Yo! It’s Tuesday, which means the Seattle Chapter of Drinking Liberally meets. Please join us tonight for an evening of politics over a pint.
We meet tonight and every Tuesday at the Montlake Ale House, 2307 24th Avenue E. Starting time is 8:00pm. Some people show up earlier than that for Dinner.
Can’t make it to Seattle tonight? Check out plethora of other DL meetings over the next week. Tonight there are also meetings of the Tri-Cities and Vancouver, WA chapters. On Wednesday, the Bellingham chapter meets. On Thursday the Bremerton, Spokane and Tacoma chapters meet. Finally, next Monday, the Aberdeen, Yakima and Olympia chapters meet.
With 205 chapters of Living Liberally, including fifteen in Washington state, four in Oregon, and two more in Idaho, chances are excellent there’s a chapter meeting near you.
The bagger movement is dead and right wing nutjobs killed it:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/.....46174.html
I believe the polls have confirmed for many months how unpopular the baggers are.
And this is toooooo goood.. From the same article:
Bingo!
A contact within the Wash. State House of Representatives has indicated that the budget will be released at 12:15 p.m. tomorrow.
@1 I understand why Republican crooks are afraid of Sharia law. They want to keep their hands (to continue keep putting them in your pockets).
Maybe you can take up a collection to get the Blue Angles back in the air. Your buddies spending spree grounded that great air team.
The Air Force says it has to cut flying training hours by 45,000 due to the sequester. That’s a lot less CO2 that will end up in the atmosphere.
Stupid Is, As Stupid Says
“Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) said Tuesday that the gun control debate doesn’t have anything to do with the families of the Newtown, Conn., shooting victims, and that the only reason those families think it does is because President Barack Obama told them it did. … Inhofe said he feels bad for those families because they’re being used as pawns in a political fight. ‘See, I think it’s so unfair of the administration to hurt these families, to make them think this has something to do with them when, in fact, it doesn’t,’ Inhofe said.”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/.....46969.html
Roger Rabbit Commentary: What can I say? It speaks for itself. What a hideous thing to say to parents of murdered children.
Why not discuss how libtards treat black conservatives. Puddy would start with the ever stupid Lib da schmucko and his continual name calling.
Oh my you libtards are some scary people. Collectivist, socialist mentality of libtards. Reeducation camps. Scary stuff.
Would someone want a libtard’s children who think they are owed everything without working for it? Wait a minute… there is someone on the HA left who always claims we got ours so where is his without working for it.
Forward – Obummer
MSNBC — Lean Forward: The digital home of MSNBC TV
From WikiPedia:
Politics
Forward (Greenland), a social democratic political party in Greenland
Kadima (Hebrew for forward), an Israeli political party
Socialist League Vpered (“Forward”), a Russian political party
Publications
Avante! (“Forward!”), publication of the Portuguese Communist Party
Avanti! (Italian newspaper) (“Forward!”), publication of the Italian Socialist Party
Eteenpäin (“Forward”), Communist Party USA Finnish-language newspaper in the United States
Forward, a magazine from the UK Conservative Party campaigning group Conservative Way Forward
Forward Magazine, a Syrian English-language newsmagazine
The Forward, a Jewish-American, Yiddish/English newspaper from New York
Új Előre (“New Forward”), a Communist Hungarian-language newspaper in the United States
Vorwärts (“Forward”), publication of the Social Democratic Party of Germany
Vorwärts! (“Forward!”), a radical paper in German published from Paris in 1844, covering topics of art, science, theater, music, literature and social life
Vorwärts, newspaper of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia
Downright amazing…
Discuss!
Damn, pud, you uncovered the international socialist conspiracy. And we thought we had id hidden.
Of course libtards never think about the full outcome of their innate stupidity. Reminds Puddy of Cuomo’s gun law… Oops…
Discuss!
Yeah… right…
Damn shame.
A Damn shame indeed!
You don’t deserve my time for spell check
Who was discussing your spell check dude? Puddy was reacting to your continual leftist lunacy! Puddy mistypes words all the time.
New York City has agreed to pay Occupy Wall Street protesters $366,000 for PRIVATE PROPERTY destroyed by police and legal fees.
@12 What’s your suggestion(s)?
@15
The city got off easy.
@10 You do realize, don’t you, that what you’re calling “innate stupidity” is efforts to save innocent lives from crazy people who get guns and go on shooting sprees?
Given the number and horror of such incidents recently, it seems to me that people who think we should do absolutely nothing to make it harder for people who shouldn’t have access to guns to get them are “innately stupid.”
It’s too bad that little girl who wants to attend college on a shooting scholarship can’t take her guns with her on airplanes, into courthouses, or the school she attends. But sometimes the greater needs of society must trump the convenience or desire of individuals.
The Second Amendment, as interpreted by the Wingnut Court, creates a constitutional right for individuals to keep and bear arms. But like other rights, it’s not free of all restraints. For example, free speech does not permit a person to yell “fire!” in a crowded theater. Likewise, the Second Amendment does not preclude reasonable regulation of who can possess weapons, what types of weapons citizens can have, etc.
If we end up with gun regulations that are ineffective, arbitrary, or unduly restrictive, those stonewalling any and all gun regulations will have no one to blame but themselves.
@14 “Puddy mistypes words all the time.”
That’s the least of your failings.
Emil Kaupan, an Army chaplain who died in a Korean War POW camp in 1951, will be posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor.
Gun control wouldn’t have done anything to stop the knife attack in Texas today. A good grade Samurai sword sold at any pawn shop would do more damage then any gun.
I’m glad I-502 passed, even though Bellevue doesn’t want any marijuana shops in its city limits.
Well Roger,
Puddy would have gotten the four rapists on charges. Also since one of them took the picture, charge all as accomplices. Now the girl is dead.
@7 Oh, lovely, more fellating Ben ‘whakadoodle’ Carson by piddl. Get a room, please.
Carson is an idiot. He rejects bedrock principles of modern biology in favor of the creation myths that piddl happens to share. He laments expanding civil rights because….BESTIALITY!!!
The only attention Carson deserves is to be laughed off the national stage once and for all.
@8
I LOVE piddl’s condemnation of the term ‘forward’. As I’ve always argued, piddl is a perfect exemplar of the term’s natural opposite.
@12
I agree with piddl, terrible.
I’m sure he agrees with me in holding that it will be a far better world when we get to the point where it’s no longer the case that so many men seem to have the notion that they can violently demand ownership of women’s bodies, anytime, anywhere.
The way to stop rape is to stop men raping.
I’m concerned about the passive voice…you don’t seem to be suggesting any active change in response to the violence.
@ 24
He rejects bedrock principles of modern biology in favor of the creation myths that piddl happens to share.
Explain this, please.
Carson’s a member of a church, which means he’s a biology denier?
When Obama was a church member, was he similarly a biology denier because as a church member he had to have believed that the earth was created in six days?
You seem to be going out of your way to smear yet another black man you do not like, Lib Sci.
Name that politician:
“…there was definitely a douchiness about him that I just don’t really see anymore.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04.....l&
Best Weiner joke I’ve seen this week:
‘Weiner/Holder 2016‘
@21 “A good grade Samurai sword sold at any pawn shop would do more damage then any gun.”
It’s called “bringing a knife to a gunfight” and you can have the sword, I’ll take the gun …
@23 What about those who drove this poor girl to suicide by circulating the photo? Should that activity be “protected free speech”? And if a rape results in a death-by-suicide, should the charges against the perps be limited to rape?
@26 One way to stop men raping is by applying Sharia law to, well, you know …
@28
Bobby H., your attempts to turn this argument on the color of Carson’s skin are as transparent and insipid as usual.
He’s a biblical literalist and Young Earth Creationist (YEC) – you know, six literal 24-hour days of creation taking place ~6000 years ago. No evolution, no natural selection, 900-year old Moses and his ark full of velociraptors and Emperor Penguins and such.
Insane drivel for someone who purports to be an educator and applied biologist (ie physician).
Moreover, in his discussions on a national political stage regarding the civil rights of marriage equity, he trotted out the old saw about the slippery slope to bestiality.
Stupid, stupid, stupid.
@ 34
He’s a biblical literalist and Young Earth Creationist (YEC) – you know, six literal 24-hour days of creation taking place ~6000 years ago. No evolution, no natural selection, 900-year old Moses and his ark full of velociraptors and Emperor Penguins and such.
Again, Lib Sci, other than his church membership, what is the basis of this statement you made?
You and I both know that Obama has never put himself out there as a YEC.
Why do you insist on making these tenuous, specious accusations? You’re not making my think, bobby.
@ 34
Does this seem like someone grounded in scientific basis to you, Lib Sci?
“Here are the simple facts,” Obama said. “I am a Christian. I am a devout Christian. I have been a member of the same church for 20 years. I pray to Jesus every night.”
http://www.ohiodailyblog.com/c.....-nightquot
To what entity does Obama pray, and what scientific basis is there for Obama spending his time in that manner?
It was Noah and the Ark. Moses didn’t have anything to do with the Ark., I’m a lapsed Christian, and even I know that!
@12, 26 Looking at Puddy’s link, I was struck by the photograph of the girl with her dog. For some reason that connected me even more with her story.
Sigh!
From the letter written by >500 Emory University faculty and students:
Carson’s own words, rejecting evolution.
More, from the “Institute for Creation Research” website:
Run along, now, bobby, you’ve been schooled….
@37
You still haven’t proven the thesis you sneered in @24, only tried to change the goalposts.
Run along, now, bobby…
Sorry, need more coffee…Moses, Noah…can’t keep these 600+ year old mythic dudes straight…ugh
@ 40
So, putting faith in a guy (Carson) who thinks some omnipotent being not of this earth created stuff 6K years ago is nonsensical, but putting faith in a guy (Obama) who thinks it took that omnipotent being not of this earth a somewhat longer period of time to make all this shit makes sense to you?
That’s your argument?
@43. That’s your argument?
No. And you know better.
“To what entity does Obama pray, and what scientific basis is there for Obama spending his time in that manner?”
Whatever.
I’m often surprised that people of deep faith and theoretical physicists don’t recognise a common ground they share. Both recognize that there is a breadth and depth to reality that they don’t fully comprehend. Most people on the planet take a leap of faith to grasp the universe around them, to reach a comfort zone where they can just live out their lives without always questioning reality. Is that so bad in itself? We’ve been doing it for tens of thousands of years. Not everybody can be a theoretical physicist or someone whose comfort zone in grasping reality is found in the scientific method. Not even presidents.
Progressives are willing because we stand for something good. We argue and fight for values and ideas that are good for all Americans.
As long as Serial Conn and Puddy and the rest of the trolls keep doing nothing but being negative, I know that conservatives are going extinct. Until conservatives are willing to argue for what they are for, instead of saying what other guys are doing badly, the conservatives will continue into obscurity.
So keep it up trolls, keep reminding us progressives about everything that is wrong with conservatives, about how wrong headed, how small minded, how callus and cruel you would be if you got power, how evil you would be. Every time you attack a child’s looks, or make specious or hypocritical arguments, or make willfully ignorant posts, make duplicitous statements and go on and on with your false morality or attack a poster’s character or sexual preference or their kids, you prove, once again, how awful conservatives are.
Keep it up, be a microcosm of everything that is wrong with Conservatives.
“No. And you know better.”
No, he doesn’t. He’s quite insecure and very shallow. The insecurities are obvious, Im sure. By shallow, I mean that I see him as having a surface persona, not connected with anything deeper inside. I’d rather hang out with a person of deep faith, say like my Dear Ms. Wingnut, or a person of science like Lib Sci. Those splashing around at the shallow end of the pool are usually just obnoxious jerks. Like Bob.
Declining sea-ice in the Arctic means global warming.
Increasing sea-ice in the Antarctic
http://www.nature.com/news/glo.....ce-1.12709
means global warming.
Why?
Because shut up.
@ 46
Progressives are willing because we stand for something good. We argue and fight for values and ideas that are good for all Americans.
Oh, please. You argue and fight for things that you want.
How is it good for all Americans that Canada’s alternative to the Keystone pipeline is to ship their oil elsewhere, and yet you oppose Keystone, which will keep us buying oil from offshore?
How is it good for all Americans that you support continued Federal borrowing well beyond our means? How does that future debt burden benefit today’s twenty-somethings?
Remove the cloak of next-to-Godliness if you want to be taken seriously. I think I got a cavity, followed by a wave of nausea, reading your ode to yourself, NTfF.
In New York City, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and Sandhogs Local 147 are reporting that the regular, controlled explosions beneath Grand Central Terminal that have been occurring for the past few years have ceased, as the blasting work on the tunnels for the Eastside Access project is done.
http://www.nydailynews.com/new.....-1.1311600
The above story has mentioned a link to another story about the ballooning costs of the project. Part of the reason, is that this is not an ordinary New York tunnel, as this one is below the existing tunnels, and harder bedrock. The Long Island Rail Road should have served Grand Central Terminal a long time ago, but the cutthroat competition of the Pennsylvania Rail Road(which owned the LIRR), and the New York Central was fierce, and it shows with the Metro North and the LIRR, as even their rolling stock is incompatible, because of how the third rail current collector is mounted.
http://www.railwayage.com/inde.....channel=55
By the way, the Sandhogs are NYC’ s legendary union of urban miners, miners. I was watching a show on the Science Channel a few years ago that did a piece on this and another MTA project, and the Sandhog they talked to, had a PhD in geology.
@49. Thank you for proving my points. Again.
Yet you oppose Keystone, which will keep us buying oil from offshore?
Never mind the chance of huge environmental damage, the oil is not ours, it is going to be sold on the open market.
How is it good for all Americans that you support continued Federal borrowing well beyond our means?
Yup, but when we try to raise taxes on the people most able to pay or close a single loophole to cover our spending on two wars and disastrous deregulation and trade policies, the republicans shut it down. Austerity has not lead to prosperity, otherwise Greece would be an economic powerhouse.
http://www.newyorker.com/onlin.....-work.html
http://blogs.reuters.com/nicho.....esnt-work/
You keep citing hypocritical arguments that have been dis-proven again and again and claim they are valid. How many times have we shot down the Keystone pipeline or the boogie man of spending and you keep trotting them out.
Keep it up, you shining example of conservative willful ignorance and false morality, you make us proud.
Also, tar sands oil, for tax purposes, is not considered oil, and they do not have to pay into the clean up fund.
@49 “Keystone, which will keep us buying oil from offshore?”
You don’t know what you’re talking about. Keystone has nothing to do with reducing our reliance on imported oil. Its function is the opposite: to enable Canada and the U.S. to export oil and refined products that are currently landlocked.
“Remove the cloak of next-to-Godliness if you want to be taken seriously.”
Taken seriously by who? You? Don’t make us laugh! See above. If you want to be taken seriously, you need to start by getting basic facts right. See above again.
@48 Once again, you don’t know what you’re talking about. Seriously, Bob, you couldn’t pass a sixth-grade science test. Learn to do some research before shooting off your ignorant wingnut mouth!
http://news.nationalgeographic.....vironment/
“Climate scientists have cracked the mystery of why Antarctic sea ice has managed to grow despite global warming—but the results suggest the trend may rapidly reverse, a new study says.”
The stock market is way up today. My guess is nervous foreign investors worried about North Korea starting a war and Europe’s impending banking collapse are sending their money to the U.S. financial markets for safekeeping.
@56 Or the prospect of a shiny new war is seen as heralding a forthcoming “emergency exception” to the sequester allowing a new orgy of military pork.
Um… Pipelines from the tar sands already go east, west, and south. Plans are in the works to extend them further east, west, and south, so that they can reach non-north American markets. China’s already bought up a bunch of future production from the tar sands.
U.S. oil use is flat, has been for a long time, and will be going down in the future.
http://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hi.....1&f=A
Beats me, I’m pro-sequestration.
How is it that you righties can back expensive war after war, defense spending that we don’t need, can’t afford, and that makes the world a less stable place, giveaways to some of the most profitable business on the planet, highways we don’t need, bridges to nowhere, and then turn around and accuse the left supporting continued federal borrowing well beyond our means?
At least the left tends to spend money on things like healthcare, education, cleaning up toxic messes, veterans and the poor.
Sally Jewell’s been confirmed as our new Secretary Of The Interior. As a former employee of corrupt oil and banking companies and as one of the people responsible for changing REI from a cool co-op to a hideous, category killing monolith, I’m sure she’ll fit right in in D.C.
It looks like the Senate is going to pass a gun bill. This bill would require background checks on internet sales, which you already have to do before pickup up your gun from the FFL (gun store) that you had your firearm shipped to. It would also require background checks at gun show which are already required when buying a gun from a gun dealer at the show, but are not required for private sales at shows. The gun bill would not require background checks on private sales.
Despite this bill doing exactly nothing the NRA is against it and gun control advocates support the bill.
Personally, I think they’re all a bunch of fucking idiots.
BNSF is going to spend 16 million in Federal money on slide mitigation. Personally, I would like the railroad to spend more of it’s own resources, since it does not have too many shareholders to report to. I understand since the slides effect passenger trains, that some public money should be used, but I read that systemwide, BNSF’ s capital budget is around $4Billion, but $1 Billion of it is for replacement and expansion of rolling stock.
BNSF stretches from Vancouver B.C.to Pensacola, Florida, and from Chicago to Los Angeles, that’s a lot of track. BNSF recently finished one major project, double tracking the Chicago to Los Angeles Southwest Transcon route.
http://www.king5.com/news/BNSF.....92101.html
@49 “Oh, please. You argue and fight for things that you want.”
What liberals want:
The Constitution, the Bill of Rights, free speech, freedom of press, freedom of religion, rule of law, and due process of law.
What conservatives want:
To arrest and detain people without charge or trial, and deny them access to a lawyer; to jail protesters and dissenters; to let government tap your phone, spy on you, and access your medical, financial, employment, school, and library records without a warrant; to let bank robbers, psychos, white supremacists, neo-Nazis, and skinheads have military assault weapons without background checks; to force-feed their religion to your children in public schools; to invade every country, bomb every village, and kill foreign women and children without cause. And to preach about “morality” while doing all of this.
What liberals want:
The 40-hour work week, overtime pay, minimum wage, child labor laws, workplace safety laws, injured workers benefits, unemployment insurance, collective bargaining rights, the G.I. Bill and veterans benefits, and Social Security and Medicare.
What conservatives want:
No unions, no organizing rights, no minimum wage, no overtime pay, no worker rights whatsoever; no unemployment benefits, no food stamps, no Social Security or Medicare or Medicaid, no safety net whatsoever; no regulation of workplace safety, no injured workers compensation; no enforcement of unpaid child support; no business regulation whatsoever.
What liberals want:
Universal free public education; opportunity for all qualified students to attend college.
What conservatives want:
To give tax money to private schools with no control or accountability for how the funds are spent, what the children are taught, or whether they learn.
What liberals want:
Consumer protection laws, public health programs, and environmental laws that clean up the air we breathe and the water we drink.
What conservatives want:
No consumer rights or laws; no mandatory vaccinations; and they think environmental protection is “communism” and laugh at “tree huggers” and global warming.
WHY WOULD ANYONE VOTE FOR CONSERVATIVES???
@57 That too. But what the hell, I made $4300 in the stock market today. I would much rather have a more peaceful and less violent world; but I’ll take what I can get.
@60 A low REI member number used to have cachet. Don’t know if it still does. What are they up to now, over 10 million? My REI member number is over 50 years old, dating back to when they had one small store and one full-time employee, and is in the low five figures. Not as low as Jim Whittaker’s (he has member number 38, and was the very modestly paid store manager when I got mine), but today’s REI cashiers probably see an REI member number as low or lower than mine maybe once a year, if that often.
I lost interest in REI when they changed the bylaws so members couldn’t nominate directors, only directors can nominate directors.
Years ago, I fought harder than anyone else for including candidate statements in the voting materials sent to members. That was adopted, and no one was more responsible for its adoption than me, although it’s really the idea that deserves the credit, because good ideas have a way of promoting themselves.
Now REI is run like the Kremlin was in Soviet days — the leaders nominate themselves and each other, and you get only one candidate slate — theirs — to vote for. It makes a mockery of corporate governance.
The REI Politburo figures all they have to do to keep the members happy is dole out their 10% rebate every year, which isn’t hard to do, all they have to do is raise the price by 10% and then give it back to you so you think you’re getting a freebie, like the grocery stores do with those “discount” cards they issue (and force you to use by making food prices prohibitive if you don’t use them, so they can gather and “mine” data on your shopping habits).
Do they have a gulag for dissident members, too? Someone should check that out.
I suppose the $1 million a year Jewell was paid to run REI isn’t out of line for a big national chain retailer, if you compare it with other CEOs of other big national chain retailers. But this isn’t the REI us old-timers used to know and love. It’s just another big national chain retailer.
@61 Don’t worry, there’ll be more elementary school slaughters, and after several dozen more kids die in pools of their own blood in kindergarten classrooms, the pols will revisit the issue again and get slightly more serious. Who knows, if there are enough deaths, they might even require people to lock up their guns so their mentally ill kids can’t get them.
Technology will solve the problem. Someday all civilian guns will have fingerprint-recognition locks so they can only be fired by the authorized owner. Manufacturers and gun store owners will love it, because when resale of guns is eliminated, anyone who wants a gun will have to buy a new one from them.
Re @63: You know what? I think it’s time for Joe Republican again. I haven’t posted it for quite a while. So, here we go …
A Day in the Life of Joe Middle-Class Republican
By John Gray Cincinnati, Ohio
Joe gets up at 6:00am to prepare his morning coffee. He fills his pot full of good clean drinking water because some liberal fought for minimum water quality standards. He takes his daily medication with his first swallow of coffee. His medications are safe to take because some liberal fought to insure their safety and work as advertised.
All but $10.00 of his medications are paid for by his employer’s medical plan because some liberal union workers fought their employers for paid medical insurance, now Joe gets it too. He prepares his morning breakfast, bacon and eggs this day. Joe’s bacon is safe to eat because some liberal fought for laws to regulate the meat packing industry.
Joe takes his morning shower reaching for his shampoo; His bottle is properly labeled with every ingredient and the amount of its contents because some liberal fought for his right to know what he was putting on his body and how much it contained. Joe dresses, walks outside and takes a deep breath. The air he breathes is clean because some tree hugging liberal fought for laws to stop industries from polluting our air. He walks to the subway station for his government subsidized ride to work; it saves him considerable money in parking and transportation fees. You see, some liberal fought for affordable public transportation, which gives everyone the opportunity to be a contributor.
Joe begins his work day; he has a good job with excellent pay, medicals benefits, retirement, paid holidays and vacation because some liberal union members fought and died for these working standards. Joe’s employer pays these standards because Joe’s employer doesn’t want his employees to call the union. If Joe is hurt on the job or becomes unemployed he’ll get a worker compensation or unemployment check because some liberal didn’t think he should loose his home because of his temporary misfortune.
Its noon time, Joe needs to make a Bank Deposit so he can pay some bills. Joe’s deposit is federally insured by the FSLIC because some liberal wanted to protect Joe’s money from unscrupulous bankers who ruined the banking system before the depression.
Joe has to pay his Fannie Mae underwritten Mortgage and his below market federal student loan because some stupid liberal decided that Joe and the government would be better off if he was educated and earned more money over his life-time.
Joe is home from work, he plans to visit his father this evening at his farm home in the country. He gets in his car for the drive to dads; his car is among the safest in the world because some liberal fought for car safety standards. He arrives at his boyhood home. He was the third generation to live in the house financed by Farmers Home Administration because bankers didn’t want to make rural loans. The house didn’t have electric until some big government liberal stuck his nose where it didn’t belong and demanded rural electrification. (Those rural Republican’s would still be sitting in the dark)
He is happy to see his dad who is now retired. His dad lives on Social Security and his union pension because some liberal made sure he could take care of himself so Joe wouldn’t have to. After his visit with dad he gets back in his car for the ride home.
He turns on a radio talk show, the host’s keeps saying that liberals are bad and conservatives are good. (He doesn’t tell Joe that his beloved Republicans have fought against every protection and benefit Joe enjoys throughout his day.) Joe agrees, “We don’t need those big government liberals ruining our lives; after all, I’m a self made man who believes everyone should take care of themselves, just like I have.”
You can see an online version here:
http://tvnewslies.org/tvnl/ind.....lican.html
@58 To boil it down a little further, so even the most thick-headed of our trolls can’t claim they didn’t understand it, it’s not for us.
@65 I lost interest in REI when they started selling $2,000 bicycles and Gore-Tex jockstraps. This was somewhat reversed while we had a kid in Boy Scouts, but that was quite a while ago. At the same time, we gained an interest in a certain “military surplus” store near First and Lenora, because in spite of their emphasis on selling military-style weapons to fantasy Rambos they also sell US Army wool winter pants for $15 a pair. These have become an unofficial component of the “Class A” winter uniform for Scouts and Scouters in the Chief Seattle Council.
Our REI membership comes from my wife, who I think signed up about when Roger did.
As to Seattle’s other two radical hippie leftist original co-ops, PCC is still around, but losing relevance as other markets get on the natural foods bandwagon. Group Health pretty much lost its way during Phil Nudelman’s reign of terror. We feel we’re stuck with them for the moment, even though our primary care physician for over 40 years died last year, and we’re paying through the nose out-of-pocket to them despite me having other insurance through my work. Until the smoke clears and unless the Republicans give up on overturning the ACA, we don’t dare bail because of pre-existing conditions. Fuck, who the hell over sixty doesn’t have pre-existing conditions?
@62 Why should BNSF shell out any of their own money when they can stick Uncle Sam with the bill? In the meantime, they’ll do everything else they can to interfere with those pesky passenger trains in hopes that their friends in Congress will pull the plug on Amtrak and they can continue to benefit from those improvements running all those lovely coal trains.
Awwwwwww…..piddl and cheapshotBob are going to have a sad….
I’m sure Carson wasn’t disinvited to give the commencement speech at Johns Hopkins because he made vile homophobic comments – or because he believes a non-Biblical explanation for natural phenomena (ie evolution) leads to a lack of morals and ethics. I’m sure, as piddl will doubtless agree, that the racists at Hopkins just realized Carson was BLACK, very very BLACK, and not that he was merely a garden variety Bibul-thumping hater.
@46
Of our local trolls, Piddl is just a gibbering loon, mostly indecipherable, mostly about who is ‘god’ is going to smite when he returns, but the passage above captures cheapshotBob perfectly.
You’ll remember, of course, his absolute refusal to provide an affirmative argument for a Romney presidency. I don’t think that he couldn’t, but rather wouldn’t – an argument like that would open him to criticism and discussion – on the merits – something he has desperately avoided.
cheapshotBob’s entire MO is to wheedle and nitpick and slime in the most intellectually dishonest way – just look at the posts above.
bobby is profoundly uninteresting, except in a rubberneck-at-the-trainwreck kind of way. We do end up spending a great deal of time picking up the shit he is incessantly dropping around here, though.
@49 was just a gold mine of inadvertent comedy, cheapshotBob style.
This sort of vacuous insult-slinging is all cheapshot can muster.
I’ll note also, that the post to which cheapshot refers as ‘an ode to yourself’ in reference to NTfF, was mostly a discussion of a right-winger’s National Review article taking the Republicans to task for being bereft of ideas.
Just another example of cheapshotBob’s remarkable ability to contort himself in gravity-defying tricks, to maliciously distort others’ positions, to move goalposts, all in the service of delivering the….cheapshot.
Bravo, bobby.
Steve, above…
Indeed. I think the more important variable is, what does your world-view lead you to do?
Does your deep belief in ‘god’ and in the inerrancy of an ancient tome lead you to repeatedly invoke a promise that someday your sky-god is going to smite those you hate?
Does your atheism and skepticism lead you to seek a world in which community and concern for your fellow humans and an alive, vital planet come foremost in shaping your politics?
Does your honest belief in and seeking of a loving Almighty bring you to gentleness and humility and acceptance of the divine in all people?
Does your empty greed and overnourished self-interest and self-satisfaction lead you to hateful, hollow and dishonest attacks on those you despise?
I think perhaps the distinguishing feature that best segregates the above pathways into two different but obvious sets is….fear.
71) BNSF, unlike the other railroads, is an Amtrak stockholder. The Santa Fe chose to pay to join, Burlington Northern, choose the option of shares in Amtrak, and they usually give Amtrak priority. I have ridden Amtrak on UP rails and had to wait for freight trains to pass, but on BNSF it is usually delayed for other Amtrak runs.
@70 Lloyd Anderson (REI member #1) started REI in 1938 to import climbing gear from Europe because local climbers couldn’t find climbing gear in the States. Lots of Northwest climbers bought Army-surplus wool trousers from REI for much less than $15 — they were in the surplus business, too. Eventually REI began making their own gear, which turned into THAW (Trager-Hartsfeld-Anderson-Whittaker), a lucrative enterprise for its owners, but at least they employed local labor in their factory down on 1st Avenue S. REI-label gear wasn’t fancy or durable, but it was cheap, and got you through your first couple of seasons of hopping around in the woods and mountains until you could afford better stuff. Now, REI is just another mass merchandiser stuffing the pockets of its executives, with the customers relegated to the role of profit centers; and it hardly looks like a climbing gear store anymore, although for the sake of tradition they still sell a few ropes, biners, and ice axes.
The stock market’s great beauty is its stark simplicity. Your performance is graded by a single number that anyone can understand. I’ve made $9,000 from stocks since Monday.
(Full disclosure: I lost $4,000 last Friday, so my net for the last 5 trading days is merely $5,000, or an average of $1,000 a day. Maybe that doesn’t sound look much; but how many jobs pay $1,000 a day?)
This is insane. People are piling into stocks because there’s no place else to make anything with their money. It will have a bad ending; when the Fed stops creating money from thin air, it all will come crashing down.
On the other hand, some would argue we would be reliving the 1930s now, if it weren’t for TARP and QE. I’m not an economist, so I don’t know. But I do know the austerity policies favored by conservatives as an “antidote” to depression would be disastrous. You don’t have to look any further than Europe’s troubles and Spain’s 25% unemployment for proof. Oh, but they’ll blame that on “so-shul-ism” …
@73 “You’ll remember, of course, his absolute refusal to provide an affirmative argument for a Romney presidency.”
That might actually be due to there actually being no valid argument in Romney’s favor, at least after Mitt himself spent more than a year frantically disowning everything worthwhile he did in his entire life.
@76 I guess I have to stand corrected. As a matter of fact, the last time we took the Coast Starlight to California we didn’t start pulling onto sidings to let the freights go by until we were well south of Portland.