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Listed below are comments made by Ptrsln between Saturday, 6th December 2008 and Saturday, 10th October 2009.

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• A prize deserved? 6:45pm on 10 Oct 2009 And in my opinion you are a zealot. You would have applauded Obama winning the Nobel Physics Prize if they had given it to him and gushed about how deserving he was of it.
  
  "If you look carefully into the lives of people you will always find flaws. .."
  
  I don't have to look carefully to see that Obama's waging wars that are killing thousands of men, women and children. It is you who are blind to their suffering. Instead you worry about Obama and how tough he has it, the poor baby. How important it is that he be given awards he doesn't deserve to encourage him, because being one of the most powerful men in the world isn't enough, apparently.
  
  If you had even the least bit of human compassion you would understand the horrors of war, instead of dismissing criticism of their commanders by saying "hey, nobody's perfect". That is disgusting. I hope the families of dead Afghan civilians don't see your post.
  
  If you applied the tiniest bit of logic to your argument you would understand that someone who is leading a war should never be given a peace prize.
  
  "I think by supporting Obama and I have quotes from people who think similarly ..."
  
  That says everything about you that needs to be known. To you, thinking and supporting Obama are the same thing. But you do not think, not like a rational human being thinks. You are devoutly, unthinkingly, loyal to one man. And whatever he does is worthy of praise, regardless of what it is.
  
  
• A prize deserved? 5:42pm on 10 Oct 2009 bethpa:
  
  "Think of it this way..you just inherited a big house and the previous owners trashed the place..its going to take a while to clean it up..and you need others to help you..meanwhile everyone is complaining about the mess."
  
  Yes, it would be like that...if I was just given a prestigious award for pristine cleanliness, despite not having done anything to clean the place up. And also thousands of civilians had died and thousands more been injured because I haven't started cleaning.
  
  "Don't let the perfect get in the way of the good"
  
  How is waging two wars considered a 'good' criteria for a peace prize? The fact that he's fighting even one war should disqualify him from any prize having to do with peace.
  
  All the sympathy you heap on him in the rest of your post is irrelevant, and insulting to Nobel prize winners who have went through much worse. Some Peace Prize winners and nominees have spent their adult lives in jail. By comparison Obama is living like a rich king. This isn't a pity prize, and if it were, he still wouldn't deserve to win.
• A prize deserved? 3:30pm on 10 Oct 2009 beth:"The Nobel committee is taking a chance and trying to give him a boost in his negotiating. As a Peace Prize winner he will have a stronger hand."
  
  If, as you are suggesting, the committee overlooked his waging of two wars in order to help him politically, then they are cheapening the entire concept of the prize.
• A prize deserved? 07:07am on 10 Oct 2009 allmymarbles: At least Begin and Arafat had just completed peace treaties at the time they got their awards (not that I'm particularly happy with those choices). Obama is in the middle of waging not one, but TWO wars. And he's escalating one of them.
  
  bethpa: It's absolutely ridiculous to suggest that Obama deserves the award because of a few tiny steps he took towards nuclear disarmament. He's still keeping 1500 nukes. He's OK with Russia keeping thousands of nuclear weapons as well. Each country still has enough nukes to wipe out human life on Earth. This is nothing more than a symbolic step.
  
  When Linus Pauling was awarded the Peace Prize, he had been working for 17 years to try and stop nuclear testing. On the day he was awarded the prize, the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty went into force, a direct result of his tireless efforts. THAT is a real achievement worthy of a peace prize.
• Pragmatic on Guantanamo - and healthcare 00:36am on 16 May 2009 "And so with Guantanamo: of course he would like to try these folks in the civilian courts. But he cannot. So, again, compromise. "
  
  Why can he not try these men in civilian courts? Are US courts somehow no longer able to conduct fair trials in their court system? Are these men not deserving of a fair trial, a basic right for all men accused of a crime?
  
  
• Republicans vs. unions 10:06pm on 11 Dec 2008 Re: the politico story
  
  It's extremely difficult to stop moderation abuse by users, which is why sites with the most successful comment systems use point schemes. Users set a point threshold (view only comments with score 5 and up, etc), so the higher the number of points a comment gets, the more people can see it. If each user only has one point per comment, they are limited in their ability to hide comments from others.
  
  When you allow a single user to 'disappear' a comment, you make it all too easy to get rid of any statement which goes against the mob mentality.
• Are Canadians falling into the Obama trap? 11:51pm on 06 Dec 2008 AngloQuebecer:
  
  I agree rep by pop is overdue, I'm just offering a reason for why it isn't here yet. Of course, the BQ are not the only opponents of rep by pop. Both the Conservatives and Liberals have had majority governments without a majority of popular support. Neither would want to lose that power. In fact, you have to go back to 1984 to find a government which had a majority of canadians vote for it, and even then they had only 50.03% of the vote.
  
  By the way, I'm an anglophone Quebecer myself. Which part of the province are you from?
• Are Canadians falling into the Obama trap? 9:26pm on 06 Dec 2008 straseed:
  
  The riding by riding votes are here if you want to see them, but that's unrelated to my argument. The BQ got 10% of the popular vote in the last election, which means they would have gotten 31 seats in this parliament if we used rep by pop. Instead they got 49 seats. This was not a fluke either. The BQ almost always wins more seats than they are entitled to under rep by pop. And most of the time the number of extra seats are quite high.
  
  For this reason alone, the BQ would fight tooth and nail against Rep. by Pop. (or the related MMP).
• Are Canadians falling into the Obama trap? 8:57pm on 06 Dec 2008 streaseed:
  
  Pray tell, what is the problem with having Rep by Pop? The only one I can see is that the BQ would never accept it (they would lose half their seats).
  
  My favourite choices for for Liberal leader are unfortunately not running: Goodale, Manley and McKenna. All three of them are well respected politicians who I think stand a good chance of not only winning elections, but of reuniting the country after Harper's divisive politics. I find Ignatieff is too far right to lead, or even be a member of, the Liberals. Why he did not choose to join the conservatives is beyond me. Rae would have a lot of trouble winning Ontario, making him a poor choice.
• Are Canadians falling into the Obama trap? 6:55pm on 06 Dec 2008 FrankRosseter and robloop:
  
  Both of you have referred to higher crime and murder rate in Canada, which is most certainly not true. Canada's homicide rate has been dropping for decades, through both conservative and liberal governments, as you can see from this statscan report. You can also see that firearm related homicides are also down (although hand gun homicides are up). The crime rate has also gone down steadily since 1991.
  If, in your municipality or province, you see a higher crime or murder rate, you should know who to blame. This is not a federal problem, but a local one.

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