Azalin

well then, maybe we can find that someone else, and ask them to do it again?

you mean the Bel Arabs?

one of my points was meant to address...although I admit somewhat obliquely...is the use of the word 'system' in this thread. a failure of the system.....what system is that, exactly? our system of government? we are supposedly governed by ourselves, and represented by those that we elect to ensure that our interests as individual citizens are not compromised. it is the responsibility of a citizen living in a free state to pull their own weight and not be dependent on the rest of society for things like housing, food, medicine and access to medical care, etc. sure, the united states is an extremely wealthy country, and there is no reason any child should go hungry for lack of food, or any single mother should be denied help when she's been ditched by an irresponsible man. there's no reason why people with physical or mental deficiencies can't be cared for, or that our elderly should live out the last years of their lives without proper care. to provide assistance for our disadvantaged, maintain basic domestic regulation and policy, and have adequate national defense, we only need a fraction of what washington sucks out of the economy in the way of taxation every year. for anyone to say that the inequities and injustices of life in america are due to wealthy people hording cash is retarded.....I'm amazed at how many otherwise intelligent people buy into this concept.....that these people are poor because those other people are rich. then they blame it on a combination of greed and an inefficient, ineffective 'system' that is manipulated by those in power to keep everyone else poor. there's just so much wrong with that line of reasoning that I'm astounded that any educated people actually buy into it. like I mentioned above, the united states is an extremely wealthy country, and it wasn't washington that made us that way.....it was americans going out and doing what they both needed and wanted to do that did it.

how is poverty or hunger a 'failing' of our 'system'? don't we have public education paid for by our society? is it a failing of the 'system' that some people quit school or flunk out, resulting in those people's inability to qualify for employment above the pay grade of janitor or fry cook? how is it a failing of our 'system' that more and more children are born into one-parent homes? we already support those who have children and have had to struggle to get by as single parents. how is it that a measure of our compassion as a spciety is in how much we continue take from achievers to support an increasing number of un or underemployed? why is it so hard to see that as we move further and further from the principle of self-reliance we have more and more dependent on government assistance and inequity in incomes? and for me, the biggest question is why in hell would anyone turn to the government for even MORE control over our lives?

this may or may not matter, but information that is instantly available (and always being transmitted whenever a telephone call is placed) is what is referred to as ANI/ALI (automatic name identification and automatic location identification), the data that tells 911 operators who's calling and where they're calling from. every time a call is placed....at least all calls from land lines....this information is transmitted, and it's completely separate from caller ID data used in standard identification. like I said, this may not matter much with regard to this particular topic, but I thought I'd toss it out there for those that are unaware.

I'd love to see a list of her clients to see how many legitimate buisnesses it includes, and how many clients are taxpayer supported entities. this is really just a hippie drum circle taken to a different level. I hate hippie drum circles.

Gordon Lightfoot became a Muslim? I knew about Cat Stevens, but not ol' Gordo....

what, the 'champions' of free speech and freedom of expression trying to silence an american citizen? gee, that could never happen here, could it?

she'll definitely be treated as some sort of far-right, anti-government activist. if we have too many people who think like that, we'd wind up having public servants in washington instead of a ruling class.

my chosen point was that your use of ' there's some pretty smart fellers in west virginia. that "war of northern aggression" stuff....' sounded extremely elitist and prejudicial, and was based on an incorrect assumption that west virginia is full of 'the south will rise again' good old boys. gun control advocates can try to spin it or rationalize it any way they want, but there's no rationalizing the fact that they are advocating limiting a guaranteed constitutional liberty.

you weren't trying to point out that some west virgianians may or may not have confederate flags. you were showing a prejudice toward west virginians, and one that was based on an incorrect assumption.

west virginia was a union state, not a confederate state. and the author of that op ed.....a professor of journalism.....doesn't know the difference between 'cretan' and 'cretin'.

I'm no expert on the subject, but I'm under the impression that the military has its own code of law that's considerably different than civil law. it might be one thing to try to bring questionable activity to light once one is out of the military, but while still serving it's another matter altogether. in addition, Manning is said to have released thousands of documents to wikileaks, including troop placements and intel. if you're passsing along sensitive information like that to someone who will make it public, you may as well be handing it directly to the enemy. he's in for a world of trouble.

I blame Bush.

that's not a bad idea.....it's harder to get into trouble when things go wrong at the office if you're never there.

a group of people who are admittedly racist? admittedly? the only thing I've ever heard regarding the tea party and racism are a bunch of unsubstantiated claims by people who use epithets like 'tea-baggers'.

be careful.....you're just begging for an IRS audit......

oh, absolutely I do. after all, they hired 16,000 more IRS agents to handle taxpayer compliance, and if there's one government entity that reeks of compassion and fairness, it's the IRS.

why pick on the poor IRS? they're nothing but understanding compassionate whenever we make mistakes on the amount of taxes we owe.

I think that the whole issue was used as just one more attack point against established republican policy. it's smart politics in that it helped keep people fired up and angry over the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan without getting into a debate over the validity of the wars themselves. despite all the counter arguements at the time (where are you going to keep the prisoners, do you actually want to give them civil trials, do you actually want to just release them, etc, etc) it helped the Obama team to put forth the image of being practical, principled, and compassionate....in other words, a smokescreen. many of us knew at the time that gitmo wouldn't be shut down, at least not until a new facility had been constructed somewhere else off offshore that would serve in the exact same capacity. we also knew that the media clamor over gitmo would vanish if & when Obama won the presidency. he did, and it has. his ardent supporters, the hyperpartisan democrats, either conveniently forget their previous outrage over detaining jihadists at guantanamo or try to find a way to justify to themselves that things are somehow different now. I would have so much more respect for those folks if they would just admit that maybe keeping those prisoners there and extracting intelligence from them was a pretty good idea after all.

to be honest, I don't think that the president ever really intended to close gitmo. I believe it was just a tool to use in rallying support against whoever was to be the republican nominee. I think that the idea of moving the guantanamo detainees to a maximum security facility somewhere in the midwest (wasn't it in Illinois?) may have been a trial balloon to test public opinion on a possible alternative, but I don't think anyone in this administration was truly serious about actually shutting down the detainee facility.

I knew we had more in common than just a mutual support of the Bills

ok, now you're just being racist.

c'mon you guys, be fair......they were only trying to make sure that their vote was counted.