tvashtarkatena

You continue to prove yourself to be an idiot. Why this is one of your apparent needs remains a mystery. We already have a highly successful version of the complete public option...and have for many decades. It's called the military. We also a highly successful version of single payer: Medicare. Both have worked very well in the 50 or so industrialized nations that have gone to them. Their costs, on average, are half of what ours are per capita. Does someone really need to walk you through the cost savings of vastly simplified, standardized billing systems (18% for administrative costs in the U.S., 5% on average everywhere else) and the leverage of high volume buying power? Do us all a favor and STFU until you have a clue about something...anything.

And a choada (berry) is a dingle berry. Christ, were you people hatched out of eggs or something?

That's like, your opinion, man. I started out in a used pair of RR's (blue boots). Skipped EBs because Spanish Rubber hit the scene. I recall some debate about poor Spanish shoe factory workers dying early from rubber inhalation or some shit, but we ran out and bought our Fires, anyway. I also recall all my cheapskate EB clad friends kvetching about whether or not they should retire their freshly resoled (ala Dave Page) shoes for the new stuff. Of course there was the brief but required 'cheating' debate. A couple of my regular posse included a beer gutted welder in snakeskin lycra and his enormously backsided girlfriend, both of whom could crank upper 10s and the occasional 11...much to the consternation of the more serious minded body nazis of the day, particularly those who liked to 'give advice'.

Holy jebus, those are EBs.

THere's a whole lot of standard conflating going on here: Waco with the liberal movement Liberals with Russian communists Pretty inane stuff, but standard procedure from the Right, which does suffer from a dearth of credible copy. Let's take Waco and the ATF, for example. Now, the latter, as an agency, has historically been one of the most incompetent, right wing federal assclown fests in our history, followed closely by the FBI (who also, as I recall, played prominently in the affair). These yahoos swooped in from outside, in complete ignorance of the relationship between the Branch Dividians and local law enforcement (which was cordial), and thought they'd be going on a lark...until the Branch Dividians opened up with 50 calibers and managed to kill 4 of these idiots on opening day. And Janet Reno? Yeah, not a good job there, Janet, but then, you're not spokesperson for the liberal movement. SO here we have a morons conflation of the Waco incident with the liberal movement, which actually supports the Branch Dividian's right to free worship and abhors excessive use of force by the government, in addition to the over militarization of law enforcement. Contrast that with the Far Right, which avidly supports both, and (large parts of it, at least) shove a very specific brand of Kristian Kookiness down the rest of our throats. Apparently, it's not comprehensible for certain posters to imagine that a person such as Reno, or an agency such as the ATF, under a democratic administration, to NOT represent the liberal movement, or to act against its principles. Nor is it comprehensible to the same posters, apparently, that agencies have histories and staff that span far beyond the short half lives of presidential administrations and their appointees; that the FBI and ATF's culture might actually be anything BUT liberal. But these higher concepts require a certain capacity, and, well, yeah. Nuff said there.

Let's hear your Clarence Thomas imitation again, TTK... for "illustrative purposes" of course. And what was that you posted on this forum about W... and a "bullet in his head"... I can't imitate Thomas. Nobody can. The guy never opens his mouth. No one's even sure he's awake most of the time. As for Bush, I don't remember what I said, and of course don't give a fuck, but yes, a bullet in his noggin certainly would have done all of us a whole lot of good had it been delivered at the right time...like before his first election.

This kind of 'bloodthirsty liberal' rhetoric is straight out of the Nazi playbook regarding those evil Jews. It's tried and true shit that really gets the crackers stirred up for a good lynchin'. Only there aren't no more lynchins to blow the stem off at anymores, Crackers. So git yer limp dicks down to the next town hall meeting to squeel with the rest of the castrada while the rest of us move the fuck on with real life in the real world. Cue FW's TTK-as-anti-semite comment. Shit, he should have a control character on his keyboard for that by now.

That's better.

So let's see what we've learned here: a) Liberals are bloodthirsty savages. b) I'm the Unabomber. FW likes to whack off onto a doug fir whenever he thinks about a) or b) Carry on.

Looks like a hericium at first glance, probably a hericium abietus (Conifer Coral hericium) if it was in our area growing on a conifer...usually doug fir. All the hericiums are delicious if fresh (but they don't last long), either raw or sauteed, plus they have no known poisonous lookalikes.

This is my suck pine marten pic, BTW:

It may not be Art Wolf (I don't even pretend to be set up for taking wildlife pics...save the occasional point blank goat encounter, I just don't carry the equipment for it), but I was surprised how many positive comments I got regarding that photo despite it's obvious marginal quality. It was the pic that most responders seemed to be excited about. Frankly, I didn't expect to get anything at all, so I was OK with the result. Pine Martens are pretty rare in Washington; I've only seen one previously, and lots of folks I know who get out a lot have never seen one. For that reason alone I thought the pic was worth posting. Apparently, others thought so, too.

Not much to add to Ivan's arguments. He pretty much crushed it in one blow. That and the supporting pie chart, showing where our money's really being TOTALLY FUCKING WASTED.

Yeah, until you consider that it was shot hand held using the 10x digital zoom feature meant only for tripods in low light. Try it sometime, bitch. It's a wonder how I got a single recognizable pic out of that situation at all.

It's no secret that the U.S. Army has undergone an extreme make-over in the Wermacht style since Vietnam. The helmets, the demeanor, the ROE, (shoot everything that moves curfews, door kicking, etc), their (former) interrogation techniques, even their desert chamo is straight out of the Nazi playbook. The informal stuff, however, the 'tea-bagging, let-the-bodies-hit-the-ground, top-predator" bullshit so popular and encouraged these days is probably uniquely 'American'. Well, the Nazi's could be intimidating. But then again, they were also not very well liked universally. And, in no small part because of that, the rest of the world decided it no longer wanted them around. Our situation is different, of course. We have all the guns, now, the Nazis didn't. Like the Nazi's towards the end of their adventure, we've had much of the blustery wind kicked out of our sails through the predictable failures of our recent foreign campaigns. Unlike the Nazis, the world vaguely remembers us before psychotic paranoia and a unilateral sense of world entitlement took over our national psyche, most particularly during the moron years. They wait, perhaps in vain, perhaps not, for the screaming lunatic to put the gun down and shuffle back to the crumpled remains of his humanity.

Who's "they", again? Certainly not fat fucks.

Atheists

And who gives a shit what Thomas Jefferson would have thought or done? He ain't on the payroll.

Um, you can't tell whether that's a pine marten or Felix the Cat. That photo sucks.

Health care is not fundamentally an argument about competitiveness. It is about our moral responsibility towards each other. Our 'competitiveness' will not inspire this nation to do the right thing. The moral argument will, or at least it should. Now, competitiveness may or may not be a result of reform, but such a statement is constitutes more pandering to the Far Right. Fuck em, they've been a train wreck for the past past 30 years, and hey, they lost. Given their shrill behavior of late, the Far Right, like any screaming street corner psychotic, simply needs to be walked on by and ignored if this country is to have a prayer of moving towards any semblance of a better future. THat is not to say bipartisanship is dead. Anyone involved in lobbying knows that nearly all successful bills must be cosponsored on both sides of the isle. It is to say that the freaks of the GOP, and there are many, need to be left gnashing their teeth in their philosophical trailer parks while the rest of us leave the dysfunction behind. Now the Right, you my have noticed, has gleefully stepped over a hundred good people in need of help to punish that one meth head who doesn't 'deserve' help. It has tortured 100 innocent people to get to that one B movie grade 'terrorist' (or driver, accountant, or other peripheral factotum, as it usually turns out). It has put a hundred 20 year old kids, an inordinate percentage of them black (surprise!) in prison for mandatory 10 years or more, to get to that one 'drug kingpin'. Essentially, it's a movement which worships cruelty, fueled by a simpleton's mythology that has gifted us with such exotic threats as 'super predators', 'welfare moms', or, for those who haven't the mental faculties to distinguish these nuanced personalities, the all encompassing 'evildoers'. It's a stone stupid movement that believes in the Big Machine; that a bigger hammer will crush any problem, as long as it's an American hammer (or at least wielded by an American...made in China is OK). We need to continue to politically marginalize the Far Right until they no longer participate in policy making in any practical way. In Darwinian terms, their traits no longer fit the climate. Of course, they never did: their dysfunctional behavior thrived only in times of gross excess, propelled by the pipedream of re-fighting and winning another Vietnam. Now back to my chocobacon. Mmmmmmmmm, that shit is GOOD.

We need Clarence Thomas in on this.

Doing the Puyallup will give FW a chance to hang out with politically like minded folks for a few hours. He can then return to Spray girded with the knowledge that he is not alone in the wilderness.

The Fairness Doctrine should have covered it, but neither the Founding Fathers nor their amending successors could have imagined anything like Heart or Krispy Kreme Chicken Sandwiches.

If only you really believed that. Like most of us, however, you're a terrible liar. I'm off to pick up a hard to find Pasayten Wilderness Map so I can take my nephew out and torture him for a week. I love torture. Bye for now.

No, I'm not talking about any of the above, nor is anyone else, except you, now. The right to health care can be implicitly enacted through legislation. Let's all focus, people. It's just not that hard.