A headline that can only end badly, cue Media Matters:
And then, something really odd happened, mostly because I think that we do not have a civics literacy test before people can vote in this country. People who could not even spell the word “vote,” or say it in English, put a committed socialist idealogue in the White House, name is Barack Hussein Obama.
Presumably, he means all sixty-nine million, four hundred fifty-seven thousand of you. And didn’t we try a “civics literacy test” in this country during the Jim Crow era? We read in history class that didn’t work out so well, but Tancredo has gotten nostalgic for ‘the good old days’ before.
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I hope the Tea Party gets on the ballot in as many states as possible.
And runs lots of House and Senate candidates. Doug Hoffman anyone?
And runs Tancredo for President in 2012. Ross Perot, anyone?
Glenn Beck/Sarah Palin 2012! It’s about time we stopped just drooling over their every word on national TV, and started letting them make the decisions!
…Since he went all Katie Couric on her asking “gotcha” questions:
GB: WHich is your favorite founder?
SP: All of them!
{GB No I didn’t ask you what you read , moron!}
I now clearly can see how you support the french house movement. Here is a story for you, a story from the otherside.
—————–
The ant works hard in the withering heat and the rain all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter.
The grasshopper thinks the ant is a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away.
Come winter, the shivering grasshopper calls a press conference and demands to know why the ant should be allowed to be warm and well fed while he is cold and starving.
CBS, NBC, PBS, CNN, and ABC show up to provide pictures of the shivering grasshopper next to a video of the ant in his comfortable home with a table filled with food.
America is stunned by the sharp contrast. How can this be, that in a country of such wealth, this poor grasshopper is allowed to suffer so?
Kermit the Frog appears on Oprah with the grasshopper and everybody cries when they sing, ‘It’s Not Easy Being Green…’
ACORN stages a demonstration in front of the ant’s house where the news stations film the group singing, We shall overcome.. Then Rev. Jeremiah Wright has the group kneel down to pray to God for the grasshopper’s sake.
President Obama condemns the ant and blames President Bush, President Reagan, Christopher Columbus, and the Pope for the grasshopper’s plight.
Nancy Pelosi & Harry Reid exclaim in an interview with Larry King that the ant has gotten rich off the back of the grasshopper, and both call for an immediate tax hike on the ant to make him pay his fair share.
Finally, the EEOC drafts the Economic Equity & Anti-Grasshopper Act retroactive to the beginning of the summer.
The ant is fined for failing to hire a proportionate number of green bugs and, having nothing left to pay his retroactive taxes, his home is confiscated by the Government Green Czar and given to the grasshopper.
The story ends as we see the grasshopper and his free-loading friends finishing up the last bits of the ants food while the government house he is in, which, as you recall, just happens to be the ant’s old house, crumbles around them because the grasshopper doesnt maintain it.
The ant has disappeared in the snow, never to be seen again.
The grasshopper is found dead in a drug related incident, and the house, now abandoned, is taken over by a gang of spiders who terrorize the ramshackle, once prosperous and once peaceful, neighborhood.
The entire Nation collapses bringing the rest of the free world with it.
“Jane, you ignorant slut!”
Jeez, Tatterbell, study a little history, will ya? You’d learn that the “ant” and the “grasshopper” (is green the new black, in your bigoted little parable?) weren’t born into the same opportunity structure, that many of those grasshoppers work twice as hard with a tenth the likelihood of thriving due to the capricious and inequitable legacies of history, and that reasonable people of good will, committed to equality of opportunity, seek ways to rectify such gross social injustices.
But you are just so incredbily, dazzlingly oblivious, compounded by a complete indifference to human suffering, that none of this ever penetrates your reptilian hide.
I said it once to your updated version (mistaking it for you), and now I’ll say it again to the (un)real thing: Go to the bank, withdraw all of your money, and go buy yourself a clue.
He, and those that think like him, take comfort in their faith that because they work hard (enough), pray, and vote republican, they will never suffer like the “grasshoppers.” If they opened their eyes to the fact that many suffer through no fault (or lack of hard work) of their own, they would realize that they too are at risk. For them, indifference is a really a coping mechanism.
You’re right. Gilda, as Rosanna Ana Dana (or however you write it), used to end her exchanges with Jane with just one quietly spoken word: “bitch.”
“when you’re on your back, the meter’s running!”
It’s all coming back now…. 🙂
n/t
about flea erections in China?”
Yeah, it wasn’t even Rosana Danadana who called Jane “bitch.” It was Emily Latella. I just didn’t get anything right! Oh, well, it was the 70s, after all….
As anything I’ve heard Tancredo say.
Go back and try to learn to be funny without insulting people.
anyone ever suggesting that Gilda Radner was racist when she said it. Nor, I suspect, would you have, especially in the context of the hard-of-hearing and confused character she was playing.
More to the point, your tedious and not particularly self-flattering need to keep trying to “get” me (day after day, week after week, month after month…) is just so much virtual noise pollution. it costs me much less, and you much more, than I think you realize. But, hey, whatever gets you through the day….
given that your proudest moment in life would be if you ever finally manage to invent some mud that you can make stick to me (a person you’ve never met, and who stands for humanist ideals), you might want to rethink drawing comparisons to Tancredo (especially on the flimsy pretext of my having quoted a classic SNL line that no one ever found offensive before): The only commonality I see is between two (or more) people who define their missions in life on the basis of an arbitrary hatred. And I’m not one of them.
I think you were really funny. I also think it was Jane Curtin, not Glilda.
though the credit still goes to the SNL “not ready for prime time” players. Though, according to MADCO, I’m SH TFO, to distinguish me from the other SH, who isn’t TFO. 🙂
That was your damned self having “fun” at the expense of orientals.
Look in the mirror, Steve.
You can delude yourself into thinking that anyone who called you on your racist bullshit was just mudslinging, but you really ought to take a long, hard look at who wrote it in the first place.
Just like the one you made a week ago, in which you posted high in the thread a day after others had stopped, in order to more effectively misrepresent something I had said (pretending that the qualifying remark in my original post, which carried most of its meaning, hadn’t been there).
Or this completely gratuitious contribution.
Or this exchange.
Or this one, in which, in contrast to your false attribution above that I stooped to humor through insult, you actually argued that humor through insult is the road to world peace (though none of your attacks have ever even pretended to be humorous)! Strange how conveniently malleable your arguments are, isn’t it Ralphie? All in a “good” cause: your petty little vendetta.
Or this one, in which, in a stretch too pathetic even for you, you tried to turn a Colorado Pols vote for front page editor, in which I hadn’t actively participated and wouldn’t have accepted, into a popular referendum on my candidacy for the state legislature.
Or this one.
Or this one.
Or this one, in which you demonstrated, by buddying up with a far-right nut-job as long as it helped heap mud on me, that your pettiness is stronger than your flimsy pretense of political integrity or social conscience.
And, skipping over several months of your wonderful obsession, going back to early July, my personal favorite and undoubtedly yours as well, in which, first, you responded to other posters who suggested that you were indeed expressing a somewhat irrational antagonism toward me; then you posted a suspiciously over-the-top denial that you felt threatened by me (despite having used language suggesting you were); and finally, just to seal the deal, you actually challenged me to compare MENSA numbers with you!!! Oh, man oh man, Ralphie, you just are the gift that keeps on giving!
All of which are just a small sampling, out of your dozens of flailing, desperate attempts to disparage me over the past year or more. The problem, Ralphie, is that not only have you demonstrated your utter lack of credibility in your commentaries about me, but you’ve also demonstrated what an incredibly small and petty person you are.
It’s you who don’t get it, Ralphie.
to call someone who you’ve dedicated yourself to doing reputational harm a “racist,” just because a flimsy pretext came along (technically a libelous act, though hard to prove), what’s troubling here isn’t the verbal violence of a marginal individual, but rather the silence of the other Polsters.
“What is all this fuss I hear about the Supreme Court decision on a “deaf” penalty? It’s terrible! Deaf people have enough problems as it is!”
(From Wikipedia): “Other mis-heard topics to which Litella responded were “saving Soviet jewelry [really, Jewry]”, “endangered feces [species]”, “violins [violence] on television” , “busting [busing] school children”, “presidential erections [elections]”, “flea [free] elections in China”, “pouring money into canker [cancer] research”, the “Eagle [Equal] Rights Amendment”, “conserving our natural racehorses [natural resources]”, “youth in Asia [euthanasia], “sax [sex] on television, and “making Puerto Rico a steak [state]”. About the last of these topics, she complained, “Next thing you know, they’ll want a baked potato with sour cream!””
Then I apologize.
In your original post, you did not attribute the quote. I thought it came from you.
Though let’s be perfectly clear: The quote was in quotation marks, with the attribution implicitly made in the same post, and explicitly stated in my first reponse to your accusation. I am under no illusion that you were acting under some misapprehension.
Had this apology been made on your own initiative, I would have gladly and sincerely let bygones be bygones, as I have done with others.
And, even as things are, I would have been happy to endorse the fiction that this uncharacterstic apology was a spontaneous and sincere gesture of good will on your part, if you had not, in private communication, given me every reason to be concerned that you are merely attempting to create evidentiary doubt in the public record, rather than announcing a change in behavior. Obviously, under the circumstances, I can’t do anything to let the record be muddied in that way. That’s a shame, really, but I don’t see how to avoid it.
Even so, if you are announcing a change in behavior, I will be nothing but courteous to you as well, in all venues. And any future sincere change in attitude will be received with open arms.
Let’s both hope that this is the end of all rancorous discourse between us.
Huh?
There’s a backstory. My preference would be for everyone else to just disregard that post. But if you’re really dying of curiosity, look up CRS sec. 8-13-105, and maybe you’ll get the picture. Otherwise, just consider it another crazy anomaly that doesn’t really make sense to, or matter to, anyone other than those directly involved. Sorry about that.
n/t
6 Golden Delicious Apples
1 stick unsalted butter
1 cup sugar
I Puff Pastry Crust (I use Peppridge Farm, but feel free to make from scratch)
Heat oven to 350 degrees.
Peel and core apples, cut in to quarters, but leave one as a half (I like to use a melon baller to core the apples)
Melt butter in a large oven proof skillet. Pour sugar over the butter. Arrange the apples over the butter/sugar with the half apple in the center, face down, with rings of apples surrounding the center. Saute over medium flame, constantly rotating the apples with a flick of the wrist so as to keep hot spots from forming. Continue to sautee until the butter is a nice medium caramel color.
Flip the apples over and continue to sautee for 5 more minutes.
Arrange the sheet of puff pastry over the top of the apples, and bake for 30 minutes.
Remove from oven. Let sit for 5 minutes. Place your serving dish over the crust, and using oven mitts, quickly flip the pan over so that the apples are now on top of the crust.
Serve with FRENCH vanilla Ice Cream.
Sorry ‘turd, did you say something?
He posts.
…and from memory!
Did you? It sounds delicious.
It’s so simple and I’ve cooked it so many times. Besides it’s only got 4 ingredients! Even Libby could make it.
This is really a great recipe. Thanks for posting it.
Little Taddy cannot come up with a single original thought.
http://shrinkwrapped.blogs.com…
Yeah, that’s you, Libertad.
is that the ant recognizes that he/she is part of a community and that the community succeeds or fails only if everyone works together and shares the fruits of their labors with the others in the community. Ants work together to forage and store provisions and raise their young.
Grasshoppers, as cool as they are, lay eggs in a hole in the ground and then hop away. They are “true individualists.”
Not much good to be said about them. Except that they’re might crunchy.
But Terrance Carroll isn’t buying it.
http://blogs.denverpost.com/th…
Jr. High in my school system had to pass a civics test to graduate and move on to High School, so this one wasn’t Jim Crow related. I passed and voted for the very moderately progressive Obama in 2008. So did the majority of the middle and centrist independents. I have no idea who this radical, socialist ideologue Obama that Tank is frothing about might be. Certainly not the one in our White House here on planet earth.
His parents and grandparents were discriminated against…
Tancredo is Intentionally Ignorant and a truly SAD individual.
The really hilarious part of TT’s rant is that naturalized citizens are the only ones that are required to take a civics test. Check out the USCIS page. “Demonstrate a knowledge of U.S. civics (history and government).” Those nasty liberal facts strike again.
for every candidate who has either been courting Tea Party support or actively seeking their endorsement (we’re talking to you Jane Norton, Scott McGinnis, Ken Buck, Cory Gardner, Tom Lucero, Dean Madere, etc) to be asked by journalists in this state whether they stand by these remarks.
They were made at the opening of the Tea Party convention. I for one am sick and tired of racist nonsense like this coming from the Tea Party folks with no one in the media holding the politicians who bend over backwards for their support responsible for it.
I refuse to believe that Tancredo is too ignorant to understand how offensive his words were, particularly calling for a Jim Crow law to be re-enacted while linking the same bullshit with a black president. I just don’t buy it anymore.
His only job now is to mouth off often enough to get fresh shots of notoriety to stay on the lists for paid appearances. He doesn’t mind being a buffoon. He just wants to make back some of that money Bernie Madoff cheated him out of.
Tancredo has the politicians brand of attention deficit syndrome. Whenever he isn’t getting enough attention he has to up the nastiness quotient to get anyone to pay attention to his ramblings. The mainstream media lap dogs that they are go all gaga over these kinds of remarks in this weird symbiotic relationship where they get manufactured news and another way to denigrate Obama without having to show their true colors while this nasty little man gets more attention and can charge more for his next deranged speaking engagement. It’s all a game folks. Move along now. There is nothing to see here.
Too ignorant? He meant exactly what he said (as quoted above): “Those bastards are quoting me accurately again.” It sounded just as bad on the radio this morning as it reads here. I came away from hearing him on the radio this morning realizing that the Tea Party organizers have let it slip away from them. It could have been a very powerful movement if they had strictly stuck to financial issues, because those cross all party, class and demographic lines. But as soon as they let the message drip over into social issues, and let the racist fringe be heard, it was over. This will play out for a while and then burn out. Our society as a whole just isn’t this intolerant any more, and we gradually get more and more tolerant over time.
…stupid in general? That’s what it sounds like when you insinuate that a “civics literacy test” would be racist.
No point in even trying to explain. But if Rs really are serious about convincing the public that they are the ones who “don’t see race” and Dems are the racists, it would help if the number of minority Republican elected officials were not dwarfed by the number of minority Democratic elected officials. Rs generally have to appoint minorities for their PR purposes. It’s tough to get their voters to elect many. Much easier to get us racist Dems to actually vote for them.
…beginning of a coherent response to the question I posed. I think it’s a valid question. Is it racist to ask voters “Who was the first President of the United States?” “Who was President during the Civil War?” “What 3 nations constituted the “Axis Powers?” “What is the highest marginal tax rate for individuals in the United States?”
I’d like to think every voter in America could answer all of those questions. Not saying there wouldn’t be enormous issues implementing it fairly, but it wouldn’t “target” any single race, nor would it favor white people. That’s just bullshit. It was only an issue during the Jim Crow period because minorities, and African Americans in particular, had vastly lower educational opportunities.
Who gives a damn whether they can pass a civics test? Can they look at an issue, understand it, and look for candidates who propose coherent solutions to problems? Those are the kinds of voters we need.
Or maybe we should ask all prospective voters the air speed velocity of an unladen swallow.
But testing “critical thinking” skills is an entirely subjective process. The best you can do is ask questions which have only one answer, and that show at least a basic understanding of the nation whose political representatives you will be voting for. For example, if you don’t know what the highest marginal tax rate is on individuals, how can you vote for someone who plans to raise that level? Or if you don’t know that the budget is passed by congress, how can you lay all the blame for fiscal issues on a Presidential candidate?
It wouldn’t completely get rid of ignorant and misinformed voters, but it sure would help.
It would take out damned near all of the Glenn Beck fans and at least 90 percent of Rush Limbaugh’s audience.
I may care about my own tax rates, but if you claim everyone should vote based on what we want the top marginal rate to be, you’re implicitly letting only the whackjobbiest Republicans vote, since the rest of us don’t give much of a damn. Nor should we.
Demanding that everything important to you should be important to everyone is what authoritarians do.
First, critical thinking skills are tested in numerous ways, often involving complex logic games (such as are found on the LSAT and GRE).
Second, factual knowledge bears a very indirect and incidental relationship to critical thinking skills (neither depends on the other, though the two often are found together for other reasons).
Third, what you identify as factual knowledge is an interpretation that demonstrates a marked absence of critical thinking skills (to economists, it doesn’t matter whether you tax “individuals” or other entities, since it is always individuals who are actually being taxed).
See my suggestion to Tatterbell, above. Maybe you can pool your resources, and buy an affordable clue that you can both share.
knowing what the highest marginal “individual” tax rate is is just one factor, fairly uninformative on its own, in considering tax policy. Furthermore, the suggestion that our votes should be determined not only by one policy in isolation, but by one isolated consideration in the determination of one policy, is to suggest that we should abandon representative democracy in all but appearance, and force government by implicit plebiscite by voting only for those who agree with every personal conclusion, on every detail of every policy, often based on “analyses” as poorly informed as yours.
What we need, rather than these superficial tests you and Tancredo think will insure that only people as “enlightened” as yourselves are the ones who vote, is to invest in public education, so that all of the people, all of whom have a stake in our social system and should have a vote in it as well, are actually enlightened. What we don’t need more of is people, like both you and Tancredo, who manage to combine an acute lack of enlightment with a delusional certainty of having a monopoly on it, and who manage to pose as populists while preaching a bigoted elitism.
would love them a poll tax also. Appears that BR wants to decimate the Republican Party even more than it is. The party has not shrunk enough for you, eh? I’d love to ask those questions of the teabaggers at the “convention”. I’d bet a dollar to a donut that the majority of teabaggers could not correctly answer those questions. But unlike BR, I believe even ignorant teabaggers should have the right to vote.
“Three or four years from now, we’re not going to have a conversation about jobs and all of that kind of stuff.” -Scott McInnis
…cast a vote for anything. And I never favored a civics test as a requirement to vote, I was simply explaining why it wasn’t racist and what the best (only?) fair way to do it would be.
And, really, a poll tax? Come on. Even your head isn’t that far up your ass. We both know I would never support something like that.
are a dime a dozen. It’s his own parameters which should be met to vote. Screw everyone else that doesn’t subscribe to his fascist ideology that people should be “equipped” with his superior values in order to vote.
“Three or four years from now, we’re not going to have a conversation about jobs and all of that kind of stuff.” -Scott McInnis
That a VAST majority of Americans have no idea what the “highest marginal tax rate” is for individuals.
It may not be racist to ask those questions, but what do they have to do with being able to vote? Why would a history test make you more qualified to vote?
Here’s a question worth answering: Would you rather have seen someone vote in 2008 who:
A) Could answer your tax question, but couldn’t articulate a difference between Obama and McCain?
B) Could tell you 2-3 differences between Obama and McCain that influenced their vote, but could not answer your tax question?
Isn’t it more important that people know a little about the candidates and issues they are voting for, rather than their ability to score well on a history or arithmetic test?
super schools and get a quality education? But the fact is most Americans have no idea what’s in the constitution, the basics of our history or even who their own Representative is. Such tests would shrink the electorate to a tiny percentage of the population. Sara Palin would never make the cut. Neither would anyone who thinks she knows what the hell she’s talking about. Hmmmm…maybe not such a bad idea.
Race baiting Tancredo blames the election on “multi-culturism.” He’s speaking to an all white crowd on how “those people” stole the election.
If you don’t see this for what it – you’re too dumb to vote.
that the only people who can vote are the ones who vote for their self-interest. This would knock out virtually all registered Republicans because they habitually vote against their self-interests when they vote for corporate lobbyists like McInnis. Voting to screw themselves with fewer services and more corporate breaks doesn’t sound very civic to me.
How about a lot of those who support here and can’t wait to vote for her?
not trying to disparage the intellect of those who post here.
And no, a lot of her supporters would probably fail. Kind of like these people.
I bet that was a Tancredo paradise.
“Three or four years from now, we’re not going to have a conversation about jobs and all of that kind of stuff.” -Scott McInnis
http://www.latimes.com/news/na…
From a pro-Tank op-ed
http://www.dakotavoice.com/201…
Citing the sanctity of “key tenets of our Constitution” [unspecified] to argue that we should abandon, in truth, key tenets of our Constitution–namely that a right is not the same as a privilege, and ‘universal’ sufferage (they may not like those amendments).
http://www.frumforum.com/getti…
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/P…
And a prophetic clip from 2009.
But you’re against a civics literacy test to vote because you would fail, Colorado Pols.
Just sayin’.
pansy
I would wipe the floor with that clown.
would write the questions to reflect the GOP reality like who was the real president of the United States between 2001-2008 (Dick Cheney). Of course Republicans would be the only ones who passed their test.
What if we excluded from voting all those people who supported torture of another human being on the basis that they are sociopaths who don’t feel for others therefore they don’t have the mental capacity to make decisions that are in the best interests of all. If you are one of the icky people who loves to think about torturing another human being then you shouldn’t get to vote. How about that GOPWeenie? Would you be able to vote with those restrictions?