Comments Posted By John
Displaying 31 To 40 Of 120 Comments
A FEW RAMBLING THOUGHTS ON THE GATES AFFAIR
Quite frankly I do not see this as a white cop vs a black citizen. I see this as two alpha males who got into a pissing contest and it went south from there.
Gates is a very prominent scholar (I have read some of his writings) who, because who he is (and what he is - prominent) got upset because he felt he was being disrespected because -- #1. it was his home #2. he is a well known scholar #3. he is an alpha male and heaven forbid someone challenge him. He therefore acted the way he did and unfortunately for him, another alpha male took umbrage with his behavior.
Crowley is a Sgt in a police force, and he took umbrage that another individual (and a prominent scholar at that) would basically have a temper tantrum (in his own home for heavens sake) and basically disrespect him in front of all his peers. (could you image what would have occurred at the police department if Crowley had left the home without responding back?)
Why do I believe is a more accurate senerio?
Almost 30 years of police and private security work (to include military law enforcement). Been there, done that, but also learned from my mistakes.
Because the color of the skin is not the same, does not automatically make it a racial issue. Sometimes it is a little more simple -- 2 strong personalities, without the common sense to take a deep breath before acting.
Comment Posted By John On 26.07.2009 @ 21:53
Why is it when conservatives choose family and good moral choices over power, they are unstable, uncommitted and cannot take the heat. I disagree that Palin made a poor choice.
Comment Posted By john On 4.07.2009 @ 09:00
I cannot figure out how stealing certain blue sky dealerships, a right to sell Chrysler products as new products, bought and paid for by individual dealers from Chrysler, is going to help Chrysler either sell more cars or manufacture cars cheaper or better. Dealerships do not cost Chrysler money. Dealerships buy cars from Chrysler for resale to the public. Dealers have no effect on the cost of design/construction of new cars or on Chrysler's economic woes. These decisions could not have been decisions driven by economic ones to lower Chrysler's production costs or to enable it to sell more cars. Something else other than good business choices drove this decision. Sounds more like a typical government decision to me. It will be interesting to learn more of the story as time rolls on. Bet it leads back to government.
Comment Posted By John On 27.05.2009 @ 15:14
THE ENDURING POPULARITY OF STAR TREK
Transporting ourselves into the Star Trek universe then, becomes an exercise in adult fantasy. Who wouldn’t want to have a drink with Scotty or play a game of chess with Spock, or sit down for a discussion of archeology with Picard? And who wouldn’t want a date with Troi or Seven of Nine?
Well, unless you're transported there and show up wearing a red Federation shirt...
(Really, the only capitalists shown in the original series were either miners with really rough edges, like in "Mudd's Women" or "The Devil in the Dark", or shysters like Harry Mudd or Cyrano Jones. Though it's safe to assume someone was paying for those cargo ships that -- like the guys in the red uniforms -- would meet a terrible fate either just before or after encountering the Enterprise.)
Comment Posted By John On 8.05.2009 @ 15:22
Since I'm old enough to remember 1976 and the ensuing years, I remember the same basic storyline playing out, except with Ronald Reagan in the role Democrats have assigned currently to Sarah Palin (though admittedly Reagan in 1977 had more legislative experience than Palin) and with Jerry Falwell and his Moral Majority in the role given to Rush Limbaugh.
People seem to forget that the Republican Party even in 1980 was NOT united behind Reagan -- the party's moderates of the time still bought into a bunch of the Democratic spin that he was both a moron and a threat to blow up the world at the same time, and some of those moderates broke away to create the third party candidacy of Illinois Rep. John Anderson. His campaign was pushed by the big media outlets as being the place where Republicans who had been forced out of the party by the right-wing Reaganites could go, because it was obvious that Reagan and his people were far to the right of the American electorate.
We know how that turned out -- The Anderson campaign did threaten to derail Reagan's presidential hopes by grabbing some GOP moderates away, but public anger at the ineptness of the Carter Administration led enough swing voters to decide after the debate that Reagan was not the idiot/evil lunatic he was being portrayed as, and he ended up winning election which in hindsight, looks like a bigger margin than it actually was (as opposed to 1984, when it really was a rout over Mondale).
While at this time there's no clear frontrunner on the right in the same way Reagan was following Ford's defeat in 1976, the playing field is the same and the concerns about the current president are similar to those with Carter in the years leading up to the 1980 vote. So while all this finger-pointing and name calling between the two sides of the GOP has been ampted up by the 24/7/365 news cycle and the vastly wider sources of information and punditry, if the Obama Administration turns out to be as ineffective or worse than the Carter Administration was, all the arguments in the Spring of 2009 will be just minor footnotes four years from now.
Comment Posted By John On 30.04.2009 @ 21:17
It seems as though the battles during the past year over the creationist movement really have been the torch that turned a small brushfire into a major inferno over at LGF.
I'd say Charles is more of a libertarian/secularist in the Penn Jillett or James Randi mode than what many posters at his site believed him to be before the clashes over the Texas school textbook controversies and other religious-based issues, which highlighted his previous disputes with other bloggers and extended the fight to posters who, until now, had been supportive of LGF's postings.
Combined with the past attacks from the left on Johnson, based on his postings about Islamic radicals, Israel and his part in Rathergate, it took his already heightened sensabilities about trolls and people on the left using the comments section to tar LGF to a new level. You're always free to do what you want with your site, and it's only human to get angry at a series of snarky or hostile posters. But he's taken his anger up to the point that anyone thinking of mildly criticizing one of his posts has to be walking on eggshells out of fear of banishment.
That's not a good thing to have, since it tends to pare any website or blog down to just the true believers after a while. With his home move currently underway, it might be a good time just to step back and take a couple of days off to let the current hosilities die down.
Comment Posted By John On 22.04.2009 @ 20:27
BEGALA: APRIL 15TH SHOULD BE 'PATRIOT'S DAY'
Begala's commitment to the wonderfulness of tax paying would carry a lot more weight if he would release his average annual income numbers vs. the tax amounts he has paid over the past 16 years, since his work on the '92 Clinton campaign propelled him into the high profile/high income tax bracket.
Comment Posted By John On 15.04.2009 @ 21:12
GLENN BECK AND THE RADICAL RIGHT
Listening to Beck about a decade ago on radio, when he was just starting to get stations to sign up for his syndicated program, he seemed to be someone groping for a distinct identity in the (by then well-established) conservative talk radio universe. He knew the general template, but he was trying to figure a way to break out of the back behind Limbaugh and establish his own distinct voice.
On the positive side, he didn't go the Michael Savage route (Savage having try to mimic Bob Grant, something Mark Levin is doing more successfully right now). But listening to Beck then versus Beck today, I still think he's more of a right/populist poseur than someone who's truly nuts. Sort of a more mellow version of Morton Downey Jr., who knew there was money to be made from tapping into the market for conservative talk, and played one on TV just before Limbaugh's show went national.
Basically, I think Beck's in it more for Beck than he is for any bedrock core beliefs, and like Downey is becoming more aggressive and careless with his recent success. If he crashes and burns a year or two from now, it wouldn't surprise me in the least; nor would him coming out 2-3 years after the fact as far less of a radical right person than the one he's currently playing weekdays on Fox News.
Comment Posted By John On 8.04.2009 @ 11:22
A LETTER TO THE TIMES ON BOB HERBERT'S COLUMN PUSHING A THIRD AIRPORT FOR CHICAGOLAND
Maybe Herbert should stick to projects closer to home, like that fourth New York airport that's been beating around the project list for the past 40 years.
Comment Posted By John On 14.03.2009 @ 15:16
Check Gallup his approval went to 67%. Astoundingly..at least to me...42% of Republicans support him which is 11 points higher than the Republicans supporting GWB when he left office. Leaving aside all the loopy Gallup is in the pay of David Axelrod nonsense, the reality is that basically a comfortable two thirds of the country supports this guy and approves by and large of what he's doing. They are scared as we lose 600,000 jobs a month; want a universal healthcare system; believe global warming is a problem and want to do something about it; are sure a cabal of massively overpaid banking executives whose taxes have fallen steadily has screwed the country; and is totally convinced the economic policies of the last eight years have been a huge failure. It really is that simple. Meanwhile we apparently want to hold tea parties, talk about marsh mice and criticise govt programs for monitoring volcanoes. It's so asinine words almost fail me. And what makes it worse is that this is going on when the Dems are led by the most charismatic politician since Kennedy and probably the most effective since FDR. It's like the Polish cavalry taking on the panzers. Rick is absolutely right but as you can see from most of these postings no one is very interested...they'd rather focus on delusions like tea parties or marsh mice. It's all a symptom of a party and movement that is retreating into immaturity....and irrelevance unless we snap out of it.
Comment Posted By John On 28.02.2009 @ 11:18
