Rangelife

South Carolina Republican leaders really respect those money-hoarding Jews

"Who do you think you are, attacking South Carolina's esteemed US Senator Jim DeMint (R), just because he's letting all the other states hoard federal earmarks at our expense? Don't you get it? How can we pound the ridiculousness of your critique into your little snail-brain?"

How about with a carefully-worded op-ed?

DeMint Watches Out for Us All

Recently your newspaper published a letter from state Rep. Bakari Sellers attacking U.S. Sen. Jim DeMint and his opposition to congressional earmarks.

There is a saying that the Jews who are wealthy got that way not by watching dollars, but instead by taking care of the pennies and the dollars taking care of themselves. By not using earmarks to fund projects for South Carolina and instead using actual bills, DeMint is watching our nation’s pennies and trying to preserve our country’s wealth and our economy’s viability to give all an opportunity to succeed.

Jim DeMint is like a Jew! Hey, what are you getting upset about it? It's in a good way. Everyone knows that Jews get rich by being cheap about the little things. C'mon, it's a saying! Some jackass once said something about "being penny-wise and pound-foolish," but that guy obviously knew nothing about crafty Jew mercantilism.

Louis C.K. did a clever bit years ago about how awesome it would be if stereotypes were more positive. Like, "You know why I love Chinese people? Because they're made out of candy. And Puerto Ricans can fly!"

The late defensive end Reggie White also once shocked the Wisconsin state house by giving a speech in which he "praised" races and ethnicities for their shared characteristics, like "Hispanics are gifted in family structure, and you can see a Hispanic person, and they can put 20, 30 people in one home."

And let's not forget the former president of the University of Maine, who claimed, shockingly, that blacks were better basketball and football players than whites because the "muscle structure of the black athlete typically is more suited for certain positions." And then there's Jimmy the Greek. 

So let's give South Carolina GOP county chairmen James Ulmer and Edwin Merwin (ha ha ha) a break or two. How many of the 40,000 white people in their counties have ever even been to shul?

Racists love Twitter

Why is Twitter awesome? It's been repeatedly described as the Internet's central nervous system, but sometimes it's more like its consciousness. It's where people just let it all hang out, no filter.

For example, last night on a television show a celebrity who happens to be African-American committed an ungraceful act that was disrespectful to a blond white girl. Good thing America is post-racial now:

WTF is wrong with Clarence Thomas?

Whew! The Supreme Court has declined to review the inane accusations about Obama's citizenship.

And who was the Supreme Court justice circulating a petition for consideration?

Jesus, Clarence. Just cut the crap and join the Klan already.

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And in other racial news, say "Yello!" to Blackbird, the browser for African Americans.

The browser displays a pre-set news ticker on top, pulls in news content from Google News that might be of interest to African-Americans, and features a section with video content from online TV sites like UptownLiveTV, NSNewsTV, DigitalSoulTV and ComedyBanksTV. Other than that, there’s a lot of integration with the most popular social networks, a ‘Black Search’, preset ‘Black Bookmarks’, etc.

Sounds kinda limiting and useless, like ordering a "Black DirecTV" or an "Black iPhone," but who am I to judge? Nobody, that's who!

Not sharing this sentiment is the TechCruch commenting community, some of whom are just outraged.

So, when is the white version coming?

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if i made a WET channel or a WHITEBIRD browser id be considered racist.

white man = less rights then all.

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I’m sorry, but it’s things like this that perpetuate racism. How can the black community demand equality then turn around and build a web browser just for themselves? This is ridiculous…

Whoa there! Next thing you know they'll be producing TV channels for Hispanics, or whole websites just for Christians. Why don't minorities just like the same stuff the rest of us do?

Another reason why an Obama victory will be sweeeet

Classy gentleman spotted in exurban Atlanta.

Let's start with a little story from the utterly indispensible 538.com Electoral Projection Blog:

So a canvasser goes to a woman's door in Washington, Pennsylvania. Knocks. Woman answers. Knocker asks who she's planning to vote for. She isn't sure, has to ask her husband who she's voting for. Husband is off in another room watching some game. Canvasser hears him yell back, "We're votin' for the n***er!"

Woman turns back to canvasser, and says brightly and matter of factly: "We're voting for the n***er."

In this economy, racism is officially a luxury.

If that's the case, then the hardest of the hardcore bigots may be living their worst nightmare come November 5th. And that would be so phenomenal.

In fact, I'm going import a few cases of my favorite Japanese beverage for them. Enjoy your horrible new reality, mouthbreathers!

Pan-Racial Bling, and Martin Scorcese's Blow for the Supply-Siders

Do black people spend too much of their money on shiny crap?

Bill Cosby thinks so. $200 for sneakers? No problem. $200 for SAT prep? Not this month.

But something about the Coz's reasoning always bugged me. Maybe it was because my high school was almost evenly split among blacks, whites, and Hispanics, and every morning in the student parking lot, you could see each community displaying their immense wealth in their own fabulous ways.

Thorstein Veblen had the thought to coin this phenomenon "conspicuous consumption," 100 years before mainstream hip-hop turned stupid and corrupt.

Thankfully, we have modern research methods to suss out the truth: According to some fancy professors with a lot of books and computers and stuff, blacks and Hispanics do spend a higher percentage of their incomes on glitter:

Blacks and Hispanics spend up to 30% more than whites of comparable income on visible goods like clothing, cars and jewelry, the researchers found... To do that, they spent less on almost all other categories except housing, and they saved less.

Visible items are those others can see when one is in public. The researchers found that blacks and Hispanics do not spend more than whites on items, such as home furnishings, that could serve as status symbols but aren't seen by as many people.

But... wait for it... there's a twist!

While Roussanov and his colleagues acknowledge that cultural preferences may play a role in these spending choices, they tested that theory by subdividing blacks, Hispanics and whites by income level and state of residence. This caused the differences in spending patterns to disappear. What really matters, Roussanov, Charles and Hurst found, is not one's race but one's economic situation relative to the "reference group" -- people in the immediate community.

Poor blacks and poor whites both spend more on visible goods if they live in poor communities, because such spending gives them more status relative to others in the community. But poor blacks and poor whites living among wealthier people do not devote extra portions of income to visible expenditures, since they are too far behind to get more status from the extra spending they can afford...

Blacks and whites appear to have different spending habits only because blacks tend to be concentrated in poor communities more than whites, Roussanov says.

So there you have it. Poor people who live among other poor people spend more on looking not-poor. And it's still nearly impossible for poor communities to get wealthier when it's dedicating so much of its income to useless items of ethereal value. So Cosby's not wrong. He's just grumpy.

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Now here's a question for the gated community across town. Which movie has contributed the most wealth to America? If you're a supply-sider, you'd have to say Taxi Driver.

Follow this thread: Scorcese makes Taxi Driver, which inspires John Hinckley to shoot Ronald Reagan to impress Jodie Foster. Reagan's personal popularity skyrockets, cowing the Congressional Democratic majority from stopping Reagan's tax cuts. The resulting deficit spending saves the American economy and leads to 25 years of prosperity.

I always wondered what right-wing economists talked about when they were stoned. Except for the supply siders' premise that we're still enjoying the fruits of the Reagan Revolution (we're always on the right side of the Laffer curve, aren't we, you soulless rich assholes?), it's an interesting answer to the question.

Now if we can take the radical action required to prevent utter catastrophe, we could bestow similar credit to An Inconvenient Truth.

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Finally, if you have Showtime, you have no excuse for failing to watch This American Life. Holy crap, is it good.