j_b

it's not because you finally learned that you couldn't call people 'towel head' or whatever without sounding like a neanderthal, that what you say isn't racist. You have learned about plausible deniability but who could flaunt Rush Limbaugh and not be a racist scumbag? laughable. as if you or KKK had provided any evidence of it. because racists like Beck, Limbaugh, Hannity, Dobbs and many others are just loudmouth yahoos and not on TV almost every day.

Don't expect an answer from Fairweather. His MO is to make outlandishingly ridiculous statements that only the far-right could think of, then ignore salient responses, issue a couple of would-be trenchant one-liners to pare off dismissive jabs, and behave as if nothing else happened. He will only answer to you when he can insult or denigrate you without it being blatantly obvious he is not answering your comments.

Agencies are in fiscal crises for a lot of reasons including the large number of destitute people who need help with essential services they can't afford (services existing in most other OECD nations), and lack of tax revenues from wealth and some type of economic activity. Average Californians and manufacturing are paying more taxes but financial and trading activities have hardly ever been less taxed than today due to the widespread use of tax havens and transfer pricing, tax exemptions (real estate, extraction industry, ...), etc. Illegal immigrants are a drop in the bucket once one accounts for their important contribution to the economy for not 'living wages' and their paying taxes including the form of taxation that has increased over the last 30 years (sales tax, licensing fees and whatnot). If you don't pay people enough, destroy the real economy and don't tax the wealthy and financial speculation, a crisis ensues. I agree with your logic, and I wasn't fully explicit: last time I looked (couple months), the only existing numbers that argue the point they make is out of their "report" that doesn't account for the economic contribution of immigration to the economy. Accusing immigrants of economic ills is standard operating practice for the far-right (always, and for ideological/racial reasons) and during times of economic crisis by conservatives in general in an attempt to deflect criticism of the policies that caused the crisis (unfettered capitalism in this case). Why do you think fascism was supported by so many industry barons and right wing politicians during the 30’s? Realistically I am not for unlimited immigration because of the hardship it entails, but if they keep destroying the real economy south of the border (thanks to NAFTA) while capital and goods can travel freely, so should people and they will. A wall won’t stop them.The cultural belief in "hard work" in this context implies that immigrants and the poor are lazy and don’t work hard, which is racist. not familiar with contemporary examples. read up on ‘caging lists’ implemented by the GOP during recent elections to deny the right of vote to millions of people without steady residence, people who don’t drive, people who have names similar to that of felons, etc … Read up on the 2004 Ohio elections and the lack of voting machine in ethnic neighborhoods. Etc .. hmmm i don't think this is exclusively a "conservative" agenda. democrats simply do a better PR campaign, and don't flaunt their empery! You are assuming that all democrats aren’t conservatives and that the Democratic party never implements conservative policies, which is clearly not true. having ethnic friends doesn’t mean one doesn’t advocate policies implemented through racist fear-mongering.

they might have been denounced as a hate group, but did the SPLC denounce this hate group's methodology or findings? I don't know. Said group was labeled 'hate group' before the collapse of the californian economy. when you are bankrupt any expense contributes to your bankruptcy. It doesn't mean that we don't owe immigrants access to social services because of their large and poorly rewarded contribution to the economy, nor does it mean that investing in social services for immigrants is the cause of bankruptcy, nor that it won't help pull the economy out of bankruptcy because a well educated, healthy population is always a plus for any economy except for the robber barons of course. up to a point i certainly agree, but to glibly deride conservatives with such broad brush strokes is kinda silly, doncha think? conservative politics aren't necessarily racist, but some of their effects can easily be used by "liberals" (hehe) to make the charge of "racism". I fail to think of any conservative policy to deny social services to lower income brackets, to deny voting rights to minorities, to grab assets in foreign lands, to justify the wanton murder of brown people, etc .., (policies that have always been a mainstay of conservative politics) that doesn't rely on racism and xenophobia but feel free to list them if you can. P.S. also note that I didn't say that all conservatives were racist (although it is debatable whether implicitly condonning the use of racist fear-mongering by right wing demagogues to impress the feeble-minded doesn't consitute racism), but discussed how conservative politics relied on racism.

i believe the social studies folks like to discriminate between the concepts of "left wing" and "ultra-left wing" - at any rate, your fringe libertarian types (usually considered leftist) want an essential total banishment of government, ergo no state to be totalitarian in the first place (the gang-based anarchic state that would naturally fill the vacuum would hardly be much better though, eh?) you never answered me on the teaching the concept of propaganda question, tovarisch. Actually, 'left' versus 'ultra-left' mostly refers to the means employed to engineer change, methods which may be anti-democratic or not. For example the anarchists you refer to (which you call fringe libertarians), are often labeled ultra-left yet their core philosophy is anti-authority. The right wing has done a good job (they have 80 years of practice and they own the media) of conflating 'left' with 'stalisnism/maoism' but on the left, only marxist-leninists (i.e. stalinists and maoists) are totalitarians. The immense majority of the currents that form the left (from true social democrats [not the Blair type] to anarchists, including marxists) is anti-totalitarian as is reflected in their concept of democracy, their anti-imperialism, their denounciation of all dictatorships, etc ..

No. He has a history of anti-Semitic posts here. Fairweather, like zionist extremists, wants to conflate denounciations of israeli colonial apartheid against palestinians with antisemitism. It is complete non-sense (palestinians are semitic people while many israeli settlers aren't semitic) and it undermines the lessons we should draw from the persecution of jews throughout human history. Nobody capable of drawing such lessons supports violent colonial expansion of the israeli state at the expense of palestinians.

Really? For example, what do you think motivates them to accuse illegal immigrants of every ill in America? Do you remember just a couple month ago when FW told us (and others concurred) that California was bankrupt because illegals were mooching off social services? Well, just so you know, the group that published the numbers claiming to show the cost of illegals immigrants to California is denounced as a racial hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. Why do you think that is? Racism and xenophobia are intrisically linked in with right wing politics and although right wingers have become leary of using overt racism on this site (compared to the time of ramping up the invasion of Iraq when 'they' were all 'camel jockeys'), it permeates much of the arguments about healthcare, income redistribution, etc ..

Could Texas' Gingrich-Based High School History Curriculum Go National?

It must hurt the lunatic fringe to hear the truth about Orwell: he was a life-long left winger who was an egalitarian, anti-imperialist, and anti-totalitarian. The most incisive criticism of totalitarianism has always been issued by left-wingers, who were among the first victims of both fascism and Stalinism, because their opposition to terror wasn’t opportunism (like Hayek’s among numerous other rightwing example) but steeped in a deep commitment to democratic principles.

You mustn't read his prose too often because there is nothing in this thread that detracts from his usual persona.

do we need any more evidence that PP is an extremist nutjob?

California's Real Death Panels: Insurers Deny 21% of Claims

“Forecasting death is an inexact science" except for the 20,000 americans who die every year for lack of access to healthcare and who don't get to die in hospices.

Insurance claim denial death panels? http://ag.ca.gov/newsalerts/release.php?id=1797

Senator Sanders on systemic corporate fraud: [video:youtube]v_2gFsEHRRU

Great interview with Michael Hudson, financial economist and historian on debt, bail-outs and Obama financial reform: Dress Rehearsal For Debt Peonage

2 excellent Glenn Greenwald columns in which he shows that what has been happening is exactly what the White House wanted: Who’s Driving Reform? Why the health care debate is so important regardless of one's view of the "public option"

Bill MOyers on Healtcare reform shenanigans:

it's all over the media. Example: http://politics.theatlantic.com/2009/09/white_house_floating_snowe_trigger.php

Beware the bait and switch Obama is cooking up with the republicans: "Senior White House officials, in conversations with reporters today, are floating the idea that President Obama is secretly negotiating with Sen. Olympia Snowe over a health care compromise that would phase in a government-funded health care alternative if private insurance companies fail to meet quality and cost benchmarks over a certain period of the time. The public discussion of the Snowe "compromise" is meant to test the reaction of House Democrats, who will pass a bill that includes an immediate public option added to a new health insurance exchange. The White House hopes that, having voted for a public option, House Dems would accept a "trigger" as part of a conference committee compromise rather than putting the kibosh on the entire health care reform project."

It's way out of line. The level of violence is beyond what is acceptable.

Yet, none of this will prevent Obama from giving the finger to the large majority of americans who wants a robust public option. http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/09/03-11

In the new picture you can also see 3 lateral moraines. The furthest downstream that is lightly wooded in the upper 3rd, left half of the picture (also visible on your first pic), and 2 more in the right side mid-height of the newest picture. The point being that the surface of the rock glacier is now significantly lower than the innermost moraine (with a stream between the debris surface and the moraine), which suggests as mentioned before that this rock glacier is inactive and probably not cored with significant ice at the present (at least for the part we see in the picture). [/armchair speculation]

More like 1/4 since only ~50-55 % of the voting age pop goes to the box (only 35-38% for mid-term elections). Reagan's "landslide" was 27% of people old enough to vote. Over the last 30 years every time turn out approached 55%, a Democrat was elected president, which puts in context the underhanded efforts by republicans to suppress the minority vote (a combined majority nowadays).

Next, they'll make sure that all mentions of galileo are erased from the books. Onward to the middle ages because our kids ought to be warriors in this age of savage competition.