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You are here: Home / Sweat, Piss, Jizz and Blood

Sweat, Piss, Jizz and Blood

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The Tea House of the August Moonbats is at it again:

And in a surprising twist, the bill language specifies that only rural areas are to benefit in the future from funding requested by the administration this year to continue a modest summer demonstration program to help children from low-income households — both urban and rural — during those months when school meals are not available.

Lest we forget:

Urban areas — defined as densely developed residential, commercial and other nonresidential areas — now account for 80.7 percent of the U.S. population, up from 79.0 percent in 2000. Although the rural population — the population in any areas outside of those classified as “urban” — grew by a modest amount from 2000 to 2010, it continued to decline as a percentage of the national population.

Apparently it’s not enough that every single fucking piece of legislation genuflects towards the 19% of America that lives in the sticks, where it’s more expensive to provide roads, mail, telecom and other government subsidized services. Now we’re taking food from kids’ mouths.

Reader Interactions

94Comments

  2. 2.

    Emma

    They have slid down the slope from mere assholishness into evil. Nobody should be surprised.

  3. 3.

    Baud

    There are a variety of different federal programs targeted to urban or rural areas, but it’s unusual to take a universal program and make it rural only.

    It bears repeating, if Democrats had tried the reverse, rural America would vote in droves to punish them.

  4. 4.

    DaveinMaine

    Not “kids’ mouths” – overwhelmingly minority kids’ mouths. But ask any Republican and they’ll tell you racism is dead.

  5. 5.

    beltane

    The Republicans have transformed this country from being the envy of the world to being little more than a redneck cesspool with a nuclear arsenal.

  6. 6.

    satby

    I just read that at TPM and put it out on Facebook. There needs to be a huge stink raised about this. Vile is too nice a word for them.

  7. 7.

    debbie

    @beltane:

    It’s not grammatically correct, probably, but you could say we’ve gone from the envy of the world to the world of the envy. So many people bitter that others might be getting more than they are.

  9. 9.

    Suffern ACE

    My understanding was that this is a pilot program. Do we know how the funds in this pilot have been allocated before?

  10. 10.

    constitutional mistermix

    @Baud:

    if Democrats had tried the reverse, rural America would vote in droves to punish them.

    You mean there’s someone in a rural area who still votes for Democrats?

  11. 11.

    NorthLeft12

    I have a hard time understanding how the cutting of urban children from this program can be true. If 80% of Americans live in urban areas how can their representatives agree to this?

    I know about gerrymandering, but this is ridiculous.

  12. 12.

    Walker

    Considering the demographic breakdown of rural vs. urban that has got to be the most explicitly racist piece of legislation to come out of the House in years.

  13. 13.

    gene108

    Pass the popcorn.

    NJ-3 incumbent Jon Runyan (R) is retiring after only two terms because he can’t take dealing with the knuckleheads running the House (the seat would’ve been his as long as he wanted it). I’m usually not optimistic about my district going for a Democrat, but the Republican candidates might give the Democrat a chance.

    An already fierce Republican primary in South Jersey has picked up allegations of defamation (by one candidate), accusations of bullying (by another), and fake campaign websites that disparage one another.

    The latest round of back-and-forth began with businessman and former Randolph Mayor Tom MacArthur suing his opponent, Steve Lonegan, for defamation in response to information on one of the sites. Lonegan reacted Tuesday with a Trenton news conference in which he called MacArthur a bully.

    Read more at http://www.philly.com/philly/news/local/20140521_Strife_grows_for_MacArthur__Lonegan.html#azsKpEoeu1J4TDfo.99

    Randolph is way up in North Jersey and no where near the district. Lonegan seems to be running for every open seat possible in NJ. Booker beat Lonegan for his Senate seat. And Lonegan doesn’t live in the district either.

    Democrats have zeroed in on Aimee Belgard, who actually is from the district and is a county wide office holder.

  14. 14.

    OzarkHillbilly

    I wonder how many Republicans will get re-elected with only 20% of the vote?

  17. 17.

    Ash Can

    I believe it was lamh35 who brought this up in the comments last night. I couldn’t believe the sheer brazenness and openness of the unmitigated malice toward minority children. “Yeah, we can’t keep them from voting, so let’s just starve them to death before they reach voting age.” Not that this shit is ever going to be signed into law by this president, if it even makes it past the Senate, but good fucking grief. The Republicans have gone from delicately blowing on dog whistles to driving bulldozers through our living rooms. But don’t anyone call them racists; that wouldn’t be polite.

  19. 19.

    Kay

    It’s so funny to see this because we’re getting funding from what was (apparently) the prior program (before it was modified to exclude urban kids).
    I just saw the flyer come home from school and the list of sponsors includes the feds. So rural schools were getting funding under the prior program anyway.
    They’re going to hold the program in a park on the east side of town. The east side is considered “the poor side”.
    I had such a great conversation with a former school board member. He said the board members were all complaining about what were proposed new rules regarding healthy food in schools and finally he had just had it and he said “what is wrong with healthy food in schools? You’re opposed to healthy food?” They responded that they wanted to handle it locally and he said “but we never did”. Good point! :)

  20. 20.

    gene108

    @Baud:

    It bears repeating, if Democrats had tried the reverse, rural America would vote in droves to punish them.

    Tribal allegiance is strong in rural America.

    Democrats have successfully been painted, by Republicans, as the Party of coastal elites – such as Nancy Pelosi and the late Ted Kennedy – and other non-rural unsavory types. This is why Democrats running for elected office in rural America have to work so hard to distance themselves from the national Party. Republicans have made the national Democratic Party relatively toxic in rural America.

    The converse is that because Republicans have gone so fucking nuts in appealing to rural tribalism they have made their own brand toxic in most non-rural areas.

    I actually saw campaign ads for PA primary races, where the Democrat was talking about being a liberal; the same word Lee Atwater turned into the eighth dirty word a politician could not say on T.V. and still be taken seriously for nearly two decades.

  21. 21.

    Alex S.

    It’s one of those things that, as Chris Rock said, are just so racist that you can’t even complain anymore, it just is.

  23. 23.

    kdaug

    Rum*, sodomy, and the lash, boys.

    *(Rum provided at extra charge. Void where prohibited. Some exclusions may apply.)

  24. 24.

    Penus

    You guys are missing the point here: Right now, somewhere in America, a black person is getting away with something. How can you sleep in such a world?

  26. 26.

    Ash Can

    @NorthLeft12: It’ll pass the House just fine, assuming it doesn’t get sufficiently publicized and the Republicans get sufficiently embarrassed as a result and pull it out of the bill. Fortunately, though, the Senate and White House are controlled by people, however flawed they may be otherwise, who are actually interested in governing rather than using their positions to punish constituents who don’t vote for them and to promote the sick fantasies of those who do, so it’s highly unlikely the Republicans will get away with this. Not this time, anyway.

  27. 27.

    dmsilev

    Wait just a second. I was under the *distinct* impression that every resident of a rural area was a Rugged Individualist who made their own way in the world and didn’t take no handouts from the Feds.

    Are you saying this isn’t so?

  31. 31.

    JPL

    @Kay: This.
    If they had prepared nutritious before hand, they would be in compliance so the law would effect them.

    @dmsilev: While driving through north GA rugged individualism is not a term I use.

  32. 32.

    AMinNC

    I just posted about this on my blog this morning too. Between this bill and Paul Ryan’s comments about the “lack of a culture of work” among “inner-city men” and the odious restrictions on voting, it seems we have lapped Lee Atwater’s contention that the racism of the GOP is going to continue to get more and more abstract. They are now basically yelling to their AM Radio base: “Hey The Blahs Are Stealin’ Your Stuff! But Don’t Worry, We’ll Put ‘Em in Their Place!”

    Every time I think I can’t be any more shocked by these guys, they manage to do it. I am beginning to think we really never will reach peak wing nut.

    But the more we can turn over the rocks and call out in both moral and logical terms the awful things the Republicans are doing, the better chance we have to beat these horrible people back.

  34. 34.

    raven

    Tired of me bitching about Pat Lang? He’s all in a tizzy about Obama, Holder and race, but that’s ok, just keep him on the BJ blogroll because. . . .?

  36. 36.

    Belafon

    But I thought the rural areas can pull themselves up by their own bootstraps. They don’t need this money.

  37. 37.

    Ash Can

    Oh, and I suppose this is more of that GOP minority outreach we keep hearing about.

  38. 38.

    Belafon

    @raven: If John didn’t leave him on the blogroll, you wouldn’t keep reminding us of how big an asshole Lang is. And where would we be without that?

  40. 40.

    beltane

    @Ash Can: They are reaching out to steal food from of the mouths of minority children. If you think there is something wrong with this than you are the real racist.

  41. 41.

    Matt McIrvin

    @debbie: The thing is, that’s exactly the argument that the right wing makes about income inequality and wealth inequality: that if you express concern about it, you’re just stoking envy that somebody did better than somebody else. What do you want, for everyone to be forced to be equal like in “Harrison Bergeron”?

    And then they build a whole ideology based on resentment that minorities and the poor are somehow getting a sweet deal.

  42. 42.

    Comrade Dread

    Well, it’s easy to understand. “Urban” means all of the undeserving mooching kids of ‘those’ people, while “rural” means all of the kids of the hardworking industrious Christian white folks who are merely down on their luck.

  43. 43.

    OzarkHillbilly

    Offered without comment:

    In case you missed it, a study not released by MSNBC (so save your breath conservatives), by the nonpartisan Center for Media and Public Affairs at George Mason University have found that Republicans are significantly more likely to lie than Democrats. And here is the kicker that the liberals have been saying all along: the lying gap between Republicans and Democrats is widening as President Barack Obama spends more time in office.

  44. 44.

    Higgs Boson's Mate

    This is a bill that needs to be vetoed. First, the House Republicans split off food stamp funding from it in the interest of reducing funding for that program. Now they’ve added this overtly racist and self-serving provision. I hope that Obama is willing to veto a bill that will result in deep cuts to food stamp money and minority kids deprived of nutrition. Yes, there’s a risk of a short term rise in food prices if an acceptable bill isn’t signed by September 30th. There’s also a risk of depressing turnout if the White House signs of on a big Fuck You to urban minorities and food stamp recipients everywhere.

  46. 46.

    NorthLeft12

    @dmsilev: Yeah, I had to laugh when I went on the American Spring web site I kept getting a pop up ad for a service that made sure I was getting all the government money [SS, disability, etc.] that I was entitled to.

    WOLVERINES!!

  47. 47.

    dricey

    Rural populations vote Republican. Urban populations vote Democratic. The House is controlled by Republicans. So Republicans limit funding to their own voters.

  48. 48.

    Punchy

    @dmsilev: This was my thought. I was under the strong impression, too, that Roorl Merka didn’t want gov’t handouts, gov’t assistance, and socialized nutrition programs. They’re independent people who can survive on their own, dontcha know.

    MAJOR disconnect going on here.

  50. 50.

    Citizen_X

    every single fucking piece of legislation genuflects towards the 19% of America that lives in the sticks

    Legislation? More like “the entire Constitutional structure of our system of government.”

    Thanks a lot, Founders!

  51. 51.

    Ash Can

    @Higgs Boson’s Mate: Given the fact that Obama told the House GOP to fuck right off when they wanted to pass a budget that cut out funding for Planned Parenthood, there’s no reason in the world to believe he’d sign off on this racist dogwhistle air-raid siren.

  52. 52.

    Joel

    Honestly, I think the dickheads are just hoping the program gets axed entirely. That would be “fair” and their constituents wouldn’t blame them for it. Sick fucks.

  53. 53.

    Higgs Boson's Mate

    @dmsilev:

    You should be ashamed of yourself. This is the fantasy from which all other conservative fantasies flow and you have the temerity to question it. Even though we, and Red State pols, know that they’d starve without that lovely Blue State tax money the myth of the hearty yeoman farmer (There must be at least a few dozen of them left) buoys up all of their other myths. Shame on you.

  55. 55.

    MuckJagger

    Long after the world will have forgotten untold hundreds of bands and artists who sold more albums, people will be using Warren Zevon lyrics to title their blog posts. :-)

  58. 58.

    RSR

    Their hatred for ‘those’ people is so blatant, but way too many people agree with them.

    It’a all part of the same bullshit mountain that let’s Craig T Nelson say “I’ve been on food stamps and welfare, did anybody help me out? No.”

    http://www.eschatonblog.com/2012/09/bullshit-mountain.html

    One can never be quite sure how much conservatives believe their own bullshit, but my longstanding theory is that they believe there’s some secret super generous welfare system that only black people have access to. When they had hard times, got their government handouts, their government handouts sucked. But the blahs are out there buying their t-bones and driving their cadillacs, so they must be getting the really good welfare. Nobody helped poor Craig out, because the food stamps and and welfare sucked. They don’t understand that this is because food stamps and welfare do suck.

  59. 59.

    mike with a mic

    Well, urban areas are where the rich get rich destroying jobs in rural areas and shipping them to China. Urban areas could tax them but we don’t.

    Let’s not forget where the predatory rich live.

  60. 60.

    JaneE

    Any chance that rural poor are more likely to be white? Is there some way to charge congress with civil rights violations?

  61. 61.

    Kay

    @RSR:

    “I’ve been on food stamps and welfare, did anybody help me out? No.”

    I can’t even deal with the disconnect anymore. What was missing from the national coverage of the fake food stamp debate was how it was presented in rural areas. It was presented as “money is going to food stamps instead of to agriculture”. I read an account of a local town hall meeting with a Congressional Republican and farmers and that was the frame.

    I can’t even deal with people who are sitting there pretending there is NO benefit that accrues to them from a food subsidy if they produce food. I mean, come on. What do people using food stamps BUY? YOUR product. Agriculture and food stamps are a TEAM. We’re denying this now? How am I supposed to take this argument seriously?

  62. 62.

    wuzzat

    @OzarkHillbilly:
    Also nearly all of Vermont, much of New Hampshire and Maine, and 50% or more of the half of New York that everyone ignores, but who’s counting.

  63. 63.

    mike with a mic

    @JaneE:

    rural areas are where rich urban bankers shut down things to ship jobs to China. Urban areas could tax that stolen cash but don’t.

    You can’t be against the predatory rich and also be pro urban areas. And you can’t be pro city and not be pro plutocrat. You may think so in your head, but you are on the 1%s side the moment you side with urban America.

  64. 64.

    SFAW

    @Punchy:

    I was under the strong impression, too, that Roorl Merka didn’t want gov’t handouts, gov’t assistance, and socialized nutrition programs.

    You’re close. If you added “for anyone other than themselves” after “programs,” I think you’ve nailed it. Of course, you’d probably also need the qualifier “themselves = their white selves” to ensure that only the white right people get the benefits.

  65. 65.

    Citizen_X

    @mike with a mic:

    you can’t be pro city and not be pro plutocrat. You may think so in your head, but you are on the 1%s side the moment you side with urban America.

    Jesus Potgrowing Christ you have some weird fucking ideas. The vast majority of Americans live and work in cities. Just because Donald Trump lives there too is no excuse to go all Khmer Rouge.

  69. 69.

    Jeremy

    @mike with a mic: You’re a F’ing idiot ! Really !
    The only reason why this country has had any kind of progress of late is because of the cities. The majority of people live near or in the cities. If it wasn’t for the “urban” areas this country would totally be a third world country.

  70. 70.

    pseudonymous in nc

    I remember reading about the summer meal delivery out in Bumfuck East Tennessee last year, where the school bus would show up for kids who otherwise would be eating Pop Tarts or nothing.

    Desperation had become their permanent state, defining each of their lives in different ways. For Courtney, it meant she had stayed rail thin, with hand-me-down jeans that fell low on her hips. For Taylor, 14, it meant stockpiling calories whenever food was available, ingesting enough processed sugar and salt to bring on a doctor’s lecture about obesity and early-onset diabetes, the most common risks of a food-stamp diet. For Anthony, 9, it meant moving out of the trailer and usually living at his grandparents’ farm. For Hannah, 7, it meant her report card had been sent home with a handwritten note of the teacher’s concerns, one of which read: “Easily distracted by other people eating.” For Sarah, the 9-month-old baby, it meant sometimes being fed Mountain Dew out of the can after she finished her formula, a dose of caffeine that kept her up at night.

    Travelling through deep Appalachia at times feels like being in a not-developed country. These kids need to be fed. But to rejig it to spite Those Kids in cities? Fuck me, that’s groteque.

    The politics are grotesque, too, because we’re talking about deep, ingrained white poverty in places where the GOP wins every single time. Complete divide-and-conquer politics.

  74. 74.

    SFAW

    @Jeremy:

    The far left is not that different from the far right. Just opposite sides of the same coin.

    Oooooh! Both sides do it!!!1!2!

  77. 77.

    Jeremy

    @SFAW: I’m not into the both sides do it crap, and I can’t stand the hacks in the beltway press. But the far left and the far right are not that different. Like I said, opposite sides of the same coin.

  79. 79.

    J R in WV

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    Me too, and all my friends, we live in very rural county in a very rural state, because we like the countryside, the woods, the birds and critters, and most of the people we live around, who are not greedy assholes trying to steal from the mouths of babes.

    We work for lower wages to be social workers, health care workers, even scientists. usually working for some level of government to assist the people we live with and around.

    We like it here. We visit big cities on vacation, just like urban folks go to parks to see rural vistas and bird watch. We can bird watch in the woods next to our houses, and do.

  80. 80.

    burnspbesq

    And this is why we have two houses of Congress. This nonsense will disappear from the bill within 48 hours after the Senate gets its hands on the bill. It won’t be in the final version that goes to the president for signature.

    The sky does fall occasionally, but Chicken Little is mostly wrong.

  81. 81.

    SFAW

    @Jeremy:

    But the far left and the far right are not that different.

    I imagine that, if you define your terms restrictively enough, you could possibly make a case that it might be true with respect to some small subset of actions. But as a broad-brush statement, not so much.

  82. 82.

    ? Martin

    @burnspbesq:

    This nonsense will disappear from the bill within 48 hours after the Senate gets its hands on the bill. It won’t be in the final version that goes to the president for signature.

    This nonsense gets through the other chamber with some regularity, mainly due to it not being noticed by some staffer there. Legislation by obscurity is alive and well.

    But it’s presence in the bill really speaks volumes to the extent the GOP continues to go to find excusable synonyms for ‘nigger’.

  83. 83.

    Jeremy

    @SFAW: Well when you go too far one way or the other politically it’s extreme. I’ve encountered people who are far left wackos and far right wackos and I don’t see much difference. You can have liberal or conservative views and not be extreme. But mike with a mic based on that statement is an extremist.

  86. 86.

    Bobby Thomson

    @mike with a mic:

    rural urban areas are where rich urban bankers {I can just tell you want to reference the Elders of Zion at this point} shut down things BECAUSE THAT’S WHERE ALL THE FACTORIES WERE to ship jobs to China AND OTHER PLACES WITH POOR ENVIRONMENTAL AND HUMAN RIGHTS RECORDS, LIKE TEXAS. Urban areas The United States could tax that stolen cash but don’t doesn’t BECAUSE OF ALL THE ASSHOLES FROM GERRYMANDERED RURAL AREAS AND EXURBS WHO WHINE ABOUT “FREEDOM.”

    You can’t be against the predatory rich and also be REFLEXIVELY ANTI- urban areas. And you can’t be pro anti- city and not be pro plutocrat. You may think so in your head, but you are on the 1%s side the moment you side with urban America the redneck agenda.

    I fixed that for you.

  88. 88.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @dmsilev:
    The assistance they get are not ‘handouts’, because they’re hard working people who struggled to get by. It’s a ‘handout’ if it’s given to people who are lazy and won’t earn it by trying to succeed, which brings us to…

    @RSR:
    Essential to racism is the idea that the Other is inferior. Once you take it as rock bottom obvious that blacks are not naturally intelligent, hard working, or anything else civilized, it becomes clear that blacks do get a better welfare system. Since blacks are inferior, any time you get even results between blacks and whites, the blacks must be getting a leg up. If whites struggle when they work hard, and they see blacks struggling (who are naturally lazy), then blacks must get everything those whites got handed to them on a silver platter.

    This reasoning is the core of racism. Extend it to a black man becoming president, and you get… all of the arguments that you’ve heard the Right use against Obama from day one.

  92. 92.

    SFAW

    @Jeremy:

    I’ve encountered people who are far left wackos and far right wackos and I don’t see much difference.

    The problem is the far right (formerly) wackos are pretty close to mainstream Republican platform these days, and the far left wackos are mainstreamed by no one. And a lot of the so-called “far left” wackos end up, on closer inspection, not to be lefties, but rather nihilists or Paulists or Naderites. (Not really for Paul and Nader, I just felt the need to bust their stones, and it was an easy shot.)

    As I said: if you’re restrictive enough in your definition(s), and pick-and-choose your examples, you could pretty much make an argument for anything, whether it’s left-and-right-extremists-are-the-same, or Liberals are the real Fascists, or Obama is 100X worse than Bush, or Obamacare is just like slavery/The Holocaust. Doesn’t mean the argument is valid, but that never stopped the Reichtards from making it/them.

    ETA: And, by the way, I’m assuming this was inadvertent, but your thesis migrated from “far right/far left” to “right-wing wackos|extremists/left-wing wackos|extremists.” The two (i.e., “far left” and “wackos/extremists”) are not really the same, except in the minds [sic] of Fox News pundits etc.

  93. 93.

    Archon

    The Republican party has entered the stage of outright tribalism without the veneer of ideology or first principles and definitely not about protecting or enhancing the nation’s common good. The fact that this version of the Republican party not only exists in 2014 but have a good shot of taking over the Senate and a puncher’s chance of winning the White House in 2016 gives me great pause on American prospects in the near to medium term.

  94. 94.

    Cal P.

    @debbie: They’re bitter that someone else might get something they didn’t “earn” – and they’re happy to burn the many who need and deserve the help along with those few who don’t.

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