Orrin Hatch, Joe Barton, John McCain… what is it about sports that turns right-wing politicos into flaming socialists?
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“We remember the Sugar Bowl, I think it my junior year of high school, we let Alabama beat us twice,” Brinson said of a team that also lost to the Crimson Tide in the SEC Championship game. “We’re not letting Alabama beat us twice. In the Sugar Bowl in 2018, they… thought they should have been in the playoffs and lost to Texas.” -- AB-H, 12/27/23
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Get The Picture · Bloviation for the Dawgnation
Get The Picture 
What on God’s green earth makes you think McCain is right wing?
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You mean, aside from his recent voting record?
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He’s No Arlen Spector or Jim Jeffords, but he is the absolute biggest thorn in the side of any honest conservative I know. That was until Lindsey Graham came out of the insanity closet!
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I’m not a McCain fan, by any means. While I honor his military sacrifices, he’s a complete BSer as a politician.
That all being said, there’s no way you can characterize him as anything other than right-of-center. Unless you’re blindly hellbent on making an ideological point, of course.
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‘Complete BSer as a politician’ is a tautology, or redundant, or obvious, or something.
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“Moderate” is basically the new code word for “conservative whose stupidity I don’t want to have to answer for.” Once upon a time, Dubya was considered a strong, upstanding conservative, too, even as he was running up debt like a sorority girl who’d swiped her daddy’s AmEx. It was only after his approval rating dropped into the 30s that he was magically, retroactively transformed into a “moderate.”
Liberals, meanwhile, throw tantrums when our former heroes turn out to be more moderate than we’d led to believe, but we just go out and re-elect them anyway because we’re wusses, which is why we don’t have to bother with this kind of renaming.
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As a conservative, I always considered Bush a moderate. I didn’t much like his “compassionate conservatism” branding, and I didn’t like his spending initiatives.
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True, He was a social conservative and moderate fiscally. I liked him as well, but the wide open amnesty (I am not against amnesty per se, but that was supposed to have been solved under Reagan) and spending as you say was a problem.
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Bush is actually a left winger who never saw a law that tells people what to do and how to live their lives that he didn’t like. Being a conservative is supposed to be about getting the government off people’s backs. Bush was actually only a special interest politician whose agenda was to increase the wealth of his already rich buddies (who funded all of his elections) at the expense of everyone else in the country.
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The only Republican running for President in 2008 who actually believed that was a candidate who was excluded from some of the debates. Go figure.
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+1.
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My response was meant for the person above. Sorry.
However, that being said, yes, I too respect him and honor his service. And yes, he is right of center, but quite the “contrarian” to his party on amnesty, free speech, Libya, etc. (and many other issues) that just bug a party looking for him to lead, rather than antagonize the more right of center base.
Any party is looking for more consistency in a “leader” of the party. Otherwise, you are just Kucinich on the right. (Think James Trafficant!)
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Kucinich? I’m still trying to get his wife to partner up with my other dancing girl, help me track UFO’s and be a spotter for incoming cruise missiles and air-to-surface missiles not only because she’s hot but also because she’s very very tall. Libya? Johnny can’t even remember what continent we’re in. Trafficant? He’s from Youngstown, same place as Tressel. Enough said. Kucinich’s from Cleveland and he’s got mad game to get that wife.
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None of those guys are right wing at all….they are big government guys to begin with.
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Since when did those become mutually exclusive traits?
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Indeed
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Everyone’s big government now. The only difference between left and right these days is what you want said big-ass government to do.
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Bingo.
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Yeah… this depresses me.
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Actually that means they are all on the left.
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Except for bombing 10th century reprobates back to the 8th century, McCain holds few, if any, right wing positions.
Also of note, Darcy Olsen is easy on the eyes.
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I’m not sure that she passes the minimum standard for hotness on a sports blog, though…
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True, though the Senator doesn’t run your avg sportsblog.
I love Tech blogs where posters have dancing bikini clad babes attached to their handle. Nothing says “I’ve never seen a dancing bikini clad babe” like attaching a dancing bikini clad babe to your handle on “The Hive”.
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Oh well, I’m sure they’ll all try, try again when they run across the lovely ladies of Murfreesboro.
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Perhaps the same thing that turned them all into socialists when their favorite banks and auto makers were going wrong?
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+100.
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Sports isn’t capitalist or socialist. There’s no supply/demand curve for victories. It’s entertainment. People are just trying to figure out a new economic model so the money doesnt influence the entertainment. They don’t have a clue, and maybe it can’t be done, but that’s what is going on.
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John ‘McCain-Feingold Breath’ wouldn’t know the first amendment if it jumped up and bit him in his sanctimonious butt. I saw that column this weekend. George Will has a nice subtle knife.
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If you think those three are right wingers you are seriously misjudging the political climate of the country. Moderates at best. They can only be viewed as “right” relative to the flakes in power, the mainstream media, and Hollyweird….all of whom are deliberately deceitful.
That said, politics and labor unions should have no place in sports.
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A guy with the most conservative voting record in the 2010 Senate is “Moderate at best”? C’mon, Mac, just because you don’t like the guy is no reason to mischaracterize his political position.
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That was SOLELY for re-election.
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Dude, they’re always running for re-election. 😉
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This, too… depresses me.
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Yes, thank you for that informative answer.
You know what I mean. 6 years for a senator to face the voters allowing for a lot of crossing philosophical lines and repositioning later. Think back to the political climate in 2005 for instance. LOT of water under the political bridge since then. Pelosi’s speakership came and went already, We are already 3 years into a completely different administration than was in the white house at that time.
UGA was SEC champs. Long time ago it seems.
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According to the New York Times:
http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/02/24/national-journal-mccain-tops-list-of-most-conservative-senators/
“That contrasts with previous years, when Mr. McCain regularly ranked as somewhere near the 45th most conservative member of the Senate.”
Calling someone who “regularly” ranked around 45th most conservative as a moderate can hardly be called a mischaracterization. McCain’s been in Washington a long time and cast a lot of votes before 2010.
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Nice selective use of stats there. The Senate’s been a pretty conservative place for a while. The issue isn’t where McCain ranks in comparison with his peers, it’s where he ranks on an absolute scale. Last year’s 89.7 is no doubt more extreme than he’s been, but I’m betting in those other years he hasn’t crossed left of 50. That would make him right of center, as much as you guys want to disavow him now.
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For example, here’s the 2009 results.
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If you think that a voting record that ranks 45th one year is objectively as conservative as one that ranks 1st another year (just the makeup of the Senate has changed), then the dean needs to confiscate your bar. That could explain one’s ranking changing by a few spots, maybe even 15 or 20. But climbing 44 spots isn’t explained by the political landscape changing around McCain. He’s tacked way to the right in the last few years. But some of us have long memories.
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That’s not what I’m saying at all.
The point is that being the 45th most conservative member of the Senate in and of itself doesn’t make you a political moderate, no matter how much you might want it to.
And as that link I posted showed, McCain didn’t go from 45 to 1 in a single year.
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If being ranked 45th out of 100 doesn’t make you moderate, then what is your definition of moderate? It doesn’t get much more middle of the road than the top of the bell curve.
And you’re correct. It didn’t take one year for McCain to go from the middle to the far right. It took him four. Of course, he wasn’t ranked in 2007 or 2008 because he missed votes for his presidential campaign. So, if you throw those missed years out, it took him two.
You should read past the headline from your CNN link earlier in the comments. You would see statements like:
“… a dramatic shift from the Arizona Republican’s voting record earlier in the decade.”
“According to the National Journal’s vote ratings, between 2002 to 2006 McCain bounced between the 44th- and 49th-most conservative member.”
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Context matters. Take a look at the link I provided. In ’09, even though he was ranked 21st, he still had a rating of over 84.
I didn’t call the man a conservative. I called him a righty. Do you really think he’s something other than that?
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If, by righty, you mean someone on the right half of the Senate, then sure. He’s a righty. By that same reasoning, Max Baucus was a righty in 2010.
But that’s not the common usage. When most of us use the term righty or lefty, we’re talking about the fringes of the party. Most people wouldn’t call Susan Collins or Olympia Snowe right wingers, even though they are more conservative than at least half their peers in the Senate. Neither would we call Jim Webb or Blanche Lincoln lefties.
That’s why most of us look at McCain’s career, the majority of which was spent in the middle of the Senate, and refrain from using the term righty to describe him.
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So what? Even if McCain were ranked as the least conservative member of the Republican Senate, it’s not as if that magically transforms him into a moderate.
It may make him less conservative than a teabagger like Demint but it does not make McCain into a moderate.
The moderate wing of the Republican Party has been purged and is on the verge of extinction. As far as I know, there are no moderates in the Republican Party except for one or two U.S. Senators from New England. And no moderates in the Republican House.
Other than the New England Republican Senators, the only moderate Republicans are the remaining Blue Dog Democrats who somehow managed to survive the last congressional election slaughter and the one in the White House.
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You’re using your own definition of moderate, which apparently excludes everyone outside your drum circle.
A moderate Republican in the White House. I don’t think you’re trying, but you certainly can hit the funny bone. You need to use your YouTube skills to append a rim shot to your political posts. 🙂
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And that was what I meant in my comment about “moderates”. The Republican Party is close to the center, and is only right because the Dims are so far left. I too appreciate McCain’s service, and his courage as a POW, but that doesn’t excuse some of the stances he has taken to win votes. And the 2008 campaign was the wimpiest I have ever seen, virtually comceding the Presidency to a total stooge/empty suit. Perhaps a better candidate would have lost anyway but he could have at least tried to confront the issues and exposed the lunacy of oh-bama/biden. So no, I will never forgive him for that, or the obvious political BS.
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No. It’s the reverse. When you are a Republican and go through the process of getting the GOP nomination for the presidency in 2008, you have to jettison everything remotely approaching moderation and become a hardshell conservative, just like McCain did.
If he was such a moderate, why pick as a running mate, Sarah, a precursor to the Tea Party conservatives? After all he was the one who picked her.
And Obama is further to the right than the first Bush President. I won’t label him as a full-blown conservative yet but he walks and talks just like the former two or three moderate Republicans. You guys think otherwise because you are so far to the right.
Mac, the only thing the Republican Party is close to the center of is the Tea Party, it’s far-right wing. And there is no lunacy on the part of Obama/Biden. Just weakness for failing and refusing to stand up and act like an opposition party to the Republican/Tea Party people. That’s their weakness, not mine.
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The “Moderates at best” trick The American Conservative Union:
“The 2010 ACU [The American Conservative Union] Ratings of Congress are determined on a scale of Zero to 100.
Republicans are Capitalized & Democrats are in Lowercase.
Defenders of LibertyPerfect 2010 ACU Rating of 100:
BARRASSO
BROWNBACK
CHAMBLISS
COBURN
CORNYN
CRAPO
DEMINT
HATCH
MCCAIN
RISCH
SESSIONS, Jeff
THUNE
http://www.conservative.org/congress-ratings/2010-acu-ratings-senate-standouts/#ixzz1JK0sGM8s
Defenders of Liberty wealth redistributionists Hatch, McCain grade out at 100% while Barton, the slacker in the House, only grades out at 96%
http://www.conservative.org/congress-ratings/
Barton would have had a perfect score but got a mandatory 4 point deduction because he did not apologize to BP enough
For Hatch, McCain and Barton, diametrically opposed double standards have never been a problem for them or for any Republican. They run the same bullshit plays over and over and will continue to do so until someone figures out how to stop them. Apparently, that someone is missing in action and cannot be found in the White House or in the Democratic congressional delegation
“Paul Ryan, the Republican Party’s latest entrant in the seemingly endless series of young, prickish, over-coiffed, anal-retentive deficit Robespierres they’ve sent to the political center stage in the last decade or so….
Never mind that each time the Republicans actually come into power, federal deficit spending explodes and these whippersnappers somehow never get around to touching Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid. The key is that for the many years before that moment of truth, before these buffoons actually get a chance to put their money where their lipless little mouths are, they will stomp their feet and scream about how entitlements are bringing us to the edge of apocalypse.”
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/tax-cuts-for-the-rich-on-the-backs-of-the-middle-class-or-paul-ryan-has-balls-20110407
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+1 for quoting Rolling Stone’s resident screechtard, Matt Taibbi, as something that might pass for legitimate political commentary.
+2 for stating that Republicans, who are 3 months into controlling 1/2 of 1/3 of the government, are some sort of unstoppable force capable of forcing Democrats into doing exactly what they want. I guess you don’t remember that 60-seat Democrat majority in the Senate from 2009-2010.
+3 for pretending that John McCain, who has been in Washington since 1983, never cast a vote until 2010. For those of us who can remember what happened back before 18 months ago, McCain represents a middle-of-the-road politician who is just as happy recommending tax cuts as he is writing legislation that excludes first amendment protections for political speech.
Nice comedy relief you provided there. Thanks.
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You are very, very welcome!
+1 It’s legit even though somewhat offensive but only to those with delicate sensibilities.
+2 We should all see dead people as a result of the watered-down legislation passed by the former 60 seat majority Democratic Senate. I know I do.
+3 Tell it to The American Conservative Union, not me. I didn’t write anything about McCain except to say that the ACU scored him as perfect. Don’t hang that one on me. I thought about joining the ACU but decided that I couldn’t pass the required brain-mapping stress pre-test
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My sensibilities have never been called delicate, but I only enjoy reading analysis or humor by grownups. If you enjoy reading blogs where the author simply calls other people ugly, stupid, jerks who are big old poo-poo-heads, then more power to you. Print it out and put it on your refrigerator with the other finger paintings. But you could at least spare the rest of us from it by not liberally quoting such sophomoric trash.
You can hardly blame Republicans for the Democrats refusing to pass legislation that was sufficiently radical for you. They passed several measures without a single R vote.
Finally, the ACU clearly measured one year. I agree that McCain was conservative during 2010. It takes one of your special brains to take one year and interpolate that out to a 27-year career. Nobody should do that. The ACU certainly didn’t. Neither did the National Journal.
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I can pretty much blame the Republicans for anything I want. God knows if anyone needs the blame, they do. Or is that a violation of the Patriot Act.
I can also blame the Democrats for being spineless. I know that’s not a violation of the Patriot Act.
I can also disagree with anyone who calls McCain a moderate. He’s not. Do I care if you disagree with me? No.
Do I care if you want to recount McCain’s conservatism ratings since Christ was a Midshipman? No.
Do I care if you didn’t notice or won’t acknowledge that McCain shitcanned all of his made-up Maverick lines of bullshit and any semblance of ‘moderation’ he had to get the ’08 nomination? Of course not. It’s your Republican Party, not mine.
But what I like most is when you write about art on a refrigerator and do nothing to refudiate any of the points that Taibbi writes about. That, my friend, almost makes me feel like a moderate.
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You are perfectly free to blame everybody for everything under the sun. It’s a free country. Given that you’re anonymous on the internet, you don’t even have to endure your friends and neighbors laughing at you. So congratulations.
If you want to look at the last 15 minutes of a man’s career and insist that the first several decades don’t count, you can do it.
If you want to hitch your ideological wagon to a man who believes that scatological insults are suitable political dialog, you can do it. But you won’t be taken seriously by most people, including me. I don’t mind rebutting your nonsensical claims. But I’m not going to stoop to rebutting second-hand nonsensical claims that you glean from idiots on other blogs.
This is a great country, Patriot Act notwithstanding. You have the freedom to believe the stupidest of ideologies. You have the freedom to be as insulting as you are capable of. You have the freedom to post walls of nonsensical text in the comments section of blogs. I certainly won’t stop you. I might point out the flaws in your logic. I might point out where your facts (if you post any) are wrong. But I won’t argue that you don’t have the right to be wrong.
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I would suggest you’re guilty of doing the opposite.
I don’t see how you can ignore his last two years (this year, too, for that matter) of voting.
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What makes it really rich is when people don’t like Taibbi but have no qualms whatsoever about hate television, hate radio and swiftboat attack ads. Those are all right-wing arsenal weapons. How dare anybody return fire? Obama and the Democrats aren’t. Why should anyone else? Because we are able.
Last summer, Ryan’s handlers handed him a weak budget
http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=3114
Because that budget proposal was so widely panned, his handlers came up with one even weaker
http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=3458
That proposal too will be widely panned by those on the left
http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2011/04/we-would-be-better-off-without-the-republican-party-watch-paul-ryan-edition.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+BradDelongsSemi-dailyJournal+%28Brad+DeLong%27s+Semi-Daily+Journal%29
by those trying to help those who need help
http://www.balloon-juice.com/2011/04/13/dance-for-us-tiny-tim-dance/
those in the middle even if they do throw in usual exculpatory language because they can’t take being criticized by the Conservatives, Republicans, and/or Tea Partiers
http://www2.timesdispatch.com/news/2010/feb/12/ed-samu12_20100211-182603-ar-9770/
and those on the Right such as Stockman and Sachs
All of which provides the sturm and drang for the sideshows because – as a matter of absolute fact, not nonsense and stupidity as you describe – when the Republicans get back the White House, they will explode the deficit again exactly as Taibbi describes.
Exactly. As. He. Describes.
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At the risk of extending this numbing debate, are referencing Jeffrey Sachs as a right-wing economist? Is that the Sachs you are referencing? If so, you just lost a lot of credibility. He is a classic Keynesian economist and is anything but a right-leaning Chicago School adherent.
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That article is the problem and the solution to our political problem in this country. The first part of that piece provides absolutely nothing to someone looking for an intellectual debate over the budget. Ironically, the writer couldn’t even take his own advice. Instead of throwing read meat out in his article to attract readers, he literally could have sliced it down the middle and used the bottom half. While many probably don’t agree with the latter half of the article atleast it provides some good points and facts. Until politicians and pundits stop acting like children and more like leaders then the problem will continue. MULTI PARTY POLITICS FOR AMERICA!
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SC, plenty of the quantitative analysis can be found elsewhere. I linked to Taibbi to demonstrate what I think is the standard gameplan for the Republican Party.
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I gotcha. I was commenting because I took the time to read the article and got a little pissed. It’s just annoying that someone like Taibbi accuses politicians of not having the balls to be honest. He has a platform like Rolling Stone magazine to express himself, but doesn’t have the balls to write something without petty cheap shots because he’s afraid he won’t get readers.
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Wait. Glendale is talking about putting public funds on the hook to “entice” and already-wealthy, private individual owner to buy their team and keep it in Glendale? With a stipulation that they continue paying him if he doesn’t make enough money with the venture? Not to mention the future public funds that new owner “requires” the city to put up to keep the team there once the contract expires.
That sounds more like feudalism to me. Maybe I’ve just lived in New Orleans to long.
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Exactly. A bunch of people hit the roof a couple years ago when it was suggested that we bail people out of their upside-down mortgages, because we’d have been giving people a pass for “living beyond their means.” But here comes some millionaire who can’t afford a hockey team by himself, and let’s not only help him live beyond his means by subsidizing the purchase, let’s keep propping him up with more public money if the deal turns out to be a boondoggle.
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These guys are no different from most in both parties. While Dubya was relieving the country of the billions left by Clinton’s admin, he was running again with the far right pulling the chain more taut. Before the Republican Convention, McCain’s family was savaged by the same chain holders and Dubya was told to go along if he wanted to run again….which he did. After the election, McCain was forced by the savagers to walk onstage and give Dubya a big fat forgiveness hug. That hurt so bad to see a guy who fought for his country and was imprisoned and tortured to again be tortured in this country in order to be the next Republican candidate.
No leaders left when it comes to taking a highly moral position . Why should their positions be any different regarding high school ball? Our clamoring for our college players to look more buff in order to keep up with the appearance of other players on other teams has an impact beginning at the high school level. Yet some of you will be the first to throw up your hands with indignation if drug testing for anabolic stearoids shows up in our players who seem suddenly transformed just for lifting more weights for a short period of time. Be careful of the results for what we wish for.
I have determined that the problem, dear Brutus, be us.
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Ahhhh….good ol’ political debate. Just what I read a football blog for!
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Amen.
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Allah Akbar.
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What the hell is going on here? Is this bizarro GTP?
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Once every 2 months the Senator feels the need to piss on his readers & display his libtard lunacy.
You’re a dumbass if you think with of those “politicos” are right-wing. Voting against Obama doesn’t make a politician right-wing. It makes them not-communist. RINO is the proper term btw.
Stick to football. No one here gives a rat’s ass about your liberal views.
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Nothing and I mean nothing pisses me off as much as the RINO Communistas do…
Burger anyone…anyone…?
http://instaputz.blogspot.com/2011/04/just-fewmoredays.html
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I loved Battlefield: Earth.
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“Stick to football. No one here gives a rat’s ass about your liberal views.”
I’d imagine your advice is well-taken, but who said you had to read this post and its comments or any part of the blog at all? Seems kind of “socialist” (as some folks like to too-loosely assert) to be telling others what to do with their own “business,” no?
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I’ve always had an inherent distrust for politicians of all stripes. Also can’t understand people who argue so vehemently about politics, which they have essentially no infuence over. Per McCain, it’s hard to have empathy for a person who doesn’t even know how many houses he owns. Arguing over politics is childish and foolish. But arguing over football is American as apple pie.
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