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What's the smokey backroom?
Smokey Backroom ^

Posted on 08/18/2002 6:33:19 PM PDT by Itsfreewill

Jim posted a message to the moderators,

Mods: The Smokey Backroom is here. This forum is setup for those who want a little more heated debate. I'm recommending that we allow a little more rule bending here. We don't want the racist stuff or the propaganda, but we can allow the people to let their hair down a bit. Spitting, biting, hair pulling and cursing allowed as long as they don't go to extremes.
I'm thinking we can also move out of control flamewar threads to this forum rather than deleting them.

Forum internal name: backroom
Topic: heated.

Jim

Reported by Jim Robinson on 2002-08-15 13:48:35

***********************************************************************************

The Smokey Backroom is an enter at your own risk forum. We're going to relax the rules a bit here, as far as heated debate is concerned. This is where you can roll around in the mud and the blood and the beer, so to speak. And if someone gets a piece of his ear bitten off and lets out a curse word or two, he probably won't get banned (as long as he doesn't make a habit of going overboard).

In other words, some of the rules may be loosened up a bit in this forum. But not the rules against racism, or leftist propaganda, etc. That kind of stuff is still not welcome on FR. If a flamewar breaks out on FR, we may ask the flamers to take it to the backroom.

Or, in some instances, we may move entire threads here. This is an alternative to deleting them. We'll be playing it by ear for awhile and see how it is received.

This is not to say that we're going to welcome vicious or nasty attacks, libel or slander, but if some of you wish to get a bit heated and all of the participants involved have thick skins and are not going to cry about it, here's the place.

9 posted on 8/15/02 10:20 PM Eastern by Jim Robinson

*********************************************************************************

This thread is chiefly for those of us who can't behave ourselves on the threads having to do with the death of a law enforcement officer, escalating from a routine traffic stop into a high-speed chase and shoot-out with a man who chose to call himself a Constitutionalist. These threads were filled with people who chose this tragic event to air their views on everything from the Constitutionality of traffic stops to what could easily be construed as hinting at a police covering up the "real" or "true" facts of the actual event in question.

That's how I got here, but if you'd like to jump into the fray, feel free.


TOPICS: Heated Discussion
KEYWORDS:
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IS THERE SOMEONE FROM THE RELIGIOUS FORUM YOU WOULD LIKE TO SEND TO SMOKEY BACKROOM? >:)
1 posted on 08/18/2002 6:33:19 PM PDT by Itsfreewill
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To: Itsfreewill
Well originally there was a promise that there would be little monitoring of the religious forum..now that has been changed...so where to next?
2 posted on 08/18/2002 7:24:33 PM PDT by RnMomof7
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To: Itsfreewill
Seems to me we used to have an "Alley," Smokey backroom has a nice ring to it.

I like the idea.

3 posted on 08/18/2002 7:28:13 PM PDT by Great Dane
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To: Itsfreewill
Just got back from vacation and saw this new forum listing.

Hell..........How 'bout letting A+Bert Post here?

4 posted on 08/18/2002 8:16:15 PM PDT by DoctorMichael
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To: RnMomof7
So, this boot-on-the-neck stuff is happening on other threads, too? I thought maybe it was just the Westerfield trial threads. Pity they can't do what Jim said in the posts above.

5 posted on 08/19/2002 7:01:27 AM PDT by MizSterious
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To: Itsfreewill
Uhhhh ..... huh huh, heh huh huh huh .... fartknocker. Heh huhhuh huh eh huhhuh huh...
6 posted on 08/19/2002 9:37:54 PM PDT by Timesink
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To: Timesink
There's always at least one comedian in the crowd.

Way to go Beavis. ( I'm just jealous cause you did it first)
7 posted on 08/20/2002 12:22:50 AM PDT by UCANSEE2
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To: da_toolman
Okay you ugly son of a bitch....


I'm calling you out....
8 posted on 08/20/2002 11:15:33 AM PDT by phasma proeliator
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To: phasma proeliator

9 posted on 08/20/2002 12:28:22 PM PDT by phasma proeliator
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To: phasma proeliator
Skin that smokewagon and see what happens... I said throw down boy
10 posted on 08/20/2002 5:19:13 PM PDT by da_toolman
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To: Itsfreewill
I like the idea of creating a new forum for lively debate. It will almost be like yahoo clubs before they merged with groups.
11 posted on 08/20/2002 7:20:47 PM PDT by Commander8
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To: Commander8
I like the idea of creating a new forum for lively debate.

Lively debate will be allowed as long as it doesn't conflict with the duty admin moderator's agenda/whims.

12 posted on 08/20/2002 10:24:58 PM PDT by Scuttlebutt
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To: da_toolman
I'm your huckleberry


Beech
13 posted on 08/21/2002 10:29:40 AM PDT by phasma proeliator
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To: da_toolman
You still wearing that red shash?


WTF you say?

FTW
14 posted on 08/21/2002 11:55:44 AM PDT by phasma proeliator
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To: Itsfreewill
This got deep-sixed when I posted it. Maybe here I'll find out why.
--------

WEALTH AND DEMOCRACY - Kevin Phillips

Preface

The genesis of this book over the last decade is twofold. In part, it grew out of the great interest in my 1990 book The Politics of Rich and Poor, but other roots lay in my increasing turn to history, not least economic history, during the 1990s. It is hard to imagine how the excesses bred by that decade – the technology mania and bubble, the money culture, belief that economic cycles were over, policies of market extremism, corruption and a politics ruled by campaign contributions – could have developed so destructively if so much knowledge of the past had not slipped away in stock market and “new era” triumphalism.

As previous periods of excess crested or crashed, books emerged to flesh out the historical context of wealth and its wayward pursuit. Gustavus Myers published The History of the Great American Fortunes in 1909 just as the Gilded Age was ending under the whip of Theodore Roosevelt and the Progressive Movement.  Matthew Josephson published The Robber Barons in 1934 just when mid-depression Americans were blaming another generation of commercial and financial leaders for the speculative bubble and crash in 1929. This book was begun in 1999 for much the same purpose: to inform public understanding and reform aspirations with a sweep of history – wealth, democracy and their tensions – that goes back to 1776 and before. The stock market mania,  the technology bubble and Enron all have precedents aplenty.

Obviously, these points are easier to make in 2002 than in 1999. In 1999, with the stock indexes reaching for the moon and upscale consumer spending surges correlating with major Nasdaq rallies, history seemed on hold. In January, 2000, with the first stages of the crash just weeks away, the movement to draft Ralph Nader to run for president – not, admittedly, a mainstream crowd – held a rally at Washington’s Lincoln Memorial at which they read from a letter of November 21st, 1864 allegedly written by Abraham Lincoln. Looking beyond the war, he said “I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. As a result of the war, corporations have been enthroned, and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed. I feel at this moment more anxiety for the safety of my country than ever before, even in the midst of war.” Amid the excitement of the Nasdaq, hardly anyone paid attention.

Many scholars doubt the genuineness of this letter, and it is a very blunt statement of sentiments that   our sixteenth president usually expressed with more restraint. My point, though, is that such viewpoints – which now get one read out of the Republican Party – have a surprising and distinguished history within it. When Theodore Roosevelt was in the White House, his attacks on corporations far exceeded Lincoln’s, and at one point, TR specifically repeated and endorsed Lincoln’s oft-quoted remarks about labor being superior to and more deserving of support than capital.

Some of this GOP skepticism lingered on in the years of Eisenhower and Nixon. Back in 1990, when I published The Politics of Rich and Poor, some of its success was owed to the two lead endorsements on the back of the book jacket. One was from New York Governor Mario Cuomo, then widely expected to be the 1992 Democratic presidential nominee. The second was from former President Richard Nixon, who gave it with full knowledge that the book was critical of the Reagan and Bush administrations for favoring the rich.  Nixon’s streetcar worker father had left Ohio for California after getting a name as labor agitator, and he thereafter interrupted his McKinley Republicanism to support third-party progressives like Theodore Roosevelt in 1912 and Robert LaFollette in 1924. Richard Nixon himself as president supported national health insurance, income-maintenance for the poor  and higher taxation of unearned than earned income. The 1972 Republican platform actually criticized multinational corporations for building plants overseas to take advantage of cheap labor.

Because my own background is Republican, and I now know much more of GOP   history on these subjects, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that the Republican economic polices and biases of the 1990s and early 2000s are a narrow-gauge betrayal of the legacy of the two greatest Republican presidents, Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt. But that is a debate I will leave to the elections.

Kevin Phillips
West Goshen, Connecticut
January, 2002

 

15 posted on 08/22/2002 2:31:00 PM PDT by ex-snook
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To: ex-snook
This got deep-sixed when I posted it. Maybe here I'll find out why.

Bad font?
16 posted on 08/23/2002 5:09:35 PM PDT by sasquatch
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To: Itsfreewill; Jim Robinson
Great idea to have this smokey backroom ... good balance between censoring and letting the whole site go to "Pot" :-) ...

But I was on a thread just now that got pulled totally, debating on the "peaceful protest" email that was posted that claimed police pepper-sprayed his kids at a protest in Portland ... frankly, it should have stayed here in backroom, IMHO, was some useful debate, and I was trying to explain to others what was really going on, dissecting this leftist-biased version of events and understanding. It was getting flamey in there, but that is what 'smokey backroom' would be about, right?

IMHO, if a thread has some volume/debate dont kill it unless it totally degenerates and/or has obsceneties etc. let it stay in backroom and die out of natural causes ... I feel bad that my 'good points' are now POOF and the anti-cop viewpoint while i disagree with is worth debating ( I was defending the cops, not the rioters/protesters and their dumb idea of bringing their kids.)

Again, JMHO.

17 posted on 09/16/2002 2:21:38 PM PDT by WOSG
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To: WOSG
Pulled. We are not going to use FR for promoting anarchy,
Address:http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/backroom/751781/posts
18 posted on 09/16/2002 2:33:08 PM PDT by tpaine
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To: tpaine; WOSG
Perfect examples of why FR has outlived it's usefullness. I don't know who the management is trying to impress, but they do so at the risk of becoming obsolete. Instead of banning or suspending the frequent posting rules violators, they pull threads and silence healthy debates.

I guess the rules violators contribute too much toward operating expenses, so they are granted free reign. I would just like JR to admit that someday. That WOULD be worth the price of a subscription.

19 posted on 09/16/2002 5:17:19 PM PDT by Critter
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To: Critter
"I guess the rules violators contribute too much toward operating expenses, so they are granted free reign. I would just like JR to admit that someday. That WOULD be worth the price of a subscription."

Astute observation.
It baffles me what he hopes to accomplish by the outright pulling of threads. - That same "anarchy" dispute has continued on another thread, and is still going hot & heavy. -- With no more anarchy being advocated than when it was originally pulled.
20 posted on 09/16/2002 5:36:48 PM PDT by tpaine
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