[strumminsix]

I hear ya, Pheaker.

I'd be fine if you says she was ignorant, hateful, mean-spirited, or even ugly (although some here might not be okay with that and yes, years back I though she was good lookin') but it seems that too often people get hung up on dumb or closed mindedness.

It's really everywhere you look especially with politics. You need to pick a side, you need to hate the other side. Geeez, Louis, most intelligent people I know and respect are open-minded and "a la carte" from the major parties!

I just don't get the closed minded behavior I witness with the policy makers (I do understand it better in conversations like this since it's just talkin') and political pundits. One side votes against cuz the other side proposed it, one side's campaign is to do things differently and better without an explanation of how, but the worst of all are the representative just voting party lines instead of their constituents.

What I'm getting at and sorry for being long winded is that I'm concerned and I'm trying to encourage everyone I know to drop the broad statements and look at the people and issues and yes party since represenatives too often vote party lines.

Personally, I think gay marriage is a tough issue and I've flipped many times on my position and over the past year but think I've finally become comfortable with my position:

#1 get the gov't out of the marriage business and leave that to the churches
#2 have the gov't respect civil unions between 2 adults
#3 let the churches decide marriage

[phreaker]

The real problem here is lack of good word choice.

SS, you're a smart guy.

[wisedyes]

I dunno; I'm pretty sure that like most of the right wing foaming at the mouth pundits, it is probably largely a schtick to sell books ( or air time, etc. ) I find it very hard to believe that ANYBODY, from Ann to Rush to the usual trolls on political discussion boards, actually stand behind some of the things they say. I mean, check out the forums on yahoo sometimes; these people cannot be serious. And if they were, they can't be taken seriously. It's just inflammatory rhetoric for commercial reasons.

However, I do think that there are three big problems with what Ann does. One, she does NOT do her homework. She is frequently busted on some of her "facts" that she throws out there. That's just sloppy work. Two, what she and others like her do has absolutely poisoned the political atmosphere in this country, and made reasoned debate almost impossible. I consider this a great disservice to the nation. And three, too many people come to depend on people like her as actual "purveyors of truth", and she actually deals in gross distortions and exaggerations much of the time. Therefore, she is doing her audience a disservice by actually making them largely uninformed about many things.

All that being said, if she was/is a deadhead, more power to her. She says the right things about it, imho. It would just go to show that people are almost never ALL bad.

[phreaker]

With all this political jib jab and people being taken seriously...

it's good to know that some people can't find humor in this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S8cN2pB3MCE

ha. "he's irresistable"

phuck phred phelps[/url]

[phreaker]

can find humor*

[phpbb]

Check out David Letterman's parody on the Bill Clinton is gay thing...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D_YzbODb9To

This falls under the category of humor....

[strumminsix]

Wisedyes, I agree with most of your post but feel you are a bit myopic. The Dems have their fair share of people equally as destructive.

Two, what she and others like her do has absolutely poisoned the political atmosphere in this country, and made reasoned debate almost impossible. I consider this a great disservice to the nation.

Am I correct in assuming you are just talking about the right since earlier in your post you referred to a spectrum of Ann - Rush?

2 examples off the top of my head:
Randy Rhodes (sp?) from Air America is just nasty as can be
Howard Dean saying things like "Republicans are brain dead." and worse as he's the head of the Democratic party. That just perpetuates the negativity on the other side.

The problem is much larger than one sided.

[wisedyes]

Nah, just picking on Ann and Rush because she is the topic under discussion here. Crazy and stupid is an equal opportunity employer, for sure. I do, however, think that the right wingers pretty much invented this style of political discussion. It seems to me that the left is really only recently getting into it. And frankly, they just aren't that good at it yet.

[phreaker]

Wisedyes, I agree with most of your post but feel you are a bit myopic. The Dems have their fair share of people equally as destructive.

As Lewis Black once said after venting about how he loaths republicans.

"...But don't get me started on the democrats. They've got their own bucket of shit to deal with, too."

[strumminsix]

Nah, just picking on Ann and Rush because she is the topic under discussion here. Crazy and stupid is an equal opportunity employer, for sure. I do, however, think that the right wingers pretty much invented this style of political discussion. It seems to me that the left is really only recently getting into it. And frankly, they just aren't that good at it yet.

HA! love it: "Crazy and stupid is an equal opportunity employer"

[Jimkkc]

Just a few thoughts that may be late in coming - to be against gay marriage is a "dumb" position for republicans to take. Why? B/c, traditionally Republicans are the supposed to be the party of small government. I'm not sure how the potential legislation concerning who can marry who constitutes a smaller government or a smaller role for government to play in our lives. Keep in mind that the same administration that seeks to legislate marriage has tapped phones, wants to use past drug offenses to determine who can and can not get college finacial aid, and of course my favorite even wanted libraries to turn over records of books checked out - my point? the "Republicans" of today are not the Republicans of yesterday. The problem is that the "neo-cons" use these emotional buttons to dictate political discourse. Hm . . . let's see there is a war in Iraq, Israel/Hezbollah, soaring gas prices, medicare/medicade catastrophe . . . but what is really important is that we make sure the Steve and John can't get married! My senes is that the Republicans or "neo-cons" must take these "Dumb" positions b/c if they were to truly talk about the issues, they would be out of power. And keep in mind that the first job of any politician is to stay in power.

I consider Coulter a prostitute - she knows what she needs to do to sell herself and have a comfortable living - on that level, more power to her (one might also argue that we are all prostitutes to some degree). The problem, as some folks have pointed out, is that many people take her words as "facts" and believe that her manner of "discussion" is the way to win political arguments. Unfortunately for us, she is not the only one who simply yells loudest, uses the most names, and the most outrageous claims - ultimately, we all pay the price for her decision - and others like he - relative to how she chooses to sell herself. We pay the price when political debate loses to yelling matches. We pay the price when political decisions are made by un-informed individuals. And yes, we do pay the price when un-informed voters vote based on what the Coulters of the world scream on tv and publish in books.

I can respect her as a person; however, she must respect me as a person as well. As far as I can tell, that doesn't happen. As far as I can tell, her mentality is "I say what I want and to hell with you and any consequences my statements might have." Unfortunately, this attitude sees to dominate much of our public discourse. As far as her opinions? No, I can't say that I respect them. Why? b/c it is clear that her "opinions" exist to sell books and not to make this country a better place to live. She chooses to use her power to better only herself; she does not use her power to make this place or even her corner of this place a better place to live.

[strumminsix]

I'm really digging what you say Jim!

Here is my favorite political quote of all times for two reasons: #1 it's from a GD "member" and #2 it describes my feelings perfectly:

From John Perry Barlow, "I was always raised to think that Republicans were about limited government, about individual liberty, about fiscal responsibility, about balanced budgets, about a wariness of military adventures abroad, about responsible encouragement to business. There's a whole list of things I thought the Republican Party was all about, and these guys that presently occupy the White House, are categorically against every single one of those things. So if they're Republicans, I'm not."

[wisedyes]

The guys currently occupying the White House are definitely not my father's Republicans, that's for sure. I like to think of them as very expensive corporate whores.

Jim, you are right on with everything you say. My point of view in the whole gay marriage debate is fairly simple: It all goes to the Constitution. The Constitution states the requirements for citizenship, lists the rights and privileges that come with it, and delegates out authority in different matters to different levels and branches of gubmint.

Last time I checked, where you park your pecker at night has NOTHING to do with citizenship, so it should not be able to be used as a basis to restrict your rights. Also, the issue of marriage regulations, laws, etc, are STATE matters, not federal. So, to me, this is just one more area that the federales have absolutely zero business in.

[wisedyes]

A thought had just occurred to me, though. Do you think that maybe Ann is choosing now to publicize her "deadheadiness" in order to maybe humanize herself a little bit? She has been taking some extreme heat lately over some of her outrageous statements regarding 9-11 widows.

[tigerstrat]

A thought had just occurred to me, though. Do you think that maybe Ann is choosing now to publicize her "deadheadiness" in order to maybe humanize herself a little bit?

She doesn't have any "deadheadiness" that I can perceive, but I think the reason she is barking up this tree is to annoy people like Al Franken and... me, by putting her stink on something we hold dear.