Comments Posted By mannning
Displaying 51 To 60 Of 475 Comments
in response to Jerry #12, I am personally fed up with continual back and forth comparisons between Bush and Obama. It seems to me to be far more fruitful to compare any President with some more objective, idealized standard of behavior, such as: is the President--Obama, for instance--- doing his job to protect, preserve, and lead the nation adequately now, or not.
In my judgement, he is not, so far, and he seems to be digging himself deeper and deeper into the hole. His czars and appointees are not performing very well at all against any objective measure I can think of, and the one score against him that is most telling and impossible to miss is the size and growth of the national debt. He appears to be doing an excellent job of filling the pockets of odd groups in the nation with cash, but the real employment rate has grown to about 17% according to some economists. I will not even bring up the chaos in foreign relations.
Comment Posted By mannning On 1.01.2010 @ 15:44
MR, you are on! Full glass raised here. Happy New Year to all.
Comment Posted By mannning On 30.12.2009 @ 15:15
I should have done the same thing with a few recent comments of mine that were, obviously, less than precise. You know what you are trying to get across, but somehow the right slant or words fail to convey the thoughts properly, and a quick reread doesn't detect the flaws either, apparently, since your own thought trail remains flawed for the moment. A cascade of explications doesn't cure the problem, and they become very frustrating to submit again and again. Your solution is the preferred one, but the re-re-read must be sufficiently objective to be successful. This is why most writers let a piece "cook" for a reasonable time before proceeding with it.
There ought to be an erase button for commenters to use! Is that possible? Would you accept requests for deletion?
Comment Posted By mannning On 30.12.2009 @ 11:59
MERRY CHRISTMAS FROM AN ATHEIST TO ALL YOU BELIEVERS
It is good to know these beliefs of yours in more detail. The post was well thought out, and appealing. The last step in your belief system is to acknowledge the devine: all else is quite Christian in morality. This allows me, and others, I suppose, to understand much better where your moral base originates; that is, exactly where mine does.
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year
Comment Posted By mannning On 25.12.2009 @ 15:02
GOP: OUT OF GAS, OUT OF IDEAS, OVER THE CLIFF
I said "less than knowledgeable governing bodies", but perhaps I should have added deliberately unwise,unjust, imprudent, and intemperate bodies to that.
Comment Posted By mannning On 27.12.2009 @ 17:37
funny man:
It would be rather difficult for me to contrast and compare the relative simplicity, degrees of freedom, and morality of America in 1800, 1900 and 2000, but the social, political, commercial and technological changes are most certainly there for all to see.
Perhaps one of the most telling shifts in the public mind in those 200 years is the attitude towards natural law as it is codified in our Constitution. The great respect formerly paid to the thrust of the Founders to create a God-fearing Republic of the Center between the tyranny of the Left and the anarchy of the Right has deteriorated considerably. Jefferson, Madison, and Franklin would be appalled at the state we have gotten ourselves into as of the end of 2009, I believe. As would Hamilton and Jay, to add a significant Federalist duo. As one person said, parties have become irrelevant, since both of them are forcing us down the wrong path---away from natural law and all that that implies. I think it was Judge Andy Nepolitano that voiced that thought, although several others have signed up to it. The thesis I have seen emerge recently is that our Constitution and the thinking behind it is just as relevant today as it was in 1800 or 1900: it is the diverse people and the less than knowledgeable governing bodies that have moved us away from the original ideas that have made us a great nation; thus, that is at the root of our problems. Yes, we now have a huge and diverse population, but, in itself, that should not change our commitment to the Constitution and the principles behind it, nor should it alter its relevancy in 2010.
What I see is the enormous difficulty in returning the populace to the ideas and directions of the Constitution and its natural law basis, and, as well, the total rejection I and many others have to performing some kind of "loose, legal, non-natural accommodation" to the steadfast natural law principles we originally had, in order to satisfy this or that growing modern constituency that couldn't care less about the Constitution. That is because these various constituencies have not been taught properly about the Constitution in our schools and homes, have been taught to reject it in large measure, or have been brought up in totally different nations and are not even close to understanding the under-girding principles of our nation. Nor do many truly sign up to our laws as being now superior in effect to their own prior laws or lack thereof.
There needs to be a book on this subject!
Comment Posted By mannning On 27.12.2009 @ 17:23
I must agree that the nation is not at all the same one that existed before, say, 1955. The idea of our original Constitutional government has been so watered down and abused that it is unrecognizable. The law has been so perverted now that the very principle of separation of powers is failing. Assaults on virtually every "settled practice" of law have made a mockery of real justice. Tenured clowns from the Left appear to man about 90% of the education jobs and professorships, and the curriculum of our schools is written by union members with dubious pedigrees, thus producing a few idiot savants along with a herd of noodnicks, much to the woe of our future. The congress has become bribery central and knows not of fiscal common sense. Our President has opted out of any rational foreign policy at all, and has managed to strengthen our foes in the process. We have decided to abandon the development of much of the military hardware that we will need in a decade or so from now. We have just about decided to give the UN more money and more inroads into our sovereignty. To make things even more dire, we have created debts that will be impossible to repay, and squandered the taxpayer's money on leftist projects of little economic worth, while unemployment has topped 17% in real terms. The moral fiber of the nation has been corrupted and weakened to the point that things that were totally unacceptable in 1955 are quite accepted today: elective abortions, same sex marriage, hookups, teen sex, filthy language, and on and on...
This much is just for openers!
I agree that the GOP would choke on this dinner, but so would any party, witness who got us so very much further into this entire mess in this year of 2009. It is apparent to me that the medicine needed to correct these ills cannot and will not be forthcoming from any party, left or right, and that nihilism and hedonism will reign in our future.
Are we at the "tipping point" where our basic lives and our government's structure have become impossible to change for the better? We are very close indeed now, and I fear for our beloved nation.
Comment Posted By mannning On 22.12.2009 @ 23:33
No one seems to address the problems and then the tough-love cures we must install, or, they bemoan the current situation yet offer no help whatsoever to dig us the hell out from our pauperism and nihilism, least of all the Left.
REFORM IS A TRIUMPH OF PROCESS OVER PRUDENCE
busboy
I did not set out to voice my own beliefs, but the beliefs of others.Beyond stating clearly that I am not racist, nor do I sign up to the evolving conspiracy theories here and elsewhere, there is little else I need to say, and that is that.
The fact is, there are some blacks on the streets that I, and anyone, must be aware of and to avoid if possible. They are thugs. For example, we listen to gunfire almost nightly, especially in Summer. I had to go buy a scanner to find out whether those strings of popping sounds were pistol shots or firecrackers. They were reported very often as "shots fired". That is the war going on, and I have no idea who they were each time, but when the radio says that the four blacks that were shooting at another group fled the scene, I take the police at their word. Happens all the time within blocks of my home. Stray bullet holes are not unusual to find, either. The point is that it is black thugs doing this nine out of ten times here. Maybe not elsewhere, but definitely HERE!
If I was gramatically deficient, so be it.
Comment Posted By mannning On 28.12.2009 @ 18:19
You, as a reader, painted a tangled picture, so it must be true, and to sort it all out again is a waste of time, I think. It would not be the first time the voice change method failed. I do become concerned by implications that I lied, however.
I gotta say, it sounds an awful lot like it’s written from the perspective of manning. It doesn’t sound at all like manning is merely reporting the ideas of “manning’s friend”.
You were told at least three or four times in different comments that I was writing about some of the racial attitudes of my many contacts here of all political persuasions, yet you imply here that I was not telling it like it was, but that I was expressing my own opinions---i.e. that I was lying. I do not lie, so I find this to be insulting.
That is it for this thread.
Comment Posted By mannning On 26.12.2009 @ 14:22
busboy
Till now, I was more than willing to further the discussion, but once I have been accused of lying or such, it is all over. You take me at my word or you can go pound sand.One last remark, take it or leave it, I don't care: I do not believe in the black conspiracy theories that the others that I know do. I do believe in safety, and I do feel threatened by blacks that war on the streets almost daily here. Any reasonable person would. I do have grave doubts about the President's programs and spending plans, and I am persuaded that he is very socialistic. I do not appreciate the Wright mentality, nor what I perceive as the dishonesty of the President in throwing Wright under the bus to get elected. I do not know whether this is the tip of a great conspiracy, because I do not have definitive information on the situation. Others believe that they have such information, or at least circumstantial evidence of it. That is what I reported. End of story.
Comment Posted By mannning On 25.12.2009 @ 18:16
