MisterMix beat me to the front page with the YouTube clip of Cliven Bundy making his “never said that, taken out of context” extremely racist remarks, so we have had a chance to judge his affect and sincerity for ourselves. Now that I’ve watched it, I retract my suggestion from the wee hours that some people were saying Bundy might be clinically senile; from the evidence of this video, he’s just old and mean and (as my lace-curtain Irish granny would put it) common as pig tracks.
***********
The Rude Pundit offers his usual excellent discourse on the latest Rising Young RW Media Weasel, Jayson Veley:
… In an Introduction to Creative Writing course, [Professor Brent] Terry went on a calm, reasonable, and absolutely biased tangent on how “racist, misogynists, money-grubbing people have so much power over the rest of us. And want things to go back not to 1955 but to 1855. There are a lot of people out there that do not want black people to vote, do not want Latinos to vote, do not want old people to vote or young people to vote. Because generally people like you are liberals.”
This was recorded by conservative student Jayson Veley, who obviously turned it over to Campus Reform, the clearing house for pathetic whiners who can’t stand to have any ideas but their own informing the opinions of the precious, delicate angels who are in college. This led to a Fox “news” hategasm, of course, of course.
First, the editor-in-chief of Campus Reform, Jebediah Fuckagoat or something like that, got to go on Greta Van Susterenenenen’s show and say things like, “[T]his is creating an atmosphere for conservatives in the classroom where they are feeling — this is why the student that released this video, this audio, is remaining anonymous. How is he going to be treated to come out as a conservative in an atmosphere where he is called a racist?”
So what intrepid reporter found out that the anonymous recorder was the aforementioned Mr. Veley? Oh, wait. It was Jason Veley himself, who was so afraid of being known that he went on Megyn Kelly‘s Parade of Shit What I’ll Sneer At. Obviously, Veley was there to reveal what a madman Prof. Terry was, just abusing students in a completely inappropriate rant. Except the second that Veley said, “He was talking about this poem that was themed and centered around the ideas of racial inequality,” whatever little point Veley and Fuckagoat and Fox wanted to make was over because what Terry said had to do with what they read in class. That’s it. Issue done. Academic freedom ain’t pretty…
There is much more, and you should definitely click over to read it.
***********
And finally, because I can be a small, small person, I actually giggled at David Ferguson’s Raw Story update on another GOP media darling:
… A former aide to the Reagan White House and author of The Roots of Obama’s Rage, D’Souza is charged with using straw donors to illegally contribute $20,000 to the U.S. Senate campaign of Wendy Long, a former school friend of D’Souza’s who unsuccessfully ran against Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) in 2012.
… Prosecutors submitted documents to the court showing that in March of 2012, D’Souza attempted to donate $10,000 to Long’s campaign and was informed by the campaign that the donation was double the legal limit of $5,000 per individual.
The campaign wrote D’Souza back asking if the donation was from him and his then-wife, and included the necessary papers for an individual donation from both D’Souzas. The papers were completed and returned to the campaign, although Mrs. D’Souza has since informed prosecutors that the donation was made with neither her knowledge nor her consent.
Furthermore, the cuckolded husband of Denise Joseph — D’Souza’s mistress in the affair that ended his marriage and another straw donor to Long’s campaign — made audio recordings in October, 2012 of his wife discussing D’Souza’s plans should he get caught making the illegal donations.
Ms. Joseph told her then-husband that D’Souza planned to plea guilty if caught, but would first plead not guilty in order to make use of the limited window of time he would purportedly have “to get his story out there.” …
Because it’s never about right and wrong, legal or illegal — it’s always about the narrative. Do you suppose the first Mrs. Dinesh and the first Mr. Denise will attend the trial? And if so, will they share a bench in the spectator section, or is it bride’s friends on one side and groom’s on the other?
BGinCHI
This liberal professor does not lecture his students about politics. He teaches them how to read, write, and think critically, then sets them loose in the world to tear the shit out of piss poor conservative “arguments.” If that’s what they want to do.
Lecturing them about who is right without making an argument based on something (data, narrative texts) is lazy and a waste of time.
GregB
Dinesh D’Souza, chairman of the newly formed Conservative Cuckold Caucus was unavailable for questions.
beltane
If the first Mrs. Joseph is now the second Mrs. D’Souza, does that mean that the first Mrs. D’Souza is now the second Mrs. Joseph? Being a happily married liberal, I must confess to finding the marital arrangements of godly conservatives to be somewhat confusing. Maybe a chart would help.
Humanities Grad
How have I missed that D’Souza’s mistress is named “Denice.” Please, dear FSM, let the two of them get married now. That’s a couples name made in headline-writer heaven. Dinesh and Denice D’Souza? How cute.
beltane
@Humanities Grad: I’ll just call them Dinesh and Dineesh.
srv
I used teh google thingy and there’s a Jason Veley with some definitely rocked ribs, so suck on that libtards.
D58826
I realize that Mr. Bundy and his supporters are playing 11 dimensional chess while I have trouble with tic-tac-toe, but doesn’t it seem just a bit strange that Mr. Bundy, while waving a copy of the US Constitution, denies the existence of the federal government. After all it is said constitution that establishes the federal government. Oh well as I said 11 dimensional chess:-)
JPL
If you think it’s bad now, wait until the Supreme Court thinks lying is an important right in order to have free elections. Kennedy will say something nice, like the voters can decide what’s the truth. Fifteen states that now have laws against campaign ads that lie, will be over turned. The right will rejoice because of state’s rights and all that. Whoops, I meant first amendment rights.
also, the case before the Robert’s Court is Susan B. Anthony List v. Driehaus
EconWatcher
The absolute best part of this story is when D’Souza showed up at some Christian conference and stayed in the hotel with his mistress, while still married to his wife. When one of the event organizers called him on it, he pulled a George Costanza: He said, “I didn’t know this was frowned up in Christian circles.”
Really. You can look it up.
Chris
Can I just take this opportunity to say how much I really fucking hate conservatives? The whole lot of them. The mooching racist “it’s okay cause I’m white” scumbag, the human-shield using fascists who idolize him, the Ministry of Truth assholes legitimizing and whitewashing [heh] his words, the racist crooks like D’Souza who make a living milking the hate machine for every penny instead of getting an honest job… and most of all, the thousands, millions of dipshits watching and reading this crap from home and cheering it on, without whom none of this would be possible in the first place.
Sorry. Rant over. Well, for now.
beth
I just can’t believe there’s two women who would sleep with D’Souza.
flukebucket
@Humanities Grad: “Defeat of deduct went over defense before detail”
sorry. It just popped in my head from my childhood.
JPL
@beth: haha..
Anne Laurie
@BGinCHI:
If you read the Rude Pundit’s post, Professor Terry’s “context” was — as Veley admitted — “”this poem that was themed and centered around the ideas of racial inequality,” :
jl
Living in a fantasy world requires constant mental and emotional practice at fantasizing. Sooner or later, fantasy is all you are good at, and it takes over your life.
Stare too long into fantasy, and it not only stares back at you, but it reaches out and drags you into its world.
beltane
@D58826: You don’t understand. In these people’s little pea brains, the US Constitution has no connection at all with the US government. It is, instead, like an addendum to the Bible, listing all the God given rights that God forgot to tell Moses.
Hilfy
You have won the Intertubes for the day with this brilliant question.
Comrade Dread
The entitlement of these asshat young conservative kids is truly amazing. “We must never, ever hear anything that challenges or contradicts our world view from anyone, let alone a teacher, or else our poor little minds are polluted.”
Sweet f***ing Buddha, even when Comrade Dread was an insufferable conservative douche college kid, he enjoyed talking about politics and religion with people who had different ideas. I enjoyed the arguing, the discussion, the moments that made me stop and think about what I believed and why I believed it.
I think it was called ‘education’.
Christ, save us from these people.
Marc
@EconWatcher: Nah, the best part is that Dinesh D’Souza and his mistress both risked jail time to donate 20 grand to a candidate who had absolutely no chance of winning her race. No chance in hell. Gillibrand won it 72-27.
“I, Denise, lust after… federal prison, apparently.”
BGinCHI
@Anne Laurie: Hmm. Not entirely convinced, but I take the point. Hard to judge from outside the context, so I’ll just back away. I wasn’t condemning that guy, so much as pointing out that straight up political lecturing is, on the whole, not a great idea.
Calouste
@Marc:
There’s that number again.
srv
@jl: Nietzsche or Schopenhauer?
jl
@beltane:
” the US Constitution has no connection at all with the US government. ”
They have a fantasy long lost US Constitution, but the US government departed from their fantasy Constitution, when unconstitutional Constitutional amendments rendered the government unfit for their fantasies.
Fourteenth amendment is unconstitutional because was signed in front of a US flag with a fringe on it, or some such (fantastical) notion.
SatanicPanic
@beltane: Yeah, they apparently think that the government isn’t what the founders intended. It’s stupid and irrelevant, but it’s not totally indefensible. If you’re into defending stupid ideas. Which I guess I’m doing right now so nevermind.
shelly
Ah, the whine of Right Wing victimhood.
Amir Khalid
I can’t help but wonder if there’s some symbolic significance to this very unfortunate event.
El Caganer
@beltane: Communists think the Constitution was written by James Madison; patriots know the real Constitution was written by Jesus and Ayn Rand.
jl
Speaking of GOP ugliness: John Roberts.
I do not like Scalia one little bit, but can there be worse than Scalia? Look like the answer is yes.
Roberts just makes stuff up out of whole cloth, and because he is a Supreme, he can write down in a legal opinion and it becomes true.
Speaking of race: I don’t get the fuss over the Sotomayor Roberts spat. Sotomayor just pointed out that the court was, ahem, in danger of just making stuff up, and writing nonsense pretending to be some kind of argument (foe example, maybe paraphrasing, Roberts nonsense drivel pretending to be an argument that ‘the way to stop discriminating on race is to stop discriminating on race’), and Roberts decides to accuse Sototmayor of playing the race card in legal arguments. The little snot Roberts decides to make that aggressive accusation based on nothing that I can see in order to create a fake dishonest and bad faith pretext. And even TPM seems to be taking it seriously.
If Scalia should, in a just world, be impeach for malfeasance and incompetence, then so should Roberts.
As a white man, I have to say that Roberts is a discredit to his race, and sad that his dishonest, incompetent, and corrupt work is being excused on the basis of his race.
Chris
@Comrade Dread:
I wonder if I could raise a similar scandal about the substitute teacher I had that one year in undergrad when the regular professor had to drop out the first week. The guy was a Navy veteran who made us read nothing but his pet author Plato (as opposed to the more diverse reading list we’d been given), would regularly go off on twenty minute tangents about his time fighting the war in the Pacific, and less frequently would go off on tangents about how society today just doesn’t give Our Glorious Military enough reverence and love and appreciation.
I’d have had far more grounds for going after him, given that his political rants were seriously detracting from class time.
Comrade Dread
@D58826: It helps if you accept that they only accept the original document as they interpret it and reject the subsequent 226 years of ammendments, judical review, differing interpretations, history, and law that follows.
Then it makes perfect sense.
Or, as I said, anything that disagrees with or challenges their world view is not legitimate and they must whine and complain and hold their breath until they turn blue about it. Or strap on a six-shooter and put on a tri-corner hat and talk about liberty, blood, revolution dreaming of a world where they can reign over the godless liberal heathen and force them to do their bidding.
MomSense
Did Jayson Veley write a book called “Telephone”?
If so, this is the link to amazon.
http://www.amazon.com/Telephone-Jayson-Veley/dp/1495357724#reader_1495357724
Alex S.
@Amir Khalid:
Oh my God, his beatification was a heresy!
In other news, here’s first-class Tom Levenson bait:
http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-04-22/piketty-s-tax-hikes-won-t-help-the-middle-class
Comrade Dread
@Alex S.: That McArdle draws a paycheck is proof that we do not live in a meritocracy.
David Hunt
That’s an amusing thought, but I suspect that Mr. Denise, at least, will not attend the trial because he is likely to be a witness to corroborate the recording and maybe give direct testimony of his knowledge of the scheme. It’s my understanding that a witness is not supposed to hear the testimony of other witnesses before they testify and thus, are not supposed to attend the trial in the gallery..
beltane
@Comrade Dread: She’s just a paid troll who collects a larger than usual paycheck.
Mike in NC
@shelly:
Chris Christie. Cliven Bundy. Dinesh D’Souza. Surely it can’t be a mere coincidence that these upstanding conservative citizens are being harassed by out of control government bureaucrats!
/ Wingnut
StringOnAStick
I read elsewhere that Dinette D’sofa is planning on using that tried and not-true defense: “I didn’t know it was illegal so I’m innocent”. Which should be interesting since there is evidence that he knew exactly that it was illegal.
Comrade Dread
@beltane: Just the sheer laziness astounds me.
I tried pulling the ‘write a book report based on the cover synopsis’ once too.
When I was in the third grade and my teacher rightfully smacked me down. I would really like to think that any self-respecting publication should call bullshit on that kind of stunt by one of their writers.
JustRuss
@Humanities Grad: I’m hoping she’ll change her name to D’nice D’souza.
Also, I’d love to hear the back story regarding how her husband happened to be recording their conversation. That dude is the Batman.
raven
@JustRuss: More like Bat Shit!
Trollhattan
Repeating myself from some other thread–Bundy and Hillary are the same age. Will be interested to see how many Republican types who waive off his blathering to being too old to know better will cut Ms Clinton the same slack every time she makes a quip they take umbrage with (i.e. each time she speaks).
He’s just not that old! If he looks it, it’s because of the seventy-gazillion kids and being sunbaked, but that doesn’t give his brain (bwwaiiin) a pass.
Iowa Old Lady
When Roberts talks about how racism is no longer a problem, I keep seeing Stephen Colbert do his bit about how he doesn’t see race. He’s so blind to race that he’s not even sure what race he is.
It’s hard to parody these people.
Frankensteinbeck
@jl: and @D58826: and @beltane:
Yeah, this is Sovereign Citizen stuff. It actually does make sense, or at least it’s internally consistent, just paranoid and goofy. There are small variations, but the heart of Sovereign Citizen theory is that the current US government is a fake, an usurpation of power (by the post office, in one theory!) The real constitution ended somewhere around the 13th amendment, and you can tell by whether the word ‘citizen’ is capitalized. It gets even goofier than there, but they can both revere the ‘real’ constitution and pretend the federal government is invalid, because they believe the country was hijacked a hundred fifty years ago.
Belafon
@Trollhattan: While I don’t think Clinton’s age hurts her, I would hold the potential POTUS to a higher standard than some guy in Nevada with a ranch. Just sayin’.
JPL
OT.. Bundy is giving a press conference about we the people and people pointing guns.. H e wants to know where the guns went/
MomSense
I’m loving all these variations on D’Souza’s name although my personal favorite is the oldie Distort D’Newsa.
Iowa Old Lady
@Frankensteinbeck: 150 years ago? Hm. Let’s see. What historical event happened with winners and losers who evidently are still fighting. Sort of like those legendary Japanese soldiers who hid in the jungle not knowing WWII was over.
Re the conservative pols and blabbers who supported Bundy and are now backing off, lie down with dogs, get up with fleas.
Except dogs are nice animals.
JPL
@MomSense: Hannity threw Bundy over board according to Mediaite. Bundy is now giving a news conference talking about something.
Frankensteinbeck
@Iowa Old Lady:
Don’t get too swept up in ‘150 years ago’. I’m being REALLY approximate. It has definitely been used as justification by folks who want to invalidate emancipation, but mostly they use it to claim they don’t have to pay taxes or obey courts. The place where Sovereign Citizen theory jumps off the deep end into ‘What are you smoking?’ land is the belief that somehow knowing the truth gives them the power to ignore the current government. They can claim to be ‘sovereign citizens’ and not puny ordinary citizens like us.
Trollhattan
@Belafon:
I know, I’m just addressing with the perception that he’s shootin’ off his mouf because he’s old. They’re both, as it were, on the top of their respective games. They (Republicans) have to do a better job picking their hero-victims. This dude could be another Zimmerman, George.
jl
@Iowa Old Lady: Now now, the US Civil War was not about race at all. Everyone knows that. Don’t go playing the race card.
@Frankensteinbeck: You have a point, but on the other hand, who does the post office usurper, governing under a fringed Admiralty flag (not a real US flag, with no fringe) send all those tax and fee moneys to? Not the real sovereign citizens anymore, but those other people.
Iowa Old Lady
@jl: Isn’t that just bizarre? For people who were unconcerned with slavery, they sure talked a lot about it in their various declarations of secession.
Civil War Trivia: Abner Doubleday was serving at Fort Sumpter when it was fired on.
JPL
OT.. Bundy is good with a shovel and he keeps on digging.
ranchandsyrup
@Alex S.: Freddie DeBoer is often infuriating, but his review of mcmegan’s review made me larf.
Belafon
The last sentence in this paragraph from Chait’s post about Bundy was hilarious (Chait is commenting on a discussion he is having with someone named Tuccille over whether Conservatives are racists):
GregB
Cliven Bundy is not a racist. Some of Cliven Bundy’s best friends are slaves.
Elizabelle
@Amir Khalid:
It’s appalling that the Catholic Church is canonizing Pope John Paul II this weekend.
He loaded the decks with conservatives and pretty much ignored the sexual abuse scandals. Does not deserve the honor at all.
Maureen Dowd had a good column on this. A Saint He Ain’t.
ranchandsyrup
fox didn’t run the bundy presser. Ran a BENGHAZI! segment.
flukebucket
@JPL: Ha! Shit, he threw away the shovel and started drilling.
scav
‘Merkans don’t do Smorgasbords of Hate. They do All You Can Eat Buffets.
Iowa Old Lady
@ranchandsyrup: Are you joking? Things have come to the point where I can’t tell the absurd from conservative reality.
MomSense
@JPL:
Oh my! I definitely need to watch his show tonight to see how he contorts himself to get out of this mess.
Mezz
That word does not mean what you think it means….
I strongly get the feeling that most of these folks don’t understand what racism IS; therefore they’re completely and genuinely convinced that they’re NOT racist.
But when you presume behavior – and poor behavior, at that – of an entire group of people based on scattered and rare experiences, and then use that presumption to cast that entire group of people beyond the pale of citizenship (note too the specific contrast with the “Spanish people” and how they have families) OR suppose that they might have been BETTER AS HUMAN PROPERTY and make no attempt to understand in any way the actual context of some of these issues – then you’re a racist. Full stop.
ranchandsyrup
@Iowa Old Lady: not joking. I know, Poe’s law and such.
burnspbesq
For a guy with an Ivy League education, ol’ Dinesh sure is dumb as a post. He should have taken whatever plea deal was on the table.
Villago Delenda Est
Deeenish D’Dumbfuck should NOT be put to death for dissing Barack Obama.
He should be put to death for blubbering like a fucking baby.
srv
@ranchandsyrup: If the tide turns enough against Bundy, all he has to do is open up on some BLM agents. Then we’ll be hearing about Bunkerghazi.
Chris
@Elizabelle:
Pretty much inevitable. I would add that one of his most egregious offenses was stomping down on any kind of left-leaning (read: anyone who gave a shit about their congregations’ bodies and not just their “souls”) influences in the Central and South American churches, and giving full cover to the mass-murdering psychopaths who ruled there during that time. Given how Catholic most of those societies were, you can’t tell me that a strong and public condemnation from the Pope wouldn’t have at least made the rulers tread more carefully – but just like fifty years earlier with General Franco, the Vatican just wasn’t interested.
(Makes an ugly contrast to the public stance he took against East Bloc regimes in places like his native Poland, which is what The Narrative prefers to remember him for).
As an aside, I believe it’s also under him and Benedict XVI that the Opus Dei was strongly encouraged, and partly as a counterweight to a Jesuit order that was seen as being too prone to independent thinking. That made me give a small cheer when I saw that the new Pope was a Jesuit.
Villago Delenda Est
@Belafon: Right on. Chait may not be able to see anti-tax sentiment for what it actually is, but he’s grokked quite well what Bundy and the slime that are his apologists are all about.
jl
@MomSense: I look forward to Hanniy’s reply to Stewart’s next segment. Hannity’s first one was hilarious in its weakness and dishonesty.
I will mention again that, while Bundy’s bigotry on race and ethnicity (wrt to both African-Americans and Hispanics, even though what he says about the latter sounds nicer) is bad, I am surprised there was so little fuss about the fact that Bundy seems to be bald face lying about how long his family has owned and used land in Nevada. Or Bundy has a sad but innocent 80 year confusion.
Local TV Station Sheds Doubt On Bundy’s Claims About His Family Ranch
“…court records obtained by KLAS indicated the family’s cattle didn’t begin grazing the land until 1954. The Bureau of Land Management was created in 1946 (the same year Cliven Bundy was born.) ”
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/cliven-bundy-ancestral-rights
burnspbesq
@JPL:
You have a problem with freedom of speech?
ranchandsyrup
@srv: i think he likes the attention so if either the tide turns against him or he gets ignored, he may just throw the “let’s kill a fed” hail mary.
JPL
@burnspbesq: No, I’m standing up for the shovels of the world.
bemused
@ranchandsyrup:
Wow. Fox and right wing media just doesn’t run away from one of their causes like this. Rare if not ever before. This time they are leaving skid marks. They must really think they stepped in it this time. Neve thought I’d see them in such a panic.
scav
Throwing it out for correction / improvement.
Cliven Bundy: The Fred Phelps of Patriotic Responsible Ranching.
Tommy
My mom and dad are not liberals. But there was one thing I learned as a kid in my household. You are not allowed to be stupid. To this day you come to my parents house and say something stupid you will be called on it. Coolest thing ever.
ranchandsyrup
@bemused: Klannity threw Bundy under the bus on his radio show as well.
ETA: You can’t half-ass a justification for armed insurrection. Unless you are Putin.
JPL
@JPL: Whoops .. responded to the wrong comment..
How do they decide that lies are okay but truth in advertising is good..
srv
WTF, when did this happen?
Patricia Kayden
Just saw Bundy’s racist video on Ed Schultz. WOW. Rightwingers sure know how to pick ’em.
jl
@bemused:
” Fox and right wing media just doesn’t run away from one of their causes like this. ”
See my comment above about the fact that Bundy’s claim to have been on the land since the 1870s in Nevada is just not true at all. This guy is totally bogus. The links, and links from the links to local Nevada press say he has been grazing federal land since mid 1950s, and IIRC, owned some land since mid 1940s. Records of family framing and grazing back to 1900 or so, but in Arizona, not Nevada.
And maybe took a few days for the quote by ex-sheriff in the Bundy posse talking about human shields to sink in.
Bundy looking more and more like a con man, and not a fancy finance and corporate con man in a fancy suit that is respectable and in fashion. He is just bad news and trouble.
bemused
@ranchandsyrup:
I saw that. But, but liberals are reprehensible when they say racist things too!
This is sort of a awkward crossroad moment. How far can they go to court the teaparty nutjobs without getting into really overt racist, homophobic, sexist quagmires? They haz a problem.
ranchandsyrup
@bemused: They haz a problem indeed. I’ve been encouraging my area wingnuts to free themselves by having the courage of their convictions (like Bundy did) and speaking their minds. Sublimating ain’t good fer you.
Patricia Kayden
@BGinCHI: You must have missed the part in the post which pointed out that the Professor was talking about a poem.
Eric U.
@Amir Khalid: this is the sort of thing that has made me vow to stay out of churches and keep my distance from religious structures of all kinds.
As far as it being a sign, that is always turned on its head. There was a church across the street from my childhood home. On one visit, I noticed that it was just a little different. They had wanted to build a bigger church in a different location, but the old church had burned. The only thing left was the crucifix. That was taken as a sign from god — not to accelerate their construction of the new and more suitable church, but as a sign to replicate the old church as best they could. There was no way the crucifix was going to be destroyed by a fire, it was on a heavy brick post some feet away from the actual structure.
jl
@jl: To complete my thought. It is possible that Bundy’s bigotry is just an excuse to back out from supporting somebody who, it is more and more obvious on other grounds, is just a con man with no case whatever.
Fox has broadcast stuff just as bad as anything Bundy said on race and ethnicity. I wouldn’t give Fox or other teabaggers too much credit on having scrouples on race and ethnicity because they are abandoning him on his comments, which I do not think are that far out by their own standards.
But, hey, call me cynical…
drkrick
@Comrade Dread:
But that’s their point – at the end of the day you stopped being conservative, which proves that different ideas are dangerous.
beltane
@jl: Limbaugh has said the same exact things as Bundy numerous times over the past 25 years and yet I do not recall his ever being abandoned by wingnuttia on account of it.
Bubblegum Tate
@jl:
Well, according to the conservatives I know (who are now scrambling to find a new spin on their WE STAND WITH CLIVEN BUNDY! stuff since that whole racism thing kinda blew up in their faces), that land is Cliven Bundy’s, full stop. It’s Accepted Conservative Truth at this point, and this whole racism thing is, in their estimation, just a way to distract you from the fact that the gummit is trying to steal his land from him. Yeah. “His” land.
The Thin Black Duke
@beltane: Yeah, but Rush and his posse weren’t waving guns in the faces of the Feds.
catclub
@Bubblegum Tate: “that land is Cliven Bundy’s, full stop.”
Woody Guthrie said so.
Chris
@drkrick:
The truth has been spoken!
ranchandsyrup
from Amanda Marcotte
Cliven Bundy verges on being living satire of what happens when a profoundly stupid person is led to believe he’s smart because of his race.
MomSense
@jl:
I saw that. I figured his “case” would fall apart once the details became available.
drkrick
@Eric U.:
I’d guess it was a “sign” in the sense that a few people in a closely divided church were convinced to change sides on the new design after the fire. Those fights make up for their irrationality with their viciousness.
The old-timers in a church I used to belong to were afraid the new minister was going to have the 130 year old original part of the building they’d grown up with torn down to save on maintenance costs, so they had it declared a historic landmark behind the rest of the church’s back. With Christian love, of course.
Comrade Dread
@drkrick: Actually, it was the Iraq War, the GOP reaction to Terri Schiavo, the 2007 recession and its direct links to GOP economic policy, and ironically enough actually sitting down and reading the four gospels and the words and deeds of Jesus Christ as recorded by the writers that turned me into a bleeding heart liberal.
Turns out the actions of Jesus of Nazareth are almost, but not entirely unlike anything we generally call Christianity today.
Baud
I’m starting to wonder whether white people were better off as serfs…
Villago Delenda Est
@drkrick: Which is why the Texas GOP wants to abolish any attempt to teach schoolchildren critical thinking skills.
They will, inevitably, learn to think for themselves and abandon the totally fucked up heretical monstrosity that is American Protestant Fundamentalism.
Tommy
People that are racist are in fact racist. Maybe it takes a few day or weeks for them to reveal themselves, but always they do. They always do. It is just who they are. You can’t hide from it.
Villago Delenda Est
@Comrade Dread: I recommend reading The Wealth of Nations as well, to find out what Adam Smith actually said.
He inspired Marx, you know.
Chris
@Comrade Dread:
Funny, that’s me too. There’s more than one thing that helped turn me from Republican (the teenage-glibertarian kind) to Democrat, but turning more liberal did coincide with me turning more religious. I wouldn’t say religion was a big part of me going liberal, but it was also no accident that it happened at the same time. (I’ve gone the other way on the religion thing since then, but not the liberalism).
Elizabelle
From the Bundy Ranch Facebook page: A lotta this could stand as performance art:
Next up: Exercising the 1st Amendment without the 2nd: I kid you not — it’s a picture of the pepper-spraying University cop from a few years back.
Exercising the 1st Amendment with the 2nd: photo of these armed yokels making their stand against the Bureau of Land Management.
There’s a quote from Saint Ronald about America and God in there too …
[If anyone knows how to embed images from Facebook into a BJ post, go for it. This stuff — and the supporter comments — is beyond parody. Full of “Saul Alinsky” and apparently Al Sharpton owes $2 million in taxes.]
MomSense
Casey Camp, a Ponca Tribal Leader is on the Ed Show right now talking about climate change, fracking, Alberta shale, and keystone. She is an impressive spokesperson-really making a great case.
Baud
@Villago Delenda Est:
This. Adam Smith has gotten a bad rap.
Baud
From Al to Ted to Cliven….I hope we’ve reached peak Bundy.
Tommy
@Villago Delenda Est: I was on a date the other day. I recall saying I didn’t like living in Lubbock, TX. Where I started school and someplace I hated. I recoil from it. Funny thing many years later I spent a ton of time in the state and loved it. Can somebody say San Marcos! But I will NEVER put a child in Lubbock public school system. I started there and happy I got out …..
Villago Delenda Est
@Baud: Actually reading Smith, you come to realize that the man’s name has been hijacked by the very people he decries in the work.
Henry Ford may have been an anti-semitic sack of shit, but he understood what Adam Smith was talking about. Unlike the vile scum that were the Dodge brothers.
Bill Arnold
For people opposed to surveillance by state security apparatuses:
Russia’s Surveillance State
(Via boing-boing). A taste:
MomSense
@Elizabelle:
Wait wasn’t Reagan the president of a country that Bundy doesn’t recognize??
I liked this story better at the very beginning when I thought they were talking about the Bunny Ranch.
SatanicPanic
@Elizabelle: You know, that poem really requires sympathy and/or identification with any of the groups they’re coming for. I mean, yeah, maybe they will come for all of those groups but I don’t see why it follows that I’d be next. Why would they come for me? And why would I expect any those people to speak for me?
Maybe they’re not including me, SatanicPanic, in the ME group.
Iowa Old Lady
I joked about false flag a while back, but actually this would make a good false flag operation because you flush out the crazies who want to shoot up government officials. You take their pictures and license plate numbers and send that info to their local FBI offices so they know who’s likely to come and shoot at them.
Trollhattan
Since is open thread, recall how Willard was on Staples board of directors? So then, this shouldn’t come as a surprise.
http://www.latimes.com/business/money/la-fi-mo-postal-workers-staples-protest-20140423,0,7845959.story#ixzz2zqKVQIJF
Let’s see, they hate the Postal Service, they hate public transportation (except roads paved with tax money), they hate trains that carry people instead of Bakken crude, they hate the NIH, they hate federal lands, they hate…..
Baud
@Villago Delenda Est:
It’s interesting that one of the main “government regulation” he decries are restrictions imposed on the free movement of labor. Of course, that has been interpreted to mean all government regulation is inefficient and bad.
Chris
@Villago Delenda Est:
That seems to happen to a lot of belief systems. (Religious or otherwise).
The creator, right or wrong, is sort of an okay guy. His followers, however, simplify, dumb down and eventually grossly distort what he had to say into something more convenient, then label it “REAL [Christianity, socialism, capitalism, American constitutionalism]” and ride it to power.
And as a rule of thumb, I’ve found that the louder someone claims “I’m just going back to the pure roots of this belief system as its founders intended,” the more likely it is that they’re full of shit and just slapping a label on what they want to do anyway. YMMV.
jl
@Bubblegum Tate:
” that land is Cliven Bundy’s, full stop. It’s Accepted Conservative Truth at this point ”
I guess that usurper US Postal Service, under the fringed Admiralty court flag, sneaked in and doctored all the local court records over the last 20 years.
Tommy
@Villago Delenda Est: Ford has issues, you noted this.
But at a time he paid his workers 3X what his competitors paid. Asked why:
I don’t know what else to say.
Elizabelle
@MomSense:
It’s the Dumb Bunny Ranch.
D58826
@beltane: ah ha that’s where I was getting confused. If it had been Charlton Hesston walking around with the constitution on clay tablets then it would have been perfectly clear.
They are still pea brains though, with apologies to the peas
bemused
@ranchandsyrup:
Oh yeah. I enjoy prodding them when I get the chance acting a little puzzled, calmly asking what then and what if questions. I know they don’t understand cause and effect or recognize the huge discrepancies in their assertions so eventually they get kind of twisted up and slip up telling how they really feel. It’s pretty revealing.
jl
@Trollhattan: If the reactionaries were smart, they would claim their privatization efforts were modeled on good liberal Europe, which has expanded their postal service locations and have also done privatization and hybridization. But the problem there is that their (sometimes private, sometimes hybrid) postal services are allowed to provide a lot of consumer services that are jealously guarded by our corporate oligarchs. The reactionaries don’t want a variety of cheap consumer financial and communication services provided with a mandate to serve the whole country by the USPS.
Baud
@bemused:
Bemused even.
bemused
@Baud:
Why yes.
lamh36
@JPL: Hannity Disgusted With Bundy: Race Comments ‘Beyond Repugnant’
bemused
Ha, Gov Brian Sweitzer is on Al Sharpton and said the right wing got sprayed by a skunk and they need to take a bath in tomato juice and vinegar to get the stink off.
JPL
@lamh36: Mediaite has Bundy’s news conference. The good news is he had a shovel and the other good news is they won’t even defend his right to cheat the government. link
He kept saying We the people and I told a friend that he tainted those words forever, for me.
Baud
There is some lowly employee at BLM that’s really enjoying this right now.
Elizabelle
NY Times blogpost: Slavery Nostalgia is Real, and it’s Dangerous
We follow an embedded link about restauranteur Maurice Bessinger to this September 2000 story: Sauce is Boycotted, and Slavery is the Issue
Mr. Bessinger came to grief when his restaurants offered for sale a little tract on how slavery is found in the Bible, and some slaves thanked the Lord for its existence. Otherwise, they would still be in Africa. Large grocery chains (Wal-Mart, Winn-Dixie, Kroger, etc.) stopped carrying Bessinger’s BBQ sauce and distanced themselves from him.
However, Bessinger had another supporter, Glenn McConnell.
Who has since become South Carolina’s lt. governor and is the newly named President of — wait for it — the College of Charleston.
Trollhattan
@jl:
Good point. Heard not long ago the USPS was considering resurrecting their banking services, which they discontinued, what, in the ’70s? Would put the payday loan industry out of business as fast as Craig’s List killed newspaper want ads, so I figure they’ll be stopped cold.
Elizabelle
@SatanicPanic:
I know.
First they came for the tax cheats …
then they came for the racists …
then they came for … d’oh!
Original Lee
@beltane: where would you like your internet delivered?
Chris
@Elizabelle:
It’s not even just in the South. It’s a very widespread, commonly held opinion among white conservatives that slavery simply wasn’t as big a deal as it’s made out to be. Though the South is certainly ground zero for that sentiment.
It’s also very common on the conservative side of the aisle to equate government welfare with slavery, as this idiot rancher just did (it’s where the “liberals are keeping blacks on the plantation” thing and memes like that come from).
Once you’ve accepted that absurdity, it’s a very small step to go on to say that in fact, slavery was better than government welfare.
“After all, under slavery, black people had to work for their keep instead of just lying around collecting tax money. And if black people are going to depend on somebody, isn’t it better for them that they depend on good, Christian men of strong moral character, who will keep them working and useful rather than lazy and shiftless, and who, being good Christian men of strong moral character, can be trusted not to abuse them too much? As opposed to depending on a government of socialists and sinners which is just using their votes as part of a conspiracy to destroy America that’ll ultimately leave everyone worse off?”
/wingnut
lamh36
Baud
@lamh36:
I’m sure Cliven Bundy is available.
WaterGirl
@lamh36: That’s depressing. It’s totally irresponsible to speculate, but I’m guessing there were death threats and the Obama’s decided it wasn’t worth the risk. I am disgusted by all the blatant racism lately.
Elizabelle
@SatanicPanic:
SatanicPanic, my dear, (and other Balloon Juicers): we are firmly ensconced in the “them” and “those people” group.
It’s hard. I know.
SatanicPanic
@Elizabelle: I’m nodding along going.. good, good
Mike in NC
@Elizabelle:
This McConnell character is a real piece of work. Up until just a few years ago his family owned a shop that sold Confederate battle flags and other “memorabilia”, and he still likes to dress up like a faux rebel general at reenactments. They probably kept the hoods and white robes in the back room. Google the name and you’ll find lots of pictures.
lamh36
@WaterGirl: @Baud:
As I understand it, FLOTUS was asked to speak, the Admin did not request it. So all the backlash shoulda been focused on them, not FLOTUS. But I did see that even people on lib blogs here and elsewhere bought the backlash view of the situation and put the onus on FLOTUS and Admin for the “controversy”.
But whatever, FLOTUS will be speaking here in NOLA at my own mother’s alma mater, Dillard University’s commencement ceremony. Dillard is an HBCU and one of the few private HBCU in the country. And I’m sure there are graduating classes in that other place who would be perfectly happy having FLOTUS along and could care less about “seating” arrangement.
But I guess it would be in bad form for FLOTUS to accept a request to speak at another place in the same state or even city.
Baud
@lamh36:
Good for her. I’d rather be in New Orleans rather than Topeka, and maybe it’ll help boost turnout for Landrieu in November.
Elizabelle
@Chris:
Yes. Those poor scrabbling whites didn’t even get to be house “servants”, did they? The black man, holding the Southern white working man down. Even then.
I remember a great book, “Tobacco Culture”, with letters by George Washington and other top Virginia planters complaining that debt to the Brits was making them slaves. Slaves, slaves, slaves.
…….
Laughing a bit at ABC’s evening news on how Bundy’s backers are fleeing.
A lot of them are, publicly. ABC flashed photos of Dean Heller, Ted Cruz, and Rand Paul.
He said out loud what many rightwingers probably say (and think) in private. That’s his transgression. How inconvenient.
Patricia Kayden
@Elizabelle: Not only out loud but caught on tape. There is no way that they can argue that Bundy’s comments have been “taken out of context”, which is their usual claim.
sm*t cl*de
@Elizabelle:
Then they came for the
MilitiasNeo-Nazis, and Idid not speak out, because I was not part of the Militiacheered them on.Elizabelle
@Mike in NC:
Do read the NYTimes links. NYTimes also did a story on the controversy over McConnell’s appointment as College President.
I guess he’s a pleasant person, so just pay no mind to that posing with people dressed as slaves business?
States rights, peoples.
NYTimes on College controversy:
Keep ’em in their own historically black colleges, and out of ours, maybe? And maybe not …
College of Charleston has a 6% African American student body. Granted, it’s an expensive private school. But …
Elizabelle
@sm*t cl*de:
Yeah. Pretty much. About time, no?
PS: coming for the neo-cons would be good by me, too. Also.
Mnemosyne
@Elizabelle:
Just as a side note, Fun Home is actually a really great book. I think the students will get a lot out of it.
Elizabelle
@Mnemosyne:
Not if conservatives in South Carolina have anything to say about it.
Pogonip
@beltane: Thing One and Thing Two?
SiubhanDuinne
@MomSense:
I heard The Ed Show on the radio (while sitting in Atlanta traffic that took an hour and a half to go 18 fucking miles, thankyewverymuch), and I agree with you. She is very impressive, and I hope we hear more from her.
SiubhanDuinne
@Baud:
What about “Little Bundy Frou-Frou, hoppin’ through the forest”?
Villago Delenda Est
@Tommy: And Ford was hated by his fellow industrialists for actually paying his workers enough to afford the goods they made.
Villago Delenda Est
@Elizabelle: They’re going to allow Bundy to twist slowly, slowly in the wind.
Every last one of them is dishonorable scum, looking to save themselves.
Origuy
@MomSense:
No wonder Sean Hannity jumped on this story so quickly. Link SFW, but the rest of the site definitely isn’t.
Elizabelle
@Villago Delenda Est:
Agreed. Until the next shiny and possibly useful rightwing object appears.
Villago: what exactly were the four words your co-worker came up with? Can’t remember the precise topic, but I couldn’t figure out your meaning …
rikyrah
Study: Reviewers Find More Errors In Your Writing If They Think You’re Black
April 24, 2014
A new study by Nextions reveals that reviewers of a legal brief were likely to find more errors once they learned that the author was Black.
Based on findings from a previous study that revealed supervising lawyers are more likely than not to perceive African-American writers as having subpar writing skills when compared to their Caucasian counterparts, the researchers attempted to confirm if they would unfairly evaluate legal writing by Black lawyers.
The results were most unsurprising.
http://newsone.com/3006968/nextions-study-racism-black-white-writers/?omcamp=sf_N1TW
Tommy
I will just say this, cause it needs to needs to be said.
My Jewish friends tell me I should listen. I laugh them away.I don’t find it funny. People are coming for you and me and nobody seems to care, want to stop them.
Villago Delenda Est
@Elizabelle: The four word solution: He, she, or they can be killed.
Being a sysadmin at a major university, in charge of the mail system, he beats his head against his desk on an almost daily basis dealing with end users who just do not get it. Or, more maddeningly, administrators and faculty who just do not get it.
Surprised he’s still sane. I think his devotion to things like Terry Pratchet novels and Arrested Development are very helpful in catharsis, though.
Frankensteinbeck
@Patricia Kayden:
Also, he used the words ‘negro’ and ‘picking cotton’. This is important. Dog whistles require deniability, and the threshold of proof for racism in our society is very high. Uninvolved whites (I know, I’ve been like this) will give the benefit of the doubt to very racist arguments. Racist leaning whites will interpret anything that does not use a few words that our society has specifically tasked as racial epithets as reasonable and non-racist. Well, Bundy made the exact argument a lot of conservatives make, but he used the epithets uninvolved whites cannot deny.
Tommy
@Frankensteinbeck: He should have just say nigger. I come from a family where if you say cotten picking negros we know what you are saying. At least I know. It isn’t rocket science.
Bruce Baugh
@Baud: Not much. A friend of mine works for BLM in Portland and says that all across the west, BLM has had to close offices and send employees home thanks to bomb threats, threats to assassinate people entering or leaving offices, and so on. BLM knows that most such threats never amount to anything, but enough do that they’re taking no chances.