What is it with right wingers and the need to punish people? Democracy, where everyone gets a chance to offer arguments freely and the best ideas win, is an anathema. Abortion and contraception are legal, so stalk women who avail themselves of their rights in an attempt to terrorize them out of using them. Someone speaks up on issues that are important to them and says things that are ideologically incorrect by right wing standards? Try to get them fired.
If that option isn’t available, start calling their house and harassing them. Which is what they’re doing to the Frosts, especially now that it’s coming out that all the smears on this lower middle class family are proving to be so much horseshit. It’s pathetic to see a bunch of people whose main political function in life is to be apologists for the uber-wealthy, to scream bloody murder about capital gains taxes and estate taxes as if making millionaires live on fewer millions (or inherit fewer millions) was the same as stealing bread from orphans try to pretend that a family of 6 that lives on the East Coast and makes $45,000 a year is living high on the hog.
The take-home lesson is the difference between the poor and the middle class is mostly smoke and mirrors. The rich and their wingnut enablers don’t make huge distinctions—any amount of money that you plebians who have to work for it make is considered too much in their eyes.
62 Responses to “There will be punishment for blowing the lid off the bullshit”
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Wow. I hadn’t heard that story about the Frost family. That the wingers have practically been stalking them is fucking creepy.
I can’t IMAGINE trying to feed even two mouths on $45,000/year, and I’ve lived in Baltimore and my boyfriend lives there. The public schools are atrocious. Plenty of middle / lower-middle class families scrape money together to send their children to one of the many private schools in town. It’s not a sign of wealth but of an attempt to provide one’s children with the best education possible.
No kidding SarahMC. My girlfriend and I make more than 50% again what they do, and there’s only the two of us. We don’t own new cars or anything, but we live in a pretty expensive part of the country–south Florida–and we’re pretty tight most of the time.
On a side note, I had a pretty visceral reaction to the people going after the Frosts as well. It’s more a short rant than anything else.
It must be awesome, in some kind of sick, twisted, wingnut way, to have all those flying monkeys at your fingertips.
Just whistle at the special frequency only wingnuts hear, and BAM! Instant attacking hordes.
One does wonder if those wingnut warriors would be even happier while wrecking other people’s lives if they could wear some special brown uniforms and some kind of cross-shaped insignia on their arms while doing it…
We made about 45-55K a year for the last 6 years for four people. Our kids are school age, so daycare only figured in for one of them for one of those years.
We live in the Boston area, where housing is EXTREMELY expensive, in an inner ring suburb where we don’t have to have two cars and we have good access to a wide variety of employment. We were able to make ends almost but not quite meet for the following reasons:
1) we bought a house in 1998 and had low payments because we got in early and didn’t overbuy
2) having a house meant writing off a huge chunk of money such that our taxes vanished
3) we got a tax credit for the two kids (on top of the deduction that all dependent humans get)
4) When I stopped working at Harvard to finish my degree at UMass (with attendant pay and benefit cuts) I signed myself on as a research associate (employee) instead of a graduate student since I controlled my own grant and therefore got health insurance
Our tightest time was when I was on unemployment and my husband’s Catholic school insurance ate nearly 1/2 his paycheck. THAT’S a moral organization that is pro-family for ya!!
SOOO, even with a $1200/month mortgage bill, no state or fed income taxes due to write offs, etc., and one car (a 12 year old station wagon replaced with a 5 year old minivan) we were still running about 3-4K per year in the hole over the course of this dry spell.
$40 K is NOT enough for a family of 4 in our area, unless you inherited your house or don’t eat regularly. We didn’t even have student loans or a huge mortgage, and we were still eeeking by because we had managed to buy before the market exploded.
Malkin is totally and utterly FULL OF SHIT. I know because I’ve lived the reality of that much for a family of four where both parents work (e.g. afterschool expenses). Despite our advantages, we consistently came up a bit short of cash - our kids just didn’t ask for stuff any more.
While there are other places where housing is cheaper, just try to find a job that pays enough. The system is rigged that way!
I’ve got a longer, more detailed comment in moderation. I just wanted to point out one thing: Malkin was betting that her assmonkeys were going to say “$40K! That’s a lot of money”.
Problem is, Queen Assmonkey herself has no clue how many of her Wingnut Warriors are themselves scraping by much short of the American Dream on that kind of money.
Despite the Messangercidal actions toward the Frosts, I think this is going to backfire on her.
Anybody want to lay money that the Frosts will be audited next year?
Restraining order on Malkin. ASAP.
“Problem is, Queen Assmonkey herself has no clue how many of her Wingnut Warriors are themselves scraping by much short of the American Dream on that kind of money.”
I wonder though if many of Malkin’s stormtroopers are even capable of seeing themselves in the plight of anyone else. The concept of “sociopath” comes to mind…
“Despite the Messangercidal actions toward the Frosts, I think this is going to backfire on her.”
God, I hope so - but I’ve been disappointed so many times before…
Problem is, Queen Assmonkey herself has no clue how many of her Wingnut Warriors are themselves scraping by much short of the American Dream on that kind of money.
If I had to make a prediction, I’d say that the people making that kind of money who are reading Malkin are also buying into the idea that these people are actually making more money and hiding it. Otherwise, how could they afford a $500K house, a newish Suburban, and private schools?*
*I know they don’t actually have those things, but Malkin is saying they do, so they must, right?
That Malkin post was incredible. Just one attack and dig after another, a tenacious attempt to discredit the Frost family. Total pile-on.
Can you imagine if the Dems took the same approach to impeaching Bush? *sigh*
I usually try to avoid Malkin like the plague, but I just read her little tirade about the Frosts. I know this point is hammered a lot here, but repeating the same stupid crap over and over does not make said crap true.
Not that the Frost family’s own story or finances have any bearing on their larger point (yes, everyone is, or at least should be, entitled to free or low cost healthcare, regardless of actual income), but how many times to reasonable people need to repeat how they can afford to live in a house or send their kids on scholarship to a private school before that explanation makes its way into her empty little head?
I just watched the latest episode of Heroes. It’s obvious. The woman has it coming to them, if they don’t make nice with men…
I love superheroes, but I’m getting to be viscerally disgusted…
/rant off
18,000 people a year die in the United States from having no health care, and these assholes have nothing better to do than harass people who are lending their name to the fight for good health care?
HOW IS THIS EVEN A FIGHT?
I could just cry, at the whole idea.
I told my family’s story at the Big Orange Monster, linky in my sig, because it could have been us who the flying monkeys have been sent to tear apart.
I thought they had reached the bottom of the barrel, but no. Found a new low. Why do they do it? To scare people like me into pseudonymous posting or just hiding under our beds, hoping that our kids don’t get sick or hurt again.
Phoenix, your story is a classic example of the old saw:
any credible economist can tell you that just about any money spent on children is a bargain.
shah8
spoiler alerts, please!
oh, wait, this is Heroes. Like I didn’t know what was coming. Just don’t tell me who this week, ok? It hasn’t aired on the west coast yet.
on topic: speechless with rage, as always
“any credible economist can tell you that just about any money spent on children is a bargain.”
See, that’s what you get from looking at the information and using logic and reasoning.
The wingnuts are trying desperately to save us all from that…
My cousin went to the Park School after a rape occurred at the City middle school to which she would have been sent, My uncle, a university professor, scraped the money together to send her there with significant financial aid.
Baltimore City schools are horrendous, obscene. Kids in broke-ass Tijuana can make fun of Baltimore. Kids in broke-ass Sri Lanka can do so. This documentary barely scratches the surface of the pompously perfectly awful school system there. Most middle-class humps like me move out by middle school, as there are NO good middle schools, though a few good elementary schools. OR they get very, very lucky and get free tuition to a private school, like I got at Loyola Blakefield or Graeme Frost essentially got at Park ($500 a year.)
Dad probably lives downtown because he’s a carpenter and rehabber of housing, which is a fairly big industry. The two glimmers of hope in Baltimore are DINKs who don’t fear crappy schools, and gay couples seeking a relatively friendly courthouse environment in which to adopt kids (or otherwise live their fucking lives with a minimum of interference from wingnut asswipes.) So Dad lives near where the work is, and is probably rehabbing his own house for an intended tax-free profit. Good on him. If he’s got no insurance, he needs every damn tax-free dollar he can get.
Many self-employed craft and tradesmen in Baltimore earn off the books. There’s a blue collar neighborhood, Hampden, where a large percentage of income is said to be untaxed green cash from bricklayers, sheet metal workers, carpenters, etc. This guy sounds like he’s above board, though, legit with papers. No wonder Malkin wants to screw him over; he’s feeding the welfare state unlike a lot of his competition.
But here’s why Malkin probably REALLY went after the kid. Park School is a bastion of liberal thought and activism. While it’s not quite as left-wing, I hear, as it was when I worked on an American Friends Service Committee anti-militarism project 20 years ago and half the AFSC kids were Park seniors, it’s exactly the kind of place designed to give Malkin a fucking stroke. The school was founded by Jewish educators early this last century when Catholic, Episcopal and other independent private schools mostly barred Jewish students from admission, and remains substantially connected to Baltimore’s large Jewish community and philanthropic support. It’s an excellent alternative school, with a liberal curriculum and instructional model, absolutely terrible for producing reliable fascists.
Look closely - my bet is that the school may have been the target as much as its now famous student. Park students are the kind that would publicly strike back at Malkin. I can’t wait to see their creativity.
Bush and Malkin = pro life my fat ass! http://www.americansunitedforchange.org/blog/entries/abby/
From PhoenixRising’s post on kos:
“My kid is on the way to being a productive taxpayer, contributing to our society, because her health care was taken care of by a government program.”
But, but, she’ll never appreciate having her health as much as the wingnuts would appreciate another tax cut. It’s just not FAIR!!!
“As for her parents: We dedicated our creativity to saving our business, knowing that our child’s health care was going to be covered, and we did it. We closed a couple of large deals in the summer of 2002. Today our business supports five families, in addition to our own.”
In capitalism, there must be winners and losers. By thwarting god’s plan for the destruction of your business, you’ve upset the delicate balance of the marketplace and pissed off the invisible hand. And that talk about “our business supports five families, in addition to our own” sounds like socialism.
Now, if you were running an airline, or an oil company, or an auto company - then that would be different. The government SHOULD whip out its teat and let you suckle…
[snark][/snark]
Seriously, when I hear stories like PhoenixRising’s, I feel better about the world…
Not that I understand any of fundamentalism/wingnuttia, but I especially don’t understand what drives these people to harass others. In my small town there was like one whole gay man, so the fundies would call him up on the telephone. Totally rude.
Oh, also! Once, while I was in high school, I wrote a letter to the editor of my small town newspaper about how Planned Parenthood is good (the Catholic school children had a writing assignment in the paper about how it was BAD!) and the fundies called my parents. They called my parents on the telephone to tell them what a big whore I am. Why the harassment? It just boggles my mind.
“…but I especially don’t understand what drives these people to harass others.”
Everbody knows shit rolls downhill. So in the wingnut mind, if they’re harassing somebody for being gay, poor, librul, or different from themselves in any way, that must prove to the wingnuts they’re better than their targets.
Only logical in greater wingnuttia…
“They called my parents on the telephone to tell them what a big whore I am. Why the harassment? It just boggles my mind.”
Gotta set the correct tone early, before you become a Gore-voting, Bush-hating DFH…
“They called my parents on the telephone to tell them what a big whore I am. Why the harassment? It just boggles my mind.”
Because the Ten Commandments’ “thou shalt not bear false witness” statement is just sooooo old testament!
I especially don’t understand what drives these people to harass others.
If you’re harassing, you’re not being harassed. If you’re with the bullies, you’re not with the victims. Also, in God’s eyes, hating on “bad” people is just as good as being “good” yourself.
When you register as a Republican or just generally start to espouse conservative viewpoints you basically cross this rubicon where you disavow all recognition of social responsibility as a moral being and an American. The prosperity gospel of free market economics is endemic to conservativism: to identify more with the class interests of people who earn hundreds of times more money than you, you have to unify on principle and that principle is that to take from me to give to the many, however much they may need it, encourages their sloth, their dependence and their inferiority and that takes away from the strong to give to the weak; it becomes a greater sin to force charity through taxation and government redistribution of wealth than it is to ignore the suffering of a fellow human being - even a child - because what we do on our own, no matter how little we recognize how society as we know it would not exist were it not for the social compact, is all that matters. You can try the but-you-would-let-them-die? argument when it comes to health care and direct aid, and generally all you’ll get back from a true believer is a shrug and a suggestion that PoorPersonX ask family members or friends for money. When that doesn’t work because they have no friends or family capable of giving at the level they need, where they are so desperate they would actually turn to the government or a stranger for help, they say, oh well… better go back to school, better get a 3rd job, better do anything than expect me to give one penny of my income to make sure no one needlessly suffers. In other words, there’s always a solution an individual can find to pull him or herself out of every kind of nightmarish situation the human mind can dream, without resorting to TAXATION. But there’s also a strong contingent of otherwise progressive Republicans who disavow social responsibility on the basis of a personal experience with a lame-ass cousin or asshole ex-coworker who got a check from the public coffers and sat around drinking all day… so because he’s the example that Republican has seen, that must be the norm. I have an uncle like that. A cop, in the middle of nowhere in New Hampshire. Now, I have no doubt that as a police officer you deal with shitty people all day, or at least people you have reason to believe are shitty, and as poor people commit crime in greater numbers than rich people, you eventually start to see a pattern among the people you’re putting in the back of the cruiser every couple of days. You know they’re getting food stamps or a disability check - but they look fine! - or some sort of aid and you can’t stand it. You can’t stand that someone is getting “free money” and you’re not. You’re actually working and the time you spend doing shit you don’t want to do is getting devalued by the extra billions of dollars coming out of your paycheck to fund the champagne wishes of Jane-single-mom-with-four-kids-who-shouldn’t-have-fucked-Doe… and how dare she!!!! So you start to stereotype and make rash generalizations, and one day when your niece is reminding you that less than one penny out of every federal tax dollar goes to direct welfare programs, you say, “I’m sure there are some people who legitimately need help. But they’re the exceptions. Most people are on welfare because it’s easy.” So when said niece goes on to tell the story of her boyfriend’s mother and sister, who were diagnosed with stage 3C cervical cancer and stage 2 thyroid cancer within one month of each other, and both would not be able to afford treatment and medication were it not for state aid and $300 a month being sent home every month by the boyfriend to his mother and sister, you get the embarrassed, yes, they’re the “exceptions” quote again.
The reason why I don’t get ill anymore when I think about how the culture-of-life people will do anything to avoid accepting basic social responsibility to ensure no one needlessly suffers in such a rich country as ours, is because it actually is a somewhat englightened belief system. To believe that all people have inherent worth and dignity and that we should all give into and take from the natural wealth of our country really requires a basic empathy. Conservatives don’t want to help people. They want to punish them. Every way people can suffer is inflicted as punishment for doing something wrong or not doing something at all. These are people obsessed with punishment: starvation is the punishment for laziness or stupidity; pain is the punishment for sex; ostracism and death are the punishments for homosexuality…. It just goes on and on. We all know they disguise their bullshit in the cloak of personal responsibility, but I think social responsibility is a much larger tenet of personal responsibility. The screw-you-jack-I-got-mine lifestyle is nothing but personal irresponsibility.
Let’s not interfere with their martyrdom and goal of government destruction! I can hear the wingnuts now, saying they have kids all grown up and scrimped and saved to pay for health insurance. If they can do it, why can’t the Frosts? Greedy bastards just want another hand out! They want to take away the hard-earned money of people who don’t have more kids than they can afford to take care of - ha! And if I didn’t get any public funding to take care of my kids then they shouldn’t either. What goes around comes around, so screw you, pal.
I’m the oldest of 4, 2 in college 1 in HS and 1 in Junior High. My dad works 1 fulltime job [with as much overtime as possible] and 1 parttime [seasonal] job, my mom works parttime, and the two of us in college work parttime [I work fulltime in the summer]. Our annual income is somewhere around 55 thousand a year. We’re pretty close to declaring bankruptcy. We can barely afford my medical payments (I have a mental disability and the HMOs/government fuck us over big time) let alone the rest of the kids.
We also have a nice TV and an xbox 360. You know why? Because my parents are trying to make sure we’re fucking happy? Remember that? Pursuit of happiness and all that?
FUCK YOU right wing!
Projection and attack the messenger.
Forget the logic, because the base dosen’t do logic. It’s all about the emotion. Watch the script.
1: It’s “Shameful that they would hide behind the children”. Because when a Republican trots out the kids on stage, they know in their shriveled little hearts that they’re trying to sell shit as shampoo, and using the kids to make people think they’re trying to help those kids.
2: Despite the fact that it’s shameful to use an innocent to hide behind, the kid can’t be innocent, so GET HIM! Fuck logic, none of the base use that anymore. Throw random acusations, leaving out all the relevant information. If anyone presents evidence, scream insults like a warding incantation until the mean old liberals go away with those nasty facts.
3: Accuse them of everything you’re guilty of. Of course the kid must be getting that sweet Soros action, or bribed and pampered by the Republican party. After all, half these partisan hacks are in place only because some spoiled trust-fund kiddies like Mellon-Scaife, the Waltons or the Coors family have forked up the dough. Claim they’re cheating on their taxes, because doesn’t EVERYOODY cheat on their taxes? *wink wink, nudge nudge*. Projection ain’t just for the movie theaters anymore.
4: Racism! Classism! They aren’t us! Who they are doesn’t really matter. A guy making a million a year “really isn’t all that rich”, and a guy making $40,000 isn’t poor. They’re either too rich, and are thus somehow part of the “elite”, or too poor which is their own fault for being lazy. And don’t worry about talking out of both sides of the mouth. These guys are TOO RICH to get government handouts for catastrophic insurance, but TOO POOR to pay the taxes for that contribution at the exact same time! Kinds like Obama being both “Too Black” and “Too White”.
And when called on all of that, sputter “THAT’S NOT THE POINT!” and then fall back on the ideological babble. “Freedom! Communism! Nanny State Nincompoop!” Run from argument to argument as necessary, t give the illusion that one of those attacks somewhere disproves everything.
God… reading US politics is hurting my head. All these logicless contortions just make me want to spray blood from my eyes…
any credible economist can tell you that just about any money spent on children is a bargain.
Exactly. While I maintain that people should have less of them, there’s exactly no excuse for not investing in the ones we have. The country lives or dies by them. I want the people changing my colostomy bag to hold me in high esteem.
I’m sorry, that was barely coherent with repetitions and Malapropisms. I’m tired… and frankly pretty sick of this relentless insanity I subject myself to on a daily basis.
Healthcare gets me riled up too, because I’ve experienced both systems. The level to which 33% of the population are willing to subject everyone to in the name of illusory “freedoms” and baseless “nanny state” fears is literally mind-boggling.
The fact that they’ve chosen to attack a family literally living the American Dream than accept the evidence of a superior form of healthcare is just…
*sigh*.
Malkin says its all about choice, priorities.
Let’s see….The Frosts chose to buy a house in a bad neighborhood, invest some sweat-equity and hope the neighborhood would improve. Guess what - it did!!! What elitists they are!
The Frosts chose to take a gamble and start their own business. According to Malkin, the champion of the small business owner, the American capitalist system, this was the wrong choice - insteadthe family should have chosen to get union-represented government jobs, parasites of the taxpaying public, where the benefits are better!
The Frosts chose to send their children to the schools they wanted to send them to, and thank goodness their children were smart enough to get scholarships, since the damned liberals haven’t allowed school choice vouchers to become policy! But, no, this just shows how elistist and upper class the Frosts are. Their desire for a good education is a misplaced priority!
Malkin notices an SUV at the curb. The Frosts chose to (maybe - who knows whose car it is!) - get a safe car to transport their family in. And also, since their primary breadwinner is a craftsman, its useful on the job. But no, they should have - what? - chosen an unsafe, cheap, broken down old car without airbags instead?
It’s all about choice and priorities!
Meaning, whatever the Frosts’ choices were, if they spoke out against Bush, Malkin’s priority is to smear them.
Sorry for the lengthy post. It didn’t look that big before I submitted it. Really. And I do know how to start a new paragraph.
I would never advocate the use of those dirty tricks you’ve mentioned, even in efforts to curtail the popularity of supremely unethical policies (like the ones you’ve mentioned). Let me say that immediately. But right off the bat, I saw a statement that bothered me:
The trumpeting (no negative implication) of democracy as an essential good just isn’t justified to me.
If Saudi Arabia was a perfectly functioning democracy tomorrow morning, with public referendums on all conceivable political issues, I can assure you it would be an even worse place to live (yes, for Saudis) than it was today.
In Jamaica, the will of the people has been heard: “We ought to drag gays into the street and beat them to death. This is the most sustainable, humane, and reasonable society that our minds can concoct, at present.” There are definitely people in Jamaica that refuse to participate in this and explain why, but their ideas lose.
Look at the Turks, the great “Muslim success story.” The people loathe freedom and still, after decades of being forced to be democratic, don’t know what civil society is. Over 20% of the population, according to Pew, supports “suicide bombing against non-combatants in defense of the faith.”
Historically, there is no indication that democracy is, even generally, a positive force in societies.
“The people have spoken” is not a new positive force that an idea can gain, working in its favor. I completely agree with you that absolute abortion rights are a requisite of an ethical society, but I also believe that democratic process isn’t a sure-fire way to determine that this is so. Women should have autonomy in regards to their body and this is an ethical truth that lies in wait for anyone to discover, should they do enough philosophical introspection. Ethical truths exist independent of the opinion of the masses, and even liberals have to admit this when they consider U.S. slavery, arranged marriages in India, FGM in Libya, and the heartbreakingly long list of awful ideas that have found remarkable success in situations where the best ideas in a society already are competing. That doesn’t mean that a single one of them is legitimate or reasonable, or that the ones that are will pick up any respect.
This is a large and cynical debate concerning the real value of “the commoners’” opinions. I’m not a Machiavellian “realist” - I like identifying with the “common man” and the indigenous and all those figures, as a default position. But they let me down so often. The overwhelming majority of people do have the full capacity to be rational, but its just not encouraged (and even romanticized!) like it ought to be - and desperately needs to be - in so many of our societies. Fareed Zakaria wrote a book about all this, I believe, about the worthlessness of democracy in uncivil societies.
I don’t have a true, strong stance on this yet.. I just wanted to prompt the question.
Wow, I just read the second two paragraphs of your post, and my comment was wildly off-topic.
I will start reading the entire posts before commenting in the future..! I swears it.
But, but, she’ll never appreciate having her health as much as the wingnuts would appreciate another tax cut.
Um, I guess I have to work on editing a bit to tell the more complete story of our success. Until recently, we were merely hoping that she might someday have the cognitive capacity to appreciate it.
Last month, apropos of nothing, she asked me: “Why was it so hard for me to learn to talk? Reading is easy.” I cried.
But I’m sure that didn’t feel as good as a tax cut would, if I weren’t already working every legal angle to move more of our profits into the pockets of my contract staffers, because the alternative is paying corporate tax on it. I’m a lousy capitalist, I admit it.
Amanda’s comment at 31 triggers a pet peeve…I can’t help it…
We all should invest much more in our children, but a decrease in population more or less means that you die younger and more alone from lack of surplus labor to keep your ass alive (and surplus economy that gives you that pension to pay that whoever to help you eliminate).
I don’t want to rehash all the fuss from before, but the attitude drives me bananas. To be well, human population almost *has* to have a growing population, and one of the main reasons is that growing population help care for the aged without them becoming an excessive burden on everyone else. We win from increasing productivity, not necessarily decreasing population
Let nature do the big die-off job, please!
any credible economist can tell you that just about any money spent on children is a bargain.
Exactly. While I maintain that people should have less of them, there’s exactly no excuse for not investing in the ones we have. The country lives or dies by them. I want the people changing my colostomy bag to hold me in high esteem.
Yes indeed. I think what’s really terrifying the wingnuts on the SCHIP issue is that the American middle class might just decide that they don’t really like being constantly fucking terrified about healthcare costs. The Frost family is clearly only able to own their own business and I would venture feel like they are in control of their lives because of this program.
Wingnuts oppose a sound, government-run, single-payer healthcare system because they are terrified of what the American people will do once they really feel that they are… free.
Their rhetoric is once more the opposite of their intentions. Funny how that always seems to work out like that. And thanks for the link, Amanda — but it’s all about calling these assholes out.
I make a decent amount of money, and while I could support a family on the salary if I made some major lifestyle adjustments, it would be a major change.
As I said to my parents, now that I put money away for retirement and a car and a down payment for a house every month, “responsibility is really starting to cramp my style.” And I don’t have half the worries these families have.
SCHIP was specifically meant to help families making quite a bit less than I do make ends meet. If I had to be responsible for paying $1000-$2000/month to give my family health insurance, any hope of opening a 401(k) would evaporate. And then the right-wingers would spit on me for not saving for retirement. Jerks.
I wonder about the collective psychology of the movement. Is their world view so fragile that anything that threatens it must be destroyed at all costs. If that’s true they are going to have a really hard time keeping up with reality.
“Is their world view so fragile that anything that threatens it must be destroyed at all costs.”
Yes.
In that respect they’re a lot like religious fundies who keep talking about how strong their faith and their god is and then demand that all books/TV/editorials/laws reflect their exact viewpoint or else.
Don’t want to test that faith - they might fail…
“If that’s true they are going to have a really hard time keeping up with reality.”
Reality is only for those who don’t suffer from mass delusions of grandeur about their exalted place in the world and the holiness of their quest to drag America back several centuries.
Wingnuts have never had any use for reality - it cramps their style…
Why the harassment? It just boggles my mind.
When you can’t win an argument on its merits, you start getting pushy and desperate.
Kyle: You’re arguing about a system where free discourse hasn’t been standard. It’s true that people unable to speak freely and debate won’t probably vote in ways that tend towards progress, but that’s not what I was talking about.
The world is painfully, horribly overpopulated! I don’t know why anyone would be advocating excessive breeding (especially if the advocate is a man, someone whose health and life will never be in danger as the result of going through a pregnancy and who society enables to walk away from parental responsibilities with relative ease).
I just can’t get past Michelle Malkin actually driving out to these peoples’ house and wandering around the yard. That is just so, so strange. I mean, she just UPPED and WENT to their HOUSE. A total stranger. Not even to talk to them or interview them as a legitimate journalist. Just to, you know, kinda hang around and stare at stuff. ….clearly I’m kinda speechless.
When you can’t win an argument on its merits, you start getting pushy and desperate.
And the closer we get to Nov ‘08, they’re only going to get worse.
shah8: First off, you’re assuming that the lack of large amounts of children is going to make you and your generation die sooner. I don’t know where you are getting this idea- perhaps from our current economic model that is based on growth. This is an economic model, not a physical law.
Secondly, you want ‘nature’ to effect the die off. Why not avoid the die off? Are you simply assuming that it won’t happen in your lifetime, and therefore want to milk the up and coming generation for all it’s worth, or does the thought of doing something about it terrify you so much that you’d rather do nothing and let disaster occur?
You are acknowleging that a growing population is leading to environmental species wide catastrophe and death, yet you say this is healthy. Why?
I think Michelle longs for the days when upper-class ladies would be driven from house to house so they could drop off charity baskets to the local poor, who would of course have to come out of the house and bow and scrape and express their immense gratitude for her condescension. And if she didn’t think they were grateful enough, she could take the basket back and give it to some people who were willing to grovel for it.
Of course, she never stops to think that in this scenario, she would almost certainly be the person who had to beg for the basket of food, but people like her never remember that.
If Malkin hates the US so much, why doesn’t she just go back to the Phillipines and see exactly where her gender and education level and gender and lack of skills and gender would take her?
I’m sure she could comfortably afford to feed, clothe, educate, and get medicalcare for her kids on what she could recycle from container loads of scrap electronics!
Why does she hate the US so much? Shouldn’t she be a more grateful immigrant?
“If Malkin hates the US so much, why doesn’t she just go back to the Phillipines and see exactly where her gender and education level and gender and lack of skills and gender would take her?”
Actually, Malkin has become “trans-Filipina”. Because of her years of hateful Reichwing attacks on immigrants, libruls, and poor people, etc., she has transcended her birth as a filipina immigrant to become a born-in-America, white, male Republican.
The process is very similar to how somebody who receives an honorary doctorate from a prestigious university magically becomes a real Dr. Somebody - exactly the same as the students who actually studied and earned their degrees through sweat and hard work.
Or not…
Kerlyssa, to keep things very simple, there are more mathematical functions than plus, minus, multiply, and divide. There is also something called nonlinearity, which means one does not get a straight one to one cause and effect relationship. The dynamic relationship between population and resouce usage/ecological damage is NOT linear. Lowering population can have perverse effects! It’s better to play it safe and act directly on resource usage and environmental damage.
Bullshit capitalist growth models isn’t the same thing as the need for the kind of growth bullshit artists hold up as an excuse for market makeovers of whatever the target economy is. We aren’t talking about growth in GDP, but in *productivity*, and in using productivity to solve national problems.
Now, as for the comment about letting Nature do that job? Pull out your graphic calculator and get birth death models. Do some graph work. When you do, you’ll find out that there is no non-horrific/extremly repressive way to substantially reduce the population. Even at humanity’s best effort at forcibly reducing the population, say during the first 30 Years War, only a third of the population is reduced, and it was quickly made up in a generation or two. Allowing a pandemic, or ecological collaspe, if we cannot avoid it, to do the killing, is the most *just* way we can reduce population by alot. Lots less political controversy when both Pericles and the beggar are dead.
shah8: You keep talking as if the only way to reduce population is to kill people- not a method that is being put forward here. And what is the point of increasing efficiency when you are also increasing population at such rates? You could double efficiency of resource use and the birth rate would destroy your efforts. A catastrophic dieoff would also destroy your efforts at greater productivity and efficiency because infrastructure would be destroyed with it, and there would be no justice in it. Some would take the remaining resources while others would die. How is it playing it safe to engage in behaviour you know will cause massive death and destruction?
The hope is that changing lifestyle now will tide off catastrophe until change in population growth(negative change) will allow for sustainability, not that you should either change nothing and wait for death or change some things you know will not prevent catastrophe and wait for death.
This isn’t really a relevant thread anyways. Sometimes, on certain issues I really feel as if I have to contradict a commenter on something on a tangent issue. Thus I *really* don’t want to comment further.
That said, take out said graph calc or paper, and do some math. You’ll find out that absent extreme (and immoral) measures, preventing new births is a *very* slow way to fix things. I’d rather increase women’s educations and control of reproduction. If that winds up reducing population, then woopee (and we do it the best way possible, too!). On the other hand, it could increase population growth. I’d prefer to be happy about increased momentary (or more) general freedom than worry about the increased population that results.
Kerlyssa, one thing about knowing something about demographic change and their economic and social consequences is that you know just how devastating demographic bulges and especially sags can be. A plague that takes from every demographic cohort will leave big pieces with which to rebuild and rebuilding happens faster. Demographic crisis lasts far longer, and are ultimately far more grindingly destructive. Which is why inducing one by trying to jigger the birth rate lower is an appalling concept for me. We would do better to have a Logan’s Run dystopia than attempt that.
Someone needs to start stalking and harassing these far right Christofascists, take pics of all of the misogynists and threaten them.
Jovan1984, as satisfying as it might be (temporarily), sinking to the level of using their evil tactics against them loses us any moral high ground we might have.
We must cleverer than they are, not just copy what they do…
Oh, I don’t know, MikeEss. I think taking pictures of Christofacists and posting them to internet sites with their home addresses and captions like, “Terrorist” is appropriate, especially when they try to block access to abortion providers and the like.
I think they should be prosecuted under RICO, too, but that’s just me.
Mezosub, I was just thinking about the creepy Malkin-stalking thing in the original post.
If people are harassing people, I agree - RICO them. But don’t follow them home, ridicule their kids, and send threatening messages/calls…
It’s the difference between standing up for what’s right and being a flying monkey…
Seems like Malkin and her ilk live in a stalk-or-be-stalked world. Isn’t this the person who supposedly up and moved her family after finding her residential address on the web? I mean literally moved them to another community.
The supposed threats she received may well have warranted drastic action; I’m don’t recall reading any examples. But it’s a clue to the siege mentality these people live in apparently all day, every day, not only that she was frightened enough to uproot the family but also that she would intentionally inflict the same sense of vulnerability and vicitimization on ANOTHER family on account of their politics. That’s literally subhuman behavior.
Shah8 (comment 51): If you’re going to admonish people to “do the math,” then you need to throw down with the data you expect them to use or at least cite a source. It’s lame misdirecton to imply that Kerlyssa lacks math skills when you’re the one claiming superior knowledge of a subject without supplying any facts.
I just learned a wonderful new euphemism from the RH Reality Check thread: “Sidewalk Counseling”. It sounds so much better than “harassing women outside Planned Parenthood clinics,” doesn’t it?
That’s interesting. In California, it’s unlawful to practice counseling or psychotherapy without a license from the Board of Behavioral Sciences, punishable by a criminal misdemeanor and a civil injunction.
Maybe that’d be a way to get protestors removed, seeing as how they’re endangering the public health by practicing a profession without a license…sorta like impersonating a police officer.
DCC, I did do the (simplified) math in an earlier thread when the topic was more relevant. Just do a search on population pressures, zero population growth, or something like that. I do not remember the name of the thread anymores. I want avoid doing any more of a threadjack than I already have.
“If Malkin hates the US so much, why doesn’t she just go back to the Phillipines and see exactly where her gender and education level and gender and lack of skills and gender would take her?”
Don’t forget she’s simultaneously proud of graduating from Oberlin College and hates “academic liberalism” (which abounds more at Oberlin than basically anywhere.)
Them durned librul professors are a bad thing unless they awared YOU a sheepskin.
The Frost incident doesn’t surprise me about Malkin at all, not to mention it was closely flanked with her quoting Edwards out of context about his interest in keeping blacks out of prison.