<a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/59124558@N06/7736320246/” title=”Romney spokesman Gabby Johnston #2 by dengre.bj, on Flickr”><img src=”http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7131/7736320246_6b545e0c2e.jpg” width=”500″ height=”475″ alt=”Romney spokesman Gabby Johnston #2″></a>
It looks like Mitt Romney is going to run a full-on race-baiting campaign. He thinks that “American Exceptionalism” is “White Male Exceptionalism” and nothing else. Today he released an ad that turned up the volume of his racist-dog-whistle campaign to eleven.
In it, he lies (of course) about the Obama Administration granting two Republican Governors the wavers they asked for to the Welfare Reform law. The point of the Romney campaign is to see if white voters will still respond to the racist memes of Strom Thurmond, Jesse Helms and the other neo-Confederates that took over the Republican Party when Nixon and Reagan shamelessly decided to embrace their hate as the future of the GOP and the Conservative movement.
Sure, white racists are killing people to celebrate their ignorance, but Mitt is running for President for Pete’s sake. So don’t look to him to exercise any judgement.
For the next three months, Mittens and his wingnutopia minions will be bringing the crazy: and the hate. It is only a matter of time before Mitt openly runs as the last hope of white America. His entire campaign is based on screaming that the President is a Ni-CLANG! in various modes of code-talking. Without that, he’s got nothing.
His lying welfare ad today will seem tame come October.
Cheers
The Moar You Know
You must admit he really has no other options.
Baud
You know what’s odd, though? The use of the word “you” in the quote. It’s as if Romney’s so out of touch even from the GOP base that he can’t distinguish between “you” and “them.”
Southern Beale
Really? That’s Obama’s plan? SIGN ME UP! Or I assume they’re telling everyone that’s just for black people?
God wingers are dumb. Yesterday I got into it with one who said Harry Reid’s claim about Romney’s taxes was 100% unsubstantiated and not worthy of a response, but WHERE’S OBAMA’S BIRTH CERTIFICATE! And how did he pay for college? HUH?! Etc etc etc
I mean jeeezuss aren’t they the ones always telling us that Obama was an “affirmative action” president who got everything handed to him on a silver platter because he’s black?
The inconsistencies in their arguments are astonishing.
Hunter Gathers
Boy, that 1980 meme just won’t die, will it? I half expect Mittens to go down to that polling place in Philly where those Black Panthers were ‘terrifying’ voters to talk about states’ rights. I would suggest Philadelphia, Mississippi, but that’s so last century.
Evolving Deep Southerner
It’ll go over well down here, as you know, Dennis. You’ve been here and worked here.
I’d agree with the folks on the previous thread. Who do you have more sympathy for? The archetypal “welfare recipient” born in the projects, the “never had a chance” demographic, or the pieces of shit you know who were born to money?
politifarce
Guessing Politifact will rate this mostly true due to lack of any evidence to the contrary with a quote from Drudge as proof.
Steve
Very, very white of him.
Linda Featheringill
I just watched the ad repeatedly. I don’t understand what all the outrage is about. The ad is factually incorrect, of course, because what Obama did was give a couple of states the flexibility they asked for. But I didn’t hear any dog whistles and didn’t see any subtle racism.
ETA:
Unless, of course, you think that most welfare recipients are non-white. Which is kind of stupid.
El Cid
This is totally unfair, because Romney was by now not in active charge of his campaign, and had retroactively resigned as candidate before resuming his candidacy at some point not exactly now but not too far from now, at least, if the past is any indication, which it may not be.
BGinCHI
They have no arguments and no ideas (except failed ones).
Racism is the last resort of a scoundrel in 2012. I think it used to be Nationalism but Romney is trying to combine them into a John Birch Lite, caffeine free version.
Mr Stagger Lee
I think the next few months is going to be fun. I’m going to be really bummed when it’s over. But just in case I better upgrade my CCW permit just case some new versions of Wade Paiges lose more of their shite.
El Cid
@Linda Featheringill: Many white voters commonly think that black people are primarily the ones who collect welfare, and their beliefs typically are that the numbers of people on welfare and the generosity of the benefits are vastly greater than reality would support.
Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant)
Love that graphic, keep pounding on him.
raven
Since we have several Athens Ex-pats here I wanted to mention that the famous right wing nutjob, ex-SF officer and booze monger Budge Williams got popped for child porn yesterday. He’s on probation on a federal gun rap so it may be b-bye for a while.
James E. Powell
His lying welfare ad today will seem tame come October.
I’m not so sure. I think that Romney is worried that he has not been able to move up, especially in the swing states. All of his previous attacks have been useless or counter-productive.
My sense is that they launched this blatant race-baiting ad now because a lot of people are not paying attention to the campaign. And he wants to get the corporate press/media to stop talking about his tax returns.
Also too, an attack like this is also launched in the hope that it will provoke a reaction that harms Obama.
Evolving Deep Southerner
@raven: Well I’ll be damned. Couldn’t happen to a nicer fellow. Is Ed Tant still alive? Last I heard, Ort had dropped off the radar and had become a crazy, sad old ghost.
BGinCHI
@raven: That guy is such a fucking asshole. Christ. Plus a perv.
Being right wing is a mental illness.
raven
@Evolving Deep Southerner: Ort and Ed are still around, in fact Ed has a few comments on the Budge story. Ort is on the Facebook and seems to enjoy any visitors.
Linda Featheringill
@El Cid:
Maybe they do.
But if they think that, then they are stupid.
I understand, though, that the purpose of a campaign ad is to express ideas in the language of the target group.
BGinCHI
@Evolving Deep Southerner: “Become” crazy?
You are a generous, generous man. Big soft spot for Ort though, seriously.
Hungry Joe
I heard that under the Obama Plan, Part II, you won’t even have to cash welfare checks — the government will just sent T-bone steaks, collard greens, and Night Train directly to your apartment.
raven
@BGinCHI: I used to see his fat fascist ass at the Y from time-to-time but, hopefully, he won’t be welcome there now.
Steve
@Linda Featheringill: The black welfare queen is a classic stereotype. I’m surprised you don’t know this.
Similarly, pretty much everyone understood it as race-baiting when Gingrich called Obama “the food-stamp president,” even though plenty of white people get food stamps too.
jl
@James E. Powell:
” Romney is worried that he has not been able to move up”
Not being able to move up? You are very civil Mr. Powell. I congratulate you :).
Fivethirthyeight blog at NYT
http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/
We can see exactly how badly Romney has not moved up, mostly due to his own antics. And Obama and Biden have barely warmed up.
So, I hope you are right, that going this false this stupid and this racialist so early is a sign of desperation.
Edit for those who do not want to link to NYT: Obama estimated chance winning election is 72 percent, 302 electoral votes, expected national popular vote up to almost 51 percent.
raven
@BGinCHI: He has nearly 3500 FB friends.
Did you guys know Jeff Tate?
Dennis G.
@raven: Last I heard ORT was having trouble with his eyes. That’s a hell of a hit for a writer. Good to hear that he is on Facebook.
I still remember sitting in The Globe with Ort as tears filled his face as he described the old equipment at a country radio station he found on his travels. He was one of the first regular contributors to Flagpole. Too bad he lost his place there after I left.
Cheers
Hungry Joe
God, I hate it when I post something and then think, “Should I have put ‘snark’?” Because if you have to put “snark,” you really didn’t get your snark across properly. But (***sigh***): My #21 post: Snark.
slag
So, under Obama’s plan, I’ll be treated like the CEO and President of Bain Capital was treated from 1999 to 2002? That sounds like a pretty good deal!
Roger Moore
@Linda Featheringill:
No, if they think that they are ignorant and misinformed. It may be more common for stupid people to be ignorant and misinformed, but they have no monopoly on it.
raven
@Dennis G.: He’s still there from time-to-time.
pragmatism
The moocher straw man is gonna get a lot of use in the next few months.
aimai
@El Cid:
Morover, when they do know white people who are receiving Welfare they consider them either “deserving” or “honorary black people.” There are plenty of white people on welfare who believe, as a matter of faith, that “their” righteous welfare payments are being squanderd on someone lse, who they know, who doesn’t “deserve” it.
aimai
The Moar You Know
@Linda Featheringill: I’d be willing to bet any amount of money you’d wager that not only do ALL Republicans believe this, but that an absolute majority (+50%) of Democrats believe it as well.
I ask people for shits and giggles what they think the federal government spends on “welfare” (which doesn’t exist any more in a form they’d recognize). The average estimate is about 25-35%.
When told the real figure, regardless of party affiliation, not a one has ever believed me.
Stupid? Yeah, but that’s 21st century America. We need to figure out how to work with it, or just turn the country over to the Trumps and Romneys and learn to love our new lives as slaves.
Roger Moore
@Hungry Joe:
I think the snark was pretty damn clear even without any snark tags. You might have mentioned watermelon and fried chicken, though.
raven
@Dennis G.: Also, there is a wonderful painting of Jon Seawright by Art Rosenbaum in the Globe now.
Turgidson
@politifarce:
And Kessler will insist we have to take Romney at his word, no matter how much evidence Romney was lying is presented, until he personally is convinced.
Roger Moore
@The Moar You Know:
Again, not stupid but ignorant and misinformed. Maybe “disinformed” would be more accurate, since it’s clear that there’s a long term project to spread racist slander about welfare and welfare recipients. Part of any attempt to reverse the situation has to be an attempt to get accurate information out there to compete with the lies.
jl
And Nate Silver has a new post up: His simple average of election models give Obama a 61 percent chance of winning. Obama is winning the election, and he hasn’t even had to do much campaigning yet.
Other’s pointed out early that Mitt would be a totally dismal hideous no good at all, horrible, simply all bad all the time candidate. So far, looks like they nailed it.
A candidate who had things under control would not have to pump out demonstrable, patent, obvious, and counterproductive, lies so far before election day.
BGinCHI
@raven: That doesn’t surprise me. Ort is a friendly, friendly dude.
Don’t know that guy (Tate).
BGinCHI
@Dennis G.: He was Flagpole for a while. You did a good thing with that mag. More than you know probably.
different-church-lady
@Southern Beale:
They hate it when we play Calvinball better than they do.
Linda Featheringill
Perhaps my problem is that I’ve lived just above and just below the poverty line for a good part of my life and the same can be said for the folks I’ve hung out with. I have eyes and I can see.
A few years ago I did some research into the question and came up with the fact that about 80% of all welfare folks are white. The other 20% were made up of everyone who would be classified as nonwhite. [Don’t remember where I found these numbers.]
Facts and perceptions, of course, aren’t the same things.
scav
This is one weird, really weird man. OK, via TPM to LA Times Contrasting joy of individual action, Romney finds … the kibbutz?
This is the quote.
So, his vision of America and American Culture is nothing more than a combination of individuals that own enterprises and employ (or are employed by) one another? Nothing about govt (not unexpected) but also nothing about churches, neighborhoods, civic organizations, simply no recognition of any units other than individuals and LLCs, and “corporations are people, my friend”. Barn-raisings and quilting bees must be a part of a communist rewriting of our individuals only history. All relationships other than contracts and presumably family have gone AWOL — that is a pithless and arid view of this nation. American with no sense of joined destiny or objective. All for One and None for All!
Dennis G.
@raven: Good to see. I must admit that I rarely check in on Flagpole, but I’m still glad it survives.
I remember Melissa and understand his sadness. Strange as he might be, ORT is a grand old soul.
Cheers
different-church-lady
@The Moar You Know:
Probably because they think Social Security is the same as Welfare.
Damn near every problem we have in this country has a lot to do with the difference between what words actually mean and how people commonly use them.
SiubhanDuinne
@raven: It’s extra delicious that he was pulling up his kiddy porn of a computer at the fucking public library.
Dennis G.
@raven: That would be worth a return trip to see. John was amazing and his Ghost Fry column was one of my favorite things we ever did at Flagpole. It all grew out of late night conversation with John at the Globe. Him on one side of the bar and me on the other…
raven
@BGinCHI: He is the son of the legendary Dean Tate, the Tate Student Center bears his name. Jeff was a heavy bar-fly who would con people into coming home with him to play drunken chess all night. He sobered up about the same time I did but I don’t know if it stuck for him. One thing I do recall is that he would bitch and moan about how it sucked to be sober. Refreshing in a weird way.
Here’s an interview with him about growing up here and his dad.
WaterGirl
@Hungry Joe: Not to worry. Comment #21 was obviously snark-alicious.
Roger Moore
@scav:
Great FSM, who talks like that? Could he get any more stilted and formal? How has he been able to get anywhere in politics, much less win a major party nomination for the Presidency?
raven
@Dennis G.: I’d sit there and just hope someone, anyone, would ask him a question just to hear him talk. It was so sad when he got married and lost his wife so quickly and then died.
Linda Featheringill
I did find this article which is interesting and full of lovely numbers. And it’s safe to read it as it isn’t hostile to either side of the question.
http://theobamacrat.com/2012/01/05/welfare-recipients-which-race-gets-more-benefits/
Smiling Mortician
@Linda Featheringill: I’ve only watched it twice, but here’s what I see: while the announcer is talking about Clinton “requiring work for welfare,” we are looking at a shot of a hard-working, wiping-the-sweat-off-his-brow white guy (blond hair!). While the announcer talks about Obama “gutting welfare,” first we see Obama looking down (ashamed!) and then we see a sad-disapproval-faced white guy in a business suit. And finally, while the announcer is saying “you wouldn’t have to work and wouldn’t have to train for a job, they’ll just send you a welfare check,” we see, first, a partially obscured black guy and then a woman who glances suspiciously toward the camera. She’s white, though. Still: all the dog-whistle language about not working and just receiving a welfare check happens while we’re looking at a black guy and a woman — and everyone else in the ad is a white guy. Except for Obama, of course.
The Moar You Know
@scav: If you pull family out of the equation (you may as well, the Republicans don’t give a fuck about families) it starts smelling suspiciously like something Ayn Rand came up with.
Oh yeah, she did.
Evolving Deep Southerner
@BGinCHI: This is a weird Ort story, but nevertheless what I think of whenever I think of Ort.
I was, for a time, a security guard for the UGA libraries when I was an undergrad there. We had to periodically go on rounds to inspect the doors and etc. I alternated between the main and science libraries.
In the basement restroom, in the grout between the tiles, someone had written:
Ort SHARES his thoughts
Ort CARES about people
Ort BARES his soul
Ort ERRS rarely
Right underneath that, in a different hand, someone wrote:
Ort is an asshole and a crashing bore.
And he really was. May still be. Hell, I haven’t seen the man since 1994.
SiubhanDuinne
@Roger Moore:
I know, right? It’s like Palin’s word salad, only all kind of stiff and unmoving.
Word Jell-O Salad.
different-church-lady
@Roger Moore: You gotta cut him some slack here — he’s trying to describe concepts he has never once thought about before in his entire life.
Scott Alloway
@raven:
That made me laugh so hard. Not in a bad way. I spend four days a week visiting my 98 y.o. mother-in-law at a residence and always make sure to say hi to a number of her residence mates. Sing with one, dance with another, am called Santa Claus by two of them. The point being, the “seems to enjoy visitors” hit me as what these women enjoy. It only takes a little to give a lot.
scav
@The Moar You Know: Well, I will admit I was giving him the benefit of the doubt on the family part. May continue to do so for a bit, but maybe he is pitching it a bit toward the Randoid end of his loosely attached base. But it’s not exactly a vision that leads to a jolly 4th of July picnic and seems odd to attempt to mainstream. Went and reread it for exact context. Another of his fund-raisers. Man doesn’t campaign for votes, it’s all about the cash — he’ll be holding up a piggy bank and kissing it for the camera any day now.
raven
@Evolving Deep Southerner: I’ve been here so long and he’s always been around but I never really have gotten the fascination with him but I have never had any kind of significant moment with him like DG had. Local color is important I guess.
raven
@The Moar You Know: Are you the same Moar that swings by Pat Lang’s?
Laertes
“wavers?”
raven
@Scott Alloway: Always glad to bring a smile. . .
The Moar You Know
@raven: There can be only one.
raven
@Scott Alloway:
Hello in There
John Prine
We had an apartment in the city,
Me and Loretta liked living there.
Well, it’d been years since the kids had grown,
A life of their own left us alone.
John and Linda live in Omaha,
And Joe is somewhere on the road.
We lost Davy in the Korean war,
And I still don’t know what for, don’t matter anymore.
Ya’ know that old trees just grow stronger,
And old rivers grow wilder ev’ry day.
Old people just grow lonesome
Waiting for someone to say, “Hello in there, hello.”
Me and Loretta, we don’t talk much more,
She sits and stares through the back door screen.
And all the news just repeats itself
Like some forgotten dream that we’ve both seen.
Someday I’ll go and call up Rudy,
We worked together at the factory.
But what could I say if he asks “What’s new?”
“Nothing, what’s with you? Nothing much to do.”
So if you’re walking down the street sometime
And spot some hollow ancient eyes,
Please don’t just pass ’em by and stare
As if you didn’t care, say, “Hello in there, hello.”
BGinCHI
@Evolving Deep Southerner: It’s entirely possible Ort wrote the first one.
Basement was the periodicals, yes? Spent a lot of time down there but I didn’t write on the bathroom walls.
raven
@The Moar You Know: I was thinking about sending Pat the article about Budge seeing how, from all accounts, they were both present when Che was killed.
BGinCHI
@raven: Man I love that fucking song.
raven
@BGinCHI: I wish this version with Mike, Natalie and Billy was a little better quality.
I couldn’t listen to any version for 5 years after my old man died.
Evolving Deep Southerner
@raven: The thing that made his columns for Flagpole distinctive, for me, was that he always made a point of including the area codes for the towns. Which is, if you think about it, about the most boring gimmick one might devise. I remember he wrote a lot about beer, and almost as much about his mother.
I used to see him out in my carousing days in the late ’80s, early ’90s.
The only real interactions I had with him – both of them – were observed and not direct.
My roommate and I saw him out one evening and my roommate clapped him on the back and said “Ort! Good to see you, wild man!” (My roommate called everybody “wild man” as a generic term of affection.)
Ort turned around and said, in the most high-mindedly offended way possible, “I am not wild, sir!”
My roommate said nothing back. We walked off and he said “Fuck, what an asshole.”
Less than a week later, we’re sitting at the same bar and my roommate’s drinking a big Foster’s “oil can” and Ort sits down beside him, obviously not recognizing him from the earlier altercation. Ever the unusual-beer freak (and Foster’s was unusual for that time and place) says “Hey, Foster’s! Do they still make their cans out of steel?”
And my roommate, still smarting from the earlier snub, turns around and screams “How the FUCK should I know?”
Good times, those were. When you could mingle with the local characters, be insulted by them, and then get to insult them back.
The Moar You Know
@raven: You could. I don’t have it in me. It’s a terrible thing to discover that someone you knew is an awful monster.
He’ll find out anyway but I’d prefer not to be the bearer of bad news.
batgirl
@aimai:
I see this all the time helping people in the library apply for food stamps, unemployment, TANF, etc. As they are applying they are complaining about all the “unworthy” moochers getting benefits.
raven
@The Moar You Know: Yea, I decided to leave it alone. I’ve actually mentioned Budge a couple of times and get no response.
raven
@Evolving Deep Southerner: And the day after Marvin died
“Memories, flood the corners of my mind. . .”
BGinCHI
@Evolving Deep Southerner: Ort is/was the Athens Walt Whitman who didn’t write any poetry.
batgirl
@The Moar You Know:
They were talking to a man on NPR who was a registered Democrat until 2008 when he voted for McCain and he plans on voting for Romney. In the interview, he talked about how he was afraid Obama was going to interfere with his Medicare options while he praised Romneycare in MA. As I listened to him talk he clearly held Democratic party views.
I wonder what changed in 2008? /snark
Evolving Deep Southerner
@BGinCHI: Thought a whole lot of himself, though. If you’ve seen the “Athens, Ga. Inside/Out” documentary, he’s a narrator of sorts. And for anyone who wasn’t there, he’s probably the one person in that doc whom people will watch and say “Who is this annoying, self-important dude and why is he in this film?” And if you look back objectively, it’s a fair question.
Dennis, can you explain Ort? You printed his columns faithfully. What cache/accumen did the guy really have except as a loud hanger-on in the “Athens scene?”
raven
@Evolving Deep Southerner: I think he knows a lot of shit about music.
Evolving Deep Southerner
@raven: I must have caught him late in his columnist’s dotage, then. Beer. His dear mother. ZIP codes for all the towns he ever mentioned. That’s all I remember.
I honestly never got into John Seawright’s “Ghost Fry” column from that same era, but damn if wouldn’t give my left one for a written volume of his poetry.
In that same security guard job I mentioned above, I watched him come into the library every night, or at least every night I worked. Always dressed in black, like a pilgrim without the hat, regardless of the season. Never once talked to him, and I regret that.
Anne Laurie
@Roger Moore:
Money. Seriously.
He jumped into “saving” the SLS Olympics, using his high-dollar contacts to bring in a ton of (largely government-funded) last-minute fixes. He jumped back to Massachusetts because, and I quote, “Nobody runs for President as the governor of Utah”. He got the GOP gubernatorial nomination by using his money to crush the last GOP governor’s designated coat-holder, and dumped a ton more money defeating a hapless Dem candidate in one of the local machine’s regular scheduled civil-war sessions. He checked out of doing the governor job approximately 18 months into his 4-year term, but that was no problem, because he still had tons of money to start campaigning for the job he really wanted. Which didn’t quite work out in 2008 — after all, that McCain fella had some serious money of his own (or at least his wife’s), not to mention all the political experience Romney figured he could jump the queue to avoid — but then Willard still had the money to keep campaining for the last four years.
The man has never done anything that didn’t involve beating the opposition down through the raw application of superior funding-power. It was hard enough for him to get through the GOP clown-parade primary, having to pretend for the media that he didn’t regard the nomination as something he could buy, without visibly cracking. As a Masshole, I’m kinda hoping he just breaks down completely around mid-October, and starts flinging dollar bills at “the people” during a campaign event. Or blurts out “I could buy and sell, you, you know” at President Obama during the debate.
raven
@Evolving Deep Southerner: My contact was strictly booze based. I hung at the Globe heavily in the couple of years leading up to my hitting the wall and putting it all down. John had an astounding knowledge of Georgia history. When I mentioned that I had officiated high school hoops Elberton his dad was a preacher there. When I was at Georgia Tech it turned out he lived in “Home Park” as a kid. It was always like that but I never read anything, I was too busy drinking.
Evolving Deep Southerner
@raven: Well, sounds like Athens has suited you just fine even without all that. I wouldn’t say I truly miss it – the Triangle is an awesome place to be, and I’m only just now getting to know and enjoy it – but I sure do have fond memories of Athens.
raven
@Evolving Deep Southerner: Yea, I don’t regret much and I live living here. At this point in life I’m pretty content. Pickup truck, dogs,dawgs, great ol’ lady and the occasional 130lb tuna. What’s not to like?
raven
@raven: love living
time to sleep
Evolving Deep Southerner
@raven: Well, sleep long and well, brotherman. Good catching up with you.
Patricia Kayden
@Linda Featheringill: Don’t you think that most Whites believe that the vast majority of welfare recipients are non-White? That’s the dog whistle.
Obama needs to counter the ad with the facts. Fight fire with fire.
Caz
Am I missing something? Where’s the racism here? Is it just another example of you liberals shouting “racism!” just for the hell of it again? You’re worse than the boy who cried wolf. Everything any conservative does is racist. So dumb. People don’t buy it at all. Well, other liberals buy it, but they are already equally brainwashed so that doesn’t really get you anywhere.
Tripod
@scav:
He’s just a well heeled grifter. Bain is right there in plain sight. He’ll fundraise… say $1.5 billion, and skim 10% right off the top. Election? Oh well, the black guy is real popular, what are you gonna do?
The only difference between him and two bit GOP street hustlers like Newt and Palin is he’s playing for the real money, not a fucking shopping spree.
Dennis G.
@Evolving Deep Southerner: There was a lot to ORT, but he was hard to know. His column was about obsessions, his mostly, but through them was a reflection of the obsessions of research, of papers, of study.
He was a sweet guy and nice fellow if you got to know him, but he was difficult and lacked, people skills. The first few times I met him he would rant and rave when I asked him for his column, I’d let him get it out of his system and ask again. Then it would be fine. His eruptions never bothered me, but I think others felt differently.
ORT knows music, BBQ, beer, Athens, rural Post Offices, that big hotel fire in Atlanta back in the 1930s, AM radio, zip codes, band posters and a thousand other useless things. There was a Dada aspect to his column that I liked.
While I was there, ORT was a fixture at Flagpole. I seem to recall that we put an ORT mask on the cover one year for Halloween.
I’m glad to see that he still writes occasionally for the old rag.
Cheers
El Cid
I STILL WAITIN’ ON MAH 15 CENT
cay
Rare-id!
Mnemosyne
@scav:
This is totally inconsequential, but …
Seriously? You’re in frickin’ Chicago, one of the best food towns in the country (if not the world) and the best you can do is a chain Italian restaurant? Why not just have the “gathering” at Applebee’s and let everyone hit the salad bar?
Steve Crickmore
@Caz:How about John Boehner describing in 2009, far right white supremists as merely American citizens who disagree with the direction Washington Democrats are taking our nation”. He was referring to the white supremists, who were being tracked by the 57 billion dollar DHS, by five analysts led by by Republican, Daryl Johnson which was gutted and then disbanded because of political pressure from the wacko Republicans.
Some of the the same groups and people, that Boehner ordered the NHS to lay off, today are fiercely proud of the killing of 6 Sikhs by “their brother Page”….
Is that dangerous racist inflammatory talk? They were saying the same things in 2009, or are they just “American citizens who disagree with the direction Washington Democrats are taking our nation”, as their enabler Boehner would like us to believe?
Pseudonym
@Caz: I hope you’re getting paid for these comments in T-bone steaks and Cadillacs and flat-screen TVs, you strapping young buck you.
FlipYrWhig
@scav:
Remember, this is the same guy who’s supposed to be a champion of the distinctiveness of Israeli culture.
TenguPhule
A brain, a sense of ethics, morals, a high school diploma.
Shall I go on?
karen
@Dennis G:
I hope like hell I’m wrong, but I get the feeling they’re practicing for the big kill.
I hope Obama wins in November but as the craziness has gotten more crazy, I’ve heard more than whispers that these White Supremacists (let’s face it nearly all of the GOP is in that category now) are going to bring down a racial war if Obama does win. And you know that Koch and Romney will be fueling it.
People used to say that I was a conspiracy theorists but there’s a pattern with these recent killings (and the guy in Ohio who was caught at the movie theater showing “Dark Night”) and the arson of the mosques in Joplin. The racism that was coded and implied without being said is more and more becoming overt, giving us the F finger and saying, “Yeah I’m a racist watcha gonna do about it?”
Have you noticed, since Obama has been President, more has been become acceptable than it used to be? It’s like the boil of racism that was beneath the skin burst on the day after Election Day 2008 and the pus just spurted everywhere.
If Obama was guilty of anything, it was naiveté. He thought that he could bring people together and that the GOP took him seriously as a man, let alone a President. He thought that racism wouldn’t get in his way and didn’t count on the GOP becoming psychopathic and sociopathic.
Then again, no one did.
Dennis G.
@karen: I’m afraid that you’re correct.
Wingnuts are following in the Confederates footsteps of old. If they loose in November expect a wave of terror, night riding and killing. It is how they respond to change.
As they lose power, they get more violent. And if they manage to grab more power in November they will rely on state sanctioned violence and discrimination (or at least a state incapable of stopping it) to hold onto to power.
Epicurus
It’s quite simple, really. Rmoney has nothing left except fallacious attacks on the President. Nobody really likes him, and I think he knows he’s going to lose big in November. Perhaps I’m whistling past the graveyard, but I do hope my prediction is correct. The alternative is far too chilling to consider. I awoke in a cold sweat the day after Reagan was first elected, and he did not disappoint. A lying religious freak in the White House? I shudder to think…and I am planning to investigate my eligibility to emigrate to Canada if the unthinkable happens.
karen
@Epicurus:
I hear you there. I’m already checking and unfortunately, I don’t think I’ll be eligible.