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rottingjohnny
Sport climber
Shetville , North of Los Angeles
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Sep 26, 2015 - 11:01am PT
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Gary..The Chief did mention that he got screwed out of promised benefits in 1993...rj
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donini
Trad climber
Ouray, Colorado
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Sep 26, 2015 - 11:21am PT
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Mine is still here!
Do I need to call a doctor after four hours?
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Larry Nelson
Social climber
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Sep 26, 2015 - 11:24am PT
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Survival wrote:
That's why all the screaming about how bad things are, and liberals "destroying America" are so disturbing to me.
Yeah, we are one big melting pot, a somewhat disfunctional family doing our best to disrupt the digestion of Thanksgiving Dinner...LOL.
I guess it's only human nature to hyperbolize our positions,
to build up a strawman caricature of the other side,
misrepresent or take out of context an opposition argument,
and when our reasoning fails us, to launch ad hominems.
Sometimes I feel like a dog chasing his tail by posting on these non-climbing threads. But I also love my ideas to be challenged. If I am full of sh!t, I don't wanna be the last to know...cause I've already been there.
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Jeff G
Trad climber
Fort Collins
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Sep 26, 2015 - 11:28am PT
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Survival Wrote:
"I love my conservative friends hollering "Hey, look! We have a colored guy too!!"
Any guesses how much love Ben Carson would be getting from them if Obama had never been president?"
What a crazy thing to say. You can't handle it that not all people and not all republicans are racists or bigots.
It has only to do with the person that Carson seems to be and about his ideas, nothing to do with his race.
I would say that you are the racist. You only voted for Obama because he is a black man and you just wanted to show everyone how cool and hip and open minded you are.
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pyro
Big Wall climber
Calabasas
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Sep 26, 2015 - 11:42am PT
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I would say that you are the racist. You only voted for Obama because he is a black man and you just wanted to show everyone how cool and hip and open minded you are.
Jeff G
Back then the people were looking for a little more Nuance..
here come Kevin Mcarthy Paul Ryan and Jeb Hensarling as the speaker
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Larry Nelson
Social climber
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Sep 26, 2015 - 12:06pm PT
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Denver Diversity Symposium study:
the only way for people to extinguish racism in their own souls is to become experts at identifying racism in others.
http://www.sedonaconnect.com/topic/3402-study-claims-only-way-to-be-less-racist-is-to-accuse-others-of-racism/
So the charges of racism go back and forth.
I'd say that racism is an extension of tribalism. We all belong to tribes. When times are good, we are gloriously magnanimous.
When times are bad, we retract back to the viciousness of the tribe.
Always has been, always will be to varying degrees.
That's why our society needs good times and has opportunity for all.
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survival
Big Wall climber
Terrapin Station
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Sep 26, 2015 - 12:15pm PT
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You can't handle it that not all people and not all republicans are racists or bigots.
Baloney. I have no problem understanding why a black person could be a republican, or why some republicans who aren't bigots could relate to him and his ideas. All I'm saying is that he wouldn't be getting the same traction and attention among the "general" republican population if they weren't trying to show the small percentage of black conservatives that they have in their party.
Democrats actually elected Barack Obama, twice. It remains to be seen how Dr. Carson will actually do in the long run.
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Ken M
Mountain climber
Los Angeles, Ca
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Sep 26, 2015 - 12:27pm PT
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From Truth or Fiction:
May 18, 2001 the General Accounting Office issued a three-page letter that said that it was unable confirm the damage largely to a lack of records from the White House. The letter also said that the condition of the White House offices was “…consistent with what we would expect to encounter when tenants vacate office space after an extended occupancy.”
There was a companion story that Air Force One had been the victim of the outgoing Clintons and that numerous items from aboard the plane had been pilfered. President Bush himself told reporters aboard Air Force one on February 12, 2001, that the report was not true. According to Salon Washington correspondent Jake Tipper, Bush brought up the subject because the chief steward aboard Air Force One told him the allegations were false.
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Ken M
Mountain climber
Los Angeles, Ca
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Sep 26, 2015 - 12:32pm PT
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The Obama admin spent $500 million giving "aid" to the "rebels" to destabilize Syria. Now the Obama admin says they will take in 180,000 refugee's into the US from a conflict the US has supported.
Do you seriously forget? Forget McCain and his Repug hawk friends SCREAMING for MORE MORE MORE money, weapons, etc, etc, etc.
You are decrying the expenditure, when your side's position was for MORE?
What a flip-flopper!
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c wilmot
climber
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Sep 26, 2015 - 12:41pm PT
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I dont have a side. I recognize that politics is just staged theater to distract the public while the rich profit from military sales in conflicts against enemies the US creates.
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survival
Big Wall climber
Terrapin Station
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Sep 26, 2015 - 12:46pm PT
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"Politics is the entertainment division of the Military Industrial Complex."
Frank Zappa
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Norton
Social climber
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Sep 26, 2015 - 12:50pm PT
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I would say that you are the racist. You only voted for Obama because he is a black man and you just wanted to show everyone how cool and hip and open minded you are.
is IS true that some white people voted for Obama for the reasons you cite
however, exit polling showed that President Obama's popular vote margin would have been some 4 million higher as many white Democrats either stayed home because they could not vote for a black man
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/112915/author-obama-racism-study-responds-nate-cohn-criticism
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Ken M
Mountain climber
Los Angeles, Ca
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Sep 26, 2015 - 12:52pm PT
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This is precisely what needs to be done to ALL of Craig Fry's precious growing zombie nation bureaucratic gov't immediately...
This would seem to be covered by this:
Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort.
I would think that advocating an attack on the legally constituted Gov't of the USA would be an act of treason.
https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2385
Whoever knowingly or willfully advocates, abets, advises, or teaches the duty, necessity, desirability, or propriety of overthrowing or destroying the government of the United States or the government of any State, Territory, District or Possession thereof, or the government of any political subdivision therein, by force or violence, or by the assassination of any officer of any such government; or
Whoever, with intent to cause the overthrow or destruction of any such government, prints, publishes, edits, issues, circulates, sells, distributes, or publicly displays any written or printed matter advocating, advising, or teaching the duty, necessity, desirability, or propriety of overthrowing or destroying any government in the United States by force or violence, or attempts to do so; or
Whoever organizes or helps or attempts to organize any society, group, or assembly of persons who teach, advocate, or encourage the overthrow or destruction of any such government by force or violence; or becomes or is a member of, or affiliates with, any such society, group, or assembly of persons, knowing the purposes thereof—
Shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than twenty years, or both, and shall be ineligible for employment by the United States or any department or agency thereof, for the five years next following his conviction.
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Brandon-
climber
The Granite State.
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Sep 26, 2015 - 12:54pm PT
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It's bizarre that in the past I really disliked Boehner for his obstruction tactics against the left and now, with the current batch of GOP candidates, I am left thinking that America has lost one of the good ones in politics. WTF does that say about the GOP? It's like crazy town over there.
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Gary
Social climber
Hell is empty and all the devils are here
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Sep 26, 2015 - 01:24pm PT
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RJ: Gary..The Chief did mention that he got screwed out of promised benefits in 1993...rj
And that sucks. Veterans have been getting screwed over since time began it seems. Was just reading about London after WWI filled with maimed vets begging in the streets.
But to the ruling classes, they are just fodder to be discarded when no longer of any use.
Baloney. I have no problem understanding why a black person could be a republican,
Someone once said: "What is it that the black conservatives are trying to conserve?"
I dont have a side. I recognize that politics is just staged theater to distract the public while the rich profit from military sales in conflicts against enemies the US creates.
c wilmot, you are a very observant man.
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Larry Nelson
Social climber
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Sep 26, 2015 - 01:43pm PT
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Todd Eastman wrote:
So soldiers and sailors are special citizens?
A protected class with better virtues than the ordinary citizen?
Not sure anyone was saying that, but:
War veterans have earned more than the modest benefits they receive.
What other citizen in this country has a lower benefit to cost ratio of services offered?
Maybe some form of national service (not necessarily military)should be required of citizens to vote.
(Heinlein's Storm Troopers...complete with coed shower rooms)
Edit: "Ask not...yada yada" Whatever happened to that concept?
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Norton
Social climber
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Sep 26, 2015 - 03:10pm PT
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Lefties rejoicing the departure of Boehner?
why would leftists rejoice?
John Boehner had an impossible job but when he needed to get something passed he turned to Nancy Pelosi to provide the votes to get it done.
He was a pragmatist, caught in the throes of his own party's extreme right wing.
Personally, I can see the House Republicans shutting down the Federal Government again, really shutting it down, to the point of SS checks not going out and some defaulting on our debt payments, the stock market going down thousands more points, etc.
Our side wins every argument when the gloves come off.
like when the House Republicans under Boehner caved to Obama after stamping their feet and shutting the government down the last time?
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dirtbag
climber
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Sep 26, 2015 - 03:31pm PT
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Boehner is the republican model lefties should rally around. He compromises to the left and is in place for the illusion of opposition.
Actually, his voting record is solidly conservative.
He just recognized politics losers, and in some cases, political malpractice (I.e., debt default) and tried to save his party from catastrophe.
He also seemed interested in governing, which apparently, is a dirty word among right wing deadenders.
Now, he can no longer save his party (and the American people) from itself.
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Craig Fry
Trad climber
So Cal.
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Sep 27, 2015 - 09:00am PT
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This is a such a great historical perspective, that I had to post it.
I cut off the last couple paragraphs to shorten it a little
A Must Read, especially for Conservatives...
It is time to get very afraid: Extremists, authoritarians now run the GOP — and no one can stop them
Boehner and McConnell weren't conservative enough for them. Nor Eric Cantor. Right-wing purists won't stop here
Sunday, Sep 27, 2015 02:59 AM PDT
http://www.salon.com/2015/09/27/it_is_time_to_get_very_afraid_extremists_authoritarians_now_run_the_gop_and_no_one_can_stop_them/
Movement Conservatives just claimed the head of House Speaker John Boehner. His political death was the price of preventing a catastrophic government shutdown after Movement Conservatives in Congress tied the very survival of the United States government to their determination to defund Planned Parenthood. Movement Conservatives are gunning for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell next. We should be very afraid. Boehner and McConnell are not wild-eyed lefties. They are on the very far right of the American political spectrum: fervently pro-business, antiabortion, opposed to social welfare legislation. But they are old-school politicians who still have faith in the idea of American democracy.
Movement Conservatives do not. They want to blow up the government and remake America according to their own radical ideology.
Since the 1950s, Movement Conservatives have set out to destroy the form of federal government that came out of the New Deal. After the Great Crash and the ensuing Depression, most Americans believed that the government must regulate business and protect labor in order to create a stable, prosperous society. But businessmen hated the very same New Deal regulations most Americans liked. The captains of industry believed that government meddling in their affairs would disrupt economic laws. This would cripple their enterprises and, in turn, cripple the American economy. But the New Deal consensus was enormously popular, and actually made for a stable economy in which most Americans enjoyed security. Business interests could not fight this consensus on the merits, or they would continue to lose.
In 1951, a young William F. Buckley, Jr., came up with a blueprint for destroying the American consensus. Rational argument was a losing strategy, Buckley wrote in “God and Man at Yale: The Superstitions of ‘Academic Freedom.’” If voters were presented with facts, said Buckley, they would choose government regulation. So a new breed of Movement Conservative leaders must start from the premise that what Buckley called “individualism”—that is, an economy in which individual action was untouched by the state—was as sacrosanct as the Ten Commandments. Buckley gave this same untouchable status to Christianity, another fundamental that could not be questioned. People could quibble about the details of society based on an unregulated economy and Christianity, he allowed, but those bedrock principles could not be compromised. Individualism and Christianity were under attack, he insisted, from New Deal apologists and secular thinkers who had wormed their way into all levels of government and education. The secular New Dealers, Buckley claimed, threatened America’s very survival.
In the same year Buckley wrote “God and Man at Yale,” Eric Hoffer, a former San Francisco dockworker-turned-philosopher, examined the nature of authoritarian government. Having watched the rise of both fascism and communism, the former San Francisco dockworker thought those who wrung their hands over the ascent of a charismatic leader like Adolf Hitler or Joseph Stalin were missing the point. There could be no leader without a mass movement, Hoffer argued.
His observations about how revolutionary leaders created followers were so compelling that when Dwight Eisenhower became president, he urged everyone to read Hoffer’s book, “The True Believer.” Eisenhower worried deeply about the rise of authoritarian governments. He worried about fascism, communism and religious extremism overseas, but he was also deeply concerned at the rise of Movement Conservatism in America. That movement looked dangerously like the ones Hoffer described. In the years since, Movement Conservatives have continued to follow Hoffer’s script.
Mass movements ultimately need a disaffected population, Hoffer said, people who are either economically or culturally dispossessed. Those isolated individuals need to feel part of something bigger than themselves. They need to believe they can regain their previous relevance. Properly primed, such followers will throw themselves behind a leader who promises to return them to power.
In the early stages of a mass movement, “men of words,” as Hoffer called them, primed the pump for revolution by discrediting the current order of society. They encouraged followers to despise the present as a terrible declension from a glorious past. Then came the men of action—political leaders. As society destabilized, these new leaders created an artificial reality that made their discontented followers feel like they were part of something bigger than them, a movement to save society, a movement so important it was worth sacrificing themselves for it. The easiest way to unify followers was with hate. Leaders of such a movement identified a villain. These villains were usually the weakest members of society, making them easy to attack. And each attack on these new “enemies” fed contempt for them. Followers of a movement made more and more outrageous claims about those they demonized. Eventually those villains became so dehumanized that movement members would kill them, believing such atrocities were vital to reclaiming a glorious future for their nation. At this stage, followers were immune to facts or logic. Indeed, arguing with them only entrenched them in their beliefs, because the sign of a true believer’s faith was that it stood firm in the face of overwhelming opposition.
Eisenhower noted that early Movement Conservatives seemed to fit the pattern Hoffer’s work identified. In Eisenhower’s day, Movement Conservative leaders from William F. Buckley Jr. to Robert Welsh, who began the John Birch Society from his position at the Education Committee of the National Association of Manufacturers, harped on the idea that Communists had taken over the American government and were selling it out to an international cabal. Wisconsin Sen. Joseph McCarthy took that war into popular media. He claimed the need to defend individualism and Christianity from the secret plots of godless Communists in the government.
McCarthy began the process of creating an enemy that Movement Conservative followers could hate. His outrageous accusations divided American citizens into good and evil. Buckley and his brother-in-law, L. Brent Bozell, expanded this theme, dividing Americans into “Conservatives” like McCarthy and themselves, who were trying to save the nation, and “Liberals” who wanted to destroy it. Their Liberals were all those who endorsed the New Deal consensus. Although New Deal supporters made up the vast majority of Americans, Buckley and Bozell announced that these traitors must be purged from the country. Instead, the nation must return to its glory days with a new “orthodoxy” of strict individualism and Christianity. Bipartisanship, progressivism and national unity were all a dangerous assault on what they claimed were America’s traditional values.
In the 1960s, Movement Conservatives created a cast of villains. The Brown v. Board decision in 1954 and President Eisenhower’s use of troops to desegregate Little Rock Central High School in 1957 enabled Movement Conservatives to resurrect old white fears that government activism was simply a way to funnel white tax dollars to African-Americans. Black people threatened America by forcing the government to redistribute wealth, thus inserting communism into the very fabric of the country. In 1968, Nixon made this Movement Conservative argument part of the established Republican Party when he resorted to the Southern Strategy. He expanded the villains’ list, too: he added to it grasping women, all minorities, and anti-war activists in the streets. They were all trying to destroy America.
Nixon’s people were purposely vague in their accusations—the administration’s favorite straw man was the murky “they” of “they say.” That unspecified “they” allowed Nixon’s people to preserve the illusion that they were describing facts. But President Ronald Reagan unhinged the rhetoric of Movement Conservatism even further from reality. He told folksy stories about Welfare Queens who stole tax dollars and hardworking individuals threatened by “a little intellectual elite in a far-distant Capitol.” When journalists fact-checked Reagan, he accused them of bias and rallied supporters against the “Liberal media.” And it played. In 1987, his administration ended the Fairness Doctrine that had required media to present facts and a wide range of opinions. This enabled Movement Conservatives to spew their worldview on talk radio and later television, railing against lazy blacks, women, minorities, workers and “Liberals,” all of whom were destroying America and holding the country back from regaining its former glory. And the more Movement Conservatives attacked, the more they weakened their enemies, and the more they despised them. Just as Hoffer had predicted.
By the time of the George W. Bush administration, Movement Conservatives controlled the Republican Party, and they abandoned reality in favor of their simple story line. A member of the Bush administration famously noted to journalist Ron Suskind that “the reality-based” view of the world was obsolete. “That’s not the way the world really works anymore,” this senior adviser to the president told Suskind. “When we act, we create our own reality.”
more paragraphs at link
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Chaz
Trad climber
greater Boss Angeles area
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Sep 27, 2015 - 09:07am PT
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Un-married women.
Married women went Republican both times.
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