nomadic's Comments (51)

“Sorry to disappoint you but I'm never scared of stupid. Palin's a dim bulb and those who follow her could be legion but that just means they're not too bright either. The failing of our societal ideals looms large on a regular basis. As a "liberal" the only thing that concerns me is the lack of real, quantifiable progress as a nation and as a people. I have no time to get worked up over Palin or those who like her.
So many like her have come before and more will follow. Train wrecks from Phyllis Schlafly to Andria Dworkin are a given.”

“Nolookpass is another denier of facts so pointing them out may be a waste of time. Seeing as he missed the most obvious points I'd say noeinstein is just another of the many illogical foils out there.
I've always looked at the way people see marriage as this ultimate state of heterosexual validity as being pretty backwards. The same goes for all the "religious" people who claim to be the moral high ground. Prisons are full of born again Christians (I guess al those churches they passed on the way to repeated felonies would have had a better influence on them if they'd incorporated drugs and hookers into their recruitment efforts). Then there all all those trashy unmarried couples -with kids- who claim Christianity or some other faith but who can't be bothered to get married. I have no problem with unmarried folks with kids (or without them) who have ongoing relationships but to claim to be Christian strikes me as odd given the claims of the signatories.”

“Actually the poll divides Americans pretty neatly down the middle when it comes to abortion on demand. Also, you and so many others miss a lot of serious points:
1. Nobody is naturally a good parent and the abused, neglected and murdered children in our nation are proof of this. Being a parent is a lifetime responsibility as well as learned behavior. Having sex is no way to determine parenthood.
2. No one in our country is forced to get an abortion but you seem to think parenthood should forced on anyone with biology to be one. The only out you'll consider is rape and incest? That's generous. There's also the fact that some people -despite having the biological ability to have children- simply are not cut out to be parents and no shame should go with that realization.
3. The orphanage option is a sad joke. The social and biological bonding between a woman and her child, temporary as it might be, makes giving the child up for adoption problematic at best. And if given up for adoption being brown skinned, underweight, overweight, not cute enough, etc, means those children can look forward to life in an orphanage.
So, until kids have love and a minimally good quality of life (just one loving and responsible parent for a start) abortion is a fact of life and limiting or denying women access is a control issue and not a moral one.”

“Bill, based on what I'm reading in a lot of these comments it looks like it's too late to stave off the assault fast food has had on our society.
Thanks anyway.”

“First of all Obama didn't spend this money on Wall Street. Bush and his handlers did. Second, this has been building for almost 30 years as people were encouraged to buy more on credit than on saving for it. Then there are all those people who conned themselves into buying homes they could not afford. As for the REAL unemployment, again thank previous administrations for dropping people from the dole and also from being counted. People like yourself always want to find the fast blame. Well, it's not that easy. Those unemployment numbers grew over several years going completely uncounted, even obfuscating questions were used in polls to make the picture rosier than it was. I've know people chronically unemployed for years before the current administration. I'm sure their glad you were gullible enough to believe they were all gainfully employed up until a few months ago despite facts otherwise.”

“I DO remember the war in my living room. I survived. Instead of whitewashing the war we need people to realize that the war is bloody, it is violent and disturbing. The RAH! RAH! attitude of many Americans comes not from experience but from the stories they're told. Unlike Vietnam on back to the Civil War, this war is made up of volunteers. Many of them, despite their talk of patriotism, are in uniform because of job security. I can attest to that first hand. That is why i joined in '76. everyone except that ROTC grads joined for the job, experience and hope of funding their own further education. These days that job security comes at a high price with a blind populace only too happy to watch their reality TV shows while men and women bleed for their life of leisure, still scared of the terrorist boogyman. With massive job losses in the private sector more and more people are going to believe they can dodge a bullet. Too late, they'll discover that job security's price is too high.”

“Bill, thanks for the confirmation. Confronting the naive is becoming an ongoing sport where no one is expected to win. I overhear conversations that almost make me wish I was deaf.
The town halls are a big joke and distracting from what needs to be done. What's worse is poll after poll negates the idea that Americans don't want universal health care. They're fairly clamoring for it. Still, the talking heads in Washington take the insurance and drug money pointing at clearly insane media coverage of people (evidently driven crazy by their access to good hallucinogens and the internet) claiming a public health option will kill us all but especially the old and innocent children.
Notice the clear ignorance of the fact that no country with socialized medicine has done this or even suggested it, or why an American politician would be off his nutter enough to make such a provision.
"Idiocracy" is here.”

“You do know of the police brotherhood, right? The same brotherhood that keeps cops from reporting their fellow officers often even when that officer is in the wrong.
I get it, but that certainly is a factor in this case. Those officers are watching each others backs on what can be a dangerous and difficult job. The trust issue means sometimes you go along to get along.”

“I'm hoping that Gates doesn't sue. I'm hoping that Gates and Crowley can have that beer with Obama and iron this out. I don't expect it will solve the "crisis" but maybe they can get on with their lives (unlike the fanners of these flames).
I do think Crowely let his anger get the better of him and they both made this more than it had to be. But the arrest was definitely over the top. I think white folks (my folks) wish they could get away with back talking a cop and because they don't they think Gates was out of line, deserving arrest.
Ah, the irony....”

“Yeah, thanks to Palin and her ilk "reverse racism" is the phrase that pays.
Would that such a thing was as rampant as some delicate folks keep asserting. If it was racism would cancel itself out entirely.
Black folks having "power" over us white folks? One day, maybe. But we're not anywhere close to that day.”

“Since you were there did you get Gates "hysterics" on tape to show us...?

See, I didn't think so.

I can hear my neighbors clear as a bell from inside my house with the television on. In a neighborhood one does not need to be yelling at the tops of their lungs to be heard.”

“So, larry7777, you're a black man who knows what it's like to be confronted by authority figures based on your skin color alone?
I'm not black. I'm mostly white. I can't say I've ever been overtly harassed but I do know what it's like for people to make assertions about me based on the barest of information like my parents not being homeowners and working class with a tint in their son's skin. I'm very happy I'm not a black man in this nation.
I wish other white people would admit to that fact. If they did things would change.”

“So you favor a police state where any complaint of wrongful misuse of authority is fine. Just say you want a police state and stop mincing with subtlety.
In your world Gates would still be in jail and actually have charges pressed because he demanded rights as a citizen in a tone you don't care for regardless of whether he was right or not.
You know, you can just move to Cuba and fulfill those wishes.
Here we have rights and yes, sometimes it gets ugly. This didn't have to go down that way. Both men under-estimated the other's ego.
But a police state is much less complicated isn't it? How would you fare as a civilian in such a world? Would you just roll over for every indignation? I'm disturbed by all the gun bearers in uniform who believe authority is carte blanc.”

“Dissident D., right on the money. The rich get screwed, WATCH OUT!
The vengeance of the wealthy will not be denied unless those justice dept. folks risk them not getting them elected.
The argument that this is about the money that was stolen all I have to say is none of those investors seemed to care that repeated double digit returns on their investments never raised their curiosity any more than the financial reports lacking specific investment information that came not from where the money was being invested, but from Bernie himself.
They did not deserve being robbed but they sure did their best to look the other way so long as the money looked good.
150 years is ridiculous and serves no purpose whatsoever; not for us and not for those who were robbed. It serves the case for hollow and unremitting vengeance, period.”

“Blame yourself. I never bought a Michael Jackson item in my entire life. The cult of personality is lost on me. He was talented but and sad and I was not in his fan club. If he walked down the street across from me I'd hope he escaped notice.
No one could survive the level of fame he achieved with anything like reasonable grace.”

“Alec, thank you for pointing out what should be obvious; everyone screws up. The level of screw-up may vary from person to person but marital infidelity knows no political affiliation. People taking pleasure in this bruise to Republicans' supposed moral superiority would do well to remember that despite the hypocrisy evident in this case it's just better to let it slide.
Next week it will be a Democrat. Does it really mater?
Personally, and being 27 married without stepping out, I find no pleasure in this guy sweating it out for the news cameras.
I really have come to hate our 24 hours news coverage.”

“The internet was about all I had but it was enough to show me the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq were politically motivated.
What good did that information do when the overwhelming numbers of Americans thought the invasions were justified despite that evidence?
Jumping on the bandwagon after the invasions means nothing. If people only use the internet to entertain themselves or re-enforce their set opinion it's pretty much worthless.
For those who paid attention and got it, well the lonely days may be over but the mess remains and grows.”

“And I remember McCain's scandal with the Savings and Loan industry in the late eighties. I can list more Republican who have made bad decisions if you'd like I'll rake a little muck. There's no relevance to your remarks and the subject at hand.
And in '02 there was no scandal with Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. The reason the Reps focused on them was because, at that time the FM's were competing with private financial groups for college loan contracts.
I like the way you ignore the financial turmoil that was the result of 30 years of deregulation to point out one you didn't like. No financial firm then or now is innocent so focusing on this one incident is pretty dubious.”

“I know what led to my being a former Catholic. The lacking faith never bothered me much. I figured if I didn't have it I'd get it eventually, or not. Yeah, that's a bit naive. I know that now.
What set me to walking was the intolerance that was becoming more and more prevalent in the Catholic community. While the church seemed to shy away from the stronger evidence of that intolerance the allowing of routine evangelical preaching before the mass on Sunday morning at a church in Las Vegas in '93 was the proverbial straw. My wife continued but is much more tolerant than I am, having hoped things would shift back.
During the recent campaign she had to quit attending her church where we now live. She's started attending another more tolerant faith in recent weeks.
She probably won't ever be without faith of some kind. I support her in that even if I don't agree with her convictions. The world and especially the church should have more people like her in it.”

“It took over 40 years to create this mess and you, who mock Obama's followers as having messianic zeal, and YOU'RE the one expecting miracles? It will take a lot of time to undo this mess and you'd be the first to complain if he used the bully pulpit and signed a legion of executive orders to force his "agenda". There are crushing priorities that are not of his choosing. Most of us have the patience, grudging as it has to be, required to give him breathing room and act as responsibly as the situation merits.
Expecting him to solve this particular issue in such a short time is unrealistic given the other messes on his plate.
From personal experience I know how stupid our drug laws are, but a mere decade ago the vast majority of people signed on for this nonsense. I was never among them but believe me when I say I paid a high price for my tolerance. Luckily it wasn't too high. No, that price was paid by friends and relatives who thought it wasn't a big deal. A close friend's daughter is now facing the same price just for being in the same household of a former casual smoker of the dreaded weed.
Yeah, there's the irony. He didn't smoke anymore and still got busted for possession because his mean spirited kid sold him out for revenge.
This mentality is far from gone, so expecting miracles is more than a little naive.”

“Socially and politically we've allowed ourselves to be painted into a corner when it comes to illegal drugs. Logic has never been exercised when engaging the issue. It's a strange place we exist in when college kids engage in beer pong on the front porch of their frat houses, with no one even bothering to be concerned with their "just being college kids" drunken abuse (my daughter and her friends tell me that it's routine for some participants to get so drunk they lose motor function and have to carried by their fellow drunks to places where their moaning and lashing about will not dampen the party's fun). But, some busybody, one street over will see some guys toking a joint in their living room while watching a movie, and will then call the cops. The place will get raided and at least one of those people will end up in prison for 5 years.
In the meantime state after state is rolling back legislation that would have banned cigarettes, a true killer, in public places while the cancer wards are treating thousands of people daily, all year long, who are addicted and dying due to that unregulated "product".
Talk about being stuck in a groove...”

“Those who do not know our history should not comment on it. The reason Nixon WAS a dangerous man was the sum of his power which went beyond authorizing and attempting to cover up a break-in. This man controlled people in national security positions in the FBI and CIA. He did not think he was innocent. He honestly felt, that as president, he was above the law. He manipulated evidence, made threats upon people from his position in the White House and had the foot soldiers to carry it out. He was so dirty he had to be ousted. The White Water break-in was the equivalent to Capone's tax tax evasion trial. The corruption was so deep and complex that it would have taken decades and billions of tax payer dollars to ferret it out. Instead federal prosecutors, knowing the impatience of the American public, went with the easiest means for removing Nixon that they had and that was the obvious cover-up he engineered.”

“A constitution your kind makes a point of cherry picking and editing to suit your agenda.
Why do you guys always drop the qualifying statement regarding the purpose of having a well regulated militia when you quote the second amendment?
Know the entire constitution and quote the entire amendment before you start questioning anyone else's intentions.”

“So, our soldiers, reservists and National Guardsmen are NOT citizens?
And as far as the Neocon Fascists go it's your lot that keeps voting for them.
I love it when liberals are blamed for something they've had no say over because they've been utterly drowned out reactionary, paranoid fear-mongers.
Who finances the NRA's legions of lawyers? Which pundits endorse their agendas?
The worst thing liberals due is knuckle down to YOU guys when you refer to them as traitors for not agreeing with you.
I may not be among those who do but I'm also an outcast among all the political movements for not blindly toeing the line.”

“A major triumph for whom? I've yet to meet the legions of people who have suffered due to gun control laws. Let me tell of the numbers of people who HAVE suffered because of our gun happy society. I wish they'd either stick to the amendment's principles and stated points, which is to have a well regulated militia, or change the amendment so that the anyone can own a gun, any kind of gun, who is a citizen. At least with the latter I know it's time to barricade my house from the gun happy whack jobs who believe they have a right to kill me for no apparent reason.
My grandfather was a hunter and I've hunted. I get it. I have friends who are avid hunters. Every year these same people complain about how crowded the woods are getting with more and more reckless people with guns. This liberalization of the gun owning philosophy pretty much puts more of us at risk from these less than responsible gun owners. As a near victim of an armed "law abiding citizen" when I was 15 I can tell you, guns in the hands of stupid people get innocent people killed.
I'm glad the lower courts are handing down reasonable judgments.
My grandpa used to lament the crazy city people who occasionally hunted in the same woods he and his friends did. It's too bad his generation is all but gone because their responsibility is sorely missed in these discussions.”