I don’t have anything special against Matt Welch. I liked his book about McCain, he’s written reasonable stuff in the past, but now he’s an unabashed glibertarian. Nobody’s perfect. But his appearance on the Snooze Hour today (h/t JK) made me laugh.
I would expect it (racism) to manifest itself at minimum with people expressing, whether it’s in their signage or in their conversation, concerns about hot-button racial issues: affirmative action, immigration, welfare queens, and whatnot.
Uh, Matt, many of them were carrying signs of a black president in white face. Isn’t that a better measure than whether or not they were using 1980s phrases like “welfare queens”?
And this especially:
And I saw a precious little — and I even tried to tease people out, like, “Ah, what do you think about that Obama character? Is he legitimate? Is he not?”
I don’t what it is, but the idea of this guy “teasing out” teabaggers by asking what they thought of this Obama character just cracks me up.
KCinDC
No racism evident. None at all.
KCinDC
I guess my comment is in moderation because it was all links (two of them).
El Cid
Wait — so, hysterical reactions to the housing rights group ACORN as if it were a ninja squad of Obama death troops who stole several hundred billions of dollars’ worth of mortgages and caused the U.S. economic collapse — that wouldn’t fulfill his ‘expectations’ (and what an expert he is that his expectations would be a guideline) of a version of seeing race transmogrified through hot button, racially tinged issues involving, say, welfare queens?
Really? Really? Is ACORN not simply dropped into every single discussion exactly where ‘welfare queen’ used to, with even less reality than the purely propagandizing Reaganites?
gizmo
Libertarians are just Republicans who are 1.3% smarter than others of their ilk. They are wise enought to put a little distance between themselves and the certified wingnut crowd, but drill down deep and you find the same basic core.
stacie
Matt Welch will be the only person in America shocked by the content of the tea party signs when Obama takes up immigration reform.
arguingwithsignposts
I’m watching “Nerdcore” on Netflix just to scrub my brain from this incident. Just saying.
freelancer
@stacie:
Except for Andrew Sullivan
jl
@El Cid: The ACORN ‘scandal’ may blow up in the wingnuts’ faces too. We will see.
The film was a wingnut sting operation, it was not investigative reporting uncovering any existing scandal.
ACORN claims that the stingers visited ACORN offices, getting kicked out, until they walked into one staffed by dumbasses who went along with the stingers’ scenario.
We will see.
arguingwithsignposts
“nerdcore hiphop is like playing halo while getting a blowjob from hello kitty”
hahahahaha.
Incertus
@gizmo: I used to think that, but I’m now convinced that they’re the dumbest of the lot, even worse that the young-earth creationists.
Mark S.
That is some Class A Concern Trolling by Mr. Welch:
This would be more believable if any of these idiot teabaggers were shouting when Bush was passing Medicare Part D or running up the deficit. Also, fuck you Welch: this debate has been extremely corrosive, and it’s not like it’s been a robust exchange of ideas before the Democrats started calling the teabaggers racist.
KCinDC
No racism here.
KCinDC
Here either.
Singularity
There’s no way to trust the so called “sting” those douchebags pulled off. They walked into the offices with an ideological agenda and they edited the videos to suit their purposes. Even with the raw footage, I wouldn’t trust them. I am absolutely certain that they paid those ACORN workers off to besmirch the organization. I have no doubt of this.
See how easy that is? Until there is independent verification, I say the entire thing was staged.
Max Power
“Welfare Queen” was used by Reaganites as a non-racial term, a reference to welfare that that everyone just happened to know meant welfare for “those people”.
Nice to see Welch admit it was in fact racist, along with the other terms.
MikeJ
Atwater:
You start out in 1954 by saying, “Nigger, nigger, nigger.” By 1968 you can’t say “nigger”—that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states’ rights and all that stuff. You’re getting so abstract now [that] you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites.
scarshapedstar
Somehow I see John Oliver asking Adolf Hitler, “Got any opinions on the Jews?”
shecky
I’d say Welch is deliberately blinding himself because he wants to believe that the teabaggers are serious about wanting small government. I say it’s simply another example of libertarian wishful thinking. I wonder what his response when immigration reform makes the rounds? Because I think I know where teabaggers will stand on the issue.
I think Arnold Kling’s observations (continued here) are more realistic, and probably based on experiences of being burned too many times by the chummy relationship with the Right.
General Winfield Stuck
Here is video of Michael Steele with Andrea Mitchell today on MSNBC blaming Obama for the out of control racism going on with teabaggers and other wingnuts. Priceless.
El Cid
@jl: This is possible about this covert filming thing, but they were creating the myth of ACORN as the welfare queen cause of the U.S. economic collapse (along with being the new Chicago mob force of Obama) for the last year or so, not just this recent manifestation.
The question remains — how can someone saying they’re not seeing racially tinged hot-button issues not see that this is behind the fantasy spectre of ACORN as a nationwide Black Panther force of mortgage-stealing welfare queens?
burnspbesq
No way of being certain, but one wonders if the wingnuts’ and birthers’ problem with Obama isn’t specifically because he’s black, but more generally because he’s “not one of us.” Would it be the same if the Preznit was Barry Finkelstein, or Kazuo Uehara, or Manmohan Subramanian?
jl
@El Cid: You are correct, I do not disagree with that.
And it will make no difference if this scandal does turn out to be a cherry-picked bogus outlier among ACORN offices. The scandal, regardless of it merit will joing the list of horribles that are ‘out there’, true or not.
To be honest, though, I am not particularly fond of ACORN. They have known that they have been a big target for several years now. They have stuck with policies that permit this kind of penny-ante BS. To be honest, I do not know how tough it is to organize voter registration and tenant rights programs and other actions in the neighborhoods ACORN works in. I have worked for similar organizatios, but in much more higher income areas, or rural areas where the racial and class divides are not so apparent.
And we will have to wait for the real facts to come out before anyone can judge what happened with the sting, and how much ACORN was to blame for lax controls. if this was like the tenth or fifteenth office these clowns walked into, and then they released the tape, then the scandal is pretty bogus.
AnotherBruce
Oh, the biege guy. I think he was wearing the same damn shirt in the News Hour as in that picture you link to Doug.
Someone tell that guy to buy some new clothes.
Martin
No doubt, but what’s the difference? Is one kind of discrimination better than another?
I mean, look at the regional polling on Obama – it’s dramatic. Net favorability:
North: +72
Midwest: +31
West: +25
South: -40
That’s not a partisan trend, that’s a cultural one.
Midnight Marauder
@Martin:
South: -40
The South shall rise again, indeed.
CT
Well, to be fair to Welch, while we’ve all seen examples of borderline or outright racist sentiments expressed at these types of rallies, what we don’t know is how common they are-seems like most of the signs didn’t have any of that kind of stuff (not that “don’t tread on me” in these times is a real cogent argument, but at least its not racist), and most of the participants will (publicly) claim that its all about big government.
To my mind, the fact that he’s a Democrat is the main thing here for most of the baggers-just look at the hysterical attacks on Clinton, who governed in a time of peace and prosperity, not a time of great uncertainty like now, which only drives up the feeling of fear in the populace. Not to deny that for some, racism IS the main motivator, or that for others, it is a contributing factor, but any Dem trying to do what Obama is doing would draw a shit storm, and for the GOP, painting Dems as freaky unamerican god haters is just SOP.
Polish the Guillotines
Q: What do you call a black guy flying a plane?
A: A pilot, you racist.
Mnemosyne
@Singularity:
On at least one of these “shocking” videotapes, the woman in it says she made the whole thing up when she told the tapers that she murdered her ex-husband. The San Bernardino police checked and, yes, her exes are all alive and well.
So, yeah, there’s a pretty good chance that the ACORN people were fucking with them.
wasabi gasp
Totally teased out by Matt Welch.
eemom
I saw the News Hour segment and thought exactly the same thing about that incredibly stupid ass “welfare queens” remark. Oh yes, racists always carry signs proclaiming “I am a racist.” Welch really stood out as a fucking idiot amongst the other people who were talking sense about the racial issue.
But at least we have one thing to thank the Lord for today: Jimmy Carter, who spoke the truth where lying bigots dare to tread.
El Cid
@jl: According to ACORN, these clowns went to a lot of offices, some of them apparently just didn’t believe them, and at least one called the cops. One that didn’t believe them simply toyed with them, hence the source of the right wing (up to FOXNOOZ /BECK) claim that an ACORN worker had murdered her prior husbands, who are all still alive.
As to whether or not it’s difficult to organize for housing rights in poor and primarily people of color communities, often riven by race and class divisions? I haven’t done it, but I’m going to assume ‘pretty tough’, given that I hadn’t really heard of too many other organizations systematically attempting this nation-wide outside of ACORN.
I’m not saying that I have knowledge that this is a saintly organization, just that I’ve known about them and occasionally worked alongside them for years, and I couldn’t have told you (without Google checking) if anyone else tried to use community organizing power to help the housing access and rights of poor and working class Americans.
Before throwing the baby out with the bathwater, a few examples of how they do more than help Barney Frank use the CRA to steal houses and assassinate white voters (which was pretty much the story most of last year), both cases from the Bay area, California, just because:
—————————————
Last night, the Richmond [CA] City Council voted unanimously to pass Just Cause eviction legislation for foreclosed properties — making it the second city in California to pass an ordinance involving tenant evictions in bank-owned properties. While several cities, like Oakland, have Just Cause ordinances, Los Angeles and now Richmond are the only two cities in the state with specific legislation designed to protect tenants in foreclosed properties.
Several Richmond groups — including Contra Costa Faith Works and Richmond ACORN — have been lobbying for this measure for three years and only recently in March got the attention of Councilman Jeff Ritterman who brought the legislation to the table.
— East Bay Express, June 2009
In urban areas like Oakland, predatory lending is an increasing problem, and for the last two and a half years ACORN (the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) and several other grassroots groups have been fighting to protect people from loan scams.
Many of Oakland’s neighborhoods are particularly attractive to lenders who tend to prey on what ACORN organizer Brian Kettenring calls the “house-rich and cash-poor” — generally, senior citizens in poor or minority areas. They may not have much money on hand, but they’ve spent decades building up equity in their homes. “Predatory lending is about the global finance system ripping off your grandmother in East Oakland; it’s a wealth transfer of equity from low-income and working-class homeowners to large predatory lenders,” says Kettenring.
Exacerbated by redlining, or the exodus of mainstream banks from urban and low-income areas, subprime lending has become a lucrative and rapidly growing sector of the banking industry. Nationally, the number of subprime home purchase and refinance loans has grown more than 1,000 percent in the last ten years, and many of these loans are made to people who would actually qualify for a better loan elsewhere.
Both subprime and predatory lending have a strong racial component; although the overall majority of subprime loans are made to white borrowers, it’s becoming the dominant form of lending in many minority neighborhoods.
An ACORN study conducted in 1999 shows that in Oakland, subprime loans accounted for 36 percent of all refinance loans made to African-American homeowners and 17 percent of those made to Latino homeowners, but only 9.5 percent of those made to white homeowners. The disparity was even more apparent when the researchers controlled for income levels; 53 percent of all loans went to low-income African Americans and 44 percent to Latinos, but only 16 percent of loans to low-income whites.
— East Bay Express, October 2001
************************************
The Hannitoids and Beckists don’t oppose groups like ACORN because of what they do wrong — they oppose them because their goal is to help poor and especially traditionally discriminated-against groups even when this clashes with the interests of financiers and profiteers.
Let’s say that people agree that ACORN is imperfect. Who else, then? Who else will be working out there in communities to challenge predatory lending practices in many poor and minority communities, or trying to keep tenants in their homes? Anyone? No one? Bueller?
jl
You have to be an idiot, or at least seriously bigoted yourself, not to see that among the rank and file teabaggers, much of this is about race, either alone or in combination with other horrors, like ‘big government’ or ‘aliens’ or ‘high taxes’, of some kind or another. Of course, hard to tell, since some of this other stuff has been one of the dog-whistle tunes for so long, it is difficult to tell what is or is not a racial issue.
I would not walk up to a random teabagger and assume that they were bigoted. I have some teabaggers in my own family who show no sign of racism, in word or deed, in fact, just the opposite. One of the most extreme teabaggers in my family, a small businessperson, has been more broad minded and fair in employment and business dealings with a variety of groups than most people I know. I have never ever heard this person talk racial or ethnic smack about any group ever. But there are just too many racially coded signs and words and outright statements of racism in the demonstrations for it not be the major consideration for many of them. So, in any demonstration, I would have to assume that there are a number of bigots, though I wouldn’t know which ones unless somebody had a sign that gave it away.
But I do not think that racism is a motivating factor among the depraved and ruthless overlordsthese of these poor dupes. The GOP slime machine, Limbaugh, Beck, etc., are constantly throwing out chum from different baskets to see what kind of sharks are attracted and how frenzied they are. Liberal, fascist, communist, social engineer, French, abortion, family values, race, etc, etc., these are all just chum organized into baskets and ready to throw.
That is the reality behind the current hateful nonsense. I think it is a mistake to believe that racism will remain the point of attack. It depends upon the tactical and strategic decisions of their masters, who are too ruthless and cynical and pragmatic to be distracted from the ultimate goals, which are amassing wealth and political power.
I think that is important to remember, since the ringleaders are masters of bad faith misdirection. As soon as another angle seems more advantageous, or a target of opportunity arises, they will move on and drop the race card, or at least move it to the bottom of the deck, ready to deal it out the next time it seems especially useful.
One fine point of the art of vile social engineering that just occured to me is that the current racial bigotry is carefully mixed, or alternated, with victimology:
The black brutes are beating our kids!
The fasci-commie overloards are racist against us!
The we are just reacting to smears of racism aimed at us!
I just put Obama in whiteface, and he is half-white, how is that racist?
We are victims!
ACORN is commin’ fer our wimmin!
The leaders must listen to lots of good hip-hop, they use their ideological pallette to produce masterful mash-ups are lizard brain samples, mixed to perfection. You have to appreciate the skill of their sonics, even if you hate their song.
John Cole
Fuck Matt Welch, and fuck Ken Layne for not having the balls to call his buddy on his bullshit. Wonkette mocks everyone who spews the same bullshit that Reason does, but they ignore Reason.
Cowards.
John Cole
Not to mention, Matt Welch and the Fonzi of Freedom Nick Gillespie are paid handsomely (.pdf) by the wingnut welfare circuit to spew their bullshit.
I wish I could get a refund on the Welch book about McCain.
General Winfield Stuck
Kitty litter liner?
jl
@El Cid: Thanks for the info in the ACORN sting.
I do not doubt they do good work, and I have no desire to throw them out of anything.
I do not think they were dumped for political reasons when the Census decided not to use them. Anyone who has had serious dealings with the Census knows that those dudes are super tight ass about any kind of scandal or irregularity. Unless things have changed recently, go download their preliminary job application form. Dude, its almost like a security clearance application. Same if you want to access to their confidential data to do statistical analysis -they are super ultra tight ass, which is a good thing.
Other commenters are correct, ACORN has been a target for purposes of bad faith racial hate mongering. Maybe it is impossible to withstand that kind of unfair and hostile scrutiny and do effective work in their target neighborhoods.
If this sting is BS, and I would give pretty good odds at this point that it is BS, I do not like the idea of ostracizing them. But not sure what the best solution is in the middle of racial hate compaign in the middle of a recession.
MikeJ
OT, but related to small govt loons, atrios links to a wsj story. Teabaggers complaining about service on Metro.
arguingwithsignposts
For nothing but there hasn’t been any music lately: Clare Burson – Will You Love Me in the Morning.
kth
Ken Layne was actually the guy who coined the “we will fact-check your ass!” rallying cry; of course he repented of his pro-war tub-thumping even before the 2004 election.
As for Welch, surely this (from the interview):
will serve as his epitaph, unless he says or writes something even dumber. Which is entirely possible, given that he is relatively young and a libertarian.
jl
@General Winfield Stuck: I had a cat once that loved to chase wadded up balls of paper, and then tear them to shreds. Maybe it thought they were mice or something. The farther and harder you threw the paper wad, the faster the cat chased and more frenzied it tore.
Try it out with some Welch screed and see whether it pleases Tunch, whom I have gathered it is wise to please on a regular basis.
John Cole
@kth: I say again- Matt Welch has completely and totally sold out. I fucking live for his discussions of the problems with media- printed in his little wingnut welfare journal called Reason.
Tell me about that successful free market enterprise you were involved with, Matt, called the LA Weekly. Oh, yeah. The free market bitch slapped you and you ran to wingnut welfare, where you could safely tell us all about the free market while cashing checks signed by Scaife and Koch.
God damned joke.
General Winfield Stuck
I understand where standard GOP wingnuts are coming, most of time. But the stuff Reason and the rest of today’s so called Libertarian jabber about is like reading ancient Sanscript to me. Just can’t get my head around wtf they are talking. And why do you need an ideology and magazine dedicated to an ideology where the over riding proposition is the country should be run without rules, for the most part. An ideology about nothing.
El Cid
@John Cole: Libertarian wingnut welfare is a necessary phase, due to the Red threat of big gubmit unfair ideology advantage, during our long and difficult transition to True Libertarianism. The major theoretical debate is whether or not we nimrades can achieve Libertarianism in one country, or whether it must be a worldwide reLOVEution.
John Cole
I wish I could sleep. Instead I am sitting here stewing.
Try this:
General Winfield Stuck
was like that last night. Then I thought of the possibility of a President Palin and the bullet we dodged last year, and slept like a baby.
General Winfield Stuck
Speaking of sleep, it’s that time for moi; Later Alligators.
jl
I used to drawn to libertarian thought. I was never attracted to its world view. But economically, I thought, for a time, back in the day, when markets hummed out prosperity and the Great Moderation based on Unregulated Free Market Thought was in full swing, I thought, well, like them or not, maybe they are right about the best way to organize society.
But you can get predictions wrong only so often before you just have to write them off as basically, not understanding much of anything.
With Bush II, most libertarians became glibertarians, and were not only almost always wrong about how things would turn out, but also proud, but contemptable, hypocrites.
When I read Stiglitz, Krugman, Galbraith, Roubini, DeLong etc etc. I look at their arguments, and worry about how they interpreted the evidence, and go back and check my old econ textbooks, look up their numbers, and take their diagnoses and predictions to be difficult empirical issues to be wrestled with.
But when a glibertarian goes apeshit and says that these guys are wrong, that is about the best indicator there is that they are actually right. Case closed. I’m ready to place my bets.
Jason Bylinowski
I’m not sure why Carter said what he did, but I wish he had not. It’s not that I broadly disagree (though I do disagree on some of the particulars of his argument) but specifically because it does nothing but give more damage control work for Obama. Obama CANNOT agree with Carter here, there’s just no traction there for him. Robert Gibbs was backing away from Carter earlier today, if I recall.
The whole thing is all about perception, and the perception on race is really foggy, especially here in the south. Query: How much good does it do to point out that someone is racist if they do not and will not perceive it in themselves? Answer: it does no good at all. I see, work, play, and talk with people just like Joe Wilson everyday here in SC: every well-to-do white man in SC can look you in the face and say with a clear conscience “I am not a racist,” because everyone here is pretty good at keeping the whole thing under wraps. To me, the real problem is the age-old problem of the horse led to water: you can send the black guys to the white guys restaurant, but you can’t make them sit down to the same table. The cultural divide here is a gaping maw. I know this, because I live in a working class black neighborhood and when I tell folks where I live, I get all manner of tippytoed responses about it. What to do about this problem? There is truly nothing in my mind that can be done about it except wait, wait for the last remnants of the old generations to die out, and then cross our fingers that we don’t find some other subgroup to hate.
It’d be nice if this whole thing led to another one of Obama’s teachable moments, but let’s be real: I’m afraid the only real teachable moment that will bring the GOP to the table in good faith would be for one of their own to attempt violence against the POTUS. As long as they manage to restrain their most heinous folks, they are going to keep jabbing at the president: that’s all they’ve got. Substantive arguments against the president just don’t stick due to the fact that, regardless of his shortcomings, Obama is a very effective voice of reason for our side of the aisle. The absolutist branch of the GOP (a mighty branch indeed) just aren’t interested in debate because they think they’ve got it all figured out, which in my view is the perennial problem with conservatism in general.
Polish the Guillotines
@jl:
From what I gather, ACORN became a wingnut target largely because of Karl Rove’s GOP electoral strategy. Josh Marshall was all over how Rove was pushing bogus prosecutions of ACORN for “voter fraud” as a means of stifling their voter registration efforts. This also figured into the US Attorney firing scandal. Rove was pressuring the USAs to go after ACORN, and when guys like David Iglasias called bullshit, they got canned.
Calouste
@jl:
It’s rather unAmerican to be hating the French. If it were not for the French involvement in the Revolutionary War, George Washington’s claim to fame would have been to be the last man to be hanged, drawn and quartered for treason to the English Crown rather than to be the first President of the United States.
And they sold the US almost a quarter of the country in a sweetheart deal for less than 3 cents per acre.
Joel
Whenever I see Michael Steele, I think;
Shock G has done really well for himself since his Digital Underground Days.
Bill E Pilgrim
@Calouste: Ah yes, that’s the French. Loyal to a fault, but not so good with money.
I’m not kidding either, really. They’re the most fiercely loyal friends you could have, which partly explains the somewhat formal distant demeanor you feel from people you interact with on a more casual level, or complete strangers. If it’s going to actually mean something once you give friendship, you can’t give it away to everyone.
That may sound flip but it’s a real difference in my experience. We in the US tend to throw around friendliness promiscuously, so to speak. More than one French immigrant or long term visitor to the US has told me that they were really thrown by this, people were so friendly and full of “we must have lunch” and so on, they were then surprised and disappointed to discover that much of the time people didn’t really mean it, at least in terms they were used to. The lunches somehow never happened, the people remained friendly but distant, and so on.
Re: money there’s this long, entrenched notion that it’s slightly dirty, dishonorable, so that Mitterrand for example was famous for patting his pockets after lunch and saying “Oh, I seem to have forgotten my wallet” and someone else would always pick up the tab. And this was widely admired, is the point, whereas to us it would be “what a deadbeat!”.
These are generalizations of course and not always true, plus none of this should be seen in terms of right or wrong, better or worse, mind you, just different codes of behavior, but they run deep and are fascinating.
Well, to me anyway. In any case, sticking with you when your enemies are at the gates, then making a bad business deal that loses them millions and billions– yep, sounds French to me. Those are the GOOD traits, those, of course they have their faults (don’t get me started).
Ah so many little fascinating differences, so little time.
Bill E Pilgrim
@Jason Bylinowski:
I disagree. It’s entirely right that Carter call it what it is, racism, and also right that Barack Obama avoid calling it that and getting distracted into playing the victim.
No one has more authority to call it racism than Carter, a Nobel Peace Prize recipient from the South. And it really would be a mistake for Obama to do so himself, since the right would just scream victim over and over.
It’s similar to everything else happening now, I think it’s absolutely right that progressives yell loudly for at least a public option, whether Obama is doing so himself or not, this is what moves the debate. He had a meeting with progressive members of Congress last week “to probe what their limits were” as the story went, so that’s just how it should work.
Everyone has different roles, and calling it racism when it is, is a task someone needs to do. Anyone doubting the racism of all this should look at these by the way:
http://littlegreenfootballs.com/article/34686_No_Racism_at_the_Tea_Party@Jason Bylinowski:
someguy
The difference between a libertarian and a conservative is that the libertarian thinks that lynch mobs should be a wholly private enterprise led by the county sheriff on his off-duty time and wearing Klan robes that he purchased himself, and not led by the county sheriff on duty time wearing Klan robes that he fashioned out of sheets requisitioned from the county jail.
Prospero
Welfare thug is the new welfare queen, I guess…
Ruckus
@someguy:
I likey. But for some strange reason it reminds me of the following:
Socialism — If you have 2 cows, you give one to your neighbor.
Communism — If you have 2 cows, you give them to the government; and the government gives you some milk.
Fascism — If you have 2 cows, you keep the cows but give the milk to the government, who then sells you the milk at a high price.
Nazism — If you have 2 cows, the government shoots you and keeps the cows.
New Dealism — (FDR Version) If you have 2 cows, you shoot one, milk the other one; then pour the milk down the drain.
Capitalism — (Reaganomics) If you have 2 cows, you sell one and buy a bull; you then sell all the excess milk to the government who in turn ships it to fascist and communist governments.
Anarchism — If you have 2 cows, your neighbor on your left takes one cow, and the one on the right takes the other; while your backyard neighbor takes the milk, the bucket and the stool.
Utopianism — If you have 2 cows, Mother Nature zaps the cows, turning their udders into eternal milk-shake dispensers.
Pure Socialism — You have two cows. The government takes them and puts them in a barn with everyone else’s cows. You have to take care of all the cows.The government gives you as much milk as you need.
Bureaucratic Socialism — You have two cows. The government takes them and puts them in a barn with everyone else’s cows. They are cared for by ex-chicken farmers. You have to take care of the chickens the government took from the chicken farmers. The government gives you as much milk and eggs as the regulations say you should need.
Pure Communism — You have two cows. Your neighbors help you take care of them, and you all share the milk.
Russian Communism — You have two cows. You have to take care of them, but the government takes all the milk.
Cambodian Communism — You have two cows. The government takes both and shoots you.
Dictatorship — You have two cows. The government takes both and drafts you.
Pure Democracy — You have two cows. Your neighbors decide who gets the milk.
Representative Democracy — You have two cows. Your neighbors pick someone to tell you who gets the milk.
Bureaucracy — You have two cows. At first the government regulates what you can feed them and when you can milk them. Then it pays you not to milk them. Then it takes both, shoots one, milks the other and pours the milk down the drain. Then it requires you to fill out forms accounting for the missing cows.
Pure Anarchy — You have two cows. Either you sell the milk at a fair price or your neighbors try to take the cows and kill you.
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
The local car parts guy has a large clear glass jar of tea bags on the customer counter, with the word BLACK centered, bold and the largest word on each bag. His A village in Kenya is missing its idiot sign hangs proudly on the soda machine. Of course this is not racist, right? He is obviously discussing serious issues, right?
Fucking racists, thats all it is. I am about ready to tell the asshole off and quit buying parts there. It would lose me some good deals but it ain’t worth the blood pressure going in there to set parts (which he has been screwing the orders up on recently) and see that shit decorating the place.
I am sitting here at my desk in the garage with a very happy little girl kitty who is no longer in pain. Of course, when we adopted her in March (along with two other pals of hers), we took her in to the vet she had been seeing (for continuity) but it turns out that they didn’t keep records on the prior owners many rescue cats (and she was dead, suicide, so asking her was out). We told the vet that she had severe diarrhea and we wanted her checked out (in general for her health too). He checked her out (or so we were led to believe) and sent us home with a weeks worth of EN food. When that didn’t work he recommended several diet changes, treated her for parasites and by July I had enough and brought her back in for an exam.
When my wife picked the cat up she was told to add FortiFlora to the cats food for a week (they gave us a weeks supply that turned out to be expired from last year). I ordered a months supply from an online pet supplier and kept her on it for a month. No good so the beginning of this month I notice she quit eating kibble and her breath smelled like shit. I took her into the vet and he told me that when he saw her in July that he noted that she had severe plaque/tartar. I told him that my wife nor I had been told about it, nor was it noted on the receipts that we were given. He blew it off like it was no big deal (well we will get her taken care of now!) and then made us wait over the weekend with a sick cat so she could get her teeth taken care of.
He did show me the teeth and god were they encrusted. How he missed this in March is bad enough, why he failed to inform us in July is even more inexcusable. All three cats were in rough shape and had received minimum care in the past, that is why we paid to have them examined. When I brought Bobbi (teh kitteh) in for her cleaning I pointed out that it was very unprofessional for a vets office to allow a cat to needlessly suffer for at least two months and that I had brought the cat to them because I knew it needed help. The girl at the desk (who later wrote on the paid bill “PAYED IN FULL”) said they were sorry and were glad we were able to get it finally taken care of.
Stupid people, gaah!
They found two cavaties, one abcessed, under the crud. Luckily, when I figured out that she had a mouth infection I started her on doxycycline (5 mg a day). She was already doing better when we took her into the vet for the cleaning and now, two days later, she is a changed cat. Runs are gone and she is purring constantly. For a former feral she is a real sweet cat.
Just don’t surprise her. ;)
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
My kingdom for an edit!
linda
if you wonder how it is that two of the stupidest assholes in the senate could be elected repeatedly, just know that 75% of oklahoma high school students cannot name the first president of the united states:
http://trueslant.com/jeffhoard/2009/09/17/understatement-oklahoma-students-fail/
Xenos
The way the corporate right wing is playing here, if they should ‘win’ I would not be surprised to see some truly left wing radical politics develop in the next generation. Kids with no jobs, no student aid or universities to go to, and no prospects. A health care system reminiscent of an early Larry Niven novel. And no responsive politics, where corporations have finished capturing both political parties.
What will these kids form the bottom 80% of society ten years from now have to lose? We could get a whole generation of bomb-throwing anarchists out of this.
WereBear
I, too, would take the Teabaggers more seriously if they ever, EVER, mentioned Bush as the President who ran the deficit up in the first place, or bring up Clinton as the President with an actual surplus. But they NEVER do, NEVER.
So it’s bullshit.
And the whining that it’s not racial? Bullshit too. Good for Carter calling it out; he’s white, he’s Southern, and he ran against Lester Maddox.
I believe he knows it when he sees it.
Keith G
I am reading these comments while listening to an appreciation of Mary Traverse.
I will miss her very much.
Fulcanelli
RIP Mary Travers, and Henry Gibson too.
Bill E Pilgrim
Tea Baggers furious at lack of public plan ….. for transporting them via public transportation to protest: (via Atrios)
http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2009/09/16/tea-party-protesters-protest-dc-metro-service/
“Just because we hate government and don’t want to pay taxes, that doesn’t mean we don’t want the government to cater to our demands public services!” said Tea Bagger spokespeople.
Okay, no they didn’t, but they might as well have.
Bill E Pilgrim
“demands [ FOR ] public services”
Does the government provide typing lessons?
A Mom Anon
@WereBear:
I live in a town where there’s a KKK storefront business with a sign on the door that says “White History Year”(as opposed to Black History Month,because this guy is such a grown up). Inside,visable from the sidewalk, are all kinds of charming lynching photos and other “civil war memorabilia”. The guy who owns this adorable place of business got an award from the mayor over the summer because of his work with (young white male)children at his Civil War re-inactment camp.
This is in a fairly well off part of metro Atlanta,in the ‘burbs. Smack in the middle of an Historic District. No one bats an eyelash,and heaven help you if you tried to bring it up as being wrong. But nope,no racism here,why I’d have to be a racist to even notice such things.
It’s fucking creepy. I wish I could move. Dumb and evil is NOT a good combo and I’m surrounded by it.
JenJen
LMFAO at that Matt Welch picture, Doug. Thanks for starting my morning off on such a terrific note! ;-)
Xenos
@A Mom Anon:
It is a shame you can’t move. I was looking into moving to Atlanta recently. Do you mind telling what county you are in so I can cross that off my list in case this comes up again?
SpotWeld
ACORN should be, when judged as an organization, reviewed on how it deals with the worst of it’s members.
It has fired those who have proven to be incompetent.
The right wing simply seems to wait for thier incompetents to make thier next blog post so they can have something to say during lunch.
Ash Can
@Bill E Pilgrim: LOL! The comments on that piece are suitably brutal. Well-deserved rapier snark goes well with morning coffee. :)
georgia pig
@A Mom Anon: I went to junior high and high school in the 70’s in a small town outside of Atlanta and, although there was a lot of ingrained racism and de facto segregation, I really don’t remember stuff this nasty and stupid being so widespread. Christ, Carl Sanford and Jimmy Carter were elected governor in Georgia, and they both were pretty progressive. Lester Maddox had a certain following, but he was generally kind of a joke. Junior Sample (of “Hee Haw” fame) was the only one who openly toted a sidearm in public places, and his home town of Cumming was pretty widely viewed as a shithole. A lot of this began with Nixon and built up through Reagan and thereafter with all the NASCAR/God Bless the USA/bighat country music/big box church crapola that really wasn’t all that prevalent 30 years ago. Back in the 70’s, 10th street in Atlanta was home to hippies with southern drawls, and Atlanta was generally a nice town and not the sprawling, faux southern mess it is now. From what I remember of the 70’s, people out in the country pretty much tended their gardens, went to church and minded their own business. There was a certain optimism with the growth of the “New South.” There were areas in North Georgia that had only had electricity for a couple of decades, and people still had a bit of humility and memories that government action had done a lot to lift that poverty. They were pretty conservative, but you didn’t have a lot of Rebel flag bullshit and other ostentatious displays of white victimhood. Frankly, the suburbanization/exurbanization of the new south and the marketing of a “real America” industry via cable TV and the Republican Party has made this a lot worse. The death of small towns via Walmart and offshoring of manufacturing hasn’t helped.
Jonny Scrum-half
I agree that Welch is engaging in wishful thinking about the Tea Party people. I don’t know that the Tea Parties are motivated by racism — I think that the more likely explanation is simple politics (protesting a Democrat) — but the motivation definitely isn’t opposition to “big government.” The “tell” is that these people weren’t protesting when Bush was doing the same things as Obama.
John Cole
I’m personally a big fan of Welch’s tirades against newspapers- long posts telling them how they should run their business. Usually those posts are followed by odes to the free market.
Pretty funny shit coming from a guy writing for an unprofitable magazine propped up by wingnut welfare.
Comrade Darkness
“Welfare Queen” had to disappear as a term because if someone used it now and faced the question, so, who is that again? What are they going to say? Bank of America’s CEO, AIG’s CEO? America’s farmers? They’re all republicans those welfare queens are.
And “this Obama character”? I thought the West Wing had been cancelled.
LaurenceB
Amid all the hand-wringing about whether or not people on the left are calling the 912 protesters “racists”, did it ever occur to anyone to point out the head honcho of the protesters actually called the President a racist?
Xanthippas
And what they’re actually saying is…Obama wasn’t born in America, and that he’s a racist because black kids are beating up white kids.
But we should be listening harder. Um, okay.
Mnemosyne
@Bill E Pilgrim:
Who imagined even a year ago that Little Green Footballs would become a voice of reason for the right? It would have been like saying that Rush Limbaugh had become a Democrat and was voting for Obama.
harlana pepper
Weeell, here’s Obama at Univ of Maryland, health care rally, what will he say
I thought Max Baucus looked just like the cat that swallowed the canary yesterday
harlana pepper
same speech he gave last week, basically
IndieTarheel
@someguy: Would you like your intertoobs in a bag?
Bender
No, you won’t see. You’ll excuse, ignore, and repeat ACORN’s lies like you did here (there’s only one report of them being “kicked out” in Philly, and THREE offices — so far, I should say, as the tapes are being released slowly, to allow time for ACORN to thoroughly beclown itself — where they received advice from ACORN as to how best hide their child-sex-slavery ring from the government). But you won’t see.
And no, it was not an investigation by Big Media, because Big Media has never showed any interest in investigating one of The Zero’s pet criminal enterprises. When even Jon Stewart, the left’s anchorman, is noticing, you’ve got a problem.