Comments for Daily Renewal: Freethinking Bipartisanship

Comment on Bugs and the Quality-Deprived Society by Potrzebie

Potrzebie — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 12:16:02 +0000

And who will make the most money at the end of the day? Oh, to be an attorney in this day and age. All one has to do is turn on the television for more than, say, a half hour to see the proliferation of class action lawsuits against drug companies who have beta tested new drugs on the general public. Attorneys must get seam-splitting erections every time a new side-effect is listed. Oh wait… that’s a current side-effect too (“If you have an erection lasting more than four hours, please discontinue use and consult your physician.”), although not one anyone middle-aged or beyond would sue for.

Comment on Sarah Palin and the Tea Party by terry mckenna

terry mckenna — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 22:02:53 +0000

oddly, i still see myself as essentially conservative, and especially culturally so, but by culture i mean culture as was formerly understood before it became a euphemism for backwardness. thus i am skeptical of much modern art (conceptual art and that that followed). i am miffed by how conservatives morphed from being well educated folks like buckley or gary wills, or even terry teachout (today), to near idiots who are junior college types at best.

Comment on Sarah Palin and the Tea Party by donna

donna — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 21:33:07 +0000

Yes, but you’re reaching a far more intelligent audience than she is. ;^)

Comment on Sarah Palin and the Tea Party by terry mckenna

terry mckenna — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 21:08:05 +0000

to be frank, were we more widely read, i might have avoided moron, but i think the rhetorical nature of sentence was pretty clear. but hey, i really am against the over politicized language that makes even disabled problematical. i, by the way, am deaf in one ear. not a person with deafness in one ear, but deaf. and were i crippled (by polio, or severe arthritis) mincing words would not make me less so.

the harry reid flap should have led to an examination of political correctness. what made harry reid’s words less offensive than trent lott’s was not the correctness or lack of it, but the meaning. reid was suggesting that a particular Negro could run for president. trent lott was saying that a man who wanted to keep Negroes in their place would have made a great president. and that’s unacceptable. we can accept it for 18th and 19th century folks, but not leaders today.

Comment on Sarah Palin and the Tea Party by Brian

Brian — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 20:26:44 +0000

An interesting word choice there, given that the right is under attack for using their new “R” word (“retard”). For “moron” was originally the invention of faux-scientists attempting to use IQ scores to further an essentially racist agenda — see Stephen Jay Gould’s “The Mismeasure of Man” for a thorough and actually entertaining keelhauling of this Bell Curve lunacy.

Once again, I’ll know our society is healing when Palin is like us now — an ultra-marginal, 50-hit-per-day nonentity on the web, and you’re giving the keynotes at right-wing conventions instead.

Comment on It CAN Happen Here! by terry mckenna

terry mckenna — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 14:40:48 +0000

i love my nieces and nephews and one them made an off the cuff comment that she hated Obama and said it with what sounded like genuine anger. this was at a family event, and came for no reason that i could discern. sigh. she is still my niece, and so i stand back.

i don’t expect everyone to agree with me, but it surprises me that anyone is so hateful so early. i was unimpressed with bush, but didn’t grow to genuine disgust till after September 11, when he became bush the warrior.

Comment on It CAN Happen Here! by Mardé

Mardé — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 00:14:40 +0000

A gardener, a real nice friendly guy who started going to our church a couple years ago, a good sense of humor, works for free on our church garden, I find he loves Glenn Beck. I lost my cool and yelled at him, then I apologized a few minutes later. He took it fine, shook my hand with a friendly, happy smile, but I know he believes in Fox News. What to do? I just hope we keep being easy and friendly with him while he keeps hearing the other side from us. But it’s scary how easy the guy was taken in.

Comment on Jobs, Jobs, Jobs. Time to Consider What We Lost to our Ideology of Free Trade by terry mckenna

terry mckenna — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 22:21:20 +0000

at a minimum, sure. but i also see myself wondering why we can’t do something about products like furniture making. we have sustainable wood, and (for the nonce) workers trained in wood working. yet we have watched as cheap 3rd world furniture (Ikea for one, but others as well) have pushed moderate priced American wood furniture off the market. the american products may be more expensive, but they are better quality – trust me, i have worked with wood in my own (failed) business. and wood working is the sort of activity well suited to rural areas, like rural NY state and Appalachia. and yes, it might require an import duty, but we built our industrial base with import duties. without, we abandon the rural wood workers to what… not even walmart exists in the mountains.

Comment on Jobs, Jobs, Jobs. Time to Consider What We Lost to our Ideology of Free Trade by donna

donna — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 21:47:48 +0000

In regards to manufacturing, the best thing we could do is get off the U.S. standard, since other than three countries, everyone is now pretty much metric…

Comment on Cleaning Up Our Cultural Chernobyl by donna

donna — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 18:50:46 +0000

“One of the formative lessons every writer (and editor) learns is that the adjective is the uranium-235 of language. Adjectives are to be treated as highly radioactive material: when used correctly, they can light up a city; used with laze, stupidity, and excess, they can turn you and your work into the artistic equivalent of Chernobyl.”

That is awesome. I’m stealing it for my facebook status. Quoting you, of course….