Recent content by Possum

welcome to the forum Peter - as others have mentioned already, your dad is a good egg even if he does lie about being fat. I don't have any questions at the moment, just wanted to say thanks for coming on and offering your perspective, and I'm glad to hear you're happy and doing well.

no, I don't claim allegiance to either party and I don't see any difference beyond semantics, brother - people on both sides of the aisle tend to believe crazy stuff regardless of evidence when their elected officials and the media are telling them it's true, and there's a growing lack of trust...

how many Democrats do you think believe that Hillary would have won in 2016 if not for Russian propaganda influence? Or that Trump colluded with the Russians while he was president? Or that Al Gore would've been president in 2000 if not for hanging chads and miscounted votes in Florida? Or that...

someone mentioned this already, but it's amazing how the crazies in our own party are actually just a minor fringe element with no real power whose influence is being wildly exaggerated by the opposition for fear-mongering and political gain. Meanwhile it's an ironclad fact that those other...

allowing people to have freedom means that sometimes bad stuff is going to happen, because human beings are imperfect. I'm not happy that humans do bad stuff but I don't want anyone controlling what I can and can't say, read, watch, hear, etc. either, so it's a price I'm willing to pay.

:goodposting: I've voted third party the last two elections and can't see myself changing that this cycle either. It might be throwing my vote away but I don't care - I feel great about not supporting either brand of corruption and stupidity, and there's always the chance a third party gets...

I hear ya - it's definitely a tough situation to be in for teachers who have extremely strong ideological beliefs around this stuff and/or who feel deeply that they're doing the student a disservice by acceding to the parents' wishes. and to be clear I'm responding to your scenario as if it...

unfortunately, I would say that's not your call to make. 

I agree with you that teachers should address bullying like that and not allow it, GB. I'm speaking more about formal sex education contained in a curriculum or teachers who go off-script with specific instruction regarding sexual identity/practices to kids who are (in my opinion) too young to...

:goodposting: there's absolutely no good reason that I can see to introduce gender/sex education to kids at that age. 

I voted definitely wouldn't suspend but I'd like to change it to probably wouldn't suspend. Having grown up in an extremely religious Southern Baptist/quasi-Evangelical family, it's very easy to see how the trans rights community's consistent stiff-necked inability to handle this type of humor...

I agree with you that US and world leadership isn't in great shape these days for a variety of reasons. But I don't think things are gonna get better anytime soon if we all continue promoting uninformed opinions and people because they support our position. (edit: that's just my opinion homie...

people's opinions are always subject to change though, mass. I'd just prefer we do as much as possible - within reason, of course, given the current situation - to keep those changes on a positive track.

agreed - we always focus on Putin and the oligarchs, but the average Russian was already pretty poor by Western standards even before these giant sanctions. It's not their fault they're living under a dictatorship with very little ability to do anything about it, and I don't think the answer to...

unfortunately I think we're all wishing and hoping and holding onto any scrap of news or info we can that tells us there's a happy ending here, and I think for a lot of people - especially on social media where emotion trumps logic 99.9% of the time - that's bordering on or spilling over into...