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[…] we’re on the subject of right-wing inconsistency, a Balloon Juice commenter summed up the conservative view on immigration quite well: Conservatives want an economic system whereby no […]
Michael
WOLVERINES!!!!!
Davebo
You had to love the look on their faces when the young man explained that Saint Reagan had appointed the first ever federal “Czar”.
For a millisecond they seemed to second guess their belief systems. Then of course it was Onward Through the Fog!
Michael
PS – Can I please run a Death Panel?
Lupin
I think everyone in America should be made to wear a toga and we should reintroduce worship of the Greco-Roman gods. By the zestful zither of Zeus!
It’d be like an old STAR TREK episode, Romans with machine guns or something.
Because if we’re going to live in a country of lunatics, I’d like it to be cool.
General Winfield Stuck
We need more brain bleach, lots more brain bleach. Watch out Anglo Saxons, the darky hordes are goona waterboard yer Honky asssessssess.
BTW. I thought Nancy Pelosi was quite fetching in that Gestapo getup. Wolverines mutherfookers!!!! Ride the White Pony.
Christ, I;m gonna lose my frackin’ mind if this keeps up.
Leelee for Obama
@Lupin: Yeah, too bad Belushi is gone. That guy knew how to throw a toga party, you betcha!
R-Jud
@Lupin:
You can’t see me, but I’m putting that line in my shirt pocket. You know, to save it for later.
Just Some Fuckhead
White people suck.
drillfork
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Yep. We’re the worst…
JHF
I just don’t get it. Never have. Growing up in America, the government was the only thing I learned to trust, the only thing standing between me and the racists, crooks, and bullies. Medicare, Head Start, anti-pollution laws, parks & wilderness areas, etc. etc. Not to mention saving our asses during a disaster (pre-Katrina, of course).
Okay, so the people in office now ARE the racists, crooks, and bullies. That does make for problems. But the machinery they’re driving is at least neutral, if not inherently benevolent. It all depends on who’s steering.
I just don’t get it. Do these people want to put out their own fires, build their own roads, deliver their own mail, or fight their own stupid little wars? What do they do if their supermarkets sell them poisoned meat, run home and come back with a noose? Madness. And the administration scurries like a bunny to fetch them cool damp hankies for their fevered brows.
Lupin
@Leelee.
Senator Bluto Blutarski, at the end of the movie, if memory serves.
Who’d have thought ANIMAL HOUSE could be so predictive?
By the boastful beard of Bacchus!
Da Bomb
@General Winfield Stuck: Didn’t you know that all of the meetings between melanin-infused un-americans(Kenyans and others) always involve different ways of how we could put honkeys on a cracka?
Prepare for 2012 bitches, because when the revolution comes I am going to take my half-white spouse down first just to prove I am not fuckin’ around. Viva la blackness!
tasteslikechicken
Look at the size of these people’s personal spaces. No wonder there is confusion over crowd estimates! They have 20,000 people taking up the space of 1,000,000 veteran (i.e. anyone who was awake during the last administration) demonstrators.
Also, I love the dipers (sic) poster at 3:20.
asiangrrlMN
Nope. Not gonna do it. I am in mah happy place, and I don’t need this shit to mess that up. I really want to cut off all government aid to these people. Seriously.
R-Jud
@Da Bomb:
What kind of cracker are we talking about here? I’m partial to the Cheez-It, personally.
Martin
No, they want a white president. They want their privilege, their status, their permanent moral majority. They don’t want to share their healthcare, their schools and libraries, their ability to speak for everyone else – and if they can’t have their privileges, nobody can.
They LOVE big government. They love their roads and mail and Medicare (remember who passed Part D?). They just don’t want to share any of those things and they sure as fuck don’t want a black man handing it to them.
Cat Lady
That needed a soundtrack. Like banjo music.
de stijl
John Galt would be decidedly nonplussed with his would-be minions.
I don’t think one of these schmekels could run a Kinko’s.
Well, maybe that military-type guy, but all the staff would think he was a monster dick.
Da Bomb
@R-Jud: I was thinking more saltine. Cheez-Its has too much color for some of those morans.
El Cid
By “limited goverment” they don’t mean a government restricted in scope, but one restricted inmembership, i.e. only neo-Confederate war-mongering tax-cutting whites allowed, please.
None of your darkie Kenyonesian Muslim Ayers communists please or your Nancy Pelosi Syria scarf-wearing paganite babykillers, neither.
The Grand Panjandrum
Ayn Rand acolytes and Christianists all together in one place pleases me to no end. Whose god/goddess is stronger? That is the question.
gypsy howell
Do these people want to put out their own fires, build their own roads, deliver their own mail, or fight their own stupid little wars? What do they do if their supermarkets sell them poisoned meat, run home and come back with a noose? Madness.
Many of these people just can not put 2 and 2 together to come up with an answer. The dots do not connect in their universe. Railing against government while you extol the military? Helloooo?
I love the lady who says she’ll drop SS & Medicare just as soon as the government gets out of her life. Whaaaa…???
Glen Beck and the churches have these people so bamboozled that they just can’t think straight.
thomas Levenson
@de stijl: I believe the term of art is “unplussed.”
thomas Levenson
@JHF: I believe that in particular they want their own e-coli in their meat. Or, as this fine piece of documentary footage revealed…vacation paradises unbesmirched by government contamination, (private contamination….booyah!): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7QDv4sYwjO0
freelancer
@Cat Lady:
More like Yakety Sacks
eyepaddle
@Lupin
“…It’d be like an old STAR TREK episode, Romans with machine guns or something.
Because if we’re going to live in a country of lunatics, I’d like it to be cool.”
Stop the internets, we have a winner. :)
Punchy
If you’re not part of the solution, you’re the precipitate.
Surreal American
Ironically if any of those people in the above clip got near the levers of federal governmental power, I would want that power reduced to the effectiveness of a lemonade stand.
pharniel
great now i’m humming yakkity sax while pondering whether these demonstrators are more forward looking and risk aware than our dev team.
right now the odds are on the protestors, and that makes me sad.
but the yakkity sax is making me happy.
so there is balance in the world.
feebog
I liked the guy with the Tshirt declaring 9/11 was an inside job. I guess he forgot who was Prezdint at the time eh?
Deborah
@Michael: Can I please run a Death Panel?
I think you should start with the Glenn Beck internment camp. It’s got to be awfully embarrassing for the poor man that they can’t even bother to put him in one–like a journalist from the 70s who didn’t make Nixon’s enemy list.
@General Winfield Stuck: I;m gonna lose my frackin’ mind if this keeps up.
That’s their fiendish plan in a nutshell. What else could explain the rapid twists, e.g. “This week, we’re mad about Czars! Commies had czars!”
Original Lee
OT but related.
(I seem to be doing this a lot this week.)
EEH
Slightly OT here- this guy painted a portrait of Glenn Beck using bull crap. I can’t think of a more appropriate medium than that.
http://mmike.com/Michael_Murphy_Artist_Portfolio.html
wasabi gasp
I miss blowing tubes to fresh episodes of The X-Files.
de stijl
If you’re not part of the solution, you’re the precipitate.
What if I sublimate?
Leelee for Obama
I have a question concerning undocumented workers, and their families. I read an article about Cong. Gutierrez being pissed off at Obama and Dems about the cave on undocumented people being allowed to buy into the Insurance Exchanges. I am as ready as anyone to fix the problem with illegal immigration, maybe more, because in the hospitality industry, where I usually work, there are tons of them, and they are hard-working, great people for the most part. My question is-barring really good Immigration reform, how can the undocumented be allowed into the Exchanges? I think it’s a tough sell, myself, and I’m not conservative at all. I’d be interested in opinions, because this seems to be an argument that shouldn’t be happening right now. Am I wrong?
Perhaps, if the rent-collectors, the Big Winners in our economy were arrested, fined and made examples of, there would be far fewer undocumented workers, and the wage-slaves, legal and not, would be in much better shape.
freelancer
@General Winfield Stuck:
I think I need to pick up Blumenthal’s book.
http://www.amazon.com/Republican-Gomorrah-Inside-Movement-Shattered/dp/1568583982
malraux
barring really good Immigration reform, how can the undocumented be allowed into the Exchanges
Being here illegally does not stop one from buying other stuff, there’s no particular reason the exchanges should be different.
Tim F.
@de stijl:
What if I sublimate?
Or you’re hanging in suspense.
freelancer
@Tim F.:
I love this place.
That is all.
Inncent Bystander
Max has a lot of guts to wade into that feeding pond of RW stupid. I did get a chuckle out of that guy who thinks immigrants need to learn English, but he can’t spell words like ‘politician’ and ‘diaper’ correctly. Bet no one knew the difference, though.
And that lady who wants all government out of her life – yet needs that to happen 1st, before she gives up her Social Security, that really is the essential teabagger right there. She’d freak out if her dream ever came true. The common theme that ties these folks together – they are walking, breathing contradictions.
Thank Gawd 1.2mm of these folks didn’t end up there, I think we’d have seen a critical mass of rubes that would have precipitated a black hole of stupid. We might have lost the Capitol in that implosion…
Leelee for Obama
@malraux: I’m thinking in terms of Government programs. As in, they pay into Social Security, but can’t collect. They may qualify for Medicaid or Medicare, but they aren’t eligible. Isn’t the Exchange kind of similar? Are they allowed to buy car insurance here? I never asked anyone, because status was a no-go zone.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Leelee for Obama:
Conservatives want an economic system whereby no one can participate without some form of national govt-sponsored identification.
Martin
The distinction between the messages is ‘who’s paying’.
If the private sector runs the show, the undocumented can pay their own money in. That’s no different than any other private sector business.
The GOP is trying to have it both ways – block the public option, but also tear down the bill for allowing the undocumented to do what they’ve always been allowed to do (and which private industry would be pissed if they took away).
Leelee for Obama
@Just Some Fuckhead: So, it’s really about a National I. D. card? I thought the teabaggers didn’t like stuff like that? If we all have to have one, will that be the next march?
Demo Woman
@Just Some Fuckhead:
They want to make sure that it’s the long form of national identification.
Tim F.
@Leelee for Obama:
A national ID makes it harder for the desperately poor to participate. Conveniently, that group votes Democratic and has more trouble getting things like ID cards.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Leelee for Obama:
I’m holding out hope for a simple mark on the hand or forehead.
Leelee for Obama
@Martin: So, they can buy insurance now, even without documentation? I had to show my License, registration and Birth Certificate to get car insurance here in FL. I didn’t know they could buy insurance here now.
Ash Can
@Da Bomb: Nevertheless, you’d better put me on a Triscuit. I’m so white I wouldn’t even show up on a saltine.
de stijl
@Just Some Fuckhead
Government should get out of government sponsored identification.
John Galt? Who the fuck is that? What is this “Who is John Galt?” bullshit? Do you have some ID?
Leelee for Obama
@Tim F.: Yeah, I remember that coming up with the voting laws in GA. I guess we’d have to set up another ACORN-type organization, to get I.D.s for folks. And register them to vote, and get them to the polls. Sounds like it’s doable.
@Just Some Fuckhead: Where is the Mark of the Devil, Goody Proctor?
Dreggas
I am embarrassed to say my father went to a teabagger rally in upstate NY over the weekend (in Albany) he estimated there were a thousand people there, of course now he has a bunch of stupid ass bumper stickers for his new car. There’s a reason i put a continent between us.
Ash Can
@Tim F.: I agree, but I still can’t help thinking that if Barack Obama were to announce that he wanted to initiate a national ID program the wingers would flip their shit. They’d be all for a national ID unless it were a
blackDemocratic government issuing it.Martin
Varies by state. There’s an estimate floated around that about 25% of undocumented immigrants already have health insurance.
Woody
Just Some Fuckhead said:
Which they can revoke if the bearer proves recalcitrant…
“Kapitalists has won when Owners can make the workers pay for their jobs.”
jeffreyw
Dammit, I put too much rooster sauce in the shrimp creole, and now mrs jeffreyw is walkin around suckin air and goin all hoo-wee.
Woody
izzit just me?
Your comment is awaiting moderation.
Just Some Fuckhead said:
Conservatives want an economic system whereby no one can participate without some form of national govt-sponsored identification.
Which they can revoke if the bearer proves recalcitrant…
“Kapitalists has won when Owners can make the workers pay for their jobs.”
Dreggas
@feebog:
See you don’t get it 9/11 was an inside job by the DHIMMICRATS. It was designed to happen so republicans would over-reach implementing big-brother (DHIMMICRAT) policies like warrantless wiretapping, torture for getting confessions, the patriot act and other SOCIAL-COMMIE-FASCIST policies. It would also result in republicans implementing nefarious liberal spending policies and programs that would drive us into a deficit and ultimately lead to the republicans being discredited enough that a majority could be easily be brain-washed into voting for a black KENYAN MUSLIM for president which would culminate in the ultimate DHIMMICRAT plan of forced gay marriages and those who refuse being aborted by death panels even once they’re out.
See it all makes sense. The DHIMMICRATS have planned this for years, that’s why BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA is none other than the very same DAMIEN the movie THE OMEN warned us about!
Martin
The GOP already has a national ID system that they like:
White? Check.
Marriage certificate? Check.
Got a Bible in your pocket? Check.
No card needed, and everyone else can go home.
Mayken
@Just Some Fuckhead: I thought it was barcodes! http://www.religion-cults.com/antichrist/mark.htm
eric
Obama should just wear a clock like Flava Flav and send these bigots apoplectic to the point where, if they don’t rapture, they rupture and we are through.
I love all the mid-centrist folks out there that argue that because we elected a black president, that shows racism is dead or greatly receded in the US. Uh, no.
This “movement” (perhaps there is no better scatological term) is all about hating on the dark and forboding Other. The obviousness of this is made even more apparent with the strident SUPPORT of Joe Wilson and his boorish behavior. It is not just an effort to delegitize Obama, but it is an effort to denegrate the man as unworthy of respect so that every little black boy and girl can learn his and her proper place in the world, i.e., in the back of the bus.
I for one do not welcome our illiterate racist overlords and wish them all back to the fucking first half of the 19th Century.
eric
LoveMonkey
@Just Some Fuckhead:
I’m okay with the forehead mark. I’m thinking, a red or a blue dot.
Dreggas
oh somewhat OT but i love that the president called Kanye West a Jackass, wait for this to be his “Sistah-Souljah” moment.
Citizen_X
One of these wingnuts predicted
Of course, that particular wingnut was Ayn Rand in 1940, after FDR won a third term over Wendell Wilkie.
Seems the paranoia never quite seems to go away, does it?
eric
@LoveMonkey: reminds of that classic Seussian rhyme: one dot, two dot, take aim and shot (sic). :)
Corner Stone
@Da Bomb:
Ha-ha! Good one!
You prolly believe in Sandy Claws and the Tooths Fairy too, doncha?
Crackin me up I’m tellin ya.
slag
Clearly, they want limited government. It just happens to be government limited to rich, white Republican males.
freelancer
OT – But there’s a lot of whinging from conservatives showing up in my RSS feed because the Obits for Swayze are burying the lede by not putting his work in the greatest movie evah (Red Dawn) in graph 1. They are instead mentioning Dirty Dancing and Ghost, Faggy Chick flick movies.
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/tim-graham/2009/09/15/wapo-patrick-swayze-obit-gets-his-drag-queen-movie-red-dawn
I really have half a mind to put down 3,000 words on why Red Dawn is an allegory for Native American resistance to American continental imperialism and expansion as well as a rallying cry against Manifest Destiny. Just to piss them the fuck off.
Leelee for Obama
@Dreggas: Yeah, I smiled at that! it was honest, off-the-cuff, and had the virtue of being absolutely true. Kanye needs to take a break; there’s no reason to be disruptive like that. I don’t like country all that much, but I hear Taylor Swift is pretty talented. Nothing against Beyonce, she’s amazing, but there’s more than one kind of music in the world.
Da Bomb
@Corner Stone: Whacha talkin’ about Willis?
Leelee for Obama
@freelancer: Please do, freelancer. I’d love to read that!
hmd
The exchanges as currently conceived are a way for people who don’t otherwise have health insurance to buy it. Sort of like a group health plan for people who don’t have any other group plan. So if you are paying for your own insurance, you’ll still be able to get a decent rate, unlike the current individual insurance market.
But you still have to pay for it. Is there a problem with illegal immigrants buying their own health insurance, if they want to? The only reason not to let them – that I can think of – would be if the government subsidies were somehow administered via the exchanges, and there was no mechanism for enforcing eligibility for the subsidies. But that is the same problem – either you have to enforce eligibility for the subsidies, or you have to enforce eligibility for the exchanges.
If the people who whine about this were serious, they’d be proposing better eligibility mechanisms. But they are really using this as a way to whip up fear and uncertainty in an attempt to block any kind of reform.
Da Bomb
@freelancer: Don’t do it Freelancer, you wil confuse the wingnuts even further! Don’t take away their thunder!
binzinerator
@Just Some Fuckhead:
‘None may buy or sell without the Mark of the Beast’.
Seriously, once they get such a system in place they’ll bitch about how easy it is to forge the ID cards, and then stomp their feet and wave signs and guns and demand we get it tattooed on our arms or have some kind of an id chip implanted in our heads.
They really insist on fulfilling their own fearful prophecies, don’t they?
God these people are fucking stupid.
Elie
JHF @ 10
“And the administration scurries like a bunny to fetch them cool damp hankies for their fevered brows.”
I think that you may not be understanding completely the risk here…
The first time that the administration attempts to match the anger or in any way mimic the emotions of this or becomes defensive, the more likely this whole thing degenerates into the fight THEY want. Do you think that they are not intentionally bringing the most vituperative and inflammatory language and symbols for any other reason other than to start a fight they want?
I totally agree that it is maddening and very frustrating to seemingly have to “take it”. But in my very humble opinion, you have it exactly wrong. The adminstration is controlling THEM. They are escalating and trying to get a response out of HIM and the administration. THEY are in the inferior position – not him. Please see that. They are trying to put him in a position where THEY can achieve control…that is not where they are right this minute.
Is it uncomortable for us? Hell yes. Training your dog is uncomfortable too as you repeat and reinforce the wanted behavior over and over and try not to overreact to it. Taking control of something is always hard work.
But please, Obama IS in control. The difficulty is that its still damned ugly and will be for some time. Get used to it and get into the real game in place.
Punchy
@Dreggas: What’s up with so many dads of commenters here being Teh Rushbot? My dad is too. Talking to him about politics is like talking to a man who’s lived on Mars….his info is almost universally wrong and most often completely opposite of the truth.
What Obama needs to win another election is not to appeal to a wider base, but to lock up dads all across the country in early November. “Enemy combatant” and all that.
Zifnab
@hmd:
We can’t offer illegal immigrants group rates. That’s insane. Might as well let them start joining unions next – or encouraging their anchor baby spawn to attend public schools.
Of course, it all may be a moot point: http://www.emaxhealth.com/1275/121/33350/mexico-offers-health-insurance-migrants-united-states.html
But let’s not let facts get in the way of our raging xenophobia.
Da Bomb
@Corner Stone: Last time I checked, he is a Peruvian and German mix. He has sisters who are half german/filpino, and german/russian. And maybe a long lost brother who’s german/indonesian Papa was a rolling stone and put a new meaning to having “hoes in different area codes”.
Dork
If Obama proposed a law to outlaw kicking puppies and to force jailtime for those guilty of skull-fucking kittens, Republicans would find a way to oppose it. Something along the lines of “Dems want you to marry your dog, but they wont let you beat it! UnAmerican!”
slag
Every time I hear someone saying they want government out of their life, I really wonder what they mean by that. What part of their life is government making so miserable? Is it drinkable water that they hate? Public roadways? Food that doesn’t give them salmonella? Breathable air? Public parks? What?
I mean, I’d understand if they hated the fact that government is telling them who they can and can’t marry or what to do with their reproductive organs. Wiretapping their phones, etc. All that stuff is pretty personal, and really, the government has no business there.
But the rest…I just don’t get.
Donald G
@R-Jud:
“@Lupin:
By the zestful zither of Zeus!
You can’t see me, but I’m putting that line in my shirt pocket. You know, to save it for later.”
The line actually comes from Avengers #42, written by Roy Thomas back in 1967. Hercules exclaims it when he is punched by the android, Dragon Man.
wasabi gasp
I have trouble getting these nutters out of my head simply for the fact that I can’t make sense of them. I can’t rationalize them, associate them, or begin to understand what goes on behind their eyes. I find them absolutely fascinating.
I’m left thinking President Obama as the unintentional exorcist in chief and they as the green bile of America. But that doesn’t take into consideration all the talking snakes that lie inbetween and that you can mop up green bile with a ShamWow.
Xenos
I am wondering if we should expect the whole health care issue to get kicked down the road until February of 2010. The strongest blue-dog style contender (Steven Lynch) for Teddy K’s seat just issued a statement that he will not be running.
This is going to drop into Martha Coakley’s lap.
She is pro-public option, and as she has serious EMILY’s list backing. We are not going to see anything other than what Teddy would have supported.
So the White house has a few months to twist arms to get cloture…
freelancer
@Leelee for Obama:
@Da Bomb:
Benen just found the story I linked to:
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2009_09/019951.php
Zifnab
@binzinerator:
Or they’ll go back the other way and demand that this is government infringing on people’s lives and rights and raising our taxes and yadda yadda yadda.
The job of the government is to make sure everyone leaves the rich old white people alone. That means burdensome obnoxious regulations for everyone NOT US, and complete hands-off deregulation and unlimited liberty for ME, ME, ME.
They want a system entirely tilted in their favor – which isn’t even unreasonable, it’s what everyone else wants too. But they wrap it up in so much bullshit, that they inevitably contract the hell out of themselves.
I mean, I’ll happily admit that the Public Option favors me over the corporate insurance company (and, by extension, all its managers and employees). But I’m not going to tell you I’m a pro-corporate, big business free market capitalist in favor of the Public Option because it will deregulate the insurance industry and dramatically increase insurance company profits today, then come back tomorrow and complain that a lack of public option is just another way for the government to dictate how high my private insurance premium is. And yet, it’s that exact nonsense rhetoric we hear from the right. Forty layers of bullshit, all wrapped up in the American Flag and the Constitution, that basically boils down to, “I got mine / I want more for me”.
Tsulagi
Someone could have cleaned up selling Metamucil and sunscreen to that crowd.
jibeaux
I know it’s not very liberal-blog-gy of me, but I actually do think it’s weird that we don’t have a standardized national ID card, and I wouldn’t have a problem with one associated with health care. As I understand it, the countries with universal health care typically do have some sort of ID (like an NHS card in Great Britain), and there has been a real issue lately with identity theft in order to obtain health care. Heck, ICE recently deported a mentally handicapped guy named Mark Lyttle who lived his entire life in NC and didn’t speak a word of Spanish, to Mexico. (For reasons unknown, he told them at one point he was from Mexico.) We do not have a simple, national way to verify identity and citizenship. I realize there are counterarguments to be made, but I just cannot get worked up about identification as an intrusion.
Corner Stone
@Da Bomb: You know the rules!
One drop of less than pure, sweet, sweet angry white blood and he’s not half-anything. He’s the Other!
Oh, and I’ll take my cracker in Large Wheat Thins please.
de stijl
Obama should just wear a clock like Flava Flav..
Flava Flav is an incoherent buster (except for the the first 30 seconds of 911 Is A Joke). The era of Foofy-foof was the death of the sucker.
I say that Obama should pitch Biden and take Chuck D as veep.
Hell, fuck that! Chuck D for President!
Professor Griff for House Whip! (Israel would knock the West Bank settlement shit right off)
Rename the Marines the S1Ws!
Fear of a black government!
Cain
@Dreggas:
Kind of hard to make it a sistah-souljah, he truly was being a jackass. I mean, really. Of course it did highlight that Beyonce has a shitload of class. One of the few performers who I felt is talented and has a lot of class and is pretty damn smart.
cain
Martin
Self-selection. My dad’s turned into a full-throated socialist – gets more liberal the older he gets.
Of course, he’s retired from the insurance industry and will gladly describe what blood-suckers they are.
It’s not as much fun for me to talk about him as it is for others to describe their rushbot dads.
Da Bomb
@Corner Stone: Oh, I see so you a little color in your cracker. I get it.
No wonder he’s been confused all of these years. once we have kids, that will be it and Obama’s indoctrination… I mean we will have beautiful kids is all.
Corner Stone
@Da Bomb: And I like to melt pepper jack cheese on top!
*But don’t tell anyone.
Da Bomb
@Corner Stone: I meant to say “like”. I am thinking faster than I type.
Damn you, lack of no edit function!
Leelee for Obama
@Zifnab: That’s an interesting article on so many levels! How come they can manage this, and we can’t? How can they insure the approx. 12 million here? And where would that insurance be accepted here? Like I said, so many levels, and likely some I haven’t even thought of.
Martin
Shit, we got a half-black president and already we have assault rifles showing up at events. You really want to turn it up to 11?
Da Bomb
@Corner Stone: LOL!!
Da Bomb
@freelancer: That’s really unbelievable. Really.
But I shouldn’t be shocked.
Tony J
As I understand it, the countries with universal health care typically do have some sort of ID (like an NHS card in Great Britain)
I haven’t got one, and I don’t know of anyone over here in Britain who has one either.
Our glorious New Labour leaders have tried more than once to impose a national ID card system, but have failed every time. They’ve just never quite managed explain the pressing need in a way that doesn’t translate as “Some of our corporate donors would really like to make a lot of money out of it.”
Dreggas
@Punchy:
I think it truly is a generational thing. I said it to my mother not long ago, wingers like my father don’t get it, they’ve already lost. They are clinging to old ideas, old prejudices and anything else that isn’t “different” and to them just the fact that we have a black president is difference enough to push em over the edge.
Granted my father was a dittohead growing up, but while the primaries were going on he said to me he liked Obama but didn’t think he was experienced enough, he was also, at the time a Romney supporter. Now it’s to the point where he is full on frothing at the mouth thanks to Beck, Limbaugh, Hannity and the rest of Fox Noise.
It’s sad because he raised me to think for myself and never take anything at face value vis-a-vis the government but he worshipped the ground Bush and Cheney walked on, bought everything they said hook line and sinker. It’s like as soon as Fox News was offered through their local cable he had a lobatomy and is just a drooling ditto-head.
Cyrus
@jibeaux:
I don’t care much one way or another and in theory I wouldn’t have much of a problem with it. I don’t think it should be a requirement for daily life, but that ship has sailed. We have a higher drinking age than almost all the rest of the world with (I think) more draconian enforcement. We have less and crappier public transportation than most of the developed world, so individual cars are more important and used more often. We have ever-expanding police privileges for searches and seizures. Identity theft is a big business, so we need to verify our identities more often to counter that. This sucks, but I’m not sure how much of it is America doing stuff wrong and how much is the inevitable consequence of living in modern society.
So given that a driver’s license or passport already almost is a requirement, making that requirement a de jure thing instead of just de facto doesn’t seem bad, in theory. In practice, though, it would be yet another chance for bigoted demogoguery, yet another corporate pork giveaway, would be disproportionately difficult for all those people who have enough time getting by in modern society as it is, and doesn’t address any of the real problems in the world.
de stijl
You really want to turn it up to 11?
Yes, I do.
President: Chuck D
Vice President: Dr. Dre
The Cabinet of Rivals:
State: Professor Griff
Treasury: EPMD (co-Secretaries)
Defense: Ice Cube
Attorney General: Ice T (he has L&O experience)
Transportation: The 98 Posse
Energy: Ultramagnetic MC’s
Education: KRS-One (He’ll drop some science on us) – undersecretaries include Professor X and Schooly D
Interior: Eric B
Agriculture: Rakim
Labor: LL Cool J
HHS: shit. I already used Dr. Dre as veep. Hell, Grandmaster Flash needs a slot.
Bubblegum Tate
The high road has been renamed Beyonce Boulevard until further notice.
Leelee for Obama
@Bubblegum Tate: Close the thread! We have a winner!
Funkhauser
Why did no one ask the lady who wants government out of her LIFE why she’s standing on federal government property?
gnomedad
These guys are whack jobs and kudos to Blumenthal for documenting it, but I find his leading questions really annoying. Just keep asking ’em “why?” and “how do you know?” On the other hand, the fact that so many don’t realize they’re being mocked is pretty telling.
gnomedad
@Elie:
Hear, hear!
Wile E. Quixote
@Elie
I’m tired of hearing nonsense like this. We didn’t win the Civil War by having Abraham Lincoln say “Oh noes, the rebels have fired on Fort Sumter, but we’d better not do anything because we’d be giving them the fight they want.” No, we won the Civil War by burning the South to the ground and slaughtering confederates like the diseased rats they were, and unfortunately, as history has shown, we didn’t go far enough or kill as many confederate, rat bastards as we should have.
World War II wasn’t won by Winston Churchill and FDR saying “Oh noes, the Germans and the Japanese are attacking us but we can’t fight back because if we do we’ll be giving them the fight they want. No, we must show patience and forbearance because otherwise we’ll be giving them the fight they want.” No, World War II was won because we built up the RAF and the Army Air Corps and then spent four long bloody years wiping Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan off the map. After which we sent in troops and told the surviving Germans, Japanese “start this sort of again and we’ll go ahead and kill the rest of you.” And you know what? It was remarkably effective as neither country has invaded another country since then.
We need to do to conservatives and conservatism what William Tecumseh Sherman did during the March to the Sea and what Curtis Lemay and Bomber Harris did to Tokyo and Dresden. Wanking and consoling ourselves with the mantra that we’re the good guys while these assholes run amok and are emboldened by the fecklessness of our so-called leadership and our lack of action is just going to make things worse.
liberal
@Wile E. Quixote:
Actually, for better or for worse, WWII was won by Stalin’s divisions in the east.
I once tallied up German casualties inflicted on the two fronts; by my take, about 5/6 were in the east.
Yeah, we took out Japan, but given that that was mostly naval battles, it was small potatoes in comparison.
Right Wing Extreme
@ Davebo
“You had to love the look on their faces when the young man explained that Saint Reagan had appointed the first ever federal “Czar”.”
It was a look of disbelief Davebo. Here is the list of czars so you don’t have to strain yourself doing your own research.
Franklin Roosevelt 12
Harry Truman 6
Dwight Eisenhower 1
Lyndon Johnson 3
Richard Nixon 3
Gerald Ford 1
Jimmy Carter 2
Ronald Reagan 1
George H. W. Bush 2
Bill Clinton 7
George W. Bush 35
Barack Obama 33
So as you can plainly see, “Saint Reagan” did not appoint the first federal czar. It was “Saint FDR.” Having said that, czars did not reach their peak until the last two administrations. Please do your homework in the future.
IndyLib
@slag: They want the part that pays for all of that stuff “out”. The R’s have convinced a lot of people that they shouldn’t pay taxes for anything, but don’t ever talk about what you have to give up if you pay less in taxes. They get away with it by putting everything on the national credit card and then blaming Dems for the deficits.
gnomedad
@freelancer:
Go for it. Red Dawn is one of the ten greatest liberal movies ever!
Right Wing Extreme
@Liberal
“Actually, for better or for worse, WWII was won by Stalin’s divisions in the east.
I once tallied up German casualties inflicted on the two fronts; by my take, about 5/6 were in the east.
Yeah, we took out Japan, but given that that was mostly naval battles, it was small potatoes in comparison.”
I will not dispute your numbers in Europe. They sound about right, so I do not feel the need to look it up. However The Pacific Theater was far from only naval battles.
The Island Hopping Campaign was mostly land battle and amphibious landing. Unless you are counting an amphibious landing as a naval battles, I have to call you on that. I will grant that Island Hopping did not happen until later in the war, but most casualties happened during that phase.
I am also unsure whether I would define the Pacific as “Small Potatoes” US casualties ran about 33% of those in Europe. Granted it is less, not sure I would define 33% as small potatoes when we are talking numbers of that size.
I will grant that the Pacific Theater was secondary to the European Theater, and That the Soviets made major, possibly majority, contributions to the war effort.
Other than the small potatoes comment, nice assessment on a little known fact of history.
Mike in NC
If I still worked in DC I’d have set up a booth with tinfoil hats.
General Winfield Stuck
OT- sort of
And a new meme is born for the Right Wing downtrodden be ever increasing blackness. From memerandum front page the wingers led by the Queen of OUtrage herself are in a flutter over alleged racist attack of black kids on white. Proof that the Obamublackpantherist is coming for you whitey.
ONly problem is, seems like the Police Chief has retracted his earlier statement of it being racist.
Kids fighting on a school bus is now a hate crime of epic black thuggery spreading across our sovereign white soil.
Mike in NC
I’m rereading “Battle Cry of Freedom” by James McPherson. In March of 1861, five of seven cabinet secretaries favored abandoning Sumter. So did many senior military officers who felt they lacked the troops and ships to fight a war. Lincoln twisted arms and went with his gut, and the rest is history.
Woodrowfan
What’s up with so many dads of commenters here being Teh Rushbot? My dad is too. Talking to him about politics is like talking to a man who’s lived on Mars….his info is almost universally wrong and most often completely opposite of the truth.
My Dad passed away in 1998. it wasn’t until some years later that my mom told me that he listened to Rush. I was horrified. my Mom (good Democrat that she is) wouldn’t let him listen to Rush in the car when she was there. “Turn that idiot off” she told me she’d say. heh. Good for Mom!
liberal
@Right Wing Extreme:
Thanks for your kind remarks.
IMHO it’s really, really small potatoes compared to the eastern front in Europe. Supposedly the Soviets lost 100,000 men in the battle for Berlin alone, IIRC.
Not to take anything away from the Marines in the Pacific theater, or Americans in the European theater. It’s just that popular portrayals over here in the US kind of ignore the role of the Soviets.
As an addendum to my post, one or two history books I read implied that Churchill really dragged his ass when it came to actually launching Overlord. We (the US) had to really push for that.
liberal
@gnomedad:
Wasn’t there some character who was a black high school science teacher who the dirty Reds knocked off pretty early in the film?
Elie
Wile E. Quixote
While I think that there is definitely a time to fight, this is not that time. Do you want him to fight or do you want to get this important agenda passed, (which requires immense cooperation and handling people in institutions like the Congress and the insurance companies giving up some of their power).
YOU want a war for your own reasons. That is why you cite it as a comparison. But it is the wrong comparison. He is trying to accomplish a task that requires coordination, not subjegation and coercion. He is not a chieftain whose village is being overrun (though I think that is what exists in your mind)
You are wanting to feel victory and the defeat of a group of people in this country as your positive end point. He is trying to get our nation to work together again and for critical institutions to regain their power and sense of responsibility to all of us. Not a war!
Fighting a war with some podunk group – a war they want because THEY feel powerless – just to scratch some primal itch that some of us have, is antithetical and destructive to the end that he and many of us have in mind, no matter how seductive is the siren song you sing for “bloodletting”…
If your only solution is a nail, all your problems look like nails, Wile….Your tool box is all hammers, my friend
Elie
I mistated that last part:
If all your problems like like nails, your only solution will be a hammer.
LD50
Actually, the real figure is close to a million.
Calouste
@liberal:
Most chilling statistic I have read that showed how brutal the fighting was on the Eastern Front was that during the Battle of Stalingrad the life expectancy for newly arrived Soviet recruits was less than 24 hours. 3 days for officers.
The Soviets lost more soldiers in that single battle than the Americans in the entire war.
You won’t see much of this in popular culture because, besides the obvious nationalistic tendencies of Hollywood, no one wants to watch what amounts to the opening scene of Saving Private Ryan extended out over three hours, only with more death and violence and starvation and freezing cold mixed in.
Mike in NC
The idea that the USA pretty much won WW2 single-handedly was pushed for years by popular historians like Stephen Ambrose.
Right Wing Extreme
@ Liberal
“IMHO it’s really, really small potatoes compared to the eastern front in Europe. Supposedly the Soviets lost 100,000 men in the battle for Berlin alone, IIRC.
Not to take anything away from the Marines in the Pacific theater, or Americans in the European theater. It’s just that popular portrayals over here in the US kind of ignore the role of the Soviets.
As an addendum to my post, one or two history books I read implied that Churchill really dragged his ass when it came to actually launching Overlord. We (the US) had to really push for that.”
Sorry I missed part of your point. Compared to Soviet losses, definitely small potatoes. Thought you were referring to the US loss/kill ratio in Europe compared to Pacific. The SovUnion had appalling losses. Most of their losses were due to poorer equipment and training, but also due to their brave stand against the German aggressors.
You are right that the efforts of the Soviet Military are overlooked all over the world generally, and here specifically. The allies probably could have defeated the Germans eventually, but it would have taken much longer and with much higher losses.
About Churchill dragging his feet, I have come across hints of that here and there, and I would be greatly interested in any book you could recommend that would state it explicitly and offer evidence.
LD50
Probably not. If -Obama-Hitler had never attacked Russia (or if Hitler had somehow quickly won in Russia), there would have been nothing whatsoever the Western Allies could have done about Hitler’s occupation of the continent, *and*, all that would have prevented Hitler from occupying Britain would have been Germany’s inferior navy. There’s good reason to believe that all the Western Allies did in Europe was help Russia with supplies and to prevent -Obama-Stalin from occupying western Europe as well.
Tho the US did defeat Japan, obviously.
Wile E. Quixote
@Elie
Elie, do you have any original thoughts of your own, or do you just constantly and mindlessly barf out crap like this? . I want a president who is willing to call the Republicans on their bullshit, who is willing to get his hands dirty and who doesn’t want to pretend that he’s above it all. I want a president who is willing to make a speech like this one that Johnson made about civil rights in New Orleans during the 1964 campaign. From Rick Perlstein’s brilliant Before the Storm, pp 469.
That took some real courage Elie, more courage than I’ve seen Barack Obama display so far. Indeed if Lyndon Johnson had approached civil rights as half-assedly as the Obama administration has approached health care Barack Obama wouldn’t be president today. Hell, he’d be lucky if he could even vote.
Elie
Wile:
Just stop it.
All this turmoil you spew out; all this anger…
I have nothing to fundamentally do with it (your anger). I have my opinions, you have yours.
You seem distressed, angry and twisted up with emotion and need to strike out…wars, hurting people, being violent…
You ever think about that? Why you have so much anger for just opinions?
This is a blog. While our opinions can go forward to do things eventually, why are you so angry and hostile in response to opinion?
Man, maybe you need a vacation. Relax. Take a nice bath. Batherapy makes a nice relaxing formula with Magnesium sulfate — relaxes those muscles and lets you contemplate things in more balance.
Think about it.
Right Wing Extreme
@LD50: To be totally fair I am reasonably sure the Soviets helped us against Japan as well. I think it was in China, but my memory is vague on that bit of WW2 history, and I am too tired to look it up right now. Maybe tomorrow. I agree with your assertion that Germany would have taken the continent, but they would have been beaten back eventually. If nothing else we would have had to nuke them into submission. Granted Germany was close to a nuke of there own, and there is some evidence to support that they detonated a small device of their own, our destruction of the heavy water production facility in Norway set them way back. They were not pursuing straight uranium bomb technology, and heavy water was necessary to produce plutonium. I am reasonably sure they would have been pulled down eventually, but as I said it would have taken much longer and the death toll would have been horrendous, especially if we had had to nuke Europe.
LD50
In spring/summer 1945, the Soviet Army attacked Japan in Manchuria. It was very helpful, but it mainly just shortened the war rather than changing it.
If Hitler had grabbed the whole continent, not attacked Russia, not stupidly declared war on the US, and left Britain alone, I don’t think the west would have felt the need to nuke Germany. The West would have signed treaties with Germany, and that would have been that. (Especially since Germany would have had nukes themselves by ~1947.) The ‘German Empire’ would have probably broken up in the 50s or 60s after Hitler and the first generation of Nazis died, but I don’t think Hitler owning everything from Poland to France would have offended America enough to nuke them. You forget that until Hitler declared war on the US, the overwhelming consensus in the US was not to get involved in Europe’s problems.
Right Wing Extreme
@LD50:
No I didn’t forget the isolationist tendencies,it is just you just revised the time line from an earlier point than I was. If Hitler had left England, the US and Russia alone, then I think you are probably pretty right on with your predictions except for the 50’2-60’s break up. Might have happened, but then again empires tend to have a form of inertia that must run it’s course before the will collapse under their own weight.
I was basing my predictions more on say Germany taking Moscow or the Russians deciding to stop there and not continue to roll the Germans back. Say freeze them outside Moscow then sue for peace, leaving the rest of the allies to go it alone. By that point we would still fight. To many dead, to much bad blood to just up and leave, besides the US was in a war fury. I stand by my assertion that we would have won eventually. All things being equal though, If Hitler had played it smarter, or listened to his generals more, he would have had most of Europe without having to fight the big 3 of the allied forces.
Right Wing Extreme
@LD50: So there is no misunderstanding, read revised as, “what-if’d”.