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mojede
Trad climber
Butte, America
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Apr 21, 2009 - 11:27am PT
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I thought that it was only the Republicans who wear wool, sir Bookworm...perhaps you are confused.
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bookworm
Social climber
Falls Church, VA
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Apr 21, 2009 - 11:36am PT
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naaa, just all those libs who think barry and the congressional dems really care about education
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noshoesnoshirt
climber
dangling off a wind turbine in a town near you
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Apr 21, 2009 - 11:43am PT
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Good god people! Can't we all just get along?
Seriously, Bush f*#ked us, Obama's f*#kin' us, what's new.
Screw this, I'm goin' bouldering.
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bookworm
Social climber
Falls Church, VA
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Apr 21, 2009 - 12:31pm PT
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brilliant...on the exact same day that barry demands fiscal responsibility from his cabinet by finding a TOTAL of $100 million dollars in budget cuts (or a whopping .0029% of the federal budget), he announces a new $100 BILLION commitment to the imf
so, he'll spend $100 million less on america but $100 BILLION more on other countries
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jstan
climber
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Apr 21, 2009 - 12:31pm PT
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I supported Obama because I thought we were still a people able to sustain a representative democracy. It appears I was wrong and I did him a great evil.
I wish you all well.
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Karl Baba
Trad climber
Yosemite, Ca
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Apr 21, 2009 - 01:21pm PT
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"the least of the evils"
Worm-a bow to the saudi king, the tyrant who oppresses women, homosexuals, and christians (wait, you probably like that last one)
Baba-Bush kissed him the damn lips! Prince Bandar's nickname is Bandar Bush they were so close. I call Obama's alleged protocol move lesser
Worm-a handshake and gratitude to hugo chavez, the tyrant who destroyed a democratic state with a vibrant economy
Baba- Prove destroyed! They are still a democracy BTW and Chavez lost an election designed to change their rules. Place is not doing as badly as many places.
Worm- promises of understanding and cooperation with the president of iran, a vile anti-semitic who continues to call for the destruction of one of our staunchest allies and who provides financial support to terrorist organizations (hamas and hezbollah) and whose thugs have helped to kill american troops in iraq
Baba-The call for destruction has been proved false translation many times. What's worse, talking to these guys or invading them for billions of dollars or thousands of lives lost like Bush did in Iraq. I call that lesser evil too.
Worm-calls for disarmament the same day noko (the tyrannical regime that starves its own people) tests a long-range ballistic missile in open violation of un resolutions
Baba_ Yeah, they say they were trying to launch a satellite. Who has North Korea invaded lately? Who did they attack? We have thousands of nukes, launch missles all the time, and fire weapons at real and imagined foes every day. Don't you think a little less hypocrisy would serve us better in the world? Do you know that we have obligations to move toward disarmament in the NPT?
Worm-disparagement of the monroe doctrine, which was specifically set up to protect fledgling democracies in latin america from european imperialists (which either shows barry's true feelings on democracy or his utter ignorance concerning american history)
Baba-Study the history of us defeating democracy in Latin America for the benefit of our corporate interests. Your post above is pure fantasy. Start with "Confessions of an economic hitman" We have a disgraceful (unknown in this country) past there and THEY ALL KNOW IT DOWN THERE.
Worm-official orders to stop using the term "terrorist" when talking about people who strap bombs to themselves and blow up women and children but officially using the word "terrorist" when referring to pro-life supporters, opponents of ILLEGAL immigration, and VETS (who willingly risked their lives to protect america)
Baba- Right wing talking points that are either lies, exaggerations but certainly don't cost anybody their jobs, lives, or freedom. Nothing compared to Bushes lesser crimes not to speak of his real crimes.
i could go on, but i think this illustrates the irony in your use of the word "lesser"
Dude, I'm not going to waste more time posting with you because you are the incarnation of Lois in objective consideration of things. It makes me look and feel bad to engage in this manner. You've got 8 years to enjoy Obama rule...Enjoy.
Still, I'll be right with intelligent conservative and liberal thinkers in opposing Obama policies that get dictated by the power of the system of political economics that has strangled our system. I've very skeptical, for instance, on Obama's stepping up on Afghanistan. So many countries have failed in that. He's a smart guys so hopefully he has a unique plan but fear what happened to Johnson in Viet Nam
Peace
Karl
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HighDesertDJ
Trad climber
Arid-zona
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Apr 21, 2009 - 01:44pm PT
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bookworm- You need to lay off the Little Green Footballs or whatever it is cause it's hurting your brain. Calling Juan Williams a "dyed in the wool liberal" is just ridiculous. You have no idea what you're talking about.
jstan-
I'm not sure exactly what you're getting at here. It sounds like you're looking for more transparency in the social security system? Please realize that you can't take on an issue like Social Security without looking at the way it's been treated by politicians for the last few decades. It has been repeatedly raided by Congress to shore up budgets without raising taxes (thus Al Gore's much ridiculed "lockbox") and everyone skews the numbers for their partisan gain. The reality is that it most certainly IS a social contract. Running numbers based on what is there now would be like demanding that you see my bank account because I will owe you rent at the end of the month. My account is empty, but it's only the 16th. I have a lot of time to get my rent money.
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bookworm
Social climber
Falls Church, VA
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Apr 21, 2009 - 04:49pm PT
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oops, it looks like i was wrong about obama...or obama was wrong about obama...today, suddenly, he's decided prosecuting those responsible for torture might be a good option after all...hmmm, i wonder what changed his mind...couldn't possibly be "political factors" could it?
read the blog and see the potential cluster that awaits:
http://hotair.com/archives/2009/04/21/obama-flip-flops-on-potential-torture-prosecutions/
oh yeah, also sorry for calling john kerry the biggest flip-flopper in the world
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apogee
climber
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Apr 21, 2009 - 04:54pm PT
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"Dude (bookworm), I'm not going to waste more time posting with you because you are the incarnation of Lois in objective consideration of things."
Karl nails it. bookworm, get your meds refilled, will ya?
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the Fet
Supercaliyosemistic climber
Tu-Tok-A-Nu-La
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Apr 21, 2009 - 04:58pm PT
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booky if you believe the BS you post here you must be tearing your hair out.
I suggest turning off the right wing news/radio/websites before you lose it and do more climbing instead.
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Apr 21, 2009 - 07:30pm PT
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White on white crime?
Fox news just said this was Obama's fault, and would make us less safe.
Red State.com confirmed this view immediately.
Michael Savage and Rush added their well considered statements of fact that the Obama daughters' upcoming sleepover was poorly planned,
and would only make us less safe.
In other news, Fattrad still wants to be POTUS, and Bookworm is holding a press conference to announce he is switching political parties and will immediately register as a Democrat.
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bookworm
Social climber
Falls Church, VA
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Apr 23, 2009 - 06:06pm PT
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i know this is long, but it's worth reading...from today's wsj:
"Barack Obama's critics have long worried that his placatory attitude would project American weakness, thereby emboldening enemies and making real that impression of weakness. That may happen (or be happening), but what seems to have happened first is that President Obama's own weakness has emboldened his domestic allies on the Angry Left. As a result, the administration seems to be on the verge of a political crisis, and the country is at risk of a constitutional crisis.
Until this week, the White House had been clear in rejecting calls from left-wing Democrats to prosecute former Bush administration officials for their involvement in what the far left calls "torture" of terrorists. But on Tuesday the president effectively voted "present," as MSNBC.com reports:
"For those who carried out some of these operations within the four corners of legal opinions or guidance that had been provided from the White House, I do not think it's appropriate for them to be prosecuted," he told reporters.But then Obama added that prosecutions for those who drafted the memos would be up to Attorney General Eric Holder. "With respect to those who formulated those legal decisions, I would say that that is going to be more of a decision for the Attorney General within the parameters of various laws, and I don't want to prejudge that. I think that there are a host of very complicated issues involved there."This noncommittal response emboldened the Angry Left and has everyone else worried. Merely contemplating such a step poses dangers to the administration. Going through with it would pose a myriad of dangers for the country.
The most immediate danger is a political one, described aptly by Commentary's Jennifer Rubin:
His own party, not to mention the Republicans and the public, must now fight it out: criminalize the prior administration or not? Spend weeks or months with a parade of witnesses pointing fingers at superiors, subordinates, and even congressional leaders who knew and approved of the policies at issue?And now the administration is frustrated, we are told, that everyone is so distracted and not paying attention to the economy and the president's domestic agenda.This is one "distraction" that Obama cannot blame on his political opponents. Of course, depending on what you think of Obama's domestic agenda, a distraction from it may not be altogether a bad thing. But surely a weakened presidency at a time of war and economic crisis is the worst way imaginable to save us from socialized medicine and higher taxes.
Then there is the question of America's vulnerability to a terrorist attack. We tend to think that Obama's changes in policy, including the repudiation of enhanced interrogation, increase the likelihood of an attack. Even if you disagree, consider the case the Washington Post's David Ignatius makes about the effects of threatening prosecutions:
Obama promised CIA officers that they won't be prosecuted for carrying out lawful orders, but the people on the firing line don't believe him. They think the memos have opened a new season of investigation and retribution.The lesson for younger officers is obvious: Keep your head down. Duck the assignments that carry political risk. Stay away from a counterterrorism program that has become a career hazard.Up to this point, Obama's actual changes in policy have been less drastic than the drama with which he has announced them--think of his promising to close Guantanamo after a year rather than doing so immediately. The threat of prosecution adds a new element of drama, which the reality of prosecution would heighten enormously. The drama itself will affect public perception if there is, heaven forbid, another terrorist attack. The more dramatically Obama is seen as having remade antiterror policy, the more inclined the public would be to interpret an attack as having resulted from his new policies--whether this perception is accurate or not.
Obama's willingness to take such a political risk may be foolish, or it may be to his credit. But his policies would be at risk as well. If abandoning "torture" is seen as having led to the deaths of American civilians on American soil, public opinion may well swing in the opposite direction. It's quite possible that the public would demand policies harsher not only than Obama's but than Bush's. This is a disturbing prospect to anyone who cares about civil liberties, this columnist included.
Further, as David Frum notes, the criminalization of policy differences can go both ways:
Obama is musing about extending the political reach of the criminal law. If he does so, he will find he has opened a new front of political warfare that will not soon end.After the 9/11 attacks, President Bush drew a curtain of oblivion against all the errors and mistakes that had led up to the attacks. There was accusation and counter-accusation in the media, but at the official level there was no recrimination against President Clinton's decision not to kill bin Laden when he had the chance, no action against those who had failed to stop the 9/11 hijackers from entering the country.If Obama proceeds to take legal action against those who did what they thought was right to defend the country, all that will change. Prosecutions launched by Obama will not stop when Obama declares "game over." If overzealousness under Bush becomes a crime under Obama, underzealousness under Obama will become a crime under the next Republican president.If officials pay for policy mistakes not only by losing elections but by losing their freedom, that would amount to a fundamental change in America's form of government. As The Wall Street Journal notes in an editorial:
At least until now, the U.S. political system has avoided the spectacle of a new Administration prosecuting its predecessor for policy disagreements. This is what happens in Argentina, Malaysia or Peru, countries where the law is treated merely as an extension of political power.What Obama is offhandedly contemplating, then, amounts to a step toward authoritarian government. The impulse behind the push to prosecute is an authoritarian one as well. Matthew Yglesias of the left-liberal Center for American Progress writes that "large-scale punishment for the perpetrators of Bush-era war crimes is less important than establishing some form of political consensus that torture is wrong for the future."
Yglesias blames this lack of "consensus" on "the existence of a large and powerful conservative media apparatus," including the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal (which publishes this column), and he quotes approvingly from a blogger called Neil Sinhababu:
I don't think that we're going to be able to establish any such consensus anytime soon. It used to be that we were worried about Fox News defeating us in elections, or beating the drums for another Bush Administration war. Winning by big margins is nice, because we don't have to worry about those particular horrors for at least a little while. But now we have to worry about how Fox and the rest of the right-wing noise machine are going to continually sustain a substantial minority of crazy people, preventing the formation of an anti-torture consensus, an anti-war-of-aggression consensus, and anti-warrantless-spying consensus. Even if there's majority support for these views, anybody scrapping for power within the Republican Party will find reason to oppose them, just to get a majority of Republicans.I think the impossibility of consensus on these issues is part of why nobody thinks about consensus and there's so much left-wing attention to judicial punishments for the perpetrators.What troubles Yglesias and Sinhababu, then, is the existence of disagreement and debate--the essence of democracy. They seem to imply that prosecution is a method by which to force the consensus they would like to see. But a forced consensus is no consensus at all. If those now in power yield to the temptation to use authoritarian means--however well-intentioned their ends may be--they will set a precedent that their opponents, perhaps equally well-intentioned, may one day use against them.
To be sure, most of what we have written is speculative. Perhaps we will make it through the Obama years without being attacked, so that the dire consequences we imagine will never materialize. Perhaps, too, the current frenzy will blow over and will prove to have been only a distraction. But the president's noncommittal words have fueled the Angry Left's demands for recriminations.
It may be that the president can put out this fire only through bold and irreversible action--to wit, by issuing a blanket pardon of former officials and intelligence agents for their actions in the war on terror."
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bookworm
Social climber
Falls Church, VA
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Apr 24, 2009 - 09:39am PT
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i guess one's popularity rating depends on the company one keeps:
"WATCHING ALL THIS, I was wondering what the new standards were. How oppressive must a leader be before we determine that he has not merited a hug by the democratic standard-bearer of the free world, the president of the United States? Yes, I get it. We have to speak to our enemies, and America has to push "reset" on its relationship with many of these countries. We should try and change them through charm. But who said the president himself, rather than a lower-level diplomat, must do so?
And if Obama feels that he has to be the one to greet a man like Chavez, must it be with the kind of ear-to-ear grin that one might show girl scouts selling cookies? It must surely be disheartening for those who suffer oppression in countries like Venezuela, Cuba and Saudi Arabia to see the American president backslapping their oppressors when these victims have always looked up to the United States as their champions."
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1239710740265&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
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bookworm
Social climber
Falls Church, VA
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Apr 24, 2009 - 09:53am PT
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bob, i've already expressed my disappointment in how bush treated the saudi king
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Bob D'A
Trad climber
Boulder, CO
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Apr 24, 2009 - 09:55am PT
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Bookwoom...what about his many meetings with Hu Jintao?
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