j_b

you've got to be kidding: "today's situation [..] really isn't that bad." nearly 20% real unemployment on average (that 1 in 5 and not 1 in 10 as claimed by Obama last night). 10's of millions making it from paycheck to paycheck and the constant threat of losing their sole income. Millions of retirements gone up in smoke. Millions have lost their homes and nearly everything else, including access to health care (40,000 death a year for lack of access). Millions of older workers and professionals have lost their careers forever. No real perspective of "recovery" in sight besides low paying jobs and debt servitude.

dude, you should try to get out of your bubble. There are ten's of thousands without homes in many major cities. Unemployment among minorities is upward of 50% according to age group. etc ..

some of us have been around for a long while and have already climbed together.

I tend to find most people not engaged on a personal level, and it is not only magnified when dealing with stress but it can have disastrous consequences, which is the main reason I stopped choosing partners only with climbing in mind. Too many expeditions with strangers, I guess.

The point of the site is climbing. I don't understand anyone who is pure spray in general, but all the more so when their posts are mono-dimensional. There are plenty of internet sites to discuss US politics. no answer to any of my comments. more non-sequitur. The point of this board is community. It takes all types to make a community you freaking nazi.

Hell no! I learned a long time ago that choice of climbing partners is critical for a successful trip. Life's too short to spend any of it with nincompoops.

can't you ever discuss anything without shifting the goal posts in the middle of an argument? whether you spend your time here posting TR is irrelevant to how much time you spend on line versus working as you pretended was the issue. can't you ever discuss anything without trying to smear your opponent or somehow label him as unAmerican? you are a goon through and through, dude. I should have stuck with the standard neanderthal crossing picture for it is all that your interventions warrant.

is it really necessary to point out that you have 3.5 times as many posts as I do in 2/3 the time since our respective registrations on this site? or is it that obvious facts never get in the way of whatever would-be put down you dream of?

spoken like a true neanderthal who spent the last 9 years cheering on Bush and his cronies. FYI I don't think life is shitty, although I think politics suck in the US as well as most everywhere else. I have a full time job and I get out now and then when I don't work weekends. Just think of it as if the time you spend making fart jokes, I spend it doing something else more enlightening.

The joke is your dismissive content-empty one-liners. I only share said opinion with the foremost student of the middle class: Elizabeth Warren.If we don't act the game is really over "Elizabeth Warren told Jon Stewart that "this is really the moment" that will determine the future of America's middle class -- the system must be fixed or "the game really is over. Warren, who chairs the Congressional Oversight Panel created to monitor TARP, said: "It is simple. This is America's middle class. We've hacked at it and chipped at it and pulled on it for 30 years now. And now there's no more to do. Either we fix this problem going forward or the game really is over."

i think it was you who brought up gandhi? about how the means are never justified by the ends? so if one's attempts to "change" things are fueled by anger, then the changes are tainted.... btw, i don't think conditions now are comparable to the 30's.... Joseph brought up Gandhi and I don't see how expressing anger (not really my word btw, i prefer 'intensity' myself; I only get angry when fear-mongerers/red-baiters try to curtail freedom of speech) taints changes. Anyway, anger is an emotion and doesn't preclude anything else, including reason and ethics. The world has changed a lot since the 30's but the reforms of the 30's made the middle class possible, and we are currently considering its demise. Most people only see the financial crash without realizing that it is only the last blow that broke the camel's back after 30+ years of upward wealth redistribution. Economic inequalities are back to what they were in the age of the robber barons and we are considering whether it will be the status quo or whether it is an aberration brought about by decades of regressive policies.

Obama is certainly saying a lot of the right things about the economy and the cred deficit of the political class. Let's see him actually do something toward achieving these goals. My main worries (besides the fact that his speech may be as good as it gets and much of it wasn't very specific) is that he appears to think the health care mess was a communication problem and that much of his energy/environmental policy is in great part greenwashed pork (biofuels, nuclear, "clean coal") for the same old entrenched interests.

I think he said that getting the economy going and creating jobs were the first priority, which usually requires spending.

how else did FDR keep winning re-election w/o the power of positive thought? wasn't like shit had gotten better by '36 or '40. He had to give to a lot of very pissed off citizens what they wanted before he got reelected: millions were in the street demanding to be heard, the labor movement was in full expansion, .. Very different from today, which is worrisome IMO Believing that one can affect change is always necessary but I wager that 'positive thinkers who relax' are less effective than 'angry types who express their disbelief' until they see real actions in the desired direction.

Some of us will make it through these times, and odds are the middle class won't. If you think that people came out somewhat on top of the great depression by thinking positively, you have something coming.

The right wing tax bogeyman perhaps but, in fact, taxing upper incomes and corporations is a necessity.

Your comments seem to indicate that you have little clue (sorry, I am being honest here) about the pickle we are in and the sweeping changes that are taking place. If there ever was a moment not to relax, it is now. As a matter of fact, you and most around you aren't angry and pissed off enough and it is going to cost us a lot. FWIW, I have traveled and lived abroad extensively.

I am glad one of us thinks it is funny that you drooled over every attempt by Bush and Reagan and co to destroy the legitimacy of government and bankrupt the middle class.

Corporate personhood is legal fiction. Time to wake up from your wet dream.

of course, no reply on the policy question from you, only some joke about bi-partisanship with the party of no and buffoon Lieberman I smell a rat because you certainly didn't say anything about the many instances over many years when the Bush administration trampled the free speech rights of individuals (just a couple of examples: http://www.aclu.org/free-speech/secret-service-ordered-local-police-restrict-anti-bush-protesters-rallies-aclu-charges-u , http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G1-103009202.html). Anyway, corporations aren't individuals, despite what conservative activist judges say.

like in Oregon (considered a test case of what's to come) yesterday that voted for increases in income tax on salaries > $250,000 and in the minimum corporate tax for the first time since 1930. Independents are of all political slant. Currently a large number of them, as shown by several polls, are positioned to the left of Obama on many (and probably most) important issues. What? no red-baiting today? today, is 'let's play the sympathy card' day? and don't confuse being full of oneself and not letting you get away with pretending ignorance about your long term support for the plutocracy that led us to bankruptcy.

More distraction and fear-mongering propaganda from the loony right. "Islamists" have become the "communists" boogey men of yesterday (and like before they are for the most part people trying to achieve some form of independence). In the meantime, nothing from you or the clowns you cite about the supreme court selling out to corporations or the bankruptcy of the middle class.

Not only was he licking their boots but he is trying to pretend it was any different under other Republican pres.

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