Motley Moose – Archive

Since 2008 – Progress Through Politics

What’s Wrong with America

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There’s plenty wrong, but this is in my craw today: People who think that the poor and middle class are too ignorant to think for themselves.

filthy rich

Exhibit P:

The line of Range Rovers, BMWs, Porsche roadsters and one gleaming cherry red Ferrari began queuing outside of Revlon Chairman Ronald Perelman’s estate off Montauk Highway long before Romney arrived, as campaign aides and staffers in white polo shirts emblazoned with the logo of Perelman’s property — the Creeks — checked off names under tight security.

A New York City donor a few cars back, who also would not give her name, said Romney needed to do a better job connecting. “I don’t think the common person is getting it,” she said from the passenger seat of a Range Rover stamped with East Hampton beach permits. “Nobody understands why Obama is hurting them.

“We’ve got the message,” she added. “But my college kid, the baby sitters, the nails ladies — everybody who’s got the right to vote — they don’t understand what’s going on. I just think if you’re lower income — one, you’re not as educated, two, they don’t understand how it works, they don’t understand how the systems work, they don’t understand the impact.”

Exhibit Q:

A woman in a blue chiffon dress poked her head out of a black Range Rover here on Sunday afternoon and yelled to an aide to Mitt Romney. “Is there a V.I.P. entrance? We are V.I.P.” ….

A few cars back, Ted Conklin, the owner of the American Hotel in Sag Harbor, long a favorite of the Hamptons’ well-off and well-known, could barely contain his displeasure with Mr. Obama. “He is a socialist. His idea is find a problem that doesn’t exist and get government to intervene,” Mr. Conklin said from inside a gold Mercedes, as his wife, Carol Simmons, nodded in agreement.

These people spent more on dinner than I make in a year. Look, I’m a capatalist (mostly), but SRSLY? Since Romney’s money has more foreign policy experience than he does, shouldn’t he be Running for President of the Caymans?  

Per ‘teh wiki‘:

A snob is someone who believes that some people are inherently inferior to him or her for any one of a variety of reasons, including real or supposed intellect, wealth, education, ancestry, class, taste, beauty, nationality, etcetera. Often, the form of snobbery reflects the snob’s personal attributes. For example, a common snobbery of the affluent is the belief that wealth is either the cause or result of superiority, or both.

Popular etymology holds that “snob” comes from “sine nobilitate” or “sans noblesse” meaning “without nobility”; however this is incorrect.

Snobbery existed even in mediaeval feudal aristocratic Europe, when the clothing, manners, language and tastes of every class were strictly codified by customs or law. Chaucer, a poet moving in the court circles, noted the provincial French spoken by the Prioress among the Canterbury pilgrims:

And French she spoke full fair and fetisly

After the school of Stratford atte Bowe,

For French of Paris was to her unknowe.

We’ve got a Snob constituency in this country, to be sure, and they’d like nothing more than to elect one of their own to the Presidency. Well, what do you all have to say about that?


Categories: Uncategorized.

/ 45 Comments

45 comments

  2. fogiv

    WASHINGTON — From facilitating energy development to managing America’s public lands for tourism and outdoor recreation to assisting Indian tribes with education and economic growth, the activities of the Department of the Interior contributed $385 billion to the U.S. economy and supported more than 2 million jobs in 2011, according to a new report released today.

    “The Interior Department has a uniquely diverse mission that benefits the American people by promoting tourism, outdoor recreation, energy development and other economic activities that fuel local economies,” said Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar. “This report underscores that there are real, lasting impacts on communities and small businesses across the country where Interior is helping to strengthen economies and support families.”

    The report, The Department of the Interior’s Economic Contributions, highlights the impacts of the Department’s broad mission, including land and water management; energy and mineral development on public lands; encouraging tourism and outdoor recreation at national parks, monuments and refuges; wildlife conservation, hunting and fishing; support for American Indian tribal communities and Insular Areas; and scientific research and innovation.

    Prepared by Interior’s Office of Policy Analysis, today’s report underscores the findings of other studies on the economic impacts of Interior Department lands and programs. For example, an earlier study found that recreation in national parks, refuges, and other public lands alone led to nearly $47 billion in economic contribution and 388,000 jobs in 2010.

    http://www.doi.gov/news/pressr…

    Damn that big ol’ evil gubmint!

  3. fogiv

    U.S. Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney raised $106 million in June, far surpassing President Barack Obama’s $71 million haul in the record-setting money race leading to the November 6 election.

    Romney’s fundraising mark, announced by his campaign on Monday, is the best monthly total so far in the 2012 presidential campaign. It is another sign that Romney and his allies are on course to wash away any cash advantage that Obama, as an incumbent president, typically would enjoy in a bid for re-election.

    Romney’s effort is being fueled largely by big-money donors who have poured cash into his campaign, the Republican National Committee’s election funds and independent “Super PACs,” or political action committees, that support Republicans.

    http://www.reuters.com/article…

    Teh LULZ quote, from same article:

    “This month’s fundraising is a statement from voters that they want a change of direction in Washington,” said Spencer Zwick, Romney’s finance chief.

    But the figures released by Romney’s campaign indicated that nearly 80 percent of the total for June came from just 6 percent of the donations it received – meaning that big-money donors are driving most of the campaign’s effort.

  4. HappyinVT

    The Zambrellis scoffed at attempts by the Democrats-who mocked Romney in an ad Sunday as “great for oil billionaires, bad for the middle class”-to wage class warfare.  “Would you like to hear about the fundraisers I went to for him?” Sharon Zambrelli said of Obama. “Do you have an hour? … All the ones in the city-it was all of Wall Street.”

    “It’s not helping the economy to pit the people who are the engine of the economy against the people who rely on that engine,” Michael Zambrelli said as the couple waited in their SUV for clearance into the Creeks shortly after the candidate’s motorcade flew by and entered the pine-tree lined estate. “He’s basically been biting the hand that fed him in ’08. … I would bet 25% of the people here were supporters of Obama in ’08. And they’re here now.” http://www.balloon-juice.com/2…  

    Someone googled Mr. Zambrelli and apparently he runs an ad agency whose claim to fame is updating the Chuck E. Cheese brand:

    And what is Michael Zambrelli’s greatest achievement in life? Well, he is the man who helped to rebrand Chuck E. Cheese from a teenager forced into wearing a moth-eaten rat costume reeking of sweat, old cheese and minimum wage while entertaining packs of feral children eating slightly warm cardboard and ketchup-flavored pizza when they’re not cavorting in one of those Ball Pits of Childhood Diseases  into a  backwards-hat-wearing “hip, electric-guitar-playing rock star” just like Scott Stapp but with less Jesus. http://tbogg.firedoglake.com/2…  

    You would think that a guy whose job it is to separate people from their money would want said people to, you know, have money from which to be separated.  But I’m “common” so I don’t know how things work.

  6. Benito Malito

    Its silly season again. Did you hear George Will this week?

    paraphrasing “The left needs to understand the difference between weather and climate. Its just hot.”  

    That’s actually progress if you ask me. All the best man.  

  7. Strummerson

    Yeah.  I mean it.  When the President of the United States is opposed in suggesting that a significant bi-partisan majority act on the 98% area of agreement on tax policy and meets with this kind of animus, I just don’t think there is anywhere to go.  We’ve got an entire wing of the electorate that is so averse to compromise, either because of ideological fanaticism and blindness or partisan zealotry, we have a non-functioning republic.  

    ‘Pakistan’ means land of the pure.  So let’s allow all of the purists have their own country.  Let them elect Ted Nugent as their head of state, Michelle Bachmann as Secretary of State, Paul Ryan as Treasurer, put Tom Tancredo in charge of the Interior, Clarence Thomas as Chief Justice and Jim DeMint as everything else.  They don’t recognize the rest of us as ‘American’ anyway.

  8. Strummerson

    Tomasky has an excellent piece out this morning:

    http://www.thedailybeast.com/a…

    Obama needs to go all in on this, and the caucus/party needs to back him up.  A few to many times, on signature issues, Obama has pushed something that is sound policy and politics, made the case, then stepped back.  This time he needs to commit.  One of Tomasky’s points is that the Dems have allowed the right to misrepresent the debate over tax cuts.  They claim that Obama wants to raise taxes on people making over $250,000, which is divisive class warfare that will hinder small business job creators.  Wrong on several points:

    1. Allowing temporary tax cuts to expire is not the same as raising taxes.  It’s not a “massive tax hike.”

    2. Allowing the expiration of tax cuts on income over $250K will affect 3% of small businesses, (much of which will be offset by the ACA’s subsidies for providing small business employees with health ensurance).  Gotta make this connection.

    3. Obama’s proposal isn’t divisive.  It’s a tax cut for ALL AMERICANS.  It’s not that people making over $250K are being singled out.  It isn’t ‘soak the rich’ class warfare.  It’s a cut on tax rates for INCOME under $250K.  Yep.  That’s right.  Mitt Romney, Charles and David Koch, Warren Buffet, Bill Gates, Jeffrey Katzenberg, Sheldon Adelson, George Soros, Jamie Dimon, Lloyd Blankfein, Hank Paulson, Sam Walton’s descendants, Steve Jobs’ estate, and everyone else will continue to receive the tax break on income under $250K.  It’s a tax cut on that first $250K, not on people earning under $250K (which would still not qualify as class warfare, just part of a progressive [speaking technically here and not just politically] tax system).  In fact, misrepresenting this is a form of class warfare.  Misrepresenting this is divisive.  All Americans will continue to keep more of what they earn up to $250K, ditch diggers and dishwashers and derivative peddlers alike.

  9. Strummerson

    To hear the media report it, President Obama is proposing a tax increase on wealthy Americans. That’s misleading at best. He’s proposing that everyone receive a continuation of the Bush tax cuts on the first $250,000 of their incomes. Any dollars they earn in excess of $250,000 will be taxed at the old Clinton-era rates.

    Get it? Everyone is treated exactly the same. Everyone gets a one-year extension of the Bush tax cut on the first $250,000 of income. No “class warfare.”

    Yet regressive Republicans want Americans to believe differently. The editorial writers of the Wall Street Journal say the president wants to extend the Bush tax cuts only “for some taxpayers.” They urge House Republicans to extend the Bush tax cuts for “everyone” and thereby put Senate Democrats on the spot by “forcing them to choose between extending rates for everyone and accepting Mr. Obama’s tax increase.”

    Pure demagoguery.

    Regressives also want Americans to think the president’s proposal would hurt “tens of thousands of job-creating businesses,” as the Journal puts it.

    More baloney.

    A small business owner earning $251,000 would pay the Bush rate on the first $250,000 and the old Clinton rate on just $1,000.

    Congress’s Joint Tax Committee estimates that in 2013 about 940,000 taxpayers would have enough business income to break through the $250,000 ceiling — and, again, they’d pay additional taxes only on dollars earned above $250,000.

    All told, less than 3 percent of small business owners would even reach the $250,000 threshold.



    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/…

  10. fogiv

    so uh, did the romney team actually think his gab before the NAACP would go well?

    Mitt Romney found himself on the receiving end of a loud chorus of boos when he promised to repeal health care reform during a speech before the NAACP.

    “If our goal is jobs, we have to stop spending over a trillion dollars more than we take in every year. So to do that, I’m going to eliminate every non-essential, expensive program I can find. That includes Obamacare, and I’m going to work to reform and save — ” Romney said, being interrupted by boos.

    video too: http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com…

  11. fogiv

    Stone spearheads and human DNA found in Oregon caves, anthropologists say, have produced firmer evidence that these are the oldest directly dated remains of people in North America. They also show that at least two cultures with distinct technologies – not a single one, as had been supposed – shared the continent more than 13,000 years ago.

    In other words, the Clovis people, long known for their graceful, fluted projectile points, were not alone in the New World. The occupants of Paisley Caves, on the east side of the Cascade Range, near the town of Paisley, left narrow-stemmed spear points shaped by different flaking techniques. These hunting implements are classified as the Western Stemmed Tradition, previously thought to be younger than the Clovis technology.

    The new research, based on the recent discovery of the artifacts and more refined radiocarbon dating tests, established that the cave dwellers who made the Western Stemmed points overlapped or possibly preceded the Clovis artisans elsewhere, the scientists reported in a paper published online Thursday by the journal Science.

    “These two distinct technologies were parallel developments, not the product of a unilinear technological evolution,” the research team, led by Dennis L. Jenkins of the University of Oregon, concluded in the report. “The colonization of the Americas involved multiple technologically divergent, and possibly genetically divergent, founding groups.”

    http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07…

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