Category: Beating Back the St00pid

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Quote of the Day

"I have been courted by various people and government officials to do business in Uganda. I was seriously considering it. However, the dreadful witch hunt against the gay community and lifetime sentences means it would be against my conscience to support this country. I would urge other companies worldwide to follow suit. Uganda must reconsider or find it being ostracised by companies and tourists worldwide. Governments must realise that people should be able to love whoever they want. It is not for any government (or anyone else) to ever make any judgements on people's sexuality. They should instead celebrate when people build loving relationships that strengthen society, no matter who they are." ~ Billionaire entrepreneur Richard Branson, in a statement published on the front page of the Virgin companies' website.

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I Can Guarantee…

…that when the revolution comes, this asshole will be among the first that the people drag out of his penthouse to string up.

At least some people get it:

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Seeing an Anus Form Words No Longer Surprises Me

From marmel.com:

Joe Wurzelbacher, more commonly known as Joe the Plumber, wants Americans to "admit" they "want a white Republican president again."

"Wanting a white Republican president doesn't make you racist, it just makes you American," Wurzelbacher wrote on his website Oct. 10.

First, let's get this out of the way: If you're criteria for the next president be that he be white, it makes you a bigot. That's the definition of bigot. There's no wiggle room there. Own that.

But on to the rest…what public figure—and I use this term loosely referring to this clown—would say this?

I get that the skinheaded bigoted "sorta-plumber" who got famous for being sassy to the black guy has dialed his "black-smack" to eleven. It's loud out in the media, with a lot of bigots saying a lot of horrible things about the President from subtle dog whistles about "takers" to George Will comparing Obamacare to "The Fugitive Slave Act."

It's a tough time to be a minor player hate-monger when the league is filled with established home run hitters. And for all of his "fame"—again, loosely put—Joe is really just a freak-show anomaly now. He's a car crash you can't take your eyes off of, like Michele Bachmann or Louie Gohmert. He's Snooki, really.

But here's the thing. We should be grateful for morons like Joe.

Unsubtle, blunt, dimwitted throwbacks that aren't savvy enough to mask their hate, he's like people at town halls that scream about Obama being a secret Muslim. Or part of Al Qaeda. Or that he's actually Osama Bin Laden (see "Truckers Ride For The Constitution").

You know bigotry still exists because he's not smart enough to hide it in code-words.

And in being that, he reveals that he is a big chunk of that unmoving GOP's 30%. You know that number that never changes? That always disapproves of everything the President and his wife does, even if it's as simple as "drink water?" or "eat healthy?"  Or cheered Zimmerman?

He's those guys in a ball cap. The only thing he's missing is the white robe.  And if he had that white robe, he'd be dumb enough to wear it to work.

The election in 2008 made it so the days of smiling racism over. The black President drove that 30% nuts.

After all… Fox News promised Obama would lose. Twice. The right wing media promised they could hurt him by repealing Obamacare with lie after lie after lie. They were told this man would be put in his place. And now, that 30% is so mad, it's like turrets syndrome or Mel Gibson getting pulled over drunk—the bigotry just explodes out in ways they can't control.

And it's part of what's destroying the GOP.  See, the shutdown sucks and is hurting a lot of people, and the polls are showing most people blame the Republicans in general and the Tea Party specifically.

The more people like "Joe the Plumber," or Mark Kessler, or Glenn Beck or the next loon pops up, the more people realize exactly what is fueling this five year "let's not work with Obama" that's been going on that has brought us to this shut down.

Not wanting to work with the black guy. Hanging an imaginary "Whites Only" sign on the office of the President or any seat of power in Washington, D.C.

So in a way, I'm grateful for this moron. He's defining the problem in a way that would make anybody with a brain, or a heart, or a single friend of diversity go "this is not what I want out of a mainstream political party."

It's hurtful, I'm sure, for many people of color to hear.

But It's also hurtful to people who wish they could pretend they weren't bigots, but by toleration of people like Joe show that they are.  With their facebook feeds, and N-word tweets, and racist memes.

And as ugly as it is to look at, it's good that we can see it.

Maybe some of those people can be shamed into the 21st century.  But at the very least, we know who they are and they can now be discounted as the cavemen (and women) they've always been.

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Word.

From Driftglass:

They really aren't that complicated.

Because.  There. Is.  No.  Tea.  Party.

As we Liberals have said many, many, many times before—as we were saying immediately after they appeared on the national scene and were slobberingly embraced by the national media as a Totally New Awesome Shiny Object—the Tea Party is nothing more than the same, cranky, white pig-ignorant GOP base voters who have been flinging the United States off of one cliff after another for most of my adult lifetime.

The same, old (very old) coalition of bigots, fundies and assorted other proudly ignorant meatsticks (tarted up for the cameras with a drizzle of "intellectuals" and think-tank manikins and a sprinkle of a few self-loathing minorities) that have been the bedrock of the GOP since Nixon—a mob of lobotomized shouters who cheered for every treason and catastrophe of the Bush on at 120 decibels right up until he started to lose.

After which they started to become exponentially more publicly unhinged.

Then came the Black President, after which they lost their shit completely and forever.

But of course, Serious People in Polite Society are never supposed to recognize such things, so instead of doubling over in laughing when millions of Republican meatsticks put on tricorner hats and hied their fat asses down to the local Ramada Inn to rally in favor of everyone pretending they'd out for a short beer for the last 20 years or so…the Mainstream Media went right along with the scam.

As one reviled, loser wrote back in 2009, while Very Serious people like David Brooks were ooh-ing over all of these newly minted "independents" that were suddenly abroad in the land, the word "Independent" had lost any meaning at all

Nobody knows what "independents" want, because "independent" as a modern political category is a textbook example of what Kurt Vonnegut defined in "Cat's Cradle" as a "granfalloon":

"…a proud and meaningless association of human beings"

Because "independent" can mean any-damn-thing, or nothing at all.

As the same, reviled loser wrote back in 2009 as the protobaggers were figuring out where to order Gadsden Flags in bulk:

And based on simple observation, guess who appears to be the largest group of late-blooming independents?

Those fucknozzles who, after giving Dubya the longest tongue bath in modern political history while calling everyone else a traitor, started gagging on the sheer tonnage of bullshit their creepy idolatry of George W. Bush was requiring them to swallow and obediently regurgitate every fucking day, that's who.

Most newly minted "independents" seem to be little more than Republicans who are fleeing the scene of their crime, but at the same time still desperately want believe in the inerrant wisdom of Rush Limbaugh. They are completely incapable of facing the horrifying reality that that they have gotten every single major political opinion and decision of their adult lives completely wrong, so instead they double-down on their hatred of women and/or gays and/or brown people and/or Liberals, and blame them for the miserable fuckpit their leaders and their policies have made of their live and futures.

Like German soldiers after the fall of Berlin, they have stopped running away from the catastrophe they created only long enough to burn their uniforms.

But they fool no one.

Except, apparently, David Fucking Brooks.

Actually, I got that last bit wrong: turns out they fooled a whole lot of wealthy, influential people in the press because so many people in the press got to be and wealthy, influential by being just such colossal fools.

All of which is made geomentrically more depressing when I go back to my archives and note that, yep, I sure as shit predicted this exact phenomenon 2006 during the height of the Age of Boosh:

… In five years, having voted for Bush will have become the parachute pants of this decade. 

It will become the "Oh my GOD. What the fuck was I thinking?" shameful secret people will occasionally and elliptically allude to by piping up with, "well, he did good after 9/11" as schoolchildren are taught what a disaster on every front and by every measure he was, and as adults who now have to pay and pay dearly for the myriad lies and crimes and follies of George W. Bush recount his Top 100 Fuckups and bitterly laugh and laugh and laugh.

As I said, Teabaggers really aren't that complicated.  They only made to appear so by their collaborators in the national media who categorically refuse to call them out by their real name.