This afternoon Republicans announced that Iowa freshman GOP Sen. Joni Ernst will be delivering the GOP response to President Obama’s State of the Union address, and via Greg Sargent frankly I can’t think of a more fitting spokesperson. Iowa happily elected her after saying this:
“What we have to do a better job of is educating not only Iowans, but the American people that they can be self-sufficient. They don’t have to rely on the government to be the do-all, end-all for everything they need and desire, and that’s what we have fostered, is really a generation of people that rely on the government to provide absolutely everything for them. It’s going to take a lot of education to get people out of that. It’s going to be very painful and we know that. So do we have the intestinal fortitude to do that?…
“We’re looking at Obamacare right now. Once we start with those benefits in January, how are we going to get people off of those?It’s exponentially harder to remove people once they’ve already been on those programs…we rely on government for absolutely everything. And in the years since I was a small girl up until now into my adulthood with children of my own, we have lost a reliance on not only our own families, but so much of what our churches and private organizations used to do. They used to have wonderful food pantries. They used to provide clothing for those that really needed it. But we have gotten away from that. Now we’re at a point where the government will just give away anything.”
Nope, I can’t think of a more apt representative of the GOP’s philosophy of “governance” in 2015 than she is to answer the question of just how much pain will Republicans have to put you and your family through, and if they have the intestinal fortitude to continue doing that while funneling what little wealth the 99% has left to the top 1%.
By all means, put her on the national stage as much as possible heading into 2016, complete with her gift from Huckleberry Graham.
You ready to squeal, America?
Buddy H
Tom the Dancing Bug reveals Hitler’s diabolical plot for Obamacare:
http://www.gocomics.com/tomthedancingbug/2014/08/21
Tenar Darell
What great comments for an agricultural state Senator to make! (Obviously she’s in tax credit dependency denial).
jl
Boehner or McConnel or some GOP pooh-bah said that the Party was full of serious people who intend to do serious things.
Zandar should be ashamed of himself for doubting that.
I think Ernst is a great choice. I eagerly await her contribution to the GOP outreach program. Maybe they will go after the sane vote this time. That would great, IMHO.
Botsplainer
Stupid fucking worm.
The reason why welfare programs had to come about was because her beloved churches and private charity couldn’t (and wouldn’t) do the appropriate job of charity despite all the deference at regulatory and tax law.
Iowa Old Lady
I’m already cringing with embarrassment.
andy
If I’m not mistaken, this parasite draws a paycheck from the Iowa National Guard, too.
AxelFoley
LOL, the GOP wants to kill her career by having her give the SOTU response, huh? Jindal and Rubio never recovered from their disastrous responses to President Obama’s addresses. But by all means, please proceed, GOP.
srv
Blaming Republicans for the pain to come is like blaming the doctor when the crack babies scream in the maternity ward.
patrick II
Pay them enough to afford health insurance?
Zandar
To be fair, there’s no Michele Bachmann to kick around anymore.
chopper
given the recent track record for GOP rebuttals to O’s SOTU speeches, i’m giddy with excitement as to what ernst will do to humiliate herself.
John M. Burt
Joni, we tried relying on private charity. It didn’t work.
We had generations of illiterate, sickly, malnourished people.
The more the government did to help people, the healthier, happier and more productive they became.
Yes, you’re right, it would be difficult to force us back to that. In fact, it can’t be done. We won’t go back.
In six years or less, you will take your castrating tool and go home in disgrace and failure.
Nobody will miss you.
fuckwit
@Botsplainer: Well they’d be very, very happy to do it, but you have to accept Jeebus as your personal savior first. And bow to their authority. And forget about birth control. And pledge chastity until marriage. And you better stay married for life, no divorcing. And stay home with your kids. And do what your father (or husband) tells you, because you’re living under his roof, goddammit, he’s paying the bills, so you’ll live by his rules. Maybe this Iowa Senator is totally OK with that, and she’ll be the spokesperson for that viewpoint. Let’s see how goes over.
See, all this bullshit from the right wing about their fear of the power of government, is a terror of losing the stranglehold on power that religions, “families” (read: autocratic male heads of households), and corporations would otherwise have. It’s the howl of privilege being taken away. Democratic, secular, government power replaces religious and business power. Government regulation and secular, government-provided services are vital resources for enabling women’s rights, as well minority rights, and reallly the rights of anyone who’s not in the 1%.
I’ve never considered myself to be a very good feminist (being a privileged and somewhat douchey white male), but the older I get, the more I’m convinced that feminism is the answer to many, if not most, of this society’s problems. And the more I look at what the right wing hates, the more I see women’s empowerment closely connected to their fears. Whether that connection is coincidental or causal, I don’t know, but it seems pretty consistent either way.
I’m starting to think that if you took away racism and sexism, there wouldn’t be much all else remaining in American politics.
John M. Burt
@srv: “Blaming Republicans for the pain to come is like blaming the doctor when the crack babies scream in the maternity ward.”
The difference is, the victims of ErnstDoesntCare are not mythical the way the “crack babies” were:
http://www.alternet.org/drugs/study-debunks-myth-crack-baby
They are real people who are really going to suffer.
scav
All those homespun heroes used to band together as self-organizing communities and churches and police the streets or defend the borders themselves, organize the summary execution tree-parties and celebrate same themselves, rather than getting all lazy and depending on the police and army to police, guard and summarily beat up, shoot and torture those deemed undesireable by the chosen few.
Another Holocene Human
@Buddy H: Wait, so that comic is from 2009 … before Obama sold us out? Is it a LaRouchie shoutout? I’m so confused.
Iowa Old Lady
I thought government programs were meant to treat people with dignity so they don’t have to rely on begging from a relative or charity.
Another Holocene Human
@scav: It’s not that, it’s that the police got a union and now they’ll persecute you if you decide to water the tree of liberty with the blood of Africans, that’s union work.
scav
@Another Holocene Human: they seemed pretty happy with the Zimm getting in on the job without paying union dues.
shelley
I think there’s something rather nauseatingly about being warmly nostalgic about ‘wonderful food pantries.’ Serious hunger in your community, but it’s better if a church dispenses charity rather than the Gov?
Another Holocene Human
@fuckwit: Fuck following their rules. That’s for suckers. Just be rich, or be a good enough con to fake it. Doesn’t matter what crimes you commit, just give the hush money to the right preacher and he’ll sing your praises to said suckers. GOP voters don’t fall in love, they fall in line.
Just be rich. Be a hypocrite. Because, trust me, you can follow every sucker’s rule they expound upon and you’ll still be ground under the heel and looked down upon.
If you look carefully, among white people (the GOP base) they don’t do really well with people who didn’t graduate high school. Their contempt for poor people is so obvious that even some white people have gotten the picture. Of course you can see the wages of race hatred when you compare GOP high school dropout numbers among whites and then among all others.
SatanicPanic
@Iowa Old Lady: That’s exactly why Republicans don’t like them.
Repatriated
@chopper: They couldn’t have one of the current undeclared-declared candidates do it; that would constitute an implicit endorsement, and the money-frontrunners aren’t sitting congresscritters so they’d be ineligible. And, as you point out, the rebuttal represents a risk committing a campaign-ruining gaffe before the campaign even starts.
Given their emphasis on the recent success of their female candidates, they had to go with a woman. Why her in particular? I expect it was because within the pool of available female GOP legislators, she was one of the few that wanted to risk this high-visibility exposure — and that may be a case of the overconfidence that often accompanies zealotry.
Lavocat
It’s got nothing to do with America being ready to squeal and everything to do with Democrats being ready to call the Republicans out on this bullshit. Every. God. Damned. Time. They. Do. It.
Citizen Alan
There was a time when I held out hope that the American people would wake up to the fact that the GOP was the Party of Sadism and reject it. Now, I have come to accept the reality that a majority of Americans in general are sadists and the GOP perfectly represents them.
Davis X. Machina
The GOP says “I could make your life better. But I won’t.
Instead, I’ll make someone else’s life worse. And let you watch.
Deal?”
And half of America says “Sure!”….
scav
@shelley: Well, yes, churches can make sure only the right sort of people get any help, that they get properly shamed first, have to leap through hoops and listen to mandatory indoctrination in order to benefit, etc. Look at some of the Christian charity efforts following natural disasters. India I vaguely remember made some official protests.
Buddy H
How well do you all think she’ll do with her rebuttal? I remember Jindal being the great brown hope, and then after his big chance, everyone said “eh”. (some said “meh”)
Will she have a dry mouth Rubio moment? Will she do crazy eyes Bachmann? Or will she hit it out of the ballpark?
I haven’t seen much of her, so I really don’t know if she’s up to the task. Any predictions?
Buddy H
@Another Holocene Human: It’s just Tom The Dancing Bug having fun by taking literally the fever dreams of tea party faithfuls.
Origuy
When a visit to the ER to get an asthma treatment costs hundreds of dollars, and a few days in the hospital costs thousands, a tip jar by the cash register of the local diner isn’t going to cut it. Nor will a bake sale run by the ladies of the First Methodist Church of Ottumwa, Iowa.
gene108
Ernst is a good choice.
She’s only 44 years old, which is young by Washington, D.C. standards for politicians.
She’s not hideously deformed or anything, so telegenic enough for the job.
She’s also female, which proves Republicans are not just a party of angry old white men.
I mean, at the end of the day, who else is there? Christie? Walker? Scott? Paul? Marsha Blackburn? Nikki Haley? I’m cannot think of options that would be markedly better.
Another Holocene Human
All that stuff about purity and abstinence is just a lie … look at Parah Salin and the Wasilla Hillbillies Family Entertainers.
Nobody in this life will ever give you credit for “sexual purity” whatever the fuck that is but they will give you a heap of scorn. Just ask an asexual person how they get along some time. Protestant, Catholic, or Jew, I guarantee you that friends, family, coworkers have made them feel harassed, othered, even ostracized. Not held up as some sort of more perfect human.
All of that rhetoric is a big fat lie. Elizabeth Smart had it right. That crap is all about humiliating and shaming rape victims and other victims of child abuse and molestation (or partner abuse) and driving them to suicide. It’s done because bullies love to bully people. Every single one of those bullies wants to see children with a “healthy” interest in the “opposite” sex just like popular culture &cet &cet has always reinforced. (Bullies are not known for creative thinking.)
Roger Moore
@SatanicPanic:
This. Poor people need to be humiliated in exchange for any help, since that will teach them about the evils of being poor. Also, too, churches need to be able to proselytize to people receiving their charity, and government services get in the way of that.
Botsplainer
@gene108:
If they were thinking straight, they’d prevail on Jon Huntsman or Mark Kirk to do it.
Another Holocene Human
@Buddy H: I know, but the Left fell out of love with Obama so fast. I’ve seen plenty of his comics where Obama is his sarcastic target. The Left gives me whiplash, is all.
JPL
@Buddy H: As a female, I think she’ll relate to the problems raising a family in America today. Since the previous rebuttals have been awful, a Hollywood type director will be brought it to assist her. She’ll be prepared.
That’s my guess, anyway.
Repatriated
@scav: I think this is where a lot of the conservative opposition to governmental support comes from. They know how they’d wield the influence that charity provides, and assume that the government is doing likewise.
Also, see fuckwit at #13. It’s the “ownership society”. If you’re supporting someone, they “should” owe you something — loyalty, obedience, whatever. Having the government come in and abstract that away diminishes the ability to use wealth to directly buy popular support.
Iowa Old Lady
@Buddy H: She can sound scarily plausible. My neighbors who voted for her didn’t believe the tales of her extremism were true.
Another Holocene Human
@Another Holocene Human: It had to be such a specific moment in time since by the time the year was over the Left blamed Obama for the death of the Public Option (proving they can neither count nor grasp basic civics) and both the “worse than Bush” and Green Lanternism legends were born. To be so earnestly defending Obama on account of the Public Option … wow … maybe it was because a pessimist got his hopes up … and they were dashed … the love-object becomes the subject of obsessive hatred.
jl
Maybe Ernst will go apeshit over this totalitarian outrage from Obama. I hope she obsesses over cutting social security. That would be great GOP outreach.
White House Weighs In On House GOP’s New Social Security Ploy
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/white-house-house-gop-social-security-rule
Repatriated
@Another Holocene Human: Honestly, most people don’t understand basic civics, and thus don’t realize why the ability to count actually matters in this case.
Roger Moore
@Botsplainer:
No way will they even try. What would happen if Huntsman got on national TV and managed to avoid embarrassing himself? That would automatically make him the frontrunner for the Presidential nomination, and that’s completely unacceptable.
Another Holocene Human
@Iowa Old Lady: The GOP’s oxygen is gulling millions of white people into not taking them seriously, and buying their Potemkin policy papers and proposals.
It’s funny, the Dems achilles heel in a way is that they push for stuff they then can’t pass because it turns into base versus money and the base just gets furious and ragequits and never ever ever ever forgives them (instead of, IDK, doubling down on citizen activism/lobbying, which could actually work and push money into a corner, you know, it might work if it were actually tried … see how Keystone has been politically marginalized and it only took a million environmentalist march, lol). But the GOP can flim flam their base all day long and twice on Sunday and they keep coming back for more. They never fucking catch on. Damnnnnn.
Belafon
@scav: How else is God supposed to know that you’re being a good Christian if no poor people will come to your church for handouts provided by the money you give? I mean, He’s only omniscient.
Another Holocene Human
@Repatriated: True, but most people don’t conflate politics with religion and/or war and make it a huge part of their identity.
Because if you do–learn to fucking count! Please! Think of the children!
sigh.
Repatriated
@Another Holocene Human: Indeed. The problem is that knowing how things actually work gets in the way of grandstanding. Actually making things work is, you know, work.
Barbara
I’m still trying to figure out why she thinks food pantries have ceased to exist.
If I ran a food pantry in Iowa, I’d be sorely tempted to make a spectacle of announcing our organization is operating right now, in the present, and we are thrilled Joni Ernst understands the important role we play. Now, could she please give us a donation since she obviously values our work so highly? Think of Michael Moore chasing after the head of GM for a model of what I’m imagining.
But nothing like that will happen because it’s not the 60s anymore and non-profits don’t make big stirs.
Another Holocene Human
@jl: My deceased Republican granny thought Reagan’s call to cut the “waste, fraud, and abuse” from SSI/SSD referred to “those people” right up to the day when her benefits got cut.
Then she got on the phone to moan at my mother, no Democrat she, who told her mother I told you so–that Reagan had done exactly what he had promised to do.
My uncle was in college on the Paul Ryan plan. I guess he was a few years younger than Paul Ryan because his benefits were abruptly cut.
I guess it was a double dutch play on whitey because SS was structured in such a way as to cut out so many Black families of that generation (domestic workers, for example, few ever received benefits, and they were scanty), so the whole deal where your parent dies and Uncle Sam puts you through college was for whites-mostly. And then Reagan cut it. Tossing whites into the moochers and looters caste with the Untermenschen. It’s funny, that didn’t learn the rubes one bit. They doubled down and begged the GOP for more!
Repatriated
And the real problem is that spending a few years studying how it actually works won’t necessarily get you any higher visibility or acceptance than just talking off the top of your head.
Another Holocene Human
@Citizen Alan:
Now, be fair, it’s only a majority of white people, and the reasons for that are fairly obvious.
You can call it sadism but I would say their fuel is more like spite. Most of them never envision a next step after they enact their spite, because feeding the spite is enough. They’ll endure any amount of pain (it’s not masochism, it’s determination) to feed the spite gator.
Repatriated
@Another Holocene Human: Because the narrative of “those people are getting handouts” survived the cutbacks. As far as they knew, good people like them weren’t getting “the assistance they deserved” because others were getting it instead. Of course, they weren’t getting it either, but you never heard about that in those circles.
SatanicPanic
@Roger Moore: Also, Republicans always assume they will be the humiliaters, not the humiliatees. So to speak.
D58826
sort of OT but it does show conservative stupidity and bigotry. Duke Univ. announced today that they would allow the campus bell tower to be used by Muslim students for thew call to prayer on Fridays. Just like it is used by Christians to announce Sunday services. Well the Franklin Graham god bothers went full ballistic and Duke folded like a cheap suit. The offer has been withdrawn. I’m really really getting to hate this country.
SatanicPanic
@Barbara: She’s not saying they don’t exist, just that they’re not wonderful anymore. Whatever that means.
Aside- remember when Paul Ryan and his wife barged in on that charity to pretend to do dishes? That’s what they really think about charities.
Mike in NC
There was once this guy who liked to call himself a “compassionate conservative” (AKA asshole) who was going to totally alter the status quo by making sure churches and private charities provided neighborhood assistance instead of the government.
Apparently it was just more GOP lip service, huh?
jl
@Another Holocene Human:
Yeah, some of my folks friends have convinced themselves that their social security and medicare are private insurance programs, not the same at all as the government handouts ‘those people’ get.
Adding a little pain to middle, working class and poor whites and blaming it on non-whites or some other bad ‘those people’ group is a conscious strategy of the GOP, and has been for years. And with a critical mass of whites devoted to their own self-righteousness, ignorance and bigotry, and who also seem addicted to falling for affinity fraud, it is depressingly easy.
I don’t have a link and don’t remember the names, but if anyone does, please post them in a comment.
My hope is that this critical mass of sad sack whites will be gradually reduced until it is no longer critical. The GOP outreach program to youth has been promising on that front, since the GOP seems to think that youth is a static minority group that will never become prime age voters. I think the GOP is counting on the same effect happening with current white youth that happened with baby-boomers and Generation Jones (not sure that is a real group but BJ commenters told me it was) and X-ers.
There came a time when the white boomers and X-ers got their bennies and nice stuff and suddenly many started looking to the GOP to protect it. And when will the current youth get their nice stuff? And who in their life experience was the party most visible in effing things up? Not the Democrats.
Another Holocene Human
@Repatriated: So true. And there’s always a good crowd more impressed by bullshit than the truth or some near simulcrum because bullshit is truthy and pleasing to the ear.
And then there are young people. Their brains are dissimilar to older people. This is both good and bad. I had to quickly scramble off a feminist snarkblog on tumblr just yesterday because the blogger had called someone a tone troll because they had gently suggested that all of the angry denouncing of newbies for making simple mistakes was driving people away from the cause. It must be exhausting to be that ragey all the time. Also the constant striving and competing with everyone, we used to call it “dick measuring contests”, doesn’t that get old?
Damn, me and tumbler, every other week somebody mentions all the trans-positive stuff there and I’m like yay, then I read it and they insult me within a few sentences and I’m all fuck it, let me go yell at clouds. Why in my day we met secretly in the Anglican church basement and LIKED IT!
Mike in NC
With Obama, didn’t the Republicans decide one person giving a rebuttal to the State of the Union address was insufficient, and they’d instead need to trot out four or five knuckle-draggers to get out their messages?
Repatriated
@SatanicPanic: Thanks for the reminder. I expect we’ll see the like again in the upcoming campaign, from someone. The other side does photo-ops well; understanding what those staged events actually represent, not so much.
Belafon
@Mike in NC: Obama may have been the catalyst, but I believe the Republicans are doing it so that one person talks to the corporate people and another person is talking to the Tea Party people.
A Ghost To Most
@Another Holocene Human:
Hmm, I must live in a different America than you do.
Repatriated
@Another Holocene Human: I’m not sure the kids are all that different, it’s just that social media and the internet in general don’t provide the same feedback that having everyone in the room with them roll their eyes at the dumb thing they just said does. It’s just words and pictures, and they’re reacting to a persona they put out there rather than them as a person.
jl
And I am confident that the GOPs racism dogwhistles and tribal fear-mongering will not work very well on the white youth who have grown up over past twenty years. Too much as changed.
They already have to turn the dogwhistles into air horns dialed up to 11 to get traction and attention. The kind of patent nonsense that will only impress weak minded elderly in mind and spirit types of people who live in front of their TVs. That is, the Fox News audience.
Another Holocene Human
@jl: They already see the writing on the wall in terms of white birthrates and they have lost their tiny little minds over it.
Actually, I think surveys still show Baby Boomers are still more liberal than the generations before and after. It’s just that demographically they’re becoming more white as time goes on because whites live longer. Also richer people live longer. And as they become whiter and richer they go more GOP as a cohort. I don’t know how strong this effect is but if you look at the South and look at Black male life expectancy, these folks are just not making it to retirement age. They will never cash the first check.
GenX is really in the prime voting years, middle age, and they’ve never believed they’d collect anyway. Of course all of those alternative plans, 401K etc, never worked out for the majority of people so I wonder what kind of rationalizations they’re going through.
I heard all of that stuff about social security collapsing and for me it was like crying wolf, guess what it’s still viable, guess not suckers … instead, I’ve seen a lifetime of unnecessary spending on empire, on war. Fuck that shit.
Oh, and looks like ACA extended the lifespan on Medicare. Why don’t we double the medicare payroll tax and cover 55 and up?!
Just because my grandfather who owned a company could work till 75 doesn’t mean that a manual laborer or a house cleaner or any job that involves stooping and bending or possible catastrophic injury is going to have that person plausibly working past 55. Such bullshit.
We need those pensions. What foolishness to destroy them.
JMT
One painfully funny thing about her statement is that there continue to be thousands of food pantries and hundreds of food banks across the country trying to fill the gaps for the millions of families suffering from food insecurity. Many of those charities experienced big drops in financial support as the lower and middle classes took the hit from the recession. It’s amazing that more of them have not folded.
Repatriated
@jl: Excellent point. They need the overwhelming majority of the white vote now, and it’s gotten to where they simultaneously must make appeals to them as a group, and cannot make those appeals without appearing overtly racist.
pseudonymous in nc
cough IOWA cough FARM SUBSIDIES cough cough.
But of course, providing large offerings to King Corn is not “welfare” because white people.
Roger Moore
@SatanicPanic:
They aren’t allowed to discriminate the way they used to.
pseudonymous in nc
Ernst is, however, a good choice, because she is the telegenic face of teh Krazy. What the GOP got right for the Senate elections in 2014 was to recruit and get through primaries people who are batshit but also sufficiently well-trained to not appear completely batshit or weird. That’s a shitty gift that will keep giving.
Another Holocene Human
@Repatriated: No, I really do think it’s youth and everything that implies. Granted, there are adults that never mature, but most do. There are changes in the brain, changes in hormones, and also experience and life changes us. I don’t like to repeat myself and what was once visceral and exciting is now boring and stale
tumblr is really heavy on the academic-humanities influence–the English majors, the gender studies and women’s studies and the part of the History dep’t not devoted to dead white Christian males. Academic culture is already pretty competitive, so that part I think is inculcated, and it’s very toxic when encouraged and fostered. They think they’re changing the world but they’re only really influencing academic language and theory which has some impact on activism but of course not as much impact as engaging in activism and face planting three or four times. There’s such a thing as too much theory in activism, like that socialist guy who derails meetings where you’re supposed to be assigning tasks with talk about how most Americans are sheeple and what signs point towards revolution. Or the earnest kid who tells the public who comes to get a handout at a labor protest not the basics of the union-management dispute but that capitalism is rotting and on its way out.
MLK had it right, hate can never drive out hate. You’re not changing the world by inverting the world’s hierarchy and enforcing it with scorn. It’s still a hierarchy and you’re still bullying the weak sisters and the slow-witted brothers. You’re not changing the world by advocating for left-wing authoritarianism and totalitarianism. You can only change this corrupt world by giving power back to the people. That’s hard and scary, both for politicians and for some activists who think they are the enlightened few. Vanguard of the revolution dreams. Ego on steroids.
Another Holocene Human
watch this fywp
@Repatriated: No, I really do think it’s youth and everything that implies. Granted, there are adults that never mature, but most do. There are changes in the brain, changes in hormones, and also experience and life changes us. I don’t like to repeat myself and what was once visceral and exciting is now boring and stale.
Tumblr is really heavy on the academic-humanities influence–the English majors, the gender studies and women’s studies and the part of the History dep’t not devoted to dead white Christian males. Academic culture is already pretty competitive, so that part I think is inculcated, and it’s very toxic when encouraged and fostered. They think they’re changing the world but they’re only really influencing academic language and theory which has some impact on activism but of course not as much impact as engaging in activism and face planting three or four times. There’s such a thing as too much theory in activism, like that socialist guy who derails meetings where you’re supposed to be assigning tasks with talk about how most Americans are brainwashed and what signs point towards revolution. Or the earnest kid who tells the public who comes to get a handout at a labor protest not the basics of the union-management dispute but that capitalism is rotting and on its way out.
MLK had it right, hate can never drive out hate. You’re not changing the world by inverting the world’s hierarchy and enforcing it with scorn. It’s still a hierarchy and you’re still bullying the weak sisters and the slow-witted brothers. You’re not changing the world by advocating for left-wing authoritarianism and totalitarianism. You can only change this corrupt world by giving power back to the people. That’s hard and scary, both for politicians and for some activists who think they are the enlightened few. Vanguard of the revolution dreams. Ego on steroids.
Another Holocene Human
hahahaha, fywp did my bidding, hahahahaha 0wned!
Another Holocene Human
@Repatriated: Think about what that says about white people.
Repatriated
@Another Holocene Human: Hold my beer and watch me edit! :)
Another Holocene Human
@A Ghost To Most: The majority of people don’t give a shit. Pretty sure entertainment and sports programs kill politics/snooze in TV ratings and the same is true on the intertoobs.
I guess what I meant is that politics is their religion, I wasn’t referring to phenom of churches hand in glove with politicians, so what else is new, and actually that is reaching its sell-by date from all accounts.
Repatriated
@Another Holocene Human: It actually says something pretty decent about them. Open appeals to white ethnic identity only go so far now; it wasn’t long ago in historical terms when it was a winning play even considering the demographics of the time.
(edit to add)
The GOP gets some mileage with at least their base in asserting the not-too-controversial proposition that the Democrats are the party of minorities (in large part because populism demands such a coalition), but adding that this makes Democrats racially divisive. What gets left unsaid is that this would make Republicans the party of white people, and yet somehow this is not racially divisive.
Roger Moore
@Repatriated:
I don’t think that’s quite correct. It’s probably still possible to appeal to a large majority of whites with non-racist economic populism. It’s just not possible to do that while staying in the good graces of the 0.01%, which is why the Republicans aren’t willing to try it.
scav
@Another Holocene Human: abstract root thing might also have a lot to do with those in power (technically — they at least had some of the benefits and most of the illusions of it) losing it. Racism (and religious prejudice) often used as tools with which to maintain power. Plus the general observation that ethnic, racial, religious etc fissures often get worse in times of stress as everyone starts fighting. I’m not sure congenital meaness and selfishness is hard-linked genetically to lack of melanin.
Davis X. Machina
@SatanicPanic:
@JMT:
They’re wonderful, and there’s a reason why more of them haven’t folded. My school — 58% free-and-reduced lunch eligible is having a drive to help our local pantry. Some of the kids will eventually get back the same stuff they donated — because to not donate would look bad.
Face
OT, but here’s that number again…
From the link:
Imagine that.
SatanicPanic
@Roger Moore: I think you have hit the nail on the head.
chopper
@Face:
LOL. it’s magic.
Repatriated
@Roger Moore: Right. I think the best example of this is the demographic breakdown of Fox News viewership — the African-American share of their audience is almost entirely statistical noise rather than actual viewers. While there is a non-racial case to be made for GOP policies (a weak one, mind you, but it exists), this shows that’s clearly not the message they’re using. Because based just on socioeconomic status, there really ought to be a few African-Americans who would identify with it…if there wasn’t something else going on there to alienate them.
Another Holocene Human
@D58826: Terrible.
eric
@D58826: same old duke, still no defense.
chopper
@pseudonymous in nc:
yeah but that’s totes different. it’s science.
D58826
I wonder if that ‘reliance’ includes farm subsidies, crop insurance and disaster relief for the state of Iowa?
Another Holocene Human
@Repatriated: It’s telling how many African Americans who previously dabbled in Republican politics have switched parties or distanced themselves since, oh, about 2006.
Say what you will, the Bushes did try to broaden the GOP tent, but the forces of xenophobia and reaction were too strong and they’ve immolated themselves in those flames.
The loss of Asian and Latin@ voters has been even more dramatic.
eric
@D58826: also, tell this to the families that take care of their elderly parents…..not a small number indeed
Another Holocene Human
@D58826: When she was a “small girl” she probably had no concept of who was paying the bills, and at what cost. Or what the bills were.
Plus, biggest economic expansion in the 20th century ring a bell? What rot.
Berial
What needs to be repeated after EVERY disaster.
The Republican dream for America: “I’m from the government and you’re on your own!”
Another Holocene Human
@scav: Nope, it’s memetically linked back to our history.
That book the Texas Board of Education is ever so eager to rewrite.
Yet we’re still living that history. Happy happy talk does not make it go away.
Why do you think ex-confederate white populations vote so very, very GOP as compared to non ex confederate white populations and all others? Surveys show they have retained a lot of very pernicious notions about race and merit and embrace punitive attitudes towards minority populations. The hatred and the excuses and the lies have been repeated, generation over generation, sown, and nurtured, and breed. (And sometimes one of their own gets national prominence and seeks to spread that infection everywhere, such as what Wilson did to home loan underwriting and the wave of pogroms that sparked, conveniently after he was already in the ground. Or Gingrich with his welfare reform.)
boatboy_srq
@AxelFoley: Didn’t think of that. D’you suppose that this time, instead of presenting the “Voice of the GOP”, the leadership is allowing the nuttiest Senator her first best opportunity to put her foot in her mouth right up to the hip – thus embarrassing her into silence for the rest of her term and assuring that she isn’t reelectable (and some more biddable non-Teahadist can replace her)?
scav
@D58826: Freedom of expression (such as calls to an event of belief) is only supported for sartical magazines, not for institutions of higher learning! Duke will need to run all expressions of thought, published or otherwise, past the god-bothering gatekeepers no doubt. Wonder if they’ll grade all the multiple choice (back-satan! Pro-Response C!) exams as well?
scav
@Another Holocene Human: i just said I doubted there was a genetic link — but sure, whatever, caucasians bear the necessary mark of cain, got it.
eta oh yeah, and the whole situation in the US has nada to to about maintaining social and class power.
Roger Moore
@Another Holocene Human:
Asian much more so than Latina. As recently as a decade ago, Asian Americans leaned fairly strongly Republican, but in 2012 they were more strongly Democratic than Hispanic/Latino voters were. It’s a huge swing. In contrast, Hispanic/Latino voters have leaned Democratic for a long time. Some Republicans- notably GWB- have done less badly with them than others, but they haven’t gone overall for the Republicans for generations.
Repatriated
@Another Holocene Human: Their problem with the Latino demographic is that they can’t really bring them into their coalition, not merely out of outright xenophobia but because of their need for undocumented immigrant labor to undercut wages. The policies and practices that marginalize the undocumented also significantly impact Latino citizens, and alienate them from the Republicans.
boatboy_srq
@Another Holocene Human: Rubes don’t necessarily want more; they just want Those Other People to get less than they do. Doubling down on the SSI/SSD cuts is rational once you realize that “making do with what ya got” is far too easily translated “I ain’t got nuffin – why should THEY get all’o’that?” resentment.
Southern Beale
If we’re going to nip this “people that rely on the government to provide absolutely everything for them” stuff in the bud once and for all, can we start with the current generation of Corporate Persons first?
Sloegin
Sen. Joni’s statement seems a bit unclear. Do I get my medical care from the church pantry or is it stashed in the bottom of a used clothing box?
Repatriated
@Southern Beale: Here’s the thing. You can wage a potentially-successful economically-populist campaign from the higher-wealth levels down, too. This is what Gov. Romney’s “47%” thing was about: appealing to the top 53%. They have the socioeconomic resources, so it’s easier than populism from the bottom up.
The problem is that you can’t actually run a government that way, precisely because the upper 53% have the resources, and the lower 47% simply don’t have enough money to pay for government as we know it, and frankly, as we expect it to be. (blood, stone, you know).
stinger
@Iowa Old Lady: Me too. As if Grassley wasn’t bad enough.
Citizen Alan
Here’s my theory about Ernstapalooza 2015. I think they’re putting this looney Republican woman out there with the expectation that she’ll say something stupid and then the Left will tear her apart … at which point, the GOoPers will use it as an excuse to say liberals don’t really support women after all so forget about all that War on Women crap.
catclub
@jl:
But as Adlai Stevenson said of a slightly different voter base, “But I need a majority.”
Repatriated
@Citizen Alan: They’ll try. But “stupid is as stupid does”. It’ll work with their base, and not outside it. Remember the half-term Governor of Alaska, and how our treatment of her she proved Democrats hate women? Or, you know, not.
pseudonymous in nc
Yeah, next time the crops fail in Iowa, they can just go to their local church.
Private charity is capricious. Once more with feeling: private charity is capricious. Appeals to private charity are basically appeals to tribal solidarity, and they empower the people who choose to do the giving.
SiubhanDuinne
@D58826:
Stupid and cowardly. I’m disgusted.
Southern Beale
@Citizen Alan:
I think you’re giving them far more credit than they’re due. They really believe Joni is a woman who can expand the Republican brand to the ladies. Just like they thought Marco Rubio was the man who could expand the Republican brand to the Hispanics. Just like they thought Bobby Jindahl could expand the Republican brand to the browns.
They never have understood that the problem is not the messenger, it’s the message. No matter how many times they are proven otherwise with disastrous performances by the likes of Sarah Palin, Jindahl, Rubio, etc., they still think their ideas are good and popular, if only they could find the right person to tell us about them.
Another Holocene Human
@scav: Mark of Cain? Whatever are you talking about?
Another Holocene Human
@boatboy_srq: Rational if you’re a dipshit.
I’ve seen this my whoooooole life and I still don’t understand it any better. It’s no skin off your fucking nose and why wouldn’t it be in your own self-interest to invest in the social welfare state or the Great Society more? If only to reduce crime rates and get those gol-durned kids off your lawn!
Repatriated
@pseudonymous in nc: And this is the motivation behind the myth of Job Creators. If you believe that they’re granting employment as a boon, then you owe them your support.
Of course, they’re not creating the jobs out of the goodness of their hearts, they’re doing it because it’s profitable for them to do so. There is an economic term for companies that actually hire people at a loss. That term is “bankrupt”.
Another Holocene Human
@pseudonymous in nc: And for all that, in the worst months of the Depression the charities in NYC failed to come up with sufficient funds and they started sounding the alarm. The Depression was a time of charity as cult/control. Yet the would-be overlords lacked the capacity in the most basic way to accomplish what only government can do.
And here’s the truth of the matter, a great deflation will allow a very few people to live like kings, with servants and luxuries and their pick of real estate. A great deflation will never result in the flower of charitable giving as the capacity will shrink while the need will explode. While they call for charity they are really dreaming of their own lord or ladyship.
Another Holocene Human
@Repatriated: Feudalism.
Repatriated
@boatboy_srq: I think I explained it above, but the trick is the transition from “my tax dollars are being wasted on the undeserving” to “my benefits were taken away from me and given to the undeserving”, because they don’t see that “the undeserving” had their benefits eliminated as well.
Berial
Those who call for charity to do what only government does are really all about, “He who pays the piper calls the tune”. And they ALL think they’ll be the one paying or at least the piper. None of them believe they’ll have to listen to someone else’s music.
Repatriated
@Another Holocene Human: Pretty much.
Employers don’t create jobs. Customers with money create demand, which creates jobs.
Randy P
@Repatriated:
I know plenty of white people to whom a racist appeal would not be the road to their hearts. Quite the opposite. Are we really such a minority?
Perhaps. I could never figure out why Rmoney had a majority of either white people or of males. It just didn’t make sense to me that there could be that many idiots. Still doesn’t.
WereBear
@John M. Burt: In WWI, the examining doctors were appalled at the malnutrition and general poor shape of much of the young men called up for service. It led to the first school lunch programs or free milk or something; (on my touch, my google-fu is weak.)
fuckwit
@Repatriated: That’s basic Economics 101, and I can’t believe that the right wing actually fails at that, nor that the Masters of the Universe could possibly ignorant of that fact, because if they did, they’d have never succeeded in business in the first place. Which tells me, it’s just lies and grift when they pretend not to understand it.
muddy
@Randy P: You can get Fox for free and have to pay for msnbc, which isn’t even full time.
WereBear
@shelley: Did you ever see any starving children in Mayberry? Huh huh?
They rest their case.
CONGRATULATIONS!
@Another Holocene Human: I was always pretty liberal, but the 20th or 50th time I stepped over some homeless guy sleeping on my porch as I was going to work (San Francisco in the 1990s) I decided then and there society needed to tax everything and everyone as much as possible without killing the golden goose, as it were, because it’s not OK for anyone to have to sleep on a doorstep. Or for someone to have to step over them to get to work.
I traded cities and do not have that particular problem anymore, but the issue hasn’t changed. There’s still people sleeping in the streets, America. Untreated mental, untreated addiction, untreated unemployed, whatever. It’s not OK.
Repatriated
@Randy P: Minority? I don’t think so, and that’s the problem they have.
muddy
@WereBear: I enjoy looking at old photo sites like http://www.shorpy.com/ and that one where you can search Depression era photos by county (can’t find link right now). They might as well be medieval, the sort of conditions people had. Good old days.
ETA: found the link, http://photogrammar.yale.edu/
fuckwit
@Citizen Alan: In any oppressed group, there’s always a subset of people willing to play along with the system because they have a goood grift going that’ll let them succeed within it. Perfect example is Sarah Palin, who can wink at the camera and cause starbursts, and let a bra strap fall strategically often enough, and thus can get whatever she wants out of men in power… enough so that she’s fine with them remaining in power. There’s your Michael Steele’s and such too. Usually a small number within any group, but of course held up by the people in power as a STELLAR example.
Repatriated
@fuckwit: Grift, or just ego? At some point the difference ceases to matter.
To be clear, that was a reply to your #118, not #124.
muddy
@fuckwit: I now imagine poor Sarah trying to pull off this routine in 10 years and I shudder. With laughter.
WereBear
@muddy: Cool stuff. Love history. Thanks!
Repatriated
@muddy: But by then she’ll have gravitas and won’t need to do that sort of thing, She’ll command respect for her wisdom and….
Ow. I think I sprained something trying to visualize that.
Back in a bit.
Roger Moore
@pseudonymous in nc:
And generally dries up at just the wrong time. When the economy tanks, so do donations to charity, which sucks because that’s exactly when we need it the most. For example, charitable donations declined from 2008 to 2010, during the heart of the Great Recession.
Just Some Fuckhead
@CONGRATULATIONS!: Can’t we just pass out bootstraps?
Roger Moore
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Only moochers and looters can’t provide their own bootstraps.
Turgidson
@Roger Moore:
A fact always conveniently forgotten by the “get government out of the charity business” assholes.
Just like they conveniently ignore the fact that government deficits necessarily skyrocket during downturns due to plunging tax receipts and increased need for automatic stabilizer spending. No, no, it’s the Kenyan Sockulist spending us into oblivion (and, wink wink, giving it to his buddies at Acorn, etc.)! We need to cut Medicare and Social Security now before we all die!!!
Fucking assholes.
catclub
@Another Holocene Human:
My thought was: Lower the eligibility age one year every year, plus any child born is put on Medicare as well as their family.
in 15 years it would just about take over.
PhilbertDesanex
@WereBear: I understand now only 1/3 of the kids will pass a military fitness exam due to FAT. Given a GOP Prez, if I was 17, deep-friend Snickers here I come!
john fremont
@Another Holocene Human: Also too, in the Midwest there were hunger marches and food riots that took place as private charities failed to keep up with the surge in unemployment of the family breadwinner after the Crash of 1929.
Zinsky
Yeah Joni, the “government gives people everything they want”. Except – healthcare, free education, decent roads, safe streets, food inspections, banks that don’t rip you off and collapse the economy, subsidized gasoline – actually anything of any value. In fact, I can’t think of the last thing that the government “gave” me. What a freakin’ moron she is….
Ruckus
@fuckwit:
The more women get empowered, the more difficult it is to get one of them to put up with whiny shit. That of course makes it much more difficult for conservative men to get any at all, because having actual respect for women is something they know nothing about. As Kelso once remarked, “I like parts of her.” You take away pants pissing, white, whinny, male entitlement and what do you have? A lonely hearts club with hairy palms.