09.23.13
Posted in Culture of Lickspittle, Rock 'n' Roll, WhiteManistan at 2:41 pm by George Smith
If you’ve been wondering about what’s behind part of the GOP hate party on food stamps, it’s outrage over Jason Greenslate, a San Diego surfer with a hard rock band called RattLife, who has an EBT card.
Fox News made a special example of him and the GOP has been using video of Greenslate to inflame people with the implication the SNAP program has expanded because of alleged moochers like the “beach bum.”
“You can no longer sit on your couch or ride a surfboard like Jason in California and expect the federal taxpayer to feed you,” said Kansas GOPer Tim Huelskamp when the House food stamp cuts were voted up last week.
Greenslate, who cooperated with Fox in hopes of getting publicity for RattLife: “I do work. I’m just not making any money. I’m setting up a career for myself.”
Darrell “Benghazi” Issa of California delivered this unintentionally amusing quote: “Clearly it’s an example of somebody using a government program that is unreasonable, considering he has chosen to make less money and is using public assistance for a lifestyle decision … He obviously is anticipating being very rich later and not paying back the money.”
Getting rich playing in a rock band, yeah, that happens so easily.
Anyway, this is a standard right wing media trick — finding one person getting a detested government benefit, in this case, a food stamp recipient, ideally in a blue state, someone most offensive to WhiteManistan. And Jason Greenslate is certainly that. His band, Rattlife can be found on YouTube.
Rattlife is an 80s-90s Guns n Roses in Hollywood style-act and the videos are worth checking out for the comments alone, now made by the terminally enraged in WhiteManistan who seem to think if they get angry enough, they can will Greenslate out of existence or, at least, maybe get him arrested.
:I don’t think that one person [in a Fox News story] should be the decision for 47 million people [on food stamps],” Greenslate told the media today, which is certainly a sensible statement.
There’s another reality here, unstated. Job opportunities and wages are so poor in southern California that if Jason Greenslate worked the kind of more traditional “jobs” actually available, like wait staff at Starbucks, he’d still be eligible for the SNAP program, anyway.
I like Jason Greenslate and because he so pisses off the party of extremists who have used him in a right wing media gotcha, you should like him, too.
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09.20.13
Posted in Crazy Weapons, Culture of Lickspittle, WhiteManistan at 1:56 pm by George Smith
Fiore. You gotta see it.
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Posted in Psychopath & Sociopath, WhiteManistan at 1:40 pm by George Smith
Unwise.
And now officially a pariah.
Fired in WhiteManistan:
(AP) Gilberton Borough Council members said Thursday night they plan to fire Mark Kessler, nearly two months after voting to suspend the only full-time member of the town’s police force …
In January, Kessler drafted a resolution the borough adopted that calls for nullifying any federal, state or local regulations that infringe on the Second Amendment.
This leaves continuing to grow the militia, called the Constitution Security Force.
Mark “Gunny” Kessler of Schuylkill County, PA, from the archives.
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Posted in Psychopath & Sociopath, Ted Nugent, WhiteManistan at 11:06 am by George Smith
From the American Journal of Medicine:
“The number of guns per capita per country was a strong and independent predictor of firearm related death in a given country, whereas the predictive power of the mental illness burden was of borderline significance … Regardless of exact cause and effect, however, the current study debunks the widely-quoted hypothesis that guns make a nation safer.”
Accompanying data shows US the obvious world leader.
Journal article here.
Full size.
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Posted in Psychopath & Sociopath, WhiteManistan at 9:14 am by George Smith
Full size.
Krugman today: “[It] grows increasingly hard to see how … we can avoid a government shutdown — and … the even more frightening prospect of a debt default … this political moment of truth was going to happen sooner or later. We might as well have it now.”
Bring on the Constitutional crisis. See if the crazy backed and elected by corporate wealth in 2010 can bring down the government and the economy.
Why not?
They voted to toss a few million off food stamps yesterday and set the stage for closing the government over Obamacare today. They should have what they want, a doomsday, and see what it’s about.
No more suspense.
Wreck it, do it, stop the checks, stop the planes, stop the services, send homeland security home, stop the spending in government/military towns, stop it all, bring on the whirlwind and blight in the “greatest nation on Earth,” let’s get it on. With hands over hearts. God Bless America!
The catalog of PARIAH covers. Collect them all.
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Posted in Culture of Lickspittle, Ted Nugent, WhiteManistan at 8:35 am by George Smith
Ted Nugent:
How many more slaughters have to occur before we reverse this very deadly course mandated by clueless bureaucrats?
Liberalism is a death sentence. Don’t buy it.
It took inter-agency joint SWAT forces to take him out. Therefore the NRA should spin up a new program to train soldiers on bases on the use of guns in self-defense. The ones allowed to bear arms should be more heavily armed. And self-defense guns should be mandated for all janitors, secretaries and whatever other civilian workers there may be.
Trivia: Blog comments filter catches astro-turf to domain welovegun.com, a spam site in Arabic, used as a front for advertising and backlinks to the usual goods. On access it attempts to load at least 3000 elements.
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09.19.13
Posted in Culture of Lickspittle, Decline and Fall, WhiteManistan at 8:59 am by George Smith
We have met the enemy and it’s our so-called best. Corporate America and the most wealthy have destroyed everything, with no end in sight.
Smartphones and iJunk have not saved the day. You can use them to notify your family you’re going to the food pantry.
Excerpts from the news on the today’s Census report on the state of America:
“The number of Americans in poverty remained largely unchanged at a record 46.5 million. By race, a growing proportion of poor children are Hispanic, a record 37 percent of the total. Whites make up 30 percent, blacks 26 percent. The new census data show that lower-income households are a steadily increasing share of the population, while middle- to higher-income groups shrank or were flat. Roughly 13.6 percent of U.S. households, received food stamps, the highest level on record. Just over half of these households, or 52 percent, were -below poverty.”
Corporate profits soared, noted the New York Times, “but [according to Census data] the median earnings of men working full time have not increased in real terms since the early 1970s.”
“Economists believe that the [Census] report understates the degree of income inequality in the United States, by not including, among other things, earnings from capital gains made on rising stock prices.”
Could we hope for the Republican Party to make things worse in two weeks?
Isn’t it time to send everyone to the glue factory?
Comparisons: 46.5 million Americans live in poverty. Population of France — 65.7 million, Britain — 62.2 million.
Art predicts life:
We lock up the poor for all the rich
And we do it right without no hitch
Welcome to the United States of Greed
It’s the only country you’ll ever need …
Now we think freedom’s lame
Because what you need is a life of pain.
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09.18.13
Posted in Crazy Weapons, WhiteManistan at 1:58 pm by George Smith
The damaged tribesmen of WhiteManistan are incapable of seeing their mental trouble.
They can be counted on to do the wrong thing, always.
Open carry of guns to Starbucks in Newtown, Connecticut, was an idea and action by people who need to be ostracized from society.
And the “I Love Guns and Coffee (at Starbucks)” campaign to take your guns to the franchise has just been … killed.
From Starbucks, today:
Few topics in America generate a more polarized and emotional debate than guns. In recent months, Starbucks stores and our partners (employees) who work in our stores have been thrust unwillingly into the middle of this debate. That’s why I am writing today with a respectful request that customers no longer bring firearms into our stores or outdoor seating areas …
Our company’s longstanding approach to “open carry??? has been to follow local laws: we permit it in states where allowed and we prohibit it in states where these laws don’t exist. We have chosen this approach because we believe our store partners should not be put in the uncomfortable position of requiring customers to disarm or leave our stores. We believe that gun policy should be addressed by government and law enforcement—not by Starbucks and our store partners.
Recently, however, we’ve seen the “open carry??? debate become increasingly uncivil and, in some cases, even threatening. Pro-gun activists have used our stores as a political stage for media events misleadingly called “Starbucks Appreciation Days??? that disingenuously portray Starbucks as a champion of “open carry.??? To be clear: we do not want these events in our stores. Some anti-gun activists have also played a role in ratcheting up the rhetoric and friction, including soliciting and confronting our customers and partners …
I would like to clarify two points. First, this is a request and not an outright ban. Why? Because we want to give responsible gun owners the chance to respect our request—and also because enforcing a ban would potentially require our partners to confront armed customers, and that is not a role I am comfortable asking Starbucks partners to take on…
Howard Schultz, CEO of Starbucks, told newspapers: “The presence of a weapon in our stores is unsettling and upsetting for many of our customers.”
And this points again to the dark heart of the gun-crazy in America. They have made a big thing out of open carry in restaurants, shopping centers, snack shops and on the streets of cities because it is about intimidation, a form of low level mental terrorism.
Their’s is a dark joy in unsettling those they see as enemies all around.
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Posted in Culture of Lickspittle, Decline and Fall, WhiteManistan at 12:33 pm by George Smith
A decade ago, in the introduction to my collection The Great Unraveling, I argued that the modern Republican party was a “revolutionary power??? in the sense once defined by, of all people, Henry Kissinger — a power that no longer accepted any of the norms of politics as usual, that was willing not just to take radical positions but to act in ways that undermined the whole system of governance people thought they understood …
So, now we face the imminent threat of a government shutdown and/or a U.S. government default because Republicans refuse to accept the notion that duly enacted legislation should be allowed to go into effect, and repealed only through constitutional means. Oh, and the cause for which most of the GOP is willing to threaten chaos is the noble endeavor of ensuring that tens of millions of Americans continue to lack essential health care. —Krugman
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Posted in Crazy Weapons, Culture of Lickspittle, WhiteManistan at 10:27 am by George Smith
Taken by the New York Times a week ago in Missouri and used as the leading photo for a post-Navy Yard massacre piece on gun control, it’s a photo that, coincidentally, powerfully illustrates a central social problem in this country. And so it requires emphasis and republication.
The photo is WhiteManistan and the need to escape it, perfectly captured.
With hands over hearts the people are not heart-warming. Quite the opposite. In their desire for an unbridled gun culture, they provoke fear and loathing, having brought on the convincing reality that when they get any of their way worse inevitably follows. Nothing can be done and nothing will be done about gun violence because more guns must be bought, they save lives. Everyone is made prisoner to gun hoarding manias, paranoia and regular gun bloodbaths as normal in American civilization.
Mind-numbing, it’s a tableau of the old, irrational and anti-civilization, a collection of my mentally troubled tribe in Jefferson City, Missouri, hoping — of all things to hope for — legislation to nullify federal gun control.
It’s a damaged group, perhaps successful in their lives with grown children, loving pets and all the possessions of American middle class life. But there is something very wrong inside and it can’t be fixed by reason, only endured. Worse, these broken people cannot recognize their mental trouble.
When I see these pictures, now commonplace, I see people the same color, who look the same as my parents, who looked like the people with which I grew up. But we share nothing.
Massacres will continue until morale improves.
From Der Spiegel: America’s unhindered gun mania.
Hat tip to Frank at Pine View Farm.
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