Recent Comments

1. about 11 years ago on PreTeena

   Changing your name is not cheap. At least in California…

2. over 11 years ago on Matt Davies

   This issue is very complex, but in short;

   Genome Project -“There(sic) living. I pay them”

   Most illegals are not paying all their taxes for one thing. For another thing, this nation effectively subsidizes poorer Americans. They get more from the government than they pay in. So poor immigration has a lot of hidden costs that sink the notion that illegal immigrants are good for the economy. (I’m fine with humanitarian arguments. ) But the point still holds, without illegals you can still get your gutters cleaned. There are no “jobs that Americans won’t do” as some racist Mexicans like to claim. There are not even any industries that are +50% illegal immigrant. If you truly want cheap labor as your highest goal, why not argue against the minimum wage and at least be consistent? Alternately, if your personal economic good is truly your highest goal (it isn’t mine), you’d be better off with illegal immigrants guest workers than citizens.

   “Move to their dream country. Somalia if they’re a libertarian or China if they’re a fascist.”-David

   What the heck is with people claiming conservatives want America to be like Somalia? I’m more of a centrist myself, and I can still see how blatantly deceptive that claim is. You can’t tell me that the Somali government revolves around the notion of individual rights. You can’t (honestly) tell me their culture is similar to the more conservative portions of America.

   There was a point in time when internstate commerce laws couldn’t regulate what a person grew in their back yard, when government spending was much less, etc. Even with their lower level of technology and a lower standard of living for everyone on the globe, America was still not Somalia because it had very different laws and a different culture. BOTH of those things matter.

   How many mainstream conservatives do you actually see holding up Somalia as a model? There were a fair number of Americans on the hard left who held up the Soviet Union as a model. They genuinely preferred that system of government, and demonstrated that preference based on their own choices.

   I’m not defending conservative economics or social agendas here. I just think that this particular argument is a strawman and totally out to lunch. But it will not die.

3. almost 12 years ago on Ted Rall

   The criticisms of the mental health system and the harsh way that some institutionalized individuals were treated were legitimate. The problem is that instead of recognizing that those folks needed outpatient care, they were just cut loose till they ended back in some other institution like US prisons. This nation has a problem. Our non-gun homicide rate is higher than most European country’s homicide rates. Eliminating all guns, even if it were possible and a good idea and there was no substitution effect for other weapons STILL wouldn’t bring the US homicide level to that of Europe.

   We have other problems.

   I take issue with the Anti-gun nuts for obscuring the fact that guns in the hands of responsible citizens do make people safer. Kellerman, despite his anti-gun agenda and flawed methodology (he eventually recanted his findings since issues like undercounting of handguns produced a bias), produced data that showed people who owned shotguns had a lower risk of homicide than those who did not. And this finding is borne out by other studies.

   Heck, Obama’s kids go to a school where ALL the kids are protected by armed professionals. We seem to be looking at a class issue here, in regards to those who push the notion that simply reducing the number of guns can solve all our ills. The result is that the president’s kids are protected, but the guy selling jewelry on the corner store won’t be, because he can’t afford an armed guard.

4. about 13 years ago on Robert Ariail

   @dtroutma – Why not start a market with nothing but long term investors? Maybe only allow buying and selling once every three months. Either that’s a good idea and someone should do it, or “clamping down” on voluntary transactions does more harm than good.

5. about 13 years ago on C'est la Vie

   p.s. I shouldn’t have said “non-existant.” The rate for Downs is 10x higher in older mothers.

6. about 13 years ago on C'est la Vie

   @Wyntre – I have no problem with checking credentials or arguments against Palin’s positions or her merits. Let them come hard and if they knock her out, so be it. That’s part of running for high office in a democracy. But google “Palin 3 invisible” and then see what kind of leftist backlash there is against this kind of junk. Seriously. I’ve heard some slanderous attacks against Palin’s person from the left that have been met with deafening silence from the left, which would have been categorized as misogyny in a heartbeat if they had been directed against Mrs. Clinton. And the nonsense about Trig being Bristol’s daughter is bogus on its face. Trig has downs, which is almost non-existant among young mothers and dramatically more common in older ones. If that was the only slander, I would hardly complain but these things are as legion as Obama Birtherism. But most significantly, “feminism” seems to include the notion that some women (like Ms. Palin) just can’t decide what’s good for themselves or moral, which is ridiculously patronizing. Palin has become a lightning rod for this kind of hypocrisy. NOW acts like they speak for all women, and barely condescends to dismiss dissent from conservative females.

7. about 13 years ago on C'est la Vie

   @Night-Gaunt – One part of feminism that I don’t agree with is that it denies women the agency to disagree with “feminist” beliefs. I’m not a Palin supporter, but the way she’s been treated is nothing short of hypocritical. She’s been subjected to myriad sexist slurs, been forced out of office by dozens of bogus ethics violation accusations (one did seem to stick. Something like 29 were dismissed.) And the media then acted like she left office on a whim. If that had happened to a Democrat, we’d hear endless noise about a “climate of hate.” etc. Any “feminist” who doesn’t complain about Palin’s treatment has no right to complain when their own heroes are subjected to the same abuse.

8. over 13 years ago on Doonesbury

   BlueRaven:“Sorry, but the Tea Party called itself Teabaggers first.”… Sorry, no. “Teabaggers” is sexual slang used by those opponents of the tea party who have the vocabulary and courtesy of some of the worst 15 year olds. You could find Fox News repeating the term maybe once or twice before someone told the anchors what it meant. It’s no better than replacing, say, Obama’s name with, say, F%*ker. Which any decent person would also object to. If a person is capable of logic and reason, there’s little room left for obscene namecalling. And vice versa.

9. over 13 years ago on C'est la Vie

   @fritzoid – I disagree. While I’m not a randian and while I believe societies need some selfless acts (in the traditional, not randian, sense) to prosper, altruism is not necessarily synonymous with actual morality. A Spartan mother who gives up a sickly baby even though she’d rather raise it may be acting in what she’s told is society’s best interests (whether it is or not.) But her act may still be “selfless.”Just because a person selflessly sacrifices their life for an ideal doesn’t prove that that ideal is morally correct. There were no doubt people who gave their lives for Nazi-ism or Communism in the sincere belief that they were helping some general group. The purity of one’s intent is not a proxy for the goodness of one’s result. And that works the other way around, as well. I cannot count the number of times that people have assumed that bad results necessitated bad or selfish motives. It took me a long time to understand the truth of the saying “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.”

10. almost 14 years ago on Doonesbury

    @longtimecomicsfan - “If you don’t read the newspaper, you’re uninformed. If you read the newspaper, you’re mis-informed.” — Mark Twain.

    Loughner was

    Probably schizophrenic. Totally uninfluenced by Palin as far as any evidence suggests. Primarily a leftist, to the extent that he was political. Not that that matters much given #1, but it does put the lie to a lot of these dishonest attempts to blame Palin for the shooting.

    http://tim.2wgroup.com/blog/archives/002383.html

    Not that anyone on the left was complaining about Obama’s “if they bring a knife, we bring a gun” comment. Hell, google “assassinate Bush” sometime. You get a mix of leftist advice on how to assasinate Bush and actual attempts to do so.

    I’ll agree that everyone should tone down the violent rhetoric. But implying that Loughner even followed Palin is a matter of seeing what one expects to see and not what’s actually there.