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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Dec 17, 2010 - 11:23pm PT
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Karl Baba
Trad climber
Yosemite, Ca
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Dec 18, 2010 - 12:04am PT
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The title of this thread still rings true.
Sadly, it seems true for Democratic politicians these days.
They rely on less delusion to sell their wares but have so much less spine.
The people are going to have to wake up cause no matter what anybody does, this economy is going to melt down. All the printing money and Tarp and whatnot was just a hail mary to at least let the rats get off the ship
Store your treasure in the heart.
Peace
Karl
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HighDesertDJ
Trad climber
Swimming in LEB tears.
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Dec 18, 2010 - 12:04am PT
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Skipt quoting a hippie who lived by a lake in Massachusetts and wrote about it and sold the book to other hippies. Closet liberal if I've ever seen one. Skipt: the self-hating liberal
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TGT
Social climber
So Cal
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Dec 18, 2010 - 12:28am PT
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HighDesertDJ
Trad climber
Swimming in LEB tears.
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Dec 18, 2010 - 06:58am PT
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Ahahaha. TGT went from "the rescue has arrived, the RNC is victorious" to "f*#k Republicans" in just over 1 month. Who said a worldview informed almost entirely by propaganda comics can't be accurate?
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k-man
Gym climber
SCruz
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Dec 18, 2010 - 12:44pm PT
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On 911 Responders
Those GOP Senators DISGUST me, and the same to any of the folks that support them.
From the Editorial in today's San Francisco Chronicle:
Republican senators blocked their house's version earlier this month.
Their reasons were flimsy - they said that they would approve nothing until
the Bush tax cuts had been extended, and that they were also concerned about
finding the money to pay for the $7.4 billion measure.
The logic doesn't hold. The Bush tax cuts for the wealthy - which those same
Senate Republicans are adamant about extending - will cost this country $70 billion every year.
... The idea that [the 911 responder's] lives are not as important as the economic
comfort of this nation's wealthy is an affront to this country's values.
You support the GOP here? You are a soulless shell of a human. You disgust me.
I feel like puking every time I hear a Republican politician use 911 to bolster
their cause. The slimiest of hypocrites to ever walk this Earth.
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shut up and pull
climber
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Dec 18, 2010 - 01:06pm PT
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FROM INSTAPUNDIT:
DAVID BOAZ WRITES: “The distinguished economist Alan Blinder says it’s a ‘Christmas present’ when the government doesn’t raise taxes on the rich. So I’ve got a present for Dr. Blinder: I’m not going to steal his car.”
EXACTLY!
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shut up and pull
climber
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Dec 18, 2010 - 01:08pm PT
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MORE FROM THE GREAT GLENN REYNOLDS SITE INSTAPUNDIT:
LAME DUCKS: “With a devastating electoral loss behind them and a 13% approval rating, Congress flouts the intent of the framers and ratifiers of the 20th Amendment.’
UPDATE: Reader J.T. Smith emails:
When Harry Reid pulls a trillion dollar pork-fest from the Senate floor because he doesn’t have the votes then we can truly say that we have got the wrong people doing the right thing. From Milton Friedman’s famous quote:
“I do not believe that the solution to our problem is simply to elect the right people. The important thing is to establish a political climate of opinion which will make it politically profitable for the wrong people to do the right thing. Unless it is politically profitable for the wrong people to do the right thing, the right people will not do the right thing either, or if they try, they will shortly be out of office.”
Harry Reid defeated the right candidate…but it was Harry Reid that was ultimately forced to do the right thing.
Keep up the good work Glenn. You certainly deserve a large share of the credit for this through your Porkbusters exposure and your tireless promotion of the tea party movement
Now, though, to quote another great philosopher, “[we have to] keep our boot on their neck until the job gets done”.
Amen. The people should always have their boot on the politicians’ neck, because the political class is always either at your throat, or your feet. And thanks for the credit, but while I did the promotion, it was a lot of other people who did the actual work, and that’s what really counts.
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shut up and pull
climber
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Dec 18, 2010 - 01:09pm PT
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THANK YOU WIKILEAKS!
A CUBAN HOSPITAL IS NO PLACE TO BE SICK. And according to the WikiLeaks cables, the Cuban government banned Michael Moore’s Sicko because “it knows the film is a myth and does not want to risk a popular backlash by showing to Cubans facilities that are clearly not available to the vast majority of them.”
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shut up and pull
climber
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Dec 18, 2010 - 01:17pm PT
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THE GREAT GEORGE WILL TODAY:
The political fantasyland of the 'No Labels' movement
By George F. Will
Sunday, December 19, 2010;
As the new political group No Labels convened in Manhattan, a judge was issuing a decision that illustrated why the group's premise is preposterous and its pretense is cloying. The premise, obscured by gaseous rhetoric, is that political heat is inherently disproportionate. The complacent pretense is that it is virtuous to transcend the vice of partisanship.
No Labels purports to represent a supposedly disaffected middle of the ideological spectrum. Some No Labels enthusiasts speak of eliminating "political retribution," presumably meaning voters defeating candidates with whose positions they disagree. No Labels promises to police the political speech of the intemperate.
That would not include the scrupulously measured ruling of Henry E. Hudson , a federal judge in Virginia. He says:
The Constitution's commerce clause empowers Congress "to regulate commerce . . . among the several states." If this clause permits Congress to punish the inactivity of not engaging in commerce - refusing to purchase health insurance - then Congress can regulate anything, making a mockery of the American project of limited government.
Eventually, the Supreme Court's opinion about Obamacare will be dispositive. Meanwhile, consider Hudson's judgment - that liberty and the crux of the Constitution are at issue - when examining the pieties of No Labels, which says its purpose is:
To achieve a government of "the vital center" that "makes the necessary choices" and "common sense solutions" to put America "on a viable, sound path going forward," with "free and open markets, tempered by sensible regulation," a government that "empowers people" with "world-class education" and "affordable health care - provided that it does so in a fiscally prudent way," and with "fact-based discussions."
The perpetrators of this mush purport to speak for people who want to instruct everyone else about how to speak about politics. Granted, there always are people who speak extravagantly, and modern technologies - television, the Internet - have multiplied their megaphones. But blowhards, although unattractive, are easy to avoid. And speaking of the unattractive:
Although the people promising to make No Labels into a national scold are dissatisfied with the tone of politics, they are pleased as punch with themselves. If self-approval were butter, they could spread it across America, if it were bread. They might cover the country with sanctimony as they "overthrow the tyranny of hyper-partisanship." But aside from No Labels' policy bromides, and its banalities about playing nicely together, how might "nonpartisan" discussion proceed concerning complex and consequential matters such as those preoccupying Judge Hudson?
"Hyper-partisanship" is deplorable, but partisanship is politics. What would it mean to have a "nonpartisan" position on the issue with which Hudson has dealt? People have different political sensibilities; they cluster and the clusters are called parties. They have distinctive understandings of the meaning and relative importance of liberty, equality and other matters. Politics is given weight, and motion is imparted to democracy, by intensely interested factions composed of people who are partisans of various causes.
Often in the year before the year before the year divisible by four, a few political people theatrically recoil from partisanship. Recently, this ritual has involved speculation about whether New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg might squander a few of his billions to improve America by failing to be elected president.
But Bloomberg, addressing the No Labels confabulation, spoke truth to powerlessness: "It's not clear that the average person feels themselves disenfranchised or wants a lot of the things we are advocating." Just so. Whatever their defects, America's political parties are marvelously sensitive market mechanisms, measuring every tremor of the electorate's moods.
Appearing with Bloomberg, who in the past decade has labeled himself a Democrat, a Republican and an independent, was Florida Gov. Charlie Crist, an ideological chameleon who recently labeled himself "a true-blue Reaganite Republican" and then an independent - one with no discernible difference with Democrats. Labels are not, however, ridiculous because ridiculous people treat them as disguises, or as flags of convenience for dinghy candidacies sailing without any ballast of convictions.
No Labels, its earnestness subverting its grammar, says: "We do not ask any political leader to ever give up their label - merely put it aside." But adopting a political label should be an act of civic candor. When people label themselves conservatives or liberals we can reasonably surmise where they stand concerning important matters, such as Hudson's ruling. The label "conservative" conveys much useful information about people who adopt it. So does the label "liberal," which is why most liberals have abandoned it, preferring "progressive," until they discredit it, too.
georgewill@washpost.com
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Ken M
Mountain climber
Los Angeles, Ca
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Dec 18, 2010 - 01:39pm PT
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latimes.com/news/opinion/editorials/la-ed-foxnews-20101217,0,6952663.story
latimes.com
Editorial
Fox's unbalancing act
A memo to reporters on climate science suggests an unacceptable level of bias.
4:12 PM PST, December 17, 2010
Love it or hate it, Fox News has shaken up the media establishment and achieved financial success by airing the views of strident conservative pundits. Yet while the network has never made any bones about the political slant of opinion shows hosted by the likes of Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity or Bill O'Reilly, executives often claim that its news coverage is "fair and balanced." A memo revealed this week by the liberal watchdog group Media Matters calls that into question.
The first time Media Matters unveiled a leaked e-mail from Bill Sammon, Fox News' Washington managing editor, it was hardly worthy of mention. On Dec. 9 the group's website revealed that Sammon had instructed reporters to avoid the phrase "public option" when referring to a proposed government-sponsored healthcare plan. The memo, sent out on Oct. 27, 2009, when debate over the Democratic healthcare bill was raging in Congress, came two months after Republican pollster Frank Luntz had appeared on Hannity's show and encouraged him to use the phrase "government option" instead, because such terminology decreased public support for the proposal. "Please use the term 'government-run health insurance' or, when brevity is a concern, 'government option' whenever possible," Sammon told reporters.
Liberal bloggers were furious, but few mainstream journalists could muster much outrage. Arguments over semantics and perceived bias are commonplace and seldom fruitful. "Government option" is no less valid a descriptor for the proposal than the more commonly used "public option," and if Fox News was demonstrating bias by using the former, one could accuse mainstream outlets of the same for using the latter.
But a second intercepted missive from Sammon is quite a bit more troubling.
"We should refrain from asserting that the planet has warmed (or cooled) in any given period without IMMEDIATELY pointing out that such theories are based upon data that critics have called into question," read an e-mail sent by Sammon to news reporters on Dec. 8, 2009, and revealed this week by Media Matters. The memo went out 15 minutes after a Fox News reporter accurately explained to viewers that United Nations scientists had issued a report saying 2000 to 2009 was shaping up to be the warmest decade on record — even warmer than the 1990s, which were warmer than the 1980s.
Such data aren't in serious dispute among climate scientists. The way the data are interpreted can vary; it's legitimate for climate skeptics to reach conclusions that contradict mainstream theories. But only a crank would deny the underlying temperature data that show the Earth getting warmer — records compiled by independent stations around the world, combined with satellite measurements and confirmed by observations of rising sea levels, vanishing glaciers and other inputs — because to do so is to deny material and measurable facts. Instructing reporters to treat such facts as controversial is like telling them to question the laws of gravity when discussing plane crashes. The only reason for doing it is to further a partisan agenda, in this case an attempt to cast doubt on climate science in order to fend off government efforts to limit greenhouse gases.
Fox should either come clean about this and crack down on such partisanship in its news ranks, or it should stop pretending to be an objective news source.
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k-man
Gym climber
SCruz
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Dec 18, 2010 - 01:46pm PT
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SU&P vomits:
"THANK YOU WIKILEAKS!
A CUBAN HOSPITAL IS NO PLACE TO BE SICK. And according to the WikiLeaks cables,
the Cuban government banned Michael Moore’s Sicko because “it knows the film is
a myth and does not want to risk a popular backlash by showing to Cubans facilities
that are clearly not available to the vast majority of them.”
But, Michael Moore says something different:
So, on January 31, 2008, a State Department official stationed in Havana took
a made up story and sent it back to his HQ in Washington. Here's what they concocted:
"XXXXXXXXXXXX stated that Cuban authorities have banned Michael Moore's documentary,
"Sicko," as being subversive. Although the film's intent is to discredit the U.S.
healthcare system by highlighting the excellence of the Cuban system, he said the
regime knows the film is a myth and does not want to risk a popular backlash by
showing to Cubans facilities that are clearly not available to the vast majority of them."
Sounds convincing, eh?! There's only one problem -- 'Sicko' had just been playing
in Cuban theaters. Then the entire nation of Cuba was shown the film on national
television on April 25, 2008! The Cubans embraced the film so much so it became one
of those rare American movies that received a theatrical distribution in Cuba.
I personally ensured that a 35mm print got to the Film Institute in Havana.
Screenings of 'Sicko' were set up in towns all across the country.
But the secret cable said Cubans were banned from seeing my movie. Hmmm.
Another proof of the mis-information that the US Gov't promotes, and lapdogs
like Skip drink this crap like Kool-Aid on a scorching hot summer day.
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Ken M
Mountain climber
Los Angeles, Ca
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Dec 18, 2010 - 01:48pm PT
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Sarah Palin is out with “America by Heart: Reflections on Family, Faith and Flag.”
One of the reflections missing is who did the writing.
You have to get to the very end of the book, and work your way through the acknowledgements of Palin’s family, friends, our veterans, “Common-Sense Constitutionalists,” “Prayer Warriors” and her lawyer before she notes that conservative speechwriter Jessica Gavora did “most important work” on the tome.
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rottingjohnny
Sport climber
mammoth lakes ca
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Dec 18, 2010 - 01:53pm PT
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Ken M....Well yeah...You wouldn't expect Palin to fit that book all onto her slimy paw would you...? rj
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Sir loin of leisure...
Trad climber
I'm from Idaho..bitch
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Dec 18, 2010 - 01:53pm PT
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politicians are all the same ,they all have the same goals...they pretend to be different to keep the dummies distracted and divided...see ya at the revolution....
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shut up and pull
climber
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Dec 18, 2010 - 03:15pm PT
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Hey libs -- what is so sad about you is that you claim to be for freedom, yet what you are really for is government, and the more the better. Do you ever have any introspective thoughts regarding this? Does it ever occur to you that you are proponents of more government in our private lives?
Just asking.
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Skeptimistic
Mountain climber
La Mancha
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Dec 18, 2010 - 03:24pm PT
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^^^
Does it ever occur to you that the largest expansions of gov't power, intrusion, and taxing have all come during republican administrations...?
Just answering...
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k-man
Gym climber
SCruz
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Dec 18, 2010 - 04:37pm PT
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How do you make a Republican short circuit?
Tell them they're about to make abortion legal in the Middle East.
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