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fletch

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Everything posted by fletch

  1. More good news for Obama. The Baseball Hall of Fame Committee will present him with The Cy Young Award during his induction ceremony next year for his performance at this years All-Star Game. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kRGK3QfcEqw
  2. Do you think individual rights are a good idea, or do you think they should only kick in when everyone elses needs and wants are first met?
  3. Doesn't a place like Israel need restrictions on immigration?
  4. No. Myself acknowledges reading the other thread after you made it known to him. His first post mentions nothing of the other thread, only critiques of your new drawing. His second post was written with knowledge of the other thread.
  5. I can tell you that you aren't going to have much success convincing anyone around here of anything if you cant go four words without contradicting yourself. I think you have to start by asking yourself: Why do I believe? Since you have ruled out any evidentiary basis for your belief, there isn't much reason for any rational person to buy into it then, is there?
  6. I think you are right, but I also get the impression that Obama is also of the view that things like individual rights, liberty, democracy are Western ideals and the West has no right to impose its ideals on others. When he says things like "the world is watching'' I get the idea that he is really saying "go ahead and get these unruly masses under control, but just dont kill too many of them in the process." I dont know if he is afraid to stand up for democracy for fear of being compared to Bush or what, but it hard to imagine that his administration cannot see the benefit to the US that a change in the leadership of Iran would mean.
  7. You started off by arguing that "Letterman doesn't do statutory rape jokes, in fact he makes a point out of not allowing any allusions to sex with a minor, and has been doing so for 30 years." Now you say this: So which is it? Does Letterman have a 30 year history of scupulously avoiding sex jokes that involve a minor? Or does he just run with a joke without research? It cant be both. If you are going to do a joke about a woman and her daughters visit to New York, wouldnt someone with a 30 year history of avoiding sexual jokes involving minors at least do a little reaserch into which daughter it was? A staff with the standards you claim they have would. But in this case they didnt so Letterman owes the woman an apology. Total nonsense. You clearly dont know what a joke is or how they are constructed. Virtually any good joke has some basis in fact, reality or the way one views reality. Use your own joke about two Jews as an example. Would it make sense if instead of Jews you used two Christians? Two rednecks? Why do you think that is? Are you also claiming that there were no facts involved in the Palin joke? His whole monologue is basically current events (facts) that are infused with non-factsor other non related facts to make them funny. The Palin joke fused many facts together to create fiction in the form of humor. Trouble was, this one was not all that funny or very well thought out. More nonsense. Adding the second half of the sentence doesnt change anything, which is why I left it off. Had you written it this way the first time I wouldnt have said anything. But since you took the time to re-write the sentence, you already knew that.
  8. From my experience with Christians, they are more advocates for what they see as tradition and traditional values. Any support they show for capitalism is based more upon how they see it related to traditional America, than as a value itself.
  9. Its almost as if Obama has made the calculation that the protesters will ultimately lose out and if he sides with them now it will make it that much more difficult to deal with the Iranian govt in the future. He seems more interested appeasing the current regime than in the Iranian people liberating themselves from it. It is a rather disgraceful position for an American president to take.
  10. Ok. Lets start form the beginning. Here is the 'joke' that started the whole thing: “One awkward moment for Sarah Palin at the Yankee game, during the seventh inning, her daughter was knocked up by Alex Rodriguez.” Now, Palin was in New York with her daughter, Willow, the 14 yr old, not Bristol, the 18 yr old. Why would I or anyone else assume that Letterman was talking about the daughter that was not in New York and was probably home in Alaska, and not the one that was actually in New York? No, he didnt name the daughter he was referring to, but perhaps he should have if wanted his meaning to be clear. For example, lets say you have two brothers, Ed and Joe. Ed is a drunk and Joe is not. You and your brother Joe come to New York and I say something humorous like: One awkward moment for Jake Ellison at the Yankee game, during the seventh inning, his brother passed out drunk and fell out of the bleachers. Would you assume I was talking about the brother, Ed, who was not in New York or the brother, Joe, who was? Even if I grant that Lettermen intended the joke to be aimed at the older daughter, that doesnt mean that an honest person could not conclude that he was talking about the other daughter. As for your other claim that Bristol has "a habit of getting pregnant," does doing something one time constitute a habit in your mind?
  11. Dont look now, but that joke he told the other night about Palins daughter was a sexual joke about a minor. While you are obviously impressed by his supposed 30 year streak of not telling such jokes, well, he just blew it. But look on the bright side, he can always start a new streak. He's already got about a week under his belt.
  12. Was Bristol at the Yankee game, which was the basis for the 'joke?' Was Letterman's first statement really an apology? Or a snotty monologue?
  13. This strikes me as a bit arrogant. Barbara Boxer doesnt like being called ma'am: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ryEGmkjv8R8
  14. That constitutes proof to you? The proof of who he was talking about lies in the fact that there was one Palin daughter at the Yankee game--the 14 year old. So like it or not, the joke (if you can even call it that) was aimed at a minor. I dont see why Palin should have assumed Letterman was talking about the daugher that wasnt at the game just because Letterman wants to backpedal or pretend he has some standards. I see no reason to cut this asswipe any slack. It was a stupid and obviously ignorant thing to say and he should have been man enough to immeidately apoligize for his own and his writers' stupidity. You mean the way they ignored his apology in this story from the Fox News website on June 16? http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,526525,00.html Actually, Mr. Palin stayed completely out of the news while his wife has routinely attacked and mocked for the past year. He didnt step forward until Letterman attacked his 14 yr old daughter. He had every right to be upset and would have been justified as a father to punch that clown Letterman in the face. I wonder if Letterman would find that funny.
  15. Do you have another way of defining gender? If my putting on a wig and some lipstick makes me a woman, then you wont mind me loitering about the "ladies room" or "womens locker room" while you are in there changing.
  16. Well, you could always take a look at how well central planning has gone in North Korea. Unless, of course, starvation was the central plan, then it has been a smashing success.
  17. I dont think you can necessarily draw that conclusion from the poll you cited. There is no way of knowing, for instance, how many of those who feel that Hamas is leading them in the wrong direction feel that way because they see Hamas as not being militant enough, or oppose the current leadership or tactics but not the ideological movement. Either way, this poll cannot be used to measure the level extremism in Gaza...except to say that is still quite large.
  18. For the past 6 months, neither religion nor the religious right has been driving the agenda. The left has total control over than now. If there is a religious issue that needs to be addressed and hasn't been, I cant think of it.
  19. This clip at 6:20 gives the movie credits and lists the songs http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=snr8fLYWAwQ...feature=related It might be one of those.
  20. More religious than the 1850's? The 1750's? I doubt it. Somehow Christianity and Capitalism co-existed just fine throughout the freest most productive years of US history. It is the secular left that seeks to enslave us, not the Christian right.
  21. Correct. 1930's America didn't have the benefit of hindsight that we have either. We now know the real causes of the Depression and that FDR's actions only lengthened it. Despite that, we seem willing to repeat the same mistakes today. Plus, we were a producer nation back then and a consumer nation now; we were a creditor nation back then and a debtor nation now. We still have all FDR's programs hanging around our necks as well as those of LBJ's Great Society and everything since. There is a big difference, I think, between the first nail in the coffin and the last.
  22. Foreigner--Waiting for a girl like you
  23. I think you are going to have to fill in that blank since, if you rule out political or regulatory figures, for what purpose would it be necessary for CEO Johnson to buy allies and influence? Are there advantages to being a $100 billion company over a guy working out of a storage unit? Of course. Wealth has its advantages. That is why people pursue it. You seem to want to change that, however. You want political power to weigh in on the side of Miller to make up for the disparity in wealth that he has with Johnson. It is that mentality that ultimately ruins it for Miller. Because once you open the door for political influence to enter the market, you make it possible for that influence to be influenced; usually by the party with the most cash. In other words, the very thing you decry in your post, you make possible. Maybe you have some evidence as to which particular regulations Bush eased to cause the current economic problems. I will agree with you in one respect: deregulation is very dangerous. When you have a market already distorted by mountains of government regulation, removing certain regulations while leaving others in place can cause just as many negative and unforeseen consequences as enacting new regulations.
  24. Is he really a pragmatist or does he just play one on TV? I, for one, dont believe a word of this: "... if we can fix this problem [healthcare] entirely through the market, I'm happy to do it that way." If he really believed that, why would he have set aside $600,000,000,000 as a health care 'down payment' in his first budget? He has no intention of turning to the free market for a solution to health care or anything else. All these summits and task forces are to select the best possible government solution to the problem. From what I can tell, the market, in his mind, is the cause of the problems. So I dont expect him to seek solutions there.
  25. Given your previous posts on the subject, I dont know that assuming you support Obama could be classified as 'baseless.' As for your original question: Who is better than Barack Obama? I suppose if your goal was to expand the size of government, socialize medicine, balloon the debt, punish achievement, reward failure, redistribute wealth, and extinguish the remaining embers of smokestack-capitalism, then there might well be no one better than Barack Obama.
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