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Politics & ReligionWell Since every damn forum has one. Might as well leave it out there. This place is loosely moderated and should not be entered if you're weak of heart.
Shah is a complete joke with all the "jesus H. Bush" crap.
I guess we should cut him some slack though, he claims he is from Iran. Maybe he got here last month.
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"What? Thats no country I've ever heard of, do they speak English in What?"
"Wha What?"
"English, motherfucker!! DO YOU SPEAK IT?!"
Last edited by FastNinja76 : 04-14-2008 at 12:12 AM.
Lots of reasons our logging industry is having problems. The main one is the federal government themselves in the form of the Forest Circus and there piss poor forest managment. Currently the vast majority of your logging is done on private land.
Klinton/gore really bit hard into the logging industry with more of there BS enviro sanctions. Bush opened some up, but needed to open alot more.
Again things decided by people that dont realize they wipe there ass with something made from a tree.
hippies don't wipe.
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"I dont see holy wars fought in the name of Satan"- Glenn Danzig
It's amazing to me how rightys always seem to think the reasons for failure are because they didn't do the wrong thing enough or for long enough. Doing the wrong thing more seems to be their solution to every failure.
"Conservatism" has become the political label for "leave it for the next guy, even if the next guy is our children."
By WILLIAM KRISTOL
Published: April 14, 2008
I haven’t read much Karl Marx since the early 1980s, when I taught political philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania. Still, it didn’t take me long this weekend to find my copy of “The Marx-Engels Reader,” edited by Robert C. Tucker — a book that was assigned in thousands of college courses in the 1970s and 80s, and that now must lie, unopened and un-remarked upon, on an awful lot of rec-room bookshelves.
Skip to next paragraph
Times Topics: William Kristol My occasion for spending a little time once again with the old Communist was Barack Obama’s now-famous comment at an April 6 San Francisco fund-raiser. Obama was explaining his trouble winning over small-town, working-class voters: “It’s not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”
This sent me to Marx’s famous statement about religion in the introduction to his “Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right”:
“Religious suffering is at the same time an expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the sentiment of a heartless world, and the soul of a soulless condition. It is the opium of the people.”
Or, more succinctly, and in the original German in which Marx somehow always sounds better: “Die Religion ... ist das Opium des Volkes.”
Now, this is a point of view with a long intellectual pedigree prior to Marx, and many vocal adherents continuing into the 21st century. I don’t believe the claim is true, but it’s certainly worth considering, in college classrooms and beyond.
But it’s one thing for a German thinker to assert that “religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature.” It’s another thing for an American presidential candidate to claim that we “cling to ... religion” out of economic frustration.
And it’s a particularly odd claim for Barack Obama to make. After all, in his speech at the 2004 Democratic convention, he emphasized with pride that blue-state Americans, too, “worship an awesome God.”
What’s more, he’s written eloquently in his memoir, “Dreams From My Father,” of his own religious awakening upon hearing the Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s “Audacity of Hope” sermon, and of the complexity of his religious commitment. You’d think he’d do other believers the courtesy of assuming they’ve also thought about their religious beliefs.
But Obama in San Francisco does no courtesy to his fellow Americans. Look at the other claims he makes about those small-town voters.
Obama ascribes their anti-trade sentiment to economic frustration — as if there are no respectable arguments against more free-trade agreements. This is particularly cynical, since he himself has been making those arguments, exploiting and fanning this sentiment that he decries. Aren’t we then entitled to assume Obama’s opposition to Nafta and the Colombian trade pact is merely cynical pandering to frustrated Americans?
Then there’s what Obama calls “anti-immigrant sentiment.” Has Obama done anything to address it? It was John McCain, not Obama, who took political risks to try to resolve the issue of illegal immigration by putting his weight behind an attempt at immigration reform.
Furthermore, some concerns about unchecked and unmonitored illegal immigration are surely legitimate. Obama voted in 2006 (to take just one example) for the Secure Fence Act, which was intended to control the Mexican border through various means, including hundreds of miles of border fence. Was Obama then just accommodating bigotry?
As for small-town Americans’ alleged “antipathy to people who aren’t like them”: During what Obama considers the terrible Clinton-Bush years of economic frustration, by any measurement of public opinion polling or observed behavior, Americans have become far more tolerant and respectful of minorities who are not “like them.” Surely Obama knows this. Was he simply flattering his wealthy San Francisco donors by casting aspersions on the idiocy of small-town life?
That leaves us with guns. Gun ownership has been around for an awfully long time. And people may have good reasons to, and in any case have a constitutional right to, own guns — as Obama himself has been acknowledging on the campaign trail, when he presents himself as more sympathetic to gun owners than a typical Democrat.
What does this mean for Obama’s presidential prospects? He’s disdainful of small-town America — one might say, of bourgeois America. He’s usually good at disguising this. But in San Francisco the mask slipped. And it’s not so easy to get elected by a citizenry you patronize.
And what are the grounds for his supercilious disdain? If he were a war hero, if he had a career of remarkable civic achievement or public service — then he could perhaps be excused an unattractive but in a sense understandable hauteur. But what has Barack Obama accomplished that entitles him to look down on his fellow Americans?
Actually, the op ed completely misses the point. He was offering an explanation about the hardships faced by workers in small towns as an alternative to the question. The question supposed that small town antipathy to his message of hope was really racism in disguise.
So your boy has written and off-point and uninformed screed. Figures it would resonate for you. You've always been drawn to that scarecrow we all call a straw man.
It's amazing to me how {people on either extreme} always seem to think the reasons for failure are because they didn't do the wrong thing enough or for long enough. Doing the wrong thing more seems to be their solution to every failure.
I actually understand that! And pretty much agree.
It's like thinking that making guns more illegal for criminals to own will stop crime!
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I too, have nothing of value to add to this thread...
Really republicans don't support their boy king jesus h bush?
Wow if so you really have a funny way of showing your discontent for your boy king!
You apparently voted for him twice in record numbers! That and stood by and kicked any one who even questioned his past and or his actions.
But back on topic I think Obama was right. The first article from Faux news of all places really did explain his point. As much as the jellocrats take for granted the minority vote, the gop has taken the rural vote for granted as well. And in these past 8 or so years it's these rural votes who've been hit the hardest. And seeing how they can't get any assistance from their elected officials they turn to their imaginary friend in the sky and or get very angry at those they do not know nor trust. And start voting for things that have no bearing on their current lot in life.
In essence they for go a possible step forward for change for more of the same for fear of the unknown.
Hence the three G's that are the base of the gop.
Guns, Gays and Guns.
I'm as struck by the messenger as I am the message. Kristol helps define elitism. He makes a considerable amount of money arguing in support of tax cuts for millionaires and military adventures that burden low-income families disproportionately. He's had every advantage in life, and now gets paid ridiculous sums to write regrettable items for the nation's most prestigious news outlet. Kristol probably visits small towns, only to tell his very wealthy friends about how "quaint" they are once he returns to the DC cocktail-party circuit and Fox News green-room.
Kristol's most notable contribution to public policy came in a 1993 memo he wrote to congressional Republicans, explaining that they had to destroy any effort to pass a national healthcare bill, not because the policy was flawed, but because it would "give the Democrats a lock on the crucial middle-class vote and revive the reputation of the party." If tens of millions of Americans were left uninsured, so be it -- the goal, Kristol said, was to help the Republican Party, not those without insurance.
Barack Obama, meanwhile, used some clumsy language to describe a real phenomenon in struggling communities, where working-class families have fallen behind thanks to the policies embraced by Bill Kristol. Obama, whose faith is genuine, has, like Hillary Clinton, presented a policy agenda that might actually help these communities for a change.
Kristol concluded, "[W]hat has Barack Obama accomplished that entitles him to look down on his fellow Americans?" Oddly enough, I'm tempted to ask Kristol the same question.
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back on topic
I just wanted to go on record as saying that although I'm from a small town, and cling to both guns and religion, I wasn't offended by the senators remarks.
The comments are being taken a little out of context as they are being replayed without regard to the point he was trying to make. It is also reaching to say he's an elitist based simply on the viewpoint he has taken in this instance.
Damn, he should pay me for this.
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Obama the next Pres? I sure hope not... All the current polls put him neck and neck with McCain. In fact, I've read more then one article (MSNBC.com, CNN.com, etc) that state that Obama's popularity may have peaked in February as his support has been getting softer by the day.
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