<a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/59124558@N06/7645078102/” title=”Romney spokesman Gabby Johnston #1 by dengre.bj, on Flickr”><img src=”http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8019/7645078102_1773c53eef.jpg” width=”500″ height=”471″ alt=”Romney spokesman Gabby Johnston #1″></a>
When Mitt Romney says “American Exceptionalism” what he means is “White Male Exceptionalism”. By October, he’ll openly campaign as ‘The Great White Hope’. Already his whisper strategy of all-dog-whistles-all-the-time is moving from the shadows to become the centerpiece of run for the White House.
The event cited above and his code talking speech to the VFW yesterday will seem tame when we look back on them in the fall. Mittens and his wingnutopia minions will be bringing the crazy. We should enjoy the quiet of summer while we can.
Cheers
Culture of Truth
We should enjoy the quite of summer while we can.
Get a tan. But not too dark.
jwb
I so wanted to put this up on Pinterest, but you’ve disabled sharing on the Flickr account. I has sad.
Handy
I expect the worst.
Culture of Truth
By the fall the Romney campaign will be in full bunker mentality.
Archie Bunker
redshirt
I’ll say this – we certainly have a choice this election. Sanity or insanity? Progress or regress?
The lines are quite clear.
Dennis G.
@jwb: Really. I’ll look into that…
PurpleGirl
Doesn’t Mitt understand that there are lots of people (maybe even most North Americans) who aren’t of English descent — England is one smallish country compared to other countries in Europe. I myself have Austrian, French and Sicilian ancestors, maybe even some North African and Greek if I went back far enough. Both sets of grandparents came to the US in the early 1900s.
Yutsano
Willard is still an Other. To the teatards, he is still an Other cult member. He thinks this will generate enthusiasm in the South for his candidacy. It won’t work.
f space that
A Booman points out, this is straight up KKK stuff. Rmoney, one of our most despicable a**holes.
Randy P
Can someone decode the Winston Churchill dog whistle for me?
EconWatcher
When he says Obama does not understand our Anglo-Saxon heritage, I think we can dispense with the talk of coded language. That’s just blatant, loud and proud.
jwb
@Dennis G.: It says the image cannot be pinned to Pinterest because flickr.com reports that “the owner has disabled sharing.”
Richard
There’s a show I enjoy on PBS called “History Detectives”. The last episode I watched had a story about a 1920’s 78 record recorded for the Ku Klux Klan. The two Klan propaganda songs on the record were recorded by the “100% Americans”.
Evidently, being “100% American” was a popular catch phrase for the KKK at the time and obvious code for white Anglo-Saxon Protestant.
Everything old is new again, apparently.
Dennis G.
@jwb: I think I fixed it. Try and let me know. Cheers
Culture of Truth
as I said on twitter last night, that’s not a dog whistle, it’s an anglo-klaxon
PurpleGirl
@Randy P: George W. Bush had a thing about Winston Churchill. Supposed they were distant cousins. Bush borrowed a bust of Churchill for the Oval Office. President Obama gave it back to the English and this upset many wingers. However, they fail to note that the loan was time-limited and it was time to return the statue. Another case of the wingers making a mountain out of crap.
MikeJ
@Richard:
Cherokee?
rikyrah
I hear the dog whistles, loud and clear.
rlrr
@MikeJ:
Cherokees are descended from Asian immigrants.
jwb
@Randy P: I’d like the full story as well. Best i could make out, Obama apparently returned some bust of Churchill that W. had on display to the British and gave some cheap zone 1 encoded DVDs to the Queen or PM at some meeting and that shows that he hates the British.
KSH
As a member of the race that the anglo-saxons stole the most labor from, I think the president understands that heritage more than most.
rlrr
@jwb:
I’m pretty sure the Queen has access to a region free DVD player…
Mattminus
I think this is a rope-a-dope. The plan to launch a series of increasingly thinly veiled dogwhistles until one is so outrageous that the president or a proxy has to respond to it. Then they’ll turn it around and start in about how race obsessed the prez is, he thinks you’re a racist if you disagree with him, etc.
hueyplong
Imagine what it will be like if Obama is perceived to have opened up a lead that requires something on the order of “game change.” I’m going to have to agree with the many who have posted that we might as well have a pool for the first GOP operative to drop Ni-CLANG without the clang.
jwb
@Dennis G.: Yup, it works. Thanks!
trollhattan
@EconWatcher:
One wonders what his grandparents would think of this talk. Who would have had a greater influence on the president, the grandparents who helped raise him, or Bill Ayres? Per the Republicans, the grandparents don’t count.
How does that work?
Ripley
Predictably awful bow to the lily-whiteness of Puritan heritage, but still: No Irish!
rlrr
@jwb:
I’m pretty sure the Queen has access to a region free DVD player…
El Cid
@rlrr: Europeans are descended from East Africans.
Mattminus
I think this is a rope-a-dope. The plan to launch a series of increasingly thinly veiled dogwhistles until one is so outrageous that the president or a proxy has to respond to it. Then they’ll turn it around and start in about how race obsessed the prez is, he thinks you’re a racist if you disagree with him, etc.
jwb
@jwb: Yup, it works now.
mechwarrior online
Anglo-Saxon is really odd at that. It’s not even generic white, far from that, a whole lot of us are excluded from that description as well despite being pale as snow.
This comes off as more of a David Brooks sort of cultural thing. That everything was fine when it was just the WASPs from Great Britain before the Irish, Italians, Spanish, Dutch, and the rest of us came in and fucked everything up. What with our poor work ethics, drinking, fighting fucking, and general behavior that would have the upper classes freaking about those damn Irish are at it again.
Culture of Truth
Obama is insuffciently servile to the European socialists who we declared independence from. Yes, Republicans iz weird.
Randy P
@jwb: @PurpleGirl: I heard the story about the bust, which was on loan from the British. So “return the bust of Winston Churchill to the White House” is not actually code for anything else, it just means return the bust of Winston Churchill?
Since it doesn’t belong to the US, I guess that means a military raid on the British Embassy.
mechwarrior online
Anglo-Saxon is really odd at that. It’s not even generic white, far from that, a whole lot of us are excluded from that description as well despite being pale as snow.
This comes off as more of a David Brooks sort of cultural thing. That everything was fine when it was just the WASPs from Great Britain before the Irish, Italians, Spanish, Dutch, and the rest of us came in and fucked everything up. What with our poor work ethics, drinking, fighting fucking, and general behavior that would have the upper classes freaking about those damn Irish are at it again.
mechwarrior online
Anglo-Saxon is really odd at that. It’s not even generic white, far from that, a whole lot of us are excluded from that description as well despite being pale as snow.
This comes off as more of a David Brooks sort of cultural thing. That everything was fine when it was just the WASPs from Great Britain before the Irish, Italians, Spanish, Dutch, and the rest of us came in and fucked everything up. What with our poor work ethics, drinking, fighting fucking, and general behavior that would have the upper classes freaking about those damn Irish are at it again.
mdblanche
@PurpleGirl: Maybe he doesn’t understand. Guess which state has the highest percentage of people who identify as of English descent? That’s right, Utah.
Judas Escargot, Acerbic Prophet of the Mighty Potato God
I have uncles on both sides who, in their younger days, would have pummeled the face of anyone calling them “Anglo-Saxon”.
So as a Franco/Irish-American, I guess I don’t have to bother voting for Romney then.
Phew. I was totally on the fence for awhile there.
rlrr
@El Cid:
All people are descended from East Africans, which is why most wingnuts don’t accept evolution…
mdblanche
@PurpleGirl: Maybe he doesn’t understand. Guess which state has the highest percentage of people who identify as of English descent? That’s right, Utah.
redshirt
@Mattminus: That presumes a high level of intelligence and cunning on the part of the Rmoney campaign. Qualities that have not been observed in the least bit so far.
Omnes Omnibus
@jwb: He returned the bust and, on his state visit to the UK in 2009, gave QEII a personalized iPod with video from one of her recent trips to the US plus music she was known to like as a part of his official gift.
gelfling545
@PurpleGirl: Not of English descent myself – French, Austrian & Irish (with possible Hungarian depending on where 1 great grandfather was actually from). For that matter the name Romney doesn’t sound Anglo-saxon to me – more like Norman/French or perhaps Rom.
mdblanche
@PurpleGirl: Maybe he doesn’t understand. Guess which state has the highest percentage of self-reporting English ancestry? That’s right, Utah.
Omnes Omnibus
@jwb: He returned the bust and, on his state visit to the UK in 2009, gave QEII a personalized iPod with video from one of her recent trips to the US plus music she was known to like as a part of his official gift.
Comrade Javamanphil
@Mattminus: If true, then they are running against the angry black man stereotype in their heads and not the current President.
redshirt
@Mattminus: That presupposes intelligence and cunning on behalf of the Rmoney campaign. Qualities not in evidence to date.
dead existentialist
@Culture of Truth: Damn, you are on fire today.
cmorenc
@Dennis G:
That indistinct mangling of “quite” and “quiet” is a characteristic Southern Redneck White malapropism. If I didn’t know your well-established record of harsh criticism against revisionist neo-Confederate reactionaries, I’d suspect from that bit of verbiage that you might be driving around in a pickup truck with a gun rack and a confederate flag decal on the back window.
kindness
Mitten’s minions makes one want to join The New Black Panthers.
kindness
Mitten’s minions makes one want to join The New Black Panthers.
FormerSwingVoter
This may be beside the point, but… Weren’t the Britons the good guys, and the Anglo-Saxons savage monsters?
cmorenc
@Dennis G:
That indistinct mangling of “quite” and “quiet” is a characteristic Southern Redneck White malapropism. If I didn’t know your well-established record of harsh criticism against revisionist neo-Confederate reactionaries, I’d suspect from that bit of verbiage that you might be driving around in a pickup truck with a gun rack and a confederate flag decal on the back window.
Violet
I hope someone really destroys Romney over this. I mean politically. I hope he becomes such a disaster of a candidate that he’s a weight on downticket races.
mdblanche
@PurpleGirl: Maybe he doesn’t understand. Guess which state has the highest percentage of self-reporting English ancestry? That’s right, Utah.
Brachiator
@Randy P:
Conservatives and other fools like to pretend that the Churchill bust has been in the White House either since the signing of the Declaration of Independence or WWII (Sir Winston, like Obama, had a time machine). But the whole thing is part of the 9/11 theater.
Conservatives take the return of the statue as a sign that Obama hates Churchill because of the prime minister’s connection to UK’s past colonial empire. And if Obama hates Churchill, he hates the British, and so must hate white people. And if he hates white people, he hates America. And Fox News.
I think that just about covers it.
eric
I think we should create an objective measure of racist content. We create a chart of words, phrases, and topics and allocate points. Then, we can add up the points of a given speech or event on a scale from 0 (celebrate kwanza everyone) to 100 (birth of a nation film festival).
so, Nigger is straight up 100. ghetto as adjective is 90. Uppity would be 80. Lazy = 50. and so on. I would never have put anglo saxon on the list, but now it is a robust 75.
FormerSwingVoter
This may be beside the point, but… Weren’t the Britons the good guys, and the Anglo-Saxons savage monsters?
mdblanche
@hueyplong: How would that be a game change?
Comrade Javamanphil
@Mattminus: If true, then they are running against the angry black man stereotype in their heads and not the current President.
Yutsano
@Mattminus: I’d buy that if Willard had shown any sense of tactics. So far none of that is in evidence.
eric
I think we should create an objective measure of racist content. We create a chart of words, phrases, and topics and allocate points. Then, we can add up the points of a given speech or event on a scale from 0 (celebrate kwanza everyone) to 100 (birth of a nation film festival).
so, Nigger is straight up 100. ghetto as adjective is 90. Uppity would be 80. Lazy = 50. and so on. I would never have put anglo saxon on the list, but now it is a robust 75.
4tehlulz
@Mattminus: Honestly, it’s probably Obama rope-a-dope. The Bain attacks really drove Mitt et al. right into Crazytown, making him easier to dismiss as a rich crank rather than as presidential material.
quannlace
Don’t forget the nekkid lady mud-flaps
Tonal Crow
Mitt Romney does not understand his obligation to campaign honestly and without pandering to evil.
mdblanche
@PurpleGirl: Maybe he doesn’t understand. Guess which state has the highest percentage of self-reporting English ancestry? That’s right, Utah.
Litlebritdifrnt
Presidential debate format and dates issued.
http://www.politico.com/blogs/media/2012/07/presidential-debate-formats-announced-130089.html
It all hinges on the moderators now I guess. I’m thinking that Romney will call in sick for the last one.
eric
@Brachiator: he got a “european” dog, too. not a hound.
quannlace
Don’t forget the nekkid lady mud-flaps
Tonal Crow
Mitt Romney does not understand his obligation to campaign honestly and without pandering to evil.
dead existentialist
@PurpleGirl: I’m the real deal. Paternal side came over with the Baltimores; father’s mother’s people came directly from Wales; Ma’s parents were Ulster Irish. You should see my feckin’ teeth.
@Culture of Truth: Damn, you are on fire today.
jwb
@Randy P: How dare Obama return what doesn’t belong to us! The disrespect!
As I recall this occurred during the phase where the wurlitzer was engaged in microanalyzing PBO’s every act, especially with foreign leaders to show how he disrespected them or America’s place in the world or both, all in a rather transparent attempt to undermine his legitimacy by purporting to show that he didn’t know what he was doing in statecraft. The MSM, of course, played right along. Fortunately, this is one stop on the wurlitzer that has not been playing quite so regularly over the past year or so.
jl
@eric: Word cloud? How so you make those? Any freeware for that?
Pasting in speeches would be easy.
Commercials and his off the cuff remarks would be a lot of work.
Can you configure the word cloud software to keep together the immortal quotes. So ‘trees’ ‘right’ ‘height’ cluster around Michigan? ‘Small’ next to ‘varmints’?
the Conster
@eric:
Thug is up there in the 90s somewhere, I’d say. Arrogant and uppity are tied at 80.
MikeJ
@eric:
You’ve never been around the BNP. Happily, I’ve never really been around anyone who would admit to being a supporter either in polite company, but I’ve seen them on the news and in the paper enough.
dead existentialist
@PurpleGirl: I’m the real deal. Paternal side came over with the Baltimores; father’s mother’s people came directly from Wales; Ma’s parents were Ulster Irish. You should see my feckin’ teeth.
@Culture of Truth: Damn, you are on fire today.
mdblanche
@mdblanche: @mdblanche: @mdblanche: @mdblanche: @mdblanche: FYWP
MonkeyBoy
A lot of the Tea Party ancestry is from what Colin Woodard calls Greater Appalachia which was colonized by Scots-Irish. That race (with a large Celtic component) was despised by the Anglo-Saxon Yankees and the Southern aristocrats who thought their royal Norman heritage made them the natural masters of the Anglo-Saxons and Celts.
Mormonism itself is a religious offshoot of Puritanism and of all states Utah has the largest proportion of Anglo-Saxon descent.
Somebody needs to tell the teatards that a lot of them are not really WASPs and have been historically despised by the English derived people of the US.
Dennis G.
@cmorenc: Fixed. And I did live in Georgia for a dozen years back in the day so I guess some of it rubbed off…
jwb
@Omnes Omnibus: Where did the zone 1 DVD part of the story come up? Any ideas? I know that detail was in one of the many confused reports I read yesterday.
Violet
What the hell is wrong with the blog today? There are a whole bunch of the same comment over and over again from various posters.
eric
@the Conster: i would rate arrogant lower than uppity, cause uppity conjures up nigger in the way arrogant doesn’t. not to say it is not a whistle, but uppity has to be 10 points more ;)
and the phrase “I agree with Pat Buchanan” employed in any context whatsoever is 93.5
HyperIon
@Richard wrote :
For me the most interesting part was about the record company that made the record. It was run by Italian immigrants who were obviously NOT 100% American. And they were happy to make the record but evidently went to the trouble of not putting anything on the label that would point back to their company.
Plus I have (a copy of) the King Oliver recording they also made that featured the young Louis Armstrong.
Brachiator
@mechwarrior online:
This kind of thing also gives Pat Buchanan a stiffy.
It is odd, but telling, that the Romney advisor peddles this stuff. It is like the kind of crap that 1950s Birchers would eat up. Distinctly retro. But I am getting the sense that Mittens really believes this stuff, and that his entire world view (including stuff like wanting to make enemies of Russia and China again) reflects somebody who is not just out of touch, but also stuck in the past.
And as I noted in another thread, I wonder what Sheldon Adelson thinks of his fair haired boy Romney now? Not a lot of Anglo Saxons in Israel, I don’t think.
redshirt
@MonkeyBoy: Sorry for the ignorance, but how is Mormonism an offshoot of the Puritans? I thought old sexy Brigham Young or whomever invented it whole cloth in order to get more sexy time with more ladies.
jwb
@Violet: Blog’s been borking. You submit comment, blog barfs, you reload blog, comment is not there, so you resubmit comment, blog barfs again. 5 minutes later, reload blog and multiple versions of comment appear.
Rob in CT
Sadly, my Brit father totally believes the whole Churchill bust means Obama hates the Brits because Kenya thing. I’ve given up discussing politics with him, not least because he’s 86 now and what’s the point? I don’t think he even votes anymore.
dead existentialist
@Violet: I think something is amiss with the reply feature.
Greed Is God
Romney’s foreign policy advisors are still referring to the “Soviet Union”. This is from today:
Litlebritdifrnt
It has become quite clear that the Romney team does little or no research on those they pick to do ads and stuff for them. The latest two small business stooges picked for a conference call are both sucking on the gubmint teat
http://www.tampabay.com/blogs/the-buzz-florida-politics/content/romney-campaign-has?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter
beltane
I’ve read in numerous places that outside of the South, only around 25% of Americans (probably more like 27%) can claim English descent. The largest group of white Americans are descended from German immigrants.
scav
@redshirt: Actually, the polygamy thing was added to the mix later, while they were in Nauvoo I’m pretty sure (so they’d already been thrown out of MO, but had yet to walk to UT). He was sleeping around pretty solidly already but meeting with some pushback so decided to make it doctrine instead of a personal perq.
Robert Sneddon
The Angles were from the region of Europe that is covered by Denmark and Belgium. The Saxons were from Saxony, in France.
The British people are mutts, basically, an admixture of Celts, Picts, Irish, Britons, Romans, Angles and Saxons, Vikings, Normans and latterly Jamaicans, Pakistanis, Indians and Chinese. The most recent entry into the genetic sweepstakes are the Poles.
PurpleGirl
@Brachiator: In his speech to the VFW, Romney referred to Czechoslovakia. He (and his speech writers) don’t know that it’s two countries now and has been for some time. Of course, it always had two cultures.
Violet
@Rob in CT: The whole Churchill bust probably could have been handled a bit better. Agree behind the scenes with the British ambassador or other representative about how it was to be handled. Public statement from the White House thanking the British for their generous loan, noting that the time of the loan had come to an end. Mention of the fondness America has for Churchill and his historical importance for the world. Followed by public statement from British rep about our two countries “shared ideals” or somesuch.
As it was, even the British seemed a bit unclear as to what the return meant for our two countries relationship. Just not handled as well as it could have been.
The Right Honorable Member for, the Very Reverend Mother, Her Duchal Serene Highness. Dr. Hortense Sussudio Fuuckerfaaster
does anyone think richard grennell might not have been this colassally stupid?
beltane
@redshirt: Mormonism is only an offshoot of Puritanism in the sense that it’s not an offshoot of Catholicism or Anglicism. In reality, Mormonism is not an offshoot of any particular religious tradition but is a classic 19th century snake oil cult cloaked in a pastiche of Christian-sounding woo combined with good old British Israelite white supremacism.
Brachiator
@MonkeyBoy:
Scots Irish are a race? I don’t think so.
The best reaction I saw to the Anglo Saxon BS was on Reddit
Yutsano
FYWP. That is all.
Nellcote
@jl:
http://www.wordle.net/
Raven
@scav: Used to catch the Addie Mae in Nauvoo. It was a flat top double deck excursion boat with a jukebox and cheap beer. It would steam south down to Lock and Dam #19 at Keokuk and back and we’d party like mofo’s!
Violet
@PurpleGirl:
Now? It’s been that way since 1993. Romney’s not just an idiot, he’s ridiculously out of date. Same thing with the “Soviet Union.”
Who does he think he’s talking to when he says things like that? It’s been almost 20 years since those countries even existed.
dead existentialist
@beltane: Well, you just had to go Godwin, didn’t you.
Culture of Truth
@dead existentialist: Merci. Or however they said in olde englishe
MonkeyBoy
@redshirt: “how is Mormonism an offshoot of the Puritans?”
From my memory of Woodard’s book:
1) The Founders and most members came from New England Puritan stock.
2) Puritanism had two components – a theology and a social world view where the members were subservient to the community (communal Protestantism) as opposed to the individual Protestantism (personal not world salvation) that the Southern/Appalachian faiths held most important.
Puritan theology was basically utopian but didn’t last long before splintering into such things as Universalism which retained the world view but not the Theology. In upstate New York there were a large number of Utopian sects established (some even promoting free love) and Mormonism is the only one that survived.
dead existentialist
@Brachiator:
You too?
Raven
@Violet: He’s talking to the fucking jackasses that will vote for him no matter what he says.
the Conster
@eric:
Weirdly, during the Bush maladministration when Uncle Pat was writing for antiwar.com I actually agreed with several things he wrote about the neocons and their little vanity project in the ME. He was not a fan. Maybe we can give that phrase an asterisk denoting agreement after 2008.
jl
@Nellcote:
Thanks. When I have some time I will put in some text and try it out.
Now I read that Romney has not contacted Telegraph to dispute story, but is accusing Biden of taking political advantage of the “false statements” in his statement today.
I told a commenter that we need to enjoy the hilarity of Mitt’s performance. I may have to take that back. Now I am getting really pissed.
Violet
@Raven: I just hope he keeps saying things like that. Maybe he can mention Prussia or Austria-Hungary. If he talks about his good pal Napoleon, that would help too.
PurpleGirl
@Violet: He’s speaking to those Americans who yearn for the good old days of the 1950s when we knew who our enemies were. Since the demise of the Soviet Union there’s been an emptiness of sorts for many Americans. We seem to need an enemy who is as powerful as we are, as evil as we are good. I’d bet that Romney doesn’t realize that Yugoslavia doesn’t exist either.
Raven
@Violet: And Yugoslavia
Culture of Truth
So what if Obama doesn’t love the Brits. He’s President of the U S of feaking A. If Mitt wants to grovel to some foreign power that’s his business.
Violet
@Raven: Yes….?
Mnemosyne
@Brachiator:
I have a sneaking suspicion that this is the part of the story that irks them most of all.
jl
@PurpleGirl: But the US has always been at war with Yugoslovia and Canadia. And Frenchia too, but that goes without saying.
Redshift
@Violet:
Perhaps, but it’s a bit like attempting to make sure that no sentence will sound bad as an out-of-context quotes — you don’t put a large amount of effort into it because what sane person would try to make a big deal about it?
Do you have a reference for anyone on the British side actually having a problem with it at the time? My impression had been that, like the business with the gift to the queen, wingnuts just made up the idea that the Brits must be offended as a way to bolster their outrage.
geg6
My dad was full out 100% of British descent, a first generation American. His parents registered as Republicans after naturalization because Lincoln was one and they admired him as their great-great grandparents were involved in the British abolitionist movement. My dad switched parties, in large part, because of the changes in the GOP due to the Civil Rights movement. He would, if he was alive today, tell Mittens to go fuck himself with that Anglo-Saxon shit. My dad was a WASP and he wouldn’t want Rmoney on his side of anything, the draft dodging cultist that he is.
contessakitty (AKA Karen)
Voter ID and Racial Resentment
Says it all.
jl
@Mnemosyne: i have a hard time believing that anyone could NOT take this garbage as ROFLMAO. But will probably find out at family gatherings that include the tea partiers around Labor Day.
Violet
@Raven: Ah, I see you edited it. It was blank before. Yes, Yugoslavia would be excellent. Perhaps he could mention how those East Germans always do so well at the Olympics.
AHH onna Droid
Z@scav: Smith demanded plural marriage of his inner circle but it was after his death that Young promulgated mandatory polygyny for Mormon families in the Utah colony, according to contemporary accounts. BY had no trouble getting poon; rather the demand was a Jim Jones style method of exerting more power over his followers. Flds does the same and for the same reason but more extreme than even the wildest charges against Young. (Of course, marital rape was not recognized then, however emotional abuse was freely discussed and condemned.)
redshirt
@MonkeyBoy: Thanks. That makes sense. Those were crazy times back in the day.
Culture of Truth
Churchill is a remider of a time when the US and Britain ruled the world. Abe is reminder of time when Washington crushed the south and laid waste to its lands and homes.
jwb
@Redshift: The article from 2009 cited above suggests that some Brits at the time were less than happy with the handling of the situation of the bust.
Mike in NC
@Greed Is God:
Willard has hired the biggest bunch of neo-con hacks and imbeciles from the two previous Republican administrations. He really does intend to start Cold War v2.0 since many countries, including Russia and China, aren’t happy about having Mormon missionaries on their turf. He’ll teach them not to mess with the angel Moroni!
El Cid
James Holmes obviously proved the value of good weaponry and ammunition and is a role model for so many.
There’s nothing better than a big, successful mass public killing by guns to remind us all how desirable guns really are.
beltane
@Violet: We used to joke about this in 2008 on account of John McCain’s advanced age but Romney really seems to have avoided all knowledge of the world outside of his bank accounts.
Violet
@Redshift:
From the Telegraph link that Brachiator linked above:
No one specific and who knows if it’s true. Diplomats and other political officials probably wouldn’t wanted to have been quoted at the time saying something negative about the new US President. Potential international incident and all.
japa21
@jl: Interesting, since we know how quick the campaign is to have newspapers retract things, or at least try to.
Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant)
@rikyrah: Those aren’t dogwhistles, those are freaking vuvuzelas!
SatanicPanic
It’s not enough that the Republicans go after womens’ bodies, now upset about dudes’ busts.
Villago Delenda Est
@Tonal Crow:
There is no evidence he feels any obligation concerning his campaigning, other than winning.
In that, he’s a typical Rethug. The good of the country or humanity in general is totally subsumed and denied by the quest for power.
honus
@PurpleGirl: Also, the republicans need a WWII hero and iot can’t be FDR or George Marshall, or Ike anymore, so they are idolizing Churchill, who would have died in a German prison camp had it not been for FDR. Churchill is also purported to have uttered a lot of conservative maxims which research reveals he most likely did not actually say or write, i. e. “…show me a person who is not a conservative at thirty, and I’ll show you a person w/o a brain.”
Redshift
@Violet: The followup implication by the Torygraph journalist that it must have something to do with Kenya makes me even more suspicious. It does appear that the rumor was started by British wingnuts rather than American ones, though.
Calouste
@Robert Sneddon:
Except for that Denmark and Belgium don’t share a border so they’re not usually considered a region, and that Saxony is in Germany and hasn’t been under French control since Charlemagne, you’re 100% correct.
As far as you can call Charlemagne French of course, considering he was born in what is now Belgium.
MonkeyBoy
@Brachiator:: “Scots Irish are a race? I don’t think so.”
If you can get off you political correctness high horse, one can define a “race” as a group of people who almost always marry within that group. Thus might use “the Anglo-Saxon race” in a non racist sense (though it often is used in a racist sense). In this sense of race, English, French, American Scots Irish, African American, Jewish, American Catholic, etc. have been mostly closed breeding population though recently the stricture of “marrying within your race” has been declining.
redshirt
@Villago Delenda Est: Country First! And by that I mean – ME! ME! ME!
Linda Featheringill
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/12/20/mitt-romney_n_1160732.html
Romney is also in that all-presidents-related club.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@MonkeyBoy: @redshirt:
More specifically, many of the early Mormons, including Joseph Smith, were Mayflower descendants. The Mormons are as much an offshoot of Puritanism as anything else that formed in New England during the Second Great Awakening.
trollhattan
@Culture of Truth:
Win! Don’t know how I missed this one earlier.
g
Read on some other blog in the comments from an amateur geneologist that actually Obama’s descended through his grandfather Stanley Dunham to some of the earliest English settlers to Plymouth Colony. Can’t be bothered to search and link from work, but maybe later.
redshirt
I hope one day we can all see each other as “people”, rather than this race or that nationality, etc. I used to think the only things that could bring this about were: 1. Everyone sleeps with everyone, worldwide. Would take time, but eventually the point will be made, and 2. Alien Invasion.
But I doubt that now – if Obama were President when aliens invaded, no doubt the Rethugs would do everything they could to help the aliens defeat that evil OBAMMER.
scav
@AHH onna Droid: Going for a quick look at my book on the period, there apparently had been rumors of plural marriage about since the 1830s (strenuously and officially denied, see 1835 General Conference) but the John C. Bennett esposé is what blew up in Nauvoo in the early 40s. This is JS, not BY.
Villago Delenda Est
@Mnemosyne:
Well, sure.
Also, keep in mind that Churchill was the guy who stood up to that liberal monster, Hitler. He also replaced an appeasing liberal monster, Chamberlain. He also allied with a true conservative icon, Uncle Joe Stalin.
Yes, I know it makes absolutely no fucking sense at all if you’ve bothered to study history, but there you have it.
jenn
@Culture of Truth: The thing is, it seems the Queen and the Obamas are quite fond of one another. On my phone now, so can’t link it, but in the shocked kerfuffle about when Michelle put her arm around the Queen, HRH put her arm around Michelle. For like the first time ever. Can’t imagine HRH and Ann Romney getting along so well!
redshirt
@g: Yeah, but he’s black!
I had a hilarious exchange with a cashier at Wal-Mart back in 08 while wearing my green “O’Bama” t-shirt.
Him: What’s that shirt got to do with Obama?
Me: He’s Irish – get it? O’Bama?
Him: How is he Irish?
Me: From his mother’s side.
Him: (DOES NOT COMPUTE CANNOT FORM REPLY)
Villago Delenda Est
@MonkeyBoy:
One has to remember that 120 odd years ago, the term “race” meant something very different that it does today, when in general there are considered to be three of them…and some of us fight even that notion. Back then, it was more or less a synonym for “nationality”. Thus you have such nonsense as the “Anglo-Saxon nations”, Britain and the US, which are made up of all sorts of different ethnicities. Particularly the Brits, who have been invaded by Celts, Romans, Angles, Saxons, Norsemen, Normans, Dutch, and for the past three centuries have had ethnically German monarchs. In fact, to be in line for the throne, you have to be a descendant of a German princess.
Mind you, the Nazis took this race thing to its logical extremes, where they analyzed your skull to determine how “Aryan” you were. The Brits were practically cousins, as were the Dutch and the Scandinavians. Don’t get me started on how untermensch anyone who spoke a Slavic language was.
beltane
@jenn: Can you imagine the Queen strapping one of her Corgis to the roof of her Range Rover? Neither can I.
Mnemosyne
@Calouste:
If we want to get really pedantic, he’s right, because the Angles, Saxons and Jutes started their migration to Britain before Charlemagne was born.
Not that modern nation-states existed in 400 CE when the migration began.
Villago Delenda Est
@jenn:
HRH would bitch slap that pretentious git all the way to Balmoral from Windsor castle.
SiubhanDuinne
@PurpleGirl:
Really? He’s still doing that, REALLY? I thought we laughed and snickered and mocked it out of his team months ago.*
*(Can’t remember when it was, but one of his advisors in one of those daily conference calls referred to both “Czechoslovakia” and the “U.S.S.R.” as current entities.)
Djur
@Violet: The Telegraph is a right-wing paper, so I’d take that with a spoonful of salt.
Mnemosyne
@Linda Featheringill:
I was much less impressed by these kinds of revelations once I started watching Henry Louis Gates’ series on genealogy. If two families are from vaguely similar parts of the country, they’re probably related in some way. Heck, my husband and I are both Catholics from Chicagoland whose families have lived there for a few decades, so I’m sure we’re related in some way.
On my mother’s side, one of my ancestors is William Bradford, first governor of Virginia, so I’m probably distantly related to many of the East Coast posters at Balloon-Juice.
patrick II
@El Cid:
It’s what gun manufacturers call a killer marketing plan.
PurpleGirl
@jenn: I seem to remember that the Rethugs thought it was horrible that Michelle O had done that. I think the Queen was surprised and decided to just go with it and not make a big deal of it. Yes, the Queen likes our First Lady. There a couple of scenes in the movie The Queen where Tony Blair tries to get familiar with her and she shuts him down sharply.
JGabriel
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Dennis G. @ Top:
Only 6 shopping days left till August, the Month of Crazy.
Steeplejack
@mdblanche:
Say, I’ve heard that Utah has the highest percentage of people who identify as of English descent. Do you know anything about that?
jenn
@beltane: Ha! Yeah, there’s a disqualifier right there!
@Villago Delenda Est: Oh, I’m sure HRH couldn’t do anything so vulgar. I lean towards oh-so-polite small talk with a side of oh-so-polite verbal evisceration, of the sort to make Miss Austen cheer (for I’m sure she’d never call her ‘Jane’), followed by oh-so-polite snubbing.
Brachiator
@MonkeyBoy:
No. It’s got nothing to do with political correctness; it’s about biology. Your attempt at a definition of race is just wrong from any angle, and doubly so when you talk about a “closed breeding population.”
Shit, some older Brits, and lazy asses like Romney, invented a myth of the Anglo Saxon about a people who have always been refreshed ethnically by waves of invaders.
But to modern Brits, much of this shit is incomprehensible. Romney’s aid waxes nostalgically about some mystical Anglo Saxon special relationship. Meanwhile, the British TV show The Only Way is Essex treats the descendants of those who lived in the kingdom of the East Saxons like the buffoons on The Jersey Shore.
scav
@PurpleGirl: Saw the same article Jenn did, pretty sure it’s hanging off the Telegraph one. Seems to be that HRH might have made the first move in the “notorious” incident.
R-Jud
@PurpleGirl:
Unusually so. The press over here was abuzz with it. I remember a reporter saying he’d overheard the Queen asking Michelle Obama, “When can you come back?”
mdblanche
@Steeplejack: Don’t get me started.
Brachiator
@Villago Delenda Est:
And that mainly because the princess was Protestant.
Even the royals cared less about ethnicity than who was the right religion.
But you’re right about the nationality thing. And the Brits absorbed previous enemies into their sense of their national identity. So, the mythical King Arthur is a Briton fighting the Anglo Saxon invaders, but later the English “become” Anglo Saxons (and Arthur’s queen still has traces of Welsh origin). Some of the legends surrounding Robin Hood has him as a Norman lord, and the stories look to Richard the Lionheart (who probably spoke only French) as the essence of a good English King. Meanwhile, King John is such an ass that no subsequent British king has ever used John as a royal name.
And of course you have the House of Windsor that deliberately downplayed their German ancestry during the first World War.
Maude
@R-Jud:
They stay in touch by telephone.
Maude
@R-Jud:
They stay in touch by telephone.
Maude
R-Jud
Reply doesn’t work.
I read that they stay in touch by telephone.
Steeplejack
@The Right Honorable Member for, the Very Reverend Mother, Her Duchal Serene Highness. Dr. Hortense Sussudio Fuuckerfaaster:
But he’s gay! So forget that.
Villago Delenda Est
@Maude:
I think FYWP was funning with you. There are threads all over the board totay that have multiple identical postings everywhere.
different-church-lady
McCain looked into the maw of the crazed, bigoted, xenophobic monster that his party had become and was horrified.
Romney is looking into the maw of the crazed, bigoted, xenophobic monster his party has been for the last 4 years and is saying, “Hey, if it helps me be president, then…”
Jeffro
@Mnemosyne: quickest Obama win ever: “Oh…does my bust of Republican President Abraham Lincoln bother y’all?”
You’d have to loop it 10 times to make a 30-second commercial ;)
Xenos
@Calouste: Saxony is in Germany, and is called ‘Saxony’ because Saxons moved there. The Angles and Saxons lived on the Jutland peninsula, and those who did not move to the British Isles were pushed out of Jutland by the Danes. Thus, we now call that area “Denmark”.