I would like to say that the reason the Occupy America movement is and will continue to be successful is that Americans want to come together so save our middle-class, but I don’t believe that. I believe that the real reason the movement resonates with people is that people hate banksters. I’ve been following along with Greenberg Quinlan Rosner polls and conference calls about what strikes a chord with people economically, and over and over again I hear that the two things that work are (a) hatred of the Chinese and (b) hatred of banksters.
I don’t like the politics of xenophobia and scapegoating, but there’s no question that they often work very well. One of the main reasons that establishment political reporting is so worthless is that they refuse to admit this. And it may be that one of the weaknesses of contemporary liberalism is its aversion to using these techniques. Some of the aversion is that establishment media, consisting as it does of rich people, is quick to yell “class warfare” whenever wealthy people — the natural scapegoatees in many cases — are criticized. Some of it, though, is that liberals just don’t like the politics of scapegoating and xenophobia very much. Maybe that has to change.
MikeJake
If we’re talking economics, “hatred of the Chinese” isn’t xenophobia. The Chinese have created an economic model so attractive to our top 1% that they’re doing everything in their power to change us into them.
wrb
The scape goat was an innocent, sent to die to purify the rest.
Need a different term for these fuckers.
Leach splatting?
virag
after every middle-class american has utilized elizabeth warren’s revenge voucher and kicks someone from wall street in the balls, the american people will be able to move together in a more pure and benevolent solidarity.
wrb
slug salting?
catclub
They may hate banksters, but they hate their neighbors more.
Bail out the banksters, angry, but they get over it.
Bail out the deadbeat neighbor who is underwater on his mortgage? Apoplexy.
The difference between remote and local injustice.
navigator
Nothing wrong with a little rabble-rousing in the service of your agenda:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IjSTQwamo8M
Samara Morgan
yup, like no one wants to admit that anti-mormon sentiment may make it simply impossible for Romney to win the general.
;)
americans desperately want to belief that we are better than that.
we arent.
el_gallo
Yeah, what’s xenophobic about hating the Chinese Communist Party for pimping out their own population as slave labor to the American 1%?
I’m old enough to remember when Communist oppression was Anti-American, not a business model.
catclub
@MikeJake: Another case of GOP projection.
sal
It’s not scapegoating to hate on the banksters. They are the ones who got us into this economic situation, and who continue to promote and profit from it.
Dougerhead
@wrb:
I think that many of the banksters are essentially innocent. They make too much money, sure, and should have to pay more taxes. But some of them think that too. If someone (a) had nothing to do with the subprime crisis and (b) thinks he should pay more taxes, I don’t see why that person isn’t innocent.
Omnes Omnibus
Hate and war – the only things we got today.
Dougerhead
@el_gallo:
Nothing, but I don’t think it’s always pitched that way.
JGabriel
Personally, I have no problem with the politics of scapegoating if the target earned it. The Chinese government makes a convenient scapegoat for some of our job problems right now because their manipulation of the yuan is keeping the dollar too high.
Xenophobia on the hand, yeah, I have a problem with that — and would prefer that we continue to avoid hating on others just because they are other. Going down that route would betray principles I believe to be important.
.
Jager
Talking with a pal the other day, we concluded what would resonate with people is not that guys like Blankfein make millions and millions, but that the underlings make 500k plus a year in their mid to late 20’s. As I told my friend, my daughter has a masters in education, works 60-70 hours a week and makes 44k…it ain’t fucking fair. He has a 33 year old daughter who is a pediatrician. She makes 120k and pays 36k a year on her school loans and works her ass off.
Zifnab
Hate fits very nicely on a bumper sticker, that’s for damn sure. And people need to identify a cause for their suffering. If we weren’t in the bottom of the latest recession in a thirty year run of bad economic news, I’d say maybe it would be nice if we could be a bit more hopeful. But shit stinks, and there’s no point in pretending human anger and misery don’t exist.
The real reason liberalism is “losing” is the US electoral system. We’ve got over 40% of our Senators that represent less than 20% of our population. We’ve got gerrymandered districts. We’ve got a two-party system that is heads-I-win tails-you-lose for lobbyists who are able to play both sides against the middle. We’ve got a bicameral legislature with dozens of checks and balances that make it easy to do absolutely nothing even when you have overwhelming support for a given agenda.
The deck is stacked. Pretending that its a messaging problem or a financing problem or a human-nature problem misses the mark entirely. Popular candidates can’t get majorities in our current political system because the game. is. rigged. Period.
el_gallo
@Dougerhead: Well, perhaps it’s time to point out the obvious to people: American oligarchs have more in common with Chinese oligarchs than either have in common with their own countrymen. Worldwide, if you’re not an owner, you’re a resource to be expoited.
wrb
@Dougerhead:
I can agree with that on an individual level, but the flagrant efforts, even now, to bend the rules in their favor and punish those who suggest greater equity, isn’t innocent
They fought for the right to pillage and destroy the lives of others.
catclub
@el_gallo: The chinese are copying the business model of the south from 1870-1940 with prison labor. The xenophobes resent that.
The US is more and more bringing that model back.
trollhattan
Shinobi linked to Taibi in the earlier Open Thread.
@Shinobi:
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/my-advice-to-the-occupy-wall-street-protesters-20111012
He gets off to a rolicking start:
Mnemosyne
@Dougerhead:
What’s your definition of “had nothing to do with the subprime crisis”? If they sold mortgage-backed securities. If they supported the loan department that was handing out bad loans, they’re responsible.
Unless you’re talking about a teller in the bank, I’m not sure how you can claim that someone who worked for a major bank wasn’t responsible for the mortgage collapse. If nothing else, they went along with bad policies without protesting and now they’re whining because those bad policies have bitten them in the ass — hoocoodanode?
General Stuck
For the dimmer bulbs, I think maybe a portion of the electorate blames and hates the Chinese. But I suspect those folks are already primed to hate someone and are more likely to turn up at a tea party rally.
I think, and hope, that those on the left that tend to think a little more deeply about such things, will realize the Chinese ‘people” and the Chinese government are two separate things, and the people have very little say in what their country does on the world stage. I do think liberal activists are more attuned to hating on banksters a little or lot more than they should, being it is the government that they elect to regulate capitalism and it’s greedier side to mostly blame. I fall into that category, as I suspect most at the OWS does.
Here in America, the non activist middle of the road folks that make up the vast majority of citizens, I think are well into sensing something is wrong and our economics are very unbalanced, and seem to be maybe blaming that on where it should be blamed, money in politics, mostly politics of the right with some dems, having conned them for at least 3 decades. I don’t think they hate the players so much as feeling some bigger changes are needed in the system we all live in, and the corps are a needed part of that system.
The OWS folks, long as they don’t go crazy, I think will cause the middle class proper to do some more critical thinking about what is wrong, and realize the solution is not with the GOP. That is our only hope, and then will give dems larger majorities for making the big changes needed. And with those big majorities for dems, enough to cancel out the few bad actors in dem ranks that side with and enable the wingnuts and the plutocrats. It is possible things go this way, I wouldn’t say likely, but the OWS actions increase the odds of enlightenment of the bulk of white majority.
eemom
Moody Blues “The Question”? In which case you forgot Death.
btw, today is Justin Hayward’s 65th birthday.
El Cid
I can tell you that as often as I hear ordinary coworkers and neighbors etc bitching about ‘the Chinese’ it is accompanied by either (a) we are letting them buy us up or we owe them so much or (b) our companies are sending all the jobs there.
(b) is a real case, (a), not really, but it’s not like this complaint universally means someone is expressing hatred for Chinese people and the nation of China in general.
There really is a common — not dominant, but common — understanding that it’s our companies either shipping jobs out of the country or bringing in cheaper Chinese products (the same thing but it sounds like two very different concepts).
JGabriel
@wrb:
I suppose evil motherfucking asshole bastards is too unwieldly?
.
suzanne
I hardly think that’s a weakness.
Plethded
Is it xenophobia when all you’ve been hearing about is how that guy over in China is willing to do your job for 10% of what you want to get paid? It’s just regular “I hate those guys because they’re taking my job” phobia. It’s not like I’m berating people from China who live here and aren’t taking my job.
Come to think of it, I’m not even blaming Chinese people as much as Wall Street for punishing companies who don’t offshore as much work as possible.
jl
The Occupy America people I have seen on the news seem well informed, thoughtful, and reasonable (in striking contrast to the ‘get the feds out my Medicare’ teabagger crowds that the corporate flacks bussed in to their demonstrations).
So, there is hope that demonstrators will be able to educate as well as protest.
As for commenters above who talked about resentment of debt relief for neighbors, not sure what is meant by that. Is that resentment against real neighbors they know who are in trouble, or abstract neighbors in other neighborhoods who people just know are getting an unfair advantage?
Dougerhead
@eemom:
The Clash.
catclub
@JGabriel: “I have no problem with the politics of scapegoating if the target earned it.”
I suspect that FIRST you convince the people the target earned it, THEN you make the target the scapegoats. It is probably somewhere in Mein Kampf that he tried the other way first and it kept not working, and suddenly he had a revelation…
schrodinger's cat
@suzanne: I think DougJ is trolling us like for example when he suggested teaching long division was redundant.
slag
I’m going to divide the baby and say that it’s both. Some of us hate the banksters and some of us want to save our middle class and some of us both hate the banksters and want to save our middle class.
Nothing’s perfect. And if that combination of impetuses gets us to where we need to go, I’m ok with that.
Dougerhead
@schrodinger’s cat:
Holy shit, you really believe in teaching long division?
eemom
@Dougerhead:
oh. That band that folks always confuse with Soft Cell…
:)
Chris
I’ve said this here before, dude: whoever finds a way to synthesize nationalist insecurity and fear of the Chinese with economic insecurity and fear of Wall Street bankers perceived as “selling our country out” will have hit the twenty-first century’s populist goldmine, combining right wing identity politics with left wing economic resentment.
To what extent that’s a good thing, I don’t know: I there’d be a lot of parallels with mid-twentieth century liberalism, actually, with FDR’s two big legacies being his economic victories over the rich in the 1930s and his patriotic victories over the Krauts and the Japs in the 1940s.
David in NY
I’d mind the scapegoating (for lack of a better word, I know scapegoats are innocent) less if it went along with the recognition that this isn’t new. That for thirty years median wages have been essentially stagnant (household income has risen solely because of women’s entry into the employment market); at the same time executive compensation, all over, not just bankers, has soared. And then, of course, in an effort to drive the already incredible compensation higher, the banksters busted the bank.
And I believe that the increasing growth of economic inequality has been a result of three things: 1) defeat of unions, 2) reduction of government oversight, and 3) a lack of political challenge from the left (and the fall of international communism). Cf. Galbraith, pere.
I wish only that there were wider appreciation of the inequality and discussion of its causes (which certainly do not include any commensurate growth in competence of the executive class).
joeyess
I can’t speak for anyone else, but this liberal loves laying blame where it is deserved and point out cheating as it occurs. It is what it is.
Banksters wrecked both ours and the worlds economy and cheated while profiting obscenely and the Chinese have been lying about their currency for some time now and have been profiting obscenely.
I’ll just call it what it is: Lying and cheating.
If you want to call it scapegoating and xenophobia, go ahead. I tend to laugh at those terms as loudly as I laugh at the cry of “class warfare!”.
If banksters and the Chinese don’t like it, they can fucking suck it.
Dougerhead
@suzanne:
I’m not sure, I think liberalism would work better if there was more overt, hostile class warfare in it. Not “everybody should pay their fair share” — that’s not class warfare — but “fuck those rich assholes”.
wrb
@JGabriel:
To replace scapegoating we need a word to describe what someone is doing when being mean to them.
I thing your words have potential. Need re-ordered.
Maude
Is this one of those goats gotta scape posts?
Dougerhead
@eemom:
I may have to delete this comment.
eemom
Perhaps it is worth noting that among “the Chinese”, the “1%” are possibly more evil and certainly more powerful than they are here…..and that their “99%” is WAY more fucked than we are.
Samara Morgan
@suzanne: of course you do.
you dont want to admit that Christie is unelectable because he’s OBESE.
hahaha
and Romney is unelectable because hes a MORMON.
lawlz.
goblue72
@schrodinger’s cat: I’d like to think so. Going down the road of “China’s government is stealing our jobs with slave labor” quickly winds up at “the Chinese are stealing our jobs”. Not only does that have far too strong a whiff of xenophobia for anyone with the gall to then call themselves a liberal, but know you’ve just gone a turned off Chinese-American voters (and likely many Asian/Pacific Islander voters in general) who’ve grown up dealing with anti-Asian racism their whole lives. Liberals don’t go down that road because we lack the balls to – we don’t go down that road because we HAVE the balls not to.
Just substitute “the Chinese are stealing our jobs” with “the Mexicans are stealing our jobs”, and no one here would think that would be acceptable. But bashing on yellow folks – well, that’s not so bad, amirite?
White people – Still oblivious in the 21st century.
suzanne
@Dougerhead: Sure. But that’s not xenophobia.
I think there’s plenty of room on the left for a moral discussion about the dangers of the consolidation of wealth, and I wish every left-leaning person of any influence would talk about it. This really is a larger issue than a merely political one.
catclub
@jl: both types. The complaint is: _I_ didn’t screw up, so why should the guy who did (who has a _slightly_ nicer house than he ‘should’, and whose life I can understand) get bailed out.
My point was that there is much better understanding of the small, local case, than of the case of the bankster bailout, which is treated as just the way the world had to work, so no reason to get any more angry.
The bankster bailout also comes into the billion here, billion there problem. There is not the same visceral understanding of the billions paid to the banks as there would be of a neighbor getting $20k
to put him right-side-up with his mortgage. Even if the totals spent nationwide are the same.
David in NY
@suzanne: Agree. Nice shorter me, of my clunky earlier comment.
wrb
@eemom:
Wasn’t their big thing harshing the US Festival?
Oh yea. I’m remembering. They liked iced tea. Sold it probably.
“the only people who put iced tea in Jack Daniel’s bottles is The Clash, baby!”
schrodinger's cat
@Dougerhead: And finding square roots without a calculator. I also advocate using slide rules.
Chris
@eemom:
Upton Sinclair, no friend of the robber-barons, had some good quotes about the Germany of his day that I think are applicable to China vs the West today –
“I have lived in Germany and know its language and literature, and the spirit and ideals of its rulers. Having given many years to a study of American capitalism, I am not blind to the defects of my own country; but, in spite of these defects, I assert that the difference between the ruling class of Germany and that of America is the difference between the seventeenth century and the twentieth.”
“American capitalism is predatory, and American politics are corrupt: The same thing is true in England and the same in France; but in all these three countries the dominating fact is that whatever the people get ready to change the government, they can change it. The same thing is not true of Germany, and until it was made true in Germany, there could be no free political democracy anywhere else in the world — to say nothing of any free social democracy.”
nancydarling
Can we call the MSM “judas goats”? The pretty faces and news readers are trained by their corporate masters to lead the rest of us to the slaughter.
Samara Morgan
@Dougerhead: meh.
both you and suzanne deny human nature.
the reason occupy wallstreet is successful is because its an emergent self-organizing system.
no purity required.
Jay B.
“Banksters” is a shorthand for “Greedy motherfucking vampire squids on Wall St and elsewhere who have extolled off-shoring, ‘productivity’, tax breaks for the rich, de-regulation, ‘globalization’, ‘innovative financial products’, corporations as people and spend their time blaming Barney Frank and Jimmy Fucking Carter for 30 years of rampant crony capitalism and double-dealing”. It doesn’t necessarily mean “everyone who works in banks”. That seems pretty obvious.
Are you wearing your Matt Yglesias hat today or something?
Bill in Section 147
The Spartacist Youth League used to hand out flyers with the old, “…while the Rockefellers sleep on silk sheets…” and in the late 70s that rhetoric was just not cutting it. But there was a time when something that simple resonated with a lot of people. And it wasn’t silk vs. cotton…it was that the system cared more about keeping ‘Rockefeller’ in silk than feeding a starving child.
The banksters are enjoying something simple and visceral right now that everyone knows is a demonstrable symbol of avarice. That object or privilege is there. Finding that resonance is the hard part.
OWS is clarifying it but it hasn’t yet made the complex simple.
catclub
@joeyess: “I’ll just call it what it is: Lying and cheating.”
My memory of the Devils dictionary put it: “The two main products of of the Orient are murder and cheating, the two main products of the Occident are also murder and cheating, but we call them war and commerce.”
Catsy
@Mnemosyne:
And you know this how? Oh, wait: you don’t.
Unless they share the anecdote, you haven’t the foggiest idea what Joe Finance said or didn’t say–or for that matter, was or wasn’t privy to–in the course of their job. You have no way of knowing what their financial and family obligations are, what their salary is, and whether or not they’re just as dependent on continued employment as anyone else with a family.
You don’t know. Don’t presume to.
The system is rotten. The financial instruments industry is dangerous and rewards sociopaths, of which there are far too many in this country. It needs to be torn down and rebuilt–heavily regulated–and that’s if it has any need to continue to exist at all.
But there’s a lot of people on our side that are dangerously close to losing sight of the fact that there are people on the other side of the hatemongering they’re advocating.
Senyordave
@joeyess: Well, this liberal isn’t very comfortable with the politics of scpaegoating and xenophobia. In part because it can get ugly very quickly but mostly because it tends to have an enormous amount of collateral damage.
schrodinger's cat
@nancydarling: I prefer Punditubbies, gibberish without the cute.
suzanne
@Samara Morgan:
Dumbshit.
First of all, I’ve made that exact same comment about Romney. On this blog. Repeatedly.
Secondly, I am keenly aware that Christie’s weight most likely disqualifies him from winning the presidency. My point, however, is that that should not be so. His weight, if we were being intellectually honest, shouldn’t matter. People are prejudiced, and that causes injustice.
You’re a fucking idiot.
Culture of Truth
Speaking of Asia, Occupy Wall Street rallies are planned on Oct. 15 in Tokyo, Roppongi, Seoul, Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, as well as Sydney and London.
catclub
@Dougerhead: It would be nice if the ‘fuck these rich assholes’ could get over to:
“We are all in this together, do your part.” Not sure it can.
There is no us in USA.
Chris
@Senyordave:
I agree completely.
I would say, though, that scapegoating and xenophobia are ALREADY central features of the American political landscape, and that the Banksters are using it for all it’s worth. If we can redirect in a way that targets the Banksters, that’ll already be one step up from where we are now.
cat
A) Its only scapegoating if the victim is innocent, otherwise I believe the term is justice.
B) Its not xenophobia to claim the Chinese Government’s manipulation of its currency, corporate ownership laws, and public works contracts to benifit of the ruling Chinese elite caused millions of lost jobs in the US and else where aroung the globe.
el_gallo
@cat: This.
Uncle Clarence Thomas
.
.
I believe that more people agree with President Obama that they are simply savvy, non-lawbreaking though high-spirited businessmen whose humble job it is to make money, don’t they?
.
.
Omnes Omnibus
@ eemom: Do you have some kind of mental block wrt the Clash? It is bothersome.
Sloegin
The common clay can only keep track of a couple of enemies at a time. What pisses off the Money class is if they’re in the top few, that bumps off the list an enemy they’re trying to create, such as:
The guy with a union job.
A schoolteacher.
Anyone with a pension.
Catsy
@Samara Morgan: You are failing to distinguish between recognizing the potential for the prejudices of others to influence their behavior, and attempting to exploit that potential as a weapon.
The former is simply the ability to observe and recognize facts as they are. I don’t think anyone’s disputing that there are people prejudiced against Christie for his obesity, or against Romney for being a Mormon. There is room for plenty of speculation and reasonable disagreement about how much of a factor those prejudices might play in a general election, but nobody seriously disputes that those prejudices exist.
That is not the same thing as deciding to empower and validate bigotry by pandering to it and using it as a political weapon.
I would disagree with suzanne. I think our reluctance to use bigotry and demagoguery as political weapons is a weakness of liberalism. But it is weakness in the same sense that our aversion to assassinating our political opponents is weakness: the kind I’m proud to own.
We might be a little more effective if we were otherwise. We might not. But it would be a betrayal of many of the very core principles we purport to espouse.
Dougerhead
@Jay B.:
I think of it as everyone who works at a bank.
Cris (without an H)
I believe in using a slide rule to demonstrate logarithmic identities.
Dougerhead
@schrodinger’s cat:
I realize you’re screwing with me, but I think that learning how to use slide rules would be more useful than long division. Anything that helps students understand order of magnitude has value.
eemom
@Omnes Omnibus:
Not actually. I was just reminiscing about that glorious evening where I was nearly run off the blog cuz I fucked up about Tainted Love.
eemom
@Dougerhead:
Who said: “I don’t know what a slide rule is for”?
(I don’t either, fwiw).
Brachiator
Works for me.
So, are people going to stop shopping at Walmart? Are the Occupy Wall Street people going to slap the new iPhones out of people’s hands?
schrodinger's cat
@Dougerhead: Actually I am not, well yes I am about square roots but not about slide rules. In my high school we were not allowed to use calculators. I think overall it is good idea to be able to do back of the envelope calculations without using calculators.
soonergrunt
@Catsy:
You mean the people who were human beings before they became bankers?
NonyNony
@Dougerhead:
You realize there’s actually a difference between a “banker” and a “bankster” right?
A “banker” works in a bank. A “bankster” is a combination banker and gangster.
If you think there’s no difference between them, you believe that there’s no such thing as an honest bank. I’ll admit there are people who believe such things, but most people I know put the leadership of Citibank and Chase in the “bankster” category while the folks who run the local credit union get a pass.
soonergrunt
@eemom: Sam Cooke, Wonderful World
Citizen Alan
@Samara Morgan:
Truthfully, I DON’T think Christie is unelectable because of his weight. It is a negative that he would have to overcome, much like any other appearance-related issue in our incredibly shallow society, but not an insurmountable one. I certainly cannot believe that obesity is a bigger handicap than being a racial minority, after all, and that obviously didn’t stop Obama. Romney’s Mormonism is a much bigger problem, but mainly because his party affiliation requires him to build a winning coalition that includes the majority of the nation’s religious bigots. If Romney were running as a Democrat, Bain Capitol would be a much bigger obstacle for him than Mormonism.
singfoom
http://vimeo.com/30550909
“Clearer” video of the OWS protests where a cop ran over someone, then they arrested him.
Cris (without an H)
@eemom: Sam Cooke. But he said it back in the pre-calculator days when students actually used them.
Loneoak
There really needs to be a sense of international solidarity between American and Chinese workers. The same people are fucking us over, and equitable labor and environmental laws would do a lot to bring some jobs back over here and improve their lot in life. But I don’t see a lot of opportunity for this kind of thinking or work at the moment.
Omnes Omnibus
@ eemom: You should have been ridden out of the blog on a rail – tarred and feathered too. The slide rule quote is from a Sam Cooke song (you may remember it from the cafeteria lunch line scene in Animal House).
schrodinger's cat
A Chinese student once told me that Chinese provincial/state governments kill the local businesses by giving multinationals much better incentives.
pete
@Cris (without an H): Slide rules were beautiful and I wish I hadn’t got rid of mine. Not that I’d use it, but I’d like to fondle it occasionally.
suzanne
@Catsy:
That’s totally what I meant. Like, exactly.
There’s no point in having principles if we abandon them just because we’re losing.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@catclub:
In my face to face discussion circle we have a principle for analyzing sales/marketing-speak (a subset of the larger world of Orwellian doublespeak) which we call “The People’s Democratic Republic principle”, named after places like North Korea and the former Warsaw Pact countries that like to use lots of words like that in their official name. And the principle is that whenever you encounter lots of positive-sounding adjectives embedded in a proper noun, somebody is lying to you about the object being named, and the positive qualities in question are in all likelihood conspicuous by their absence.
The application of this principle to “The United States of America” is left as an exercise for the reader.
eemom
@Brachiator:
this is a good point. The hypocrisy of people railing against “the Chinese” — not only without boycotting their products, but without even pausing for 10 seconds to consider how ubiquitous are those products in their lives –is mind-blowing.
Like the assholes pissing on Steve Jobs the night he died over Chinese labor exploitation — by clattering away on their “made in China” Dells.
Samara Morgan
@Citizen Alan: sure Christie is unelectable because of his weight.
Appearance is all.
here is a thought experiment for you.
if sarah palin looked like Janet Reno how far would she have gotten?
ditto Bachman, ditto COD (christine o’donnell).
WereBear
Feature, not bug.
Sure, we could get down and roll in the muck; the other side can’t believe we don’t. But if we did… we wouldn’t be Liberals, would we?
Our most powerful weapon is Telling the Truth. Which is why so many corporate media outlets won’t let us. But I think we are starting an end run around that; and I hope the results will be worthy of awe.
eemom
@Cris (without an H):
@Omnes Omnibus:
damn, y’all are right. But I was actually thinking of the Simon & Garfunkel cover.
wrt The Clash, I can only continue to plead ignorance. Honestly, they just never made that much of an impression on me back in the day.
oh wait….maybe I shouldn’t have said that…..
Catsy
@soonergrunt:
Missing the point by a light-year.
suzanne
@Samara Morgan: I’ll accept your apology for misrepresenting my position any time.
Samara Morgan
@suzanne: but you willfully ignore reality.
it doesnt matter what liberals think of of christies weight or romneys mormonism.
it matters what the GOP base thinks.
do you have to be so pigignorant? does pregnancy pith the XX?
Samara Morgan
@suzanne: i didnt misrepresent your position.
want links?
ornery
Scapegoating is wrong. It is also stupid longterm.
Scapegoating makes your tribe WEAK by projecting and never see one’s own problems, to never clean your own house.
Plus, the Right does it, which means it is morally wrong and destructive in my experience. Maybe the Left DougJ represents wants to go down that path, but I’m a liberal who disagrees. The end does not justify the means if it is wrong.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Omnes Omnibus: It’s better used in Witness, of course.
cat
@eemom:
What is the acceptable amount of time the “Dell using assholes” should wait before critizing Job’s and Apple’s exploitation of chinese workers?
Are people using chinese made computers belonging to someone else given a special Purity Police dispensation and allowed to correctly point out the [explotation of the] people assembling the $200 worth of parts into $1000 iPhones in closer proximity to Job’s death?
suzanne
@Samara Morgan: Yes. I want links to comments in which I stated that Romney’s Mormonism was a non-issue to the GOP electorate and that prejudice against Christie for his weight was morally acceptable. Bring. It. On.
Amir Khalid
@Samara Morgan:
Here’s another thought experiment for you.
If Sarah Palin had Janet Reno’s ability, how far would she have gotten?
Catsy
@Samara Morgan:
You have a genuine gift for making statements that–while technically accurate or based in facts–really have no bearing on the argument you’re actually making. Is anyone here disputing that shallow prejudices might motivate voters in a way harmful to Romney or Christie on a national level? No?
It is of course true that it matters what the GOP base thinks of Romney’s religion and Christie’s weight. I have not seen anyone suggest otherwise.
It’s also irrelevant to the question of whether or not we, as liberals/progressives, should betray our principles and demean ourselves by pandering to–and thereby empowering–the very prejudices we expend so much energy trying to eradicate.
suzanne
@Samara Morgan:
My position is that the reality of anti-fat prejudice is morally wrong. I am keenly aware that the reality exists.
Still waiting on those links.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Amir Khalid: You have apparently infinite patience, as well as an inexplicable desire to bang your head against a wall, repeatedly. Nevertheless, I always appreciate your thoughtful insights and occasional statements auf Deutsch.
Samara Morgan
@suzanne: I stated that Romney’s Mormonism was a non-issue to the GOP electorate
LOL
you are such a stupid cow.
did you miss the Pew poll i cited?
eemom
@cat:
no. I was just assuming that the majority of non-Apple computers are Dells.
If there is some widely used computer or other electronic device that is NOT made with Chinese labor, please enlighten me.
Hypocrisy is hypocrisy is hypocrisy whenever it exists. It was just particularly odious that certain people chose to flaunt it on the night the man died, imo.
Samara Morgan
@Amir Khalid: a lot farther than she got, provided she got to keep her looks.
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q): you lurves you some house muslim, right?
Satanicpanic
It’s not the Chinese, it’s every company that is outsourcing and our neoliberal government that is encouraging it. The Chinese just happen to be the best at attracting said companies
opal
@Brachiator:
Walmart only sells goods made by conservative Chinese.
catclub
Suzanne and Catsy, Please stop feeding the troll.
suzanne
@Samara Morgan: I have repeatedly said on this blog that Romney’s religion will be a problem for him with evangelicals.
Can you read?
Samara Morgan
@suzanne:
LULZ! so fucking what you dimwitted scold? Christie on terebi is visually repugnant to a WHOLE lotta Murrikkkans.
A majority of Murrikkkans.
:)
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Samara Morgan:
@Samara Morgan:
This is just one commentors opinion, but I think you’ve gone over the line into hate-speech here. IMHO a timeout would be appropriate at this point, and far more productive if it were self-imposed and accompanied by some self-reflection rather than coming from the blog-hosts. But in either case, time for a timeout.
suzanne
@Samara Morgan:
So liberals shouldn’t encourage or contribute to it.
Links?
Samara Morgan
@suzanne:
LOLOLLLOLOL!
ALL the WHITE evangelicals there are are in the GOP electorate.
AMG you are a simpleton.
please tell me you were a simpleton before breeding.
i cant bear to hear pregnancy piths the XX.
different-church-lady
The fact that the banksters seem to enjoy playing the bad guy so much probably has something to do with it too.
Samara Morgan
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ: trust meh, its incoming.
The Moar You Know
@eemom: In fairness, a not insignificant subset of those people were clattering away on their “made in China” Macs.
Samara Morgan
@suzanne: ‘zactly.
so why discuss it?
ever time you swing on me you punch yourself in the neck suzanne.
suzanne
@Samara Morgan: I got two Master’s degrees after having a kid.
Where’s those links?
wrb
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
pithing in the wind?
Hugh
I don’t know… I guess I should look at that poll. But I’ve heard nothing in the comments out of OWS that suggest xenophobia or scapegoating. I think people are scared and angry, and that can be directed against “other” groups. But I haven’t heard that there at all. Now on to look at that poll.
suzanne
@Samara Morgan:
Because some liberals (eemom, for one) are happy to encourage appearance-based prejudice as long as it’s in service of their goals.
Links?
Samara Morgan
@suzanne: i gave you your EXACT WORDS.
degrees in what?
law? english?
hahahahahaha
Samara Morgan
@wrb: hahahaha
niiiice.
cat
@eemom:
It depends if you consider Taiwan part of China and their labor practices better then the Chinese.
If you were careful you could build a computer that didn’t have any major component assembled in China, some minor components would be Chinese, but you wouldn’t actually end up with a computer that would be ‘fair trade’ as it were.
Asia owns the means of production for our Technology Economy, that should worry people.
Samara Morgan
@suzanne: appearance based prejudice is part of the bio basis of behavior.
Sociobiolgy 101.
Hugh
Upon re-reading your post I see you’re not actually saying the protest participants are scapegoating or xenophobic – but it took a couple of reads for that to become clear to me. As a rule I love your posts and always read them when I see them. This one feels a little blurry to me. It looks like you’re linking to specific polling on OWS to support your thesis about why it will succeed. Regarding the broader point, how depressing a thesis. I’m not sure it’s true as a rule. Though there are plenty of examples of people’s fear and anger being turned towards destructive paths. Still, hard to feel sorry for a group of people (banksters, as it were) who have so much and who have had so little acountability.
Ash Can
Not all that OT at all, yes, it’s Tim Fucking Geithner, and yes, they’re just words. But they’re encouraging words. He doesn’t strike me as someone who would blow smoke if there weren’t at least a little bit of a fire going.
suzanne
@Samara Morgan: My full quote was:
My degrees are in architecture and building science. I graduated summa cum laude.
Links?
FuzzyWuzzy
@Samara Morgan: South Park will make an episode defending Romney and he will become America’s Next Hope.
Amir Khalid
@Samara Morgan:
Even so, appearance-based prejudice is still wrong. And exploiting appearance-based prejudice is just as wrong.
I for one maintain that it is not naive, or assuring their own defeat, for good guys to fight clean even when the bad guys fight dirty. I’m well aware that it makes the fight more difficult, often greatly so. But liberals are supposed to the good guys here. If they do like the bad guys, how then are they not the bad guys too?
MonkeyBoy
The recent Public Policy Polling poll are rather surprising in that the largest support for Occupy is in the 100K+ income bracket.
My explanation is such people are those who have enough money that they are in a position that they need to go beyond vanilla banking services and they have personal experience on how the banksters can be real weasels.
Among the wealthy in the US (let’s say not banksters and not the superwealthy but those with income in the low 6 figures) they regard financial services as a way to preserve and moderately grow their wealth. It seems even they are feeling screwed by the banksters.
Brachiator
@cat:
Not really. The sad fact is that the stagnant wages and overall decline in the standard of living of many Americans is partially offset by the lower labor cost and price of Chinese manufactured goods. And people are happy with this.
However, as Chinese wage costs rise, companies just look for the next viable low cost producer. And so, for example, you have Apple starting to ramp up production in Brazil.
suzanne
@Samara Morgan: What Amir said.
Links?
Samara Morgan
@suzanne: ? you SAID that critting christies obesity was immoral.
i said no one cares.
you said romneys mormonism should be a non-issue to liberals as well.
again, no one cares, and its not a non-issue.
liberals arent going to vote for romney OR christie anyways.
you are just an old PC scold that denies the biological basis of behavior.
“building science”? WTF is that?
LOLLLOLOL!
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ: I was quite offended by the comment about what I “lurves,” and it wasn’t directed at me. But I found it crass and tasteless and inappropriate in any event. I also don’t appreciate seeing commenters addressed with “you stupid cow” again, whether directed toward me or someone else. Thus I would indeed support a timeout. Ahem, DougJ.
opal
Here’s what I believe:
Chris Christie will most likely succumb to Fat Comedian Disease in the near future.
Mormonism is a troll religion, initiated by a sociopath who never would have gotten laid otherwise.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@wrb:
Most likely. But I’ve generally tried to refrain from joining in when others pile on her and possibly as a result have had semi-productive conversations with this commentator before, so you never know. At least I tried, nicht wahr?
Samara Morgan
@Amir Khalid: but its not “our” fight.
its the GOP base’s fight.
are you an old PC scold like suzanne?
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q): so bring it.
mail Cole and bitch about it.
agorabum
“For nearly four years you have had an Administration which instead of twirling its thumbs has rolled up its sleeves. We will keep our sleeves rolled up.
We had to struggle with the old enemies of peace–business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, sectionalism, war profiteering.
They had begun to consider the Government of the United States as a mere appendage to their own affairs. We know now that Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob.
Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate for me–and I welcome their hatred.
I should like to have it said of my first Administration that in it the forces of selfishness and of lust for power met their match. I should like to have it said of my second Administration that in it these forces met their master.”
– FDR, on the eve of the 1936 elections
RTWT
suzanne
@Samara Morgan:
Still waiting.
Building science is research and experimentation in the pursuit of the design of carbon-neutral buildings.
Admit you’re lying, or fuck off.
Samara Morgan
@Amir Khalid: you and suzanne are just alike.
you are breaking your arms pattin’ yourselves on the back for being the “good guys”.
you arent the good guys.
you are the lefthand mirror of the conservitards with different tribal shibboleths and totems.
eemom
@opal:
suzieQ awaits your apology.
Bill Arnold
@schrodinger’s cat:
Mentally roughly estimating square roots is useful for estimating error bars…
suzanne
@Samara Morgan:
I’m 31. Your demographic.
Links or an apology for being a liar.
My Truth Hurts
The politics you describe Doug often leads to atrocities. I could never support that.
opal
@suzanne:
Lookism.
“we face a world where lookism is one of the most pervasive but denied prejudices.”
Amir Khalid
@eemom: If you own a Dell laptop, it would have been assembled in Malaysia — where, last I heard, Dell still assembles all its laptops. Malaysia has been an off-shoring site for electronics manufacturers from the US and Japan since the early 1070s, as have other countries in southeast Asia. (Hell, you can’t depend on exporting tin and rubber and palm oil forever.)
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Amir Khalid:
I knew Malaysia stayed ahead of the curve, but apparently I didn’t recognize just how far. :-)
Samara Morgan
@suzanne: yawn
boo-fucking-hoo
no, its not. its his problem if the GOP wont vote for him based on APPEARANCE.
none of “us” liberals would vote for him anyways.
except maybe you…as a mercy
fuckvote.Ash Can
@suzanne:
To matoko, that’s ancient.
suzanne
@Samara Morgan: Is that a link to a comment I made in which I said appearance-based prejudice is morally acceptable?
Swing and a miss.
Since you aren’t going to find any links, I’ll just settle for a nice, “I was wrong”.
Amir Khalid
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q):
(Blush.) Is typo. I meant the 1970s.
Raenelle
There can be a problem with the disdain/hatred for bankers in that it can come from either right or left. On the right, an attack on bankers is often just code for attacking Jews. So, Father Coughlin blamed bankers for the Depression and turned that explanation into an anti-Semitic attack. On the left, “bankers” stands in for an attack on finance capitalism, and that’s on target as a real explanation. #OWS, however, is firmly on the left in this case.
different-church-lady
@Ash Can:
To a 12 year old, all adults of any age are.
Samara Morgan
@suzanne:
WTF? you are consistant in saying any kind of prejudice is totally immoral and unacceptable.
WTF are you talking about?
my position is that liberals and conservatives alike are subject to bio-basis-of-behavior prejudices laid down in the EEA that are certainly immoral and unfair and that you, suzanne, can do absolutely nothing about.
im saying christies obesity and romneys mormonism aint our bidness cuz we aint gonna vote for them anyways.
like i said you are a politically correct scold.
:)
Samara Morgan
lulz, shorter suzanne–
you arent.
you just have a different set of prejudices and tribal shibboleths.
Davis X. Machina
@agorabum: Too bad he adopted their analysis of the macroeconomic situation, and plunged the country into a recession which, if it were considered separately from the 1929-936 Crash and Depression, would be the second-worst slump of modern times.
Not even FDR was “FDR”.
Mnemosyne
@cat:
If you paid $1,000 for your iPhone, somebody ripped you off. The highest-end one available costs $399. Even when it debuted, the most expensive one was $599.
Mnemosyne
@Catsy:
Ah, yes, the poor innocent banksters. How could they have possibly known that faking people’s financial records to get as many loans on the books as possible could go wrong?
If someone had such a moral problem with handing out liar loans, they would have quit. I have zero sympathy for the people who were “just following orders” and now insist that they’re bigger victims than the people they harmed. Admit that you participated in a horrible system that tanked the economy and promise not to do it again, and maybe I’ll eke out a tiny tear for your pain.
Amir Khalid
@Samara Morgan:
Oh. Well, when you put it that way, you’ve wound up changing what you actually said in the first place: that Romney being Mormon and Christie being obese make them unelectable i.e. that they shouldn’t be considered because of their obesity and Mormonism.
It is true that these attributes are not liberals’ business; but, precisely because they have nothing to do with either man’s ability to do the President’s job, they are not conservatives’ business either. And if liberals take heart that these attributes are what disqualify them in the eyes of conservatives, then liberals are guilty of profiting from conservatives’ prejudices.
Samara Morgan
@FuzzyWuzzy:
they already did.
.
Samara Morgan
@Amir Khalid:
those attributes MAKE THEM UNELECTABLE BECAUSE THEIR OWN BASE WONT VOTE FOR THEM.
i was perfectly clear on that.
you and suzanne just doan liek meh, so you seize any excuse to chihuahua-pack me.
:)
Mnemosyne
@Amir Khalid:
Hopefully you are not surprised by this. It’s pretty much her modus operandi at this point.
A Farmer
One good bit of bankster news, a local bank calls out BofA on debit card charges:
I like this. No way those big banks don’t make a killing charging an average of 20 cents a transaction. Glad to see somebody at a local bank make them look like the crooks they are.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mnemosyne: When one debates the intellectually dishonest, one does tend to run into intellectual dishonesty.
Catsy
@Samara Morgan:
And yet your assertion is demonstrably untrue. The fact that were are having this discussion at all makes it false on its face: clearly there are at least three people out of the four involved in this back-and-forth who do, in fact, care. I submit that we are not, in fact, alone in this.
With regard to your repeated use of “no one cares”, I find myself with an overwhelming urge to deploy the appropriate Inigo Montoya quote.
Are you off your meds today or something? That’s not an attack, that’s a no-shit serious question; your writing today is far less literate and far more incoherent and antagonistic than usual. You’re acting like a junkie who missed their last fix.
Samara Morgan
@Mnemosyne: fuck off mnem.
i was PERFECTLY CLEAR on that.
i actually did the math to prove Romney is unelectable because the GOP base has anti-mormon sentiments.
Catsy
@Mnemosyne: Modus operandi? She moves goalposts more often than Calvin and Hobbes trying to play football.
Samara Morgan
@Omnes Omnibus: you never answer my questions Omnes. im not the intellectually dishonest one here.
@Catsy: im just tired. educating the juicitariat is like the labors of sisyphus.
:)
Samara Morgan
@Mnemosyne: i FUCKING consistantly SAID that christie and romney are unlectable BECAUSE THEIR OWN BASE wont vote for them.
i gave hotair quotes where the hotair commentariat was making fat jokes.
i gave a mathematical presentation based on Pew polling of why i think Romney cant win BECAUSE SOME PART OF HIS BASE wont vote for a mormon.
slines cant read i guess.
;)
Omnes Omnibus
@Samara Morgan: When you quote people out of context and suggest that they support things that they do not, you are being intellectually dishonest. When you ask questions of me like “Can you name a good libertarian?”, there is no reason for me to answer. You could just as well ask “Why is green?” for all that the question adds tot he discussion. I am not a libertarian, nor am I libertarian curious. Why should I be asked to find and defend someone or something with which I do not agree? Further, how can my failure/refusal to do so be seen as dishonest?
Amir Khalid
@Samara Morgan:
Trying to make oneself a better person, the greatest jihad of all, requires (among other things) that one seek to rise above one’s prejudices and the shibboleths of one’s tribe. And, of course,that one not seek to gain by the prejudices and tribal shibboleths of others
@Mnemosyne:
I know, I know. I just can’t help myself, though; I just have to point it out..
Mnemosyne
@Samara Morgan:
And that had exactly what to do with what suzanne was saying?
That’s the whole point — you put words into her mouth, and when she called you on it, you tried to pretend that you were saying something else.
You called her a liar while lying about what she said, and then tried to pretend you said something else when she pointed out that you were lying about what she actually said.
This is how you make yourself disliked around here.
Omnes Omnibus
@Samara Morgan: People expressed moral objections to these prejudices. They did not say that the prejudices did not exist.
opal
Some folks here are going wolf pack on Samara on style over substance.
To paraphrase suzanne, I thought liberals were better than this.
Catsy
@Samara Morgan:
Your arguments are perfectly clear in the same way that a mountain is not aerodynamic. If everyone but you is consistently misunderstanding the point you’re trying to make, you may want to reevaluate your approach to communication.
Honeybadger, you di’n’t prove shit.
What you did was cherry pick numbers from a poll to support your argument, perform some Captain Obvious-level math on those numbers, and assume that this poll is predictive of the outcome of an election.
This is one poll. One poll with a sample size of 1,020 adults. Not 1,020 registered voters, nor even 1,020 likely voters (you do know what that term denotes, right?). You could get more predictive value from taking any given Tom Friedman column and assuming the opposite position.
Omnes Omnibus
@opal: No, people are going wolfpack on m_c on substance. Unless you consider dishonesty and goal post moving to be matters of style. I don’t.
Catsy
@opal:
Are we even watching the same thread? It is precisely the substance of Samara’s “arguments”–such as they are–which draw such ire.
You also may want to brush up on her history here before wedding yourself too closely to that observation.
opal
@Samara Morgan:
Exactly.
Samara Morgan
@opal: plz…chihuahuapack, not wolfpack.
@Catsy: i didnt cherrypick, i used all the stats from that section of the poll, on mormonism.
My hypothesis is that Romney cannot get the 65% of the white vote he needs to win, because of anti-mormon sentiment in his own (white voter) base.
i would welcome a discussion of that.
OTOH, i DID NOT say that fat and mormon render people unelectable like khalid and suzanne are asserting. i SAID VERY CLEARLY that prejudice in the conservative base renders the candidate unelectable.
and it doesnt matter if democrats are prejudiced or not, because we arent voting for them.
Catsy
@Samara Morgan: Okay, this post is just over the line. It’s like you’re going out of your way to be so offensive and abrasive that you’ll be
martyredbanned for it.Omnes Omnibus
@opal: And this has exactly what to do with people saying that religious and obesity related attacks on politicians are wrong? Exactly; it has nothing to do with it. I don’t necessarily disagree with m_c’s judgment about Romney’s chances at the GOP nomination, but that judgment is entirely immaterial to the fight she picked.
suzanne
@opal:
No, I’m going “wolf pack” because she’s a liar.
Samara Morgan
@Omnes Omnibus: chihuahuapack, Omnes.
be species specific.
:)
Amir Khalid
@opal:
This isn’t a dispute over m_c’s style. We are criticizing the substance of her comments. Specifically, that prejudices are innate and natural, and so may go unquestioned — or even be profited from — in a nation’s politics and economic discourse. Naturally, most of us don’t find this acceptable, as m_c does.
Samara Morgan
@suzanne: what did i lie about?
links plz?
;)
wrb
Samara, my taco:
I think you should chill.
You are sounding the least together I’ve heard you.
I agree with your basic point.
But you’ve followed it with a lot of flailing and unearned nastiness, which has become the topic.
Good time to groom a horse.
Samara Morgan
@Amir Khalid: i find all empirical data interesting and acceptable.
what i dont find acceptable is holier-than-thou unrealistic PC pontification and fake tafsir.
:)
opal
@suzanne:
She clearly struck a nerve.
Get over it.
Catsy
@opal:
Truly, the voice of Substance over Style.
Amir Khalid
Remember Yoda’s speech to Luke about the temptation and the peril of following the dark side?
Samara Morgan
@wrb: haha, ok i can take advice.
some people believe in nature, some people believe in nuture.
i believe i’ll go ride my horse.
opal
@Catsy:
Catsy:
How wonderful.
Omnes Omnibus
@Samara Morgan: One can recognize that something is a fact and yet find the situation implied by that fact to be immoral. This is what you seem to be missing here. To put it your terms, US troops are in the Middle East. Empirical fact. Using the reasoning you are exhibiting here, that would be the end of the discussion. The whys and wherefores of US troop presence as well as the morality and advisability of it would never be discussed. Does that make sense. I would say that it does not. Also too, when you talk about reaction to Christie’s obesity being a socio-biological thing, how do you reconcile that with differing standards of beauty across different cultures and during different time periods?
suzanne
@opal:
Wow. Rush me to the burn unit.
opal
@Catsy:
You should know Catsy:
wrb
suzanne
@wrb: I’ve also heard class-based explanations: when money is scarce, fat shows that one has the resources for food.
But whatever the explanation is, it’s patently untrue that fat hatred is biological.
But if it’s patently untrue, that must be why FourLoko clings to it.
Amir Khalid
@Samara Morgan:
Chihuahuas are a breed of dog, not a species. Even dogs are not a separate species; they are merely the domesticated descendants of wolves.
suzanne
@Samara Morgan: @Samara Morgan: You lied at your first address to me in this thread above comment, linked here.
You also lied by not quoting my comment in it’s entirely.
The intellectually honest thing to do is to apologize.
I’ll be gentle on you. Usually, when someone attempts such transparent Breitbart-esque tactics, I call them “a lying sack of shit”.
Tucking your tail between your legs and running away?
suzanne
Doug, my response to the child is in moderation for having too many links to prove her lies. Please remove from the filter? THX.
Omnes Omnibus
@suzanne:
This, of course, was my point.
opal
@suzanne:
Don’t worry about it, fat is a good thing.
Fat means you’re going to live.
PIGL
@Catsy: Although part of me would like to see something much more satisfyingly drastic in the article of retribution befall the scum who manipulated peoples pension funds into 401k’s that were designed to be pillaged…..well, let’s say I am not interested in who is guilty as sin and who is a mere hanger on with the darling family you imagine.
I want all their income treated as income, their income taxed at progressive rates such as used to prevail 40 years ago, and I don’t want any of their kids inheriting, directly or indirectly, more than a million or so. As long as we have a tax system like that in place, I need not concern myself with filtering the spotless Christian heroes from the ocean of corrupt self-serving mother-fuckers. The SSMF’s will not acquire enough money, under my system, to pose a treat.
Ren
@Hugh:
It’s probably fuzzy because of Doug’s conflicted loyalties.
Some of his best friend(s) are bank(st)ers. The same friend who treats him to 300 dollar bottles of wine. Maybe he’s feeling guilty. Even though he knows that his banker friend “thinks” he ought to be taxed more –and he really is a good guy. But you guys balk at spending more than twenty dollars on bottle of wine. And E.D. Kain’s chart detailing the disproportionate rising finance salaries is damning, isn’t it? Know your audience.
suzanne
@opal: Oh, sweetie, thanks for calling me fat. It TOTALLY burnishes your intellectual credibility. I mean, goodness, in the face of that kind of persuasion, how could anyone fail to be convinced of your point of view?
b-psycho
@Samara Morgan: So I see the pie is getting confrontational. Cool…
Mnemosyne
@opal:
No, we’re going wolf pack on her because she called suzanne a liar and then tried to back off and pretend she never said it:
Mnemosyne
@Samara Morgan:
Some people think it’s a both/and question, not an either/or, because nature and nurture work together to produce a result.
But I realize your brain only operates in oppositional mode and doesn’t understand things like “nuance” or “reality,” which is why you have to shove people into a “nature” or “nurture” box without ever understanding the actual question at hand.
Samara Morgan
@suzanne: lawl.
you took my comment out of context, so i took yours.
fat or mormon REPUBLICANS are unelectable. because their base will not vote for them.
i guess because they dont have a sanctimonious pompous puffed up jackass like you on the Right to defend them and scold people into voting for them.
@wrb: oh please.
in contemporary american culture fat signals one of two things.
old or poor.
fat women are post-menopausal in nature. fat men are just old.
poor people are fat in america, because they cant afford to eat properly.
american culture glorifies youth and wealth. thin approximates youth.
never too rich or too thin, eh?
suzanne
@Samara Morgan:
And what comment would that be?
I love you, too.
The Spy Who Loved Me
@Dougerhead:
Maybe some protester will beat the snot out of one of your very good bankster friends, since you’ve mentioned that you have a few, and then you can think “fuck yeah, serves him right,” while on your way to visit him in the hospital.
Really, Doug? Jesus, grow up.
opal
@suzanne:
You’re welcome.
Catsy
@Samara Morgan:
Are you fucking kidding me?
You can make a reasonable argument about being Mormon. I personally think that when faced with a choice between:
1) a black socialist Muslim leftist Democrat, or;
2) a corporatist RINO Mormon who is willing to advance the conservative agenda when it’s in his own political interest;
Republican voters are going to hold their noses and vote against the scary black man. Because in the end, they hate Obama and want to end him a lot more than they hate Mormons and RINOs. I mean, they were willing to make their peace with John McCain, a man who based his “maverick” career on sticking it to his own party.
But fat? Being fat disqualifies you in the Republican Party?
We’re talking about the same party that worships at the altar of Rush Limbaugh, right? Because I assure you that if he ever ran, they would be falling over themselves for the right to vote for him.
Honestly though, I don’t really think you have a grasp on just how much bullshit and distaste the typical committed Republican voter is willing to swallow in order to vote against a Democrat or for a culture war issue. And they’re the ones who overwhelmingly determine the outcome of primaries and (especially) caucuses, not a random sample of 1,020 Americans from all 50 states.
ETA: FYWP.
Catsy
Argh, can someone please un-FYWP my comment above?
different-church-lady
@opal:
How the hell do you go wolfpack on a hyena?
suzanne
@Samara Morgan: You’ve had a few hours now to provide those links you promised. Since you can’t provide any, I’ll settle for your apology.
Samara Morgan
@Catsy: UNELECTABLE AS PRESIDENT you dimwitted simpleton.
Distributed Jesusland can elect fat folk and mormons.
Because its localized mobrule.
suzanne
@Samara Morgan:
Um, you know that Mitt Romney was the governor of Massachusetts, and Chris Christie is the governor of New Jersey, right? Hardly “distributed Jesusland”. Besides, I thought your case was that Mormonism and fatness would alienate Republicans. Now you’re saying that the only place they can win is in heavily Republican areas? Epic logic fail. But, from you, I expect nothing less.
:::bookmarking this thread for future evidence of FourLoko’s lies and nastiness:::