After this post, you’re probably going to start suspecting that I’m a closet muff diver or a secret member of the gay activist parade. You’re just going to have to trust that I enjoy all my prolific sex with one very rugged man and that I despise all fringe activists of whatever stripe.
It’s no wonder less than 25% of the public identifies as Republican when we’ve elevated Joe The Plumber as a conservative poster boy. I’m sure he’s an honest, decent guy, but give me a break, he doesn’t exactly sell conservative philosophy eloquently to anyone with an IQ above 60. When Joe speaks, I cringe.
People don’t understand the dictionary—it’s called queer. Queer means strange and unusual. It’s not like a slur, like you would call a white person a honky or something like that. You know, God is pretty explicit in what we’re supposed to do—what man and woman are for. Now, at the same time, we’re supposed to love everybody and accept people, and preach against the sins. I’ve had some friends that are actually homosexual. And, I mean, they know where I stand, and they know that I wouldn’t have them anywhere near my children.
I should probably be grateful that he didn’t start slinging nigger in that interview. I wish he would shut up, go home and plumb something other than the media.
Lily Allen courtesy of Alison and Laura.
Trust but verify sez moi.
Posting the home porn wouldn’t disprove assumptive muff diving, Gerard. The two aren’t mutually exclusive.
Can I get a witness?
No alibi’s on my end, you’re just going have to go on faith that salty twangs my tongue.
“I shall cling to the old rugged man….”
Actually, Joe’s statement is almost exactly the same as one Al Gore made in 1982.
I don’t like him either, Gordon.
Thanks for the link ;-)
I was going to post a Lily track onto your post about women and sex the other week but decided against … check out Lily and “It’s not Fair”.. try to listen to a clear version. I’d post a link but it drops the whole video onto your thread. Lyrics taster:
Oh I lie here in the wet patch
In the middle of the bed
I’m feeling pretty damn hard done by
I spent ages giving head
Then I remember all the nice things that you ever said to me
Maybe I’m just overreacting maybe you’re the one for me
As for Joe the Jackass. Conservatives need to unshackle the religious right
Joe the Plumber isn’t part of the religious right in any sense other than he’s conservative and nominally Christian.
I know quite a few folks who are, though, and they’re good people who try to live their convictions. Falwell, Robertson, Dobson and other “always available” commenters get the headlines, but most of them are just people whom you would be very happy to have as friends and neighbors.
Don’t buy into the caricature. America needs more people like them, not less.
Gordon, I think where people politicise religion then noone wins, least of all the good people you mention. The piece links to some christian group who appear to be plugging this stupid statement he made. You’ve read my piece on Thatcher to know I respect and admire people with belief when they apply it in a certain way. But where it merely becomes fringe activism they are no better than hard-core feminist or gay activists.
It is far easier to see the foibles in the creeds of others than to see our own.
Jerry Falwell was a good man who, I suspect, had some big surprises when he went to heaven. Yet if all people like him were sent to heaven this afternoon, I do not doubt we would be looking down a rabbit hole that was never part of our calculations.
One of the old Greeks first saw that it would not be better if things happened to men just as they wish.
I hadn’t even bothered to consider that you might be the kind of girl to dive, past or present, not that my good standing in the perverted gender would object to such a thing. You seem rather to be the kind of girl who has taken a bullet or two under the shotgun rack.
Joe should have stuck to his fifteen seconds.
He seems like a stand-up guy but when he starts spouting off on keeping gays away from the kids it just makes me think, please go back to blowin’ turds out of my pipes…um, literally speaking.
You realize you’ve left me alone at my desk with visions of prolific sex and muff diving. Hmmm…what to do.
Joe’s an idiot. And he bred. I wouldn’t want him near any children.
re: Joe. I think Andy Levy got it right with his tweet yesterday (he re-ran it on Red Eye last night, too):
andylevy: If Joe the Plumber equals the grassroots, I’m happy to be called an elitist.
All of which goe so show that, with attitudes like these, conservatives and Republicans won’t be troubled by the actuality of power anytime soon. How relaxing. We can all just kick back and feel pure.
So these are our choices then. We classical liberals wash our hands of the whole mess, retire to the sidelines and submit to our Leftist overlords or, as Gerard suggests in his post this morning, we all contribute to the hard work of putting the culture back on the tracks.
Gordon typed:
‘Actually, Joe’s statement is almost exactly the same as one Al Gore made in 1982.’
Yawn.
It’s 2009 Gordon.
Gore supported gay rights as a congressman, Senator and Presidential candidate and worked to allow gays to serve in the military.
Go figure. A military veteran from Tennessee enters politics moves to Washington DC. involves himself in a bigger world and changes his attitudes on various issues as he grows. Isn’t that the way it’s supposed to work as one’s world view becomes more complete?
What’s Joe’s excuse?
Joe hasn’t entered politics moved to Washington DC or involved himself in a bigger world. He is guilty of being honest and unspun, although I don;t support what he said.
Yes, let’s stick with the Bush model of compassionate conservatism; focusing on a narrow range of social issues, increasing legislative control over our lives, creating new entitlement programs and growing the government.
One of the main problems I have with the evangelical arm of the GOP and their approved representatives is their lack of essential conservatism (less is better – stay out of my business) on most issues, save morality or the military.
The following bills are pending or have passed in the Texas Senate, a Republican dominated body. They were all proposed by Republican representatives serving Joe the Plumber constituencies.
Prohibit a driver under 18 from using a cellphone while driving.
Beef up driver education courses and prohibit drivers under 18 from using a cellphone.
Prohibit anyone younger than 16 ½ from using a tanning bed in a salon.
Raise the legal age to buy cigarettes from 18 to 19.
Beef up driver education and prohibit driving after 10 p.m. for anyone under 18 and licensed less than a year.
Prohibit anyone under 18 from many rodeo activities without a protective helmet.
These are not conservative principles in action, it’s more big government, nanny statism fueled by the religious right republican constituency. These people have no problem supporting government intervention in our lives as long as it’s their brand of approved intervention. This type of legislation is just as ridiculous, and controlling, as the Left’s push for the ban of dishwasher detergent in Seattle.
I doubt that those of us who subscribe to classical liberalism will prevent the party’s rise back into power by snubbing the Joe’s of the GOP.
I, for one, am tired of supporting those who have brought about the ruin the party.
One needn’t enter politics to expand on his/her world view. Some do. Certainly most don’t.
But Joe’s not ‘guilty of being honest and unspun’. Thanks for the chuckle. “Unspun’ is a good one.
The world has changed a very great deal since 1982.
Except for a certain ‘average’ Joe it seems.
And this is a good thing?
You’re back, Arthur. Good, we missed your contrary opinions.
I have to admit you guys are fun.
I missed you.
Well, some of you.
Joe the Plumber is an everyman, who is being exploited by lots of Republican politicians ( and vice versa ) to mutual detriment
Most of those pending or passed laws in Texas make sense to me!
I don’t think that anyone should drive while using a ( hand held ) cell phone, especially not what is often a very inexperienced driver. Keeping near-adults from distracted driving protects everyone else on the road.
An orderly society is not against Republican principles. Or shouldn’t be!!
Cheers
Gotta keep those trains running on time eh phantom?
MSL
Someone who wants to take the cellphone out of the hands of a gabby 17 year old driving 70 miles an hour at night is hardly an oppressor.
All societies have rules. Supporting rules does not make one an Il Duce or a Nanny.
Besides, Texas barely has passenger train service – there’s nothing to keep on time down there!
Yes, we have no trains in Texas. ;-)
Phantom, you do know that that particular law isn’t going to stop any teenager from texting while driving, what it will do is increase state revenue and give the cops one more reason to pull over citizens for no decent reason.
“Gordon, I think where people politicise religion then noone wins, least of all the good people you mention.”
And so says DSD.
And Daphne too.
Mass stupidity ever amazes in our mass democracy. People have given up the habbit of thinking because it is already done for them, badly, and because they do not wish to contradict the mass.
Has even one legislator in even one state stood to say there is not the slightest difference in driving while using a hand-held cell rather than an earpiece? We are four times more likely to wreak either way. It does not matter if we are using two hands or two knees.
But they will not pass laws to actually ban cells in cars, because they themsleves cannot imagine not using them. They will pass laws against texting, because most legislators cannot text.
When I become Rex, legislators will not use cell phones while driving, drive, legislate, or leave home for any reason without helmets.
It’s not rules I have a problem with phantom, it’s the incremental nature of some of these rules where one leads to ten more and they become as Daphne says merely an additional revenue producer for the state rather than a means to actually solve a problem. A gabby 17 year old going seventy with a phone plastered to their ear is already covered I believe by reckless or negligent driving laws. Why not leave it up to the cops discretion whether or not public safety is being threatened?
Oh…sorry for the Il Duce inference.
Stealing a goat is a felony offense in Texas. Stealing exotic fowl just got bumped up to a third degree felony. Nab a fancy chicken and you’ll be cooling your heels in prison for a long stretch.
10% of Texans have outstanding warrants due to excessive traffic fines because of stupid laws like no underage texting or a sixteen year old driving home from his job or school event after state curfew hours.
In the name of For The Children or Public Safety these dumb cluck republicans hound their representatives to Do Something and the politicians jump on board, knowing full well that these Protect Society criminalization bills are nothing more than revenue generators for the state coffers. They get to control your innocuous personal actions, your children’s personal actions and legally dig into your wallet.
A bill to increase SCHIP eligibility to families earning up to 300% above the poverty level just passed the Texas (republican) Senate. I call Bullshit. The republicans have lost their way. They have completely bought into big government programs, entitlement legislation for the middle class, and onerous laws infringing on our personal lives. This has all been led by the religious right and I’m sick of their moral code agendas derailing a party that should, first and foremost, be focused on fiscal responsibility, small government, individual freedom and free markets.
We aren’t out of power because we were too conservative, we’re out of power because we stopped behaving like conservatives.
Joe is welcome to hold any belief he likes, live how he wants, raise his children as he sees fit – I truly wish him well. But, when he’s held up as a spokesperson for the GOP, I’m going to speak when I disagree with his opinions or his manner of delivery.
Poor old Joe.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/05/07/joe-the-plumber-quitting_n_198920.html
And more on the ‘nanny state’.
Seattle has authorized police to target drivers who run red lights and fail to yield right of way to pedestrians after a bump (as it were) in the number of man/woman vs. automobile incidents. Now I would have thought a red light and a pedestrian in a cross walk would be recognized by drivers as an opportunity to stop their cars. Sadly that is not often enough the case. Likewise Washington State enacted a law banning the operation of hand held phones while driving. Seems negligent driving laws didn’t apply to the new phenomenon of constant electronic communication as clever defense attorneys argued in court so a law became necessary to force drivers to do what common sense dictates.
Go figure.
And yes Washington State has enacted legislation lowering the phosphate levels of dish washer detergent.
And I say good. The more we learn the consequences of our actions the more we need to adjust our behavior to preserve our health and the environment.
Remember, many can still recall the days when medical doctors shilled their preferred cigarette in paid advertisements.
As Aurthurstone points out, the (not so) Great State of Washington has nannyism down to science. I suspect (at least hope) that the government in Texas is still in the farm league in this area.
Daphne stated: “Nab a fancy chicken and you’ll be cooling your heels in prison for a long stretch.”
Does that mean your friends and neighbors won’t be making off with your chickens in the night? What ever happened to that little endeavor?
Bucksins Rule:
‘As Aurthurstone points out, the (not so) Great State of Washington has nannyism down to science. I suspect (at least hope) that the government in Texas is still in the farm league in this area.’
For what it’s worth I’ve always opposed such as smoking, alcohol & caloric warnings and helmet laws, etc.
I much prefer a gradual strengthening of the herd as the less evolved weed themselves out.
And as I tried to point out in my little discussion about lousy drivers, we wouldn’t need a ‘Nanny’ if people acted like adults.
Cheers!
I dare say that you and I are in agreement Arthurstone. While I disagree with nannyism, I do realize that it evolves due to the inability of those in the shallow end of the gene pool to exercise common sense.
I think that many laws and safety regulations keep people alive who otherwise would have died off.
Arthur, if you don’t mind me asking, are you straight and single?
If so, I think I’ve found a nice, compatible woman for you! (I’m a relentless matchmaker, can’t help myself and you just whisper “Single” to me.)
I do need to do a chicken update.
Hmm
I just did research on Amtrak. You can actually take the train from New York to Austin
You can leave NY at 355pm and arrive in Austin at 7pm! How great is that?
Of course, it’s two days later.
But you also get to see Chicago, where you make a connection, also.
Daphne-
Straight and happily married. Began year three of my honeymoon last month.
Congratulations to you, Arthur. I wish you a lifetime of happiness. My sense of smell was obviously way off, which is disturbingly weird.
Now what am I going to do with this nice feminist lady in need of a man? You were my only prospect.
Thanks. My bride is an über-feminist who once upon a time spent vacations cutting sugarcane.
In Cuba.
Sounds very similar to the woman I had picked out for you.
über
*rolls eyes*
Who SAYS that? It sounds painful.
Women who post at Feministing. ;-)
Arthurstone: “Thanks. My bride is an über-feminist who once upon a time spent vacations cutting sugarcane.”
Wow. I mean, I’d heard of people who did that, but never actually met one (once removed, even). They’re kind of like folks who were at Woodstock and Altamont.
Then again, I have a friend whose dad was an honest-to-god socialist organizer in Minnesota. That was back in the days when it got you beaten up instead of a seat on the Minneapolis City Commission.
They run good newsy clips and some of their stuff is valid – but generally they’re a bit confused and überlegen for me. Like liberals in general.
with love
your resident Bigot ;)
If the Texas legislature is out of control, Daphne, and it is controlled by Republicans, what exactly does that tell us? Not that Democrats would be the anwer, clearly, so what then?
How we think when we are continually losing in something determines how soon it will be until we do not. Right now we are only trading places at the blackjack table, and the government is keeping the table.
No James, clearly the democrats aren’t the answer, that would would be like sliding down the sewer.
I believe most conservative voters have lost, or were never taught, the founding precepts or they would never initiate, or support, these absurd pieces of legislation. You called it straight on the government running the table, regaining an upper hand on our elected servants should be a priority, unfortunately those of us singing that tune seem to be in a minority.
The reason I bring this up is because we may need to consider that the democracy has run its course, is only gravitating to its natural end in socialism, and is in a historic process that is accelerating as we twitter. I think we may have less time than people suppose, a lot less. And we are talking about Joe the Plumer. The revolutionaries provide weekly if not daily distractions to cover their intentions; it must please them when we make our own.
When I am sure we are finished it will cease to bother me so much. It is the uncertainty that is maddening.
Republicans suck because Joe used the word “queer”, Republicans suck because Joe’s quitting them. C’mon, folks. One or the other. Both cannot possibly apply.
I am just in awe at what a great abundance of energy is being spent, on both sides of the aisle, to figure out whether or not the GOP sucks. Seriously. Has there been any time in history since 1776 when the answer to this question mattered any less?
Meanwhile, Robert Byrd was a Kleagle. Most folks don’t know.
Puh-leaze. It’s one thing to admit the media tilts left and to say there isn’t a single thing anyone can do about it…quite another thing to work at adding to the problem.
What James and Morgan said. I’m worried also. The degree of socialism rachets; it never retreats. It took 20 years of work to get welfare reform passed; Obama wiped that out in an instant.
Oh woe is us.
The end of ‘democracy’ is within spitting distance.
It’s all over except for the shouting.
It’s likely true the age of inexpensive petroleum and the subsequent automobile & sprawl & waste culture is drawing to a close. I certainly hope that’s the case.
Good old American exceptionalism seems to be fading as well as China, SE Asia, Japan and the EU grow economically.
Oh well we’ll always have the biggest, meanest armed forces on the block. No matter how useless.
But if it’s any consolation the ‘death’ of ‘America’ has been predicted since the founding of the nation. And during my lifetime (early 50′s onward) our imminent demise has been a matter of faith for generation after generation of Americans not at all eager for our life of unparalleled privilege to change one iota.
Buck up!
Arthurstone, he didn’t write that he feared the end of democracry, but that democracy ends in socialism. Others have pointed out the same thing; I’m fond of Robert A. Heinlien’s take:
“Bread and Circuses is the cancer of democracy, the fatal disease for which there is no cure. Democracy often works beautifully at first. But once a state extends the franchise to every warm body, be he producer or parasite, that day marks the beginning of the end of the state. For when the plebs discover that they can vote themselves bread and circuses without limit and that the productive members of the body politic cannot stop them, they will do so, until the state bleeds to death, or in its weakened condition the state succumbs to an invader–the barbarians enter Rome.”
It may be that this is our fate, and Obama’s role is to use the crisis to shove us a ways down the path, and quickly.
Interesting.
‘…democracy has run its course, is only gravitating to its natural end in socialism…,’
Oh well. Sounds like a fear of the end of democracy to me.
As far as Heinlein is concerned I hesitate in this day and age to take anyone seriously who commits the word ‘plebs’ to print. Especially a guy from Kansas City. The Roman bread and circus thing is old, old, old.
PK Dick has much more interesting politics.
http://www.philipkdickfans.com/articles/slash-interview.htm
I must at least appreciate that Arhurstone does not disquise his intellectual condescension; neither can he back it ip in reading the meaning of a simple, if badly constructed, sentence. The fact is, I have no practical ideas in altering our course. Arthurstone should learn grace in a deadly game he has already won.
If Kansas City and Heinlein are beneath Arthurstone, perhaps Tocqueville is not. He feared, greatly feared, socialism, and believed there was no system worse than a democracy without liberty, which socialism surely is. He never confused liberty and freedom, the freedom to agree with others, and do it cheerfully.
Tocqueville warned that we will derive consolation from being supervised by thinking that we have choosen our supervisors, that centralization easily succeeds in imposing upon the external behavior of a man a certain uniformity which comes to be loved for itself without reference to its objectives. “Philosophic systems that destroy human individuality will have secret attractions for men who live in a democracy.”
Then he wrote briefly about Heinlein’s plebes, who in America he loved, and Arthurstone’s intellectual class, who he did not: Not only is a democratic people led by its own tastes to centralize its government, but the passions of all the men by whom it is governened constantly urge it in the same direction. It may easlily be foreseen that almost all the able and ambitious members of a democratic community will labor unceasingly to extend the powers of government, because they all hope at some time or another to wield those powers themselves. It would be a waste of time to attempt to prove to them that extreme centralization would be injurious to the state, since they are centralizing it to their own benefit.
As another hick from Kansas City said, the only way to prevent government from abusing its powers is not to grant them in the first place, although Jefferson may have said it first in other words.
But as we have already lost on that score, I await further instructions from Arthurstone.
Phillip K Dick’s own words on Heinlien:
“Several years ago, when I was ill, Heinlein offered his help, anything he could do, and we had never met; he would phone me to cheer me up and see how I was doing. He wanted to buy me an electric typewriter, God bless him—one of the few true gentlemen in the world. I don’t agree with any of the ideas he puts forth in his writing, but that is neither here nor there. One time, when I owed the IRS a lot of money and couldn’t raise it, Heinlein loaned the money to me. I think a great deal of him and his wife; I dedicated a book to him in appreciation. Robert Heinlein is a fine looking man, very impressive and military in stance; you can tell he has a military background, even to the haircut. He knows I’m a flipped out freak and still he helped me and my wife when we were in trouble. That is the best in humanity, there; that is who and what I love.”
While I’m flattered by the attention I really can’t see where my ‘failing to hide my intellectual condescension’ sets me apart in any meaningful way from anyone else posting here. ‘Intellectual condescension’ is what Jaded Haven is all about. I’ve only recently found this blog and the large number of enthusiastic Anglophiles and the consequent enthusiasm for class stratification and our slide from a golden era long ago where everyone knew their place denote a level of ‘intellectual condescension’ which both precedes and exceeds my modest offerings.
‘Pleb’ is derogatory term for the great unwashed out there who don’t always share the same views of the more enlightened (in this case the early 21st century American political conservative) . And while Heinlein may have ‘loved’ him some plebs his use of the term illustrates the common conservative disdain for workers and for participatory democracy.
And Gordon thanks for the blurb regarding Dick and Heinlein.
A useful illustration people can disagree politically and still have common ground.
Cheers.
“the large number of enthusiastic Anglophiles and the consequent enthusiasm for class stratification and our slide from a golden era long ago where everyone knew their place ”
You seem to be stooping to either a broad misrepresentation of everyone who comments here brought about by the liberal snobbery you indulge in or you just can’t read.
As for “plebs”. A label is nothing in comparison to an attitude and God knows from what I saw in LA and elsewhere home to the Liberal Rich and Famous, they were quite happy to keep the “plebs” somewhere out of sight and mind whether they were welfare or “working class”. When I asked you about the former, you pretended they had all gone on holiday there from conservative states. Fair enough I figured. So why haven’t you dealt with it yet? You create the havens for the poor and destitute to flock to but seem quite happy for them to live in shocking shit. Probably because you are of a mindset to keep them that way.
The truth is Arthurstone, liberals are the hugest frauds. They stand and point at conservatives with their high minded liberal judgment of conservative policies and attitudes and pretend to care. But you don’t.
Just as long as other people have to live with the fall out of failing liberal welfare policies life is just dandy for champagne socialists.
Thanks for proving my point Alison.
It isn’t the ‘intellectual condescension’ which annoys the Tories around here.
It’s having it come from the other side of the political spectrum.
And by the way, have we met?
You assume a lot.
You rather proved mine on several accounts on this blog Arthurstone. As for have we met? I don’t know. You assumed me a bigot at some point in an interesting conversation about some of the topics up for discussion, where all I was doing was engaging you in a discussion about welfare. You assumed you knew the situation in the UK. You assumed an awful lot, took offence and decided you weren’t going to kick that particular football around any longer. Bit like here with the word “pleb”.
The majority of your comments about conservatives come stacked with assumptions and a level of condescension, so seriously – that won’t wash. Why don’t you drop it and accept the very reasonable assumption that liberal policies can and do fail and people, of all stripes, suffer the consequences. God knows that this blog has been honest enough about failed conservative politics. Champagne socialists live the high life and pay lip service to what’s on their doorstep. The evidence is in those States.
You are on fire, Allison.
Condescension is a term that seems to unnerve Art. I don’t wonder why.
It is even possible to admire a socialist gadfly if he has an honest moment. Bertland Russell did–Much that passes as idealism is diguised hatred or disquised love of power.
My son has the experience of housing having been converted to Section 8 not a block from him in Tampa–by our moral and political masters of course. The results are immediate and horrendous. Idealism increases in direct proportion to one’s distance from the problem. There is a solution in that for sure.
They are going from drug dealing to burglary to assault to gangs to homicide faster that you can say ‘to each according to his needs, from each according to his ability.’
What’s not to assume about Arthurstone? A humanist is a creature akin to a human, and of which it makes a superstitious worship, but for whom it has little sympathy.
Ever adapted a wayward kid, Art? Or mentored someone who was lost, really lost? Spent a few grand from your own pocket, not taxes? Volunteered to tutor, not for a few days, but for as long as it takes? Stood up to a gang and said not in my back yard, or a thousand other ordinary things?
Then I was guilty of assuming a lot. We do not ordinarily see it from people who talk your talk.
Mr. Freeberg – if Republicans suck, does that mean they are queer? Or just the fellows?
If they are going to rely on Joe the Plumber they are doomed.
Joe the Plumber is embarassing. He needs to go away.
C’mon, he’s not that embarrassing. He could be Speaker of the House…