Chuck Grassley apparently isn’t too happy about the Radical Left™ exerting free market pressure on the corporate members of ALEC.
ALEC, if you don’t know, stands for the American Legislative Exchange Council, and is a formerly anonymous and shadowy organization that writes many of the bullshit laws that state legislatures all across the nation have passed, including the “Stand Your Ground” laws at issue in the Trayvon Martin case, and voter suppression laws. (Kay at Balloon Juice has written extensively about the subject, here and here.) As a result of pressure from the Fringe Left™, Coca-Cola, among others, have withdrawn support from ALEC, and the wingnuts aren’t happy.
So this afternoon, Gramps picked up his computer machine and tweeted the following in defense of ALEC which has been taking a lot of heat over the last couple of weeks:
U might think abt not drinking Coca Cola since companysucombed to pressure fr Leftist not to support ALEC
— ChuckGrassley (@ChuckGrassley) April 22, 2012
Setting aside the fact that I don’t know wtf “sucombed” is, there’s one glaring problem with Grassley’s latest pepaw moment. The main ingredient in Coke is high fructose corn syrup. The main ingredient in corn syrup is corn. And Grassley is the senator from Iowa. You know — the place with all the corn? (And the children thereof?)
Hello? McFly?
Could he be any more of a corporate shill?
The answer is no. No he cannot.
[cross-posted at TRS-ABLC]***(edited to reflect that the main ingredient in Coke is high fructose corn syrup.)
Matoko Borgia-Steeler
“Sucombed” is an example of the white man’s over-type.
karen marie
Tweeting while drunk: never a good idea. Goes double for US senators.
Hey, wait, I’ve got a great idea! Drug and alcohol testing for all US senators and representatives! Test them before they are sworn in and then re-test them every time they come back from a recess.
Yutsano
FTFY. It’s a byproduct of processing corn for ethanol and such. Corn syrup as a sweetener has been around forever. HFCS is an industrial waste product. It’s also cheap as hell which is why it gets used everywhere.
Steeplejack
@Yutsano:
I drink only the Mexican Coca-Cola with the pure cane sugar harvested by Aztec virgins.
David Koch
I stop buying Coca Cola after they sucombed to big gobermit and removed cocaine as an ingredient.
David Koch
Coca Cola killed Breitbart!
daveNYC
I’d love to know when Grassley decided to roll over for every bit of right wing crazy. Dude is like 90 years old. WTF is wrong with people that they decide to spend their twilight years as complete sellouts? I remember him pimping the death panel BS too.
Little Boots
ALEC has to go.
a good run, sweetie darlings, but it’s gotta go.
sorry.
Matoko Borgia-Steeler
@daveNYC:
I think it happened shortly after the crazies threatened to tear down the 70 ft statue of an heroically nude Grassley defending an innocent Virgin America that had gotten itself erected in Charles Grassley Square in the delightful city of Grassleyopolis in Greater Grassley County.
gaz
@Steeplejack: That shit is fucking awesome. I get it here too.
eemom
Coke actually did kill this lady in NZ.
“All substances are poisonous; there is none which is not. The dose makes the poison.” — Paracelsus
Science — I haz it.
Little Boots
@gaz:
for a second I thought you meant the 70 ft grassley statue.
Matoko Borgia-Steeler
@eemom:
Coke might have a point. She most likely did die of water poisoning, rather than succumbing (or sucombing, as Senator Grassley has it) to the brown cat-kidney-filtered sludge that Coke adds to that water.
Matoko Borgia-Steeler
@Little Boots:
Big Chuck is watching you.
MP
Apparently Grassley has forgotten about the large Coke bottling plant in his home state.
Little Boots
@Matoko Borgia-Steeler:
he’s watching all of us, apparently.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@efgoldman: Here in Texas, at least, not only can you buy RC Cola, you can buy Diet RC Cola.
Stillwater
Nicely done ABL. Succinct. To the point. Winning.
Oh wait. Well, as Yuts said, FTFY.
BGinCHI
@Matoko Borgia-Steeler: WIN!
Wait:
VICTORY!
Little Boots
ya just know “sucombed” is some sick senatorial sex thing.
BGinCHI
@Little Boots: Sucombed is how Grassley gets his hair to look like that.
asiangrrlMN
@Little Boots: A kinky combo of sucking and combing. I don’t even want to think about it. Wait. I just did. BRAIN BLEACH, STAT!
fasteddie9318
If I had Twitter, I think I would be inclined to twit something like, ”sen gr assly y u haf 2 b sch a doosh all tiem?”
Yutsano
@efgoldman: Quite a few. Ruined a few lives too. Odd that now I’m working towards essentially the opposite in the IRS now.
Little Boots
@asiangrrlMN:
whatever’s going on, it’s frightening.
not john cole party frightening, but still …
Matoko Borgia-Steeler
@asiangrrlMN:
It’s all one long pumping groaning frenzy of sucombing and fucombing in Grassley’s Underground Lair.
amk
cokeheads UNITE.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@efgoldman: Yah but Kosher for Passover is very hard to get. The people who have an actual reason to celebrate that festival tend to buy it out. great stuff, though, and I managed to snag a bottle this year.
FlyingToaster
@Belafon (formerly anonevent): Rat Bastard!
In the (inside 128) People’s Republic of Massachusetts, I can no longer find RC in cans, and only one store carries it in 2L bottles. I haven’t seen diet RC in over 10 years.
Cadbury-Schweppes owns RC now, and it’s bottled hereabouts by Polar.
I think Grassley is shilling for his retirement job with whichever wingnut welfare organization will have him.
Matoko Borgia-Steeler
@amk:
The American people will never allow innocent carbonated beverages to be dragged before Charles Grassley’s death panels of faceless government bureaucrats!
gaz
@Little Boots: lol
Little Boots
@Matoko Borgia-Steeler:
no carbonated tax.
read my lips!
Matoko Borgia-Steeler
@Little Boots:
No taxation without representation! Corporations are people too, my friend! Occupy the ALEC death panels!
TheMightyTrowel
@FlyingToaster: I used to be able to find in in a Tedeschi’s in Dedham. But I’m 8 years out of date. Also, somewhere in West Roxbury but I don’t remember the shop.
asiangrrlMN
@Little Boots: Nothing is THAT frightening.
Cole! I demand pictures of Tunchie to make up for teh horrors!
@fasteddie9318: Hm. That’s tempting.
Little Boots
@fasteddie9318:
I love the idea of grassley sitting down with the secret service to break that secret code.
Suffern ACE
@Belafon (formerly anonevent): But not diet rite? Royal Crown’s Diet Rite was 10x better than tab.
BGinCHI
So let’s get this straight.
Grassley and the GOP want to use ALEC to bend laws to corporate will, so that corporations will have the maximum say in how governance works. But when corporations decide to oppose this, or merely stop cooperating, he attacks them and suggests people not patronize them.
What the fuck?
Could these fucks be more corrupt?
When are the young people and the brown people going to rise up and throw these old white bums out of office?
Yutsano
@asiangrrlMN: Senators do not get Secret Service protection. So you’re free to deride and insult them all you wish. In other words DO EET!!
Little Boots
@Yutsano:
even national treasure chuck “chuckie” grassley?
Marcellus Shale, Public Dick
ha, that’s funny they are ratfucking hard.
they are desperate to throw noise, and hope people get boycott fatigue.
Villago Delenda Est
“U might think abt”?
OK, now I know who all the illiterate assholes in WoW trade chat are.
They’re United States Senators.
karen marie
@Matoko Borgia-Steeler: No, “a pathologist testified Thursday that she probably suffered from hypokalemia, or low potassium, which was caused by excessive consumption of Coke and overall poor nutrition.”
Had nothing to do with the quality of the water or any “brown sludge.”
asiangrrlMN
@Yutsano: ::sharpens pencil, then tosses it aside ‘coz I’m muthafuckin’ tweeting, bitchez::
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@FlyingToaster: There’s a restaurant here in Rockwall, Route 66 Diner (located on state Highway 66, not Route 66) serves RC Cola.
Little Boots
@Marcellus Shale, Public Dick:
honestly, I think the Koch brothers will make up any deficit, but the important thing is that everyone knows where this shit comes from, and starts hopefully paying attention to their legislators and the stupid shit they are voting for.
FlyingToaster
@TheMightyTrowel: Until 5 years ago I could find RC in cans at Shaws in Cambridge, Belmont, Newtonville and Waltham. Then they stopped carrying it altogether. Then Stop&Shop in Watertown carried 2Ls until last year, when it disappeared.
Now I’m getting the 2Ls at Hannaford in Waltham.
Next time I have to go down to Dedham for WarriorGirl’s LLBean stuff, I’ll check the Tedeschis. I suspect that you’re thinking of the Roche Brothers’ grocery in West Roxbury, which will be even more interesting to try to navigate to than Tedeschi’s Dedham.
Thanks for the tip.
Jennifer
Something tells me that attacking your corporate sponsors isn’t the best fundraising strategy for re-election.
Kind of like the underwhelming Limbaugh strategy of bad-mouthing the sponsors who dumped him on air. It was like he felt compelled to warn all prospective sponsors that if they advertised with him, no matter what he said that might make their connection to him anathema to the public, they’d be stuck advertising with him forever, else he’d bad mouth them once they stopped. Not too bright.
Suffern ACE
@BGinCHI: It is kind of like the Opthlamologists protesting one of their members for not coming to the convention and asking us to get riled up about it.
Anon
I don’t often drink colas, but when I do, they’re ALEC-friendly. Stay wingnutty, my friends.
Matoko Borgia-Steeler
@karen marie:
Water poisoning (aka water intoxication) has nothing to do with the quality of the water. What matters is the quantity. Effectively, excessive water dilutes the amount of electrolytes in the body and causes a disturbance in brain function. Given the amount of water that she was consuming by drinking the Coke she did, it’s actually perfectly possible for her to have developed water intoxication/poisoning.
Martin
Hey Chuck,
We pay your stupid ass $150k per year to write legislation, and your off fucking whining like a spoiled litte girl that Coke doesn’t want to pay someone else to do your job. STFU and get back to work you lazy git.
BillinGlendaleCA
I’m now in a korean BBQ induced haze.
BGinCHI
@Suffern ACE: Exactly, but with more fascism and dickishness.
piratedan
seems to me that if we really want to kill ALEC all we need to do is send an obtuse white guy in, pretending to be a pimp looking for a way to have them write laws so he can pimp his string of hookers legally in the state. Naturally, we’ll have to film it and selectively edit it, but once we’re done, we can show it on Fox News to show how REAL laws are written.
Little Boots
@Martin:
whining cause somebody called him on his shit of just picking up whatever some bullshit corporate entity writes up and hands to him and then introducing it as legislation.
that’s what people have to get. all over this country that crap happens.
FlyingToaster
@Belafon (formerly anonevent): Yeah, when I was in college in Indiana there were several “family” restaurants that served RC.
Here, a family restaurant is most likely to serve Amaretto di Saronno and Sambuca. Well, since Bickfords disappeared, and there’s only 1 IHOP left over in Brighton.
BGinCHI
@Martin: His job is like a hammock that lulls him to sleep.
End Senatorial Welfare!
gaz
@piratedan: just edit it to make them all look black.
BGinCHI
@FlyingToaster: RC used to be big in Hoosierland. Pretty good with cheap whiskey back in the day.
Unless you went to Earlham.
FlyingToaster
@BGinCHI: Fortunately for me, I did my time in Bloomington. And didn’t get off the bus in Martinsville.
Little Boots
@piratedan:
ohmigod, I love this.
piratedan
@gaz: but also kinda gayish mexican too….with turbans….
BGinCHI
@FlyingToaster: Smart. Martinsville is not for lovers.
You can tell by the way they play the Deliverance music without irony at the welcome center.
Freshman year at IU, rest of undergrad at Purdue. Hey, I think Little 5 is this weekend! Good times.
Narcissus
I drink only Aztec Virgins
Little Boots
mmm. gayish mexicans with turbans.
nellcote
@asiangrrlMN:
A Wolfowitz?
karen marie
@Matoko Borgia-Steeler: Sorry, I misread your point. I thought you were arguing the opposite. I blame the heat. I’m not used to 94 degree heat in April.
Matoko Borgia-Steeler
@nellcote:
Maybe a Rums-feeled – you know, the sucked sucks and the unsucked unsucks….
Matoko Borgia-Steeler
@karen marie:
Eh, no harm, no foul. It’s hot here too – which is beyond bizarre in April.
Little Boots
everyone should mock john, upstairs.
TheMightyTrowel
@FlyingToaster: Good luck!
mangrilla
@David Koch:
I believe they still do contain trace amounts of cocaine alkaloids. Coca-Cola still imports coca leaves to this day, AFAIK.
In this case, your namesake would have gotten exactly what he really wanted were he in control of Coca Cola: laws that apply to everyone other than him.
ABL
@Yutsano: You say high fructose corn syrup, I say tomato.
Calming Influence
def: suc-ombed: verb (sʌk-kəʊmed)[Middle English, from Medieval Latin, New Old Fart]
1. Getting a comb-over from a succubus.
2. (general) Random Republican douchebaggery.
Suffern ACE
If we had a press corps, there would be questions to chuck as to why ALEC is so worth defending
Matoko Borgia-Steeler
@Suffern ACE:
Not to mention Coke’s freedom of speech and liberty of action. Corporations are people too, after all. Why, one might think Grassley was setting himself up as a little tinpot King or something like that.
handy
@Martin:
Congressin’ is hard work.
bago
@Matoko Borgia-Steeler: A Virgin American? What is Richard Branson, if not a perfect allegory.
The prophet Nostradumbass
Heinz recently started selling a version of their ketchup called “Simply Heinz”, which has sugar in it, no “High Fructose Corn Syrup”.
Funny how companies will play both sides.
The only reason why companies use “High Fructose Corn Syrup” instead of Sugar is that the government has given a huge give-away to Archer Daniels Midland, the biggest corn syrup producer in the country.
harlana
could someone please get the old men away from the twitter machines?
becca
Big ALEC story in the NYT this AM.
The Wal-Mart bribery investigation by the Times is potentially explosive.
Not a good news day for bloodsuckers.
kay
@becca:
I’m so pleased it’s national.
I think people won’t like this. We like to think state legislators are writing state-specific laws, not churning out corporate-drafted boilerplate forr a national agenda.
kay
Also, ALEC really contradicts the ( wholly fictional and fanciful) conservative dogma that state-level governance is closer to the people, so therefore pure and unsullied.
ALEC writes the laws and state lawmakers put them in, whether it’s Arizona or Kansas or New Jersey. It’s a national program with a national agenda, just like a federal government, except unelected!
debbie
If ALEC’s writing all the legislation for the lawmakers, we need to either lay off staff or drastically cut salaries for everyone. What are these clowns getting paid for?
kay
@debbie:
A lot of them are part-time and they don’t actually make that much. They’ve always used outside groups for expertise on a specific subject, but I think this is different.
This is a national pro-corporate agenda, implimented at the state-level, methodically and consistently.
Arizona is Kansas is New Jersey, even for things like schools, which people like to pretend are still locally governed.
There’s such arrogance in the sloppiness, too, submitting bills w/ the ALEC header still on them, etc.
I think it’s funny that they’re tweeting right as the NYT story comes out :)
debbie
“There’s such arrogance in the sloppiness, too, submitting bills w/ the ALEC header still on them, etc”
Zealots are always sloppy — like those Gulf safety plans that all promised to protect Caribbean walruses.
I also love how they’re calling critics “bullies” when that is their M.O. too. They couldn’t be less self-aware.
Patricia Kayden
So of course in Grassley’s world, it’s perfectly okay for a group like ALEC to go around from state to state legislating right wing laws, but it’s not okay for “lefties” to fight back. Right. Got it now.
kay
@Patricia Kayden:
I think they forget that these are multinational companies. The corporate brand has to be sold and protected outside, say, Grassleyland.
White people aren’t the growth area in emerging markets. POC are.
So when Color if Change says that Coke and Pepsi are “corporate sponsors of voter suppression laws in the US” Coke and Pepsi aren’t looking to Grassley’s constituents.
Conservatives have an amazingly US centric view that doesn’t really comport with reality.
Apparently they haven’t noticed how much advertising is directed to Latinos and other people of color.
There’s a reason for that, and it has nothing to do with “diversity” or “political correctness”.
It’s bidness :)
kay
@Patricia Kayden:
We have a JC Penney here that was dying. Their entire local advertising focus is now directed at Latinos, because that’s the growth group in that county.
Grassley can whine all he wants, but they’re going to go where the customers are, and that ain’t the Fox News demographic.
kc
A U.S. Senator calling for a boycott of an American owned and manufactured product?
pseudonymous in nc
@kay:
Exactly. The “laboratories of government” are really just school science labs where the lesson plans are being sent from an office in DC. ALEC isn’t as obvious as, say, AUL, which puts its “model legislation” concerning abortion on its website with [insert state name here] blanks. But it’s clearly working the same way.
I repeat myself on this, but state legislatures in the US are really fucked up: there’s a huge disparity between the powers they wield and the capabilities of the people elected. Most voters don’t really give a shit about state-level politics; local newspapers and TV don’t devote much time to it, because it’s not a sexy beat to cover. All that combines to create a perfect environment for wingnut welfare shops like ALEC to appropriate the machinery of government.