The wingnuts are trying their damnedest to blame President Obama for the fires in Colorado when, in the reality-based world, their own small government free market Ayn Randian policies are to blame.
In other words, shut up, Michelle Malkin.
by Imani Gandy (ABL)| 62 Comments
This post is in: Teabagger Stupidity
The wingnuts are trying their damnedest to blame President Obama for the fires in Colorado when, in the reality-based world, their own small government free market Ayn Randian policies are to blame.
In other words, shut up, Michelle Malkin.
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Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant)
Ha ha!
Valdivia
Though I may be +-too-many-to-even-attempt-to-make-sense I thought this was that town that went total Rand on emergency services! Good to know my brain still works even under utter gin oblivion.
johnny gentle famous crooner
Keep your government hands off my government services!
Let the fires keep burning, because stupid Al Gore and Greenpeace and stuff.
Maybe those firefighters would put out the fires if they weren’t too busy unionizing and collecting their million-dollar pensions!
Sigh. It’s not even fun anymore.
Just Some Fuckhead
A rational free market would have destroyed South Carolina first.
Cermet
In the words of someone – “Burn, baby, burn!
Cutting taxes does have a down side – who’d guess? Can’t truthfully say that this is what they deserve but did these people every stop to think that fires are common there and that taxes pay for the equipment, people, and operations for the firefighting?
Roger Moore
@Just Some Fuckhead:
I don’t know. You have to cost it out. It may be that destroying Colorado Springs is enough cheaper than destroying South Carolina that it got priority even though it’s not as attractive a target. Or possibly the presence of a single major target in Focus on the Family pushed it up the list. The workings of the market are sometimes too deep to fathom, but that doesn’t mean it’s irrational.
beltane
Shouldn’t there be a plethora of private sector fire-fighters appearing to compete with each other for the opportunity to put out the fires in an efficient and cost-effective manner? The wingnuts say we should compare hospital prices before going to the emergency room; shouldn’t they be calling up fire-fighters asking for estimates?
Valdivia
@beltane:
maybe they can take bids in front of the building and/or house as it burns?
karen
And cue Mitt Romney’s quote about hiring less firefighters.
Cripes. I’m surprised they didn’t blame hurricane Debby on Obama.
beltane
@Roger Moore: The market is kind of like the Flying Spaghetti Monster in that way. Speaking of which, have all the fundies in Colorado Springs forgotten to pray?
piratedan
gee, maybe this is a sign from God that maybe these people should extract that giant Sequoia outta their ass and go back and review those chapters about tolerance, forgiveness and charity.
salacious crumb
so ABL, I have a compiled a list of people that haven’t been overtly deferential to Dear Leader Obama, and have questioned some policies of He Whose Policies Shall Not Be Questioned.
1) Frank Rich of Observer
2) Amy Davidson of New Yorker
3) Matt Taibbi
4) Matt Damon
5) Bill Moyers (for hosting Taibbi)
6) Andrew Bacevich
7) Seymour Hersh
8) Claire MacCaskill (for backing out of the upcoming Democratic Convention and thus wont pay starry eyed homage to the President)
9) Rachel Maddow
10) Amy Goodman
THEY ARE ALL RACISTS!!! Please let your supporters know that these “liberals” need to be shamed openly and angrily!!
Baud
@salacious crumb:
WTFF?!
General Stuck
They got nothin’
Liquid
Let them burn.
Just Some Fuckhead
@salacious crumb: You know you can just email her, right?
Mnemosyne
@salacious crumb:
So you’re saying that Michelle Malkin is right and Colorado burning is All Obama’s Fault?
General Stuck
@salacious crumb:
Dude, step away from the crack pipe.
beltane
@Valdivia: Yes, the fire-fighters can submit bids just like they’d do in Galt’s Gulch. Anything else would be soc1alism and worse than Hitler. Besides, you’d think these people could just shoot their guns at the fire to make it go away. Whatever happened to rugged individualism?
Mnemosyne
@Baud:
As I said when the troll appeared in a thread yesterday, just reading SC’s comments is the best possible argument against legalizing marijuana.
Valdivia
You guys have to listen to this segment of This American Life about Colorado Springs. It tells you everything you need to know about why this is happening. Galt’s nightmare is what these fires are about.
/sobering up in the rage of it all.
ETA:@beltane: yes, because stand your ground laws also work with wold fires!
Baud
@Mnemosyne:
Alternatively, the best possible argument for a Mary Jane
mandatetax.slag
@salacious crumb: You’re boring.
And why isn’t Michelle Malkin out there putting out her own wildfire? Whatever happened to personal responsibility? I blame the nanny state.
Cap'n Magic
What we need, dear Juicers, is to recruit Tom Lehrer out of retirement and pen us some new fighting songs. Who else could say this and get away with it?:
Keith
The comments over on MM’s site are just amazing. I found a single one recommending asking for private donations, help, etc. while the rest are just insults towards Obama and sarcasm along the lines of “If The One is so awesome, why can’t he make the fire go away?”
dmsilev
@karen:
And remember, Bobby Jindal’s remarks about “something called ‘volcano monitoring’ ” came not too long before an eruption.
Word to the wise: Rand Paul was recently observed babbling about the need for flood insurance to prevent abortions. Build an ark.
Baud
@Keith:
Clearly, it’s because this fire is His punishment for the sin of electing Him President.
Yutsano
@salacious crumb: Keep trying, you’ll defeat her yet!
Soonergrunt
I have friends in Colorado Springs. A lady I went to high school with. Decent person who is not among the shit-heads. Her home may be among the destroyed. We don’t know as she and her family were evacuated yesterday, and are today in Denver while nephew is undergoing a radical hemispherectomy to bring his epilepsy under control. He’s in surgery as I write this, and I get updates via Facebook. Needless to day, she have other concerns at the moment.
Whenever we wish the shit heads ill, we should bear in mind that some of that ill falls upon the innocent who were unable to prevent the shit heads from doing their thing. Which is not to say that we shouldn’t wish the shit heads ill, or engaged in shadenfreude when they suffer the entirely predictable negative results of their belief system. It’s simply to remind each of us, myself included, that karma is frequently a flame-thrower and not a laser beam.
PurpleGirl
@beltane: Maybe they remember how it helped Texas when Gov. Perry declared a public day of prayer and conducted a prayer service?
beltane
@Keith: Right-wingers are useless during a crisis. They abhor the idea of working together to find a solution and so must resort to hapless bitching from the sidelines, all the while hoping to be rescued by a Great Man, either the invisible one in the sky or a heroic earthly one just like they thought George W. Bush was.
piratedan
@slag: yup, she should show some of that American ingenuity and craft a bucket brigade with her neighbors regardless of race, creed and countertop style to save their homes. Firefighters, who needs them when they have purity of spirit and… what? A garden house won’t do? Not even on wide misting?
oh well….
beltane
@Soonergrunt: Unlike yesterday’s Supreme Court decision, the fires around Colorado Springs do not fill me with schadenfreude. I am actually quite angry with these people (not the good ones) because their continued insistence on following a fantasy-based theory of government puts lives at risk. If it only put their own lives at risk I’d see it as justice, but since innocent people are also likely to be harmed I see it as a crime.
SiubhanDuinne
@karen:
Give ’em time, give ’em time.
slag
@piratedan: Yeah, but too bad they used up all their bathwater to drown the government. Woulda come in handy right about now.
And, yes, @Soonergrunt, I’m right there with you on that. It’s hard, though, to not grasp onto the silver lining when it comes in the form of wingnut tears….
Speaking of, has anyone tried using wingnut tears to fight this fire? If not, I’m going to have to side with the wingnuts on government’s lack of innovation here.
Soonergrunt
@slag: FTW!
The Moar You Know
It will come as a shock to you folks, but there are a lot of non-fundie, seriously cool folks living in Colorado Springs.
The fundies are not the ones getting it in the neck right now. Everyone else is. Cheer for that if you want. I can’t.
Chris
@beltane:
True story, old bean.
ABL 2.0
@Soonergrunt: yeah, i can’t do schadenfreude here. maybe if the fire was localized in malkin’s backyard, but it sucks for people who don’t subscribe to ayn randian batshit insanity.
Cap'n Magic
@Soonergrunt: What is it that we have constantly heard in past incursions–“Collateral Damage”?
When and how does one separate between the two? And when does one decide the risk is worth taking for the potential payout of its success-or failure?
Jay in Oregon
My scorn is reserved solely for the wingnuts like MM who magically discover the comforts of the nanny state aren’t so bad when their asses are the ones hanging out in the breeze…
I thought the individual was the best judge of what services they require, and able to effectively negotiate for those services at a fair price! Why, I can just picture Malkin leafing through glossy brochures for U-Douse-It and Dagny Taggart’s Discount Firefighting Service and BBQ Hut, and filling out a spreadsheet comparing surcharges for tanker plane drops (the first 3 are complimentary!)
It must have escaped their notice that when they were slashing services in CS with the anticipation that the Feds would pick up the slack, and their Tea Party brethren in Washington D.C. were doing the same with the anticipation that states and localities would pick up the slack, that they may have overlooked something? No? More’s the pity, for them and the poor people who were being dragged into Galt’s Gulch with them.
catclub
@beltane: “Besides, you’d think these people could just shoot their guns at the fire to make it go away.”
FEMA bought a half-a-billion bullets just to make sure they could NOT do that.
Odie Hugh Manatee
What?! Private contractors aren’t interested in investing in their businesses by buying and maintaining a large fleet of aircraft that are capable of putting wildfires out effectively while keeping those in the plane and on the ground safe from plane crashes? That the private contractors are operating with a limited number of old, worn aircraft that are unsafe and poorly equipped for putting out wildfires?
This is what profit at all costs capitalism is all about baby! Can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs, ya know? That and you need a big fire to cook those eggs on!
Who would have ever thought that it would have been a good investment for the government to purchase and maintain a proper fleet of safe planes at the ready to go forth and fight wildfires effectively?
Whoever thought of that deserves a medal. That and the last laugh.
trollhattan
Somehow they’ll determine this disproves climate change. In the meantime: shorter, warmer, drier winters mean bark beetles survive and kill millions of acres of forest. Low snowpack means forests dry out early. Fires start and because there’s a vast amount of fuel, cannot be stopped.
Rinse and repeat–this is the future for the intermountain west. And no, I get zero pleasure out of any of it. The future is going to suck in ways we can’t imagine.
Cap'n Magic
Someone should tell MM: You lie down with dogs...
Nellcote
Sympathy for the folks of CS. Still I wish the Air Force Academy would burn to the ground and relocate.
PurpleGirl
@The Moar You Know: No, I don’t think we don’t know that. We do feel for the non-crazies and the people losing everything.
But, where have those people been when voting for who represents them in Congress? Where have those people been when the city decided to cut essential services and not raise taxes over the last few years?
Jay in Oregon
What pisses me off the most about all of this is that assholes like Michelle Malkin will never get it.
They honestly think they can get away with not paying for services through the brutish tactic of government taxation, yet get all of the benefits because “stupid libs” will keep paying the bills for them.
Their political philosophy is reckless, ignorant, and selfish; yet they will not only escape the consequences of their actions, but they drag innocent people down with them. And their fault is never theirs, oh no…
I guess I can take comfort in the thought that once they’ve gotten their hearts’ desire, taken over the country, and fed all of us liberals/gays/minorities/heathens into the ovens, that they get to rely on the kindness of strangers that are just as callous, greedy, and vicious as they are.
We’ll see how fast Malkin can sprint for the treeline when the 5th Annual Galt’s Gulch Hunger Games kicks off, and she’s this year’s tribute…
Cap'n Magic
@trollhattan: I just got an email from my former HOA, stating in no uncertain terms hell on earth will happen if fireworks go off in my former subsdivision-which happened quite frequently on our shared property. C’es la vie.
New Yorker
I’m surprised Michelle Malkin acknowledges that the wildfires exist, since that would give ammunition to those of us who claim that climate change will makes for a hotter, drier west, and makes these fires more common and intense, and we all know Malkin’s view on climate change….
Villago Delenda Est
@salacious crumb:
I invite you, most cordially and with felicitations, to go DIAF.
Dexter's new approach
John Galt Shrugged.
Colene Guymon
I’m a huge fan of all kinds of music (most kinds even) and a musician myself. I’ve performed in the improvisational/unregimented music of jazz/fusion/funk, to the “cookie cutter” performances of classical and metal. Why, just because metal and classical are regimented, does it mean that they lack any meaning? Why have we “lost” something by playing those kinds? Just because you’re playing the same thing twice, doesn’t mean each time you play it, it will yield the same feeling. Metal and classical are two of the most technically difficult genres of music to play, and many musicians love that, because it takes a high degree of musicianship to play like that.
Pseudonym
@salacious crumb: You forgot someone on your “list of people that haven’t been overtly deferential to Dear Leader Obama, and have questioned some policies of He Whose Policies Shall Not Be Questioned”:
11. ABL 2.0
Pseudonym
Who are we as individuals to question the way in which the free market efficiently allocates its fire resources? If Galt’s Gulch can’t compete in the marketplace of “areas not on fire” it has no right to stay in that market by stealing my property at the point of a gun, i.e. taxation. Sometimes a little creative destruction is called for, and once we let the process work itself out I’m sure we’ll be seeing green shoots in no time.
mardam
It’s the same thing with these people all the fucking time!! Just like the bankers…”OOOHH we’re all so self-reliant, free-market loving entreprenuer/citizens/whatever.” Until something goes wrong, then “OOOH where is my government bailout/services/medicare.
Fuck Colorado Springs. They made their bed. You know, freedom to fail and all.
mardam
Or maybe Malkin should take her own advice re: New Orleans and not rebuild in some place that tends to burn.
Fuck her too.
mardam
Sorry, I’m just out of patience with these people. They all want the gov’t out of their lives…until they need it.
I apologize for my language. But Malkin takes the cake on this one.
Soonergrunt
@Villago Delenda Est: Colorado Springs has airport and highway access, making it very convenient!
r€nato
unless I’ve missed something, I’m actually surprised that wingnuts aren’t trying to turn this into a Katrina moment for Obama, or bitterly complaining that this is proof that the liberal media is liberal because they don’t blame Obama for the wildfires like they blamed Bush for Katrina.
nastybrutishntall
How long till Pat Robertson declares Colorado Springs the new Sodom and winks with glee at its well-deserved destruction? Obviously God had it in for those sinning losers.
I’ll work on my beard in the meantime.
Haydnseek
I’m waiting for Michelle Malkin to propose a series of bucket brigades, to be manned by the jobless in lieu of unemployment benefits. They will be paid below minimum wage, and if they bitch, she will tell them that she has plenty of other people dying for the job if they don’t want it. She will deduct the cost of the buckets from her taxes. Fox news will hail this as a victory for creative entrepreneurship and use her as an example of a true job creator.