These really are just hideous people, any way you look at it:
At yesterday’s health care summit, Rep. Louise M. Slaughter (D-NY-28) related this story from one of her constituents:
I even have one constituent — you will not believe this, and I know you won’t, it’s true. Her sister died, this poor woman had no dentures. She wore her dead sister’s teeth, which of course were uncomfortable and did not fit. Do you believe that in America that that’s where we would be?
What was the reaction from leading members of the conservative media?
* On Twitter, Michelle Malkin wrote: “We need trillion-$ Demcare cuz someone had to wear their sister’s dentures! O: “Terrific conversation”
* On his radio program, Glenn Beck stated, “I’ve read the Constitution … I didn’t see that you had a right to teeth.”
* Author and radio host Laura Ingraham told Bill O’Reilly that Slaughter’s tale was “ridiculous” and a “sob story.”
* Fox Nation, the website maintained by the Fox News Channel, labeled Slaughter’s comments “Summit Insanity.”
I don’t know whether to interpret this response as to them just not believing anything that a Democrat says, their being complete assholes, or the fact that all of these folks are so well off that the concept of hand-me-down clothes, let alone dentures, sounds bizarre and foreign to them. After all, there is no poverty in America- all those welfare queens got their big screens somehow.
It really is amazing, though. I didn’t flinch when I heard this story, but then again, I live in an area where people make the calculation to not do anything about a sore tooth until they can justify getting it pulled- because that is cheaper than a root canal or anything else. I know people who don’t check their blood sugar, or who don’t take their meds, because they simply can not afford the equipment or the treatment. And they all work. They all have jobs.
It is easy to chalk this all up to them being assholes, but I really do think a lot of them are just oblivious. That is why we can have septuagenarian assholes like Andrew Malcolm bleating about people in line for food at a shelter having the nerve to own a cell phone. But then again, they just don’t care to know, so I guess that does, indeed, make them assholes.
On the other hand, thank goodness Rep. Slaughter didn’t mention that woman’s name, or you know who would be on her doorstep giving us a play-by-play about her kitchen counters.
Yutsano
Four words, John: THEY. DON’T. FUCKING. CARE. That’s it, part and parcel. Those they have deemed worthy have their needs and affairs in order and if folks don’t it’s their fault. It’s a total lack of any empathy for another’s situation. This is Ayn Rand’s paradise in a nutshell.
abo gato
Hearing that these dickheads have the gall to say that about any other human being, just really pisses me the hell off. I cannot understand how anyone could come out and say this, even if in their small and hardened hearts (do they even have any?) actually believed it.
I think this just shows how evil the r’s have become. I can only hope that the dems have the balls to air this on every commercial during the mid-term elections. This contempt for real people needs to be continually pointed out to everyone.
Martin
http://www.statemaster.com/graph/hea_ora_hea_los_of_nat_tee-health-oral-loss-natural-teeth
43% of adult WVians are missing teeth. Out west here among the hippies, it’s 13%.
Yep, best health care in the world.
jeff
The appropriate conservative response would be something like: “that’s a heartbreaking tale to hear, and I’d like to help, though I don’t think it changes my opinion of the potential bills under discussion.”
Is that so freaking difficult to do?
SiubhanDuinne
I read earlier on Media Matters that Rush Limbaugh’s response was on the lines of “So what if you don’t have teeth? That’s why there’s applesauce!”
ETA: Sorry, I should have clicked your link first. The one that went to Media Matters. The one that quoted Limbaugh talking about applesauce.
dmsilev
So I guess it’s time to take the phrase “compassionate conservative” and put a bullet through its head? Out of compassion, of course.
-dms
bleh
They ARE oblivious — far too many of the True Believers I know come from comfortable, sheltered backgrounds — but they are also ugly and willingly so. In law, guilt requires culpability, and these people actively do evil.
asiangrrlMN
Cole, you’re right when you say that they simply don’t know what it’s like to do without. I think the only way for them to truly get it is to have to actually live as a working poor for, say a month. I’m talking about Congresspeople here because the pundits are beyond redemption. However, when someone like Grumpy McCain goes on about sockulism or whatever, I just want him and Cindy to have to live with a (one) house mortgage, (one) car payments, grocery bils, car bills, etc., no insurance, and working at Wall-Mart for thirty-nine hours a week. One month. They would never last.
Yes, it’s a lack-of-empathy issue and the fact that they just don’t fucking care. If only there was a way to make them care.
lucslawyer
Seriously…is anyone really surprised by these comments?
mcc
There’s a great headline. “Glenn Beck says you do not have a right to teeth.”
donnah
I wrote this elsewhere, but I used to think the disgusting comments made by the likes of Limbaugh, Malkin, Coulter and their ilk were simply staged, as certainly no one would really believe they were sincere.
I believe it now. I believe that they are sincerely without consciences or hearts.
Part of those responses may come from their privilege, but they say these things to diminish the lives of the poor to make themselves feel superior. Which makes them even more despicable in my book. Because when you believe that denial of simple medical care for the poor is a joke, then you haven’t got any soul left at all.
lost in GA
Amen, Mr. Cole.
Mike in NC
Oblivious assholes. They own our lives. But maybe they have a point: why should strapping young bucks be allowed to have good teeth? Might be OK in the Third World, but this is America, dammit!
rootless-e
Those people don’t get empathy. They are damaged.
But here’s my question: what’s wrong with Dick Dunbar? Why does he cave like that?
dmsilev
It’d be worse than that. James O’Keefe would show up at some dentist’s office (later taping some footage that made it seem like he did so dressed as a molar) and would steal some X-rays which he would claim proved that she actually had at least one actual tooth. Then some random right-wing blogger would construct a scale model of a set of dentures in a sandbox and would use this to claim that it’s mathematically impossible for two people to wear the same set of dentures. Then the font kerning would begin.
-dms
Nellcote
There was a brilliant exchange between Prez Obama and Barasso at the hcr meetup that illustrates your point well. Barasso was argueing for HSAs and the Prez was telling him that it’s easy for Barasso since he makes 170k a year. And that it’s a whole different story for someone making 40k. It’s worth looking up the clip if you haven’t seen it. The Prez was fully engaged.
Nick
Soulless, compassion-free, despicable wastes of flesh. I’m an old man of 58 and I’ve come to hate them over the decades. And I’m not ashamed of it. If conservatives truly believe the nonsense they utter, they are fools. If they merely mouth the words to gain and retain power, they are charlatans.
I hate them.
Breezeblock
Regardless, nice hat tip to The Guess Who. Excellent song from their DFH album “Share The Land”.
Bueller??
jacy
Even my mom (who is 73 and has Medicare), my brother (who is an IT specialist for the Olympics and has absolutely great insurance), and my best friend (who’s husband is an air traffic controller and also has great insurance) don’t seem to be phased by the fact that so many people have no recourse. They’re all worried that healthcare reform is going to somehow affect them slightly negatively. (And they’re all Dems, I might add). They complain to me, while conveniently forgetting the fact that I’m self-employed and haven’t been able to afford any kind of healthcare for about 6 years now.
I had my last mammogram in a trailer in a Piggly-Wiggly parking lot. The service was paid for by a private foundation. I had an ear infection last year and sat in a rural health clinic for 12 hours so I could get a $4 antibiotic prescription. I had a spider bite that I self-treated by debriding it with manicure scissors and iodine for three weeks, because I couldn’t afford the doctor bills.
Truth is, nobody wants to think about what happens to those people who can’t afford healthcare, until THEY are those people that can’t afford healthcare. God forbid I should ever have anything serious happen before I turn 65, because my best option at this point would be to just die.
Grumpy Code Monkey
Asshole is too mild a term; they are freaks.
dmsilev
@asiangrrlMN: As lovely as an idea as that is, it would never work. Even if you could get McCain to slum among the mortals, he’d know that if he could stick things out for just a few weeks, he’d be able to return to his 453 houses. For the lesson to really sink in, the possibility of *remaining* in such a fallen state would have to be real.
-dms
daryljfontaine
@mcc: Sounds like a good excuse for someone to punch his out of his head.
D
Silver Owl
Yep it’s pretty sick. It’s not like our fellow citizen was wanting to stuff their face with the gourmet meals that those three do on a daily. It is just a person wanting teeth to eat a basic average meal to live and work. They begrudge that.
With the new tainted American faux royalty eating average meals to live and work is a socialistic fascism horror of ungodly magnitude and a threat to their overpaid, over privileged lives. Eating is only for the rich white conservatives.
Henry Bayer
In the book “The Sociopath Next Door” the author believes that 4% of our population has no conscience. I think the number is low, as you can propose the most unconscionable government policies in a poll and 20 percent (Republican base) will endorse it.
bemused
I always wonder how they were brought up. Did they all have parents that taught them how to be hideous or are some just bad seeds?
celticdragonchick
@Yutsano:
Ex-fucking-actly
I have had conversations with some of these types that left me convinced they would be thrilled to live in 1850’s London as 75% of the population dwelt in rags, thousands of children disappeared and the poor houses and giant, Satanic mills belched smoke and human misery.
Because God makes sure that good people have good lives, ya see…
It is not the responsibility of the government to usurp God’s great vision for us all, or to try to actually do anything to make a stable society that has anything to do with justice!
I wish I was kidding.
Short Bus Bully
John, do you know much RICHER our poor are than Zimbabwe’s poor? Our poor kick other nation’s poor’s ASSES!
American Exceptionalism!
Check the medal count in Vancouver, you’ll see!
WIN
ruemara
My car is a hand me down & if I hadn’t had it, we would not be able to survive. All the clothes are old and so are the shoes because I make just enough to pay the bills & buy food. & I feel lucky because I know things could be worse. There are times when I think we need a French revolution in this country because so many rich and powerful have a deficit in empathy and virtue. A few guillotines, a few empty heads, vive la middle class!
mostly j/k on violence but not on a much angrier middle, working class standing up to these dim bulbs.
celticdragonchick
@ruemara:
Aux Barricades!
Tonal Crow
@Yutsano:
Well said. I suspect that Republicans relentlessly work to suppress their inborn empathy so that they can feel guiltless about — indeed, morally justified in — steamrolling whomever they need to steamroll to get what they want. It’s a psychopathology.
KCinDC
My parents are blessed to have as their congressman compassionate conservative Eric Cantor: “All of us share the concerns when people are allegedly wronged in our health care system.”
Toast
The entire right-wing mindset is premised on lack of empathy. Every policy they advocate for – deport those dirty immigrants, tough shit if you’re out of work, women should be forced to carry rapist’s babies to term, bomb the hell out of any country that pisses us off – would be impossible to support if they had a shred of empathy for “other people” in the abstract.
scav
I’d really like to see that part of Beck’s {hack hack, sorry, hard to get that out} constitution that guarantees bankers right to bonuses. All those NYT sob stories about the plight of our lord and masters on Wall St. going without et cetera et cetera et cetera.
Funny, I’ve just discovered a craving for shish=kabob. That image of heads on rusty instruments is scarily compelling. eek.
Gwangung
No hippie punching. Go hit a wingnut who thinks like this…HARD.
Bill
Oblviholes; yeah, that’s it !
rob!
It’s amazing that the GOP has been able to convince so many middle-to-lower-income families that they are the ones on their side, not the Dems.
I guess the GOP has managed to bamboozle enough of them to vote against their own economic interests, just as long as the queers can’t carry and abortion is being made illegal is always just around the corner…
General Egali Tarian Stuck
I believe Beck is right on this score. George Washington had wooden dentures –and didn’t get much Obamacare. Think about it libtards?
And yes, I know smarty pants, that wiene lieberal science guys now say George’s teeth were not wooden. Lies of the commie press is all that is.
bemused
Reading “The Authoritarians”, Bob Altemeyer is helpful but I still will never fathom how people can behave like barbarians toward others.
Bill
Obliviholes; yeah, that’s it !
Scott
When you reward psychopaths with high positions and colossal salaries in politics and the media, you get a psychopathic society.
jibeaux
Rumproast summarized them as “utterly loathsome and unequivocally subhuman”, which I think just brings the awesome and gets the awesome courtside seats.
Mnemosyne
@ruemara:
Why do you think conservatives are busy pushing every racial button they can get their hands on? If working- and middle-class white people ever figured out they have more in common with working- and middle-class people of color than they do with white plutocrats, we would have your revolution. Unfortunately, as long as they can get people to sort themselves by race, they’re going to win.
freelancer
See also, a certain Senator from Kentucky whinging about being forced to miss a basketball game in order to sustain a filibuster against extensions on Unemployment Benefits.
Not acknowledging those who make less than $100k a year is a pretty gross blind spot.
BombIranForChrist
When hearing crap like this, I think it is important to remember that although the Democrats are not particularly popular, the Republicans are very unpopular, and stuff like this probably doesn’t help them.
Mystical Chick
Agree that it’s a profound lack of empathy brought on by the “I got mine, you get yours” mentality. That bit of back and forth with Prez and that one guy re: HSAs was spot on. If you don’t have money for health care or rent or whatever, you don’t have money for a fancypants HSA. They really are that out of touch. And cruel. (Mostly cruel, I think.)
Fuckers.
KCinDC
Barbara Bush at the Houston Astrodome: “And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this — this (she chuckles slightly) is working very well for them.”
Midlife
In keeping with this story, there’s Jim “Tough Shit” Bunning of KY who singlehandedly blocked the extension of unemployment benefits yesterday and who complained that the debate was causing him to miss a basketball game on TV.
mr. whipple
Today I had to call a supplier. I never knew the guy’s politics, but he was ranting, totally unhinged. Said all the politicians needed to be thrown out.
I said I agreed to a certain extent, like that I saw this ahole yesterday say that the answer for HCR was savings accounts. And he tells me that he’s never met anyone from a country with socialized medicine that said it was worth a damn.
Then I said they should throw out Bunning for blocking unemployment benefits/Cobra and he tells me that the reason he is doing that is that you just can’t give people money or they’ll never work. He said what we should be doing is slashing gvt spending.
This dood had every dittospank talking point down cold, a total loon.
Elisabeth
@lucslawyer:
Somehow I remain surprised that they feel free to say them out loud. Says more about me, though, than it does about them.
Dreggas
As someone who lost his teeth (upper) as a result of not having insurance when I was living on the street (or in and out of peoples houses) when i first came to cali, I would have loved to have kept my original ones.
Unfortunately there’s that thing called dental insurance which ones needs to get one’s teeth fixed which I didn’t have. But, you say, there are free clinics. Well all they do is yank the tooth when it’s too rotten to save. So needless to say that wasn’t a big help.
And yes i tried to take care of my teeth, however a combination of extreme stress (being for all intents and purposes homeless) combined with genetics (every male in my family had weak teeth and lost the upper ones) made it a losing battle.
Jean
@KCinDC: I am also so blessed to have Cantor as my rep. But then his district is huge! He rarely closes his mouth even when not speaking. Then he just looks dumb. When he speaks, dumber.
General Egali Tarian Stuck
@freelancer: And to think that jackass Bunning is in the baseball Hall of Fame. And from my home state I no longer claim. He’ll be gone soon though. Thank the FSM
Midlife
Freelancer, your comment posted while I was composing mine. Sorry for the redundancy. Nonetheless….
El Cid
The answer?
They’re assholes. And they’re ignorant. And they’re callous, mean little bastards and bastardettes. And they get off on petty cruelty and hurting people who are weak and who are allied with the weak. They’re proud of ignorance and hateful toward anyone who gives a damn.
And I’d like to wish that these shit-piles would be put through the wringer just to know what it felt like, but more than likely they’d be just like the people who grew up poor and suffering and then made good and then were the most bitter, snobbish bastards to people like what they used to be that you could imagine.
They’d happily rip the country apart and laugh at the suffering they caused, if it meant they could have a bit more time flushed with the feeling that they’re superior to somebody else and somehow their magic willpower and ideology gave them high and mighty redemption.
“Tough shit,” said the Senator blocking unemployment insurance to all them welfare queens that just lost 11 million jobs because Jimmy Carter forced banks to give free houses to ACORN and then black people hid all the banks.
celticdragonchick
@rob!:
Their greatest triumph came from spending 30 years to pound home the culture war grievance theme and turn every single possible issue into a culture and religious war paradigm referendum.
It will take at least a generation to undue this kind of damage, and I suspect far longer since the traditional media has been bludgeoned to docility by the tactic and civics and classical thought are no longer taught in many schools. The movement feeds on paranoia and is self radicalizing and self sustaining.
I don’t foresee a healthy polity emerge anytime soon.
Cheryl from Maryland
Cruel heartless idiots. Just wait until they are in their 80’s. My poor dad, he has bad teeth and a mega bridge from a childhood baseball accident. The “gruel” he can eat is not nutritious, so he is having issues. My brother and I are working on getting him dental implants so he can freaking eat something besides soup (thank the FSM he can afford it), but it is an uphill battle with, of all people, his doctors and dentists, who see this effort as a waste of time.
Sorry Glen Beck, but if you don’t have good teeth, you cannot pursue happiness. Just ask George Washington.
Raenelle
These people went after the 9/11 widows. They mocked, harassed and browbeat children. Empathy is meaningless to them. Did Stalin empathize with the kulaks? Did Hitler empathize with the disabled? It’s all a matter of which side you’re on–for them, you’re either on the guest list or the menu.
They will never condemn Rush, no matter what he does or says. Beck is always appropriate. Kidnappers of Haitian children are not criminals, because they just wanted to make sure that those children were raised in some kook religion. Terrorists are A-OK is they’re attacking the IRS. Abortion doc murders–why they’re flat-out heroes. Olympic park bombers–another pass, because the bomber was pro-life.
Bobby Seale: You’re either part of the solution or part of the problem.
Joseph Stalin: In times of war, there are no innocent by-standers.
That’s their mentality. That’s who they are. They are so on auto-pilot with their ideology that hoping for some kind of human twinge in their psyche is like hoping our microwaves will be upset when we get laid off. It’s in fact why they have so much contempt for liberals, and compromise, and respect, and nuance, and for the pacific virtues like generosity, mercy, patience, compassion, etc.
jibeaux
We probably shouldn’t rule out sending Acorn Pimp in to steal the dentures, then put them in her mouth to prove that they fit just fine.
El Cid
Free dental care is theft!
celticdragonchick
@jibeaux:
What is really sick is that I can see Breitbart and “Huggy Bear” O’Keefe actually trying to do something that sleazy and vile.
bemused
Ignorance & the inability to connect dots affects a lot of people. I couldn’t believe it when Craig T. Reilly (Coach) ranted that was he was once so down he had to go on food stamps or whatever but no one ever gave him a free ride. How does anyone even say something like that without feeling like a complete idiot?
slag
C’mon. We all know that bad things only happen to bad people. If you’re poor, you’re not possibly down on your luck or victim of circumstance. You’re bad. You did it to yourself.
Mocking you for your weakness is a sign of their righteousness. It makes them feel better about themselves. You wouldn’t want to deprive them of what little self-esteem they have left, would you?
celticdragonchick
@slag:
Pretty much.
Steeplejack
@dmsilev:
Excellent fucking point. It is hard to underestimate the corrosive power of despair, the feeling that your life sucks and there is no chance for improvement.
peach flavored shampoo
MM could DIAF, and I’d probably mourn by opening a bottle of wine.
El Cid
Was it here where someone said there are these types in America — I’m guessing the 28% of die-hard Bush Jr. fans — who would be happy living homeless under a bridge cooking sparrows over a trash can fire, as long as the family under the next bridge over didn’t have any sparrows.
El Cid
@Steeplejack: How ironic then that they are completely corroded without ever having had to feel despair.
The Moar You Know
@ruemara: I have reluctantly arrived at the conclusion that until people start taking the possibility of either dishing out or becoming the victims of violence for indulging in such horrific acts of insensitivity and disregard for the welfare of their fellow man seriously – no kidding around – that nothing is going to change.
SpotWEld
It all boils down to the same core neo-con concepts.
Happenstance doesn’t exist.
Work hard and the American Dream will happen (per the GOP promise.)
If things go bad it’s not because of happenstance or bad luck it’s because either you are flawed (i.e. liberal) or some people (i.e. liberals) are conspiring against you.
The whole concept of a small bit of help when you need it the most so you can quickly get back to being a productive member of society (i.e. taxpayer) is just not possible.
The horrible beauty of this punditry, anyone who does have some sort of tragic accident and can’t instantly get back on their feet are pretty much out of the loop of neo-punditry circles, so they don’t really exist.
demkat620
This is where I get confused, if I heard Rush Limbaugh say that, I would shut him off and never listen again. But these guys laugh and say “Yup” and keep on going.
How can you do that? That’s nowhere even close to christian.
mandarama
I sometimes think that these people just delude themselves into believing every sad story is made up. In other words, THEY don’t know anyone who lives like that, so no one lives like that. It’s all propaganda made up by Dems to them.
My crotchety old father-in-law, whom I love, is a Fox News and Rush junkie. But he also knew my mother, who died at 52 of cancer with no health insurance, on Medicaid. So he’s kept his mouth shut to me about health care reform so far. He knows how hard my mom worked (as a cleaning lady, cashier, whatever she could find). He knows she was poor as dirt. And he knows that she delayed finding out why she had chest pains, because she had no insurance. This topic brings the sound of crickets, because he can’t do the denial thing like all his compadres on the right.
Instead, he fusses about Islam. Sigh.
Brick Oven Bill
Benjamin Franklin teaches us:
“The best way to help the poor is to make them uncomfortable in their poverty.”
My very own recent field experiments teach us that you can buy cream puffs with food stamps. And we have also determined that one cream puff equates to four pounds of potatoes.
El Cid
I don’t think they believe that if you work hard and are smart, you’ll succeed.
They do believe that if you do all that and it doesn’t work out, you should keep your god-damn mouth shut and not bother any body.
Die if you need to, but don’t bother their pretty ears with your dissatisfaction and for god’s sake, don’t beg for anything.
Take your god-damned lifelong punishment like a grownup, as they imagine that their cowardly, pampered, lazy selves do.
El Cid
Does anyone know why cleek’s pie filter doesn’t work sometimes?
bemused
Speaking of hideous people, can anyone explain why the media is so enthralled with John McCain? Not many republicans like him & tea partiers definitely hate him so what is the upside for media to feature him constantly? I’d love to find out from some political insiders the real reason for the the media McCain fetish.
General Egali Tarian Stuck
@The Moar You Know: Bunning and bullshit summit spin pretty much flipped my switch today. In liew of violence, I go on a snark rampage and don’t usually take prisoners. Though it works to calm the savage beast, but only for a little while these days.
Mike Kay
LET THEM gum CAKE
celticdragonchick
@Steeplejack:
That is just one of the things that they love to mock the most. See…that then makes you a bum/welfare queen/moocher/loser who didn’t have the fucking gumption to pull yerself up by your bootstraps when you were 16 and go to Dartmouth like you should have.
Therefore, it’s all your fault and you absolutely should feel ashamed and depressed for being such a worthless toad. If you want to be a Randian winner, you have to resubscribe to the American mythology that all it takes is a bit of gumption and Presto!
You can end up just like Jack Abramoff…
uh…oh well.
Dreggas
@Brick Oven Bill:
Not an unsurprising thing for Franklin to say considering he was pretty well off and part of the aristocracy of his time.
El Cid
@bemused: Besides the standard reasons of completely fetishizing right wing war heroes, I’ve seen reported that McCain always went out of his way to grant access and time and favors to the press.
El Cid
@Mike Kay: awsum
bemused
@El Cid:
I keep thinking there is more to it, that even the press can’t be that easily bought but we do live in a very screwed up country.
El Cid
@bemused: The press can be more easily bought than you’d care not to imagine.
Let me add a famous story, quoting something I wrote here earlier.
Like the lawyer for the United Fruit Company wrote in his book An American Company after successfully working with media contacts to drum up a hysteria campaign so that its allies in the U.S. government would use the CIA to overthrow the legitimately elected government of Guatemala, Jacobo Arbenz (and initiate a new phase of murderous and even genocidal military rule), he found himself stunned at how easy his PR task had been at getting all major newspapers of supposedly different perspectives to see things his way:
Jody
Everyone got that? Brick Oven Bill goes around checking the contents of shopping carts of people on food stamps to determine if he deems their purchases worthy of his tax dollars.
Ann B. Nonymous
These people aren’t going to have a good time in their old age–although I doubt that Limbaugh or Beck will survive to be elderly. Their past medical history and lifestyle is against it.
I honestly think that many of these people don’t realize they’ll be weak and sick and without a voice someday. Money only goes so far; power is evanescent. On one of the snark websites, I once read a commenter mention how he was behind Charles Krauthammer–a wheelchair-bound man whose politics are at best unpleasant–at the video store, and how a child relative nagged him into a rental choice Krauthammer obviously did not want.
That’s their future, even if they do manage to destroy American civil society first. The guillotines aren’t necessary.
SpotWEld
Is whoever is posting as BOB punishing us for being bad commentators.
If we were more insightful would we be spared his bizarre inanity.
KCinDC
@El Cid, see “27 Percenters” in the lexicon.
celticdragonchick
@Brick Oven Bill:
I would very much like to make you as uncomfortable as I have been when I was impovershed after two back surgeries and no longer being able to work, dickweed.
I would really like you to feel every damned torn muscle and damaged nerve ending along with the fear of how to meet bills and pay the bankruptcy. I would really like you to feel what it was like to collapse and start crying because the agony in your back has over-ridden your motor controls.
I want you to feel as worthless as I did when I could no longer be the family breadwinner because I could not work as an aircraft mechanic any longer, or having to live on handfuls of pain medication to even function minimally.
I want you to feel every sickening bit of it you bastard.
Then spout platitudes at me.
kay
They better be careful, if this gets out into the wider world, beyond conservative internet world. They’re really out of touch.
Dentures are this huge issue.
People finance them, at high interest. I see the contracts they sign. It’s cheaper to have your teeth extracted and purchase dentures than it is to fix your teeth.
I am convinced you could estimate the median income in a particular place and come within 10,000 dollars by going into the drugstore and seeing how many over the counter remedies they stock for dental pain and do it yourself dentistry. There’s even this little blister-pack kit to fill your own cavity.
I think the conservative blogs must be full of out of touch elitists. They should get out more.
Kryptik
Dunno if you guys already got a hold of this, but Pawlenty (you know, one of those GOP hopes for ’12?) has a genius new solution to saving money on our health care costs!: Turn the poor away at the ER! After all, if you have something minor, you should go to a primary care clinic. You know, the one you can’t afford to go to since you don’t have insurance.
Honestly, Grayson’s summary of these guys is looking less and less exaggerated by the day. There really isn’t an ounce of compassion in the GOP anymore.
kid bitzer
oh c’mon–
she wore her dead sister’s dentures–to eat t-bone steak!
and she’s clearly driving a gold cadillac with marble counter-tops–and her dead sister’s grill!
she’s just another lucky ducky–as barbara bush said at the shelter after katrina, “i’d say this is all working out pretty well for them”.
of course, if she’s black then i do admit she’s worse off now than she was under slavery.
bemused
@mandarama:
R’s do think liberals just make up everything. I guess that makes it easier to believe Fox News.
Ruckus
@jacy:
Truth is, nobody wants to think about what happens to those people who can’t afford healthcare, until THEY are those people that can’t afford healthcare. God forbid I should ever have anything serious happen before I turn 65, because my best option at this point would be to just die.
From the conservative point of (wanted to say view but these assholes don’t have a point of view, that would require them to actually look at some kind of reality) bullshit, having you or me die is a feature not a bug. Without any government assistance whatsoever, taxes could be lowered to zero, so fewer people needing a hand gets them nirvana.
Are they assholes? That doesn’t begin to describe the current conservative. But the description is mostly swearing, using words that even an old sailor does not want to put to print. Mainly because in print they lose some of the invective.
Kryptik
@kay:
I know well enough about the tooth patching kit: I’m forced to use it due to gaping holes in a couple of my molars (due to horrible brushing habits for the years that I had braces. The rotting molars in question are the ones that were bracketed) because I can’t afford to get them root canaled and get crowns, even if I go to a dentistry school for lower rates.
Cain
@rob!:
Well, the thought is this:
“We are already in need of money, but these damn taxes are making it hard to get things. Furthermore, we see our taxes used in ways that doesn’t seem to help us in anyways except in things that offends us religiously and socially.”
to some extent the malfeasance on how our taxes are used especially when it comes to helping minorities and what not. I can see where they would feel like that. Obama did a pretty good job of recognizing that during the campaign with his speech on race.
Things like healthcare is going to help them and they need to sit down and analyze that. You’re spreading the risk among a large number of people and so costs are going to come down. Even for the young people it will be more affordable since there is a larger pool IMHO. Someone needs to sell that properly. Because seriously, even if you’re making a 100K one healthcare incident and blammo! You’re fucked if you ever lose your job, or they decide not to help you, whatever. Nobody wants to lose whatever you worked hard for all your life on cancer or bankrupting your kids whatever. A couple commercials like that and people will understand.
jl
Dentists have told me that insurance companies helpfully make that calculation (having a bad tooth pulled rather than a root canal or other treatment) much easier for people of ordinary means by imposing unreasonable waiting times to get pre-authorization.
El Cid
@Kryptik: But wait — you watch!
They’ll both say that anyone in America can get health care by going to the Emergency Room while also saying that the ER’s need to turn all these damn parasites away.
Also, bitching and moaning about the subsidized Wall Street bonuses is unbecoming and un-American.
bkny
i really don’t get it, because i can guarantee you that a very good portion of that audience has family members (if not themselves) with severe dental problems that they cannot begin to afford treatment and can actually imagine that level of desperation.
oh, and they’re just assholes.
Brick Oven Bill
Balloon Juice is often on the cutting edge, be it Scott Brown election predictions, Climate Change e-mails (beat Drudge by four days on that one IIRC), windmills (watch and see), cream puffs (these I purchased myself; the subject of correlating the contents of shopping carts with the BMI of shoppers, especially those with those little motorized carts, will be left for another day, God willing), and the mother of all subjects, oil shale. So we here have our ear to the ground, so to say.
If you noticed, AOL today covered “I AM DOCTOR AMY BISHOP!”, the one from Harvard, icing her brother. So Balloon Juice beat AOL this time by again, several days. AOL hasn’t gotten around to Amy’s Great Cornholio moment at IHOP, but they might.
So when Beck closed out his show today with a proposal to cut the Federal Budget by 50% and taxes by 50%, this was recognized as a political platform. Stand by for updates.
Jody
In regards to the original post: it is not just that they have no empathy. They are actively enjoying the fact that people other than themselves are suffering. In their eyes these people are clearly undeserving for whatever reason they care to pull out of their ass.
Funny story. An acquaintance of mine who is a long term opponent of health care recently lost her job and benefits. When I pointed out this was exactly why we need a public option, she pointed out that she’d obviously have benefits from the job she was going to get any time now.
It’s fear, plain and simple. They are afraid of what they see happening to some people so they insist to themselves that it can’t happen to them, It’s worse than lack of empathy. It’s a DELIBERATE lack of empathy, to the point where they enjoy seeing others down on their luck, because in their eyes it reaffirms their own righteousness.
El Cid
Anyone who attended Harvard is a Communist, including George W. Bush and the entire membership of the Harvard Republicans Club.
See, we dumbass right wingers and proud small business owners don’t know shit, but, by god, we sure knew Scott Brown DROVE A TRUCK! (And helps end GOP filibusters too!)
Kryptik
@Cain:
But everyone knows that poor people don’t get cancer, so yeah.
Welfare Queens, also. They should go without their cell phone for a while so they can save up for a primary care provider, and stop leeching off the ER.
El Cid
@Cain: Well, and also, especially here in the conservative white South, it’s “I may be poor but I’d rather stay like this than see one damn dollar go to the n****** and homos.”
harlana peppper
She should be grateful for those teeth, wherever they come from . . . as always, the Lord provides. Some people don’t even have dead sisters whose teeth they can inherit. What’s wrong with you people??
Kryptik
@El Cid:
Also shows a disdain for the common man and ruining their chances for upward movement, if you try and drag the poor Wall Street CEOs down. If they can’t afford their third summer home, how can you expect the janitor down the street to be successful, man?!
Xenos
@El Cid: Do you know why Scott Brown, from the suburbs, bought such a big and macho pickup? It was so he could tow the horse trailers for his daughters when they were into competing at horse shows.
Salt of the earth…
celticdragonchick
@El Cid:
The grievance based culture war trumps every other consideration.
Tonal Crow
@jl:
See! [Tooth-]Death Panels!
celticdragonchick
@Xenos:
Don’t tell me it was the sort where they ride English saddles and wear red jackets…!
bemused
@Kryptik:
Pawlenty wants to run for prez or vp so bad, he’ll do anything. Everyone I know is just counting the days till we see the back side of him. He is gutting our state for his ambitions & smiling while he does it. Another fine evangelical “Christian”.
freelancer
I can’t even be snarky about the vile things they’re saying. It’s beyond disgusting.
Xenos
@celticdragonchick: They don’t ride western style in Norfolk County, MA.
Extra fun details.
Kryptik
@bemused:
I bet Bachmann’s district is loving it, however.
Anne Laurie
@Raenelle:
Terrifying, because true. And the cherry on the shite sundae is… they want to reduce the rest of us, the people who still have souls, to their own reptilian eat-or-be-eaten level.
General Egali Tarian Stuck
@Brick Oven Bill: So what’s your point dumbass? And may I remind you that Dick Cheney and George Bush killed hundreds of thousands for non existent WMD. And tortured the ones they didn’t kill. And Glen Beck is worried that poor people might can chew their food with government aid? Or Amy Bishop went to Harvard and that means something? Piss of BoB, not in the mood for your wretched gumbo of crazy tonight. Go suck on an exhaust pipe or something. k
bayville
First off. Corporate Welfare=Good. People Welfare=Not so.
But most importantly, if you are a socialist, teacher, atheist, Commie, abortionist, Messican, Muslim, fag, union member, college educated, progressive, Yankee, colored folk, pacifist, nature lover. community organizer, lesbian, single mom, non-flag lapel pin wearin’ librul….you probably had it coming…so you deserve no sympathy.
kay
@bkny:
I think so, too. I think this is a “blunder” by the conservative elites. And they thought fancy mustard was a “tell”! Wait ’till this gets out.
Teeth are like the absolute best class indicator.
So let’s tell everyone how out of touch they are.
bemused
@Kryptik:
Oh no, not Pawlenty & Bachmann in the same thread. That’s just cruel.
Anne Laurie
@El Cid: Credit where due: That was Davis X. Machina —
(It’s in the Lexicon, under ’27 Percenters’)
Steeplejack
@Brick Oven Bill:
I try not to respond to you, BOB, because you are obviously a spoof or a troll–and lately you seem to be written by at least three different “voices”–but sometimes I just have to say it: you are a complete and utter asshole. I try to tell myself that I hope you never have to experience firsthand the downside of American life about which you comment with such wit and classical insight. But I am not always successful. Please just DIAF.
And I hope that someday you become uncomfortable with your own poverty: poverty of empathy, poverty of intellect, poverty of simple humanity.
harlana peppper
@celticdragonchick: you poor dear, how horrible, my heart goes out to you, i wish you relief
B.O.B, spoof or troll? is there such a thing as a “sproll”? Or perhaps, just “batshit crazy” will do
El Cid
@Anne Laurie: The spirit of Anatole France enters the blog age.
burnspbesq
@celticdragonchick:
Given your nom de plume, I suspect you know perfectly well that it’s going to take centuries. How long did it take the good people of Ulster to figure out that they had to put sectarian divisions aside in order to move forward?
Kryptik
@bemused:
Pawlenty and Bachmann in the same state is cruel, but hey, that’s reality.
Comrade Mary
I feel helpless about the inhumanity of these fuckers. I’ll just offer a couple of relevant Guess Who links, because music can help, you know?
Hand Me Down World
Share the Land
As a young punk, I held bands like this in disdain, but God damn, I will take sincerity, harmony and power vocals any time now. I saw them at Ontario Place a few years ago on their reunion tour and was blown away.
El Cid
@Xenos: I knew that. I think I posted it here in comments. It should have been front paged, particularly how TRUCK DRIVIN’ naked Scott Brown didn’t like it ’cause it smelled and was all dirty, ew, ew.
celticdragonchick
@Anne Laurie:
Welcome to predatory rapacious capitalism, American style!
You can be part of the menu, just like being in a (libertarian sci fi author) Jerry Pournelle story…
celticdragonchick
@harlana peppper:
I appreciate your thought. My family and I have managed to adjust, and things got much better when I was awarded federal disability last year, thank God. I am now finishing my geology degree so I can do something productive with my brain :)
General Egali Tarian Stuck
@Comrade Mary: American Woman was the best for me.
El Cid
@celticdragonchick: Yeah, it’s all predatory macho rapacious reptilian capitalism until the business gets a boo-boo or a buddy gets on a good committee and then it’s all GIMME GIMME GUBMIT MUNEE.
Blake
Just going by the Republicans I know, this is the main thing. They react to stories like this, just like liberals react to stories about welfare queens: they think it’s bullshit. Sure, I think on some level there are many who don’t care, but I think the gut reaction is to call “bullshit” when they hear any potentially heart-wrenching story from a Democrat.
Johnny B
The last time a polical party adhered to a philosophy of no emphathy, 12 million people were intentionally murdered, and an additional 50 million died in a world war. But the lesson of that experience is that a political philosophy premised on a lack of empathy is not the best organizing tool. Eventually the masses learn that they constitute the pool of people that the oligarchs would rather see dead. And make no mistake about it, the Limbaughs, Malkins, Becks, and O’Reillys of the world would like nothing better than see the murder of about three quarters of the country. I give them a 25% chance of getting their wish.
celticdragonchick
@burnspbesq:
Possibly so, given the quasi-religious nature of the culture war. You can argue that we are merely continuing the cultural divide conflict that began prior to the signing of our own Declaration of Independence. Washington foresaw that any potential split in the country would be based on the North/South cultural and geographic divide. We are still playing that out.
Donald G
As I wrote several threads back, these overprivileged, social Darwinistic sociopaths have created a society which rewards their arrested moral development and their shriveled souls.
Without the ability to empathize with others not as fortunate as themselves and lacking the desire to examine themselves and the role their philosophies have created in bringing about in exacerbating an often nightmarish existence for those without their money, power and status, radical conservatives like Beck, Malkin, Limbaugh, Coulter and their respective cheerleaders have made themselves into monsters who can justify and revel in any cruelty they wish to visit upon decent, everyday real Americans who can never aspire to the material advantages these bozos have.
slag
Brick Oven Bill:
You see, John. By mocking the poor old woman wearing her dead sister’s dentures, they were helping her. Scorn and ridicule are uncomfortable, so they were just making sure this lady with the ill-fitting dentures didn’t get too comfortable in her poverty. In helping her pull herself up by her tattered old bootstraps they were behaving just like our founding fathers.
Patriotism, John! Maybe you’ve heard of it.
harlana peppper
@celticdragonchick: oh, I am so glad to hear that! best of luck to you! :)
Brick Oven Bill
The point, General Egali Tarian Stuck, is a health, safety, and welfare issue. You need to give Democrats wide berths as they have an unsettling tendency to turn violent. This is a well-documented community hazard.
Hold your fingers, hold your nipples, yummy cream puffs grow your ripples.
The answer SteepleJack is charity, not government. Charity cannot grow dangerous, and is much more efficient. My guess is that if this toothless woman went to a Church, or a local fraternal organization, that she would have been accommodated immediately.
El Cid
@slag: I too remember the Parable of George Washington Laughing at the Poor Beggar Woman. We could learn a lot from that these days, what with them blacks stealing $700 billion worth of houses from banks using Jimmy Carter ACORN voodoo.
General Egali Tarian Stuck
@Donald G:
The scary part is that these cretins didn’t actually make themselves into anything. They were made by the millions of Americans whose ideas they represent.
Steeplejack
@kay:
Bad teeth and dentures (lack of) were a surprisingly big part of Barbara Ehrenreich’s Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America. A book that I recommend to all.
slag
@Brick Oven Bill:
I thought the answer was discomfort.
Kobie
Well, Brick Oven Bill is either a masterful troll or a delusional twat. Or both. I dunno.
As per the original question, the answer as to why conservatives spout off such vile, vile things is that they are insufferable, overprivileged, self-righteous bastards who deserve nothing more than to be cornholed by the devil in hell for eternity for their complete disregard for other human beings who aren’t rich, white, or their enablers. Disgusting, subhuman pigs. Fuck each and every last one of them sideways with a rusty snow shovel.
Brick Oven Bill
The answer is not government cream-puffs.
Kobie
@Brick Oven Bill:
Democrats have an “unsettling tendency to turn violent”? What the fuck does this even mean? And why am I even engaging someone who’s such a colossal dick?
Nick
I remember reading the diaries of French Revolutionaries (in French) and one of the things that caught my eye was how patient they were over the late 18th century that, eventually, the King and Queens and aristocracy would come around, but at some point, when the country was bankrupt and they were still feasting on expensive buffets dressed in costly garments garnished in priceless jewelery, they realized they were never going to change the minds of those hurting them and went from trying to convince them, to eliminating them.
I’m coming close to the point where I think people like Michelle Malkin are a danger to society. I don’t want to have to go there, but some people’s opinions are just opinions, others are just dangerous.
El Cid
Government aid never works. That’s why during the Great Depression, churches had to step up and employ millions and millions of those out of work to build and conserve parks, cultural institutions like theaters, government offices, and employ thousands of writers and artists and others, because, yeah, god forbid them dang inefficient soshulist big gubmit types had got involved when Americans really needed help. Freedom. And scoffing at the poor.
SenyorDave
When I read this I’m embarassed. Not sure who or what I’m embarassed about.
When I read about the summit from yesterday, I’m angry. The GOP is disgusting, the Dems spineless.
I have a suspicion that Obama would like to go after the Dems every bit as much as he would like to go after the GOP, but he can’t really go after either.
A generation exposed to Limbaugh has really hurt this country. Not many people I really wish ill on, but can God set it up so Limbaugh and Cheney end up being caught in bed together? Cheney can expire with his boots on, and Limbaugh can switch teams and fight for the repeal of DADT.
celticdragonchick
@harlana peppper:
Thank you :)
General Egali Tarian Stuck
@Brick Oven Bill:
Oh fuck me. You’ve been reading too much World Nut Daily. If you don’t shut yer yapper I will glue you to my idjit tree and pour honey and pizza over your head and watch the little libtard children eat your brain.
rootless-e
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9noyufiMS0
the bunning video
The united states senate: the greatest legislative body in its side of the Capitol building when the Senate AAA meeting is not in session.
scav
@El Cid: and forcing the poor to gum charitable mashed nettles because someone on govt aid might have once purchased something tasty.
rootless-e
@El Cid: one of the wingers on twitter told us yesterday that the government bans monopolies, but it is a monopoly itself!
They run logical circles around us.
slag
@El Cid: I know I look around the country with 10% unemployment after 10 years of stagnant wages and think: Damn! These poor people are hilarious!
Ahhhh….good times. If only more people had decent a sense of humor.
John Cole
@The “Callous Right-Winger” in Me « It Don’t Mean Much, These Seats are Cheap.: This guy is great. My argument sucks because he googled some shit.
He also completely missed the point of the tooth story, which is that people suffer for months and then have it extracted because it IS CHEAPER than the root canal.
I give up.
Steeplejack
@Jody:
Try asking her: “What would happen if, say–God forbid, of course–you are in a bad car accident before you get that next job?”
Mr. Furious
@bemused: Reminds me of Jon Stewart’s clip of Glenn Beck railing against the gov’t, taxes and everything else, then boasting that he “educated himself, for free—at the library!”
Stewart’s histrionics after that were pretty spot-on.
SIA
We got yer fucking banality of evil right here folks
mr. whipple
Canada curlers have one shot to make for the gold.
The Sheriff's A Ni-
They’re all assholes appealing to the asshole fringe. Simple as that.
celticdragonchick
@Brick Oven Bill:
Project much?
Let me know when you see a democrat wander into a Southern Baptist church and open fire after reading a Bill Maher book.
Kinda like that right wing wack-a-loon who shot up the Untarian church in Tennessee and then claiming he was motivated by hatred of Democrats, liberals, African Americans and homosexuals
The following books were found in Adkisson’s home during a police search:[9]
* Liberalism is a Mental Disorder by radio talk show host Michael Savage
* Let Freedom Ring: Winning the War of Liberty over Liberalism by talk show host Sean Hannity
* The O’Reilly Factor: The Good, the Bad, and the Completely Ridiculous in American Life by television talk show host Bill O’Reilly
In his manifesto, Adkisson also included the Democratic members of the House and Senate,[11] and the 100 People Who Are Screwing Up America [11] of Bernard Goldberg in his list of wished-for targets.
Shall we get into the shootings within the past few months by right wing extremists in Pennsylvania or the Holocaust Museum?
Steeplejack
@Tonal Crow:
Tooth Fairy death panels! Eek! The horror! Teh gay!
mr. whipple
Oh no, overtime.
Kobie
@mr. whipple: Bah!
I got compared to Brick Oven Bill for expressing my feelings on curling last week.
El Cid
By the way, if you’re poor, you should eat nothing but potatoes and spinach. If you use food stamps for sweets, you are proving that you’re truly a young buck abusing the public funds, and therefore it’s totally okay for people to demean you and blame you for every failure and taunt you, and you should return to your life of gray, bland, unsweetened drudgery, because you’ve so much else to look forward to.
All we need to run any society are loudmouth small business owners, who know everything in the universe because they work a lot and have to pay people.
Tonal Crow
Please remember: feed trolls only pie. Anything else is welfare that encourages them to grow and multiply. That is all.
celticdragonchick
Caprica is coming on in a bit. See you all later and have a safe weekend.
Steeplejack
@General Egali Tarian Stuck:
I am partial to “Undun.” But I have the jazz chromosome.
jibeaux
@John Cole:
Well, you scroll through the blog and you find a guy who buys his own insurance on the individual market who is OPPOSED to health care reform. Can’t fix stupid. Also, looking at the tags he’s pretty obviously just trolling the lefty blogosphere trying desperately to get a comment on his blog, like that desperate guy who periodically crops up from the Boston paper, whatever his name was. You have to feel at least a little bad for wingnuts who can’t manage to troll their way into more blog comments than my blog, which consists primarily of cute things my kids say.
General Egali Tarian Stuck
@Steeplejack: also love that one
Zandar
It’s that simple, John.
People who have a job and can afford to go to the Applebee’s salad bar once in a while cannot possibly have money problems.
You take that extra part time job. You miss your kid’s soccer games because you work two jobs, your spouse works another one.
You exhaust yourself and make yourself miserable. If you don’t, you’re a dirty lazy f’ckin hippie liberal welfare cheat darkie.
That’s the GOP way. They’ve convinced millions of Americans that the only God-given Constitutional right you have is self-pity…and if anyone dares to help people more miserable than you, then you need to crush them until they Learn. Their. Place.
Anyone worse off than you deserved it. Anyone better off than you earned it. Challenge that order, and you’re The Enemy.
That’s it.
Brick Oven Bill
Those were, of course, wrong celticdragonchick, but those Democrats who were exposed to Barack’s teachings for an extended period of time in his Chicago neighborhood send twelve or so to the emergency room with knife and bullet wounds, oftentimes fatal. This is every night in one hospital alone. That is really messed up.
I am also disturbed by the oral fixation of the violent Democrat. What is it with teeth?
Oranges cost $0.38 El Cid. This is when you buy them one at a time.
Niklas Blanchard
@John Cole #155:
Of course I understand that people get their teeth pulled because a root canal is to expensive, and to the extent that it happens, it’s unfortunate.
However, do you really know people who don’t check their blood glucose level? That would be the extreme hyperbolic discounting I was talking about.
If you read my health care posts, I share your desire to lower the cost and increase the access to health care…I just don’t think the arguments you used are very good.
El Cid
@Zandar: Just to reinforce, for David Brooks it wasn’t enough to just go to the (entirely fictional) Applebee’s salad bar — Obama had to be accepted be the people who hung out at this august non-real institution, to be cool there.
El Cid
Why is cleek’s greasemonkey script pie filter failing me?
Mike in NC
B.O.B.’s “brain” equates to one pound of shit…
John Cole
@Niklas Blanchard: Yes. I do. I know a guy who did not check his blood sugar for a week and a half because the sticks were too damned expensive for him.
These people exist. In bulk.
El Cid
And, again, if BOB is someone here, seriously, fuck you, you’re not funny, you’re just a hack asshole. Any body, I mean any time wasting hack, can imitate a right winger and say asshole shit.
El Cid
@John Cole: What kind of TV and countertops did he have? Did you get him to sell his car or motorcycle or bike? Does he have any nice shoes he could sell for replacements at Goodwill? We need to know these things.
RareSanity
@Kobie:
Slow down there.
You didn’t get compared to B.O.B. because of your “thoughts” on curling. You got compared because of your “thoughts” about the people who watched curling and the prickish way you expressed them.
I sat through the entire 300+ posts thread, let’s not rewrite history now…
jibeaux
Sure, but they’re really cheap at Wal-Mart. Why do you DFHs always want the government to provide a people handout?
Jody
Steeple: That’s my point. I ask her that, and her response is “but I won’t”. This is perfectly reasonable to her, because in her mind she is a good person and does not deserve to have that sort of thing happen to her.
For some people, that kind of misfortune is so unthinkable they literally reason it away on other people. Anything bad that happens to someone else is because for some reason they deserved it. It’s the same mentality that cause Pat Robertson to say the Haitians brought the earthquake upon themselves for making a deal with the devil. It’s also what allows them to take malicious glee at the misfortune of those that have to wear their dead sister’s dentures.
El Cid
@jibeaux: Well, I know Wal-Mart’s good for finding bulky people, but I didn’t know they had people in bulk as well.
jibeaux
@El Cid:
I know, right? I once knew a guy who told me about dissolving ketchup packets from McDonald’s into hot water to make tomato soup, but he TOTALLY had an old car that didn’t run too well but could’ve been sold for parts for three digits, easily. Admittedly the countertops were laminate.
jenniebee
@Dreggas: It’s not limited to the uninsured. My brother has a job and dental insurance. He would have needed a crown. The dentist didn’t even bother to quote him a price, just told him that the deductible to save the tooth was going to be more than he could probably afford. My brother took his word for it and got his tooth pulled.
Barasso thinks that the problem is that when people are advised to get a treatment by their doctor, the first question they ask is “is it covered.” He thinks that all the problems he cares about would be solved if medical care was more like yachts – if you have to ask how much it is, you can’t afford it.
kay
@Steeplejack:
I didn’t read the book, but she included it because it’s a huge problem for people, so they (of course) talk about it, I imagine.
People use clove oil here to treat their own dental pain. It numbs, so it affects their speech. It has a very strong odor, not really unpleasant, it’s herby, but you can smell it on them.
mr. whipple
Barrasso also said he knew many doctors that treated people for free, because they are so kind.
Fine. Everyone can drop their insurance now!
El Cid
@jenniebee: Barasso was playing on a different fantasy, I think.
This one is the notion that if you only shopped around carefully, the medical procedure your doctors all tell you that you need and would cost $13K would really be available for $750 if you had only been a good conscientious coupon-clipper and careful shopper, and had read all the doctor want ads and such.
In his view, the sufferers of catastrophic conditions were ‘scared thrifty’ and learned how to look for ways of making their $2 million procedures $1.75 million, etc.
So, when you’re leg is broken, don’t just rush off to the first Emergency Room like any lazy Demo-Krap librul would do; load up Angie’s List and find that doctor with the 50% off sale this week for broken femurs.
Kobie
@RareSanity: My thoughts were on the fair-weather fans, and I clarified that as such. Don’t you rewrite history either, Tex.
I sat through 300 posts of everyone piling on me long after the so-called “discussion” was over too. And I’m really sorry if you think the way I expressed my opinion was “prickish.” I also don’t give a shit. Fuck off.
El Cid
@jibeaux: A lot of my relatives grew up in desperate, live on the streets poverty. And those that did best were saved by the BIG FEDRUL GUBMIT, particularly by joining the military and getting food and shelter and good clothes and basic social training and health care, and eventually enough for their families. Parasites. They should have just learned to live without food and teeth.
General Egali Tarian Stuck
@Niklas Blanchard: You must live on planet wingnut where everyone can buy everything they need and poor folks don’t exist. Four thousand people a week die needlessly because they can’t get or afford health insurance, and therefore sure as shit can’t afford to pay out of pocket for “equipment” they need to stay alive. That’s a Vietnam War worth of dead Americans every year because republicans are concerned about lowering health care costs and getting people insured, but never do a damn thing about it other than obstruct those trying to.
RareSanity
@Kobie:
Yeah, I remember you tried to argue that…most of the commenters weren’t buying it…
But hey, that’s the thing about opinions, if they were provable, they would be facts.
jibeaux
I don’t wanna ask, but I have to ask, did we have a 300+ thread about fair-weather curling fans, complete with hurt feelings? I mean, I knew this was a pretty eclectic bunch and all and prone to odd digressions, but dayum.
And I bet the guy John knew could have, if he was really poor and an environmentalist, re-used the same sticks or found a dead relative who still had half a box. Diabetes does run in families, you know.
slag
@El Cid:
I know I’ve observed this in myself. Not with regard to money, per se. But when I feel like sh#t, I eat like sh#t. And when I feel well, I eat well.Studies have even been done on this phenomenon. Why is it so hard for righties to get their little minds around the causes of some of these problems? That’s where my own imagination fails.
There are times when I’ve had relatively little money, so I can imagine what it’s like to be poor (within limits) and how that cycle perpetuates itself. And I’ve also had a lot of privilege in my life at different times. But still, I can’t–for the life of me–imagine how someone who has benefitted from various privileges in his life can totally overlook those privileges and mock poor people. If this were a 12 year-old kid exhibiting this behavior, then maybe, but since it’s an adult…It baffles.
AhabTRuler
@jibeaux: Just good, old-fashioned BJ(TM) not-letting-a-bad-point-die-a-quick-death-ism!
RareSanity
@Kobie:
Yeah, that was the prevailing opinion about you…
Steeplejack
@John Cole:
Amen to that. Just worked beside a woman today who has a hacking case of bronchitis and should have been at home. But she has used up her sick leave and doesn’t get paid if she doesn’t work at the Big Box Bookstore. And she can’t afford–at all–not to work.
El Cid
@slag:
Rational thought is theft.
Kobie
@RareSanity:
Again, you seem to be missing the part where I give a rat’s ass what you think. And either way, I was compared to captain shitkicker back there over a discussion about curling. FACT. Look it up.
El Cid
@Steeplejack: Well, if she works in a damn book store, why ain’t she spendin’ her spare time readin’ and figgerin’ out how to make whatever it is she needs to cure herself? I mean, is somebody else supposed to fix all her health problems? Tell her to take some responsibility!
El Cid
I really do beg these people not to bring up some weird argument about curling. I’m sure I ignored it the first time.
RareSanity
@Kobie:
Then why are you still arguing?
jibeaux
@Steeplejack:
Yeesh. You would think, out of society’s pure self-interest, that we would have proposed paid sick leave by now for people who work in jobs with public interaction, i.e. most of the jobs not currently offering paid sick leave.
Kobie
@RareSanity: And my prevailing opinion is that the people who were piling on me because of my supposed slight of curling fans can go get bent. Every last one of them.
Kobie
@RareSanity: Why are YOU still arguing?
RareSanity
@El Cid:
I’m sorry…I inadvertently rekindled it.
I promise, I’m done.
Steeplejack
@jibeaux:
Yeah, we actually discussed that a bit at work today. Heh.
The kicker is that this woman’s other job is as a waiter at a restaurant.
Serenity now.
jibeaux
A nice thought, but we’ve got some curling flame wars to re-ignite.
Hiram Taine
@El Cid: Have a Cuppa Tea.
SiubhanDuinne
I hesitated about sharing this, but what the hell. Several years ago I had what was called a “whole-mouth extraction” — yes, they pulled out every tooth preparatory to a whole-mouth set of dental implants. In all, over a 13-month period, I had at least six general- anesthetic oral surgeries. My insurance (which is actually pretty good) did not cover any of the procedures, let alone the hardware. I was/am more than fortunate that I was able to cover the (very substantial) cost out of pocket, although it did me out of vacations and other luxuries for a few years and considerably deferred my retirement date. (AND I hasten to say, it’s one of the best things I ever did for myself, on a par with Lasik surgery which I had a couple of years later).
The point is, even though I was lucky enough to be in a better financial position than Louise Slaughter’s constituent, or the thousands of others who deal with oral disease and other dental problems every day, I absolutely know first-hand what it’s like to be toothless (my hyperactive gag reflex meant no traditional dentures for me — sorry, that’s probably TMI). I can assure Mr. Limbaugh that 13 straight months of nothing but soup, smoothies and APPLESAUCE plays merry hell with the digestive system (TMI again). I know what it’s like to force yourself NOT to smile no matter how amused or happy you are because if you do, you look like a demented 93-year-old, and frighten people.
Limbaugh and Coulter and Beck and Malkin and the rest of them don’t know or don’t care how intimately connected dental health is with the rest of the body, from cardio-vasular to digestive to the health and appearance of hair and nails and skin. They can fry in hell as far as I’m concerned.
+2 , more to come
kay
@Niklas Blanchard:
And, then, improperly managed diabetes affects dental health, leading to…… dentures.
We’ve been debating this health care thing for what seems like decades on this blog, because (sadly) this ORDEAL of health care reform never ends. I know more about it than I ever wanted to know, frankly.
Maybe John’s on to something with the dentures + blood sugar examples? It’s all interconnected, which is what makes it so hard to “fix”.
Steeplejack
@jibeaux:
Okay, how about this: I think everyone who
likespretends to like curling is icky.Too strong? (I’m not very good at this.)
Wile E. Quixote
@celticdragonchick:
Do you know what the best part of this would be? Not watching BoB suffer, although he certainly should, not because he might learn something from the experience and become a better person, but rather because he is human garbage who should have been aborted by his drunken slut of a mother. No, the best part would be watching BoB produce a video like the one that his crybaby punk hero Glenn Beck did. A video, which after watching 30 seconds of it made everyone who isn’t a Glenn Beck fan want to find out where Glenn Beck lives and go over there and give the little punk something to really cry about.
Mnemosyne
@El Cid:
It puts an interesting spin on our obesity epidemic, doesn’t it? When cheap, tasty food is your escape from the rest of your miserable existence, how would we not have an obesity problem?
(Note: I’m speaking about public health here. I am not criticizing any individual or any individual’s actions, unless that individual is the CEO of McDonald’s or Burger King.)
@Steeplejack:
I was at Joann Fabric a couple of weeks ago and I’m convinced the woman who was cutting the fabric had whooping cough (pertussis) because she had that really distinctive gasp at the end of each cough.
But it’s a big box fabric store so … sick day? Health insurance? Wazzat?
Hopefully no one in the store that day is also a crazy anti-vaxer (they’re legion out here in California) or there’s a nasty surprise waiting for them.
Pheonix
I’m one of those people that has had teeth extracted (four total) because I couldn’t afford root canals. There’s nothing like having to give up actual parts of your body to save a bit of money.
Apparently Glenn Beck can’t read very well, or just doesn’t understand the word “welfare” as it’s used in that constitution he read, unless he’s got his own private version. If he thinks teeth are not something you have a right to, then I think it’s about time someone knocked his out, explaining to him as he lies in a sobbing pile of his own excrement, that he also doesn’t have a right to them. You can bet he’d quickly spray out a new tune then, just like he did about health care, when he experienced how bad it was first hand, just before he moved to Fox.
Not that I’m promoting violence, mind you. I just wouldn’t lose much sleep over it, if he, say, said something so insanely stupid he provoked a violent reaction from a listener, who, oh, I dunno, might not be all that well mentally balanced & fair.
Plus, the poetic justice & irony, and Beck’s temporary explosive-exodontia induced silence on the air could be a little too much bliss for any single human to contain safely.
slag
@SiubhanDuinne: Holy christ! Move over, John’s shoulder, this is definitely something worse to bitch about. I’m taken aback. Seriously. It’s so good that you were able to pay for the expense, but I bet you could have found other ways to spend your money.
Cataphract
I’ve come to a conclusion about these folks as of late, It’s nothing new, I’m just slow on these things.
The conclusion is on what they are and what these people should be labelled (sic?). Because they are not conservative. When I think of conservative–a true conservative–I think Andrew Bacevich.
These people–this breed of Repub, the Teabaggers, etc–they’re fascists. I don’t use the word lightly. But that is the definition of what they are. Mean, nasty, brutish and cowardly Fascists. Conservatives they are not.
kay
@Cataphract:
Well, whatever else they are they’re certainly isolated, if they aren’t aware that there are people who can’t afford dental care or dentures. I don’t know how you miss it if you actually occasionally interact with “folks”.
No one talks to them, because they’re horrible and nasty. I bet that’s it. I know I’d cross the street to avoid Rush Limbaugh. Yuck. Spot him, keep my head down, and make a quick diagonal cross.
Three-nineteen
@John Cole #176: Hi John – longtime listener, first time caller. Thought I would reproduce the comment I left on Mr. Cheapseats’ blog here:
I clicked on your link and found out that you indeed can buy a blood glucose meter for $12 (on sale from $70). That’s cheap! Then I scrolled down and found out that the test strips, which you have to use every time you test, are $30 for 50 strips (on sale from $55) and lancets, also used every time you test, are $12 for 100 (on sale from $17). That’s $36 for 50 tests. Still pretty cheap, unless you know someone, like my cousin, who is supposed to test his blood 5 times a day, which is approximately 150 tests a month. That’s when you figure out it costs him over $100 dollars a month to test his blood. He also has mental and emotional problems, which affect his job performance and makes it almost impossible for him to hold down even a minimum wage job. What if his parents were dead and couldn’t provide for all his needs? What if his 6 month marriage had produced a child? Would you tell him to go ahead and spend the $100/month on himself instead of his dependents?
The only thing thing I’m going to say about the $4 Walmart prescriptions is that I am on one medication where there is no generic that costs $200 a month. I’m pretty sure I can’t get that at WalMart for $4 (but I will check for sure). Good thing I don’t have my cousin’s problems, or I wouldn’t have my well-paying job with the half-way decent insurance plan to help pay for it. Of course, I can’t quit like I want to so I can start my own business because of my pre-existing condition, but I guess that’s just a combination of tough luck and bad genetics, huh?
Amy
One of my best friends has stage four melanoma and is about to go into clinical trials and what does she have to deal with?
— Fighting with her insurance company about what gets covered
— Covering the 20% co-pay
— Maintaining her job so she can keep health insurance
— Worrying about what happens to her 19 year old’s health insurance if she dies
With her illness, she’d face a tough row without any of that other BS. But why should she have that bullshit? Do these asshats think it builds character?
KenInPhilly
it’s the same old republican/glibertartian attitude: screw you, until of course it’s me getting screwed. only then is it time to do something. i mean isn’t that what jesus’ message was all about?
SiubhanDuinne
@slag
Well, if it came across as bitching, that wasn’t really intended. And it was a long time ago. I tend to be a count-your-blessings kind of gal, and I know I felt genuinely blessed (which is *not* a word this unbeliever uses often) to live in a time when implants were available. But it was sufficiently unpleasant, uncomfortable, unsightly and expensive that it gave me a whole new depth of compassion for people who have to cope with ill-fitting (or borrowed, or no) dentures and who don’t have the resources. I think John would say — and *has* said, in the midst of his pain-fueled rants — that it would be orders of magnitude worse without insurance/private means.
My bitching, if that’s what it was, was aimed at the Limbaughs of this world. I wasn’t trying to do a pity party.
carlos the dwarf
@kay:
I’d heckle him. Then walk away cackling gleefully.
/But I only ever hang out in bastions of DFHism, so it’ll never happen.
Sanka
When my neighbor rebuilt his house, I took his old bathtub and used it as the base for a plantbed that I built.
That doesn’t mean I need to ask everyone on my block to pay for my gardening necessities.
Yutsano
@Sanka: Mr Non Sequitur, your table is ready. Not that I’d expect you to appreciate the difference.
Mike G
For them, yes, because True Republicanism demands not just that you be indifferent to the suffering of weak and powerless ‘outgroups’, but that you be an arrogant, contemptuous bullying asshole toward them.
And Another Thing...
@Brick Oven Bill: A direct quote from your drivel:
“…; the subject of correlating the contents of shopping carts with the BMI of shoppers, especially those with those little motorized carts, will be left for another day, God willing…”
I’m one of those people who use motorized wheels. I had polio as a one year old and wore a full leg brace and used crutches for FIFTY effin’ years before I finally was forced to start using motors. And guess what you asshole, I’ve gained weight. A casual observer wouldn’t be able to determine the reason most disabled people need to use motors. They certainly wouldn’t know by looking at me.
So shut up and go away you fucking a$$hole, and stop pouring your brand of poison in this, or any other, thread. You’re not funny, clever, or insightful. Fuck off.
AhabTRuler
Hey guys, don’t let B.O.B. get you down.
I mean, he don’t know shit about pies.
Tonal Crow
Straw-berry, rasp-berry, boysenberry tart,
Apple-frosted peach pie,
And pumpkin-cream to start,
Gather ’round and chomp ’em down and then go for a stroll,
But please, oh please, I beg of you, don’t go and feed the troll.
Niklas Blanchard
@Brick Oven Bill: Unfortunately for Benjamin Franklin, psychology has advanced well beyond the place he left it when he died (who does that, anyway?)…and thus, his analysis is nearly completely wrong.
I even wrote a blog about it, if you would like to read in more detail!
TenguPhule
At this point exterminating Republicans in job lots should be considered pest control.
And the last sane man heard a knock on the door.
Quiddity
From the story:
What exactly is ridiculous about the story? Seriously.
Tonal Crow
@Quiddity:
What’s ridiculous about it is that it exposes Republican ideology as immoral, hateful, and toxic to the body politic. Therefore it must be mocked, its messenger impugned, and the victimization it describes denied. See, it’s ridiculous. Nothing to see here but libtards whining like they always do. Walk on, walk on.
Ken
We live in the District adjacent to Rep. Slaughter’s; her story wouldn’t surprise me in the least.
BoB – I was just wondering; to you ever have any points to your comments, or are you in constant free-form?
rikyrah
they don’t care.
Quiddity
@Tonal Crow
I agree that there is a ridiculous aspect to the Ingraham statement and the whole Republican/conservative reaction. What I was asking – and this may be impossible to determine – is, what in her mind makes the story “ridiculous”? As you write, poor people must be mocked, and so the context-free insult of “ridiculous” was deployed. But, and this will never happen, I’d love to see someone badger her so that she says what is ridiculous about the story that she was dismissive of.
About 10 years ago, it was noted that Limbaugh’s show was categorized by a ratings firm as “non-guest confrontational”. That’s FOX and much of right-wing radio. So they can say that Obama is “arrogant” and that various stories of pain and suffering are “ridiculous” without anybody challenging them.
TenguPhule
That Slaughter expected the GOP parasites to care.
lucslawyer
John Kenneth Galbraith got it right…”Conservatism is the increasingly sophisticated attempt to justify greed.”…..
TenguPhule
Corrected.
diane
And I bet they will attend some kind of religious service this weekend and think that they are wonderful christians.
This is what Americans want for each other?
This is is the type of attitude that we are fighting wars for?
To spread this great democracy all over the world.
I am glad POTUS asked a republican at the health care summit his week, but would you feel the same way if you made $40,000.00 a year?
I wonder how much cheney had to spend to have his heart attack taken care of or rush when he had chest pain?
Right republican, best health care system in the world as we spend billions to bomb and kill people and destroy other countries.
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
@harlana peppper:
BJ is like a room full of people who are relaxing and holding various conversations on a variety of subjects. Everything is going fine until somebody farts. B.O.B. is of the garlic and egg salad sandwich ‘scented’ variety. The best response is to move to the other side of the room and just let him stew in it by himself.
He seems to enjoy doing that.
What makes me laugh at the idea that wingnuts hate ‘elites’ is that they are the ones who worship the true elitists, the rich and powerful. These rubes think that ‘their’ rich and powerful party patrons are looking out for their best interests so it’s up to the rubes to protect the rich and powerful and keep the merry-go-round going because one day they might be rich too and then they will be able to reap the same benefits!
IOW, they’re fucking stupid and have absolutely no idea what the words “elite” or “elitist” mean. Cattle have more sense than these morans.
bob h
I just went thru six months of gallstone attacks, with an inflamed organ that was in danger of getting infected, before having it out. I’m guessing there are people without insurance who just let things slide, tolerate the dull ache in the side, until they are taken to the ER with sepsis and maybe it is too late.
I cannot conceive of getting thru these routine sorts of medical emergencies without insurance.
bcinaz
You know that thing in your brain that connects to your human empathy, that thing that prevents you from torturing, abusing, and humiliating, animals, children, people of other faiths, and those who do not think like you? Well, in these guys, in the modern Republican/ Conservative/GOP, that connection has either been severed or they were born without it, like a birth defect, like sociopaths.
kay
@bcinaz:
It’s political, like everything the conservative brain trust does or says.
Personal stories are really persuasive.
It’s why Sarah Palin used her little kid to make up that lie about death panels. She had to make it personal.
Conservatives try like hell to keep the health care obstruction at 50,000 feet. The funniest and clumsiest example was Rep. Cantor, who said his constituents have “alleged” problems with health care delivery. He couldn’t run from those individuals fast enough. He doesn’t want to talk about that.
They can’t allow this to be about 1. people, or 2. health care.
It has to be about The Dogma. Markets, government, you know the drill.
That’s why I think this was a great post, and a great catch, by John, and I thank him for it. I couldn’t watch the forum and I didn’t hear the Slaughter story.
kay
@bcinaz:
But you do have to wonder why these same people didn’t object when Sarah Palin once again dragged that little kid into the spotlight and made him complicit in the death panels lie.
Rahm Emanuel’s brother was plotting to kill her baby, as I recall. I believe she physically lifted the child up and made sure he was photographed, as a sort of visual aid.
That wasn’t ” a sob story” or “hyperbole”. Nah. That was God’s Honest Truth.
We didn’t hear a peep from any of these morons when Palin pulled that card out.
georgia pig
@bcinaz: Let’s not go that far. Sure, the public faces like Malkin and Limbaugh are manipulative sociopaths — they do it for attention. Their followers are probably a different story. My brother in law is a Glenn Beck follower, but he’s not a sociopath. No, he’s just a sick puppy, a very wealthy but extremely unhappy guy.
I was explaining to a recovering conservative friend of mine that “conservativism” in the hands of most Americans who think they’re conservatives is like dope in the hands of a junkie. Selfishness is the oldest human vice, and none of us is immune to it. Our culture cultivates selfishness because the only common denominator is money, and self-expression is almost entirely subsumed in the acquisition of wealth. Accordingly, material selfishness has become a fetish and the psychological construct of “conservatism” — which has very little to do with traditional Anglo-Saxon conservatism — is the drug of choice. It’s the way you construct the bubble to shut out the things that undermine the fantasy, such as little old ladies that have to wear second hand dentures.
Sanka
No. The ridiculous thing is that Obamacare doesn’t even cover dentures—no dental.
Talk about idiots.
Liberty60
Back in the early 90’s when I was still a conservative Republican, people used to charge us with being merciless uncompassionate bastards.
I would retort that no, no, conservatism simply wants to use the power of free markets to help empower the poor, and that liberalism actually ensnared people in dependency….
Anyone who actually believes that (rightly or wrongly) has long since left the Republican party.
I have said it again and again- like with most death-spiraling cults like the Khmer Rouge, the GOP has allowed its loudest, angriest, most radical and doctrinaire voices to claim ownership.
Are all registered republicans as hateful as Rush? Probably not. But who is leading, who is setting the agenda and writing the talking points?
Kenneth Mark Hoover
RepubliKans hate America and they hate Americans. They’ve been trying to destroy the middle class since 1980. They want our country to fail because they think that’s the way they can win.
They are vile hate-spewing vermin and they deserve to be treated as such.
russell
Sometimes there isn’t a whole lot of difference.
Bill Hicks
There’s nothing to understand except this: Republicans and conservatives have hatred running though their veins. It’s their very lifeblood. It’s their fuel. To a Republican, a person in need is the perfect person to deny. To a Republican, a person that’s down is the perfect person to put their boot on.
In short, Republicans and conservatives ENJOY the feeling of hatred. They take every chance they get to show the world they not only are NOT ashamed of their love of hatred, they are PROUD of it.
OhioGuy
More proof of what we already know: conservatism is a mental illness. Conservatives are lacking big parts of what makes us human, reliance on logic over emotion and empathy for our fellow humans foremost among them.
With this lack of humanity on the right becoming more obvious every day, we thinking people can hope that one day soon we can throw the whole Far Right Wing into the dustbin of history and just forget about them. Finally.
How much more sick hatred from the right are we supposed to take? Me, I’m joining the Coffee Party.
lovable liberal
Y’see, if the wingnuts give away their hard-earned empathy, not only will they not have any left for their own deserving families (blood kin only, though, not in-laws), but the deadbeats who need empathy will expect more. And by giving empathy away, they’ll undercut the market for empathy and its price will drop, so there’ll be nothing but cheap empathy available to those who can afford the very best in empathy.
But they’re not doing this to protect those who purchase too much empathy, oh, no, they’re trying to provide all the best market incentives to produce high-quality empathy. You wouldn’t want to give your innocent young white children any used minority empathy, would you?
Oh, strike that last. The wingnuts didn’t really mean that.