danielsangeo et al.

Having people try to tell me that Obama said something quite different from what he in fact did say is mildly irritating. People don't like to be taken for fools or treated as victims of false consciousness, have you noticed?

Obama needs for something else to happen that will take people's mind off this. For his sake I hope "something else" happens soon. His comments can't be explained any more than Hillary Clinton's remarks about coming under sniper fire could be explained. (Please note, I am not saying that Clinton's and Obama's remarks are equivalent, just that both sets of remarks are indefensible.)

El Dudereno 2008-04-14 01:13:31 PM
Politicians dismiss or ignore rural america at their own peril. The democrats have a lot to offer people living in small towns, which are dying in large part because of republican trade policies. If the dems would just get over their seeming fear of religious people who own guns, they could kick some serious ass this fall.

Correctomundo.

These people consistently vote against their own interests because of wedge issues:

abortion
gay rights
etc.

Maybe if they realized that people who are pro for these camps would never bother living is the same towns as they do, they could grasp the issues *everyone* should be concerned with:

Iraq
the economy
alternative energy
nation security
EDUCATION

Corpus Delecti: viccellini: I was totally ready to vote for Obama until he said this. I'm not happy with this at all.

So yeah, there are some bible-thumping rednecks out there who love guns, but I'm NOT a redneck and I have a gun. I am a pro-second amendment liberal.

Obama, dude, there are a lot of "gun nuts" in the inner cities. I used to live in NY and I've seen it. The only difference, sadly, is that a lot of those people got those guns ILLEGALY, and use them for CRIMES.

/pissed off

Dear Idiot:
You haven't actually read (or heard) what Obama said. You're basing your entire pea-brained opinion on what other people are TELLING you he said. How do I know? Because if you'd actually heard or read the speech yourself, instead of just allowing the Internet to interpret things for you, you'd know that Obama wasn't even remotely bashing guns or religion.

I know that all the big words are hard to understand, but here's what he was actually saying: "Small-Town Americans feel so betrayed and distrustful of politicians that they cling to a few core issues, like Gun Control and Religion, around which to center their political views."

Only an idiot would think that he was being anti-gun or anti-religion. Quite the contrary: he was saying "since Americans feel like they've lost control over every other section of government, we tend to focus on the few things that we most fear losing."

Now, I ask you, how do people like you make the leap from what he ACTUALLY said to "Obama hates Fundies and Gun Nuts"?

Firstly, I have a high IQ. I am not a moron, and you can suck it.
Secondly, I did read EXACTLY what he said, and I am still against it. He is being a snob. He's insulting those of us who want someone in office who will let us keep our guns.

Are you a secular vegan whacko? Do you think we should have freed Tookie? F you.

cmb53208: Democrats say they stand up for the workin' man but actuallu hold him in contempt.

On the other hand, the Republicans say they want to lower taxes and bring down the size of government when in fact most of them want to base our laws on the Old Testament.

Consider this your primer on America's two party system

Um, given the cultural, social, dietary, entertainment and voting preferences and predelictions aren't these people, by the very definition of the word, contemptible?

If not, they certainly deserve plenty of scorn, derision, and pointed barbs.

Honestly, the reaction I'm witnessing here today is akin to black "leaders" getting their panties in a bunch when Cosby, M.E. Dyson, Clarence Page, Cornell West, etc call them out onto the carpet for the lives their communities are living.

What's the difference?

It's not incumbent upon us educated elitists to "lift up" poor, ignorant whites but for us to be chastised for even acknowledging the lives of quiet angry and depressive desperation that so many of our fellow Americans live is absurd.

GhostFish:

For once a politician isn't talking down to you like children.

In this particular case, what he did was worse. Talking to wealthy, elite donors in California, he said those people in small-town Pennsylvania are children; you have to make allowances for them. And that is the kind of attitude that has been costing Democrats elections for decades now.

danlpoon: To Democrats and most Republicans, tax money is the property of the government, not the person that earned it. Any credit is really a payment by the government.

Education is a joke. I can educate a kid in 3 hours a day, 200 days per year. Why do we give kids a ride to school? Why do we keep them their so long we have to feed 'em? Why are they so bored and uninspired and restless? The system sucks and there is no way to change it in a governmental context.

True this.

goofass 2008-04-14 02:17:30 PM
Oh, and since everyone's taking sides: dumbass uneducated hillbillies HAVE ruined America. So to all you "Red Stater," patriotic manly-men...
Link (new window)

/and when/if it comes to Civil War 2, may the smarter, more educated man win. That would be "liberals."

Are you for real. Are you a plant or are you trolling?

You're more of a redneck than some rednecks...

keypusher 2008-04-14 06:54:22 PM
GhostFish:

For once a politician isn't talking down to you like children.

In this particular case, what he did was worse. Talking to wealthy, elite donors in California, he said those people in small-town Pennsylvania are children; you have to make allowances for them. And that is the kind of attitude that has been costing Democrats elections for decades now.

Now seating the histrionic section, Mr. Keypusher, party of one...


/italics in regular text only make the point
//no, I was using italics to quote you... :)

zeroPOINTzero 2008-04-14 05:10:48 PM


Even when he loses Obama will still have his core supporters to fall back on.

Like you mom?

/sorry, late to the party

veedeevadeevoodee: barjockey:

Now we have to be subjected to pseudo-intellectual diagrams to defend
what Obama said?

FTFY (new window)

paygun 2008-04-14 06:44:36 PM
nuclear_asshat: For those saying that Obama is merely saying the truth, I don't hear him saying that Nubians need to stop having so many babies, stop shooting each other, and start taking education seriously and stop blaming whitey.

It's not bigotry if you're talking about white people living out in the country.

I like this speaking to people like an adult thing.

All about context.

Also, when criticizing someone, or a group of people, do you reflexively state the short-comings of another group to somehow be fair and balanced?

"Yeah, those German tourists can be rude, but to be fair, the Dutch have become increasingly xenophobic in the past few years..."

Who the fark takes that tact when talking?

Yeah, didn't think so, sparky.

/learn to argue, people
//you argue like my ex-girlfriend.

Self-importance is so annoying, especially when big-city people try to come up with stereotypes to explain small-town people. It's ridiculous to assume people live in small towns only due to desperation and poverty. Some people just like the comforts of a small town. Some people don't want to get caught up in the fast lifestyle that goes along with living in a bigger city, and that doesn't automatically make them stupid, ignorant, or bigoted.

'OMG, he shops at Walmart and doesn't own an iPhone! What an inbred redneck!'

/can't wait to move back to small-town Tennessee

Corpus Delecti: GhostFish:
For once a politician isn't talking down to you like children.


...which is Obama's problem, really. He's forgetting that the average I.Q. in America is 90, and half of the population is lower than that.

I don't think it's Obama's problem that you don't know that, by definition, average I.Q. is 100.

TheFredSavages: you argue like my ex-girlfriend.

I can see why you argued with her. And why she's your ex-girlfriend.

My point is that wrong is wrong, but you'll never get that.

Kuta: You can't engage and energize a group of people you inadvertently insult, even if you're merely trying to explain why they feel the way they do.

This was no inadvertent insult. It was a comment designed for the hippie Frisco audience. BS on Obama's apologies. He knew exactly what he was saying and who he was saying it to at the fundraiser.

So much for a worthy option to Clinton or McCain. If there's a reason not to sit out the election, I'd love to hear it.

Zen Penguin: So much for a worthy option to Clinton or McCain. If there's a reason not to sit out the election, I'd love to hear it.

You sound bitter.

You need to listen for a while to a bunch of pricks who drive by big buildings every day and have convinced themselves that means they built them. Maybe they can convince you of all sorts of things. If they don't that means you're too stupid to understand.

IlGreven
I don't think it's Obama's problem that you don't know that, by definition, average I.Q. is 100.

He said the average I.Q. in America.

If that's accurate or not, Hell if I know.

keypusher: danielsangeo et al.

Having people try to tell me that Obama said something quite different from what he in fact did say is mildly irritating. People don't like to be taken for fools or treated as victims of false consciousness, have you noticed?

I also do not like it when people take what Obama DID say and twist it to suit their individual agenda.

Frankly, I don't really care that you find it mildly irritating that you don't like it when I unspin the spin. Obama did NOT mean that people were religious (for example)because they were bitter and I'll thank you for NOT twisting the words.

Obama needs for something else to happen that will take people's mind off this. For his sake I hope "something else" happens soon. His comments can't be explained any more than Hillary Clinton's remarks about coming under sniper fire could be explained. (Please note, I am not saying that Clinton's and Obama's remarks are equivalent, just that both sets of remarks are indefensible.)

Except that Clinton's remarks were incorrect and Obama's comments were correct.

keypusher
In this particular case, what he did was worse. Talking to wealthy, elite donors in California, he said those people in small-town Pennsylvania are children; you have to make allowances for them. And that is the kind of attitude that has been costing Democrats elections for decades now.

Try harder.

"Isn't this guy supposed to be a religious man? Does he see a problem with people holding onto their religious rights? Good God. Clinging to their guns? Gimme a break. These are our rights. Just like me clinging onto my free speech."

Yes.

GoldSpider: DaSwankOne: That is why they turn to the wedge issues and do not vote in their own economic best interest.

And by that you mean people should vote themselves a share of the public treasury?

Nope, I mean that people should vote for a system that represents the people and not the corporations. Teddy Roosevelt is a conservative hero. He is also a progressive in the same sense that most Demoncrats are today. He understood that there needs to be a balance between business and labor. Today at America's largest private sector employer, 40% of their FULL TIME employees qualify for government assistance. Your taxes are going to boost their profits and if you support McCain or Hillary you are voting for someone that does not support a raise in the minimum wage or someone that spent six years on the board of this company. You are not voting in your own best interest. The Walton's collected over $10 billion in profits last year. The median income of their full time employees is $17,000 a year. You may not have a problem with this, I do.

Belltower: This just makes no logical sense to me.

If I'm rich, I can afford private school. Poor, I can't. So the current economics of the situation allows segregation by economic class. And as a reasonably well-off individual, you better believe I checked the quality of the school district before I bought my house. How is subsidizing private school for the poor going to make this *worse*?

It is called demand. A voucher program will create more demand on the system. One of two things will happen.
1. Prices go up above the amount of the voucher and we will have the same inequity in opportunity we currently have.
2. There will be an unregulated increase in the supply of schools and we will see a decline in the quality of private education.

You conservatives really need to study what happened at Walter Reed Medical Hospital after it was privatized. It is a case study in why it is a horrible idea to leave things like education and healthcare to the free market. You guys still remember how you make a profit right? Higher prices, lower cost. You do remember that right?

viccellini: "Isn't this guy supposed to be a religious man? Does he see a problem with people holding onto their religious rights? Good God. Clinging to their guns? Gimme a break. These are our rights. Just like me clinging onto my free speech."

Yes.

So in other words you are a Republican that was never going to vote for a progressive in the first place. I love these Farkers that come on here and say that something like this was the final straw. Que the fake outrage.

DaSwankOne: I love these Farkers that come on here and say that something like this was the final straw. Que the fake outrage.

Allow me to offer fake outrage for your fake outrage.

DaSwankOne

"progressive"?

What's the alternative? Regressive?

You mean a candidate that wants to progress int he direction you prefer, right?

The classism is littering the ground like cowpies in a very small pasture. Walmarts, egad! The horror, the horror....
/Take a second and imagine people of color instead of rural and small town whites as the objects of a lot of the elitist stereotypes offered above. Go ahead, I've got time...

Yeah, 'cause lordy knows there's no baby-slapping troglodytes at Wal Mart.

But the implication was that they're all baby-slapping troglodytes. And that kind of hyperbole rarely adds any credit to an argument or a statement.

DaSwankOne: GoldSpider: DaSwankOne: That is why they turn to the wedge issues and do not vote in their own economic best interest.

And by that you mean people should vote themselves a share of the public treasury?

Nope, I mean that people should vote for a system that represents the people and not the corporations. Teddy Roosevelt is a conservative hero. He is also a progressive in the same sense that most Demoncrats are today. He understood that there needs to be a balance between business and labor. Today at America's largest private sector employer, 40% of their FULL TIME employees qualify for government assistance. Your taxes are going to boost their profits and if you support McCain or Hillary you are voting for someone that does not support a raise in the minimum wage or someone that spent six years on the board of this company. You are not voting in your own best interest. The Walton's collected over $10 billion in profits last year. The median income of their full time employees is $17,000 a year. You may not have a problem with this, I do.

Belltower: This just makes no logical sense to me.

If I'm rich, I can afford private school. Poor, I can't. So the current economics of the situation allows segregation by economic class. And as a reasonably well-off individual, you better believe I checked the quality of the school district before I bought my house. How is subsidizing private school for the poor going to make this *worse*?

It is called demand. A voucher program will create more demand on the system. One of two things will happen.
1. Prices go up above the amount of the voucher and we will have the same inequity in opportunity we currently have.
2. There will be an unregulated increase in the supply of schools and we will see a decline in the quality of private education.

You conservatives really need to study what happened at Walter Reed Medical Hospital after it was privatized. It is a case study in why it is a horrible idea to leave things like education and healthcare to the free market. You guys still remember how you make a profit right? Higher prices, lower cost. You do remember that right?

Yes, because private schools are generally so much worse than the government schools and the quality of healthcare under socialized medicine is so much better than what you find in the free market. Are you even reading what you are typing?
Many of us are willing to pay more for better education/ healthcare. Unfortunately, it's not all of us.

IlGreven: Corpus Delecti: GhostFish:
For once a politician isn't talking down to you like children.


...which is Obama's problem, really. He's forgetting that the average I.Q. in America is 90, and half of the population is lower than that.

I don't think it's Obama's problem that you don't know that, by definition, average I.Q. is 100.

If half the population has an IQ of below 90, then 90 is more likely the median, rather than the average. By definition, if a full 50 percent is below 90, the average cannot be 90, unless the higher half is exactly proportional to the lower.

"All that remained and thrived within the dying town were the two things that give hopeful delusion and fleeting comfort to the destitute: the bars and the churches."

Yes, the uppity n*gger must be silenced, right Rethuglicans?

Swede: Yeah, 'cause lordy knows there's no baby-slapping troglodytes at Wal Mart.

But the implication was that they're all baby-slapping troglodytes. And that kind of hyperbole rarely adds any credit to an argument or a statement.

True, but it's obvious you've never been to Wal Mart.

I live in SD. Obama is spot on for about 70% of our state population.

Paranoid racist, gun hugging bible beaters abound.

Superjew: Small-town America should do something about their image problem, but they won't, because they're just a bunch of backwards-ass jesus nutters, siphoning wealth from the smart part of America to pay for their deep-fried cheese logs.

THIS my friends, is a very good troll. I almost fell for it.

Every politician is elitist. You have to have an enormous ego to run for the office.

Ok, since we've finally dismissed forever and ever the "issue" of elitism, what's next?

"People are frustrated".

Yep, that's right.

So what's the problem?

mycatisposter: Yes, because private schools are generally so much worse than the government schools and the quality of healthcare under socialized medicine is so much better than what you find in the free market. Are you even reading what you are typing?
Many of us are willing to pay more for better education/ healthcare. Unfortunately, it's not all of us.

I can give you tons of example of private schools that suck and exemplary public schools. In fact most public schools ion affluent areas are just as good as their private counterparts. You want to play that game. And sure healthcare is great if you can afford it, but when you make $17,000 a year and pay $500 a month for rent, it is kind of hard to afford it. Hell it hard to afford if you are rich and old with a preexisting condition. John McCain is talking about eliminating group plans for insurance. I hope you never get sick and lapse coverage. You will not be able to afford it. I can promise. Someone with so little ability to comprehend simple laws of supply and demand is not rich unless your parents are loaded. So are you a liar or are your parents loaded.

Disgruntled Postal Worker: What Obama was trying to say is that if you don't vote for him it proves you are a racist.

Word. That's what I get EVERY farking TIME I mention that I don't like Obama and his agenda. Nor do I appreciate the Hilarity of Hillary. As such, McCain is just the older of three evils, but that doesn't mean that I want to vote for him either.

/this election sucks.

Wow thats a lot of postage about who's the crappiest person out of a group of crappy people.

DulceEtDecorumEst: Obama is a danger to this country, he is an elitist, muslim sympathizer who wants to surrender Iraq to al-quaeda. He is also a corrupt asshole with friends like Rezko and Wright, who have funded his millions of donations.

Joke?
That was a joke, right?

mycatisposter: IlGreven: Corpus Delecti: GhostFish:
For once a politician isn't talking down to you like children.


...which is Obama's problem, really. He's forgetting that the average I.Q. in America is 90, and half of the population is lower than that.

I don't think it's Obama's problem that you don't know that, by definition, average I.Q. is 100.

If half the population has an IQ of below 90, then 90 is more likely the median, rather than the average. By definition, if a full 50 percent is below 90, the average cannot be 90, unless the higher half is exactly proportional to the lower.

Which it is. Look up bell curve (not the book) sometime.

Why can't people just vote for the candidate best suited for their circumstances and learn to accept that those circumstances are different for each individual?

For example, I won't touch Obama because he is the only candidate who has not pledged to reform the alternative minimum tax. My household is set to pay $30k more next year because of it. Take this logic, rinse wash repeat for everyone and watch an end to all the bickering.

/And I've heard of the "omg wut a selfish narrow bastard" moral high horse retort from those who probably never experienced a perspective outside of their own scope
//Sounds like one of those hopeless libertarians

Relatively Obscure: wage0048: The sad thing is Dulche doesn't even seem to care that the book(s) in the top two images don't match.

I guess I'm the only one that took DulceEtDecorumEst's pictures as intentional humor.

We have a winner! Hooray for Relatively Obscure:!

The day "elitist" becomes a dirty word we lose any hope of high culture or progress.

Didn't we elect a non-elite last time? How'd that turn out?

Gunslinging illiterates?

Sounds more like the inner city to me...

What's really funny is how middle America gets to decide the president and the folks on the coasts get to biatch and make documentaries.

It's funny, you guys who are outraged are doing exactly what Obama mentioned in his opinion. He basically said that people in PA are economically ravaged, but go against voting for their economic self-interest because they are polarized by people screaming "They're taking your guns! They're gonna allow gays to marry! The immigrants are taking over!!".

So how do some posters respond. Yup, they yell "Elitist! Elitist!"

Please, it's embarrassing.

DaSwankOne: You conservatives really need to study what happened at Walter Reed Medical Hospital after it was privatized.

Uh, Walter Reed was led by Major General George W. Weightman at the time the scandal broke, and he was relieved of command by the Secretary of the Army. That's a private hospital? Various services may have been outsourced, but the government was still in charge.

P.S. "You conservatives" used to describe me? Now *that's* funny. I'm an atheist, anti-WOD, pro-gay marriage, opposed the War in Iraq before it started, etc. Not everyone is so easily pigeon-holed.

I just love that the Dems are set once again to snatch defeat out of the jaws of victory. Not that I think McCain will be any better than Hillary or Obama. It's just funny to watch.

/conservative non-Republican

Brubold: I just love that the Dems are set once again to snatch defeat out of the jaws of victory. Not that I think McCain will be any better than Hillary or Obama. It's just funny to watch./conservative non-Republican

Yes, well, it's like in them Harry Potter books. I forget the quote but someone said it. The people on the side of freedom and democracy are disorganized, because they have to tolerate so many dissenting opinions. The people on the side of evil are quite disciplined, because shut up or we kill you.

And yes, the PC mob is quite annoying, but they don't have much of a history of lynchings or genocide. Hassling a student publication before a university board doesn't qualify (though it's stupid and hypocritical). Especially while the War On Drugs means that smoking a joint can lose you loans for college, even though our 2 Presidents over the last 16 years did it.

Let's have some perspective.

LowPlainsDrifter2008-04-14 01:16:02 PM

But in real life, it's not hard to notice that liberals hold actual real life working men blue collar values in contempt. They make no bones about mocking those things the average working man believes in; family, being left alone, guns, hunting, fishing, raising their children as Christians (for the most part), not valuing college, and so on. Liberals absolutely seethe with hatred at these things and don't bother to hide their contempt while projecting a huge aura of Ivory Tower "I am smarter than those yokels" elitism.

The working man, blue collar types, the "downtrodden" and poor are imaginary images to them I think. The real life versions of those people disgust liberals fully.

Wait....what?

I can't believe no one has mentioned how the GOP has manipulated their base since the Reagan era. To the common men and working poor of this country I have to ask: do you really think the upper echelons of the Grand Old Party actually give a damn about you? They only want your vote, nothing more. The GOP has screwed the working poor and common man since 1980 under the blanket Igor-like phrase "Small government good, big government bad." You won't know how you're been had until much later down the road when the bill is due and you need something you later realize the government should take care of. The GOP is giving you a few hundred dollars this year so you can keep your F150 from the repo man but they screwed you with a reduced government services like unemployment insurance, medical care and even food stamps & aid of that ilk, if you lost your job; gave away your jobs to China and India; reduced the $ to help your son or daughter's medical treatment from their war injuries (since you couldn't afford to send them to college, they went into the Armed Forces); relaxed air and water standards so now your groundwater is contaminated and your air is unsafe to breath. Like the Iraq War, it's a bill you don't see in front of you right now, but you're grandkids will surely pay it. Republicans use issues like gun control, gay marriage, teaching evolution in schools, and abortion as rallying cries against Liberals and Democrats. When will poor whites/Fox News watchers of this country wake up and smell the POS/bait and switch created by Karl Rove and his minions?

The GOP has become the "I got mine, you get your own" party. Compassionate Conservatism...my a$$. The top 1% of this country has it's net worth increase by 20% thanks to this administration. Is that what it's going to take for working class people to wake up...when the US economy takes its next big nosedive, and out-of-work common folks start clamoring for government aid and services...then the common man will realize the last 28 years of Republicanism were just a huge practical joke on them? To Low Plains Drifter and people like him, I say if anything, the upper echelons of the GOP have nothing but demonstrated the utmost contempt for the working people of this country. Actions speak louder than words. Those reduced government services were made possible by the tax cuts for the wealthy during of this administration and enormous tax cuts for corporations i.e. corporate welfare.

Democrats may have its factions of limo-liberals but they actually have some semblance of caring for those less fortunate than themselves which is why they wax about the downtrodden and poor. However, they'll put the $$$ where their mouths are. The GOP elite has no shred of that in its current public manifestation.

Finally, why is elitism a bad thing? We need a president who is intelligent, willing to be in contact with people who don't have mainstream views (dissent is what this country was founded upon, ya know or maybe you don't?), examine different opinions, willing to come up with new ideas for old problems and talk to me about race and class like an adult. That whole concept of "I want a President I can have a beer with" didn't really work out, did it? Look at what we ended up with, thanks to you lot who voted for that a$$hat. Come on,...why should the leader of the Free World be able to have a conversation with an average American? I want my President to be SMARTER than me, in fact he should be SMARTER THAN EVERYBODY ON THE WHOLE FREAKIN' PLANET so he deal with Iran, Russia, North Korea, Pakistan and all the other world issues and complexities the Average Joe has probably never heard of, much less concern himself with. Average Joes have enough on their plate with their jobs, homes and families. Remember, it's our President's job to handle THE HUGE STUFF, so we don't have worry. Our current President...what can I say...he's never been able to do much at all except get us into a pointless, non-winnable war based on lies and deliberate misinformation.