Ted Nugent likes to shovel piles of insults into his columns at the WaTimes. I like insults, particularly people who are good at them. One of the true pleasures in life is the flattening clever putdown.
But Ted, while easy with the character assassinations and slurs, has only a limited vocabulary.
inebriated idiot, bureaucratic village idiot, high-ranking government bureaucratic idiot — all in the same paragraph, the last two in the same sentence
bureaucratic idiots at ATF, bureaucratic punks — in the same sentence
bureaucratic punks, terminally brain-dead — in one sentence, next graph
Rocker and hunter Ted Nugent plans to sue the Department of Natural Resources over its order declaring swine used at special hunting ranches to be an invasive species. Nugent, who owns the Sunrise Acres Ranch near Jackson, claims that the invasive species order was illegally issued and is being illegally enforced. Nugent cited a loss of business through immense stress and hardship because of the DNR’s public campaign to unlawfully enact and enforce the order. A hunting ranch in Negaunee has also filed a notice of intent to sue on the issue. The DNR will begin actively enforcing the order in April. The order is legally effective, but the department delayed enforcement to allow the facilities time to remove swine.
The public servants administering public schools nationwide do not create jobs when they hire teachers. All in your imagination.
The US national security apparatus and its public servants do not hire hundreds of thousands of civilians to staff its intelligence, staffing and logistical services.
Anyway, we know Ted Nugent is a terrible writer, an embarrassment. I would ask his high school English teacher, if still alive, if he was better as a student.
But embarrassments are often rewarded well in America just because they are a convenient. Kurt Vonnegut, an excellent author and writer, built entire works of fiction on this kind of cynicism in the national identity.
One piece of advice often given to people who struggle to write well: Write about what you know.
Notably, Ted has never written even the slightest about that which he does best: play guitar.
Perhaps he has threatened to do so and I have overlooked it. And perhaps he will actually write a book about playing guitar some day rather than repeating, like a trained parrot, some trash from the church of Republican extremism.
Ted Nugent is a busy guy. Ever since he became an accidental hot-selling author (I’m not gonna call him a writer; anyone who has read Nugent’s bits excerpted here knows he has no talent there), Howard has worked it to cultivate his image as a motivational speaker for the extreme right.
It should be no surprise that there’s an audience for this in the heartland shires of the land. Down through human history there’s always a crowd to enjoy seeing others tied to a post and whipped and those who recommend such treatment as proper. Particularly in hard times.
And now Ted is scheduled to provide the inspiration at a GOP “Lincoln Day” event in Springfield, Illinois.
In choosing Nugent, organizers will without doubt accomplish their goal of raising money and packing the house. Nugent may be many things, but he is never boring. Given this platform to speak his mind to a friendly audience, Nugent is sure to provide a moment that will endure for years in Springfield’s political lore.
But the local GOP also is taking a risk in making Nugent the voice of one of its most significant annual events.
Right now on the national stage, the GOP is fighting against an image of a seriously splintered party. Twice in 2011, Congress ground to a halt when the House appeared unable to control its most extreme faction.
Nugent clearly is part of at least one of those factions — the gun rights absolutists — and his overall shtick may not play well with more traditional conservatives.
We’ve always enjoyed Nugent’s outspokenness in the newspaper’s direct dealings with him …
Much of what makes Nugent so entertaining is his unwillingness to self-censor.
But that quality also is where the risk comes in for the local party. Some of what Nugent says isn’t so benign …
And that’s a rather large, if gentlemanly, understatement. To its credit, the newspaper links to a column written by one its local pundits, published a earlier.
Back in 1990, when the forced-segregation apartheid system was still the law in South Africa, Nugent managed a 40,000-acre ranch used for bow hunting, according to a 1990 Detroit Free Press article.
“(A)partheid isn’t that cut-and-dry,??? he was quoted as saying in that article. “All men are not created equal.
“The preponderance of South Africa is a different breed of man,??? the quote goes on. “I mean that with no disrespect. I say that with great respect. I love them because I’m one of them. They are still people of the earth, but they are different. They still put bones in their noses, they still walk around naked, they wipe their butts with their hands.???
As a columnist for the Washington Times, one Nugent target has been unions.
In a column posted Sept. 2, he wrote, “Labor unions have not sustained labor but rather have destroyed it??? by forcing “unrealistic and unsustainable wages and benefits on businesses.???
If he were to say that in Springfield, he might get some agreement. But many current and retired state workers in the crowd might not love to hear what he wrote about their affiliation.
“Public-sector employees typically enjoy higher pay, more benefits and more time off than private-sector employees,??? he wrote. “This is unconscionable and is yet another example of the fleecing of the taxpayer by our elected officials and labor unions, which are joined at the hip.
“Public-sector employees should be banned from joining a union, paid a wage commensurate with the private sector and provided with the same benefits as their private-sector peers. Only a goon would think otherwise.???
Here, none of this is eye-opening. And readers will no doubt note that Ted is a little late today with the weekly WaTimes Fireball Express of calumnies and slurs on the many internal and external enemies of our nation.
“We wonder if Nugent’s appearance will do more toward bringing new people into the party and shoring up unity or disenfranchising longtime party faithful who already are nervous about where the party — locally and nationally — is headed,” muses the Springfield paper.
It’s one hundred bucks for dinner and Ted. Seventy five for dinner, Ted and a personal handshake in the meet-and-greet line. That’s a joke.
Some fop at the Atlantic, partnered with the National Journal, entitled a representative piece on the spectacle of Iowa Republicans: 11 things you might not know about Santorum.
No link.
Google the man’s name and you get a headache of varying proportion, thereby defining the reality of “low information voters.”
However, the press exacerbates, creating a fantasy, inventing article after article, all sort of portraying Rick Santorum as something he is not: a decent thinking human being.
This in contrast to what he is: A mild-looking psychopath theocrat with a beamish smile.
The only way to describe this media malpractice is by paraphrasing something I posted as a one-liner at Pine View Farm earlier today.
Media handling of Rick Santorum is like someone looking at the little boy next door who tortures the pet cat once or twice a week and, instead of being moved to strike him down, idly says they think he’d make a good vet when he grows up.
If you met the person at the Atlantic, Molly Ball is the name — some staffer used for SEO whoring, who wrote such a 90 second thing, you’d punch her (and the magazine’s editor) into a double concussion — as a public service — for practicing cynical nihilism and off-the-cuff inhumanity in grasping for web eyeballs.
No one not a dipshit/moron, frankly evil or insane could cast a vote for a person like Rick Santorum. He is an example of the worst old white paranoid and ignorant America can produce. There is nothing in his biography to be proud of other than the tale of a mediocre student aligned with the religious right, educated at big yawningly mediocre schools for the sub average and athletically favored muscle-bound — Penn State and Pitt. Who started his career as a flunky/low rent fixer for the steroidal fakes in second-tier professional wresting.
Rick Santorum is an insult to people his age, like me. His success is a symptom of why this country is experiencing epic fail. In the class room at university, or on any wrestling mat in Pennsylvania in the Eighties, I would have stomped his face and dislocated his shoulder in less than 60 seconds. From science to mathematics to any subject in liberal arts, I buried him, like tens of thousands of Americans who would have never thought to conflate theocracy and corporate monarchy with democracy. So would have readers of this blog.
Rick Santorum doesn’t believe in science. He despises sex unless it’s his crabbed vision of it. He hates the idea of women’s reproductive rights in modern America. He wants war with Iran and believes in various right wing GOP conspiracy theories. He uses his religion to damn everyone not like him. And he’s a toady for the 1 percent in corporate America. This only scratches the surface.
That Rick Santorum gets any votes is a measure of pathology, proof there’s an incurable necrotic tumor in the demographic that, even if elimination doesn’t cure the patient, still must be disintegrated by beams of ionizing radiation. Because it’s the right thing to do, from a scientific standpoint as well as a humanitarian one.
Ted Nugent Howard wasn’t always a raging libertarian/ GOP shoe-shiner who regularly spouts get-off-my-lawn black bile about kids, the president, unemployed people, way too many others and social safety-net programs.
In the inescapable, common-sense world to which producers of America are hopelessly addicted and in which they proudly reside, compensation is determined by dreams, work ethic, skill, knowledge, ability, expertise, level of effort and, last but not least, results. Put that in your merciless pay pipe and suck on it till you drop, Occupiers.
Employees who lack these most basic of work characteristics are tossed out on their lame rears in short order, as it should be …
It’s part five of five where a young Ted reclines and chats, looking and sounding a lot like the “hippies” he regularly damns and condemns in his many political columns now.
During the interview Ted and the interviewer gently laugh about the Soupy Sales show, also done in the studio.
“I’m not deep into politics, mind you,” Ted says.
“It’s a groovy place we’re livin’ in here,” he adds, near the finish.
Groovy.
According to Chuck Eddy, the interviewer is “Dave Dixon, co-writer of Peter Paul and Mary’s ‘I Dig Rock and Roll Music‘, and a big deal on Detroit underground rock stations in the early ’70s.”
Here’s a kook summary for the end of the year, all brought on by the wide publicizing of Newt Gingrich’s love for electromagnetic pulse doom mythology. I correctly called Gingrich’s bubble about to burst a week ago. His mania for electromagnetic pulse doom stories proved unpalatable, along with many other things, to many.
However, Gingrich will always have the EMPAct America yearly conference at Niagara Falls. (Joke: You’ve won first prize in a travel lottery — a weekend in Niagara Falls! Second prize is a week in Niagara Falls!)
From the wires, on electromagnetic pulses ending civilization, still echoing from the examination of Gingrich’s personal fancy:
Apocalypse 2012 — an obscure author who specializes in the end-times/survivalism fringe market, curses US politicians for not doing enough to save us from a coronal mass ejection.
“If [EMP doom] sounds far fetched, then you haven’t spoken to Lawrence Joseph, a Los Angeles-based writer who has spent much of his life preaching this frighteningly plausible vision of the Apocalypse,” it reads.
“As only politicians can, they dashed the hopes of a healthy civilization,” the man told CTV News.
Written by one of EMPAct America’s lobbyists, the article is distraught over the New York Times piece on Gingrich and EMP doom.
The Russian newspaper, Pravda, has delivered us a warning, one to heed:
[If] the U.S. continues in its attempts to fight terrorists and provide support to our NATO partners, we will “provoke” an EMP attack that will kill many millions, potentially end civilization as we know it, and ultimately result in the loss of our sovereignty. This warning is not the first to have emanated from Russia. One of the most notable was described in testimony before a House Armed Services Committee Hearing held on July 22, 2004—a high-level Russian official (Chairman of the International Affairs Committee) had issued a similar threat to two sitting Congressmen while discussing U.S. involvement in the former Yugoslavia.
The Russians are not alone. An EMP attack against the United States has been written about and discussed openly within China, North Korea, and Iran …
“It is therefore baffling that the New York Times would take an obviously partisan stance to a major threat,” it continues.
Cryptome publishes a notice in the Federal Register on a meeting to be held on January 9 by the Department of Homeland Security’s Advisory Committee. Public comments on threats delivered to the Committee to be published later at regulations.gov.
Sensitive Threat Briefings against the Homeland.
Briefing on Strategic Implementation Plan to Counter Violent
Extremism Domestically.
Update on Border Security and Evolving Threats.
US Coast Guard, Update on Counterterrorism Efforts Around the
World.
TSA Frequent Travelers Program Operational Update.
Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) Threat–Lessons Learned and Areas of
Vulnerability, and
Evolving Threats in Cyber Security.
Basis for Closure: In accordance with Section 10(d) of the Federal
Advisory Committee Act, it has been determined that the meeting
requires closure as the premature disclosure of the information would
not be in the public interest.
Alert readers will have noticed that DHS threat analysis can be moved by newsmedia subject matter — even when there is no actual threat imminent menace at the root of such stories.
That is, if enough people are talking about electromagnetic pulse doom, even though the net result has been skepticism and damage to a presidential political campaign, homeland security is moved to be briefed on the notional matter.
Also worth consideration: Briefing on Strategic Implementation Plan to Counter Violent Extremism Domestically.
Generally speaking, there was no violent domestic extremism in 2011 unless one counts the Giffords shooting. And Occupy Wall Street is not armed.
In fact, the FBI’s end of year list of top ten terror cases is a paltry one, domestically consisting only a people nabbed in a variety of wanna-be plots uncovered by the loose chatter of those arrested.
Coincidentally, and earlier this this month, DD blog has posted extensively on the extremism and heavily armed survivalists associated with the Cult of Electromagnetic Pulse Crazy.
The script: The US will collapse soon, through an unspecified series of disasters which include (but are not limited to) total electrical grid failure, rampant bioterrorist-spread disease, and the death of money. Only those in the country, on farms with their own fruit trees, vegetable crops, chainsaws for cutting firewood, elevated water supply, and Bible-reading skills will survive. You will have to defend yourself from the hordes fleeing the cities, just like in AMC’s The Walking Dead.
You must view all three Urban Danger teasers to get the full bit. (I jumped on the grenades so you don’t have to.) But watching the one posted, if you can endure it, delivers the general idea. There ain’t no progressives in this bunch. Or children and other young people, it would appear.
This old white Christian paranoid End Times mania is inseparable from the electromagnetic pulse attack story. And the political professional EMP lobby has always nourished it.
These days it’s virtually mainstream due to adoption by significant segments of the country’s dysfunctional and increasingly irrational political class.
Number 2 on the FBI list of top stories/arrests in terrorism/violent extremism.
Threats to the United States from a shockwave of electricity known as an electromagnetic pulse, or EMP, are not “far-fetched??? …
Americans should be relieved to know that the bipartisan Congressional EMP Caucus, which I head with Representatives Yvette Clarke (a Democrat from New York) and Trent Franks (a Republican from Arizona), is working with colleagues to protect our grid from EMP.
The House unanimously approved the Grid Reliability and Infrastructure Defense Act in 2010 to give the federal government needed authority to protect the grid against EMP. Legislation to protect the grid against EMP is also advancing in the Senate.
Bartlett, as is always the case with the cult, calls the issue bipartisan. It is bipartisan in that the GOP-led electromagnetic pulse doom caucus has always been successful in getting one or two insignificant Dem congresspeople to be pets (or sock puppets).
It’s a role custom-fit for Congressmen with either no ability or no inclination to author any meaningful legislation. For example, if you try to find anything significant by Bartlett, or birther Trent Franks of Arizona, it’s a tedious search.
Bartlett on first: Preparing for life after electromagnetic pulse doom is fun, he implies.
Does Roscoe Bartlett look like someone anyone with a shred of sense would pay attention to? Rhetorical, obviously.
The experts say the damage would be millions of times worse than 9/11. Nobody would have power, and most modern cars wouldn’t start. The Internet has been completely destroyed, and the financial system is offline, perhaps forever. All phone communication is dead, and virtually all commerce across the entire country is brought to a complete stop. Our country (which doesn’t know how to live without technology) would be completely stripped of it in an instant …
What would you do if all the supermarkets in your area shut down because food could not be transported? What if you were suddenly unable to call your family and friends for help? What if you were suddenly unable to get the medicine that you need?
This certainly isn’t going to enhance anyone’s Christmas cheer one iota, but perhaps when we hang our stockings and say our prayers on Christmas Eve, we’ll humbly ask Jesus (the author of and reason for this joyful season) for the very special Christmas present of deliverance from the evil entities who are, even now, plotting our demise. Oh, yeah … and even if the fat elf doesn’t descend through the atmosphere to stuff our stockings, perhaps our merciful Creator will save us from far worse stuff coming down upon us from the sky … like electromagnetic pulse destruction.
Because of Newt Gingrich’s momentary popularity — I noticed he’s the cover of Newsweek which must surely mean the bubble’s about to burst — many more people have been familiarized with the mythology of electromagnetic pulse doom.
Right now, it’s not just for the far right GOP missile defense/bomb Iran lobby anymore.
And although Gingrich has tried to make it seem an entirely pseudo-intellectual thing, there’s no escaping its attachment to extreme Christian religiosity and the belief that catastrophic end times are upon the country, trials which will only be survivable through Godliness and the quick adoption of the skills of the deep woodsman and farmer.
A political blog, Maryland Juice, points out Roscoe Bartlett, the ancient Republican Congressman who has been warning of electromagnetic pulse attack for as long as I can remember, is running for re-election.
Bartlett has never been successful in getting any electromagnetic pulse defense legislation passed. He has forever been a minor Congressional nuisance, one who always gets re-elected despite serving his Maryland constituents poorly.
However, at Maryland Juice, Bartlett’s participation in a wacky survivalist documentary called Urban Danger is noted.
There are a number of teasers for Urban Danger, peddled on DVD, posted to YouTube.
Here is the best, if that’s the word to use:
Bartlett is on first.
The script: The US will collapse soon, through an unspecified series of disasters which include (but are not limited to) total electrical grid failure, rampant bioterrorist-spread disease, and the death of money. Only those in the country, on farms with their own fruit trees, vegetable crops, chainsaws for cutting firewood, elevated water supply, and Bible-reading skills will survive. You will have to defend yourself from the hordes fleeing the cities, just like in AMC’s The Walking Dead.
You must view all three Urban Danger teasers to get the full bit. (I jumped on the grenades so you don’t have to.) But watching the one posted, if you can endure it, delivers the general idea. There ain’t no progressives in this bunch. Or children and other young people, it would appear.
This old white Christian paranoid End Times mania is inseparable from the electromagnetic pulse attack story. And the political professional EMP lobby has always nourished it.
These days it’s virtually mainstream due to adoption by significant segments of the country’s dysfunctional and increasingly irrational political class.
Newt Gingrich’s rise in the polls has brought attention to his various “big ideas,” and plenty of derision from other GOP Presidential hopefuls and the media. Among the most undeserved targets is the former Speaker’s concern about an electromagnetic pulse (or EMP) attack …
The usual media suspects have recently run skeptical stories on his “doomsday vision” and “silly science” … A single nuclear weapon detonated above the U.S. might not kill anyone immediately. But in the worst case millions could subsequently die from a lack of modern medical care or possibly food, since farmers couldn’t harvest crops nor distributors get food to market. Access to drinking water could be cut if many of America’s dams, reservoirs and water-treatment facilities were shut down …
Mr. Gingrich deserves credit for bringing EMP to public attention.
Here’s a real dose of cheer, emblematic of the legion of crazy far right white f—s delivering public service announcements for what to watch out for when the electrical grid goes down.
Many have surely noticed that a lot of the current US doesn’t really support the way A Christmas Carol or It’s a Wonderful Life turned out. Sure, everyone pays lip service to these stories. But if people were honest with themselves, surely a lot would admit a sneaking desire to see a Xmas movie where Scrooge laughed off the grim reaping spirit of Christmas future and Tiny Tim was dead of consumption by Xmas day.
In 2011 you could pitch a comedy TV series on the two really talented and fun guys in Robin Hood, Sir Guy of Gisbourne and the Sheriff of Nottingham.
Ted Nugent is Dickensian. His inability to rally any significant fan base among the young, in direct proportion to his success as a shoeshiner for old white man radical right and extreme wealth makes him perfect material for any modern approach to the material.
One of the things associated with Dickens’ Victorian London is the burning of coal and soot of it everywhere.
(A year later an explosion at one of Blankenship’s mines killed 27, an incident which most probably will eventually see criminal charges levied against former Massey Energy executives.)
The poor get extra helpings of hardship and pain and Ted Nugent can be reliably counted on to tell us it’s all their own fault, a consequence of the alleged shit choices they make. Like being born into poverty. The time to have made your first good choice toward a life of plenty was when swimming down Pap’s penis at the moment of climax. Go back!
As we near Christmas, his new column at the WaTimes is in character.
The majority of people who are poor in America are poor because they knowingly have made poor decisions … Being poor is largely a choice, a daily, if not hourly, decision. If you decide to drop out of school, fail to learn a skill, have no work ethic or get divorced, a life of poverty is often the consequence.
At one point Nugent recommends the churches get more involved in helping the poor. Of course, they do. But it was only a year ago Nugent was doing the Dickens trip, too, hating on the church after Thanksgiving and suggesting the Vatican give up some of its swag.
Roughly 50 percent of all Medicare costs are spent in a person’s last six months of life. When a person is terminally ill or without hope of getting better, forcing taxpayers to keep them alive isn’t fair. If the terminally ill individual or his family wants to keep him alive for as long as possible, then they should pay for it, not taxpayers … Last time I checked, churches have a few billion dollars worth of gold, silver, jewelry, art, real estate and other assets. Maybe they could use some of it for such compassionate causes. Maybe not.
In this bit from November, a year back, Nugent not only went after the Catholics but also called for hospice care for the dieing to be ended. Medicare pays for the six months of such support, as those who have loved ones or close friend fall into the clutches of an incurable disease, like cancer, painfully know.
Nugent is one of the lousiest writers one could hope for, perfect for our times. Not only a wretched stylist, more importantly, he is devoid of any human warmth or empathy. Paradoxically, he papers over this failing with a regular clumsy implication that he’s a person who actually cares.
The Washington Times is the ideal venue for him, a Dickensian publication for DC. These days it attaches promotions to buy precious metals, or the consulting services of those who advocate for the hoarding of gold and silver to the end of Nugent’s columns.
And it does not surprise at all that a winning political idea for the current GOP is the torn from Oliver Twist suggestion that poor children be janitors of their schools so as to cultivate good work habits and the avoidance of crappy life choices that will make them forever poor. Of course they should.
A lucky winner of a raffle at TedNugent.com gets an all-expense paid weekend hunting with Ted on his ranch in Crawford, Texas. The second place prize is two weekends hunting with Ted on his ranch in Crawford. No, not really — I just made it all up.
