Ted Nugent: Patriot

Ted Nugent, who has become infamous for incendiary rhetoric against President Obama and Hillary Clinton, and some really bad music, made the headlines yet again with more vitriol against the President causing enough concern for the Secret Service to investigate. While listening to those comments, something he said struck me. He considers himself, and all those who think like him, patriots.

NUGENT: "If you take that adamant, 'We the People' defiance, remember we're Americans 'cause we defied the King. We didn't negotiate or compromise with the King, we defied the Emperors! We are patriots! We are 'Braveheart'! We need to ride onto that battlefield and chop their heads off in November!"

Well, when Ted Nugent had a chance to show his patriotism, for real, he chose the Dick Cheney way out with student deferments... while on tour.

...Nugent received student deferments in 1967 (1-S) and 1968 (2-S). But according to the Internet Movie Data Base website, Nugent has been "performing professionally since 1958, non-stop yearly touring since 1967, averaging more than 300 shows per year '67-73." Hmm, that would include the two years he was supposedly too wrapped up in his studies to be serving his country.

And then he just decided to shit himself.

In a July 15, 1990, Detroit Free Press interview, Nugent crowed about how he managed to dodge the draft. He claims that 30 days before his draft board physical, he disavowed personal hygiene. The last ten days he ingested nothing but junk food and Pepsi, and with a week to go until the physical, he stopped using the bathroom altogether. When the big day came, he had been living in excrement-caked and urine-stained pants.

Ted Nugent. What a patriot.

No, It's Not a Manufactured Outrage

POSTED BY JHW22

This is what I was saying before and after Gabby Giffords was shot: there's a line we shouldn't cross. This is not comparable to jokes that one can say are offensive. This is actually suggesting that killing a President is a necessary action. Nugent, at an NRA event, tells a bunch of scared men to be afraid of becoming something America will NEVER become and says it's because Obama is something he will never be. He wasn't "joking" or being "creative." He honestly believes that patriots need to stand up to the government led by Obama. And he knows that referencing America's past, and the words "patriot," and "guns" and "self-sacrifice," all are loud and clear messages that people need to take up arms against enemies domestic. And he's making it very clear that he thinks we should see and treat Obama as an enemy.

This isn't about rhetoric from a rock star. This is about a group of Americans getting louder AGAIN, as the election looms, who INSIST on making you think the only desperate act is to remove Obama from office ANY WAY NECESSARY.

Do YOU think that's how Americans have to handle their struggles? Do you think things are SO BAD that we need someone to assassinate the President? Do YOU think this kind of behavior is inconsequential? Well, it's not. And if you think this doesn't matter, then you're willfully ignorant of what's happening out there and how many people don't just disparage the President but who actually threaten harm by stirring people up to think they have to.

The Tea Partiers around here say, "Wake Up, America." Yes, wake up. Wake up and see that this kind of discourse is BAD for America. And just ignoring it and saying, "Oh, it's JUST Ted Nugent" doesn't make it stop.

I have admitted when liberals have crossed a decency line or when liberals have gone too far. I don't like when liberals suggest Nugent should suck on his own machine gun because that's unproductive and stupid. But even that suggestion is FAR from as HARMFUL to the nation as someone actually implying our President is so dangerous that he should be stopped with force.

Forget the fact that Nugent has OBVIOUSLY missed the 8 years of illegal activity. Forget the 8 years where we did suffer at the hands of a dumb President led by a vicious Vice President and aided by an bumbling, egotistical administration. Forget all that.

IF a fellow liberal went to a convention of people with the firm belief that guns are a God-given right to protect ourselves from the government just as much as a wild boar out in the uncharted lands of the west, and these men would die before giving their guns up to some phantom government gun collector, and these men truly fear their rights are being violated every second of the day, and IF the fellow liberal stirred those fellas up and suggested something should be done about the evil, criminal who is a threat to AMERICA'S SURVIVAL, then I would tell that liberal to shut the fuck up!

But I don't hear a liberal doing that. I don't hear a liberal inciting a bunch of gun-clingers to protect America. I don't hear a liberal saying that to fight for our country we actually have to fight to the death.

When liberals worry about America, we threaten challenging elections and recalls and boycotts and facts!

This isn't about the ugly name calling from any side. This is about ONE PARTY consistently coddling people who actually speak as if our President is the enemy from within and that the only way to take him out is by death.

See, a while back some liberals were mad that Obama signed some bill that clarified and tightened language about protesting at events held by elected officials. I actually supported Obama on that. Why? Because I remember the guy who showed up at an Obama event with a gun strapped to his hip and nothing could be done about it. And I knew we were entering the general election cycle and I remembered that at the last election someone yelled out "kill him." So, you know what? I'm fucking scared.

This Ted Nugent thing isn't manufactured and it's NOWHERE NEAR the level of Hilary Rosen v. Ann Romney.

We're at Gabby Giffords level here. And to mock or ignore it is fucking dangerous. These freaks actually are desperate enough to think Obama is evil. What on earth makes you think one of these freaks won't act on it?

Will it be manufactured outrage if something actually happens to Obama? NO. So stop pretending the threat is fake.

Lame

When Democratic strategist Hilary Rosen took Mitt Romney to task for putting his wife, Ann, front and center as an expert when it comes to women's economic issues with the factual statement that Ann Romney hadn't "worked a day in her life," the Romney campaign and the right lost their collective shit, accusing Rosen of waging a war on stay-at-home mothers. They work hard too, dammit! And they weren't going to let an opportunity pass to misconstrue Rosen's comment and try to tie her to the Obama camp even though she doesn't work for the Obama campaign. The faux outrage was palpable - enough for Rosen to apologize while clarifying her comment - and for the story to run at least three news cycles.

Fast forward just a week or so later. Today, rock-n-roll has been and NRA gun nut Ted Nugent, whose endorsement was sought out by the Romney camp to bring the NRA into the fold, made some pretty scary comments regarding President Obama and Democrats in general.



"If Barack Obama becomes the president in November, again, I will be either be dead or in jail by this time next year." Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are criminals. We will be a suburb of Indonesia. We need to chop their heads off.

While the White House basically shrugged off the rantings of a crazy, stupid person, this threat was enough of a concern to have the Secret Service launch an investigation. Now, while I haven't been watching much cable news lately, my guess is that the right will come to the defense of Nugent with yet more misunderstanding of the First Amendment and they too, will shrug off what I consider to be a disturbed man discussing thoughts of assassinating the President of the United States. Eh, it's only Obama, right? It's not like someone was threatening George W. Bush. But I digress.

You'd think that Mitt Romney would come out and denounce these types of comments and specifically tell Ted Nugent that he can take his endorsement and shove it up his rifle warmer. Right?

...Andrea Saul, a campaign spokesperson, said in an email, "Divisive language is offensive no matter what side of the political aisle it comes from. Mitt Romney believes everyone needs to be civil."

Lamest. Condemnation. Ever.

No matter what side of the political aisle? Ms. Saul, Mr. Romney, are you trying to equate what Hilary Rosen said (not related to the Obama campaign) about Ann Romney to an assassination threat on President Obama by a man who is ENDORSING YOU for the Oval Office?

So weak.

A Ted Nugent Op-Ed?!

It is to laugh.

Ted Nugent, the rock 'n roll star from the 70's turned conservative activist and gun nut, has written an op-ed for the Washington Times called "Obama Punks America" in which he spreads the debunked claim that the stimulus cost $287,000 per job. Go on and read it if you like as it takes nothing less than a 5th grade reading level to get through it. But even a 5th grader will tell you that the amount of the stimulus divided by the number of jobs created does not equal the amount each job cost.

[AP, 11/2/09, via Nexis]:

The reality is more complex.

First, the naysayers' calculations ignore the value of the work produced.

Any cost-per-job figure pays not just for the worker, but for material, supplies and that worker's output -- a portion of a road paved, patients treated in a health clinic, goods shipped from a factory floor, railroad tracks laid.

Second, critics are counting the total cost of contracts that will fuel work for months or years and dividing that by the number of jobs produced only to date.

A construction project, for one, may only require a few engineers to get going, with the work force to swell as ground is broken and building accelerates.

Hundreds of such projects have been on the books, in which the full value of the contracts is already counted in the spending totals, but few or no jobs have been reported yet because the work is only getting started.

To flip the equation politically, it's as if the 10-year cost of George W. Bush's big tax cuts were compared with the benefits to the economy that only accrued during the first year.

Third, the package approved by Congress is aimed at more than direct job creation, although employment was certainly central to its promotion and purpose.

Its features include money for research, training, plant equipment, extended unemployment benefits, credit assistance for businesses and more -- spending meant to pay off over time but impossible to judge in a short-term job formula.

Nor do the estimates made Friday include indirect employment already created by the package -- difficult if not impossible to measure.

Nowhere in the editorial does Nugent include the fact that $282 billion in stimulus spending was in the form of tax cuts for the rubes who waste money on his concert tickets, something that would usually have the GOP's nipples get hard, and something they fought to get into the package, but since it was provided by a Democratic president (and a Kenyan at that!) they voted against en masse, but still like to take credit for it.

Interesting that a newspaper would give a guy, who threatened the current President of the United States while he was still a Senator, along with two other Senators in a concert setting while waving machine guns around, an op-ed column to reprise a 21-month old bogus claim. But I don't completely blame this bit of idiocy on Nugent alone. After all, he's citing the Weekly Standard's Jeffrey Anderson, who for some reason chooses to mislead on the numbers and the report he's basing it on. I wonder why?

So, is this the strategy? Are we going to rehash stimulus spending for the next 16 months until the election? Because if so, my guess is that the voters who benefitted from those jobs saved or created will be voting Democratic - all 2.4 to 3.6 million and counting.