First off, being divisive is not the same thing as being uncivil. I'm taking this as you're surrendering the argument that Obama is rude and uncivil for a political leader, which is pure utter horsecrap. I have plenty of complaints about Obama; his alleged incivility as a political leader is utterly laughable. I don't see him going around telling people that if they don't agree with him, they're unpatriotic, not "real Americans", communists, fascists, socialists, and other nonsense. He doesn't scream "YOU LIE!" in the middle of other politicians' nationally televised speeches. Your entire suggestion that he's uncivil is partisan hackery. There's PLENTY I would criticize Obama for, but being uncivil?! Give me a break.

More extreme left Democrats don't like him so much, so that makes Obama divisive?! Newsflash - they don't care for him so much because he's governed as a moderate. You know, the type of politics most people in this country agree with when asked without being mislead by the media. His signature legislation, Obamacare, broadened Medicaid rolls by a few million people, while limiting tax deductible benefits related to health care that wealthier income people benefit from the most, such as Cadillac health plans and capping FSA yearly contributions. It was the most moderate health reform being discussed. Put it up against single payer or government option, and it is remarkably moderate. Extreme left Democrats didn't like it? COLOR ME SHOCKED!

You want to know why politics is more divisive today than ever? We are now in a political climate where Obama is being criticized for taking out Bin Laden by political opponents. "Spiking the football"?! Has there ever been a more politically shallow move than that? "Man... he really has us by the political balls on this one, how on earth can we spin it? EVERYONE wanted Bin Laden dead, and we couldn't do it for almost a decade of trying, and now his administration got him... I KNOW! Let's accuse him of taking too much credit and excessive celebration!!!" Talk about manufacturing a conflict!

And please, the birther thing is ridiculous. Just stop. It was idiotic before he released his birth certificate, and after he released it, it's taken absurdity to a whole new level. It makes his opposition look even more brain dead the more they talk about it. Extreme conservatives simply wanted to latch on to anything that could disqualify him from office because he's not a Republican. Where were these people when there was talks about Kissinger making a good President?

And stop playing your religious card. If you'll accept whoever God appoints as President, then drink a tall glass of STFU, and stay out of politics. Where's your outrage for the GOP not making it a priority to protect the poor? That's certainly not very Christian either.

Sorry for the rant, but when are we going to talk about things Obama ACTUALLY hasn't done well with as President?

>> ^shinyblurry:

>> ^heropsycho:
SERIOUSLY?!
Obama needs to be more polite?!
OBAMA ?!?!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qgce06Yw2ro
Not to mention a significant faction of the GOP accuse him of not being an American citizen. And that's persisting after he provided his birth certificate!
I'm not a leftwinger, or a Democrat for that matter, but you have to be out of your damn mind if you think that politics isn't civil enough because of Obama.
>> ^shinyblurry:
I'd like him to be more polite



Obama is the most divisive president this country has ever seen. Even top democrats complain that he is a terrible leader:
http://www.mrctv.org/videos/top-congressional-democrats-compl
ain-obama-not-leader
As far as where he was born is concerned, it's not as if the birthers have no reason to be skeptical:
http://ww
w.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2012/05/17/The-Vetting-Barack-Obama-Literary-Agent-1991-Born-in-Kenya-Raised-Indonesia-Hawaii

As for me, I accept whomever God has appointed. I pray for Obama, although I hope this will be his only term.

>> ^heropsycho:

SERIOUSLY?!
Obama needs to be more polite?!
OBAMA ?!?!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qgce06Yw2ro
Not to mention a significant faction of the GOP accuse him of not being an American citizen. And that's persisting after he provided his birth certificate!
I'm not a leftwinger, or a Democrat for that matter, but you have to be out of your damn mind if you think that politics isn't civil enough because of Obama.
>> ^shinyblurry:
I'd like him to be more polite




Obama is the most divisive president this country has ever seen. Even top democrats complain that he is a terrible leader:

http://www.mrctv.org/videos/top-congressional-democrats-complain-obama-not-leader

As far as where he was born is concerned, it's not as if the birthers have no reason to be skeptical:

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2012/05/17/The-Vetting-Barack-Obama-Literary-Agent-1991-Born-in-Kenya-Raised-Indonesia-Hawaii



As for me, I accept whomever God has appointed. I pray for Obama, although I hope this will be his only term.

Hardfloor is still going strong. Still the best and will never die! Look them up. Every track they release is good enough to stack up against any track of any other of my favorite artists. They are so consistently good to great and by now have released around 300 hours of great music if you add up all their tracks from albums, EPs and singles. They released their first single in 1991 and have been releasing tracks and albums steadily ever since, one of the best groups out there in any genre and certainly one of the best and most influential dance music acts.

De Niro's 1991 flick comes to mind.

how many roman mathematicians does it take to screw in a lightbulb?

answer: 1991

the copyright date at the end (MCMXCI) doesn't require a consensus.

Disease rates

"During the past two decades, an explosive growth in both the prevalence and types of sexually transmitted diseases has occurred. Up to 55 percent of homosexual men with anorectal complaints have gonorrhea; 80 percent of the patients with syphilis are homosexuals. Chlamydia is found in 15 percent of asymptomatic homosexual men, and up to one third of homosexuals have active anorectal herpes simplex virus"

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrezDb=pubmed&Cmd=ShowDetailView&TermToSearch=2242700&ordinalpos=4&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_Resul
tsPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum

Higher rates of AIDS - 63 percent of new cases

http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5424a2.htm


Drug use

Among homosexual men, ages 18 to 25: 79.2 percent have used marijuana; 75 percent have used psychotherapeutics for nonmedical reasons; 65.2 percent have used stimulants such as dexedrine and benzedrine; 62.5 percent have used inhalants such as amyl or butyl nitrate; and 50.2 percent have used hallucinogens such as LSD. Rates among lesbians: marijuana, 82 percent; psychotherapeutics, 58.8 percent; stimulants, 52.9 percent; inhalants, 41.2 percent; and hallucinogens, 41.2 percent. Comparing current usage to national usage, homosexuals were found to use drugs with greater frequency: "Among adults aged 18-25, 16.5 percent of men and 9.1 percent of women have used marijuana in the past month, compared with 37.5 per-cent of gay men and 23.5 percent of lesbians."

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1615476/

20 times higher rate of meth use (quoted from LA Times article)

http://www.narth.com/docs/methuse.html

Domestic violence

"Rates of battering victimization among urban MSM are substantially higher than among heterosexual men and possibly heterosexual women. Public health efforts directed toward addressing intimate partner battering among these men are needed."

http://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/abs/10.2105/AJPH.92.12.1964

http://www.springerlink.com/content/r130ql0471892435/

Depression, suicide, mental health

LGB people are at higher risk of mental disorder, suicidal ideation, substance misuse, and deliberate self harm than heterosexual people

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18706118

Findings support recent evidence suggesting that gay, lesbian, and bisexual young people are at increased risk of mental health problems, with these associations being particularly evident for measures of suicidal behavior and multiple disorder.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10530626

Life expectancy of homosexuals

"In a major Canadian centre, life expectancy at age 20 years for gay and bisexual men is 8 to 20 years less than for all men. If the same pattern of mortality were to continue, we estimate that nearly half of gay and bisexual men currently aged 20 years will not reach their 65th birthday. Under even the most liberal assumptions, gay and bisexual men in this urban centre are now experiencing a life expectancy similar to that experienced by all men in Canada in the year 1871"

http://ije.oxfordjournals.org/content/26/3/657.abstract

Statistics on Amsterdam

According to a study in the Netherlands where homosexuality has been accepted and mainstreamed for years, homosexual behavior significantly increases the likelihood of psychiatric, mental and emotional disorders, negating the mindset that society’s lack of tolerance of homosexual behavior and lifestyle produces these psychoses Youth are four times as likely to suffer major depression, almost three times as likely to suffer generalized anxiety disorder, nearly four times as likely to experience conduct disorder, four times as likely to commit suicide, five times as likely to have nicotine dependence, six times as likely to suffer multiple disorders, and more than six times as likely to have attempted suicide.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11146762

That covers all of my claims. I think you'll find all of the evidence I have provided is from unbiased sources. This refutes the claim that homosexuality does not harm anyone. It clearly harms the individual, the community and society at large.

Here are some more statistics that I don't have direct links to. .

An Amsterdam study found that the average homosexual relationship lasts only 18 months and that "men in homosexual relationships, on average, have eight partners a year outside those relationships." By comparison, more than two-thirds of heterosexual marriages in America last longer than ten years. Maria Xiridou et al.,

"The Contribution of Steady and Casual Partnerships to the Incidence of HIV Infection Among Homosexual Men in Amsterdam,"
AIDS 17, 7 (2003): 1029-1038.

Ricky Behaviors:

Researchers from the University of California, San Francisco found that thirty-six percent of homosexuals engaging in unprotected oral, anal, or vaginal sex failed to disclose that they were HIV positive to casual sex partners.

"Some With HIV Aren't Disclosing Before Sex; UCSF Researcher's 1,397-person Study Presented During aids Conference," The San Francisco Examiner (July 15, 2000)"

A CDC report revealed that, in 1997, 45 percent of homosexuals reporting having had unprotected anal intercourse during the previous six months did not know the HIV serostatus of all their sex partners. Even more alarming, among those who reported having had unprotected anal intercourse and multiple partners, 68 percent did not know the HIV serostatus of their partners

Gay and Bi Men Less Likely to Disclose They Have HIV," GayHealth News (July 18, 2000).

Promiscuity

A.P. Bell and M.S. Weinberg, in their classic study of male and female homosexuality, found that 43 percent of white male homosexuals had sex with 500 or more partners, with 28 percent having 1,000 or more sex partners.

A. P. Bell and M. S. Weinberg, Homosexualities: A Study of Diversity Among Men and Women (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1978), pp. 308, 9; see alsoBell, Weinberg and Hammersmith, Sexual Preference (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1981)

Paul Van de Ven et al., "A Comparative Demographic and Sexual Profile of Older Homosexually Active Men," Journal of Sex Research 34 (1997): 354. Dr. Paul Van de Ven reiterated these results in a private conversation with Dr. Robert Gagnon on September 7, 2000

In their study of the sexual profiles of 2,583 older homosexuals published in Journal of Sex Research, Paul Van de Ven et al., found that only 2.7 percent claimed to have had sex with one partner only. The most common response, given by 21.6 percent of the respondents, was of having a hundred-one to five hundred lifetime sex partners.

Survey Finds 40 percent of Gay Men Have Had More Than 40 Sex Partners," Lambda Report, January/February 1998, p. 20.

A survey conducted by the homosexual magazine Genre found that 24 percent of the respondents said they had had more than a hundred sexual partners in their lifetime. The magazine noted that several respondents suggested including a category of those who had more than a thousand sexual partners.[11]

M. Pollak, "Male Homosexuality," in Western Sexuality: Practice and Precept in Past and Present Times, edited by P. Aries and A. Bejin, pp. 40-61, cited by Joseph Nicolosi in Reparative therapy of Male Homosexuality (Northvale, New Jersey: Jason Aronson Inc., 1991),

In his study of male homosexuality in Western Sexuality: Practice and Precept in Past and Present Times, M. Pollak found that "few homosexual relationships last longer than two years, with many men reporting hundreds of lifetime partners."

David P. McWhirter and Andrew M. Mattison, The Male Couple: How Relationships Develop (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1984), pp. 252, 3.

>> ^curiousity:

>> ^Porksandwich:

Does Finland schooling system provide anything but education and the facilities and meals related to keeping a large group of people for hours on end?
Do they do tutoring?
How do they handle discipline?
Do they offer sports teams and fields, etc as part of the school budget?
Uniforms?
Field trips?
Music/band?
Im hoping to hear from @CreamK on this.
Like I've always felt in the US that the sports programs and all the cost associated with them plus the competition they spawn within the student body and against other schools is not beneficial. Basically you end up with a small group of players who get the school to bend over backwards to make things possible for them and everyone else loses out on it, in fact they often have to pay for tickets to even see the events their parents tax dollars make possible.


There's tutoring for students that are falling behind, it's personal one-on-one and there's a multiple programs to help students who have problems, like specail ed or for troubled teens. I actually went on one these troubled youth programs. I never had any learning problems in school, in fact i was always so much ahead in classes that i got bored and started to get in to problems and skipping A LOT.. But when they finally managed to get me in to this special class, i've never enjoyed school that much.. I did two years of math in half a year and got free choice of what to do instead of math.. I either got a free hour or i picked up another subject like literacy and the best part of it was that i choosed what to do..

Discipline is there, you got many levels of it. Mostly it's handled in conjunction with parents. Detention, personal tutoring or changing to a smaller group, workshops where you can fix bikes and learn sciences with more hands on approaches etc. Mostly it's not a punishment as such but personalized programs to tailored to fit for the needs. Expulsions are very rare, in my school years i heard of two incidences and both were changed to smaller group where they both stopped skipping school in two weeks time. Those smaller groups consists of one teacher per 5 students or even less..

No sport teams are provided by schools, they are handled by sport teams junior programs. There is of course 1-2 hour classes per week for sports but it's more to do with learning to enjoy excercise than competing.

No uniforms or mandatory dressing codes. There is the basic decency expected when it comes to dressing and one peculiar code is that you are not allowed to wear a hat in class... Those baseball caps can hide your eyes... I know, it's a bit strange..

Field trips: yes, there are both provided by the school and then longer ones where the students do bake sales etc to gather money and those are voluntary.

Music is a subject and schools can provide the means to do them more in your own free time. The bands are not a part of schools but usually every city has one or to schools that concentrate more for those programs. It means a few extra hours but provide a good base for secondary musical education institutes where you can enroll at young age. Those institutions are publicly funded too and work in conjuction with all levels schools and they continue seamlessly to provide education for music teachers and professionals up to master degrees. You can go to those schools when you're grown up too and they have a tuitions, in the range of 100-200€ per class. So once again, money is not a hurdle for education.

It's been a years when i was in basic school, i graduated in 1989 and went to secondary school in 1991. That was about the time when the education reform was moving to that state too so i had to mixed field of teachers. Some were not up to job and some were just wonderful personalities. Now adays it's up to standards too and in fact, i'm enrolling in one next fall to finish up my graduation..

The downside of Finnish system is that you can not even get a job as a cleaner without finishing some sort of courses for it.. So even for basic shitty jobs you need a basic education in that field... But since those are basically free of charge (some require a 100-200€ fee, not a problem...) everyone has a chance. Also when you get a better job the companies often provide the follow-up studies that fit to that job description. The cost of those are divided by the goverment and the companies.

"Hit Any key" she says?! Well where the hell is it? I've been looking for the "Any" key since 1991!!!

When I worked at Hartville IGA (back in the late 80's early 90's), one of our lead baggers got to the nationals a couple times... I want to say he won his last time out, but could be way wrong on that...


EDIT: Yeah, he won in 1991
http://www.nationalgrocers.org/who-we-are/nga-special-programs/best-bagger-contest/best-bagger-championship-history

Thanks for posting this. I got it in my head back in 1991 that I was going to write software for the Macintosh. So I bought tons of books and "Think C" and studied all their system function calls and how to program the 68030 chip directly, I was really dedicated. I thought I would move to California and work for Apple. Then they switched to the PowerPC chip and all that assembly code I memorized was obsolete. Still it was a great learning experience, the Mac really inspired me back then.

Pfft.
I could easily have won that--but I lost my amateur status in 1991.

Does what?

>> ^Yogi:

>> ^berticus:
"Azealia Banks was born in 1991. Her mother raised Banks and her two older sisters in Harlem after their father died when she was two years old. At a young age she became interested in musical theater, acting, and singing. At age 10, she began performing in off-Broadway musicals with the Tada! Youth Theater in Lower Manhattan. She won lead roles in three productions (Rabbit Sense, Sleepover, and Heroes) in addition to performing as a soloist. Banks was classically trained in the performing arts at the renowned LaGuardia High School of Performing Arts in Manhattan, the same school Nicki Minaj attended. At age 16 she starred in a production of the comedy-noir musical City of Angels. Banks never finished high school, however, instead choosing to follow her dream of becoming a recording artist."
I would say so, yeah.
>> ^Hybrid:
Her parents must be so proud.


Good for her. I think it's sad that in order to be really successful...she does this. Oh well.

>> ^berticus:

"Azealia Banks was born in 1991. Her mother raised Banks and her two older sisters in Harlem after their father died when she was two years old. At a young age she became interested in musical theater, acting, and singing. At age 10, she began performing in off-Broadway musicals with the Tada! Youth Theater in Lower Manhattan. She won lead roles in three productions (Rabbit Sense, Sleepover, and Heroes) in addition to performing as a soloist. Banks was classically trained in the performing arts at the renowned LaGuardia High School of Performing Arts in Manhattan, the same school Nicki Minaj attended. At age 16 she starred in a production of the comedy-noir musical City of Angels. Banks never finished high school, however, instead choosing to follow her dream of becoming a recording artist."
I would say so, yeah.
>> ^Hybrid:
Her parents must be so proud.



Good for her. I think it's sad that in order to be really successful...she does this. Oh well.

"Azealia Banks was born in 1991. Her mother raised Banks and her two older sisters in Harlem after their father died when she was two years old. At a young age she became interested in musical theater, acting, and singing. At age 10, she began performing in off-Broadway musicals with the Tada! Youth Theater in Lower Manhattan. She won lead roles in three productions (Rabbit Sense, Sleepover, and Heroes) in addition to performing as a soloist. Banks was classically trained in the performing arts at the renowned LaGuardia High School of Performing Arts in Manhattan, the same school Nicki Minaj attended. At age 16 she starred in a production of the comedy-noir musical City of Angels. Banks never finished high school, however, instead choosing to follow her dream of becoming a recording artist."

I would say so, yeah.

>> ^Hybrid:

Her parents must be so proud.

@dag I would imagine WTF.

And man, other's comments make me feel like an old fart. Born in 1991!!! Wow, that's... yeah. I'm officially old now