If your not getting responses
Posted By: see message on 2009-01-18
In Reply to:
It seems like some posters below are attacking others for not aggreeing with them, however, they are being ignored. People are attacking others and luckly the original posters know what their game is and decided to not respond anymore, however, some (a) poster has taken it to a new level and decided to try to instigate more trouble. I would say no response is the best response they deserve.
Complete Discussion Below:  marks the location of current message within thread
The messages you are viewing
are archived/old.
To view latest messages and participate in discussions, select
the boards given in left menu
Other related messages found in our database
Your responses come as no
surprise. I was actually expecting worse. I guess i should thank you for your temperance. All that I said was that when I heard the Governor speak, it crossed my mind how no one representing this administration has attended any funerals of Iraqi soldiers. You say the others have attended none to some...that is more than this administration sees fit.
This IS the only administration where the president or an envoy of some sort has not attended a funeral or 2. It just simply crossed my mind while listening to the governor going on and on about W's compassionate self. I do not, contrary to popular belief, suffer from BDS. He is so completely inconsequential that I almost feel sorry for him. I watched him in Ohio giving a speech and he was rambling about chickens and plucking and something else...really not making a lot of sense. I was embarrassed for him. I have never seen a presidential campaign start as early as this one and I believe, IMHO, that the reason is that the nation pretty much considers this administration chopped liver. You have got to admit that the scandals (enough to make any CEO proud) have kept this administration from governing, with the exception of **staying the course,** not attending a funeral here or there.
I did not get my information on other presidents' funeral attendances from **liberal sources,** it is pretty much common knowledge and has been bandied around every time someone talks or writes about the numbers, the lack of photos, the **no draped caskets** rule quite a few times,...at any rate, I DID go to a **liberal** site today and found an article written by a man who had the same response I did and I will enclose it for your reading enjoyment. His focus covers the Iraqi civilians while I confess I had not thought of them as much as the soldiers and I should have.What those poor people go through on a daily basis, every day, every single day, with numbers in the 3 digits some of the time is heartbreaking.
The Human Face of Death
by Louis Freedberg
What the green hills of Blacksburg, Va., and the dusty streets of Baghdad have in common is that in the last few days terrible acts of violence have been perpetrated there.
But the reactions to that violence could not have been more different.
Within a day of the Virginia Tech massacre, the 32 victims were memorialized in detailed biographies, news stories, photos and “interactive features” on a range of Web sites.
Here’s an excerpt from the Washington Post’s write-up on 19-year-old Emily Hilscher, the first student killed by the deranged Cho Seung-Hui. Apparently, Hilscher liked every kind of music except country and classical. “Give me something I can bang my head to or dance like crazy and I’m all over it,” she wrote in her My Space profile.
Of Ryan Clark, another early victim, the New York Times wrote, “Ryan Clark was known as Stack on campus, an amiable senior memorable for his ready smile and thoughtful ways … Tall and thin, Mr. Clark, a resident of August, Ga., was well liked and a member of the university’s marching band, the Marching Virginians.”
It is entirely appropriate that the violence at Blacksburg be personalized. Putting the human face on death will help focus the nation’s attention on an out-of-control culture of violence, which allows easy access to guns to the most demented among us.
If the violence in Iraq were humanized to the same extent, perhaps the war in Iraq would be over by now.
Yet, instead of putting a human face on the carnage there, the human toll in Iraq has been mostly reduced to body counts. The victims of the Iraq war have received little of the outpouring of grief and national attention focused on the Virginia victims.
Here’s a cold number: as of this week, 3,309 U.S. servicemen and women have been killed in Iraq. Typically, the victims get a story or two in their hometown newspaper or a report on local television. (I just read my colleague Steve Rubenstein’s wrenching obituary on Sgt. Mario De Leon from Rohnert Park, who died in Baghdad on Monday. “Sweet, polite kind,” his wife said of her 26-year-old husband, who loved to watch his collection of “Star Wars” movies. “I never met anyone like him.”)
But then everyone moves on (except, of course, the survivors).
Some might say soldiers are in a line of work where casualties are expected. Mass homicide on a college campus, they’d argue, is a different story that deserve special attention.
But the civilian casualties of the civil war in Iraq rarely emerge as human beings who have lives as rich and complex lives as the Virginia dead. News reports from Iraq invariably provide a daily casualty count in a sentence or two, the numbers usually prefaced by the words “at least.”
On the Saturday just before the Virginia Tech massacre, “at least” 37 people were killed, and another 150 wounded in a car bomb explosion in Karbala.
On Sunday, 34 people were killed in two suicide bombings in Baghdad. Of those who died half were women and children, according to a report.
On Wednesday, “at least” 158 people were killed in Baghdad in some of the deadliest attacks of the war.
So it goes, each day in Iraq. More deaths. More numbers.
I’ve been searching for a report profiling even one of yesterday’s victims in Iraq. What did they look like? What music were they interested in? What were their hobbies? Who is mourning them?
I’ll concede that it’s tough to identify victims of suicide and car bombings. Language and security barriers make it difficult for reporters to track down relatives and friends of the victims.
Of course, they aren’t Americans. It’s understandable we would care more about our own.
The daily statistical reports from Baghdad on the latest atrocity are numbing to the point where we hardly pay attention to them anymore. They read like a table from Dow Jones Industrial index — up today, down tomorrow.
Imagine what would happen if mass killings on the scale of the Virginia Tech massacre — or multiples thereof — occurred each day in the United States.
Yet that is exactly what is happening in Iraq, a country one-tenth our size.
The Virginia victims deserve to be remembered as vibrant human beings. The images of them that dominate the airwaves have the potential to spark action to make sure something like it does not happen again.
But the anonymous victims of a war begun by the United States should also be memorialized. By reducing them to ciphers, it’s too easy to avoid confronting the full impact of the catastrophe that has overtaken Iraq.
And so the war goes on.
Louis Freedberg is a Chronicle editorial writer. E-mail him at lfreedberg@sfchronicle.com.
© 2007 The San Francisco Chronicle
Discuss this story
Your responses are disturbing.
I don't believe I have ever seen a more angry and irrational person.
Thank you for your candid responses.
It helped solidify a few things in my head. I guess for me the bottom line is, whatever your beliefs are on the subject, if you have religion in your life or a pagan like myself, it does not give the right for a special interest group to subjugate another, and that is the end result. I don't think that they can effectively stop abortion using this method.
I think it all goes back to educating people. I guess it is easier for some individuals to stand on their moral high ground and point fingers than to truly come up with a workable solution. The unborn do not need their voice. They have a mother to make decisions for them, which is where it should stay. Selective benevolence? Not for me. If one is so emphatic in the decision to embrace life and fight for it, then fight for all. Do not pick and choose who or what's life is in more need. Pro-life to me means anti-war, anti-starvation, anti-subjugation, etcetera, for all living things.
If one is strongly anti-abortion, which is strictly a moral issue, then start a movement to educate people and create viable alternatives, but leave it out of political and the legal system. I do believe that choosing a presidential candidate because of a moral or religious tendency is improper. It comes as no surprise to me that this behavior has been justified on this posting. I find it to be extremely arrogant. But it seems that some just cannot temper themselves and feels the calling to preach not realizing that when one has an opinion about everything, they lose their effectiveness. People stop listening. The need to control or dominant a conversation has nothing to do with dissent. It has everything to do with being unduly opinionated and argumentative and makes people wonder who they are trying to convince.
I was glad someone brought up the subject of the welfare of these unwanted children. If parents discover early in their pregnancy that the child has birth defects and are responsible for the welfare over the lifetime of that child, should they not have the right to abort it? If a parent has a child who has experienced a TBI who cannot survive without a ventilator and nutritional support, should they not have the right to end that child's life? To me, that is benevolence. It is wrenching decision and should not rest within the government or a special interest group. Deferring abortion law back to the states does not address the issue at its root, it just puts it in someone else's lap.
No one wants increased welfare and other government subsidies. There is a direct correlation between the poor and uneducated to welfare subsidies. If government would actually take the subject seriously and increase education funding rather than cutting it everytime tax cuts are put on the table, which tend to hit the inner cities the hardest, it would stand to reason the abortion rates would go down. I firmly believe this. But, I digress, and this is a whole other subject.
I would like to hear a presidential candidate state they are going to increase education funding. That is a reason for backing a presidential hopeful.
Responses for M and Some thoughts (sm)
M:
If they don't show progress and default on the loans, then the gov would have a controlling interest because they gave out those loans. This would lead to restructuring, and probably more of a government run industry. And yeah, they could mess it up just as bad, but we have to at least try something.
Some thoughts:
Even if they are supported financially during re-education, what would they go into? Just about every industry across the board is being hit with this financial mess, so their options would be limited. Also, we're talking about millions of people, and not everyone is cut out for higher education, which is a good thing because we actually do need workers in this country.
This also leaves us with an auto industry that would consist of imports, so we would still be oil dependent.
Thank you for your wonderful responses!
I am truly impressed by all of the posters who responded to this question in such a compassionate and intelligent way. You have renewed my faith in the people who post on this board, and for that I thank you!
Personally, I think that any medicine that can help relieve human suffering should, without a doubt, be legal and made available to those in need. The voters of California or any other state that wish to have marijuana legalized should have that right without interference from the federal governent.
Again, thank you!
Yep -Responses from the very ones I expected.
You all are SO predictable.
TTYL...I'm off to do something constructive for our country....
I can also read them and post responses to them
if I like and sometimes I choose to, and I don't use use rage to get my point across like you do. You are the one that needs to take a serious chill pill...that is if you want to, but I seriously doubt it. You revel in your rage.
Obama does not inspire these responses.
xoxoxo
Unbelievable that there are no responses to this post.. All I can say is...sm
this is so true. In my opinion, people voting for the republican ticket are either right wing religious voters, rich voters, poor under-educated voters who are easily led, bigots who would never vote for a black man, or people who for whatever reason buy into the terrorist, Muslim, anti-American, anti-Christ, foreigner, not like us scare tactics that abound.
When I read the ugly responses here to my
post, I know that Jesus is real and that He not only gives someone a new heart but a new mind, a mind not corrupted by the world as the majority of the minds are of you who responded here with your attacks. Of course, you think you are attacking me, some of you on a very personal level, not even knowing who I am, asking such a stupid question as to whether I have children or even suggesting sending brown envelopes filled with feces to people like me.
I don’t know who you are either, but I can tell you that I pray God forgive you for your blindness and hate just as He forgave me when I surrendered my life to Him.
This post is not about me. It is about innocent life, life that never asks to be born, defenseless life that no matter the circumstances of conception is holy and valued in the eyes of its Creator. For everyone of YOU reading this, someone gave you a chance at life. That is more than 50 million aborted babies and counting have had. Their lives have been snuffed out before they had a chance for life, liberty, and the pursuit of justice. They have been murdered for convenience and a lack of responsibility. We all have choices in life, and yes, responsibility does begin with conception. Even a baby conceived in a rape has the same right to life as any other. It didn’t have a choice as to its parentage or the circumstances of its conception.
The Red Envelope Project is to protest millions more innocent babies being murdered across the globe using U. S. taxpayer monies. Woe to you if you support this administration’s unbridled hatred of innocent lives.
I do put my money where my mouth is by working with pregnant women in my community, giving of my time, talents, energy, and financial resources in giving them an alternative to abortion. Many have become pregnant under the most awful circumstances imaginable to the human mind. Yet, these women are far more courageous than most of you who call us terrorists because we want to protect life. In fact, these women are thankful that there are those of us who are willing to sacrifice for them so that their babies have a chance at life. Not even the most vile of you on this board can take away the profound satisfaction and love we have of defending and protecting the most innocent among us. When I see a mother look into the face of her baby and know that she has chosen life, whether she has decided to raise her baby or to give it up for adoption, then I know that all my time, talents, energy, and financial resources have gone into and been made to that which is worthy and glorifies my Lord, and another child has been born who will have an opportunity to become all that God created him or her to be.
Someone made a choice of life for you. Why would you want to deny that for another innocent baby? Why would you want to support an evil president who celebrates death instead of life?
Well, I got a fair number of other responses....sm
..from people who got the point. Sorry if it zoomed past you two!
Note to self: There are a couple of simpletons on the board. Do not use parody or metaphor when writing, or you'll lose them.
Read all the responses to your message - sm
and try to understand what we are saying.
There is just no justifiable reason for this luau and/or any other diversion Obama is into. Does not seem as though many people agree with you and, for the record, I am not here to argue with you, just to try to get you to see past the fog.
Questions for dems and pubs - only serious responses need post...(sm)
If you are a democrat, is there anything that Obama has done that you don't agree with, or perhaps is there a policy that he has kept from the previous admin that you agree with that would be out of the norm for the left?
My answer: I actually agree with the decision exhibited thus far by the Obama administration to keep the "enemy combatant" thing. I think it could serve as useful, however, it should not be abused. In the case of al-Marri I think it was abused, and it should be refined. They have FINALLY brought charges against this guy who has been held in prison since 2003 with no charges, no counsel, nada. I think we need to preserve the right to hold people, but there needs to be some kind of standard for doing so.
Info on case: http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5gcdH1vowYGzkkCo-7c8M2imC056Q
If you are a republican is there anything that the Obama administration has done that you DO agree with?
|
