Comments on: Poll: Should President Obama be allowed to do a nationwide address to school children without parental consent?

By: Bob

Bob — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 01:15:16 +0000

@21 “incipient Southron & right-wing violence, treason, & terrorism”

Fixed that for you…

By: Jenni

Jenni — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 14:40:01 +0000

And this is even a question…why?

By: Monado, FCD

Monado, FCD — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 13:08:19 +0000

Sorry about that "secret conspiracy". Make that a ~~secret~~ conspiracy.

By: Monado, FCD

Monado, FCD — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 13:05:16 +0000

I meant to continue, “It all sounds frighteningly familiar these days. What was that proverb? â??Those who forget the past are compelled to repeat itâ?? Itâ??s time to squash the incipient Southern & right-wing violence, treason, and terrorism in the bud, if we are not to have losers snatching the prize of enlightenment and reason once again.”

By: Monado, FCD

Monado, FCD — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 13:02:33 +0000

As a child, I found history lessons boring and pointless, until some teachers and my reading made me realize that history is about people and why they do things. But for the most part, history lessons completely miss the point. In the year that we studied U.S. history, the assassin of President Lincoln was always described as “an unemployed actor,” as if that somehow motivated him or perhaps simply to add human interest. That was all.

Nowhere did my lessons mention that Booth was a member of a secret conspiracy of hard-core Southern secessionists. They didn’t say that the secessionist groups were bitterly irreconcilable over their side losing. They didn’t say that the plan of the secessionists was to treasonously undermine the U.S. victory. They didn’t say that the motivation of the secessionists was wildly exaggerated horror stories about what the U.S. government had in store for them. That knowledge would have made that bit of history understandable, instead of random, and even more despicable than one violent act by a single unstable individual.

By: bobh

bobh — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 09:13:40 +0000

Mike H. Why do you hate America?

By: gwen

gwen — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 04:46:18 +0000

Yes, people DO die because they don’t have health insurance. I’m an RN and I have seen it firsthand, including a UC Berkeley student some years ago who died from a 5 lobe pneumonia that could have been cleared up with pneumonia had he gone in when he first became ill. He did not go in because he was afraid of the cost it would incur….and he died. That is the usual reason I see the deaths, people put off going to the doctor, hoping the problem will go away, and the problem either becomes MUCH more expensive by the time we see them, or they die and won’t be repaying it anyway….

By: Ben Abbott

Ben Abbott — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 19:59:54 +0000

Here's a link to a poll on The Limits on Health Care. Do you believe that no one should die because they cannot afford health care, and nobody should go broke because they get sick?

By: jefu

jefu — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 19:47:52 +0000

I suspect that if a republican president were to request the same thing that these same parents would be complaining if anyone were to even suggest that their kids be kept away from the broadcast – unpatriotic, you know.

It is all getting rather tiresome.

By: Joshua Zelinsky

Joshua Zelinsky — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 19:37:06 +0000

Christie, given that the Republicans are complaining most about is Obama talking about kids thinking about what they can do to not drop out, I presume that opposition is to go drop out. It all fits together because after the kids drop out and have minimum wage jobs (if any), the Republicans will make sure the kids don’t have any health care either.