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Why the GOP IS the root of all evil...
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mrgybe



Joined: 01 Jul 2008
Posts: 5180

PostPosted: Thu Jun 18, 2015 4:14 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

coboardhead wrote:
For one who routinely scoffs at science........

Once again you are making stuff up. Quote me scoffing at science. I note that you did not respond to my rebuttal of your assertion that US women have restricted access to birth control........having second thoughts? And if you feel so strongly about the shrinking farmland and the ability to feed hungry mouths, perhaps you should protest this Administration's continued support of putting corn into fuel tanks while resisting exploration for cheaper and more efficient hydrocarbons.

The world is a complex place. Simplistic assertions rarely have much merit. BTW, why is that so many people who believe they have the solutions to global problems, can't spell "losing".
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mac



Joined: 07 Mar 1999
Posts: 17742
Location: Berkeley, California

PostPosted: Thu Jun 18, 2015 4:26 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Making it up again. Mrgybe has indeed scoffed at the bioaccumulation science that led to the banning of DDT and to the global warming science. He attributes to Obama an ethanol program developed under prior administrations with strong support from Congress, particularly those members from the corn states (known to us out on the left coast as the "fly-over" states). To be distinguished from Virginia, the military contractor state. Pants on fire, still.
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coboardhead



Joined: 26 Oct 2009
Posts: 4303

PostPosted: Thu Jun 18, 2015 4:30 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I am against ethanol. I do not support everything this Administration does.

I am impressed with the results from pilot program in Colorado that provided increased access to contraceptives. Plenty of proof here. I argued for contraceptives, as part of the ACA. You argued against. Now that access is much better we are seeing the results. The GOP is continuing to fight against this access.
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mrgybe



Joined: 01 Jul 2008
Posts: 5180

PostPosted: Thu Jun 18, 2015 5:16 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

coboardhead wrote:
I argued for contraceptives, as part of the ACA. You argued against.
Another fabrication. I argued that religiously affiliated organizations should not be forced to provide abortifacients if it runs counter to their beliefs. I stand by that. Any woman in this country can get contraception with minimal effort and with little or no cost. This "war on women" to which you continue to refer is a cynical political fabrication used repeatedly by Democrats to gain the votes of the uninformed and gullible. As Mark Udall found out, women are tiring of being used as political pawns and treated as dimwits. There are many vastly more worthy candidates for your "biggest political concern".
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mac



Joined: 07 Mar 1999
Posts: 17742
Location: Berkeley, California

PostPosted: Thu Jun 18, 2015 8:07 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

It's pretty clear that women vote against the party of the American Taliban. I wonder why? Could it be that when we find something that actually reduces abortion, and teen pregnancy, and it is cost-effective, Republicans find a way to kill it. And religious extremists--those who want to use the force of government to force their way--find ways to rationalize it.
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MalibuGuru



Joined: 11 Nov 1993
Posts: 9293

PostPosted: Thu Jun 18, 2015 11:15 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I suppose that's why R's finally control both houses of congress.l
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nw30



Joined: 21 Dec 2008
Posts: 6485
Location: The eye of the universe, Cen. Cal. coast

PostPosted: Thu Jun 18, 2015 11:26 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

mac wrote:
It's pretty clear that women vote against the party of the American Taliban.

LOL!!! It sounds like mac moved in with Dean, down in his Baja bunker.
Hysterical!!!
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real-human



Joined: 02 Jul 2011
Posts: 14838
Location: on earth

PostPosted: Fri Jun 19, 2015 10:46 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

nw30 wrote:
mac wrote:
It's pretty clear that women vote against the party of the American Taliban.

LOL!!! It sounds like mac moved in with Dean, down in his Baja bunker.
Hysterical!!!


I have to admit I wish I had thought of that one first... Never saw it till now.. But if I owned the media I would always call the right wing RR that. It is so fitting american taliban.

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/American_Taliban
Quote:
The American Taliban is a derogatory but often accurate term for American Christian fundamentalists. It was coined after the invasion of Afghanistan, when the term Taliban became a household word. It is used to draw parallels between Islamic fundamentalism and Christian fundamentalism.
The point of the phrase is to compare those who would make the United States into a country with a state religion, or inflict their religious views on others through government decree, to the Taliban government in Afghanistan, which was also a repressive theocracy.



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when good people stay silent the right wing are the only ones heard.
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mac



Joined: 07 Mar 1999
Posts: 17742
Location: Berkeley, California

PostPosted: Wed Oct 14, 2015 3:43 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

It didn't use to be that way. But now even David Brooks sees it:

Quote:
The House Republican caucus is close to ungovernable these days. How did this situation come about?

This was not just the work of the Freedom Caucus or Ted Cruz or one month’s activity. The Republican Party’s capacity for effective self-governance degraded slowly, over the course of a long chain of rhetorical excesses, mental corruptions and philosophical betrayals. Basically, the party abandoned traditional conservatism for right-wing radicalism. Republicans came to see themselves as insurgents and revolutionaries, and every revolution tends toward anarchy and ends up devouring its own.

By traditional definitions, conservatism stands for intellectual humility, a belief in steady, incremental change, a preference for reform rather than revolution, a respect for hierarchy, precedence, balance and order, and a tone of voice that is prudent, measured and responsible. Conservatives of this disposition can be dull, but they know how to nurture and run institutions. They also see the nation as one organic whole. Citizens may fall into different classes and political factions, but they are still joined by chains of affection that command ultimate loyalty and love.

All of this has been overturned in dangerous parts of the Republican Party. Over the past 30 years, or at least since Rush Limbaugh came on the scene, the Republican rhetorical tone has grown ever more bombastic, hyperbolic and imbalanced. Public figures are prisoners of their own prose styles, and Republicans from Newt Gingrich through Ben Carson have become addicted to a crisis mentality. Civilization was always on the brink of collapse. Every setback, like the passage of Obamacare, became the ruination of the republic. Comparisons to Nazi Germany became a staple.

This produced a radical mind-set. Conservatives started talking about the Reagan “revolution,” the Gingrich “revolution.” Among people too ill educated to understand the different spheres, political practitioners adopted the mental habits of the entrepreneur. Everything had to be transformational and disruptive. Hierarchy and authority were equated with injustice. Self-expression became more valued than self-restraint and coalition building. A contempt for politics infested the Republican mind.

Politics is the process of making decisions amid diverse opinions. It involves conversation, calm deliberation, self-discipline, the capacity to listen to other points of view and balance valid but competing ideas and interests.

But this new Republican faction regards the messy business of politics as soiled and impure. Compromise is corruption. Inconvenient facts are ignored. Countrymen with different views are regarded as aliens. Political identity became a sort of ethnic identity, and any compromise was regarded as a blood betrayal.

A weird contradictory mentality replaced traditional conservatism. Republican radicals have contempt for politics, but they still believe that transformational political change can rescue the nation. Republicans developed a contempt for Washington and government, but they elected leaders who made the most lavish promises imaginable. Government would be reduced by a quarter! Shutdowns would happen! The nation would be saved by transformational change! As Steven Bilakovics writes in his book “Democracy Without Politics,” “even as we expect ever less of democracy we apparently expect ever more from democracy.”

This anti-political political ethos produced elected leaders of jaw-dropping incompetence. Running a government is a craft, like carpentry. But the new Republican officials did not believe in government and so did not respect its traditions, its disciplines and its craftsmanship. They do not accept the hierarchical structures of authority inherent in political activity.

In his masterwork, “Politics as a Vocation,” Max Weber argues that the pre-eminent qualities for a politician are passion, a feeling of responsibility and a sense of proportion. A politician needs warm passion to impel action but a cool sense of responsibility and proportion to make careful decisions in a complex landscape.

If a politician lacks the quality of detachment — the ability to let the difficult facts of reality work their way into the mind — then, Weber argues, the politician ends up striving for the “boastful but entirely empty gesture.” His work “leads nowhere and is senseless.”

Welcome to Ted Cruz, Donald Trump and the Freedom Caucus.

Really, have we ever seen bumbling on this scale, people at once so cynical and so naďve, so willfully ignorant in using levers of power to produce some tangible if incremental good? These insurgents can’t even acknowledge democracy’s legitimacy — if you can’t persuade a majority of your colleagues, maybe you should accept their position. You might be wrong!

People who don’t accept democracy will be bad at conversation. They won’t respect tradition, institutions or precedent. These figures are masters at destruction but incompetent at construction.

These insurgents are incompetent at governing and unwilling to be governed. But they are not a spontaneous growth. It took a thousand small betrayals of conservatism to get to the dysfunction we see all around.
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MULLDE102f



Joined: 15 Jun 1997
Posts: 131

PostPosted: Wed Oct 14, 2015 6:48 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Absolutely awesome graphic, b-h.
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