Things You Can’t Take Back
(Updated below)
If President Lincoln had had a crystal ball, when told the South was seceding, he’d have said, “Woo hoo!” Lord, I wish he had. Especially today. Setting aside the thousands dead, cities destroyed, and money wasted, as decisions go, it was like parents who guiltily decided, once again, to take in their delinquent, worthless offspring, subsidize them forever, only to see their house later blown up by the meth lab the miserable ingrates built in the basement. Today we were reminded again of that in the US Senate.
Senator (!) Jeff Sessions of Alabama is just the sort of “American” we wouldn’t have to have around had Lincoln been more prescient. From the party that thought they could move heaven and earth with their candidate Sarah Palin, out slithers the vile and clueless Sessions, reminding us why the South doesn’t belong in a purportedly civilized Democracy and beating us over the head, for the thousandth time, for our arrogance and stupidity in thinking such creatures could ever be assimilated. Nurtured in the fever swamps of racism and rebellion, grown fat and angry under a deluge of misguided federal subsidies, these icons of the land of trailers and cousin-breeding stepped forth today to once again embarrass us all for the very act of being white Americans.
You can’t blame Sessions, really. It’s how he was raised, in a racist, third world hellhole that, due to liberal “empathy” and a willful blindness to evil, now arrogates to itself the status, always one-sidedly revocable, of a member of the United States. His state, Alabama, along with its benighted Confederate neighbors, helped along by their appallingly dismal education levels, have become a immobile, angry, and disturbingly vocal impediment to human progress that nearly a century of lavish indulgences haven’t begun to erase. The “War of Northern Aggression,” as its creepy, embittered losers still universally call it, still plague the rest of us with their prosperity-destroying “Right to Work” laws, their proud willingness to destroy the natural environment, and their openly racist bloodlust for people at home and abroad, set the stage for the disgusting spectacle we’re now forced to watch, which, adding insult to injury, we all paid for.
Had it not been for the many expensive yet unsuccessful efforts to buy off these irredeemable descendants of traitors, we would never again have to listen to such antediluvian horseshit at all… We’d have an impoverished, undeveloped nation below us, welded to its hate and superstitions, that Haiti would look down on. Instead, we have “Senators,” and “Governors” so comically corrupt ruling a population so dimwitted and poisoned, physically and mentally, that they would matter about as much to the civlized world as the ravings of, say, their favorite daughter Britney Spears, picking and choosing who “belongs” on the Supreme court. Nice “victory.”
Instead, vainly attempting to bring them on board, we made costly and counterproductive “investments” like the TVA and the many military installations which have now made these anti-government zealots, racists, and plain old trash the angriest, ugliest, freeloaders on the planet. Are refunds available? We brought these people out of the muck, and now they run around telling everyone there was never any muck to begin with. They take federal money while they bite the hand that feeds them, and they defy the laws of the country that has treated them so well; suppressing minority votes, vilifying their supposed countrymen from up north, and threatening to secede yet again on a fairly regular basis, even as their leaders eagerly indulge themselves in the “sins” of which they accuse everyone else. Nice work if you can get it.
It’s far too late to go back to the 1860′s and get rid of these vipers in the nest unilaterally, but couldn’t complete disinvestment accomplish the same goal?
No more military bases or contracts, no more subsidies, and above all, no more treating southern “leaders” like anything other than what they are, and so proudly call everyone else.. Traitors. G’Bye.
At least then it wouldn’t be so embarrassing to watch C-Span.
Update: Now, I really have been dreadfully remiss in how I went ahead and skipped over the “wise Latina” quote the righties have gone so cuckoo over her of late. In context, Sotomayor is merely saying that a different perspective, somewhat more scandalously closely related to the other side of the case than the one, the two, three, or eight other white guys talking about the matter. What’s “Duh?” in Puerto Rican, Senator Sessions?
The fact that a documented, lifelong racist is allowed to spout such drivel unchallenged is a searing indictment of, not bigoted scum like Sen. Sessions himself, but by our shamelessly corrupt and amoral media, who pretend such a person’s opinions are worthy of public discourse.
Rut roh. Next month I’m sending my older daughter (and a lot of our money) to that fine state represented by Beauregard. She’s just done an orientation at Camp War Eagle and has already started reading the first assignment for a paper due the first day of class. I don’t think the yahoos not affiliated with the university will have much of an effect on her in changing her toward their backward ways. At least I hope not.
Oops. Sorry, Jim. Though not known for my temperance in general, I get especially intemperate when in comes to the South. As a lifelong Northwesterner, I’ve alway been bewildered, and more than a little scared, of The South. “Deliverance” always comes to mind, even when I’m in the comparatively civilized places like Nashville or New Orleans. Liberal though I am, I admit I’m biased, and in a big way, against the swamp-dwellers of the Confederacy. Every time I think I’m recovering, some creep like Sessions steps up, and I turn into the lefty version of Glenn Beck.
But it ain’t bigotry, ’cause I’m white, and we don’t even know what that is.
The six southern red states do have a lot of Sessions only few are as smart as he is. Just let Sessions lead his dummies and follow the Repug leadership and their numbers will continue to dwindle.
I am listening on c-span to the whining of the House Repugs who can’t find anything worthwhile in the bill the Dem House leadership came out with today. We Repugs are not on a level playing field and and we can’t have government health care without any choice. They always talk about what is wrong and nothing about what is good or what will serve far more people than get health care now. It’s amazing how these hypocrites are only capable of the negative unless a Repug has proposed something.
I am shocked. I am now listening to a group of Republicans who have an entirely new approach, according to them, from the bottom up and puts patients first. They said, the Dems put government first and people will not be able to keep their current plans. But they are claiming that in their plan every American gets coverage. It sounds like the co-op proposal but is called a pooling of group plans. At least they claim that they will achieve the same thing as the public option and the other Obama goals and that they really believe in reforming health care not criticizing the opponents’ proposal. Sounds like the health industry lobbyists have helped them come up with this.
Speaking of lobbyists, I wrote about Rick Scott on the “Act of Journalism” Post at UT on Friday, July 10, 2009 08:05 AM [Didn't know if a link would post]
Digby: “It seems to me that it should be somebody’s job to expose this man [Rick Scott]. He’s the most evil of evil CEOs. He should be a reviled and loathed character on par with the lowliest criminals at this point, and yet he’s on TV lying about health care for his own profit. How can this be?”
The comment includes links to Digby, The Nation and Mother Jones.
And if the lobbyists did help them come up with it, then we know it will benefit the health care industry, and not voters/patients, which was supposed to be the whole reason for a new health care bill… and a public option.
No worries. Here in Gainesville, we’re a little dot of blue in a sea of red. It is Deliverance-like when you get outside one of the university towns we hang out in. South Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi are even worse, so you’re basically right on target with what you’ve written. It’s especially true how the most extreme of these inbred half-wits are the ones who get ahead in both business and politics around here. That’s the part that’s so hard to deal with…
Well, I guess I can with hesitation imagine life without South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas (though I’d try to move Austin to Colorado). But, I think we should at least hang on to the Research Triangle of Raleigh, Durham, and Chapel Hill. I’m fairly agnostic about Virginia, Arkansas, and Tennessee.
I am glad to see a little movement towards allowing others to go their own way. Bystander, you might as well let Tennessee go also; or at least the eastern part of the state. It is full of those Scot-Irish that everyone here loves to hate.
What a thread though; with “inbred half-wits” and the like thrown around with the hate that comes from not being able to make others live as you would have them live. But Hag! You wrote, “… he was raised, in a racist, third world hellhole that, …”. Well, perhaps you know his hometown far better than I, but that sounded a little over the top.
However, the main point of Hag’s that letting my people go is welcome indeed. If only we could let the northwestern part of the USA break off and go it alone, that would be sweet. And the south would love to bid goodbye to the rest. I know some folks from the upper northeast that would also love to leave the empire.
A coalition of union-busters? (the good kind)
You know I always go over the top… it is not the nature of the Hag to be decorous; nor would it be very fun. I know not whether Sen Sessions grew up in a literal hellhole; more likely it was in magnolia-scented luxury, Alabama not being noted for social mobility, after all. But yes, Heru; at times like these, I do wish we could roll back the e pluribus unum.
Pot/kettle?
Me? Surly you jest. Hag can tell you that I am known far and wide for always being understated!
:=)
Who are you calling surly? That was a favorite word of my mother’s. When I was in college, she once said, “You were such cute children. And you grew up to be big, surly, drunken bruisers.”
Did Laurie Kellman of the AP commit an act of journalism? She actually led her story Senator blocked by bias claims now raises them with:
via
I saw that inconvenient fact aired more than once yesterday…. What’s gotten into these reporters? {sic}
Thanks for that link, bystander. I’ve been neglecting Digby lately, something I should never do.
Letting them go their own way. Mmm…I’m with lincoln on that one. If we’d let them go their own way, Sessions would still own slaves. Thanks to Appomattox, he has to content himself with being just another Beauregard instead, one of those burdens we have to bear to escape what Madison and Hamilton, among others, thought of as the tyranny of an unwashed majority. Torching the South, which does, in fact, have much to offer the country despite its history of peculiar institutions, won’t get rid of Sessions, and others like him. Abolishing the Senate might.
I don’t think we have much to worry about in the long run. 150 years ago it took Grant’s entire army to kick their slaveholding asses. Now all it takes is one wise Latina. I don’t know what others would call that, but I call it progress.
And that’s what I call a sense of proportion.
My argument is hyperbole, of course, WT, but having to endure people like Jesse Helms, Strom Thurmond, Newt Gingrich, Tom DeLay, et al can be a bit much. And it certainly makes “victory” in that particular war bittersweet.
I was raised among them, Hag. I know them as well as anybody. The War of Northern Aggression, Lincoln the destroyer of entire civilizations, Jefferson Davis and John C. Calhoun the honorable country gentlemen. I’ve heard it all before.
They’re still peddling it, even in the parlors of genteel lady imbibers from the Northwestern rainforests. It was bullshit then, and its still bullshit now.
Well, I never invited these crackers in to imbibe or peddle, but here they are.
What’s good for anyone with a brain who’s paying attention (including non-entitled white males like me, and all you other white guys without portfolio) is it’s crystal clear that the only point of attack against the judge is the very thing that reveals the attackers’ completely outdated sense of privilege.
Not to dive into the region-bashing too much, but this hearing might just as well be occurring in Montgomery the way it sounds. The only thing missing “on-stage” there would be the presence of a detail of state troopers for “per-teckshuhn” of the wise-ass Latina.
Keith Olbermann has a little note on his MSNBC site about recent proposed changes to history and social studies books in Texas … FYI. Having worked briefly as a substitute teacher there eons ago, I got a look at their public school books. What a joke. And it made me wonder if such junk was also in the classrooms in other Old South states. I’ll bet …
Not just in southern states, but possibly in the north, too. IIRC, Texas (for some unknown reason) sets standards for text books.
http://seedmagazine.com/content/article/dont_mess_with_textbooks/
There are committed parties fighting back, but pity the poor students caught in between and in the cross-fire.
Economies of scale. California is a large market for cars, therefore car manufacturers have to meet California emissions standards for a large percentage of their production. To reduce unit production costs, they build all their cars to California standards, and the rest of the country benefits.
With textbooks, the same economic incentives apply (Texas buys a lot of textbooks) but because Texas is run by Neanderthals, the result is a lowest-common-denominator drag on education in the rest of the states.
Yeah, I’ve been aware of Texas’ clout in the educational book market. Another joke.
An interesting comparison, WT. The lowest common denominator for text books because of Texas’s standards, but a controversially high standard for cars because of California’s bull-headedness.
Who’s going to buy those cars, though, if Texas keeps setting the standards for text books? I guess we’ll just have to ship them overseas.
The Seed article answers your question about Texas’ influence on the nation’s public school text book market: It buys more books by volume than most if not all big states, thus having undue influence on what many smaller states can buy.
I’ll tell you this: I never saw the kind junk science and history books I saw in Texas when I was in school in Massachusetts; but, you know how those ‘big’ socialist states are, especially the ‘biggest’ of them all.
But y’know … Henry David Thoreau would have been run out of Texas on a rail if he started peddlin’ that civil disobedience crap back when Sam Houston was runnin’ things … ‘n maybe only a day or so ago come to think of it.
Here’s another one about your regional B.S. and hypocrisy, related to health care …
ht tp://www.alternet.org/healthwellness/141048/
I think the VA hospital system is simply the best template we have, inside the country, for a universal care structure. It’s right there and it works very well, except perhaps in more rural areas.
ht tp://www.alternet.org/healthwellness/141048/
http://www.alternet.org/healthwellness/141048/
(Sorry, this isn’t working for some reason. What a dummie!)
Knock me over with a feather, Dirigo. The biggest freeloaders are always anti-gummint. That DeMint quote at the end makes my blood boil. Is he really that stupid? Or does he think his audience is? A puzzler, indeed.
Based on my time reporting in West Texas, this hypocrisy also applies to farm and ranch issues, like water, power, mining, and agriculture programs generally. That’s another whole set of scams.
Part of the reason Boone Pickens is shelving his Great Fart Wind Program for now is he can’t count on Big Gummint subsidies for transmission lines to get the wind-generated juice to your house!
It’s the same way out here; ranchers graze their herds on public lands, farmers get subsidized water, Lewiston, Idaho gets its seaport, and as the salmon go extinct, it’s all the fault of liberal tree-huggers and the gummint. If right-wing radio has accomplished anything, it has been in promoting and nurturing “rural idiocy.”
“Useful, rural idiots.”
When I was about 12 or so, my mother, brother and I stopped in Madras, Oregon for lunch on the way to Sunriver. We were struck by what a hellhole it was; flat, dusty, treeless, and stuck in the 1950′s, but we were hungry, so we went to the town’s one greasy spoon. We saw a kid in there about our age sporting a buzz cut, pegleg jeans, and an “Archie Bunker for President” button… on his thigh. It was all we could do not to burst out laughing, since such a royal flush of 1976 fashion faux pas was something we’d never seen before. I bet he’s got a McCain/Palin sticker on his truck today, if he isn’t in jail.
Do you know this Diane Arbus photograph?
Boy (Bomb Hanoi)
No, WT, but it’s priceless! (The boy from Madras was considerably less dapper and nebbishy, though…)
A business proposal is created to reflect the professionalism of your organisation and is there to persuade a buyer that your goods or providers are useful to them. Together with any other collateral it’s the proposition that you are giving towards the customer and what will hopefully win much more function for the business.