NineToGo -- I read your post too late, I'd already written another dang novel in response to Bo's reply to me. Guess I'll never learn.

By the way, I don't have an [IGNORE] button...I'm assuming it's a button in my mind, not on the screen, right? I'll have to look around for it, and start using it. It'll save me a lot of time. :lol:

Yes, BoJester, I really was a firefighter. I worked for the USFS 50 years ago, on the Nevada City District, Tahoe Nat Forest -- three months in '62, five more in '63. In '62 I started on Mitch Stowe's timber stand improvement crew at North Bloomfield station, soon switched to Jim Ford's fire crew at White Cloud station. In '63 I was assigned to Jerry Wasley's fire crew at a new station just below Findley Peak, to guard against fires during the logging and construction of the dam for what soon became the Jackson Meadows Reservoir. I spent a few weeks as a fire lookout on Findley Peak, even did a short stint as a hellitack crewman. We fought fires in '63 right up to the point that the water froze in our tank-truck.

AZ Gov Jan Brewer is NOT one of "my leaders", as you put it. I don't know enough about her to defend her or not. I don't give knee-jerk support to anyone. I actively work -- during the candidate se******n process, right up through the primaries -- to replace Republican candidates in my state (WA) who don't live up to my definition of "conservative". It's true that in the final e******n I often v**e for Republicans whom I find unpalatable, only because they are the only viable alternative to a liberal or progressive candidate. The last two Republican p**********l candidates were poor choices from my viewpoint, but (as you so perceptively note) I despise what Obama has done and continues to do, so in the final e******n, any other option is an obvious choice for me. I held my nose and v**ed for McCain and Romney. ...BUT, my observations about Brewer had nothing to do with my support for conservatism. I wouldn't care if she were Democrat, Libertarian, or C*******t, the incumbent governor simply wasn't responsible for improving fire fighting procedures, nor for the deaths of those fire fighters.

I don't blame Obama for everything bad that has occurred during his term in office -- I don't blame the B******i attack on him, or the Boston bombing, or hurricanes, or droughts. I think his poor leadership and the lack of response by his administration to many warnings may have contributed to the situation that allowed the B******i attack to be so devastating, but it was terrorists who attacked our consulate, not Obama, so don't say that I blame him for everything. ...But I certainly DO blame him for a broad spectrum of problems, pains, and ills that are befalling our country specifically due to his failures.

As to your insistence on calling us "teabags" or "teabaggers", there is not one single instance where the TEA (taxed enough, already!) Party has used a teabag as its symbol. If you Google "TEA Party movement symbol", you'll see hundreds of examples of f**gs and posters used by tea party members...all of them use rattlesnakes, tea cups, or tea pots as our symbols, not tea bags. The only time a tea bag is used to symbolize the tea party is when opponents are trying to denigrate, minimize, or marginalize the tea party and its accomplishments, such as the ugly poster showing a tea bag with the words "TEA BAG PARTY -- No BLACK Or COLORED Tea -- The Party of Ye Olde South -- Without diversity there is no flavor". So please don't tell me to change my party's symbol. You and your confreres should stop using references to a d********g sexual practice in an attempt to humiliate us.

About the spelling of 'phoney' -- thanks for correcting me. Before I correct someone else, I actually do look up words in my dictionary, a 1947 Funk & Wagnalls New Standard American Dictionary, library edition, over 2,800 pages...it doesn't include any reference to "phoney". However, as its title indicates, it only addresses American English. I found this clarification on the Gramarrist website: "Phony vs. phoney -- Phony is the American spelling of the word meaning (1) not real, (2) not genuine, and (3) a false or inauthentic person or thing. In British English, Australian English, and other English varieties from outside North America, phoney is the preferred spelling. Canadian writers use both, though phony is more common." I guess I should start looking up words in a more t***soceanic edition of the dictionary. I'm sorry I incorrectly 'corrected' you. ...But I am a bit puzzled -- why use a British spelling of that word, but not others, such as "criticise"? But the whole spelling thing is a trivial issue, so please forgive me for starting the discussion at all.

Oh, how I wish I could determine when Nancy Pelosi is lying...oh, wait, I CAN.

...It's whenever her lips are moving.

Amen, brother. :thumbup:

BoJester, It's hard to know where to start in responding to your compendium of ignorance and hatred.
(1) the tragic deaths of the 19 members of the hotshot firefighter crew in Arizona have been attributed to the inexplicable failure of the team to follow well-established safety procedures in moving from a safe position to a less-safe position for no known reason, and without making any attempt to use their radios to advise the fire-boss what they were doing, why they were doing it, or where they were going. As a former USFS firefighter, I'm well aware that the existing Federal, state, and local fire-fighting procedures are imperfect, but they are frequently updated, and to the best of my knowledge, NOBODY HAS EVER BEFORE claimed that "the fear of 'government'" has caused a failure to review, revise, or correct them. I assume you are referring to conservatives' desire to limit or reverse areas over-regulation, but firefighter safety has never been the target of deregulation. To make that allegation is asinine.
(2) Why do you assume that it is Gov Brewer's job or responsibility to personally oversee the review of a firefighter safety procedures? ...Or to take personal action to save this particular crew? The crew was already dead before she or anyone else could have taken specific steps to save them. There was a tanker filled with fire-r****dant liquid almost immediately above them, which could well have save them, if they'd only advised people of where they were. One doesn't need to have been a forest fire fighter to feel the pain of this horrid accident, but to attempt to lay the blame on Gov Brewer is ignorant, stupid, and willfully hurtful.
(3) Do you know what it means to call someone a "teabag" or "teabagger"? If you don't, look it up, it is a particularly vile epithet. If you don't agree with or like members of the conservative right-wing known as the Tea Party, fine, that's your right. But stop labeling us with foul and crude language.
(4) If you can't see the multiple scandals surrounding the handling of the B******i fiasco a year ago, then you aren't paying attention. If you think all the scandal-threads of this horrific event were fantasized by Republicans, then you aren't paying attention. The "answers" we've been given by the Obama administration are vastly incomplete, distorted, and purposely misleading.
(5) ...And for what it's worth, there's no "e" in "phony".

Hiya, Bmac. H**e to carp, but you must work off a lot of calories, jumping around like a flea on a hot griddle. It's hard to respond to a post that opens 3 or 4 different topics.


...But they're all good topics.

I understand your argument, Rhonda, but I'm not sure it was God in government that gave us so much. I think it was the concomitant emphasis in the private sector on family, integrity, hard work, and holding to a moral compass that served us so well, and the success and strength grew not for 150 years -- it was well over 300 years in my reckoning (from 1620 to about 1960).

There were setbacks and shames (the advent of American s***ery, our treatment of native Americans, the Civil War and its aftermath, the Great Depression, etc), but in general we kept progressing, growing, spiraling upward for 330 years or more.

But then the ideal of a strong core family deteriorated in the last 50 or 60 years, and the faith in God has faltered in most American souls, and it appears to my dispirited old eyes that most of the last two or three generations have no strong moral compass; they no longer believe in hard work or integrity; c***ting in school (or later) is fine if it helps you and reduces the need for work or study.

Oh, I know this isn't true of everyone born in the last 75 years...I've found that most kids raised on farms and ranches and in small towns, as well as a small percentage of kids from cities and suburbs, have retained much of the sense of honor and integrity, with the same strong work ethic and honesty that has sustained past generations.

But most kids I've met from the cities and suburbs don't want work, they want a fat paycheck without paying their dues or working their way up, they WANT and NEED enough $$$ to buy the drugs or toys and travel and gambling that give them instant gratification, and if the paycheck isn't big enough...well, they run up debt on a pack of credit cards and then declare bankruptcy, just to start the spend-and-borrow cycle all over again.

I think I understand some of the causes, the reasons, for the falling American integrity and honor, but I have no prescription for its recovery. I think maybe a really good man in the White House, a man of honesty and honor and charisma, might be able to turn things around. I think Reagan made a pretty fair start...but it didn't last.

I think that when it comes my time to go, I may be grateful that I don't have to watch the further demise of my country, a country I have loved and served. I pray for my children and grandchildren...but I've lost hope. I don't expect my prayers will be answered.

Why don't you check out Bloomberg.com:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-08-11/eric-holder-owes-the-american-people-an-apology.html

That Bloomberg article was written by Jonathan Weil, one of the most honored and respected financial journalists around. He has a BA in journalism, and a JD from SMU. Wikipedia reports:

"Prior to joining Bloomberg as a columnist in 2007, Weil was managing director and editor of financial research at Glass Lewis & Co. (2006–2007), an investment-research and proxy-advisory firm in Broomfield, Colorado. Before that, he was a reporter for The Wall Street Journal (1997–2005), where he wrote about accounting and finance. He began his career as a reporter at the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette (1995–1997).

"Weil was a Gerald Loeb Award finalist in 2002 and won the New York State Society of Certified Public Accountants Excellence in Financial Journalism Award in 2008, 2009, 2010, and 2011. He won Society of American Business Editors and Writers Best in Business Journalism Awards in 2009, and 2010. He also won the Society of the Silurians Award for Editorial Writing/Commentary in 2011.[1]

"Weil has been credited by Columbia Journalism Review, Barron's and The New Yorker magazine, among others, as the first reporter to challenge Enron Corp's accounting practices during the Internet bubble, for his Sept. 20, 2000, WSJ article, "Energy Traders Cite Gains, But Some Math Is Missing"[2] . His columns for Bloomberg in 2007 and 2008 focused on questionable accounting practices at Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Wachovia, Washington Mutual, Lehman Brothers, AIG, Citigroup, and IndyMac."

...So, IronDoor, is the reported correction of DOJ lies all a big conspiracy? There are other sites that have reported the FBI's findings of gross exaggeration by Holder and the DOJ last October regarding their claims of crackdown on financial fraud. Are all the sites in on the conspiracy to blacken the name of your hero, Saint Eric?

OK, if all the news sources reporting on the DOJ correction are in cahoots, how 'bout you check out this one, right off the DOJ website:

http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/2012/October/12-ag-1216.html

"This announcement was updated on August 9, 2013.
The initial version of this press release inadvertently contained inaccurate numbers stating that the Distressed Homeowner Initiative netted 530 criminal defendants in cases involving more than 73,000 victims and losses of more than $1 billion, in FY 2012.

"An extensive review of the reported cases concluded that the original figures included in the Distressed Homeowner Initiative included not only criminal defendants who had been charged in Fiscal Year 2012, as reported, but also a number of defendants who were the subject of other prosecutive actions – such as a conviction or sentence – in Fiscal Year 2012. In addition, the announcement included a number of defendants who were charged in mortgage fraud cases in which the victim(s) did not fit the narrow definition of distressed homeowner that the initiative targeted. While all of the cases originally reported were part of our collective efforts to ensure stability and fairness in our financial and housing markets, the press release below reflects the accurate, up-to-date data regarding the Distressed Homeowner Initiative."

Your chosen "handle", Irondoor, seems fitting -- you have an iron door to your mind. Apparenly, you keep it locked to any facts that don't fit your distorted world-view. If you insist on posting lies, and someone catches you at it, don't rant and rave about the sources used by your critics, not until you've done your own due diligence.

IronDoor, your hero-worship of Holder is unwarranted, and your repetition of all the bogus statistics that the DoJ put out just makes you look foolish. Holder and the Justice Dept were forced to issue an apologetic retraction/correction of all those phony claims, many of which had been exaggerated by 300%, 400%, or more.

What follows is a a report published yesterday by the Daily Caller [ http://dailycaller.com/2013/08/12/report-holder-exaggerated-doj-track-record-on-financial-fraud/ ]. I wouldn't normally quote an entire article, but I want 1PP readers to be able to immediately see the extent of the DoJ's lies without having to follow links:

"Report: Holder exaggerated DOJ track record on financial fraud"

The Department of Justice was forced to revise inflated mortgage fraud statistics after an FBI memo revealed that an administration task force greatly overstated the amount of fraud victims, the number of charges filed, and the size of related monetary losses.

Bloomberg reports that the correct numbers were released late Friday from the multi-agency Mortgage Fraud Working Group, a year-long initiative ending in September 2012 and designed to crackdown on mortgage fraud in the United States.

At the time, Attorney General Eric Holder claimed the group’s “success” represented “an historic, government-wide commitment to eradicating mortgage fraud and related offenses.”

In an October press release, the DOJ initially stated that the group indicted “530 defendants for allegedly victimizing more than 73,000 American homeowners — and inflicting losses in excess of $1 billion.”

But following pressure from the FBI, the Justice Department updated that release to show that the actual number of indictments was just 107 — an 80 percent reduction in criminal charges from the number originally claimed.

The number of affected homeowners dropped by 56,000 and the number of alleged losses fell over 90 percent, to just $95 million.

“Regrettably, the statistics reported in October included cases that fell outside the specific parameters of the initiative,” an FBI memo from Friday morning stated.

Government watchdog groups condemned the misleading stats. “If there’s a publicity stunt opportunity they’ll go for it, and will attempt to accrue as much glory or benefit as they can for political purposes,” said Chris Farrell, director of research at the conservative, Washington-based Judicial Watch.

“They’re extraordinarily good at cherry-picking statistics and enforcement actions in a very self-serving way, making themselves look like they’re tough on crime,” Farrell told The Daily Caller News Foundation. “But when you peel back the layers and get to the root of what they’re actually doing, you’ll find it’s normally a sub-par performance.”

Reports first emerged that the DOJ fudged the initiative’s numbers just days after the original press release, when two Bloomberg reporters noted that some of the cases Holder cited in an Oct. 9 news conference included those filed as far back as 2006, when George W. Bush was still president.

Bloomberg columnist Jonathan Weil sought the complete list of cases from the Justice Department last fall, but was repeatedly rebuffed by a DOJ representative. Although he was told multiple times that the information was forthcoming, the data never materialized.

“No wonder the government found it so difficult to bring a meaningful number of accounting-fraud cases against bank executives after the financial crisis,” he wrote on Sunday. “Its own books were cooked.”

Farrell agreed, arguing that rather than move “hard and fast” through the financial sector after the 2008 crisis and “clean house,” the Obama administration tried to “glom onto and claim credit for” financial fraud cases dating back to the Bush administration.
“Obama talks tough polemics against Wall Street bankers,” he said, “but who’s actually gone to jail?”

This is not the first time DOJ has been accused of massaging the numbers. In December 2010, the Justice Department rolled out “Operation Broken Trust,” an initiative ostensibly designed to ferret out financial fraud.

In reality, “Broken Trust” simply repackaged a number of older cases, some from as early as 2006, and attempted to pass them off as new investigations. They also took cases which had advanced separately through the court system earlier that year and lumped them together, giving the illusion of a combined effort.

Farrell believes that Holder deliberately trumpeted statistics he knew were grossly inflated.

“There’s no way he didn’t know,” Farrell said. “Any of these huge enforcement actions, they can’t happen, they can’t occur without the direct personal involvement of the attorney general.”

“It would be impossible for it to escape his attention,” he concluded.

Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2013/08/12/report-holder-exaggerated-doj-track-record-on-financial-fraud/#ixzz2bsSl4lID

Hey. STOP IT. This is really stupid. How many times do we have to go through this.
1. THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS AN "H.B." The House v**es on Resolutions, not BILLS, so anything coming out of the House is an H.R., not an H.B.
2. H.R. 3200 was a preliminary version of the health care fiasco. The one that eventually became the basis for Obamacare was H.R. 3590.
3. Almost all of the claims in this stupid list are out-and-out lies, or gross distortions, even if you go back and look at the (failed) H.R. 3200. A good example is the final item (which I left in the quoted excerpt, above). Obamacare DOES apply to Senators and Congressmen and their staffs...why do you think they have been scurrying around to get a special dispensation to pay 75% of their costs? If they didn't have that loophole, lots of congressional members and their staffers would have quit, because (like us) they just can't afford to pay for Obamacare.
4. The more h**xes like this are passed around, the more misinformed (even though right-minded) conservatives go around screaming about all these bogus charges. Then ALL of us conservatives are painted by the Dems and the MSM as being ignorant i***ts who cast false aspersions on the great and wondrous Obamacare.
5. Come on, people -- there are more than enough real evils and ills associated with Obamacare. Stop sending these garbage h**xes around.

...That is one heck of a great, accurate assessment. I know it only addresses one aspect of Obama's failures, and just one area where he has lied or distorted the t***h in his speeches, but it seems typical of his entire term in office. I've never before actively lobbied for impeachment/conviction/removal of a sitting President...not Clinton, not Nixon, not even Carter. I have been disappointed and disheartened by the v****g public's choices in the past, but always felt that a duly elected President deserved his full term. As a vet, I've always felt that -- good, bad, or indifferent -- the President is the Commander-in-Chief. But I don't believe that Obama deserves the support of the US population as a whole, or the respect and loyalty of service-men and -women. Obedience? Yeah, I suppose, until he's removed or succeeded, our armed forces have to serve and obey, even if they have to hold their noses to do it.

But now, for the first time in my life, I believe that the performance of a sitting President warrants his removal from office. I doubt it can happen. We may be approaching a point where we could muster a simple majority of Housemembers to v**e for impeachment, but unless there is a huge sea-change, we'll never get 2/3 of the Senate to convict. Yet who knows, if enough Democrats can read the writing on the wall, they may support a Republican movement to convict. I can dream....

Yeah, me too. I've been married to only one woman, and it's been more than 40 years, so I generally get her name right, but for my three kids, they grew up not knowing their names, since both my wife and I regularly called each by the others' names...one after another. My daughter objected more than my two sons. Go figure. The day she really blew up was when I called her Sophie...the name of my lovely old black Lab. I tried to convince her that it was really a compliment, since I loved Sophie more than anything. Wrong move, she never forgave me for telling her I loved my dog more than her. ...I guess the t***h hurts.

Oops. My bad. I was tired, fingers were moving faster than my (alleged) brain. I mis-typed "Cleveland". Cleveland is another city in trouble, but you are correct, the focus right now is Detroit and its bankruptcy. Sorry for the confusion.

...Thoughtful post. You make many valid points. But I think you'll have to agree that Cleveland has gone down the tubes for 50 years, under the not very sk**lful management of a succession of Democratic leaders, none of whom were able to find a way to cut into fat pay and pensions for public servants, to convince Detroit auto manufacturers back in the 60's to improve quality to be competitive with imports, to slow the demise of the manufacturing base, to take action that might have led to the creation of other jobs to hold people in Cleveland, to convince public and industry unions to come to the table for much needed renegotiation of pay and benefits, etc.

If you ask, do I really think that good political leadership alone could have completely resolved all of Cleveland's problems, considering all the downside aspects of the auto debacle, I'd have to admit, "probably not". But it sure could have helped. And doing nothing has made things a lot worse.

I won't deny your charge that many of us fall into the habit of profiling. It isn't fair to blame these things on any race or races. But I think it's fair to say that liberal Democratic policies have made things a lot worse in Cleveland, and good, ethical, intelligent, and conservative management could start to make things better. At least, that's my take.

From some of the other things you've written, it appear that we may have a lot more in common than I thought, and I welcome this discussion. I can even occasionally change an opinion, if you have a long enough lever and a rock-solid fulcrum (data, data, data, not conjecture).

And look, I actually agree with you, that v***r r**********n should not be aimed at giving any party an advantage. But you have joined the mainstream media in misquoting PA Republican House Leader Mike Turzai (...yeah, that's right, it wasn't the governor). On June 23 or 24, 2012, Turzai was listing several recent Republican accomplishments in the PA legislature, the last of which was this:

"...V**er ID, which is gonna allow Governor Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania, done."

He did NOT mean that the new PA v***r r**********n law was passed in order to give Romney a victory, although many MSM outlets made that inference, purposefully misquoting him. For example, Annie-Rose Strasser, writing for Think Progress on 25-Jun 2012, utterly distorted his meaning: "This weekend, Pennsylvania Republican House Leader Mike Turzai (R-PA) finally admitted what so many have speculated: V**er identification efforts are meant to suppress Democratic v**es in this year’s e******n." That is NOT what Turzai said. Note Turzai's use of the word, "allow". He meant that v***r r**********n would help to ensure a clean e******n, without v***r f***d, AND THIS WOULD ALLOW ROMNEY TO WIN, IF HE GOT THE MOST V**ES. I admit he could have phrased it better, but he never said what was claimed, and many PA Housemembers who know Turzai, even Democrats, repudiated the claims made by Strasser and others.