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shut up and pull
climber
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Sep 21, 2009 - 12:31am PT
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THIS IS SO TRUE.
Strangers to dissent, liberals try to stifle it
By: Michael Barone
Senior Political Analyst
September 20, 2009
It is an interesting phenomenon that the response of the left half of our political spectrum to criticism and argument is often to try to shut it down. Thus President Obama in his Sept. 9 speech to a joint session of Congress told us to stop "bickering," as if principled objections to major changes in public policy were just childish obstinacy, and chastised his critics for telling "lies," employing "scare tactics" and playing "games." Unlike his predecessor, he sought to use the prestige of his office to shut criticism down.
Now, no one likes criticism very much, and most politicians would prefer to have their colleagues and constituents meekly and gratefully agree with them on pretty much everything. And yes, Rep. Joe Wilson does seem to have broken the rules and standards of decorum of the House (though not of the British House of Commons) when he shouted "You lie!" in the middle of Obama's speech.
But none of this justifies the charges, passed off as cool-headed analysis, that Obama's critics are motivated by racism. There are plenty of nonracist reasons to oppose (or to support) the Democrats' health care proposals.
I would submit that the president's call for an end to "bickering" and the charges of racism by some of his supporters are the natural reflex of people who are not used to hearing people disagree with them and who are determined to shut them up.
This comes naturally to liberals educated in our great colleges and universities, so many of which have speech codes whose primary aim is to prevent the expression of certain conservative ideas and which are commonly deployed for that purpose. (For examples see the Web site of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, which defends students of all political stripes.) Once the haven of free inquiry and expression, academia has become a swamp of stifling political correctness.
Similarly, the "mainstream media" -- the old-line broadcast networks, the New York Times, etc. -- presents a politically correct picture of the world. The result is that liberals can live in a cocoon, an America in which seldom is heard a discouraging word. Conservatives, in contrast, find themselves constantly pummeled with liberal criticism, on campus, in news media, in Hollywood TV and movies. They don't like it, but they've gotten used to it. Liberals aren't used to it and increasingly try to stamp it out.
"Mainstream media" tries to help. In the past few weeks, we have seen textbook examples of how MSM has ignored news stories that reflected badly on the administration for which it has such warm feelings. It ignored the videos in which White House "green jobs czar" proclaimed himself a "communist" and the "truther" petition he signed charging that George W. Bush may have allowed the Sept. 11 attacks.
It ignored the videos released on Andrew Breitbart's biggovernment.com showing Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now employees offering to help a supposed pimp and prostitute evade taxes and employ 13- to 15-year-old prostitutes. It downplayed last spring's Tea Parties -- locally organized demonstrations against big government that attracted about a million people nationwide -- and downplayed the Tea Party throng at the Capitol and on the Mall on Sept. 12.
Actually "mainstream media" is doing its friends in the Obama administration and the Democratic party no favors, at least in the long run. Obama comes from one-party Chicago, and the House Democrats' nine top leadership members and committee chairmen come from districts that voted on average 73 percent for Obama last fall. They need help in understanding the larger country they are seeking to govern, where nearly half voted the other way. Instead they get the impression they can dismiss critics as racist or "Nazis" or as indulging in (as Sen. Harry Reid said) "evil-mongering."
Speaker Nancy Pelosi has warned us that there was a danger that intense rhetoric could provoke violence, and no decent person wants to see harm come to our president or other leaders. But it's interesting that the two most violent incidents at this summer's town hall meetings came when a union thug beat up a 65-year-old black conservative in Missouri and when a liberal protester bit off part of a man's finger in California.
These incidents don't justify a conclusion that all liberals are violent. But they are more evidence that American liberals, unused to hearing dissent, have an impulse to shut it down.
Michael Barone, The Examiner's senior political analyst, can be contacted at mbarone@washingtonexaminer.com. His columns appear Wednesday and Sunday, and his stories and blog posts appear on ExaminerPolitics.com.
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shut up and pull
climber
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Sep 21, 2009 - 12:34am PT
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The modern liberal has usually had years of hearing nothing but liberalism, which is why when the nearly 50% of the America that is not liberal disagrees with the hard-left Dem party, liberals:
1. Label the opposition as "stupid"
2. Try to ignore the opposition,
3. Label the opposition "racists"
4. Cry and whine that the opposition is not being "civil"
Notice, of course, that the liberal never really engages the opposition on an intellectual level. To a liberal, it is beyond argument that man causes "climate change", or that whites are racists, or that corporations who make our products are eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeevil, or that high taxes are good.
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mojede
Trad climber
Butte, America
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Sep 21, 2009 - 12:35am PT
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Nice website link (sarc)
Tourism is overrated--AGRICULTURE and MINING are 1 and 2
FWIW: our state just UNDERESTIMATED its budget SURPLUS. We may be small in numbers, but we are huge in resources. How is YOUR state doing these days?
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Captain...or Skully
Social climber
Idaho, also. Sorta, kinda mostly, Yeah.
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Sep 21, 2009 - 12:37am PT
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Hey, Mojede, let's go climbin'....
PM me. Groove on, you polititards.
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Bob D'A
Trad climber
Boulder, CO
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Sep 21, 2009 - 12:38am PT
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Mo...both my wife and I work...things are fine...thanks for asking.
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Bob D'A
Trad climber
Boulder, CO
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Sep 21, 2009 - 12:43am PT
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mo...from the internet:
Obviously, with a record 9.5 million visitors in 2000, Montana has natural allure. With parks, wilderness areas, scenery, wildlife, historic attractions and more, the state offers what more and more vacationers are looking for: an escape from their everyday lives. Montana's tourism and recreation industry is considered the state's second leading industry. Tourism is one of Montana's most important and promising industries.
In the year 2000, a study conducted by the Institute for Tourism and Recreation Research (ITRR) at the University of Montana found that Montana attracts 1.6 billion dollars in new money from outside the state each year. This 1.6 billion dollars spent by nonresident visitors supported 32,400 jobs and resulted in more than 525 million dollars in personal income.
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mojede
Trad climber
Butte, America
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Sep 21, 2009 - 12:49am PT
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How did agriculture fare according to the internets?
Or mining?
Or logging?
Did they count all of our water that West so desperately needs?
It's all good here, glad CO is doing fine, too.
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Bob D'A
Trad climber
Boulder, CO
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Sep 21, 2009 - 12:53am PT
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Rox: And we DON'T need "johnny come lately's" coming in NOW and screwing with our lands and our homes and our populations. We got Fish and Game managers of our OWN, and we don'T need the Federal Versions over-ruling our homegrown State's management.
If they are federal lands one would think they (federal versions) a have a right in the management plan.
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dirtbag
climber
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Sep 21, 2009 - 12:53am PT
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Boo-f*#king hoo.
If they are going to use, exploit, or destroy public resources they can learn to f*#king do so within the bounds of a few rules to try to keep things as sustainable as possible so there will still be wildlife, rivers and water after their time on earth has passed and they become worm food.
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dogtown
Gym climber
JackAssVille, Wyoming
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Sep 21, 2009 - 12:54am PT
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Ca. is not doing fine. just look at it!
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mojede
Trad climber
Butte, America
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Sep 21, 2009 - 12:56am PT
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I'm pretty sure that I didn't write that quote, Bob.
Your hot spell breaking like ours, or still Indian Summer there, too?
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Captain...or Skully
Social climber
Idaho, also. Sorta, kinda mostly, Yeah.
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Sep 21, 2009 - 12:57am PT
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PFFFFFT.
Idaho Stump Ranch.
You are refuted, Some kinda joxy person.
State the maybe's as truth. There is always more truth than you know.
City boys.....
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Bob D'A
Trad climber
Boulder, CO
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Sep 21, 2009 - 01:02am PT
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Mo...sorry...it was Rox.
Cold tomorrow, in the low 50's. Good discussion so far.
Interesting facts on water use in the west.
In Colorado, some 25 percent of all water consumed goes to alfalfa crops. 2 In Montana, agriculture takes 97 percent of all water used in the state, and just about the only irrigated crop there is hay and pasture forage; more than 5 million acres in the state are irrigated hay meadows. 3 In Nevada - the most arid state in the country - domestic water use amounted to 9.8 million gallons a day in 1993. By contrast, agriculture used 2.8 billion gallons of water per day. 4 Altogether, agriculture uses 83 percent of Nevada's water 5 - and the major crop is hay for cattle fodder. In Nevada, while cow pastures are flood irrigated, wetlands at wildlife refuges and the state's rivers often go bone-dry.
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dirtbag
climber
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Sep 21, 2009 - 01:02am PT
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Wolf Boy are you really that ignorant of just about everything?
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mojede
Trad climber
Butte, America
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Sep 21, 2009 - 01:06am PT
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Where the hill does the rest of (75%) your water go to in CO, Bob--hopefully not on lawns and for city life. You need us to send you some to grow food (not tourists)?
edit: What does that source say about our wheat, sugar beets, and UNdammed waterways (the Yellowstone River--that would be the longest free-flowing blue ribbon trout in the USA)?
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Bob D'A
Trad climber
Boulder, CO
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Sep 21, 2009 - 01:12am PT
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Mo wrote: Where the hill does the rest of (75%) your water go to in CO, Bob--hopefully not on lawns and for city life. You need us to send you some to grow food (not tourists)?
Is there something wrong with city life? I think people living in cities generate revenue, pay taxes and travel to place like Montana to spend their hard earned dollars.
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Jingy
Social climber
Flatland, Ca
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Sep 21, 2009 - 01:13am PT
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Some will say that they are pro-death penalty...
at the same time are against Birth Control..
all the while, most proclaim to be religious.
And though they will never say that they are fundamentalist in their personal quest for gods kin-dom,
they are willing to condone the acts of others when others kill....
Whether it be by way of state or one lone nut.
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mojede
Trad climber
Butte, America
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Sep 21, 2009 - 01:18am PT
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Contrary to the websites out there making money off tourists, we don't really care if you come here or not. Ever hear of the Bakken Shield?
edit: Bob, YOU are more than welcome to come here and climb--the rest of the city-dwellers can read about our state in one of the many trendy mags:-)
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Bob D'A
Trad climber
Boulder, CO
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Sep 21, 2009 - 01:20am PT
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Mo wrote: Contrary to the websites out there making money off tourists, we don't really care if you come here or not. Ever hear of the Bakken Shield?
You might want to ask the 32,000 people who make a living off tourism in the state.
No...but I have heard the Taos Hum!
Thanks...Alex Lowe extended the same invitation to me back in the early 80's. Great people in Montana...Rick Bass is one of my favorite writers.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rick_Bass
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