Socialist Arizona
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Just a few notes from sunny Phoenix.
Good news for disaffected radical leftists on both coasts. Not only do housing costs continue to be deeply depressed out here in the Valley of the Sun but, as I learned today, Arizona is in the vanguard of the construction of socialism! Here's your chance to take up residence real cheap where you can catch a daily Red Dawn.
Oh yeah, forgot to mention that within 30 years Europe will be All Muslim because good Christians are aborting each other at such a high pace and that we Americans are not far behind.
That's the skinny I got today from a couple of local Republican Party OFFICIALS who are helping to lead the primary campaign against John "The Head of the Snake" McCain -- folks who are supporting former congressman J.D. Hawyorth in his right wing challenge to Marxist McCain. All this and it isn't even heat stroke season yet.
Heading this evening to a meeting of local Tea Party folks where J.D. will be the guest speaker. If there are any plans for credibile resistance to the Commie yolk being imposed by the Obama-McCain axis I will send out a coded message. Make the the diodes implanted in your neck on switched to receive mode.
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Just a few notes from sunny Phoenix.
Good news for disaffected radical leftists on both coasts. Not only do housing costs continue to be deeply depressed out here in the Valley of the Sun but, as I learned today, Arizona is in the vanguard of the construction of socialism! Here's your chance to take up residence real cheap where you can catch a daily Red Dawn.
Oh yeah, forgot to mention that within 30 years Europe will be All Muslim because good Christians are aborting each other at such a high pace and that we Americans are not far behind.
That's the skinny I got today from a couple of local Republican Party OFFICIALS who are helping to lead the primary campaign against John "The Head of the Snake" McCain -- folks who are supporting former congressman J.D. Hawyorth in his right wing challenge to Marxist McCain. All this and it isn't even heat stroke season yet.
Heading this evening to a meeting of local Tea Party folks where J.D. will be the guest speaker. If there are any plans for credibile resistance to the Commie yolk being imposed by the Obama-McCain axis I will send out a coded message. Make the the diodes implanted in your neck on switched to receive mode.
March 18th, 2010 at 7:34 pm
I’m sure Woody has links that “prove” this stuff…
Unfortunately, Marc, the daily missives from our own potted plant in these comments threads steal some of the thunder from your reporting on the fringes of contemporary “conservatism.”
Hayworth is a trip – I saw him on Maddow and he’s so comfortable with being totally unhinged that he’s entertaining. Also has that great orange skin tone, like John Boehner.
March 19th, 2010 at 8:47 am
All right, Marc, it’s easy for you to judge these people, but you’re on the outside looking in, regardless of how many functions you attend. There are multiple reasons to consider McCain, not a socialist so much as Democrat Lite. Make some allowances for the human tendency towards hyperbole in political discourse.
McCain supports Cap And Trade. He also supports what most Democrats support in the way of Immigration Reform. He was even against drilling in ANWR. Those positions might seem reasonable or moderate to you, from your perspective, but to a conservative Republican, they do carry a suggestion of socialist leanings.
Then there is the nattering on about Guantonomo, water-boarding, and torture. No matter how you feel about this or other issues, the man sounds like a Democrat in a lot of different ways.
Finally, the icing on the cake. His support for the TARP bailouts. Actually, that may be what killed him in the last election. Until then, he actually had a chance of winning.
You’re being a little bit guilty of hyperbole yourself, as no one that I know of said Europe would be all Muslim in thirty years. They generally think it will be majority Muslim in maybe forty years if current demographic trends continue. Personally, I think its impossible to predict such things from such a linear based perspective, but I see your point, they are engaging in fear-based Muslim bashing. Give them some credit, at least it shows they are culturally sensitive enough that they don’t want to see all the great works of art in the Louvre piled onto the streets of Paris and set ablaze.
March 19th, 2010 at 9:02 am
Make some allowances for the human tendency towards hyperbole in political discourse.
That’s precisely what is wrong with political discourse.
March 19th, 2010 at 9:49 am
Arizonans should reject socialism and elect those who agree with free market principles, like those Milton Friedman introduced to Chile. That would also help with the Arizona earthquakes, like the recent one in Hawaii that Obama told us about.
So, if it hadn’t been for Friedman and Pinochet, there would have been countless, needless deaths in Chile.
- – -
Marc, at what level were the Republican “OFFICIALS” and who are they?
Good luck tonight. I expect you to come out an official teabagger.
March 19th, 2010 at 11:59 am
Oh, this is going to be good…
March 19th, 2010 at 12:31 pm
[...] Marc Cooper reports from a Tea Party meeting in Arizona in support of Republican primary challenger J.D. Hawyorth against that well-known commie, Marxist McCain. Heading this evening to a meeting of local Tea Party folks where J.D. will be the guest speaker. If there are any plans for credibile resistance to the Commie yolk being imposed by the Obama-McCain axis I will send out a coded message. Make the the diodes implanted in your neck on switched to receive mode. [...]
March 19th, 2010 at 1:02 pm
Patrick
do me a favor and DON’T tell me how to report. I dont need your advice and I guarantee you I have a much higher skill level than you. I can empathize and sympathize with virtually anybody. I can also recognize people who suffer from mass delusion and paranoia.
You might not know anybody who thinks Europe is going Muslim but I do. I interviewed then and that’s what they told me
March 19th, 2010 at 1:19 pm
Marc-
Well, far be it from me to dispute such an ace reporter as yourself, but I find it hard to believe that anybody told you-
“within 30 years Europe will be All Muslim”
ALL MUSLIM? Not any Christians? Not even one? If somebody actually told you that, I would have to agree with you that they are paranoid and delusional. However, I want to point out that this is not the general position of conservatives, or the tea-party, so thankfully it is not a mass delusion that you are dealing with here, perhaps just a few nattering nabobs of negativism.
And by the way, I am not disputing or challenging your reportorial skills. Just keep your tape recorder running and functional, and I’m sure you’ll do fine.
March 19th, 2010 at 1:42 pm
To what extent are the birthers and the white supremiscists able to exert influence over these misguided?
March 19th, 2010 at 2:17 pm
Cap & Trade, Immigration Reform, No to ANWAR – “to a conservative Republican, they do carry a suggestion of socialist leanings.”
Sorry Patrick, but you’ve confused “conservatism” with idiocy. Contemporary “conservatism” is little more than an “I’m with Stupid” tee-shirt. You can debate Cap & Trade, Immigration Reform and ANWAR (I happen to support Cap & Trade, don’t support immigration reform unless it has the strong employer sanctions that are the only way to stem massive illegal immigration that screws with US labor markets and would trade ANWAR drilling in a minute as part of a strong energy bill that moved us significantly away from petrol and carbon emissions and toward renewables within a decent time-frame) but to call these policies “socialist” is nutty. Really nothing more nuanced than totally fucking nutty. It’s equaly crazy to call McCain a Democrat-Lite. You have to be totallyt hard-right – loony toons really – to consider McCain anything other than one faction – more moderate on a handful of issues than some – of conservativism. Characters like you aren’t conservative so much as right-wing radicals with a chip on their shoulder.
March 19th, 2010 at 2:20 pm
Incidentally, Patrick – today’s garden-variety liberals are more conservative – in the classic Burkean sense – than today’s GOPer Right. I wouldn’t expect you to understand that – which is why I laugh when the kind of wingnuts who excoriate John McCain invoke their “conservatism.”
March 19th, 2010 at 2:46 pm
Incidentally, if TARP was the “icing” on McCain’s “socialist leanings” cake, Allen Greenspan, Henry Paulson and Larry Kudlow – among many others – all are veering toward “socialism.”
I’d also be interested in a discussion by Woody of how the cure-all of Pinochet’s “free market” Friedmanite ideology supposedly adopted in the mid-70s squares with Pinochet’s government nationalizing the banks and instituted a massive government jobs program when a financial crisis – similiar in some ways to ours – hit in 1982. Just curious.
March 19th, 2010 at 2:56 pm
Pinochet was a monster!
March 19th, 2010 at 3:24 pm
Reg-
What makes your “energy policy” socialist, or at least quasi-socialist, is the fact that the kind of energy programs you are aiming for couldn’t possibly, under any conceivable or realistic scenario, work without government subsidies. Which of course means they would be taxpayer funded, by those same taxpayers who will still have to pay for the energy out-of-pocket, and even more for oil, gas, or coal due to Cap and Trade policies.
This is including solar and wind, especially. Moreover, these fraudulent, pie-in-the-sky plans are probably to a degree dependent on petroleum or coal regardless. Just like a car running on “all-electric” is still going to need an oil-change every year, there is always going to be a need for some kind of petroleum.
Wind power? Yeah, right. I always say, fill the landscape of North Dakota with wind turbines and you can probably supply the energy needs of South Dakota from now on.
Maybe.
I don’t think you understand what conservatives consider socialism. It’s a problem of definition understanding. Socialism is government control, or as some refer to it, nanny-statism. Or, tax-and-spend. Or, borrow-and-spend. Those that support Cap-And-Trade, or Immigration Reform (as promoted by McCain and others) or McCain-Feingold, by definition can not be conservative. Just because somebody talks out of both sides of their ass about tax cuts and national defense, that doesn’t qualify them as conservative.
I consider myself conservative, and I want cuts across the board in government spending, but in my case, that is including the military. When it comes to NATO, I want to end it, not mend it. You want to bring our troops home from Iraq? Hell, I want to bring them home from Western Europe after sixty-five years. I want to do away with the VA and their hospitals and pay veterans medicals bill for trips to their own neighborhood doctors, hospitals, and pharmacies, as opposed to making them travel in some cases a hundred miles round trip to wait all day for substandard care. Think of how much money that would save in addition to the improvement in care for veterans. Now that’s a conservative idea.
I understand you get all misty-eyed thinking about how McCain is your idea of a principled conservative, a man you would work hard to defeat but could at least grudgingly respect in some matters. There’s reasons why many media personalities, such as Tim Russert, all but campaigned for him to get the GOP nomination. It’s precisely because they understood full well he is not a real conservative, he is a moderate. You do know what a moderate is, don’t you?
That’s the kind of guy that can call himself a Republican, yet get all misty-eyed and practically cum in his pants talking about his great and beloved friend Ted Kennedy.
March 19th, 2010 at 3:43 pm
My comment isn’t showing.
March 19th, 2010 at 3:50 pm
I responded to PK but it doesn’t really matter. I’m not a fan of fruit loops.
The VA, incidentally, isn’t substandard care. Simply not true. But that’s par for the Patrick Kelley course…
From Wiki – Patients routinely rank the veterans system above the alternatives, according to the American Customer Satisfaction Index.” In 2008, the VHA got a satisfaction rating of 85 for inpatient treatment, compared with 77 for private hospitals. In the same report the VHA outpatient care scored 3 points higher than for private hospitals.
“As compared with the Medicare fee-for-service program, the VA performed significantly better on all 11 similar quality indicators for the period from 1997 through 1999. In 2000, the VA outperformed Medicare on 12 of 13 indicators.”
A study that compared VHA with commercial managed care systems in their treatment of diabetes patients found that in all seven measures of quality, the VHA provided better care.
A RAND Corporation study in 2004 concluded that the VHA outperforms all other sectors of American health care in 294 measures of quality.
March 19th, 2010 at 5:43 pm
Well,Patrick. You can call Rob Haney, Chair of the Maricopa County GOP and ask him directly what he told me — with no prompting. I dont make things up. You think that’s an idiotic statement? Great. Maybe you real conservatives can do something about the people running America’s conservative party. It’s your problem, pal. Not mine.
March 19th, 2010 at 6:43 pm
Marc-
I wasn’t accusing you of making anything up, but that’s just wrong. If anybody told you that, they’re full of shit.
Reg-
“The VA, incidentally, isn’t substandard care. Simply not true. But that’s par for the Patrick Kelley course”
Sorry, pally, I had an uncle who died dependent on the VA for his medical care, so I know from first hand experience what it is, and I’ve had a couple of other relatives that went through the same shit. So you can stick your Wiki up your fucking ass, moron.
March 19th, 2010 at 6:55 pm
PK, wanna trade anecdotes?
My grandfather was treated at the VA in St. Paul and received superb care. Moron. And do that ass sticky uppie thing too!
March 19th, 2010 at 9:07 pm
Kelley – you are a complete fucking moron. It’s not “my Wiki” it’s ratings based on users and objective assessments. You know somebody who went in a hospital and died? That’s terrible. Never should happen. Nobody dies in private hospitals…
You’re running on empty, buddy.
March 19th, 2010 at 9:08 pm
Dan O-
Frankly, I think you’re a liar. What do you think of that? Whoops, forgot, you’re a fucking leftist. So I don’t think you’re a liar, I know you’re a liar.
March 19th, 2010 at 9:20 pm
Here’s an informative article on the improvements in VA care over the past 15 years and the high quality of the current system. There was a period of serious problems, but currently VA health care is some of the best in the country. Extreme right wing cranks are irrelevant to any empirical evaluation of reality. They live in an alternate reality that they make up as they go along to conform to their ideology.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2005/0501.longman.html
March 19th, 2010 at 9:55 pm
“Sorry, pally, I had an uncle who…”
Wow. Aside from Godwin’s law, the only faster way of showing you don’t really have an argument is to start babbling out anecdotes. That’s pretty funny, though.
March 19th, 2010 at 10:07 pm
Patrick:
Some civility please…
March 20th, 2010 at 3:29 am
PK,
Dude! I totally did to have a grandfather. He was married to my grandmother.
March 20th, 2010 at 8:32 am
“Some civility please…”
What? I kind of enjoy seeing a conservative’s head explode- figuratively speaking of course.
March 20th, 2010 at 12:42 pm
Dan O – it’s on you to produce your grandparents’ marriage license. We know how these liberal conspiracies work.
March 20th, 2010 at 5:05 pm
I’d also be interested in a discussion by Woody of how the cure-all of Pinochet’s “free market” Friedmanite ideology supposedly adopted in the mid-70s squares with Pinochet’s government nationalizing the banks and instituted a massive government jobs program when a financial crisis – similiar in some ways to ours – hit in 1982. Just curious.
I’d be interested in seeing why he defends a foreign government whose secret police detonated a car bomb in Washington, DC that resulted in the death of a US citizen and a foreign national granted asylum.
March 20th, 2010 at 5:45 pm
“I’d be interested in seeing why he defends a foreign government whose secret police detonated a car bomb in Washington, DC that resulted in the death of a US citizen and a foreign national granted asylum.”
That’s easy. Protecting free markets.
March 20th, 2010 at 6:01 pm
I’m not defending anything. I provided a source that credits a free market economy for making Chile the economic powerhouse in South America it is today.
But, as usual, liberals hate free markets so they try to smear everyone associated with them, rather than simply acknowledge that capitalism works better than Marxism that has slaughtered millions of innocent people, as in Russia and Cambodia.
You guys show me how stupid you are every day.
March 20th, 2010 at 6:18 pm
Hey Woody. A couple of things. The new conservative President of Chile is about to fulfill his campaign promise of granting a so called one time “March Bonus” to 4 million Chileans… it’s a one time $77 cash payment. Period. Translation: 1/4 of the Chilean population is so poor under the free enterprise system that this one time paltry and rather socialist hand out actually makes a difference in their lives.
And of course you are right about Marxist slaughter. Capitialist Britain, U.S., France, Italy, German and Japan put together last century slaughtered no more than 20-30 million… a pathetically wimpy figure.
March 20th, 2010 at 7:08 pm
,i>But, as usual, liberals hate free markets so they try to smear everyone associated with them, rather than simply acknowledge that capitalism works better than Marxism that has slaughtered millions of innocent people, as in Russia and Cambodia.
Woody, you and the WSJ know precious little about Pinochet’s economic policies and you revel in demonstrating your abysmal knowledge.
March 20th, 2010 at 7:15 pm
Actually, all you linked to was a wingnut opinion piece that parrots the WSJ editorial page, which has consistently been a source of pro-Pinochet puñetas.
In other words, you got nothing.
March 20th, 2010 at 10:14 pm
The March bonus was less than Bush’s stimulus payment.
I prefer the U.S. killing Nazis over Stalin killing farmers.