Allen West's Slavery Complex

...or "Dumbass Allen West Quote of the Week."


Sometimes I really think that Republican Congressman and Tea Party nut job Allen West just says things to make headlines. He enjoys the spotlight. He's got Donald Trump Fever, that dreaded disease where diarrhea spews from your mouth just to attract attention to yourself.

Responding to a question about the increase of Americans getting Social Security benefits, he said, "that is an unfortunate consequence of failing economic policies coming from the president so that now when people are running out of the unemployment benefits, now they are looking toward going on Social Security disability… so once again we are creating the sense of economic dependence, which to me is a form of modern, 21st century slavery."

Yeah. A black man comparing Social Security to slavery and blaming another black man in the process.

Of course, it doesn't dawn on West to blame the "failing economic policies" to an intransigent GOP,  more worried about bringing anti-abortion and anti-contraception bills, as well as contempt charges against the Attorney General, to the floor instead of any inkling of a jobs bill. Why help the President create jobs and lower the unemployment rate when your main goal is to make him a one-term president?

And where is the proof that there is a direct correlation between the long term unemployed and those filing for Social Security disability benefits? But I digress.

Nutty West keeps bringing up slavery, whether it be in regards to Social Security or the self esteem that comes with being employed. Come on, Florida! Surely you can do better than this. You've been very disappointing since November of 2000.

Compare This To Standardized Tests

What. The. Fuck?!

Third graders in in Gwinnett County, Ga., were given math homework Wednesday that asked questions about slavery and beatings...

...Another math problem read, "If Frederick got two beatings per day, how many beatings did he get in one week?"

Another question asked how many baskets of cotton Frederick filled.

Oh, those silly, Georgia teachers, with their slavery beating and cotton picking questions. I suppose Frederick received the beatings for not filling enough baskets of cotton.

Sorry, Family Leader. Too Little, Too Late.

The Family Leader's controversial "Marriage Vow" pledge they are trying to garner GOP presidential candidate signatures for is now being revised:

Slavery had a disastrous impact on African-American families, yet sadly a child born into slavery in 1860 was more likely to be raised by his mother and father in a two-parent household than was an African-American baby born after the election of the USA's first African-American President.

Well, isn't that nice? They think that it was better for African-Americans during the good ol' slavery days because hey, at least you had two parents. But seeing the ruckus this single sentence is causing, The Family Leader decided to drop if from their pledge.

But it's too late, because Michele Bachmann and Rick Santorum had already affixed their names to it while the comment was still included. Whether they thought it was a casual little line, that they could later disagree with or deny is irrelevant. We now know A) they truly feel this way or B) they'll say anything to anyone for support, including crazy shit like this.

Why Affirmative Action Is Fair

Desert Crone is a long time reader and posted a comment today in light of the Trump/long form birth certificate/Manchurian candidate/fear mongering/boo whitey! fiasco. And I think it's important enough to make it a post of its own.

Desert Crone:

Slavery began over 500 years ago, but it has never ended. To understand the impact of slavery, which decimated the African continent--the effect of which we see today--you must imagine if slave traders came to America and stole our strongest, healthiest, smartest, youngest members of our society. The impact of that would be felt for generations. But even after slavery ended, Jim Crow laws were implemented to keep African-Americans out of the voting booth, public places, and schools. It was even illegal for them to learn to read. Ask yourself how long it would have taken America to recover from 500+ years of that kind of human destruction and oppression. For those of you who dismiss slavery as an episode in American history, or who say blacks should get over it, then shame, shame on you.

And for those of you who oppose affirmative action because it discriminates against whites, well, where have you been for the last 40 years? Why didn't you complain about discrimination against people of color? Do you really think people of color aren't discriminated against every day? How naive you must be! We owe African-Americans a chance at America's colleges; we owe them a shot at the best jobs. We owe them because America kept them under a whip and bootheel for 500+ years. So stop whining about fairness--affirmative action is FAIR. It gives a fair shot to those people who have suffered unspeakable horrors throughout our history.

Republican Priorities

For a year leading up to the 2010 elections, Republicans campaigning for public office raised holy hell against the Obama administration for spending so much time on health care reform while the country languished in a prolonged recession and unemployment hovered close to 10%. Their cry was all about jobs, jobs, jobs. It was all about doing the people's work once they regained control of the House.

So how has the first session of the 112th Congress, specifically the new Republican led House of Representatives, tackled the unemployment issue? So far, they haven't.

After one month of the new Congress, they've spent a little over their first week, reading the Constitution, while conveniently skipping the three-fifths clause, apparently to the detriment of Michele Bachmann, had a symbolic vote to repeal the "job killing" health care reform passed by the previous Congress, took a week off due to the tragic event in Tucson, and are now pushing a bill called the "No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act." They are so clever with their bill titles, those Republicans, aren't they?

While there is already precedence for prohibition of federal funding of abortion with the Hyde Amendment, this is a dubious effort to constrict the legal right of abortion because the wording in the bill is attempting to redefine rape.

Since the 1976 Hyde Amendment, federal law has prohibited federal funds to pay for abortions except in the cases of rape, incest, and when the pregnancy endangers the life of the mother, but now...

"...Republicans propose that the rape exemption be limited to "forcible rape." This would rule out federal assistance for abortions in many rape cases, including instances of statutory rape, many of which are non-forcible. For example: If a 13-year-old girl is impregnated by a 24-year-old adult, she would no longer qualify to have Medicaid pay for an abortion.

...Given that the bill also would forbid the use of tax benefits to pay for abortions, that 13-year-old's parents wouldn't be allowed to use money from a tax-exempt health savings account (HSA) to pay for the procedure. They also wouldn't be able to deduct the cost of the abortion or the cost of any insurance that paid for it as a medical expense."

This doesn't pass the smell test because there is no legal definition of "forcible rape." What about date rape? Or victims being drugged? And how can you pass a law with such vague definitions subject to malleable interpretation? How many bruises does a rape victim have to have before the sex is considered "forcible?"

So just to reiterate, after 18 months of GOP whining that Democrats spent too much time focusing on health care and not enough on jobs, the Republican led House has spent its first month focusing on repealing health care benefits already in place for millions of people and the further restriction of legal medical procedures. The people's work indeed.

Beck Reveals Himself To Be Most Despicable Human Being On Earth

Glenn Beck thinks health care reform is bad. Because of government involvement. Because it's "enslaving the American public." Oh, and by the way, slavery was not really evil until the government got involved.



Besides being completely wrong and just pulling things out of his ass about the history of slavery, he's equating slavery to participating in health care reform. This guy will say anything, ANYTHING, to put his audience into a frenzy. And the rubes who listen to his daily insane rants take it at face value, without fact checking or reasonable analysis.

Now call me crazy, but there's got to be some kind of blowback from these abhorrent statements. If not from the sane people of the world, there must be at least one of his listeners who'd think to question Beck's deranged train of thought. At least one, no?

If you're a Beck fan, I'd ask you to take a step back and seriously question what it is that makes you follow someone who is obviously a narcissistic, sociopathic, financial opportunist. Glenn Beck is clearly a confidence man.

GOP R.I.P.

posted by Armadillo Joe

I've figured out what really pisses me off about the whole Steve King slaves-aren't-significant-to-American-history episode.

He's from Iowa. Iowa fought for Union. Iowa was never a slave state. So why is he making common cause with a bunch of Dixie-fied Civil War re-enactors? I know why. It goes to my larger thesis about the Dixie-fication of America.

When Nixon used the Southern Strategy (actually hatched during the Goldwater campaign) to bring former Dixiecrats into the GOP fold, he welded the definition of "conservative" to that of the word "southern" and, forever after in American life, conservatism as it is popularly understood has a distinctly southern flavor. I offer the coast-to-coast appeal of Jeff Foxworthy's "redneck" jokes as just one piece of evidence.

And though what I'm sure they all thought was a sure bet for electoral success ad infinitum could have worked if calibrated properly and tended to with loving care, the Republican Party is now imploding into a minor regional party because the overlords, in order to garner allies in their generational class war, thought they could harness the inchoate fears in the lower classes of nigras, uppity wimmin-folk, queers and other assorted dirty fucking hippies. The monsters refused to be yoked to the narrow ambitions of the Ruling Class and have now overrun HQ. The result? An ever more tightly wound black-hole of hate, self-serving mythology and historical revisionism that pulls in anything in its gravitational field, including Steve King of Iowa, a state that fought for Union.

This is what "conservatism" and the GOP look like at the tail-end of the Southern Strategy. I have a whole new view of the overall arc of "The Movement" since WW2 because of Rick Pearlstein's "Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus." The fact that McCain went down in flames to a man unimaginable as president within the living memory of most Americans makes a neat historical bookend to the fact that Goldwater -- and, more specifically, the Goldwater campaign -- launched the modern Republican Party by inviting in the racist yokels, toothless goobers and paranoid rednecks to their party who had once been beyond the pale of polite society and then ruthlessly organized them into an orc army with the help of modern technology and mountains of private and corporate cash. Prior to Goldwater, conservatives were split regionally and culturally between the two political parties. Between Goldwater and Reagan, they united under the Republican "brand."

However, I don't believe the GOP will be able to pull out of its current death-spiral. GOP resurgences since Goldwater's implosion in '64 have happened because "The Movement" was still gathering steam: Nixon resigned and Ford was weak, but Reagan overran a clueless Jimmy Carter; a vacillating Bush41 lost in a three-way split, but the post-Reagan GOP caucus in Congress (and a Supreme Court with no less than four Reagan-appointed justices -- including O'Connor from Arizona and Chief Justice Rehnquist also from Arizona who had been on Goldwater's legal team) had redrawn the political map enough to get Bush43 in office.

But Reagan, Gingrich's Congress and the impeachment of a popular president for a blowjob were the apex of their power. I think they've been coasting on inertia ever since because they don't know what to do. Since Goldwater, the right (and eventually the whole of the GOP) had always defined itself in opposition to things. Once they were put fully in charge, they proved utterly clueless. Were it not for the adrenaline-boost of 9/11, they may have even imploded before Bush's second term. He may not have even had one.

The GOP and conservatism have fallen a long, long, long way -- farther even than they had stood in the late 1950's when some on the American right-wing were accusing Republican President Eisenhower of being a communist sympathizer, before Goldwater twisted the party into an ugly enough horde to actually place a diseased cur like Dick Nixon on their ticket. The last time the American right was laid this low was in the early days of FDR and the Great Depression. It took 30 years and the Senator from Arizona to galvanize them back into an effective movement, even if the whole edifice was built under false pretenses and group delusion.

This time, though, I don't see how they can get back up again. I really don't.

And that is a good thing.

Stupidity Knows No Bounds

On Wednesday, I awarded Rep. Steve King (R- Doucheland) my Douchebag of the Week honors, something I normally reserve for a Sunday afternoon. Soon thereafter, Brian Kilmeade made his wonderfully racist comment on Fox and Friends which Fraulein brought to our attention.

For a minute, I thought I may have been too hasty in not waiting until the end of the week to rip King. But never let it be said that King disappoints. It only took 24 hours to top himself.

"[O]f the 645,000 Africans that were brought here to be forcibly put into slavery in the United States, there were over 600,000 people that gave their lives in the Civil War to put an end to slavery. And I don't see the monument to that in the Congressional Visitor Center, and I think it's important that we have a balanced depiction of history."

Not only is King a racist douche, but he's a moronic one as well. "... there were over 600,000 people that gave their lives in the Civil War to put an end to slavery." Uh, Rep. King? Wasn't that the TOTAL amount of casualties for BOTH sides? If so, then, uh... who fought against those who wanted "to put an end to slavery"?

(H/T Bob Cesca)