So many, but not all, of the suicide bombers come from failing, humiliated societies that generate huge numbers of “sitting-around people,??? who are easy prey for recruiters offering martyrdom and significance in the next life. We need to do what we can to eliminate their sources of energy.
Boy, what other “failing, humiliated societies” that have generated “huge numbers of ‘sitting around people'” do we know of?
We must do all we can to eliminate their sources of energy, too.
Thinks California smaller than Pennsy, went red on Tuesday. Plans to try more hating on Latinos next year.
Much laughter all around.
Pennsy heevahava and ersatz Republican Blue Dog Democrat Jason Altmire on Nancy Pelosi:
“I am not voting for Nancy Pelosi.”
“I don’t get the sense that Speaker Pelosi understands what happened on Tuesday. We lost middle America. The Democratic party got crushed … I would rather have someone who understands middle America and someone who can relate to the districts we lost.”
Not here in California, buddy boy.
Classically, Altmire’s is a case of bad thinking. Because he almost lost, and three of his ersatz Republican Blue Dog Pennsy pals did, he thinks the fault lies not with them but with someone else, from that state of commie fags.
“Altmire voted against major pieces of Democratic legislation, including the health care bill,” added CNN helpfully.
Today Glenn Beck is describing how socialist insurrection — now said to be happening all over Europe, will soon be coming here, heralded by a total collapse of the dollar caused by the US government. Reinforced by a real he-man named Brad Thor, allegedly a very important ex-Dept. of Homeland Security employee. They wave around books that prove it, they say.
Besides the commercials for goldbuggism, advertisers are for the geriatric club, locally — a retirement home in Pasadena, rip-off reverse mortgage schemes designed to put you underwater pitched by elderly Fred Thompson, and lap band surgery.
And this:
Which says everything with very little effort.
Why did I even watch? Not being an ostomy patient, of course.
“American exceptionalism exists!” insists Brad Thor, with great conviction.
When DD was in grad school, lunatic extremism was not the mainstream. Now it is.
I’ve sampled the best comments and added remarks.
Here we go!
The number of people living in the house is what is mandated the rest is bullying. It is our duty as citizens to resist any law that is not constitutional and any law that is not in the spirit of the constitution is automatically unconstitutional!
Standard right wing census-dodger bullshit I heard many times. Census workers were given examples of what people were asked, and the results, from way in the olden days.
At one time census workers asked if there were people in the house who were paupers or mentally incapable.
Jezzus numb nuts, They ask simple things like name, do you own or rent, and how many people live here. They do not care about flush toilets or how many rooms you have. They will ask in a follow up more detailed questionnaire which is entirely voluntary questions like household income, and occupation for the people living there.
A census is an example of intrusive government? Really? A data collection mechanism designed to enable the folks in charge to make better, more informed decisions. Something that allows the people who live in a country know a little bit more about said country.
Really?
No offence is intended here…but I have to view that kind of statement as either “you are victim of some pretty blatant Tea Party propaganda” or “you are off your meds.” Together, those two would probably have a synergistic effect.
Seriously: WTF?
Experienced every day, multiple times.
“part of the reason people responded to the census the way they did is because this was the first time an actual federal representative was coming over to the house uninvited.”
Well yes, except for the fact that the census has been performed by Actual Federal Representatives every ten years since 1790 (inclusive). So unless they’re less than 10 years old, immigrated to the US sometime in the last 10 years, or slept through the previous census(es) then it’s already happened before and they lived to tell.
My mother was an enumerator in the 1990s Census and people were much more cooperative then. It was only the crazy (think Hannibal Lecter) or red-neck (think Early Cuyler) who didn’t want the census people to count them. This current paranoid right-wing resistance is new and directly traceable to Fox News.
I absolutely DO NOT understand why any group would want to intentionally under represent themselves in the census. Census data is used to determine the distribution of representatives in the House and for purposes of determining funding for a LOT of Federal programs (road creation/repair, school funding, etc)
As the title implies that you are responding to the article titled “Ironic” I am not sure if I understand all your points. The point that gathering too much personal data can be deadly for minorities or groups out of favor was also mentioned in the OP where it stated “…Remembering that the US has a history of rounding up persons based on race, national origin, and political bent, …” and is agreed with. So, going forward with the point that in the EU, where more personal data is collected than in the US, the population is less whiny seems, well, illogical. If collecting personal data is dangerous then collecting more personal data is more dangerous. Rather than being dismissive of protesting personal data collection as being whiny, I would think that it deserves applauding as it provides a higher standard that can be used as an example. Yes?
However, the fundamental points of the OP were not just about collecting personal data and what evil may be done with it. They were also about: 1) how those who refused to comply were labeled; 2) how the US government uses force to gain compliance; 3) how it has a history of abusing groups that can be identified via personal data like race, national origin, and political bent; and that given those points, 4) it is not improbable to be skeptical of the Census. Those are the points that I think should be discussed. As it seems to be the first point that is ignored the most, I have to wonder why? Is it too subtle? Have we already stopped noticing when someone calls people crazy, as in loony for thinking thoughts like that, for resisting a government process to force us to help with gathering personal data? They may be crazy for resisting a process that cannot be stopped but I don’t think that is not what the author meant.
I had no experience with census work prior to taking the job. I had no preconceptions going in. I thought it would be difficult, given that part of the job was explicitly to enumerate the hardcore census-dodgers, not the vast majority of people who had performed their civic duty. Like me.
I divided the non-responders into two general categories on experience, not on preconception. Others in my crew, perhaps not all, thought the same way.
The author divided potential targets as either those that complied, those that could not comply, and those that refused to comply. Those that refused to comply were crazies and the envious. I think that is vilification, yes? The only caveat to his analysis is that he said the ‘second category’ included those kinds of people so it may also have included people he might consider sane and not envious. But as he doesn’t actually say that we can only conjecture it, if we are feeling benevolent, and by that benevolent logic you can also include any other group not mentioned. Given that he has already disparaged that category though, I suspect most people would add their other least liked groups. And that, along with the obvious pejorative descriptions of people who were ‘census-dodgers’, is why I call this slanted.
Called a spade a spade. If you were a hardcore census-dodger, you were a hardcore census-dodger. No other way to describe them.
Now, it’s quite possible that a group that actually only had X% of Fox-believing care-in-the -community cases in it might seem in hindsight like it had rather more, but that’s the kind of thing that most people would apply their own pinch of salt to when reading, and in the end, it’s not exactly important what the precise proportions were – for an insight into someone’s job, it’s likely that they’ll concentrate on the more memorable people.
In any case, the author actually seemed to go on to describe people like the sneering ‘why don’t you get a better job’ types that seem more like people who just want to look down on others in order to feel important, not just anti-government nutjobs.
Really? Then why all the angry gibbering about how anyone with a gripe about the census was a fat-cat Glenn Beck addict? (And how homeless and jobless people were invariably pleasant and understanding and had totally legitimate excuses for everything.)
The major problem was the mentioned multiple rounds of invasive questions. After 3 “census” guys show up at your door, after you’ve already returned your form, you’re going to be a) a little testy at the obvious government waste and idiocy, and b) wondering if they’re really census guys, or people out to steal your identity.
After re-answering all the questions with the first guy, I told the rest to sod off. They gave me the usual “you’re interfering with the census” to which I said “no, I’m not, as I’ve sent in my form. fuck off”
One guy waited for over an hour hoping for me to answer questions. I simply went about my business and he helplessly followed me around the house, while I ignored him.
The IT angle is the census was the first use of punched-card data processing equipment.
And that census fellow was a good example of how courteous and patient we were, even in the face of many dickheads daily.
Then the census workers did what we did with everyone. Ask your neighbors about the uncooperative guy living next door. And they told us. Sometimes they rolled their eyes.
I feel entitled to a firewall against the nuisance of articles by former census workers!
Sadly, I know how to write up a storm.
First, abusing census takers is actually a VERY, VERY OLD issue that can be traced to right after the Civil War. In the 30’s it wasn’t unusual for rural people to take shots (as in with a firearm) at census employees either mistaking them for revenuers (federal police either enforcing the ban on alcohol at the time or later shutting down unregistered stills) or simply out of pure cussedness. If all you got was insulted and cursed at, count yourself lucky.
Second, I have a couple of friends (retired) who decided to become census takers for something to do. From what I’ve been told, all you really had to have was a pulse and be able to get to your assigned area. I met a charming young lady one late morning looking for my next door neighbors. She couldn’t understand why they were never home till I pointed out they both worked and didn’t get home till 5pm. Apparently it never occurred to her that showing up during regular working hours probably wasn’t the best method for contacting people at home.
Actually, my favorite time to go out was when people were arriving home from work. Or early weekend mornings and gay Sunday afternoons when people were cooking out and partying, much to the dismay of the NRFU’s.
During World War 2, the US Army used Census data about race to identify Japanese-Americans to round up and send to internment camps. Now they don’t care so much about race if you’re Asian or European, but they really obsess about it if you’re from Latin America, and the right-wing politicians obsess about sending all those Latino immigrants back home.
Quote of day in the print edition of the Los Angeles Times:
The brand name is still a tremendous liability. People of color are just turned off by the Republican Party. — GOP strategist
This coming in stories where a Republican said he woke up in the morning feeling he’d been run over by a truck.
“Tellingly, Latinos in California had a far more negative view of the GOP than other voters — almost 3 in four had an unfavorable impression …” continued the newspaper.
This because a big part of the GOP platform has been to cast the impression that Latinos in the west, as they relate to illegals, are parasites and to be deported or persecuted.
That’s great in most of the interior of Pennsyltucky. Not at all so, here. Except if you live in places of big acreage but not so many people, like the Hemets and Temeculas.
In California, those who’d been laid off in the last two years — and there were many — trashed the GOP, 56-38 for Brown, and 56-40 for Boxer. Unequivocally demonstrating that if the Great Recession had impacted you in a serious manner, you weren’t interested in Republicorp in CA.
Boxer’s ads emphasizing Fiorina’s sending 30,000 jobs overseas were effective. It was something for which the ex-HP exec had no answer.
One demographic the GOP won in California was the 65-and-older. Call it the coot vote from the interior, it went 48-47 for Whitman, 50-44 for Fiorina.
The hardcopy edition of today’s Los Angeles Times had an excellent county-by-county map of the Brown/Whitman results.
Sadly, latimes.com is absolute rubbish for finding stuff like this easily. So no link.
Now that things have changed and GOP/Tea Party types still don’t have the control they’d hoped for in the US government, what’s my old neighbor, the LehighValleyConservative up to?
Readers know I refer to the old Tea Party dude, the union man who hates on unions, spouts Biblical quote for the damning of others and has a contract as clip art for advertisements appealing to goldbuggism.
Harry Reid of Nevada won back his Senate seat last night for one main reason. He is in bed with and in the pockets of the Los [sic] Vegas gambling hierarchy. One look at the red/blue districts in Nevada and that becomes obvious. Reid is not being elected by the average working class, he is being protected by his gambling buddies. Much the same is going on in New York and other places. If we don’t wake up and clean house, it will only get worse … Bottom line is that we must get back to our traditional values and we must eliminate welfare for the lazy and reward hard work and success. That alone will eliminate most of the division and the resulting hate and crime in our society!
Having never left the pleasant green of Allentown and Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, he doesn’t know what everyone who is sane does: Hey, lots and lots of Latinos live in the cities of the west.
The big problems are simple, he sez — our “lack of Judea/Christian values,” meaning yours and mine, and the paying out of entitlements to all the leeches.
The number of people seeking jobless benefits jumped sharply last week, after two straight weeks of declines.
The increase undermines hopes that unemployment claims, after falling four times in the previous five weeks, were on a sustained downward trend. That would signal layoffs were slowing and hiring was picking up. Instead, claims remain stuck at an elevated level.
For logistical reasons having to do with how unemployment claims are processed and the slow pace of payroll tax reporting by the federal government in various states, some of these results must inevitably be due to census workers claims just now working through the system.
The results from the US 2010 Decennial Census are guaranteed by the end of the year. However, those who collected it – called enumerators – already know quite a bit about the state of the nation. There’s no good news …
Census employment was the only bright spot in the US economy this year. It showed solid results when the army of enumerators went into the field. The president mentioned the more positive employment statistics sometime in late May-early June. Paradoxically, since the statistics lagged the real world, by the time he said it, the census was busy laying off as many people as it could in Pasadena.
They’re fabulous. If only because they show absolutely nothing has changed.
The election brought out the crazies. And the crazies, with the same political beliefs as the census-dodgers, thought they were going to win big time, sweeping everything in their path.
They did not. And many of the most famous nutcases lost. But they’re still around, fuming and swearing they were delivered a mandate by the people. And the very close result splits in places like Pennsylvania show the great and irreconcilable divisions between our tribes.
The census operation showed a way forward early in the year. It demonstrated how people could be put back to work for productive purpose. It put money in their pockets, money they spent in the regions in which they lived, and it sustained demand as long as it was in place. There are facts.
If Obama had used fancy footwork and 2 AM sessions to pass a big public works program, and this program had brought unemployment down, Republicans would be screaming about the process — and Democrats would have comfortably held control of Congress. Remember the voter backlash against the way Medicare drug benefits were passed? Neither do I.
Census employment, while coincidental to the times, showed a result.
It demonstrated unequivocally how hundreds of thousands of Americans could be put to work to capably do productive work for the country.
“We all either work for rich people or sell stuff for rich people.”
Except when the rich people don’t need Americans to work for them, just those in China and India. Or they aren’t interested in people working at all, just making and selling fraudulent or criminal financial services and instruments.
Earlier — on the ‘artisan’ economy, or the plutonomy.
A book on American plutocracy is reviewed here — at the NY Times.
The West Toledo man whose home contained hundreds of hallucinogenic mushrooms had amassed a cache of eight firearms and had told his wife that he hates government, especially the IRS and law enforcement, according to a newly obtained FBI affidavit.
Toledo police arrested Thomas D. Wineinger, 51, of 4716 Douglas Rd., on Oct. 26 and seized the illegal mushrooms, firearms, and more than 2,000 rounds of ammunition.
Also seized were castor beans, the basic ingredient for ricin, which has application as a biological weapon.
You really have to click through to the Toledo Blade to see the photo.
More gems, at the foot of the piece:
He routinely buried waste from his illegal mushroom-growing operation in the backyard, and threw castor beans in the yard too because he wants to “kill people,” [his wife] told agents.
Authorities also seized the following items last week from Wineinger’s property:
• Plastic bread racks containing 916 jars of mushrooms.
• Numerous pressure cookers with jars containing possible drug residue.
• A cooler with 41 spore petri dishes.
• Alleged drug paraphernalia including a scale, pipes, and knife.
What actually happened, of course, was that Obama failed to do enough to boost the economy, plus totally failing to tap into populist outrage at Wall Street. And now we’re in the trap I worried about from the beginning: by failing to do enough when he had political capital, he lost that capital, and now we’re stuck.
But he did have help in getting it wrong: at every stage there was a faction of Democrats standing in the way of strong action ..
Which leads to the phenomenon of the Blue Dogs, or Democrats who try to be fake Republicans.
Pennsylvania has a load of them and here in Pasadena we’re stuck with Adam Schiff.
With Adam Schiff, one holds the nose while voting because there’s never anyone from the GOP who even remotely resembles a human being on southern California ballots.
In Pennsylvania, however, three of them — Chris Carney, Patrick Murphy, and Kathy Dahlkemper — lost their seats.
Tim Holden, from Schuylkill County, did not. He should show some stones and change party affiliation, like Arlen Specter in reverse. And Jason Altmire retained his seat.
The Blue Dogs found that GOP voters don’t go for fake Republicans. Half of them lost their seats. And why should they? Who likes the feckless who lack the nerve to identify themselves as they really are?
Third-tier Republicans.
Those Blue Dogs who kept their seats? I’m betting it was because the GOP had trouble nominating opponents who weren’t obvious criminals in their respective districts.
