This afternoon at Netroots I attempted to ask the embattled Senator Sherrod Brown about his campaign, specifically his record as the deciding vote for Obamacare. Ohio voters passed an amendment to their constitution outlawing the Democrats’ health care law by a wide margin in 2011:
Ohioans overwhelmingly rejected the healthcare mandate provisions of Obamacare.
They did this by handily passing an amendment to the state’s constitution that reads, in part, as follows:
No federal, state, or local law or rule shall compel, directly or indirectly, any person, employer, or health care provider to participate in a health care system.
My own state’s senator, Claire McCaskill, championed Obamacare while Missourians overwhelmingly (by over 70%, 3-1 in every county) passed the Healthcare Freedom Act which excluded Missourians from the penalties of Obamacare, including jail time and fines. I wondered how Brown was going to reconcile this troubling disparity in his state.
Unfortunately, while the Senator stood and asked questions from a number of progressive attendees, when I finally had an opening to ask my question, he refused.
“Senator, do you have a moment for a question?”
“Not for you,” he remarked, pointing at me, before rushing off with his assistant.
Later, Al Gore Tweeted “Awesome.”
He later deleted it, but not before I and others screencapped it.
Twitchy called Brown’s behavior “rude and dismissive.” Mediaite attempted to pass it off as a “botched interview attempt” which would only make sense if I had “botched” politely asking Brown for a moment of his time.
Brown can’t rely on Gore to bail him out of his situation and he would do well to not run from honest, politely asked questions from those who simply want answers.
And I’m not talking about that heinous Power Point presentation that looks as though it was done by a toddler using Corel Draw. Here’s my slogan for Shakowsky:
JAN SCHAKOWSKY: A COMIC SANS KIND OF GIRL
I’m talking about repurposing the hallmark of scifi Americana for a cheap partisan attack against conservatives.
Duh, everyone knows that the evil Empire wanted to suppress free trade, over-regulate, and control the galaxy, much in the same way that socio-progressive policies believe in heavy government regulation of the private sector and individual mandates that penalize people for not choosing government health care. Shakowsky is a Paplatine sycophant, I suspect she lacks the force sensitivity to even register as a Sith apprentice.
Sorry, Schakowsky but as a Star Wars nerd I personally reject your rudimentary knowledge and bastardized galactic analogies.
Because your business is worried that it might not get enough traffic on its own, hire a PR/social media firm to send out emails like the one below baiting bloggers into giving an otherwise undeserving piece written for shock’s sake (you remember what I said about shock as art) some attention.
Good morning!
Wanted to pass along this week’s Village Voice cover story from Steven Thrasher – it’s an interesting take on the decay of the white brain and attempt to determine if it can be cured.
Although, you cannot help but chuckle at the “Sources of White Stress” diagram in the piece, which supplements the various examples of white baby boomers behaving “insane.” Thrasher attributes this to the “stingy” reaction from these boomers who fully understand that their tax dollars are going to education, healthcare and welfare for the “coming browns” (40% of our nations population under 18, whites will be a minority by 2023).
The URL to the piece follows below – would be interesting to see your reaction. Let me know if you have any questions or would like additional information on this week’s Village Voice.
Just imagine for a moment if someone had written “Sources of Black Stress” and portrayed people like Al Sharpton or John Lewis in this manner.
I couldn’t even read through the entire article. I’ve read critiques of conservative America before and have even chuckled, as Marissa said, with those, but that’s because the author could write well enough to accurately convey sarcasm without offense. Unfortunately, that’s not what we have here with a publication whose online life must thrive for the print side to make financial sense. I wonder if that’s why dinosaur publications must go to such extreme lengths to attract eyeballs – and they depend upon the blogosphere to push them with reaction.
The article is a frosh attempt to characterize the entire conservative movement as being solely Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, and a few other white people. Thrasher insists that it’s an all-white movement. As a former OFA worker, Thrasher is doing his party proud by following the cardinal rule of soc-prog politics: ignore the black conservatives. Deneen Borelli calls this “plantation politics.” Why is the media so terrified acknowledging the existence of black conservatives? Pretty soon, they’ll have people standing in front of the polls … oh, wait.
Thrasher also tries to identify racism:
After the 2008 election, when former House majority leader Tom DeLay suggested that instead of a formal inauguration,Barack Obama should “have a nice little chicken dinner, and we’ll save the $125 million.”
Right. Because saying “chicken” is racist. Does Thrasher think that only black people eat chicken and because of that, immediately assumes this is racist? Because I ADORE chicken. DeLay is from Texas, after all, and in certain parts of the hemisphere, that’s considered a pretty damn good meal, race aside.
While Thrasher projects, he ignores:
– The Kenneth Gladney beating
– The NAACP presser wherein Gladney was ridiculed and called slurs in public
– White liberal/progressive/socialists mocking and name-calling black Republicans, on tape, at the 8/28 event in DC
– Bill Clinton’s remark on Obama: “A few years ago, this guy would have been getting us coffee.”
– Harry Reid: Obama — a “light-skinned” African American “with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one.”
– The revered former KKK grand cyclops/dragon/something Democrat Roberty Byrd a few years before his death:
But because they said “sorry” after they were caught and trashed in the public, that totally absolved them of any racist feelings in their hearts. Repentance? In faith, it’s motivated by wanting to do better as a person, not a formality one must begrudgingly endure so as to bypass a PR disaster.
Thrasher wants to shock with an intentionally non-amusing piece:
White people, after all, had managed to invent a spiffy new form of self-government so that all white men (and, eventually, women) could have a say in how white people were taxed and governed. White minds had also nearly universally occupied just about every branch of that government and, for more than two centuries, had kept sole possession of the leadership of its executive branch (whose parsonage, after all, is called the White House).
[…]
White people have simply gone sheer f*cking insane.
It doesn’t take a genius to see how this may be validated then:
November 2009, Public Policy Polling found that more than a quarter of Americans (and an outright majority of Republican voters) believed that ACORN had stolen the election for Obama.
OMGWTF! You mean Americans distrust a group which plead GUILTY to VOTER FRAUD? Nooooo!
More tired conspiracy theories. Thrasher makes the birthers and truthers look sane:
Months later, O’Keefe was arrested by the FBI in a bizarre prank at Senator Mary Landrieu‘s office, in which he was either attempting to plant a wiretap or, in his explanation on Breitbart’s website, just trying to find out whether her phone system worked to help her constituents reach her. (Yeah, that was a good one.)
Perhaps he never read the police report wherein O’Keefe was never picked up for “wiretapping.” For someone to complain about white people and puppets so much, Thrasher does a helluva job in letting the liberal white patriarchy pull the strings of the talking points. Everyone on the same page!
More:
This summer, Breitbart picked out another black target with another selectively edited video, this one of a USDA employee named Shirley Sherrod. His editing so mischaracterized Sherrod’s words
Thrasher honestly has no clue what he’s talking about, a very important prerequisite if you’re going to write a blabbering piece airing out your hatred of conservatives and your refusal to acknowledge black conservative America.
As I said on King last night, apparently, I’m one of few who’s actually read the original post, watched the original video, and watched the entire 45-minute-15-second video in its entirety. Some points.
– People need to get out a dictionary and look up “exculpatory.”
– The original post and video was to highlight the applause of discrimination towards a white farmer. It was given in context.
– The original video was not “doctored” nor “out of context,” and the irony is that those making such statements are actually taking the context away from its original presentation. Sherrod was building to a lesson in her speech – but went on later in her speech to talk about how people who support HCR are racist, essentially. It’s at 23:53 in. Look, I did your homework for you.
“I Haven’t seen such mean-spirited people as I’ve seen lately over this issue of health care. Some of this racism we thought was buried didn’t it surface?” Now we endured eight years of the Bushes and we didn’t do the stuff that these Republicans are doing because you have a black president.”
Um … soooo people who wanted to make their own medical decisions over their own bodies were doing it because they were racist?
While I’m continuing to do your homework and critical thinking for you, check this at 25:00 in:
“I couldn’t say 45-years ago, I couldn’t stand here and say what I will say to you tonight … God helped me to see that it’s not just about black people, it’s about poor people.”
Why can’t it just be about PEOPLE? PEOPLE, PERIOD?
It’s easier to get a paycheck for writing a diary entry on how badly you hate conservatives when you don’t research the very topics about which you’re writing.
Cute, Thrasher:
We’ve had rat-fuckers like Breitbart and O’Keefe around forever
Why isn’t he calling the people who are trying to bilk billions of dollars from the public via the fraudulent and corrupted Pigford case (the reason that the White House acted so quickly to toss Sherrod under the bus; the didn’t want the public to find out that she was connected to a massive case of fraud which could implicate the president as it was he, as a senator, who ushered Pigford back to Washington) ratf*ckers? Here’s a challenge for you Thrasher: be worthy of the journalist title which you claim and write a five-page diatribe on that.
My interest trailed off when he decided that Mark Williams was the tea party head (which, if that’s the game he’s playing, I’ll go ahead and assume that Jeremiah Wright is the head of all progressives) that, and I was tired of being screeched at by an angry former OFA worker whose knowledge of the issues he tackled was limited to whatever Kos had posted about them.
And dinosaur media wonders why America has given them a vote of no confidence.
Hi America! Due to the inane rumblings concerning what a teenager did in her youth, a teenager who in turn upset the establishment apple cart in Delaware, I figured it was time to put some things into perspective.
First, let me reintroduce you to the mullet.
mul·let: n.1. pl.mullet or mul·lets
A hairstyle that is formed by cutting the hair short on the the top and sides and allowing it to grow longer in back.
See also Camaro crash helmet, Kentucky Waterfall, the Missouri Compromise.
Often defined as “business in the front, party in the back,” the mullet is the staple coiffure of mostly adult men who will never, ever get a date for who they themselves cannot pay. While the hairstyle was indigenous to the redneckius vir and was thought to have grown unpopular after the 80s, it has seen a recent revival in pop culture thanks to individuals like Bill Maher:
Maher’s hairstyle, despite the clever combing, is clearly a case of Kentucky Waterfall.
Look, we’re all guilty of inane, youthful behavior, some of us continue certain aspects of it (see the above mullet) well into our adulthood. We’ve all had stupid hairstyles, said stupid things, I even campaigned for the Non-Accusatory Knuckle-Pointer Clinton before I could vote and I and millions of other Americans used to tight-roll our jeans. One time my girlfriends and I even got – are you ready for this? – an ouija board out of a game closet during a slumber party at a friend’s house. OMGBBQGASP!!1! If any one of us were required to run for office while teenagers not a single one of us would have passed inspection. We had not the benefit of maturity.
So why is it now that Christine O’Donnell’s teenage admissions from 14 years ago are more relevant today than her positions on policy today? Answer: the left is trying to spin any candidate with tea party backing as “extreme” or as a “kook” and this is the only way they can since the majority of Americans identify with the grassroots more so than with the Democrat congress:
So O’Donnell “dabbled in witchcraft.” I thought the left was supposed to be tolerant? Do they not believe in grace for all, as the right believes? Wait – these are the same people who were calling conservatives “homos” outside of Right Nation this past weekend, so that point may be moot.
I wish the left would have made as much of a fuss about the Pigford scandal as they do over what a candidate said as a teenager. Notice how Bill Clinton can advise them on policy, yet nothing is said of his lurid past.
Let this stand as an example of tolerance and grace, but pay attention from what side it originates.
ANY ITEM that looks like a gun will have to be licensed under several changes to the Weapons Act being considered by the Queensland State Government.
Even guns made out of materials as unlikely as soap or plastic may have to be kept under lock and key if they could “reasonably be taken to be a weapon”.
The draft act says an imitation is a “reasonable copy” of a weapon that is not capable of causing death or injury.
“If it looks like a gun and feels like a gun, it will have to be licensed,” said a government source.
[…]
Failure to license an imitation weapon will carry a maximum $4500 fine under the proposals and incorrect storage carries a penalty of $750.
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