“The purpose of power is power.  The purpose of torture is torture.”
“Picture a boot grinding into an upturned face…forever.”

— George Orwell

Hateful, vicious people are hateful and vicious.  Who knew?

Of course it has. It’s to be expected after 20 yrs of hate-radio and nearly 14 yrs of having an entire television network devoted solely to hate speech while disguising itself as a news channel. As Dave Neiwert has repeatedly demonstrated, the main purpose of these media outlets is to mainstream the monstrous, and in that respect they’ve been wildly successful.

During the Ford administration, during the inevitable recession that occured after back-to-back Republican administrations, I collected Unemployment benefits for a year.

In other words, Ford didn’t veto unemployment extension. A Republican president didn’t veto unemployment extension—why? For the same reasons this Congress should assure them: they’re stimulous at a time when jobs are scarce, they ease the pain of the families of the unemployed and so on and so forth.

Also: Ford didn’t want the blame that would be engendered for his administration.

Now we have Republicans gleeful at the idea that suffering should be inflicted because the blame will be reflected at the voting box come November, and Blue Dogs who don’t give a shit if they’re in the majority or the minority because they’re being paid off by their corporate backers in either case.

Hell, corporate Democrats LOVE being in the minority, it gives ‘em an excuse for not being able to accomplish anything for their constituency.

Have the regular levels of viciousness and sadism of the right wing movement gone up?

Damn, with the bar so high, it’s difficult to tell.

One of the reasons I used a pseudonym when working to defund the hosts at K S F O is that I knew just how vicious they are.

They hosts had felt no consequences for their vicious assaults. Part of the reason is that they are protected by defamation laws that are structured to protect the media and these people are seen as the media by the law (and their lawyers).

When they finally did feel the consequences of their vicious attacks on others they of course lashed out and cried victim. 

If we want to reign in these people we need them to see that their attacks can have financial consequences. Since my advertiser alert at K S F O the station has lost advertisers and millions of dollars in revenue. Two hosts have been fired as well as sales staff. The third host now apologized when he says something and is caught.

Those are consequences.

One thing about this method that needs to be made clear for OUR side is that it is not an attack on the advertisers. It is not a boycott. It is also not about the hosts “free speech” the advertisers and management can continue to support the foul things that they say. We are simply asking them to with draw their financial support.  These media personalities are businesses and they should respond to a business proposition. “If you lose money you don’t get your contract renewed.” (and if they keep losing money you will be replaced.)

The rancor that has always been simmering has simply been brought to the boil by a Democratic president.

I’d say it was all about race, but it happened to Clinton and Carter too.  And Johnson, after he signed the Civil Rights Act, so maybe it’s about race after all.

Their logic is so transparently bogus. If people are collecting unemployment because they’re lazy, why weren’t they lazy three years ago? Or during the entire freakin’ Clinton administration?

And Johnson, after he signed the Civil Rights Act, so maybe it’s about race after all.

It is.  Read Nixonland to see how Republicans deliberately raised and fed that monster to gain power for themselves.

If I was to develop a program to defund Breithbart I would look for comments of his that were racist (toward blacks and Hispanics) bigoted comments toward Jews (because bigoted comments toward Muslims are accepted) and violent comments toward anyone (because when he brings out the enviable “I have my free speech!” line we bring out the one area that even free speech advocates agree on the classic you can’t falsely yell fire in a crowded theater”. 

I also would look to how he gets his revenue. Then look to stop the revenue stream. With talk radio (and especially K S F O’s new owner Citadel, they were dependent on advertiser revenue, especially local advertising. This made them vulnerable in a way that groups that have diverse revenue streams don’t have. That is why I chose that method. Other methods of costing them financially weren’t as powerful.

But Breithbart, like the K S F O hosts, is vicious and I’ve already paid a price for my work. I couldn’t take this on with out backing, and nobody is willing to get into a fight with Briethbart who has friends in low places.

Conservatives have always hated every country with a nonwhite leadership.

This is totally nothing new with conservatism.  This sadism goes back to the Stone Age which these same conservatives believe only happened 6,000 years ago.

Well, you know what? If I got laid off, I’d exhaust unemployment benefits before working for McDonalds or a cashier at Wal-Mart. That would be my absolute last resort.

Not so much because it’s “beneath me”, but because I’d be fucking horrible at it. Most of these menial jobs are now customer service, and a lot of people are really bad at customer service!

But Breithbart, like the K S F O hosts, is vicious and I’ve already paid a price for my work. I couldn’t take this on with out backing, and nobody is willing to get into a fight with Briethbart who has friends in low places.

“We are Anonymous…”

I won’t deny the influence of hate talk which has allowed cruelty and coarseness to be the public face of conservatism.  (But even Reagan was cruel and spiteful - just ask his kids.  He was just a better actor than today’s Beck or Palin.)  Add in the normalization of things like torture and a gruesome war, and everyone is just primed for a Two Minutes’ Hate. 

But I think the private ill will is based on fear.  We’ve been afraid in this country of the Other since about 1776, but this was really brought into sharp relief after, you guessed it, 9/11.  Now all of a sudden several generations of Americans found out that everyone just doesn’t love them as much as they thought, and in fact, wants them dead.  Scary stuff. 

The other thing is that profound economic insecurity is truly terrifying for many people.  (As well it should be, since it would appear nobody in power gives a rip about it.)  This leads people to lash out:  at immigrants, the unemployed, whoever is perceived to be the weakest and the fount of trouble.  To be honest, I’m surprised we haven’t heard more hating on “the blacks” as the source of all our problems, random surveys to the contrary.  But I bet at dining tables across the country, that’s the theme. 

Finally, the world really IS changing, probably forever:  climate change, economic change, globalization, etc.  This is totally frightening to a lot of people, and I think explains why some people “miss Bush.”  They don’t miss Bush.  They miss being fat and happy and able to buy whatever crap they wanted on credit.  And it pisses them off, so they start ranting and join a tea party somewhere so they can blame “teh Mexicans” or whoever for the fact that they have literally been asleep at the wheel when they weren’t cheering on the overlords who are now putting the thumbscrews to them.

Spocko, I don’t disagree with the idea of contacting advertisers, but the way you say “reign them in” makes me uncomfortable and sounds too close to Bill Donohue-style protection-racket pressure. I don’t know who these KSFO people are, so I won’t comment directly on that, but I think in Breitbart’s case that ridicule of him for being ridiculous and untruthful is both ethically more sound and more likely to be effective.

Using your monetary leverage always has an edge of threat. The tone of the approach is so important because you risk doing the same thing to others that you’re trying to defend against.

G2G—

I don’t think anybody misses Bush. Ask a wingnut about Bush, and the response is “He was REALLY a liberal” 99% of the time. Reagan would be a better example I guess.

Good luck in getting that McDonald’s or Wal-Mart job: hundreds will be in line for them, as fewer and fewer jobs are created for the unskilled.

Even factories now require fewer unskilled workers:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/02/business/economy/02manufacturing.html?ref=business

Harkening back to the Ford recession and unemployment extension: nope, don’t remember a general cry against us “lazy” unemployed.

Not from Ford or the other Republican politicians.

Reagan later would go to town on his imaginary “Welfare Queens” but when it was us white people unemployed Ford was there to ease our pain.

Judybrowni—

That’s a good point about factory jobs. And despite the rhetoric coming from politicians, most of the job loss isn’t offshoring. Sure, some of it is, but a lot of it is automation. Politicians just blame offshoring because it’s an easy excuse, much easier than explaining that its really automation and there’s not much to be done about it.

So the trope that we don’t make anything anymore isn’t true, it’s more that we don’t need very many people to make stuff anymore.

The major offshoring occurred during Clinton (NAFTA) and Bush, actually giving tax credits to corporations who moved the jobs abroad.

Offshoring still occurs (I’ve heard it recently from those who used to be in IT or phone-type customer service), but cutbacks in public education also mean that we have generations of unschooled that the factories can’t even employ.

A classic case in the last couple years was a car assembly factory that left the South for Canada because of the major illiteracy they were encountering down south in job candidates.

I have been coming to the view that sadism isn’t just a feature of conservatism but has become it’s raison d’etre.  So many examples have come to mind that I doubt I could list them all here.  Others have pointed out hippie punching.  Consadists will do anything they can to hurt the planet, even if it hurts them and theirs, and its simply because they hate hippies (and since they conflate everything, every conservationist, no matter political stripes, is a hippie).  Stupid things like littering or wasting gas by revving an already wasteful engine.  Wasting gas is a waste of THEIR OWN money but they’ll do it anyway just to piss off a liberal. 

I think their sadistic behavior towards the poor is a twofer.  There’s the satisfaction of knowing a poor person is suffering and the knowledge that the ranks of the poor are swelling at a rapid rate.  Then there’s the bonus of knowing that liberals hate to see people suffer—so they’re sticking it to liberals, too.

This struggle over unemployment benefits, which happened under Bush II as well (many unemployed were left in the lurch thanks to similar Republican bullshit), infuriates me.  Our unemployment benefits are the worst in the civilized world.  No other first world country, to my knowledge, offers such a short standard time period for unemployment benefits.  It should be a year *minimum*, and it should automatically be extended whenever the economy drops below certain benchmarks and for as long as it takes for the economy to again rise above those benchmarks.

Dear Joe blubaugh: Your concern reflects the concern of some people who have not heard what the hosts have said. They have suggested hanging journalists and liberals. They have called for the genocide of the Iraqi people, the murder of millions of Muslims and the torture of suspected criminals by cutting off their fingers and penis.  Then they would read a commercial for Visa. I asked Visa if they were fine with them tainting their brand in this fashion.
They chose not to advertise.
Ridicle is fun but not as effective. They see it as a badge of honor, good PR. Higher ratings.
If you don’t believe these people are dangerous do what many liberals do and ignore them and hope they will go away.
These people want us dead. They seriously said it on their radio shows broadcast on the public airwaves i wasn’t going to just ignore them calling for the death of my friends. So I acted.

Spo cko did good work, Joe.  The K F S O people were quite hateful people.  The advertisers weren’t specifically supporting that kind of talk, and when they heard what was being broadcast they bailed.  It was more an educational issue than anything else.

Gone2Ground says: But I think the private ill will is based on fear…The other thing is that profound economic insecurity is truly terrifying for many people…Finally, the world really IS changing, probably forever.

Very well said.  Go back to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs - in today’s climate, many of us are back down on level 2 - fighting for security.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow’s_hierarchy_of_needs

Spocko, LP, thanks for the response. Sounds like a much different situation than I was envisioning.

I’m honestly too young to have any idea if it’s getting worse; I was in middle school when the 2000 election happened, so I’ve never seen anything but lies and hate and fear-mongering from the right. I’m certainly more aware of the hate now, but that could be due to any combination of it getting worse, the internet/new technologies making it more visible, or me just becoming more aware of the world in general.

Reactionaries have always been a critical part of the conservative coalition in this country, it’s just that changing conditions have allowed them a national prominence they haven’t known since the Goldwater campaign.  Their voices get louder during any kind of crisis but I’d say that they’ve been aided considerably by the total failure of the Bush administration.  This might seem like a paradox but it isn’t—moderate conservatives deserted the Republican brand, either becoming Democrats or independents.  Those who became Democrats (e.g. Blue Dogs) further diluted the already questionable progressive tendencies of that party, while those who became independents lost the party infrastructure needed to make their views known, so they get only vague media coverage (that is, they exist, and they like this or dislike that).

Although the number of people self-identifying as Republicans declined precipitously and even independents trend more and more towards the Democrats, people are still used to the bipolar political system.  News happens, and we get the “Liberal” view and the “Conservative” view.  But now the Liberal view is voiced by a party that has to pay lipservice to everybody from Barney Frank to Bart Stupak, while the Conservative view is controlled mainly by crazy people.  And even though the Liberal view (at least ostensibly) speaks for 60% of the country and the Conservative view speaks for maybe 30%, people—especially in the old media—are used to treating it as a 50-50 proposition.

I think the actual number of these reactionary sadists is about the same as its always been, it’s just that they’re speaking much louder and too few people with the means to be heard and believed is calling them out as insane.  You can see this going on most obviously in recent cases like Rand Paul and Sharron Angle, where a politician cruises along until somebody randomly takes a cursory look at them and realizes that they have a whole passel of crazy ideas.  Polls indicate that the Republicans are in a strong position for 2010, but I think that’s mostly due to popular ignorance of their actual platform.  Every time the national services report seriously on the Republicans, they come off as foolish at best and malevolent at worst.  This is to some degree encouraging, but I doubt they’ll stick to it enough to make a big difference unless Tea Party madness is packaged in a no-effort narrative.

Well, of course I understand that the first rule of journolist is not to talk about journolist. But until every last email on the group has been revealed to Breitbart, how can he be sure journolist was not a vast left-wing conspiracy to manipulate the news? Consider how many lefty journalists promoted that unlicked pup, Obama, with his worn-out, plagiarizing running mate Biden, instead of that seasoned leader, John McCain, with his dynamic—and still fertile—sidekick, Sarah. Surely if every email was totally innocent, no one would have the least qualm about handing it over for a fast payday.

Something’s rotten in the state of Google, and by golly, Breitbart’s going to root it out.

Should I have posted a smiley, or is the sarcasm coming through?

I actually think people are less hateful than they used to be. At least to the extent that they know it’s wrong to express their hatred directly and so they learn to code it. It used to be okay to picnic under a lynched black man, but while we have a lot of slow-motion violence now, lynching picnics are a thing of the past.

Most of what we see now IMHO is a kind of swan song. It’s a measure of weakness, not of strength, that the conservative party here has to rely on the true racist crazies and cater to them if they want to win national or even statewide elections. And they’re in a demographic trap as the pre-civil rights people die off: it will only get worse (for them) from here on out.

The ultimate reactionary/fascist “cut off your nose to spite your face” event is of course the Holocaust—killing six million Jews and millions of other groups on what was essentially a whim. Hitler could have had a number of conscript soldiers, and millions of factory workers and potato-planters out of that group. Instead, he chose to over-strain his transportation system in the middle of a world war to send them all to unnecessary deaths.

Killing large numbers of people to steal their goods and lands (indigenous peoples in the Americas), or to ensure political control (Stalin’s purges), is routine in history, of course. But what the Holocaust showed was that the lunatic right would blindly pursue its imagined enemies even when they themselves were sure to lose heavily by so doing: “I will hurt you even if it kills me.” How do you argue with someone like that? What incentives can you bring to bear on them?

This is not about transparency, or hypocrisy. It’s about power. And when you are Andrew Breitbart, power is all that matters. There is not a whit of thoughtfulness about this, not an iota of pretense that it might actually advance the conversation about how to deal with, say, a world still perilously close to a second Great Depression, a government that is bankrupt, two wars that have been or are being lost, an energy crisis that is also threatening our planet’s ecosystem, and a media increasingly incapable of holding the powerful accountable.

It’s been a long time since I took any political science classes, but isn’t that one of the central dynamics of classical fascism?

Oops.  Looks like sunsin is one step ahead of me. 

Spocko, I don’t disagree with the idea of contacting advertisers, but the way you say “reign them in” makes me uncomfortable

Especially since it’s REIN them in.

Reign is a totally different thing.  >|^P

Especially since it’s REIN them in.

Reign is a totally different thing.  >|^P
———————
I make little joke.

I had friends, not close observers of politics, simply appalled by the Bush administration inaction during Katrina, but also shocked.

“Who are these people, why aren’t they doing anything?”

I had to explain to them the Grover Norquist theory of government that Republican conservatives had gleefully adopted.

They’d moved to California years before, and were Democrats, but had a hard time believing that Republicans as a group had become such, well, sadists.

Largely because the husband’s mother had been a Republican state legislator in the 1950s in Wisconsin, and I had to explain, gently, “Unfortunately, there’s no longer such a thing as a moderate Republican.”

I honestly think they’ve just gotten a lot better at mainstreaming it.  I think they’ve always been this way.

I wonder if the anonymity afforded by the internet isn’t contributing in some way?  I only wonder this because I have noticed that in comments sections on newsites, the unemployed tend to congregate on stories about the various (so far failed) votes to extend them.  And there always seems to be people who are actually drawn there to post really malicious things like “good, now you lazy people can stop living off of my tax dollars and get a job at McDonalds”.  Really crude stuff.  I think that’s pretty sick.

If anonymity allows you to act out on your most depraved feelings of cruelty, can that become a habit?  Can it make cruelty seem like a more natural state?  I really don’t know, but I do also wonder if it has helped the cons to mainstream their cruelty, which I feel strongly they have been able to pull off.  It’s so fucked up that I don’t really know what to do with some of the stuff I see and hear.

Oh Jesus, Mel Gibson.  That frigging animal.  Can you imagine any woman ever watching one of his movies where he stars as a romantic lead again?  I would seriously puke.

“Jesus. Why haven’t you killed yourself yet?”

KaNewt, I hear setting yourself on fire is all the rage these days.  Just because Drudge didn’t take that good advice, doesn’t mean you can’t…

@Evan@29: 

Good points, all.  However, the fact that Rand Paul or Angle or Bachmann or any of the rest of the nuts can say things like “the unemployed are just lazy” or “the earth is 6000 years old” or any other utter nonsense AND NOT BE CHALLENGED ON IT or LAUGHED OFF THE STAGE is primarily a function of the normalization of the “50-50” stance that you mentioned and that the MSM has promoted.  But I would argue that they use this stance largely out of fear of the RW noise machine. 

Before Rush Limbo and all the RW fanatics started repeating their outrageous lies day after day and year after year and attacking anyone who challenged them with the ferocity of rabid dogs, both in their own arenas and in the arena of politics (like Rove does to this day), insanity would be held on its own merits and typically discarded.  This is why the Birchers could never gain a serious foothold in American politics, even during the 1950s and 60s.  They didn’t have a media platform to not only repeat their bullshit, but also, by virtue of its repetition, legitimize it.  The also, until Lee Atwater, didn’t have a political operative willing to exploit their positions for political gain. 

Today’s Birchers, the Teapartiers and assorted other GOopers, have not only Rove, but Fox and other media empires that spread their shit arount and take it seriously as though it were worthy.  You are correct that sometimes the MSM repeats their positions and the public finds them wanting, but up against the “other side” of the noise machine, I’m afraid it’s often too little too late.

This is also why the Demos are losing this debate:  because they think this is about Facts and Reason and Logic.  It isn’t.  It’s about Fear and Intimidation and Emotional Appeals.  Until the Democrats figure this out, (and I would say the only ones who have are the unions right now,) they will continue to lose.

It really is true. People DO hold off on finding a job, and look primarily around their experience and expected wage levels. It’s true. The main problem is their inability to see this as a good thing. That it you know..actually holds up wages in a free market, and as such makes the economy a healthier place. They don’t see it.

More education isn’t a solution. The problem is that there are not enough jobs to go around. Period. More education just extends the problem, and actually ends up at a macro level being worse than doing nothing. (On a micro level it’s good. We just have to be aware of the future issues and work around them. Realize that over time as education levels rise, the earnings advantage will start to decrease. Probably quickly. We can fully educate everybody, but we’re still going to need janitors and fry cooks. Thinking about how to make that work is important)

The problem with Obama, isn’t a problem with Obama. It’s a problem with our society. It’s not that we’re sadistic. It’s that people tend to think that they work hard and everybody else is lazy and entitled. Or at least enough people with enough influence to turn it into a common trope. Obama could have opened the flood-gate to the stimulus money, starting projects anywhere and everywhere. But they were downright paranoid of the political backlash that stem from fraud and waste. And even if it’s only a small amount…

To put it neatly, people would see some construction workers having lunch, and then freak out because they’re “wasting taxpayer money”. So everything is done as tight as possible, which does less for the economy as a whole.

You know, speaking as (ahem) a lawyer, this Andrew Breitbart guy strikes me as a prime candidate to be sued into oblivion.  Posting an offer of a $100,000 reward for other people’s private e-mail is tortious as hell.  Invasion of privacy . . .

...these assclowns are a bunch of rank fucking amateurs…

I agree, Dan; the ‘assclowns’ in question are just a bunch of well-funded, practically accountability-free blowhards and petty bullies.  Today.  I’m not just pulling some alarmist shit out of thin air, but let’s be realistic.  The shit you refer to—from the early 20th century—didn’t spring up from instantly from the ground with total war and the Holocaust.  It was gradual and incremental.  We aren’t Weimar Germany, so we obviously won’t devolve and implode into Nazi Germany.  We’ll devolve and implode into something entirely different, though, if we aren’t able to put the brakes on this and start turning it around.  Pretending that it can’t get much worse, just because it isn’t much worse today, will be fatal.  The seeds of doom have been planted, they’ve sprouted, and they’re getting some good rain right now.  We have to put these fuckers out of business, whether they’re GOP or hedge fund Democrats.  Continuing to play their ‘lesser of two evils’ triangulation game is a losing strategy.
  Following my rant is a link to a first-hand account from Toronto, where the assholes who planned the G20 meetings spent a billion dollars on ‘security,’ then carried out their plan to inflict pain and humiliation on protesters and bystanders alike.  Why?  Because they’re conservatives, and they are fucking sadists.  They wanted to show the small percentage of the Western world that still gives a fuck that they mean business, and they’ll put the hurt on us if we get out of line.  Or if we just happen to be there when they’re dishing out the hurt. 
How I Got Arrested and Abused at G20 in Toronto, Canada.

@Karmakin -

But WHY does “everybody think they work hard and everyone else is lazy”? 

This is the crux of the problem:  that somehow we have arrived at a society where people (apparently) think this, regularly, about everyone else.  Where did this notion get the biggest airtime and support in modern memory?  I’d argue, right out of the mouth of Ronnie Raygun.  He is the one who popularized the welfare queen and all the other tropes which are essentially racist tropes, but also part of this sort of divisive attitude - that somewhere someone is getting something for free, so you’re not. 

This translates into the whole “gubmint bad and only benefits the poor or minorities” ideology which is the basis for the modern GOP.  During the Great Depression, for example, lots of upper class people thought FDR was bad and everyone who didn’t have a job was lazy, but due to rampant and high unemployment and the utter lack of a safety net, regular people felt more of a kinship with their brothers and sisters on the street.  They KNEW that could be them in an instant.  Ironically, now that we HAVE a safety net, most Americans have convinced themselves the DON’T need it (until they do, of course), and anyone who DOES need it is a loser.  (We saw the same dynamic at work with health care.) 

I also think part of the problem, as someone mentioned upthread, is that our interactions today, especially on the web, are almost totally impersonal and therefore can be filled with vitriol that I bet 90% of people would not say to someone’s face.  Plus the groupthink that pushes people to behave badly.  (Remember that guy who humiliated the pro Health Care guy who had MS?  Talk about an exercise in the pain of hubris.  And on the internet, too.)

Haven’t you folks heard of the McCarthy era witch hunts, or the wildly popular anti-semitic radio host Father Coughlin?

“After the 1936 election, Coughlin increasingly expressed sympathy for the fascist policies of Hitler and Mussolini as an antidote to Bolshevism.[17] His CBS radio broadcasts became suffused with antisemitic themes. He blamed the Depression on an “international conspiracy of Jewish bankers”, and also claimed that Jewish bankers were behind the Russian Revolution. On November 27, 1938, he said “There can be no doubt that the Russian Revolution ... was launched and fomented by distinctively Jewish influence.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Coughlin

That the unionists fighting for those socialist dreams of the 40 hour week and eight hour days were hunted like dogs by both the police and Pinkerton guards hired by mining companies, and maligned as bomb throwing anarchists.

Roosevelt’s WPA which built bridges and buildings and roads and national parks was maligned and the unemployed put to work as “shovel-leaners.”

“Some who were critical of the WPA referred to it as “We Poke Along”, “We Piddle Around”, “We Putter Along”, “Working Piss Ants”, or the “Whistle, Piss and Argue gang”.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Works_Progress_Administration

Are the so-called conservatives of today nastier than those of earlier generations who also lynched (and keep in mind that the Ku Klux Klan resurgence in the early 1900s included northern branches that acted out against Eastern European immigrants and Catholics.)

Good question.

I wait, in vain, for an orchestrated effort (and many, many thanks to Spocko) to highlight the link between right-wing violent speech and right-wing violence (think Jim David Adkisson, Scott Roeder, Richard Poplawksi, etc.) I think they’ve always been this nasty, but they’ve usually been more hidden because the Republican party was bigger, and had more sane people in it, and the media felt compelled to hide the crazies. Now there’s no way to hide the crazies, and they’ve got Roger Ailes, still infuriated over Nixon being held accountable for his crimes, determined to spend billions of dollars and get his revenge. On the country.

I do not think that the levels of sadism have increased.  I think it’s just that the level of civility and artifice have decreased.  Conservatives have always been cruel, sadistic and hypocritical fucks.  It’s just that they hid behind a veneer of family values and moral forthrightness.  However, the disaster that was Bush II and is the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, combined with the callous disregard for the poor during Hurricane Katrina stripped way all pretense from the conservative movement.  And once their id was liberated, they can’t put it back.  These were the motivating urges for the entire movement, and they’ve lurked and snarled for forty years.  Now that they’re out in the open, conservatives seem almost happy to expose the world to the nastiness that has lurked within the conservative mind for so long.  So no- I do not believe the levels of increased.  I think that the counterbalancing artifice has simply been irrevocably destroyed by 30 years of conservative governance.

I think that some people here are missing something.  A majority of Americans support extending UI benefits.  I have been reading polls at various sites when they are posted.  Some of us are falling victim to right wing propoganda.  Everytime one of these sadistic, grinning fucks gets on tv, the first thing they say is that “the American people want something done about these deficits”.

Well, that’s a lie.

The deficit is down the list on concerns of Americans right now.  It’s jobs, jobs, jobs.  Somehow, the echo chamber morons, have managed to build the conventional wisdom around yet another falsehood and now alllll the monkeys on tv repeat it.  I have no doubt that David Gregory, CV Monkey in Chief, will be furiously restating this nonsense this Sunday, if he’s working.

And the Dems actually believe this misinformation campaign, and are actually going into a midterm election prioritizing the priority of a minority of Americans, and not, jobs, jobs, jobs.

The Republicans are taking an unpopular position.  Yet they are getting away with it and will win the midterms anyway.  Maybe because the chamber is just set up for the echo of fiscal pain being needed.  Maybe it’s sexier than talking about poor people.  Maybe a good number of them are sadists.  Maybe a lot of things, but it doesn’t change the fact that it’s simply not true that a majority of Americans support cutting off UI benefits.

And the bill to extend them “went down 58-38”

Please read that twice.  The bill to extend them was voted down with 58 yes votes and 38 no votes.

Hi, I’m Lee and this is my first post to Pandagon. I’ve been reading the blog for about a month now.

I agree with EvanSchenk’s point at 29 that the liberal/progressive tendencies of the Democratic Party were weakened by the exodus of liberal and moderate Republicans into the Democratic Party. What I question is his calling the liberal/progressive tendencies of the pre-exodus Democratic Party as questionable. I’m just wondering why Evan is calling the liberal/progressive tendencies of the Democratic Party questionable Its true that the Democratic Party wasn’t a purely liberal party but before the 1960s, the Republican Party wasn’t a completely conservative party either. However, the Democratic Party did institute some of the most liberal and progressive legislation and policies in America and produced some of the most liberal politicians, which makes its liberal tendencies genuine rather than questionable in my opinion.

  EvanSchenk’s post seems to represent a strain of thought that existed among some liberals/progressives/socialists in America since at least the 19th century, that if we could get rid of the Democratic Party than a real and purely liberal/progressive/socialist party would replace it and go on to defeat the Republicans and implement truly progressive policies. This line of thought has existed at least since Henry George and the American Labor Party tried to win control of NYC during the late 1880s from Tammany Hall. My guess is that this line of thought originates from a disdain of Tammany Hall and other Democratic machines during the 19th century, who got a lot of the working and lower middle class vote without doing much to help them.

Ruby Ridge. Oklahoma City. The Arkansas Project.

Communications technologies are more pervasive today than they were for those events, and the right wing propaganda infrastructure is more developed and integrated. 

The center of political discourse continued to move right through the 90s and the Bush years. The DC babbling head parade is predominantly right of center and moving further right. The courtiers remain conservative. This has, as Niewert notes, mainstreamed far right voices For fuck sake, Pat Buchanan still has a job—on “liberal MSNBC” no less—and CNN hired Erick Erickson.

I think another problem with conservatives is that the view politics as game for scoring points rather than as a system to address and possibly fix or at least mitigate the problems in society. Its more important to score about against the other side even if its a petty way like defeating an extension of unemployment benefits rather than actually doing something to solve the problem.

MaJeff, while I loathe Pat Buchanan, I do not think that having him on as commentator particularly speaks ill of MSNBC. One of the main problems with conservatives in the United States and possibly elsewhere is that they lived in a closed universe where they only listen to people that already agree with them. Fox and Talk Radio are the epitome of this. We have plenty of evidence of how dangerous this closed universe is. If liberals, progressives, and socialists lived in a similar closed universe than we would be inflicted with the same illness that conservatives are suffering from. Its important to have genuine and non-straw people conservatives on liberal programming so that at least we can try to understand their thought process and learn how to debate with them to win over the people in the middle to the Leftist side.

  CNN has never been liberal though, its purely commercial.

Lee, Pat Buchanan should have no position in public discourse; no reasonable news network would employ such a racist anti-semite.

Well, you know what? If I got laid off, I’d exhaust unemployment benefits before working for McDonalds or a cashier at Wal-Mart. That would be my absolute last resort.

Not so much because it’s “beneath me”, but because I’d be fucking horrible at it. Most of these menial jobs are now customer service, and a lot of people are really bad at customer service!

Also, people that have been working for 15-20 years for say, $30,000 a year have usually built a life around that, complete with house, car, insurance, credit cards, money for the children, etc. Even if they were living beneath their means, taking a part-time job at McD’s and riding out the “recovery” there is going to flat out ruin. their. lives. They’re going to have to dig deep into their savings - sometimes even retirement savings - go without health coverage (which is life-threatening for many middle-aged people), possibly have their house go into foreclosure, and ruin their credit, just to keep food on the table and their family off of the street. The transition from middle class to working poor isn’t easy, and encouraging reams of people to make that transition *will* screw up the economy… do these people actually want the debt that individual families owe to get paid off before these people die or decide to go bankrupt? Or is their desire to teach people a lesson about thinking they can have nice things that strong?

Meh, Pat Buchanan is nothing more than an easy punching bag. He has every right to show how ridiculous he is in public.

Selena777, its the latter. The entire conservative philosophy seems to have degenerated from Benjamin Disraeli’s “Tory men and liberal principles”, meaning implementing liberal principles but at a slower pace than liberals would like to ensure greater stability, to the infliction of pain by teaching people listens. This seems true for conservatives everywhere. Everybody is too interested in being tough these days. Tough on crime, tough on terrorism, tough on everything. Whatever happened to gentleness as a virtue?

He has every right to show how ridiculous he is in public.

Yes, but no one need give him a forum.

Sorry if being reminded of your pointless sadism upsets you, Knute.  I’m not obliged to pretend you aren’t an asshole, though.

In any (relatively) sane era, Pat Buchanan would be quickly and firmly rejected by the powers that be.  See Jimmy the Greek. Al Campanis, etc. 

But if you’re a conservative in this era in America, you could wear a diaper under your wetsuit, pay prostitutes to give you foot-jobs while outing CIA personnel — and top it off by claiming The Jews are secretly running the world and did you know they have horns under their hair and matzos are made with the blood of christian babies and they like anal sex — and you’d get a raise, not a pink slip.

We’re a very sick country at the moment…

I don’t know if the existing assholes are becoming more asshole-ish or more people are becoming assholes but it seems we are suddenly up to our assholes in assholes.  I’ve stopped writing letters to the editor and making comments on articles in our local newspaper because the viciousness of the assholes has become astonishing.  Once they find out who their “enemies” are (liberals, mostly), they take their attacks out of print and into the real world.  They have succeeded in silencing me because I have no desire to expose myself or my partner to harassment and/or violence.  As a liberal lesbian couple in a small city, our careers and our physical safety are at risk.  It sucks.

Lee:

“Nothing is so strong as gentleness and nothing is so gentle as real strength.”  Ralph W. Sockman.

I’ve stopped writing letters to the editor and making comments on articles in our local newspaper because the viciousness of the assholes has become astonishing.

Me too. Wingnuts infest the comments boards. I got tired of sifting through the made-up stories about “urban thugs” buying high-priced steak at the grocery store with “Mah Tax Dollahs™” and every article about the weather becoming about global warming.

Oh, and whining (of all things) about Jimmy fucking Carter, this from people who say we should stop blaming Bush a little more than a year and half after his Presidency. *eyeroll*

@Selena777: 

No, the problem is that most RW types Don’t Think Things Through because logic and rationality aren’t in their toolbox.  They are all about emotion and reaction. 

This is why they come up with stupid shit like “let’s cut off the power at the homes of illegal immigrants,” courtesy of some elected RW nutjob in ARIZONA, I’m sure thinking he can cash in on all the hysteria. 

I also think there is a profound educational deficit in America which has led to so many obvious thickheads that look good on tv being elected to office.  I’ve maintained for some time that one of the qualifications of being elected to Congress really ought to be an IQ test, or even a knowledge test, heavily weighted towards basic information on how the government actually functions.  (My God, we make people take a test to get a driver’s license, but any moron can get elected, NQA.)

#72

Oh, and whining (of all things) about Jimmy fucking Carter, this from people who say we should stop blaming Bush a little more than a year and half after his Presidency. *eyeroll*

It is as if they wish to eradicate all traces of liberalism, not only from the present, but from the past as well. The fantastic character of this wish is bizzarre, when you think about it. It may be a clue to how distant the mindstate of modern conservatism is from reality, and how mythical their narrative has gotten.

I’ve maintained for some time that one of the qualifications of being elected to Congress really ought to be an IQ test, or even a knowledge test, heavily weighted towards basic information on how the government actually functions.

I know you didn’t mean it, but that sounds too much like a literacy test. Would you trust some asshole local Sheriff’s minion in Mississippi to administer a test like that? Plus, I don’t think it is a problem of elected officials being stupid. The vast majority of elected officials at the federal level have a college degree,  and unless you got in on Daddy’s legacy or are a sports star, you have to be at least of average intelligence to graduate from even a low-ranked school.

I don’t think this is the problem. It’s elected officials exploiting stupid voters. And that’s just a general hazard of democratic governance, period. You can see it outside the USA in other western democracies as well: look at Berlusconi or Thatcher. Berlusconi, especially, is an asshole on the level of Bush/Cheney. He just does less damage than them because Italy isn’t as powerful as the United States.

Atheist, the bizarre thing about their Jimmy Carter hate is that he really wasn’t all that liberal. He was a Christian evangelical, he started de-regulation, he started the ‘80s military build up, and presided over the end of détente.

You think they would be attacking LBJ instead.

#76

Atheist, the bizarre thing about their Jimmy Carter hate is that he really wasn’t all that liberal. He was a Christian evangelical, he started de-regulation, he started the ‘80s military build up, and presided over the end of détente.

Ben D., granted, Carter wasn’t as liberal as many seem to think. Especially when you look at his foreign policy. But I think the thing about Carter than conservatives hate, was his emphasis on conservation of resources. He got up on TV and said the Earth has a limited amount of Oil and natural resources, and we have to use them wisely.

It was obviously true at the time, and now it is even more obviously true. Even the stupidest of conservatives know in their guts that he was right. I think that is why conservatives hate him so much even now, and expend so much energy attacking him.

@Ben D - You are right that I am being somewhat facetious (sp?).  But don’t think just because members of Congress have college degress actually means anything. 

Michele Bachmann has a college degree, all right.  From Oral Roberts University. 

You’ll get no argument from me that there is massive exploitation going on.  But I also think, especially based on watching Congressional hearings, that there are a lot of people in Congress that are profoundly uninformed. 

Or perhaps, as you said, they are just venal.

@ Lee #59:
Under Clinton’s leadership during the 1990s the Democratic Party made several choices which lead me to call their commitment to progressive politics “questionable.”  I could describe a number of these but the most salient is the continuation and strengthening of deregulation and neoliberal economics.  The vote to repeal Glass-Steagall was a bipartisan masterpiece, for example.  Before 1994 the Democratic Party might have been progressive as an institution but afterward the evidence suggests otherwise.

I find this nostalgia for the 20th Century Democratic Party a little strange.

For most of that century, the Party was infested with Dixiecrats, especially in the Senate. Even as late as the 1980s Phil Gramm was a Democrat. Reagan got most of his program through even though Democrats controlled the House thanks to Dixiecrats, then called “boll weevils”.

Mercifully, they were gone by the ‘90s. They either reformed (Robert Byrd) or became Republicans (Strom Thurmond).

Blue Dogs are a hell of a lot better than Dixiecrats. I’ll take a party with Ben Nelson as the farthest right member of the caucus rather than a party with Strom Thurmond as the farthest right member!

The 1964 Civil Rights Act, which was supposedly done in the golden age of this progressive Democratic Party, actually failed to get a majority of Democrats to vote for it because of the Dixiecrats! I don’t miss that party.

he 1964 Civil Rights Act, which was supposedly done in the golden age of this progressive Democratic Party, actually failed to get a majority of Democrats to vote for it because of the Dixiecrats!

According to this it did

I stand corrected, I mis-read the stats in the Wikipedia article.

Still, my point about Dixiecrats stands. In some ways it was a more conservative party especially in Congress.

Perhaps the right way to say that would be that it didn’t get enough democratic votes to pass without addition votes from republicans?

I think there’s a good argument that the old “swing to the right in hard times” (where “right” means authoritarian) thing has been going on, but for so long and in such slow motion that it’s been hard to see. Remember that median wages have been essentially flat for 40 years, with the exception of the Clinton economic expansion. So that’s a whole generation of workers who have spent their careers with the experience that jobs are nasty, brutish and short.

“Don’t feel bad though now instead of 10 yahoos following your every word you have a 100.”

Calling yourself a yahoo is certainly appropriate, although I’m still partial to the term “troll” to label your kind…

Attn EvanSchenck at 79: I thought who were calling the New Deal/Great Society Democratic Party questionably progressive. I misunderstood. I agree with you that during Clinton, the Democratic Party started to make more than a few questionable decisions.

  Ben D: I think the nostalgia for the early and mid-twentieth century Democratic Party comes from the fact that they were more left on economic issues than the current Democratic Party and because they were seen as putting up more of a stance against Republicans and other conservatives rather than being ineffectual. Dumping the Dixiecrats moved the Democratic Party to the left socially on many issues but seems to have hurt economic leftism at the same time.

#89

Dumping the Dixiecrats moved the Democratic Party to the left socially on many issues but seems to have hurt economic leftism at the same time.

Lee, this is an interesting point. I’ve studied Afghanistan a little bit, and have gotten an idea of why the tribal makeup of that land is so important to understanding how the people will act. But the interesting thing about it is, the more I examine tribes in Afghanistan, the more the tribes of the USA stand out to me, and the more US politics seem tribally influenced.

I guess you could make the argument, that the Democrats have a more genuinely multi-tribal alliance. I wonder if this is somehow related to why they are so afraid of seeming “left” in any sense? Maybe one problem the US left has relates to the difficulty in keeping together multi-tribal coalitions? While the Republicans have decided to go completely, utterly one-tribe in their approach, and act as the stupidest and most bigoted whites would want them to act?

It is my considered opinion that the reason the ReThuglicans are drum beating the deficits issue as opposed to jobs is that they know it will fail. The ReThuglican Will to Power does not care how many millions of lives are blighted and ruined. They KNOW that cutting off stimulus now will create another dip in the recession, if not make it even worse, a Depression. All the better to run against the spineless Democrats with my dear.

They don’t care, they have theirs, fuck the rest of us. They gutted the education system years ago, and so many people are in such a state of ignorance that all their atavistic fears can be exploited by the masters of the Echo Chamber.

What motivation do ReThuglicans have to do anything that might help this country if it leaves them out of power? The naked beast that is the Conservative movement is exposed for what it is. A carnal, savage, devouring, animal that will stop at nothing until it creates another theocratic feudal state. Killing the education system was the first step.

I spent 11 months on UI. I know the agony, worry and depression of sending out 300+ applications and having two interviews. The reason people aren’t spending $$$$ on consumer items is that we are too fucking busy digging ourselves out of the credit hole we went into just to survive, pay the mortgage, taxes, postage and maybe even buy some rice and beans.  I finally did find a job making substantially less than I had previously. I took the job because I didn’t fancy sending another 300+ applications out and not finding anything at all and adding another 20K to my CC debt.

People who say the unemployed are lazy apparently have never had to do the UI process. I spent 5-6 hours per day looking and applying. States just don’t hand out $$$$ you have to report, keep records in case of audit, take classes, and have a really strong HOPE that one day, someone may pull your cork under. All that for .25% of what I had been making as an employed person. I applied for a receptionist job in Austin at $10.00/hr. The HR person who called me for screening and said that there had been over 500 applicants. Fortunately, I was able to find something in my area of esoteric educational knowledge…teacher certification, and every day I go to work I thank my boss for the opportunity. I work my ass off and do the best job I know how to do because (I am that type of person) and I know that at 50, I probably won’t be able to find another job in this country.

@91:  I’m glad you found work.  I have been looking since February of this year, but I knew the downturn was coming since around fall of ‘08.  I, too have had an interviewer tell me he had 700 applicants for one job that required a certain amount of technical knowledge that isn’t easy to come by.  My industry has 27% unemployment, so the prospects aren’t good.  I just thank ye gods and little fishes that UI pays the mortage, so I only have to scrape up bills from savings and whatever my spouse can cobble together.

What I don’t get is this shortsightedness on the part of these conservatives.  Don’t they know that people, worn down by this, will NEVER, EVER forget what they did?  That nobody is going to go back to the good old run up the credit card at Barney’s days, at least not in the quantities that Wall STreet has gotten used to?  I will be rebuilding savings and clipping coupons for many years to come, and it will be a hard bargain before I give up ready cash again for anything unnecessary, even after I get a job.  And isn’t that frugality and discipline just what the RW is always braying about? 

As I said upthread, and have to keep reminding myself, these people function on emotion, not reason.  Nothing they say makes sense.

Attn Atheist at 90: The main reason why I think that American Left has trouble acting in concert is that the American political system forces diverse Leftists groups together in one uneasy alliance. If American was a multi-party system than the American Left would be happily split into many parties. Now we have a system where a wide range of leftists ideologies with different and often contradictory ideas and priorities has to work together. We have many people who would be socialist in Europe calling themselves liberal in America even though liberalism and socialism are rather different in their teachings.

So yeah, the American Left is more beset by divisions than the American right and has a harder time working in concert because this.

Ok, my turn. (waves at Spocko)

I remember being a young man with an invisible disability (I’m on the autistic spectrum, something not really even known at the time) trying to find work during the 70’s recession.

Nothing has changed, save for one thing - the lack of embarrassment. Nowadays, these people will say what they really feel, in public, and sign their names to it. Way back when, they seemed to realize there might be a price to pay for being a known and famous asshole, and cunningly hid behind all kinds of “plausible deniability” dodges. But they were still assholes, and clearly took joy in it; that, or they were very happy taking orders from assholes more than willing to exploit them to their own ends.

In various unguarded moments ... well, let’s just say that the rhetoric is *depressingly* familiar.

When I found myself enmeshed in the sexual abuse survival awakening in the late 80’s and early nineties - same people. Same ideas. Same rhetoric.

When I finally moved into speaking about multiple personality (because I was, and could afford to speak out, unlike the millions who cannot afford to let on that they are mad in ways that undermines all sorts of social and cultural understandings) - same people. Same ideas. Same rhetoric.

And when I and others write of Autism, and the idea that neurodiversity is a good idea, or that human rights apply to all persons, regardless of their situation, their privilege, gender, orientation, color, status or their wetware…

Same People. Same Ideas. Same Rhetoric.

These people say they are Conservatives, and most often, Christians. I’d say they are neither - and indeed, the exact opposite. They are radical in political terms, and their values owe more to the values expressed by Anton Le Vey than Jesus of Nazareth.

But hey, I’m crazy; the sort of person that would say that sort of thing.

I claim (without proof) that there was a time when conservatives would have bitterly complained that it was viciously unfair to use Graeme Frost because, what are you going to do, beat on a kid?

I hope no one here thinks they have any right to make *that* complaint any more.

Yes, I think sadism has become much more widespread.

Another thing about Atheist’s tribal point. Historically, the Democratic Party and the Republicans were basically geographic-ethnic-class alliances than actual political parties centered around a specific ideology. Before the 1960s, the Democratic Party represented the South, the cities, and the ethnic whites. Most of its voters were lower to middle middle class. The Republicans were the party of white protestants in the NE, Midwest, and West and African-Americans, at least until the Great Depression. Both parties had politicians that were all over the place ideology wise but the Democrats tended in a more liberal direction than the Republicans. The 1960s changed all this and saw the liberal and moderate Republicans gradually depart the G.O.P. This made the G.O.P. a more ideologically unified party.

  The Democratic Party was also changed ideologically since they dropped their most conservative members but still more of a geographic-ethnic alliance than an ideologically based European party. This made it harder to appear more left since the Democratic Party could not afford to sacrifice its more moderate factions and its left factions. Therefore, a careful balancing act is necessary.

The only thing the Democratic Party has been consistent on (mostly) in it’s history is that it has been the party of the downtrodden, powerless, and those who sympathize with them. This was true even before FDR—it was the party of post-Civil War Southerners, rural farmers, ethnic whites, and laborers in general. The only downtrodden class missing was African-Americans and they joined in the 30s and all those groups co-existed until the 1960s. Southern whites, sadly, chose racism over their own economic interests at that time.

By contrast the Republican Party, since reconstruction ended, has been the party of big business, privilege, and special interest, with racism added into that toxic stew post-1960s. The only Republican leader to buck that trend was Teddy Roosevelt and he left the party in 1912 because the establishment disliked him so much.

Ben D at 97: Yes and no. Its true that the Democratic Party has gotten most of the lower to lower middle class, or downtrodden vote as you put it, since the Andrew Jackson presidency but more than a few people on the American Left, in the past and the present, would basically see the Democratic Party as using this base opportunistically to advance the personal interests of Democratic politicians and the few upper-class members of the Democratic Party. Think of the criticism towards the Democratic machines in the cities during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The criticism that the Democratic Party is falsely liberal/progressive long existed in American life. Personally I think this view is over simplistic but it does have some evidence behind it.

It’s not really on topic, but I’ve wondered for some time if “beneath me” is shorthand for “this job makes no sense to take because it would suck the soul out of me, I would make half of what I need to pay all my bills, and I’d get home without the energy to do anything but crawl into bed until it’s time to go to work and have my soul sucked out again.” 

I mean, we’re talking about people who can be convinced to think Dijon mustard is elitist, for godsake. A certain type of people often exploited by the right that takes it so personally when others refuse to suffer like they do that they might not even be capable of realizing there are reasons for not taking a job besides feeling all uppity and not like Real Murikans. In fact, if I articulated those very reasons, in as many words, to my sister and her family, I’m pretty sure they’d filter it through whatever rightwing Bizarro World exists between their ears and conclude “Oh, you know Kristin. She’s not taking that job because she thinks it’s beneath her.”

The droogies hate Carter because he gave amnesty to the young men who didn’t comply with the Vietnam draft.  Also, Carter interrupted what could have been a 24-year era of Republican corruption and incompetence - oh, and yes sadism.

Comment #99: kristin

This is an excellent, insightful comment.

Case in point.

Wow, never been here before and the ignorance, misinformation and outright lies are hilarious.  Do any of you remember Paygo? Signed back in February saying you have to pay for new spending?  The dimocrats are responsible for the non-extension of unemployment benefits- which are already at 99 weeks- what’s the term I’ve seen in the liberal press, oh yes, “funemployment”- when you pay people to do nothing, they won’t.  Back to reality, the bill that dimocrats refused to vote on last week was that the benefits extension be paid for with unspent stimulus funds- of which 57% is still sitting around in reelection slush funds!  However, it’s so much easier to go out and say Republicans are cutting off benefits and what did that absolute idiot and embarrassment to women princess botox pelosi say, oh yes, unemployment benefits are the best stimulus.

Economic ignorance = dimocrats!

“Economic ignorance = dimocrats!”

Awesome!  A new Reichwing troll at Pandagon!

If the wingnuts who care about economic issues (as opposed to those who are totally obsessed with immigration and whether Obama is a Communist or a Fascist — if he isn’t the Antichrist) had anything more to offer to the conversation than “bend over, close your eyes, and think about the invisible hand of the marketplace, and by-the-way we need to cut BP’s taxes and stop regulating them”, maybe somebody would listen. 

But if all you can come up with is more cynical economic voodoo while standing next to Arthur Laffer and worshiping Ronald Reagan’s desiccated corpse, then why should anyone listen to a word that dribbles out of your lying mouths?...

unspent stimulus funds- of which 57% is still sitting around in reelection slush funds!

Uh, what?  Did you get this from Rush, or Beck?

Paygo is a great idea in theory, except that the only cuts Republicans will allow to pass are to “entitlement” programs.  So the only way to pay to help people is to cut benefits to other people who need help.  Rob Peter to pay Paul.  Nice.  Paygo cannot work in this political environment.

Also, the economic ignorance is on your side.  You do not cut government spending in a recession, it only makes it worse.  This is a well-known economic truth, proven by experience.

Jeannek3468: the.  Burning.  Fucking.  Stupid.

Thanks for proving the point of the original post in such an awkward & inarticulate fashion.

“I mean, we’re talking about people who can be convinced to think Dijon mustard is elitist, for godsake.”

Ok, that made me laugh out loud.  Thanks.

Name one time stimulus has created economic growth?  You can’t, ever, in history, anywhere on the planet and don’t throw FDR at me- his actions prolonged the Depression, however, facts never seem to get through your tiny little brains!  You don’t have the mental capacity to understand that 2+2 always equals 4 and stealing from those who create wealth and giving it to the biggest black hole of waste and corruption otherwise known as the government doesn’t create jobs, never has, never will.  The policies of this disaster of a president are preventing growth and creating uncertainty- it’s not that banks won’t lend it’s the businesses won’t borrow to expand with all the tax increases coming- they don’t know what the costs will be so they are going to sit on their money, do more with less and wait until he gets kicked out!

I know the truth hurts but the porkulus bill was set up to boost dimocrat electoral chances- only 43% has been spent- check the oblahma run websites- the rest is saved to reelect the the least accomplished, least experienced lying piece of garbage and worst president ever!  Nothing that comes out of his teleprompter-ed mouth is the truth! 

Don’t give me this save the teachers crap- more than 50% of the money spent on education goes to administration, not to teachers and kids but again, don’t let the truth get in the way of your delusions- seriously, D.C. spends approximately $15k per child per year and has the worst system in the country- what the hell are they doing with the money besides padding the unions and donating to dimocrats?  Here’s another fact- almost every major city or state that is in such financial distress has been run by dimocrats for decades- California, Michigan, Illinois, New Jersey, Chicago, Detroit, New Orleans- think that would have happened under Giuliani’s watch?

Economic ignorance = dimocrats!

“Name one time stimulus has created economic growth?  You can’t, ever, in history, anywhere on the planet and don’t throw FDR at me- his actions prolonged the Depression, however, facts never seem to get through your tiny little brains!”

You don’t seem to understand that the current wingnut talking points regarding the Great Depression involve claims that FDR actually inherited a healthy economy from Hoover and wrecked it himself, causing the Great Depression.  I mean, if you’re going to be stupid and ignorant enough to spout off a bunch of (ahistoric, Jonah-Goldbergesque, utterly unhinged, completely disconnected from reality) Reichwing bullshit, at least pull out all the stops.

Remember, The Big Lie only works effectively if you go balls to the wall.

Of course, why am I telling you that?  Obviously you’ve swallowed an awful lot of Big Lies if you’re dumb enough to come here and spout off your bullshit and think it means anything more than idiocy to us. 

I hope the Koolaid tastes good while you’re licking it off Karl Rove’s, Dick Cheney’s, Rush Limbaugh’s, and Glenn Beck’s ball sacks…

Jeanne’s “K” is for Karl Marx and Kommunism.  She’s pissy because the new deal prevented the sorts of unrest that caused warfare in Europe and the economic conditions that had the wobblies doing a banner business with jobless youth.

corwin, ask and ye shall receive…

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2009_02/016850.php

http://jonathanturley.org/2009/02/13/austrian-history-fdr-caused-the-great-depression/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gd4l6fkxAO8

Congressman Austria is the easiest example to find, but the problem is one ignorant ass spouts off some bullshit, the next one is emboldened and claims something even more outrageous, and so forth.  Then you get to a situation where many Americans believe Barack Obama caused the 2008 financial meltdown (pretty good for a guy who hadn’t even been elected yet), started the war in Afghanistan (via time machine no doubt) according to Michael Steele, and surely must have blown up BP’s well in the Gulf of Mexico personally.

We already have that giant ass Jonah Goldberg claiming that Fascists and Communists are the same, and both phenomena of the Left, along with the KKK and pretty much everything bad that LoadPants wants to disown from the right.

Besides you, how many Americans think Saddam Hussein was responsible for 9/11?

A boatload of ahistoric bullshit (among other things) was what allowed Hitler and the Nazis to take otherwise reasonably sane Germans and turn them into goose-stepping sheep, playing on their irrational fears to make Jews into the greatest threat to mankind evah!

One of these days somebody’s going to hear Bluto’s famous line from Animal House: “Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor? Hell no!” and believe he was talking about actual history…

“What you’re provided is someone claiming he made a bad situation worse.”

Really?  These are his words: “When Roosevelt did this, he put our country into a Great Depression…. He tried to borrow and spend, he tried to use the Keynesian approach, and our country ended up in a Great Depression. That’s just history.”

corwin, you seem to be unaware that Roosevelt became president in 1933.  The Great Depression was officially in high gear long before he was sworn in.  While the Crash of ‘29 is seen by many as the kickoff date, in actuality the country’s economic problems started well before that.  The Crash was a reaction to sickness that already infected the national economy.

What Congressman Austria said is just as stupid as somebody criticizing a doctor in an emergency room when the patient they get, fresh from a massive auto-crash, fails to return to perfect health immediately after the the first treatment begins.  And then claims the doctor caused the patient’s injuries to begin with.

Reading comprehension, you need, padawan…

“But, I do know which side of the American political spectrum has declared open season on jews.And,it isn’t the right wing.”

Wow!  Where in the hell do you come up with that one?  Are you drinking the Goldberg “Fascists=Communists=Liberals” bullshit too?  Get some real history books and leave Liberal Fascism for what it’s best used for: crumpled paper for use starting fires in a fireplace during the winter…

“DO you agree with me the left has become more anti Semitic ?”

Um, no, I do not agree.  In fact I have no idea in the world why it is that you would believe something as asinine as that, unless you’re tuned in to Limbaugh and Beck 24/7…

“and,do you have any thought as to the reason?”

I give up.  Tell me, oh enlightened on, why is it you believe the Richwing has never and will never be anti-Semitic but you believe the Left has become the party of the KKK?  (Really looking forward to this answer.  I bet it’s really going to be entertaining.  If it isn’t, I’m gonna be very disappointed…)