Anonymous wrote:I don't hate America - I believe very much is the ideals that we were founded upon. I think we have the capacity to be a great nation.

Doesn't mean I think we've made the best decisions all the time. And I 100% do NOT buy the "We're the greatest nation on the planet" nonsense.

There is a lot to fix, and sadly no one seems to care to do it. And now that compromise seems to be a dirty word, I've pretty much given up on our stupid politicians.

Anonymous wrote:I'm not a vegetarian. But I hate bacon, and its smell. Completely do not understand the craze.

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Anonymous wrote:what's wrong with how the Obama girls act?

The fact that they didn't seem to act fascinated and enthralled about the pardoning of a turkey, and that one wore a miniskirt that day seems to upset a lot of people.

Anonymous wrote:1. I hate avocado
2. I think parents who are hyper vigilant about germs have the sickest kids
3. I hate that schools celebrate all the holidays making parents do all this silly crap like wrap a shoebox in paper for valentine day card collection.

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I fully support gentrification in DC. It's time to rid this city of the riff raff.

Serious question: Where is the riff-raff supposed to go? If you kick all the poors out of Anacostia, where do you suggest they live instead?

Not the person who posted this but I agree with them. I really don't give a damn where people "go" once their neighborhood becomes gentrified. It's not my problem. I don't see the issue here in DC yet but the protests against gentrification in San Francisco REALLY upset me. A guy dared to open a successful restaurant in a gentrifying neighborhood and the useless hippies harassed him until he left. And they said he didn't belong there. If poor people moved into a richer neighborhood and were treated the same way, EVERY civil rights activist in the Western Hemisphere would descend upon that city and there would be protests and hell to pay.

I mean, are we really going to stop real estate values from rising and stop neighborhoods from becoming BETTER? And safer with less crime, and with more amenities, and nicer housing stock, and likely better schools? It's such a friggin' backwards attitude, I can't even stand it. Do people realize they're fighting to make their neighborhoods stay semi-crappy?

The bolded statement is kind of hilarious. PP does not seem to understand that poor people *can't* move into rich neighborhoods because they can't afford it. And the rich know that, which is why they put up with high property taxes -- because they want their neighborhood to be cost prohibitive.

So poor people live in cheaper neighborhoods. But then wealthy people move in, and even the poor people who have managed to buy a house and maintain can no longer afford the property taxes and get pushed out, which was the wealthy plan all along. So then where do the poor people go?

And that leads to the elephant in the room. Some people just want the poor to disappear altogether. But they don't actually want to *help* poor people move up the ladder. They just want to get rid of them.

So when people say that gentrification "improves" neighborhoods, they are wrong. Gentrification *replaces* neighborhoods. I have yet to see a gentrification model whereby the people who originally inhabited the neighborhood, the poor people, find their lives getting better with gentrification as opposed to just being moved to some other location.

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Anonymous wrote:I believe no jail sentence should be shorter than 10 years, no exceptions, no plea bargaining out. Too many people commit 'non serious' crime eg domestic abuse, car theft, shoplifting etc etc and are out of jail in months if they ever go

Aaannnndddd you want therefore to raise taxes to 90% of everyone's income to pay for this?

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I'd like to encounter this "lot" of respectful atheists. Even within this thread people have been very insulting to believers. As a Christian, all I ask is that you give the same respect that you'd want for yourself.