Dr. Tom

What does it matter? If such a person kills someone, they're either going to die or spend the rest of their lives in jail. The system can handle violent bigots without tacking on extra penalties for what people were thinking when they committed a crime. Why is it a "hate crime" when a group of white guys beat a black guy to death, but it's not when a bunch of black guys beat a white guy to death? Are minorities incapable of hate? What if some gay guys torture and kill one of those wacko hardcore gay-hating preachers? That wouldn't be a hate crime, but a few straights killing a gay guy is. I have two serious problems with the concept of "hate crimes." 1. We shouldn't be policing people's thoughts. 2. They're double standards, which are inherently unconstitutional.

... Jesus tapdancing Christ, you have to be the most naive and ignorant person alive. Arafat was a TERRORIST and a THUG, nothing more. Late in Clinton's presidency, he had Arafat at Camp David and offered him *everything* he'd said he wanted: peace, a Palestinian homeland side-by-side with Israel, etc. Do you want to know what your "great man" who was all about "peace and discussion" did? He walked out. KNow why? Because Arafat didn't want a Palestinian state to coexist with Israel. He wanted to destroy Israel, kill all the Jews, and take over the whole bloody place for his Palestinian homeland. He was a mass murderer and sociopath who ordered, condoned, financed, and actively supported thousands and thousands of murders. The only thing wrong with his death is that he didn't suffer nearly enough. I heard tens of thousands of Palestinians were in the streets after he died. Israel should have killed them all. They should also kill every piece of shit terrorist who attends Arafat's funeral tomorrow. A couple missiles should be enough. And fucking educate yourself about people before you start giving them head. Christ on a cracker.

It was terrible. Every "character" on the show was really just a caricature and a few stereotypes cobbled together. Every negative stereotype about pro athletes was on the show. It was yellow journalism made into a bad fiction show.

Lies.

I knew my position would win converts. All it would take is enough time and enough tards.

I've had poems published, too. Here's the reality: 1. it doesn't matter, 2. most places that publish poetry take anything they get, and 3. there's no money in it. While I've had some of my poems published, I don't think I'm the next coming of Robert Browning, or even Philip Levine, and I certainly wouldn't waste whatever talent I have for verse writing some hippie protest about a war.

I'm still upset he's been in a coma. The fucker should have been in agonizing pain all this time. And I'm glad he's not getting buried in Jerusalem. Fuck him, a pauper's grave is probably more than he deserves.

Let's stick to the topic, folks. Some good questions are raised between the initial post and the first reply.

It would be a worse insult to amoebas and plankton.

(Election Night...) And now, to Ohio, where President Bush is leading by 4 trillion votes, with 99.99999999% of presincts reporting. CBS News has determined this race is still "too close to call." Yes! They're falling into my trap! Finally, I have a plan that works! CBS News joins Fidel Castro in awarding Ohio to Senator Jesu... er, John Kerry! This is a great day to have the media in your back pocket! Now where's my crazy bitch of a wife? Right here, dahling. I have just finished sucking the blood of another conservative journalist, Muahahaha~! You commies better get outta here and stop buying off the media! I got silver bullets in my gun for that bloodsucking bitch! NOW LET'S THROW DOWN, HIPPIE~! Oh, shit! I must now fly away using technology I got from the Vietnamese in exchange for letting them torture more American POWs! Up, up, and away! (Later, his political career ruined after the 2004 election, John Kerry turns to his buddies in Hollywood, who immediately cast him in the starring role of an expected blockbuster...)

I love how Rant insists he's not a bigot, but makes posts like the ones on the previous page. Tremendous. Anyway, Loss, I think your idea is worth exploring, but I'm not sure how many converts you'll win to your side. It sounds like you'll get a lot of undecided or ambivalent liberals, but considering that numbers that turned out against gay marriage, you need more than that. There's also the problem that the South is unlikely to adopt it anytime soon, since they seem quite resistant to change down there in the Bible Belt. Your best inroads are probably in the states Kerry won, which would be the Northeast and the Left Coast. Make some progress there and get some laws changed, and you could affect the rest of the country. But you have to start by preaching to the choir and hoping it's enough.

I heard a rumor that the Kerry campaign had people taking the polls who hadn't voted at those locations. Just Kerry supporters who got into the buildings via a back door, then walked out the front door and took an exit poll just like they'd voted. Just a rumor, but it is an interesting one.

There is a legitimate concern that this was a career year, or a contract year, for Beltran, and that he won't do it again. He's also an injury risk. No one's getting A-Rod money anymore, as the game's salary structure has changed since then. Someone will offer Beltran 6 or 7 years at about $14m per year, and we'll see where it goes from there.

Indeed. I've loathed the man since he was appointed, and it was Ashcroft that was compelling me to not vote for Bush in the recent election. I eventually relented on that stance, but I'd still love to see Ashcroft out of office sooner than later.

Damnit, I don't want him to be comatose. I want him to be awake and experience every second of blinding agony in a long and painful death. This is way to good for a piece of shit like Arafat.

I'm still waiting for Alec Baldwin to move there, like he said he would in 2000...

Because it's the only time they don't have a direct feed to the Party Politburo, which makes them act like wooden automatons.

I won't make you wait. Consider your misery ended.

Not to take the thread off course, but what would you consider to be a "good" OBP? How would you rank OBP scores? (i.e. most people would consider .260 to be an mediocre batting average, whereas .300 is considered good) I'm not trying to answer for Al here, but what I see when I look at those numbers is this: Cabrera, in the prime of his career, has a .316 lifetime OBP, which is bad. Uribe, who is young and still improving at the big-league level, posted a .327 OBP last year (to go along with a pretty decent SLG), and has plenty of time to improve on that mark.

Bloody typos.

With the Kerry concession, this can now be unpinned.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,137424,00.html This is what I want to see. Not necessarily this result, but the states deciding on the issue for themselves. The federal government shouldn't need to get involved here, and states should decide on the issue of gay marriage based on the 10th Amendment. I hope these areas enact civil unions, but regardless of the results, it's good that individual states are taking the initiative to decide on a hot-button issue for themselves.

Ah, but ponder this: The Hippie Movement, or what's left of it, are soon going to transform into a political juggernaut: Senior Citizens. An awful lot of senior citizens live in Florida. Bush won Florida handily. I'm not concerned.

Good move for Kerry. He had about zero mathematical chance of getting the electoral votes he needed. We were looking at the outstanding states here at work, and figured he'd need something like 85% of all outstanding votes nationally (including provisionals, which can be expected to break approximately along party lines) to have a chance, and that just wasn't happening. Props to Kerry for not dragging this out longer than necessary.

I'm not sure, really. They've sold themselves out to the hardcore anti-war crowd and the international community, and those are not values which resonate with most Americans. They basically put everything into this Presidential election, and with Bush's victory a virtual certainty, they've lost a lot. The problem was that Kerry was the best they had to offer, and he was not a good candidate. The days of the tax-and-spend liberal are likely over, and the Democratic Party needs to adjust accordingly. They need actual centrists -- not people like the Clintons who are really socialists in disguise -- with sensible views on the issues and a touch take on terrorism. A candidate like that could do well nationally, though the people who still cling to the hardline leftist ideals in the party would have a problem with such a candidate. I think they're in trouble. The country has shown itself to be increasingly conservative in its values in the past decade-plus. Note that Clinton won re-election in 1996 by running on a platform full of traditional conservative issues, like welfare reform and a balanced budget. The GOP continues to make gains in the House and Senate, which further erodes the Democrats' power base. Some states do traditionall side with the Democrats, but a lot of those old, set-in-their-ways voters, products of the 1930s and 40s, aren't going to be around for many more elections. The Hippie Movement, which caused the Dems to sell out to the anti-war crowd, has been a disaster in recent years. The party clearly needs a more centrist direction. Hard to say. I don't think he was a big help to the Democrats, and if getting rid of him enables some more moderate folks to take the reins of the party, then Daschle's defeat will be the best thing to happen to the Democrats in a long time. If the far left retains control of the party's direction, the same problems will continue. I'm not familiar enough with Dem Senators and Representatives from around the country to answer this. I guess the easy answer is Obama, but he's a neophyte in the Senate, and the party won't rally around him yet. Whoever they pick, the person has to be centrist and moderate. It'll piss off the old hardcore liberals, but their days of political relevance are dwindling fast.