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Craig Fry
Trad climber
So Cal.
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One more reason why you should never vote for any Republican.
They don't represent you, they lie about who they will represent, and that is the 1% and big Corps with big money. They not only will NOT represent you, but they will screw you then blame it on the Dems.
It's all about gaining power by appealing to suckers to vote for them using wedge issues, then just doing a show for these suckers about some BS issue like abortion or gay rights while they rob them from the inside out.
How are those Red States doing anyway?
They suck because of one reason, the suckers put morons in office to govern them. And that's due to a corrupt media that knows how to manipulate the suckers.
Why the House of Representatives Doesn’t Represent Americans
Thom Hartmann Administrator's picture
Mar. 30, 2015 12:20 pm
By Thom Hartmann A...
One of the really weird ironies of politics these days is the huge divergence between what the American people actually want and what the radical right-wingers in Washington actually do. You won’t hear this on Fox So-Called News, but right now the American people are as progressive as they ever have been.
Don’t believe me? Just check the polls.
The Progressive Change Institute recently asked likely 2016 voters about their views on a bunch of big issues, and it turns out that everyday Americans overwhelmingly support some of the most liberal policies around.
71 percent of all Americans support giving all students access to a debt-free college education.
70 percent support expanding Social Security.
71 percent a massive infrastructure spending program aimed at rebuilding out broken roads and bridges and putting people back to work.
59 percent support raising taxes on the wealthy so that millionaires pay the same amount in taxes as they did during the Reagan administration.
77 percent of Americans, support giving every American child free pre-K education.
And the list goes on.
58 percent of Americans support breaking up the big banks.
59 percent, meanwhile, support a basic guaranteed minimum income while a still higher percentage - 70 percent - support the creation of a “Green New Deal” that would see the government invest hundreds of millions of dollars in renewable energy.
Oh, and if that wasn't enough, support on Capitol Hill for the Congressional Progressive Caucus’ annual budget, which would put into place many of these very same liberal policies, is growing.
A full 40 percent of House Democrats supported the CPC budget in 2012, 43 percent supported it in 2013, 44 percent supported it in 2014, and more than half - 51.5 percent support it this year.
In other words, progressive values aren't just popular with everyday Americans - they’re also popular, and increasingly more popular, with one of our two major parties, the Democratic one. But all this begs the question: If more than half of Congressional Democrats and way more than half of all Americans support doing things like expanding Social Security and making college free for all, why aren't those policies becoming law?
Why, in our democracy, is the will of the people not being heard? The answer is both simple and tragic - we no longer actually live in a democracy.
We live in an oligarchy. Thanks to the Supreme Court’s Long War against campaign finance law, the billionaires and economic royalists now have more control over our political system than they have in almost a century. This isn't opinion; it’s objective and quantifiable fact.
A study released last year by political scientists Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page, for example, found the following: A proposed policy change with low support among economically elite Americans (one-out-of-five in favor) is adopted only about 18% of the time while a proposed change with high support (four-out-of-five in favor) is adopted about 45% of the time.
It really is all about money in politics. Since billionaires like Charles and David Koch can now pretty much buy their own politicians, along with billions in advertising and PR, it’s their views that get heard in Congress, and it’s their views that become law. And because real progressive policies so often cut into the power of the rich, they only very rarely become law in this Brave New World of ours.
America has and always will be a progressive nation, but if we don’t do something right now to reign in the corrupting influence of big money, it won’t matter whether 70 percent or 30 percent of Americans want to break up the big banks.
So go to MovetoAmend.org right now to get money out of politics once and for all.
.- See more at: http://www.thomhartmann.com/blog/2015/03/why-house-representatives-doesn%E2%80%99t-represent-americans#sthash.ZmnbqqdD.dpuf
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HighDesertDJ
Trad climber
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This TGT-esque "comic" was pulled from a pretty hateful Facebook thread:
The logic behind it was so ignorant and mind boggling I knew I had to post it here. I went searching for it and the first google result I got was this:
http://tribuneherald.net/2013/08/23/kkk-wins-lawsuit-against-bakery-for-discrimination/
KKK wins lawsuit against bakery for discrimination
A Georgia court has ruled in favor of Marshall Saxby, the Grand Wizard of a local KKK chapter, in a lawsuit stemming from two years ago when a local bakery denied him service.
The three judge panel concluded unanimously that the bakery had violated civil rights laws by discriminating against Saxby when they refused to sell him a cake for his organization’s annual birthday party.
Elaine Bailey, who owns Bailey Bakeries, refused to bake a cake for the ceremony because it violated her religious beliefs.
Saxby filed the lawsuit claiming that Bailey’s refusal of service was discriminatory against his religious beliefs.
*moonwalks out of the thread*
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guyman
Social climber
Moorpark, CA.
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this is such a funny thread.....
lets make sure we save all of this BS for some time, then we can have a discussion, when Iran shoots off its first A-bomb and President Clinton claims its the fault of the republican held house and Bush.
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dirtbag
climber
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Topic Author's Reply - Apr 3, 2015 - 12:56pm PT
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lets make sure we save all of this BS for some time, then we can have a discussion, when Iran shoots off its first A-bomb and President Clinton claims its the fault of the republican held house and Bush.
What do you suggest we do?
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Craig Fry
Trad climber
So Cal.
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There will be No Nukes for Iran because of Obama.
If we followed the Republicans, we would have started WWIII
and they could still get Nukes since we would Not negotiate with them
and it's still not over, the Repubs can nuke the Obama deal out of spite and to keep they're record of being 100% wrong on everything.
Please try and remember One thing they're were correct about.
Was it invading Iraq?, was it letting the Banksters crash the economy?
was it trickle down? Was it keeping abortion illegal?
You can be assured that the Repubs are wrong (and lying) about Iran just out of consistency.
Yes, in 30 years the Repubs will have a list a mile long that they were 100% wrong about.
There are two sides of every issue:
There is one side that is based on truth and helping people,
the other side works against the side devoted to the people and wants to exploit workers for their gain, they will lie about everything and produce misinformation so to keep the suckers in line.
It's all about the money, one side wants you to use your money to have a happy life,
the money side wants your money, and wants the Gov. money as well, they want it all, and they will do anything to get it, even start a unnecessary war where millions die just to get at it.
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apogee
climber
Technically expert, safe belayer, can lead if easy
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"That looks just like actual news!"
Worth saving for TGT's inevitable cartoon posting later today. And tomorrow. And this weekend. And forever.
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Bob D'A
Trad climber
Taos, NM
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Guyman wrote: lets make sure we save all of this BS for some time, then we can have a discussion, when Iran shoots off its first A-bomb and President Clinton claims its the fault of the republican held house and Bush.
Really laughable.
Oh...what country is the only one to drop A-bombs on another country?
That same country drop the bombs in very populated areas/cites with many civilian deaths.
Could you please name that country for me Guyman?
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HighDesertDJ
Trad climber
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No, no. Iran is the world's leading exporter of weapons.
Crap no that's us.
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HighDesertDJ
Trad climber
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TGT-
So what you're saying is that you're just trying to stand up for Muslims? Or that the Muslims are the "real problem?" That video is an amazing victim racing pile of garbage. The "giant burkad elephant in the room" is the insanely tiny number of Muslim owned bakeries in this country? It only took one Christian bakery to get a law suit? This is a video completely aimed at people like you who just desperately want someone to tell them that mommy is going to make everything ok.
TGT posted "Kowtow to our view of morality or you'd better keep your mouth shut!"
So now you're a moral relativist? I think you're so lost in your sea of conservative media that you're not sure which way is up anymore.
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apogee
climber
Technically expert, safe belayer, can lead if easy
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"That looks just like actual news!"
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HighDesertDJ
Trad climber
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guyman posted lets make sure we save all of this BS for some time, then we can have a discussion, when Iran shoots off its first A-bomb and President Clinton claims its the fault of the republican held house and Bush.
It's like a whole bunch of things that aren't going to happen rolled up in one sentence!
Also, how much more self fulfilling prophecy can Republicans get about this? US invades Iraq in part to intimidate Iran. Iran looks to start making a bomb to deter US from invading them. US starts threatening Iran more overtly. Iran sees bomb as only protection against war crazed country willing to kill thousands of civilians to satisfy domestic political concerns. US threatens harder.
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tradmanclimbs
Ice climber
Pomfert VT
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Why Is The GOP So Angry At Everything These Days?
Cruz, Walker, Kirk and—especially—Bolton are furious at the world. Their solution: Declare war on it.
At the end of a week when many paused to reflect during Passover and Easter ceremonies, a question with no real answer seemed to crash into our culture with all the subtlety of a marching band in a funeral parlor: Why do so many Republicans seem so angry all the time at so much around us?
The fury of some like Ted Cruz is understandable. It’s fueled by his massive ego and outsized ambition along with his personal belief that he is so smart and the rest of us are so pedestrian that he can manipulate opinion to win the Republican nomination for president with the support of the mentally ill wing of his party.
“A real president,” Cruz the bombardier said last week, “would stand up and say on the world stage: Under no circumstances will Iran be allowed to acquire nuclear weapons. Iran will either stop or we will stop them.”
Then there is the minor league Cruz, the tough talking, totally in-over-his-head governor of Wisconsin, Scott Walker, who is running to crack down on the salaries of teachers, cops and firefighters everywhere. Oh, he’ll also teach Iran a good lesson by throwing any deal out the window no matter what other countries might think. Imagine Scotty informing Angela Merkel of his decision while he wears his Cheese-Head Hat.
There are so many others too. There’s the kid who started the pen pal club with the ayatollah, Tom Cotton. There’s the mental midget from Illinois, Mark Kirk, who went right to the basement for his best thought on Iran, claiming that England got a better deal from Hitler than the U.S. got from Teheran. Kirk, not a history major.
But my personal favorite? In this corner, from Baltimore, wearing the costume of a true warrior, locked and loaded and ready to roll, the former Ambassador to the United Nations, John “Bombs Away” Bolton. He took to the Op-Ed page of The New York Times to declare war on Iran. After all, why waste time!
“The inconvenient truth is that only military action…” Field Marshall Bolton wrote, “can accomplish what is required. Time is terribly short, but a strike can still succeed.”
Bolton, of course, is one of the Mensa members who told George W. Bush that it would be swell to go to war in Iraq.
Bolton, of course, is one of the Mensa members who told George W. Bush that it would be swell to go to war in Iraq. Twelve years later things are really going well there.
At least Bolton knows war on a first hand basis. At age 18 he was in South Vietnam where….OH, I’M SORRY…MY MISTAKE…that was another Bolton. That was Dennis Bolton from Bedford, Ind., born two weeks before John Bolton was born in Baltimore in November 1968. Two different young men with two different tales to tell.
Dennis Bolton went to Vietnam. John Bolton who went to Yale. Dennis Bolton was killed near DaNang on April 19, 1967 where he served with the Marines while John Bolton finished his freshman year at New Haven.
In 1967, Bedford had a population of about 13,000. It’s a nice small town where Gene Hackman could have filmed ‘Hoosiers’, one of the great sports films ever. Ten young men from Bedford were killed in Vietnam.
Indiana, of course, is the state where Mike Pence and Republicans in the state legislature spent the week clowning it up over their lost fight to make it harder for some Americans simply to be happy. Make no mistake about it, their war was against same sex marriage and they suffered a TKO when the country turned against them in the snap of a finger, an overnight knock-out delivered with stunning speed. But I digress.
In 1967, Baltimore had a population of about 930,000. It’s a tough town with a lot of different neighborhoods, some dangerous, many working class where Barry Levinson hadn’t made “Diner” yet and HBO hadn’t given us the gift that is “The Wire.” Four hundred and seventeen residents of Baltimore were killed in Vietnam.
Dennis Bolton’s name is on the wall of the Vietnam Memorial in Washington. John Bolton’s name was on the Op-Ed page of The New York Times as well as on the lips of some angry, fevered lunatics whose principal policy option is to fight rather than talk.
Obviously, Bolton never made it to Vietnam. He joined the Maryland National Guard to avoid going to Vietnam and, hey, good for him. At least he served.
Of course, he blamed his absence from combat on the politics of the time. On liberals like Ted Kennedy and others, claiming they had already lost the war by the time he was ready to take on the North Vietnamese Army. I guess that explains the itch, the unfulfilled need, the frustration that guys like Bolton have lived with across the decades.
And today, "Bombs Away" Bolton still has a strong desire to light it up. And according to some pundits he's even considering a run for president. Obviously his platform will remain as unchanged as his thinking: Different time, different dangers, different countries but same selfish solution: Send someone else’s kids to fight and die while Bolton and others play with a lit fuse in a world more dangerous than dynamite.
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