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Happiegrrrl2
Trad climber
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Jan 12, 2018 - 06:34pm PT
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Right now he's grabbing the low hanging fruit and trying to make good on campaign promises. He's a changeling and may become more moderate. We shall see.
Had that been posted 11 months ago, I would have allowed it was possible, out of politeness, and that yes, we'd have to wait and see.
But My patience with "maybe he will"...tone it down, start acting more presidential, stop tweeting insane garbage, change in ANY way....that ended a long time ago. What ON EARTH would he be waiting for, already? In just over a week, he will have been in office for one year - 1/4 the duration of a term.
When you have hooked up with a random climbing partner with the intent to do 10 pitches, and it becomes glaringly obvious before they even tie in that they are not only arrogantly in denial of their lack of capability to do the job, but probably going to get you killed if you continue - do you wait until midway through the third pitch and STILL HOPE and wonder if he somehow becomes a competent and safe leader?
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Fat Dad
Trad climber
Los Angeles, CA
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Jan 12, 2018 - 06:42pm PT
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We’re the shithole as long as that jackass is in the White House.
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Fritz
Social climber
Choss Creek, ID
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Jan 12, 2018 - 07:09pm PT
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Fox News stands by their Trump, per this editorial opinion:
As usual the media and liberal critics of Trump have it all wrong.
------ I will tackle Trump’s “offensive words” about Haiti and African nations. There are reports that Trump called those countries by a crude name. If he did, he certainly could have chosen his words more carefully. But…who cares? If he said it, he told the raw truth. As usual, he was right on the money. Trump said exactly (although perhaps crudely) what 63 million American taxpayers who voted for him were thinking.
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2018/01/12/trump-not-barbarian-and-hes-right-america-is-far-too-nice.html
Fox News & Trump are making Racism "GREAT" again!
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JC Marin
Trad climber
CA
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Jan 12, 2018 - 07:12pm PT
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rottingjohnny
Sport climber
Sands Motel , Las Vegas
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Jan 12, 2018 - 07:48pm PT
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The only sh#t hole Trump knows is the one connected to the Pootinator's rear end... Chumpy Chomp corn and i don't care..
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Winemaker
Sport climber
Yakima, WA
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Topic Author's Reply - Jan 12, 2018 - 08:13pm PT
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Hopefully he'll realize the gravity of his position, clam up......
Yeah, right. Like that's going to happen.
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thebravecowboy
climber
The Good Places
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Jan 12, 2018 - 08:30pm PT
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donnie crack corn and i don't care
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Lennox
climber
in the land of the blind
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Jan 12, 2018 - 08:32pm PT
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skywalker1
Trad climber
co
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Jan 12, 2018 - 08:34pm PT
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When you have hooked up with a random climbing partner with the intent to do 10 pitches, and it becomes glaringly obvious before they even tie in that they are not only arrogantly in denial of their lack of capability to do the job, but probably going to get you killed if you continue - do you wait until midway through the third pitch and STILL HOPE and wonder if he somehow becomes a competent and safe leader?
I like that analogy.
My wife and I backpack a fair bit and often through developing countries. She is Chinese and speaks both Mandarine and Cantonese and can fly under the radar so to speak. Meanwhile I'm this 6'3" white dude who reeks of being an American and I get "mobbed". Never violence just constant money stuff but I'm vigilant. We meet very cool people who are very nice. We have been planning a backpacking trip to Africa this summer and I'm now like "Holy Sh#t"! Trump you are F...ing things up for me! I feel he might get me killed at some point.
S...
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rottingjohnny
Sport climber
Sands Motel , Las Vegas
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Jan 12, 2018 - 08:37pm PT
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Pretend you're Canadian...
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skywalker1
Trad climber
co
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Jan 12, 2018 - 08:38pm PT
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^^^^^^^Yep!
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Charlie D.
Trad climber
Western Slope, Tahoe Sierra
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Jan 13, 2018 - 08:02am PT
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Reilly
Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
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Jan 13, 2018 - 08:43am PT
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The Swedes are trying to take the pressure off The Donald:
South African protesters ransack H&M stores over 'racist' ad
By Alexander Winning | JOHANNESBURG
Protesters angered by a "racist" H&M advertisement ransacked several of the Swedish fashion group's South African stores on Saturday.
The Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) protesters targeted six H&M stores in the Gauteng province, where South Africa's economic hub of Johannesburg is located, tearing down shop displays and throwing clothes around, police said.
In one instance, officers fired rubber bullets to disperse the protesters, the police added.
H&M earlier this week issued an apology for the widely criticized ad, which featured a black child modeling a sweatshirt with the slogan "coolest monkey in the jungle", and said it had removed it from all its marketing.
Frankly, I find this incomprehensible given that it was not an off-the-cuff remark and that
any number of people had to sign off on this lunacy.
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JLP
Social climber
The internet
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Jan 13, 2018 - 09:04am PT
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They are, in fact, shithole countries. No education, no natural resources, just humans breeding on top of each other.
The divide and unrest will continue to grow - as population increases and natural resources to support them become increasingly scarce - and taken away to be consumed by only the elite - us.
I have to say I enjoy the surprise at every turn as to how the laws of nature - carrying capacity of the planet - get enforced in our very complicated world.
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stevep
Boulder climber
Salt Lake, UT
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Jan 13, 2018 - 09:28am PT
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One could characterize many of the poor rural areas of the US(the ones that voted heavily Republican) as that way as well JLP.
But we're talking about people. If I go to those rural areas, I almost always find the people nice, friendly and fun.
And if I go to those poor countries, I also find most of the people nice, friendly and fun.
Why would we not allow those people to come to the US for better opportunities? Generally they work very hard, often in jobs many Americans don't want to do.
Is that language on the Statue of Liberty:
"Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
no longer accurate for how we see our country? Now it is "Give us your rich Scandinavians" (apparently Trump doesn't realize many of them are Socialist-leaning).
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rottingjohnny
Sport climber
Sands Motel , Las Vegas
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Jan 13, 2018 - 09:30am PT
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Truth be spoken and Trump is one of the recipients of these hoarded resources...it's all mine , mine i tell you sh#t holees...
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Reilly
Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
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Jan 13, 2018 - 09:45am PT
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And if yer knott a correspondent for The Economist who gets to go to shithole countries
regularly here’s what yer missing:
Which are the world’s worst airports?
An informal survey of the most horrible places to be lost in transit
LIKE expensive watches that never break, the world’s best airports can be boring. You land, breeze through passport control and check into a hotel within minutes. The experience is pleasant, but not memorable. The worst airports have more character. To adapt Tolstoy, lovely airports are all alike, but every wretched airport is wretched in its own way.
Consider Juba. The airport in South Sudan’s capital is a sweltering tent next to a festering puddle. Planes are often late, so passengers must sweat for hours. The departure lounge has no toilets, no food and no queuing system. Lucky is the traveller who finds a chair that is only half-broken. Since dirty water and tropical diseases are common, so are upset stomachs. Tough luck. Travellers should have thought twice before eating salad.
Security is haphazard. Big important people’s flunkies carry their bags, which are ostentatiously passed round, not through, the scanner. Since the machine seldom works, little people are in effect upgraded to big important status by not having their bags scanned for guns and explosives, either.
South Sudan is at war, so many UN planes take off from Juba carrying aid workers and emergency supplies. Aggressive officials in sunglasses take pleasure in obstructing them. When your correspondent was booked on a UN flight, he was assured by the government that his papers were in order. Yet at the airport he was told to get a fourth permit, as well as the three pricey ones he had already obtained.
Predictably, he missed his plane.
Juba has three terminals, but only one is in use. After South Sudan became independent in 2011, the government planned to build an airy structure of glass, steel and concrete. Work started in 2012, but stopped when the bills were not paid. In 2016 the government decided to build a more modest terminal. But it, too, stands half-completed and empty, next to the tented camp that people actually have to use. Travellers are advised to bring a good, long book.
All are bored
Working out which is the world’s worst airport is not easy. The best rough-and-ready attempt is the Guide to Sleeping in Airports, a website that publishes an annual survey based on voluntary submissions from irate travellers. It ranks airports by qualities such as discomfort, poor service, bad food, cumbersome immigration procedures and how hard it is to grab forty winks while waiting for a connection.
Overall, Juba was rated worst in 2017. Since photographing any airport in South Sudan will get you arrested, the description of its “horrific smells and filth” is accompanied by an artist’s impression which makes the departure lounge look far nicer than it is.
The ranking is inevitably skewed by sampling bias. It misses truly awful places that hardly anyone visits, and over-emphasises less egregious ones that handle more people. Juba won its “worst in the world” ranking not only on demerit but also because so many foreign charity workers pass through and complain about it. Jeddah, in Saudi Arabia, comes second not because it is really the second-worst in the world but because it is swamped with haj pilgrims every year and cannot cope.
Because gripes spring from disappointment, expectations matter. Travellers in the rougher parts of the world applaud wildly when a plane lands without crashing; more pampered types are enraged if the Wi-Fi is slow. It was the mismatch between expectation and reality that doubtless propelled three Greek hubs (Crete, Santorini and Rhodes) into the Sleeping in Airports worst ten. Hordes of northern Europeans flew to Greece for a cheap holiday in 2017, where they encountered strikes, delays and other indignities to which they were unaccustomed. Many reached for their smartphones and complained.
To illuminate some of the gaps in existing rankings of bad airports, The Economist conducted an unscientific, anecdotal poll of its globe-trotting correspondents. It attracted more, and more passionate, responses than nearly any other internal survey we have done. Here are some of our reflections from the departure gates of hell.
Several airports in war zones are worse than Juba. Our Africa editor cites Bangui, in the Central African Republic: “The fence around it has been stolen, so when big jets come in to land the pilots keep their hands on the throttle so they can pull up if they see people trying to run across the runway (which lies between a refugee camp and the city, and so has lots of crossing traffic). On the plus side it has sandbagged bunkers on its roof and was designated the final fallback position by French forces during the civil war, so if you are in it you are about as safe as you can be.”
Although each awful airport is unique, four themes recur: danger, bullying by officials, theft and delay. Sometimes, all these reinforce each other. For example, it takes ages to get through Lubumbashi airport (in the Democratic Republic of Congo) because truculent security officials slow things down in the hope that passengers will give them “un cadeau” to hurry up. If you hand over $1, they let you board without your bags getting checked at all. Such transactions are often referred to as “bribes”, but are really a form of extortion with menaces. They make air travel in places like Congo slower, riskier, costlier and much more unpleasant.
Air travellers make tempting targets for thieves. They are rich enough to afford an air ticket, which in many places makes them rich indeed. They carry luggage, some of it valuable. They are often far from home and unfamiliar with local rules. Finally, airports are full of choke points through which travellers must pass if they are to board their planes, creating opportunities for crooked officials to fleece them.
The ones in Manila are especially creative. Some have been known to plant bullets in luggage so they can “find” them and demand bribes not to have the owners arrested. This scam is known in Tagalog as “laglag bala” (“drop bullet”).
In Johannesburg the pilfering is covert but rampant. Our correspondent grumbles: “Despite packing absolutely nothing of value in my checked bags they are regularly rifled through and were twice slashed open (they weren’t even locked). Once I found someone else’s sunglasses case in my bag; mislaid, perhaps, by luggage handlers in a looting frenzy.”
Some travellers are harassed by officials who seem to fear that, if they do not look busy, they will be replaced by machines, as many have been at modern airports. The magnificently uniformed functionary in Delhi who demands to see your papers—despite having just watched another functionary inspect them—falls into this category. Other officials harass travellers for the sheer fun of wielding power. Our former Cairo bureau chief writes, of Saudi immigration procedures: “The queues are subtly divided by nationality and caste. If you happen to be a Baloch labourer, your lot is to sit on the floor for hours, getting barked at and swatted by swagger-stick-wielding Saudi policemen. Anyone who falls asleep risks a thrashing.”
Rules change at borders, and some airport officials enforce them mindlessly. One correspondent recalls that in Santiago, Chile: “I once got detained for two hours for failing to declare an unopened, sealed bag of almonds. I then had to write a declaration expressing my contrition for bringing the nuts. When I failed to do so without cracking up I was threatened with arrest. The lady next to me was being interrogated for smuggling in a lone banana.”
The worst airports reflect the vices of the governments that regulate them. Pyongyang has a totalitarian vibe. A correspondent writes: “The plane played rousing music when we flew over the border into North Korea, and we were handed copies of the national newspaper and asked not to fold it, since it had a photo of Kim Jong Il on the front page.” The only consolation is that the airport has a chocolate-fondue fountain.
Venezuela’s half-Marxist, half-gangster, wholly incompetent government, which has prompted much of the middle class to emigrate, does not make the journey easy or pleasant. Our Bello columnist grumbles of Caracas: “Your hand baggage will be searched in detail twice (by the National Guard, who are drug smugglers who claim to be fighting drugs).” Our organised-crime correspondent also has miserable memories: “The departures board showed our flight as delayed up to the moment when it showed it as closed. I waited endless hours for the next flight in a fast-food restaurant, the only place with seats, and watched a mange-ridden dog licking out the polystyrene containers strewn on the floor.”
Poor countries have an excuse for poor airports. Rich countries do not, which is perhaps why travellers are particularly irked to find grottiness in, say, Brussels, the heart of the European Union and a noted centre of gastronomy. Our Charlemagne columnist writes of Charleroi, its second airport: “It is grim, grimy and cramped, and has atrocious food. The planes leave and land at ungodly hours. And the only real way into town is a coach that runs every 30 minutes and is frequently overbooked: more than once I’ve queued in the rain only to see it drive off as I reach the front.” Many correspondents moaned about Berlin, where a new, unfinished terminal is six years late. Another European airport that elicits howls is Luton, which claims, fancifully, to be close to London. An intern writes: “Going on holiday and returning to Luton is like having a wonderful dream and waking up to find yourself in a puddle under a railway bridge.”
Airports all around the world have to cope with growing crowds. The number of passengers has roughly doubled since 2005, to an estimated 4bn in 2017. Some have done so brilliantly, harnessing technology and smart design to usher more people swiftly through. Singapore, Seoul and Munich score highly on this measure.
American airports, by and large, do not. This is not simply because security has grown tighter since 2001—that is true everywhere. It is because security and immigration screening are far more hasslesome than they need to be. Border officials are rude, and there are too few of them. Surveys suggest that every year millions of tourists shun the world’s greatest country because getting in is so horrible. A “trusted traveller” programme speeds things up a bit, but only for a handful of passengers.
Idiotic bureaucracy abounds. Travellers from Europe to Latin America who change planes in the United States must pass through immigration control, thus running the risk of missing their connection. What is the point of asking people who do not wish to enter the United States why they wish to enter the United States? Transit passengers in Singapore or Nairobi do not have their time wasted like this.
Our overall judgment (readers are invited to visit our travel blog, Gulliver, to dispute it) is that, adjusted for national income per head, several busy American airports would be contenders for worst in the world. Washington Dulles has the worst-designed ground transport: travellers must enter and leave a mobile pod by the same door, so everyone crowds round in the hope of getting off first, thus blocking it. JFK is the main gateway to the world’s capital of consumerism, yet scarcely any retail therapy is available to treat travellers’ boredom. But Miami is surely worst of all. The queues at passport control take nearly as long to navigate as Leif Erikson took to cross the Atlantic in a longboat.
This article appeared in the International section of the print edition under the headline "The departure gates of hell"
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Happiegrrrl2
Trad climber
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Jan 13, 2018 - 09:49am PT
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If Trump wants to address the Immigration Lottery, he really ought to address the "Selling Green Cards" issue as well. Money ISN'T everything, and those EB-5 cards can and DO come from dirty money wrought from arms and drug sales, human trafficking. Hell, a person could buy their greencard off selling hacked data, and I don't doubt they have, which means we, the average US citizen, has paid for these criminals to enter.
What is the vetting process as to where those EB-5 monies came from????? Because, I have the feeling, you might find out that they are often from shithole people.
My gd, I am getting a headache from the unbelievable intentional ignorance that is being fed to us and glommed up like it's delicious. How can people be THIS ignorant?
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