This article about some uber-Real Murkin — a lifelong Republican — expressing doubts about the Ryan budget is sort of awful (too many Big Russ style details, e.g. “so Clarence clips coupons, cuts back on dinners at Chili’s, drives less and spends more time at the desk in his basement, managing the budget”), but I think it gets at something crucial politically: most people don’t want to see their family starved and deprived of medical care, no matter how “fiscally responsible” said starvation and deprivation would be.
It’s easy to portray people on food stamps and Medicaid as undeserving young bucks, but pulling that with Medicare and Social Security is a tall political order. I just don’t see how Republicans can win this one, even with the full support of the Village.
Evolved Deep Southerner
I am first. That is all.
Daddy-O
Ain’t no WAY those fuckheads are gonna win with this issue.
As soon as Obamacare gets going, there won’t be any winning with THAT issue, either. Any Republican who thinks he can turn back time is as insane as that sounds.
This is why they went balls-to-the-wall to PREVENT Obamacare. Once the average REAL Murkin gets a taste of that forbidden Socialist fruit…
stuckinred
@Evolved Deep Southerner: What’s up? Just came from an incredible celebration of life for Earl Murphy, a 92 year old fiddler that passed away. A who’s who of Athens pickers!
Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen
Provided the white people on food stamps and Medicaid don’t get in front of the cameras.
Stillwater
Well, as we learned some time ago, when you’re talking about implementing lessons from political children It Takes a Village.
Oh wait..
kdaug
So, at last, ideology meets reality. Let’s dance, cowboy. When it’s your damn family needing those food stamps lets hear your “Pull yourself up by your Christian bootstraps” rhetoric.
No? Maybe like when you got caught in [X] and everyone had to rush to say you weren’t representative of “true Christian values”?
Fuck off, hypocrites.
The ithacan
I always try to cut off the “entitlement” claptrap by emphasizing that MCare and SS are social insurance policies that you’ve already paid for.
Peter
I’m reposting this comment from a previous thread because I just realized nobody’s there any more (I’m using my +4 cup of drinking, which is why I’m so smart):
I think that the compliant media, acting as stenographers/fluffers/heh-indeeders to all this reactionary class war horseshit has actually done the left a solid on this issue. The right, convinced by the echo chamber that they had carte blanche to go all Hobbes on our Aynuses, has overreached on the very same issue that pulled Dubya up short in his second term and halted his momentum for good. The actual voters don’t love them some privatisation of the actual safety net that keeps them from the nasty, brutish, and short.
The ithacan
Privatization for thee…
None for me….
Lolis
I don’t know, Doug. I’m guessing Clarence will still be voting Republican in 2012. He can’t enjoy his later years but he still doesn’t understand why. That confusion will prevent change. It is sad.
Asshole
I think the Republican voter’s reaction is something like this Deep Thought by Jack Handey:
That is to say, they won’t like it at first, but once it’s explained to them why it’s necessary to stop death panelists and abortionists from killing granny and the younglings, and stop the gay rapists from abducting and marrying their children they’ll go along with it completely.
Independent voters will be harder to convince, of course.
jrg
Yeah, it’s just that they don’t care if it happens to someone else’s family. Fuck ’em.
The right time to worry about the debt would have been when Bush/”Reagan proved deficits don’t matter” Cheney turned the Clinton surplus into a massive deficit.
These people are far too stupid to vote. The instant the budget is balanced again, the GOP will come up with some sort of shiny object like Gays, Saddam, Birth Certificates, Blow Jobs, or WMDs… We’ll be back to massive debts in no time flat, and mooks like this fucktard will be too deeply concerned about that shiny object to consider anything else.
Mark S.
@Lolis:
Oh, I’m sure he’ll vote Republican. He’ll vote for Ryan.
Clarence, on the off chance you’re reading this, we’d have a balanced budget in a couple of years if we let the Bush tax cuts expire and got out of a couple of the wars we’re currently in. The Randian Eddie Munster you keep voting for is not your friend. He actually fucking hates you and thinks you and your family are parasites.
Maude
@Peter:
The Rs crossed the line and kept going. Unfortunately for them, most of the people in this country aren’t stupid.
This is like a anowball rolling down a very big mountain. I figure that around the time of the 2012 election that big ole ball of snow is going to come home to the Rs like hand grenade with the pin pulled.
Happy days are on the way.
You can’t tell people that the money they have paid into SS and Medicare for all those years makes them big bucks and buckettes when they start collecting their earned benefits.
There are over 43 million people on food stamps, that is also a hard sell.
Mark S.
@jrg:
The instant the budget is balanced again, the GOP will
come up with some sort of shiny objectpass massive tax cuts for the rich and then blame the ensuing deficit on the Democrats.Jeffro
I think even most of us on the blogs don’t get just how bad it’s going to get for the bottom half…
…okay, bottom three quarters…
…and if there can be some get-out-the-vote energy directed there, this country could turn on a dime. Their last one, to be sure…
Cerberus
Also a good hint of a potential line of attack if Democrats want to take it. The best way to pass the social safety net laws we like and take for granted now is to basically extend it to all.
Social Security (in the form of a guaranteed safety net and absolute minimum wage for any who can’t support themselves) and medicare (in the form of guaranteed health coverage and care as a basic right) for all are hard things to assault because its big and needed and hard to sell as something that’s only there for poor blacks to steal hard-earned middle class white money.
Of course, that might only be because conservatives haven’t found a way to paint the majority of recipients as uppity black folk like they have with unemployment and public sector employment.
The cynic in my heart feels that they’ve accidentally jumped the gun and were hoping for a better social message outcome from the 401K craze in order to sell those as “white guarantees of retirement” so they could argue that social security was just welfare shifty blacks and needs to be cut.
Cerberus
@Jeffro: Except for those of us down on the bottom (internet connection a requirement of getting employed these days) who are unfortunately hyper aware not only of how bad its going to get but how bad it already is and has been for a very very long time.
Remember that Bush’s fake recovery never affected anyone under middle class. For us, we’ve been in the midst of an ever-worsening depression since around 2000-2001.
Peter
@jrg: But this isn’t someone else’s family we’re talking about any more. That’s what makes the Ryan “plan” such a godsend to Democrats if they’d just fucking pick it up and run with it. Stupid people aren’t stupid when it comes to their very narrow self interests.
I don’t get mad at the troglodytes on the right; they are what they are. I get mad when the left doesn’t brain them with their own awful, awful policies and win elections.
Felanius Kootea (formerly Salt and freshly ground black people)
@Cerberus: If the Republicans keep on about not raising the debt limit and trigger an actual default it will become rapidly clear to everyone that their wiped out 401Ks won’t be useful for retirement. Of course we’ll be well and truly screwed by that point. I keep reading about polls showing that the majority of Americans don’t want the debt ceiling raised. I wonder whether these people know how much of their retirement funds are invested in US treasuries and whether they are ready for 12-15% interest rates on car loans and mortgages and IMF-style austerity measures.
jrg
@Mark S.:
Yep. They will keep doing that over and over again until people realize that shit is not free, tax cuts do not pay for themselves, and Larry Ellison will not buy you a fucking pony if you give him another tax cut.
You can believe that 70% of the federal budget goes to NPR and foreign aid to Estonia if you want, but that doesn’t change the fact that the Keebler elves don’t pay for grannie’s blood pressure medication. The stupid. It burns.
The ithacan
I remember being in an Upstate NY diner and hearing a “minister” ranting about the importance of a capital gains tax cut. He was poor his “congregation” was poor, the whole town was poor and you’d have thought he just choppered in from the Hamptons.
The hook is in deep, very deep.
Peter
@Maude: Yes. Obama knows this. The “Professional Left?” Not so much. I think the dismissive “stupid” angle works to any party’s detriment if they really believe it. People pay attention in direct proportion to the relevance of an issue to their lives as they currently live them.
Having these issues explained clearly is sort of the sine qua non of a democracy, though, which is why it largely comes back to that media problem we all love to gnaw at.
jrg
@Peter:
I’m sorry, but if you’re a “conservative” living on SS, collecting veteran’s benefits, with a son on unemployment, and it never occurred to you that cuts to government programs could harm you, you’re an idiot. That’s a fact.
Villago Delenda Est
The Randroids are projecting, big time, when they bitch about “parasites”.
Fred
Maybe I don’t understand your sarcasm but the Ryan ‘plan’ (and I use that term very loosely) is not fiscally responsible either. Not even close. If you don’t agree don’t bother responding. I really can’t be bothered with people that far out in never never land.
MikeJ
@Peter:
I was just explaining to somebody today that, despite being raised in a fundegelical church, I never understood that whole crucifixion thing until I saw (against the advice of the fundies) Jesus Christ, Superstar.
Judas was a purity troll. Kingdom of God on Earth right now, or I’m staying home and won’t vote. That’ll show him! (Don’t blame me, I voted for Barabas.)
I know this is only marginally related to your point, but I had my first martini today during The xmas carol ep of Dr Who and just now declared myself done for now. And the sox are up five naught.
Omnes Omnibus
@jrg: There is a difference between idiot and uninformed.
Martin
Sometimes the GOP forgets that the guys that sign their campaign contribution checks only get one vote. Sure, there will be plenty of voters that go along for that ride, but I doubt there will be nearly enough.
Montysano
The GOP was hoping for one last shot at The Dance before demographics does them in. Their only shot was to crank up the crazy to 11, to go big or go home. They may be back on their heels at the moment, but they’ll be back. 2012 is going to be quite the freak show.
Omnes Omnibus
@Fred: You seem new here. This place has a shitload of snark and sarcasm going on most of the time.
Peter
@jrg: You’re right. But a lot of that “Keep gummint outta my Medicare!!!” ignorance is because there isn’t a referee that calls bullshit on the bullshit. Gravity is real, “gravitation” is a theory! There’s a controversy! Both sides do it!
Regular people aren’t so smart, maybe, but not so stupid either. Most of the stupid is the result of a calculated fabrication by people with the ways and means to get at the message-makers.
Punchy
Please tell me you’re spoofing this. I don’t see how they dont win.
Martin
@Punchy: They lost big last time they tried this.
Peter
@MikeJ: I hope your martinis were pure, or you’re going to hell.
jrg
@Omnes Omnibus: You don’t have to be particularly well-informed to understand that the VA is not free, unemployment is not free, or that the check you just got came from the government.
I mean, really… My dog has the common sense not to bite me when I’m feeding her.
Maybe you’re right. I don’t know. It seems like stupidity to me, but maybe I just don’t understand it.
Omnes Omnibus
@jrg:Call them stupid and they will never vote for your candidate.
Martin
@Omnes Omnibus: Wait, calling people stupid isn’t the best way to win them over? Huh.
jrg
@Omnes Omnibus: If they don’t have the savvy to google “US Federal Budget”, I doubt they are reading this blog.
Besides, that’s just a reason not to call them stupid, not an argument to the contrary.
Peter
@Omnes Omnibus: Exactly. The republicans are in business because they campaign directly at the limbic system. Flipping those basic neurological allegiances means calling out the violence of the right’s agenda every time, all the time.
Town halls around the country are already showing this.
PGE
I think deep in the grip of denial is a better description than stupid. Republican ideology is a religion, and reality just doesn’t get through, because they can’t stand the thought of it getting through. And the fact that it affects them and their families won’t matter. Back in the 80s I argued with several Republicans at work about the Reagan “tax break”. When I asked if it had actually made a difference in their pay check, every single one of them said no. But every single one of them also thought they were an exception and that it was good for the middle class. These weren’t stupid people, or I wouldn’t have bothered with the argument, but they were all in denial.
Peter
@jrg: And look, I’m not disagreeing with you, really. I’m just maybe seeing more grounds for optimism.
Omnes Omnibus
@jrg: Those people’s parents probably weren’t any smarter, but the voted for JFK and LBJ and their parents voted for FDR and Truman. Education and persuasion can work. The guy mentioned up top… He is probably open to persuasion right now.
Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal
selling this shit is the galling part, to me.
the fucking arrogance this appeals to, as if there aren’t forks in the road and defining moments every fucking day. my gawd, we have to do something, shared sacrifice!, its like ww2!, no it isn’t, its about getting rich motherfuckers who will see the benefits, regardless, and lean on the rest of us when they don’t, paying some more.
its about not looking for shining moments, or big world crisis, or being the only guy who can stop the guy who wants to shoot up a luby’s even if you have barely shot the gun you carry, and the chances of you hitting that guy, and only that guy, while taters fly everywhere and you are ducking behind some big soft drink counter, is improbabale, so are singular defining moments that you see in advance…,mostly you grind it out. we employ some people, tax the people who have benefitted the last 30 years, it won’t hurt them, honest, they will go to stay with relatives, on a big farm, in the country, they will be happier….i am pissed because this ego shit works. and its the exact opposite of what we need to do, and anyone appealing to your ego, is trying to rob you fucking blind!
Punchy
@Martin: I think you underestimate the ability of Limbaugh, Boortz, Beck, and Hannity in brainwashing the base. When they suddenly, against all logic and fact, claim that the plan to eliminate Medicare was actually the Dem plan, it’ll become common knowledge that Dems hate old people.
eemom
the title of this post made me think of “Attack of the Killer Tomatoes.”
Cerberus
@Villago Delenda Est:
Oh yeah, they are. Big time.
Pretty much every Randroid I’ve ever met has basically wanted to gain all the benefits of living in a society (roads, sewer, water, garbage pickup, law enforcement, infrastructure, social safety net, job infrastructure, protection from foreign invaders, protection from personal theft, and so on) while paying absolutely nothing (because they are self-made men.
The vast majority of them add the additional hiccup of also basically relying on the government for their livelihood working either for the government, public education, or living on disabilities or veteran’s pension or some other link to leeching off the public tit.
They use parasite in order to dominate the debate and keep anyone from noticing that the only parasites in the equation are the Randroids.
Also, something I hadn’t noticed until recently. Atlas Shrugged purports to be the great Objectivist proof of concept, but the only reason “Galt’s Gulch” and all the other Objectivist fairy tales work in her fiction is because they are all willing to forego the profit margin in order to work together to create something bigger than the sum of their parts.
Taggart and Reardon could have gained far more financially and personally by screwing the other in ways other than the literal, by shortchanging the design or metal and providing the cheapest possible effort or just selling out wholesale to the evil government of that world. Those decisions would have been far better in terms of enlightened self-interest. Instead they donate time, services, money to provide the needed infrastructure and Galt’s Gulch ends up essentially being a socialist paradise model where they are all donating their talents to each other to make a perfect society.
Basically, even when they control the entire world through bullshit fiction and masturbatory praise, even when Queen Ayn herself is writing it, the shit still doesn’t work or at all look credible.
So yeah, objectivism, so bad it doesn’t even work or exist in its own propaganda.
Martin
@Punchy: The base is pretty fucking small. It’ll win a primary, but it’ll lose the general. The base isn’t enough. And you always have the base – that’s why they’re called the base. You don’t need to win them over. You need to win over the non-base, and axing Medicare isn’t the way to do that.
Cerberus
@PGE:
Yep.
Which is why the marriage of the Religious Right with free-market fetishists was so important. No one does cognitive dissonance and denial of reality like the religious right.
Stillwater
@Punchy: it’ll become common knowledge that Dems hate old people.
Of course that’s their plan. Dude, they always have that plan! The point of the post is that it won’t work this time. Real Americans are revolting!
Kobie
I would pull myself up by my bootstraps, but I had to sell them to pay for medicine.
Peter
@Stillwater: Oy, are they revolting. I think that’s something we can all agree on.
@Cerberus: Yes, but the dissonance only carries so far with the less zealous, which is why this overreach is such a gift.
Birtherism, climate denial, trickle-down ass-rapery, tax cuts as stimulus: being a Republican in 2011 simply requires that one believe in things that aren’t true.
Davis X. Machina
The greater the faith, the greater the merit, and since the greatest faith is needed to believe the impossible, it gains the greatest merit.
The early Church Father Tertullian of Carthage is the ideal RNC chairman: …credibile est, quia ineptum est;…certum est, quia impossibile. It is believable because it is unsound, it is definite, because it is impossible.
(Often misquoted as Credo quia absurdum…)
tkogrumpy
If it isn’t go for the jugular time with the rethugs now it never will be. Every discussion with repubs now should consist of one response and one only. “you lie”. I’m so pissed at this point I can no longer trust myself to interact with the girls (Snowe and Collins) without losing my shit and melting in a pool of mofo sumbitch, bastid and getting carted out into the street.
Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason
@Martin: But you DO have to win over the base. If the base stays home, you lose. Refer to 2010 for an example.
b-psycho
@Felanius Kootea (formerly Salt and freshly ground black people): People seem to think of the debt ceiling vote as “shall we rack up more debt?”, with Nay translating to “let’s pay down this debt”. Ask them “from what?”, I bet steams whistles from their ears.
Cerberus
@Davis X. Machina:
Probably helps that faith-based religions (i.e. religions that see faith and zealousness as the greatest good rather than good works or deeds) basically provide a reward system for cognitive dissonance. The more you can support dramatically opposed ideas at the same time and avoid reality that disagrees with what you already “know”, the stronger your “faith” is and the more “moral clarity” you have.
And the more active your push through said cognitive dissonance, the more you have proved it against temptation and sin.
Same reason why conservatism has been sold more and more as a religion that one must prove their faith in. The invisible hand of the free market will reward you but only if your faith is pure enough and you don’t give in to temptation to regulate and shackle it because it keeps fisting you.
tkogrumpy
@Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason: You don’t have to “win over” the base, you just have to get them pissed at the other guys. If that’s not doable now, then I don’t know what.
Parallel 5ths (Jewish Steel)
@Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason: Was 2010 not just a typical midterm? The base turned out, independents and youthful first time voters did not, I believe.
ETA: I would like to put quotes around “independents” because I think they are less independent and more disengaged. Disengageds would be a better name actually.
El Cid
Great. Make an entire post with quotes and everything, and only 2 URL links, and it just vanishes. Maybe to be seen in a few days when no one’s reading it. Fuck this shit.
Martin
@Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason: Presidential elections and midterms are totally different animals. And Obama drew the base out like nobody before – and that was against a war hero and Caribou Barbie. I expect he’ll do just fine if the activist left doesn’t undermine the whole thing.
Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason
@Parallel 5ths (Jewish Steel): Perhaps. Maybe where I worked the polls the D base was very very thin and I was thinking the 2008 voters were the base.
Disengaged covers it very well. Tough crowd to pull to the polls for Governor, Senator, and statehouse races. Although I thought my spin of “Do you want to vote for a retired Wall St Trader or a Retired Admiral?” would work better in South PA.
Parallel 5ths (Jewish Steel)
@Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason:
I find that irresistibly sexy, but then again I would haunting a political blog on a Sat nite.
4% of eligible voters turned out for city council elections last month in my hood. Ridiculous.
Suzan
@Cerberus: Absolutely!
I’ve been saying this for years at my blogs.
And I swear that very few people reading them have caught on yet to how bad it’s already been for many of us who lost jobs and never got them back after 2001.
Thanks!
Suzan
Fred
@Omnes Omnibus: There seem to be more that a few Greenwald fans who also take a Republitarian like the Ex New Mexico Gov seriously. So I don’t know what to think about people around here.
I just can’t take anyone who takes Greenwald seriously….seriously!
Suzan
@Cerberus: Well, thank you!
I wrote a paper on this in undergrad school where I argued that Ms. Rand must have been confused about the definition of Objectivism as I couldn’t find it in her vision.
Granted she talks the talk, but had no walk.
Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason
@Parallel 5ths (Jewish Steel): One of the people on my call list got to the polls, found out she was a registered Democrat when I checked her off, and declared that she wanted to register with the Tea Party then and there.
Perhaps my most depressing moment working elections.
PA. Pittsburgh to the left, Philly to the right, Alabama up the middle.
D. Aristophanes
… too many Big Russ style details …
I didn’t mind that so much as this:
Srsly? A fucking floppy disk? I mean, okay, maybe … but that little detail almost fails the smell test in 2011. Not that the old fella would have an iPad 2 or anything, but still.
D. Aristophanes
Also, here’s your problem, Dad:
asiangrrlMN
Hello, bitchez. How the fuck are y’all on this fine Saturday evening? Shit. I am so fucking happy that I can swear again. Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck!
Shitfuckdamn. That feels so fucking good.
Baron Jrod of Keeblershire
@Fred: Feel free to fuck off to a more serious place. Nobody will miss you or your very serious gravitas.
Yutsano
@asiangrrlMN: You do realize the did a study that shows that swearing is actually good for you. Having said that, I’m pleased as punch you can now light up teh Interwebs again with your foul speech.
@D. Aristophanes: It wouldn’t shock me if the writer just made up this story out of whole cloth. I mean c’mon, who would want to leave the Nation’s Capitol to travel to the middle of nowhere Wisconsin just to find some poor old schmuck who’s struggling but is still a true believer? I’m calling foul.
Parallel 5ths (Jewish Steel)
@Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason: Oh, man. That is a heartbreaker.
@asiangrrlMN: Having wandered the desert, welcome to the motherfucking oasis.
@D. Aristophanes:
we need some kind of social safety net for that, for sure
asiangrrlMN
@Yutsano: You bet your sweet bippy I did. And, I agree. I feel ever-so-much better when I can let my fuck-flag fly. I wish my Catholic friends had fucking told me that Lent was so fucking long. Next year, I’m trying something easier–like giving up cleaning the fucking house. Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck. God, I love that word.
Fuck.
Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal
@Yutsano:
chilli’s, creed, the son drinks double mochas? in rural wisconsin? frosted mini-wheats is a stretch too. the details are too detaily. and they don’t seem likely at all.
asiangrrlMN
@Parallel 5ths (Jewish Steel): Thanks. I have missed my swears so fucking much. So. Fucking. Much.
FUCK YOU MOTHERFUCKIN’ WORDPRESS! I still had thirty fucking seconds to edit my goddamn comment, you anus beret! I’m keeping that one.
Yutsano
@asiangrrlMN: It can be a noun, a verb, an adjective, and an interjection. Fuck is a very versatile four letters.
@Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal: There were just details in the substance that just seemed to not add up, beyond the details. If Clarence doesn’t realize he’s next on the austerity chopping block he’s an even bigger idiot than they’re making him out to be. Or making him up to be.
asiangrrlMN
@Yutsano: Yes. Fucking is very versatile. Um, what?
Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal
@Yutsano:
yeah, if he is 64, how did his dad lose a buick pension? then on welfare? not social security, welfare, which implies that he retired early and wasn’t social security eligible at the time….
Yutsano
@asiangrrlMN: And not for nothing but it’s Barbra Streisand’s favorite curse word. And hearing her say it for some reason is beyond hilarious to me.
asiangrrlMN
@Yutsano: Really? That is hilarious.
asiangrrlMN
Awright. I’mma try to get some fucking sleep. Night, bitchez.
Yutsano
@Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal: And the amount he gets at his age seems awful high for not getting the full amount of SS. And I think the only way to lose a pension from the Big Three is to get fired. And I don’t even think you lose it then.
@asiangrrlMN: James Lipton was kind enough to discover that little factoid for me. I’ve relished that ever since.
Amir_Khalid
@asiangrrlMN: I’m kind of sorry you’ve gone back to real, full-on cussing. I was getting really fond of the expression “Damascus figs”.
Yutsano
@Amir_Khalid: The best part, of course, being that there is indeed a variety of figs called Damascus.
goblue72
My takeaway from the Post article is thus: Old white people cannot shove off this mortal coil fast enough. Their stupid asses have been coddled for far too long in this country. Republicans like Clarence disgust me – morons who would rather bend over and get screwed so they don’t have to – share with anyone else outside their immediate family. And heaven forbid, support something the “liberals” are in favor of.
cckids
@Lolis:
I know I’m 4+, but after reading that, I guess my takeaway is that, ok, your son has no higher education/training, spends what money he does have rather foolishly, (ie, the mochas, etc.),has never been independent, you are still budgeting for both of you while he’s surfing the net. . . do you feel no sense of responsibility for what a moocher he is? Does he have some actual disability, or have years of you doing stuff for him because it’s easier than teaching him just created this mentality? Yes, jobs are hard, if not impossible to come by. Why is the old guy doing all the budgeting? The one time in my life I had to move back in with the parents to make ends meet, I’d have gouged out my eyes before I’d have laid around in a recliner, playing video games or whatever, while my dad worked on a budget without any input from me. Hell, I’d have been doing yard work for free for my neighbors just to look/keep busy, for my own self-esteem. But that’s how I was raised.
IndyLib
@Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal:
Pendanticism alert!
I’m a bit iffy on some of the details in the article, but Elkhorn is right off of Interstate 43 and right at the exit for Lake Geneva, which is the Wisconsin equivalent of Aspen or at least Vale. I can almost guarantee there is a Starbucks and a Chili’s within a 5 mile drive of this guys house if he lives in the town of Elkhorn and not in the boonies outside of town. This part of the state isn’t really that “rural” despite a crap ton of farms.
I can’t wait to go to Ryan’s “Listening session” in Kenosha Tuesday. I hope to hell I never need constituant services from this asshat, his staff won’t even answer letters from me any more and I would probably get hung up on if I called his DC office.
piratedan
OT – a little something to get you through the night
http://www.metacafe.com/watch/wm-A10302B0000186680G/little_village_she_runs_hot_official_music_video/
Shalimar
@Mark S.: They’re already demanding massive tax cuts for the rich. Republicans will never allow the budget to be balanced while they have the power to stop it.
PreservedKillick
@Shalimar:
They can’t. They’ve essentially painted themselves into a corner where the only path out is to, for all intents and purposes, eliminate the government. I’m sure they see this as a good thing.
I mean, look. I’m as worried about the deficit as can be, but the reality is that there is a relatively simple path out of the problem without huge amounts of pain – it’s just not going to be compatible with their plans.
In the meanwhile, they know that HCR will be popular and will probably work. They can look as Massachusetts, which is far from perfect, but where a similar plan is, in fact, working pretty damn well and is broadly popular. I mean, really, who can complain about most of the fundamental reforms? Mandate aside, required coverage? No lifetime limits? Strict cost controls? These are bad things?
So they could go after the mandate, but that will kill the insurers and almost certainly result in single payer.
They can’t go after the other reforms – they are too popular.
So the government MUST go bankrupt for them to succeed. It doesn’t have to, of course, and it will be hugely bad for this country and it will be hugely unpopular, it’s just their only path.
That’s the game they are playing. It’s that simple.
And it is PROFOUNDLY disturbing and sad. These guys are playing for their own personal gain and political power over what is right.
And they know it.
kdaug
@MikeJ:
Stoled.
stuckinred
@kdaug: On deck early dawg.
JPL
@IndyLib: Someone does need to ask Ryan why he voted for 8 years to increase the deficit? When you vote for unfunded Medicare prescription plans or unfunded wars, it increases the deficit. Ryan spent 8 years increasing the deficit and now he wants to rob Social Security to pay for his votes.
I’m not sure that I could sit in the same room with him.
kdaug
@stuckinred: Insomnia’s a bitch.
befuggled
@IndyLib: Bingo. There’s not a Starbucks in Elkhorn proper, but there are in Delavan and in Lake Geneva, both of which are within 15 minutes of Elkhorn. Elkhorn is also close enough to Milwaukee for residents to commute (although I imagine that’s gotta hurt these days).
bemused
I watched WI Rep Sean Duffy’s town hall video and had to laugh. He used over the top, tv infomerical gushing enthusiasm when he said no, no it’s not a voucher for seniors, nothing of the sort, it’s “premium support”. Ha,ha. Those have to be Frank Lutz spin words but I wonder if a video with vocal and body coaching were sent with the memos.
salacious crumb
When Real ‘Murkins get upset about these cuts, the media now portrays this as cold hearted ass kicking to them in the form of Ryan’s budget. When non Real Murkins complain about these cuts, its portrayed as young bucks wanting to eat organic steaks for free without doing any salt of th earth hard work.
Uloborus
@Fred:
Man, you are obsessed. And I say this as someone who can’t stand Greenwald.
Single issue commenters are creepy creepy.
aimai
I thought the striking cultural trope embedded in the piece was that the guy is still “managing” his money and that managing the money is a sign that he’s good people–even if its essentially tax payer grift. His father received welfare payments but he isn’t tainted with those because he didn’t like them and “left home” as soon as he could to earn his own way. Unlike those “welfare queens” who actively enjoy the money or those foster kids who we now know actively seek high priced sneakers and flashy “new” clothes on the taxpayers dime.
There’s something really pathetic and puritan about this notion that its the money that needs caring for and accounting for and that as long as he’s carefully handling the money he isn’t just hanging on the welfare tit. But I think that the author of the piece really feels this way, and a lot of working class and middle class americans do–and it makes all the “young buck” and “welfare queen” stuff work as propaganda. Its what enables the penny pinching moocher in the article to believe, for years, that he’s any different (or more worthy) than the teenage mothers in Detroit who are having their school taken away from them.
I also think the article ought to have interviewed the son and the wife directly rather than letting them appear as ghosts in the story. The wife is actually supporting the family since without her job they would have no health benefits. The son is working, albeit sporadically, in an economy that doesn’t offer him much. Its the father who lives entirely off other people–just because his knees hurt doesn’t mean he couldn’t be selling porn on the internet or whatever it is people do.
aimai
Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason
@Yutsano: And here’s a sentence with every part of speech except pronouns. And prepositions.
Fuck! Fuck the fucking fuckers or they’ll fucking fuck us all!
Interjection
Verb
Adjective
Noun
Adverb
Verb (again)
Omnes Omnibus
@aimai: Old man in rural Wisconsin pr0n might have a limited audience. But who am I to judge?
ppcli
Your mistake was to let them know you’re a constituent. Next time say you’re David Koch.
[Disguise your voice so it sounds like Monty Burns. They’ll be, like, totally fooled.]
Cermet
Just wondering if that asswipe realizes that if Ryan and his follow thugs force us into default, then his savings will fast become worthless? Stupid is but that much stupid is hard to believe – manages his money and doesn’t know shit about how the system really works? That governments print money and lend to banks – they define financial rules and aren’t dependent on income – really that stupid? That debt for a government is a “tiny bit” different than his soon-to-be worthless savings? If this is what the mid-west has for smart, then stupid is the rule, not the exception.
Omnes Omnibus
@Cermet: Where are you from? I bet I could find people within one mile of your home who are just as ignorant as this guy. This is, of course, my way of saying fuck you and happy Easter.
WereBear
@Cermet: I would suspect that in this case “managing the money” comes down to logging into websites, looking at numbers, making printouts, filing the printouts, making columns add up on a spreadsheet, making a new spreadsheet for the month.
It’s just busywork that makes him feel important and the Man of the House; when he might as well be playing an online game called Trump, Titan of Industry for all the effect on his net worth goes.
aimai
@Omnes Omnibus:
Good point. But what about becoming an ebay top seller? I remember when Karl Rove was touting ebay millionaires as the new base for the Republican party.
aimai
Omnes Omnibus
@aimai: As a general rule, if Rove be for it, I be agin it.
Yevgraf (fka Michael)
The stupid is very deeply rooted these days. Yesterday, I went to pick my daughter up from her college apartment for Easter. I carried her trash to the dumpster where a big, fat grizzled piece of trailer trash shit was rooting for aluminum to throw into his shitty pickup truck. He said he makes about a thou a month from it, then started whining about Obama ruining the economy, because he cannot seem to collect as many cans. The n word was clearly on his lips, but he barely held it.
It was as perfect an expression of white Christian messaging on the most important of Christian holidays as one could imagine.
asiangrrlMN
@Amir_Khalid: Heh. You’re not the only one who has expressed desire for me to continue with the non-swears. Damascus figs was one of my faves, but, lord. I missed FUUUUUUUUCK so much!
@Yutsano: Of course! I wouldn’t have used it otherwise.
Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal
@IndyLib:
i am wondering how many 64 year olds, go to chain eateries like tgi chilli’s etc, or how many sons have the girliest of corporate coffee mocha, and creed seems an odd choice as well.
these choices seem awfully and painfully immersively suburban, not at all keeping with the simple humble folk theme the author was trying to suggest.applebee’s salad bar and all that. it just seems like folk like these would be steered away from those options, by social constraints.
Fred
@Baron Jrod of Keeblershire: Yavolt Heil Hitler!
Fred
@Uloborus: Still trying to figure this site out. Are you trying to call me single issue?
Only in that I just can’t see how people around here who seem to understand domestic issues pretty well and how insane Rethugs are yet are willing to completely throw that all away because some batshit crazy Republitard ex Gov. says he does not like war. LOL!
Just can’t wrap my head around exactly what sort of a mental retardation would produce such thoughts.
spark
@Omnes Omnibus:
And there’s a difference between uninformed and victim of lies, misdirections, exaggerations, false memes and ideological wolves in sheeps clothing.
Baron Jrod of Keeblershire
@Fred: lolwut
Anne Laurie
@cckids:
Reading between the reportorial lines about ‘seizures in infancy‘ and ‘severe ADHD‘, I think we’re supposed to understand that Son is mildly brain-damaged — not group-home-qualifying, just what used to be called “a little off”. Dad feels obscurely responsible for his son’s limitations, and sad that he’s probably as happy & succesful as he’ll ever be right now, and worried that the new cold-hearted, lizard-brained Republican Party will dump his unfortunate offspring in the gutter the second his Republican-voter parents are no longer around to protect him. Which, of course, they will. Kind of a metaphor for an entire generation of ‘hereditary Rebublicans’ and ‘Reagan Democrats’, in fact.