Republican because of their perception of that vote's impact on their wallets, even though then end of paying the same amount through either user fees or payment to private entities for the same service.”

“The government has nothing to do with this-the flu vaccine is made by Swiss based Novartis and French based Sanofi Aventis. The government ordered millions of flu shots to be distributed to thousands of clinics nationwide. The flu shot is being distributed to the WS bankers directly from the manufacturers, not the government, and it's not a new phenomena. We had 2 recent years of flu shots being distributed to Walmart, Walgreeens, CVS, King Soopers, and Target in the millions of doses before the vaccine manufacturers distributed to the individual doctors' offices. The docs have to prepay for vaccine that's only good for 1 flu season. There's nothing like buying $1000 worth of flu vaccine, only to get the shipment in November and have 90% of your patients tell you they already got the shot a Walmart...­.You can't return the vaccine to get your money back!
It's easy to blame everything on the government. It takes some research to get the facts straight, however”

“I wish it was just $5Trillion­...try $11T and counting..­..
We financed WW2 with incredibly high taxes on the rich. We financed GW2 by borrowing from China-thanks neo-cons!”

“Ditto-my husband said something to the effect that Rush usually liked to stay out of the spotlight. Obviously, getting interviewed on Fox as a national figure is not "out of the spotlight", but it is good for ratings. As for being "obsessed" by Limbaugh, when my neighbors come up with a coherent thought that doesn't come out of his mouth first, then I will happily give up the "Rush watch". Until then, I pay attention to know hwo the heck they came up with what they are talking about-'cuz it ain't reality”