The Republican Party Is Filled With Idiots, Part MMMMMMMMMMMXVI

Doop-de-doop-de-doo, reading my email, doop-de-doop-de-doo...

"People now don’t die from prostate cancer, breast cancer and some of the other things," Collins said.

Hi there, Mr. Collins. Speaking as someone whose mother managed to die from breast cancer about two years ago despite five years of treatment (which, might I add, was very expensive)... you are an idiot.

The Republicans must have discovered some vast deposits of stupid somewhere, to come up with so many idiots in such a short span of time.

History FAIL (Tea Party Edition)

TPM:

Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) had an interesting take this weekend on America's first European settlers, who she said "had different cultures, different backgrounds, different traditions."
"How unique in all of the world, that one nation that was the resting point from people groups all across the world," she said. "It didn't matter the color of their skin, it didn't matter their language, it didn't matter their economic status."

Uh, Michele? About that last sentence? Yes it fucking did.

I don't know if you ever heard of this, but some of the people who came here, like, say, the First Lady's ancestors, came here as slaves. And even when they were freed, they were subject to great restrictions on their civil rights, and had to work hard to be treated as something approaching equals to white people. And true equality is still nowhere close.

Then there's the people who came here voluntarily. Like the Irish. Or the Italians. Or the Japanese. Or perhaps the Chinese, to whose immigration Congress was so indifferent, that in 1882, they passed a law to stop it. Or, God forbid, the Mexicans.

Perhaps Definitely, Michele, as mutual white people, you and I haven't felt the effect of our societal baggage as much as, say, a black man. That doesn't allow you to whitewash (no pun intended) our history, by pretending that every thing was always happy, and will always be happy, if the American people vote for "true conservatives" like you.

The USA is a pretty damn nice country to live in, don't get me wrong, but we've had problems in the past. Ignoring them won't help to fix their legacy, nor will it win you much sympathy with the people who have to deal with that legacy.

America is not perfect. Stop pretending that, and start working on something that could actually help with anything.

Love and kisses,
Teh Pope

No True 'Merkin

Charles "Bell Curve" Murray writes in Kaplan Daily (forget about a link, this is far too bad for linkage):

There so many quintessentially American things that few members of the New Elite have experienced. They probably haven't ever attended a meeting of a Kiwanis Club or Rotary Club, or lived for at least a year in a small town (college doesn't count) or in an urban neighborhood in which most of their neighbors did not have college degrees (gentrifying neighborhoods don't count). They are unlikely to have spent at least a year with a family income less than twice the poverty line (graduate school doesn't count) or to have a close friend who is an evangelical Christian. They are unlikely to have even visited a factory floor, let alone worked on one.

Just so that you won't have to seek out his wretched pile of camel spunk, let me explain what he's saying. The whole article talks about some "New Elite" that apparently the Teatards dreamed up, and Chuck here decided must be right, because it fit his preconceived notions exactly. It's all basically one big violation of the "No true scotsman" fallacy. No true 'Merkin would live in a city, or not read Left Behind, or not watch The Price Is Right.

As I understand it, though, the great thing about America is not supposed to be that we are all robots who follow one exact path, but that we're a nation of diversity. Everyone, everywhere, is different from everyone else. We all have different experiences, and yet we're still Americans. I'm still an American in spite of the fact that I've never gone to Branson, Missouri, nor have I watched any mixed martial arts (though I do know what "MMA" stands for).

But the best part of all of this is that Kaplan Daily gave Murray a live Q&A time, in which he revealed that he is currently writing a book about this whole "New Elite" thing. Because Bobos In Paradise wasn't insipid and idiotic enough. Also too, I look forward to Andrew Sullivan giving it a rave review.*

*Cf. Murray's previous magnum opus, The Bell Curve. It's infamous for the contention that different races are more intelligent because of genetics. When someone calls your book "a scabrous piece of racial pornography masquerading as serious scholarship," ur doin it wrong.

Tea Party Parasites

Hypocrite Joe Miller: I am not a hypocrite.

Back in June, Miller was saying this about his Republican primary opponent Lisa Murkowski, blasting her for supporting a state health care program:

As you are aware, just last week the Anchorage Daily News reported that the Denali KidCare Program funded 662 abortions last year. Senator Murkowski has been a champion of this program, voting against the majority of her Republican colleagues for CHIPRA (HR 2) in January of 2009.

Of course it now turns out that back in the Nineties, Miller himself and his three children (with one on the way; he now has eight) were at one point receiving assistance via a program almost exactly like the Denali KidCare program, which is only for low-income earners. Various reportsnote that Miller received this assistance after he’d bought a house and been hired by a prestigious law firm; he also got low-income hunting and fishing licenses during that time. It’s also come out that he received some $7,000 in farm subsidies and that his wife received unemployment insurance benefits.

But, but, young bucks buying t-bones!


Miller basically goes on to justify this by saying that he used it just to get through hard times, not like those moochy poor people who spend their lives on it. He also argues that welfare programs should be controlled by states, which is utterly incomprehensible to me. Why would states do better at managing welfare programs than the federal government? It's just useless bullshit dogmatic federalism.


This is one of the things I find fascinating about the Tea Parties. You have seniors carrying big signs demanding that the government get out of their Medicare, and demanding that there be no socialized medicine (except for Medicare). You have military veterans angrily insisting that the federal government is a big anti-federalistic parasite. Except of course that the government trained them, paid them, and took care of them in the military; and now that they're out, they probably get some kind of pension (or maybe they're in the Reserves)


But these things are not inconsistent to the Tea Party. Because they are Patriots, and those poor people (generally presumed to be of different skin color) are just big ol' moochers who don't want to be productive.


No double standard here, folks. Move along, move along.


(thx Kos)