A reader over my pad aptly noted:

What knocks my socks off is how this guy, without a trace of irony or self-awareness, changes the subject from corporate welfare to welfare queens. “Go get a job”—I’m sure we’d all like to tell that to AIG executives, but this clown is clearly reading from the Republican playbook of 20 years ago.

Fail.

Somehow spending money to engage in an illegal war and killing thousands of Iraqis is not a problem but investing money to raise the standard of living is terrible.  These people are just selfish.  I wonder when they are going to get their heads together and learn that 2+2=4.  The man actually refuses to see that he received a tax cut.  Also if it was so easy to get a job we wouldn’t have these high rates of unemployment.  It says something when a janitors job becomes available and over 1500 people apply for it.  It is not that people don’t want to work, it’s that there are no jobs available and if you are a minority or an older worker the chances of finding work is even more difficult.

How can anyone see that and then say to themselves, “I wanna be like that guy!  Where do I sign up?”

Bush racks up insane debt for 8-years, oversees the ruin of our economy, and this idiot is NOW concerned that China will call in its loans to us?  After the Democrat gets into office? 

A year ago, Bush and his buds were spending like drunken sailors, with nothing to show for it but making fatcat Republican donors even fatter…and was this guy throwing a “tea party” back then?

Conservatism: Less like a political philosophy and more like a mental disease…

Does Tim’s brain hurt after filming these folks? I only got minute three of this video before stopping it in disgust. This is the #2 problem with the Republican party—they’re stuck on stupid, repeating the same tired crap (tax cuts, trickle down wealth) that they’ve been shoving down our throats for years. And they’re so delusional that they won’t admit that when W did those exact things it bankrupted the economy. And their #1 problem is that no one is left in their party but racist, sexist, homophobic bigots. The tool in this video immediately blames the problems of the poor on the poor themselves, not our crumbling economy and uses “welfare queen” language. He certainly looks like he’s never missed any meals so I’m guessing that compassion for those who’ve lost jobs this year is totally out of the question.

Is it wrong to hope that bloggers who post these videos get folks like this fired? If I was this tools boss, I would start looking for ways to get rid of him so no one could mistake his ignorance with what my company stands for. But oops! He probably works for daddy who taught him everything he doesn’t know.

It’s that Teabagger jolt of sadism Fuck the poor/burn Iraq.  It’s really all that’s left, now that their governing ideology has been discredited and you can’t even be racist out loud in the GOP.

While we laugh at this kind of idiocy, let’s still keep in the back of our minds that this kind of I’ve-got-mine-fuck-you ressentiment, exploited by puppeteers much higher on the socioeconomic pyramid, is what fascist movements are all about. If the economy should slide a lot deeper into the toilet, you might want to actually start worrying about such people. It can happen here.

I can’t watch it.

I know he’s going to say the stupidest shit, but he looks like a Junior Limbaugh.  Fat, white and over-privileged.

Just looking at his ugly mug makes me loathe to push the start button.

I can’t hear the video because my speakers are broken.  But doesn’t this guy realize that poor people are not good consumers?  Whatever business he’s in, it won’t do as well if fewer people can afford to buy his product or service.  Why is that so hard to understand?

People like Joe act as if the spending that Obama is doing has come out of nowhere and is a natural result of lefty liberalism ... not at all because we happen to be trying to keep the economy from going into the shitter thanks to unfettered <strike>market forces</strike> corporate greed, enabled largely (but not exclusively) by the Republicans.  And yes, it’s unsustainable.  No one, including the president, said it was. 

That entire tirade about “getting a job” had nothing to do with anything.  If you’re going to re-hash talking points, make sure they’re at least somewhat relevant.

That was painful.  “you have to pay tax credits back”  I think he is confusing that with Bush’s rebate checks of a few years ago.

I doubt this guy is over-priveledged he is dressed like a call center rep or bank teller.  My guess is that he thinks that rich cool people are republicna so he is trying to join them.

I doubt this guy is over-priveledged he is dressed like a call center rep or bank teller.

Privilege is more than just being rich.  It’s likely that this guy has never had to face the possibility of being laid off or downsized.  People who have job security often assume that others lost their jobs because they were lazy or incompetent, without considering other factors.

A year ago, Bush and his buds were spending like drunken sailors….

Sir, I sail, I drink, and I am offended.  </snark>

I doubt this guy is over-priveledged he is dressed like a call center rep or bank teller.

Well, he is wearing a nicer shirt than one would normally expect. The call center/bank teller/IT guy sartorial aesthetic trades exclusively on the plain-white shirt, no jacket.

I’m not saying he’s rich, but he probably comes from what passes for the upper middle class in the Cleveland area. He’s probably the son of a small town lawyer or small business owner. He’s not a part of the elite in any sort of major sense, but outside of his rarefired world of the Cleveland-area country club and rotary society, he probably thinks he is.

Typically these guys end up as name-dropping Hill staffers in DC.

“you have to pay tax credits back” I think he is confusing that with Bush’s rebate checks of a few years ago.

This seems to be a common belief on the right - I got into an argument a few days ago with someone who insisted that the ~$20 more in my paychecks lately wasn’t really a tax cut, and that I’d have to pay it back at tax time next year, even though I linked him to the IRS page explaining the “Making Work Pay” credit. I wonder where that idea is coming from?

I wonder where that idea is coming from?

My guess would be right-wing pundits and Fox News.

“I wonder where that idea is coming from?”

From inside their tiny, tiny brains.

Awwwww, poor boy gots a crush on Rachel Maddow.

The whole Tea Party thing was a madcap melange of whiners and bitchers of every stripe.  Everyone from rascists to radical libertarians was on parade.  I still haven’t seen any reliable figures as to how many people turned out, in toto. 

Good news, bad news.  The bad news?  25% of our fellow Americans are whackjobs.  The Good news?  75% aren’t.  I’m having a hard time, a very hard time, getting a historical perspective on all of this.  Is our ‘squirrel quotient’ higher now than at other times in our history or is this about normal?  I feels like it’s getting bigger but from the shrinking Rethug demographics it would appear that it’s getting smaller.  Whadda you think?

I think it’s a college republican thing to made no sense, but be a white dude with way to much privilege and no self-examination or thought that maybe those tax dollars don’t just go to people supporting kids, but you know, their roads, food, water, etc…

The president of the Kansas State Young Repubs just made some insane comments too…

http://kansasjackass.blogspot.com/2009/04/ksu-college-republican-president.html

He’s mad because people think that diversity money shouldn’t have been used to bring a racist, anti-choice, sexist, homophobic person on campus to speak, even if she is black herself (Star Parker).  And goes waaay off the deep end…

I wonder where that idea is coming from?

A:  He knows someone or has heard of cases where the IRS withheld the stimulus check amount last year and used it to pay back back taxes, child support, or other governmental obligation.

B:  The original 1st-time homeowner credit was originally designed to be paid back by the taxpayer @500$/year in 15 years to repay the original credit of 7,500$ they’d get in their 2008 tax refund.

If we protest in the streets and they don’t, it’s because we’re lazy unemployed hippies, and they have real jobs.

If they protest in the streets and we don’t, it’s because they have taken valuable time from their real jobs, and any of us who are paying enough attention to mock them are lazy unemployed hippies.

“Get a job” has become nothing more than an epithet to them, like “socialist,” they’ve drained it of all meaning. It’s gotten to the point where I find it really funny.

Don’t think you won’t hear the same kind of shit from plenty of honest-to-god working-class people in the Cleveland area, who really do have to worry about being laid off, or who even HAVE been laid off. False consciousness is a remarkable thing.

You mean all that it takes to get a job is to apply?

WOW!!!  Such insight!  It isn’t that these millions of unemployed people are unemployed because every company in America is downsizing and there aren’t any jobs out there, it’s because those lazy bums aren’t applying for jobs.  If only those unemployed schmucks would just apply for jobs, they would all have jobs, and we would all live happily ever after in one gigantic Libertardian utopia!!!

As much as this douche probably likes to preach the mantra “money doen’t grow on trees” he needs to get it through his thick skull that neither do jobs.

Unfortunately, a significant proportion of my “friends” on Facebook are conservatives of this stripe, or at least they’re parroting the talking points without any self-awareness at all.  When I mentioned I did not understand that purpose of the Tea Party protests one person responded on my wall that it was a protest of out-of-control spending from Bush and Obama. So I asked why there were no protests under Bush if it’s simply about spending and not about a Democratic and black president…I was greeted with sighs (apparently, I’m just a witless liberal and too thick to get it) and then total silence. 

In response to my questions about the Tea Party, this same friend posted a quote from Thomas Jefferson about governments big enough to provide for everyone’s wants being big enough to take them away. I commented that it was a good thing there is no government on earth that a) actually does provide all our wants, or b) was actually capable of doing so.  My comment was deleted from her page.  Apparently, you are not allowed to point out reality when ideology is at stake.

When I mentioned I did not understand that purpose of the Tea Party protests one person responded on my wall that it was a protest of out-of-control spending from Bush and Obama. So I asked why there were no protests under Bush if it’s simply about spending and not about a Democratic and black president…

The answer is that Bush is a Republican (and also white).  Because of that, you don’t actually have to protest him directly, you just have to mention his name when protesting the Democratic president.

My comment was deleted from her page.  Apparently, you are not allowed to point out reality when ideology is at stake.

Well, that’s because reality has a liberal bias.

someone who insisted that the ~$20 more in my paychecks lately wasn’t really a tax cut, and that I’d have to pay it back at tax time next year ... I wonder where that idea is coming from?

In some cases, the “Making Work Pay” credit will result in underwitholding, according to this Kathleen Pender article in the SF Chronicle:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/04/21/BUK8175ON1.DTL

The headline “Bigger paycheck now could cost you next year” is pretty scary.

Regarding the pres of the Young Republicans (puts the moronic in oxymoronic): The most infuriating part for me was his Republican amnesia. W. was able to fund his tax cut for the rich by borrowing the dollars we sent China as the US manufacturing sector all but disappeared. Now, somehow Obama’s responsible for W.‘s shell game. And all evil was created during the last two years of W.‘s reign, by the Democratic Congress, and not during W’s first six years, when he had a lapdog Congress.

I have friends that own a few tax preparation businesses in Las Cruces, NM and El Paso, TX. They work extremely hard to make sure everyone understands their tax situation and making sure their fees are affordable and fair. They work to make sure undocumented workers get and EIN to help them establish residency and the non English speaking workers and lower income workers are not being taken advantage of by their employers. I worked for them a couple years ago and was impressed with their patience since EVERY week dozens of their clients would come back in complaining that some friend of a friend of a relative told them their taxes were done wrong. Every time they would patiently explain the client’s return until they understood. But this year my friend lost her cool when yet another teabagger claimed that the tax break they were receiving wasn’t a tax break because they falsely believed they would have to pay it back next year. The client that broke her was a white Texas man with a mortgage and two kids making about 65k a year telling her that “that black man” was stealing money from his kids to pay for all the “blacks” and “single mothers” that don’t want to work. She actually told him to leave and never come back.
I’ve been amazed by Faux News and the conservatives in general ability to convince middle and lower middle class people of these types of myths.  I used to feel sympathy because I felt they were being exploited by the entitled white upper class. But after this teabag bullshit my sympathy is gone.

Interesting how the guy interviewed correctly notes how deep in hock we are to China vis-a-vis their investment of US Treasury Bills without noting that Bush virtually begged for them to buy up in order to fund the Iraq War.

” Awwwww, poor boy gots a crush on Rachel Maddow.”

Hey, who doesn’t.

Dan:
Go find a fucking mechanic, dumbass.

hehehe that made me laugh.

Jesus, what a fucking retarded! There’s the “get a job” and the welfare queen shtick, and apparently his fragile mind managed to repress all information about the benefactors of the bailouts, so as to be shielded from the horrible truth that the people who are ripping off the taxpayer aren’t exactly those unemployed lazy minorities.

But the really sad part is, even if you bend over backwards to try to salvage the only part of this moron’s discourse that may might make some sense - the tax cut is not really a tax cut because it creates debt that will eventually have to be paid down the road - then you come to the startling conclusion that Bush never cut taxes! Nor poppy Bush or Reagan for that matter. They have all decreased taxes at the cost of increasing the national debt. Which, according to the imbecile, doesn’t count has a tax cut.

So he is a perfect fit for the teabagging parties - one of those people who makes more sense while having two balls in their mouths. I apologize for the image.

I’ve known Joe since his college days (he was a student employee of mine) and I can tell you that he has held these convictions since his teenage years growing up in the Cleveland area.  He sincerely believes that we are headed for some sort of doomsday scenario with the Democratic party in charge.  If you want to really see him get excited talk to him about Bill Clinton, those were the days.  I can also tell you that he is also one of the most naturally funny people you will ever meet in spite of his paranoid rantings.

Well, Requiem, I’ll take that view under advisement, but what I see in this video is an ugly bully barely controlling his rage. The consistent, menacing use of Tim’s name, “See what I mean, TIM? What are you doing here, TIM?,” the bizarre, sneering references to MSNBC & Rachel Maddow, the entire encounter screams that this guy has issues. If I met him, I’d cross the street to avoid him—he strikes me as a repulsive specimen of humanity.