aerockyulhim comments

Exactly right, griff. At least, that's the impression we get from women in media (movies, TV, magazines, etc..) and the various marketing campaigns thrown on by diamond and jewelery companies. Though I've seen it in reality as well.

cleo--Doesn't it say a lot about the woman when she continues to let the man spend all that money, even when she's aware that he's throwing away a huge chunk of their future money, and she doesn't stop him? Why do women put their future on such a rough foundation to start out willingly, all in the hopes that they can achieve that perfect wedding DAY (and get that completely materialistic and unnecessary engagement ring)? But if things are indeed changing as you say (and I also agree to an extent that they are), that's very much a positive thing.

The positive she can't see is this will actually force Japanese to face the fact that their country is not being ravaged by foreigners and it's not the "safety country" they so love to brag about. Hopefully, with more and more citizens being forced to examine their own REAL society, they may start taking action of their own to make their country a safer place for all.

I don't really have any sympathy for the marketers of these companies that tell us that diamonds are "rare" and if we want to "make her happy" we'd better fork over the money and get her diamonds. Media portrayals add pressure as well for men to really spend a crapload of money before the marriage to woo, ask, and wed women. The equivalent of three months salary is not something that LFRAgain just made up, that was something that was marketed to men in America not less than 5 years ago. It's really a ridiculous notion that a man must waste his money on an engagement ring and then turn around and buy a new SET of rings for the marriage. I truly hope, cleo, that indeed people are moving on from the old rules, which wasted a lot of money needlessly. I like that people are deciding for themselves. But I don't think LFRAgain was saying that was what he really thought. What he said was completely the sort of thing young American men get fed before they get married (among many other money-wasting things). (Source: being a young American male targeted by diamond companies and "old" rules of wooing and marriage)

This reminds me of that elderly couple who were murdered a few weeks ago because they were flashing their cash around the neighborhood rather ostentatiously. I'm really sorry that this woman had to go through this ordeal, but banks and not advertising to the world how much money you have are good ways to avoid this sort of thing from happening.

sorry, my spelling of governments got mangled up there

So you're saying it's genetic? If that was a proven fact, then fine, I'm with you. Why don't we punish the users the way that most countries punish the users of drugs? Guns? Anything else deemed illegal? We all accept that child porn is bad, yet governemtns don't go after the users with the same zeal that they go after users of other illegal things. And obviously I'm not saying that just because you looked at something you should be punished. We all see things inadvertently and that doesn't make us criminals. Users is generally defined as regular users, isn't it? That's the way we use the word, right? I may have missed it, but exactly who are the people other than the distributors and makers (who I don't believe I said should be let off the hook either, they AND the users should be dealt with) who are profiting hugely from child porn? I really, really hope you're not dismissing this sort of "war on child porn" as unnecessary and positing that the users are just giving in to their instincts/desires, so why not let them? I'm not really understanding your vehemence at going after child porn.

All manner of road dangers are compacted here, where street construction FOLLOWED housing and building construction. It's why there's not a lot of grid-pattern street setups here (at least from everything I've seen from east Japan). It's kind of counter-intuitive, then, that people would be so complacent with these very dangerous road hazards everywhere, yet it's true, for the most part Japanese people don't pay attention.

Maybe my taste in music isn't as eclectic or up-to-date as I thought it was, but I'm thoroughly underwhelmed by almost all of these lineups.

That sounds like a favorite tactic of the right. Context or no, factual or not, if something suits your purpose, you'll pounce on it whether it makes you look stupid or not.

teleprompter--that wasn't a red herring about the Sioux nation that BeaverCleaver was talking about. He was directly addressing my post earlier. It's not like he/she? just randomly started talking about the plight of the Sioux. I think this proves how closely you pay attention to what's going on around you instead of taking everything out of context to suit your purposes.

That's exactly right. But don't expect them to "read" much more into what the title actually meant. If taking things at face-value allows you to "win" arguments, you can bet they'll do it.

That's true, it's not like humans, even babies, are made of completely soft material that you wouldn't hear hitting with a car. Have you ever had a rock jump up from the road in front of you (from another car) and hit your hood, bumper or windshield? The rock is a few hundred times smaller than even a toddler and you KNOW you've just been hit by a rock because it makes a really loud sound, even at freeway speed. It's not likely that the driver didn't hear anything when he/she hit the girl. It's hard to absolve the driver in this case, any way you look at it, and it's almost impossible to absolve the mother, for reasons we've already mentioned.

SushiSake, that's exactly what I said earlier in this thread about it being too early for conservatives to shut the door on the Bush years 7 months into a new presidency as if nothing happened before. Ignoring (forgetting) history is what makes history repeat itself. So I'm very glad that Obama is man enough to move forward, using the mistakes of the past to help him come to his many, many decisions that he has to make about fixing this mess, even though most people underneath him still revel in name-calling and blame-slinging and the same old political BS that got us into this mess in the first place.

Of all the "wars" on stuff (drugs, terror, X-mas) that (mostly) American presidents (and blowhard radio/TV hosts) declare, the war on child-porn is probably one of the most noble and I don't mind money going into fighting it (as long as the money is going to the right places, not being wasted by going after the wrong people). Is it really such an impossible goal to eradicate child porn and punish/rehabilitate users? Probably. I don't think what can be done has been done. These agencies are always going after the distributors. My first post makes the point that if you go after the distributors, that doesn't address the problem as there are millions (sadly) of users out there who will turn to other distributors to get what they "need". Go after these users, the distributors will move on to other money-making ventures, and the number of sex-crimes against children in order to fuel the child-porn canon will decrease dramatically. I think that's worth fighting for.

Franken insults one guy, arguably the biggest blowhard and defacto voice of the Republican party, and suddenly the left are a bunch of insult-slingers deigning to come down and allow the right to join in the discussion. That's quite a lot you've read out of one title of one book by one man aimed at one other man. Did you actually, I don't know, READ the book? Or are you doing that ever-so-foolish thing where you judge books by their covers? Here you don't even have a cover!! Just a title!

Wait, HelterSkelter, isn't that the reason that you and your ilk are constantly defending the reasons we went to war? Saddam was persecuting these poor helpless Iraqis and the only people who could come in and save the country was Bush and the US military. Isn't that the reason you fall back on time and time again when someone (not of the right) says that we should get out or that there were no WMD's or that Iraq and Saddam were culpable in 9/11? That's the RIGHT'S political mileage, not the left's. I guess you're all being consistent though. The right's political mileage now becomes the left's, just like the gigantic cluster-F that Bush left for Obama has now become solely Obama's. Sailwind is right, at least Obama is looking forward and isn't resorting to all this switching of tactics, which can't be said about EITHER side of the bickering and blame-slinging constituents of both the left and right.

griff--it is exactly that. It is EXACTLY that.

Yeah, I don't think she necessarily deserves jail time, but it really depends on her feelings about being a parent. If she couldn't be bothered to help her toddler across the street (which suggests she probably wouldn't or hadn't in the future or past), she deserves a little more punishment. If she had a tragic, one-time mental lapse, then her grief is all the punishment she'll need. However, with a lot of the show of indifference so many parents show in this country (again, not singling Japan out, but this happened in Japan and most of us who actually live here can agree that parental skills are for the most part lacking here), it's very easy to imagine she probably won't care as much as a good parent would, and that's what a lot of people are reacting to here.

BeaverCleaver, I just reread my post about Clinton being a draft-dodger and I should have put it in quotes to highlight my point. Sorry to come off the way that it reads. I'm relatively new to joining forum discussions and I sometimes forget how easily sarcasm can get lost in print.

Let's go into more of the right's name-calling as well. Sarge didn't start it on this thread but he's continuing it and I didn't realize it was such a popular tactic now. So if someone says they're a native of a state, you think they can only be a native if they are Native American Indian?? So what does that make you?! Do you walk around saying "I'm from America, but I'm not Native American, my family immigrated from (insert white European country here), but I still consider myself American" Incredible that you take the time to say that! It's staggering the games you guys will try to play to bring the level of discussion down to playground name-calling.

BeaverCleaver, yeah, I know, that was just one of those things that the right loves to throw at Clinton. It was kind of going with the whole of my point of outlining the staggering hypocracy that the right uses to bring down anything other than what they believe. So, yes, I will apologize for not making that clear. Thanks for bringing that to light so more people will (perhaps) know the truth.

My wife sometimes likes to watch this TV "drama" (it's more unintentionally hilarious and cringe-worthy than anything I'd call a drama) and she whips a bunch of prissy J-punks who constantly get into huge slapping brawls and Yukie always walks in and saves the day by beating the crap out of the OTHER J-punks that are not her students (who are themselves useless, crybaby J-punks). The fact that she's using violence to stop violence amongst the same two sets of people with different names kind of says something about the war on drugs in general. It's a battle you're not going to win, no matter who is brought in to fight it.

I'd be all for other people pressing my own country to do the right thing in most situations. I didn't mean to pick only on China but as it's the focus of this article...

Yeah, I guess it's difficult to get China to do the right thing when most of their detractors are just as guilty of similar infractions. In a perfect world...

People from all walks of life make it into government, and that's no reason to discount them. That's all I was trying to say there.

I don't think he was the greatest president, but most of his constituents did/do (at least that was the impression one would draw from the aftermath of his death, as well as their constant defense of his policies (Reaganomics) and it mirrors the constant defense of the Bushes policies). Clinton was a draft-dodger. My point wasn't democratic representatives in government are inherently good, and republican reps are inherently bad. I was saying that people who are discounting Franken and other former reps because of their jobs before getting into office have no ground to stand on.

The driver most likely couldn't see the very small child, but he probably could see the mother. I know that in America we have a law that pedestrians must be at the very least 2/3rds of the way through the crosswalk before you can drive into it. I don't know if it's a law here. Regardless, the onus was on the mother to help her child across the street. This was absolutely the wrong place to teach a child a lesson about being left behind. On the sidewalk or indoors, I can see the point of teaching a lesson, but in the middle of the F-ing street is brainless and most of the blame goes on the mother in this case.

I can't count the number of times in all public areas of Japan how many times I see parents walking ahead of their children, with only occassional looks back. Not all parents do this, but a large number do. I don't know if it happens a lot in other countries either. But it's so sad to see these stories constantly happening here, and new parents continue to make the same mistakes that these other irresponsible parents make.

I hope the postponement leads to an absolute cancellation of the requirement. It's great to see that finally with enough pressure China is able to back down. I hope more movements continue to pressure China so effectively to start doing the right thing in other situations.

By twice elected as president I meant to two terms. It was the same guy, in case anyone thought I didn't know that. And as to California I meant Reagan and Schwarzenegger. Sorry to mix the terms up.