And while Bush is contemplating his legacy, Michelle Malkin has one of those odes to the common man that make you want to just laugh out loud:
Instead of awaiting the next stimulus check from the Borrow-Spend-Repeat-Panic politicians in Washington, Jen explains how the family has cut costs: “I learned how to make my own shampoo, toothpaste, soaps, cloth napkins, dish scrubbies, potholders, skirts (mend all clothes) and most meals from scratch. We heat our home exclusively with wood, and I am currently growing a winter garden. The spring garden will be in containers by the last week of December to prepare for spring planting. I do not see this as a downfall or a tragedy. For those worried about holiday spending: I spent only $100 for a family of six last Christmas, and most of that [on] underwear, socks and the meal.”
And she adamantly rejects the victim card: “This accident has been a blessing for my family. The pain that my husband has daily is not the blessing, but that he is alive and able to continue to watch his children grow into adulthood.
“It also has been wonderful to know that we live in a nation that affords us the opportunity to reinvent ourselves from suburbanites to a country-dwelling farm family. I am ashamed to see the American spirit that made our nation so great now turned into nothing.”
So shut up, you lucky duckies! This is all a blessing. If you were really lucky, you might have a solid disease, and then you could learn how to craft poultices out of vinegar, oatmeal, and aloe vera, and let the pain bring you closer to God.
So there you have it, folks. Republican rule has not been a disaster, but a blessing in disguise, and while it is admirable that this family has found a way, this is not a realistic path to the future for America.
We are sooo gonna party like it is 1899.
Incertus
How long could Malkin hold up in those conditions, do you think? Ten minutes? Five?
Scott
How long could Malkin hold up in those conditions, do you think? Ten minutes? Five?
Malkin would have Jess and the kids dead, deboned, salted, wrapped, and stuffed in the freezer inside of a half-hour…
John S.
Sounds like Palin has really left her mark on the wingnut psyche. We’re all destined to be wilderness-dwelling moose hunters living off the land like pioneers until the rapture comes. How glorious!
@ Incertus:
This has been the best Thanksgiving holiday weather we’ve had in a at least a decade, wouldn’t you agree?
Redhand
Under no circumstances can there be any direct relief to individual taxpayers and citizens!
What an asshole Malkin is. Seriously.
Ripley
Well, as long as she continues to shave her legs, it’s OK. But the wingnuts will be watching her very, very closely.
DrDave
I met a State Department diplomat yesterday who is on his way to his new posting at an embassy in Europe. I asked him if he is optimistic or pessimistic about the direction of the country and her job. He said that the last 8 years have been the most difficult of his career and that he is hopeful that their standing with foreign governments will improve once Obama takes office. (He qualified his remarks with, "I would not be having this conversation unsolicited but since you asked…")
Bush can’t leave soon enough.
gnomedad
I’m disappointed that this woman didn’t sell one of her children to raise money for the Bush library.
Comrade Vida Loca
Well, look, give her a little credit. At least she’s not blegging her readers for contributions to replace the gas grill that got blown away in the last hurricane that passed over her fortified bunker.
4tehlulz
>>This accident has been a blessing for my family.
Ten bucks says there’s a disability check and a settlement were not being told about. Also.
Athenae
There’s nothing wrong with conserving, living off the land, making your own stuff. Lots of people I know do that and it works for them. It’s when you turn your life into a Virtuous Lesson for others that it gets my back up. Do whatever you want, but don’t tell me that unless I do what you do I deserve what I get. Jesus.
A.
jon
I have no problem with those who live within their means, though I guess MM expects me to suggest they could take some welfare. But receiving welfare has always been optional, and in my life I used it very little considering how much I needed it at times. But I say it’s good that struggling people are adapting to struggle, even if things could be better.
Her attempts at making political points when she prints this letter fall very flat. Hippies and orthowingnuts have each lived off the land for many decades by now. And I think regular apolitical people who live off the land–I believe they’re sometimes called "farmers"–have only done so for about as long as civilization plus a few additional millennia.
That family probably has another home-schooling, free-range chicken farming, composting-toilet shitting, somewhat-off-grid family down the road from it. They probably surf the net to get access to digitized Whole Earth Catalogs, J. H. Kunstler’s peak oil info, and those constant emails from Barack Obama asking for more money. They’ve probably even traded stuff on freecycle and craigslist, and I hope that the homemade soap got the hippie cooties off.
Michael Drake
For related reasons, Malkin is a blessing to citizen journalism.
South of 1-10
So now I have farm, keep house and home school the kids all while wearing heels and pearls in order to be a God fearing Republican? That made my head hurt even more than it already does.
Tymannosourus
They’re right!
You know how it’s kinda spooky fun when the power goes out and we get to light a ton-a candles and tell stories… it’s just like that, except on a little bigger scale!
Too bad Palin didn’t get in, cuz’ we sure could use some of her homespun crafts advice right about now.
J.
Let them eat chocolate.
Comrade Jake
The whole business about Bush agonizing over his legacy is interesting to me. He is beyond pathetic at this point.
Bill H
But let’s see three hundred million peoples try to do that.
Still. Our forefathers built this nation in the face of disease, starvation, hostiles, weather, and wild animals. They crossed an ocean in what amounted to little more than rowboats and marched into an uncharted wilderness to search for places to make their homes. They died in large numbers and forged on.
And now here we are, seven full years after 9/11, a nation of cravens, cowering on our foxholes and screaming at our government to keep us safe from a threat of death that is smaller than the risk of getting hit by lightening. Standing in line, removing our outer clothing, opening our bags and taking off our shoes in airports.
I maybe cannot argue so much with that.
Tymannosourus
@Comrade Jake:
This shouldn’t be so surprising given his born-again tendencies. His administration is like the 8 year coke-party that were his Yale and draft-dodging years, and now that the fun is over, we are now at the convenient repentance stage of the process.
Comrade Rick Massimo
Because there are no other countries on earth where you could do that. Absolutely none. Odds that this woman has ever been out of this country?
Hey, that works both ways, right? I’m gonna reinvent myself from living in a shack and eating dirt to comfortable, wealthy suburbia. Shouldn’t be too hard, should it?
Zam
I can make my own rum. My high school chem class had that as a lab once.
cleek
someone needs to send Jen a copy of Cadillac Desert.
it’s hard to read that without coming away feeling that nobody who lives in the desert southwest can claim to be self-sufficient and free of govt handouts.
sparky
thanks for reading this crap so i don’t have to.
but someone in the oligarchy should get in touch with their mindless minion of misinformation–propaganda is supposed to help the oligarchy. self-sufficiency silliness isn’t going to help corporate america, michelle.
RSA
Pretty funny. Two things I liked:
So wingnuts knew Obama would become President three years before anyone else did. Amazing. And this:
Can anyone else find the exact quote? I can’t.
Comrade Rick Massimo
Well, RSA, the rugged individualist Malkin may not have had the time to get the quote exactly right, what with posing for the furs-and-makeup calendar and all.
Though she’s come close, no one can literally write an eyeroll and a tongue-stickout, so she has to use actual words sometimes. Being a moron, she gets most of them wrong.
Tim in SF
And When Things Get Really Bad… people should remember our history.
http://www.thisamericanlife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?sched=1269
This crap ain’t new. Neither are mindsets like Malkin’s.
Shameful state of affairs.
Tim H.
Tunch! Come with me if you want to live!
Nicole
What’s particularly hilarious in that editorial is when it says Jen and her family moved to New Mexico for its lower cost of living. Why is it cheap to live there? Because New Mexico gets almost twice as much in federal money as it pays in:
http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2004/09/red_states_feed.html
Self-sufficient my ass. She and her family are living off my elitist latte-loving tax dollars.
(and can someone explain to me how to rename links I post so I can call them something short and clever? I can’t figure out what all the little buttons above the comment box mean, other than B, I, and B-Quote. Because I’m short, but not clever.)
p.a.
Jeb next door is a portly fellow; we’ll send some of our starchy produce over there to keep him that way…just in case we need the protein…
Dennis - SGMM
Bush contemplates his legacy:
I want to be known as somebody whose Blues guitar mastery led to a series of sold out concerts and smash hits during the late Sixties and who sent hundreds of gorgeous female groupies into ecstasy with his twelve inch penis, and whose philanthropy later earned him a Nobel Peace Prize.
Dennis - SGMM
Your comment is awaiting moderation.
Wha?
CIRCVS MAXIMVS MMVIII
1. Type in what you want it to say
2. Highlight it
3. Click LINK
4. Type in the address (if you copied the address from a browser bar, make sure the "http://" only reads once, since it’s preprogrammed into the Link tab.
Submit your post, viola! You have a link saying what you wanted it to say.
(Note: if you try to do it in editing, you will have to type in the HTML yourself)
Comrade Stuck
We’re busy at the Funhouse whipping up a dandy poultice for Malkin to soak her fat wingnut head in. Just because we are filled with The Holiday spirit.
CIRCVS MAXIMVS MMVIII
Perhaps he is just now realizing that with all the idiocy of his presidency, his lectures won’t bring that high a price. It’s a good thing he’s got Bush dollars to get him through the tough times, unlike the rest of us.
CIRCVS MAXIMVS MMVIII
I need to take up learning Construction and build Michelle’s own personal internment camp. I hear she thinks they’re a nice place to live.
Person of Choler
Me not worry. Obama fix all mighty quick.
Libby
Sadly, No has a great take on this one with a tie-in to The Corner.
CIRCVS MAXIMVS MMVIII
They taught the under-aged how to make booze?
Nicole
Thanks, CIRCVS!
And now… which button do I click to get the blue @ when I want to respond to another poster by name?
Tymannosourus
@Nicole:
top right arrow near the date and time is the reply button, it does it automatic-like.
gnomedad
What the hell is "Jonah’s Shatnerfest"? This sounds very bad.
p.a.
My mental image of this comes from the great cartoons of the 40’s, 50’s and 60’s when a weak 5 watt bulb buzzes and snaps and barely lights over a character’s head.
Nylund
If everyone stops buying stuff then the stores that sell things go out of business. The companies that make those things go out of business. The truckers, port workers, and railway workers that ship the stuff go out of business. The people that sell the raw materials go out of business. The ad agencies, marketing companies, and design firms lose all their clients and they go out of business. Mom and pop stores go out of business. If no one buys software, software firms go out of business, they fire their programmers. They fire their accountants, secretaries, HR reps, etc.
All that leads to higher unemployment, which means more people with less money who buy less stuff which means you repeat the first paragraph only more so.
This goes on until you get to the point where you become self-reliant because there is no other way for you to get food or clothes because all the companies have been driven to bankruptcy.
As horrible as it is, we are an economy of consumption. If consumption stops, so does the economy.
The quickest and surest path to another great depression is for everyone to follow this lady’s lead and stop buying things.
And if you don’t believe me, here is Krugman saying the same thing (its basic econ 101) last month:
"individual virtue can be public vice, ….attempts by consumers to do the right thing by saving more can leave everyone worse off. The point is that if consumers cut their spending, and nothing else takes the place of that spending, the economy will slide into a recession, reducing everyone’s income.
In fact, consumers’ income may actually fall more than their spending, so that their attempt to save more backfires — a possibility known as the paradox of thrift. "
Paddy O'Shea
The shiftless bastard gets to stay alive and watch his children grow up? Right. Until they figure his useless ass out and dump him downtown to duke it out with the rest of the bums.
Since when is the emotional well being of out-of-work loafers an obligation of the government?
gex
I, for one, cannot wait until we are back in huts and caves. Progress and modernity are for liberal wussies.
CIRCVS MAXIMVS MMVIII
Fixt!
Zam
@CIRCVS MAXIMVS MMVIII:
Yes they did, I was 17 at the time. Probably didn’t help that our chem teacher was a guy that probably overused his knowledge of chemistry a bit back in the 60’s and 70’s.
Tymannosourus
But from what are they going to fashion their firearms to protect their rambler? Since, you know, the apocalypse is nigh and all, and Obama is gonna git yur guns!!
CIRCVS MAXIMVS MMVIII
Did he have a penchant for Mickey Mouse blotter paper? ::rolling on the floor::
Zam
CIRCVS MAXIMVS MMVIII
Left over bamboo sticks found in the dumpter behind Robb & Stucky stores that are in foreclosure. Then all they have to do is shape the arrows out of fishbones, find some poisonous substance, and voila! – a weapon!
Nicole
@Tymannosourus: Thank you! :)
Zifnab
"– And when my car broke down, I bought a horse. And then I patched the roof with straw and thatch that I’ve grown on my front lawn. And we’ve got a bee hive for wax to make our own candles. And stones in the walkway will be pried up to make crude axes and hammers.
Meanwhile, the next door neighbors will just cut back on eating out and put off buying a new water heater until the economy recovers in a few years. But not me. I’m digging a moat around the front porch while I teach the young’ns to scavenge for roots and berries. –"
Who the frak are these people and what country do they live in? The DOW drops 500 points and you think we just got tossed into a Mad Max spin-off. Summer and winter gardens? Reinventing yourself from suburbanite to farm family? Going John Galt, you say?
Am I the only one who thinks this smells of an epic amount of bullshit? It’s like a wingnut fever dream. Someone needs to swing by that woman’s house and check her counter tops cause this whole intrepid tale of personal salvation absolutely reeks.
CIRCVS MAXIMVS MMVIII
Something tells me he probably never got tenure.
El Cid
Republicans: We Built the Bridge to the 18th Century.
CIRCVS MAXIMVS MMVIII
After writing the above, it just occurred to me I might have trouble going through Airport Security next time I try.
CIRCVS MAXIMVS MMVIII
Fixt!
gnomedad
I really think there is a Stockholm Syndrome thing going on with some people in that the more they are screwed by the Republicans, the more loyal they become.
skylights
What Malkin really applauds is the idea that everyone could become country-dwellers. As opposed to the city, where all the libruls live.
CIRCVS MAXIMVS MMVIII
Well, there must be something terribly wrong with the economy, as I just found out that if I purchase a chocolate eclair at my local convenience store, it comes with no filling.
Silver Owl
Malkin is doing the Gramm dance. You’re all whiners. Of course everyone knows that one is not allowed to bitch about the mess the conservatives made. They can not handle it. If they heard the bitching they might find out just how messed up in the head they really are.
LOL! Malkin: Work hard and be poor! Expect for me.
Zam
I wonder if she realizes that if you don’t live in a very rural area there won’t be the same kind of resources to live this life, and if large numbers of people migrated to those areas those resources would dry up within a couple of years?
JPL
Judging by the title, it looks like JC’s been hitting the Dwarf Fortress pretty hard lately.
CIRCVS MAXIMVS MMVIII
She apparently isn’t thinking very clearly on that point, cuz if you think about it, if everyone does that, the land per capita rate is reduced significantly. Then, to accommodate the needs of the people, new roads will need to be built, and new infrastructure and amenities to serve those new populations. People will want to engage in enterprise which means new businesses springing up, a few decades of that and all you’ve got is new cities.
Beej
Actually, even John Galt wouldn’t touch this one. If you remember, Galt’s Gulch had all the modern conveniences, including electricity generated from the static electricity in the air. I also seem to remember something in the interminable radio speech about comparing the spires of New York with the "festering huts" along the Ganges and deciding which one was really more spiritual. Maybe Malkin needs a refresher course in wingnut logic. She seems to have slipped into DFHs 101.
cleek
she applauds any idea which can be seen as a way to antagonize or escape from liberals. if something annoys liberals, it is therefore good, and therefore conservative. vapid wingnut tribalism is her entire reason for existence.
Bill H
@Dennis – SGMM: I finally figured out on my comment it had to do with removing outer clothing. Which means this comment will also get moderated.
Sorry to put you to the effort John, but I couldn’t resist.
Edit: wow, no morderation. That’s confusing.
JenJen
So, this hard-workin’ farm woman can make soap and shampoo and prairie skirts like she’s living in PBS’ 18th Century House! She chops wood and makes family meals from scratch! Bully for her. Sounds like this would occupy a shitload of one’s time, of course.
In the meantime… who’s paying the mortgage on the family farm? How are they getting loans for seed, livestock feed, veterinary visits, what have you? Running a farm, even a small one, is an expensive pursuit. But somehow, a family of six with a hubby who is only kinda-employed and clearly physically unable to manage farm work and upkeep, is thriving?
Although SuperFarm Woman omitted it from her letter to Malkin, I’m willing to wager this family is on some kind of public assistance. How on earth can they afford health insurance for a family that large, for example? Dare I say it… perhaps the children are enrolled in SCHIP? I’m shocked Malkin hasn’t dispatched herself to inspect their countertops yet.
Not very Galt-y when one thinks about it.
Mr. Mises
Hmm.. if we had mini-plantations run by interned darkies Real American Freedom and Liberty might return?
Chris Johnson
One does not simply COMMENT into Mordor.
demimondian
Now with *music*!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GsfVw9xxoNY
Comrade grumpy realist
Methinks this is the wingnut/Galt equivalent to the letters to Penthouse.
Anyone interested in doing a LexisNexis search to see if that article was originally published in The Onion?
TheHatOnMyCat
John, just get together with Malkin and get it over with.
canuckistani
@Nicole:
I can’t wait to see how their farm does when they refuse that government subsidized water. They’ll be eating the homemade soap and candles.
Mike
ITYM 1929.
Mr. Mises
Once, Buchanan, Dobbs, Huckabee, Paul, Baldwin.. would have been considered the idealistic fringes (or the boundaries) of conservatism. Right or wrong, their ideologies usually have some kind of thought or rationality behind them.
But today O’Reilly, Malkin, Coulter, Limbaugh, Palin, Kristol.. are popular, mainstream conservatives. Loud, arrogant, fear mongering, idiotic bloviators who are almost always wrong at the end of the day – and who then never admit it.
Where the hell did all their supporters come from? Who the hell are these people? Social psychologists are gonna have a field day with this one.
ATinNM
Nicole @ 27
New Mexico receives a high Federal Money per capita for a number of reasons. Please allow me to explain.
We have a low population (2,000,000 roughly) with a larger percentage of 65+ (12.4%) on Social Security. 11.5% (est) of the entire job force is employed in Federal jobs: military, National Forest, National Parks, National Laboratories, & etc. We also have a high percentage of retired military. And there is the large percentage of the population living on reservations.
Another infusion of Federal monies comes from the co-payments given to local government organizations from the huge "tracts of land" owned by the Federal government in the form of national forests, parks, monuments, military bases, etc. as these lands have been removed from the tax rolls.
And, to face facts, New Mexico – what with one thing and another – is a poor state and about 4% of the population receives Welfare and other forms of Federal Income assistance.
The annoying thing about all this is very little money is spent on infrastructure projects such as a high-wattage electric transmission lines to send wind, solar, and geo-thermal generated electricity to market, that could jump start (heh) the NM economy, reduce oil and coal consumption (screw Wyoming! :-), and provide jobs here and in Ohio, which is starting to be a ‘hot bed’ of wind turbine manufacturing.
The upshot is, yes: New Mexico has a high rate of Fed Bucks per person. What that money goes to is immediate consumption, locking the state in a low-level of economic activity, and – to cut this short(ish) – keeping us there.
kommrade reproductive vigor
I’m sorry, I can’t play this game as it requires me to assume this frugal RealAmerican (who keeps up with Malkin’s blog on her steam powered computer), has any basis in fact.
srv
Wall Street has done God’s work.
But remember, if you give up your SUV, the terrorists have won and baby Jesus will cry.
KG
It’s funny, when I was in law school, I had a conversation with one of my classmates (she was a few years older, second career type), about the Hamilton-Jefferson debate of what kind of country we could/should be. I, being fairly libertarian in my leanings and a product of the suburbs, was firmly in the Hamilton camp. She, despite also clearly being a product of the suburbs, with a doctor for a husband, and carrying herself in the way of a blue blood type conservative, was all about a nation of yeomen farmers.
It’s funny, listening to so many on the right talk about what the Founders believed, without actually knowing how different many of them saw things. Malkin calls them God fearing men, but obviously has never heard of the Jeffersonian Bible, or knows that Hamilton and Franklin rarely went to church, or that Washington was asked to leave his church because he refused to kneel while praying. It’s cafeteria devotion to the Founders.
Kirk
Comrade Grumpy, probably not Onion. Jen is Jennifer of penofjen blog. She’s been blogging since late 2006. She’s … a solid member of the right side of the aisle. Her major drumbeats are on homeschooling and how bad the liberals are.
Jay Severin Has A Small Pen1s
Nice, Michelle. You cheered us into our self-destruction and now you tell us to revel in it.
Can someone please post her home address so that angry out-of-work people can visit her?
Litlebritdifrnt
There are so many parts of this story that are suspect that I am suprised that Malkin took it as read without a little checking.
a) Car accident Jan 1, 2005, chances are he was either hit by a drunk driver or was drunk himself. If hit by a drunk driver there was probably a settlement, possibly quite substantial. If he was working at the time (field officer = police?) there would also be a substantial workers comp settlement or possibly monthly checks + medical, he would also be entitled to social security disability. If he was the one that was drunk that would be a different story.
b) they moved from a "really nice house" and bought a cheap fixer upper in New Mexico, there are no details as to where they moved from but Jan 1, 2005 was long before the housing bubble "burst" in fact wasn’t it at its peak then? Chances are they made a healthy profit on that "nice house" that they sold and were able to pay cash for that "fixer upper"
c) as someone already said "living off the land" isn’t cheap, seeds cost money, plants cost money, livestock feed costs money, and do these people only eat seasonal veggies? I grow my own veggies in season but it is simply impossible to grow lettuce or peas (for instance) in NC in the summer, too damn hot, personally I would hate to have to go without lettuce from March to September.
I’m all for self sufficiency, I practice it as much as I can (heating with wood as much as we can, growing my own veggies, making meals from scratch, all my clothes come from thrift stores etc., etc.) But as another commentator said, if everyone did it the economy as it is would collapse. If the nation quits consuming in a consumer driven economy we are all screwed.
Bob In Pacifica
OT: On his yearlong Da Stupid Tour, Plaxico Burress shot himself in the leg last night.
Burress is one of the few people in the world who can make me feel sympathy for Tom Coughlin.
Wimp
What I really find interesting is that The Michelle is unitentionally promoting sustainability and conservation. Had she read that same thing on a lefty blog, she’d whip out her moonbat blowhorn.
Jamey the plumber -- an American hero
Paging Confederate Yank’em:
Svensker
Da Truf.
kommrade reproductive vigor
Then the fReichtards could blame the poor for the economic collapse!
Again!
Hob
@Zifnab: Like so many things do these days, this reminds me of the great ’50s science fiction satire The Space Merchants. The narrator is an advertising executive who lives in a horribly overcrowded, broken-down New York City where you can barely get fresh water. He has a great speech about how environmentalists are dumb because they don’t understand how progress always gets us through everything: (paraphrase) "When we ran out of meat, we invented soyburgers! When we ran out of oil, we invented pedicabs!"
srv
Now we know why you’ve been fattening him up.
p.a.
Oh dear god don’t start the ‘He’s not fat’/He is so’ thread again.
Joshua Norton
Hell, any third world country would offer the same "opportunity" to them.
Ah, the Republican American Dream. One part share cropper, one part Donner party.
Indylib
@CIRCVS MAXIMVS MMVIII: They taught the under-aged how to make booze?
Yep, we got to do that, too. Used fruit and tried to outdo each other on how high we could get the alcohol content.
The kicker – if we brought a note from our parents we could take the stuff home with us. I don’t think any of it ever made it out of the parking lot. It’s a miracle we didn’t all end up blind.
p.a.
Yep. I’m not an occult mind reader, but I think if I could commune with my deceased grandparents they’d say their dreams for future generations when they emigrated from Italy didn’t include us becoming subsistence farmers. Just a guess of course.
myiq2xu
I’d bet on Tunch at the showdown.
Tymannosourus
@p.a.:
But, they’d be happy that you had farmland "family values."
gil mann
It also has been wonderful to know that we live in a nation that affords Tunch the opportunity to reinvent himself from a cat to a beanbag chair.
kommrade reproductive vigor
Meanwhile, NRO is standing athwart history yelling "PLEA$E GIVE U$ MON¢¥!"
Heads, you give us money. Tails … you give us money anyway.
[Sadly, No!]
Nicole
Hey, ATinNM, that was interesting reading- thanks for posting. Screaming librul that I am, I acually have no issue with poorer states getting more back- it’s how I think things should work. What I get tired of is when (usually) conservative residents of these states yammering about how since they are self- sufficient they resent having to pay taxes for welfare moms, out-of-work shiftless bums (insert right- wing punching bag here), when in fact their state depends on other states’ higher incomes to keep functioning.
pseudonymous in nc
‘sfunny, but while Malkin focuses on someone taking inspiration from The Good Life (are you zoned for pigs in the back garden?) if she were to take one big step herself towards ‘reinvention’ — unplugging from the internets — she’d be a fully-blown village idiot.
ninerdave
Shouldn’t Malkin be checking out this family’s counter tops to make sure they are properly constructed by the family out of recycled waste products to make sure they are sufficiently self-reliant?
I mean that’s what a good citizen journalist would do.
Johnny Pez
I believe you’ll find that Malkin excretes a deadly toxin from venom sacs behind her fangs.
Mike
Why didn’t she take a job with the American Enterprise Institute, or take over as editor of Commentary? Or maybe get her father’s friends to set her up in business? That’s what the real Heroes of Capitalism do.
TheHatOnMyCat
test post redacted
markwilliams
Personally, having read this Malkin article, I feel closer to god already. Imposing the vow of poverty on the rest of America, it is clear George W. also has a close relationship with the divine. While I am chopping wood for fuel and making my own soap, it’s possible I could invent a sawdust based tooth paste. Should I become wealthy, I will gladly shower our social conservative leaders with my tax dollars once again in order to make myself poor and holy.
Amen
Joshua Norton
You can almost hear the theme from "The Waltons" playing in the background.
OriGuy
Except without the streetcars and railroads that have been torn down since then.
Tim Fuller
Seriously? She’s so out of her element here. Better for her to stick to demonizing minorities than trying to switch to this twisted rightwing rendition of a Horatio Alger story.
Enjoy.
South of 1-10
Off topic, but is anyone watching the Bayou Classic? Grambling’s band just spelled out Obama. Love the Battle of the Bands.
Andrew
I just read The Road. It strikes me that the "intellectual" leaders of the right will be eaten very quickly by the base after the apocalypse.
I think Bill Kristol would be a bit gamey, but Jonah Goldberg will feed a large family for weeks.
JenJen
@South of 1-10:
Dammit!! Sorry I missed that, South of I-10… was watching ESPN instead of NBC. Did NBC show it? Are we talking "Script Obama" in the sense of "Script Ohio" or what?
Delightful! Look forward to the YouTube’s!
Cassidy
Hey TZ. I’m still waiting for you to tell us when you’ve stood up and placed your life in danger for your convictions. That’s always one of your smug and condescending tactics, so I think it’s time you proved to us you aren’t the phony and pussy I think you are. Just one story. That’s all I ask. Just one tell of your bravery.
Personally I think your a psuedo-intellectual phony, just like goat boy. Put up or shut up.
Cassidy
If you prepare for the zombie apocalypse, you are prepared for enything.
Atanarjuat
Yeah, I know, same old story.
When a liberal reduces their consumption, this is seen as a GOOD thing and is lauded as a goal that can help balance human existence with Mother Earth.
When a conservative reduces their consumption, this is seen as a LAME stunt and is ridiculed instantly as a John Galt wingnut fantasy.
You libs are consistent, that’s for sure.
calipygian
Who knew that Malkin was such a big fan of Dmitriy Orlov, who wrote a whole, very fascinating book about the lessons that America could draw from the collapse of the Soviet Union. His conclusion was that your average ex-Soviet citizen was better off than a post-collapse American would be because at least Soviet citizens had free apartments, health care and trams.
Crusty Dem
If only the people of New Orleans were as resourceful as this New Mexican. You know what the Republicans say, when life gives you corpses, make soylent green.
In agreement with so many here, I would love to see the lengths Malkin would go to in discrediting this woman if she were an example being used by the Left. How many different government programs could they be on? CHIP, Social Security, Welfare, Food stamps, FHA loans, farm subsides, etc, and Malkin assumes she’s not taking any money from the government (not that she shouldn’t be)? Are they receiving workers comp or government money for her husband’s accident? Frankly, I hope so, we pay for taxes, insurance, and social security so families are not destroyed by accidents, but these are all things Malkin would decry if she were a Dem.
Dave A
Obviously, none of you understand the historical significance of this. If the Republicans are to return to their glory days when the Republican party was the "Party of Lincoln", we all need to live in the same conditions that existed in the 1860s.
MikeJ
Apparently Southern University spelled out "Obama" back on November 15th.
apocalipstick
Yes, by all means, let’s have everyone heat with wood. Between the deforestation and the pall of smoke, that would be an improvement, yes?
Idiots.
I actually know a guy like this, nice fellow, really works at it. Smart as hell. He was a master carpenter before he decided to get back to the land. Even he admits that you can’t totally unplug.
Genine
That headline had me laughing so hard, it took me a few minutes to actually read the post… though I had a pretty good idea what it was about.
Ha!
kommrade reproductive vigor
@Dave A: Slavery? The right to vote severely limited?
Yeah, I can see the fRighties wanting to get back to that.
Dennis - SGMM
And another straw man feels the mild irritation of Fast Runner’s harpoon.
South of 1-10
@MikeJ: Southern spelled Obama today too, along with JAN20.
Gravenstone
@Atanarjuat:
Hey fuckstain, you forgot your usual "Country First" shtick. You’re slipping, mikey.
Xecklothxayyquou Gilchrist
And we’d get it right this time, not like when Pol Pot tried it. ‘Cuz we’re AMERICANS!
Ken Lovell
I’m all for Americans becoming hippies and making their own soap and stuff.
The bow-and-arrow armed military will be less capable of interfering in things that don’t concern them.
lovethebomb
@Atanarjuat:
So much for the "what’s your favorite thanksgiving dish" make nice plastic faux evangelical syrup. If a dem were pres now, how many glorious tales of survivalism would be penned by the right to praise the blessing of poverty?
Tunch's Bones
John, I’ll have to eat the neighbors, because you’re not going to be that tasty after the frou-frou crap you’ve been eating since you went libural.
Cassidy
@ Ken
Yeah, we are so not doing that.
par4
And vacation like the Donner party.
Tunch's Bones
John, I’ll have to survive off the neighbors, since you won’t be that tastey after all the frou-frou foods you’ve been eating the last couple of years.
Cassidy
Also, we don’t interfere. We go where we are ordered, complete our mission, and come home. Don’t blame us for the failings of the people you vote for.
Atanarjuat
lovethebomb said:
One, I’m not an evangelical anything, and two, most of us here are either Americans or legal residents and have a lot of good things in common, which includes a day of giving thanks for all the good things in our lives. For just one day, despite how much some (most?) liberals resent their ideological opponents, we can hopefully set aside our differences and come together to share these values. If you’re not able to understand that, then I can’t help you. Sorry.
I don’t know, but then again, a lot of these "what if" scenarios are usually based on dumb stereotypes and two-dimensional characterizations of people you instinctively despise. Is that clear enough, or are you going to resent me for pointing out the obvious, too?
TheHatOnMyCat
What exactly does that mean, Cassidy? Putting your life in danger for your convictions? Can you give me an example?
Laura W
Really great post, John. I’m not linking over anywhere. Not in the mood tonight. Your words alone got me recalling my T-Day call home to Grama Emma, who was 15ish during The Last Great Depression. She said: "NOW is worse". Huh? Without asking her to justify that, I did ask her for her memories on the last Blessing in Disguise economic collapse.
*Her dad left them and her mom had 6 kids still at home (out of 8 or 9 total?) She has no idea how her mom got money.
*The only time they saw an orange was at Xmas.
*Grama and her sibs went to the market and climbed thru trash bins to get spoiled fruit because it was as close to fresh fruit as they could get.
*They NEVER ate meat. Her mom would boil oats and something else I can’t recall, and call it dinner. A lot. Gruelish, I guess.
This is a woman who voted absentee for Mittens in the primary (she couldn’t recall his name: "The handsome one"… because she "liked the way he looked.") God bless her. She’s an amazing woman, more of a mom to me than her daughter, my bio mom, and when I told her how happy I was with our new President, she said that she wished him a LOT of luck. I was so grateful she didn’t call him The Colored One, but she knows I was hot for him and she tries hard to be really PC, because she is 100% PC in her heart. Just a product of her generation, in those aspects.
(oh no…I just scrolled up to around #90 and see that there is a Fat Tunch secondary thread in progress. Guess I need to start at the top after all.)
Laura W
@gil mann:
Furiously adding to Top Ten Funniest Fat Cat Jokes at Tunch’s Expense (ongoing) list.
Glenn
Y does anyone listen to this hateful, stupid BITCH anymore?
Joe Max
I’m not totally sure, but I think it refers to a Star Trek film festival that Pantload threw as a fundraiser fro NRO.
myiq2xu
Either that or a party with a bunch of TJ hookers
Cassidy
@ the hat…cat
refer to the death penalty thread
TheHatOnMyCat
No, you brought the harangue here. Answer the question here.
What do you mean by "Putting your life in danger for your convictions?"
Be specific.
Cassidy
You can answer you own question. Enjoy.
bago
I was born poor in a trailer park in Alaska. I went to local farms for food. You know what I learned? Two things really. The first would be how to camp, a useful skill at burning man. The second thing was to not be poor. Seriously. If a marginal 3% change affects you, you aren’t wealthy, you’re just putting on airs.
Laura W
@South of 1-10: SO….was it everything you nightmared it would be?
myiq2xu
Isn’t that double-redundant?
kommrade reproductive vigor
The Doughy Pantyload told K-Lo that Obama was going to sell American virgins to Osama bin Laden and she shat in ‘er pants.
For $20 you can download the video of the whole thing including interviews with the HAZMAT clean up crew.
clone12
When a liberal exhorts people into eschewing material consumerism, he’s a tree-hugging hippie elitist from the People’s Republic of Berkeley trying to undermine the industrial progress of the US.
When a Michelle Malkin conservative does it, it’s an indication that a salt-of-the earth, rock-ribbed God-fearing family value survivalist is a superior human being than you.
Comrade Mary, Would-Be Minion Of Bad Horse
Things aren’t that bad in Toronto yet, but I know that there’s a lot of good eating on my Fergus. Not that John will ever show photographic evidence of that.
RS
My wife and I moved with the kids to northern Michigan 20 years ago, where we built the house we’re living in. We have a very large garden that requires work to prepare and maintain. We heat with wood- cutting, splitting, hauling, and stacking isn’t work for a guy on disability, and neither is climbing up onto a roof several times a year to clean a chimney. Unless large animals are obliging enough to commit suicide on the back porch, it’s also hard work removing them from their natural environment after they’ve been shot. If this ladies husband is participating in the rustic lifestyle she describes, he should be capable of doing the work he was doing before his accident.
Fulcanelli
@Dennis – SGMM: Dude, beat ‘ya to it… I’m just humble.
All that Palinized turkey yesterday seems to have sent Mr. Cole into "Full Metal Snark" mode. Beware!
I’m convinced that faux-outrage idiocy the likes of which is published by Malkin, Doughy Pantload, Kristol and the rest of the cognitively dissonant right wing really is their most lethal weapon. Sorta like that new microwave gun the Pentagon has that boils the fluid in your cells causing pain…
The rational, thinking minds stop dead in their tracks, paralyzed, mouths agape, struggling to comprehend the stupid, while they rig the system and loot the public kitty and then play the victim.
/+5
TheHatOnMyCat
This is from a discussion of a position against the death penalty taken by the Illinois State Bar Association, which went on to cite passages from a state supreme court decision:
It is the fundamental immorality of the death penalty in the face of the justice system’s infallibility which is at the core of modern day DP abolitionist argument.
I mention this because we need to understand the background in which Cassidy has taken to calling me a "pseduo-intellectual pussy" for advancing this argument.
When I challenged him to volunteer to lie down peacefully on the lethal injection table when his turn came to be the accidental victim of a flawed DP system, he went on his harangue and suggested that only he, and not I, had actually ever "put his life in danger for his beliefs," whatever that means …. a concept he has been unwilling to explain as demonstrated on this thread, see above. We don’t know for sure what Cassidy means by this odd assertion since he won’t explain it.
His final outburst so far falls from my assertion that by shrugging at the incorrect executions of innocent people, what Cassidy is doing is actually putting other peoples’ lives in danger for his beliefs, not quite the same thing as putting his own in danger, to my lights.
TheHatOnMyCat
Seriously guys, why don’t you fix your capricious and stupid moderation filter?
I don’t think it can be rocket science, inasmuch as the old worked fine all those years .. do you think? And could you take my previous post out of moderation please?
kay
The financial crisis is weirdly comforting to me. It means the rules I’ve spent my adult life following still apply.
I live in a small town. We all know pretty much what we all make, give or take.
At the height of this insanity, so, 2006, I was watching HUGE houses go up, complete with 80,000 dollars worth of brand new automobiles in the driveway, and knowing that, say, the manager of General Tire and a schoolteacher spouse can’t carry all that debt. We don’t generally have huge upticks in income, so it had to be debt.
There’s comfort in reality. The rules didn’t change. That it imploded makes sense. That it lasted as long as it did is the mystery.
TheHatOnMyCat
Tick tock.
Democrashield
@p.a.: Yeah, my grandfather left a life as a subsistence farmer in Italy sixty years ago to give his children a better life than he had. If he were alive today, he’d be devastated to see a lifetime of hard work gone to waste as our nation inches closer to the poverty he left behind.
@clone12: Heh, I was going to write something like that, but you said it better than I ever could have. If someone (who wasn’t a known conservative) had sent Malkin that letter a year or two ago, they would have been mocked endlessly for being a dirty hippie. Funny how that works.
Mako
Jen’s blog-
http://penofjen.blogspot.com/
Its a fun read; if by "fun" you mean "boring" and by "read" you mean "crap".
Dennis - SGMM
@Fulcanelli:
The passing years have slowed me on the draw. That, and the moderation filter.
GSD
How are we going to turn America into a capitalist utopia if these Jeremiah Johnson wannabes only spend $100.00 total on Christmas?
-GSD
South of 1-10
@LauraW: It really wasn’t too bad, I guess I have finally gotten over my high school insecurities. There is another shindig tonight, but last night was enough. The worst moment was actually when we were leaving, some guy walked up and stated he was hoping I would come and asking after my brother – I have no idea who this person was. He wasn’t in my class. The 72 beers probably didn’t help with my identification skills.
Dennis - SGMM
@kay:
I know what you mean. Same thing in my small town except that it started a year or so earlier. I kept wondering whether or not I was doing something wrong. Lived in the same home for sixteen years, never added a room or a pool, our cars are collectively 23 years old and we don’t have an RV, jet skis, Quadrunners, or a Harley. No one is safe, not us, not anyone. All I’ve done is save myself the trouble of having to put For Sale signs on a bunch of expensive toys.
JL
@GSD: Michelle didn’t think about that.. Odd but Kathleen Parker seems to be making sense now. Did you read her last column in the Washington Post where she compares Barack and Michelle to Ward and June Cleaver.
kommrade reproductive vigor
You know, I bet Tunch read this post over John’s shoulder and thought: "Oh yeah monkey boy? Guess whose skull is going to be my cat box when the excrement hits the air circulation device."
OriGuy
Hey, we can build iron smelters in our neighborhoods and make our own tools. We’ll call it "The Great Leap Forward"! It worked so well in China!
Dennis - SGMM
@OriGuy:
We can even go to the fields en masse like they did in Kampuchea. That also worked out really well.
bago
@myiq2xu:
You have no idea.
Brian J
Wow, that was as dumb in its entirety as the preview passage that John cited made it seem. And to think, I thought it couldn’t get any dumber after that Andrew Breibart column from a few days ago!
She’s entirely wrong when she says that people should become more self-reliant and implies that being less focused on material goods would be a positive for most. The problem is that she takes it and stretches it out until it’s become a truly inane and bizarre recommendation. If everyone did what this "Jen" lady did, we’d be reverting closer to a time when people traded chickens and eggs for work instead of cash. If we all spent so much less money each year, our economy would be drastically altered, and not necessarily in a good way, because it’s so heavily focused on consumption. It’d also make life needlessly complicated for a great number of people.
As for not waiting for a stimulus check, Malkin is absolutely right. We shouldn’t be waiting for a short-term check from the government. We should be waiting for infrastructure investment spending and other forms of government investment that can help our economy over the long term. Malkin’s favorite guy, President Bush, could easily make this happen if he wanted to. Instead, he’s focused on helping his cronies avoid legal troubles, get into positions of power, and ensure environmental protection is harder to do. What an asshole.
4tehlulz
@Dennis – SGMM: I bet will make a killing in those fields!
DougJ
Off topic, but this is too great not to share…singles ads from the atlasphere.com:
Ellid
One comment:
Jen of the Pen isn’t nearly as frugal as she boasts of being. Making your own soap, toothpaste, shampoo, salve, etc., is not nearly as cheap as it sounds. She’d like do better buying in bulk at the warehouse store.
kommrade reproductive vigor
You just know fucknut is talking about his mom.
ninerdave
@DougJ:
Um, because you are?
I liked these:
I wonder who this guy votes for?
HA!!!
TenguPhule
A perpetual burning effigy in Times Square sounds about right.
pseudonymous in nc
Look, there’s Andrew Bacevich’s old-school conservative line, which is that on the macro and micro level, the US can’t live off tomorrow’s money, next year’s money, and Money To Be Named Later. That means managed reduction of a military reach that includes all those supercarriers and foreign bases as much as it does using HELOCs as an extra income. (But that also means having incomes that rise with profits, and a Wall Street that doesn’t uptick on a redundancy announcement.)
I’m also reminded of where Bill Hicks wanted to tighten his belt.
LiberalTarian
Bull shit. MM would be embarrassed, if she had the brains.
srv
Let’s check the end of "The Limits of Power":
Bacevich makes me look like a goofy optimist.
Delia
I have a semi-insane distant relative who sounds somewhat like this. She lives with her husband and unmarried children in a small town south of Tucson in a house filled with supplies of canned food for the coming catastrophe. She makes everybody wash their hair with laundry detergent because shampoo is too expensive. She won’t let anyone use deodorant because it’s an unnecessary luxury. I guess they don’t get many visitors anymore.
But she can’t be Jen. This woman would never permit spending frivolous time and electricity writing to a blog, even a winger one.
leo
I ‘spose if things get really bad, I could always eat my hamster. So at least I’ve got that to look forward to.
Ellid
Y’know, I wonder how long Jen will stay out there on her little self-sufficient "farm" once the irrigation dries up and she can’t grow two crops anymore? Or when her six kids grow up and leave her with her disabled husband? Or when the air pollution gets bad enough that she’s forced to get solar panels, thus depriving her of the source of ash she needs to make her own soap and toothpaste?
magisterludi
DirtyFuckingHippies have been doing what Jen does now for decades.
When lefties "get back to the garden" it’s all eco-nazi. When wingnuts do it, it’s revelatory.
And wingnuts do seem to lag about thirty years behind the times on all issues. That’s why their favorite compilation music download (or would that be an 8-track?) is "Lost in the Eighties".
Faux News
I agree. Then again why does anyone keep responding the the Atana-what-its-name troll? Just ignore it and it will go away.
skrunt
May use this space to commend TenguPhule on a fabulous suggestion: an eternally burning Dubya effigy?
But please don’t limit it to Times Sq. Rendered in steel, vented statues of Bush should be fitted to flamestacks from coast to coast to coast (Fresh Kills to south LA to the refineries of south Los Angeles). What a noble and productive public works project!
phasearth
Does that mean she is ashamed of America?
Aaron
Green Acres is the place for me,
farm living is where I wantta be!
John PM
Over the summer I read a trilogy by S.M. Stirling about the fate of the world after all machines stop working for some mysterious reason. The world is essentially thrown back into the 12th Century, after a massive dying off of the world’s population. People struggle to eek out an existence in one of the few rudimentary societies that grow up after the disaster. They fight each other while also fighting off bands of thieves and cannibals. I no longer think of it as fiction but as a survival guide the rate things are going.
Mentis Fugit
@Xecklothxayyquou Gilchrist:
I’m thinking less Pol Pot and more McGillicuddy Serious, only more farcical.
ed
Jen’s dream farm is a few miles from White Sands National Monument, in the Tularosa Basin, lovingly described as ". . . desert scrub lands where creosote bush predominates. Since surface water was unable to sustain the cattle herds, the ranchers turned to ground water, and the easily reachable sweet water was mined out from under the basin, leaving only brackish water." (Wikipedia)
Have you been to the Tularosa Basin? You could not raise a fuss there with 10 gallons of whiskey and a kilo of PCP! Self-suffecient farm, my ass. TANF, food stamps, farm subsidies, & WIC (at the very least) keep that nightmare alive.
Interrobang
That poor stupid woman. She doesn’t realise she’s been had on several levels. She seems to be all about the whole conventional gender-role thing, so there’s dupe #1. She’s got six kids, which is dupe #2. And she’s decided to do the heavy-duty back-to-the-lander thing, when we already know Sparky ain’t doing 50% of the household chores (not only is he disabled, but she’s a genuine-article Tool of the Patriarchy and he’s the patriarch), which is dupe #3. She’s also doing a lot of that stuff in the least technologically-sophisticated, most labour-intensive way possible, which is dupe #4. There are better ways of doing the heavy-duty greenie stuff, which generally involve a liberal dose of appropriate technology, not just trying to recreate what people were doing in the 19th C.
Then again, even a lot of (male) leftie radicals think that women are the ultimate off-the-grid appliances, so I don’t particularly find all that surprising, just sort of pitiable.
Laura W
Now that has the makings for a fabulous online singles ad.
I do not cook, clean, iron, bake, cut hair, bear children, grow food, make candles (or soap), quilt, carve, knit, can, preserve, sew, compost, or shave my legs in winter. You will never confuse me with an off-the-grid-appliance. Nostalgic slackers need not apply.
Capelza Gradenko
Heh…I do a whole lot of what Michelle is extolling…except that I’ve been called a dirty fucking hippie for years for doing these things.
I had to post because the title is just amazing and I am stealing it.
HRA
This Jen person as been said is not saving money on some of her homemade things. Plenty of stores offer good bargains for those products.
There was a time when I had to tighten up on the spending. I did grow a vegetable garden. Besides providing fresh vegetables for the table, it became a place to get my excercise, be alone and it was relaxing. We had tomatoes on a table in the cellar covered with newspapers to ripen and lasting till late December.
I bought good quality clothing on sale for the family.
I cut coupons for the grocery store continuously. I did not buy what we would not use with them. Now I wont even look at coupons.
To this day I get asked how did I do it. You do what you have to do. The Michelle Malkins of this world did not need to tell me about it.
I guess I should tell we were a family of 8.
Chuck Butcher
Aw cripes, as a DFH I researched the hell out of getting out of the system, turns out, it ain’t happening. If you want to live on the streets, that’s about as close as you’re gonna get. If you’ve got land you’ve got taxes and if you’ve got income to pay those taxes you’ve got taxes and money can’t be printed in the basement so the getting of it involves being in the system. So I bit that one and just worked hard and tried to make the nickle into something fairly nice. Well, I picked the wrong way to make a nickle. Some people got rich off the housing market, what I did was do the work and that’s paying off real nice nice now with many thousands of dollars worth of tools collecting dust and doing piss ant repairs because that’s as far as people trust their dollars to go. The problem is it takes a hell of alot of those pissant deals to make a buck and alot of them isn’t what’s happening and the plethora of contractors who started up in the last couple years are in the same boat.
Having been through a couple construction crashes I didn’t go crazy but a nickle isn’t covering the dollar and my insurance and bonding companies give a damn if I make anything in month, they want their payment and it would make your hands shake to see those bills. I pay those companies a good piece of a poverty scale for the privilege of being in business and poor. If something doesn’t happen in the next month this show is gonna hit a wall real hard. I’ve got a couple things to sell but I’m going to take a horrid hit on them for a very short term rescue. There’s no point in trying to get work out of area because things are worse there.
So, in the spirit of Thanksgiving I’d like to say thankyou very fucking much BushCo. And no, conservative troll asswipes, I did worse under BushCo than Clinton and all this housing boom did was provide me with a bunch of competition in a slow down.
The Truffle
Is this Jen the Superfarmer? She’s in NM and the farm is called Double Nickel, per Stalkin’ Malkin. Folks, this sounds like a Christian fundie family who were planning to leave the godlessness of suburbia behind anyway.
And yes, I will wager they get public assistance, including Social Security disability and SCHIP.
MG
Jon Swift’s BB Posts of 2008 sent me this way!
Wow! I remember reading this somewhere and thinking-this has to be a joke! This has to be an Onion piece! But no, it’s not. With Malkin you just have to laugh. That’s all you can do!