Speaking in Tongues

Now that CB mentions it, let’s put it up on the board…

There may be a fascinating Con Law seminar on the subject, but in our lifetime “states’ rights” (which, to be fair, Paul doesn’t mention by name) has predominantly meant one thing, and we’re not the first to find it curious that the “secession” issue turns up soon after the nation’s first black president has been inaugurated.

Fun footnote at 3:30: Pledge of Allegiance writer Frances Bellamy (the indivisible part, not the under-god part) was an “avowed socialist”.

Fun footnote II: And as Serolf Divad reminds us, let’s not forget those racist newsletters published in Paul’s name.

Ron Paul defends Texas secession as ‘very much an American principle.’ [Think Progress]
39 Comments

Good. Let ’em go and jam all broadcast signals emanating from Snakehandler Land. I’m tired of their shit.

Now now, you must understand that your libertarian variety of loon does not use words in the same sense that the rest of us understand those words.

Remember, these are people whose favorite founding fathers quote is the old “the tree of liberty needs to be watered with the blood of patriots” shit. They believe that there is a “right” to revolution. They believe that there is a “right” to sedition, treason. They believe that the founding fathers intended and desired frequent revolutions, and that when you commit treason against the US, you are really being loyal to the founders of the US.

Anyone who hasn’t, try reading “The Authoritarians,” It talks at length about how authoritarian personality types tend to have very compartmentalized minds, they do not have a big picture awareness of the interconnectedness of different subjects, to them, each issue is seperate and apart, which is why they never see their own contradictions and hypocracy.

They have no problem believing treason is patriotic.
They have no problem hating the sin, loving the sinner.
They have no problem being fanatically pro-life and pro-death penalty.
They have no problem believing that we are the most powerful and wonderful country on earth and that one of our boys can whup 100 of anyone else’s boys, while at the same time believing that a ragtag group of radicals present a life-or-death threat to our existence.

They are, you know, morons.

Where to begin, where to begin? Secessionists draw the line at further secession–the Confederate government made it clear it wouldn’t tolerate any states or counties leaving the CSA. If Texas secedes, will it let Austin remain in the U.S.?

The republics formed from the breakup of the Soviet Union considered themselves victims–with justification–of Czarist and Stalinist imperialism.

Oh btw, teabaggers, the Founding Fathers came down hard on the Whiskey Tax Rebellion.

Breaking Hard (in more ways than one): priest molests under age boy and plies him with liquor.

http://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/19238926/detail.html

ADD. Cops find pics of other boys on his CELL PHONE!!!!!

The biggest problem with these goofball Texas secessionists is that just when you start getting all excited imagining a nation without Texas, they come up with some absurd, laughable demand that makes it clear that they’re not actually serious about it:

In early May, Mr. McLaren arranged a common law court hearing in which a jury ordered the federal government, the International Monetary Fund and the Holy See of the Catholic Church to repay the Republic of Texas $93 trillion for 150 years of “plundering.”

So not only do they want to become an independent nation, they also want the rest of us to pay-off their mortgages, put their kids through college, and lick their buttholes clean after every time they take a shit.

@Serolf Divad:
No different than the Quebecois Separatistes.

Also, I’m surprised they want reparations for “plundering” but will scream loudly whenever someone brings the subject in regards to for slavery…

It’s also my understanding that “Love It or Leave It” doesn’t include taking your land with you.

@Serolf Divad: I love the $93 trillion – makes it sound like they used math instead of just making shit up.

@blogenfreude:
They originally wanted to use 40 hundred gajillion-zillion but were told it wasn’t a real number.

@nojo: I have my rant on “US America – Love it or Leave It” up at FB with a link to the video above.

“I got gloves, fencing pliers and a post hole digger. I’ll gladly take some time off to start building the fence between New Mexico and Texas. ”

tj/ a groovy hispanic woman I went to high school with just got a WH job offer, General Counsel for the Office of Management and Administration, I believe. She is currently chair of the Denver Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. I’ll always remember her as the girl with the ponytail with an alto sax around her neck laughing at one of my jokes.

@Jesuswalksinidaho: I fear Austin would have to be evacuated and relocated, perhaps to Northern California.

Christ, Nojo, I just saw you were mainly directing your attention to the racist code, well sure, “state’s rights” means Jim Crow, or slavery, one or both. “Activist Judges” means judges who make your kids go to school with blacks. “Judges who legislate from the bench” means judges who make your kids go to school with blacks, and who make you let blacks vote, and who won’t let you discriminate against blacks.” “Education Crisis” means there are blacks ruining the schools. “Crime problem” means criminal blacks. “Tough on crime” means “tough on blacks.” “War on Drugs” means war on those evil blacks who bring these drugs into our communities and corrupt our fine young white kids.”

“Big Government” means government that tries to end discrimination against blacks” (they didn’t mind the size of government when it paid them not to grow cotton). “Welfare” means “they’re taking my money and giving it to lazy niggers.” “Taxes” means “they’re taking my money and giving it to lazy niggers.” Hell, every single last word out of a southern politician’s mouth is code for “I want to go back to 1859.”

Too bad Molly Ivins is gone. She’d tell them good ol’ boys what they could do with their secession talk, and shame them into shutting the fuck up.

These retards better not EVER refer to themselves as the “Party of Lincoln” ever again.

@Prommie: Remember when wingnuts were called “reactionaries”? Might be time to revive the term, since that’s all we’ve been hearing since January 20.

@Prommie: When you put it all together like that…

@WaltTrombone: And where is Molly from again? New Jersey? Vermont?

After reading Prommie‘s rant, I’m sure she and her buddies Ann and Barbara and Bill must have been Northerners.

There are a few more common southern conservative code words. “New York” is an adjective that means “Jew,” as in “New York Bankers.” “Elite” means someone who uses proper grammar and wears laundered clothing. “Pencil Neck” means educated. “Faggot” means homosexual, of course, but they’re less likely than northern rednecks to gaybash in my experience, too many Ashley Wilkses among them, and they have this strange penchant for threatening anal violation at the drop of a hat that makes me think they are all more than a little geh, which may be why they have fewer code words for that.

They are preoccupied with status in the South, everything and everything is sized up to see if it is above or beneath them, when males meat they circle like dogs trying to figure out who could “take” who, its bizzaro. And their mental state and predispositions towards people and institutions are largely a result of where they feel they are in the hierarchy.

They have contempt for those they think are beneath them, an arrogant dismissiveness towards the trailer trash and the strivers who went to State schools, but they can also have a sort of affectionate, benign, paternal way with inferiors, too (Bush’s attitude towards Gonzo and Rove, for instance) and to this day you will hear southerners talk about how relations with the negroes were just fine before the damn yankee intellectuals and legislating judges interfered, I have had adult southerners tell me I don’t understand, but the white southerners know their negroes, you see.

But the more dangerous of their emotions is the constant simmering resentment they have towards others what they percieve as superior. Oh, they hate with a malignant festering hate the North, because we won the war, because we speak grammatically, because we produce all the wealth of the country and watch Tennis instead of Race Car Driving.

Its truly a pathological part of the Country, Twain said so, Faulkner was a living exemplar of its evil, everything from history and the Arts confirms it.

The South is our retarded cousin, bless its heart, but like the elephant in the living room, we must never acknowledge it.

@Jamie Sommers: I learned all I know from her; she wrote some great columns on the CCC and the secret racism at the heart of southern conservatism.

@Prommie: They talk a big talk about threatening anal violation, when in my experience, they’re the ones desiring the violation performed on them. See: atlanta.craigslist.com/M4M. Keyword: MWM, Marietta.

@rptrcub:

Can it really be called “violation” if the subject is screaming “Yes, God Yes, I’m a Bad Boy, Yes!!!”?

Being a nice Northwest boy, I’ve heard tales of this “South” y’all mention, but it’s as foreign to me as humidity.

@Prommie:

Still, Tennessee Williams, Rptrcub, John Kennedy Toole, James Dickey, Tom Wolfe, Harper Lee, Flannery O’Connor, Margret Mitchell, James Bridges, Glen Campbell, Johnny Cash, Elvis, Al Green, Scott Joplin, Mary Steenburgen, Matthew McConaughey, Johnny Depp, Patrick Swayze, George Clooney, Harry Connick Jr., Brad Pitt, Johnny Knoxville, Wayne Brady,Martin Luther King Jr., Thomas Jefferson, Catherine Clark Ellis, Edward Hicks…I can go on and on. Pretty good for a “retarded cousin”.

It does no good to demonize them, Prom, because in the final analysis they are us. We should never forget that they are just Americans, loving their country and doing what they think is right, just as we do. Win hearts and minds, even though they bring the hateful and stupid along with them.

ADD: And yes, I’ve been there. I’ve done theatre in Mobile, Alabama…and a more welcoming, gracious group of people you will never find. Even hooked me up with a gay bar down there…

Speaking of anal violations, a new candidate for GCILF (ETHAWCSWATE) to throw out the the Stinque ghey boy/str8 girl faction.

@homofascist:

I’d fuck Newsome, but for the fact that I’d get snake oil all over my sheets…

I’m pretty sure these “secessionists” are all waiting for somebody to fight the battle for them so they won’t have to miss American Idol.

David McCullough’s biography of John Adams made some pithy remarks about Thomas Jefferson’s efforts to make sure his own blood wasn’t going to refresh any tree.

@Tommmcatt the Wet Sprocket: Rubber sheets honey. Sometimes they are your friend.

@Tommmcatt the Wet Sprocket: Glen Campbell used to play high school dances in Albuquerque when my dad went to school there in the late 50s.

@Prommie: Your continued stereotyping of Southerners is tiresome and boring.

@Tommmcatt the Wet Sprocket:

Hmmm, I see my name is mysteriously missing from the list.

@Prommie:

So here’s the deal: when I was a little kid in the 80s and Bill Clinton was the original Luv Guv and Hillary was our state’s most notorious, drug-dealing lesbian assassin, we heard a lot about “The Arkansas Brain Drain,” which meant that kids were fleeing like hayell outta Arkansas after high school graduation, mostly to coastal states, or after college graduation if they couldn’t afford to go out of state. Mr. OA and I drove until we ran outta freeway after college graduation cause we wanted to get as far away from Arkansas as possible, since our relationship was essentially illegal there at the time thanks to sodomy laws.

The problem is that it’s a self-reinforcing scenario. Sane, edumacated people leave in droves, the stoopids consolidate power and the state keeps moving further to the right, so edumacated people bail, etc, etc.

Things have actually gotten far worse legally for gays and lesbians in Arkansas in the years since we jumped ship (marriage & civil union bans, a likely unconstitutional adoption ban, etc), but people are strangely more personally accepting, at least on our visits. In other words, they hate you and will vote against your rights at the ballot box, but they’ll still be nice to you to your face, or at least the closet cases will suck your kahk on a Saturday night.

Fortunately, a lot of the sane people still living in AR are becoming a lot more vocal and organized, so hopefully they’ll be able to make some progress in the next few decades. There’s this one gal, Rita Sklar, the exec director of the Arkansas ACLU, who’s a hero of mine and likely has the most thankless job in the nation trying to reason with those tongue-talking morans.

“Welcome to Arkansas. Please set your clocks back 30 years.”

@Original Andrew: \

Poor OA, I’m always leaving you out! Will it help to know that I thought you were from Connecticut?

@Tommmcatt the Wet Sprocket:

Tommmy, you owe me a martini. One of these days, I’m gonna jet down to Hell-LAy to collect.

It’s funny you should mention CT, though. I learned to talk by watching PBS when I was growing up, so people in the South think I’m from the Midwest or the Northeast (WGBH rulz!).

Here in Seatown, on the other hand, people think my Southern accent is so hillbilly extreme that they’re shocked I’ve got a shirt and shoes on. I get “I’ve never met anyone from Arkansas before” alot.

@Jamie Sommers: I am not stereotyping all southerners, only those who fit the stereotype. I am sorta describing people I knew. Retarded cousin, please regard that as ironic hyperbole.

I shoulda stuck to the racist code words, they are all true. Thats why all republican national candidates get themselves a good southern strategist/campaign manager, an atwater, a rove. They know the racist dog whistle words.

I think I unconsciously let some biographical bitterness out, I do apologize, my southern friends. In high school, even in Florida, but I did live in the cattle and citrus area, I had to fight. A lot. I had to fight rednecks who absolutely forced me to it, I am not a fighter. And I had to deal with the class system, it did and does seem to me that class hierarchy is more real in the south, a sorta caste system. Each county does have its little local aristocracy, and boy, they know how to condescend and still know how to do the cut direct.

I had to fight so many rednecks, I became so familiar with the ritual of southern male pecking order fights, people who would challenge you just to see who would win. If I won a fight (it didn’t take much, it was largely ritual, once it got to where you were even close to hurting someone, it would break up, defeat would be acknowledged, or some kind of mutual admission of respect, at least) then three more rednecks would start trying to start a fight with me for the next few weeks, cause if I beat ole Beell, they needed to know where that put them. I thought my name was “damn yankee,” or “yaller haired hippie thang.” Fun times. My favorite was the one who started the fight with “you think you’re smart, lets see how smart you are.” The point being that smarts would not work against fists.

And you all know, what a mild, meek, polite quiet mouse I am. I never did anything to incite this. Heh.

@Jamie Sommers: A very wise man once (OK, last week) told me that the way to remain on an even keel, and keep from blowing a Stinquey gasket, was to selectively and regularly skip some comments. To date, I have found that to be sage advice.
Let it be known that I’m with you, sister. I’ve lived in Hillbilly USA, and married a (literally) hillbilly girl. Although I poke fun at Texas, I think the South has both the best and the worst of the NorAm culture.
Oh, Tommcatt, I must take issue with one of your examples of Southern lights: Harry Connick Jr is and was worthless. Very little talent stretched way too far.

@Promnight:

Just to be clear, I’m not offended by the stereotyping–there’s a reason that I moved 2,300 miles away.

@Tommmcatt the Wet Sprocket: You forgot me, too. And I am from the Southern aristocracy and know how to cut you dead, mister.

@Original Andrew: I watched so much Masterpiece Theatre that I had a British accent by the time I got to college.

@Mistress Cynica: Darling, did you catch Little Dorrit? It’s superb. Apart from some rather RSC perfs – most lamentabe being Andy Serkin’s TV shattering stint as Rigaux – this is why we watch the tube. Claire Foy and Matthew McFayden are smashing. Glorious design and elegant script (apart from one hideous misjudgment: see above note re Serkin) with some cunning supporting perfs (Judy Parfitt) adds up to …

Oh. I see. Desperate Housewives wins emmy prize. k. Since it was so.. botoxed. And…

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