I’m visiting a friend in Texas, where Michael Savage is on FM radio. I listened for about two minutes — heard birther stuff, stuff about Michelle Obama going sleeveless to the queen, stuff about Obama “militarizing his own police force”, promotion of Tea Parties…every crazy wingnut meme there is.
It was amazing.
TR
SavageWiener is like the haiku of wingnut radio — everything is distilled to the essence, with an economy of form.
PeopleAreNoDamnGood
They lost by ten million (okay, about 9.7) votes.
Too early to predict that they will lose by an even larger margin next time?
Texas is a lost land. Seriously, in terms of intellectual integrity, and moral values, it’s a third world country. Once you cross the NM border heading east, you are in a lost world until you get north or east of Tulsa.
Driving through there, I always expect to see brontosaurus grazing off in the distance.
The real ones, not the lath and plaster variety.
AnotherBruce
What’s amazing to me is what people like Savage can get away with saying. Rhetorical violence that leads to real violence.
But you know, the worst thing that could happen would be to bring back the fairness doctrine, because that would infringe on the wingnut’s sacred right to smear people.
Comrade Jake
It’s funny until you look at how many people tune into that asshat. Then you realize that the only surprising thing about Palin’s selection as VP is that we didn’t see something like her sooner. These folks are batshit insane.
Comrade Stuck
It’s not only Savage. You can scan the comments of about every prominent wingnut blog and be transported into a world of subspace and see what Alice sees through the Looking Glass.
Common Sense
Which part?
Every part of Texas isn’t completely awful. Each is miserable in its own special way. For instance, the oft mentioned oasis of Austin is, despite its charms, not without fault. It’s way too hot, with no breeze on most days. But the worst knock on Austin is the resident’s insufferable certainty of the superiority of anything Austin related. “No THIS coffee is from Austin. THIS halfass failed philosophy major making a rambling incoherent wordfuck of a movie is from Austin, so he’s better than the halfwit beatnik from Seattle.” Gah.
Wiley Wiggins is still a celebrity there.
Yup. not a whiff of moral value till you get to Louisiana and Mississippi. Texas is a lot more purple than you seem to think.
PeakVT
stuff about Obama “militarizing his own police force”
That’s a new one to me.
BTW: Google’s 3rd link for those keywords already leads back here. Scary.
PeopleAreNoDamnGood
@Common Sense:
Wow, you found two states more backward than Texas?
Good for you! I assume you work for the Texas Bureau of Tourism?
I think Texas’ main contribution to this country in my lifetime is in fostering discussion of whether states should be allowed to secede. States like …. um … Texas, for example.
Yes, please secede. Please. All we’d have to do is move our border fence and build some border crossing stations.
I don’t understand why there is no probation period for states. Once they prove unsuitable, why can’t we just let them go? I am pretty certain that Mexico would love to have you back.
Okay, I’m joking. About Mexico loving to have you back, I mean.
JWC
My DH and I spend the winter in south Texas, Corpus Christi area. I have met a lot of mostly nice, but I DO NOT ever discuss politics. We are out on the island, a nicer area, with a lot of white retired folk. This last winter was an eye-opener for me. Some “friends” just couldn’t stand it, and broke the “rule” about politics… making racial cracks and talked about someone shooting the president.
Since I hated GWB, but never talked bad about him, it upset me that they thought they could be rude about Obama in front of me. I have never hid the fact that I am a Democrat and that I consider myself a liberal.
I don’t understand how otherwise nice people can be that way, but then they listen to Rush Limbaugh and watch Fox.
Sad, and more than a little disturbing.
gnomedad
@AnotherBruce:
I’m opposed to bringing back the fairness doctrine, but I’m starting to fantasize about Obama doing all the things wingers accuse him of planning to do — but only for them. Take away their guns, impose sharia law, etc.
merl
i have to move Mississippi for a while. god help me.
Xanthippas
Well, at least you stuck up for Texas in general at the end of your anti-Austin rant. I’m from Dallas and I happen to think Austin really IS the coolest city in Texas.
Anyway, for you libs who’ve only ever heard of Texas in the context of the idiot Republicans we insist on sending to the White House and Capitol Hill, and I think this breakdown of Texas’ demographics and its political consequences is still a pretty good intro to what Texas is really like. At least politically.
Zandar
And yet these same Savage Nation idiots declared that Bush had to send troops to the Mexican border.
Common Sense
@PeopleAreNoDamnGood:
Hells no Mexico doesn’t want us back. They’d have to pay for their own citizens. Plus there’d be all these illegal foreigners invading their sovereign space. Might even start a revolution or something.
My point is that for the South, Texas is a beacon of moderninity. Seriously, it ain’t just LA and MS. There’s Alabama and Tennessee; Georgia and Florida.
No worries, though. From whatever insulated beacon you comment from I’m sure all those states just blend together based on the one car trip you took.
blogenfreude
@dougj – I know you only listened for two minutes, but was it anywhere close to Peak Wingnut?
PeopleAreNoDamnGood
@Common Sense:
In what way is Texas a beacon of modernity? Air conditioning?
How about its law? Its government? Its representation in congress? Its open, vocal racism?
How about its record as the state that excels in capital punishment?
Zombie Ronnie
I lived in Texas once. It’s actually not a bad place if you can get used to the heat and the mexicans.
Leelee for Obama
@Common Sense: Hey! I’m a transplanted New Yorker in FL and there are lots of very normal people here. Some of them were born here, they just never drank the water unfiltered. It makes a difference.
DonBoy
In Boston, Savage is on the same station that the Red Sox are usually on, in the early evening, so some number of people must hear him sort of accidentally on days there’s no game. The over/under on “how long before I hear words that make it clear that he wants me dead?” is 30 seconds.
Comrade Kevin
You went to Italy, then Texas? I would have done it in the opposite order, to put thoughts of Texas behind me more quickly.
asiangrrlMN
if my hatred dies
then how will i spend my life?
spew on, Savage, spew.
PeopleAreNoDamnGood
You are damned straight. That would pull down Mexico’s education level considerably.
LauraJ
Making a sweeping judgment like that makes you sound snobby, PANDG. Rubs me the wrong way, too, ’cause I live in Texas. There’s a diverse mix of people in here. Like all other states, rural areas (vast stretches in TX) tend to be populated by larger numbers of conservative voters; urban/suburban areas are more racially diverse and populated by growing numbers of Democratic voters.
Sure, Texas still manages to elect embarrassing idiots to government office, (please don’t hold “Governor Goodhair” against ALL of us), but the state is changing. I predict that Texas will be “purple” or “blue” in less than ten years. Texas has 4 large urban regions adding to its total number of Democratic voters: Houston/Galveston, Dallas/Ft Worth, Austin, and San Antonio.
What about those AZ murders?
Surprising to see no mention of the latest rightwing terror attack here. Over the weekend a leader within the minuteman, anti-immigration movement carried out an attack against a latino family (suspected drug dealers), killing the man and his 9 year old daughter. The wife was also shot, but she returned fire and called 911. Talking Points Memo, Crooks and Liars, and HuffPo have covered it, but it seems to have been lost in the Iranian coverage and Ensign business. Coverage has not been sustained, nor particularly focused. Or maybe people would rather not focus on this one because it’s old hat and this is a relatively normal occurance now. For fuck sake, a 9 year old girl is dead. And the perps included THE director of a DC based border watch org and the same org’s “operations director.” The woman who led the attack has made media appearances in the past and at one point participated in a PBS debate on immigration. Why isn’t anyone paying attention to this one? Lou Dobbs and Malkin should have to squirm for this, as should the minuteman movement in general. But it seems they’re getting a pass on this one, and for some strange reason it’s not getting nearly the press that the Tiller murder or Holocaust Museum murder received. Any thoughts?
PeopleAreNoDamnGood
There are lots of “very normal” people in hell, too.
Or so I have been informed.
Zifnab
You have truly arrived!
People seem to forget that before DeLay and his GOP cronies got their hands on the redistricting maps, Texas was a fairly purple state. The Governor before Bush – Anne Richards – was a god damn Saint by comparison. Comparable to a modern day Katherine Sebilius or Janet Napolitano.
Texas also has a handful of Congressmen that – due to some nasty redistricting – have been able to build fairly safe liberal voting records in near unassailable liberal districts. :-p
We ain’t Mississippi.
AnotherBruce
@gnomedad:
I guess that what I hate most about Weiner and Rush is that they have such a huge platform but they are too damn cowardly to allow a contradictory point of view within 100 miles of them. If someone does slip into their programs, they always have the mute button and the last word. And I do think that fairness is a worthy value. It’s just one that we don’t acknowledge the way we used to a few decades ago.
bloodstar
The Anti-christ as our local wingnut Neal Boortz calls him, (and when you have a wingnut calling you the “Antichrist” it’s gotta be bad) and I think if you took his rants on ‘gays’ and switched it out for ‘jew’ you’d not be able to tell him apart from the speeches coming out of germany in the 30’s
No clue if this Godwin’s the thread, but really, he pushes things to the point where bad laws restricting speech almost seem like the lesser of two evils.
kwAwk
You’ve got to admit Michael Savage is some of the funniest radio there is. You have to take it for what it is, though a minstrel show.
It is the worst possible traits of everything one could consider to be wingnut and exaggerated for mass consumption and entertainment.
C’mon the guy is a former botanist who worships his little dog, lives in San Francisco and like to tell stories. Its just that the wingnuts don’t seem to get the fact that they are being made fun of.
kwAwk
You’ve got to admit Michael Savage is some of the funniest radio there is. You have to take it for what it is, though a minstrel show.
It is the worst possible traits of everything one could consider to be wingnut and exaggerated for mass consumption and entertainment.
C’mon the guy is a former botanist who worships his little dog, lives in San Francisco and like to tell stories. Its just that the wingnuts don’t seem to get the fact that they are being made fun of.
Just Some Fuckhead
@kwAwk: Either way, he’s a weiner.
Calouste
@Xanthippas:
And that is different from being the tallest pigmy in which way?
ruemara
Sorry you experienced that, Doug. May I suggest brain bleach and plenty of good records? Just smack your hand if it reaches for that radio dial again.
@27 & 28
Saying it twice won’t make it true. The man is peddling hate for a buck and whether he truly believes the venom he spews or not, he’s responsible.
JR
Joseph Farrah can usually hit all those notes within a couple of sentences.
My new idea for birthers: know all those idiotic billboards WND is posting? We buy the domain name “righthereyouidiots.com,” post the certificate there, and put up billboards near the WND ones. Shouldn’t cost too much. Any takers?
shelley matheis
Michael Savage? This guy makes Glenn Beck look like a model of well-reasoned thought.
Little Dreamer
Sorry honey, the entire south is like that, pretty much.
joypog
screw y’all. Houston f’in rocks! This city is diverse than the Cali Bay Area – and I grew up in San Jose and went to Berkeley. Don’t have anything good to say about Austin or Dallas tho.
Michael Savage is just pure entertainment, its been a while since I’ve tuned in, but don’t take him too seriously and always remember that he wrote a book on mind-altering plants before his current incarnation.
smiley
@Common Sense:
You forgot South Carolina. There’s a bunch of crazy there.
As for Savageweiner, he really is worse than most. Certainly the worst with a national audience. Okay, maybe Stein is the worst. That much hate really is hard to listen to. What happens to such people to cause them to hate their fellow countrymen/women so much? (and I’m one of the psychology professors who hangs here – just not that type of psychology.)
Comrade Jake
@Little Dreamer:
Minus the dot of blue that is Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill, that is. Fairly damn progressive territory. Might have something to do with them having the second-highest concentration of PhDs in the country.
Anthony
“…stuff about Michelle Obama going sleeveless to the queen…”
I keep hearing a lot of this sort of thing from GOP commentators. Someone needs to point out to them that this is just nonsense. There is no controversy in the UK over Michelle Obama and the Queen. She went down a storm with the Queen and with the British public. Obama is the most popular president over here since Bush 41 and, to the extent that the British public think about that sort of thing, Michelle Obama is also personally very popular. It’s very odd reading these right wing nutbags (and I say this as a little bit of a right wing nutbag myself) suddenly getting into hysterics over alleged slights committed by an American president against foreign allies. Didn’t see much of that concern from those quarters in the years immediately preceding the last presidential election.
The Bermuda issue, that’s been a problem (and the administration has been lucky that a couple of other issues have pushed it off the front page). Michelle Obama’s arms? Not so much.
kdaug
Barbara Jordan. Ann Richards. Molly Ivans. Jim Hightower.
Hell, LBJ.
Don’t assume the jackass transplant from Kennebunkport, Maine (with his Andover/Yale “legacy” script from when his dad was head of the CIA) and his fake “ranch” in Crowford (with no livestock) represents Texas.
Can’t do much about the association, but I’d prefer to see a bit less stereotyping.
PeopleAreNoDamnGood
Exceptions that prove a rule.
Texas is a wasteland.
Cut it loose, and good riddance.
Montysano
@Common Sense:
And South Carolina, Virginia, Indiana, rural Wisconsin, Utah, Idaho….. etc, also. This meme is way past its expiration date. There are rednecks and wingnut assholes everywhere. There are also islands of sanity everywhere.
PeopleAreNoDamnGood
@Little Dreamer:
I know, that’s why I pointed my vector north and east of Tulsa. Away from the south.
:)
Origuy
Yeah, the queen was so offended by the effrontery of the swarthy colonist that she gave Michelle and the girls a private tour of Buckingham Palace when they were in London this month.
PeopleAreNoDamnGood
Islands of sanity don’t count in an electoral college system.
Texas is lost. If it wants to be seen as a locus of modernity, it has to start governing itself as an island of sanity instead of an island of narrow minded crazy nonsense.
Texas is rigidly anti-progressive in its political culture. That’s not me talking, that’s utexas.edu talking.
I am totally pro-progressive. I have no use for the Texas idea of what government should be.
Little Dreamer
@PeopleAreNoDamnGood:
Ummm, honey, east IS the south.
kdaug
@PeopleAreNoDamnGood
Heh. Love the pic at your link.
Don’t be scared, come out of the box. They never shovel snow in Texas!
PeopleAreNoDamnGood
Sorry, this link goes with my previous post. I would just put it in there as an edit, but you know, it’s WordPress and Ajax and FUCK IT that’s why.
steve s
Hussein Osama
Kenyan Mooslim Communist
Birth Certificate
PeopleAreNoDamnGood
@Little Dreamer:
Missouri, St. Louis, Illinois, then Ohio. Highway 44, love.
Little Dreamer
@kdaug:
TZ and I never shovel snow in Phoenix either.
Little Dreamer
@PeopleAreNoDamnGood:
That’s north. I’m talking about Tennessee, Kentucky, Arkansas.
Have you checked out some of the legislation coming out of Tennessee lately?
Little Dreamer
@steve s:
Mooslim? Is this an animal for Sarah Palin to hunt?
joypog
@peopleain’tdamngood
so what do you propose? California? Texas is not a pretty state, but good lord, my home state is a royal mess.
Montysano (All Hail Marx & Lennon)
@PeopleAreNoDamnGood:
I don’t choose where to live based on the electoral college.
common sense
East of Oklahoma is Arkansas. North is Kansas, whose sole beacon to reasonable centrism are their Texas born President and the guv, basically Richards minus the humor and humanism.
kdaug
@Little Dreamer:
Just for shits ‘n giggles – this would be the same AZ that put up Mr. McCain?
steve s
Speaking of radio wingnuts, it seems like just a week ago I put up this mock image of Sotomayor depicted as a cleaning lady. Well, Limbaugh just said it.
And I was trying to Spoof them!
Noah Brand
There are three important things to remember about Michael Savage:
1. He grew up as a short, unattractive male human named Michael Weiner. You can easily imagine what junior high school was like for him.
2. He is quite clearly suffering from untreated bipolar disorder. For every show where he’s a non-stop torrent of free-associative hate, there’s another one where he’s mumbling “It’s all deliberate. It’s all… I don’t know. I can’t even talk about these people any more. What do you want to talk about? Let’s… let’s take a call.”
3. He hates himself very, very much. He lays claim to Orthodox Judaism as his religious-right shibboleth, but he quite clearly hates Jews a great deal. You should hear his “comical evil Jew” voice… it’s like something out of the 1930s. He lives in San Francisco, but loudly lays claim to the idea that all urban residents are scum, and Californians are subhuman. Most of all, he hates homosexuals more than anything in the universe. As a young man, he was a VERY big Allen Ginsberg fan, and tried to wangle his way into Ginsberg’s inner circle, without success. Thing is, while Ginsberg sure liked men, his tastes emphatically did not run to dumpy little men named Weiner. Given what I’ve heard about Ginsberg’s interpersonal skills, this experience was probably more painful for Li’l Weiner than it needed to be. And now we have Michael Savage.
Little Dreamer
@kdaug:
Yeah, they’re still a bit backwards here, but hey, I can sport an Obama sticker on a car here without getting too much grief, which is more than I can say for where I moved here from.
PeopleAreNoDamnGood
@kdaug:
It’s the original 1942 Steig cartoon that made popular the line “People Are No Damn Good.”
PeopleAreNoDamnGood
@kdaug:
Johnny McPain, the crazy fucker who ran for president last year. And his chauffeur, Jon Kyl, the emptiest suit on Capitol Hill.
And my brother and sister went to high school with Cindy.
( makes gagging sounds )
PeopleAreNoDamnGood
@Little Dreamer:
No sweetie, that would be ilk.
Nylund
I moved to Dallas recently. The first time it really hit me that I was someplace different is when I confronted my roommate’s girlfriend about the huge messes she leaves around the house ( once I found a paper towel covered with melted cheese, cheese-side-down, inexplicably left on the coffee table). Her response to my request that she clean up her messes? “Do I look like a f#cking Mexican to you?”
That was the first in a long line of shockingly candid racist statements I’ve heard since moving here. In order to get by, I’ve learned that you just have to actively avoid any conversation about race, religion, politics, immigration, etc. and just pretend that should you ask people about such topics, their answers wouldn’t be totally insane. Unintentionally, almost everyone I’ve befriended since moving here has turned out to be a non-native Texan.
Being a liberal in Texas, outside of Austin, at times feels like being part of a secret society where you only, with due care, reveal your beliefs to people after a certain set of secret signals has been communicated with your conversation partner. At first, there is a desire to confront everyone and be open about your beliefs, but you quickly feel overwhelmed and outnumbered. From then on, its just a constant feeling of shame for not sticking up more for what you believe in when you hear ugliness spoken around you.
I did convince one lady to vote for Obama and she came home crying from the polls, utterly horrified that her actions might cause some unknown and great travesty for America. It was really quite odd.
I will also agree that Austin really is, by far, the best place in Texas and can hold its own with any of the great cities in America. Considering what surrounds them, I do not fault them for going a little over the top with Austin pride.
smiley
OT: I wonder what happened next.
BTW, that’s a pretty cool site. Photographers have been manipulating photographs ever since there was photography. Digital photography, however, just make it easier, especially colors and lighting. As an old film photog, it’s almost like cheating – well it is cheating because it’s almost impossible to tell what’s real and what’s not.
And then there’s this. Talk about wondering what happens next!
Little Dreamer
@PeopleAreNoDamnGood:
Ha! Good one.
Little Dreamer
@Nylund:
My mother (a Republican all her life) lived in Stephens county for several years before she died. She had culture shock when she moved there. She called it “a whole ‘nother country”.
kdaug
@Little Dreamer:
In Austin you’d have been hard pressed to find a McCain/Palin sticker. Dallas/Houston, yeah, maybe 50/50 split, but certainly trending purple.
An Obama sticker in the outlying cities though – watch your back, you’re likely to get your tires slit. But that seems to reflect my general impression of all southern states – the urban areas are always more progressive, the rural areas are where the troglodytes lie.
smiley
@Nylund: Eric Alterman, northereastern elitist, once proclaimed on his blog that Austin and Nashville were the only places in the south that deserved his presence. That’s when he made it clear, once and for all, that he’s an asshole. And I’m pretty sure his was the first blog (on MSNBC) that turned me onto blogs.
kdaug
@Nylund:
What the hell you doin’ up there? Come on down!
Seriously, though, I loathed Bush/Rove since the ’94 gubernatorial election in Texas where they ran a smear campaign against Ann Richards insinuating she was a lesbian. My opinion of him and his coterie progressed downward from there. Texas was solidly blue prior to that.
Check the map that Xanthippas posted at #12. It’s the rural areas that trend red. The urban centers are blue.
smiley
@smiley: BTW, That second link was supposed to be to the Praying Mantis pic down the page.
Emma
For those of you badmouthing Texas I have four words: Molly Ivins. Jim Hightower. Ann Richards.
PeopleAreNoDamnGood
@Emma:
That’s been asked, and answered, upthread.
Little Dreamer
@kdaug:
I understand Austin is completely different than the rest of Texas. I’ve never been there, I’ve only heard it is so. I am glad Austin is different. I wish more places in Texas were that way.
The two times I visited my mother in Stephens county, I was glad to get away from there. Very backwards people.
Little Dreamer
@Emma:
Governor Perry.
joypog
@Nylund:
see Dallas bites. Never liked the city any of the times I visited it.
joypog
@Little Dreamer:
Austin likes to think they are “weird” and progressive but you drive around a little and you find out its a bunch of engineers, frat boys and hipster band members. Meh.
Its a lot prettier landscape than H-town. That’s about it.
eric
who gets credit for Jerry Jones: Arkansas or Texas? that will settle the debate for me.
But seriously, if you think about it, it make sense that Texas and Arizona harbor anti-immigrant feelings (same for California). But what excuse to the skin heads in Idaho have? Plus, there is no “Austin,” Idaho.
So, with all its warts, I will take Texas over a whole bunch of other places.
eric
kdaug
@Little Dreamer:
I understand. But I think if you pick any little podunk city in any state you’re likely to find the racists and rednecks. Don’t have any idea where Stephens County is, but it ain’t one of the big ones.
It’s just that Texas is really big, with a (relatively) few urban centers per square mile.
dbrown
@What about those AZ murders?: The nine year old girl isn’t a WASP but mexican – that is why.
JFitz
My brother is a birther. I called him the other night to relay some good news about my family, and I was treated to a 45 minute Savage style rant. Sigh. Soon as you make a coherent argument in defense of progressive values, they change the subject. It’s like arguing with a pissed off 3 year-old. I’m now convinced that it will ever be thus. They’ve already had their shame and integrity surgically removed, so no matter what happens they’ll just ‘rant on’. It’s mind boggling.
Emma, thank you for that comment. I’m a southerner by birth, though I’ve been out west for many years, and I sometimes get tired of the lumping of southerners in the same group of malcontents and idiots that goes on in lots of comment threads. I understand it, but it gets depressing. We’re not all troglodytes.
Little Dreamer
@kdaug:
Stephens county is west of Fort Worth, in the hills (near Abilene).
Frank
I’ve had several training gigs in Texas and have always found the persons I dealt with to be, as my old doctor would have said, “within normal limits,” but politics was not part of my purview.
At the same time concomitantly, the antics of the Texas politicians and school board are beyond the fringe.
On the other topic, Michael Savage makes Linmbaugh look like an intellectual.
Mario Piperni
I still have no idea whether Savage truly believes the nonsense he spouts or whether he does it all for effect (and money).
That said, the end result is the spreading of hate and divisiveness across the airwaves. His claim that swine flu was brought into the country by illegal immigrants was typical of his venom.
Jim-Bob
Amanda Marcotte’s from Austin. So she has the dubious honor of being both wrong and insufferable.
Oh yeah, Savage: Unmarried fiftyish man with a goatee who lives with his mother–in San Francisco. Of COURSE he hates the ghai.
PeopleAreNoDamnGood
@What about those AZ murders?:
Unfortunately the anti-immigration “movement” has focussed its energies down here in AZ and in TX and also in CA to a large extent. I am ashamed of some of the crap going on along the border in my state.
This recent tragedy is just another in a series of rotten things that have happened along the border. I don’t think we have all the facts yet about this case. I’ll reserve further rants* until I know more about what happened.
*On this subject, I mean. Heh.
kdaug
@Frank:
No question there. The TX Board of Education is vying with Kansas’s to be the most reprobate bunch of fundamentalist knuckle-draggers in the US.
In 2003, Tom Delay engineered a mid-decade gerrymandering (not once a decade, as required by census law) that ensured the Christianists got a disproportionate seat at the table. The Dem’s fled to New Mexico to deny the Repubs a quorum to enact it, and Delay tried to enlist the feds to track them down. So much corruption it’s hard to track it all….
Link here
Montysano
@JFitz:
Alabama, where I live, can be a seriously screwed up place. It’s also a stunningly beautiful state, with some fine people. Then, if you go south, there’s the Montgomery/Selma/Marion/Demopolis corridor, the birthplace of the civil rights movement, and an area where the progressive movement is alive and well. It’s a wonderfully mixed bag, far more complex than the usual cheap stereotypes.
Violet
@PeopleAreNoDamnGood:
Wind power. Leading source of wind power in the country.
Sheesh, you’ve got a real hate on for Texas. There’s a lot more to it than driving through it on I-10, while holding your breath and hoping the Texas cooties don’t rub off on you.
When anyone hates anything as much as you seem to hate Texas, I always suspect they’re covering for something. Secretly wish you were a Texan, perchance?
Julie
Sure there is: Moscow, Sun Valley, and, to a lesser extent, Boise. Those cities certainly aren’t as big as Austin, but then Idaho has a significantly lower population overall. Boise is still mostly purple, but Blaine and Latah counties are bright blue. My parents live out in Eastern Idaho, which is still crazy conservative for the most part, but is also rapidly evolving as more and more people from elsewhere (particularly California) move there.
PeopleAreNoDamnGood
Rarely have I read anything around here so completely full of shit. Are you a spoof?
I made some rhetorical blasts at Texas, in the spirit of …. bashing Texas.
Big fucking deal. And just for the record, my state, county, and even hospital of birth, and most of my life story … well documented on these pages. The only thing I wish about my bio is that I didn’t have my grandmother’s arteries.
Wish I were a Texan? Uh, maybe if the other choice were Madagascar, yes. Give me Texas. Otherwise, love the barbecue, but that’s about it.
Texas needs to get over itself. I agree with the governor, it should think seriously about seceding. I don’t know of any non Texans who would mourn the loss.
Oh wait, those misguided Cowboy fans. Well, 28% of the country is crazy so there you go.
PeopleAreNoDamnGood
The earth is the source of wind. Not Texas. Texas is just in the way of the wind.
joypog
@PeopleAreNoDamnGood:
I hate the cowboys too.
Xanthippas
Pigmy and Texas don’t belong in the same sentence, and I don’t care what subject you’re talking about. Austin may not be NYC (or freakin’ Berlin) in terms of culture, but it’s a great place to visit and live. Anybody else who thinks otherwise can suck it.
Allow me to be blunt. People like you can go jump off a cliff. Anybody who says “Texas is lost” doesn’t know a damn thing about politics down here, or the great strides Democrats have made in the aughts. The Texas progressive blogging community is vital and effective, and light years ahead of the joke that is the conservative blogosphere down here, and that’s despite years of Republican dominance. Yes in Presidential elections Texas isn’t of much use to Democrats, but perhaps you’ve forgotten the unprecedented impact Texas had on the primary we held early last year? Or the 20,000 people that turned out to see Obama when he came to Dallas in advance of that primary? And this “if Texas wants to be seen” bs? Last time I checked, our state wasn’t on Democratic probation or anything. Progressive who want to write off a whole state that they’ve never once set foot in because they don’t like Tom DeLay and George W. Bush are ignoramuses.
Anyway, anybody who knows anything knows that Oklahoma is the REAL backwater (Native American tribes excluded.)
Xanthippas
It’s really not that bad. I spend a lot of time in East Texas right now, where your average wingnut ideas are casually bandied about, but I can have a conversation with my conservative co-workers. And I’ll be damned if not a month before the election, there was an Obama rally on the town square, with people whooping and hollering and honking as they drove by and generally have a great time and annoying the conservatives driving by.
We do have a secret society, a collection of bloggers known as the Texas Progressive Alliance. Only it’s not that secret and several of its members were prominently feature on panels at least year’s Netroots Nation.
PeopleAreNoDamnGood
Oh, really? So the utexas analysis I cited, all wrong?
Texas appears to be a backward, antiprogressive state by all accounts and simple observation.
Until it behaves otherwise, that’s what it shall be taken to be.
Your defense is the Texas progressive blogging community? That’s funny. Seriously, hilarious. Tell them to stop blogging and start turning the state into something that would at least look good in the 19th century.
Bloggers. I think we have reached a tipping point in nonsense. Texas has progressive bloggers.
I guess that makes Iran a progressive democracy.
El Tiburon
Hey, ask your friend if he knows a dude named Bob, red hair, about 5’8″.
PeopleAreNoDamnGood
Let me be blunt. I don’t want to write off Texas. I want to saw it off, and give it to Bolivia.
Or maybe the Rev. Moon. Call it Moonrovia.
Who needs this boil on the ass of America?
Xanthippas
You really have no idea what you’re talking about. I know it’s hard to believe that the experience of someone who lives and is politically involved down here might have more credibility than a statement on a website, but try it. Check the links in my comment above, and then maybe do a little Googling around, and then get back to me. I’ll understand if it takes you a minute to overcome the embarrassment of putting your foot in your mouth.
PeopleAreNoDamnGood
Now we’re getting somewhere.
Violet
@PeopleAreNoDamnGood:
Methinks you do protest too much. Seems to reinforce my earlier assessment.
@PeopleAreNoDamnGood:
Read more carefully. I did not say just wind. I said, “wind power.” The wind comes from the earth, the heavens, Mother Nature, God…take your pick. But harnessing it and turning it into usable power is done by people. Texas leads the nation in wind power.
El Cid
One time the Savage Wiener was screaming about how all these good Hollywood actors were ruining America by playing evil characters. (I don’t remember who it was.)
The point I knew it was just pure show was when the Savage Wiener screamed “I’ve had it with these Hollywood actors always playing somebody else!!! WHY DON’T THEY JUST PLAY THEMSELVES???!!!”
Ladies and Gentlemen, the Savage Wiener.
PeopleAreNoDamnGood
Jesus, you guys are funny. Okay, you win, Texas is a progressive and forward-leaning state, a model of the American future.
Americans everywhere should look to Texas as an example of what this country can become.
( rolls eyes )
Fuck me. Fuck me with a sharp stick. Really, please.
PeopleAreNoDamnGood
Because the entrepreneurs with the money to build wind turbines have bought a lot of locations in Texas.
Probably because the wind blows, and the land is cheap.
Great. That really makes Texas a progressive star.
What do you do with all that cheap electricity? Spark up the electric chair?
PeopleAreNoDamnGood
Methinks you couldn’t win an argument if your life depended on it.
Hint: Try picking a position that isn’t grounded in the progressive politics of Texas.
Oh Jesus, my sides hurt. Stop it now, please, I can’t breathe.
SiubhanDuinne
@ Anthony / 40
@ Origuy / 45
And you know what’s really funny? Michelle Obama didn’t wear sleeveless when she met the queen. She wore, and I quote, “a black-and-white calf-length tulle net dress by Isabel Toledo with a black wool cardigan, black shoes and pearls.”
Sleeveless, my elbow.
Violet
@PeopleAreNoDamnGood:
Wind powered electricity is used for anything that requires electricity. It’s renewable, has a low carbon footprint, and is among the green energy resources that progressives want us to use more frequently.
PeopleAreNoDamnGood
( music up )
announcer:
Texas.
Leading, by seceding.
( waving flag )
SiubhanDuinne
I have now joined the long list of people who post some variation of “whatdidisaythatthrewmeintomoderationTHIStime?!” I don’t get the rules.
anonevent
@PeopleAreNoDamnGood: Actually, Texas leads in wind power because a bunch of rich, conservative entrepreneurs realized they could make money off of it.
Come to Texas, I’m sure it can be arranged.
As for progressive, we’ve had two female governors, probably a third by the end of next year. I wish we taxed a bit more to pay for things, but at least as regressive taxes go, they’re not the shithole that is California.
anonevent
@PeopleAreNoDamnGood: And see, that just shows how little you know about Texas. Governor Goodhair is too chickenshit to actually try to secede. He knows he couldn’t afford to spike in the cost of hair care products were Texas to become its own country.
Chris Johnson
All I know is, I could listen to ZZ Top’s “Jesus Just Left Chicago” forever (off Tres Hombres, specifically).
Any accounting of Texas has to reckon with shit like that. For that matter, Stevie Ray Vaughan? Buddy Holly? Roy Orbison? Janis Joplin? Or if you’re a metalhead, Pantera and King’s X?
Didn’t take much googling, either. (I’m not from Texas at all)
Come ON. There’s something you can do with that Texas wind electricity :D
geg6
DougJ, you are a true man to listen to even two minutes of that cretin, Savage. Seriously. As for Texas, I can only say what I’ve observed in my four trips there. I found it very ugly. Just…I don’t know how to describe it, but it is sort of like FL for me. I find all the flatness and sameness completely depressing. I’d go mad living in that landscape. Dallas sucks ass in every way imaginable (horrible people, loud, and just too damn much BIG with little substance), Houston is also just ugly to me but the people were friendlier, Austin was okay but not as cool as I’d been led to believe. But San Antonio was nothing but lovely in every way (except all that horrifying flatness). Loved every minute of the week I spent there. Lovely people, lovely town. In all, I forgive Texas for the 99.9% of it I hated simply because it also has/had San Antonio, Molly Ivins, Barbara Jordan, and Ann Richard. They make the rest of that place worthwhile in my mind.
Mike
Xanthippas,
What part of DFW do you live in? I’m in Richardson.
When my dad, a 55-year-old straight-laced corporate attorney, wore a “Keep Austin Weird” t-shirt, it stopped being weird.
sapper
I moved to Houston last year. I work in the oil business with bunch 40-60 year old white guys. I stay out of political discussions at work. If I did, I’d be getting into 5-1 arguements on the very definition of words like “socialism”.
It’s not not that they talk bullshit that bothers me. It’s that they talk it with such confidence. It’s like foxnews has given them such special insight and everyone else in the US is blind and stupid.
The best part is that these guys work in regulation compliance. If it wasn’t for “big liberal government” making rules they wouldn’t have those nice cushy oil business jobs.
noncarborundum
OT:
This just in: committing adultery makes you a liberal.
OriGuy
@SiubhanDuinne: It’s the footwear word. Why? Who knows?
kdaug
@Mike:
Gah, Richardson. Born there, grew up in Plano (worst spot of commercialist hell on the face of the planet – Dallas X 9000).
Moved to Austin as soon as I could.
And, yes, I’ve lived in Billings, Seattle, and San Fran. Still think Austin’s cool.
Xanthippas
@Mike:
The mid-cities, to be semi-exact. But I’ve always considered myself a Dallasite more than anything else, if only because I’ve always lived in or around it.
kdaug
@Xanthippas:
HEB?
Tim in Wisconsin
@Violet:
BFD. Texas is the largest state in the contiguous US. If Kansas had the area of Texas, it would lead the nation in wind power.
I wouldn’t give a damn if Texas were as blue as Barney Frank’s backside. If they still had the same attitude that they’re God’s gift to America, they’d still be the worst state in the nation. Yes, we’ve heard that you were once your own nation. So was Vermont. Get over it.
Of course, one of my proudest moments in life was standing in Oklahoma and peeing on Texas.
Mike
Much as I’d love to blame Savage on Texas, he’s a Bay Area product; he learned his craft on our local wingnut station before going national.
Mike
sapper,
I face the same challenges as a liberal in Dallas. They’re so damn sure they know more than the “liberal elite,” when their counterargument is actually against some strawmanned version of uber-liberalism that didn’t even exist in 1967.
Mike
I hate Plano, but they’ve turned its small downtown area into a somewhat cool place. As far as commercialism goes, Frisco, north of Plano, is 10 x worse. Intersection of Preston/121, where Stonebriar Mall and 986 big-box stores are located, hurts my urbanist sensibilities more than any place on earth.
I love Austin, but the traffic has been crazy the last few times I’ve been down there. Spent any time in San Marcos? I’m doing my Ph.D. and could probably grab a faculty spot at Texas State. I’ve heard good things but never been.
kdaug
@Mike:
It’s been ~15 years since I’ve been in Plano (they had the brick streets on the east side “downtown” at the time), but if Frisco’s worse it must be a Neiman-Marcus-branded hell on earth.
My sister lives in San Marcos. It still has the 1940s houses, small town feel, center of town is built around the hills and river. Check it out – it’s escaped most of the “Best City to Live In” crap that’s choking Austin.
Violet
@Tim in Wisconsin:
That’s rather sad. So academic achievment, meeting professional goals, or personal milestones like getting married or having kids, let alone something like rescuing an animal from a shelter or volunteering for a charity all take a back seat to urinating. Okay…..
kdaug
@Tim in Wisconsin:
Hadn’t heard about that… was there a camera crew? A YouTube video maybe? Something?
Or was it just some jackass standing out in a field, thinking he knows where the border is?
Just wondering.
Common Sense
I’ll take the best food in America, the most beautiful women, and the best musicians on earth if it means I gotta listen to loony politicians every once in a while. There’s a reason Texans neutered their Governor’s power and only let the Leg meet for a few months every two years — we figured out long ago that the best government is that which governs least. Government is more of a circus sideshow than an actual functioning entity here. We keep the Texas Leg around for the laughs mainly.
Besides, while our Presidential record isn’t stellar at least we aren’t responsible for Nixon AND Reagan. I can think of other states with a slightly worse record on par compared to TX.
Common Sense
San Marcos is nice, but I would seek out living quarters in one of the Hill Coutnry towns nearby. New Braunfels is probably too expensive right now, but there are dozens of beautiful small towns along the rivers in C. Texas. I find San Marcos a little too crowded and overrun with frat/college kids myself. Plus the bars shut down at freaking midnight, which means house keg parties at all hours.
And Austin lost its soul when North Austin turned into Plano South.
pip
Savage spews from San Francisco, not Texas.
Doug, if you and your followers want to trash a purple state like Texas, you all from “blue” states like NY an Cali are doin’ it right :)
joypog
hehehe good stuff. Just gotta say that Houston has a much more fair and just housing market than California. This butt ugly, but at least you don’t have a bunch of progressives freaking out about the high density apartment complex being built next door — cause without zoning YOU HAVE NO SAY!
Its the damn NIMBY’s in SF and the Bay Area in general that have kept housing densities at an artificial low (cause of crappy arguments like the enviromental impact of having extra people in the city – like yeah, so where are all your service workers gonna live if you don’t let them live near you?) and keeping their home values high.
I lived in the progressive city of Berkeley for seven years and I can tell you that I think that Houston is much better run – and we don’t have the luxury of exporting all our poor folks to Oakland. And guess what, if you drive a little, you’ll eat better and cheaper here — the only food thing I miss out here is In-n-Out, whataburger doesn’t even come close.
kdaug
@Common Sense:
Wimberly’s nice if you don’t mind dodging the deer in the road.
pip
BJ has turned into Wonkette.
Wait, that’s history, I see.
Deer dodging is not a problem. Tick dodging is a whole ‘nother problem out in Wimberly.
Common Sense
@Chris Johnson:
Oh there are many more:
Willie Nelson
Townes Van Zandt
Joe Ely
Lead Belly
T-Bone Walker
Lyle Lovett
Chuck Butcher
Lemme see if I can put this gently, I’ll stay in Oregon, thanks anyhow. Yes that includes CA, NY, TX…most places actually.
My wife suggested moving to be nearer our son in FL, I said FL???? OK, then somewhere nearer, I asked where she thought I’d live that was nearer enough to leave here? Crickets
Indylib
@Montysano:
You’re damned right it’s a stereotype. Rural Wisconsin, and most of the rest of the state went for Obama in a big way. The progressive spirit is alive and well here in the Badger Boonies.
Chuck Butcher
@Indylib:
We couldn’t get Obama a win in my county, but pretty good and that was with no help since OR was going for him big anyhow.
valdemar
Michelle Obama’s absent sleeves are supposed to have offended the Queen? Well, over here in the Little Old UK, according to royal sources quoted in proper adult newspapers, the Queen and the First Lady have become good pals and have kept in touch since the G8 summit.
I can’t recall hearing that HM the Q liked any First Lady, ever, before this. Mrs Obama is breaking new ground.
kay
It’s spreading.
I had dinner last night with a formerly sane 80 year old Republican. I’ve known him my whole life.
He was fine until he switched from beer to whiskey, then he leaned in and revealed Obama’s vast conspiracy to impose fascism.
I didn’t have anything to say in response. I don’t know where to begin. The conspiracy is so big, there’s like 50-some players. I would have been there all night. Geithner, the Federal Reserve, Biden, Harry Reid, there were trains in it, there were windmills, GM, GE, Eric Holder, Bill Clinton, it just went on and on.
He’s gone mental sometime in the last year. I was listening to a crazy person. He lives in rural Michigan and listens to a steady stream of right wing radio and television, ever since his wife died. It drove him around the bend in 12 short months.
Dream On
Your Wingnut World…
http://gocomics.typepad.com/tomthedancingbugblog/2008/07/the-new-yorkers.html
cosanostradamus
.
Wonder what the li’l Weiner’ll have to say about conservatives selling their wives to their bosses and laundering the money through their children? The free market at work with family values?
Wonder if the rest of our media will pay as much attention to this as they did to Letterman?
.
Dream On
All relative. I remember Robert Duvall in “The Apostle” saying, “I’ve been to every American state – plus Mississippi”
And indeed, Michael Savage broadcasts from San Fran.
kay
@cosanostradamus:
I can’t help but be mildly amused that it looks like it’s tied to the housing market. They borrowed too much on a house and that’s when it fell apart.
It’s a sex scandal that’s tied to the economy, and living beyond your means, and easy credit, and high interest rates.
It’s a sex scandal that includes photos of a huge, senseless, over-the-top piece of real estate, and a burdensome note that no one in their right mind would take on, or issue.
joypog
@cosanostradamus:
Prostitution is in the Bible.
cosanostradamus
.
@kay:
Actually, the affair took place before the bubble burst. The “extortion,” if there was any might have been motivated by real estate problems. They have a million-dollar home, which, in Nevada, must be a freakin’ palace. It kinda puts one in mind of that Redford movie where he buys Demi Moore from Woody Harrelson for a million bucks in Vegas one night.
I can’t wait to see THIS movie! Or at least a picture of the lucky couple.
.@joypog:
I know prostitution is in the Bible, but so is God, and that kinda ruins it for me.
.
mike
The average asshole don’t give a shit about all the political horsehit that’s flying around. The progressives down here understand what’s going on and they just toughen up and give back what they get. Tuh hell with them.