Fox News contributor Charles Payne proves that just when you think Fox News has gone as low as they can go, they find a hidden basement and tumble ass-over-elbow downstairs:
Fox News contributor Charles Payne defended Mitt Romney’s lack of concern for the poor by saying, “To supposedly alleviate the very poor, and Mitt was right. The very poor in America do have a lot of programs a lot of benefits. People aren’t dying in America. You know, in fact, the very poor suffer from gout. In fact, in the 1920s and 30s that was called the rich man’s disease, but here’s the thing, the very poor have entered into this sort of Faustian deal where they’ve said, ’Ok, you know what? If I can go to my mailbox twice a month and get paid the same amount of money that I could get at a low paying job then I’m not going to take it. In return, you can have my vote, but give me some political cover.’ You know what, here in this country; think about it, we don’t criticize the people that suck up the lion’s share of government services, government aid, police department services, fire department services. We’re crucifying the people that pay the lion’s share of taxes, so it’s worked out great in that particular point. But here’s the problem, we have generational poverty, and in this country, that shouldn’t exist.”
According to Fox News the proof that poor people aren’t really poor is because they have gout. But the odds have having gout are increased by being poor, or more specifically the diet of many poor Americans. ~snip~
More poor people are getting gout, not because they have money, but because they don’t.
Shorter Charles Payne: Look poor people: You can’t be claiming you’re poor when you’ve got microwaves, refrigerators, Xboxes, and the “rich man’s disease.” Get a job and stop asking for handouts, you lazy-asses!
*facepalm*
[via PoliticusUSA]
[cross-posted at ABLC]
DougJarvus Green-Ellis
Amazing, amazing.
Martin
I thought they determined that gout was primarily inherited, with some contribution due to diet, etc.
Of course, poverty is largely an inherited condition as well, so maybe it all makes sense.
General Stuck
I’m with the NOOT on what the poor need is more trampoline. This mumbo jumbo Gout shit is a much lower grade wingnuttery. IMHO. Run NOOT Run
Jim, Foolish Literalist
they also used a lost of asbestos and lead paint
Chet
I’d think the primary sufferers of gout in today’s America are Fox News viewers, what with all that red meat they consume every day,
Martin
Oh yeah:
Yeah, that would be old people, not poor people. You know how to solve that problem? Death panels, baby!
MikeJ
@Martin: It’s also linked with diabetes and obesity, two conditions linked with poverty because of cheap, low quality food.
wasabi gasp
Fuck him. Ease off those bedroom slippers and gout the vote, bitches!
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Little know fact, Jesus had a choice between a 39% marginal tax rate on all his carpentry and rabble-rousing income over 250,000 sesterci, and being nailed to a block of wood there to die a slow and painful death. Obviously, he picked the latter.
Pongo
Wow,they are going to double down and go all out assault on the poor, the sick and civil servants aren’t they? Sadly, it will probably work. You can almost hear the enthusiastic head-nodding of Nascar-Americans to this brilliant analysis.
General Stuck
It’s all part of the Wingnut Social Safety Net, directed by baby jeevus and Karl Rove. If you fall through a crack, not to worry, you’ll bounce up on one of NOOT’s trampolines. Every trailer park will have one.
Steve
Voting participation rates among the poor put the lie to the tired claim that America is being destroyed by a bunch of slackers voting themselves government benefits.
Truth be told, back in the golden age of machine politics incumbents were a whole lot better at getting people to hand over their votes in direct exchange for government benefits. Time has severed that connection. Nowadays everyone can be like Alaska, a state where one out of every three jobs derives from federal spending, and which consistently votes for the party that wants to slash federal spending in election after election after election. And God knows how many people who will be helped significantly by the ACA are voting for the party that promises to repeal the ACA.
Mark S.
Yeah, that’s a real fucking mystery. Everyone knows there’s no difference between being born to millionaire parents and being born in a trailer park. How is such a thing possible? I hope some conservative think tank is working on this problem. It’s probably due to welfare or something like that. Maybe McMegan knows.
The Dangerman
A preview of coming attractions; they want to privatize everything and if you can’t afford private police and fire, well, you are SOL in their world. In other words, “let them eat cake”. That hasn’t worked so well in the past.
When we get to the literal Marie Antoinette treatment for some, I say this asshole gets an express pass; if it’s hanging, we’ll have to have an extra strong rope for him. It doesn’t look like he’s skipped many meals.
The Snarxist Formerly Known As Kryptik
@MikeJ:
But don’t you remember that only the rich used to be fat because only the rich could afford to overeat in the past? Now look, that jus’ shows you how damn good these poor-ass leeches have got it, when they can claim to be poor and still be obese, the fuckin’ fat cats lucky duckies!
rikyrah
he is a slave catching Uncle Ruckus .
straight up. no chaser.
look up minstrel, and his picture will be there, right beside ‘ call me cornbread’ Cain.
piratedan
maybe we should just rename these guys ID TV because there is obviously no one performing any kind of editing function for what gets said on their channel. Not sure where else they can go… publicly televised executions?
Trakker
I hear this far too often these days, and I’ve finally come to realize that about 20-30% of the people in every society are incapable of feeling empathy. They are self-centered pricks.
However, I don’t think Mr Payne is one of them. I suspect Mr. Payne is just taking advantage of Fox News’ need for a dark-skinned (ergo an expert on “the poor”) talking head to tell the self-centered pricks it’s okay to be a self-centered prick…which is just a different kind of welfare isn’t it?
Katherine H
when i was anemic i went on an iron intensive diet bc iron supplements did not agree with me / i ate alot of greens from the garden among other iron rich foods / oh i got gout in my big toe ! i then discovered gout is due to excessive uric acid and the “cure” was sour cherries / lucky me i had pounds of cherries in the freezer from my tree / i ate them all / the gout went away
i recalll a comic strip when i was a kid in the 40’s called The Katzenjammer KIds / the rich guy in the strip had gout / it was funny / smile
Katherine
General Stuck
“War on Poverty” awe, I smell a luntz. Puts folks in mind of LBJ and Vietnam with three words.
Yutsano
That statement by Payne made no sense at all. Plus he contradicts himself at the end. But hey, sometimes it’s tough keeping your lies straight.
Jay C
@Trakker:
Probably quantifiable to a little more precise figure: say, ohhh.. 27%??
SRSLY, gout???
The mind, she is boggled…
Mike G
The ‘consumer’ of police department services would be right-wing lawnorder conservatives, with their screaming demand for, and support of, lavishly funded skull-cracking police departments, SWAT teams in every town and the lucrative War on Certain People Using Certain Drugs; and lock-em-all-up-and-let-Jeebus-sort-em-out incarceration policies that give us the largest prison population in the world, at hideous financial and social cost.
And let’s not get started on billions in corporate subsidies and tax breaks, or who is driving us to spend over half the entire world’s military budget. It ain’t the very poor. So the Fox Noise crowd need to STFU about the cost of government.
D. Mason
This is OT but I really like the new iteration of ABL. Good on ya.
Trakker
@Katherine H: Thumbs up for mention of the Katzenjammer Kids! Fighting my brothers for the Sunday comics defined my childhood.
Chris T.
Gout is basically a buildup of uric acid crystals (specifically sodium urate) in joints.
Uric acid is a product of a number of biological processes. Normally it is cleared out through the kidneys and intestines. Gout can ensue due to either an increase in uric acid production, or a decrease in excretion, or both.
One way to increase production is to eat a lot of red meat, which is high in purines. However, this is not the only way to do it. It’s just the primary way that “rich men” did it in the old days when gout was a Disease of the Rich: they had more access to meat than the poor.
These days it’s more commonly associated with poor clearance due to kidney damage due to renal issues due to diabetes, lead poisoning, and such. High-carb high-sugar diets tend to produce metabolic syndrome and diabetes, and low-cost foods are mostly high-carb and high-sugar. Increased lead exposure is also pretty strongly correlated with low income. So it’s now more a “poor man’s disease”.
gene108
The right-wing assault on the poor has been very successful.
Why should they start caring about the poor now?
The poor are easy to disenfranchise via voter ID laws, thus lowering an already low voter participation rate.
They can’t afford to give gobs of money over to lobbyists to get laws written that benefit them.
They can be segregated to certain parts of towns, because they can’t afford to live anywhere else, so it’s easy to ignore them.
If all the poor people started voting in high numbers, you might see some change, but I don’t think that’s likely to happen.
RSA
Clearly, rich and middle class people need to get off their butts and start more fires.
scav
So, they’re really going all-in on the anti-poor and anti-sick line of attack. You got Cancer? You got Gout? You’re “Poor”? Shut up and be grateful for your blessings! Oh, and could you vote for some lower taxes for me while your at it? Ta. This will make for an interesting campaigning year, because it will bleed over (see Santorum).
Mike G
In California, a disproportionate amount of firefighting resources go to defending homes in the hills and semi-rural areas where the affluent like to build for the views and closeness to nature. The ‘very poor’ tend to be under-represented in areas like Big Sur, Palos Verdes and the foothills behind Santa Barbara.
PurpleGirl
@RSA: Yes, I was just thinking the same thing.
BGinCHI
Oh, I thought he meant “grout,” as in people with backsplashes and ceramic tile.
Never mind.
Bago
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Hey, “Lead Asbestos” was an awesome MBM song.
Smiling Mortician
Five minutes ago I was blissfully unaware of the existence of Charles Payne. Man, those were good times.
Comparatively, I mean.
Baud
In the 2010’s, paper cuts are called the rich man’s disease because of all they money they have to count.
BGinCHI
The day will come when gunshot wounds will be the rich man’s disease.
/radical marxist wingnut
Roger Moore
@Mike G:
This. They also demand a lot of protection from the debris flows that follow after the fires and are at least as destructive. I have yet to see a poor minority neighborhood protected by an enormous, government operated debris basin.
Also, too, I’d question the claim that the poor people are the ones using police services. They’re the ones who are disproportionately arrested and imprisoned, but that looks to me more like a service for the well off to keep the poor people under control than an attempt to help the poor people out. Especially because a lot of the stuff their locked up for is crap non-violent drug crime. I’m pretty sure I know who would be happier if you proposed saving a bunch of money on imprisonment costs by shortening sentences for simple possession.
Polar Bear Squares
I get a strange perverse satisfaction out of watching black teabagging assholes. It shows we can be as misguided and full of assholery as the next person. We too can reach for the American Dream — being so full of shit they put you on TV to confirm it.
Baud
@Polar Bear Squares: You win the Internets for Positive Attitude!
Jennifer
@Martin: Actually, those who consume the lion’s share of government spending would be the rich. There are entire areas of law and regulation that cover only their interests. How many poor people use the patent office? And that’s not even getting into where the REAL money is, in government contracting – defense, roads, etc etc etc.
I went on a rant about the whole “how can they be poor when they all have TVs” bullshit over at roy’s the other day – if you want to read it, it’s in the comments on the most reacent post. But in a nutshell, let’s note that a TV costs less than one month’s health insurance premium, so to claim that ownership of a few cheap consumer goods “proves” that no one is poor is just more bullshit from people who are paid very, very well to pretend not to get it. Poor these days means that while you may have some consumer gadgets, you can’t afford the basic necessities of life, and forgoing any and all consumer crap still won’t allow you to afford the basic necessities of life.
Hal
Are black conservatives required to pass some sort of initiation in which they deny any existence of bias, poverty, and racism?
I can’t imagine the desire to belong to such a group. It’s like being gay and trying to join Fred Phelps church.
Mark S.
I’ve noticed over the years that idiot WSJ columnist James Taranto likes to change definitions to words and then apply them to his enemies. I remember him doing this once in regards to William Bennett’s gambling habit, saying something like liberals were the real hypocrites because they aren’t moral blowhards like Bennett. Here he’s at it again:
Sorry, dum-dum, totalitarianism doesn’t mean “politicizing everything”, or being intolerant of other people’s beliefs, etc. Otherwise, such entities as Fox News, talk radio, and the WSJ editorial page could be called “totalitarian.” An entity needs to be a state or perform state functions in order to be totalitarian.
kay
I feel like it’s too late to reframe the gaffe.
FOX is getting slower off the mark.
They’re supposed to be creating news, not responding to actual gaffes by their candidate.
They better get with it. Rupert’s got his red pen out.
Baud
@kay: By August, Fox News will be captioning Romney events with “Mitt Romney (D).”
Roger Moore
@Hal:
I’m guessing that there’s good money in it for the lucky few who manage to get jobs as token minorities in conservative organizations. I’m pretty sure Fox pays their talking heads very nicely.
Mr Stagger Lee
Maybe in Payne’s previous life, he was a French aristocrat who lost his head. Still doesn’t get it
ABL 2.0
@Polar Bear Squares: win.
JCT
OK, that is just absolutely disgusting.
I woke up late this AM and PAID for it because by the time I got to the gym at my RV park the Tea Baggers had taken it over and turned on Faux Noise on *all* of the TVs. Luckily I had my iPad and Netflix to save me — as they watched Neil Cavuto that horrible fucker go on and on about the evils of the minimum wage and how it represents evil gubmint oversite and if a job is only worth $5.00 an hour the gov’t shouldn’t make you pay those lousy employees more.
Meanwhile they spent 3 secs on the unemployment #s and something like 20 mins on gas prices and how they are all Obama’s fault because of the decrease in offshore drilling leases. It was unbelievable.
Meanwhile the olds all around me (most of whom drive enormous diesel pusher RVs worth $500,000 +) are nodding and saying “that’s exactly right”.
Any bets on how many of them have Medicare?????
What “job” is worth $5.00 an hour?
I was so pissed off that I don’t think my hour of exercise had the desired effect at all. AHHHH.
ABL 2.0
@Mark S.: somebody actually wrote that? good gravy.
i like how his notion of “neutrality on abortion” is, essentially, “opposing an organization whose mission it is to provide abortion” (which, let’s face it, is what karen handel was talking about when she said she didn’t agree with PP’s mission).
true “neutrality on abortion” would have resulted in komen doing nothing.
It’s all very Luntz-y.
Roger Moore
@Mark S.:
He also completely, and predictably, misses the point on “neutrality” toward abortion. Yanking the funding of Planned Parenthood because you don’t like their performing abortions is taking sides. Neutrality would involve giving the money to whomever is best equipped to provide the services you’re trying to provide, no matter what other things the organization does.
Mnemosyne
@JCT:
Fox News contributor.
And at that, they would be overpaid.
Villago Delenda Est
@Mr Stagger Lee:
This.
These idiots refuse, absolutely refuse to learn from history.
MonkeyBoy
I’ve had a few gout attacks in the past and tried using aspirin for the pain.
Then I learned that aspirin actually contributes to gout.
Since switching from aspirin to ibuprofen for all of my OTC pain meds I haven’t experienced gout since.
Gout among the poor may in part depend on an over-reliance on aspirin over doctors.
Maude
@Villago Delenda Est:
I am weaving a lot of wicker baskets.
J
To the right wing commentariat
torturing people in Abu Ghraib (and elsewhere) = fraternity pranks.
subjecting our pampered, cosseted, porcine ruling class to the lowest rate of tax in living memory = crucifying them.
What the Romans did to Christ = Just what swarthy mid-east dwellers have coming?
gocart mozart
@General Stuck:
It’s all part of the Wingnut Social Safety Net, directed by baby jeevus and Karl Rove. If you fall through a crack, not to worry,
MacKenna
Who is “ABL 2.0”?
maurinsky
Jeebus H. My father grew up one of 9 kids in Galway, Ireland in the 40s and 50s. 1 bedroom house, 9 kids, no electricity or running water. His father died when he was 9, he went to work as a carpenter’s apprentice when he was 12. He had gout by the time he was 18, and I can guarantee you, he was pretty damn poor.
muddy
My friend had it and they told him not to eat fish and meat, so he switched to beans for protein. Turned out the beans gave him a worse attack. Dried damned beans in a bag, that’s some rich folk’s food.
Mike G
So Taranto is admitting that the Komen Foundation For the Fail is totalitarian, for an explicitly-Republican process to hire an explicitly-Republican politician as VP of Public Policy who implemented an explicitly-political policy to cut off funding for a breast cancer screening organization based upon explicitly-political opposition to their other activities, using rules they just made up that don’t apply to any other organization.
The WSJ editorial page has been a sewer long before Australia’s Worst Export bought the place, and Taranto is paid to be stupid in specific ways.
Yutsano
@MacKenna:
John Galt. Only without all the Objectivist bullshit.
mclaren
In very ancient times, salt was so valuable that it was used as money, so if a poor person has salt, they’re actually RICH!!!
If we go back even farther, to prehistoric times, fire was rare and valuable, so any caveman with fire was wealthy and powerful.
I therefore suggest that we show our appreciation of Charles Payne’s deep wisdom by…setting him on fire. And watching him burn.
Ronzoni Rigatoni
@Katherine H: Katherine H @ 20: You are right about gout veggies etc. Our cure believe it or no was copious quantities of concord grape wine. My grandaddy never had gout, and neither did (do) we. I drink about a liter of the stuff daily, but only for breakfast.
General Stuck
@ABL 2.0:
You may already know about this lady XM radio POTUS channel. For the 6 weeks or so, I been glued to my radio on Saturday afternoon during her weekly show as a humorous take on the past weeks politics. Her name is Pamela Kirkland, and I didn’t know she was black until I googled her a few days ago.
She is absolutely hilarious in running down the weeks poll events, and has become my political decompression go to. The show is POTUS Readout, on a couple of times of Saturdays. But you have to have XM/sirious radio.
El Cruzado
Your modern conservative movement: striving to bring communism back since 1994.
Ronzoni Rigatoni
Communism, communal efforts. Remembering when everybody stole squeezed drank home-made concord grape wine every October. Unlike the breast cancer crap, political allegiances were irrelevant (besides, we all know who THEY were, and they squeezed stole and drank like everybody else).
Martin
I was diagnosed with gout when I was 19 (56 now,) all the wives tales… high living, too much port, rich foods, etc. were kind of hard on me. Been on anti-infamitories, earlier on the old Phenyl drugs which caused more damage to you than they helped the condition., spent several years eating low protein diets before my doctors said “oh, you can eat a normal diet, just say away from organ meats, use red wine in moderation and just don’t excess on things. BTW, you can’t acquire gout, you inherit it.
High levels of uric acid crystallize at joints, tendons and sometimes muscles and promote your immune system to try to fix the crystallization that occurs. Crystallization can be caused by high levels of uric acid, “rapid changes” in the levels of uric acid (low to high, high to low,) as well as physical trauma such as booting an un-level sidewalk, someone stepping on your foot, awkwardly moving something (lightweight or heavy,) etc.
Aspirin and derivatives will bring on an attack and also make a current one worse. Because I am also inflicted with heart disease, my issue is heart health treatment makes my gout worse, and my gout treatment makes my heart health worse. I’ve been walking with a cane or walker for almost a year. All meds are very stressful on the liver.
Ya, right. I may be poor, but I can be sick, just like rich people,
Also, the full name for the disease is Gouty Arthritis.
Ronzoni Rigatoni
@Yutsano: @64 LOL
Thymezone
So glad to see you back here ABL. Tell John Cole I take every rotten thing I ever said about him.
Marty,FC
I should point out, I did not notice the other poster named Martin. I did the gout posting and just used my first name.
Call me Marty,FC as my ip will show I’m not trying to spoof another poster.
I regret confusing or inferring that earlier posts from Martin were associated with mine.
Err… I did the gout post (56yr Old)
Chris T.
@Marty,FC: You probably have an enzyme deficiency (genetic condition, inherited as you noted) and are thus unable to convert and remove uric acid properly.
You can “acquire” gout, e.g., from kidney damage. It’s not very common to do so until one is older (40+ for instance) though.
opie jeanne
@Katherine H: Too bad my mom didn’t know about sour cherries curing gout.
She had to give up almost everything she had been used to eating; I seem to remember she ate a lot of boiled chicken breast and boiled eggs. She couldn’t have coffee or tea, or red meat or ham or even turkey. Eventually she got her uric acid numbers down to where she could take a pill once a day to treat it, but it never got completely better.
opie jeanne
@muddy: Cabbage is one of the irritants for gout, too.
opie jeanne
@Martin: That’s terrible. I think of 18 as far too young for gout, but that’s because my mother was diagnosed at 45.
Eating turkey would set her off, even after she was on the meds.
moderateindy
Have had gout for over a decade and I can tell you that there isn’t a worse pain than a full blown gout attack. When simply having your blanket or sheet lightly touch the affected area creates searing pain that radiates through your entire body, you know you’re in trouble. And for whatever reason the pain is worse at night. There have been times when it was in the knee or ankle and burned and throbbed so bad that I was fortunate to get 1-2 hours of sleep in 10-15 minute increments and that was while on Vicodin. I played a lot of collision sports from high school into my 30’s, and have had broken bones, dislocated shoulders, badly sprained ankles, and enough knee injuries to require 3 surgeries, but nothin, and I mean nothin, hurt like the Gout. Not even getting your dick caught in your zipper.
Not Sure
@General Stuck: I don’t know. People have been known to break their freaking necks on trampolines. I would much prefer a ladder, one that’s not missing a bunch of rungs.