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apogee
climber
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Mar 16, 2009 - 02:39pm PT
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"i agree, the W/repub spending spree was stupid (minus defense spending), but doubling/tripling down on stupid is even more stupid"
bookworm, thank you for perfectly illustrating my point. That is exactly the kind of hyperbolic, hyperpartisan, divisive language and positioning that prevents any kind of meaningful discussion here on ST or the country, for that matter.
Though your commentary is often highly partisan, you write well and can be quite articulate- more of that kind of communication style is needed here. I can take responsibility for the similar types of commentary I've made in the past- can you? More importantly, if you truly do agree, are you able to do anything differently?
To the point: do you give a flying f*ck? (So much for articulate...)
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bookworm
Social climber
Falls Church, VA
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Mar 16, 2009 - 04:26pm PT
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apogee, i'm not sure what set you off; i was responding to rok's "hyperpartisan" rant, which ended with repub spending; i agreed that the spending was STUPID and pointed out the obvious: to double and triple STUPID spending is even more STUPID
allow me to rephrase: the repubs were stupid for spending so much; if the dems spend two or three times as much, then the dems are even more stupid
how, exactly, is that "hyperpartisan"?
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P.Kingsbury
Trad climber
the jeep
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Mar 16, 2009 - 04:42pm PT
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i heard that the program that is replacing 'who wants to be a millionaire' next year is supposed to be less popular as well
edit: my source was the from the people who got canceled....
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Dick_Lugar
Trad climber
Indiana (the other Mideast)
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Mar 17, 2009 - 12:29pm PT
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You guys have too much time on your hands...you'll regret wasting it on crap like this someday.
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jstan
climber
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Mar 17, 2009 - 12:37pm PT
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An appropriate contribution to this unbelievable thread:
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601039&sid=aUoRTqRtwOPE&refer=home
Sarah Palin Blows Another Teachable Moment: Margaret Carlson
Commentary by Margaret Carlson
March 17 (Bloomberg) -- This is a bulletin for those following Governor Sarah Palin’s meteoric political career, from mayor of a small Alaskan town to vice presidential candidate. In January, Palin formed SarahPac, which allows her to travel the country on unofficial business. Last week, the Draft Sarah Palin 2012 Committee held its first fundraising event and signed up 40 organizers and 100 volunteers. In June, she will headline the biggest Republican fundraiser of the year.
Palin says she isn’t running for president, but that if God should open the door to the White House, she will prayerfully pass through. With a dearth of Republican talent and party leadership up for grabs, Palin remains a hot commodity. In one recent Rasmussen Reports poll, 55 percent of Republican voters wanted their party to become more like Palin.
Yet just as the Draft Palin movement was having its first meeting, Levi Johnston, the father of Bristol Palin’s 2-month- old son, Tripp, was hosting his first solo interview outside his Wasilla home. Levi told the Associated Press that there will be no wedding after all and that the relationship ended “a while ago.”
Johnston was responding to inquiries about a Star magazine piece which quoted his sister complaining that Bristol makes it almost impossible for Levi to be the “hands-on dad” that Bristol had said he was. “She tells him he can’t take the baby to our house because she doesn’t want him around ‘white trash.’”
Bristol issued a statement through SarahPac: “Unfortunately, my family has seen many people say and do many things to ‘cash in’ on the Palin name. Sometimes that greed clouds good judgment and the truth.” With a non-denial denial, another generation enters politics.
Confusing Us Again
Palin’s fundamentalist Christian base will no doubt brush off this latest twist in the Palin family saga, much as it did the original revelation that Bristol was pregnant, further confusing those of us in the Blue States whom they regularly scold for lax childrearing and permissive sexual practices.
We expect Jamie Lynn Spears to be shameless and Hollywood to romanticize teen pregnancy in movies like “Juno,” but the Palins and the Christian Right? Republican Senator John McCain claimed to know about the pregnancy when he selected Palin as his running mate. Bristol and Levi were treated like royalty, hugged by McCain on the tarmac and at center stage for every event, waving to the crowd like Evita and Juan Peron.
Bristol’s out-of-wedlock pregnancy ended up doing little, if anything, to hurt the Palin candidacy. Not one Republican delegate I questioned at the party’s national convention had a problem with it, as long as Palin’s daughter was marrying her boyfriend and not having an abortion.
Cultural Split
The whole episode speaks to the cultural split between conservatives and liberals on teenage pregnancy and marriage. Republicans, ever ready to do battle over homosexuals, unmarried welfare moms, and Bill Clinton’s sex life, seem sanguine over teenage pregnancy so long as the teenager gets married.
Liberals are more likely to believe an accidental pregnancy shouldn’t derail a child’s development into adulthood, that a child shouldn’t have a child.
Statistics show teen marriage to be a bad bet, and teen marriage with a baby on the way even worse. A study released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showed that twice as many marriages at age 18 fail as those after 25. Children born to older couples fare better on a variety of measures, including educational attainment and financial stability, the study showed.
Yet conservatives have rules that make teenage pregnancy and marriage more likely. That would be OK if they didn’t seek to impose them on others.
No Sex, Please
The ideal is no premarital sex. Conservatives take it a step further, pressing “abstinence only” education in high school. Most liberals agree: Abstinence is the best policy. But liberals go on to ask what the second-best policy is, knowing that if birds do it and bees do it, their teenage offspring might do it.
According to the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, more conservative states such as Nevada, Arizona, Mississippi and Texas have the highest teen-pregnancy rates, and public costs associated with it. Vermont, New Hampshire, Minnesota and Maine have the lowest. The heathens in Massachusetts have both the lowest rate of teen pregnancy and marriage and the lowest rate of divorce.
Bristol Palin not getting married is a second chance at a teachable moment. If abstinence only didn’t work in the Palin household, where is it going to work? In one of her Palin impersonations on “Saturday Night Live,” Tina Fey delivered the best line of the 2008 campaign when she summarized Sarah’s view of marriage as “a sacred institution between two unwilling teenagers.”
Family Values
This isn’t an argument for abortion, but one for reality -- drop abstinence only, make contraceptives available and consider adoption, relying on grandparents, or single parenting until the child herself grows up. Take a look at family values in the People’s Republic of Massachusetts. Don’t be so quick to leap to wedding bells and happily ever after.
As Levi moves on, Bristol’s parents might someday be relieved that an unwanted pregnancy hasn’t been followed by an unworkable marriage. I’m guessing Levi, hardly the first to succumb to the chance to cash in, won’t resist remaining in view. Already, he has graciously made himself available to a tabloid, the AP and “Good Morning America.”
With any luck, he could be the next Joe the Plumber, reeling off half-baked opinions on the economy, taxes and foreign policy. After all, he lives in Alaska. On a clear day, he can see Russia and Fox News from his front porch.
(Margaret Carlson, author of “Anyone Can Grow Up: How George Bush and I Made It to the White House” and former White House correspondent for Time magazine, is a Bloomberg News columnist. The opinions expressed are her own.)
To contact the writer of this column: Margaret Carlson in Washington at mcarlson3@bloomberg.net.
Last Updated: March 17, 2009 00:01 EDT
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dirtbag
climber
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Mar 17, 2009 - 01:05pm PT
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who cares?
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the Fet
Knackered climber
A bivy sack in the secret campground
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Mar 17, 2009 - 01:06pm PT
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The problem is that he (McCain) lost his own party not that he lost the so called moderate vote.
-Skipt
I just love that quote, completely ignoring reality so you can believe what you want to believe.
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bookworm
Social climber
Falls Church, VA
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Mar 17, 2009 - 02:20pm PT
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in 5 weeks, obama hasn't even completed his own cabinet...he hasn't even filled 17 of 18 posts at TREASURY, posts that require senate approval, which could take months...but maybe the treasury department isn't all that important...
i mean, obama has "established a staff position in the White House to oversee arts and culture in the Office of Public Liaison and Intergovernmental Affairs under Valerie Jarrett, a senior adviser, a White House official confirmed. Kareem Dale, right, a lawyer who last month was named special assistant to the president for disability policy, will hold the new position. Mr. Dale, who is partly blind, previously served as national disability director for the Obama campaign. He also served on the arts policy committee and the disability policy committee for Mr. Obama when he was a senator from Illinois. Bill Ivey, who served as the administration’s transition-team leader for the arts and humanities, said he was encouraged by the appointment and would meet with Mr. Dale next week. “It’s a big step forward in terms of connecting cultural and government with mainstream administration policy,” Mr. Ivey said in an interview on Friday" (nyt)...so what if we're in the "biggest financial crisis since the great depression", the government needs to focus on CULTURE
and, of course, obama has confronted the ever critical "girl effect":
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/mar/17/economic-crisis-new-challenges/
and in case you were worried about how obama would treat our veterans:
http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/03/10/veterans.health.insurance/index.html
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bookworm
Social climber
Falls Church, VA
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Mar 17, 2009 - 04:13pm PT
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poor warbler, please read...i wasn't mocking science or culture, just obama's priorities...however, since you brought it up, if we don't bomb the islamofacists, well...
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines01/0301-04.htm
oh wait, those are religious statues so you're probably happy they were destroyed, opium of the masses and all that
and, i assume you agree that our soldiers who are injured while serving the country should be required to pay for their treatment through private insurance...maybe that way, they'll stop picking on the islamofacists
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jstan
climber
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Mar 17, 2009 - 04:34pm PT
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"No one party should have all the say."
Skip:
Would have very much liked to hear you say this in the 90's and earlier in the 2000's. Or have you reached this position more recently?
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jstan
climber
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Mar 17, 2009 - 07:52pm PT
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Good talking to you again Skip.
I agree on this with you. I have even wondered if we might have the legislature elected in November as it is now and then have the president elected a month later. During the Bush administration we saw the worst that ever existed during my lifetime. The business of refusing to give the minority party conference rooms in which to meet, signing agreements that entirely vitiated the legislative branch of government, and telling a senator from the minority party right on the senate floor "to go f*ck himself" is just about the bottom of the barrel.
Now I know the power invested in the floor leader is huge so Tom Delay's personal domination of the republican House and the Nation could be understood. Absolutely no one dared vote against the leadership. Fortunately he ran into trouble with the laws and was removed. But here we are almost two months into a new administration, the republicans are now the minority party, and they still refuse to break ranks and vote their individual priorities.
The welfare of the Nation continues to get hind tit from the republican party.
Some of the youngsters here may not know why this is bad so I will spell it out. A cow's hind tit is the one that always has sh*t on it.
It is mind blowing.
My conclusion? No republicans in the government at this time should be returned to office. We need a complete sweep. Bar none. Now if we see more examples like Olympia, Arlen, and the third senator to take part in governing the country for ITS benefit as intended by the Constitution, I may relent somewhat.
My feeling? We need to see the final end of Lincoln's party and the formation of a, now, responsible opposition.
A lot of people have seen the absolute worst that a monolithic government can offer. A new party may find more support coming to it than it first imagined possible.
EDIT:
Studly:
I agree. It is hard to find a word more appropriate than "treason."
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Studly
Trad climber
WA
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Mar 17, 2009 - 08:03pm PT
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jstan, I couldn't agree more, clean sweep. The new gov has tried to reach across party lines and the Repubs have refused to do. Obama has made gesture after gesture, something Bush didn't even consider in his arrogance, and for the new buzzword from the Repubs to be "I hope Obama fails" when the very fate of our Nation is at stake is no longer acceptable, and to me borders on treason.
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jstan
climber
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Mar 17, 2009 - 08:11pm PT
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Skip:
The minute one feels one's party is not acting in the interest of the nation, one's response should be to stop supporting that party. That is why I stopped supporting the republicans. You have not done so and indeed in your representations you have continued to support that party.
I think you have described your own situation not mine.
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Mighty Hiker
Social climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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Mar 17, 2009 - 08:18pm PT
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skipt (speaking with jstan): "I can understand that you are rabid about your party."
Except that his party is the conservative party, that is to say the party which in his view best represents conservative American values. And after 50 or so years voting (mostly) Republican in federal elections, he now chooses to support and vote for the Democrats, who, whatever their name, better represent those values.
I suspect that jstan is rabid for the United States of America, its constitution, its core values (particularly as stated in the Bill of Rights), personal and government responsibility and accountabilty, sane economic and foreign policies, etc. I doubt he'd ever be rabid for a political party or candidate, though I'd guess he thought Eisenhower was pretty competent.
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Mar 17, 2009 - 08:52pm PT
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Speaking of AIG:
They first were given billions in September and again more in December, both times when Bush and his appointed Treasury Secretary were in control. Clearly, no effort was made both times in 2008 to look in to executive compensation to limit it.
This called a gross lack of oversight.
Now AIG is back for more money, and this time transparency is bringing this to light, with the proposal now that those executives will be taxed 100% to return that money to our treasury.
That is the responsible thing to do, now that people who give a sh#t about oversight are in charge.
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Mar 17, 2009 - 08:59pm PT
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We just took a poll, in November.
The conservative philosophy was soundly, convincingly, rejected by the voters.They had a bellyful of it for eight years.
Nothing anyone says on this and thousands of other internet forums matters a bit, we are all just venting.
No one is going to convince anyone to switch political parties.
The 2010 midterm elections will again soundly reject the Republican party, just as the 2006 and 2008 elections did.
This rejection of conservatism will continue for a very long time because their base keeps shrinking. Dead Party Walking.
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jstan
climber
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Mar 17, 2009 - 09:00pm PT
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Skip:
A President takes an oath of office to defend the Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic.
George Bush violated his oath of office.
A worse charge does not exist.
He was supported in this by the republican party and that support continues to this very day.
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jstan
climber
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Mar 17, 2009 - 09:06pm PT
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After you murder someone. Does saying, "That is history. Get over it."
Does this deal with reality or just deny it?
Skip, if you feel you are a spokesperson for your party, your activity guarantees its failures will never be forgotten.
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