Azalin

I understand what you're saying, and I'm not necessarily trying to disagree. It's just difficult to fathom the logic in the notion that all sexual assault is about power and none of it is about sex.

I would very much like to meet the so-called person who gave the ok to do that.

those are entirely reasonable questions, and it's a viewpoint that I wish was more widely shared. a little healthy skepticism is a good thing.

if rape is all about power & dominance, then how does that square with the fact that date rape is one of the most pervasive forms of sexual assault? how is it dominating someone to get them to drunk or to slip them a couple rufinols so that they pass out cold? wouldn't a sexual assault based on a power trip require the victim to know they were being victimized? I think to lump all rape cases as being about dominance instead of depraved sexuality on the part of the offender is misguided.

please forgive my bringing a little levity into the discussion, but if intentional, that pun was well timed.

but if she's Russian, isn't red her color?

isn't the goal of military training to supress individual tendencies in favor of a controlled, reactive response from all soldiers in like manner? maybe this isn't what you meant, but I would imagine that 'group think' is exactly what the military is looking to accomplish with the enlisted.

from the article: With the rhetoric rising during the Crimean crisis, a senior Kremlin-backed broadcaster made an explicit nuclear threat this week, saying Russia remained "capable of turning the United States into radioactive ash". so here we go, round two of the ever-popular Mutually Assured Destruction game. I wonder - will school children start being taught 'duck and cover' again?

well then, I guess it must be true. so it must just be a nasty rumor about former senator Robert Byrd (D-WV) being a former Klansman. otherwise, he obviously would have otherwise become a republican.

and Combo was one of Hogboy's sockpuppets. that had to be 14 or 15 years ago,

I get your point, but I believe that any media, liberal or not, would run a story on the obvious outrage over a group who was low enough to protest funerals, especially of those who lost their lives in service to the country. that they behaved that way to draw attention to themselves, I don't doubt for a moment. ah, the sound of stereotypes exploding.

you? speaking about perception?

if it's anyone, it's Hogboy. it has to be an act....nobody could be that oblivious and still know to breathe. do you remember Combo? I fell for that one, and am starting to think I'm falling for it again.

I call them as I see them. when I look at you, I see someone who is stubbornly and willfully ignorant, and you prove me to be correct every time you reply.

I'm impressed...you have actually outdone your normal level of intellectual ineptitude. segregationist = conservative? even morons would be offended at that. the cold war = cuba? idiots are deep thinkers by comparison. every time I try to have any kind of a discussion with you, you are either incapable of reciprocating, or just don't care to do so. any explanation of thought or belief contrary to yours is either not worth considering, or automatically partisan (even coming from a non-partisan like myself. I would suggest you look up the meaning of the word 'partisan' but you would likely accuse the dictionary of bias and ignore what it has to say as well). that means you are either willfully ignorant, or intellectually deficient, unwilling to look at anything from a differrent point of view, or open your mind in an effort to learn. you are less than a cat toy, and lower than a troll. you will never be anything else until you open your eyes, open your mind, and stop filling your head with vacuous dogma from socialist retreads masquerading as progressives.

when I was very young, the democrat party was significanly more conservative than they are now. Kennedy supported significant reductions in taxes, was big on national defense, and actually had a spine when it came to dealing with the Russians. even considering those stances, he was considered at the time to be too liberal. that's why he came to Texas....to try to heal the divide between conservative democrats and the more left-leaning dems of the time. in this day and age, any president with the convictions of JFK would have the modern left screaming that he was an ultra-conservative. Richard Nixon, who took office only five years after Kennedy's death, was arguably more of a leftist than Kennedy ever was, having instituted price controls on things like meat, and creating the EPA. I was a democrat in the days of Reagan. at first I couldn't stand him (I actually thought Jimmy Carter was a better president back then, I'm embarrassed to say), but eventually I had to admit that his economic policies were starting to work. I was impressed that he could be such bitter enemies with Tip O'Niell and still successfully work with him. I liked that he showed the same kind of backbone in dealing with the Soviets that Kennedy had. still, it wasn't until the early Clinton years that I realized that the democrats had moved so far away from what they had been only a decade or two prior that they were little more than socialist-lite. since those days, they've practically sprinted toward becoming full-blown socialists. I've changed somewhat over the years, but the democrats have abandoned enough of the things I believe in that I want no part of them anymore. the republican party is making a similar migration to the left in a pathetic attempt to be popular. this is what's given rise to the creation of the TEA party movement. it is the last bastion of fiscal conservatism out there (aside from the Liberatarians). that's why they have my support. as for the rest - all the social issues - I believe that for the most part, people can and should make their own way through life, because it affords them true freedom, and is the best bet for individual success.

yep, because we all know that school districts weren't experiencing out of control budgets before health care became an issue.

are you kidding? it has to be simple because you said it.

partisan? you don't pay very close attention, do you? I don't belong to any political party. I used to be a democrat, but left them when they began turning into socialists.

you say the right reminds you of communists, and yet you call someone else a boob?

is that not a bit of a contradiction in terms?

to be honest, I think that Obama has already done a great deal of damage to the democrat party in the eyes of the middle/undecided/unengaged/moderates/etc. until the implementation of Obamacare, the republicans were considered by many to be either paranoid or simply over exaggerating by calling the left 'socialists'. now, many people are realizing that such charges are largely accurate. people can be swayed into thinking themselves as 'liberal' or 'progressive' because those terms imply contemporary thinking as opposed to the perceived stodgy, old-fashioned way of thinking that the word 'conservative' inaccurately implies. for the most part, americans view socialism as it truly is - governmental control of everything - and they still reject it, considering it (if nothing else) to be un-american. I believe the republicans could likely gain more seats in the house and take the senate back simply because many people will be casting their votes against democrats.

that's probably the most accurate summary of the current republican party I've seen in a while.

I'll never disagree on the point that government programs or projects are inefficient. many public schools are already dropping things like advanced art courses and band from their curricula directly because of such inefficiencies. it just boggles my mind that so much money (how much is spent on average per student per year? it has to be an awful lot) can be spent on public schools, yet they continue to offer less & less to the students.

while I understand (and largely agree with) your point, I can tell you that going back to when I first began attending school in 1962, there was no symphonic or orchestral training in the greater Buffalo/Niagara Falls area for children outside of school. the music theory course alone that I attended in high school (it was based on the primary music theory course from Eastman) was something I would have had to wait until college to take. I did have additional instruction outside of school, but that was for developing technique, not working within the framework of a classically oriented symphony. my family was never poor, but the cost for outfitting a child with timpani, xylophones, and the like would have made participation impossible for me. in addition, many children don't get any exposure to anything but commercial pop music (via their parents or their peers.....most of which is pretty vacuous no matter what generation it comes from) in the home. the first time I saw an orchestra performing the molto vivace movement from Beethoven's 9th was at school, and it had an everlasting effect on me. I seriously doubt if I'd have had that experience if it hadn't happened at school. this is a breakthrough. for once, you understand me completely. no truer thing has ever been posted on this board. high school football is a religion down here.