Most people think of bigotry only in terms of race, religion, ethnicity and sexual orientation. But at its core, bigotry simply is intolerance – which all too often leads to singling people out for attack based upon their group identity...
As the spending-driven debt crisis grows in America and among the 50 states, we would not accept such vilification toward the poor and elderly who consume taxpayer resources. We certainly would not accept such vilification toward the working class or minorities. So why do we tolerate the vilification of those most successful in America?Oh no he di'n't? Oh yes John Tillman of Forbes di'd!
According to the IRS, the top 1 percent of earners take home 17 percent of the nation’s total taxable income. Yet they pay 37 percent of the nation’s taxes. They are paying a disproportionate share of the burden of government and yet the Occupy protestors, public employee unions and even President Obama demonize them.One is tempted to ask: If everyone who isn't an Occupy protestor, unionized public employee, or President Obama loves you rich fucks, why you cryin'? Because you've run out of other inventive ways to use your dollar bills besides wiping your ass and lighting your cigars with them, and now you want to see how they work as Kleenex?
Tillman goes on to tell us that he did his part back in the 80s, when people used to tell him racist jokes:
...I made a conscious decision to no longer accept such prejudice in my life. Whenever someone would begin a joke that was clearly heading toward a racially focused end, I would stop them and say, "Please, I’m not interested in hearing that joke." It was very uncomfortable at first. But I did it because this was a small thing that could help create a better culture.Despite the severe discomfort this caused him, Tillman asked somebody not to tell him racist jokes. Now you people owe him! Quit laughing at Mr. Burns!
And yet, here we are today with a new form of bigotry that is openly encouraged by people who should know better.
So I suggest we start saying, “I’m not interested in hearing that. Please, no bigotry toward those who are successful in pursuing the American Dream.”Of course, some folks already do that -- the rich themselves, that is. If they think a waiter failed to treat them with the respect to which they are entitled, they express their opposition to his bigotry by stiffing him. If one of their employees has a bad attitude -- say, she doesn't react enthusiastically when they tell her who to vote for -- they fire her; that'll teach her to look down on them! And if citizens commit the hate crime of resisting their austerity measures, they send in the cops -- just like Eisenhower did in Little Rock!
Because to people like Tillman, every slight they suffer is the equivalent of the great injustices of history. If you can't see that, you're just a wealthist monster.
I advise Tillman to keep his eyes on the prize. Look for small victories. Maybe one day, with the support of some righteous paupers, a one-percenter will break the money line, and get a job at 7-11 or Denny's. That may turn things around, and over time more and more of them will be able to enjoy the same living conditions, job security, and health care as the rest of us. I certainly look forward to it. The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.
UPDATE. The purple mountainous majesty of our comments section today is graced by a long historical pastiche from Fats Durston:
There are those who are asking the devotees of elite rights, "When will you be satisfied?" We can never be satisfied as long as Richie Rich is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of people’s envy. We can never be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel in our private conveyances, cannot gain five-star lodging in the hotels of the cities. We cannot be satisfied as long as a millionaire in Mississippi cannot vote a thousand times as much as commoners and a billionaire in New York believes he has nothing for which to spend his millions buying congressmen...Impetuous, Homeric.
I'll get my knitting basket.
ReplyDeleteLet me see if I can explain the difference for Mr. Tillman.
ReplyDeleteSee, most Americans require anywhere from 100-375% of their take-home pay to pay for food, housing, gasoline to-and-from work, and maybe luxuries like healthcare and schooling.
Let's talk about what percentage of take-home pay the 1% spend on toilet paper, for example. And then wonder how guillotines must feel in the last 3 seconds.
.
Notice the cute dodge in the first sentence of the third paragraph: "According to the IRS, the top 1 percent of earners take home 17 percent of the nation’s total taxable income."
ReplyDeleteSo, if you exclude all their non-taxable income, and all the income they're getting where they're taxed at a much lower rate, the gross injustice of it all is inescapable.
Of course, it just wouldn't do to point out that that same 1% so unfairly saddled with paying 37% of income taxes only own about 40% of everything there is to own in America, assets that are in other contexts referred to as the "tax base;" things like real estate, capital holdings, etc. They are referred to as such because you can't really base a tax assessment on nothing. So by this metric, our poor, put-upon gazillionaires are actually paying less than they should be.
Once upon a time, I knew how to knit. It looks like time for me to relearn it.
ReplyDeleteYou should walk a mile in the other guys shoes so I am (very bravely) offering to be made wealthy so that I can experience the special misery of overseas tax havens and such. Do not go easy on me, I want the whole enchilada.
ReplyDeleteHmm. Actually, I expect nothing less than this from Forbes. One of the biggest fucking whiners of all the gazillionaires is Steve Forbes (who, coincidentally, is yet another self-important mental defective who inherited his money), and it wouldn't surprise me that he's got a whole stable of lackeys writing such drivel on command.
ReplyDeleteTillman would be the last person to recognize it, but what he's advocating is that society not only look the other way at grand theft to the googolplex power on a global scale, but that we shower the thieves with rose petals and all our spare change, as well, and just because they're fucking rich and we're not.
This is the way an aristocracy expects, nay, demands to be treated, and I'm fast coming to the realization that the French didn't just lop off their heads as a matter of principle, they also recognized that it was the only way to shut up the irritating little fuckers.
Bigotry is, by definition, based on prejudice -- judging people based not on actual knowledge of what they're like, but on preconceived ideas of what they're like because of how they look or where they came from. The problem for Mr. Tillman is that our hatred of the 1% isn't based on prejudice; it's based on the facts of how they behave -- like the greedhead assholes they are. And believe me, I used to live in Beverly Hills so I know what I'm talking about.
ReplyDeleteI rode a tank, held a general's rank, when the Blitzkrieg raged and I said "I'd rather you kept your rude jokes to yourself."
ReplyDeleteYou'll only need the needles.
ReplyDeleteSilly boy, rich people don't eat anything as plebian as an enchilada. I think you mean the whole pathologically fatty duck liver.
ReplyDeleteI'm sure they truncated those aristos more in sorrow than in anger.
ReplyDeleteHere's a deal for Mr. Tillman- we'll stop ragging on the rich when they stop engaging in wage slavery and Gaiacide.
ReplyDeleteI don't think anyone at Forbes could top the douchiness of Gene "If I Were a Poor Black Kid" Marks, but this comes close. A- for effort.
ReplyDeleteYou're a man of wealth and taste.
ReplyDelete"Most people think of bigotry only in terms of race, religion, ethnicity and sexual orientation."
ReplyDeleteWhereas we should think of it in terms of flowers and free steak knives.
"But at its core, bigotry simply is intolerance..."
Write what you know, John.
"... we would not accept such vilification toward the poor and elderly who consume taxpayer resources."
For values of "we" which do not generally include shills for the 1%.
"They are paying a disproportionate share of the burden of government because they receive a disproportionate share of the benefits we all create."
FTFY. Yer welcome.
"...I made a conscious decision to no longer accept such prejudice in my life."
Fellating the wealthy being far more profitable.
"The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice."
None of us are free to sell out to the rich until all of us are free to sell out to the rich.
It's not enough for them to have wealth and power; they want to be admired, or even loved. You would think that would-be Machiavellians would not be so emotionally needy, but 'twas ever thus for the (as TBogg dubbed them) Atlas Hugged crowd. Why, oh why won't the rabble recognize the Randians' genius and superiority? (And how dare the President of the United States talk to Tagg's daddy like that? Who does he think he is?)
ReplyDeleteObama hasn't pushed the wealthy much, and they have completely freaked out. And best buds Norquist (no tax cuts, ever!) and Rove (let corporations buy the election!) are still the masters of the Republican Party.
The situation has gotten really bad, because Tillman's sentiments are now common and not something the Randians feel they need to hide. Even the most basic understanding of the social contract or civics or history eludes them. (To the degree that the understand it, they want to destroy it all.) More liberal economics are not only more fair, they produce more. They'd all be richer, but their percentage of power might drop, and being an aristocrat (as Digby's often pointed out) is the real goal (even if they don't consciously realize it).
Remember, if Romney wins, these fuckers will claim a mandate for their world view. They always do. (And yet strangely, every time they lose, somehow it doesn't invalidate their ideology…Hmm.)
Yet again, another reason Romney really needs to lose in November is to push back against these whiny, entitled, plutocratic, Galtian, neo-feudalist assholes.
As the spending-driven debt crisis grows in America and among the 50
ReplyDeletestates, we would not accept such vilification toward the poor and
elderly who consume taxpayer resources. We certainly would not accept
such vilification toward the working class or minorities. So why do we
tolerate the vilification of those most successful in America?
I take it Romney's etch-a-sketch move in the first debate has finally trickled down into the talking points.
Bill Gates famously suggested we should be kind to nerds because some day we'd be working for one. The updated version of that advice is to be subservient to assholes because some day we'll shit on by one. Doesn't make quite as much sense, but what does these days?
ReplyDelete"Bow, bow, ye lower middle classes
ReplyDeleteBow,bow, ye tradesmen and ye masses."
This guy's so extreme I had to look him up. Tillman is the six-figured CEO of the Illinois Policy Institute, yet another 501(c)(3) "charity" whose tax exempt, supposedly non-political "educational" activities and tax-deductible, non-transparent donations we all indirectly support. (For any Young Republicans out there, they currently have an opening for their Milton Friedman Internship.)
ReplyDeleteThe IPI is a miniature Club for Growth, and Tillman is such an über-glibertarian he thinks George W. Bush was a RINO. He bills himself as an entrepreneur, but it seems that his business background consists almost entirely of working for other institutional prosperity whores like Americans for Limited Government and Citizens in Charge, ad nauseum. (Since these sinecures are almost always associated with the torrents of money in Finance, his name also shows up on things like "Strategic Advisory Councils" of various investment consulting parasites.) Unfortunately, by dint of being CEO of the IPI he's officially labeled a public policy expert, and thus invited by Forbes, Fox and the Wall Street Journal to spew at will.
He's also the president of the village of Golf, Illinois (I'm not making this up), population 500, median family income $138,560.
I'm guessing that describing bigotry as "unctuous" is just him being entrepreneurial with words.
Quick, everyone, break out the tiny violins! It's the worst thing in the world EVAR!
ReplyDeleteYes, that's the most blatant lie, that they don't tolerate criticism of the 99 percent.
ReplyDeleteMaybe a 10,000 man Lear-jetting will help raise consciousness to help end this horrible oppression. Maybe we can get school children to pin ribbons to their breasts, ribbons made from hundred-dollar bills, ribbons that remind us that there is no place for hate. Maybe the richest Americans should pursue sanctions on American haters in the U.N., as this is not just a local problem, but one that afflicts transnational elites.
ReplyDelete...we would not accept such vilification toward the poor and elderly who
ReplyDeleteconsume taxpayer resources. We certainly would not accept such
vilification toward the working class or minorities.
Funny, I seem to recall a lot of vilification directed towards public unions, auto workers, minorities who used the Community Reinvestment Act to bankrupt Wall Street, unwed mothers and their criminal offspring, pot smokers, MedicAid recipients, moochers, anyone under 55 who expects to receive Social Security, lazy unemployed people, anyone who defaulted on a mortgage (breaking contracts is only for businessmen, I guess), and every single member of that infamous 47% of America that doesn't earn enough to get over the hump of the personal exemption.
The only real question left is whether Tillman is so stupid that he actually believes this pap, or just so cynical that he knows his audience will be back asking for more of the same.
I guess that's not really a question, is it?
I guess the old trope about average wealth stopped working (i.e., the 1% make all of us wealthy because if you average us all out, etc.), so now we have to come up with some other reason why even Joe Lunchpail can identify with the 1%.
ReplyDeleteNext up: Being wealthy is soooooo socially isolating because the Koch brothers can't spend time at the VFW.
One reason is that in the 1980s, I made a conscious decision to no longer accept such prejudice in my life. Whenever someone would begin a joke that was clearly heading toward a racially focused end, I would stop them and say, “Please, I’m not interested in hearing that joke.”
ReplyDelete"And this is when I decided it would be my life's work to help eradicate poverty among the upper classes."
I'll be damned if I let any of them fat seegar-smokin', top hat and spat-wearin', cane-twirlin' r*ggers move into my neighborhood without a fight!
ReplyDeleteWouldn't accept vilification?
ReplyDelete"They're f------g taking all the money back from you guys?" complains an
Enron employee on the tapes. "All the money you guys stole from those
poor grandmothers in California?"
"Yeah, grandma Millie, man"
"Yeah,
now she wants her f------g money back for all the power you've charged
right up, jammed right up her a------ for f------g $250 a megawatt
hour."
I'd like to give Millie first crack at the useless fucks.
Not to mention that Golf residents, at least as one point, enjoyed the most heavily subsidized commuter train rides in the area on a per capita basis. It costs a lot to give a tiny village their own train station, so rides were already costing the system over $20 years back.
ReplyDelete"Drifting. . .".
ReplyDeleteWho knew that "trickle-down economics" was really a prostate issue?
It's not enough for them to have wealth and power; they want to be admired, or even loved.
ReplyDelete"It's not enough just to get away with murder
It eats you up that they don't love you everywhere."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZgJDQ1uqo_Y
One
ReplyDeleteand a half score years ago, a Great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand
today, signed the Economic Recover Tax Act. This momentous decree came as a
great beacon of light of hope to millions of Wall Street indentured Traders who
had been seared in the flames of withering injustice.
But
thirty-one years later, the Banker still is not free, crippled by the manacles
of segregation in gated communities and the chains of discrimination.
Thirty-one years later, the Businessman lives on a lonely island of material
prosperity in the midst of a vast ocean of poverty.
It
would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment. This
sweltering summer of the One Percent's legitimate discontent will not pass
until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and inequality. Two thousand
twelve is not an end, but a beginning.
There
are those who are asking the devotees of eilte rights, "When will you be
satisfied?" We can never be satisfied as long as Richie Rich is the victim
of the unspeakable horrors of people’s envy. We can never be satisfied as long
as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel in our private conveyances,
cannot gain five-star lodging in the hotels of the cities. We cannot be
satisfied as long as a millionaire in Mississippi cannot vote a thousand times
as much as commoners and a billionaire in New York believes he has nothing for
which to spend his millions buying congressmen.
Let
us not wallow in the valley of despair, I say to you today, my friends. And so
even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a
dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. I
have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true
meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all
men are created unequal."
I
have a dream that one day on the streets of Beverly Hills, the sons afflicted
by the Death Tax and the sons of Wal-Mart greeters will never have to sit even
in sight of each other. I have a dream that my four grown
children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the content
of their bank accounts, but by the color of their perfectly-tanned bodies and
perfectly white teeth.
I
have a dream today!
Unfettered
at last! Unfettered at last! Mammon, almighty, unfettered at last!
I like to think of that whole episode as a great community project of the people of Paris. One day, they set aside their regular lives and joined as a whole to really spruce up the place by chopping the head off the king. Sure, things got a bit out of hand afterwards, but I think people everywhere need to keep giving Parisians their due for this great public service.
ReplyDeleteI want to know when the English will get around to something as great.
"Give me the most expensive item on your menu stuffed with the 2nd most expensive!"
ReplyDelete"Very good, sir - lobster stuffed with tacos."
He's also the president of the village of Golf, Illinois (I'm not making this up)
ReplyDeleteI had to look it up, and it literally seems to be a golf course and adjacent subdivision. Just about the textbook (or, rather, SF novel) definition of a "burbclave".
Wealthism.
ReplyDeleteOh my god, that's genius. Seriously.
:-)
When he says "we will not accept such vilification", what he really means is "we will not accept such vilification unconditionally." To someone who is to the manner born, or at least assiduously acquired, dissent = oppression.
ReplyDeleteOK - this internet thing? Shut. It. Down. It (and we) all belong to Fats now...
ReplyDeleteDoes anyone here remember when rich people demanded respect instead of whining and pleading for it? They don't make plutocrats like they used to. Can you imagine Rockefeller, Morgan or Carnegie putting up such a pathetic fuss?
ReplyDeleteFats Durston has remooooooved the mountaintop!
ReplyDeleteWhen he says "we will not accept vilification" he means "we, the right people, you know."
ReplyDeleteAccording to the IRS, the top 1 percent of earners take home 17 percent of the nation’s total taxable income. Yet they pay 37 percent of the nation’s taxes.
ReplyDeleteAnd all they have to show for it are trillion dollar wars for the greater good of their corporations, trillion dollar bailouts for the great good of their corporations, and the right to pillage and pollute the rest of the country (protected by the government and sanctioned by our corporate media).
It's *sniff* NO FAIR!!!
~
Um, "Charles I was executed 30 January 1649." That worked out about as well as the execution of Louis XVI, it appears.
ReplyDeletehttp://faculty.history.wisc.edu/sommerville/361/361-28.htm
I don't know that there's that much that's new in Tillman's cri de coeur; we know that billionaires feel disrespected by the president, that bankers who were saved by the bailout insist that they did it by virtue of their own financial brilliance, that the presidential candidate who just dropped out of the lead (barely) thinks that "corporations are people, my friend". The thing I find striking about his post is that it's polished and streamlined into something not unlike a catechism, where free markets are endlessly benevolent and most 1%ers started out as small businessmen and "success is achieved by serving others well", not serving up bales of pink slips and exporting jobs overseas. Perhaps the next entrepreneur that Tillman will hail will be someone who starts a jewelry business selling necklaces in the fashion of schoolgirl crucifixes, but with small dollar signs instead--small and simple, of course, so as not to be mistaken for the sort of bling that Those People wear.
ReplyDeleteThere's a great line in the movie of Catch-22 (a clip of which seems not to be available on You Tube), in which someone--Yossarian, I assume--asks Col. Cathcart (?) (Buck Henry) what he and the other officers want in exchange for something. (Sorry to be so vague, but I saw it when it came out, just once, in another century). And the colonel says, "We want you to like us."
ReplyDeleteOf course, that's Tillman's job, to solicit liking and admiration. He's a functionary. The Koch bros. don't care if we like them or not.
In any case, the sign I saw at an Occupy rally still says it all: "They only call it class warfare when we fight back."
Well, call it 50-50.
ReplyDelete"Most people think of bigotry only in terms of race, religion, ethnicity
ReplyDeleteand sexual orientation. But at its core, bigotry simply is intolerance –
which all too often leads to singling people out for attack based upon
their group identity..."
Know WHO ELSE gets discriminated against?
It's about time the Hitler Anti-Defamation League got some respect around here!
ReplyDelete~
Unctuous was a really weird word choice for that sort of self-serving tongue cluck of a column, wasn't it? Almost like he can't even fool himself.
ReplyDeleteMort Sahl observed that awarding the Nobel Peace Prize to Henry Kissinger rendered satire obsolete. These guys have decided to sell Satire's assets to fund a hostile takeover of Irony.
ReplyDelete"Obama hasn't pushed the wealthy much, yet they have completely freaked out."
ReplyDeleteJesus, tell me about it. If Tillman can produce one genuine public moment where Obama so much as wags his finger at the thieving bastards (never mind "demonizing" them), I'd like to hear about it.
It's not enough for them to have wealth and power; they want to be admired, or even loved.
ReplyDeleteDon't worry. They'll get around to asking for droit du seigneur as soon as they figure out what the hell that French means.
I want to go to the mountaintop with this comment.
ReplyDeleteTeabag for the Tillman. Sounds like a folkie album John put out in the 70s, before he changed his name to Yuseless Whiteman.
ReplyDeleteTell me, does Tillman wet his pants when he hears the term "union thugs"? 'Cause i'm not seeing it.
How does that old banker spiritual go?
ReplyDeleteFree trade at last? Free trade at last? Thank Mammon almighty free trade at last?
Tillman's right--they do pay a lot of taxes, and that's to be admired. I'll just say it: the rich *can* buy my admiration, and there's even more where that comes from! Hell, if the marginal rates goes up to mid-20th-century levels, I'll make out with Jamie Dimon.
ReplyDeleteIt was an open secret that Henry Clay Frick used to pay poor folks to complain about him. It was the only way he could, you know, frick.
ReplyDeleteWe'll be sorry when they start hiring homeless people to self-immolate in protest.
ReplyDeleteI like the way he sneaks in "poor & elderly consume taxpayer resources.
ReplyDeleteBut not in a disparaging way, he totally means it as a compliment.
ReplyDeleteThe "we would not accept vilification" is not-so-hidden swipe at poor and elderly who consume taxpayers (the wealthy!) resources. He thinks the rich are the makers and the poor are the takers: he's got it entirely BACKWARDS. Completely up-side-down. In Regency Romances the ordinary people admire and respect the "Quality". You can always tell a Quality Person from a Vulgar Mushroom. But does one distinguish a Vulgar Mushroom from a repug?
ReplyDeleteWell, Sen. Brown is hiring black homeless men to wear t-shirts that say 'Obama Supporter for Brown', so that's a start.
ReplyDeleteThis guy doesn't know what class warfare is, but he's going to find out in a hurry if enough people here get hungry. And this is not Spain, where people are half-civilized. This is a country where organized torture goes unpunished and the cops tase people if they don't like their looks.
ReplyDeleteI'm sure Tillman's "I have a dream" speech will be quite inspiring.
ReplyDeleteThe rich don't pay any Social Security on their incomes over 6 figures. So what they fuck is he banging on about?
ReplyDeleteGod damn it, I have been paying into Social Security, Unemployment and Medicare since I was 16. You're goddamn right I see those as entitlements.
You turn them over and inspect the gills.
ReplyDelete"Please, no bigotry toward those who are successful in pursuing the American Dream.”
ReplyDeleteThe American Dream means that ALL Americans have the opportunity and ability to rob the rest of the US, and the world, into financial collapse, starvation and endless wars over limited resources. And then whine that the starving masses don't admire or like them. Boo-hoo.
Of course this drivel was in Forbes. The magazine is run by someone who inherited his job and his wealth and basically has done nothing but whine about paying taxes on the latter.
ReplyDeleteAh they're such whiners - they need to take it like a man http://youtu.be/ZaVe65LWDCI
ReplyDeleteFrom Echidne over at Eschaton:
ReplyDeleteWhen they say "17 percent of the nation’s total taxable income" does that include capital gains and interest income? Because the rich don't make their money on a paycheck.
I'm just looking for that information. Pretty sure it excludes all sorts of income.
...
Got it. That 17% refers to income from work alone. Capital gains are excluded. As capital gains are more than half of the income of the Fortune 400, for instance, the guy's arguments are distorted.
http://www.eschatonblog.com/2012/10/explain-it-all-to-me.html#comment-687379234
~
This is a test...I want to see if I can post...
ReplyDelete"Dennis Moore, Dennis Moore ... he steals from the poor and gives to the rich" -- erm, what's the next line?
ReplyDeleteYeah, but what's the country's general reaction to cops tasing people, or even pigs beating homeless people to death? "I didn't like his looks either."
ReplyDeleteAnd that torture indeed goes unpunished indicates Americans will simply sit there & take it.
You know, "I was not a [whatever group I despise anyway], so I said nothing."
Fucking sheep.
Godwin's Law has got no teeth.
ReplyDeleteAnd, of course, there's no mention of all the income that's parked offshore for the expressed purpose of avoiding (and evading) taxes in the U.S., a truly gargantuan figure by now.
ReplyDeleteIf someone by now hasn't written a book on the pathology of wealth, someone should....
Imma set up a town called Beer! Who's with me!!!
ReplyDeleteIf someone by now hasn't written a book on the pathology of wealth, someone should
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately, the elephants in our living rooms aren't very good typists.
Don't feel too good about your success, bliekker. My fucking brilliant 9 am post was disappeared. FD.
ReplyDeleteIt's always the brilliant ones that disappear isn't it? ;-)
ReplyDeleteClearly you have never known the pain of being called a fat cat. It's funny enough to read about such a creature enjoying lasagna, but to be compared to it? To have your own existence degraded to the point where you are literally the property of a white man?
ReplyDeleteHow could any other group ever possibly know what that feels like, I ask you.
Also!
ReplyDeleteHer blog on this topic:
http://echidneofthesnakes.blogspot.com/2012/10/the-most-hilarious-class-warfare-piece.html
~
Fucking sheep
ReplyDeleteDon't insult sheep. This is standard Homo Sap behaviour. Solutions are welcome. Don't hold back.
I love you for quoting Micheleen Og Flynn in The Quiet Man. That phrase is one of my favorites--along with "Is it a bed...or a parade ground?"
ReplyDeleteThe mountain has come to Fats.
ReplyDeleteExactly! Leeds man. Hands off teh sheeps!
ReplyDeleteWho is storing them up, that's what I want to know.
ReplyDeleteFuck off. The crest says it all. We didn't all have to go halfway across the globe to justify our love of sheep and rugby.
ReplyDeleteWasn't it Tom Lehrer who made that observation?
ReplyDeleteThe owls have kilt the sheep!!!
ReplyDelete(And yet strangely, every time they lose, somehow it doesn't invalidate their ideology…Hmm.)
ReplyDeleteAs Digby also says, conservatism can never fail, it can only be failed.
That Brown is resorting to desperate measures doesn't astound me at this point.
ReplyDeleteIt aint kilt. It's ristin.
ReplyDeleteI wish I had enough money to whine about people disliking me because I have too much money.
ReplyDeleteThere are so many good lines in that movie.
ReplyDelete"So it's himself you're named after. Your grandfather. Who died in Australia. In a penal colony. And your father, he was a good man too."
Perhaps teh Rich are actually more frightened than offended by the Peasant's contempt? They snivel that they're disliked, but in truth they are afraid that ... one of these days... the rabble will rise up and .... take away all their so very hard-earned Wealth! With higher taxes! and Regulations! Single Payer Health Care for ALL! The Kochs and the Dimons and their little yapper-dogs like Tillman will no longer be billionaires, or super-duper millionaires, they'll just be Ordinary Wealthy People, only able to to buy one or two politicians rather than dozens in every state. So sad.
ReplyDeleteAw, c'mon... Obama called them FAT CATS once... or maybe twice. Hurtful words like those can scar a body for life, my friend.
ReplyDelete"Whenever they's a fight over the best table at a 5-star resturaunt, I'll be there. Whenever they's a Koch brother buying a politician, I'll be there . . . . I'll be in the way guys yell at he help when they're mad an'-I'll be in the way kids laugh when apply to an Ivy school an' they know daddy's donated a million dollars and has the library named after him. An' when our folks eat the stuff raised by sharecroppers an' live in the houses with car elevators-why, I'll be there."
ReplyDeleteWhat these nob jockeys seem not to understand is that we don't hate rich people. There are some very nice ones out there who spend their money as they want, and also fit in the time to do the occasional nice thing.
ReplyDeleteWe just hate entitled pompous whining fucks, regardless of how many zeros there are on their bank balance.
City Gent
ReplyDeleteOh, jolly good too. (surveys field; he looks puzzled)I say, those are sheep aren't they?
Rustic
Ar.
City Gent
Yes, yes of course, I thought so...only...er why are they up in the trees?
"I’m scared of walking out of this room and never feeling the rest of my whole life the way I feel when I’m with this comment"
ReplyDeleteCool. Like a One Millionaire March?
ReplyDeleteTrue, dat, the final results were what was important. They can have their sorrow.
ReplyDeleteAnd yet, here we are today with a new form of bigotry that is openly encouraged by people who should know better....So I suggest we start saying, “I’m not interested in hearing that.
ReplyDeletePlease, no bigotry toward those who are successful in pursuing the
American Dream.”
I think crack dealers are the ultimate entrepreneurs - don't you think? Taking risks, challenging local ordinances, guarding their marketplaces from competition, finding new and innovative ways to develop product and market it? Why are we so bigoted and prejudicial against honest American entrepreneurs like crack dealers?
Tillman is the six-figured CEO of the Illinois Policy Institute,
ReplyDeleteyet another 501(c)(3) "charity" whose tax exempt, supposedly
non-political "educational" activities and tax-deductible,
non-transparent donations we all indirectly support.
But he did build that, I suspect he'll assert.
You should walk a mile in the other guys shoes
ReplyDeleteCan I, please? I'd love a pair of Ferragamos or Louboutins, but I can't afford them on my own income. Maybe someone can help me out?
Pleased to meet you. Guess you know my name.
ReplyDeleteI'll run a bath.
ReplyDeleteCrack dealers are just hard working middle men. Those who deserve our real sympathy are the drug cartels; Cali, Medellín, GlaxoSmithKline, Pfizer, etc. Sure, their profits come with collateral damage, but eggs, omelettes, and so on.
ReplyDeleteThis has cropped up a couple of times in Breaking Bad--at one point Walter tells Skyler that his business is big enough to be listed on NASDAQ, which is probably an exaggeration but may not be as big of one by the end of the latest season--and a former associate of Walter's, Gale Boetticher, says that he's getting into the meth business for libertarian reasons. (He actually has a Ron Paul sticker in his lab notebook.)
ReplyDeleteGET OUT FJSK IS IN THE HOUSE WITH YOU IT'S OUT FOR REVENGE
ReplyDeleteThe one thing that really struck me about sheep, the one time I visited New Zealand, was that from about 500 meters altitude they look exactly like maggots. White, plump, with a little black speck at one end....
ReplyDeleteI haven't been able to figure out if this should raise my opinion of maggots, or lower my opinion of sheep.
My fave:
ReplyDelete"So the I.R.A.'s in this too, huh?"
"If it were, Red Will Danaher, not a scorched stone 'o your fine house'd be left standin'."
"A beautiful sentiment!
I get where you're coming from, but it really shouldn't matter whether we like wealthy folks or not; whether they do "good deeds" or not. Ultimately, we need a society that takes care of its own, without having to rely on the ethical whims of "successful" rich fucks.
ReplyDeleteBill Maher nailed it Friday night when he targeted Pizza billionaires
ReplyDeleteShit, Papa John, you got your own golf course, why the long pizza face?
On the other hand...
ReplyDeleteForbes: Want a Better Economy? History Says Vote Democrat!
http://www.forbes.com/sites/adamhartung/2012/10/10/want-a-better-economy-history-says-vote-democrat/
The American justice system in its awesome majesty gives both rich & poor alike the right to form SuperPACs, put their blind trust funds in the Cayman Islands, & own car elevators.
ReplyDelete