Success, Wealth and Achievement Creates Mean People ? Honor Bright?

em·pa·thy  
n.1. Identification with and understanding of another's situation, feelings, and motives. See Synonyms at pity.
2. The attribution of one's own feelings to an object.

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[en- + -pathy (translation of German Einfühlung)].The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition copyright ©2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2009. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.

Empathy is over-rated.  Some of the rottenest, self-absorbed, manipulative and tight with a buck people I know are  appointed  hogs with snouts in the public trough and each one is empathetic.  These ladies and gents have made careers at tax-payer expense spouting high-minded policies that will ensure their snot-lockers a place in the public bucket for years to come. The human heart can only be measured by the spike in  taxes imposed on the public and they can be heard to shout, "Keep Your Rosaries off my Ovaries." 


The empathetic public lungs bellow for or against these policy initiatives:

•  Living wage -- An artificially high wage that minimally benefits some individuals and creates unemployment for the rest
• The Common Good -- A phrase used by a small group ruling in the name of the majority in order to enact laws that abrogate an individual's rights
• Gun control -- Confiscation of legal firearms from law abiding citizens
• Universal health care -- Access to affordable health insurance
• Public assistance programs -- Government programs
• Plight of the homeless -- People who are victims of their own poor choices with the exception of the mentally incompetent
• Entitlement programs -- Taxpayer funded appropriations
• Taxes -- Legal plunder
• Social Security -- The largest Ponzi (pyramid) scheme in history.
• Tax cuts for the rich -- Tax cuts for the economy or A proven economic stimulus plan that produces 65% of all new jobs.
• The rich need to pay their fair share of taxes – Legal plunder where the top 10% of taxpayers pay 70% of all income taxes and the bottom 50% pay 3%.
• "Do you want to get rid of Social Security?" -- "Do you want to continue unchanged the largest Ponzi (pyramid) scheme in history which is going broke?  The same scheme that sent Bernie Madoff to jail?"
• It's free money (federal grant/stimulus money) -- Funds that are actually paid by taxpayers or are put on our children's credit card and have a limited life so whatever is started will have to be paid for in a few years by local and/or state taxes.
• Unions are for the workers -- Unions are for unions.  Just like corporations are for corporations and politicians are for politicians.  The goal is to increase the union's power not the worker's power. 
• Unions and the Government have increased the standard of living -- Businesses that invest in capital equipment increase the productivity of workers which lowers the price of their products and increases the standard of living. 
• Social Justice – The revocation of Natural Rights so government can use legal plunder to steal property and give it to those who have not earned it. 
• Fairness – using legal plunder to steal property from individuals who have earned it in order to give it to individuals who have not earned it.
• Spread the Wealth – using legal plunder to steal property from individuals who have earned it in order to give it to individuals who have not earned it.
• Shared Sacrifice – using legal plunder to steal property from individuals who have earned it in order to give it to individuals who have not earned it.
• It’s Free Money (Federal grants or stimulus money) – Funds that are actually paid by taxpayers or are put on our children's credit card and have a limited life so whatever is started will have to be paid for in a few years by local and/or state taxes.
• Price Gouging – Simple supply and demand in a scarce marketplace which results in the fairest distribution of goods and services.

 The New York Magazine's Lisa Miller has trotted out a 'scientific' study' that proves empathy only rests in the hearts of dedicated lay-abouts, bust-outs, slackers, mouth-breathing job-dodgers, or people who depend upon the public teat for self-esteem and biological sustenance:

 Wealth may give you a better brain. It may make you a more strategic thinker, a savvier planner. (Research has shown that the more a ­person is able to imagine himself in the future, the more cash he is likely to have in his savings account.) And the cognitive benefits of affluence may accrue incrementally, speculates Dovidio, so that very rich people have better brain functioning than moderately rich people. These hypotheses are at the untested frontier of the new science: “I think in ten years we’ll have a compelling story on this,” says Dacher Keltner, the psychologist who oversees the work of Piff and his colleagues. But already the outline is becoming clear. Princeton University psychologist Eldar Shafir has shown that in environments of abundance, people make better financial decisions—it’s not that rich people tend to be better educated and can afford better advice, but that people living paycheck to paycheck don’t have the mental space to make the smartest long-term moves. The efficiencies of the affluent brain may trigger the shutting down of what the researchers call “pro-social” impulses and lead people toward the kinds of behaviors that a hedge-fund manager I spoke to characterized as “ruthless.” “They’re more willing to hurt others in their quest for money,” he said. “When you look at people who’ve done exceptionally well, it tends to be the difficult people.”. . .  (Research shows that the rich tend to blame individuals for their own failure and likewise credit themselves for their own success, whereas those in the lower classes find explanations for inequality in circumstances and events outside their control.) But the truth is much more nuanced. Every American, rich and poor, bounces back and forth between these two ideals of self, calibrating ambitions and adjusting behaviors accordingly. Nearly half of Americans between 18 and 29 believe that it’s “likely” they’ll get rich, according to Gallup—in spite of all evidence to the contrary. Those who have already gotten wealthy wrestle openly and with real anguish over how to raise children who are productive, community-minded, and hardworking. Jamie Johnson, an heir to the Johnson & Johnson fortune, made a documentary in 2003 called Born Richand, since then, has become a kind of confessor to the anxious wealthy. “Everyone says, ‘I don’t want my kids to turn out to be the next Paris Hilton,’ ” says Johnson, “It’s weird. You know they want their kids to be superior. They want their kids’ lives to reflect the wealth and the position they have in society. But they don’t want their kids to be elitist and arrogant.”

Wealth may give you a better brain?  Wealth begets brains?  Have any of you ever met a really dumb rich person? Sure you have.  All the wealth in the world can not do a damn thing for the present generation of the Kennedy Clan.  Likewise, based on human observation of the likes of the late Old Teddy, Dr. Billy 'Landmine' Smith the acquitted rapist, Patrick, Joseph the Deuce or any other Kennedy males, I'd prefer my daughters marry tattooed, meth-addled Carnies than Kennedy males linked by DNA to Old Joe.

Wealth does not mean that you will become a louse of the first order, either.  Sts. Francis of Assisi, Mary Seton and Blessed Edmund Rice were all born to wealth and dedicated their lives to the poor.  Lord Bertrand Russell, a celebrated atheist and author of Principia Mathematica, was, not only a cat with nickels to toss around, but also a very nice man.

I have had the privilege of knowing $1%-ers here in the Midwest and the City of Chicago - the late Don Flynn, the courtly and thoughtful John Buck, Tom Owens, Andy McKenna, Frank Considine, Dick Landis, Dick Walsh, Patti Bidwill,  Mary Ellen 'Mel' Cooney, Dan Walsh, Ron Gidwitz, John Powers, Joe Power and especially the very sweet and heroic James O'Connor.  These ladies and gents, Christians and Jews, are great people and very generous.  They do not mouth platitudes or build monuments to themselves with words - they are doers and self-made accomplished tireless workers.  They do. The empathetic talk.

Wealth does not make one smart, pretty, or fun to be around.

My daughter and I witnessed US Congresswoman and professional empathy spout-er, Jan Schakowsky scream at a little Asian girl who was helping co-ordinate the sign-in of guests for Alexi Giannoulias when he ran for Illinois Treasurer - it seems that this political blowfish was not on the list that included my Alderman, Senator Barack Obama and bunch of others.  " You little idiot!," screamed Jan, " I am supposed to up there next to Obama! Don't you know who I am? I  can't believe that someone so stupid . . .IIII"  Empathy positively rang through the halls of Conrad Hilton that day. The little Asian volunteer fought back tears of embarassment.   I sure  loves me that there Empathy!

My daughter asked me, " Dad, what's wrong with that woman?"

All I could say was , " She's  Jan Schakowsky, sweetie."

The New York Magazine presents yet another scientific justification for Jan Schakowsky and other empathic public truffle snuffle-ers/

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

http://nymag.com/news/features/money-brain-2012-7/index4.html

http://drjohnlilly.com/politics/issues/liberalterminology

Elite Class Warriors Hang a Strawman in Effigy

"Cheers: Coach Buries a Grudge " (1984)

Tom: Let's hang him in effigy.
Ernie 'Coach' Pantusso: To hell with that. Let's hang him right here in Boston.


I am neither the sharpest bulb in the box, nor the brightest knife in the drawer, but know not to dance a fine jig in a steaming and teeming cow pasture, in order to pick up an ice cold gallon of moo juice. I step lightly and nimbly on the concrete streets of my neighborhood and go directly to the dairy case of County Fair Foods.

Call me crazy, call me lazy but $ 2.24 for a gallon of Kemp's 2% is preferable to spending untold hours with a trowel or sharp stick de-defecating my boondockers.

Likewise, I enjoy a paycheck that will clear upon deposit at Beverly Bank.

When 516 City workers (laborers, bus drivers, Streets and Sanitation workers, clerks and crossing guards) stand a solid chance of layoff, I know that fewer families will be able to afford Catholic school tuition. The economic mess that is the American economy hurts the people who Ivy League Academics, MSNBC, Editorial Boards, Brahmin Appointees like Forrest Claypool, and the DNC play at helping.

The Elites build many strawmen - Chicago Progressives like Toni Preckwinkle and Forrest Claypool stay employed by attacking powerless workers in their budgets, Machine Bosses ( try and find one), Skilled Trades Leaders and middle class helots. the mantra is always It is not our Policies that Fail, You People Don't Pay Enough!

Kids and glue-sniffers love that.

The Occupy Everything Movement nonsense and the toddler Obama Administration are fast and furiously Hell bent on stringing up A Strawman. The Strawman is the mythical Rich. This strawman is a caricature like 19th Century cartoonist and anti-Catholic bigot Thomas Nast's cartoons of plutocrats.

The plutocrats in fact are creating the Strawman that people on the Left are burning in effigy. The real Plutocrats are the trust funded, insulated activists who have colluded with Bill Clinton, Goldman Sachs, Fannie & Freddie Mae, Rev. Jesse Jackson, Barney Frank and Chris Todd to force the myth of Real Estate Mortgages as a Civil Right.

Here in Illinois ten or more years ago, smart legislators saw a problem: if a man had no or almost invisible income per his Income Tax returns, how could he afford a mortgage? Former Illinois State Representative Kevin Joyce pointed that problem out. Zip codes that were home to the most impoverished Illinois residents were a signal. Rev. Jesse Jackson tossed the race card in reply. Remember?

People qualified for mortgages without any discernible proof of an ability to meet those mortgage payments. Soon, homes purchased on a promise went into foreclosure and property values took its continuing nose dive. That mortgage bubble built by the Elites burst in 2008.

Plutocrats never tend to be pipe fitters, carpenters, millwrights, machinists, cops or firemen.

Plutocrats are Kennedys, DuPonts, Rockefellers, Buffets, Gates' and Oprahs. They are unaffected by the collapse of the economy and they are just fine with Class Warfare.

The Class Warfare targets today are Capitalists, whoever they might be; billionaires with jets; 'sFat Cats and Dry Cleaners.

The Middle Class was shrunk, not because of Bush, or Pipe fitters, it has shrunk because too many of us are not only charging into, but rolling happily through the endless cow pasture, in the mistaken notion that by milking organically fed cows, one can get an ice cold gallon of pasteurized 2% Milk of Amnesia.

Click my post title for Joel Kotkin's lucid and far less cranky presentation of this very topic

Class Warfare 2011 -An Inverted Fun-House Mirror of Genuine Class Warfare 1900

Class Warrior 2011 -Killing the Middle Class
Class Warrior 1900 -Giving Life to a Middle Class


Class Warfare? It might be. Rather, I see it as a masquerade of wanna-bees like porky film-maker and plutocrat Michael Moore doing a Big Bill Waywood imitation in Madison, Wisconsin last winter.

Movies need funding, especially documentary films. One must go where the money hides.

I am re-reading a wonderful book, Big Trouble: A Murder in a Small Western Town Sets Off a Struggle for the Soul of America published in 1998 and written by the late J. Anthony Lukas. Lukas wrote a brilliant study of the Boston Desegregation atrocity in the Boston Public School system - Common Ground in 1986. I read that book while I was teaching in Kankakee, IL. Bishop McNamara High School was beset by a down-turn in enrollment due to the closing of industries in the late 1970's. The school attempted an innovative restructure of tuition payment for struggling families - Negotiated Tuition. It worked for a couple of years and then the economy righted itself and Kankakee went from light industry to service industry. Common Ground studied three families - two white and one African American; two urban matriarchies ( one white and one African American) and one two-parent family of affluent suburban Liberals.

I was in Lake Forest, Il one day a year or so back and there was a street festival. A Huge banner proclaimed 'We Celebrate Diversity!' The streets seemed packed with Laplanders. Nary a dusky hued person celebrating diversity among the well-heeled caucasians.

Here is a review of that book -

As one who actually lived through these terrible, terrible times in Boston, this book is one of the only pieces of journalism that doesn't portray white, working class Boston as the bad, ugly racists, but rather shows that the children of Boston were used as pawns by well-heeled suburbanites and a lofty judge who walked away and then pointed the finger. It was always, always about class and not race and the whole busing debacle nearly ruined a great American city. Stopping the desegregation at the City limits was the biggest mistake ever made and the people of Boston simply refused to abide by it. Sure, people were accused of being racist and certainly some ugly things happened, but to act as though discrimination ended at the borders of Boston was ridiculous, which is now acknowledged. Hopefully the suburbs will not be let off the hook again.

There is one negative review that reads like an MSNBC commentary among the 21 Five Star ratings for the work.

Lukas, committed suicide shortly before Big Trouble was published. It is said that he set impossibly high standards for himself as a journalist. That is a problem that evades too many names on the Media mastheads these days.

Big Trouble weaves around the story of the assassination of former Idaho Governor Frank Steunenberg who had called in Federal troops to put down a strike at the Coeur d'Alene mining district in 1899.

A man named Orchard was arrested and charged with the crime. The Mining interests called in the Pinkertons and special agent James McPartland, the man who befriended the coal miners association known as the Molly Maguires and rigged their hangings, orchestrated to have Orchard placed on Death row without a trial.

In no times at all, following threats and bribes, McPartland and the Pinkertons obtained a 64 page confession by Orchard that included at least 17 other murders at the orders of the United Federation of Miners (UFM) a very radical union led by Marxist Bill (Big Bill) Haywood*. Haywood and two other union leaders were illegally extradited to Idaho from Colorado on forged papers - drafted by the energetic McPartland.

James McPartland was the G. Flint Taylor of his day. Jon Burge, the police officer tagged with hundreds and soon to be thousands of police torture incidents, required an energetic Class Warrior of post-racial age. For thirty years, G. Flint Taylor, like James McPartland the century before, has patiently and energetically shopped judges, journalists and juries and managed to have Burge convicted, not on torture, but perjury.

Lukas, in Big Trouble, painstakingly presents the facts about the last Turn-of-the-Century Class Warfare. At that time, there was virtually no middle class. There were owners and there were workers. In order to keep workers from the middle class, the Capitalists and Ruling Brahmin Class exercised power politics over the Laws and the people.

Today, the Ruling Class is evaporating the American Middle Class. The class warriors then and now face one another in a crazy-house mirror reflecting Hegelian power.

Like the Boston Desegregation fiasco - the ruling elites pitted black against white working classes and coated the narrative with the dismissive charge of racism. Southie Irish Catholic racists, like their ethnic counterparts in Chicago, New York, Philadelphia and Detroit are not worth considering. Very much like Tea Party people.

Lukas burst that balloon.

In 1904 there were very few African Americans living in Chicago. Some of those black skinned Americans lived next door to Irish, Lithuanian, Czech, German and Polish folks in the Stockyard region. In the summer of 1904 there was long and deadly strike by the Amalgamated Meat Cutters. You will find almost nothing about that strike on the Web these days. Companies were formed by people like Frank Curry of St. Louis to bring strikebreakers into cities where labor unrest erupted.

Upton Sinclair happened to be writing a story about the 1886 strike by the Knights of Labor in the Stockyards and he spent the early days of the summer of 1904 on the steps of black-listed Knight of Labor strike-leader John Joyce. That tale was never written. Upton Sinclair witnessed a huge strike himself and wrote about a Lithuanian meat-cutter who yelled to car loads of African Americans brought into Chicago by the likes of Curry as strike breakers -" It's not your skin! It's your Scabbing!"

Like McPartland, modern activists have succeeded in tagging Class War as meat and racism as its gravy. J. Anthony Lukas is not with us to make clear the issues and the personalities. The journolistas today operate according to a template provided by their benefactors.

White is Black and Black is Purple, if SEIU Mandarin Andy Stern says it is so.

Chicago cop Jon Burge tortured young black men 24 hours a day and seven days a week. Everyone knows that! If you do not know that fact you are hater, racist idiot.

Taxing billions-aires means taxing familes making $250,000.

Reading about a 1905 set-up to keep workers from attaining American middle class status makes sense of that same Class terminating the Middle Class. Warren Buffet will be fine. The husband and wife who use their college degrees and work long hours to gross $ 250,000 annually are in Big Trouble.

Click my post title and read Lukas's books.


* Big Bill Haywood went to the Soviet Union and worked for Lenin and later Joe Stalin, with whom he fell from grace. Big Bill died of alcoholism related maladies in a Moscow hosptial. Half of his ashes were scattered at Haymarket.

Pope Kiril Quinn - The Shoes of the Ninian Edwards

Kiril Lakota: [the shadow of the cross is on the Pope's empty chair during this exchange of dialog] Leone, how does a man ever know if his actions are for himself or for God?
Cardinal Leone: You don't know. You have a duty to act. But you have no right to expect approval, or even a successful outcome.
Kiril Lakota: So, in the end, my friend, we are alone?

The Shoes of the Fisherman

I had a great chat with veteran banker Steve Jordan, who worked in Boston, Singapore, New York and San Francisco for some of the leading banks in America. Mr. Jordan is disgusted by the destruction of banking in this country and most especially by the idiotic and gutless trend to nationalize our banks and lending institutions.

Steve Jordan reminded me of the novel by Australian Morris L. West - The Shoes of the Fisherman in which the Pope sells off all of the Vatican's assets to stop a World War sparked by famine in China.Pope Kiril I had been confined to a Soviet Gulag until he was named to replace the Pope. Jordan pointed out that this fictional Pope needed to do What Jesus Would Do, which makes for fine and inspirationally uplifting fiction, but bad economics and worse management -'What about the next Famine? Who's the next Vicar of Christ and what's he got left? Think Red China will buck up?' Nope.

Bankers quit being bankers and made themselves pawns to politicians - politicians are pawns to Programs and Programs come from Taxes. Taxes come from the Wealthier citizens and primarily from the Middle Class and also largely from businesses that pay the wages that can be taxed.

Here in Illinois, political semi-exile recluse, Governor Pat Quinn is playing Pope Kiril Quinn the First - filling the Shoes of Ninian Edwards 1826-1830( 1st Il.Guv). Ninian did one term - a full one though.

Here is Pope Quinn's Encyclical:

Quinn's proposal would raise the individual income tax rate from 3 percent to 4.5 percent and boost the corporate rate from 4.8 percent to 7.2 percent. At the same time, Quinn would shield lower-income families from the tax bite by increasing the personal exemption from the current $2,000 to $6,000. In all, the higher income taxes would generate about $3.1 billion.

He contended 5 million lower wage-earning residents would pay no increase in income taxes or get a tax cut due to the higher exemption.

Quinn also is considering doubling the $10 cost of a four-year driver's license, adding $20 to the $79 cost of a basic license plate fee and increasing vehicle title fees as part of his "Illinois Jobs Now!" proposal—a $26 billion public works program that he said would create 340,000 jobs over several years. The higher fees on motorists would fund $18.6 billion in transportation projects, including road repair and mass transit, and 10 percent of the new income-tax revenue would pay for school construction and unspecified "economic development" projects.

Additionally, the governor is backing a plan that would boost the current 98-cent per pack cigarette tax by 50 cents in the next budget year to help pay down a backlog of long-overdue bills from health-care providers to the poor. The tax could go up another 50 cents a pack the following year.

Quinn outlined his plans in a meeting Tuesday with Democratic lawmakers, who praised the new spirit of openness in contrast to their contentious budget battles with Blagojevich. Still, many lawmakers were warning that several of Quinn's plans were non-starters—including one concept which would deny cities and towns a share of new income-tax revenue.

This is Class Warfare - corporations will leave the State; Programs will bloat; More Taxes without Cuts. The Middle Class will bear more burden. Pope Quinn is not selling off State Assets to pay bills, meet debts, and cover expenses - that, Pope Quinn leaves to the Taxpayer -Pope Quinn loots the citizens and businesses that will leave Illinois.

In Morris L. West's novel the Bells Tolled for Joy - at noon today, Governor Quinn, the bells toll for Thee. Fiction and this Tax Scam are cousins.

McCain/Palin: Obama's Dreams of Class Warfare - He Fired the Opening Shot at the Debate

CNN - Obama second-string cheerleaders helped his Campaign Spin the Debate on Friday and craft an Obama Shot Heard Round the Nuanced Crowd!

Speaking about Friday's presidential debate, Obama accused McCain of not addressing working families.

"We talked about the economy for 40 minutes, and not once did Sen. McCain talk about the struggles that middle class families are facing every day," Obama said at a campaign event in Detroit, Michigan.

The economy took the lead in Friday night's presidential debate, as both candidates highlighted their plans to bring the United States out of what some are describing as the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.

McCain on Sunday brushed off Obama's latest line of attack, saying he has "bigger things to worry about."

"Who does he think I was talking about when I said 'people on Main Street'? Who did he think I was talking about, about the necessity of helping the American taxpayers and income -- and Americans who are out there working and trying to keep their jobs?" he said on ABC's "This Week."

http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/09/28/campaign.wrap/


Yep, Obama is all about the Middle Class, Mainstreet, Non-Arugula buying 'bitter and clinging Bible Toting and gun packing Middle Class Bubbas! Rubes with Union Cards- real ones

These are Obama's Words from Dreams of My Father ( clique my Post Title for more on Obama Class Warrior):

Our rage at the white world needed no object, he seemed to be telling me, no independent confirmation; it could be switched on and off at our pleasure.” (page 81);
j) “Following this maddening logic, the only thing you could choose as your own was withdrawal into a smaller and smaller coil of rage, until being black meant only the knowledge of your own powerlessness, of your own defeat. And the final irony: Should you refuse this defeat and lash out at your captors, they would have a name for that, too, a name that could cage you just as good. Paranoid. Militant. Violent. Nigger.” (page 85);
k) “Frank opened his eyes: ‘What I’m trying to tell you is, your grandma’s right to be scared. She’s at least as right as Stanley is. She understands that black people have a reason to hate. That’s just how it is. For your sake, I wish it were otherwise. But it’s not. So you might as well get used to it.’ ” (page 90);
l) “Understand something, boy. You’re not going to college to get educated. You’re going there to get trained. They’ll train you to want what you don’t need. They’ll train you to manipulate words so they don’t mean anything anymore.” (page 97);
m) “I had stumbled upon one of the well-kept secrets about black people: that most of us weren’t interested in revolt; that most of us were tired of thinking about race all the time; that if we preferred to keep to ourselves it was mainly because that was the easiest way to stop thinking about it, easier than spending all your time mad or trying to guess whatever it was that white folks were thinking about you.” (page 98);
n) “To avoid being mistaken for a sellout, I chose my friends carefully. The more politically active black students. The Chicanos. The Marxist professors and structural feminists and punk-rock performance poets.” (page 100);
o) “There was one particular passage in Trinity’s (Chicago’s Trinity United Church of Christ pastured by Reverend Wright) brochure that stood out…”A Disavowal of the Pursuit of Middleclassness,’ the heading read. ‘While it is permissible to chase “middleclassness” with all our might,’ the text stated, those blessed with the talent or good fortune (no mention of “hard work”) to achieve success in the American mainstream must avoid the ‘psychological entrapment of Black “middleclassness” that hypnotizes the successful brother or sister into believing they are better than the rest and teaches them to think in terms of “we” and “they” instead of “US”!’” (page 284);
p) “I took the opportunity to study these tourists as Auma and I sat down for lunch in the outdoor café of the New Stanley Hotel. They were everywhere – Germans, Japanese, British, Americans – taking pictures, hailing taxis, fending off street peddlers, many of them dressed in safari suites like extras on a movie set. In Hawaii, when we were still kids, my friends and I had laughed at tourists like these, with their sunburns and their pale, skinny legs, basking in the glow of our obvious superiority.” (page 312)

He ought to get look at my pasty, Mick gams! That would get him off of Arugula!

What a phoney! That is why Obama plays so well with Olbermann, Matthews, Brown, Maddow, Blitzer, and the whole gang of Middle Class hating elites.

John McCain: AP's Racist Poll- Plays The 'Cue Card!

"People would rather barbecue burgers with Barack Obama than with John McCain."


The 'Que Card gets Played in the ginned up ( Bumpy Face - n'cest pas?) Presidential Campaign. Does Associated Press need to further Balkanize American Voters?

O Tempora! O Argia B's Mumbo Sauce!

Click my post title for AP Poll that smacks of race baiting and Class Warfare - without the mopping sauce!

Empirically speaking, I could see John McCain nailing a greasy brown bag of fried 'listeners,' but I doubt very much that Barack Obama has tried this delicacy.

While many are still deciding who should be president, by 52 percent to 45 percent they would prefer having Obama than McCain to their summer cookout, according to an Associated Press-Yahoo News poll released Wednesday.

Men are about evenly divided between the two while women prefer Obama by 11 percentage points. Whites prefer McCain, minorities Obama. And Obama is a more popular guest with younger voters while McCain does best with the oldest.

Having Obama to a barbecue would be like a relaxed family gathering, while inviting McCain "would be more like a retirement party than something fun," said Wesley Welbourne, 38, a systems engineer from Washington, D.C.

Party label means a lot, with three-quarters of Democrats picking the Democrat Obama and the same number of Republicans picking McCain, a Republican. Independents are about evenly split.

"John and I would probably have a lot to talk about," said Republican Michael Mullen, 53, of Merrimac, Mass., like McCain a Navy veteran.

One in six people saying they'd vote for McCain prefer Obama as their barbecue guest; just one in 20 Obama backers would invite McCain.

The AP-Yahoo News survey of 1,759 adults was conducted online by Knowledge Networks from June 13-23 and had an overall margin of sampling error of plus or minus 2.3 percentage points. The margin of sampling error for subgroups was larger.

Another study conducted during the Primary suggests that perhaps racist stereotyping might be at the core of the Poll Conducted by AP.


Stereotype: black people love BBQ
So last month's poll - If you were stranded on a desert island with the presidential candidates and forced to eat someone to survive, who do you think would taste the best? I'm proud of how my site brings up a lot of conversation about race, the perception of fat people, and double entendre.

Case in point: gchat with gks

me: who did you vote for on my poll?
gks: barack obama
dark meat
tastes better
me: he doesn't have any fat
garry: lean cuts are better for you
me: not as delicious
and he's a smoker
garry: char grilled flavor
me: ha! good point
I voted for huckabee
garry: lol
me: then I realized you could read the poll in a really dirty way but it was too late to rephrase

http://anditwasawednesday.blogspot.com/2008/01/stereotype-black-people-love-bbq.html

Another study conducted by scholarly and poetic Byron Crawford points to the fact that Barbecue is a litmus test for white ( boring) and black ( FLAVA!) acceptability concerning the consumption of comestibles al fresco:

St. Louis Stories #7
While we're not as known for it as Memphis or Kansas City, St. Louis actually consumes more barbecue per capita than anywhere else in the country. It's a fact that I once saw on the infamous Food Network, before anybody goes questioning my statistics. Pretty much wherever you are, you're not that far from either a Super Smokers (former employer of yours truly) or its main competitor Bandanas.

Which is cool.

Up until I was like 15 or 16 I didn't really know shit about white people's barbecue. I had eaten a few rib dinners at places like Applebees, and especially those "riblets" things that used to be all you can eat back in the day, but I didn't really know shit about a pulled pork sandwich, which is like the main feature at white barbecue resturants.

Come to think of it, I might have had one or two of them from the KC Masterpiece restaurant in Creve Coeur, but there's a reason you never hear people talk about it anymore. In fact, it might not even still be there. But the main barbecue sandwich I was into at that point was the infamous rib tip sandwich from this place called C&K.

That's it pictured above via Maxim Online, which once did a feature on it, but you can't really see that in addition to the actual rib tips soaked in copious amounts of barbecue sauce and the oh, so necessary white bread, it also comes with a layer of potato salad in between the tips and the Wonder. The whole thing comes wrapped in a sheet of butcher's paper roughly the size of a Twister mat and is basically impossible to eat as a regular sandwich.

Needless to say, it's arguably the best thing you could possibly eat. Nullus.

But then a regular old cracka-ass cracka pulled pork sandwich is pretty dang good, too. In typical white people's barbecue fashion, it consists of nothing more than a handful of pulled pork shoulder on a hamburger bun - the idea being that if you put anything else on it, it might take away from the taste of the meat, which I've written about before. Some people, especially southerners, have been known to put slaw on them, which I tried once and found to be actually not a bad idea.

If there's an issue, it's that C&K is deep, deep down in the ghetto, far enough that it's really not worth going. Because it's nowhere near the highway, you run the risk of getting lost and getting yourself into some deep, deep shit. There are other black 'cue joints scattered about, but nobody really bothers with them, unless you're just really into snoots or some shit. White 'cue restaurants, on the other hand, are - like I said - literally all over the place.

Quod Erat Demonstrandum!

Let' s get beyond race! Remember Obama's speech in Philadelphia that made Chris 'Milky' Matthews pee his britches? The one that got Grannie tossed under the rolling and the parade of others now jacking up the bus to greater elevation via the body count?

Let's get beyond barbecue and eat it!