seerickson's Comments (35)

“It is like the weeks and months of relentless lies and charges on the floor by republicans that democrats want to kill grandma, and then Wilson countercharges and the crying from them is "he should apologize"? They can dish it out but they can't take it.”

“You can find accurate dissections of every side on mediamatters. But my question to you would be how can you use Fox input in your consideration of a rational decision if their information is inaccurate, slanted askew and you have to do hours of digging and research to find out what is a lie and what is a genuine concern or alternative attitude.

In my college education, we were taught that in any scholarship (and that should apply to journalism too) if biases and worldviews are unacknowledged the scholarship is inherently untrustworth. At the least it should be called a persuasive piece (propaganda). But even that doesn't quite go far enough with faux news as there is no clear delineation between their opinon shows and most of their so-called news for the average viewer.”

“Let's not forget that Mrs. Cheney had an important post in the Department of Education and tried to slip under the radar a requirement for curriculum to go back to all of the worst mishmash of historical mythology about American history, that was intended to shape students perceptions to the Right. And force schools to pay for the ridiculous garbage.”

“the medieval system of serfs were slaves. indentured servant meant you had owed a debt and you or your children could work it off whereas slaves are actual property. Many paid for their trip to the New World or Australia that way. European slave dealers took advantage of the well established by the Muslims Northern African slave trade. Muslims were disallowed from taking other Muslims into slavery, A college chum of mine from Ethiopia said their tradition said the majority of slaves were African Christians because of that fact.”

“Wasn't this what Kon-Tiki voyage/book/video all about? Proving that Egyptian papyrus boats were fully capable of crossing the ocean.”

“I'm not sure where you get your "alternative history". I thought like the Jews, Muslims do not eat pigs, so this would be your reverse point wouldn't it? Muslims and Jews in spain were the ones with the libraries and culture.

Furthermore your point about "Arabic Numerals"? The Hindi were the end result of the same "Indo-European" invasion that "enculturated" and provided a language to the middle east on their way to wiping out or dominating the well developed culture that already existed there in the peninsula. So they both got Sanskrit from an earlier people they developed from. Just saying. and yes, the Mughals (or ancient Persians) had their own well developed culture that gave the conquering tribes wealth and luxury, along with harems and treating women like property which originally wasn't part of the matriarchal tribal people that became the first Muslims. But even in those primal days had a rich cultural tradition from the Near East melting pot that had centuries of ebbs and flows but went back to Sumeria. The Muslims collected libraries and wisdom from every culture they encountered or conquered. While they had preferential treatment for in the law for those of their own religion they treated all people with respect, curiousity and tolerance. At least until the bigoted crusades triggered poste and riposte bigotry and violence. Even so it is incestuous feuding, as Judaism, Islam and Christianity all are branches of the same religion.”

“Until post enlightenment idealogues, in the 19th century particularly ,started trying to apply the scientific method to ridicule and eliminate faith and theology there wasn't this artificial division. In fact science arose out of a reverence for learning about and understanding the "book of creation" which was a way for our understanding of God. It was a huge misuse of the principles of science to promote justification for slavery by saying that only white people were really human and capable of freedom and adult responsibility creating the pseudoscience myth of social darwinism and concept of "race" which no matter how it has been proven to be not borne out by the genetic evidence still gets promoted. Pseudoscience was also used, just like theology often was, to promote that women were either a seperate species and incapable of public discourse. Narrowness and intolerance is obviously not a theologic monopoly”

“This blog illustrates what's so common in these positive thinking arguments.­..namely that if it doesn't work it is the fault of the attempting magic user not the system. circular argumentation for fallicious reasoning and magical thinking. If something happens its because I was thinking positively, but if it doesn't I have to devote my time and energy to whip my thoughts into place. Yes, you can make lemons from lemonade, such as in your examples of how those with trauma and tragedy can still be an inspiration, but you also need to keep being able to recognize consensus reality and profoundly accept and come to peace with both unhappy life events, and the environmental factors, politics, societal systems and thought patterns that have placed you in these circumstances. Otherwise it too often is blaming the victim and creates apathy instead of activism.”

“His greatest point that it takes a grass roots popular movement like smoking cessation, mothers against drunk drivers changing the laws and the green movement created by education, recognition and motivation. however, that requires a shattering of the current mythology of our medical system that in truth puts the emphasis on crisis ER drama and expensive interventions and procedures, but also on pharma promoted iatrogenic (doctor or treatment generated disease) that creates a market for its often toxic drugs. James would only be motivated to quit smoking, lose weight and exercise if the curtain was removed from the reality that chronic disease is a logical outcome of what has become our culture. But traditional medicine has been conservative, with a tremendous inertia from recognizing integrative and alternative care and are primarily adopting it now because of the competition and demand from the consumer. Which is again a great point he makes above the fundamental change needed has to be community and consumer driven. a bandaid of providing or requiring insurance for every one that results in the same crisis driven care won't give any improvement in those WHO outcomes, or it would be not enough to look back and point at a successful outcome from this hard fought legislation. There is nothing in the strategy outlined above that haven't been stressed by Obama at one time or another, but the Republicans have managed to distract and shift the subject to insanity and away from real discussion of the issues.”

“This was great, I've been going around muttering for the last few days "with friends like these who needs enemies" our so called left wing liberal pundits have been doing all of the repukes work for them. Listening to several days of rants from Ed Schultz on how "WEAK" our president is because he is quietly confident instead of letting himself be manipulated and bullied into acting an loud mouthed idot like the republicans are, and of course the media have jumped on the republican spinning band wagon. "wow, remember how Hilary said in a debate she doutbed whether he had the guts to be president" It was either on Morning Joe or Hardball.

We progressives aren't being let down by the administration but by the spin doctors, even those who are supposedly on our side, who made up that whole story by parsing the word essential to death. Its like no one can cope with a white house trying to actually have a discussion and trying to be inclusive. Now Krugman, but he's not a big surprise either. Then they take any clarification about support for the public option that their sputterings having been effective. As if that would make the Prez strong to be susceptible to bullying and dictation from anyone, even we who haven't been elected to anything. You gotta just say hmmmmn. Thanks Chez for being a voice of reason, although I'm afraid you are going to be drowned out.”

“and they have better outcomes than ours....hm­mmmmmn”

“well said”

“Perhaps this is another plank to building a structure of imprisonment for those who do the work, all the rhetoric during the too brief employee driven market of the dot.com boom before Bush got into office was that the ability of employees to pick and choose jobs resulted in the rise of "productivity costs" because of rising salaries and benfits. Strategies were discussed of how to counteract that by returning the worker to extreme neediness so that they could be more profitable. Sometimes I wonder if the republicans tanked the economy on purpose to bring this about. Ungrateful uppity plebians us workers. If so, it seems to have really backfired on them, but they don't seem to understand that. as long as the discrepency between CEO pay and average worker in the company continues to part company there seems to be little concern for quality of life. Now they try to twist it to an ideal for the worker to be somehow self sufficient and pay for their own independent insurance when wages, security and property ownership for the worker and middle class has tanked. That's "free market" for you which is actually never "free" because it is always paid at someone's expense, usually the ones doing the actual work.”

“Great comment”

“You give him a little too much credit I think, His specious argument totally ignores everything that doesn't support it for one, it occurs in an existential vaccuum of the way things are currently in a context of the "big government" is the problem answer to everything these guys have. For another its unsustainable because it is unregulated, health insurance is no longer limited to."nonpro­fits" and regulation doesn't just rise organically from market forces as Greenspan finally admitted in his mea culpa.”

“How I understand his point above the right to life isn't an essential right or to quality but allow every person on their own to act unhindered to "pursue" life whatever he thinks that means. Its like the thinking of those antiabortion prople who decry killing babies while dismantling any services that would allow an equal playing field for that child to have a happy, safe and healthy life. While I think that the right to life at bare minimum should include health care, food, shelter, safety from others "poisoning my backyard". In other words we agree on government to have REGULATION and then thrash out what fairness in that means. Those are the proper and civilized territory of government, rather than a savage darwinian throw them out on the scrap heat and see who survives.

What totally mystifies me is why those who claim to religious faith as the central motivator of their lives adopt these cretins and their bankrupt philosophy. Yeah, let's go back to slavery, ignorance, bestiality, unfettered pollution of the beginning of the industrial revolution, or even the good old days of the great depression. My mom said when Reagan was talking about the good old days before welfare -- "yeah, I remember those days, when the town widow took in washing to buy food and sent out her little children to scour the railroad tracks for coal that had fallen to the side which was their only source of heat".”

“On the other hand I had a chronic dermatitis on my ankle for almost ten years which is turning out to be easily treatable with the write combination of burn cream and steroids from a dermatologist which had caused me much misery. Also lack of dental care is having some serious health considerations.

If health reform continues to only cover the medical monopoly of big pharma and dysfunctional disease management, rather than holistic functional medicine we will continue to have rising poor health no matter what the outcome of the current legislation.”

“I am much in agreement about this post. I had been diagnosed with fibromyalgia, when after going back and geting a college degree I got a better job at 28K a year but my MNCare premium leaped for me and my full time college student daughter from $39 a month to $384. When I called and questioned that I was told it was "cheap" if I looked into direct buy, which may be true, but also weighed against the reality that while it would cover "catastrophe" it didn't cover anyway all of the alternative treatments which were promoting my recovery such as supplements, massage and other body/energy work, environmental remedies such as air and water filters which added up to about $200 a month.

I would hear about new treatments being trialed by the medical community but couldn't participate. But ironically now that I lost my job and am on unemployment I qualified for transitional medical assistance and going in for my first physical in 15 years I was told that not only had I made almost a complete recovery from my fibromyalgia which is supposedly unheard of in the medical community but I had avoided the drug addiction to pain killers and muscle relaxers that every other patient he had inherited in his practice with fibro has with their personality changes, side effects and continuing poor prognosis.”

“Grassley is quoted as saying that him and Ben Nelson are interechangeable and work well together as they know that either one would be the top ranking in the committee-- just depends on who is in the majority, so they make a point to look first to each other. 'nough said. Ben Nelson needs to go”

“The one point I don't see mentioned is that when these insurance companies paid these fines their accountants put it under the cost of doing business column and it was added into the insurance rate increases charged users. It will only teach them a lesson if it can be required to come out of profits. I agree with other posters that this was almost certainly only a small tip of the iceburg of fraud that goes on systemically. Stories of people in dire straights being denied the coverage they paid for are endemic. There wouldn't be all the high costs for bureaucrats and billcollectors if coverage for all was straightforward and the american people's lives wouldn't be destroyed.”

“As Jesse Ventura pointed out the US has "only" tortured muslims making this have a racist and bigoted dimension.”

“The report was on msnbc, a live press announcement, the original news release that was posted on drudgereport.com... according to which the mother in law was on the floor in restraints, they had gone up grabbed the mayor in his boxers dragged him down to the kitchen put him in cuffs. THEN one of the labs started crossing the floor toward one of the police who pulled out his gun and shot. the mayor said the only thing that over friendly dog would have done was lick them, and there was nothing that the cops said that as he reported that would have made him feel they thought they were actually threatned. Afterwards as they were looking through the premises one of the cops went into the backyard and shot the other dog who was running away to the farthest end of the yard.”

“euphemisms”

“Michale, how about walking a mile in the shoes of the mayor, his mother in law his wife or his poor dead black labs?”

“I don't see anybody anywhere bring up what I think is the obvious point, the US conducting a preemptive strike against another country, Iraq, robs us of any moral ground to criticize Russia's actions. Hoist on our own petard. The hypocrisy of Bush and McCain to chide them harshly knows no bounds.”