Comments by Synova
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Posted on October 31 at 8:06 p.m.
Ethanol subsidies might help farmers but they hurt everyone else. They don't save the environment in any way shape or form, so that's not even a plus.
Is what's good for you but really bad for people who have to buy food, a good thing? Milk prices are through the roof... if I can get a gallon for less than $4 I figure I've got a deal. Bread prices, too... food prices throughout the world are drastically inflated.
Did anyone point out at any time that the *obvious* result of subsidies for ethanol is pushing the price of food up and up?
If we're serious about reducing our dependence on foreign oil as a nation (and not just getting more money in our own pockets) nuclear power is the bedrock of it... taking advantage of our own oil (drill baby, drill) is another (and Obama also promises to make Oil companies exploit our reserves) and taking advantage of *all* other alternative sources... biofuel too, (but not made from food crops!), solar, wind and everything.
Anyone who says they're for energy independence and isn't pushing nuclear to carry the base-load, is trying to sell you something.
Posted on October 31 at 7:52 p.m.
Considering the really vile things said here about McCain's military service...
You need to say that louder... in public... where more people can hear you.
Posted on October 31 at 7:49 p.m.
Wow.
No lack of "simple writing" is there.
If Obama's rallys aren't so nasty it's because the anti-Palin posters here aren't there. But they are every bit as nasty... starting with the bile spewed at Palin for simply being a woman and ending with someone pushing over a 75 year old man in Florida and putting him in the hospital. Not to mention somebody going through government records and personal information about Joe the Plumber and releasing it to the public. How would you like if someone at the Court House there in Fergus Falls did that to you because you had an Obama sign in your yard? Has Obama condemned that action or has he attacked Joe himself in his speeches, tacitly approving and encouraging others to violate other people's right to privacy?
Has everyone given leave to their reason?
Obama is not a muslim terrorist, and probably not racist either, for all that he sat in a church for 20 years that makes Palin's church look just like the church YOU attend. But he is liberal, as we'd expect any Democrat to be. He's voted with his party 95% of the time (more than even the party leaders have). He believes in solving problems through government programs. A lot of people really like that.
A lot of people don't.
McCain is a moderate Republican who has voted with his party less than just about anyone else calling him or herself a Republican... despite the ads Obama runs emphasizing his votes with Bush which were for some particular sub-section of votes. McCain is notorious for leaving the party fold and working with Democrats. He doesn't even *like* Bush.
Palin got elected on her own effort and bucked her own party to enact reforms in Alaska. SHE wants to drill for oil in a tiny subsection of ANWAR. McCain does not.
Can't you vote for Obama without lying about McCain or Palin?
Posted on April 10 at 4:04 p.m.
I will admit that "beefmobile" caught my attention.
After reading the article, however, I am just as much in the dark as before I read it. What, pray tell, is a beef check off? And it seems I would have to visit the beefmobile to find out what the money involved was supposed to be used for because it's never once mentioned.
Posted on April 9 at 2:16 p.m.
I'm pretty sure that "not reading it" was exactly what this person suggested, no?
In fact, this sort of censorship is the proper sort. People ought to let others know, and certainly let content providers know, what they find offensive. Choices are made every day to exclude untold numbers of comic strips. Knowing which ones the customers like or dislike is useful.
I like Dilbert.
Posted on April 4 at 12:07 a.m.
I got out of my "white town bubble" over 20 years ago. Went back to a choir concert at Underwood HS after being overseas and just stared at the blond and thought, "how do they tell each other apart?" I've enjoyed listening to the delightful polyglot of shoppers where individual sentences were in at least three different languages including "Tech". I've enjoyed living between black families across from Iranians, kitty-corner to Hindi and two houses over from my good Jewish friend and about two blocks from the largest Sikh religious facility in the US... all in the same house. And now I live in a state that is primarily hispanic.
Not speaking English isn't a *choice*... it's a handicap. It enables the exploitation of people. We may argue that making English the official language won't help, but I think that in large part it would discourage those who do seem to think that they are doing a good thing by helping people to avoid learning it.
Exploitation is a very serious concern for those who are trapped by language. Not a choice. And our policies have enabled people to avoid learning English which keeps them second-class. Because, and I realize this comes as a shock, learning a new language is *hard*.
Posted on April 2 at 9:49 p.m.
Nothing stops someone from helping out just because the government doesn't compel it. Particularly volunteering at veterans hospitals. Wouldn't that be wonderful if people did that? There are other ways to contribute as well... is anyone from the local area deployed? Being home is in some ways harder than being deployed. What can be done to help and support those families or soldiers who have returned? As they say, whenever possible act locally.
I'm always skeptical of calls for compelled equality of sacrifice because the motivation for that is often hopes for greater anti-war political clout. Similar are calls for a draft that are invariably proposed by anti-war Congresspersons or Senators. Why? Because they know that's where the power of war protest comes from.
Posted on April 2 at 9:35 p.m.
In the end, accusations of racism are an attempt to end, and win, an argument without making an argument.
I think the most interesting thing about what Mr. Thompson said was about foreign assistance and the farm bill. Right now efforts to promote something other than opium poppy production in Afghanistan are being hog-tied by the US farm lobby (whoever the heck that is) in an effort to protect markets. But good things in Afghanistan (or anywhere else in the world, including Africa) translates to more markets for US goods even as it means more competition. What's good for someone else is good for me and for you.
What policies are nameless lobbyists promoting in your name?
Posted on April 2 at 9:13 p.m.
The idea that people can be separate but equal is wrong.
Facilitating the ability of people to get by without English is facilitating their separate status.
It would be easy to argue logically that enabling people to live separate because a lack of English is facilitating their second-class status. IE. racist. If that's what a person is inclined to argue.
It bothers me not at all to be in a multi-lingual environment. I've worked in a shop (many years ago in So. Cal.) where I and a black girl were the only non-Spanish speakers there and about half the people could not speak English. It was a sweat shop. The non-English speakers could be and were exploited because they did not have other employment options. I've volunteered to tutor English at church to Vietnamese immigrants who worked in Silicon Valley for supervisors who spoke Vietnamese. The idea of "labor law" need not apply! But without English they had no other employment options.
It may make a person feel good about how accepting they are about diversity but enabling people to go on longer without English enables their exploitation to go on longer.
If we're going to toss around accusations of racism, maybe that should be considered.
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Posted on November 2 at 9:37 p.m.
Not to be too annoying but... just how long does a person have to *wait* to adopt an infant in the United States?
Talking like there is some huge number of unwanted infants that "Christian" people are not standing in line to adopt is deceptive. Willfully deceptive.
The "unwanted" babies in this country are those that someone *else* figures that the mother should not have had. The babies that some hypothetical "Christian" hypocrite should have adopted were never given up for adoption to begin with. You can't force people to give up infants they don't want to give up... and trying to make some moral point about the people who do not adopt these UNAVAILABLE infants is dishonest.
(The small children in foster care, no matter how tragic, have parents or grandparents who want them *back*. They are not available either.)
And how can Bristol Palin even be brought up as an example of someone with a baby that someone should step forward and offer to adopt? Is she *supposed* to give up her baby for adoption just so someone can get morally superior about the "Christian Hypocrites" who aren't ripping the child from her arms?
And the doom and gloom about Bristol and Levi's future... they'll both go to whatever amount of schooling they'd have gone to if they didn't have a baby. Family support makes a whole lot of difference there, and every indication is that both families are highly supportive of their son and daughter. They don't view a baby as punishment.
That's Obama... who doesn't want to be punished with his daughter's babies. Which is what he said, isn't it. Punished with a baby.
It's sad.
On Sarah Palin has my vote in election