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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Mar 24, 2016 - 08:06am PT
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If disaffected teen males who failed to assimilate (if not criminals) are the acetone, then religious fundamentalism is the hydrogen peroxide.
(Or, it takes two to tango.)
Facts: 25-50 per cent of Christians are scriptural fundamentalist. 80-95 per cent of Muslims are scriptural fundamentalist.
How many Muslims "believe in" evolution? believe in creationism? are pro-science? anti-science?
Muslims no less than Christians believe in a WARRIOR god.
Support Muslim culture in the name of multiculturalism? No. Support ex-muslims and reform muslims and liberal muslims? Yes.
End of rant. Have a good one.
.....
"The people who care about this politically correct term are the LEAST nuanced and the LEAST likely to make the distinction you describe."
This sooooo telegraphs your bias. "politically correct term"? lol
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/03/23/reform-muslims-stand-up-to-take-on-the-ideology-of-islam.html
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Escopeta
Trad climber
Idaho
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Mar 24, 2016 - 08:17am PT
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$10 trillion dollars is awful spendy dancing lessons.
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HighDesertDJ
Trad climber
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Topic Author's Reply - Mar 24, 2016 - 08:21am PT
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HFCS posted If disaffected teen males who failed to assimilate (if not criminals) are the acetone, then religious fundamentalism is the hydrogen peroxide.
Indeed, it's their own fault they weren't accepted.
This sooooo telegraphs your bias. "politically correct term"? lol
Your reading comprehension is poor, apparently. That was the entire point of that conversation. Tell me, HFCS, if one term is considered the "right" term and another the "wrong" term to use in a political context, would insisting on the right term not be "political correctness?" How is it biased to call a spade a spade? Are you mad I'm not calling it a leverage scoop?
Brandon posted You know, I was going to post an opinion piece written by Michelle Bachman which tries to tie the Belgium attacks to President Obama, but it's just an unintelligible word salad.
Bachman and Palin are like internet meme aggregators come to life. That isn't even an opinion piece it's a collection of saved links from Bachman's Facebook page.
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dirtbag
climber
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Mar 24, 2016 - 09:53am PT
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The 2016 general election campaign is going to be one supremely nasty mother f*#ker. It's going to be just brutal. Ugh.
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HighDesertDJ
Trad climber
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Topic Author's Reply - Mar 24, 2016 - 09:56am PT
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Yuuuuup
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Escopeta
Trad climber
Idaho
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Mar 24, 2016 - 10:01am PT
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Maybe you can get some counseling Dirt since your delicate sensibilities have clearly been assaulted. Lol.
"Mamby Pamby" is the phrase that comes to mind when considering the "safe space" intrusion of these college kids.
http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2016/03/337436/
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Norton
Social climber
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Mar 24, 2016 - 10:05am PT
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Hillary beats Donald by over 10 million popular and over 100 Electoral Votes
modern day landslide
the GOP is facing a demographic tidal wave, they cannot get to 270
down ticket voting in November gives the Senate back to the Dems
The GOP keeps the House until at least 2022, divided government, nothing get done
and most everyone left church early
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dirtbag
climber
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Mar 24, 2016 - 10:07am PT
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Oh, okay Esco.
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HighDesertDJ
Trad climber
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Topic Author's Reply - Mar 24, 2016 - 10:26am PT
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Meanwhile, Trump supporters literally throw punches and complain about "hate" because people are invading their safe space. You know, tough guy stuff.
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Escopeta
Trad climber
Idaho
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Mar 24, 2016 - 10:44am PT
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divided government, nothing get done
We can only hope so.....
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HighDesertDJ
Trad climber
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Topic Author's Reply - Mar 24, 2016 - 11:25am PT
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Dingus posted It was a quid pro quo deal, a dirty back room as#@&%e deal by incumbent dirty politicians and their partisan dogs within the respective parties. Shameful but the blame in no way whatsoever resides solely with the GOP. This was a bipartisan rip off.
Hence my contention that partisans SUCK.
How would you have it happened, exactly? I mean other than an independent group drawing the lines (that everyone would just call partisan).
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guyman
Social climber
Moorpark, CA.
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Mar 24, 2016 - 12:05pm PT
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Dingus........+1
Hand that job over to a geographer.... It's called "Population Bubbles " .... A common map making tool.
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JEleazarian
Trad climber
Fresno CA
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Mar 24, 2016 - 12:24pm PT
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I dunno about other states but in California the GOP-favored gerrymandering of congressional districts was done as a deal within the state, between California democrats and California republicans.
California GOP-favored gerrymandering of congresional districts? How did I miss that? John Burton masterminded the Democrats' gerrymander in 1980 that's pretty much disenfranchised California centrists ever since. (For non-Californians' info, John Burton was a San Francisco Democrat). The "independent commission" that was supposed to take district boundaries out of partisan hands employed the consultants of the California Democrats, and the relative proportion of California representatives between parties reflects that bias.
I personally like open primaries in states, such as California, where so many districts are one-party districts. That allows members of the other party to show a preference for the more moderate candidate of the dominant party.
I still remember when California's nominally partisan government was really non-partisan. Earl Warren and Tom Kuchul were Republicans, B.F. Sisk (a rather conservative local congressman) and Sam Yorty (a rather conservative LA Mayor) were Democrats. That centrist, pragmatic approach to government really characterized government in most of the western U.S., but as states like California and Washington became dominated by big-city political machines, that changed for the worse. In California, at least, the "good old days" of the mid-20th century really were better. After all, that's when Yosemite climbers became world-class.
;>)
John
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JEleazarian
Trad climber
Fresno CA
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Mar 24, 2016 - 12:34pm PT
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Exactly! It was an "Incumbent Protection Plan" that "preserved the balance of power." California was dominated by existing gerrymanders that heavily favored the Democrats. The gerrymander that you cite continued the status quo.
John
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August West
Trad climber
Where the wind blows strange
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Mar 24, 2016 - 02:30pm PT
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How would you have it happened, exactly? I mean other than an independent group drawing the lines (that everyone would just call partisan).
The winner-take-all system is the problem. To the extent possible, I would rather have a regional, proportional system. So you would have a district where ten seats were up that were awarded on a proportional basis. So it would take about 10% of the vote to elect a single politician. In our current system if an alternate party (green, libertarian, Christian conservative, etc.) gets 10% across the board, they gets zero seats. With a proportional they would. If the Dems (or Reps) got 40% of the vote in that district, they would get 4 seats in that district. 10% for the greens would get one. It would better represent voters. I would limit it to 10 so that there is still a regional component.
There is no practical way to gerrymander a proportional system.
Obviously there is no hope of doing this on a national level, but I would presume that CA could do it with a voter prop for the CA legislature.
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the Fet
climber
Tu-Tok-A-Nu-La
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Mar 24, 2016 - 02:56pm PT
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Our state is not well served by preserving dirty partisan dog elective jobs, democrat or republican.
A huge Fing problem IMO. You get very red and blue districts that elect more wingnut politicians. Who don't compromise and don't take into account differing view points.
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Craig Fry
Trad climber
So Cal.
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Mar 24, 2016 - 06:06pm PT
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An Open Letter to My Republican Friends
03/22/2016
Richard North Patterson
Novelist and contributing opinion writer
Dear Cherished Friends,
The Republican Party has become intellectually and morally bankrupt, a mockery of its traditions — corrosive to our society, our civility, and our capacity to govern. This is not a temporary condition; it is woven into the fabric of the party. Unless and until it reverses course, you should take your votes and money and walk away.
I never thought I would presume to say this. I respect that your allegiance is rooted in considered beliefs and years of loyalty which, at the beginning of my political journey, I shared. I certainly don’t think I have all the answers, and I enjoy exploring our differences. You inform me, correct me and, most generously, tolerate me. You care, as do I, about the world we are leaving the next generations.
Our friendship far transcends our political beliefs. We share each other’s celebrations, enjoy each other’s successes. I value your advice. You’ve helped me through hard times, and some of you have helped my kids as well. You are loyal friends, generous members of the community, and deeply committed parents and grandparents. My world, and the larger world, would be a grayer place without you.
Knowing you as I do, I know that you are troubled by the direction of your party. Little wonder — you are mainstream Republicans whose mainstream has run dry. But I also accept that, for you, the Democrats may not be the answer — that you see them as feckless devotees of identity politics and too much government, don’t trust Hillary Clinton, and believe that Bernie Sanders would drive us off the fiscal cliff. I’m not writing to quarrel with these beliefs. Nor do I suggest that unchallenged dominance by the Democrats would serve the country well.
But to compare the two parties at this time in our history is to indulge in false equivalency. For rationalizing the GOP’s pathology by responding with a partisan tit-for-tat is not adequate to the circumstances. The sins you perceive in Democrats are the usual ones — misguided policies, ill chosen means for dubious ends, and the normal complement of rhetorical dishonesty and political squalor. However mistaken you may find Clinton and Sanders on the issues, their debate is addressed to the world as it exists and therefore open to a sensible critique. The squalor to which the GOP has sunk, an alternate reality rooted in anger and mendacity, transcends mere differences in policy, threatening the country with profound, perhaps irreparable, damage.
This is not simply about Donald Trump. For Trump is not the result of forces which will come and go, but of a deterioration within the Republican Party that has been accelerating for years. The GOP has become a Frankenstein monster, assembled from dysfunction, demagoguery, myopia and myth, nurtured in a fever swamp where lies and hysteria kill off reason. Nothing better will arise until you help drive a stake through its heart.
One of our ongoing disagreements has been about the nature of the party, and where you fit within it. With respect to GOP extremism in areas like climate denial, gun violence or reproductive rights, you often say, “but I’m not like that.” But the party is. You may be moderate in your views; the party is not. Even candidates with temperate instincts must go along to survive, or meet the fate of Jon Huntsman, mocked for publicly accepting climate change and evolution.
Long since, the GOP killed its moderates and trashed everything they stood for. It has replaced respected figures like William Cohen, Richard Lugar and John Danforth with rigid ideologues like Ted Cruz and Mike Lee, and social illiterates like James Inhofe, Jeff Sessions and Richard Shelby. On issue after issue, they have embraced an orthodoxy rooted in extremism and divorced from fact. These dynamics forced Mitt Romney to win the nomination by running so far right that he could never get back. And what was the lesson learned among the party base? That Romney was not nearly extreme enough.
In short, the Republican Party no longer belongs to you, or you in it. 2016 has proven the point.
I saw this coming not because I’m uniquely prescient, but because I began writing reality-based political novels 20 years ago. I hung around with party pros, consultants, lobbyists, donors, pollsters, officeholders and political partisans, some of whom became my friends. Bit by bit, I saw the party sell out its agenda for short-term gains with disastrous long-term consequences. Eventually the GOP’s train wreck became inevitable — no longer a matter of if, but when.
How did this happen? Start with the relationship between the party establishment and its base. Your family, and mine, occupy a privileged slice of American society. Not so for most members of the GOP electorate. They are folks that few of us know very well: evangelicals; modestly educated whites threatened by economic dislocation; and people whose distrust of government partakes of paranoia.
Economically, they are not natural allies of the party of business or its wealthy donors, who tend to focus on tax cuts and free-market principles irrelevant to the base. So in exchange for pursuing its economic agenda, the party offered evangelicals a faith-based vision of America: barring abortion, banning gay marriage, and giving government preferences to fundamentalist religious institutions. Why should business people care, the reasoning went, when we can rally these voters with promises which, however illusory, cost us nothing?
But as “promise keepers,” the party failed its fundamentalist flock. Abortion remains legal; gay marriage became a right; the constitution prevents government from enshrining religious preferences as law. So there was nothing to stop evangelicals from noticing that their own lives were often harder and less secure.
Ditto other members of the middle and working classes. The real causes of their woes are globalization, the Great Recession, the housing crisis, and an information society which marginalizes blue-collar jobs. But the GOP never addressed these complex forces with any kind of candor — let alone proposed solutions like job retraining and educational access for their kids.
Barren of ideas for helping its base voters, it resorted to blame-shifting and scapegoating — of government, Obama, illegal immigrants, Muslims and other minorities. Instead of looking forward, the party indulged a primal nostalgia for simpler times, an imaginary white folks’ paradise which can never be resurrected.
Some of this was shameful. The GOP countenanced a race-based birtherism directed at our first black president, giving Donald Trump a political foothold. It nurtured xenophobia that targeted all Muslims at home and abroad. It pretended that illegal immigrants were poisoning our economy. It aped the mindless masters of talk radio and trafficked in conspiracy theories. It embraced Tea Party dead-enders who claimed that shutting down the government, at whatever cost, was the only answer.
In Congress, the party resolved to deny Obama reelection by grinding the legislative process to a halt, then blaming him for gridlock as if its tactics played no role. Political polarization polluted foreign-policy — as when all 300 Republicans in Congress turned the Iran deal into a political wedge issue, shunning the careful consideration it deserved in favor of shrill and simpleminded denunciations. In the world of the GOP, our many and complex problems had but one misbegotten cause: that Barack Obama was president.
So-called mainstream Republicans competed to fan the flames of outrage, poisoning political discourse. Typical was the establishment’s darling, Marco Rubio, who claimed that Obama was not simply wrong, but trying to destroy America as we know it. Republican politics became not faith-based, but hate-based.
For the Republican base, nothing changed.
Except, of course, their rising anger, stoked by yet more empty and diversionary anti-Washington rhetoric that only deepened their sense of impotence. Focused on the donor class, party leaders charged the Democrats with “class warfare” against the less than embattled rich, while still failing to acknowledge through substantive policies the very real struggles of its rank-and-file. The election in 2014 of yet more Republican senators and congressmen made no difference in the lives of the people who supported them.
Not unreasonably, the base came to believe that our governmental and financial institutions — including the Republican Party — were controlled by an elite that was indifferent to their plight. And so demagogues like Donald Trump and Ted Cruz became the agents of their frustration and despair. Like the sorcerer’s apprentice, the party lost control.
Among the casualties was the agenda most dear to the Republican establishment. Its insensitivity to the base has eroded support for free trade. Despite its claims of fiscal probity, the GOP continued its meretricious complaints about deficit spending — for which, as ever, it blamed the Democrats’ self-serving rhetoric about protecting Social Security and Medicare — while proposing tax cuts for the wealthy that would explode the national debt. And consider this: How do tax cuts at the top benefit the struggling middle and working classes? And wouldn’t slashing or privatizing Social Security further threaten their fragile place in our society?
But set aside the party’s disingenuousness with respect to the economic and fiscal concerns that, in many cases...
to be continued
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/richard-north-patterson/an-open-letter-to-my-repu_b_9497274.html?utm_hp_ref=politics
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Craig Fry
Trad climber
So Cal.
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Mar 24, 2016 - 08:08pm PT
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I agree
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