Hamba Kahle Madiba
“It is better to lead from behind and to put others in front, especially when you celebrate victory when nice things occur. You take the front line when there is danger. Then people will appreciate your leadership.”
On December 5, 2013, Nelson Mandela passed away.
It’s a little awkward to try and synthesize what he meant to black South Africans, South Africa, Africa as a continent, and the world.
And it almost seems disrespectful to talk about how he impacted me, because I’m just a white bitch living in the United States. When I was finally old enough to pay attention to and understand current world history, Mandela was already larger than life, having succeeded in staring down the tyrants and getting the world to accept him and his country. I wasn’t there to worry that he would end up another Steve Biko. I wasn’t there when it looked like Apartheid would never end nor was I there when it looked like no one would care. And I definitely wasn’t there on the ground, suffering that oppression, wondering if I would live another day, much less those I respected as activists and leaders.
And on top of that, I only had access to his story in barest fragments. Despite the name, my “world” history classes’ coverage of Africa began and ended with Ancient Egypt. So I had to go outside to hear his story and to respect him. How he survived a brutal prison environment that had claimed so many of his compatriots. How he fought for what was right even when it cost him and even when all the Western world was happy to treat South African blacks as an unruly bits of property that needed to learn their place. And afterward, how he made those same fuckers actually respect him and South Africa as a nation to be treated as an equal and how he has been instrumental as a spokesperson for his entire continent, slowly helping to move it into its own away from its colonialist shadow.
It’s small and it’s narcissistic, but yeah, I respect the shit out of him. Every time I find my courage fail in activism, I remember his courage to stay true. And even when he compromised, he knew what was right and spoke in favor of it. A strong ally on feminism, LGBT issues, class consciousness, and anti-xenophobia, he fought hard to get protections for other marginalized groups enshrined in law even when it was already a struggle to get rights and protections for himself and those like him. He may have been inspired by Gandhi, but I don’t think I’m the only one who has been inspired to always try and do what is right by him.
And my most poignant memory of his isn’t even an iconic one for most and isn’t even all that remembered, but is the passionate way he supported Caster Semanya, the South African sprinter who was harassed by Olympic officials for being intersex, and spoke clearly about the exact forms of bigotry and bullshit that were going on.
Even when it wasn’t his fight. Even when his hardest battles were complete. Even when it was just a person in his nation when he was already old and frail and could have easily ignored it. He took the time to stand up for them. That is my memory of the man.
He was, simply, in many ways, better than we’ll ever be and the world is much poorer for his leaving.
Hamba Kahle Madiba!
So yeah, on that note, let’s talk about the right wing’s reaction to the death of this great man.
Really, None of You Fuckers Wanted to Put Your Name to This One?, Wing Nut Daily:
Nelson Mandela Was a Radical Marxist
Oh, hi there whiplash, fancy seeing you here!
What? Mandela was known as a revolutionary who fought an entrenched and very importantly white power structure on behalf of marginalized voices and the powerless. Of course the right-wing hated him.
And not just the right-wing as if the entrenchment of Apartheid was due to a handful of douchey white guys (who are all dead now, because racism is over, totes for real) and a small smattering of shut-ins still decrying that a Catholic could be elected President.
Pretty much all the current “saints” of modern conservatism were 100% behind the brutal oppression of Apartheid when they were still on top. Both Reagan and Thatcher were strong supporters of the Apartheid regime, even as international outrage built against the numerous human rights violations they were perpetrating. Reagan, especially, kept supporting it past the point where public opinion was so universally on the side of the black South Africans that his Congress felt safe overturning his veto against their disinvestment from the country. Which for context, it’s worth noting that this was the same congress that had no compunction about rubber-stamping his “trickle-down” economic bullshit and seriously debated his nutso “Star Wars” Defense Initiative.
And it wasn’t just them. Like with every other fight for human rights and dignity in the sum history of time, conservatives of the time were proudly on the right side (in a way that they’ll often be extremely quick to deny now), fully supporting Apartheid rule against the “uppity” terrorists and their evil commie-feminist caring about the health and safety of non-white people ways. And when Nelson Mandela was just a guy in prison to them, they were happy to shout the Apartheid party line about him being a dangerous maniac who needed to be killed for the good of the nation.
So it should be no surprise that among the same modern conservatives who somehow thought that “anti-colonialist” was a)bad and b)was something that made black voices inherently untrustworthy there are some who seem to have lost the memo that everyone is supposed to pretend to have been physically present for his release like they were during MLK’s marches.
Which leads us to Wing Nut Daily, our first port of call. And we don’t even need to get out of the tagline to start harvesting plump juicy maggot-filled mangoes.
Renowned Christian minister: ‘He tried to destroy us, set his dogs on us’
What? I couldn’t possibly hear that dog whistle… or anything else after that trumpeting bellow made me deaf.
I mean, we talk about dog whistles a lot over here, but I think this might be the most blatant attempt at a “blacks are the real racists” and “our crimes are actually your crimes” dodge. I mean, fuck, at least the racism-deniers usually had the decency to at least stick to one culture’s crimes for their attempted judo shit instead of going “er, uh, I don’t want to even admit by analogy that the White South Africans did anything bad so let’s import some horrendous treatment of darkies from the States to pretend to suffer through.
Now if you managed to retain some manor of consciousness after having your inner ear completely annihilated, you might be wondering “so exactly what dead-ender Apartheid Denier did they drag out to be their ‘renowned Christian minister’?”
Heh.
Rev. Peter Hammond, founder of Frontline Fellowship and Africa Christian Nation, has worked for nearly 30 years helping persecuted Christians in Africa.
Peter Hammond and his “Frontline Fellowship” are a well known South African mercenary squad which is (surprise, surprise) under fire by human rights organizations for their role in smuggling guns for the SPLA, which is a notorious gang of murderers and rapists in Sudan who are purporting to be a “Christian” resistance to… well, essentially the existence of Muslim officials in power. Peter Hammond is also connected to illegal gun running to Mozambique and considering he is part of a white “Christian” private army, no prizes as to what he was doing during the era of Apartheid rule (remember that “private” mercenary forces were often contracted to “take care” of certain political prisoners).
He’s also closely aligned to several other Christian “ministries” that are actually mercenary companies, including ones who reported the impending release of Nelson Mandela like it was the countdown to rapeapalooza and surprise of surprises he’s a fervent Apartheid Denier (not at all because of personal involvement in the crimes, of course, and you can trust his word and nothing but his word claiming to have never supported Apartheid on his blog… well, not so much denying it as demanding to know where the email writer lives, which might as well be the same thing).
In short, if WND got any more primary source for their Apartheid Denialism, they’d be digging up the corpse of PW Botha.
So what are this totally objective nutcase’s examples of Mandela perfidy?
As a result of Hammond’s visit with Mandela – in which the missionary laid hands on the president and prayed for him to see abortion for what it really is, the merciless slaughter of innocent human life – Hammond was subjected to a 13-year audit of his organization.
See, just because he was the leader of a white nationalist identified merecnary company that may or may not be staffed with ex-Apartheid governmental and military officials, Mandela had to get up all in his grill.
And sure, it turned out his company was in fact engaged in illegal gun running and other illegal activity, but that doesn’t mean that the police should be investigating.
I mean, what ever happened to the South African rule of law that said a white man could do whatever he wanted to up to and including killing darkies without a single policeman saying boo about it?
What? That was called Apartheid and it ended? Why the fuck would they do that? That shit was awesome! Goddamn commie darkies ruining all our fun!
Oh, and might I just chime in here to note how much I am fucking loving the right wing imploding their “get out of jail” “abortion” dodge by basically using it as the anthropomorphization fallacy exploiting “what about teh babiez” dodge it always was.
Because every time they barely hide that what they really hate is the notion of women having sex or in this example, the existence of a black leader in their previously whites only palace, it reduces that bullshit exploitation of people’s natural desire to put human motivations and existences onto inanimate and still growing objects and helps us get closer to a point where we no longer need to pretend that babies are just chilling out with a newspaper for 9 months because we want to pretend that all the important stuff is done the moment a cisman’s involvement is complete.
Anyways, what else is black… I mean, evil about Mandela?
Ha! Spoiler warning, it’s nothing. I mean, there’s a smattering here and there about him being a communist (which, shock of shocks, his oppressors were aligned with every capitalist shitbag country on the planet, what else was he going to be?), which just serves as a giant reminder that conservatives are wholly incapable of dealing with the new world order where the Soviets aren’t the big bad anymore. I look forward to the day that the people who don’t remember the Cold War outnumber those who do and just seeing the utter terror on their faces as they try and rant about how evil someone is for being an out socialist.
Cliff Kincaid, Apartheid America:
Comrade Mandela’s secret life
So let’s jump to the next crazy old person yelling at clouds about how they learned to hate that damn commie darkie that was gunna kill all the white people if he ever got free and dog nabbit nobody is gonna change their mind about that, nosiree.
Shorter (or the last port before Jungle):
- Bu-bu-but he was a dirty communist. He even admitted to being a socialist and supporting socialist ideas like the notion that people aren’t inferior because of their gender, sexuality, race, gender identity, religion, or social or economic class. So why doesn’t that instantly discredit him like all the other brave revolutionaries we were able to completely justify ignoring because of real or implied connections to that big scary word?
Oh, you can just see the indignation on their little faces as they write these.
They really can’t cope with the fact that just yelling “commie” doesn’t make the people scream with Red Terror like it used to and instead people are even feeling safe critiquing vulture capitalism, showing solidarity to marginalized groups, and even speaking out against oppression without dreading the life-ending accusation of being associated with “you know who”.
Also, somebody needs to sit them down and help them cope with their addiction to conspiracy theories.
My friend Victor Lasky used to write books about liberal or left-wing figures that carried the name of the person and the subtitle, “The Man and the Myth.” He would compare the coverage of a political figure with the truth. The coverage of the death of Nelson Mandela has focused mostly on the myth. Key facts are being omitted, including Mandela’s secret membership in the South African Communist Party (SACP), which may shed light on the future of South Africa.
Secret connections to shadowy forces, ooohh. It’s all a secret and only you are smart enough to know this support and alliance that just existed because of course it existed with Apartheid oppression using their “Capitalism” to gain support from Western powers who wanted an excuse to punish uppity colonies who thought they could shrug off white domination.
I know that pretending to be part of a tiny force of super smart savvy operators against a vast unstoppable conspiracy helps you deal with the guilt and shame of fighting on behalf of the powerful against the powerless, but Bob damnitt man, you don’t need to translate everything into shadow conspiracies just to get your hit.
Also, speaking as someone weak and small against a vast, disconnected array of antagonistic forces, never feeling there is one centralized authority you can just “defeat” and make everything better by conquering. I know you’re just essentially “playing the video game” version of this shit, but in reality, that life really fucking sucks. It completely does a number on your sanity, your perception of safety, and your ability to even focus on the raw essentials of survival when you’re constantly getting hit from all sides at once and you don’t feel you can ever fight back.
You don’t actually want that life, so stop fucking pretending, you goddamn posers.
Oh, and shock of shocks, the post ends with some Birther conspiracy nonsense because apparently thinking about South Africa’s first black president after Apartheid for more than five seconds just reminds them of how much they hate our first black leader after years of “proper white rule”.
Interestingly, President Obama used the foreword to describe Mandela as “a liberation figure” who worked for “equality, opportunity and human dignity.” But he said Mandela had acknowledged “that he has not been a perfect man” and had “his flaws.” Obama says the lesson is that we have to be “honest with ourselves” in the personal and political realms.
Clearly, Mandela was not honest with the public about his deep involvement with communism, including membership in the South African Communist Party. Then again, Obama was never honest with the American people about his mentor, Communist Party operative Frank Marshall Davis, a member of the Soviet espionage apparatus in Hawaii.
Do we see a pattern developing here?
Why aren’t you scared yet, AIEEEEE?!?
Now, hey, you might be going, hey at least these fuckers are being open and honest about their involvement and support for oppression instead of pretending they were always Team Underdog because it no longer is socially acceptable to be the monsters they are.
To which I say… yeah, let’s just pop over to the National Review shall we?
Travis Kavulla, National Bandwagon:
Mandela’s Virtue
Cause, see, while there are still a few holdouts who are holding on to the halcyon days when saying you were proud to support Apartheid against those uppity commie africans and their marauding hordes of black people hellbent on slaughtering all white people everywhere and banning Christianity in “real” countries, the vast majority of former proud Apartheid supporters have long since seen the writing on the wall and have been trying to pull the standard MLK whitewash and co-opt stunt for years now.
So, no end to articles like this trying to elevate shitstains like Dick Lugar to honorary ANC members in the hopes of stealing reflected glory and erasing less noble racist actions. And no end to people who were just as happy to rant about Mandela the commie trying belatedly to pretend that they were on the streets protesting this shit before it was cool as if they weren’t sneering at every hippie who tried to get Americans to care about what was happening to “those people”.
Shorter (or the last port before Jungle):
- Okay, fine, Mandela was great, but only because he wasn’t a white-murdering reverse racist like we tried to sell him as. But his successors will totally be that, so please support white rule now that that uppity negro is out of the way.
Well, they would be trying the whole “Actually instead of supporting his oppressors and calling him a commie pinko, I actually marched with him and he totally told me that he always supported infinite tax cuts for rich people because rich white guys are the most oppressed class” game, if it wasn’t really fresh for the old bigots.
I mean, we’re talking about people who have difficulty handling the notion that social attitudes can change from one century to another. The concept of radically rethinking one’s stance on a public figure in only about 20 years or so is really new to them and kinda scary.
As such, there’s still an awkward adjustment to the whole “pretending to be on his side” con and thus, they have a little bit of a hard time hiding the bitter resentment at having been thwarted by a “non-entity”.
Dignity, humility, and courage. Those are the words, predictable as they are proper, that are being used to describe Nelson Mandela after his death on Thursday.
Few other people in the annals of the 20th century suffered such great personal indignities and yet turned the other cheek. Few others, too, managed such an explosive political moment so deftly.
Yeah… on that note. I’ve seen no end of hagiographies of the man talking about how he “refrained from getting revenge on the whites” as if a) it was his only accomplishment or goal, b) it was the only goal that “real” people should care about, and c) it was necessary.
I mean, yeah, the passion of the moment, and the way white people have utterly shit their pants over Zimbabwe, and the real concessions to white power that Mandela had to make in order not to spook a hesitant white power dynamic that had a real hard time accepting a black South African leader and all that…
But here’s the thing.
A lack of revenge isn’t fucking novel. Most rights movements do not end in the recreation of bigoted power structures (but now with the former oppressor power in the “victim” spot). It’s just not really the “point” of the rights movement, even though brutal oppressions have been survived.
But every time in a group’s struggle to be free, we have to deal with the outpouring of fear from dominant group members about the specter of “revenge”.
Every fucking time, as it becomes more and more apparent to the world that an oppression exists and is wrong, we get the outpouring of bullshit from the oppressors claiming that while they understand that things can’t continue, they are just so scared that if they stop and treat the oppressed group with dignity then that broken and beaten oppressed group will “try and get revenge”. And before that, the most brutal forms of oppression are often done in the name of “preventing revenge”.
And when the oppressors are finally losing their undeserved place on the neck of the oppressed, they hijack the conversation once again, pretending that every gain of rights for their former victims is an “act of revenge” against them. And once they have fully lost and it’s time to talk about all the murders and beatings, it becomes all about them in the form of demanding that accounting the real human rights violations “not become about revenge”.
And after they have been relegated to the dustbin of history and after their victims have accepted the bare minimum of accountability for the depths of the crimes committed against them because everyone is tired of fighting, we then get this shit.
Where we are all asked to not focus on the crimes committed against the oppressed because “that sort of backward thinking is just revenge” and only herald those who suffered and bled to topple oppression on how they totally stopped all those infinite hordes of “bad oppressed members” who would totally have started stabbing oppressors if that great man hadn’t used their one and only act of heroism to protect them.
And it’s insulting because not only does it erase real crimes and real acts of heroism, but it also privileges this dangerous delusion and justifies its reuse in every fight against oppression.
Allowing this tactic to delay and truncate justice to thrive over and over again as everyone fawns over the poor oppressors and their ludicrously rare “fears” of their righteously angry victims doing a tiny fraction of what they did.
Certainly no African leader is more deserving of a cult of personality (on a continent where this practice is widespread). Yet Mandela was one of those Gandhi-like figures who, if occasionally vain and tempestuous, was no self-indulgent demagogue.
Heh, I guess Mandela is not the only world-renowned figure who makes these Colonialism Cheerleaders wet their pants in hatred and fear.
In the 1980s and ’90s, as the chorus to end apartheid reached its high notes, a guerilla campaign was waged on all sides in South Africa — white segregationists versus blacks, a Zulu nationalist faction versus Mandela’s African National Congress, “coloreds” (a South African term for the Afrikaans-speaking, darker-skinned, but not black, population) on both sides. There was a very real chance that South Africa would become another Zimbabwe. The forecast was for civil war, followed by an inevitable victory by black nationalists, and then decades of score-settling through expropriation and clannish misrule.
We were so too justified in fearing that this campaign for justice would end in the culling of all whites unlike every other racial struggle for equality! WAAAH! Why did you deny us, you bastard, and instead make us have to pretend to take African nations seriously even if they don’t have a proper white spokesperson?
That South Africa has avoided this outcome thus far is remarkable.
And it could still come true for us, you’ll see! Fucking cockblocking commie.
The country’s internal social and economic inequality makes the United States look like a nation of levelers. (South Africa’s distribution of income is the most unequal of any country for which the World Bank compiles statistics.) Even today, it is not clear what fruits the end of apartheid has delivered to most black South Africans — except the basic dignities of the freedom of movement and the freedom of the ballot, which are not to be mocked, but which at the same time don’t fill empty bellies.
I mean, after all, the white power structure is still using economic means to perpetuate the effects of Apartheid in much the same way that capitalism is used against black empowerment hear in the Sta…
On second thought, please pay no attention to this semi-closeted attempt to smear the target of our rage for our own crimes.
Mandela was the one who counseled patience. Justice needed to be realized, but realism demanded a slower departure from the status quo ante. Coming to power, he retained virtually all the apartheid-era bureaucracy. The Mandela government sought justice through its famous Truth and Reconciliation Commission — which offered those two things, but not the material proceeds of a reckoning.
Mandela is today revered as a saint. But it was his cautiousness and realism — his recognition that South Africa could and would become a basket case if popular passions were unloosed all at once — that were his best virtues in government.
He was one of the few who could have accomplished what he did, because everyone knew that he was a man with the most to be furious about. He had been a prisoner for almost three decades. He did not even know his family.
Revolution is the easy part. Washington knew he needed a Hamilton, Jefferson a Gallatin. Mandela’s government included both revolutionaries and technocrats. Terms like “capital attraction,” lost on most revolutionary governments, were in vogue.
This is probably the main reason that Obama gets criticized right here. It’s that Obama recognizes he is in a historic role and wants to live up to the moderate and forgiving name those past historical roles have made for themselves…
Seemingly unaware that not a one of them was actually “moderate”, merely labeled that way to make their shocking transformations to the system seem more mundane and thus forgettable and less dangerous to the oppressive system as a whole.
MLK Jr, Gandhi, Mandela. None of these figures were actually the milquetoast “oh my poor oppressors, let’s not hurt them too bad” figures they are painted as. Sure, many of them shared principles of non-violence that frankly most social justice movements share, but all of them also spoke out frankly about abuses of power and were willing to stand up for unpopular groups and shared human rights and accept no compromise and quarter.
It’s why they must be reduced to a caricature, some smiling face whose message can just be some fucking 70s soft rock song about how we should all try and be friends instead of rare moments when consistent effort finally punched through the brick walls of oppression and forced a social change.
And it’s also why these movements are always reduced to one man, no matter how great, supposedly surrounded by an infinite horde of mean-spirited grudge-holders who want blood spilled in the streets.
Because that makes them easier to discount.
This is Mandela’s saddest legacy. Like so many ruling parties in Africa, the ANC has become a byword for a self-dealing, one-party rule. Its ranks are filled with senescent, go-along-to-get-along cronies. There are some good, thoughtful people in South Africa’s government, but its top leadership barely has a sense of where to guide the country, and certainly little idea of how to get there.
Stay classy, you fuckers.
But wait, there’s more!
Joel Pollak, Wearing a Dead Man’s Blog:
Communism Was Worse than Apartheid
Cause while we’ve gone into the various wingnuts who want to drunkenly piss on Mandela’s grave like they always fantasized about and those who want to pretend to be people to be taken seriously by trying to fake the genuine regard the vast majority had for a glorious man, what about those who want both?
Who want to pretend that they are super serious people who should be listened to because they aren’t super crazy racists who would still support Apartheid in the modern era, but also want all the Klan rejects they’ve been courting for the last 8 years to know that they are still on their side and aren’t about to start speaking well of a commie darkie fag-lover?
Well, don’t you worry, over at Not Compensating for Anything Journalism, we’ve got this complete mess of a post.
Shorter (or the last port before Jungle):
- Um… er… uh… well… (freak out) OOH, no wait, I’ve got something. The way that people are acknowledging the actual things conservatives did to support apartheid and smear Nelson Mandela is the perfect example of why American white conservatives are the most oppressed people in the world. I mean, how dare they suggest that conservatives would ever dare smear such a great man as Nelson Mandela. Though, now that you mention it he was a commie scumbag and Apartheid isn’t as bad as having a bunch of darkies running around letting themselves vote.
And still some of us liberals accuse them of being racist. It’s just not fair.
We begin our final port of call, like every Not Compensating for Anything Journalism post ever written, whining about the mean Jewish… i mean liberal media.
The left media has continued exploiting the death of Nelson Mandela to attack conservatives. The latest version is Sam Kleiner’s attack at Foreign Policy and the Huffington Post, “Apartheid Amnesia: How the GOP conveniently forgot about its role in propping up a white supremacist regime.”
WAAAH! People having memories of our actions is EVIL! And OPPRESSION! AND I DON’T HAVE TO TAKE IT! WAAAHHH!
But seriously, it’s amazing to see just how unwilling conservatives are to accept the consequences of their actions. It honestly galls them and incenses them that people are allowed to remember and think poorly of their past actions in modern circumstances.
And it infuriates them that they could even be critiqued in a modern context not just for the horrible things they said then, but the horrible things they are still saying now or that those horrible actions in the past might mean that they have to put extra effort into their modern scams.
It’s like they are the world’s laziest conmen and just expect the whole world to carefully create a permanent culture of amnesiac marks so they don’t have to go through all the trouble of changing the name on the side of the cart when they want to sell another batch of snake oil.
Which… no. History happened. You supported what you supported.
If you can’t deal with that being permanently recorded on teh interwebs, may I suggest you stop supporting terrible things.
Cause see, 50 years later, I doubt I’m going to be nervously trying to hide my support for trans* rights the way that these fucks do their still current support for Apartheid and Segregation.
Kleiner acknowledges that President Ronald Reagan officially opposed apartheid,
Only because he was literally forced to by Congress. I mean, the fucker tried to veto nearly every attempt by the American people to oppose Apartheid rule and even when his hands were tied he still sent unofficial support and strongly encouraged private business to step in where his government could not.
I mean, if that’s “opposing” Apartheid, then Mussolini “opposed” fascism.
and that some GOP leaders voted to impose sanctions.
Yes, some GOP members belatedly broke ranks with their Apartheid supporting majority in order to do the right thing once it was already a world-wide condemned human rights abuse (it’s worth noting that America was one of the last nations on Earth to finally stop supporting Apartheid in an official or unofficial capacity).
I mean, that’s like saying there’s one or two Republicans who are willing to criticize the Iraq War in 2013 and it certainly doesn’t change where the majority of politicians were aligned at the time.
But he tries to claim that Democrats owned the anti-apartheid struggle, while conservatives backed the regime.
Isn’t it just the worst when left-leaning blogs and indie papers aren’t willing to lie for you? Even when you scream about how they are filthy liberal commies?
It’s just not fucking fair.
As in all such attacks, Kleiner plays down the association of Mandela’s organization, the African National Congress, with global communism.
HE’S A DIRTY FILTHY COMMIE! WHY HASN’T THIS DISCREDITED HIM YET?
Again, I’m just giggling my ass off to think of the day that fucking Pavlov trick dies its ignoble death as the collective American youth go “huh? You mean, like Sweden? Yeah, that place is cool.”
And it’ll be great to finally be able to acknowledge all these great people’s works supporting economic justice without a bunch of old fucks jumping at ghosts screaming commie every five seconds as if that was a goddamn argument against their moral characters.
That revisionist step is necessary to make the slander stick,
Uhhhhhh… did you mean to reveal your game plan or was that just an IT’S ALWAYS PROJECTION accident?
as it obscures the context within which conservatives were reacting.
See, when we supported the outright murder of civil rights activists and a brutal oppressive regime enforcing the will of white colonialism over native interests, we were just speaking out about communism.
Yeah, that’s the ticket. We were just so worried that if South Africa fell to the dirty rotten commies and their magic hammer and sickle dance, then um… they’d be able to launch nukes into Kansas? I dunno, we’re making up shit on the fly at this point and hoping that “oh that’s right, the ruskies” will serve as much as a blanket forgiveness of sins as “but think of the children”.
Kleiner has a loose grip on the facts anyway: he writes that “Nelson Mandela was freed from jail in 1988,” when in fact he was freed in 1990. Those two years are crucial: in 1989, the Berlin Wall fell, ending communism as a threat and opening the door to Mandela’s release.
Yes, you fucking Apartheid Denialist, I’m sure that connection was firmly in the mind of Apartheid leaders when they were resisting international pressure to free their prisoners. They were totally thinking, gosh, we’d so love to release the guy we’ve been torturing for decades this year, but gosh darn it, the Soviet Union just hasn’t quite fell yet and if we let him out too soon, he’ll use his evil commie brainwashing powers to make us all like Borscht, so guess we’ll just have to be evil human rights violating scumbags for another two years.
Are there any other bullshit after the fact justifications you want to pull out of your ass?
Hmm, maybe they had to delay two more years so that Bush the First Evil could promise no new taxes because tax cut promises solve all ills.
Or maybe they needed to wait until a World Cup year because all the good spaces for the “Welcome to not being imprisoned by us” parties were being used up by “We’re so sad our oppressive segregation in all things has gotten us banned from international competition” parties.
Ooh, maybe they just thought the 80s as a decade sucked too bad to have something that awesome happen in them.
I mean, if we’re just making up shit anyways…
But let us accept, just for argument’s sake
That this “supposed” Apartheid took place. And further let us “suppose” for argument’s sake only that it was “bad”. And in an act of reckless charity we even “suppose” that the denial of its “crimes” is an act on par with denying acts of genocide, then…
Huh, I guess even with all that bullshit it still makes us look like the complete wankers we are. Fuck. More obfuscation!
Kleiner’s misleading claim that conservatives supported apartheid.
Just because it’s “true” and we haven’t even stopped supporting it long enough to mourn his death properly instead of trying to piss in his face. I mean, fuck, are we going to start being held to heel for every shitty thing we’ve done now, because that’s going to take a while and…
Suddenly I understand why liberals hate us so much.
An honest comparison of apartheid and communism would have to conclude that communism is, by far, the worse evil.
The fug?
(gently wipe spilled water off shirt)
Go on.
Communism killed millions of people worldwide, in addition to condemning millions to poverty. Apartheid subjected millions of black people to terrible oppression, but killed few
…
You know, if it turns out, contrary to your history on these matters, that you are right and there is a Hell, I would ask you to please not feign surprise when you wake up there after your death choking on a pound of uncut heroin.
–and the black population of South Africa grew during that time. (Notably, life expectancy in the post-apartheid era has fallen dramatically.)
Cool story, Klansbro! #blamingyoureconomicvictimsforcapitalismscrimes
The ANC’s choice to align with the Soviet Union was understandable, given that non-violent resistance to apartheid had largely failed by 1960, and the communists were the only source of arms.
Well, that and the fact that nobody but communists gave a fuck about African self-independence and self-rule. Fuck, that’s still pretty fucking true today seeing as how it seems to only ever be filthy liberal hippies in the West who note how things like the World Bank, IMF, or Western private companies treat Africa like an unruly child who just needs a few more beatings to “learn its place”.
But sure, why not pretend that good ol’ America was waiting with bated breath to help those poor oppressed souls but was just too darn wary of letting the mean darkies play with guns.
Yet on balance, that alliance, in addition to being morally problematic, likely set back the anti-apartheid struggle by a decade or more by alienating allies in the free world.
Sure it did.
You do realize that just because you use something as an excuse to do what you want to do that doesn’t actually make it your genuine reason, right?
Also, you do realize that we’re not as fucking stupid as you and thus aren’t willing to swallow your self-serving bullshit as if it was the chocolate cake you want to pretend it is?
Of course, few Americans who supported the anti-apartheid struggle supported communism.
And I totally bet money that when Apartheid was supported by a majority of Americans, you were equally committed to this “concession” and totally never yelled at anti-Apartheid activists as “being a pack of nasty hippie commies”. Cause that’s truth, yo.
Yet that alliance meant that building such support was more difficult.
Yeah, I’m betting that was totally the reason that bigoted white racists just couldn’t be down with doing the literal bare minimum to stop one of the worst human rights violations in the last 40 years. Mmmhmm.
There were always a few brave souls, in the U.S. and in South Africa itself, who fought apartheid while opposing communism.
Suuuuuure there were. You just keep telling yourself that. And then tell yourself that those same people were you and you get to be off the hook for pledging material and moral support to a bunch of murdering psychos who wanted segregation and colonial rule in Africa to extend into the 21st century and beyond.
One such was Helen Suzman, once the sole anti-apartheid member of the South African Parliament, whose liberal colleagues eventually helped shape South Africa’s constitution to resemble the U.S. Constitution in some respects.
Heh. I love this.
You should care about this lady. Okay, so she didn’t actually do anything to stop oppression, but people in the same governing body were eventually drafted to pledge a seal of white support to the darkie’s document which was stolen from the Freedom Loving USAians so it’s not like they were smart enough to make a real Constitution on their own and and WAAAAAAHHH! Why did he have to win?!?
Rather than trying to politicize Mandela’s death through historical revisionism, Americans should celebrate the fact that his legacy is a point of rare bipartisan consensus.
Why are we even caring about these uppity “fighting against oppression” little shits anyways? I mean, can’t we just exploit every brave person’s death to sell the same brand of “both sides do it, the truth is in the middle” horseshit that we’ve been exploiting for four decades?
Reducing their accomplishments into a tiny little marketable shell that can be safely forgotten and never inspire others to fight for their own freedom and human dignity?
Co opting their struggles into something that can prop up the status quo and enforce the same mythologies that are used to abuse and oppress, resisting the inevitable with violent force and bigoted deed?
Well, dickweasels. Let me answer that.
We stand up for the memories and the reality of their struggle because it did fucking matter. People like Madiba took genuine risks when it would have been safer to be bullied into a hole. Were brave when it would have been simplicity to cower. And by remaining true to themselves, helped slowly steer the world to what it needs to be.
His story needs to be told. To be heard. Right alongside the context of all those who would have been glad to see him hang, all those who now try and claw at his memory because his impact can’t be erased.
Because it’s a reminder of how those epic power structures crumble and fall.
How we can manage to topple the bigotry and hatred and all those who say things can never change.
Because he was and will forever be, just as much an inspiration to others as Gandhi was to him.
Hamba Kahle Madiba.
We stand and remember you.
‘Shorter’ concept created by Daniel Davies and perfected by Elton Beard. Thina, bantu baseNingizimu Afrika, Siyakukhumbula ukucekelwa phansi kwamalungelo okwenzeka eminyakeni eyadlula; Sibungaza labo abahluphekela ubulungiswa nenkululeko kulo mhlaba wethu; Sihlonipha labo abasebenzela ukwakha nokuthuthukisa izwe lethu; futhi Sikholelwa ekutheni iNingizimu Afrika ingeyabo bonke abahlala kuyo, sibumbene nakuba singafani. We are aware of all Internet traditions.™
*As of the writing of this post, the first comment on the Breitbart column is someone pointing out the giant pile of Denialist donkey shit followed by a bunch of inbred tigers trying to prove they are the dumbest fuck on Fuck Mountain by doing the best rendition of “black people iz communist iz Hitler” they can. It’s tragicomic how utterly irredeemable these shitstains are. But as Mandela taught us, we don’t need to convert the irredeemable, merely make them the irrelevant past-clinging turds they have always been.
Any book recommendations for South Africa? I read a novel set there back in college but I forget the name. I remember in the beginning a black guy trying to cross town but he doesn’t have his pass.
There are no comments as I start writing this, but if I’m actually first by the time I finish, I’ll be surprised by, and a little disappointed it, the Sadlytariat.
…I hope I’ll live to see that day, but here in Chambersburg, PA, the buckle on the Scum Belt*, it seems to be a pretty long way off, because Jesus. The propaganda identifying Jeezus with MURICA NUBBER WUN! has been catapulted higher than the pie in an elephant’s eye– (is suddenly buried by a collapsing metaphor, digs his way out from under) Anyway, judging by the letters pages of Public Opinion and The Herald-Mail, the 27% are more like the 73% hereabouts, and I don’t know how you change that, since the churches are indoctrinating new generations faster than natural selection can remove the old ones.
(* The page shows up just fine when I go there from the Google search results, but when I click on the link, I get a 404. The other two links are fine, so [gently caress] me if I know.)
but, bur, he was black, and a bit of a leftie, and black, and better than us
I feel your pain and amazement. I ran into a snakepit of vile stupidity on Reddit, where many conservadouches were in poutrage towards those who’d dared to question St. Reagan’s refusal to put pressure South Africa’s government.
It is just amazing the degree people can go to, rather than admit they might be the tiniest bit wrong.
Everyone can do it, liberals and conservatives. But the conservatives sure have cornered the market on it.
the missionary laid hands on the president and prayed for him to see abortion for what it really is, the merciless slaughter of innocent human life
And take it from a guy who knows “merciless slaughter of human life” when he sees it…
Peter Hammond and his “Frontline Fellowship” are a well known South African mercenary squad which is (surprise, surprise) under fire by human rights organizations for their role in smuggling guns for the SPLA, which is a notorious gang of murderers and rapists in Sudan who are purporting to be a “Christian” resistance to… well, essentially the existence of Muslim officials in power. Peter Hammond is also connected to illegal gun running to Mozambique and considering he is part of a white “Christian” private army, no prizes as to what he was doing during the era of Apartheid rule (remember that “private” mercenary forces were often contracted to “take care” of certain political prisoners).
He’s also closely aligned to several other Christian “ministries” that are actually mercenary companies, including ones who reported the impending release of Nelson Mandela like it was the countdown to rapeapalooza and surprise of surprises he’s a fervent Apartheid Denier (not at all because of personal involvement in the crimes, of course, and you can trust his word and nothing but his word claiming to have never supported Apartheid on his blog… well, not so much denying it as demanding to know where the email writer lives, which might as well be the same thing).
In short, if WND got any more primary source for their Apartheid Denialism, they’d be digging up the corpse of PW Botha.
So what are this totally objective nutcase’s examples of Mandela perfidy?
The activities of “Christian” murderers like this in Africa, and the close ties they often have to the American right wing (the fundiegelical missionaries who helped write Uganda’s “kill the gays bill;” Pat Robertson’s financial ties with Mobutu and Charles Taylor; etc, etc, etc) are something that jumps to the front of my mind whenever I hear one of those pious jackasses indignantly say “how dare you compare Christian fundamentalists with Muslim fundamentalists,” especially when they go for the gold (as many do) and add “Christian fundamentalists don’t kill people!” It’s our equivalent of the Saudi fundamentalist establishment spreading money far and wide to support the likes of al-Qaeda and the Muslim Brothers.
American fundies, living the good life in their all-white suburban gated communities, delude themselves that because they personally aren’t doing anything as low-class as strapping on a bomb and blowing themselves up in a crowded mall, somehow that exonerates them… but then, the average Saudi imams and mutawwas aren’t rushing to Afghanistan either. Their movement still finances murder in the name of God all over the world, and the country should never be allowed to forget it.
Back to Mandela…
Plus the Christian fundamentalists are mostly here making our lives miserable while the Muslim fundamentalists are mostly elsewhere making other people’s lives miserable.
Yeah… on that note. I’ve seen no end of hagiographies of the man talking about how he “refrained from getting revenge on the whites” as if a) it was his only accomplishment or goal, b) it was the only goal that “real” people should care about, and c) it was necessary.
What gets me about that is that as much as they love to talk about what a total mensch Gandhi/MLK/Mandela was for turning the other cheek and foreswearing revenge, it’s not a standard they would ever think of applying for themselves. I mean, I remember how all of these people were talking after 9/11, and I don’t think any of them were suggesting that maybe bombing the ever-living shit out of not one but two sovereign countries, killing thousands and then letting thousands more die by failing to provide adequate security or infrastructure might just have been egregiously disproportionate. Other people are expected to show mercy, generosity, greatness of spirit, or what-have-you. Ourselves, not so much.
See, when we supported the outright murder of civil rights activists and a brutal oppressive regime enforcing the will of white colonialism over native interests, we were just speaking out about communism.
1) For them to argue that gets the causality backwards – communism, third world nationalist movements and the like spread in the region in reaction to the crimes of white colonialism, not the other way around. Saying “oh, we’re afraid of communism, so we have to be colonialist assholes” conveniently inverts what actually happened and avoids the question “why were all these people flocking to communism in the first place?”
2) Even if we take their “Apartheid bad, but communism worse” logic and grant it for the sake of argument, that still does nothing to excuse them because the Apartheid regime in South Africa fell twenty years ago (give or take); the people who made it fall are those same dangerous “communists” they were all warning us about; and surprise surprise, despite twenty years of them being in charge, the country still hasn’t descended into the Stalinist hell we were promised. So having seen the facts, all we can do is go right back to the original question; what, exactly, were we fighting to stop in South Africa?
Rather than trying to politicize Mandela’s death through historical revisionism
Mandela was a dedicated left-wing radical whose entire career was dedicated to the causes we believe in. Ignoring his entire life and legacy in order to serve your saintly rule against “politicizing” death would be as impossible as giving the eulogy for a Pope without ever mentioning the fact that he was Catholic. Fuck off and go find your own saints.
despite twenty years of them being in charge, the country still hasn’t descended into the Stalinist hell we were promised
Unless suezboo’s been writing to us from the gulag I’d guess it hasn’t.
Uh, why are we back to talking about Trayv— oh. South African. I thought that was South Floridian, there.
The fact is, real Americans are outraged about our flag being lowered to honor a foreign black communist who hated the USA and white people. Keep trying to test our patience, liberal ursurpers.
Lawrence O’Donnell, from The West Wing.
There must be a Xhosa word for ‘pancakes’.
It’s not just fundamentalists though. Lots of Americans seem to fall for that kind of crap. For example there was a lot of fundraising for “widows and orphans” done in Irish American communities that went to fund the IRA.
Hey, Pennis! remember how St. Reagan supported apartheid?
And Thatcher?
“Mmwwwwwh! Mwwwwh!”
What’s that, Pennis? We can’t understand you!
Take that turd out of your mouth!
Keep trying to test our patience, liberal ursurpers.
I don’t mind if I do. You must come over and try mine some day.
Oh, come on. you don’t have to tell the truth about boring dead conservatives who supported the apartheid. You can tell the truth about live ones that supported the murderous policy. Like David Cameron whose college Tory organization printed up “Hang Mandela” posters and buttons. Like Clarence Thomas’s decade long involvement with the Lincoln institute which in their words “oppose[d] the “terrorist outlaw” African National Congress (ANC)”. Or Grover Norquist who attended a “Youth for Freedom Conference” in South Africa sponsored by South African businesses and said of it: “The left has no other issue [but apartheid] on campus. Economic issues are losers for them. There are no sexy Soviet colonies anymore.” Jack Abramoff spent much of his time distributing South African army propaganda as part of their ‘Operation Babushka’*
*from http://www.thenation.com/article/175172/meet-conservatives-who-campaigned-apartheid-south-africa#
Don’t bother me with the facts, conservatism can only be failed, it can never fail of itself.
While completely naked, Concern-Trolling Silly Symphony Spam-in-a-Cam spouted the following:
The sheer IT’S ALWAYS PROJECTION from that sentence alone could light Chambersburg for a year, if Chambersburg’s dead-ender majority hadn’t demonstrated their active preference for being in the dark.
Now now, Misanthropic Merrie Melody, just because you’ve never understood anything in your entire life, ever, doesn’t mean nobody else ever understands anything. Also too, don’t you wish you knew how to quit DA?
And of course, the comment I was replying to got cleaned up while I was typing. My bad.
By shuffling off this mortal coil, Mandela has done the world one last great service, & not a trivial one at that: his death has served to out the real scumbags among us in no uncertain terms – because scumbags gotta scumbag, & his death popped open the door to the Scumbag Room nice & wide so that everyone could get a good look.
Let’s just keep that whole “screencaps” thing on the QT for now, shall we?
The activities of “Christian” murderers like this in Africa, and the close ties they often have to the American right wing (the fundiegelical missionaries who helped write Uganda’s “kill the gays bill;” Pat Robertson’s financial ties with Mobutu and Charles Taylor; etc, etc, etc) are something that jumps to the front of my mind whenever I hear one of those pious jackasses indignantly say “how dare you compare Christian fundamentalists with Muslim fundamentalists,” especially when they go for the gold (as many do) and add “Christian fundamentalists don’t kill people!”
They should try that last line down in El Salvador or Guatemala some time.
in order to serve your saintly rule against “politicizing” death
twenny bucks says there will be some rightwing/gunnut fb post on the first anniversary of newtown about a story from one of the dead children’s parents saying, ‘we don’t need gun control in this country…’
The only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.
SPOILER ALERT: the bad guys with guns probably got away
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/12/10/inside-the-nypd-s-report-on-the-kenya-shopping-mall-massacre.html
It’s ALWAYS projection.
OH, i always miss the dumb-ass trolls. Not that I want to read what they say, but I love the Sadlyville replies.
Just the sheer fucking gall of the right wing to try and bend Mandela’s world-changing accomplishments into some kind of twisted metaphor for OBAMACAREEEEEVILBLAAARRGHGHG is making me yell at my TV more than usual.
Mandela was a great person; the kind of person you want to tell the aliens about when they land and ask “So, what are human beings all about, anyway?”.
SPOILER ALERT: the bad guys with guns probably got away
According to the beeb those Kenyan military types that weren’t shooting cops were looting the mall.
Just the sheer fucking gall of the right wing to try and bend Mandela’s world-changing accomplishments into some kind of twisted metaphor for OBAMACAREEEEEVILBLAAARRGHGHG is making me yell at my TV more than usual.
i strongly advise you to NOT read the comments over at wingnutdaily…according to them, mandela was the worst violent communist thug who ever thugged..and he thugged A LOT…
i was perusing all the wingnut diatribes about what a communist- marxist-violent-assassination/torture-obsessessed-obama-wannabe mandela REALLY was and i was ready to throw up…they painted a pretty heinous picture of him (and of course anything winnie did totally means he did it too) without, of course, any citations whatsover…
i wandered over pbs way and clicked this handy-dandy mandela timeline which was handy for a sometimes forgetful sort such as i am…
but the real answer to my question of ‘what universe do these wingnuts live in’ was answered, as so many of my silly questions are by the great pup:It’s ALWAYS projection.
of course! they live in a hologram-universe of their own paranoia, self-loathing, ignorance, hatefulness…etc…
I had completely forgotten about the Michael Mann v NRO/CEI kerfuffle.
They’re so used to the court of public opinion in their heads that actual courts with, like, facts and stuff are dangerous places.
RedState TrikeForce needs extra-strength morphine suppositories, STAT!
I’m certainly not going mango hunting at redstate, but the URL alone — “paul-ryan-plays-us-for-chumps” — is popcorn worthy. Please proceed, redstate. It would be terrible and horrible and scary to us liberals if the GOP found an even crazier Teahadi to primary against ol’ ZEGS. I’m askeerded!
Failure Artist: Mandela’s memoirs would be a good place to start. Interesting, funny in places, and he sure doesn’t spare himself.
I wish I hadn’t sold back all those books from my freshmen sem “Africa from Book to Film”. The callousness of youth. Sigh…
I’m certainly not going mango hunting at redstate,
ha! i did it for you…here’s the most enthusiastic of them:
Oh, Gary, thank you! You had me worried with that perfect spelling, but you came through on the very last word. God’s in his heaven and all’s right with the world.
As long as we’re harvesting RedState mangoes, don’t overlook this gem:
…you cannot make the lowest and least motivated get off their butt in a nation where slavery has been abolished.
Oh, his fingers just tingle for that whip handle!
OK. To start with :
1. Cerberus, I really admire your writing. I think you are a gifted and impassioned writer. You have educated me to the discrimination which people who do not fit into the gender binary face every day – all new to me and I am grateful.
2. “Mussolini made the trains run on time”. The old argument that blacks had it better under apartheid is similar in form. It all goes to where your key value lies – which is more important to you : efficiency and comfort for the minority or justice and democracy for the many.
3. Yes, there is little doubt that “things” were easier for white SAfricans back in the Bad Old Days – as a white kid, I had a privileged lifestyle probably as good as, if not better than that of all you First World folks.
4. SA is not a good place right now. Jacob Zuma and the gang now in power are, IMO, a bunch of corrupt incompetents. What, you guys never had any of those?
5. The income inequality and level of poverty is horrifying. The public education and health systems are bad which doesn’t help. HIV/AIDS kills thousands but is being contained now with targeted medical campaigns which seems to be working.
6. Crime is rampant and scary but with unemployment at about 30%(low estimate) hardly surprising.
7. Everything back in the 60s-80s was about the Cold War. Every local fight would have the two sides waging proxy battles. Anti-colonial movements everywhere took this same format and we all knew who would be on which side.
tl – I know. Ask questions for all SA history.
…you cannot make the lowest and least motivated get off their butt in a nation where slavery has been abolished.
Hey, I’ve got an idea! I know this sounds crazy, but what if you tried paying them?
Oh, and, Failure, A Long Walk to Freedom is an easy read . Highly recommended.
Pollak:
Jeez, you get a whole lot of hits at Breitbart complaining about communists, so perhaps they should shut the hell up already.
Which is weird, because you teabaggers are anything BUT chumps.
Which is weird, because you teabaggers are anything BUT chumps.
Yeah, cause playing them for razor sharp brainiacs would WIN!
“Chump don’t want no help chump don’t get no help”
zegs
Ask questions for all SA history
All of these things are common for a nation trying unbury itself from colonial oppression. The entire Middle East shares that same story, the Balkans, the rest of Africa…
For as much as whitey likes to point and laugh at the tribulations of these fledgling nations, they conveniently forget who broke the fucking things in the first place.
What, you guys never had any of those?
Harding comes to mind, as with U. S. Grant, the historians say that neither man was personally corrupt, but that their associates were grifters of the first-rank. We have a lot of local corruption in America.
In Bell, CA, the city officials got paid oodles of money considering the size of the town they claimed to be serving. The ringleader even tried to game the pension system(California has its own independent pension system for government workers), and he may have succeeded in doing so at the price of a long jail sentence.
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/5-of-6-convicted-in-bell-calif-city-government-corruption-case/
Jacob Zuma and the gang now in power are, IMO, a bunch of corrupt incompetents
See also: United States, 2001-2009.
tsam: One of my alltime favourite books is Roman, Go Home by Adam Fergusson.
Brilliant satire on what happened in Britain as the Roman Empire abandoned its colony.
Paul Theroux:
I wonder how much of that $50 billion is military aid to Egypt.
1) [citation needed]
2) Must be the aid, right? Because no other factors contribute to such things
3) STFU, bro.
So, Mr. Theroux is trying to say the thieves have gotten more efficient? Talking about private philanthropy is a little iffy, as some are better at funneling money to the intended destinations than others (see Mr. Santorum‘s “charities”). Also, citing the oil revenues of Angola and Nigeria as if the miney were going to the people of those nations seems a bit dodgy. As for the way things were 50 years ago compared to today, on many important levels (like income equality, infrastructure maintenance, school funding, to name a few), things in the Good Ol’ U S of A are worse than they were 50 years ago. Especially for straight white men.
So I question his conclusion that it’s the “aid” (unless you’re referring to plutocrats helping themselves) that has made things worse.
… as if the money were going …
You send textbooks to schools and then the savages forget how to grow beans.
I haven’t read many Paul Theroux books (three maybe?) but after every one I thought “That guy is an asshole.”
1) [citation needed]
a recurrent theme…
Ooh. $50 Billion in aid. Africa’s population is just over a billion people. Give any random person in financial trouble $50. Did you cure their poverty? Why in the hell would anyone think that repeating that exercise on a continent wide scale, under circumstance that virtually guarantee the money comes right back to the benefactor to buy weapons, would have a different result?
poorer, sicker, less educated, and more badly governed.
Wow, sounds like NO OTHER COUNTRY I can think of.
Never mind that Angola’s oil revenues are around $72 billion, and Nigeria’s $95 billion; that Africa boasts at least 55 verified and somewhat detached billionaires.
Places with oil and billionaires never have poverty?
poorer, sicker, less educated, and more badly governed.
Worst. Daft Punk. Evar!
Yeah. $50 billion dollars in aid. Blown on weapons, ‘defense’ and short term food aid. With a little thrown in for vaccination. So freaking what.
To cure poverty in Africa, all one has to do is with local cooperation and consent:
Build an continent spanning expressway system like Germany’s Autobahn, and a train system like France’s or Japan’s, and a few port facilities comparable in capacity to the port of Long Beach. Put hydroelectric dams on every cataract of the Congo, Zambezi and Nile using locally hired laborers and engineers, and even African built heavy equipment if any is available. (don’t really, but it would be one way to provide cheap power) Shade the Sahara, and the Kalahari and every other desert with solar and wind farms, use the power to run desalination plants and pumps to take it where it’s needed. Build a robust continent wide public health infrastructure. Pass and enforce continent wide fair trade and minimum wage laws. Resolve ancient religious, political, and tribal grudges and stop brand new resource wars. Make sure the profits from extraction industries stay in local communities and make sure those same extraction industries aren’t destroying the environment. Create continental wildlife parks to preserve the continent’s biodiversity, and stop poaching and smuggling of exotic wildlife by addressing local poverty and by finding and prosecuting their customers abroad. Get the rest of the world to stop profiting from the exploitation of the continent and start sharing the profits of developing it.
So how much of that list does $50 billion buy? Not very much. It would be a start, maybe even a good start, but it’s not what aid agencies are doing.
I haven’t read many Paul Theroux books (three maybe?) but after every one I thought “That guy is an asshole.”
Me two.
I bet he read Lords of Poverty and is trying to summarize. From his short stories he gives the impression that he spent some time in the Aid Industry in Africa trying to get laid.
Wait a minute–are you saying the American, Chinese and Russian oil companies aren’t sharing the revenues with the actual inhabitants of those nations? Noooooo, they wouldn’t plunder the place and take all the profits for themselves. That’s just being mean to oil company executives.
A quick search doesn’t turn it up but there was a pic in Granta a while ago of the Newton, MA Cub Scout troupe that contained both Theroux and lil’ Mikey Bloomberg. Looked like lots of fun.
I love the way conservatives and Republicans throw around Communist like it’s fucking illegal to believe in socialism or communism. In a “democracy”, aren’t people allowed to believe what they want? That’s sort of the point, isn’t it?
Just went on a search for books on South Africa and apartheid in my local library system. They have “Long Walk to Freedom” but only as an e-Book which doesn’t help me.
Books I got out on hold:
Truth & lies : stories from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa
Nelson Mandela Speaks
Clearly the answer is to just send every person in Africa a copy of Atlas Shrugged and a set of bootstraps.
Grr. Thanks to
I somehow ended up reading this crazy thread.
They throw the term “Communism” around so much that it’s practically lost all meaning.
It’s fucked up to believe that Communism will ever take root in these United States.
It’s fucked up to believe that Communism will ever take root in these United States.
I thought the corporate-friendly ACA had us 95% of the way there? Did I miss something?
Sorry Sub. As penance I went and read some of it. Is there an antidote?
PROVE TO ME THERE IS A DOTE.
I clearly have no idea that Benghazi is anything other than a bullshit wingnut talking point.
YOU CAN’T PROVE THERE ISN’T!
PROVE TO ME THERE IS A DOTE.
The existence of mairzy dotes and dozy dotes is an OBJECTIVE FACT, established beyond all doubt or cavil, you dote denialist.
Clearly the answer is to just send every person in Africa a copy of Atlas Shrugged and a set of bootstraps.
Teach a man how to make his own bootstraps and he can go on trapping boots
for his lifetimeuntil they’re extinct.Renowned Christian minister: ‘He tried to destroy us, set his dogs on us’
The Universal Law of Projection means that this complaint was inevitable, given the propensity of Afrikaner white supremacists for literally setting literal dogs on people they disagreed with.
Get the rest of the world to stop profiting from the exploitation of the continent and start sharing the profits of developing it.
Yeah, that’s what goes unsaid in all these stories about the failure of Africa. The unspoken assumption is that the white people all closed up shop and went home sixty years ago, and that everything that’s happened since then has been 100% on them, and the only reason anything’s wrong is that the wogs are just too silly to figure it out. Bullshit. Neocolonialism in Africa was in full swing during that entire time – the great powers just switched from a “British in India” model of ruling the continent directly to an “Americans in Latin America” model of ruling through friendly dictators, intelligence operations, mercenaries/paramilitaries paid by the corporations, etc. And when native African leaders tried to actually take responsibility for their own affairs (Lumumba, Mandela), we sided with the neocolonial regimes and did our damnedest to shut them the hell down right then and there.
Looking at South Africa since Mandela led it to freedom, one wonders how the Congo would look today if Lumumba had had a chance at a similar legacy there, instead of being shut down by a Belgian and American puppet.
The fact is, why are white people responsible for all the worlds problems according to the libs? We are responsble for most of the worls progress and wealth, and some uppity lefties think we owe them when we did all the work?
I think we should just let African kill each other off and starve.
Say, wasn’t that Karl Marx feller white? And that other one, Lannon……uh…….Lenin……yeah that feller. And that other Russkie, the one with the big mustache, Stalin, he was kind of white lookin’ too.
Pancake breakfast. And not the good kind.
Good morning! So a guy faked sign language at Mandela’s funeral? What was that about? Link and explanation about how only white people would care?
Can we not, for the love of the late God, just put Dennis and DA in a box and shake it already?
FA, I’m white myself, through no fault of my own, and I have only a morbid curiosity about the sign-language thing, except to the extent that it has right-wing wrigglers excreting even harder in their diaperstems than usual.
The fake sign language guy is comedy gold. His bbc interview this morning killed.
Is that a Homestuck reference, Austin?
It’s fucked up to believe that Communism will ever take root in these United States.
If it didn’t happen in the 1930s, it never will. Conditions were ideal then: The economy was much worse, income gaps far greater, rage against Wall Street and the rich much sharper. Plus the horrors of Stalinism were either as yet unknown to most Americans or lay in the future.
American Communism made some minor inroads in places like labor unions, which provoked the furious backlash in the 1950s. But Communism was never a serious threat even under the best conditions. When it comes to American Communism, the cure has always been a hundred times worse than the disease.
…one wonders how the Congo would look today if Lumumba had had a chance at a similar legacy there, instead of being shut down by a Belgian and American puppet.
Oh, give Mobutu credit. He was a crook, to be sure, but a very clever one who played the superpowers like fiddles so that they would prop him up as he stole.
Maybe he should have just snuck up behind the Danish prime minister and given her an unsolicited shoulder massage.
If it didn’t happen in the 1930s, it never will. Conditions were ideal then: The economy was much worse, income gaps far greater, rage against Wall Street and the rich much sharper. Plus the horrors of Stalinism were either as yet unknown to most Americans or lay in the future.
Funny thing is that modern conservatives look back on the New Deal AS communism, when it was little more than efforts to stave it off and demonstrate a bit of humanity. Roosevelt knew (as did all the conservatives at the time) that a few more years of that Grapes of Wrath type dystopia would assuredly lead to a popular uprising that might have put communists in the government in numbers that could actually have some effect.
Funny thing is that modern conservatives look back on the New Deal AS communism…
Oh, a lot of conservatives at the time thought the same way. When you look back at some of the shit FDR’s contemporary opponents said about him, it makes Obama Derangement Syndrome look like a mild cold.
Jesus and Santa are white too. Also.
Oh, a lot of conservatives at the time thought the same way
Even the ones who would benefit from FDRs policies. I had a friend from Oklahoma whose grandfather refused government aid that would’ve fed his family, even at the possible cost of starving them to make his point. I don’t know if he finally compromised or found another way to feed them, but such people did exist back then. Nowadays you can be Craig T Nelson and say that nobody ever helped you, but that you did get food stamps in your early career.
Semites are white, essentially.
Oh, a lot of conservatives at the time thought the same way
That’s for sure, but they were so damn irrelevant after Hoover kinda buried them.
Senate: D: 59, R: 36
House: D: 317, R: 117
(73rd Congress, when TVA was enacted, the SEC was started, etc…)
While researching that, I found our Washington state senator’s name was Homer T. Bone. I am so fucking jacked about that I can’t hardly stand it.
He was succeeded by Warren Magnuson, who held that Senate seat for 36 fucking years.
I knew that about Magnuson, though.
HAHAHAHAHAHA
Troll posts Andrea Peyser article, typed entirely with one hand, as evidence that Obama is a poonhound.
Tsk tsk tsk–selfies with a white woman, shaking hands with Raul Castro, what’s next? RE-EDUCATION CAMPS?
This thread is DEAD, FRED.
I had a friend from Oklahoma whose grandfather refused government aid that would’ve fed his family, even at the possible cost of starving them to make his point.
There were a few farmers up here in Saskatchewan who literally starved to death in the Dirty Thirties rather than take any assistance whatsoever – including even church charity.
5/5 Darwins!
One of these things just doesn’t belong:
Then there’s his misogyny, his sexual abuse of his grandnieces, his statement that the Jews should have sacrified themselves in the Holocaust, and his support of the caste system.
Total piece of shit.
FDR (who was quite wealthy) wasn’t trying to end Capitalism, he was trying to save it from itself.
As stated before: minus the New Deal things would have gotten so bad that we might very well have gone Communist or Fascist. Both ideologies had some popularity back then.
The term “dictator” didn’t carry quite the same stigma then as it does today. Studebaker actually marketed a car called the “Dictator”.
The term “dictator” didn’t carry quite the same stigma then as it does today
THANKS OBAMA. Way to give dictators a bad name.
You guys:
Homer T. Bone
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!
5/5 Darwins!
One could say they were bitch-slapped by the Invisible Hand of the marketplace.
So how did the Danish PM taking a selfie of her and Obama and Cameron with her phone morph into Obama taking a selfie with her?
As soon as it morphed into: “Oh, that white chick is probably banging that gang member”.
The fake sign language guy is comedy gold. His bbc interview this morning killed.
I like his claim to be schizophrenic. Immediately started wondering whether deaf schizophrenics hallucinate their voices in Sign.
He’s not schizophrenic Smyt, he had a schizophrenic episode. It’s a BIG DIFFERENCE.
I’m like an octopus at the boner buffet.
I’m not schizophrenic either so I keep telling the voices that they’re WASTING THEIR TIME talking to me.
If I were one of those girls with Ghandi, I wouldn’t be able to sleep well fearing his self-control might fail at any moment. Even if he did nothing but sleep, it’s still abusive.
Should note in the Explaining Voice that there is a literature on deaf people and hallucinations, going back at least to MacDonald Critchley’s 1939 paper. To sum up: lots of profoundly and prelingually deaf schizophrenics *do* complain of hallucinations in Sign. Debate continues whether some *hear* their voices.
Debate continues whether some *hear* their voices.
Sounds like we need a well designed study involving deaf schizos and cochlear implants.
Jesus and Santa are white too. Also.
Thus do I refute thee.
re: do deaf schizophrenics hear their voices?
Reminds me of one of the greatest named webcomics of all time.
I’m deaf in the left ear, I haven’t detected any anti-deaf or anti-hearing-impared bigotry here. Perhaps I’m blind as well because of my pseudo-librul ideology.
If it didn’t happen in the 1930s, it never will. Conditions were ideal then: The economy was much worse, income gaps far greater, rage against Wall Street and the rich much sharper. Plus the horrors of Stalinism were either as yet unknown to most Americans or lay in the future.
American Communism made some minor inroads in places like labor unions, which provoked the furious backlash in the 1950s. But Communism was never a serious threat even under the best conditions. When it comes to American Communism, the cure has always been a hundred times worse than the disease.
I feel like the whole left-to-right spectrum from communism to fascism no longer works as well in a lot of places outside of Europe. You have equivalents to things like communism/socialism, but they don’t exactly overlap. In America, the Communist Party per se never made serious inroads, but you had some serious anticapitalist populism in the early twentieth century (rural populists, urban labor movements) that in their own way were about as radical on economics as the Communist Parties in France, Italy, wev. At the same time, those movements also had a ton of religious overtones – from William Jennings Bryan being a die-hard creationist, to Huey Long saying “communism? Nah, this isn’t communism, it’s right out of the Bible!” to the urban unions where the Catholic Church and their social justice message was a big part of the movement. So in that respect, big difference from the “religion is the opium of the masses” commies.
Why can’t “President” Obama do something dignified–like walking out on Mandela’s funeral, the way Dreamy Ted Cruz did?
There is much to pick at in this Robert Knight nonsense:
When you see a rape victim with blacked eyes, who do you blame? The feminist what done it.
Again, Pennis, how in the hell do you interpret the Danish PM taking a selfie of her, Cameron and Obama with her phone as Obama taking a selfie of himself with her?
Is that the right-wing phony outrage of the week? I thought we were still doing “the handshake”?
It’s so hard to keep up sometimes.
This is worse, because, well, the leader of Denmark is also a form of Danish pastry of some sort, apparently.
Not just him and her, either.
Roberto Schmidt, a photographer for AFP, wrote this week that he was surprised to learn how people were characterizing Michelle Obama’s demeanor during the much-publicized “selfie” that involved the President, Thorning-Schmidt and British Prime Minister David Cameron.
Also, https://twitter.com/hotelkeys/status/411153074129223680/photo/1
PENIS-IN-IN.
The selfie that brought down civilization.
Liar.
re: Selfie
Obama clearly was not engaged in a selfie. By definition. Citation?
OED.
re: I forgot
that dude is totes random. Will grab words, strip all context, put it into some fevered nightmare scenario, and then call it a gotcha. Will even make inherently contradictory statements so long as gotcha.
Well Pennis, my hair is a bird. Your argument is invalid.
Gotcha!
Basically, whatever Obama does up to and including breathing, is the worst thing ever.
You know they’ve got nothing when they’re down to trying to score points off mineutia like this.
That asshole Cruz walked out of the memorial service when Raul Castro came on stage? And the MSM never mentioned that? What a childish, petulant thing to do! If anything could disqualify someone from a position of responsibility anywhere, surely that’s it. But of course, that goes down the memory hole, yet the Danish PM taking a picture of herself, Obama, and Cameron somehow reflects badly on…Obama? These peoples’ brains need rewiring.
At least the selfie was consensual, unlike the back-rub.
It’s not the Christ that’s the best case for Christianity, it’s the large pool of candidates for Antichrist.
You still haven’t explained how the Danish PM taking a picture of herself with Obama and Cameron reflects badly on Obama. Seriously, the Wingnut Wurlitzer is all over this and I just cannot comprehend what they’re on about.
I just cannot comprehend what they’re on about.
Black man, white woman. Think about it.
Neither was this. This was a memorial service. Mandela’s funeral was later, at his home village. I suppose all the singing and dancing fails to meet your assumed-for-the-occasion standard of decorum, too?
And it wasn’t a funeral when Reagan puked on the Japanese PM, either.
Don’t expect to get any sense out of the troll, Shirley you know better.
Have you ever been in a Turkish prison? The don’t call me Shirley!
Maybe we should talk about collard greens. I made some vegetarian collard greens today. They aren’t that great without the bacon. My blackeyed peas turned out great but it took so long to make. I should just start going back to using canned beans maybe.
This is less banal than the current conversation.
Dandelion greens are much better. If you had to buy seeds to grow dandelions and they were a pain in the ass to cultivate, everybody’s yards would be dandelion farms.
I made some vegetarian collard greens today.
I’m more of a Swiss Chard guy myself.
It was Bush Sr., who was Reagan’s VP, so close enough by internet standards.
Oops, my bad. It was Papa Bush. See, when I’m wrong, I admit it.
Yeah, Obama was being a bit gauche for sure … but that horrendous atrocity was happening at a memorial service, which was not actually a funeral.
A distinction without a difference?
Tell it to his family at the actual funeral.
YOUR MEME IS BAD, & YOU SHOULD FEEL BAD.
Also: if taking a selfie was atrocious & tasteless, what were all those folks smiling, laughing & dancing to music?
Pol Pot times Attila The Hun?
Dammit! Beaten to teh punch by St. TVRBoK!
THANKS OBAMA.
Swiss chard is delicious and under appreciated.
I wanted to get mustard greens today but they weren’t at Shoppers today. Broccoli rabe is also good but it’s expensive and never at Shoppers.
Chris: Terrific commentary. As usual.
The Major has been on a roll throughout the thread.
Thanks to Sub for the Fark comments link. Hilarious stuff.
Also so many more Sadlynaughts deserving praise for a great thread. (These three only stuck in my memory.)
Perhaps I’ll scroll through ithe thread again looking for nifty band names that you’ll have unwittingly created….
Puke on the PM?
Band names you’ll invented….
Strapping on a Bomb
Unruly Bits
Causality Backwards
Greatness of Spirit
Dangerous Communists
Fake Sign Language
Studebaker
Deaf Schizophrenics
Proxy Battles
Dozy Dotes
Spoiler Alert
Derangement Syndrome
Schizophrenic Episode
Girls with Ghandi
Homer Bone
Taking a Selfie
Plunder the Place
Trainwreck Mode
“Girls with Ghandi” is pretty catchy sounding.
Babes of Bollywood
Maidens of Mumbai
New Cuties of New Delhi
Greeting Raul
Hauling in Hindi
Gregarious on the Ganges
Busking for Brahma
Sacred Cow and Tool Store
the leader of Denmark is also a form of Danish pastry of some sort
I am DEEPLY OFFENDED by the way the first woman prime minister of my homeland is being objectified by right-wing pundits and treated as some sort of sugary treat.
She is of course a healthy slice of Smørrebrød.
The fact is, Jesus was white. Suck it, liberals and multicultists.
. I made some vegetarian collard greens today. They aren’t that great without the bacon.
Add a couple whole dried chipotles to the pot.
So in that respect, big difference from the “religion is the opium of the masses” commies.
There’s an axiom from history class (mine, at least, from the most brilliant educator I’ve ever had the honor of meeting) that states that every revolution, once it consolidates it’s power, becomes almost exactly what it fought against. Obvious example, France being hijacked by Napoleon…
As it pertains to real Marxism vs actual communism on the ground, I’m sure that once they obtain power, their efforts to keep it reveal that religion is perhaps the most effective tool in keeping people blindly loyal so that they’ll ignore your efforts to silence/crush/disappear the less compliant types. Even if a true communist state ever happened (Stalin and Mao don’t really get to wear that badge because massive corruption and whatnot) religion would ultimately end up being a centerpiece of government control efforts. It IS the opiate of the masses, and it works. Our government does it constantly, and even in a free society where you can like read books and stuff, it still works.
I just cannot comprehend what they’re on about.
Yeah, but that’s nothing new.
She is of course a healthy slice of Smørrebrød.
So who’s the Pålæg (literally “on-lay”), the topping, in this sammich?
Gold star for Helle for hiking up that skirt, BTW. That’s true diplomacy and good will at work, right there. I’m a fan.
She is of course a healthy slice of Smørrebrød.
Better than the Major on a roll.
Band names you’ll remembered?
Memorial Smørrebrød Selfies
OK, so I was reading over at CPP’s place that the “Birther” idiots are having a grand old time because Loretta Fuddy was killed in a Molokai Air crash. Since she was with the Hawai’i Dept. of Health, mentions of her locally refer to the implementation of ObamaCare or to Same-sex Marriage (now legal in HI since 12/2/2013 – it was some “Civil union” dodge before then). Apparently, elsewhere, she is primarily remembered for releasing BHO’s “long-form” birth certificate to him in an effort to shut the idiots up (and the fact that they are still not preceded by “reality denying bigots” in any news report but are still treated as though there were actually some validity to their claims should have been a clue to Obama about the feasibility of getting anywhere by treating the GOP as if it were actually interested in any kind of negotiation that did not begin and end with “you give us everything we ask for, we give you nothing”).
He quotes something that probably came from the WND site (I won’t go there to verify):
Could we please put in a rule that a public utterance like that one automatically requires the utterer to attend – and pass – the Citizenship classes required of immigrants applying for US Citizenship? Don’t they realize that the “born in the US means US Citizen, no matter where your parents are citizens” part of the Constitution (as amended) is where they get the “anchor baby” nonsense? I know, I know – being a wingnut means never having to believe anything that doesn’t fit your worldview, and we’ve always been at war with Eastasia.
Greeting Raul
I see what you did there.
Also too, doctor took me off the rat poison today. Tonight I’ll celebrate with kale soup.
*Kale is a no-no when taking warfarin, very high in vit. K.
celebrate with kale soup.
Woot! That’s what I call a party!
My (now dead) uncle used to always refuse vegetables at dinner, saying it was doctors orders. We all thought he was joshing us until we got oursleves educated.
Greeting Raul
I see what you did there.
It always comes back to recipes with Pupienus.
moar band names
Dried Chipotles
Hijacked by Napoleon
Molokai Air Crash
A batshit crazy nuclear power with an army of 1.2 million on one side, and what is laughingly called the civilian government on the other, is taking “instability” to a whole ‘nother level. Think Stalin in 1941.
I would have put a colon between “Think” and Stalin” but that’s just the way I use the rhetorical formulation.
When I form a band, I’m going to go with “Ignatz Semmelweiss and the Important Figures in the History of Hygiene”.
I have some band names saved just avoid the spine chilling horro of the band naming meeting.
Just Like Listmas
s/b horror
Ran across an interesting name today. Hadn’t heard of The Airborne Toxic Event before.
Speaking of economic development in Africa, and the causes for its lack, http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2013/12/13/ethiopia-utopia-a-village-finds-wealth-without-religion-can-you-guess-how-its-devout-neighbors-reacted/
I won’t share my band names because I might need them and we all know how you liberals like to steal free shit.
I won’t let you have my band name. But you can be in “The Ignatz Semmelweiss and the Important Figures in the History of Hygiene Experience”. I could be in a band whose cover band has recorded an album first.
Dried Chipotles
When did tigris start work at the Department of Redundancy Department?
Gay Pride.
I thought the Mandela-memorial-sign-gibberish-dude was funnier before I heard him interviewed. After that the incident seems sad. I wanted it to be the work of a brazen dick, done for nothing but the perverse joy of it.
I places where feet are cherished as they ought to be you can get them canned in sauce.
Not that I would approve of such a thing, but it would be funnier as such.
Cherishing the foot.
tigris said,
December 14, 2013 at 0:24
Nymstealing is a bannable offense, Pastor Swank.
Them lions is so gay they can’t even DRIVE straight.
Lookit The Corner:
Fun’s starting in comments, but it’s a good Friday-evening kinda thing for them.
Pupienus dives for mangoes so you don’t have to.
Unemployment benefits breeds more unemployment. What type of lousy economist are you?
The job market stinks because federal policies are anti-growth.
So… the labor market is in bad shape, so we should pay people to stay out of it.
and on and on
Well, dry those peppers again. We’ll teach those jalapenos.
Ooops. Keep messing up teh nym thing.
Snow.
Pupienus dives for mangoes so you don’t have to.
No-one warned me that there would be idiots in a NRO comment thread!
Donald Trump continues to be the class act he always has been. He and whatever small animal he has on his head are not welcome in Hawai’I.
I think it’s either a Marmot or a Bushy-tailed Woodrat.
Synchilla.
Quantum Leap, episode 273: Sam leaps into the body of a sign language interpreter at Mandela’s memorial. “Oh boy.”
-Stolen from someone who stole it from someone on twitter
Although I am sure the poster above IS a half wit, I don’t for a moment believe that he or she is a liberal.
Clearly all liberals are murderers.
Arapahoe High School gunman Karl Pierson was a committed Socialist
A committed Socialist who, thanks to the gun laws or lack thereof that you and your kind have been pushing on the country, was able to get his hands on a gun and murder the children of this good, God-fearing community from the heartland of Real America.
Why do you want to empower Socialists to murder America’s children, my good man? Why do you hate America?
I’m so liberal, I demanded an abortion in Reno, just to watch it die.
I’m so liberal I know that if this were 1856 or 1860 or 1864, I would be a republican.
I’m so liberal I know that if Abraham Lincoln were alive today, he’d be a democrat.
I’m so liberal I know that if Nathan Bedford Forrest were alive today, he, like his soulmates who used to be Dxiecrats, would be republicans.
Any more ahistorical maundering, Pennis?
What do you deny in what I just said, idiot?
True fact:
Florida has a Republican congresscitter named Ted Yoho. There’s comedy gold in the name alone:
Ted Yoho (R-FL)
((( I sorta see the boldface as the main title for a wickedly-written ensemble comedy revolving around a Colbert-like congressman, rich, vain, dogmatic, and thick-as-a-post oblivious.)))
First two sentences of the congresscritter’s bio:
(http://www.tedyoho.com/)
I found it amusing to rummage around on his site.
May I suggest not feeding trolls?
You’re right of course, but I did beatify myself—I’m just bored, I guess.
Plus, this meme is so fucking stupid. “Lincoln was a republican.” Yeah, and all those republicans in the south lurrrves them some Lincoln, you betcha!
I guess if you slugged someone it would be a viscous attack.
“A viscous attack”—? WTF? The rapist used plenty of lube?
That’s a mighty fine mpression of an ignorant conservative asshat doing an impression of a strawman liberal you’ve got going there.
C&P troll is very, very librul
not.
On the other hand, I expect the democrats’ new platform of school shootings and nun rape to lead to a groundswell of support in 2014. After all, it worked for the contras.
Dear fuck, Pennis, if you’re so fucking brain-dead ignorant that you don’t know that in the 1850s and ’60s, the republican party was the liberal party…I just don’t know how to…how can you find your ass to pull this crap out?
Later than the 1860s considering Teddy Roosevelt.
Reading threads like the above have me convinced that were a leftist to tell a conservative that his house was on fire, the latter would adamantly and unswervingly declare the opposite to be true, and go about living in the ruins until dying of exposure.
Ted Yoho (R-FL)
If that’s short for “Rolling – floor laughing”, it MAKES NO SENSE.
You don’t need to hang on Pennis’ shriveled sack, Battleaxe. That’s DA’s job.
Nym, you’re making an assumption, that Pennis has any sort of sack, shriveled or otherwise.
I think it’s being far too generous to consider them “the liberal party” at any point after 1877 – with the Tilden-Hayes Compromise, the Republicans agreeing to end Reconstruction and give the ex-Confederate elites a free rein in the Southern states, black people and all the advances of Reconstruction being sold down the river, and the death of the Radical Republican faction that had been the home of abolitionism. (On the issue of civil rights for nonwhite people, there basically wasn’t any meaningful voice in mainstream politics for them after that, and wouldn’t be until well into the 20th century).
I haven’t posted here in a while, but I’m confused as to what that nun rape story has to do with anything political whatsoever. What am I missing, besides the poster’s random idiocy?
besides the poster’s random idiocy?
It’s idiocy with a message, that this is the thing you can expect from a society where a man can’t troll a librul snark blog in peace.
Either that or it’s space madness.
One blah-perpetrated crime demonstrates librul hypocrisy on matters of race, obviously.
Yeah, old Dan Sickles has a lot to answer for. Before the war, he was the first person in America found not guilty of murder, by reason of temporary insanity. During the war he pulled his division out inn front of the line and nearly cost us the battle of Gettysburg, and then he engineered the stolen election of 1876, which as Chris said, is basically when the republican party lost its soul. Quite a record.
Clearly, the rapist should have chosen a race-appropriate nun to rape. As per the union guidelines.
UH-OH! I said UNION! My cover is blown!
Whoa, whoa, wait, that was Dan Sickles?
I knew what happened in 1876/77, but (apart from Tilden and Hayes, obviously) not the personalities that were behind it. All I know about Dan Sickles comes from a history book on the Civil War I read eons ago, where the Gettysburg chapter devotes a few paragraphs to his fuckup and describes him as “a general who knew more about politics than war.”
I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised to see him playing a role in 1876/77. It’s just that my image of him was less of a Palpatine type and more of a Jar Jar Binks… oh. Oh. Righttt…
It’s terrible how the bleeding heart liberal justice system let the rapist off.
Oh wait:
Bullock is charged with felony rape, aggravated assault and sexual assault, and misdemeanor charges of indecent exposure, simple assault and reckless endangerment.
Yeah, but we can’t talk about it, MK, because racism and librulism you know.
Meanwhile in Texas……
Teen who killed four people got off on probation because he’s rich
Grotesque atrocities performed by the mentally ill are obviously a cornerstone of the liberal conspiracy.
I feel sorry for the nun, but what else is there to say? The rapist got caught and punished. This stuff happened before Trayvon Martin, it will probably continue on even when his name is out of living memory.
Or at least the rapist was caught. Come back here when he’s let free to complain.
@ Chris:
Fraud of the Century by Roy Morris, Jr. tells Dan Sickles’ whole story in hilarious detail.
Come back here when he’s let free to complain.
Well sure. It’s not like he did something really bad like being caught with a small quantity of a controlled substance. For that we’d have to put him away for a very long time.
Chinese lander and rover on the Moon.
Greasy Scarecrow Boy skrev:
I, for one, was convinced of that a while ago. Also too (™ Princess Dumbass of the Northwoods), it’s as true now of moderate Republican Barack Obama as it was when the great Bryan Zepp Jamieson said it of moderate Republican Bill Clinton back in the day: if our President really were the Machiavellian Communist anti-Republican schemer he’s called by The Press Not So Liberal and The Press Reactionary, all he’d have to do to get rid of the Republican Party, or at least cleanse it of its crazies, would be to make a public statement opposed to people throwing themselves off cliffs.
Speaking of economic development in Africa
You can’t spell “devotion to God” without “throwing a grenade into your neighbours’ village square & sabotaging their harvest.”
BOB IS GROOVY KILL THE PINKS
Flag on the moon; how did it get there?
Speaking of how the times they are a changin,
As of Friday, Dec. 6, the Mormon Church has officially renounced the doctrine that brown skin is a punishment from God.
Boobies!
Speaking of how the times they are a changin,
As of Friday, Dec. 6, the Mormon Church has officially renounced the doctrine that brown skin is a punishment from God.
My Dad was neither black nor Mormon, so the fact that that was his 100th birthday has no significance other than to make it easy for me to remember this historic date, so as to rub the Mormons’ noses in it.
Huh? I thought the Mormon Church had already done that, but I guess they had only said black people weren’t talking animals, not that their skin wasn’t evil. I’m amazed any person of color, black or otherwise, would want to be a Mormon, but I guess Uncle Ruckus’s do exist.
Who stole my blockquote tags? Anyway, that was Pupienus in the first graf.
Does “not being a punishment from God” rise to the level of being “delightsome”, though?
RC church allows, after four hundred years, as how maybe they wuz a bit harsh on Galileo. Teh Morons admit that blahs aren’t evil after only a hunnert some years.
Progress? Discuss.
jeepers, it appears i’ve missed an interesting thread here…ugh…spent all day today vehicle/christmas shopping…finished it off with cocktails though, so it ended up o.k. hopefully by tuesday i will have a sweet ride to call my own…i’ve already named two contenders: farrah (my #1 pick) and belinda (who i’ve only seen pics of)
as a sidenote, geico can suck it…
I suspect that I trolled troll(s) but I missed most evidence
Feels like a win
Watch out for drunk car-buying, bbkf. This must be a thing—it’s the only explanation I can think of for the Kia Soul.
If you’ve been watching the SABC feeds, the current eulogy is worth tuning in to just to know what bottom feeders are going to be butchering tomorrow. (Yes, Mandela was in charge of, and perhaps a part of, various armed forces. So are many, many leaders we mourn. I’m surprised the right isn’t praising Mandela, just to acknowledge Mandela’s generally non-violent revolution.)
No kidding, if you’ve been watching the funeral coverage, this account of Mandela’s military/militant side is a fairly concise–and apparently unpopular with this crowd–history.
Letters to Megyn Kelly
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/borowitzreport/2013/12/childrens-letters-to-megyn-kelly.html
I think the answer to Cody, age 5 probably reflecrs reality for a certain segment of our population,
As of Friday, Dec. 6, the Mormon Church has officially renounced the doctrine that brown skin is a punishment from God.
It is always entertaining when the top executives in a religion announce that the Inerrant Word of God — wisdom for all eternity, transcending mere man-made laws, passed down to the Prophet during a Transcendent Moment of Contact between the Godhead and our mundane world — has been retrospectively revised on the advice of their focus groups.
Still staying in character, eh, LHW? Your commitment to this performance of a right-wing ignoramus attempting to impersonate something he is completely incapable of understanding is admirable, and right on the nose. Very method, man.
Responding to mr clyde as if the trolls weren’t there, the LDS have been OK with that from their beginning and they’ve always made it work. Jos Smith changed his story all the time, it’s one reason they keep a sharp eye on old letters sales in upstate NY cause of all the old ladies JS was grifting before he set out for the west. He had some contradictory revelations.
It’s funny, most folks self-described as ‘liberals’ usually don’t gleefully parrot right-wing talking points; I’m guessing that’s where the ‘half wit’ part comes in.
I forget about that Rev! Go right ahead and feed them the Sanctified liberal Poison Wafers. But there’s no need for any drink whatsoever in our Devil’s Litergy: The trolls have plenty of whine already!
By the way, what are you the patron saint of?
the LDS have been OK with that from their beginning and they’ve always made it work.
Heh indeed. The Elders have realised that they can go from “Abrahamic polygamy is the key element of our religious practice” to “legislating for gay marriage will lead to even worse abominations like polygamy“, and the true believers will keep on tithing.
Polygamy was a revelation JS received late, when he was besotted with a particular teenager. Didn’t even need the miracle spectacles.
Hey lighten up! I change my mind all the time. Swear to Me I’ve been doing it since forever.
By the way, youse guys want anybody smited? Maybe an act of Me would entertain you. Can’t do anything too big just now – I’m busy with the Philadelphia game.
I guess it would have to be letting the light into certain skulls with an axe. Or something.
Oh noes! Eliminationist rhetoric! Arrgle-bargle!
I hung myself from a tree for a week for the Gift of the Runes, and do you hear me complaining about it? So you got nailed to a cross for a couple hours, and it’s nothing but bitch, bitch, bitch!
Time to reprise a favorite
Odin: yo Yahweh – your boy got nailed to a cross. My boy has a hammer. Just sayin.
I guess it would have to be letting the light into certain skulls with an axe.
Shirley that responsibility befalls to St Olaf Haraldsson (a.k.a. Olaf the Fat).
Well, I guess that would be better than the way Saint Olaf converted people to Christianity—shoving a funnel down their throat, filling it with snakes, and soldering on the lid.
That would be The Saint Olaf who was King Olaf.
MAJOR WHINGING AHEAD
I am so tired of gift buying right now. I haven’t planned well and I’ve spent too much money and there are still people I need gifts for. Don’t tell me I can make homemade gifts, because that still costs money for supplies.
I am an idiot with money. I had a $50 gift card and I spent most of it on Starbucks.
(And cue Dennis saying this is a liberal trait and that’s why liberals should never be in charge.)
That would be The Saint Olaf who was King Olaf.
I’m sure St Olaf can handle both roles, Patron sainting for “religious conversion through axe-related brain surgery” and “losing weight with this simple snake-and-funnel diet”.
I am an idiot with money. I had a $50 gift card and I spent most of it on Starbucks.
Everyone knows you should have spent it on ammunition….
HJMM skrev:
Most of the liberals I know wouldn’t consider a site run by Michelle Malkin any more reliable as an infosource than, say, Stormfront; nor, for the matter of that, would most of the conservatives whose words I can stand to read.
As much as I’ve been enjoying your performance, I’d suggest you to take it down a notch; it’s beginning to blossom into full-blown self-parody. Subtle nuance is ultimately more effective than scenery-chewing.
Unlike those frou-frou liberal types, conservatives like their coffee like they like their african-americans: hot, black, and knowing its place.
Teh Ho and I stopped in at Men’s Wearhouse to get me a new vest and tie for my tux. He grabbed my tux jacket from the closet so I could find just the right vest. We get there and find he grabbed a suit, not my tux. I wanderied around looking at tuxes. Teh Ho sez “are you jonesing for a new tux?” The woman tells us she’s got some fantastic deals. I tried on a Calvin Klein – looked a lot better than my old old old rig. Upon being told the price (fucking cheap, for a tux) I declared I was getting myself a new one. Teh Ho sez “if you’re getting a new tux I want a new one too.” The whole store was on bogo (buy one get one free) so we both got whole new outfits. It’ll be nice to wear them to the New Year’s Eve Pink Martini / Portland Sphony concert.
Oh , and at our wedding tomorrow. Too.
Also FYWP.
Wow, Pupi, congratulations! I wish you many years of happiness together, and each year better than the one before.
Having a good tux is a great thing. I bought mine second hand in Islington 20 years ago but it has never let me down.
Plus, giant congrats man, all the best.
The whole store was on bogo (buy one get one free)
Wouldn’t BOGO just be buy one, get one?
Our ceremony 23 years ago saw us wedded in the eyes of doG and our families. This time we will be wedded in the eyes of the IRS.
23 years tomorrow? Altogether too freaky if so because our 23rd was today.
Congrats Poopy. Many Happy, and all that.
Yes, congrats to you and Teh Ho.
Congratulations to tigris and Pupienus. Please relay my admiration to the partners who have put up with you both for so long.
Are you implying, sir, that habitués of this blog might be in any way opinionated, argumentative, or otherwise difficult to get along with?
Shirley you aren’t.
Are you implying, sir, that habitués of this blog might be in any way opinionated, argumentative, or otherwise difficult to get along with?
Obviously not everyone, VCarlson. You’re not like the other people here in the trailer park.
Also let the record show that the Frau Doktorin has put up with me for 20 years.
Pup, congratulations to you an’ teh Ho and many happy returns.
29 years coming up for us in about a week. Mrs. Chowder will achieve beatification immediately upon her demise, hopefully far in the future.
Sniff. Well, I should hope not. I can be downright cranky.
And congratulations to you and the Frau Doktorin, as well, for finding companions that are so well suited.
I now feel obliged to quote my mother’s fifth and final husband (the one she’d been married to for 30 years or so when she died, demonstrating that persistence can pay off):
And congratulations to you and the Frau Doktorin, as well, for finding companions that are so well suited
I am seldom well-suited. Well-jeansed and well-tshirted at best.
Couldn’t be. Everyone knows liberals hate guns.
Which is why he only got 5 shots off in a minute and a half.
Just think what he could have accomplished with an AR-15.
Of course you were never in the military, so I wouldn’t expect you to know these things, but cyclic rate of fire for a semi-automatic AR-15 is approximately 60 rounds per minute.
So, figure two 30-round magazines because God-forbid everybody has to have those, and maybe 10 seconds to switch magazines (for gosh sake don’t call it a “clip” or the NRA types will take you off on a tangent) and he could have easily fired 60 (count ’em) rounds in that minute and a half.
A shotgun is preferable to any rifle for home defense because rifle bullets tend to penetrate walls very easily.
So by all means use an AR-15 for home defense if you hate your neighbors and want to kill them accidentally.
So you’re saying Dick Cheney was so incompetent he couldn’t even kill someone at point-blank range with a shotgun?
I mean if all we’re doing here is scoring cheap political points off Vice Presidents I can play that game too.
So he bought the shotgun Joe Biden suggested.
begins with ‘so’…it’s a lie!
and congrats to pup and teh ho on finally being able to reap those sweet, sweet tax bennies…
I see we’re still in the “He was really a liberal” anti-honeymoon phase, like back when Gorgeous George Zimmerman was a “Hispanic Democrat”. I’m sure by Friday he’ll have magically morphed into a second amendment solutionizer who was standin’ his ground against the ivory tower elitists.
“He’s a self-proclaimed communist, just wears Soviet shirts all the time.”
I’m gonna assume this was a vaguely Soviet-themed shirt produced for profit in Bangladesh by a Western corporation. About as revolutionary as Miley Cyrus.
Anyway, I would take his classmates’ characterizations with a gram or two of salt. His Facebook says whatever it says.
Tina said that Lisa told her that Bobby and Crissy were frenching behind the bleachers during the game Friday, so there’s that.
Curiously Illiberal skrev:
Wow, Concerned Trollberal, you’re not even trying anymore. Anyone with two eyeballs to rub together can see he was quoting the Republican Party’s position on gun violence, not expressing an opinion of gun owners. This is a tacit admission either that you yourself don’t actually believe the [poo poo] you spew or that you don’t in fact have two eyeballs to rub together.
“Really, Cliff, you must stop acting the part of the [brain-dead conservative impersonating his idea of what a liberal sounds like]. People will start to believe you.” — after Niles Caulder
CRA skrev:
And Timmy from my fourth grade class told me that if you lick a unicorn, you can see through time.
Also too, gratz to Pup and Ho on making honest men of each other in the eyes of the only government we’ve got.
Sigh, the fire is out, LHW; now it’s just like watching de Niro or Pacino performances from the past decade and being reminded of their former glory.
Yes, I’d say that we’ve definitely entered the ‘Little Fockers’ phase of LHF’s trolling career.
Remember the Knockout Game race riots that were killing hundreds of people a day in every major American city? Boy, it sure is funny how those suddenly stopped the moment conservatives decided to be outraged about Obama’s “selfie” instead.
Remember the Knockout Game race riots that were killing hundreds of people a day in every major American city?
It’s terrible! A guy can hardly walk down the street without getting knocked out these days. I must have tripped over three unconscious people on my way to the store the other day.
Yeah, we just had 5 cases of people playing the Knockout Game this week in East Gliblip, CA. The local and regional papers keep it hushed up for obvious reasons.
Not sure when Newt found time to say that what with all the wife-swapping going on.
The Knockout Game is real, because of all the articles covering it in the Wingnut Media.
Plus he lied about that even, since Miami (#3) and Fresno (#4) are run by Republicans.
And now you know, the rest of the story.
http://abcnews.go.com/ThisWeek/week-transcript-secretary-state-john-kerry/story?id=21214179&singlePage=true
Yeah, we have had Republicans running things in East Gliblip, CA, for a long time, but I didn’t realize that they were Democrats in disguise, which would account for high unemployment rate here.
Well, congratulations to you, Pups and Teh Ho. And may all your tax returns be little ones.
Congrats also to all those married couples(including Pups and Teh Ho) who have made it together for more than 20 years. I am totally impressed with your patience and fortitude. I think the longest any man managed to survive living with me back in the day was about 2 years. And he was very sweet and gentle – needed to be.
BTW, Pupienus, I think he sticks around for the cooking – I know I would.
I am totally impressed with your patience and fortitude. I think the longest any man managed to survive living with me back in the day was about 2 years.
hubbkf and i have managed 28 years of matrimonial bliss…we each marvel at that, then realize that nobody else would put up with either of us…
I think he sticks around for the cooking – I know I would.
right? i would totally turn ghey for pup just for the cooking…and fashion advice…oh, wait…
Oh dear.
Quotes From Sarah Palin ‘War on Christmas” Book v. Quotes From 1920s Anti-Jewish Propaganda
Biden’s shotgun remark makes me think of the Overton Window. Before I would have said guns are never a good thing to have around the house but when after Newtown the gun nuts said they needed assault rifles to defend their homes, I thought “can’t you just use a shotgun?”
Also, Biden’s commnet made me want to shoot up a school.
Oh dear.
shirley this does not surprise you in the least?
Wow, Sarah Palin doesn’t even bother to put the ass-covering “Judeo-” in front of Christian(ity).
As far as I’m concerned, accidental discharges, “I didn’t know it was loaded,” “how was I to know the bullet would go so far?” should all be treated as if the results were intentional, and a hefty fine and a mandatory gun safety class should be the minimum consequence – and that’s assuming good faith on the part of the perpetrator (and/or parent/guardian). If you’re that ignorant, careless, or sozzled *coughDarthCheneycough*, you shouln’t be handling a firearm, anyway.
As for “home defense,” if you’re absolutely certain your tchotchkes are potentially worth someone else’s life, a shotgun should be it.
Of course, I’m one of those folks who does not worship at the altar of the 2nd, so I feel that gun ownership should require, at minimum, the same standards of exams, licensing, and insurance that operating automobiles do (and I think the exam requirements for auto licenses should be stiffer – as in a road test for everyone every ten years or so, more frequently once you
hitreach the age of 70).heh…just realized, I’M ANONYMOUS! not sure how that happened, but it’s nice to know that i can screw up in new ways…
Of course, I’m one of those folks who does not worship at the altar of the 2nd, so I feel that gun ownership should require, at minimum, the same standards of exams, licensing, and insurance that operating automobiles do (and I think the exam requirements for auto licenses should be stiffer – as in a road test for everyone every ten years or so, more frequently once you hit reach the age of 70).
yes…
OMG.
Congrats Pupienus and Teh Ho! A toast to another 23+ years!
Our ceremony 23 years ago saw us wedded in the eyes of doG and our families. This time we will be wedded in the eyes of the IRS.
Are you cooking something even more special than usual?
Congrats PM, on getting a piece of that sweet sweet joint tax return action. A week before Xmas too. That’s some inspired persecution of teh Christianists right there. Bravo.
woot! hubbkf and i are going to pick up our newest ride, farrah! hubbkf has commissioned a welder friend to make a cow-catcher for her, hahaha…it’s humor such as that that has kept us together…
cooking something even more special
cooking something special…
tigris – Our first go-round was in July. We didn’t pick this date for any special reason, we just needed to get hitched by the end of the year because taxes.
MK – We’re meeting our friends for drinks before the event and we’re going for drinks afterwards. We’ll probably drink our dinner. If we do have dinner, Idon’t want to have to cook it myself – we’ll go somewhere really really good. Le Pigeon or maybe Tasty and Sons. Or…
Thanks to everyone!
You name ’em before you ride in them? I’ve named a few of my cars, but only after some aquaintance. Some of them just don’t seem to have names (that I can “hear,” anyway).
Anyway, congrats on the new ride. With or without cowcatcher.
With a name like “Farrah” I’m somehow imagining a champagne-colored american-made mini-van.
Captain Copypasta strikes again (emphasis added):
We could retroactively solve the energy crisis clear back to the Clinton years, could we but find a way to harness the power of IT’S ALWAYS PROJECTION.
I say “strikes again” even though my comment on his previous vowel movement was caught in the blast radius of that comment’s removal. Oh well; I can use it again sometime.
I removed the “Rambler” from my first car, a 64 Rambler wagon, then reattached it as “mabel.”
That’s Commander Copypasta, of the U.S.S. Wingnut, out on the ocean of fail.
Oh that’s rich. A conservative accusing liberals of living in a “bubble”.
Pot, meet Kettle.
We just got our first (very affordable) bill for our new health insurance plan. Yeah, keep talking about the horrible disaster that is Obamacare. It’s a real winning issue.
Needs more “Benghazi!”
Anonydennis, you wouldn’t know a fact if it knocked you sideways.
Four dead in Benghazi.
Worst Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young song ever.
Speaking of the hyperinflation of assholery, Pareene is redoing the Hack List for 2013 and the Moustache of Understanding has come in at number 9. Down from Number Three in the original list. Pareene is claiming that there are eight worse hacks than Friedman. Think about that.
Never before has illiteracy seemed such a blessing.
Although let me say, this year’s Friedman takedown is pretty fucking good. I mean read the whole thing and all, but here’s your teaser:
Concern Troll is concerned:
Do you know any actual liberals? (Pat Caddell and David Brooks don’t count.) I ask because all the liberals I know have expressed regret at the insurance companies making a liar out of Republican President Obama, and at him thinking that the insurance companies wouldn’t deliberately sabotage him just because of the “D” after his name that’s the only meaningful sense in which he has ever been anything other than a centrist Republican. And then there’s you, who apparently think the insurance companies going back on their deal is such a powerful act that it reverberates backward through time and makes Republican President Obama’s words no longer true even when he said them.
You’re slipping, anon. You said something that was and is actually true. That tarnishes your otherwise perfect record of having every word you excrete, including the conjunctions and articles, be a lie.
Again, all the liberals I know cared about it too much to let those deaths be used as a cheap political football. Some of them cared about the Republicans cutting the funding for security to the Libyan embassy, but I have neither the vocabulary nor the patience to explain to you how that’s different.
J Neo: Oh SNAP!
Pup & Teh Ho: Here’s wishing you another 2+ glorious decades together, which is the real dividend of your love. The IRS breaks are nice icing. Gee, do I mix metaphors, or what? As Will Rogers famously said, “I never metaphor I didn’t like.”
Same congrats and best wishes to all the other married and/or long-term, in-it-for-life Sadlies
I just saw this: RIP Peter O’Toole. Died Saturday at 81.
Man, we’re going to have to go a long way to get back to Nelson Mandela.
Peter O’Toole was a great actor with a funny name.
Times like this, I wish I got TCM.
https://web.archive.org/web/20121015093525/http://thedailybanter.com/2012/10/house-gop-describes-fox-news-as-we-during-benghazi-hearing/
There are very few liberals in Chambersburg that I know of, and only one that I’d describe as a “lib loon” (except to the extent he’s seized by Jesus, and even that just reminds me that, 17 centuries of the official establishment of Christianity to the contrary, a Christian upbringing does not have to be an impediment to discovering and living the teachings of Jesus; see also Leonard Pitts). In retrospect, it may not have been honest to speak of “the liberals I know”, since I mostly know them online.
Hold on, says Josh Barro at Business Insider.
While completely naked, Curiously Illiberal spouted the following:
Technically true, in that these plans were lost because the insurance companies failed to bring them up to the standards they knew the ACA was going to require, either deliberately because they knew glorps like you would blame Republican President Obama for their malfeasance or as a side-effect of having been too busy punishing Republican President Obama for only giving them most of what they wanted. Still, with every whit of respect that you are actually due, please fuck as far off as you can, then rest up, then fuck off some more.
Funny how “I have first-hand evidence that the new law is working” becomes “I’ve got mine” to Mr. Gotnolife over there.
It appears that the worst thing this clown can say about the ACA is that a group of people who were good with the old system because they had theirs have been replaced by a different group of people who are good with the new system for the same reason. So let’s go with a proper single payer system and just make everybody happy already.
Man, we’re going to have to go a long way to get back to Nelson Mandela.
Peter O’Toole played Lawrence of Arabia
Arabia is next to Africa
Mandela was from Africa
That’s three degrees of separation.
Maybe I’ll bring out my copy of How to Steal a Million. The laughter might help.
1.Six Degrees of Separation is a movie about exploiting white guilt.
2. White guilt is what liberals are all about.
3. Therefore, Nelson Mandela is history’s greatest monster
There, I think I just beat LHW to his next rant.
The Angriest Conservative in the World
The conservative who is so angry he cannot move. He cannot eat. He cannot sleep. He can just barely growl. Bound so tightly with tension and anger, he approaches the state of rigor mortis.
(tip o’ the hat to Dave Lynch)
No kiddin’ I’ve been away a l-o-n-g time. And nobody has posted nuthin’?
That cannont be correct. So I must assume it Soltice time in the city and everyone is out waging their own particular war on Chistmas, in whatever form it might take. That’s a possibilty, considering that I’ve done absolutely nothing yet. Procrastination City. Have stuff to wrap and mail.
So I’ll fill up some vacuum with a longish comment.
Instead of Solsticing, I’ve been resolutely drafting a plan for a 3-week visit to the western Cororado Plateau in 2014. I’ve been working with quarter-mil atlases (Benchmark); after Solstice I’ll treat myself to USGS 1:25,000 for all the Parks and Monuments. Here’s the current shape:
Hopi Nation
North Rim of the Grand Canyon NP
Zion NP (including Kolob extension]
Cedar Breaks NM
Capitol Reef NP (complete circuit)
Bryce Canyon NP
Grand Staircase / Escalante NM
Glen Canyon Nat Rec Area (Lake Powell)
Ambitious? You bet it’s ambitious for a man of 65. I’m hoping to persuade my best friend to travel with me. (Younger hiking hobbiest, has stamina to belong to an Expert club tacking difficult trails. Also haz camping skills. (I haven’t done any camping since a military field exercise in 1976.)
Wooops! Forget to refresh the thread!
Anyway In 2015 imma gonna travel the eastern Colorado Plateau; current list
Arches NP
Canyonlands NP
Natural Bridges NM
(not finished; these are the big ones)
In 2016 the Navajo Nation & Classic Ruins; current list.
This circuit is closer to Albuqueque than the Colorado Plateau. (I may shift northern ones into into the 2015 journey.)
Canyon de Chelly NP
Monument Valley (Navajo Nation)
Canyons of the Ancients (Navajo Nation)
Mesa Verde NP
Chaco Canyon NP
Another present for Fenwick: mid-range digital SLR w/additional telephoto. I used a PX-purchased Canon Ftb black body SLR when I toured Europe. Carried three lenses..
I was a good photographer, though using a manual camera … like we used back when dinosaurs roamed the earth and we manually loaded and extracted film canisters. My camera was stolen in a burglery just before I attended Hampshire; I never replaced it (or my PX stereo gear); the insurance money helped pay some college expenses.
I want to photograph again.
Okay now back to planning for the 2014 journey.
————————————-
My 2013 War or Christmas plan, however, must remain secret and undiscoverable by Sadlyburg trolls. It is a brilliant offensive operation, meticulously planned–it even has a Deception annex–and is predicated on speed and surprise. All principal actors have been recruited Trolls everywhere will be flabbergasted when this cunning conspiracy unfolds.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA !!! /maniac laughter
The stereotype of liberals
Which is all your tiny, tiny, tiny brain can process. You need the world simplified into stereotypes, so you can label people you don’t understand…and probably never will. You LIVE in a world of stereotypes; you would be utterly lost without them.
New post.
Sorry about the low posts. Finals season means that everybody and their mother needs tutoring.
I said that stereotype is a false one. It’s a stereotype that liberals themselves like to be portrayed as.
Whereas, you’re interested only in yourself and your family, and you believe that libruls are the same way but don’t want to admit it.
The projection in this one is strong………..
He makes a Zeiss planetarium projector look like two flashlights by comparison.
The Dark God of Time AKA DA® skrev:
And still have room left to conceal eight caraway seeds and Charles Krauthammer’s heart.
Then, while completely naked, Pennis spouted the following:
Are there conservatives who get deleted less than he does? Until then, I don’t see how you can feel entitled to rub his nose in anything.
That is exactly what you’re saying, J Neo.
Gotta love how this guy never fails to double down on the stupidity when he’s called on it.
The bottle’s out of the proverbial genie
And that’s gotta hurt like hell, no matter which end of the alimentary canal it emerges from.
Oh no! The bag must also be out of the cat!
In all my years, I have never been taunted so incompetently.
At least he didn’t say your mother was a hamster.
Let’s not fight. Christmas is supposed to be a time of peace.