DISQUS

Who knew that Heather was sleeping with Will?

Yeah, I agree. It would just be best if everybody kept quiet and didn't voice opinions. Come to think about it, why are we even allowed to hear about things like elections or the government? Maybe there's a way to have it all go on without us even knowing about it or without having any moments of pretend-accountability! We would all be so much happier!

Um, those may be the bullets of the platform but soundbites aren't policy ideas. Read the platform; it betrays a real perspective that is completely out of touch with what people need and what the country needs, at least if one is being generous to the GOP leaders who crafted the platform. My perspective is that they are completely dishonest and disengenious. Regardless of motive, the platform text is scummy and borderline evil.

Um, to my knowledge Sean Hannity isn't the one running for president.

Watching the stump speeches between the two major party candidates, it pretty much looks and sounds like a contest between and educated man and a clown.

It's up to you to choose between those. Some opt for a clown who served in the military more than three decades ago [whose experience may or may not be relevant to today's military needs]. Some prefer to describe people who go to college as "hiding" and that is surely one interesting perspective. Some prefer candidates who associate themselves with angry language from angry preachers like Falwell as opposed to Wright and that is also an interesting perspective given the history of this country. Every four years there is an oscillating debate over whether somebody's military service does or does not disqualify (or qualify) a candidate and whether somebody's executive service (or lack thereof) qualifies or disqualifies a candidate. The answers to those questions are consistently a moving target for the rabid right and the answers to those questions are, well, less fluid for those of us on the left. Some would like a candidate merely to show good judgement but it also seems clear that there are folks who want to see such judgements adhered to in the face of new and changing information.

So since I have pretty much disagreed with nearly everything McCain has said --- when I can understand what he is trying to say --- there's zero chance that I (and many of us) would pull the lever for him or any other Republican, ever. Too often people make the election about the candidate when, in fact, after the dust settles Congress makes the laws [e.g. you will see neither candidate's health care plan enacted but you will see some sausage come out of Congress based on how all the lobbying shakes down]. Elections are, 100%, always about the party platform and the folks who have been more-or-less announced to become cabinet level associates of the Executive.
And since a good part of the Republican party platform is actually reprehensible, my preference would be to never see any one hold office who would subscribe to that platform.

I don't recall which relgious teachings lie behind the statues that govern my car's
tail lights. Can somebody refresh my memory? It may have been covered when I
did traffic school but I must have dozed off. There are only 613 commandments
and it is true that I did not successfully memorize all of them in Hebrew school so
make my life a little easier and give me the relevant passages.

This reminds me of some of those old Warner Bros. propaganda cartoons which satirized Herr Hilter.

Hey everybody, I'm "John_B":

Don't look at the fact that Joe was a tax-evading, unlicensed plumber! He's a regular guy
who doesn't pal around with terrorists! And if you read the actual text of what he said, you'll
undoubtedly realize that despite the fact that you might be right about everything, you will
simply be dazzled by my spin!

I thought being a "Washington Institution" meant that you palled around with terrorists, or worked with bad dudes, of some kind or another.

howardx, you keep thinking that you are debating a human being. John_B is a computer that only spits out FOX talking points, such as "unrepentant domestic terrorist, William Ayers" and others. even this statement is patently false, but John_B continues to perpetuate the talking points anyway. remember, howardx, the computer always wins [until there is a kernel panic].

To be fair, gas shot up 75 cents for them when it had cost 5 times less than that a very short time earlier. For us that'd be like it going from our pre-war $1.82 to $9 a gallon. But then imagine also not being able to get gas --- so far all our stations haven't been out of the sutff. Not that it matters, since last month my commuter car was totalled.

Of course, I don't have to point out that it was the Carter administration that began funding the Afghan resistance to the Soviet occupation.

So maybe I should revise my earlier comment to make it a straight shut-out of Ridiculous Right-wing Ideology over the left.

And don't forget Quincy, please. Or the Ellery Queen TV show. Or McMillan and Wife, or Rhoda!

Eight years?

Last I counted it was something like 28 out of the last 40 fall into the "anti-intellectual, uber-right wing constitutional trashing, creationist-embracing, failed privatizing and deregulatiing" category. And that's being generous. Those fun-loving Clinton years get quite a few points along some of these lines (which would make it 36).

Gosh, we have all sorts of peole in high office, and who are held in high regard by much the country who are associated with known and unrepentant terrorists. Negroponte, for example, who was on the friendly side with Salvadoran death-squads. All our friends who supported the Afghanistan "Freedom Fighters". All our friends who supported the Contras.

Since when does having an association with terrorists disqualify anybody from high office? It's part of our legacy as a country.

You may think this doesn't count because it is heresay, but there it is:
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2008/09/15/be...

And you would be hard-pressed to find anyone who would make the statement that "by all accounts" she h as been doing very well at policy decisions. Sounds like she left her old town quite heavily in debt. Sounds like she may be doing very well protecting us from Putin's rearing head whenever it pops up over Alaska.

I appreciate that you have a knack for knocking down straw men (and straw women) in your posts. Someday you should get out from behind that mirror of yours and actually read something from the reality-based part of the world.

She went to college; so what? Lots of people go to college. And because she's not your "first choice" you don't quite get off the hook. Was she your second choice? Third? 100th? Or last choice (at least within the GOP)?

I am stunned by what might be the last person in this country to have such blind obeisance.
What does it take for you to acknowledge a mistake or error on the part of your comrades?
When you ask "Could all of this be because the bottom line for most of these people is the simple fact that Sarah Palin isn’t a liberal and, thus, she is to be sneered at, derided and dismissed?" it strikes me as odd that you continue to think we don't sneer and deride and dismiss because she's simply an UNQUALIFIED BUFFOON? Many of us sneer and deride and dismiss the unqualified buffoons in our party as well but you can't seem to do this. But hey, that's what comes with all the other cognitive dissonance in your life.

But it does go to the heart of "qualifications" if someone does not have a worldview that is based on empiricism and evidence. Mr. John_B may think thatt someone who believes that Dinosaurs and Humans walked the earth at the same time (and only a several thousand years ago) is indeed qualified for high (or any) office, but anybody who must make policy decisions should only do so in an appropriate manner when one can weigh evidence and take facts into account.

John_B will remind us that our beloved Constitution doesn't define such qualities as requirements to run for office. Too bad the Founders misunderestimated the extent to which basic principles of the Enlightenment should have been explicitly enshrined in the Bill of Rights [The Zeroth Ammendment: that the rights of the people to have leadership based on reason and rational thought shall not be infringed].

YOu're joking, right?

Einstein and Hawking might disagree? Both of them are excellent communicators but that is beside the point.

When someone is speaking, their unclear and muddle communications are a direct result and consequence of their own unclear and muddle thoughts. Our thoughts are actually intimately tied to the language with which we have proficiency. Unclear use of language is simply the product of poorly stored ideas and concepts.

And I think there is ample evidence that your VP candidate was not qualified to be Mayor and Governer --- being elected didn't make George Bush qualified either so you cannot invoke the simple facts of elections as evidence of qualification for office.

Really, dude, you astound me.

Can't we just be honest here? Palin is NOT QUALIFIED TO HOLD ANY POSITION WHATSOEVER.

Frankly we are all supposed to be fans of some concept called "meritocracy." Not every citizen should be considered intelligent enough or qualified to hold public office just because Grandpa says so.

For example: I am an ELITIST. Yes. It is true. I have a f*cking PhD in goddamn Astrophysics. Sarah Palin has no business actually attempting to do any Astrophysics. I think even John_B might be willing to agree to this. Well why can't we all, just for a moment, put aside questions of party affiliation and partisanship and just frigging admit that Palin really doesn't sound intelligent enough to hold the office of VP...

... let alone EVER be the tie-breaking vote in the Senate!

Hey, that's fine. Let that off-port site be in Riverside county and far from my home in Long Beach.
Or maybe that means we'll finally get that Mexico-US-Canada superhighway we've been "promised" that will run straight from some super big gigantic non-union mega-polluting port on the coast of Mexico. Then the last of the decent-paying jobs of Long Beach will be gone and we can all be successfully unemployed by the non-burgeoning service sector. And then they'll finally just give in and lie back and enjoy the great exploding LNG terminal, arguing that at least the air pollution will have been cleaned out by the fireball.

This is the best movie reviewer we can get in Long Beach?

Geez. Could we bring back any of the CSULB students? Or at least just put a stubby hyperlink to a real review?

Maybe it is enough for three of your readers to know it is "sillier" and "less thematically cohesive," or that this might be the first time George Clooney has been found to actually act (let alone fantastically), but someone more interested in film (or at least this film) might want some points regarding style, composition, camera work, relevance to particular events, past or present, continuations of themes explored in earlier works, etc.

Or at least I would have thought the editors might be interested in these things?

Hello?

You have to remember two things, Miles:

(1) If a Democrat (supposedly) calls a woman an unseemly name, the Democrat is a hypocrite.
(2) If a Republican calls a woman an unseemly name, they're not being hypocrites since the GOP party platform is explicitly anti-women, anti-equal rights, anti-equal opportunity, yatta yatta.

The onus is always on the Democrat.

Charter Schools my ass. The only thing that distinguishes Charter Schools from regular ones are motivated parents. And those are the only people who are truly accountable. School systems have had their authorities degraded over many many years by bitchy parents who complain when their children got bad grades. And over the years the systems caved to the stupid parents who only wanted to continue to reduce the authorities of teachers. Well they now have what they wanted: a system that passes students onto greater and greater apparent achievements so parents can be proud, all while the students haven't been taught a damn thing.

... and to think we almost had the best of both worlds when Disney toyed with building over here. So our underpaid hotel workers should be grateful they didn't get scabies along with the rest of the Disney clan.

We could just let Bea Albert have the last word. Albert's comments haven't added any factual material to the discussion so let's just let them float off like the flatulence that clears out a room?

Do you have some evidence that "most of these unskilled workers are from mexico" and "cross the border" to work in our hotels? Maybe you could get the "Hospitality Alliance" to admit this in public?

If only Bea Albert put so much effort into finding a real job, instead of "Self-Employed Intertubes Troll..."

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=...