Everyday, folks from wingnutopia open their mouths and say the darndest things. Competition for the biggest liar/asshole/douchebag of the day is always pretty intense. But today, you just got to give it to pretend reporter John Stossel of Fox News.
TPM Muckraker reports on the doozy of a lie that Stossel let fly this morning while he was on “Fox and Friends” discussing “wasteful Gubiment spending”. See if you can spot the serious patch of crazy:
“Why is there a Bureau of Indian Affairs?” he said. “There is no Bureau of Puerto Rican Affairs or Black Affairs or Irish Affairs. And no group in America has been more helped by the government than the American Indians, because we have the treaties, we stole their land. But 200 years later, no group does worse.”
If you guessed “no group in America has been more helped by the government than the American Indians” then give yourself a gold star. And if you can make any sense of the rest of his statement let me know. He seems to be lying so fast that he can’t agree with himself.
Now, Stossel has been a well known fraud and liar for years when it comes to environmental issues, workers and social justice. So this latest bit of crazy coming from him is not that surprising, but the bigness of this lie is amazing and so is the audacity of it.
Nationally, one in four Native Americans live in poverty (For more details look here) and on reservations the poverty rate can be as high as 90%. They are perhaps the only group in America where open racism is still OK and even trademarked (for example: Redskins). The history of the kind of “help” the Native Peoples of this continent have received from the government is a story of one disaster after another from the first day Europeans landed in the “New World”.
And yet, according to John Stossel that was all helpful. So I guess in Stossel’s rich fantasy life the Government was just “helping” Native Americans at Wounded Knee back in 1891:
And I guess Stossel would say the same thing about the Trail of Tears and the thousands of other crimes–big and small–committed against Native Americans. Stealing their rights, lands, liberty and heritage has been an American passion from Andrew Jackson to Jack Abramoff.
But in Stossel’s world no group in America has done better. Really? I would have put my money on rich white guys getting the most help from the Government. Stossel is just a lying ass.
Now on a more positive note, if you want to do something to help Native Americans in the here and now–and their ongoing struggle for justice–you could support this effort to raise awareness. It is pretty cool.
Cheers
bleh
When yer talkin’ to Teatards, y’don’t need no HISTORY er nuthin’.
Translation of his remarks: Different-tribe — and different-colored! — people have been helped by Big Government. Now feel your anger, and stoke your resentment! Your tax dollars are going to aliens! They hate you, and yet Obama is taking your money and giving it to Them! Hate him AND them! Good! Again!
Mark S.
I’ve read it five times and still can’t figure out what the fuck he’s saying.
General Stuck
Stossel is too fucking stupid to listen to. Probly still wanks off to Abba posters. I’d just as soon get stuck on an elevator with Michelle Bachmann. And let those crazy eyes carve me up like a ham sandwich.
Zam
God dammit Dennis you are such a fucking idiot. Don’t you know that all Indians get free money from the government? Or that they get to do whatever they want since laws don’t apply to them? Every white man I know would gladly trade places with me. Plus we get to own all the casinos live rich lavish lifestyles (except of course the ones that fritter away all their government and casino money on firewater).
Zam
I assume my comment is in moderation because of the word “[email protected]”
ploeg
We gave them all those pots and pans and blankets in exchange for their land. And we let the Sioux know that they could subsist on grass.
Evolved Deep Southerner
I actually posted this over on TPM, as I do with every John Stossel comment thread I’ve ever come across. When I think “John Stossel,” this bitch-slapping is all I can conjure.
nancydarling
Dennis, this has been a topic of discussion at ArkansasBlog. Here’s a link about Native Americans I used to refute some dumbass commenter who said this: “Yes The bureau of Indian Affairs has really helped the indians. You can go to any reservation and get cheaper gasoline, casinos are allowed on the reservations and they do not have to pay taxes on the winnings. Just to name a few things that the indians have over the regular citizens of this country.”
The link is to United Methodist Women. I kinda trust those church ladies.
http://gbgm-umc.org/umw/na/
Stuck, your comment is too funny not to share, so I am sharing it with ArkansasBlog readers.
Angry Black Lady
what an asshole.
I just… what?!
Seitz
First, let me caveat this by saying I in no way agree with Stossel. However, if I understand his point, it’s not that we’re coddling Native American, or that they don’t deserve help. He’s claiming that all the government does is screw things up, and the BIA is actually hurting Native Americans. Why? Probably because the BIA is government and dipshits like Stossel think the government is ALWAYS wrong. I think he’s saying we really fucked them over, and even though we’ve been trying to help them ever since, the big stupid government is actually keeping them down.
Admittedly, I don’t know why he had to throw the Black or Irish thing in there, because it’s not really germane to the point I think he’s trying to make. But Stossel’s a moron, so I could be wrong.
Dennis G.
@Angry Black Lady:
You got that right.
Just Some Fuckhead
“Stossel”? What is that, German?
Zam
I always though assholes like Stossel thought Welfare was the office of black affairs.
sfinny
Yeah, all I got is What? Really? Sputter?
And Dennis G, was that you that featured the artist Chris Hubbard? LOVE his work. Wish I could buy about five of his works.
The Dangerman
OT, but if you’re a Duke hater, not only are they losing by double digits right now, they are losing looking like shit. Think it’s about 7 to go, so not even close to over, but …
Dennis G.
@Seitz:
Well, that is a very generous and kind reading of his word strings. The choice of attacking the Government or people of color seems to have been too much for him. His effort to try and attack Government as incompetent and Native Americans as freeloaders may explain his incoherent statement. And then again, he could just be a complete asshole. I think I’ll stick with the latter opinion of him.
Cheers
CatPerson
I think he does think we’re coddling Native Americans and that it’s not helping them. If I’ve parsed him correctly, he’s saying that Indians have received more help than any other group. And they’ve received more help due to guilt about the historical wrongs. But (according to Stossel) that aid hasn’t helped them, thus “But 200 years later, no group does worse.”
John Stossel is an idiot, but criticizing his comment based on the pre-BIA wrongs done to them is missing his point, I think.
Dennis G.
@sfinny:
Yep. I was the one hyping Chub.
Cheers
jwb
@Seitz: I agree with this reading: he’s saying that no group has been “helped” more by the government than Native Americans, no group is doing worse, because all that government “help” ended up doing was transferring Native American assets to government control, which ensured that Native Americans would become dependent wards of the state. Takeaway message is supposed to be: government is bad; they steal your stuff and leave you in abject poverty.
nancydarling
“no group in America has been more helped by the government than the American Indians”
Maybe, if you aren’t counting white males. Guys, I love you all, but that’s the truth.
General Stuck
@The Dangerman:
Dook hater here, them losing would screw up my brackets, but it would be well worth it. They are the Steelers of college basketball though, so baby jeevus could still throw em a rabbits foot to pull a win out of their perfumed asses.
MattR
@General Stuck: There is a certain BJ commenter who is a Duke
fanalum that is at the game tonight.@jwb: This makes sense to me (though I refuse to watch the clip to reach my own conclusion). After all, we know that it is really blacks who have been given the most by the US government.
Church Lady
With government help from agencies like the BIA, does no one wonder why the poverty rate within the American Indian community is so damn high? Maybe, when he said no group is doing worse, given the help they have been given, that was what he was driving at. Don’t you think the American Indian poverty rate is a scandal? I do.
tofubo
fox neuz on any given day, kinda makes you miss tom
http://tomdelaydotcom.blogspot.com/
@ least for the humor
Suffern ACE
@Seitz:
He’s mixing memes. The “why is there no bureau for…” is like the “why is there no national association for the advancement of white people.” Going for this demographic with that meme.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbbMIg-Aw8E&playnext=1&list=PL448622C8A2CD521E
Valdivia
Awesome post as always Dengre. Sorta ot, go to the previous thread and read Sarah Proud and Tall’s memories of Bachman. Fucking epic.
jwb
@General Stuck: Dook losing will probably screw up most other folks’ bracket as well, so you’ll probably come out no worse for the wear.
The Dangerman
@General Stuck:
Mine, too, but the bracket is already bloodied to the point of despair already. Luckily for Duke, Arizona is taking some wild ass shots (eventually they’ll stop making them and Duke may make a run).
Zam
@Church Lady: If you’ve ever spent time on a reservation or in the surrounding communities you will have a much better understanding of what is happening.
General Stuck
@MattR:
Poor burnsy. bwa ha ha
Blue Carolinian
HAHAHAH SUCK IT, DOOKIES!
Comrade Luke
OT, but we’re a couple posts away from the last open thread so: for everyone obsessing over the NY Times paywall, here’s a take that I haven’t seen before but makes a ton of sense.
Basically, the Times isn’t trying to emphasize the print edition; it’s trying to avoid paying Apple a cut of subscription revenue.
The Dangerman
Fuck me, Duke quit with more than 2 minutes to play; cmon, that’s just some weak sauce.
Edit: Took out 2 of their top players and basically gave up. Luckily, K won it all last year, so he’s bullet proof.
Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason
@Valdivia: I’m beginning to love Sarah Proud and Tall. What a refreshing relief from the miserable trolls.
And everything she says has the ring of truth. I’m sure she’s been there and done that. Some of it though, I bet she wishes she could forget. Especially the T-shirts.
nancydarling
Also, too, the Koch brothers screwed Native Americans out of their oil royalties.
J Smith
I actually was taped in discussion with some other people as part of one of Stossel’s segments for one of his shows, and I have to say that without a doubt, he is the dumbest 1970s-era porno ‘stache hack I have ever met. Ok, you can take out the descriptive qualifiers: the man is dumber than sin.
He had all his producers basically prep us and tape us having what turned out to be an OK discussion for about an hour, on tape. His producers were somewhat thoughtful, or at least not drooling mouthbreathers. Then Stossel sashays in with what appeared to be a rather cumbersome and odd easel. He asks these opaque, generic questions and then unveils THE CONSTITUTION to bat away our senseless liberal utopian notions that hate speech isn’t, you know, protected.
Fuck John Stossel. And Fox News. And his mustache. Honestly, if he were a liberal, Glenn Beck would pull a “YOU KNOW WHO ELSE HAD A MUSTACHE?!?!1111oneone!?
RalfW
I just have to brag on the MN Governor for a second. He just wailed on the GOP leadership in our Lege today.
I thought the denial of reality bit fit in well with tonight’s theme.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@Church Lady:
It sure is, and part of the reason why it is is that when you get certain types of people running the executive branch, they use the BIA to screw the fuck out of Native Americans.
I still suspect that a big reason behind the dismissal of those eight US Attorneys back in ’06 was related to the Department of Interior’s proposed settlement of mining rights on reservations for pennies on the dollar, a settlement that saved shit-tons of money for entities such as The Carlyle Group.
Martin
@CatPerson: Well, isn’t part of the pre-BIA wrongs that they were mostly shuffled off to nearly uninhabitable portions of the country? Perhaps if we moved the Native Americans to Orange County and Long Island, we’d no longer need a BIA.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@nancydarling: With help like that, then, no one needs or wants any help. No group, ever, has been fucked over more by the government than Native Americans.
@Church Lady: Well, there’s the whole Indian land trust accounting fraud thing that had a great deal to do with it. As a start.
Martin
@Comrade Luke:
Well, yeah, but that’s stupid. Apple’s 200 million one-click credit cards are the cure to print medias ills, if they’d just pull their fucking heads out of their asses. They need to stop protecting their subscription desk and just roll with it.
CatPerson
@Martin: I’m not defending Stossel’s point, but I think Dennis’ post is attacking the wrong thing, i.e. Dennis didn’t understand what Stossel was trying to say. It’s not that Stossel thinks Indians weren’t wronged, it’s just that he doesn’t give a fuck. You could replace Indians with poor people or blacks or whomever, and he’d say the same thing–they aren’t helped by government aid.
jwb
@RalfW: And just think Minnesota came within a whisker of joining the Walker, Kasich, Snyder club. Emmer would have probably been leading the pack.
nancydarling
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q): Agreed. I was trying to say that the group that has benefited the most from the beginning of our country is white males.
RalfW
@jwb: Absolutely. I’ve actually met Emmer. He’s a peevish dickhead, and probably not too bright, either.
mclaren
It’s absolutely stunning how eagerly the commentariat here at Balloon-Juice falls in line once our government decides we need to kill people.
Doesn’t seem to matter which people we kill. Doesn’t seem to matter how we kill ’em. Just kill ’em, that’s all that matters.
Perhaps in another 5 years or so our major political parties (both of ’em) will reduce their campaign slogans to an absolutely minimalist level: KILL LOTS OF PEOPLE.
And the American public will cheer themselves hoarse and applaud until their hands are red and raw.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@nancydarling:
What, you been reading those ABL posts again? Damn her and Louis CK for letting the cat out of the bag!
Jethro Troll
The Puerto Rico Federal Affairs Administration would like to have a word with Mr Stossel.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@mclaren:
Wow. You’re right!
Or not. Really, really not.
Steeplejack
@RalfW:
Win. Positively Dickensian.
Valdivia
@Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason:
I know right? I am a fan.
catpal
I really really Hate aholes like Stossel who don’t give a s#it about Real True History and the outrageous Horrible things done to people for GREED.
PBS Trail of Tears
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Trail_of_Tears
Sly
The group that benefited most from Federal largess are white people who live in western states (and one of those benefits was the Federal government killing and displacing lots and lots of American Indians), followed closely by white people living in southern states. Incidentally, these are the two groups that complain the most about Federal largess.
@mclaren:
Please. I’ll only fall in line when the government decides to kill people who say contemptible shit like this.
asiangrrlMN
@jwb: OK. That seems like a sensible interpretation. I refuse to get off the boat. That said, Stossel is still a Fu Schnicken anus beret who can take his race-baiting bullsheetrock and hurl himself into the Atlantic Ocean with it tied around his neck.
I will add that I agree that white people are the ones who have benefited most from American government, however.
@RalfW: You know, this is one reason why I thought Mark Dayton would be good as governor. He’s rich as sin. He doesn’t have to whore himself out for money. In fact, he was the candidate toughest on the business/moneyed set during the campaign. Good on him.
As for Emmer, if he’d been elected, he would have made Scott Walker look like a piker.
And, Woot! Wildcats!
Steeplejack
@asiangrrlMN:
The no-cursing thing is tough for you, no?
asiangrrlMN
@Steeplejack: You’re dingdang right it is. It’s one of the hardest things I’ve done. John Oliver is suspicious of pols who don’t swear, and I think he’s got a gumdrop point. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve slipped. It’s time to throw a buncha Hail Marys and eat a buncha rosemary as penance. I REALLY miss my swears. Just wait until Easter Sunday.
Yutsano
@asiangrrlMN: Mmm…rosemary biscuits. Just giving you possibilities.
Hob
@asiangrrlMN: “Anus beret” is beautiful.
Hob
@J Smith: Oh man, that’s pretty bad, but I’ll go you one worse.
I used to have a job transcribing ABC News footage prior to editing, and I frequently got Stossel Specials. So I got to listen to, and type, every word of the interesting discussions with thoughtful people such as yourself. And then I had to listen to, and type, every incoherent word-whiff that was farted through Stossel’s mustache(*) as he tried to twist everything the thoughtful people had said to fit his latest libertoonian non-point. And THEN I had to listen to, and type, all of his fucking intros and monologues and epilogues… and all of the dozens and dozens of re-takes and re-asks where he tried to improve on the delivery of his dumbass questions– or, with a balls-out dishonesty that was years ahead of its time, he just substituted some whole other question so as to make it look like y’all had been responding to something completely different.
On each of these occasions, after finishing the last of a dozen hours of tape, I would tell myself that any minute now either the network would realize what a colossal joke Stossel was and pull the plug, or he would slander the wrong person and have his ass sued to a crisp. Of course, instead of those things happening, he was handed a slightly bigger chunk of the universe to despoil next time.
I do not like that man.
(* ETA: I typed a lot of these tapes before I’d ever seen Stossel’s face, and when I finally saw him on TV I was amazed– not so much that he looked incredibly stupid, which I had expected, but that he was capable of growing a bona fide mustache. His voice always sounded to me like a 13-year-old kid.)
honus
Burns actually cops to being a Dookie, where Lefty Driesell learned basketball and Nixon learned law?
jwb
@asiangrrlMN: “OK. That seems like a sensible interpretation. I refuse to get off the boat. That said, Stossel is still a Fu Schnicken anus beret who can take his race-baiting bullsheetrock and hurl himself into the Atlantic Ocean with it tied around his neck.”
Sensible, perhaps, but incredibly fucked up no matter how you slice it.
“As for Emmer, if he’d been elected, he would have made Scott Walker look like a piker.”
That’s my thought, too. He was bad, bad news.
Amir_Khalid
@asiangrrlMN: I’m among the crowd that admires your very creative not-swears. They are much more colorful than real swears. Are you sure you’re not going to continue with them after Easter?
Joey Maloney
@Evolved Deep Southerner: I have never seen that before, but now I will watch it again and again and again.
Here’s a little utility video, if you will, suitable for posting whenever Sarah Palin’s name comes up.
Ija
@Seitz:
I think this is the most reasonable interpretation. It’s a two-fer for conservatives – they get to rail against the evil of big government and pretend that they care about non-white people.
Ija
@mclaren:
Can we just pretend that all the threads that are not related to Libya begin with a disclaimer saying that we accept that Obama is killing innocent women and children in Libya, Libya is just like Iraq, Obama is just like Bush and anyone who refuses to acknowledge there facts are evil Obots? That way some people won’t feel the need to come into every thread saying the same thing over and over again.
WereBear
Just a week ago, we began to sponsor a seven year old through Children, Incorporated, because it was a move Mr WereBear and I had discussed doing once we dug out of our financial hole, and while we are not dug out yet… a strong feeling came over both of us to help a Native American child in this way.
We chose that sponsoring agency because it was rated highly for using most of their funding to actually help children, it was proudly secular, and was the only one I could find who would let us help a Native American child.
Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen
So treaties, which can only be created by sovereign entities, are all right (even when they are repeatedly violated).
But any other works of sovereign entities are double-plus ungood.
What. A. Dumb. Fuck.
Thomas
I’m sorry but Native Americans weren’t crapped on any more than African Americans. If slave reparations aren’t going to happen (which they aren’t) then Native Americans shouldn’t get special treatment either.
Emma
Stossel is just a lying ass. And your point is?
Stossel speaks. Stossel lies. Rinse. Repeat.
Omnes Omnibus
Would he prefer that the various Native American Nations deal with the State Department, which, of course, would promptly create a Bureau of Native American Affairs because US relations with Native Americans are sui generis?
numbskull
Stossel is just completing the circle. If you underfund and run anything badly, as Republican do with any government program that doesn’t directly benefit their “sponsors,” it will fail. It’s just a bonus when they turn around and use the failure as an example that supports whatever their Whine of the Day happens to be.
debbie
@ numbskull:
Stossel is just completing the circle.
I’m reading “The Killing of Crazy Horse” and when I heard about Stossel’s comment yesterday, couldn’t help but think that “the more things change, the more they stay the same” really is true.
Wilson Heath
Handy fact for poets:
“John Stossel” rhymes with “douche nozzle.”
Limericks away!
Hewer of Wood, Drawer of Water
Dennis G: You asked a trick question in your post – Stossel’s whole screed was a serious patch of crazy
Dennis G.
@CatPerson:
Yours is a very kind reading of Stossel’s statement. I don’t disagree with you that his larger aim is some effort to sell the “Government is always bad” dogma. That is a given. Still, it is his lie in the service of that which is still a lie even with your generous interpretation of his word string.
Cheers
Capri
Too bad the Native Americans didn’t just say “thanks, but no thanks” to all that government assistance. Then they would have been fine.
Scott de B.
I assume Stossel is using “helped by the government” in it’s ironic, Reaganesque sense. As in “the nine most terrifying words in the English language are: ‘I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.’
Bigol
Forget about what Stossel said, but it does raise a great question – why do we have a Dept of Indian Affairs?
Look, it’s been run by both D and R admins and billions of dollars are missing from Indian trust accounts, billions more spent on attempting to assist the native americans, any yet the gov has done very little to change their standard of living…
When you have all the power and control in some far flung bureaucracy it’s easy for people to hide. Everyone should be alarmed when our gov is corrupt and tax money disappears. Political greed for money and power. Its human nature.
ciotog
@Thomas: I’m a supporter of slavery reparations, myself, for the same reason Dalton Conley is: the wealth gap between blacks and whites arising from whites having a headstart on acquiring wealth, which they could then leave to future generations.
That being said, Native American experience was categorically different than African-American experience for a very important reason: African-Americans can be given full American citizenship rights and treated as other American immigrant groups are. They can own their bodies and personhood in ways that their ancestors could not. But Native Americans are never going to be given their land back. In other words, I would argue that we can repair some of the damage of enslavement, but we can’t repair any of the damage of land theft. African-Americans can have a place in the prevailing story of “America” (a nation of immigrants making progress) that Native Americans can’t.
wenchacha
John Stossel and Dennis Miller: equally distasteful wannabe ideological hipsters. And they both have incredibly small hands.
Hewer of Wood, Drawer of Water
@wenchacha: what are you implying?
Shoemaker-Levy 9
Guess it’s time to remind everyone that if we apply the same standards to the Euro-American conquerors of the New World that we do to Stalin and Mao — that they are responsible not only for those directly killed but those who died from negligence, neglect, or indifference — then the greatest mass murder in world history does not belong to Stalin or Mao, it belongs to Euro-American Christians.
asiangrrlMN
@Hob: I wish I could take credit for it, but I cannot. Got it from a Twit friend.
@jwb: Yep. Agreed it’s still fusillied up. Sphincter fez is Stossel.
Emmer–I’m still shuddering over how close that was.
@Amir_Khalid: Thanks! It’s been fun, I admit, but I really miss my swears. We’ll see. Maybe I’ll intermingle them.
@Yutsano, gluten-free! Nom nom nom CHOMP!
Bill Murray
@asiangrrlMN: Aren’t there 7 free days during lent? So you could get a swearing in every Sunday and still be A-OK in a Lent Legal sense, if not a soul legal sense.
I had a friend once that gave up smoking the wacky-tabacky for lent and that’s how he made it through or at least how he justified smoking a bowl every Sunday
AAA Bonds
John Stossel is a popular but messed-up dude who eventually found a perfect market among less popular but just as messed-up dudes.
Is it not enough that we’ve gotten off relatively easily for what our government did in the past? Do we have to deny it as well?
AAA Bonds
Always mute John Stossel and play “Don’t Stop Me Now” by Queen overtop of him