People on the right get very upset when we accuse them of thinly-veiled racism in all this moochers and takers talk. They claim we should actually take people like Ryan at face value. Listen to what they say.
So here is Paul Ryan in New Hampshire:
“You see, by going after the root causes of poverty and trying to break the cycle of poverty, you need economic growth, you need job creation, you need higher take-home pay,” Ryan said.
With the nation’s $16 trillion-plus debt being calculated on a large sign next to him, Paul, a seven-term congressman who serves as House Budget Committee chairman, slammed the Democratic administration for creating what he described a “government-centered society with a government-driven economy.”
“This is what Mitt and I are talking about when we are worried about more and more people becoming net dependent on the government than upon themselves. Because by promoting more dependency, by not having jobs and economic growth, people miss their potential,” Paul said in Dover.
“We should not be measuring the progress of our social programs – programs like food stamps – based upon how many people receive them. We should be measuring the progress of our social programs by how many people we transition off of them into lives of self-sufficiency and jobs and upward mobility.”
Okay, but how do you do that? Ryan’s perspective seems to be that if you slash the safety net, good things will happen. In Ryan’s world, people are choosing to be poor, to live on foodstamps, and so on. And the government is enabling that choice. Not just enabling actually, but the government is somehow actively encouraging this sort of dependency. But again, how?
And how precisely does cutting the safety net result in “economic growth…job creation… higher take-home pay”?
What we need is the “next ten words” in Ryan’s recommendations. What we need is some nuance. Some understanding of the causes of poverty and the complexity and difficulty of promoting economic growth. Until then, it really doesn’t matter if his rhetoric is a dog whistle for racists or just an example of a muddled mind. In either case, it means he doesn’t deserve to be taken seriously.
Brachiator
It ain’t thinly veiled. And Romney doesn’t care.
You’re going to be waiting a long time for something more than “if you’re poor, it’s your fault.”
Mark S.
It just does. And shut up.
Yutsano
Yesbut…don’t you see? He’s SERIOUS! And Wonky! And have you seen his blue eyes? SOOOO dreamy…wait, what were we talking about again?
Ash Can
Nuance, hell. We need some basic fucking explanation, beyond “because I said so.”
Paula
Education. The very thing the GOP wants to decimate is very thing that pulled me into the middle class.
WereBear
I’ve noticed that Wingnuts continually get things backwards.
Look at the ridiculous lengths they go to in “deciding” that there is no such thing as babies conceived via rape, or pregnancies which endanger the life of the mother, so there doesn’t have to be exceptions to their draconian abortion bans.
They look at studies that show single parent households are more likely to have stressed children, and decide the solution is to make everybody get married and not allow divorce.
So if there are poor people surviving on food stamps and subsidized housing, we simply take it away and they will NOW be motivated to become stockbrokers.
Apparently, it’s only we pointy-headed liberals who make stuff complicated.
Yutsano
OT: xkcd is a wee bit of a mindfuck today…
reflectionephemeral
Well, we’ve talked about this before, but it seems to me that the Southern Strategy rhetoric that was a tactical gambit in the 1970s has now completely taken over all Republican rhetoric and policy proposals.
They were just supposed to hate the government for making them desegregate their schools; but now they think they’re just supposed to hate the government altogether.
That leads them with absolutely nothing of value to say when we have a problem with the market, like today’s collapse in demand born of the 2008 financial crisis. The government is the root of all evil (at least when a Democrat is in office), so how could government ever help with anything?
beltane
Cutting the safety net will result in a growth of jobs in the glass industry as frequent food riots will lead to broken shop windows needing to be replaced on a regular basis. The private security industry would likewise see an explosion of growth as criminal gangs seek to maximize revenue by kidnapping their Galtian overlords for ransom.
If Paul Ryan wants America to be a country where the rich are like big cuts of juicy steak dangled over the heads of the starving masses, he has no cause to complain if he and his kind end up getting devoured.
Violet
What we need is the Republican party it its current incarnation to be ground into dust and disappear into the dustbin of history. And for sensible people who make decisions based on actual understanding of what works and what doesn’t, instead of magical thinking or bizarre loyalty to some political thought system, to be in charge of our policy. That’s what we really need. We don’t need any fucking nuance.
@Yutsano: It’s amazing, isn’t it?
Kurzleg
Not to mention Ryan’s making these remarks during our biggest economic downturn since the 30’s. Still, there’s no recognition of the impact the downturn might have on how many people paid income tax last year or how many had to sign up for food stamps. He’s beyond oblivious.
aimai
What I notice is a return to “compassionate conservativism” and a language of caring and a “rising tide lifts all boats.” This wa the language the Bush used to convince the suburban moms that he wouldn’t absolutely fuck over the poor and that he wasn’t anti black. However right now the people that Romney/ryna have to reassure is their own base that the safety net–which by the way they’ve expanded to include pell grants and the home mortgage deduction as well as the child credit–isn’t going to be ripped to shreds. Its a heavy lift. They ar e using the food stamps argument to distract from the rest of their argument which is that any government services are welfare.
aimai
beltane
@aimai: This is why Romney made a fatal error with this 47% business. You can get away with demonizing 10% or even 20% of the country, but when you vilify 1 out of every 2 Americans and pretty much label every working class family with young children in this country as parasites, you are going to run into stiff resistance.
Zandar
Next ten words:
“Moochers go back to work, they have no other choice.”
patroclus
Voucherizing Medicare, defunding Medicaid and privatizing Social Security is not just thinly-veiled racism, it is amoral, heartless, cruel, pathetic and despicable. It is also bad policy and will result in starving, rampant disease, untreated medical conditions and many otherwise-preventable premature deaths. It won’t create jobs or spur productivity despite what Lyin Ryan may or may not say.
Taylormattd
You know, I loved that show when it was on, but let’s be real here. Everything about that clip is ludicrous. That answer wouldn’t be popular or comprehensible to most people, nor would there be swelling music behind the candidate giving the answer. It’s porn for left wing bloggers.
Judas Escargot, Acerbic Prophet of the Mighty Potato God
@Ash Can:
Agreed, but this is an Enlightenment mindset.
Ryan’s mind is simultaneously infected by Catholicism (pre-Enlightenment) and Objectivism (post-Enlightenment), both of which consider “cuz I sez!” to be an acceptable response to any challenge question.
(Come to think of it, that damned ‘-ism’ suffix might be the source of the problem).
Redshift
For the next ten words, how about just asking Ryan if he favors tracking people who transition off so we know if they’re going “into lives of self-sufficiency and jobs and upward mobility.”
Republicans fought tooth and nail to keep any followup tracking out of the “welfare reform” of the 90s, so they could measure “success” only by how many were kicked off the welfare rolls. That tells you how much they actually believed their own rhetoric that the reason they were doing this was because people were “trapped” and would do better without it.
WereBear
Not just that, but it’s clear that the Big Boys want to reserve all the mooching and looting for themselves.
bemused
@beltane:
Ann Romney must be quite enraged this week. Their turn is looking further and further out of reach. I wonder who she blames, certainly not the love of her life. I’m guessing campaign staff, media and the 47%.
Villago Delenda Est
How do you do this?
I’d start by cutting the salaries of executives by 85% and using that to raise the pay of the lowest paid 60% of the work force.
Should do the trick for all three. Will increase demand for products because the people who actually create wealth will have more of it to spend on goods and services that will increase the demand for people to provide goods and services.
This is fucking elementary Adam Smith, who I’m sure the Randite twatwaffle has never so much as cracked open, let alone read.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
And we should. Except I suspect that if 1 million moved off because they were able to become self sufficient, and another 1 million moved on because of population growth, Ryan would consider the plan a failure.
Redshift
@WereBear:
Well, yes, that’s the way wingnut logic works. Decide on the answer you want, look for reasons to justify it, and then pretend that you’ve “reasoned” your way to your conclusion.
It’s one of the reasons they hate science.
MattF
The thing that made me blink in the MittGaffe tape is the statement that no one is ‘entitled’ to food. So, a few people starving to death is really in everybody’s interest, including the ones who die. The French have an ironic phrase for this, you shoot anyone who tries to retreat pour encourager les autres. Roughly, “in order to encourage everyone else.”
Punchy
People will not willingly and passively starve to death. If you remove their access to food (no stamps, etc.), they will simply steal it. From everyone. Break-ins and petty theft will become the norm. I cannot believe that Republicans cannot foresee this outcome…
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Kurzleg:
__
The most charitable gloss possible that I can put on small-c conservative ideas regarding poverty and economic growth is that while liberals focus on finding ways to open doors which lead to personal success and prosperity, conservatives focus on closing doors which lead to failure and poverty. In the abstract, I can see that both approaches have merits and drawbacks and we should seek a set of policies that combine the strengths and avoid the weaknesses of both philosophies. But when we get down to concrete details it really does matter what sort of economic climate we are in right now. The small-c conservative approach would make more sense if we had a rising economy in which some folks were mysteriously falling behind. That doesn’t even come close to describing our present circumstances. Even the very kindest interpretation of conservative ideas puts them badly out of synch with current reality.
wenchacha
@Villago Delenda Est: So Ryan favors an increase in the minimum wage? Hey, I’m all for that.
beltane
@bemused: Ann will blame the peasants and servants, and, of course, You People.
El Cruzado
I won’t get tired of saying the following:
Republicans are the party of people that think that rich people work harder if you give them more money, while poor people work harder if you give them less money.
artem1s
What we need is to stop listening to crazy people for answers. Not a sprint, not a marathon, it’s a relay.
What we need is some more popcorn. When is the first debate?
Redshift
Ryan is speaking better than Romney did, but his bizarre worldview is the same — he talks about needing jobs, economic growth, and higher pay, and then insists that government should do nothing about any of those other than ensure that people aren’t “dependent.” Somehow that will make it all magically happen argle bargle bargle.
We don’t need “the next ten words” here. These concepts are so disconnected that it’ll take way more than that to even lie convincingly about how to connect them.
Sly
The premise upon which Ryan and Romney build their argument is that people rely on the safety net because they want to despite having alternatives, and that this presents our society with widespread unethical behavior. It then follows that reinforcing the safety net reinforces that unethical behavior.
If your premise is that the safety net exists to provide a floor under which the nation refuses to let people fall (to put it more clearly, allow them to fall to a point where more and more opportunities for upward economic mobility become unexploitable), then it is incredibly difficult to come to any other conclusion than that the safety net must be strengthened to catch more people during times of systemic economic hardship.
To do otherwise would turn temporary economic hardship into permanent economic hardship. More specifically, it would turn people facing a short-term employment crisis into a permanent underclass.
BGinCHI
@Yutsano: Oh holy shit is that awesome.
Man, that dude needs to win a Pulitzer.
Richard
An Ayn Rand style social Darwinist society is the goal. I doubt Ryan actually believes that somehow more people will get back to work if social programs get cut to zero. The “moochers” simply deserve nothing, in his worldview.
It’s also worth noting the extent to which Republicans have been undercutting wages in this country, with opposition to increasing the minimum wage, union busting “right to work” laws, support for tax cuts that reward outsourcing of jobs and their distinct lack of any legislative effort that would reduce the unemployment rate. For them high unemployment is a feature not a bug, not just because it hurts Obama, but because a weak labor market suppresses wages.
I think they want to turn the USA into a 3rd world nation where folks here make the same wages as people working in sweatshops in Asia, while the money that is saved paying workers gets used to fatten the 1%.
dexwood
@Punchy:
But they did foresee this – guns and militarized police in their employ will take care of the parasites they hate and fear.
bemused
@beltane:
Yup, the 47%. Oh wait, that could include the Romneys, pros in tax evasion.
BGinCHI
Brolin could have said “fuck the poor, fuck the poor, fuck the poor, Jesus” and then just taken a victory lap.
beltane
@Punchy: Republicans are blissfully unaware of history and current events. In their eagerness to blame Obama for the Arab Spring, they seem not to have noticed the role of high food prices in sparking the whole movement. Having been surrounded with abundance from birth, people like Ryan cannot even imagine what it would be like to go without.
Forum Transmitted Disease
@bemused: I’m fully expecting a “you won’t have the Romneys to kick around anymore” speech, complete with ill-concealed spittle-flecked rage, courtesy of Queen Ann the day after the election.
Willard will be too doped up on Haldol to weigh in.
Villago Delenda Est
The thing about that clip you have to remember is, it’s a clip. Of a dramatic TV show. As much as everyone loves the hell out of President Josh Bartlett, he’s every bit as real as Jack Bauer, hero of Fat Fascist Tony Scalia is.
Although this B. Hussein Obama guy is just about as smooth, and has the advantage of being real.
That aside, I loves me some C.J. Cregg. She is so kickass.
WereBear
Yeah, people stubbornly keep going through doors marked FAILURE and POVERTY. It’s like leaving open manholes in every street!
slag
Or, what you need now is some parity:
Raven
OT mac heads, IOS6 is on!
reflectionephemeral
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
Or, as Edmund Burke put it,
The GOP’s economic and foreign policies are contestable but defensible responses to the political and policy context of 1979. Things are different now.
bemused
@MattF:
Republicans refuse to believe people go hungry or starve. Those people are just looking for free food. They should go dumpster dive like Rush suggested.
quannlace
In the same way you teach someone to swim by kicking them out of the boat into deep water.
***********
I read that Romney penned another op-ed today. He ended by saying he had a ‘five point plan’ for the economy and creating jobs. Did he actually say what any of those points were? Don’t be nit-picky!
Yutsano
@BGinCHI: It’s very distracting. I almost called in sick to work just because I had to find the end!
El Cid
We don’t need ten more words because cutting the safety Laz-E-Boy net will create jobs by magic: you don’t need customers or clients buying products and services from businesses and therefore businesses having both the capability and business argument for hiring more people — you just have people go out there and ‘get jobs’ and ‘work hard’, and if they do that, even if no one’s hiring, jobs appear because that’s how it works, by magic and willpower.
If you’re hard-worky enough, a job comes to you, or appears from a well, or in a basket left at your door; it doesn’t matter what the numbers say or what the ‘no hiring’ signs say — you get a job by working hard, even if you’re just in public moving around like a mime acting like you’re working invisible construction equipment, or filing papers, or whatnot.
Redshift
I would like to point out here that Ryan is either lying, stupid, or willfully uninformed. (My money is on all three.)
There has been a great emphasis for longer than Ryan has been in office on “outcomes, not outputs.” In other words, the focus is actually on helping people regain self-sufficiency. The number of people on food stamps is a measure of how badly the economy is doing, not a measure of “success” for the program.
It’s true that many programs work to make sure that people who are eligible apply for the program, and the success of those efforts is measured in the percentage of those eligible who are enrolled, but no one measures success by the number enrolled. It’s just another nonsensical conservative fantasy made up to justify their draconian attacks on the poor.
aimai
@beltane:
Yes the trick was always to demonize half the country, the Obama voting half, while pretending to each and every one of the voters that you were simply dissing some other guy, not half of all other guys.
aimai
Villago Delenda Est
@El Cid:
Those jobs, like the Rmoney Boom that will lift the yachts, and fuck the people in the rowboats, will just fall from the sky, magically, moments after Rmoney takes the oath of office.
Bank on it.
slag
@Sly:
You mean like Mitt Rmoney’s dad?
Hey Mitt! Without the largesse of the US government, your economic success likely wouldn’t even exist. That’s right…We built you, motherfucker! (We can sometimes be idiots that way.)
bemused
@quannlace:
What happened to Mitt’s other 54 points? He had a 59 point plan once upon a time.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@WereBear:
__
Unfortunately, yes they do. Just look at the economic cost of teen pregnancy, prematurely truncated education, and working and middle-class divorce to cite 3 common social problems. And note that all three of these are worse in the red states than the blue states, which goes to show that the policies pushed by the Right (as distinct from small-c conservatives) are making things worse not better. Just because liberals aren’t the ones stealing the manhole covers doesn’t mean that there aren’t open holes that people fall into.
Raven
So we have a local nut-bag winger, famous Green Beret, child porn collector and federal arms violator. They bust him for viewing the porn in the public library and, when they search his house find all kinds of other shit they describe as bomb making materials.
FlipYrWhig
I think it’s supposed to be like this: if the government did less, it would spend less, so it wouldn’t need as much in taxes, so everyone’s paycheck would go up, which would lead to more spending and a better economy.
The problem, of course, is what to do with the people who were hurt when they lost the assistance currently provided by the government. And the Ryan/Romney answer to that is, fuck ’em, and let God sort ’em out.
LD50
@Punchy: That’s where the prison industry lobby comes in.
Frans
If corporations are people, then General Electric, Boeing, Verizon, and Mattel are 47% moochers.
slag
@bemused:
Moral and intellectual bankruptcy dropped him down 54 points.
quannlace
So now the Rwer’s are pinning everything on the upcoming debates, assuring us all that it will be a big win for Romney.
I don’t see how. If that tape showed everything, it displayed how relaxed and focused Romney is in his own element. Put him at a podium in front of reporters and cameras, and he reverts to Romneybot again.
Kurzleg
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ –
I was going to add to my comment that – setting aside the obvious buffoonery of the past couple weeks – the mismatch between Ryan’s/conservative rhetoric and the current situation is a one reason why Romney/Ryan can’t make any headway in this election. They’re oblivious to how the downturn impacts regular people.
hep kitty
@Raven: How freaking stupid can you be to be watching pr0n in a public library. They have ways, you know, of finding things out. IT’S THE GUBMINT!
Commenting at Balloon Juice since 1937
Straw men are being burned in New Hampshire. It must be fall.
Redshift
@quannlace:
From his speech to the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce on Monday (via McClatchy):
You will note that the only two points that are actually “plans” (rather than “this will magically happen”) are drill, baby, drill and repeal Obamacare. In other words, it’s still the same old nothingburger but he’s hoping that if he puts a new “five point plan” bow on it, people will believe he’s providing “more details.”
hep kitty
@quannlace: Yes, indeed, the authentic Mitt Romney, unchained. As natural and as spontaneous you’ll ever see him.
slag
@FlipYrWhig:
And yet, here’s what actually happens here on planet earth:
Villago Delenda Est
@hep kitty:
The guy is a wingnut. This means, by definition, he’s stupid.
Face
Edited for brevity, without losing any information.
jibeaux
@Villago Delenda Est: My guess is their answer rhymes with “fax nuts”.
burnspbesq
@Zandar:
Almost. I think it’s “Moochers, get back to work, or your kids will starve.”
Villago Delenda Est
@Redshift:
Well, point one is FAIL right here, because the purpose of the Keystone XL pipeline is to move product from Canada to Texas to be refined and then sold on the global market. The actual effect on US energy independence is nil, as the source is not US and the market it’s intended for is not the US. It’s all about enriching the owners of the Texas refineries. Some of whom, I’m sure, were at that little fundraising dinner of Mittens’.
If you were actually in favor of energy independence, you’d be looking for ways to reduce reliance on fossil fuels as energy sources, and find other ways to meet our energy needs.
Fuckwit has no plan for that. His only plan is to further enrich the parasites of the petroleum industry at the expense of the the American people.
Redshift
@FlipYrWhig:
The other problem is that a safety net encourages people to take the kind of risks that conservatives are always extolling — starting a new business, taking a chance on changing jobs, going back to school — because they know that if they fail, they won’t be completely screwed.
The people who talk the loudest about the free market always seem to have the least idea how it actually works.
Villago Delenda Est
@slag:
Well, there’s your problem. The R/R ticket is from Kolob and Ferenginar.
Redshift
@Villago Delenda Est:
Worse than no plan, he’s actually against government doing anything to develop alternative energy or promote efficiency.
nemesis
Moochers are people too, my friend.
Every one of my family members who has lived in the past 80 years or so, and then retired, has been a parasite. They have used gummit roadways, accepted Social Security and benefitted from Medicare.
Mooching is as American as apple pie. I am the 47%!
burnspbesq
@Raven:
Downloading to iPad now. First order of business will be to disable every bit of Facebook integration.
Dracula
For the love of FSM, we really need a reporter to ask specifically, “which shore?”. If, and likely when, he says “Florida”, watch the state go to Obama by 15 points.
They like their wingtards but love their coastline.
bemused
@slag:
I’d say a 3 point plan is all you need to turn the US into a 3rd world paradise.
Gian
the modern GOP doesn’t do ten words.
they do 14 words.
catclub
@Redshift: Another flip-flop.
Go read the whole “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt” editorial.
$20B/yr on government energy research
Villago Delenda Est
@Redshift:
Ah, so the “plan” is the same one that the shitty grade-Z movie star brought with him 32 years ago.
Great. Love that “plan”. Gave us a worse mess today than we’d have if Jimmy Carter’s initiatives were not brutally cancelled the first thing Ronaldus Magnus did when he stepped into the White House.
As a famous flying squirrel once opined, “that trick never works.”
catclub
@Redshift: Like being able to get healthcare insurance when you start your new business.
schrodinger's cat
OT: Balloon Juice’s favoritest misogynist would vote for Brown over Warren. Why was he ever promoted from the blogs we mock column?
Villago Delenda Est
@Dracula:
That there coastline puts food on their tables, in the form of tourists spending money from up north looking to vacay along that pristine shoreline.
They’re not totally stupid in Florida.
trollhattan
Okay, it’s actually “The Onion” but yet again, only bending the Romney realtiy(tm) a wee bit.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Villago Delenda Est:
__
Good. So now let’s talk about global warming. Seems like a topic that people in a low lying coastal state which is located right in the path of hurricane tracks might be more than just academically interested in.
trollhattan
@schrodinger’s cat:
Sully, the Tory git? Let me guess…she’s too shrill and totally not Thatcherlike.
I presume the blogroll shift is just Tunch, screwing with our minds. Cole’s gotta get a tougher admin password than “lickself”.
rlrr
What will be the next disaster to strike the Mittanic?
Sly
@Redshift:
Shit.
I know shit’s bad right now, with all that Muslim bullshit, and the freeloaders, and we are running out of campaign consultants and public approval. But I got a solution!
Now I understand everyone’s shit’s emotional right now. But I’ve got a three point plan that’s going to fix EVERYTHING:
Number 1: We’ve got this guy Mitt Romney.
Number 2: He hates poor people more than any man alive!
Number 3: He’s gonna fix EVERYTHING.
SensesFail
Excellent post, Bernard.
This rhetoric from Ryan is consistent with Romney’s plans for economic growth, which, as we all know, basically amount to this:
1. Cut taxes and remove regulations.
2. ???
3. OMG JOBS!
We can codify Ryan’s rhetoric into a “plan” as follows:
1. Grab bootstraps.
2. Pull upward.
Villago Delenda Est
@Sly:
I’ll stick with the underpants gnomes. Their plan is much more solid and well thought out than that one.
schrodinger's cat
@trollhattan: Yes indeed, he is the one. He does seem to have a weakness for somewhat good looking Republican pols. I wonder whether Brown, likes Bowles-Simpson.
replicnt6
It’s really weird how immediately following a complete blow-up of the financial sector in the fall of 2008, so many of us lower sorts got really lazy and didn’t feel like working. It’s a bizarre coincidence. But coincidences happen, so I wouldn’t make too much of it.
? Martin
Yeah, this is bullshit. The problem Ryan describes is real one and the obvious solution (raise the minimum wage) doesn’t cost the government a penny. And there’s no fucking way that the GOP would support it. Here’s our proof:
No, of course not. It was increased in 2007, thankfully before everyone lost their shit, but the previous increase was 1996-7. For a decade they didn’t do shit except cut taxes, and then they’re outraged that nobody earns enough money to pay taxes (due also in part because they cut them).
The Dangerman
@Yutsano:
Someone was smoking the whacky weed before they did that one … does it ever end (read: I gave up).
Roger Moore
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
The way I tend to see it is that both sides are interested in fairness, where fairness is defined as each person getting what they deserve. With a real world system that’s obviously impossible, so you have to decide which way the failures ought to lean. Liberals are most worried about making sure that nobody is denied access to something they do deserve, and are willing to tolerate freeloaders as the price of making sure nobody slips through the safety net. Conservatives are mostly worried about people cheating the system to get more than they deserve, and are willing to tolerate some deserving people slipping through the cracks in order to keep moochers from gaming the system.
Southern Beale
My resident wingnut just made Ryan’s argument in a comment over here, even going so far as to say that spending SS funds on the poor weakens Social Security. I mean, there’s just no end with these people.
In other news, Obama has a historic lead according to a new Pew poll:
Mandate! So yeah, keep it up, Ryan and Romney. Don’t think the people are buying what you’re selling.
The funniest thing is that when Obama wins, the wingnuts will all be like, “if only we’d gone with a TRUE CONSERVATIVE!”
Ha ha ha ha ha ….
Culture of Truth
But this is why they get so exasperated when people don’t see it their way (see, Ryan, wingnut bloggers, tea party). They’re in favor of good things, and against bad things! Isn’t that good? If liberals disagree, do they want bad things? Recall Limbaugh’s book years ago was called ‘The Way Things Ought to Be’, not ‘the way things really are’ It’s all fantasy but it’s appealing until a city dies or an economy crashes or country gets invaded by mistake or a guy gets shot in the face
They’re all Frank Burns now – their basically philosophy is it’s nice to be nice to the nice and indiviuduality is fine as long as we all do it together.
quannlace
I see they put out a new campaign ad, attacking Obama as being ‘anti-coal.’ It shows Mitt standing before a crowd of miners. Problem is, they’re the same miners who lost a days pay from being required to attend and listen to Mitt that day. His campaign even confirms it and the papers are picking up on it.
How f*cked up are the people running his show?
trollhattan
Sweet jeebuz, somebndy make sure the cameras are rolling at this (via NYMag).
Culture of Truth
@rlrr: Topless pics in European magazines
jibeaux
@? Martin: This drives me crazy more than anything. They can hire a battalion of tax lawyers to make sure they don’t pay one penny more than they are legally obligated to do, but if someone simply claims a common credit or deduction that’s written into the tax code for the EXPRESS purpose of benefiting working families like themselves, a credit that Republicans crowed about at the time as a help to working people, then they’re freeloaders? If you don’t like the EITC, dig up Reagan’s freaking corpse and yell at it, for pete’s sake.
patrick II
Interesting Ryan would say this considering his running mate’s career was based on destroying better paying American jobs and sending them overseas. Many former employees of Bain controlled companies could pay taxes if they had their reasonably paid jobs returned from China and their retirement funds restored from Mitt’s various bank accounts.
Villago Delenda Est
@Roger Moore:
They’re worried about the wrong people getting more than they “deserve.” They have no problem with people “gaming the system” if they’re sufficiently white, like OvenMitt, who made his fortune on “gaming the system”, by destroying companies and in effect raiding their pension funds to make beaucoup bucks, stealing from the people who actually created the wealth in the first place.
It’s those strapping t-bone eating bucks and Caddy drivers they’re worried about.
Ash Can
@SensesFail:
…Actually, if foul-smelling gaseous emissions were the only consequence of the plan, it would be a vast improvement over the reality.
? Martin
Pew: Obama +8 with likely voters. Only way that could be is if the LV models are shifting from R toward D.
The Dangerman
@The Dangerman:
Found it.
Pretty cool.
trollhattan
@Southern Beale:
But, when UNLIMITED CORPORATE CASH aka Taco was piddling around the joint yesterday he swore on a stack of Ameros that Rasmussen (“mostest accuratest in 2004&2008 look it up losers”) had Willard within one and climbing, also, too “scared yet?”
Disconnect–I haz it.
Culture of Truth
They don’t actually ask questions at these debates, do they?? I’m asking for a friend.
Villago Delenda Est
@trollhattan:
Mold in a petri dish is inherently more sentient than Taco is.
Redshift
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
You would think so, but a big difference is that the human brain has difficulty with really long-term problems. Which in turn makes it easier to BS people about them.
BGinCHI
@The Dangerman: I’m still exploring.
Jellyfish and whale are my faves. Tunnels are deeeeep.
ETA: Shit. I only went to the right. It goes both directions. I’m in awe.
flukebucket
@Yutsano:
I wish somebody would explain to me what that cartoon means. I want to be a part of the hip shit too!
trollhattan
@Villago Delenda Est:
Mold just called to register its indignance at the comparison.
Ash Can
@The Dangerman:
@BGinCHI:
I’d love to just see a poster of it sometime. It’s a tour-de-force, but I’m wasting enough time at the computer as it is.
Auguste
@Taylormattd: That’s exactly what I was thinking. I LOVED the show, but as I was listening to Bartlet’s answer I kept thinking “do they keep skipping over the parts that make this an actual rebuttal?”
BGinCHI
@Ash Can: You’re gonna need a big wall if that happens.
Wonder how long it took to code all that!
GregB
The Mitt campaign gets the Downfall treatment.
Hilarious.
Southern Beale
BTW where is that troll who was hanging around here yesterday — Political Fact or Political something or other — who promised a new poll was about to come out showing Romney surging in Wisconsin? Umm, not so much:
No wonder your troll hasn’t been hanging around today ….
Roger Moore
@Villago Delenda Est:
FTYF. I’m pretty sure they don’t like white welfare mothers any more than they like blah ones. And they seemed to be perfectly happy with rich blah dudes like Herman Cain fucking over their employees.
dmsilev
@BGinCHI: I found one edge of the world. I was somewhat disappointed that it didn’t wrap around.
dmsilev
@Southern Beale: That troll is kind of boring. Just one-note “Word is on the street that the UNLIMITED CORPORATE CASH will be burying Obama Real Soon Now”.
Wasn’t the same nitwit promising us all summer long that the beginning of NFL season would see a tsunami of anti-Obama ads during all the games?
patrick II
@? Martin:
In 1966, the year I graduated from high school, the minimum wage was $1.25. That would translate to $8.87 in today’s dollars. The current minimum wage is $7.25 or over a dollar and a half less in today’s dollars than forty six years ago. Our national GDP has more than doubled since ’66, and yet the lowest wages for working people has actually decreased. Minimum wage earners are working people, people Romney and Ryan claim to respect, not the welfare “dependents” they frankly don’t.
Villago Delenda Est
@BGinCHI:
Have you found the X Wing yet?
Brachiator
@Villago Delenda Est:
The 47% obviously consists of more than black people and Latinos.
Romney is offering rainbows and prosperity to people who are white like him, with sufficient portfolios.
Even someone as tone deaf as Andrew Sullivan called this one:
There continues to be a lot of faux controversy over whether Romney might utter the un-utterable N word.
Obviously, he is saying that white people who vote for Obama are no better than a bunch of lazy n$ggers.
What event horizon are you still waiting to arrive?
Roger Moore
@flukebucket:
If you’re not familiar with XKCD, you’ve probably missed it. One of the twists in XKCD cartoons is that there’s always an interesting Alt text you get by hovering your mouse over the cartoon. In this case, it says “click and drag”. If you click and drag on the bottom panel, you can scroll the picture. The whole image is literally hundreds of thousands of pixels wide and high, so you can keep scrolling for a very, very long time, with all kinds of interesting things to discover along the way.
Redshift
@dmsilev: It added another note yesterday, crowing about how the teabagger voter suppression army was going to turn the tide. Such a vote of confidence, to insist that your guy is going to win because you have people who will harass your opponent’s supporters and prevent them from voting!
patrick II
@schrodinger’s cat:
We should have a “blogs we are alternately enthused and horrified by” category for the schizophrenic Sullivan.
Ben Cisco
@Villago Delenda Est: You, sir, have been on fire of late. Well done (which is what I hope MoneyBooBoo and Paulie are when this election is over, as in BBQ’d).
Redshift
@dmsilev:
And that there were going to be a wave of devastating new ads about “the threat of Russia and especially China.”
Very strange.
slag
@bemused:
Three points? That’s way too complicated. I understand that just electing Mitt Romney President will do the trick.
In my ideal happy place, the Democrats will unite together in hanging Rmoney’s extremism directly on House and Senate Republicans. Here’s a guy who essentially called his own father a moocher and looter. And the highly disciplined Republican Party is completely owned by people just like him. From a Party leadership angle, the ONLY meaningful conversation about improving safety net efficiency and sustainability is happening among Democrats. If you want improved efficiency and sustainability of the safety net, you simply MUST vote Democrat.
Brachiator
@Yutsano:
@Roger Moore:
Now that’s a helluva a cartoon, especially when you do the click and drag thing.
Chris T.
Five point plan indeed.
I have a two point plan that will make you a millionaire who never has to pay taxes! Step 1: Get a million dollars. Step 2: Don’t pay taxes! [Shamelessly stolen from Steve Martin]
Culture of Truth
In case Sully hadn’t noticed, the whole RNC was calling unemployed or not-rich people lazy.
Villago Delenda Est
@Brachiator:
He’s still speaking in code.
He hasn’t come out and used it.
But it’s very obvious that the code is all he has at this point. His five point plan for fixing the economy consists of two points that have some substance, but the substance is in fact arguably counterproductive (especially the “repeal Obamacare” point), and the other three points are points in the sense that a Rorschach blot is a point.
Culture of Truth
Also we’re doomed because of something Obama said in 1998.
No, really according to WaPo
Villago Delenda Est
@Chris T.:
And when you’re hauled before the IRS to explain yourself, two words:
I forgot.
Mark S.
@GregB:
I loved the disses on Jennifer Rubin. A+
Villago Delenda Est
@Redshift:
The dumbshits are not even in power and they’re trying to blame domestic problems on someone overseas.
They can’t even get that part of it right.
Cris (without an H)
It’s a harmless error, but it looks funny that Shawna Shepherd keeps referring to Paul Ryan as “Paul” (as opposed to “Ryan”) throughout the article. It sounds either like she’s being overly casual, or talking about a different libertarian legislator.
GregB
@Mark S.:
Those were my biggest LOLs.
hueyplong
I’m struggling to think of a better Downfall effort than that one. The Rubin bit was truly inspired.
Villago Delenda Est
@GregB:
“Anyone who does’t have Jennifer Rubin on speed dial, make like a tree.”
virginia
The other strategy is to hide the real issues at play behind a bunch of so-called numbers. Let folks spin their wheels digging deep into the percentages and analyzing the statistics and mathematics and hope that the moral imperative, and there does tend to be one!, gets lost.
This is where President Obama excels. If you watch his chat with Letterman closely or even not so closely, you see how he is able to zero in on the matter. In a way, by the way, that focuses not on the most egregious insult thrown out by Romney, Inc., but on the slap that will bring folks to the cause … That we do not see ourselves as “victims” because in fact we are not victims. We are the country itself. He gets that —
Peggy Noonan’s piece about the need for intervention is funny too. This is not about intervention right now. It’s about not enabling. There is Al-Anon and then there is Al-Romney which sounds suitably you know apt because it may very well be.
Brachiator
@Villago Delenda Est:
Seems pretty obvious to everyone. It ain’t much of a code if it is so blatantly transparent.
And if everyone is getting the message loud and clear, then what more be said?
He doesn’t even have that. Based on The Secret Speeches of Mitt Romney, his domestic policy is that the economy will get better just knowing that a white man is in charge again; and his foreign policy seems to be “maybe if I just ignore the middle east, Bibi will do something I’m not sure what oh got a tennis date at noon.”
Dubya had Darth Cheney to pull the strings behind the scenes. A Romney presidency would have more empty suits than a men’s outlet store.
taylormattd
@Auguste: Yeah, exactly. I mean listen, it was fun TV.
But the closest we will ever have to anything like that was Bill Clinton’s DNC speech this year. Which was, IMO, heads and tails better than that Aaron Sorkin fantasy from 2005 or whatever.
Cris (without an H)
The really cool thing with the xkcd “Click and Drag” cartoon is that it loads blocks of the overall image as you drag, so you can’t just easily grab the large image and save it off, you have to pull down each component. (The components are named by a directional grid — e.g. 1n1e.png is the first one, 1n2e.png is the one to the right or “east” of it — but not every coordinate has an image.)
Mike E
@GregB: “He’s exaggerating..he really doesn’t have a ball washer.”
Self-delusion. So sad to behold.
Mnemosyne
@SensesFail:
Or, as our current president said during the DNC, “Take two tax cuts, roll back some regulations, and call me in the morning.”
henrythefifth
@Mark S.: Higher take-home pay. I wonder how many times he’s voted against raising the minimum wage?
flukebucket
@Roger Moore:
Well I’ll be damned. Thank you! Now I feel like I am in with the in crowd.
sherparick
This morning, .1% emeritus Jack Welch, stated on CNBC that Romney needed to: …”to tell voters that he’ll veto any middle-class tax increases, improve education in a way that “will put teachers first, not unions first,” and maintain a strong military that will ensure peace.” In other words, he should steal Barack Obama’s DNC acceptance speech and claim it as his own.
I think Welch is emblematic of what David Frum wrote yesterday, that since 2008 crisis, whether in shock or guilt of what happen, the .1% don’t seen the real moderate, rather neoliberal, tempermentally conservative, banker protecting, Barack Obama who frustrates me continually. Instead, they see a radical Robispierre come to deliver the justice to them that they know they deserve, the Robispierre that Dinech D’souza concocts in his documentary 2016.
Meanwhile, another voting block fails Conservatives and Jack Welch. http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/05/13/us-usa-poll-military-idUSBRE84C02120120513
By the way, if teachers not having unions were the key, then the you would think the states with no or weak teacher unions would be the best. In another “Sad” for conserivative ideologues, the answer is “No.” http://www.edweek.org/ew/qc/2012/16src.h31.html?intc=EW-QC12-LFTNAV
aimai
Maybe its late on this thread but I finally watched the Bartlett speech and I realized why I’ve always hated the West Wing and never got into it. What a load of self satisfied crap. His answer came across as insincere, bullying, and incoherent. What the fuck was he trying to say. The shortest way to convey the meat of the issue is to say:
aimai
Randy P
@Yutsano: I have bad news for you people who think you found the end left-right (I’m still going right). It has an unknown extent in the upward and downward directions too. And no visual clue that you’re getting anywhere. That’s pure evil.
Auguste
@Randy P: I dragged in the downward direction for several minutes before deciding that it was black pixels all the way down. Thanks a lot; now I have to do it again forever.
BGinCHI
@Randy P: I followed the tunnels down for like a thousand click miles. Crazy.
bullsballs
thanks to all the jobs mittens created…
oh ya, they all went overseas after he broke the companies up and sold them off…
but then, the holy o gave all the stimulus money to overseas owners of businesses ran here by foreigners…
Double Nickel
I’m confused, Ryan wants higher take home pay for Americans? I thought he supported right to work laws?
JustRuss
@Richard:
Yep, makes it easier for the 1% to find good servants. I wish I was kidding.
Thomas Beck
What an intelligent idiot like Paul Ryan completely fails to grasp is that no Democrat, no liberal, wants people on welfare or to get food stamps. We want these programs to be widely available and generously funded because we realize that almost everyone might need help at some point or other in their lives through no fault of their own. Sure, let’s work together to transition people to gainful employment but let’s not delude ourselves that it’s always 100% up to each person. Paul Ryan himself received government help (to say nothing of having a well-off father) and has almost never worked as an adult outside of government! Everyone needs help of some kind – everyone everyone everyone. Those who need less should feel fortunate – and be happy to help those less fortunate. But don’t libel liberals by saying we want people to be dependent.