Once again, Governor Grabbit gets caught in the crack between his freespending-as-long-as-it’s-somebody-else’s-money habits and his incurable braggadocio. Kudos to the reporters at NJ.com for digging up the story, and to the Washington Post for sharing with the rest of us:
… NJ.com, the online arm of 12 New Jersey newspapers — which, by the way, publishes under the amazing tagline, “True Jersey” — reports that Christie, a possible 2016 GOP presidential candidate, has resisted press efforts to obtain records detailing what the Executive Protection Unit spends on its state-issued American Express cards.
The Executive Protection Unit is responsible for Christie’s security and Christie’s legal team has claimed that releasing information about the unit’s spending could compromise the governor’s safety.
But, back in April, Christie attended a town hall in the very, “True Jersey,” hamlet of Hasbrouck Heights. While there, Christie answered a question from seven-year-old Christopher Tartaglia, NJ.com reports. Tartaglia wanted to know how many body guards Christie has…
Even though he doesn’t want his political enemies to know how the Executive Protection Unit managed to drop a cool million just on Amex bills, Christie could not resist showing off what a big, powerful guy like Chris throws around for bodyguards. As NJ reporter Claude Brodesser-Akner adds:
… Speaking from the bench last Thursday, Judge Mary C. Jacobson said she was “very troubled” that the governor’s legal team’s efforts to suppress records of what the Executive Protection Unit spends on its state-issued American Express cards was in such stark contrast to the governor’s own “openness” about the details of his protection team, according to a report on NorthJersey.com…
Since Christie took office, the executive protection unit has spent just shy of $1 million on food, lodging and other travel-related expenses, far more than previous Gov. Jon Corzine or any past holder of the office.
The Christie administration has blocked the release of the security detail’s credit card statements, claiming that disclosing the specifics of prior executive protection charges would needlessly increase the security risks faced by the governor in future.
However, without the records, the public can never know which costs are the result of conducting state business and which were personal or political trips associated with the governor’s duties as chairman of the Republican Governors Association or his 2016 ambitions….
The judge has ordered the head of Christie’s security detail to testify in private before June 12 about why the records should be kept secret, but she added that she had “skepticism” about the governor’s arguments for the need to keep such an accounting secret…
Rest assured that all possible “yeah but look how many guys you need to guard a perimeter as large as Christie” wisecracks have already been taken by the commentors at NJ.com and WaPo. Still plenty of petard/windbag jokes available!
Amir Khalid
As I understand, Christie has a long history of overspending on his expense accounts, going back at least to his days as a US attorney. So the overspending as governor is no surprise. But there is supposed to be accountability, isn’t there? Or does Governor Harkonnen somehow get away with bullying the people who audit his expense accounts?
Steeplejack (phone)
Synchronistically, I am in True Jersey myself. About to arise from my humble bed in the White Caps Motel in North Wildwood. Will pick up my friend in Cape May, have breakfast and then motor back to Philadelphia for the Investigative Reporters and Editors conference. I have seen no signs of gubernatorial malfeasance since I arrived yesterday afternoon. Will continue to observe and report.
raven
@Steeplejack (phone): Waiting with bated in the deep south
eta Cool looking motel. I also see that there is no pier at surfside pier. Did it go in Sandy?
kc
The hell does he need a “unit” of bodyguards for? He’s a governor, for chrissakes, not a president.
raven
@kc: He’s a BIG target.
OzarkHillbilly
I am shocked… shocked… that the guy who would call for a special election one month before a regularly scheduled election just so he would not have to have a popular Democrat running for Senate on the ballot at the same time when he is running for Governor, would be a profligate spender. Cost New Jersey tens(?) of millions of dollars just so he could pad his vote totals.
This guy is pure pond scum.
raven
@OzarkHillbilly: Concrete going in today!
Schlemazel
@raven:
Usually when you wait it is not your breath that is baited.
OzarkHillbilly
@kc: It is normal for Govs to have a security detail of state troopers.
raven
@Schlemazel:
Shakespeare is the first writer known to use it, in The Merchant of Venice, in which Shylock says to Antonio: “Shall I bend low and, in a bondman’s key, / With bated breath and whisp’ring humbleness, / Say this …”. Nearly three centuries later, Mark Twain employed it in Tom Sawyer: “Every eye fixed itself upon him; with parted lips and bated breath the audience hung upon his words, taking no note of time, rapt in the ghastly fascinations of the tale”
OzarkHillbilly
@raven: WAAAHOOOOO!!!!!
PurpleGirl
I can’t resist….
It is widely known (or at least said) that Winston Churchill had only one bodyguard during World War II. Hitler, on the other hand, had thousands. So does the esteemed governor compare himself to Der Fuhrer in his need for protection?
raven
71st Anniversary of D-Day.
raven
@PurpleGirl: A friend of mine told me the story of his dad standing guard one night on a hotel in Italy in 1944 when Churchill walked out and smoked a stogie next to him.
Zinsky
I’m betting a big chunk of money went for blow and hookers. Governor KrispyKreme better get busy kissing Roger Ailes fat, pimpled ass for a job on FauxNews, because his political career is over.
Amir Khalid
Don’t state-issued credit cards come with restrictions on permissible expenditures? I presume someone in the state treasury (or whoever cuts the cheque to Amex) is responsible for reviewing the bills to ensure that the state isn’t paying for free beer for EPU officers, let alone hookers or blow.
Baud
@raven:
I’m in the middle of watching Patton. About 75% through.
JPL
@raven: That’s great news!
OzarkHillbilly
@PurpleGirl: On a scale of Churchill to Hitler, where does Obama fit in?
dmsilev
@Amir Khalid: The question is who signs off on the expenses. If that someone approves of the line items on the bill, all that the Treasury might see is “here’s a bill from Amex for $10 K. An authorized approver has approved it. Pay the bill”.
Germy Shoemangler
JPL
@OzarkHillbilly: hmmm.. It’s too early to compare him to a couple of dead guys.
PurpleGirl
@OzarkHillbilly:
@JPL:
Unfortunately it is known that upon his election, the number of threats to President Obama exploded exponentially and the Secret Service has had to increase its investigations of threats.
Ken
@Amir Khalid:
It does contrast with the recent spate of bills restricting how welfare recipients can spend the money. Obviously someone who gets $95 a month on a state-issued debit card needs to have their every purchase tracked, but $16000 a month on a state-issued credit card is no biggie.
raven
@Baud: Ya gotta hold em by the nose and kick em in the ass!
Gimlet
A Massachusetts man is facing charges after he was spotted outside a city elementary school dressed as a Star Wars storm trooper, complete with fake gun.
When approached he told authorities he was “Officer Friendly” and there to speak to the kids.
PurpleGirl
@Ken:
This, exactly. Governor Christie is one of those whose most important political goal it seems is to increase the misery of poor people. His own people… well, nothing is too good for them.
OzarkHillbilly
@PurpleGirl: Yes… But all Presidents since I don’t know when (Kennedy?) have had massive security details. Just saying that it is a really dumb comparison without any real meaning.
JPL
@PurpleGirl: An acquaintance can’t even explain why she doesn’t like him.
When she used the socialist word, I mentioned that he according to the stock market, he’s a crappy socialist.
We are so lucky that he is President. Even though the republicans have blocked him, he still has moved forward.
Germy Shoemangler
I’ve had people use “socialist” when criticizing Obama, and they’re calling Sanders a communist. One told me there’s no difference between what Sanders says and what the cpusa website says. I asked him “Is Sweden a communist country? Is Germany a communist country?” He keeps going back to the cpusa and saying Sanders is a commie.
I felt like it was 1956.
Germy Shoemangler
from TPM
OzarkHillbilly
@JPL: People who think Obama is a socialist don’t know the meaning of the word. I will be happy to explain it to them in 3 simple words: Kill the rich.
Obama is kinda ‘well to do’, maybe not rich on a Koch brothers scale, but certainly in the 1%.
OGJamir
The Star Ledger (biggest paper in NJ and in the NJ.com family) is great. Even their conservative op-ed guy hates Christie…and nit because Christie’s a squishy conservative but because he’s an arrogant, obnoxious prick.
OzarkHillbilly
@Germy Shoemangler: Just read that. Had to stop because of my blood pressure.
satby
@Germy Shoemangler: They have no idea what the words actually mean, they just know St. Ronnie told them those were bad words.
And a friend of mine from high school, who is a well known local (to Chicago) journalist, thinks that progressive causes have advanced over the last few years because “liberal” isn’t as dirty of a word as it was. So buried in the “both sides”, officially neutral” mindset he doesn’t get at all why people are fed up with media.
PurpleGirl
@OzarkHillbilly: K, point taken. But then I have to ask, just how large are Gov. Christie’s security details? Are they larger when he’s out of state then when he stays in state? Are the taxpayers of NJ paying for his security when he is working for the Republican Governors Committee? I’m sure I’d be appalled to learn how much is spent by Governor Cuomo’s administration, too. Ultimately the issue is one of accountability and corruption.
Iowa Old Lady
@OzarkHillbilly: There’s no point to arguing with people who make the socialist claim, not only because they don’t know what it means, but also because that’s not really the reason they dislike him. It can’t be since he’s not taken radical actions. What they mean is he scares them. And over the years, I’ve had to conclude that underneath most of it is racial fear. Not exactly news here, I know.
OzarkHillbilly
@PurpleGirl:
and those are pertinent questions. I suspect the state is on the hook for security when he is engaged in RGA activities, after all he is still the Gov, but the costs of travel should be born by the RGA, especially considering the fact that the sole purpose of chairing the RGA is just to raise one’s national profile.
When it comes to Christie tho, he really is a target rich environment all by himself. The man has himself helicoptered in to his son’s little league ball games. (I wonder how the poor kid felt as everything ground to halt for his old man’s grand entrance?)
Baud
@satby:
I think it is less dirty now than it was in the 1980s.
OzarkHillbilly
@Baud: I think in the ’80s the worst insult was “card carrying member of the ACLU.” Always kinda proud I took up that cross to bear.
Baud
@OzarkHillbilly:
Yeah, the ACLU has recovered nicely. I wonder what the kids today would think of Reagan if they saw a clip of that attack.
debbie
@Baud:
It’s been replaced by “Progressive.” That’s the new whistle for all things evil, from “socialist” to “liberal” and on to “arugula-eating latté sippers.”
Botsplainer
@Germy Shoemangler:
When you call every liberal policy you dislike socialism/communism/fascism in an era in which a large plurality of voters were born after the end of the USSR, you devalue the definitions and make the policies more attractive.
satby
@Baud: maybe. My point would be that had a functioning media continued to provide news and context based upon facts, instead of falling into the two sides, horse race narrative that began in the 1980s the words liberal, socialist, communist all would have remained understood by the public in the dictionary meanings of the words. Not as OOGA-BOOGA SCARY words divorced from their actual meanings.
OzarkHillbilly
@debbie: what was the mustard insult? I forget.
satby
@debbie: Because the “L” word became so toxic that to get around it liberals started calling themselves progressives first.
Baud
@satby:
The media sucks, but I think the source of the demonization was grounded in race and other social issues that a lot of white folks in the 1970s and 80s didn’t want to deal with. The media could have spent half their time in political theory and I don’t think much would have changed.
debbie
@OzarkHillbilly:
Grey Poupon, because they could give an extra whack at the French.
debbie
@satby:
It’s now Glenn Beck’s go-to whistle for equating Progressives with Communists. His proof, he says, is that one of Lenin’s aides told worried Russians that not everything would change at once. The aide said that change would come in progressive steps.
Poof! Proof! Progressive = Communist! Forget the differentiation between uppercase and lowercase letters.
Botsplainer
This is my favorite go to photo that says pretty much everything about the glories of conservatism that need be said:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fa/Little_Rock_integration_protest.jpg
satby
I don’t disagree, but I do think it got worse than it had to because of media collusion. Racism was a underground factor a lot though. But it had become socially unacceptable to be openly racist. Liberal was the thing to be.
I graduated high school in 1973, liberal policies were still ascendant. But Roe v Wade gave the opposition a cause to coalesce around. And a lot of the anti-abortion movement back then was openly worried about the well off white women getting abortions while less well off minorities kept their pregnancies, and how that would tilt the demographics of the nation. And by then the VRWC had spent 9 years building their alternate universe of think tanks to feed misinformation to the media, and they began pumping it out in earnest. Seven years later, it culminated in Regan’s election, and we all know how that worked out for us.
Snarki, child of Loki
Well, *of course* Christie needs some serious protection.
Just think of the last time an enormous nazi gasbag stopped in Lakehurst, NJ.
Oh, and all the credit card charges? Gas-X.
PurpleGirl
@OzarkHillbilly: Didn’t President Obama ask for some fancy-named mustard on something, not the usual, plain old French’s Yellow?
JPL
@PurpleGirl: Kerry drank green tea and ordered a cheese steak sandwich in Philly without the cheeze whiz. That was proof he was elitist and not one of us.
Patrick
@Germy Shoemangler:
And this of course means that they are absolutely clueless as to what the definition of what the word socialism means. And we have a ton of dumb people in this country based on how many people uses the word without understanding it.
By the way, if Obama was a socialist (which he obviously is not), I would be very much in favor of socialism since under Obama the Dow has increased a whopping 125%.The Dow declined 25% during the 8 years capitalist Bush was in power.
Germy Shoemangler
@JPL: I remember sitting in a barbershop around the time of the 2004 campaign, picking up a NYPost, and saw a photo of Kerry playing with a football. The photograph they chose (of course) was him in an awkward position throwing the ball. Caption: “The French Twist”
Botsplainer
@satby:
I graduated high school in 80, from a blue collar Catholic high school in a run down white part of the city. It wasn’t until I was a senior that tuition rose to over $700 a year – the Archdiocese was doing a good job of funding and the faculty was about 50% clergy.
Way I remember, most of the social war battles were over. There was good sex ed, plenty of contraceptives of all kinds, nobody gave a damn about working with women, racial tensions were abated and people got along and there were no Confederate apologists around. Reagan’s campaign seemed to split everything apart.
MomSense
@OzarkHillbilly:
No the scale for Obama is from Mao to Stalin.
/tyrant memes
OzarkHillbilly
@PurpleGirl: Yeah, not good old American yellow mustard, but as Debbie above said, “Grey poupon”, proving once again that not only is a terrorist coddling socialist, he’s an elitist too.
raven
@OzarkHillbilly: A buddy of mine sent me this stupid-ass email with SHAME ON THE ACLU and pictures of “the troops” in all kinds of religious settings. Apparently the has been this bullshit going around for years that the ACLU is trying to stop chaplains from praying with the troops. It was a group email so I was able to send them all the text and link from snopes and said “you fuckers need to do your homework before you send out this BULLSHIT”!
MomSense
@Germy Shoemangler:
When they say take their country back, I’m pretty sure 1956 is exactly where they want to go.
bemused
@PurpleGirl:
Increasing the misery of poor, also middle class people, is a high priority for Republicans and they don’t care how it costs to do so.
There are so many examples of how money is no object for Republicans when it comes to achieving political dominance and punishing Americans at the same time. I don’t think anyone mentioned in the voter ID thread yesterday the millions of dollars it costs states to implement voter suppression laws. Ditto, drug testing welfare recipients. The list just goes on and on.
The truth is we can’t afford Republicans in charge. When a state has budget surplus, Republicans instantly salivate and try to disappear the surplus as fast as they are able to via tax cuts for corps and wealthy and cutting everything for the rest of the residents reducing their states to bankrupt shitholes. Kansas is a prime example. It seems that a state has to get way too close to third world conditions before some Republican voters start saying maybe a few Republican policies have gone a tad too far.
Republican voters totally ignore how much money GOP policies cost them while scrutinizing the contents of food stamp recipients shopping carts in the checkout lane. The sociopathy runs very deep.
beth
@raven: I always forward it right back to them with the old “OMG you better check with your email provider. Some hacker’s been sending out this bullshit on your email account! You don’t want people to think you’re an idiot.”
I usually never get that kind of email from them again.
OzarkHillbilly
@JPL: You forgot that he likes sail boarding…. Which if any of those idiots could be persuaded to step away from there 2000 HP jet boats, they would find is physically challenging, and a really really really cool thing to do.
Schlemazel
@raven:
I have neighbor that used to send shit like that. I kept reply-all’ing with links disproving the BS & it changed one thing. He stopped including me on the BS mail list. Thee people are happy in their ignorance.
Slavery was still legal and women couldn’t vote
PurpleGirl
Don’t forget a step in the demonization of ‘liberals’. Liberals, remember, road in limousines and while they wanted you to send your kid to an integrated school with those people, they sent their precious kids to private schools. Therefore, there were now limousine liberals ready to stomp all over good white working class people.
Chris
@Botsplainer:
That’s exactly it. Someone a year ago showed me a poll that indicated that the word “socialism” was now actually more favorably viewed than “capitalism” in my generation. I said that’s because now that there hasn’t been a socialist bloc in twenty five years, the only exposure we’ve had to the word is in U. S. politics, where all it means is “what teabaggers and 1%ers call anything they don’t agree with.” And when that’s all the word means, suddenly it doesn’t sound so bad.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the same was now true of “liberal.”
Baud
@OzarkHillbilly:
From what I’ve seen so far, this election, the media is going to be the propaganda arm of the GOP. More so than anything we’ve seen previously.
Chris
@debbie:
He’s aware that the Progressive Movement in the United States predates the Bolshevik Revolution by fifteen or twenty years?
Ah, who am I kidding. Of course not.
Patrick
@bemused:
It would be one thing if the Republicans at least were consistent. But they are not. They are complete hypocrites. While scrutinizing food stamp recipients, they are at the very same time giving a completely free pass to farm subsidies recipients, defense contractors etc etc.
Gimlet
From the BLS website
Total nonfarm payroll employment rose by 280,000 in May, compared with
an average monthly gain of 251,000 over the prior 12 months.
Professional and business services added 63,000 jobs in May and
671,000 jobs over the year. Employment in leisure and hospitality increased by 57,000 in May, following little change in the prior 2 months.
Health care added 47,000 jobs in May.
Employment in retail trade edged up in May (+31,000). Over the prior
12 months, the industry had added an average of 24,000 jobs per month.
Within retail trade, automobile dealers added 8,000 jobs in May.
Construction employment continued to trend up over the month (+17,000)
and has increased by 273,000 over the past year.
In May, employment continued on an upward trend in transportation and
warehousing (+13,000). Truck transportation added 9,000 jobs over the
month.
In May, employment continued to trend up in financial activities (+13,000).
Over the past 12 months, the industry has added 160,000 jobs, with
about half of the gain in insurance carriers and related activities.
Chris
@bemused:
“The truth is we can’t afford Republicans in charge.”
Yep. It’s really that simple.
Schlemazel
@Chris:
He really is Dusty Rhodes, it is probable he knows more of the actual history of Progressivism but he counts on the mouth-breathing morans that send him money to not know and he makes sure they know less and less every day so they send him more and more money.
OzarkHillbilly
@MomSense: Ha!
Schlemazel
@bemused:
That should be carved into Mount Rushmore as a great truth that the country should never forget
Chris
@Patrick:
Two summers ago I went to help out my grandmother at her local soup kitchen. There was a white guy in line fulfilling every possible stereotype of the word “redneck,” who started loudly bitching about the (black) people in line ahead of him, because they were all lazy and living off of society and should get jobs instead of handouts. While he himself was in line for the exact same handouts.
bemused
@Patrick:
Exactly. Republican voters don’t give a rats ass about deficits or debt when Republicans are in charge. And if their states improve significantly under Democratic rule, they give no credit to the Democratic legislators. There is a stark contrast between MN, Dayton, Democratic Senate and WI, Walker and Republican dominated legislature but MN Republican voters want to emulate WI. Go figure.
Botsplainer
@bemused:
“And He stood upon the Mount and commanded them all to Afflict the Afflicted and Comfort the Comfortable saying ‘Lo, the lucky ducky moocher welfare parasites will always be with you, but my Father bestows his blessings upon but few, and His favor is manifest by their possessions on this Earth….'”
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Gimlet:
I am currently marooned in the land if Fox News (aka central Florida) and some jackhole was claiming yesterday that the Sainted Reagan created 1 million jobs in a single month. Truthiness or complete bullshit?
bemused
@Botsplainer:
They prefer the “prosperity” gospel and are really into smiting as long as they get to smite who they want to.
MomSense
@Schlemazel:
But at least you didn’t have those pesky voting rights and civil rights acts.
Botsplainer
@Chris:
It’s like an Appalachian-American drawing SSI and Medicaid over a spinal condition that “hurts” while spending his free time hunting and working under the table for untaxed income. That individual caterwauling constantly about “them lazy goddamn n****rs using up tax dollars for welfare”.
Gimlet
@Mnemosyne (iPhone):
Google sez:
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, employer data showed 1.1 million more people getting paychecks in September than in August. This would be extraordinary except for one thing.
On August 7, 1983, about 675,000 telephone workers went on strike. At the end of the month, they approved a contract and went back to work. In the interim, the Labor Department gathered its payroll data — and, essentially, documented the effect of the strike.
“No doubt the striking workers returning to their jobs would have created a big bump in employment,” said Doug Rossinow, a historian at Metropolitan State University in St. Paul, Minn., and author of The Reagan Era: A history of the 1980s.
Put simply, the strike jangled the monthly job counts on both ends. It drove down the tally for August and pumped it up in September (and drove it back down for October).
Roger Moore
@OzarkHillbilly:
1.5 Chamberlins.
OzarkHillbilly
@Schlemazel: You forget that 2 of the heads on Rushmoor are Republican. Not today’s Republican, but still…
scav
Battle Cry of The Republican Musketeers: “All for One! And that One’s Me!“
debbie
@Chris:
He does, and he includes both Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson as Evildoers.
@Botsplainer:
I don’t know what year that photo was taken, but if it’s pre-1964, wouldn’t most of the people be Southern Democrats?
Poopyman
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): He probably did. Just not in the U.S.
Valdivia
@MomSense:
I know we joke a lot about this here but I once went on a date (someone set me up) with a law professor at an Ivy League school who actually put Obama in that scale. I almost fell from my chair. How can anyone be so ignorant as to use such comparisons? More depressing, that he was using it and was an effing chaired professor of law! Then again he was a hard-core & fetted member of The Federalist Society. I understood then that once you are a card carrying conservative you just repeat the talking points and stop using your brain.
Botsplainer
@bemused:
Hell, most of their supporters are quite happy to eke out pathetic existences so long as “them n****rs don’t get nothin'”
Patrick
@Mnemosyne (iPhone):
These people are just unbelievable! They have no problem with weird labor data during Reagan. But without an ounce of evidence they are accusing Obama of making numbers up.
I think I just want to go and vomit.
debbie
@Mnemosyne (iPhone):
I believe this was when he busted PATCO. Hundreds of thousands were out of work one month, dropping the number. Then when they regained their jobs the next month, the number appeared to double.
Or so I read somewhere.
Botsplainer
@debbie:
They were conservatives. Today, they’d be GOP base voters.
OzarkHillbilly
@Roger Moore: Double Ha!
MomSense
Oh Tweety when you say the President isn’t a regular guy and can’t make connections with regular guys which is why he needs Joe Biden, is it possible that your definition of “regular guy” is actually someone exactly like you?
Time to change the Beau Biden funeral coverage to c-span.
Mike J
@debbie:
Have you heard about Sarkozy renaming his party The Republicans? Very annoying since every French person is a republican, and he’s trying to claim it for himself.
Valdivia
@MomSense: is the memorial starting now? ETA I see it starts at 10:30 on c-span
Patrick
@Valdivia:
If Obama indeed was in the scale of between Mao and Stalin, your date would have been in some prison camp by now… Did he not realize the obvious?
catclub
@MomSense:
Tax rates excepted.
bemused
@Botsplainer:
Yes and put the blame directly where it belongs, on liberals, doh.
raven
@beth: Funny you would mention that. I met a guy online that was in my unit in Korea. For a couple of years we had interesting conversations about that time and place. I got a couple of really nasty right-wing group emails from him and I just cut communication. A couple of years later I posted a question on a unit web page and this dude went off on me for being such a jerk and ignoring him. I contacted him and said I just couldn’t hack the crap he was sending. I had saved it and, when I sent it to him, he freaked out and said “I had no idea what that stuff was, I just forwarded it”. We made up.
Germy Shoemangler
@Mnemosyne (iPhone):
Armed contras?
Poopyman
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): And now that you’ve sent me on a search, check out this paper from 1995. It could have been written today.
Patrick
@MomSense:
So regular guys want George W Bush on Mt Rushmore?
I am a regular guy and I connected with our President.
Poopyman
@MomSense:
Salt of the earth? Simple farmers?
You know … morons.
PurpleGirl
@Patrick: They don’t realize the obvious. They are in their own little bubble.
OzarkHillbilly
@raven:
SOP for conservative thinking.
MomSense
@Valdivia:
It’s actually a thing. There is a popular tea party protest sign showing Obama as Hitler, Stalin, and Mao.
I used to get so hung up on why intelligent, successful people could get caught up believing really stupid things until I started observing common traits. There is usually some combination of privilege, cultural identity, desire to belong to a “club”, compartmentalizing, and assholery that account for it.
Valdivia
@Patrick: I believe logical thinking (& history) don’t come into it for them. Weird right, he being a law prof and all. Maybe because this was way way back in 2010 they got by on making the comparison by implying he would do all those terrible things later. Then again, this was a guy who followed the Stalin comparison with a joke about torture and Guantanamo. I am telling you, there wasn’t enough wine to get me to the end of that date.
@PurpleGirl: I agree. They do live in their own bubble and totally unconnected to reality, depressing though for someone who teaches our young.
@MomSense: By then I had seen those signs and knew people like that existed, I just never expected it to come out of someone who was purportedly respected and teaching. Like you I learned that even smart people deluded themselves on this
Baud
@Valdivia:
You should start asking for C.V.’s before you go out on blind dates.
MomSense
@Poopyman:
I’m thinking white, Catholic, middle class guys from Pennsylvania.
ETA named Chris Matthews!
Schlemazel
@OzarkHillbilly:
You will also get, “I didn’t say it was true, I just thought it was interesting”
I really don’t want to live on this planet anymore.
Chris
@Mike J:
It’s standard right wing practice. Appropriate something generically national that everyone identifies with, then attack all those who don’t vote for you as being against that thing. Same story as our right wing’s cult-like appropriation of the word “American.”
OzarkHillbilly
@Poopyman:
Really? I know the GOP trolls this bait regularly, but that doesn’t mean you have to take it.
PurpleGirl
@Chris: My mother’s first husband was from Ecuador and she learned Spanish from him. After he died, she lived in Mexico City with his mother for almost a year. She didn’t say it consistently but every so often she’d say ‘Nord Americano’. I don’t think it consistently either but every so often the thought pops up… Nord Americano.
ETA: I see it as a nice reminder that we aren’t the only residents of this hemisphere, that there are northern and southern land masses.
Valdivia
@Baud: Ha. Indeed. I had a friend who told me I should just go on the dates and later write a pseudonymous book called Sex & the Neocon. Though I do have some stories, I just didn’t have the stomach for many more nights like that. And, also too. At no point, was there ever any sex with these guys. Just for the record.
I started seeing someone not too long after that and though that crashed and burned spectacularly last year that put me off the radar of the many well intentioned but totally misguided people who were setting me up.
OzarkHillbilly
@Valdivia:
Where is it written in the “Idiot’s Guide to Blind Dating” that one has to be polite to right wing reactionaries?
Poopyman
@MomSense:
That pretty well describes me too, except the Catholic part. OTOH, I’d have to agree that a lot of the white middle class guys from PA that I know can also be described as salt of the earth, in the Blazing Saddles sort of way. You know … morons.
@OzarkHillbilly: ??? Explain.
MomSense
@Poopyman:
I meant to add Chris Matthews BT the dog grabbed the remote and I hit submit before I was finished. It’s one of my pet peeves that pundits present their own feelings and opinions as if they represent some universally accepted wisdom instead of just their own feelings and opinions.
PurpleGirl
Have a good day people… I’m off to a bead exhibition and sale sponsored by the Bead Society of Greater New York. And, for once, I’m wearing something I made. See you guys later.
Valdivia
@OzarkHillbilly: It is true that I was raised to be unfailingly polite sometimes even in situations that don’t warrant it, in this case I was more stunned & at a loss for words than polite.
MomSense
@Valdivia:
Well if you live in a remote, rural, almost Arctic area the upside is no blind date suggestions.
OzarkHillbilly
@Poopyman: Over the years I have worked with more than a few farmers (most farmers have to hold regular jobs too). Nearly all of them were nice guys. A majority of them were Dem voters (union carpenters). And you just called them all morons.
I know you didn’t mean to, but why do Dems wonder where the elitist label comes from?
Chris
@MomSense:
I read a pretty good Cracked.com article that offered at least some explanation as to why otherwise sane people stay in cults, which I thought applied pretty well to the GOP with its obsession with identity politics. http://www.cracked.com/article/85_6-bullshit-facts-about-psychology-that-everyone-believes/ – scroll down to # 4, it’s the one about cults. The cut-and-pasted short version –
It’s why conservatives are so heavy on the identity politics and on the “the liberals are pointing and laughing and condescending to you!” message. In-group identification is a hell of a drug, whether it’s the Southern Baptist church down the street or the high-falutin’ law school fraternity.
gogol's wife
@OzarkHillbilly:
It’s a quotation from Blazing Saddles.
Germy Shoemangler
@OzarkHillbilly: the farmers I meet at our town’s farmers’ market are wise, liberal and interesting as hell to talk to. They are supporting themselves by hard work. They walk the walk.
Meanwhile, my opinionated republican neighbor with the gadsden flag in front of his house… he’s in a union. A state job. His weird republican wife is also in a union. Another state job. My taxes pay their salaries. They talk the talk but they don’t walk the walk.
Germy Shoemangler
@gogol’s wife: Here’s the quote:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHJbSvidohg
Valdivia
@MomSense: I’ve always wanted to visit Iceland, maybe I should :)
bemused
@Germy Shoemangler:
It’s interesting how many Republican voters I know who have had union private sector or government jobs for most of their working lives.
raven
@Valdivia: My friends went there and loved it. They rented a van and drove around for a few days.
Germy Shoemangler
@Valdivia: You never hear much about Iceland from the corporate media. How did they fix their economic problems again?
Germy Shoemangler
@bemused:
God, I’ve seen that so many times.
Co-workers and neighbors. The biggest loudmouths, the Lush Rimbaugh fans, the faux nooz devotees… and they either get government checks (social security, medicare) or they work in some unionized place with a ton of benefits.
Also, not to be disrespectful to those of you who live in their family homes, but a good number of the staunch conservatives I encountered never had to pay a mortgage in their life. Inherited grandpa’s old house. Or lived in the house they grew up in. I had three neighbors over the past twenty years living in houses left to them by their families (while I was struggling to pay a $900/month mortgage on a shit salary) and they’d lecture me about whatever bullshit they’d heard on talk radio the day before.
Someone should write a book about that particular phenomenon.
Mike J
It’s important that we not forget what day this is.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sd5ZLJWQmss
It was the dark of the moon on the sixth of June…
(Since it was pointed out that we missed Ode to Billy Joe day earlier this week.)
Valdivia
@raven: I have Norwegian friends who live in Iceland so I have been wanting to visit and have heard wonderful things. If you fly with IcelandAir to Europe (at least from DC) you get to use the stopover to stay as many days as you like in Iceland. Really good deal I have been keeping my eye on.
@Germy Shoemangler: I remember there was a New Yorker article about how the economy fell, but not much about how they have progressed since. My friends who live there are always complaining about the govt though, which is blocking a referendum the citizens want (I want to say it’s about joining Europe but I may be wrong)
Germy Shoemangler
@Mike J: I remember when that song first came out. It was all over the radio; you literally couldn’t get away from it.
It sounded almost… authentic. And then one afternoon I saw C.W. McCall himself on the Mike Douglas show, lip-synching to his hit.
He looked like such a fraud. He was a fucking ad man, for god’s sake.
In 1973, while working as a creative director for Bozell & Jacobs, an Omaha, Nebraska, advertising agency, Fries created a Clio Award-winning (1974) television advertising campaign advertising Old Home Bread for the Metz Baking Company. The advertisements featured a truck driver named C. W. McCall, who was played by Dallas, Texas, actor Jim Finlayson. C. W. McCall is the pseudonym of William Dale Fries, Jr.
Chris
@Germy Shoemangler:
I also saw this all the time growing up in DC. The defense industry is ground zero for this kind of asshole, where the IGMFY logic of government-subsidized-conservatives mixes with the more standard neocon, nationalist ideology. But plenty of people in the more mundane departments are the same way. It’s easy to be a conservative when you don’t need to worry about what the vagaries of the market economy actually entail.
(And every one of them is convinced that when conservative politicians talk about “trimming the fat” and “reducing spending” and all those useless “government bureaucrats,” they’re talking about all the bureaucrats in the other agencies, or on all the other bureaucrats in their agency, the useless co-workers they don’t get along with: they, of course, have nothing to worry about, because they’re so good and special and surely the system will recognize that and preserve them).
Baud
@Chris:
Special snowflakes do not melt.
Chris
@Baud:
LOOOOOL.
Elizabelle
Turned to C-Span 1. Too much yapping on MSNBC.
Bagpipes playing “Going Home.” Plaintive.
Germy Shoemangler
@Chris:
Well, that’s basically it.
My neighbor who lives in the house he grew up in. Never had to worry about paying a mortgage in his life. Once a week, if I’m outside doing yard work I’m treated to his opinions. He works really short hours and enjoys a ton of benefits. Lots of vacations and days off. Union benefits. His wife is now on disability. She worked ten years in a school district. Office support. Now she gets benefits while sitting in their house all day. I want to tell them “Thank a Liberal.”
Germy Shoemangler
@Elizabelle:
Bagpipes playing “Going Home” is worth more than a million hours of MSNBC yapping. I actually teared up when I saw one photo of Joe at the funeral, eyes closed, his head raised.
Iowa Old Lady
@Valdivia: The stop in Iceland breaks up that long flight too. A friend of mine took that route on her way to Finland.
Valdivia
@Elizabelle: it’s the only way to watch this, respectful just seeing what’s happening no punditry.
Elizabelle
DId you guys discuss Kevin Drum’s column, Here’s Why Libertarians Are Mostly Men
Sounds a bit like the Republican fantasists you are discussing today.
Photo illustration of “Coventry.” (PDF version; not verified against original.)
Elizabelle
@Germy Shoemangler:
@Valdivia:
More of sense of loss. More authentic.
It’s a family, not an assignment for the yappers to get through.
Valdivia
@Iowa Old Lady: When I went to Finland last year I stopped in Sweden for a few hours, it was a good way to break up the long flight.
Gotta go and get some work done for my class before the big Barca game. Have a good day BJ!
eta @Elizabelle: yes exactly. it’s also a family moment, would be nice if they would respect that. I wanted to hear the Obama eulogy but have to get to work so I will see it at cspan later.
Baud
@Elizabelle:
Crazy. It’s a damn funeral. STFU.
@Elizabelle:
I could have been a contender. Thanks, Obama.
Chris
@Elizabelle:
My $0.02 on the last thread that brought this up: because libertarianism, being all about the glory of the individual, resonates primarily with the only people society actually treats as individuals. Namely white men.
And that since women and nonwhites have only ever had their rights guaranteed by collective action and government regulation, and not by “gettin’ the gub’mint off their backs,” they’re a lot less responsive to the kinds of fantasies that hold that the solution to everything is Rugged Individualism.
FlipYrWhig
@Germy Shoemangler: the overlap between wingnuttery and being on disability is MASSIVE. It’d be ironic if it weren’t despair-inducing.
bemused
@Germy Shoemangler:
And complain loudly about their unions! Hmm, if they adhered to their Republican principles, they would avoid taking those jobs in the first place.
I have a hunch those who inherited houses also think they have it easy growing up but by golly, they worked hard to get what they have and why can’t those “other” people take responsibility for their life outcomes.
WereBear
@beth: LOL! I love that.
I’ve reached the point where I drop people who do that. They get me so exasperated and angry it’s not worth it.
Everyone’s mileage may vary.
WereBear
The first one represents something that only THE WEAK need; ie, not them. The other is something they want. For themselves, ideally.
Yes, they are inconsistent conceptually. But they don’t think conceptually! I’ve decided they think in Realms.
Poor people, minorities, the disadvantaged and oppressed; that will never be them because they don’t deserve it. And those other people must. They are in the That Sucks Realm, and a good Republican would never be there.
Over there, in the White Privilege/I Bribed My Way to Fame and Fortune Realm, God is happy that they have been so clever.
This is why one of their ministers can commit heinous crimes and it’s okay. But a black youth walking in the wrong place risks death.
It doesn’t make any sense. But then, neither do they.
samiam
“Buh but….Hillary made a bunch of money giving speeches…”
— fat bastard defender and Hillary critic Wr0ng Way Cole
Poopyman
@OzarkHillbilly: I was just using the blazing saddles line. Nothing intentionally directed at farmers.
FlipYrWhig
@Chris: Those aren’t the libertarians I know. The libertarians I’ve known have been one of two types:
(1) wealthy hedonists (“your so-called laws don’t apply to me”)
(2) extremely socially awkward dorks with chips on their shoulders (“you mock me now, but one day you’ll need my help, but instead I’ll crush you all!”)
FlipYrWhig
@WereBear: IOW, “people like me work hard and sometimes get into trouble and need a helping hand, but Those People are lazy by nature, and just want a handout, and they’d gladly take it forever.” Every non-rich Republican thinks this way. It’s what makes Republicans Republicans. And it’s like half of the populace of the USA. Gross.
bemused
@WereBear:
They keep thinking if they stick with the GOP, they too will be richer. They believe this in their families generation after generation without it ever happening. Talk about living in a fantasy.
Elizabelle
@Chris: I will look for that earlier thread, and link it. Haven’t read it yet. Think it was Anne Laurie highlighting an article by Jeet Heer ….
Agree with your take. Also Flip’s. The libertarian is a multi-faceted creature, but rather lacking in empathy and not imaginative enough about the downsides. That befall lesser creatures. Until …
satby
@Valdivia: That’s on my bucket list. During the northern lights season.
gelfling545
@Schlemazel: Yes. Breath is “bated” or sometimes ‘bated to show derivation from abated, i.e. holding one’s breath. It is one’s fishing hook that gets baited, or one’s heffalump trap if you live in the Hundred Acre Wood.
Baud
Mrs. Rubio is apparently a bad driver.
http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2015/6/6/104940/4238
MomSense
@Valdivia:
Go!! It is beautiful and so much fun. I used to do the Boston Reykjavik Oslo trip quite a bit. If they would have me, I would live in Norway in a minute.
Baud
@MomSense:
Why wouldn’t they have you?
Chris
@FlipYrWhig:
Well, self-identified libertarians tend to come in all shapes and sizes in my experience.
Well meaning but clueless college lefties who identify as libertarian because they feel strongly about big government abuses in the war on drugs and war on terror and are inexplicably convinced that only Ron Paul can help. Rich assholes who identify as libertarian because they want the Gilded Age back. Unreconstructed Dixiecrats who identify as libertarian because they think the federal government should butt out of their States’ Rights To Keep These Darkies And Gays And Wimminz In Their Place. Nerds who’ve read too much Ayn Rand. It goes on.
What they all have in common: they identify as libertarian because they feel very strongly about abolishing X, Y, and Z aspects of the government, but don’t really think much about A, B and C aspects and kind of take them for granted. Exactly which aspects are which vary from libertarian to libertarian.
Germy Shoemangler
@gelfling545: I remember after W.C. Fields died, they found his notebook with sketches for a book he was planning. Mentioned a cat who put a slice of cheese in her mouth and then waited in front of a mouse hole with baited breath.
WereBear
@Germy Shoemangler: American Exceptionalism is about how they are Exceptional. Somehow.
Baud
@Chris:
That’s too general a description. Everyone, including us, likes some things the government does and would abolish other things.
Germy Shoemangler
@WereBear: Well said.
MomSense
@Baud:
I’m not Norwegian and the immigration laws have gotten stricter. I missed my window.
cahuenga
Petard jokes. They never get old.
Baud
@MomSense:
Their loss.
Chris
@Baud:
Yes, but not every one of us identifies as libertarian because of it. Not every one of us presents their objections to a few aspects of government policy as an objection to big government in general. Not every one of us is happy to forget or ignore those aspects of the government we don’t agree with and let our objections to certain aspects of the government define our entire relationship with it.
JPL
I’ve been finishing up some yard work and it appears that I haven’t missed the eulogies. Chris Martin of Coldplay found out that Beau was a fan and called to see if he could sing.
Baud
@Chris:
All true. The things we don’t like aren’t based on animosity to government, selectivity applied.
Michael Bersin
@Mnemosyne (iPhone):
Impossible. Everyone knows the Faux News Channel doesn’t employ any fact checkers.
Cacti
Serena Williams wins French Open for her 20th grand slam singles title. Breaks a tie with Helen Wills and becomes the most successful US women’s player in history.
Racists everywhere have a sad.
kc
@raven:
Are you in South Carolina?
raven
@kc: Athens, GA.
JPL
@raven: It’s getting warm out side. When we lived in TX, we put in a pool and they poured the concrete at 4 in the morning because of the heat.
Peale
@Valdivia: yes. Rent a car. Drive the ring road. Learn more about how beautiful lava can be.
WereBear
This resonates greatly with me. Excellent point!
It’s why I look at a rootin’ tootin’ Mad Max scenario and I don’t think, “Hells yeah, I could rise to the top of the heap!”
Goblue72
@Germy Shoemangler: Heh-heh. I see what you did there.
WereBear
I’ve come to see it as a belief in sympathetic magic.
Suzanne
@Baud: I went on a date with a dude I met at a function. He ended up being so conservative that he said that Ronald Reagan was his personal hero and role model. That ended that shit right there. Someone didn’t even get a good-night kiss.
Suzanne
@Chris: You are correct in the in-group identification. It’s common around here to attribute the insane GOP to anything Obama does or says to racism, and I have no doubt that racism fuels some of it. But, FFS, when they had a white Democrat in the White House the last time, it’s not like they treated him with dignity or respect. They insulted his wife and made fun of his teenage daughter’s looks, they mocked him for being fat, and let’s not forget how they IMPEACHED HIM OVER A BLOWJOB, even though, as we all suspected and now know, they were all doing waaaaaay more fucked-up sex shit.
The GOP is certainly racist, but Obama’s skin color is only a part of why they hate him. They really just hate that he is smarter than them all, and on the other team. That is the core of it. And this is why, if HRC gets elected, the level of bullshit will not be any lower.
raven
@JPL: I think it’s ok today.
FlipYrWhig
@Suzanne: The derp will be with us always. I’m not sure there will ever be a Republican campaign that doesn’t boil down to “liberals are a bunch of n%%%%r-lovers and they’re laughing at you.” It’ll have other offshoots, but that’ll be the gist, as it’s been for about 50 years already.
bemused
@WereBear:
A few years ago a proposal to raise taxes on those making over about $250,000 a year, iirc, got average joe Republicans’ panties in a twist. The Republican owner of a small, very small, business was bitching about that and a liberal customer asked why he was worried when it wouldn’t apply to him. The owner said, “well, I might some day”. That’s how they think. That gold is just around the corner….
Later, that business owner couldn’t make it through the extended economic slowdown no matter how hard they worked and had to close the business. I’m sure he’s still a Republican and still hoping they come through for him.
Elizabelle
Terrific eulogy by President Obama. What did you expect me to say?
JPL
@raven: In Dallas a hot day meant above 95 according to the weather crew.
I think you are fine.
Ruckus
@Suzanne:
Very well said.
Chris
@Suzanne:
The thing is, Obama may be hated for being a n/gg/r, but Clinton was hated for being a n/gg/r lover. As the next Clinton will be.
I agree that race isn’t everything, but I think people underestimate how much race is a factor even in the Clinton-h8. Democrats are The Party Of The Blacks. Putting a white face on that doesn’t change it.
JPL
@Elizabelle: I have goosebumps
Pogonip
@Amir Khalid: Accountability here is only for the little people. The upper class here may do as they like as long as are not caught breaking the strongest taboos, such as the taboo against child molestation. What’s the situation in your country?
satby
@Chris: exactly.
Elizabelle
@Chris: Agreed. A lot is race. Democrats are the party that embrace the other.
Zero sum game: if “others” are benefitting, it’s at Republicans’ loss. Um, not.
Also: the moral majority types. They see evil, they see demons, when they look at Democrats. They see something that is not there, they’re looking into a bleak, black, cruel mirror.
So you get people who call themselves “patriots”, who hate and try to derail the outcome of elections that don’t go their way. They consider the victor in a fairly fought campaign that did not elect their preferred candidate to be illegitimate. They sabotage the actual will of the American voters, and call themselves principled patriots.
This is an ugly brand of politics that has never been so out in the open in my lifetime.
I think Fox News and those ridiculous think tanks drive a lot of it. Not letting them off the hook. They are the polarizing force. They’re purveying the fantasy, and it’s an ugly, backward one. That benefits the funders.
Elizabelle
Great composure by Ashley and Hunter Biden. This is a strong family.
muddy
@WereBear: Homeopathy. They too have a fraction so small it can’t be measured, but are sure they have all the attributes of the whole. The spirit memory or whatever they call it.
Iowa Old Lady
@Elizabelle: I know most funerals are sad, but this one felt tragic.
Elizabelle
@Iowa Old Lady: The words from those who knew and loved and mourn Beau are so more real to me than the formal Catholic service.
A life well lived, in too few years.
Elizabelle
@Iowa Old Lady: And a nine and eleven year old without their dad. I think these speeches are written for them.
lamh36
Wow. Beau def looked like his dad. But am I wrong in thinking Hunter sounds a lot like VP Joe?
SiubhanDuinne
I didn’t know very much about Beau Biden, but listening to the eulogies and tributes he sounds like an extraordinary, wonderful person. I have been in tears for the past hour or two. What a family Joe and Jill have raised. The love and mutual respect is palpable, even through the radio.
Elizabelle
@lamh36: Actually, he does. You called it.
lamh36
Hunter recalls his first memory of childhood waking up in a hospital, age 3, w/Beau holding his hand, saying over & over again: I love you.
Elizabelle
“Don’t wait to make your son a great man. Make him a great boy.”
@lamh36: Yeah, learning so young that it could all end so quickly.
ruemara
@Germy Shoemangler: You should. There’s nothing worse than a neocon government worker. It may have gotten me disinvited to the holiday home parties, but I was never afraid to tell the ones I know that they can thank the liberal socialist communists for their union and their benefits.
Elizabelle
@ruemara:
I agree. There’s nothing greedier than feeding at the trough, and spitting in it for others.
This funeral had more to say about public service and our interconnection than anything out of smaller minds’ mouths.
bemused
So true. Rightwingers can pretend to themselves that liberals like Beau Biden are phonies but he was the “real deal” as are so many liberal policies. It drives them crazy.
Elizabelle
Slow peal of the bell.
The bells always get me, more than a lot of the music.
ETA: I am glad they had a clear, sunny day for the service.
J R in WV
Lots to cover inn this open thread.
I had a state credit card for travel, and was in Philly and DC often for meetings with Federal people working on the issues I worked on in state government. I used that card for hotel, air fare, dinners at nice restaurants with drinks and wine. I got the maximum allowable reimbursement, which was well under what I actually spent, as the limits were more small town motel and snack bar than big city hotels and restaurants downtown.
But Christie’s bodyguards are mostly living at home, and shouldn’t be spending much government money on meals and rooms, unless the “good” governor is traveling, which of course he does a lot.
I remember the days when legal segregation was being fought to near extinction – the hatred of government today stems from that battle, to make racists sit in a room where black folks can also sit. The hatred of a racist about to sit for dinner in a restaurant where the black members of the community can also sit for dinner, so long as they can put it on their government EBT card, is something to see.
So: There was a great deal of hatred of government back in the late 1950s and 60s, and many people killed over that hate. It isn’t a new Republican thing, just the same old conservative thing that re-emerges periodically, whenever Progressives get something done in the right direction.
I too will never understand why seemingly smart people will believe absurd things about a Democratic politician… when there are so many realistic and crazy things to believe about politicians in general, and conservative politicians in particular. I respond to right-wing nutjob emails with links to sites that show the falsehoods up for what they are! Now I don’t get many of those emails any more, which is OK, even if they still believe the nutty things but just don’t share them with me, that’s OK.
fuckwit
@Elizabelle: Drum’s wrong. It’s much simpler than that. It’s privilege. Libertarians are mostly white men for the same reason that rich people are mostly white men, and for the same reason that rich people love the idea of libertarianism. They are, as Molly Ivins famously said about Shrub, born on third base and think they hit a triple. It’s attribution bias. White men think we’re the shit because we’re awesome and we accomplished everything we have. In truth, we are the shit because we’re white men and we’re born on an immense cushion of privilege. We’re playin the game on the lowest level of difficulty, and think that our wins are because of exceptional skill. Libertarians suffer from that same attribution bias.
Suzanne
@Chris: The Dems are the party of most of the racial minorities, women, the educated, much of the poor, etc etc etc. ALL of the things they hate. I certainly believe that racism fuels a significant portion of the bullshit, but really racism is just one of the many flavor notes of the shit sandwich that the fuckers are serving up. They hate anyone that isn’t of their tribe.
Valdivia
@MomSense: I totally understand you. I too wanted to move there after visiting last year. Had a great time in Finland and Estonia, but the best time of all in Norway. I really can’t wait to go back.
@Peale: I am open to loving lava.
sukabi
@satby: it goes back much farther than that…. in the ’50’s & ’60’s it was all about the ‘red scare’… constant commie hunting…
Tree With Water
Because I’m a native Californian, a state that after all propelled men such as Nixon and Reagan to power, I understand why Christie was elected, and then re-elected. The people of New Jersey f’d up. But I am surprised that they have yet to bring him to heel, given all that’s transpired since the bridge fiasco. By that I mean impeachment hearings, or a recall election. Hell, we recall governors out here for no reason whatsoever.
PhilbertDesanex
@bemused:
Also they think if they stick with the GOP maybe, just maybe, the kids will move out.