TomAiello

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Everything posted by TomAiello

  1. TomAiello
    Hooray. Excuse me for my failure to get excited. Can't we have a "don't go off and kill a bunch of innocent people in other countries to impose our will on them" option? Just because some other guy would have done even more bad stuff is no reason to excuse the current bad stuff. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com
  2. TomAiello
    What I'd like is someone who isn't headed for the same ditch over and over again. The Republicans crashed us into a huge mess. The Democrats idea of getting out of it appears to be "just keep driving in the same direction." How about we pull the car out of the ditch, turn around, and head in the other direction. Just jamming the accelerator down while the front end is in the ditch doesn't appear to be accomplishing much, aside, perhaps from driving us deeper into the same ditch we're already in. Where's the choice? -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com
  3. TomAiello
    Which is? Is there an actual pedagogical reason for it? -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com
  4. TomAiello
    There is a huge difference between wanting to help other people and being forced to do so (or forcing others to do so) on pain of imprisonment. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com
  5. TomAiello
    There's not an option with less killing. There's just a choice of where it happens. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com
  6. TomAiello
    So, we should hand everything over to the other party, which was complicit in that fuck-overing? Just because I don't like a lot of things that were done does not mean I have to accept whatever is offered as the only alternative. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com
  7. TomAiello
    I suppose you are right. However, I don't see that question anywhere in the quoted materials. Did I miss it somewhere? Are you reading the initial guidelines or the revised ones (after this became an issue)? The original contains the following suggested assignment: -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com
  8. TomAiello
    Which begs the question: Why are we having political figures address school children at all? -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com
  9. TomAiello
    That last one is a good question. So is "why are some people so ignorant they think they can borrow their way out of debt?" How would you feel if that one was fed to your children at their school? -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com
  10. TomAiello
    I disagree. Asking for critical thinking would be things like: "What is the President saying?" "What do I think of his ideas?" "Do I agree with him?" "Do I think those things are going to be good for me?" Asking "how can I help the President?" is non-critical in the extreme. My daughter is a pre-schooler. She's fully capable of articulating her desires and comparing them to other ideas. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com
  11. TomAiello
    Given his record on this issue (addresses given in an educational setting, which have historically been non-political for every other president who's given them), no, I don't trust him. Obama lost that trust, from me, when he took an opportunity to give a standard Presidential address at a college graduation, about working hard and doing good, and turned it into a campaign stop about abortion. FWIW, I'm pretty vehemently pro-choice, and I still think Obama was utterly lacking in class to do that. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com
  12. TomAiello
    There's a pretty large difference. Bush wasn't pushing his televised image into every public school classroom in the nation, and Bush wasn't distributing lesson plans to teachers giving student assignments to tell how each child could help him achieve his goals. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com
  13. TomAiello
    I don't think I'd call it a conspiracy. It's how our foreign policy is conducted these days. We appear to be running a global empire. We invade, kill, torture and otherwise run roughshod over people in other parts of the world. We somehow regard this as either our god-given right or even our duty. I don't like it, personally. And I think that Dick Cheney is a big proponent of it. I've been disappointed to realize that, despite some lofty rhetoric, Barack Obama appears just as likely to do these sorts of things as his predecessors. Our foreign policy worldview is so entrenched, and so myopic, that "debate" over it amounts to arguing over which part of the world we ought to be sending people to die and kill, and where we ought to be doing our torturing and intimidation. There doesn't appear to be any real debate about whether we do, in fact, need to do those things at all. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com
  14. TomAiello
    In this specific instance? How about not killing people? It's cheaper, and functionally equivalent, to lock them up for the rest of their lives. Plus, it's somewhat reversible, should an error be discovered. In general? I'm a big fan of letting people do whatever they want, so long as it doesn't hurt anyone else. And our government (like most others) has a long history of bullying people while claiming that it's "for their own good." -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com
  15. TomAiello
    No. But what if he was forcing other people to do so, and they didn't want to? Would you forcibly rescue them? -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com
  16. TomAiello
    Actually, I think that's what the political debate in this country is primarily about: where to draw the line. If it were as obvious as you think it is, we would have no need for Speakers Corner. That's not true at all. The political debate is about the need for the "nanny state" spending, not where the line is drawn. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com
  17. TomAiello
    I actually believe that he was. I don't think that I can sit here, reading popular reporting, and second guess people in a court of law who were examining real evidence and forming decisions based on it. If I were on the jury, would I have found the same thing? I don't know. But I wasn't, so I don't have access to the same facts they based their decision on. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com
  18. TomAiello
    La La La La La I've got my fingers in my ears I can't hear you La La La... ??? I honestly don't understand what you are trying to say. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com
  19. TomAiello
    I think the discussion was about the regime, though, not the people. Unless you're saying that the fact the regime sucks doesn't say anything about the dictator who formed and leads it, as he was the only Cuban "person" referenced in the original post. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com
  20. TomAiello
    Hey, they're the government! They're here to help you! They know what's good for us all! Of course you trust them, right? -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com
  21. TomAiello
    I read today that Virginia is asking local schools to make rooms available for children who's parents want to opt out of this. Schools to Let Students Skip Obama Speech. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com
  22. TomAiello
    It is peculiar that you keep posting those images, Obama and GW are like chalk and cheese. So they'd like us to think. Curious that "high value detainees" are now being interrogated (behind closed doors) at Bagram, though, isn't it? -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com
  23. TomAiello
    I'd love to have a rational discussion about it. I thought we were doing that until you started accusing people of paranoia. Why did you go there? Was it just your assumption that we couldn't discuss things? I believe that every politician has an ulterior motive (acquiring or maintaining political power) for every action they take. Call me a cynic, but I'm fairly convinced that the world works that way. If that makes me an irrational child? Well, I guess you're entitled to your opinion. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com
  24. TomAiello
    Don't worry. We'll just move it over to Bagram. No annoying reporters in there, no irritating Red Cross...it's much better. Meet the new boss...same as the old boss. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com
  25. TomAiello
    It allows us to consistently inflate the money, creating a hidden tax on the savings of all Americans to benefit the largest debtor in history? It lets us borrow more money and claim that this will somehow get us out of debt? It keeps us from having to actually live within our means, at least until the bills come due? I give up. But I'm not a patriot anyway, so it doesn't really matter. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com