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Putting Ted Nugent to good use.
Boogie stomp with lyrics derived from the casual cruelty and idiot beliefs characteristic of the GOP we-want-blood crowds at the debates.
Riffs inspired/based on “Leland, Mississippi” (from Johnny Winter’s debut LP) and “I Ain’t Superstitious.”
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From the newspaper of the Town of Boston, New York, population — six or seven thousand:
In an unrelated matter [at a town board meeting], a resident warned about the potential threat of an electromagnetic pulse, commonly known as an EMP.
“People don’t understand,??? said Dolores Schlee of Hywood Drive.
She explained that if a terrorist organization used an EMP against the United States, all electricity would be lost. She recommended reading “One Second After,??? a novel by William R. Forstchen about how an EMP would affect the nation.
DD blog has noted it regularly.
One of the benefits of Heritage Foundation robots regularly flogging the threat of electromagnetic pulse doom in the nation’s newspapers — large and small — is the embedding of the mythos of it in the heartland.
The susceptible audience is almost exclusively old white, not particularly well-educated, and Republican. This is not an opinion.
A robot from the Heritage Foundation, on Sunday, in the Austin American Satesman:
Another threat we can’t afford to ignore is an electromagnetic pulse attack. An EMP is produced by a nuclear weapon detonated at a high altitude. This underscores the need for missile defense — a ballistic missile is the most effective means of delivering an EMP weapon. A successful attack could decimate America’s electrical infrastructure and cause a catastrophe such as a large urban blackout — or worse.
A missile delivered to produce an EMP wouldn’t have to be launched from 5,000 miles away. Short-range missile can be placed on cargo vessels off the U.S. coast to launch a missile at the homeland (the “Scud-in-the-bucket” scenario).
In 2004, a congressionally mandated commission found that an EMP attack is “one of a small number of threats that has the potential to hold our society seriously at risk and might result in defeat of our military forces.” Five other commissions and major government studies have independently concurred. Despite this, there has been a bipartisan failure to address this threat — and virtual silence from the Obama administration.
A Scud-in-the-bucket EMP strike could be followed by cruise missile attack. A cruise missile could be fitted with a biological or chemical spray unit.
A typical Heritage Foundation snapshot showing its robots diligently working the electromagnetic pulse doom beat.
For at least the last five years, Heritage Foundation flunkies have worked this script, with merciless lack of variation, into the nation’s newspapers. Every three months or so, like clockwork, it’s the same old thing, in news agencies scattered about the land, wherever some bone-headed editor unaware of how many times it has already been published nationwide can be exploited.
And today, from some parrot-like right-wing blog:
It’s bewildering. Pathetic. Frightening. And it seems that the mainstream media avoids talking about it for fear that Americans will panic. Well, Americans ought to be panicking — anything to get them to bang on Congress’s door and force our representatives to immediately act … The disaster I am referring to is an electromagnetic pulse (EMP).
Since it’s a far right hobby-horse for missile defense and bombing Iran, there is also the political component. The socialist Kenyan in the White House is asleep at the switch over the menace:
The [EMP] conference “Standing Up to Ahmadinehad: Military and National Security Policy Experts Call on President Obama to Confront the Iranian Threat” presented the undeniable fact that the Iranian regime is prepared to use its nuclear weapons in the form of an EMP detonation in the skies 70-100 miles above “the great Satan” and to do so without attribution …
All I can say after listening to this panel is that the Obama administration would be much wiser to invest American taxpayer dollars in our national security than it is having issued loans to Solyndra for solar panels! With such a simple solution possible, it is unimaginable that the grave threat of an EMP in America is not being talked about in every news medium …
This is a bit disingenuous. The Cult of EMP Crazy does, in fact, ensure that EMP doom is talked about in every news medium.
It’s just that anyone with even a bit of sense ignores it — like nuisance advertising, spam and pop-up ads on the Internet.
Related:
Cult of EMP Crazy use of catastrophism on stupid white people in the heartland.
Apocalyptic end times predictions, the radical right and the Cult of EMP Crazy.
Cult of EMP Crazy: Scared stupid in the heartland.
Excerpt, a year and a half ago:
One of the more dubious ‘gifts’ of the Cult of EMP Crazy – a richly manipulative group … is the cruel brain haircut it imposes on its lessers. Think of it as a cynical tax on the IQ reserve for the sake of the missile defense/Bomb Iran lobby.
It’s quite the accomplishment. Thanks to the Heritage Foundation’s press machine, GOP voters in a placid place like Lancaster, Pennsylvania, think they have to worry about national collapse …
You’ve frightened a middle-aged woman into preparing for something that has almost zero chance of ever influencing life in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, with your EMP doom promotional campaign. Job well done!
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I’ve written before that Ted Nugent is nothing but a parrot.
When he writes his political screeds for the WaTimes he simply scans for the top extremist GOP/Tea Party talking points and repeats them.
Most of the time this meant taking whatever Glenn Beck said on Fox a few days earlier. With Beck gone, now it’s his Texas favorite, Rick Perry.
A hunting buddy of mine proposes the following plan to ultimately eliminate the Social Security congressional slush fund:
Anyone over the age of 45 will receive Social Security. Anyone under the age of 45 will not receive a Social Security check upon retirement. However, those younger than 45 will still be required to pay into Social Security to cover the benefits of those who are 45 or older. What they will get in return is that all of the money they accrue through investing in their 401(k), etc. programs will be tax-free when they retire.
Nugent, protestations to the contrary, is (from evidence gathered over the past couple years from his columns and TV appearances) brainless. It’s a trait which binds him to Rick Perry. They are kindred souls, he’s implied a couple times. And I certainly believe him.
Nugent doesn’t realize or chooses to ignore that for millions of Americans, Social Security is all they have. And that as the nation slides further into its relentless decline with less good paying jobs of any kind, this number is likely to increase.
Therefore millions of Americans, under the “Nugent hunting buddy plan” would still see money being taken out of their paychecks to cover Social Security for elders. But have nothing when they retired.
Which is genuinely a Ponzi scheme, a criminal malpractice. Perhaps that is the entire idea.
From USA Today, in 2005, when times were actually a bit better than now:
Mary Rathbun gets an $809 check every month from Social Security and an additional $100 in food stamps. The 74-year-old former nurse pays $550 in rent for her apartment in St. Helens, Ore. That leaves less than $400 for food, utilities and other expenses, including medical bills.
When Social Security was launched 70 years ago Sunday, it was meant to be a supplement for retirees, not a full pension. But today, 10.6 million people, or 22% of the 48 million who will receive Social Security benefits this year, live on that check alone, the Social Security Administration says.
Living on only Social Security isn’t a happy prospect. It means stretching every dollar, depending on a patchwork of family, charity and state programs to pay for what Social Security doesn’t cover — and sometimes doing without. Those living on nothing but Social Security are often single women and minorities. AARP, the senior advocacy group, says 25% of retired women, including 46% of unmarried Hispanic women, have no income beyond Social Security. AARP also says 33% of retired African-Americans live on Social Security alone.
Those numbers could grow as the baby boom generation enters retirement. Currently, 53% of people in the workforce have no pension, and 32% have no savings set aside for retirement.
Under the “Nugent hunting buddy plan,” homelessness, premature death, hunger and truly destitute poverty among the elderly would explode. You don’t even have to do any arithmetic. The explanation and numbers in the entirety of the USA Today piece would predict a truly appalling future for everyone but the most wealthy and their class of most enthusiastic attendants.
What would you expect in wisdom from a “hunting buddy”? Would you like to live in a country run by the heartwarming charity and homespun country savvy of the “Ted Nugent hunting buddy”?
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A GOP to rig Pennsylvania for Rick Perry or whoever gets the GOP nomination is described at Poltico here.
It’s mostly about changing the awarding of electoral votes in the state so that winner no longer takes all. With that eliminated, the GOP candidate splits off electoral votes from the state’s interior under common realization that between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh (with the exception of Harrisburg and State College), Pennsyltucky is essentially a white southern red state with no urban centers in voting demographics.
It’s also a tacit endorsement on the use of voter polarization and the idea that an election should be to drive people further apart, to purge the undesirables, rather than unite under one country.
E pluribus unum. F— that shit.
It’s a problem the Democrats and Obama can’t do anything about. The extremists got into power in 2008 because of economic calamity, political weakness and the rage vote. Since then they’ve been using the advantage granted to disenfranchise voters inimical to them.
In Pennsylvania that is a clever plan, essentially one to create an electoral split of the state into two.
Practically speaking, it’s an attempt to use secession to create a 51st state for one day, the election.
On the theocrat, speaking at Liberty State Theocrats College:
Perry, whose grades at Texas A&M were far from sterling, also appeared to push back against those who question the intellect of an animal science major with a transcript peppered with Cs and Ds.
“Managing to balance between being a cadet and being a student, preparing for that life in the military while trying to focus on the variety of subjects that would prepare me for life after the military,??? Perry said of his life at Texas A&M. “It wasn’t always easy. Quite frankly, I struggled with it. I fully admit that.???
[Yeah, being a cadet and an undergrad in a Texas university must be so hard. Cramming the football stadium on Saturdays really cuts into the scholastic endeavors. “Feeds and feeding” was one hella touch course, too.]
Jerry Falwell Jr., the chancellor of the school and the son of its famous founder, spoke admiringly of Perry at a press conference with reporters before the event, calling the governor’s flirtation with the idea of secession “gutsy.???
Ted Nugent, unsurprisingly, on Sept. 11:
We must continue to kill them at every opportunity. Death and war are all they understand. We must give those to them nonstop by unleashing hell upon them at all times … Fund the military and slash the budgets of all other agencies, departments and programs … Americans must commit to this struggle for the long term. It will take years, possibly decades …
Nugent has never fought in a war although he is mighty fond of machine guns. He avoided Viet Nam through deferment and was not, in fact, a draft dodger.
From the LehighValleyConservative’s Tea Party blog:
The progressive professes that they know right from wrong but in fact deny Him that is right. How can this be, the Republicans and the Democrats today have failed to understand the Scriptures …
Recently, from the same place, denouncing the “Heathen:”
I believe separation of Church and State with its doctrine will be placed on center stage in 2012 with the Christians again showing their ignorance of scripture and the Biblical teachings. They will be supporting some Heathen claiming to be a Christian; all the while the so call Christian Voter ignores the Constitution and the essences of Romans 13:1-6 and what the civil magistrate should be doing.
The understanding of the Bible and God’s law is imperative if we are to know how to separate church and state, and knowing the true meaning of what a theocracy is. Neither the church nor the state can take away conscience or man’s right to property as given to him by God. All spheres of life are under God and owe their boundaries, as fixed, by Him and His sovereignty; this then becomes a true theocracy under Godly men …
As we drift away from God and His law we see 70 years later, the devastation done to the social fabric, the people and their freedom.
It remains for us to rightly divide the Word if there is going to be a correction and that correction will only come if God has mercy on us if we understand salvation is through Jesus Christ, and not the State …
From the Booman Tribune, a reflection on the Tea Party and the recent debate:
Obama’s response thus far has been to offer compromises to a movement that does not compromise, and to argue facts with a movement that hates facts. Between now and November 2012, however, Obama’s audience isn’t that movement; it’s American voters. In a year when economic distress should doom his reelection chances, Obama’s best shot is to cast the election not as a choice between two competing visions of governance, but as a choice between democracy and theocracy. And a particularly nasty theocracy at that.
He won’t use that framing, of course …
The results were on painful display Monday night’s Tea Party debate. Our task for the next year is to remind Americans at every turn that almost all of us are not pure enough to have any place in the theocratic vision of the United States on display there …
The routine of another regretful Republican, Sarah Reidy, Facebooking:
“I am seriously thinking of logging off of Facebook until November 2012. I am embarrassed by how red meat our Tea Party has become. For years I have tried to prove the GOP isn’t the party of elitist, stereotypical people that lack compassion. When did creativity and growth become secondary to hate? Hearing the debate crowds go crazy over things like executions and the uninsured dying makes me sick and sad …”
“Friends (1212),” her page reads.
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Use and distribute freely.
Last week’s best comment — hands down, from the Galileo post:
I am no fan of Rick Perry.Its Ron Paul or no one.The fact of the matter is gobal warming caused by human activity is a fraud. Do the research.Deliberate falseifing of weather data was exposed in 2009. Scientific knowledge is great but it should not be used to take away our freedooms.
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Some on the right have tried to link the US government’s raids on Gibson Guitars to a sinister Democratic/Obama administration plan to destroy jobs.
Gibson’s CEO, Henry Juszkiewicz, has hitched his horse to the hare-brained conspiracy thinking for the sake of publicity.
They are among the most sought-after musical instruments in the world. Everyone from Chet Atkins to Les Paul to Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin to Slash of Guns n’ Roses played them. A vintage 1959 Les Paul guitar can go for as much as $400,000. Almost every kid who has dreams of music stardom wants a Gibson guitars.
Gibson is also a company that is proud to put the “Made in the USA??? label on its instruments. While the company has lower-end lines that are made overseas, every guitar that bears the “Gibson??? label is made in the U.S. by American workers …
Outside observers see a more sinister possibility in all of this. Henry Juszkiewicz, Gibson’s CEO, is a Republican, who has contributed to Republican candidates (as well as some Democratic candidates). Other guitar companies, which have not been targeted, are led by Democrats. Is there a political motivation to all of this? Neither Mitchell, nor Juszkiewicz will offer an opinion, but consider what Juszkiewicz told Neil Cavuto on “Your World.”
“You know we’ve been pretty low key. We’re a guitar company. We’ve been manufacturing guitars. We’ve been involved in the environmental movement. We’ve been trying to do the right thing in terms of sourcing. We really don’t know why they are picking on us.???
The government is picking on Gibson because it appears to have been importing banned wood, something other guitar makers in the US refrained from. And that is explained here.
And Gibson, like many other musical instrument manufacturers, employs more people in China than it does domestically. It’s American-made business is for the wealthy as any day trip to a local Guitar Center will quickly demonstrate.
Rep. Marsha Blackburn gets it wrong again (“Gibson Guitar CEO joins jobs talk fray,??? Sept. 8). The investigation into Gibson Guitars illegally importing protected wood was started before November 2009.
The Lacey Act of 1900 was amended in May 2008 to add more protection to many commodities. The amendments were included in the Food, Conservation and Energy Act of 2008 passed by the House and Senate and vetoed by President Bush. A month later, Congress overrode the veto by a bipartisan vote of 317-109 in the House and 80-14 in the Senate.
The recent raid probably was to determine if Gibson had kept its word from the raids of November 2009 to stop using illegally harvested wood. This adds to a troubled past including IRS tax liens and charges of price fixing.
Everyone hopes that Gibson will survive this latest problem.
Laughably, Juszkiewicz has said the US government is engaged in “class warfare” in pursuing its investigation.
Please save my Gibson guitar from the tyrannical hands of the US guv’mint!
But does that make the [Bitcoin] experiment a success? Um, no. What we want from a monetary system isn’t to make people holding money rich; we want it to facilitate transactions and make the economy as a whole rich. And that’s not at all what is happening in Bitcoin …
[There] has been an incentive to hoard the virtual currency rather than spending it. The actual value of transactions in Bitcoins has fallen rather than rising. In effect, real gross Bitcoin product has fallen sharply.
Krugman likens Bitcoin to a “private gold standard.”
“[It] reinforces the case against anything like a new gold standard – because it shows just how vulnerable such a standard would be to money-hoarding, deflation, and depression,” he writes.
Previously, DD’s experience with Bitcoin:
You can leave your processor on for a century and maybe see the equivalent of a few bucks worth of bitcoins. Even semi-hard days of mining them are well over.
Think of it as the citizen’s gold mining crew shown in Pale Rider, except there’s no chance you’ll find the big rock like Spider Conway before he was gunned down by Stockburn and his marshals. And no Clint Eastwood as “Preacher,??? either.
Bitcoin is all now Coy LaHood.
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Howard is “volatile,” it is reported.
Today’s laugher re Howard is an interview conducted by Detroit music journalist Gary Graff for Billboard.
Almost all US music journalists are milchtoasts. They’re simply not capable of doing honest interviews with the likes of Ted Nugent.
Today’s piece in Billboard is no exception.
Entitled “Ted Nugent ‘Too Divisive’ to Get Role in Rick Perry Campaign,” the headline telegraphs what any reasonable person would find obvious.
However, most of the story is devoted to more puff hagiography for Ted Nugent.
It’s not the first time.
DD has mentioned Graff in the Ted Nugent tab before. Last year, right around the same time — Labor Day — when Ted had just finished his annual anti-union ritual.
I put it this way:
Nugent eventually left Michigan for Waco, Texas. And while assorted cream puff music journalists have asked Ted this summer whether he might run for political office, given his views, he’s unelectable wherever there is still an informed middle class. Even in this toxic climate. And that rules out almost his entire old home state. Ted knows it, too.
Ted Nugent, elected to represent places like Detroit, Flint, Kalamazoo, Ann Arbor or Lansing? Surely you must be joking.
Now, as for Waco or Crawford, Texas? Maybe.
Ted’s return to Michigan for a Labor Day gig has generated local advance press. Typically, no one brings up the very bad odor of Ted’s attitudes and politics toward Detroit.
The only significant item appeared in the Royal Oak newspaper, a reprint of a trivial Gary Graff wire news piece which was published at Billboard a few days ago.
And did Graff ask Nugent about what he thought of the auto unions now, for a Labor Day gig? Nope. That would be possibly rife with unpleasantness.
If you find anything in Graff’s Billboard piece on Nugent in late August of last year about the man’s animus toward union workers and Detroit, you’re better than me.
At the time, from the Nugent tab here, I wrote:
Someone with guts might have chosen to make Nugent actually look at himself in a mirror, for a change.
Good job, Billboard and Gary Graff! Get that news on Nugent’s next album, supposedly featuring “‘ stone cold motherf***king songs’ ready to go when he takes his band into the studio later this year … ???
Guts, of course, are almost entirely ruled out in music journalism. It’s a black mark, a sign of mental illness and unreliability to have any.
But back to today’s Billboard piece on Nugent, again by Graff, which skips all mention of Nugent’s virulently anti-union piece for the Labor Day weekend in the WaTimes. The same weekend Ted played his “homecoming” gig in Detroit.
An enterprising reporter might have pleasantly asked Ted if he took time to share any of his opinions with the crowd at the DTE theatre in Clarkson.
Ted often shares his opinions, sprinkled with profanity, from the stage.
Here’s what could have been asked:
So, Ted, did you tell your crowd in Detroit last night that auto unions fucking suck, teachers unions blow and you despise them all? If not, why not? Did you not have the time?
It’s simple, really. You just have to be prepared to hear Ted curse at you and call ya a “limey prick” or something.
As a Texas resident for the past six years, a diehard conservative and a personal friend of Gov. Rick Perry, there’s no question where Ted Nugent’s loyalties will lie during the 2012 presidential campaign. His capacity to be vocal about his candidate, however, is still up in the air …
“I don’t know if I’ll get a stamp of approval because I am so volatile and because the line in the sand in a political campaign can be so ambiguous — and I’m anything but, [Nugent tells Graff]. The reality is that Perry must penetrate what is presumed to be the non-Perry demographic, and if I scare them away so he doesn’t get their ear, then I’m being counterproductive” …
“That bully pulpit can also have a serious tone to it,” Nugent explains. “But on a rock ‘n’ roll stage, I can tell Hillary Clinton to straddle my machine gun. The more something causes problems with people, the more I’ll say it ’cause it’s rock ‘n’ roll and you can eat me. But that’s a rock ‘n’ roll show. I know how to change the tone …
“Volatile.” It’s like calling the first H-bomb test, the one that dug a crater a mile wide at Bikini atoll, a “big bang.” Here’s Ted being his usual tricky self when he knows a journalist won’t call him on it.
The tone in Nugent’s regular opinion pieces for the WaTimes contains no real differences from his stage rants.
Well, wait, let me correct that.
There is one difference. Ted is not allowed to use a constant stream of profanity at the WaTimes.
But otherwise, it’s the same. Ted hating on huge swaths of American society — condemning teachers, education, all aspects of the government, all Democrats, Muslims, just about everyone not exactly like him.
It’s easy to review and DD has done so. Hey, Media Matters runs a regular ticker on Nugent, too, and it did not miss Nugent’s anti-labor Labor Day generosity this weekend.
Gary Graff, and Billboard, I’m reasonably certain, know all this. They just choose not to share it with readers or take time to make Nugent defend himself. It’s just too damn distasteful to have to walk Nugent back over most of his proclamations, particularly those which are totally indefensible in a reasonable society with any kind of heart.
At one point Nugent is asked about his “I Still Believe” song.
He seems to acknowledge it’s a duff piece, asserting that if only he’d had more money to spend on it, that would have fixed things:
[Nugent] considers it more of a demo than an actual single.
“It’s [sic] doesn’t have the big, musical sound I’d normally get,” he explains. “The guitars aren’t what they need to be. The drums aren’t what they need to be. But I’m not going to spend $100,000 to give something away. I’ll spend $10,000 to give something away, and I wanted to get that song out there.”
Ten thousand dollars to give that song away? More horseshit.
The Billboard piece includes the Ted concert vid on YouTube, the one I laughed at and linked to over the weekend here.
Nugent threatens a new album, one he knows his current audience won’t buy.
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Ted Nugent has many beliefs. And he’s not a courageous enough a musician or lyricist to fit ’em into his songs. He also knows his new smallish audience of bottom-out-of-sight white assholes in wife-beaters and motorcycle gangster colors wouldn’t have it.
Not because of the actual political content. But because, in songs, they would sink a set where all anyone wants to hear is “Cat Scratch Fever” and “Wang Dang Sweet Poontang.”
So here is today’s Nugent bit at the Washington Times, for the second year running, an anti-labor column on the Labor Day weekend. Which takes stones and no heart.
Most people reading it won’t perceive the double paradox this weekend.
Ted performs one of his summer tour wrap-ups in Detroit. He’ll be performing at the DTE Energy Music Center in Clarkston, Michigan, today.
Unions are no bargain for Americans
The real purpose of Labor Day is a day for the Democratic Party to celebrate. Labor unions and their members are solidly in the Democratic camp. At every Democratic campaign rally, Big Labor is there.
The National teachers union (NEA), one of the nation’s largest unions, is a rock-solid supporter of the Democratic Party, as is every other large union. The NEA cares more about maintaining taxpayer-provided benefits for its members than ensuring our kids get a world-class education. On the NEA’s watch, test scores have plummeted and dropout rates have skyrocketed.
The United Auto Workers (UAW) has been a solid supporter of the Democratic Party for decades and has had automobile management under its thumb. The end result: Automotive plants have closed all around country. What was once the envy of the world, the American automobile industry has been totaled.
Al Capone-wannabe Richard Trumka [etc] …
Public-sector employees should be banned from joining a union …
The result of the labor movement has been a disaster. Labor unions have not sustained labor but rather have destroyed it …
Ultimately, you get what you bargain for – an unemployment check.
The Ted message: He despises unions, school teachers, and all public sector workers. Unions are responsible for mass unemployment, not the economic collapse of 2008. The unemployed deserve it because they supported unions.
Published on Labor Day. In the evening Ted plays Detroit, where the audience obviously won’t have read this column or hear him cursing them from the stage. Or they’d tar and feather him.
While Nugent’s name recognition in Michigan is still significant, there’s a reason he left it for Texas years ago.
I feel good mocking Ted Nugent’s mediocre “I Still Believe” in the previous post.
Related: Ted’s banishment from a big Michigan summer festival years ago.
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