Tag: idiots

Area Cretin Laments Death of America

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When It was OK to be anti-German

Robert Knapp of Lewiston, NY has some very important thoughts about America and how far its fallen. Perk up your listening ears, and make sure you pay close attention to any dog whistles you might hear.

What happened to my America? When you could walk down any street at any time and feel safe – not be shot at or mugged.

The premise here is that America was once a country without any crime, petty or grand. There was never an America where it was safe always to walk down a street without fear of being victimized by some crime or another. Ever. Crime has existed since the dawn of time, and violence is, for better or worse, what made our country what it is.

When you could say “Merry Christmas” and nobody would be offended.

No one is “offended” when someone says “Merry Christmas”. But it is a fact that there are several holidays in December, not all of which are celebrated by everyone. Some people find it just as kind and polite – if not more so – to simply say, “Happy Holidays”.

I remember an America when you could say, “Happy Holidays” and nobody would be offended.

When regardless of the language you spoke at home, in public you spoke English, and did not have Spanish as a second language.

That passage right there is just the author’s more politically correct way of using an anti-Latino epithet. Seriously, why not just say, “fucking spics” while you’re at it? Notice how the first part of the sentence is open to myriad native languages, but the only tongue the author singles out for his offense and ire is Spanish. Here’s a thought – just ignore the Spanish text on whatever sign is so offensive to you.

When people were innocent until proven guilty.

 

Based on the general tenor of this screed, I’m going to guess that this author is referring to the cops whom grand juries cleared of wrongdoing in the homicides of Eric Garner and Michael Brown. Well, people are innocent until proven guilty.  By juries. At trial. That doesn’t mean the general public, prosecutors, or police can’t suspect that these people are guilty – it just means that a jury and judge must be impartial.

When we were all Americans, without a race before it.

America is a made-up country that was never homogeneous and was created by and for immigrants and refugees. Some of us were 3/5th Americans. Some of us had no rights at all. Until the 20th Century, women couldn’t even vote. And this isn’t a new complaint  – it goes back at least over a century. I’m not sure what panacea this gentleman has concocted for himself, but it’s ok for Americans to call themselves whatever they want. It is, after all, a free country.

When a human life meant something, and a person who took an oath to save people did not leave a young girl dying on the roadside.

What?

When our motto was to “speak softly and carry a big stick,” not to wimp out and carry a feather.

Teddy Roosevelt coined that phrase around 1901 to characterize his foreign policy ideology, which at the time was focused, somewhat ironically, on the subjugation and colonization of Latin American countries. As for “wimping out”, the US has been involved in nation-building Asian land wars almost continually since 2001. So, who knows what this guy’s talking about?

When a red light and a stop sign meant stop, not ignore it.

Traffic scofflaws are on a recent uptick? People never ran red lights and stop signs before n0bummer?

We were known as a “melting pot.” Now we are a dumping ground.

The racism and xenophobia really aren’t veiled at all – thinly or otherwise, is it?

We are well on our way to becoming a Third World country, with people living in cardboard homes and sewage running down our streets.

Well, no we’re not and I’ll repeat: who even knows what this guy’s talking about? Is this some call for making housing more affordable, or for a massive public works project to fix our crumbling infrastructure?

No. Paraphrasing – he’s just saying these garbage (“dumping ground”) brown people are shitting and pissing in the street like they do in Wetbackistan where they came from.

What happened to my America?

It never existed. You made it up. It’s a figment of your imagination.

Incidentally, “Knapp” is a German surname. Here’s what they said about German immigrants way back when. What happened to Mr. Knapp’s America? You know, the good old days when you could own a black and hate the Hun?

Sheesh, that’s compelling. Who let you in?

Trolling #POTUSBuffalo and What Government Is

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 Some showed class. Some were absent. Others descended into a weird, anachronistic madness. It was a weird day. 

Let’s recall that the only times a member of the Bush Administration deigned to visit our fair city, it was Richard “Dick” Cheney coming in 2003 to collect big money from deep pockets – $1,000 per plate, and Bush in 2004 to a carefully selected crowd to defend the Patriot Act.  Cheney cost the city $10,000 in police overtime and avoided contact with non-wealthy non-Republicans at all cost. I don’t recall what, if anything, the Democrats did or said in reaction to those visits, but suffice it to say that Cheney wasn’t here for anything except raising money for re-election, and Bush only saw the Buffalonians he needed to see. 

Some Republicans showed class. 

 

There was the time the President forgot who the Mayor of Buffalo was.

(Byron Brown’s Democratic opponent capitalized on this moment:)

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CFCpP9gUbK0&w=640&h=480]

Then there was everything else.

Obama has come to town twice. Once in 2010, and this Thursday. He came to town specifically to announce a new initiative to guarantee that American kids who want a college education can get a quality one that is affordable. 

In 2010, he came to talk about manufacturing. Everyone was there – Congressman Chris Lee, County Executive Chris Collins included. 

In 2013, he came to talk about education. Chris Collins was nowhere to be seen. I’m told he wasn’t invited. In just one short year, the Collins district has gone from Kathy Hochul having the President’s ear and the district having clout, to an angry Obamaphobe congressman who votes to repeal Obamacare, because his singular issue is to deny families access to quality, affordable health insurance. The 27th Congressional District has a disgrace for a representative – a person who seeks to harm, not help, families. 

When I first started writing this post late Thursday, it was going to be a profanity-laden rant against the Erie County Republican Committee, which released what is probably the dumbest statement, ever. It compared President Obama to, of all people, Jimmy Carter – a punchline from 35 years ago. 

Erie County GOP Trolls

Erie County GOP Trolls

But I decided not to. I realized they were trolling us. To rant and curse would suggest that there was some legitimacy to anything the local Republican Party has to say about anything. There isn’t, so I haven’t. Simply put, anyone who would knowingly compare the economic crises (plural) of the Carter era to 2013 America is either a party hack or someone who wasn’t alive during the Carter era;  Erie County Republican chairman Nick Langworthy is both. 

Evoking Jimmy Carter is a sign of fundamental weakness; the Republicans had to skulk back 35 years to find a Democratic President who had a bad economic time of it. Were they out of Paula Jones jokes? In 2013, We don’t gave gas lines, OPEC isn’t bothering anyone, inflation isn’t 13%, unemployment isn’t in the double-digits, and we don’t have crazy high interest rates on borrowing. All of those things were true in the closing months of Carter’s presidency. Operation Neptune Spear succeeded while  Operation Eagle Claw failed. There is really no comparison to be had. 

Why the Carter troll? Because after him came Reagan, who is godlike among Republicans. They think that Reagan fixed the economy in perpetuity by ushering in supply-side, trickle-down economics.  Both parties had until recently clung to the trickle-down theory as gospel truth, yet in the last 30 years wages have stagnated, the middle class is bearing the brunt of payoffs to the very rich, and the lot of the average American family has been made worse so that people like the Kardashians and Kochs can pay lower taxes. 

Why the Carter troll? Because it’s stupid and they’ve got nothing. Bush’s recession was the worst since World War 2 in terms of overall economic shrinkage. The worst. So, the numbers now seem catastrophic as we try to undo the damage. Facts being facts, WNY didn’t do so well under Reagan, either. Or Bush 1. Or Bush 2. Or Clinton. Why the Carter troll? They point to figures showing that the number of people participating in the labor market has shrunk to 1980 levels. The problem is that no one really knows what’s behind that. The pinkos over at the Wall Street Journal suggest that the labor participation rate was shrinking even during low unemployment of the Bush 2 years, because of the commencement of baby boomer retirement (it tracks nicely with boomer engagement in the market). The cadres at JP Morgan confirm it. 

So the trolls at ECRC are blaming Obama for the retirement of aging baby boomers. 

But it also reconfirms just how patently anti-individual, anti-consumer, and anti-middle class the Republicans have become.

As the Republicans in Congress vote for the 30th+ time to repeal Obamacare, and as they release obnoxiously false and misleading, trolling press statements bringing up bogeymen from 35 years ago, realize these two fundamental truths: 

1. The Republican opposition to Obamacare is a reflection of their platform, which would deny average Americans the right and ability to obtain quality, affordable health insurance. A repeal of Obamacare brings back lifetime maximums, denials of coverage for pre-existing conditions, the wonder of medical bankruptcy, an inability for people not on Medicaid or Medicare to get affordable insurance unless provided through an employer. 

2. The President was in town to announce an initiative to provide average American kids access to quality, affordable higher education. Since when did the Republicans decide that this was not a civic or social goal?  

Why has the Republican Party declared war on providing average people with things to keep them alive or to educate their kids? I don’t get it. But they’re so dead-set on this that they will beclown themselves with 30 year-old Johnny Carson jokes.  

At one point, Langworthy’s statement read as follows, 

After ushering in an era of economic malaise not seen since Jimmy Carter, President Obama comes to one of the most unemployed cities in the nation to tout more college educations for our young people,” Langworthy said. “We need jobs now – we already have thousands of college graduates unemployed in Erie County.”

“The prescription for job creation has been proven and tested by time: government needs to get out of the way of business,” Langworthy said. “Instead the Administration is creating a raft of job-killing regulations and, with ObamaCare, transforming our nation into a part time workforce.”

Just once, I’d like to see a Republican take the side of the average person instead of big business. Just once, I’d like a Republican to say, “I think the health insurance system we have is too expensive and not geared towards patient needs. I don’t like Obamacare, but I agree that we need to find affordable ways to guarantee that no American is found wanting for medical care they need”. Just once, I’d like a Republican to say, “We need to grow the middle class, and restore the social mobility that has stagnated over the past generation. We need to encourage and help people to get an affordable college education”. These sorts of statements used to be uncontroversial.

“Talking about a college education for everyone in Buffalo is like offering a starving man tap shoes,” Langworthy said. “Thanks for stopping by Mr. President. Erie County needs jobs.”

Usually, when you present a wildly stupid simile like that, you tend to explain what you mean. What does Langworthy mean here? The President said that the unemployment rate for college graduates is 1/3 what it is for people without one. Is Langworthy saying here that Buffalo kids don’t need college? Is he saying that they are just a bunch of willing labor-meat, ready to operate machinery that long ago escaped to Mexico or China?  And what happened to entrepreneurship? Sure, we need jobs, but used to be a Republican would tell someone to go and make their own job. I guess not so much. Labor-meat. 

Given the extremely high rate of school failure in the city – led by a mayor who has Conservative Party backing, you’d think that the Republicans would follow all of this bluster up with a credible Republican candidate for Mayor.

Funny you should think that.

Buffalo has a credible, hard-working Republican candidate. Education is high on his agenda. Yet Langworthy isn’t just passively ignoring, but actively shunning Sergio Rodriguez. Education is the biggest issue of our time, especially in Buffalo; not except.

Sure, we also need strong training and apprenticeship in the trades, but the unions used to do that and we all know what Republicans think of those.

Improving our public schools and guaranteeing every kid access to higher education is a goal that no credible politician would reject, but the Erie County Republican Committee did just that. The statistics show that a college education leads to better jobs and job prospects. Langworthy ridicules this and mocks the notion of social mobility. It’s shameful. 

It’s downright un-American. 

As the President came to town, Langworthy added petulance to the mix: 

 

So, look up at the picture Derek Gee from the Buffalo News tweeted – it’s at the top of this post. People were clearly excited about a sitting President coming to town. Yet, while Langworthy was whining about the local media fawning all over the most powerful man in the world being in town, his colleague from the National Republican Campaign Committee wrote that the President wouldn’t get any “Buffalove”. Which is it? 

Buffalo showed Obama love and excitement. Buffalonians like the idea of making life easier for the middle class. We like the notion that people should have access to a quality and affordable college education, just like we think people should have access to quality, affordable health insurance. We’re that old-fashioned bit of flyover country that thinks people deserve a fair shot in exchange for hard work – whether it be through brains or brawn. The problems we face as a region are decades in the making, and most of them have bipartisan or nonpartisan causes. 

I haven’t been a Republican since 2003 – this sort of nonsense is why. If you’re an Erie County Republican, thank Ray Walter for being a respectful guy with class. If you’re an Erie County Republican, tell Nick Langworthy that he embarrassed you today. If you’re a resident of NY-27, now you know that you’re effectively unrepresented in Congress. 

Brave Patriot Fights Tyranny of “Traffic Stop”

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Here’s what happens when a brave 2nd Amendment patriot decides to fight the tyranny of the “routine traffic stop” in Ohio. 

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yid9qG30II8]

The brave well-regulated militiaman had a Kalashnikov on his person, along with eight 40-round magazines. It is somehow important for the proper exercise of his 2nd Amendment liberties that he have these so that he can shoot as many bullets as possible at the unsuspecting police officers who were “just doing their jobs” as the AmeriKKKan lamestream media calls it. 

The difference between a “responsible gun owner” and “deluded homicidal lunatic” is sometimes razor-thin. But this video also depicts the idiotic pseudo-patriotic fever-dream of the particular gun people who think that the founding fathers intended for individuals to arbitrarily take up arms to fight an undefined “tyranny” from time to time, or that the Constitution somehow sanctions that. They didn’t, and it doesn’t. 

Thankfully, More WNYers Listen to Country Music

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A few weeks ago, I criticized Buffalo’s worst Brian Griffin impersonator for asserting that the United States government is a greater threat than al Qaeda. This coming from someone who was a big supporter of Bush-era, post-9/11 fearmongering, who was a huge supporter of the Patriot Act, an Iraq War backer, and who enjoyed labeling opponents of Bush-era policies as traitors. The irony is delicious. 

Now, this: 

Anyone who disagrees with Bauerle’s weltanschauung is, nowadays, simply a member of the “lunatic left”. More irony, as he posts a link to an idiotarian birther website to “prove” his point. But what is actually shown at that WND link? Is there some confirmation there that Americans tend to agree with Mr. Bauerle’s conclusion that Islamic jihadist terrorist organization al Qaeda is a more desirable master than the participatory representative democracy of the United States? 

No. 

What’s shown there is something that -for WND.com – is uncharacteristically reasonable and completely believable. 

Now admittedly, the author at WND has reading comprehension skills that are as poor as that of the AM morning zookeeper who is #2 to country music in the nation’s 56th largest market. 

According to a pair of recent polls, for the first time since the 9/11 terrorist hijackings, Americans are more fearful their government will abuse constitutional liberties than fail to keep citizens safe.

Even in the wake of the April 15 Boston Marathon bombing – in which a pair of Islamic radicals are accused of planting explosives that took the lives of three and wounded more than 280 – the polls indicate Americans are hesitant to give up any further freedoms in exchange for increased “security.”

Wait a minute. Being hesitant to give up freedoms doesn’t equate with “fear” of government. 

A Fox News survey polling a random national sample of 619 registered voters the day after the bombing found Americans responded very differently than after 9/11.

For the first time since a similar question was asked in May 2001, more Americans answered “no” to the question, “Would you be willing to give up some of your personal freedom in order to reduce the threat of terrorism?”

Of those surveyed on April 16, 2013, 45 percent answered no to the question, compared to 43 percent answering yes.

In May 2001, before 9/11, the balance was similar, with 40 percent answering no to 33 percent answering yes.

But after the terrorist attacks of 9/11, the numbers flipped dramatically, to 71 percent agreeing to sacrifice personal freedom to reduce the threat of terrorism.

To me, it doesn’t mean that Americans fear government. Instead, it means people have lost their fear of terrorism. It means that America is growing up and understanding that one’s constitutional liberties must be preserved, protected, and maintained even in the face of occasional mayhem, death, and cruelty. It means that the terrorists have lost if we no longer fear them to the point where we agree willingly to sacrifice our liberties and our way of life. 

Not everyone lost their minds when Obama was elected and then re-elected. 

It takes an especial kind of intense hatred and ignorance to draw the conclusion that WND and WBEN’s shining star make here, but it’s what you get when you live in a country with the freedom to speak even the most rank stupidity – so stupid that it reveals your prejudices and your inability to engage in logical thought.

By not “fearing government” and instead fearing terrorism after 9/11, we let too many things go. Patriot Act, overdone security porn at airports, billions to equip police with military equipment, and a detention center in Cuba that is nothing more than an air conditioned, extralegal death row. Americans indeed need to take back our liberties – liberties that were deliberately and systematically abused and withdrawn by the prior administration Mr. Bauerle contemporaneously adored. 

We don’t win the war on terror by indefinitely detaining bad guys – we make more bad guys. We don’t win the war on terror by raining ordinance on remote Pakistani or Yemeni villages using drones – we make more bad guys. Ultimately, we need to understand that there will always be bad guys who want to do us harm, and we can do what we can to keep us safe, but not to the point of fundamentally changing what America is. 

That police power vs. safety debate is an important one to have, but when dishonest cretins misapprehend what it’s all about, and use lies to inflame the hatred and fear of people too dumb to click the link and read, then there’s no debate to be had. They just need to be told to go to hell. 

WBEN: Squadrismo Radio

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Last week, I relayed the story that South Buffalo-based blogger Mike Blake wrote about, having to do with odd threats emanating from what can only be called the WBEN morning zookeeper and his virtual entourage of dummies – a pack of dubiously big-balled squadristi. Not content merely to brook no dissent on his radio program or on his popular, selfie-laden Facebook page, this person has lobbed threats against numerous people in recent days, including Blake’s brother, Patrick – a Buffalo firefighter. 

Friends of a paranoiac fascist zookeeper lob poorly spelled threats at radio listeners

You see, Patrick called WBEN during the zookeeper’s show and joked that a backup on the 33 was due to someone having fallen asleep during that day’s program. It wasn’t a prank call – it was just a joke. Here it is, complete with Bauerle’s best Alex Jones impression: 

http://podcast.wben.com/wben2/3887120.mp3

For those unaware, a listener (my brother) called Bauerle and reported that an accident on the 33 was caused by motorists falling asleep while listening to his show. That’s when things got strange. According to my brother, a man sounding like Bauerle, phoned him from a private number. In a whiny voice, he called him an A-hole and said he ruined his show with his phone call.

It didn’t end there. My brother then received threatening texts from people associated with Bauerle. One informed him that we “know a lot of people”…

This led to a barrage of insults from the zookeeper and his friends, and on Monday, Blake added some additional examples to the mix. 

 

Evidence of a crime?

One of my favorites comes from someone whose daddy works for Verizon, and this Bauerle hanger-on threatens that daddy might shut off Blake’s paid-for Verizon contract.

Daddy is a regional guy! Daddy will shut you down!

Patrick Blake committed no crime, and broke no rules by calling in to a radio show’s call-in number to make a joke about the host. It wasn’t mean-spirited; it wasn’t even a “prank” call. What’s far, far more alarming is that the radio host’s ego is so hyper-fragile that a throwaway joke that he could have removed from air using the station’s delay became an obsession so stark that he didn’t just whine to Blake, but got other people to complain about how this somehow, magically, affects the radio host’s “livelihood”. 

I corresponded with Patrick Blake on Monday, and he notes that most of the texts came from numbers marked “private”, as well as the Florida number shown above and a Texas number. None of these threatmongers have the stones to contact Mr. Blake by a phone number that can be traced or is otherwise evident, because they know they’re likely committing the crime of harassment. When Blake tried to call the numbers back, the calls wouldn’t or couldn’t go through. 

While none of the messages or texts directly threatened bodily harm, they all demanded that he “back off” his one joke phone call “or else”. Blake believes that several of the messages came from people who were cops or had some other connection to law enforcement.

Blake says, “I called WBEN and told what was happening to a guy that said he was a manager. He told me it was above his pay grade and he would put me through to Tim Wenger. I left a message with him but never got a call back. After about 10 calls to my phone I called their *930 call-in number, and told them if they did not stop I would give out their address . After that i got a crazy text saying i had threatened to bring force against WBEN and my phone would be shut off. I never threatened anyone and this was after many calls to my phone.”

When I asked Blake whether he had kept any of the voice mails he received, he replied, “Most were just music like the Adam Sandler song “you’re an asshole” and some other song about “Jesus loves you but everyone hates you”.”

As I documented last week, the station’s program director and head of operations pretends that his morning host and his squadristi aren’t completely out of control. 

Foolish Phobia Friday

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Paranoid Parrot

1. Homophobia: From the Niagara Falls Reporter, as part of a story about why fighting is good for hockey. 

Ha ha! Gays! The ways in which the passage above is offensive are many, but to suggest that gays are not manly, or are emasculated; and to contrast the desirability of fighting versus homosexuality are idiotic and ignorant. Chances are, there are plenty of gay guys who could beat the living crap out of the author, so I fail to see the validity of the argument. 

Since that paper got a new publisher with a regressive attitude towards women and who expounds on “manliness”, this sort of thing is to be expected. 

2. Islamophobia: Member of Congress and renowned lunatic Michele Bachmann (R-Cloudcuckooland) refuses to be out-crazied by the likes of Allen West, so she had her own Joe McCarthy Moment this past week, “revealing” that the Muslim Brotherhood has infiltrated the highest levels of the federal government Islamo-Kenyan-Indonesian N0bama Administration. Actually, the term she used was downright pornographic, “deep penetration in the halls of our United States government”. When asked to clarify, she singled out Huma Abedin, who is the wife of disgraced Congressman Anthony Weiner and an aide to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Abedin also happens to be Muslim (married to a Jewish man, incidentally, thus proving that co-existence is possible). 

A writer for Salon summarized the six-degrees-of-terrorism in which Bachmann engages: 

As evidence, she pointed to Abedin’s late father, Professor Syed Z. Abedin, and a 2002 Brigham Young University Law Review article about his work. Bachmann points to a passage saying Abedin founded an organization that received the “quiet but active support” of the the former director of the Muslim World League, an international NGO that was tied to the Muslim Brotherhood in Europe in the 1970s through 1990s. So, to connect Abedin to the Muslim Brotherhood, you have to go through her dead father, to the organization he founded, to a man who allegedly supported it, to the organization that man used to lead, to Europe in the 1970s and 1990s, and finally to the Brotherhood.

Ms. Abedin’s office released this statement:

They are nothing but vicious and disgusting lies that have no place in reasonable political discourse. And anyone who traffics in them should be ashamed of themselves.

Finally, a homophobic nominally Christian woman from Minnesota is willing to stand up to the Islamic faith!  To his credit, Senator John McCain took the Senate floor to blast Bachmann, as everyone with a brain should. Always. About everything. 

3. Omniphobia: “traditional marriage” enthusiast and drug addict Rush Limbaugh claims that, “Bane”, the villain in the new Batman movie, was thusly named so that the Hollywood media elite (which is code, incidentally, for a different type of hatred) can equate Mitt Romney’s “Bain Capital” with evil, or something. Bane was actually created by comic book writers in 1993. So, you’d have to believe that it was a very prescient conspiracy, indeed. 

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