Comments by Gene Scarborough | Eastern North Carolina Now

It appears to be consistent with Conservatism of religion or politics that you dictate to supposedly maturing adults exactly what they MUST believe rather than challenge them to think for themselves for the rest of their lives and make wise decisions debated out with other wise people . . .

Commented: Sunday, March 8th, 2015 @ 4:24 pm By: Gene Scarborough

Why is it that any education presenting a full scope of challenging concepts is termed "left wing?" I think you have gone overboard and have a most limited understanding of what is a challenging and mind-expanding education.

For me, we should all be challenged to get out of our small corner of life and thinking to a broader challenge. THEN the individual comes to his own conclusions as to what is wise and what is foolish.

Are you advocating for INDOCTRINATION or EDUCATION, my friend???

Commented: Friday, March 6th, 2015 @ 11:03 am By: Gene Scarborough

Good old Thom ~~~ the new monkey climbs more limbs higher to hurt working people a favor industry and the rich . . . I feel so represented as they run fracking and sonar scanning for offshore drilling in the Graveyard of the Atlantic.

Please, if you live on or near the Outer Banks and fish the Gulf Stream, do it soon before an oil spill destroys it for greed and Koch Oil money to elect more destroyers of all for Oil. . .

The puppet of the rich responds quickly to his strings being pulled. . .

Commented: Thursday, March 5th, 2015 @ 3:22 pm By: Gene Scarborough

Here is Stan in 18 months ~~~ Love, Love, Love--all we need is love and here is the link to wash your dishes and clean your house . . .

Commented: Thursday, March 5th, 2015 @ 2:52 pm By: Gene Scarborough

I agree back with Stan~~~he has done a masterful job of putting relevant material before us and it is worthy of more deep discussion from all sides than we are yet having to date. The majority is clearly a Conservative take, but I am trying to offer some alternate things to consider PLUS rational reasons.

We can always "agree to disagree / not think as I think, but THINK" ~~~ I hope more will be open to a deeper opportunity in a fractious time. I now have friends who were absolutely opposite in opinion than me BECAUSE we kept on talking and discussing until we reached a point or mutual respect and appreciation. I consider Stan's comment a major break for us both . . . He will tell you our personal discussions have been great and usually last until we have to get on with some business when we would rather stay and talk . . .

Now, Stan, about the harsh words used against so called "liberals" --- can I get some respect, at least . . .

Commented: Thursday, March 5th, 2015 @ 8:35 am By: Gene Scarborough

I will definitely attend --- Anyone living near our River will be adversely affected by an oil spill / Fracking is the same with wash down to the Sound. The people of NY kept quiet when wast disposal sites were put in their towns and by the water sources.

They, later, died of cancer and could not sell their homes from the pollution . . .

Commented: Wednesday, March 4th, 2015 @ 8:15 am By: Gene Scarborough

One great thinking author of the early 1900 said: "It is a shame that just when media is developing and communication is at the speed of light around the world ~~~ we really have nothing intelligent to say . . ."

Commented: Wednesday, March 4th, 2015 @ 7:06 am By: Gene Scarborough

If I can just hear a few kind words toward your opposition, it would make me happy. The best leaders know how to take themselves less serious and laugh with their opponents. Maybe it's the lack of humor here that bugs me. Otherwise we can simply agree to disagree, but the Republican Presidents were MY PRESIDENT to a one. Nixon and his lies were the only exception, but I saw through his BS when he campaigned in SC.

Commented: Monday, March 2nd, 2015 @ 6:03 pm By: Gene Scarborough

This sounds much like a Rush Limbaugh, et al, conservative attack on any who oppose the Conservative moves in an organized fashion. It fails to cite the Koch Brothers being equally active under the same guise of "bland name." Our current Tax Code is but and extension of "rich get richer / poor get poorer" Trickle Down Voo Doo Economic theory which is obviously NOT WORKING.

Adoption of the Voo Doo Tax Code to NC State Taxes has us far short of a balanced budget for our state. The sad state of funding Public Education and Mental Health is another negative side of abject Conservatism.

Don't be fooled into thinking "Progressive Legislation is evil." Such Progressive thinking led to the Research Triangle Park / Eastern NC. Medical Center and School / Global Transpark which could support the growth of flowers in the place of waning tobacco. Anyone doubting the future of flower production and sales as a means to NC trade success has never been to Amsterdam where I witnessed its benefits personally in the 1980's.

All I am saying is "There are always two sides to any story." As a matter of fact, there are THREE SIDES: My side / your side / the right side . . . We rejoice in the KKK giant sign in Johnston County being gone. We grieve in the 3 murders in Chapel Hill when a white man shot 3 Muslim students to death with head shots.

If we are to have a just and progressive society in the Great North State, it will be the result of all sides in a big and diverse state finding ways to work together for the good of all tax paying citizens here. . .

Commented: Monday, March 2nd, 2015 @ 6:59 am By: Gene Scarborough

Stan, Stan ~~~ what have you been drinking during all this snow??? You must have been taking a double dose of the Conservative Mean Pill as well to come up with this.

You depict Muslim Extremism as if it were some giant army capable of invading the Middle East and then marching up the Outer Banks to invade Beaufort County. You mention not one word about President Obama's Administration bringing the execution of Osama ben Laden to it's conclusion. Those Special Forces troopers trained on his recreated Compound in Hyde County, by the way. You act as if we have a real enemy in the form of a minor, but horrible, group of thugs in black robes.

In these same "weeks of fear" you cite, Jordan put together a massive assault on the group who burned their pilot alive. Other internal groups with an actual dog in the fight are reaching their limit and striking at the leadership of ISIS. Meanwhile the US is committing drones, airstrikes, and trainers to the people who must solve their own problems in their own backyard.

To now open your history book to Neville Chamberlain and equate his diplomacy to that of the Obama Administration is your greatest stroke of mis-information yet! You simply prove to me that fear short-circuits the thought and reason circuits of your brain. Further, it turns actual history into a swamp of propaganda, in my view.

We have BOTH lived close enough to the events of WWII and failed appeasement of the Nazi onslaught to know some major differences in your conjecture:
(1) Nazi aggression was from a super-conservative megalomania that Germany should rule Europe as well as England. They had developed super-weapons and came close to the Atomic bomb before US sacrifices brought them down in a gigantic joint effort under the supervision of General Dwight Eisenhower.
(2) The current ISIS folks dare not show their faces, cart around big guns on pickup trucks, intimidate and kill with video abandon, are far more bluster and fear-mongers than Germany produced. We are putting weapons of mass destruction over their head every day with abandon. Hardly a week goes by without a report of another leader blown to bits by Allied forces and Special Forces.
(3) We have become more like the Germans in our treatment of War Prisoners at Abu Garib and Gitmo. This scares the dickens out of me as the World Court is seeking Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and George W. Bush under our signed Geneva Accords.
(4) A recent documentary on Cheney, "The World According to Dick Cheney," shows a man who inserted himself into the Reagan Administration and grew powerful and arrogant with each one he served under Daddy Bush and Sonny Bush. He and Rummy ended their last stint by getting their lawyer to sign off on torture --- and then our President. Rumsfeld was forced to depart --- and the last months had George Bush demanding Cheney NOT BE ALLOWED to meet with him again! Even naive George Bush saw the light of deception in the cold heart of Cheney/Rumsfeld. General Colin Powell left the mess over WMD falsehoods years earlier.
(5) Our current President has stopped the hidden torture / withdrawn troops from their "clay pigeon" situation in the Middle East / inserted diplomacy in the place of brute force which was bringing our troops back with PTSD rather than a victory and control of a bunch of Middle Eastern tribesmen who cannot get along with one another, much less form a valid military force and government to bring down America!

I suggest this chapter of your overreach comes close to insanity on your part. The only thing which coincides with Chamberlain's concessions is the lame lies and distortions Hitler used to con a well-meaning Diplomat in the face of a country unwilling to fight back against the Nazi onslaught simply because of Fear. Once FDR was elected, the lend-lease arms program developed, and America’s industrial might put in the equation --- Germany was beaten back.

The moral standards of America ultimately brought peace and integrity back into the world picture of our lifetimes. I think cooler heads and more honesty are in order now. All you are showing is the simple-minded fear that a bunch of thugs can create any government that lasts.

Commented: Monday, March 2nd, 2015 @ 6:25 am By: Gene Scarborough

You can prove with theoretical math that an elephant can hang from a daisy over a cliff, but I'm not fool enough to try it.

To look at the slow diminishing of the polar ice caps should make someone ask, "Where is all the water going?" Already places in the Far East are seeing a rise in water in their marshes and inland. That is because they are higher on the earth from the equator than Eastern NC. Our band can take more water without severe change than Maine or points north.

I was in England years ago. They have a 20' tidal change at their longitude. I would not build on the Outer Banks. Piers and houses are going into the sea already. The logic is here and only fools look the other way, in my view . . .

Commented: Thursday, February 26th, 2015 @ 12:25 pm By: Gene Scarborough

www.gotquestions.org

Here is the biblical intersection with confused sexuality . . . It is a fact that the Bible was written from a non-scientific world view. Its writers view the earth as a 3-story entity --- water beneath / land / sky above. Anyone claiming the Bible is "without error" would never board a jet for travel. In fact, most early mariners believed if you sailed out of sight of land you could fall off into the abyss. Early Astronomers were threatened with burning at the stake if they persisted in their theory that the earth was a globe circling the sun.

It is not stupidity. It is just interpreting strange things from the man-centered-universe perspective. Early man believed we were the center and all else rotated around us on earth. Once astronomy and mathematics intersected with that view, it did not make sense nor prove itself to be true.

Sadly, some have never "gotten it." They insist on still being the center of the universe, as silly as that might sound to a person viewing Hubble pictures of space.

Commented: Sunday, February 22nd, 2015 @ 7:26 am By: Gene Scarborough

Good plan, Stan ~~~ I see the growth from it / I hope to participate in the advertising benefits of being a contributor. . .

Commented: Sunday, February 22nd, 2015 @ 7:02 am By: Gene Scarborough

Let's hope each generation is a better grade of humanity~~~by God's grace . . .

Commented: Sunday, February 22nd, 2015 @ 6:55 am By: Gene Scarborough

The Gnostic version of the Serenity Prayer --- interesting, Stan.

Commented: Saturday, February 21st, 2015 @ 7:36 pm By: Gene Scarborough

You might be wise, Stan, to get several more cups of coffee so you make better sense to me, at least.

I believe we need to CONSERVE the progressive nature of NC that I saw come into place after graduating Southeastern Seminary in 1970. When I left, it appeared to me that Raleigh would never be more than a Capital cow-town . . . then the Research Triangle Park was conceived / jetport at Kinston / East Carolina Medical School and hospital. This part of NC took off with PROGRESSIVE thinking and planning.

I came back to Rocky Mount in 1986 to watch it deteriorate into a center of drugs and crime because every large industry was leaving by the month. There are no more executive salaries in Rocky Mount because we have lost it to other places. That is REGRESSION in my view.

If you can find a way to quit defending "Conservatives" as the latest and bestest, then you might see the plight of the current Legislature which the article cites.

Commented: Saturday, February 21st, 2015 @ 10:37 am By: Gene Scarborough

I totally agree --- we have lost the edge of being Progressive to a more than Regressive bunch in Raleigh.

Now they are sold out to the Koch Brothers and we are on the cusp of fracking filthy oil and endangering the aquifers / considering oil drilling in the Graveyard of the Atlantic and beside the pristine Gulf Stream.

Their lust for money over securing our citizens is become so obvious that even a Lobbyist like our Governor can't do enough PR to cover the Regression . . .

Commented: Saturday, February 21st, 2015 @ 7:57 am By: Gene Scarborough