Dum Pendebat Filius

Readers, it’s been pretty scary to hear about Barack Obama’s radical Marxist-Socialist-Communist plans to “spread the wealth around.” If you’re a good American, like me, Joe the Plumber, John McCain, Sarah Palin, et al., you recognize Commie doublespeak like this for what it is:

Obama explained his tax plan during the roughly five-minute exchange — telling Wurzelbacher that the tax rate on the portion of his income that was more than $250,000 would be increased from 36 percent to 39 percent. But he also mentioned that his plan includes a 50 percent small-business tax credit for health care and a proposal to eliminate the capital-gains tax for small businesses that increase in value. Obama said his tax plan, which he said focuses on bigger breaks for people making lower incomes, would be good for the economy. “If you’ve got a plumbing business, you’re going to be better off if you’ve got a whole bunch of customers who can afford to hire you,” he said. “Right now, everybody’s so pinched that business is bad for everybody. And I think when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody.”

Comrade Obama’s plan definitely sounds doubleplusungood to me, readers.

But, my friends, it gets worse. Even Adam Smith, the father of modern economics, was a goddamn commie, too. See The Wealth of Nations, Book V, Chapter II, and just imagine what Joe the Plumber (if they’d had plumbers back in 1776, that is) would have made of this:

The necessaries of life occasion the great expense of the poor. They find it difficult to get food, and the greater part of their little revenue is spent in getting it. The luxuries and vanities of life occasion the principal expense of the rich, and a magnificent house embellishes and sets off to the best advantage all the other luxuries and vanities which they possess. A tax upon house-rents, therefore, would in general fall heaviest upon the rich; and in this sort of inequality there would not, perhaps, be anything very unreasonable. It is not very unreasonable that the rich should contribute to the public expense, not only in proportion to their revenue, but something more than in that proportion.

Yikes, readers. I guess Adam Smith, too, was just a typical socialist left-winger, always trying to punish any hard-working citizen who earns a bit of financial success. Adam “Hussein” Smith just wanted to take money out of the pockets of hard-working “Joe Six-Pack” types (if they’d had six-packs back in 1776, that is) and give it to a bunch of shiftless layabouts.

Just like Obama.

Who else, readers, but Michael “Darth” Savage, could find a way to set the bar even lower? I was just on my way home from the grocery store, listening to “The Savage Nation” on FM NewsTalk 104.7, when I heard one of Savage’s looney-tunes callers suggest that “the real reason” Barack Obama’s going to Hawaii is not to visit his ailing grandmother, but to murder his ailing grandmother.

Savage’s reaction? He said, “I hope you’re wrong about that, but I was thinking the same thing.“

Apparently, “Darth” Savage and some others on the looney-tunes fringes of the right wing have a conspiracy theory that Obama’s not really a US citizen, and that his trip to Hawaii is supposed to somehow enable him to deal with this difficulty. Perhaps he’ll get his hands on some crucial evidence and destroy it; maybe there is a cache of fake documents in Hawaii that he’s going to collect; and just maybe he’ll kill his grandmother while he’s there, to prevent her from “telling the truth” about his lack of US citizenship.

Readers, what can you say about this kind of garbage? Every time I think I’ve heard it all, somebody like “Darth” Savage proves me wrong.

The GOP is keepin’ it real in Campaign 2008, that’s for sure. First Sarah Palin says that small towns are “the real America… the pro-America areas of this great nation,” then looney-tunes Rep. Michele Bachmann (R – MN) calls for a media investigation to root out “anti-American” members of Congress; finally, Rep. Robin Hayes (R – NC) told a crowd that “liberals hate real Americans that work and accomplish and achieve and believe in God.”

According to the Washington Post article I linked to above, Sarah Palin has sort of apologized for her “real America” remarks:

In an interview on CNN, Palin said comments she made last week in North Carolina praising small towns as “the real America” and the “pro-America areas of this great nation” were not intended to suggest that other parts of the country are less patriotic or less American.

“If that’s the way it has come across, I apologize,” she told CNN’s Drew Griffin.

She’s sorry if that’s the way it came across. If you can tell me any other way her comments could have “come across,” you da man. Here are her exact words:

“We believe that the best of America is not all in Washington, D.C. We believe” — here the audience interrupted Palin with applause and cheers — “We believe that the best of America is in these small towns that we get to visit, and in these wonderful little pockets of what I call the real America, being here with all of you hard working very patriotic, um, very, um, pro-America areas of this great nation.

“This is where we find the kindness and the goodness and the courage of everyday Americans. Those who are running our factories and teaching our kids and growing our food and are fighting our wars for us. Those who are protecting us in uniform. Those who are protecting the virtues of freedom.”

You tell me, readers, how those words could be interpreted in such a way as not to imply that some parts of America are “real” and others are not; that some parts of America are “pro-America” and others are not.

Still, even a left-handed apology such as “sorry if that’s how it came across” is better than no apology at all, I guess. In this age of the non-apology apology, we can’t expect much better.

Rep. Bachmann is up for re-election, and her Hardball appearance backfired on her: her opponent has raised over a million dollars since she made those idiotic remarks on TV. (If you want to help defeat her, readers, you can make a contribution of your own at ActBlue. It was the best $25 I spent all week.)

Pathetic Rep. Hayes initially tried to deny that he’d said “liberals hate real Americans,” but he had to fess up when faced with audio evidence. His excuse, amazingly, is that he “actually was trying to work to keep the crowd as respectful as possible.” How he figured saying “liberals hate real Americans” was going to keep things “respectful” is anybody’s guess, readers.

Readers, we all know that liberals are a bunch of hypocrites and elitists. They always pretend to care about working people, but really don’t care about anything but stuffing their fat faces full of expensive delicacies like lobster, caviar and champagne while luxuriating in swanky suites at ritzy joints such as Manhattan’s fabled Waldorf-Astoria Hotel.

Just imagine the joy you’d have felt if you were a wingnut blogger and somebody pointed your attention to a NY Post Page Six item claiming that Michelle Obama had spent $447.39 on room service at the Waldorf-Astoria. It would have been a confirmation of everything you’ve ever thought about hypocritical liberal elitists, wouldn’t it?

While [Sen. Barack Obama] was at a meeting at the Waldorf-Astoria at 4 p.m. Wednesday, Michelle Obama called room service and ordered lobster hors d’oeuvres, two whole steamed lobsters, Iranian caviar and champagne, a tipster told Page Six.

The right-wing Internet fell for it, readers, hook, line, and sinker. Crazy Pammy immediately got stuck on stupid:

Can you imagine if Cindy McCain did this? The New York Times would have team [sic] of asshats crawling all over the Waldorf kitchen. Chris Matthews would digging [sic] through the wet garbage chasing Cindi’s [sic] empty oysters in the event she didn’t eat every oyster. What waste! What disdain for the oyster-less poor.

It’s good to be the queen!

She approvingly links to other self-righteous wingnuts waxing hysterical about The Lying Rich Obamas and their Dastardly Secret Plan to Screw the Taxpayers, invoking the already-very-stale cliché of “Joe the Plumber”:

On October, 15,2008, Michelle Obama spent $447.39 on room service (for 2) at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel for an afternoon snack of Lobster Hors D’Oeuvres ($50.00), Whole Steamed Lobsters (100.00), Iranian Osetra Caviar ($150.00), and Bollinger Champagne ($44.00)

Sounds exquisite, doesn’t it, if your culinary tastes run to lobster, caviar and champagne? But this insight into the Obama lifestyle makes us wonder how often Joe “the Plumber” Wurzelbacher of Toledo, Ohio and his family eat lobster with all the trimmings.

How often does the average person eat like this? Or is it only those who make $250,000 or more? Or only the 95% of the population laboring under the illusion that they will get tax breaks under the Obama Wealth Redistribution Plan?

[emphasis mine; original text's font-weight was bold throughout]

Wow, readers. Those Obamas are just typical socialists — they lie to the working class and promise them tax breaks, then they go to luxurious first-class hotel suites and gorge themselves on expensive food and drink. What a bunch of fucking hypocrites, huh? High dudgeon, readers, and lots of righteous anger: these tasty treats were just the thing for a right-wing blogger to indulge in.

Crazy Pammy’s looney-tunes commenters had a field day, too. Michelle Obama is a “skanky nazi”:

Just another plain skanky nazi aiming to use government power to get a quality of life that she could NEVER achieve by merit and talent in the open market.

And the same goes for her big-talk no-accomplishment conman husband.

Just plain old stinking lying thieving nazis.

We’ve seen them all before.

We watched them destroy Germany back when Berlin was considered the flower of Europe.

And now they’re after America.

[joeblough]

One commenter felt bad for Obama supporters, whose hard-earned campaign donations were disappearing into Michelle’s gullet:

My question to Obama supporters would be:

Are you happy to know that those of you who gave $20.00 to support your candidate that it is being spent on a $450. snack? If I was you I would want to know if it was your donation that was used to stay at The Waldorf-Astoria and eating Lobster. I would question someone who is suppose to be an advocate for the middle class and poor, then hypocritically do the opposite. How do you feel, thinking your dollars were spent to make a difference and bring change then spend it on a very expensive meal. Did you compute that it took 22 people contributing $20.00 to pay for that meal? Will you in your lifetime stay at the Waldorf-Astoria?

With a campaign that has raised more money than any other campaign in history, are you sure it is being well managed? Obama, by the way, claims that he knows about how to run something, since he has ran a campaign. Think carefully…..if a candidate would spend campaign money this way, how will he spend your tax dollars?

[jcheney]

But guess what, readers?

The story was a complete fucking fabrication. Page Six issued an embarrassed correction:

October 21, 2008 –

THE source who told us last week about Michelle Obama getting lobster and caviar delivered to her room at the Waldorf-Astoria must have been under the influence of a mind-altering drug. She was not even staying at the Waldorf. We regret the mistake, and our former source is going to regret it, too. Bread and water would be too good for such disinformation.

The NY Post is a newspaper. The editors, being real-life journalists, had the journalistic integrity to admit they’d been made fools of, and to publish a retraction.

Will wingnut bloggers, such as soi-disant “Citizen Journalist” Crazy Pammy, have the honesty and decency to issue retractions of their own? Will they even mention that the story turned out to be an out-and-out fabrication, and apologize to their readers for having been fooled by it? Don’t hold your breath, readers.

UPDATE 2008/10/22, 00:31 EDT — Crazy Pammy has added this text to the top of her post:

UPDATE: The NY Post has taken the story down …… Page Six retracts

That’s it. No explanation, no apology. The rest of her blog post, with all its Sturm und Drang, is left untouched, needless to say. Anyway, she did at least acknowledge reality for one second, so I guess that’s a good thing.

It’s not surprising when a Grade-A fool like the Costco Coulter displays her ignorance of the meaning of the most basic political terms, such as “socialism.” It’s quite another when someone who’s running for President does the same thing:

In the radio address, McCain didn’t directly call Obama a socialist, but he let the now-famous Joe “the Plumber” Wurzelbacher nearly do it for him.

“You see, [Obama] believes in redistributing wealth, not in policies that help us all make more of it. Joe, in his plainspoken way, said this sounded a lot like socialism,” McCain said Saturday.

Readers, words don’t just mean whatever we want them to mean at any given moment. Socialism means collective ownership of the means of production in a centrally-planned economy. Most of us learned this in our ninth-grade Social Studies (or Civics) class.

Socialism does not mean “redistribution of wealth,” or “higher taxes,” or “taxing the rich,” or whatever else some fool decides he wants the word to mean on any given afternoon. When the word socialism is redefined to mean one of these things, the word has lost its meaning and has just become a term of abuse, just another scary word to scare the voters with.

This “socialist” silliness is just one of the many deeply foolish and nasty themes with which the kooky fringes of the right wing have been trying to dupe the American voter over the past couple of weeks, as desperation causes their shirts to get all wet and nasty with flop-sweat. If they can’t convince the people to vote their way, then by God, they’ll tell them lies to scare them.

It’s one thing to hear some kooky AM-radio talk show host or wingnut blogger say something stupid and ignorant such as “Obama’s socialist policies,” but it’s beyond pathetic to hear invocations of “socialism” come from the mouth of an ostensibly intelligent man such as Sen. McCain.

If Sen. McCain doesn’t know what the word socialism means in real life, he’s a fool. If he does actually know what the word means and still pretends to think Sen. Obama’s policy proposals resemble “socialism” in any way, shape or form, he’s a duplicitous liar who’s trying to play the American voter for a fool.

What do you think is the case, readers? Does John McCain not know what socialism is, or is he just cynically trying to dupe the voters?

Readers, Saint John Straight-Talk McCain, darling of the political press corps in Campaign 2000, was never anything but a myth. We’ve seen the real John McCain this year, and he’s an absolutely craven, cynical, deeply nasty political hack who’s willing to do and say anything to win this election. He’s even using the same robocall company that smeared him in 2000, for God’s sake. The man has sold his soul.

He claims to respect the American people, while he’s desperately trying to play them for a bunch of fucking fools.

Readers, I’ve about had it with Bloglines, a site that seems to be experiencing scalability issues. Half the feeds I subscribe to are broken these days.

Who knows about a good, reliable web-based RSS/Atom feed aggregator (other than Bloglines)? It has to be web-based (i.e. not an application that runs on my computer, not a browser plug-in), so that I have access to my feeds wherever I happen to be. If you have recommendations, please let me know. Thanks!

The Costco Coulter thinks “Joe the Plumber” is onto something here:

Joe the Plumber seems responsible and he gets it. He sees that Obama is a socialist who wants to take his hard-earned money and tax him out of starting his small business.

Readers, it’s true: Barack Obama is a socialist. Just look at his campaign website and you’ll see: after he (1) surrenders to Al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia, (2) suspends the Constitution and imposes Sharia Law on the USA, his next step as President will be to (3) have the US government seize control of the means of production. Yes, under President Obama, we will finally see the abolition of private property. Did you catch last night’s debate, when he called John McCain a “bribed tool of reactionary intrigue”? That was some good stuff, readers.

Time to put on my tinfoil hat, readers…

Using a spreadsheet program on my computer, I have kept track of every tank of gas I’ve ever put in my 2004 Chevy Cavalier. I’ve been keeping records since 17 February 2005. Therefore, I’m able to keep track of trends in gasoline prices.

Gas is currently selling for $3 a gallon (technically, $2.999, with that ridiculous “nine-tenths of a cent” folderol) at GetGo stations here in Pittsburgh. The last time I saw sub-three-dollar gas was on 30 December 2007, and that was in Egg Harbor Township, NJ (about 15 miles from Atlantic City), where gas is always about ten cents cheaper than in the Pittsburgh or Washington DC areas (the other places where I frequently fill my tank).

The last time I saw gas this cheap in the Steel City was on 21 December 2007, when it was $2.999/gallon, the same as today. That was exactly 300 days ago. The last time I bought gas in Pittsburgh, just a couple weeks ago (1 October 2008), it cost me $3.53 a gallon. The price of gas has gone down almost fifty cents in the past two weeks.

Is it just a coincidence that gas is getting so much cheaper a couple weeks before Election Day? Something to ponder, readers.

(For those who are interested: Since I started keeping records in February 2005, the cheapest gas I’ve bought was $1.92, in Atlantic City, NJ, on 22 November 2005. The most expensive gas I’ve bought was $4.10, here in Pittsburgh, on 11 July 2008. I’ve filled my tank 152 times in the past three years and eight months, to the tune of $3806.61, and the average price of gas has been $2.77/gallon in that time period.)

What’s David Horowitz up to these days, readers? Chez lui, c’est toujours la même chose…

He’s bravely battling campus jihadists in the Wolverine State:

Tonight I’m speaking at Central Michigan University a campus with 20,000+ students [...] As usual the threat of violence from the campus left is great enough that the university administration has decided to assign security guards to the event [...]

Presenting themselves [the Muslim Students Association] as a religous [sic] group when they are a political arm of the Islamo-fascist jihad against the West is a form of deception. Allowing them to get away with this endangers the lives and security of moderate Muslims who do not support the jihad and Christians, Jews and Atheists who are infidels in their path.

Scary stuff, readers. But, thank God, “The Left” was distracted last night in Michigan:

Last night’s talk at Central Michigan University went off without incident, probably because the left was attending a parallel event in which a Professor Fatah delivered a talk on how the Jews blew up the World Trade Center.

The only thing that could dissuade “the left” from turning out en masse to cause “incidents” at a David Horowitz campus event would be getting a chance to hear a radical Muslim college professor blame the Jews for 9/11. That’s life on the planet David Horowitz lives in, readers. What a character.

Paul Krugman has won the 2008 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences.

Watch for Wingnut Nation to erupt in a fit of pique and chagrin as they try to reassure themselves it’s all just a reward for Paul Krugman’s “anti-American” views. The world, remember, is all just one big anti-conservative conspiracy.