I wonder if Mitt Romney’s best strategy might be to convince the Republican establishment to try and save him from the teahadist hordes in the primaries. Maybe he can’t attack Perry too much himself (without alienating the 27 percenters) but Crossroads GPS can. This kind of crazy talk from Perry must scare the shit out of Republican strategists:
Responding to a question about the Federal Reserve at a campaign event in Cedar Rapids, Perry said: “If this guy prints more money between now and the election, I don’t know what y’all would do to him in Iowa, but we would treat him pretty ugly down in Texas. Printing more money to play politics at this particular time in American history is almost treacherous, or treasonous, in my opinion.”
If Howard Dean accused some Fed chief of treason, the Washington Post editorial board would have written 20 or 30 editorials about it; it could be the subject of an entire book by Charles Lane. As it is, Perry won’t take all that much heat for it, but it’s pretty far over the line and I don’t think he’ll be able to get away with this kind of thing in the long term.
Brian
Treasonous, as in suggesting secession?
Spaghetti Lee
Goddamn it, why is everything treason with these motherfuckers? Can’t they just say “I disagree” and leave it at that? Why do they have to strip everything of its actual meaning just to one-up each other?
bonkers
Only Hillary can stop him!11!~!!1! (blerp…bzzztt…POP!)
Mart
Listening to Sirius/XM’s lefty channel a guy called in and wanted to know why the liberals are always calling those on the right crazy…
Jenny
String up
the JewBernanke!Yutsano
I
O
K
I
Y
A
R
This is well-established.
@suzanne: Eww. Just…eww.
suzanne
I just heard on Jon Stewart that Rick Perry’s father-in-law performed his vasectomy.
I can’t get over how strange that is.
aisce
i said this on the other thread, you just watched the spectacular 24 hour demolition of the perry campaign. what a sight.
in this country, with the way campaigns are financed, you can get away with talking smack about other politicians. but to pull that shit with wall street people or worse, the fed chairman? good luck raising money, jackass. obama’s billion dollar campaign is gonna straight truck your secessionist ass, and that’s in the 0.1% odds that his oil money can somehow get him through the primaries. which it won’t.
romney’s path is clear.
filthydrop
Last I looked the 27%ers were down to about 11%. Jus’ sayin…
eric
I hope some persistent reporter presses him to find out what “treat him pretty ugly down in Texas” actually means.
bonkers
Blup
sb
@Yutsano: Not this time, IMHO.
He could have talked shit about gays, non-christians, women, teachers, the UN, the media, Hollywood, democrats, progressives, Obama’s “foreign” background, and children singing songs about peace and love (socialists!).
But you never talk shit about the men with money. And the Fed be a mighty big money man.
sb
@eric: ditto this.
The Dangerman
@suzanne:
Assuming he’s a surgeon and not a dentist or a car mechanic, I don’t find it strange at all.
Am I that hammered?
+?
JC
I agree with this strategy of calling the guy crazy, and wrong, whenever he says anything.
Go beyond the snark, by emphasizing just the danger our country is in, if this type of craziness and wrongness gets into office.
This has the added benefit of being true.
Now if we can just get MSM to stop fluffing Perry…
Martin
@suzanne:
Did he just perform it, or did he insist on it and perform it? I dated a girl in college whose dad was chief of police that I’m pretty sure wanted to give me a 9mm vasectomy when I first met him.
phillygirl
No,no, no! Please don’t take my Perrymania away. I want it for a whole ‘nother year. Hee, hee.
suzanne
@The Dangerman:
Really? The prospect of your father-in-law cutting open your junk wouldn’t even merit a raised eyebrow?
kdaug
Stillwater
And so it begins… Perry is gonna rip the party apart. I guess the one question left is to what extent the big-money/entrenched power players can push back, and how successful it will be. There will be a turn against Perry from some of the greased editorial boards and mercenary-pundits. But the love fest for this kind of crazy is just too juicy for most establishment media types to resist.
Yutsano
@suzanne: Well in his defense he is verschnickered. I don’t think he’s been married before either. So perspective distortion? Maybe?
Jennifer
@The Dangerman: Yes, you’re that hammered.
Dood had his father-in-law handling his junk.
Or to put it another way, something just ain’t right about a guy touching the tool that’s been inside his daughter.
If that don’t make you throw up in your mouth, just a little…it’s probably because your mind isn’t as warped as mine, but also because you didn’t really think through the implications there.
The Sheriff's A Ni-
@aisce: I’m gravitating away from theories of Perry playing tea party spoiler for Romney and more into the dumb fuck actually believing the Obama as Carter bullshit and by doubling down on the derp he can be Reagan too.
The Dangerman
@suzanne:
Unless he was planning to use the amazing Ginzu knife (but wait, we’ll send you another one just for the price of shipping and handling), not at all.
Considered and still doesn’t give me any concern; shit, I’d probably take a magic marker and leave him a, um, lengthy message on it.
I’m detecting a difference between the sexes here, but it could be the wine.
suzanne
@Yutsano: Dude must do some craaaaaazy shit while fucked up. Remind me to be elsewhere. Someone could lose organs hanging around that dude.
Odie Hugh Manatee
If this is ‘Perry Unplugged’ then I hope he wins the Repugnant primary so I can watch him meltdown in the general. As far as I can see, crazy is going to win no matter what. As Perlstein said, the moneybags created this Frankenstein congress and they have lost control of it. It’s going to cost them a lot of money to turn this mess around, if that’s even possible now.
The republican party is scared to death of the teahadists and they know that they have to ‘ride the wave’ or get crushed by it. I like how the moneybags tried to redirect the teahadist anger through their bought and paid for astroturf organizations and the teahadists have basically ignored them now that they have taken on a life of their own. Once Frankenstein has been powered up there is little choice other than take him out or suffer.
You can’t reason with the walking dead.
Mike
Wow! And it’s only day 3 of the campaign! Imagine all the other crazy shit he’s going to spew over the next year and a half. No wonder Obama’s Intrade numbers shot up today. Hell, I feel a lot better, too!
Yutsano
@suzanne: Well he’s closer to you than me, but I’m still saying it’s the three sheets to the wind talking.
@The Dangerman: I better be right here dude. Don’t make me wrong.
Fulcanelli
“Next time I tell you someone from Texas should not be president of the United States, please pay attention.” – Molly Ivins
Mike G
A swaggering, bombastic asshole Texas Governor bragging about committing violence and how proud he is to be stupid. Yeah, we’ve never seen that before.
aisce
@ The Sheriff’s A Ni-
it really doesn’t matter who genuinely believes what.
romney is now the only republican left who isn’t saying that debt is slavery and the fed needs to be abolished. (huntsman doesn’t count). it’s fucking unbelievable.
what hedge fund jackass will possibly give these freak shows money? how does perry finance his campaign?
burnspbesq
@Spaghetti Lee:
Bernanke is levying war against the gold standard, and giving aid and comfort to the invisible bond vigilantes.
The Dangerman
@Yutsano:
I just don’t see the big deal and I can’t be that lubed up. Can I? And, no, never married (all the Women I dated in Seattle loved Seattle and loathed California; yeah, call me crazy).
It could be all the years in Aerospace; trust me, I’ve heard of (and seen, while stone cold sober) some crazy shit; this just doesn’t rank very high on the list this evening.
burnspbesq
@kdaug:
It’s good that Republicans like Eisenhower, Rocky, Mark Hatfield, Cliff Case, et al aren’t around to see what became of their party.
Stranger
So, on his first full day of campaigning, Perry issues a veiled threat against the Fed chairman and questions Obama’s patriotism?
What’s he got planned for tomorrow? Challenge Joe Biden to a fist fight? Shoot a New York Times stringer?
By the end of the week he should be strangling his own advisors with his bare hands. How’s he ever gonna keep up the pace?
Stillwater
@aisce: how does perry finance his campaign?
You dance with them what brung ya.
Ruckus
@suzanne:
My family members with a knife? Or any kind of sharp instrument?
I’m a guy, I’ve had a vasectomy and YES this seems very weird. I think it was better that I didn’t know anyone in the room when it was done. It was tough enough letting someone cut on me in what I consider a
prettyvitally important area. Not knowing them meant I only had to worry about their skill.ETA Did let someone cut on my eyes and worried more about that that though.
MikeJ
@The Dangerman:
Doesn’t concern me either. To a surgeon it’s just a snip snip done job. If the FIL was a mechanic he would give the same amount of thought in changing a muffler.
Martin
Just think – this guy is saying this stupid shit without even being in a debate where he’s trying to one-up the idiot next to him.
We live in interesting times.
Fulcanelli
“They’re selling postcards of the hanging
They’re painting the passports brown
The beauty parlor is filled with sailors
The circus is in town
Here comes the blind commissioner
They’ve got him in a trance
One hand is tied to the tight-rope walker
The other is in his pants
And the riot squad they’re restless
They need somewhere to go
As Lady and I look out tonight
From Desolation Row”
Just when you thought it couldn’t get any weirder, America’s Mayor is jumping out of the clown car too…
BOHICA
Yutsano
@MikeJ: I’m also of the opinion one shouldn’t practice medicine on one’s family members. My aunt the psychiatrist is infamous for this. Drives my dad meschugnah.
EDIT: YMMV.
Ruckus
@Martin:
Well you did identify him correctly. Idiot. And you can’t expect him to say anything other than stupid shit being as he is an idiot.
MikeJ
@Yutsano: On the whole I’d agree, but every doctor treats family for minor stuff, and a vasectomy is minor.
I don’t think shrinks should try on family members if only because it’s less likely to be effective.
Jennifer
@MikeJ: Yeah, other than the fact that the muffler hadn’t gotten stuck into his daughter repeatedly for years, it would be just the same.
Myles
Now just imagine if Perry actually became president while Bernanke still remains Fed Chairman…
nellcote
Jim Hightower called Perry “Bush without the ethics or the smarts.”
MikeJ
@Jennifer: Doctors just don’t think like that. Really.
Do you think he should be hyper obsessed with protecting his married daughter’s purity? Should he refuse to shake hands with Perry on the basis that he’s probably used that hand to finger bang his daughter?
The Dangerman
@MikeJ:
Alright, at least I know I’m not completely off my rocker; whew!
About the only thing that might give me any pause is that I’ve heard that a vasectomy gone wrong can hurt like ya want to die; if the snip snipping went bad, I might have trouble sharing a Thanksgiving meal with the FIL, but, else, it’s a clinical procedure; rather, um, cut and dry.
GregB
Rick Perry is sounding nuclear attack on Iran crazy.
Them Dominionists need some sort of catalyst to bring on Armageddon and this raging shitheel sounds like he was made for that job.
Martin
@Mike G:
Actually, Bush saved most of that until after he won (or before he hit the national scene). He campaigned along a much more moderate line.
Ruckus
@GregB:
Raging shitheel is a better description than idiot. Can we use both?
Idiotic raging shitheel. Sounds correct.
Yutsano
OT: RedKitten needs to go play nurse. Has she been about lately?
Martin
@Fulcanelli:
Awesome. Too bad T-Paw bailed. I want to see a 20-person GOP debate – all that fighting for attention would have to yield something glorious.
JGabriel
DougJ @ Top:
Perry might get some heat for it, after all.
We’ll have to wait and see, of course, but don’t forget that Bernanke was a Bush appointee. It’s okay to talk smack about Democratic appointees, but saying shit about GOP appointees breaks Reagan’s 11th commandment.
.
GregB
@Ruckus:
Huzzah!
Janeane The Acerbic Goblin
@Martin:
True. Looks like Perry jumped the shark on that one.
piratedan
ok, ok, ok…. so Governuh Perry had his ability to father career crippling bastards removed from his personal agenda, that still leaves him fully capable of pissing on anyone with firing synapses…..
fire the teachers….check
mandate creationist pipe dreams as the textbooks du juor… check
get anointed as a savior thanks to the oil industry using him as a ventriloquists dummy… check
confederate fuck melon… check
good hair… check
he’s a turd, but he’s the best looking turd this side of John Thune and as such, he’ll have the fundies flocking to his banner because he’s not a woman, he’ll tie up the south and the old money because he’s not a Mormon and its been well established that Texans can be bought (see Bush, I and II) and will stay bought.
So fire up the smoke machines and queue the fluffers (That’s your cue Mr. Todd and you’re next, Mr. Gregory) and Faux can sit back and spew their lies unchallenged 24/7 because the feds won’t be done in time to bring them down. The rest of the boys in DC will do their best to keep the current inhabitant of the WH from making any improvements while they troll for the next racist poutrage to pimp from news cycle to news cycle.
Uriel
You’re adorable.
andy
@Spaghetti Lee: They like using the Treason formulation because the thought of applying the penalty for Treason makes them feel like real hard-asses. Make’s ’em tough- like the guy who stops the people who are investigating the execution of an innocent man…
Anne Laurie
@aisce:
With a little extra help from his Chinese “friends”, of course!
(Yeah, well, someone hadda bring it up… )
Stefan
@Spaghetti Lee:
Goddamn it, why is everything treason with these motherfuckers? Can’t they just say “I disagree” and leave it at that? Why do they have to strip everything of its actual meaning just to one-up each other?
It’s the Rove formula of accusing your opponent of your own faults. When you’re on the record actually advocating treason, as Perry is, then you have to muddy the waters, inoculate yourself through the basic schoolyard tactic of “no, YOU’RE the one committing treason!”
Jenny
Nouriel Roubini (Dr. Doom):
John Podhoretz (neo-con/Commentary magazine):
Binyamin Appelbaum (NY Times financial reporter):
Dan Alpert (Managing Partner, Westwood Capital)
Lysana
@piratedan:
That is the first place my mind went when I heard he got the cut done.
JGabriel
@Jenny: Jenny, where are these quotes coming from?
.
hamletta
There was a lot of horror expressed on the Twitter machines today. And not by the usual suspects.
It’s early in the campaign though. It’ll be forgotten/”corrected.”
Jenny
@JGabriel: Twitter and commentary magazine
http://twitter.com/#!/nouriel
http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2011/08/15/rick-perrys-serious-unforced-error/#.TkngT4gYx7I.twitter
hamletta
@Lysana: But why would he be concerned about bastards if he’s gay?
JGabriel
@eric:
If I remember correctly, in Texas it means tying someone to the back of a truck and dragging them through the streets.
.
Lysana
@hamletta: I don’t think Perry’s gay. Frankly, the “oh, look who’s gay” bits the left pulls on the right annoy me anyway. It’s based on stereotyping, and we’re allegedly above that.
So I’d also say that since Perry’s making sure he is done breeding, he’s not gay. Bisexual? I don’t know and refuse to judge based on supposition. I feel the same about Marcus Bachmann. I consider such jokes to be puerile and homophobic.
JGabriel
@Jenny: Thanks.
Jenny
Josh Barro (wingnut think-tank)
dollared
I had thought that Perry really did have some sort of direct association with Gore, but no, he was just Texas state chairman for the Gore ’88 campaign. So that, plus today’s craziness, puts me way over to to “Stupid” on the ReTeahadist “Stupid/Lying” continuum.
So I’m concluding that Perry is just so inside the Texas Republican, Oil-soaked, Upper-Class-‘Cause-I’m-Not-Brown-and-I-Went-to-College private club that he really thinks people say shit like “Ben Bernanke might jest get himself hanged for treason” while discussing monetary policy in public.
He’s pretty clearly never left the state. Jesus. And he has at least a 30% chance of being president. Wow.
ps. Love the Wikipedia note that “he is the first graduate of Texas A&M to become Governor of Texas.” Some universities really are second rate…..
JGabriel
@Lysana:
In Perry’s case, I kind of agree*. In Marcus Bachmann’s case, we’re talking about a man who specialized in, devoted a good part of his career to, talking and praying the gay away in his clients.
Bachmann clearly has issues, which, combined with his and his wife’s anti-gay virulence, makes him a legitimate for that kind of “puerile” ironic treatment (pun intended).
(*I’m leaving room to change my mind about Perry, depending on if I learn that his own anti-gay rhetoric is as hateful as Bachmann’s.)
.
Jenny
@Lysana:
It’s based on long standing stories that have run in the Austin American-Statesman and in the GOP house organ, Politico.
hamletta
@Lysana: Dude, it was a joke.
Idiotic “Perry is gay” rumors have gone around for yonks, and they’re baby-in-the-microwave wacky. I’ve always filed them with the ones about Ricky Skaggs, because they’re just as outlandish.
Back in the ’80s, everybody had a friend of a cousin of a friend who was at the Hillsboro Village branch of Third National Bank when Sharon White marched in and announced in a voice loud enough for all and sundry to hear: “I just caught Ricky in bed with another man, and I want to withdraw all our money now!”
Randy Travis, on the other hand…. I found that musical choice interesting.
Honey, that poor Marcus Bachmann is gay, bless his heart.
MikeJ
@The Dangerman:
There are so many genuinely crazy things about Perry that bringing up a clinical procedure sort of dilutes the pool.
IM
So what? I propose a test: Show me someone in the Washingtoon Post – centrism central – complaining and it matters. Otherwise it never did happen.
harlana
“this guy” – I saw a clip last night of Perry basically saying that the president does not deserve the respect of the armed forces but he does. He is starting right off disrespecting the president in the most offensive, hate-filled manner possible and the crowds seemed to love it. He’s really good at whipping up the hate and we all know how that crowd loves to hate them some Obama.
Anyone else see that clip? It’s a charming precursor of what’s to come.
EconWatcher
From this early evidence, this guy is going to make Palin look like a piker when it comes to whipping up the hate. And I’m surprised no one else has said it: the quite explicit threat to use mob violence against Bernanke is fascist, plain and simple.
John Puma
“Printing more money to play politics at this particular time in American history is almost treacherous, or treasonous, in my opinion.”
Then what is taking said money while huffing and puffing against it?
Professionally hypocritical treachery & treason?
PurpleGirl
I wonder what the religious people will think of Perry having a vasectomy… after all isn’t the number of kids you have up to Ghod? I thought married people were supposed to stop playing around if they didn’t want more kids?
Isn’t that self-mutilation and he won’t be whole when called to heaven?
(Do I just have a weird mind that thinks of these things?)
Kane
If we have learned anything from the 2010 mid-term election, it is that republican candidates approval ratings among their flock tend to rise when they are in attack mode. Candidates who attack loudest and most often are generally viewed as the most suitable and genuine conservatives.
It matters little to this crowd that these candidates are often ill-informed and that they shamelessly make things up in their attacks. And the lack of knowledge of policy matters little as well. What matters above all else is the constant personal attacks on President Obama. This is what the right-wing wants and demands of their candidates. Those candidates unwilling to play along fail to gain traction.
TenguPhule
Holding America’s Economy hostage for Teabagger Fairy Dust *was* treason. Stick your head on the chopping block, Perry. There’s a line forming to wield the axe coming down.
Raven (formerly stuckinred)
Dee Dee Meyers thinks Rick speaks to lots and lots of people. Oh, and now the democrats see what George and Laura experienced.
russell
I wish Texas would just f**king leave and be done with it.
Yeah, I know, Molly Ivins and Jim Hightower, but Ivins is dead and Hightower has been banished to the purgatory of liberal radio.
Just freaking go. And take South Carolina with you. Nobody will lift a finger to stop you.
kay
I think they’re making a fundamental mistake comparing Perry to Bush, and that’s where all the other misconceptions stem from.
What media said about Bush wasn’t true. They’re buying their own bullshit. Perry/Bush is a poor comparison.
Bush didn’t win because he had a Texas swagger and was plain-spoken. That’s the myth media created. Bush won because he was a third generation politician with an absolutely extraordinary political network and pedigree. Bush was part of a political machine. In Texas. In Florida. In Ohio. In DC.
That’s why media loved him. They knew him. He was a known quantity, and the political press are (I think) rigidly conventional people who are uncomfortable with anyone and anything new.
Romney is more like Bush. Romney has a long family history and political pedigree in the GOP. He’s a known quantity.
Perry isn’t Bush because Bush wasn’t Bush. At least, he wasn’t the person that was sold. Bush was something else entirely. A consumate insider. Bush didn’t rise on merit. He rose because of his vast national network of connections, collected by his family over three generations.
Valdivia
@kay:
Excellent point.
Quiddity
Perry is merely talking about a time-honored Texas tradition: The necktie party.
Bring the kids and a picnic basket. It’ll be just like the good old days.
On a more serious note, I think Perry will not wear well with Republicans outside of the south. Also, businesspeople have got to be startled by what’s happening in the Republican party and don’t be surprised if there is a surge of money going to Romney. He’s all they’ve got.
kay
Speaking of the plutocrat Bush family, I love how completely insane this country is about merit, by the way.
Bernanke is actually, really, authentically self-made. He’s from South Carolina. His father was a pharmacist and his mother was a schoolteacher.
I honestly don’t know why people bother achieving anything all by themselves. We absolutely insist on pretending all successful people are self-made, and it’s a bunch of bullshit.
Some people rose on merit. A LOT of other powerful people did NOT. Bush didn’t. Either did Romney.
Bernanke? Yeah. he did.
But we all have to pretend everyone did. Which is nonsense.
kay
@Valdivia:
It drives me crazy. “Bush won because we all wanted to have a beer with him”. No. That isn’t what happened. At all.
The Bush political machine was like a goddammned freight train in Ohio. I thought he was going to carry the state solely due to his family connections with powerful conservatives.
I don’t know: Florida wasn’t a clue? Was there a single piece of the political apparatus in Florida that the Bush family hadn’t purchased for him? He just magically controlled that state in a contested election due to the awesome force of his folksy personality? The Texas governor? How did that happen?
Imagine starting out with George HW Bush’s vast GOP connections in each and every state. He started on third base, and he still barely pulled it out.
Valdivia
@kay:
yes. Exactly. This is why when people say Palin is like Bush I also go bananas.
TheStone
Part of me thinks that Perry is just the next evolutionary stage in the phenomenon that 1st reared its head in the form of Frederick Thompson – namely, grasping at any downhanging tree limb that offers escape from the morass of yet another godawful Republican field. If that is the case, enjoy the next few weeks cause it won’t last long.
The other part of me fears that Rick Perry is, as someone on here hypothesized yesterday, Martin Sheen from the Dead Zone.
Rommie
If Perry survives the blades of his fellow primary candidates, you’d have to think you could get good odds in Vegas that he’ll call the President uppity and angry and every other code word short of Near in the general election. And the odds of that may not be super-high, given the chance to catch him on tape when he thinks he’s not being recorded.
The real question is if Mr. Republic of Texas will go there in the primaries, or concentrate on Bad Things to say about his fellow candidates.
kay
@Valdivia:
I felt like I knew Palin was done when people here were outraged that she cheated on Dancing With the Stars :)
They are absolutely convinced that the corrupt Palin clan threw that contest. I had weeks of fun with it. I’d bring it up, in totally unrelated conversations. I don’t know anything about DWTS, but you don’t have to. They’d do all the talking. OUTRAGED. She’s done. That’s unforgivable. It’s like Florida 2000 for political junkies. They wuz robbed.
rikryah
channelling my inner Samuel L Jackson
he’s the mofo’ing Chairman of the mofo’ing Federal Reserve.
and while, I might have my issues with the Fed, the utter lack of respect for gubbmamint institutions gets on my nerves.
but, once again, I ask..
HOW CAN A MOFO WHO TALKED ABOUT SECESSION FROM THIS COUNTRY be allowed to RUN FOR PRESIDENT?
Bulworth
So, wait, Rove and Crossroads are all in for Romney?
Just trying to keep up here.
Amanda in the South Bay
@The Dangerman:
The aftercare for a vasectomy is very similar to an orchiectomy, and I got an orchiectomy last spring. In some cases, you can have a scrotal hematoma that fills your scrotum with blood and liquid, bruising of the genitals, and bleeding. Oh yeah, bed rest and no physical exertion for a month.
Jennifer
Ok, ok…so if I buy into the notion that there’s nothing inherently icky about Perry’s FIL having performed his vasectomy, can we at least agree that something just ain’t right about the fact that we all KNOW about it?
How many of you even know who performed your dad’s/brother’s/uncle’s/best friend’s vasectomy? And yet we all know who did Rick Perry’s? TMI.
Judas Escargot
@kay:
Both Clinton and Obama are self-made men, also, too. Takes a lot of merit and mettle to pull yourself up from the swamps of Arkansas and into the White House. But the assumption now is that Clinton had to be a cheat and a thief (ie Whitewater, Vince Foster), and Obama had to benefit from affirmative action.
We used to praise such men as the American ideal (cf Lincoln and his log cabin), but now you’ll just get called white trash (or uppity, if you’re near), no matter how much honest money you make, or power you acquire. Which pundit wrote “It wasn’t his place! And he defiled it!”? That’s the Spirit of America now: Keep your place, stupid peasants, and leave the money and power to the manner born.
Economic Royalism at work, again.
Also fits with my pet theory that some of our problems lie in our culture being somehow “re-infected” with what used to be considered British (ie un-American) attitudes.
Amanda in the South Bay
I dunno, a pharmacist and school teacher seem like a pretty middle class ish (maybe upper middle class ish, depending on how much money the pharmacist makes-you know there’s a damn good reason so many allied health programs at universities have insane wait lists). Quite a lot different than someone whose parents lived paycheck to paycheck. Not quite lifing yourself up by your bootstraps.
Jon O.
Well, I did just realize why he’s implying lynching – he hasn’t presided over the execution of an innocent man in at least a few months. Got that murderin’ itch again!
jari kurri
Amanda in the South Bay-
Exactly. Where I’m from, at least, ‘pharmacist’ is definitely coded upper-middle class as far as income and social standing, if not higher (assuming Bernanke’s father had a pharm degree and was not the hired clerk behind the counter.) In low-income and low standard-of living South Carolina, I imagine this would also be the case.
As far as teachers go, my parents were able to give us a secure (in terms of never doubting that we would have food, shelter, and heat), if quite un-ostentatious, upbringing, in no small part due to the actions of the insidious communist infiltrators in the New York State teachers’ union. Teachers’ kids are by no means rich, but I certainly didn’t come from nothing, particularly in one of the poorest cities in upstate New York I’d say that my childhood peers who never ate a meal that wasn’t provided by WIC/TANF/free lunch/free breakfast were the ones who had to ‘pull themselves up by their bootstraps.’
DFH no.6
The hell he won’t.
kay
@Judas Escargot:
I don’t even think you have to go that far. In Clinton or Obama’s case, certainly. They are what they are. But, it’s just silly and wrong to compare either man to a Bush, and pretend they all started with the same advantatges. Please. They did not.
George W Bush had tons of advantages as a national candidate, and NONE of them had anything to do with him. If he was less of an asshole, it would have been a lot easier for his family to drag him over the finish line, is how I look at it.