Our old friend David “thereisnospoon” Atkins is at it again:
Let’s get straight who is paying for whom
I’m no economic royalist, preaching about producers and parasites. I don’t much care. I believe that we’re all one big human species, and that every single human being on earth deserves basic dignity and economic protection.
But it’s very, very tiresome to watch a bunch of delusional narcissists taking urban tax dollars to pay for their rural infrastructure and safety nets (most SNAP recipients are white, remember) elect a bunch of jokers to Congress who prevent the people who actually pay the bills from solving big problems like climate change, healthcare, privacy, wealth inequality, poverty, and financial corruption. All while whining that “those people” in big cities are stealing their hard-earned munnee from Real ‘Murica.
A bunch of people in Texas and Dixie want to secede to shed liberal America from their more perfect union. Fine. Quietly, a lot of liberals are sharing the sentiment. If we as a nation can’t get started on solving our real problems, those voices are going to start growing much louder.
Sigh, he has so much rage, barely suppressed. David is definitely a stereotypical Vile Prog.
The first thing that jumped out at me about David’s handy-dandy little chart is the lack of any provenance or supporting data. David didn’t make the chart himself, I first saw it two days ago, floating around Twitter like a turd in a septic tank.
So who made it? What data is the chart based on? I’m guessing that David can’t answer that question.
The second thing that jumped out at me is that all those orange spots on the map are densely populated urban areas, while the blue-green areas are sparsely populated rural areas. I’m sure that fact is gonna skew the results a little bit.
The third thing I noticed is that Detroit and Minneapolis/St. Paul appear to be economic powerhouses, while Atlanta, New Orleans and Denver didn’t leave a mark.
There is an urban myth (literally) among the Vile Prog pseudo-intelligentsia that red states take in more in federal tax dollars than they pay out. This myth is never backed up with comprehensive data.
This myth allows Vile Progs to feel superior to their inbred rural redneck fellow-citizens, and also serves to rationalize their lust for power. Obviously, if those red-staters knew what was good for them they would agree with David and his fellow urbanite Vile Progs. But they have been misled by the Koch Brothers and FOX News.
Here’s the funny thing – there aren’t a lot of factories in urban areas anymore. There sure aren’t many farms either. Those economic power centers depend on the other half for survival. If the South seceded again, who would stop them? Most of the military bases are in red states, and red staters are overrepresented in the service. There sure aren’t a lot of over-privileged rich kids in the military.
The red states grow the food that feeds the cities. They mine the coal, drill the oil, drive the trucks, and cut the trees that supply the asphalt farms. The interstate highways run through their land. They have the water and the hydroelectric dams that produce the electricity that lights up Broadway.
Be careful what you wish for, David. You might get it.
Would someone else please post a link to this in @DavidOAtkins twitterfeed?
I would do it myself but he blocked me.
Done
Will this work ?
Perfecto!
How obtuse is David Atkins? He rails about “wealth inequality” in a post that defends it.
Newsflash: The feelthy rich live in urban/suburban areas – those economic power centers David was braggin’ about.
Are you following the conversation ? Just wondering if you can reply to him via moi ? His reply came instantly! Don’t any of you guys sleep in Cali ? 😉
How strange! Social schemes of the progs invariably entail the loss of “minor” constitutional rights guaranteed to others. Why is that?
I’m not saying that David Atkins is a 1%er – but he’s a helluva lot closer to the top than he is to the bottom.
You owe me a drink. He just called me a racist teabagger and said bye, guess I’m blocked too. 😀
I guess I should have warned you. He can’t handle anyone disagreeing with him.
I have a theory that he is really a thirteen year old girl.
ROFLMAO!
PMS 😆
🙂
“Discussing” things with Atkins is sorta like wrestling with a pig, yeah?
Pigs smell better.
Nevermind. I picked up 3 followers on that tweet. You still owe me a drink though 🙂
The areas of California that produce the food (Central and Imperial Valleys) are the same ones taking in the SNAP payments.
So another subject, agriculture, that he knows nothing about. He thinks all corn is canned or ethanol. He never heard of livestock feed, meal or oil. Does he know it is exported?
The real cash cow with corn is the renewable fuel law.
I would agree that it is in large areas. But other areas it is used for livestock feed or exported. Locally is a feed mill that processes every bit they can get their hands on for chicken feed. In the coastal bend of Texas it is exported with ports nearby.
Yeah, but as someone who owns 1/3 of a family farm in the Midwest, it’s the ethanol subsidy that really makes it profitable. We made steady money before it, but my net quadrupled the year it went into effect. It’s caused a real bubble in farmland prices in the Corn Belt, too.
We grow soybeans, too – which an obvious tofu-eater like Atkins ought to keep in mind ;-).
I saw a tweet the other day that mentioned those libs railing against Capitalism on their Apple Pro’s certainly know nothing about Capitalism 😉
Sort of what we noticed with the OWS crowd and their high tech equipment.
Scares me when an idiot basically agrees on an economic policy. Makes me wonder what I’m missing?
Looks like the team gold is the only medal she’ll get. She is just too far behind – even a perfect performance today wouldn’t do it.
I wonder if next Olympics the best skaters will think twice before joining the Team Events.
Plushenko is another one who might have gotten gold in indiv if he had matched his team perf.
I think they’re trying to duplicate the gymnasts who are given more opportunities to medal in all-around and individual events. I was happy to see the Team event and it’s really no more gruelling than their daily run throughs. For Olympians, it’s more of a head game anyhow. Ever since the USFSA allowed elite skaters have sponsors (when they found out they can slice off a piece of that pie for their coffers and “allow” the skaters stay “eligible”), the skaters have become celebrities and deal with the problems that comes with that. I miss the days when Dorothy Hamill’s family stayed in rest areas for her competitions. A lot’s changed with the sport and Olympics, not all good.
Speaking of, I hate hearing the USA Hockey Team called the next “miracle on ice”. It’s not, they’re professional NHL hockey players, not the scrappy college kids we had in 1980. The Chicago Blackhawks have about 10 of their players on their native country’s teams.
Honk!
I can’t even watch those events without crying. Because I am a really, really good ice skater who never even had a lesson, and one of my daughter is showing a lot of gymnastic promise, and I would LOVE to introduce her to the ice, but if she turned out to be good, I could not afford it…
To get to the top those girls spend years living away from home with their trainers. (Unless you are lucky enough to live really close to a training site). The trainers are expensive so you either have to be rich or have a sponsor.
Gymnastics is the same way.
Why shouldn’t skaters be able to cash in like other athletes? They practice hard for years to get to the top.
I have no problem with that. In the old days, the US athletes at the Olympics were the only true amateurs in the world. Governments sponsored the training and expenses of their athletes while we screamed not fair! But victories were sweeter too. I think the movie Cutting Edge is a good example (though fictional) of an extremely wealthy girl who’s Daddy bought her the best coaches and a private ice rink to go on to the Olympics.
Winter sports are a lot more expensive to train in too. For every American girl you see on the ice today, there are literally thousands of girls they defeated to get there.
Oh, the inhumanity!
TWSS
WPMAF again
Guess it’s Walker’s turn to be Palinized. As our official TCH “motto” goes, “Vote for the One They’re Most Afraid Of “.
I’ve seen the attacks on Ted Cruz by REPUBLICANS ! I think it was Sowell? Anyhow, the drift was Cruz is like Obama and Hitler (????), will say anything to get elected then probably do the opposite. The GOP’s going to destroy anyone connected to the tea party thinking they’ll go away? Ha.
Sarah is still being Palinized:
The article is so misleading I thought for a moment I had stumbled into Gawker or Salon.
Watch it there. My governor can take on your guvnor anyday. Remember he took on the unions and won the recall.
Won big too!! 😀
I’ll happily trade ya for my governor (Terry McAuliffe). Speak about baggage, the Virginia media covered his little butt for his sleazy “green” company dealings.
His job is to help Hillary in ’16. Other than that, the Dems don’t care what he does (or did).
I have read (some economics periodical) that the figures that those who wish to vilify specific parts of the country about the intake and outflow of federal tax dollars always include military spending. While military bases and defense contracting help local economies, it heavily skews the numbers to areas especially in the southern half of the country because the weather is more advantageous for military operations. I would happily send Fort Hood (214,968 acres) to say Massachusetts or Connecticut. If any state thinks they aren’t getting their fair share they can take some of the military bases sitting on prime real estate in the good weather states.
It’s even more than that. If you overlay the “inflow” states with “percentage of Federal lands” (not just military reservations), you’ll see a substantial overlap. The flyover states are poor because the wealthy coastal areas treat them like third-world colonies for resource extraction purposes.
Come to think of it, the notion of the Army holding live fire drills in Manhattan *does* have a certain appeal ;-).
I’d like to see the unedited video:
I’d also like to know who called the cops and what they said.
Didn’t we see this identical scene in 16…….. make that 22 movies?
…..and Obama’s drawing those blue lines on the slopes 😀
LOL! They keep crossing those Obama blue lines. You should tweet that
😀
As long as he doesn’t make yellow lines in the snow…………
Ugh, my response didn’t show up 😦
I see it.
If we were to suffer some kind of apocalypse, who would survive? While cities might be home to the most prestigious medical centers and educational institutions and have the centers for transfer and control of money, those are all functions that can easily be performed almost anywhere. Try growing enough food to support you and and your family if you live in Manhattan.
Recently read something about “21 days”. Don’t know how accurate it is but guessing 3 weeks without resupply could fundamentally change ones politics.
This is why I’ve always said that if push came to shove, TX would be sitting fairly pretty. Large military bases, seaports, fishery, oil and gas, farmland, timber, water. You know, shit one might need to have a productive society and protect it.
People who blather on about “economic activity” generally have no clue that a hell of a lot of that activity is not productive in the slightest. Passing out the welfare checks is part of “GDP” by their reckoning. It’s moving numbers around. When it comes to productive activity of tangible goods, red and rural states have the most.
Yep. Most of those “economic hubs” are chokepoints instead of portals, taking their vig off each commodity passing through.
Yeah. I’m not saying that the urbanized and blue areas have nothing. But if theoretically we had to break up the country tomorrow, and each area had to start over as an independent nation state, my money is on “Advantage: Red States”. California might be an exception: they have enough land mass and resources to make it if they only got their shit together.
CA’s problem IMHO is long term reliance on a generic Dem pol attitude that “what we miss the Feds will pick up”, which leads to sleazy governance. The naive GOP pols, OTOH, assume “everyone’s basically honest and eventually will do the right thing” so the farm is given away, year after year. Yes, there are exceptions. But.
If CA had to go it alone some of that might change. Would it be enough to make a difference? I don’t know. We have enough water, oil, food, raw materials and production capacity to take care of ourselves and Baja California, plus export the surplus to the rest of the world at a profit. Would be do it? Probably not.
Hence my “IF they got their shit together” qualification. You guys do have the raw goods, energy, farmland, etc, which many blue states don’t. The will to use them profitably is another matter. Of course, in an “apocalypse” scenario, that might change rather quickly, one would think. 😉
California has resources we refuse to use. All our farmland is gonna be worthless if we divert the water to saving baitfish.
If the progs had their way we would lose our cattle, dairy, poultry and grapes to political correctness, and many of our current crops would get eaten by bugs when the use of pesticides was banned. There would be no mining, oil refining, oil drilling or lumber industries. No military bases or nuclear energy. No fishing or hunting.
The survivors of the famines and riots would flood out to Arizona and Texas like Okies flooded in during the Dust Bowl.
Chicago has a great deal of “financial” activities in part due to its commodites exchange and reated businesses. But what are commodities re “economic” activities. Maybe its them thar things from the sticks that are loaded onto the massive land, sea, and air transports in Chicago.
Exactly. The blue hubs do indeed have “more” in the current system. But where they are laughable is in postulating that if we broke up the country, their prosperity would save them. Um, no, your prosperity is built on leveraging the stuff that dumb flyover states produce, morons. If the physically productive states go away, your “prosperity” goes bye-bye.
VA is an interesting case. Problems with proximity to DC area for non productive urban in the north. But there’s lots of farmland, lots of rural, lots of independent leave me alone types, mountains, oil, gas, coal, rivers, the atlantic, fishing community, etc.. I’ll likely stick with my temperate rainforest, mini farm, and surrounding farms. Sometimes it’s good to be in the sticks.
Gorgeous. I love the whole blueridge and rolling foothills areas of the eastern seaboard. Totally different culture and feel that the eastern parts of those same states.
Definitely. I like the tidewater area too, and have boatloads of family there. But there’s something special about the blueridge.
The Whiskey Jar for when you’re thirsty:
http://www.americanthinker.com/2014/02/the_curse_of_the_sanctimonious_class.html
interesting article
I want it MY way and nothing else matters
Again with the 13 year olds?
Figured out what I did wrong on the tweet, copied Sweet’s timestamp, not mine, which should show up in my next attempt to respond to her tweeties….
Ugh. Fallon continues to be a POTUS and FLOTUS fanboy.
That will catch up to his ratings “high” this week. We old farts want our politicians bashed in a fair and balanced way 😀
just because it made me smile
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2014/02/20/stolen-157-chevrolet-bel-air-returned-to-california-owner-after-30-years/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+foxnews%2Fnational+%28Internal+-+US+Latest+-+Text%29
http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2014/02/salon-writer-white-thuggery-marches-on-mowing-down-black-folks-time-for-violent-response/
could this be considered inciting violence?
http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/ukraine-clashes-kill-at-least-70-on-deadliest-day-of-protests-1.2544349
Kiev truce collapses
http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2014/02/19/nbc-depicts-married-23-year-old-olympian-as-living-an-alternative-lifestyle/
things sure have changed
I wish someone would tell this to all the twenty three and twenty four year olds (friends of my daughter) who are getting married this June so I didn’t have to buy so many wedding gifts or go to the showers. NBC is FOS.
It’s only an alternative lifestyle if you’re straight. 😉
http://weaselzippers.us/175275-video-surfaces-of-dem-congressional-candidate-calling-for-a-barack-obama-dynasty/
now this is a terrifying thought
http://dailycaller.com/2014/02/19/going-rogue-idaho-wants-to-nullify-all-epa-regulations/
one state only 49 more to go
http://nypost.com/2014/02/18/jpmorgan-bankers-suicide-is-3rd-mysterious-death-for-company/
another banker dead. something is going on. do not think I need a tinfoil hat
http://www.bizpacreview.com/2014/02/20/obamas-are-abusing-perks-of-public-office-wh-in-cover-up-mode-says-fitton-101945
we’re having fun fun fun on OPM
Has given up on “legacy”; now working on “gluttony”.
Always they pull out the more white people get SNAP. How about some stats? Some basic math? How many more white people in the country. By per cent who gets more? New York State Supreme Court ruled Suffolk County on Long Island also takes a hit from the emergency housing and long term rehab/half-way housing farmed out from the city. Once there application is made for assistance in the county even if they have never resided there. People show up all the time dead of winter with hefty bags filled with clothes. NO where else to put them so the very expensive in season hotels are used. Children are also provided with transportation to school and as there is often no kitchen the food benefit is increased I had a temp job where I had to organize the hard copies and assist in locating housing. Racially pretty evenly split but way more white women than black and most from the city.
Lost a sentence in there. NYSC ruled emergency housing must be provided regardless of county of residence.
Under those rules thinking Rancho Mirage in the fall and Tahoe in the spring might be a great circuit.
I’m about to leave on an errand but have to stay & watch Yulia.
I lost my window of errand opportunity to watch the ladies live. What a crazy finish, but all winners in my heart. Just getting to the Olympics is such an amazing accomplishment. Unfortunately the US coverage regards Silver as the first loser 😦
They are all amazing skaters.
http://www.tpnn.com/2014/02/20/sarah-palin-endorses-katrina-pierson-first-endorsement-of-2014/
how soon before the knives come out?
https://crayfisher.wordpress.com/2014/02/20/this-week-in-spoonys-world/#comment-192634
Disaster! Whetstone supply dried up on east coast. What will they do? What will they do?
Looks like an act from Miley’s Bangerz Tour 😉
LOLz, Fox actually tweeted that !? Love it.
ROFL
Speaking of zombie apocalypses and what type societies will survive, this looks kind of….. yummy.
When your entire political theory is built around “societal progress”, and leveraging people who are dissatisfied, the dissatisfactions left to leverage become more and more nonsensical.
Seriously, the community organizing and protesting and “change” model is a useful model for responding to specific large injustices that warrant it from time to time.
But when it becomes your governing model, your whole approach to society, then chaos and breakdown is as inevitable as the sunrise. No society can encompass constant change, constant being fucked with and prodded and poked to this or that outrage. It’s insanity.
It invariably leads to massive resistance, which when suppressed leads to even stronger and more violent resistance, which when suppressed leads to insurrection and full scale revolt. Does no sane person currently in power not see this?
Didn’t Connecticut just go through this with their new law on retroactive gun registration? Creating 185,000 felons overnight? Good luck with enforcing that!
“progress” is a code word for what Lenin & Marx called “revolution”
The revolution never ends.
If you oppose it you are counter-revolutionary.
Yep. Look, I’m a lifelong observer of human nature and history. These idiots act like they never heard of backlash. I’m not saying here that any given backlash will be good and moral. I’m not making any value judgement at all. I’m just saying that human beings are the same as they ever were, backlash WILL happen, and chances are it WILL be ugly. When a population has to bend over backwards further and further and further for whatever the interest-group-du-jour is, they snap back viciously when they do snap back.
You are already seeing it in the outright ugly misogyny of (some, not all) of the manosphere. People need to learn that backing other people into corners, then harrassing them in those corners to which they have retreated (for men that would be gaming, comics, etc), is a bad, bad idea. But of course, by pointing out the inevitability of the backlash, I am obviously endorsing whatever form it takes. (**eyeroll**)
Progressives never heard of the concept of “quit while you’re ahead.” It sinks the compulsive gambler, every time. They seem to have a similar psychology.
There’s even a book “Backlash” about the very topic, from quite a while back. That was from earlier pushing males too far. We’re in the second wave of that, and I suspect it will be bigger.
Politically, I pretty much anymore just engage the various groups, try to understand the zeitgeist, try to stand back and see where the fault lines are forming. And, they are forming, if one is paying attention. Especially among young people. And young people, from what I’m seeing, are divided between total Statist sycophants, those who don’t care at all (nihilists) and those who have various RADICAL ideas to trash the whole shebang and start over. It’s like watching a slow motion train wreck, because I think we are past the point of synthesis of all this. It’s going to be a fight to the death.
Y’all don’t mind me. I’m in my cynical “we’re doomed” mode again. 😉
Better that than to undergo a case of the vapors.
Most of what is happening in world foreign policy and economics, in a nutshell:
It might help if the US actually had a policy. But by definition the word includes thinking ahead, and which silly goose in DC will waste time doing that?
The USA/EU has been playing ineffective wack-a-mole in geopolitics for awhile, and it goes all the way back to the financial crisis of 2008. They made the choice to bail out and cover up, and everything since has been an exercise in trying to prop up what they bailed out, which is still sick, unhealthy, and fragile as fuck. The West has ZERO manuevering room anymore on the world stage, because they are constrained by not upsetting the economic house of cards. They have to sell Treasuries, or abruptly hit a wall.
Russia knows this, as does China. They each have their own problems, but one thing they DO have is more ability to act without raining economic destruction on their own countries.
😀
OT: this baby photo with captions seems to be going viral:
http://happyplace.someecards.com/29431/a-dad-posted-a-picture-of-his-baby-on-facebook-and-then-his-friend-turned-it-into-a-huge-new-meme
Too funny!
Does any TCHer have to time to link to Don Surber’s essay today on Myths? It’s dynamite but I’m OOH.
http://weaselzippers.us/175396-obama-regime-program-placing-government-monitors-in-americas-newsrooms-being-run-by-dem-rep-james-clyburns-daughter/
isn’t this just peachy
http://weaselzippers.us/175350-senate-democrats-hey-why-didnt-someone-tell-us-obamacare-would-cut-medicare/
if only they knew how to read something other then a menu at a expensive DC eatery