suec03's Comments (153)

“I thought Yom Kippur was a day to reflect deeply on one's relationship with the divine and duty to one's fellow beings. There are 364 other days on the secular calendar to consider one's relationship to government and how through changing government policies we can improve life for the rest of the human community. Beck should apologize, get out his calendar and choose a different date. Do I think he will do this? No.”

“I do like to listen to the Economist's Greg Ip when they have him as a guest on PBS NewsHour. I am glad he moved from the Wall Street Journal to The Economist, since they need his perspective. The WSJ, especially under Murdock's News Corp., seems a lost cause.”

“Try The American Prospect magazine at www.prospect.org. It is a general audience public policy monthly magazine founded by Robert Kuttner, Paul Starr and Robert Reich (formerly Pres. Clinton's Secretary of Labor and now a professor of public policy at UC Berkeley). Its motto is "liberal intelligen­ce." The editors, staff writers and guest expert writers do in depth (3-6 page) pieces on public policy issues (including the Obama administration), keeping economics, politics, and the needs of poor and middle-class Americans in mind. Many issues include a 24-page section of articles on a chosen theme for the month. It is not a dry scholarly journal; it is an interesting news magazine that you and your family might enjoy. The articles (and book reviews in the back) could be a good jumping off point for discussion with students in the family.”

“It is available at my public library. I'll save the money and borrow issues from the library if I want to read the Economist (or use the website so long as access is free).”

“Just keep talking Joe Barton! Apparently he ignores the advice that it is better to remain silent and be thought to be a fool, than to speak and remove any doubt! I think we could find a number of elementary school students who could find the fault in Barton's logic. Is he suggesting that all we have to do is find an impoverished country with relatively little manufacturing or vehicle traffic compared to the US, and that is what we would have to endure to have lower carbon dioxide levels?? Spoken just like a politician from an oil-producing state! Heaven forbid we consider less-polluting technologies!!”

“Feliz Navidad=Merry Christmas, literally "happy birth (of Jesus)". If you are going to get snarky, at least spell "Feliz" correctly.”

“Certainly the British and the Russians commemorate victories over Napoleon Bonaparte and the French army. They may or may not set aside a date on the calendar to party about it. Tschaikovsky composed the 1812 Overture about it, which oddly is played all over the US for the Fourth of July (probably because of the cannons).”

“That is quite interesting. Would you share the book, chapter and verses so I can look it up?”

“If we could ship you all our Republican obstructionist legislators, we could fix our revenue problems and pass the budget on time.”

“And the Republicans have held and used veto power over our state budget, since they only need one-third of the vote plus one to defeat any budget.”

“What has happened in my home state of California is the takeover of the California Republican Party and its legislative caucus by the most conservative part of their party. Any Republican legislator who crosses the aisle to vote with the Democrats to break the budget impasse will be targeted by the Republicans for defeat at the next election. We are decades overdue in reexamining California's revenue structure since passage of the Prop 13 restriction on property tax increases. Since we have been unable to raise revenue through the tax code, we have had wave after wave of bond issues put on the ballot to borrow our way out of the problem. The borrowing spigot is now less available. The Republicans hold control over the state budget, because they only need one-third plus one vote in the Legislature to defeat the budget, which requires a two-thirds vote for passage. It got so dire this year, that even if a tax increase on the wealthiest Californians could have been passed, the revenue generated would arrive too late. Thus the only compromise the GOP would allow through has been another penny increase in the state sales tax. That raises it to 8.75% in much of California and 9.25% in Los Angeles, as they have an extra half-cent levy which I believe supports mass transit. In addition, our state government has increased the vehicle license fee. Not the Democrats' fault!”

“Visits with Mexican presidents have taken place at other locations. I am glad that, even on his way to a conference in Trinidad, President Obama met with the Mexican president in the Mexican capital.”

“Thank you, Ted Lewis, for posting this piece. More Americans should read pieces like this and begin to study further about Mexico. Mexican presidents serve a single six-year term and are barred from running for reelection. This means Mexico will next elect a president in 2012 when the US does. In spite of the issues surrounding his 2006 questionable election, President Calderon will be president of Mexico during practically all of President Obama's current four-year term. I hope the Obama Administration and its State Department do not limit their view of Mexico to the Calderon Administration, but look to the larger problem of the transfer of goods and people between our two countries. US immigration policy must be changed. It is unrealistic to expect Mexicans lawfully present in the US to wait ten years for a visa to become available to immigrate their relatives. It makes too much temptation to give up on the wait and to hire a smuggler to speed up the process. That just sets up disrespect for unreasonable legal barriers. We need a US immigration policy that takes into account the need to admit a reasonable number of foreign workers and their families with a path to eventual US citizenship. We must work against using expanded guest worker programs that just postpone dealing with the systemic economic problem. We must also reexamine trade policies that undermine small farmers in rural Mexico, leaving them unable to compete with imports and turning them into landless migrants.”

“Have you tried running AVG in the background instead of MacAfee and running SpyBot and AdAware weekly?”

“Because if we all read it for free, their revenues drop and they lay off staff. Eventually some of the staff they let go will be the reporters and columnists that you have been reading online. I hope the New York Times can find a revenue model that will allow it to keep the good journalists. I hope that won't require charging for online access, but I won't be shocked if it does.”

“So long as states like Texas discriminate against gay singles and couples, Texas may miss out on highly-qualified scientists and businesspeople who are gay and choose to take their talents to states that do not so discriminate. Such negative attitudes are hurtful to Texas' success.”

“I hope this gets people started learning more about the US Supreme Court. Please, no more calls to take same-sex marriage cases to the US Supreme Court at this time! The foundation has not been laid to get a positive decision there. The California Supreme Court has shown itself more open to the equal protection of the laws argument in same-sex cases than the US Supreme Court would be at this time, yet there is no guarantee the California court of six Republican appointees and one Democratic appointee will rule against Prop 8. Remember, this is the same US Supreme Court that still feels "In God We Trust" on US money is not a First Amendment violation.”

“Thanks. I wish more people would look critically at that slash and splice job Hannity or whoever did on Rev. Wright's sermon. If you read up on him and look at what came after the Hannity clip ends, you will see Rev. Wright is like a school bus: he picks up his congregants at the emotional place where they already hurt and redirects them to a more positive destination, based in a progressive interpretation of the Bible. He was actually preaching that although we can rightfully be critical about what has been done at home and abroad in the name of the USA, we are called to love our neighbors and go out into the world to do justice.”

“It was by majoring in Latin American Studies--an interdisciplinary major combining humanities (Spanish, Portuguese, history) and social sciences (political science, economics, anthropology) that I became aware of the history of US government involvement with Latin American governments, as well as the history of the slave trade and economic dependency. To put it in your terms, through studying history, I learned about "inhumanit­y."”

“Did you sleep through the part of world history class where we were taught about the "Dark Ages" or Middle Ages in Europe? Fundamentalist Christianity had taken hold in Europe. Science was suppressed. Christian-­controlled European societies believed the world was about to end and earthly matters should be rejected, so scientific inquiry should be rejected. Meanwhile, in the Arabic world, scientific discovery continued, with developments in mathematics such as algebra, and developments in surgery and medical discoveries. There was a great intellectual tradition in the Muslim world. This caused a great loss to Spain when the Catholic Spanish monarchs drove the Muslim moors out of Spain. Arabic base ten numerals were an improvement over the Roman numeral system. How fast can you calculate MCMXXVII minus LXXI? It is much simpler to use Arabic numerals: 1927 minus 71. We use Arabic numerals to this day.”

“What constitutes a late arrival? There have been Lebanese and Syrian Christians and Muslims in the US since the 19th century.”

“There are plenty of atheists who oppose authoritarian government, who oppose torture and who oppose the death penalty. It is a logical fault to connect atrocity to atheism just because some who committed atrocities were also atheists. The Spanish Inquisition carried out torture and murder in furtherance of Roman Catholic control. That does not make all modern-day Catholics sponsors of religiousl­y-inspired torture and murder.”

“Old-time catalogs like Sears Roebuck and Montgomery Wards were printed on newsprint, not shiny paper. You certainly don't want to flush modern coated catalog paper down a toilet!”

“I think you mean John YOO, not Woo. He is Korean-American, not Chinese-American. If I were assigned to his class, I would meet with an advisor to switch. I have no confidence in his distorted legal reasoning.”

“Some of the choruses were announced, and others were not, without any pattern. I also noticed that the gay men's chorus was not announced. Those men did a great job, despite the snub. There was another chorus dressed in red and blue that also seemed not to be labeled.”