Where the Hell Is the Tea Party?

[Budget_Player_Cadet]

@Werekoala

Tough. A further example of how out of whack this country has become when “tough, resilient, salt-of-the-earth” ranchers in the heart of the far West can’t face difficulties without whining about not getting help from Washington. If I’m not mistaken, based on some of your prior posts, you should be happy about the fact that those red-state leeches aren’t siphoning off more of your precious Federal tax dollars anyway, so what’s your gripe?

You don’t know much about the problems agriculture has in the USA, do you?

[Drum_God]

@Budget_Player_Cadet

You don’t know much about the problems agriculture has in the USA, do you?

Maybe not, but the people who do just got furloughed. :smack:

[Fear_Itself]

@Bryan_Ekers

The Tea Party will appear when it suits them.

No one expects the Tea Party.

[Death_of_Rats]

@Budget_Player_Cadet

You don’t know much about the problems agriculture has in the USA, do you?

This is a person who thinks the Dakotas constitute “far West”. I don’t think there is a lot of “knowing” going on in his posts.

[BrainGlutton]

@Fear_Itself

No one expects the Tea Party.

Our chief weapon is surprise. Surprise and stupidity – our chief two weapons are surprise, stupidity and an almost fanatical devotion to Fox News – I’ll start again . . . amongst our weapons . . .

[BrainGlutton]

@Death_of_Rats

This is a person who thinks the Dakotas constitute “far West”.

[shrug] Traditionally, anything west of St. Louis counts.

[BrainGlutton]

@elucidator

Heck, the USDA is on furlough! They can just pick up the frozen corpses, load them on trucks and they’ll be the Mystery Meat in our school lunches by next Wednesday!

!!! I wondered why they were taking the trouble to pick up the dead cows with cranes instead of just leaving them for the coyotes!

[WillFarnaby]

@Shakes

Well, it worked out so well with the banks, so why not? What could possibly go wrong?

The government removed any self-regulating mechanism in the banking industry when it passed FDIC and Greenspan implied with his bailout of Long Term Capital Management that he worshipped at the feet of Wall Street and would do everything in his power to prevent the stock market or its major players from going under.

[WillFarnaby]

@Werekoala

Tough. A further example of how out of whack this country has become when “tough, resilient, salt-of-the-earth” ranchers in the heart of the far West can’t face difficulties without whining about not getting help from Washington.

It’s not necessarily a new phenomenon. There’s a reason why agricultural welfare has triumphed for over a 100 years and Mencken puts his finger on it:

….LET the farmer, so far as I am concerned, be damned forevermore. To Hell with him, and bad luck to him. He is a tedious fraud and ignoramus, a cheap rogue and hypocrite, the eternal Jack of the human pack. He deserves all that he ever suffers under our economic system, and more. Any city man, not insane, who sheds tears for him is shedding tears of the crocodile.

No more grasping, selfish and dishonest mammal, indeed, is known to students of the Anthropoidea. When the going is good for him he robs the rest of us up to the extreme limit of our endurance; when the going is bad be comes bawling for help out of the public till. Has anyone ever heard of a farmer making any sacrifice of his own interests, however slight, to the common good? Has anyone ever heard of a farmer practising or advocating any political idea that was not absolutely self-seeking–that was not, in fact, deliberately designed to loot the rest of us to his gain? Greenbackism, free silver, the government guarantee of prices, bonuses, all the complex fiscal imbecilities of the cow State John Baptists–these are the contributions of the virtuous husbandmen to American political theory. There has never been a time, in good seasons or bad, when his hands were not itching for more; there has never been a time when he was not ready to support any charlatan, however grotesque, who promised to get it for him. Only one issue ever fetches him, and that is the issue of his own profit. He must be promised something definite and valuable, to be paid to him alone, or he is off after some other mountebank. He simply cannot imagine himself as a citizen of a commonwealth, in duty bound to give as well as take; he can imagine himself only as getting all and giving nothing.

Yet we are asked to venerate this prehensile moron as the Ur-burgher, the citizen par excellence, the foundation-stone of the state! And why? Because he produces something that all of us must have–that we must get somehow on penalty of death. And how do we get it from him? By submitting helplessly to his unconscionable blackmailing by paying him, not under any rule of reason, but in proportion to his roguery and incompetence, and hence to the direness of our need. I doubt that the human race, as a whole, would submit to that sort of high-jacking, year in and year out, from any other necessary class of men. But the farmers carry it on incessantly, without challenge or reprisal, and the only thing that keeps them from reducing us, at intervals, to actual famine is their own imbecile knavery. They are all willing and eager to pillage us by starving us, but they can’t do it because they can’t resist attempts to swindle each other. Recall, for example, the case of the cottongrowers in the South. Back in the 1920’s they agreed among themselves to cut down the cotton acreage in order to inflate the price–and instantly every party to the agreement began planting more cotton in order to profit by the abstinence of his neighbors. That abstinence being wholly imaginary, the price of cotton fell instead of going up –and then the entire pack of scoundrels began demanding assistance from the national treasury–in brief, began demanding that the rest of us indemnify them for the failure of their plot to blackmail us.

The same demand is made sempiternally by the wheat farmers of the Middle West. It is the theory of the zanies who perform at Washington that a grower of wheat devotes himself to that banal art in a philanthropic and patriotic spirit–that he plants and harvests his crop in order that the folks of the cities may not go without bread. It is the plain fact that he raises wheat because it takes less labor than any other crop–because it enables him, after working no more than sixty days a year, to loaf the rest of the twelve months. If wheat-raising could be taken out of the hands of such lazy fellahin and organized as the production of iron or cement is organized, the price might be reduced by two-thirds, and still leave a large profit for entrepreneurs. But what would become of the farmers? Well, what rational man gives a hoot? If wheat went to $10 a bushel tomorrow, and all the workmen of the cities became slaves in name as well as in fact, no farmer in this grand land of freedom would consent voluntarily to a reduction of as much as 1/8 of a cent a bushel. “The greatest wolves,” said E. W. Howe, a graduate of the farm, “are the farmers who bring produce to town to sell.” Wolves? Let us not insult Canis lupus I move the substitution of Hyæna hyæna.

[Truman_Burbank]

@BrainGlutton

!!! I wondered why they were taking the trouble to pick up the dead cows with cranes instead of just leaving them for the coyotes!

We’re gonna need a lot more coyotes. Maybe even wolves, even…

[BlinkingDuck]

@BrainGlutton

Well, the ranchers in South Dakota don’t like it too much. But they’re all Commies, y’know.

This just bugs the hell out of me. I grew up in that area, taught in that area. These people are very vocal about their overpaid parasite teachers (lowest paid in the Union) and about people on welfare being wastes of life and should just die.

Ranchers were the worst on this…yet they now cry because the government trough is not being filled with taxpayer money and they have to face the harsh realities of the world.

These ranchers should just lose their land and homes, be homeless and die of starvation.

[elucidator]

Then their place would be filled by corporadoes with more skill in lobbying. Or we would by buying our meat from God alone knows who.

[BrainGlutton]

@elucidator

Then their place would be filled by corporadoes with more skill in lobbying. Or we would by buying our meat from God alone knows who.

Or, perhaps, “of.”

[Rhythmdvl]

I thought the monied interests and funders (including Fox) realized that Teaparty actions were harmful to the bottom line and the voices generally uncontrollable—so cut off the astroturf campaign. What’s left is a frail shadow of the original brand, one that wouldn’t warrant more than a trivial mention had the original turfing campaign not been so heavily financed and marketed.

[Budget_Player_Cadet]

@WillFarnaby

The government removed any self-regulating mechanism in the banking industry when it passed FDIC and Greenspan implied with his bailout of Long Term Capital Management that he worshipped at the feet of Wall Street and would do everything in his power to prevent the stock market or its major players from going under.

You know what? If the trade-off for self-regulation in the banks is the government ensuring us that we won’t wake up to find our savings accounts unexpectedly empty, I’d call that a damn good trade. Indeed, self-regulation in the banking industry has this nasty way of allowing bank runs and extremely bad depressions. So all that’s necessary is that we instate some actual external regulation. Pity that never happened.

[WillFarnaby]

@Budget_Player_Cadet

You know what? If the trade-off for self-regulation in the banks is the government ensuring us that we won’t wake up to find our savings accounts unexpectedly empty, I’d call that a damn good trade. Indeed, self-regulation in the banking industry has this nasty way of allowing bank runs and extremely bad depressions. So all that’s necessary is that we instate some actual external regulation. Pity that never happened.

Implicit bailout promises, in the form of suspension of specie payments, have characterized American banking policy since at least the early 1800’s. There has never been a time in modern history in which the banks were self-regulating without this implicit promise, therefore your implication that I would have us return to the banking policy predominant before the passage of FDIC is a gross mischaracterization.

[Chronos]

Wait, didn’t you just say that it’s only because of the FDIC that the banks don’t self-regulate? It’s right up there on the same page, even. We can all scroll up and read it.

[Little_Nemo]

Larry Klayman Tells Obama ‘To Put The Quran Down’ At Veterans Rally

A short article that’s only five paragraphs long. But every paragraph has a conservative saying or doing something that’s either wrong or just stupid.

[WillFarnaby]

@Chronos

Wait, didn’t you just say that it’s only because of the FDIC that the banks don’t self-regulate? It’s right up there on the same page, even. We can all scroll up and read it.

I said it was FDIC and the implicit bailout guarantee put forth by Greenspan after he bailed out LTCM. Do you dispute that these two undermine any market incentive for banks to behave responsibly? I think it would be in good spirit if advocates of regulation admit that government has done away with a free market in banking many years ago instead of pretending we had one up until 2008. Either they are ignorant of economic history or they are demagogues. I say both.

[Rhythmdvl]

@Little_Nemo

Larry Klayman Tells Obama ‘To Put The Quran Down’ At Veterans Rally

A short article that’s only five paragraphs long. But every paragraph has a conservative saying or doing something that’s either wrong or just stupid.

Stupid, you say?

[QUOTE=Some ex-candidate desperate for your attention]
Our vets have proven that they have not been timid," Palin said at the rally, "so we will not be timid in calling out any who would use our military, our vets, as pawns in a political game.
[/QUOTE]

I believe the lightning bolts missed their target because Dr. Zeuss couldn’t stop giggling at the idiocy.