Last Call For 40 Acres And A Moose Lady

Sarah Palin bravely compares the national debt to slavery because they're totally the same when your brain has frostbite.

In Iowa, Sarah Palin compared the federal debt she says shackles Americans to slavery.

The government, like a slick marketer, seductively offers “free” services, said Palin, a conservative provocateur and former vice presidential candidate who makes occasional, high-profile trips to politically-important Iowa.

“Our free stuff today is being paid for by taking money from our children and borrowing from China,” she said at the Iowa Faith & Freedom Coalition's fall fundraiser at the State Fairgrounds Saturday night. “When that money comes due – and this isn’t racist, but it’ll be like slavery when that note is due. We are going to beholden to the foreign master.”

Cause what's a little slavery comparison that smacks of anti-Chinese racism between friends?

She said told the Iowans, who have the ear of presidential candidates, that they reflect what’s good about America. "You’re unpretentious, hardworking, humble, very candid. You tell it like it is and you’ll tell a politician exactly what it is that you’re thinking," she said.

Conservatism, she said, is partly about “moving the poor and the underemployed out of poverty and out from the shackles of dependency on government.”

“We’re not wards of the state but free men and women who can live good and productive lives without D.C.’s appointed best and brightest telling us what to do,” she said.

To recap, long-time government employee is telling everyone that government is evil, so vote for these people who promise not to govern to run your government.  This advice coming from Gov. Quitty McHalfterm, who couldn't handle running Alaska.  Sure, you can trust her judgment!

The Next Battle For Our Veterans

Just a reminder this Veterans Day that the last decade has not been particularly kind to our men and women coming home from overseas or from stateside service, and that they face serious economic issues when transitioning back to civilian life.  Bryce Covert at Think Progress recaps the new battles our vets now face:

1. Unemployment: While all veterans currently have an unemployment rate of 6.9 percent compared to the national average of 7.3 percent, recent vets are clearly having a tough time getting a job. Those serving since September 2001 to the present have a rate of 10 percent, meaning 246,000 recent vets are out of work, a figure that has risen by 37,000 since last year. Recent female vets also have a higher rate than male ones, 11.6 percent compared to 9.6. Recent vets are also more likely to have a service-related disability than past periods — 28 percent versus 14 percent of all veterans — and of those, around 70 percent were in the workforce, compared to 87 percent of those without disabilities. While the unemployment rate for returning vets has been declining, the challenges they have faced in returning to the civilian workforce have been devastating and may be linked to higher suicide rates.

2. Poverty: In 2010, more than 986,000 veterans under age 64 had been in poverty during the previous year. Their exposure to poverty makes the safety net all the more crucial for veterans: One in five households that relies on the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) has a veteran in it, and they also rely on food stamps from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). That’s why the recent automatic SNAP cut is impacting about 900,000 veterans. LIHEAP is on the sequestration chopping block, while food stamps are likely to be cut even further during negotiations over the farm bill.

3. Homelessness: Veterans are disproportionately likely to experience homelessness. While they make up 7 percent of the general population, they are 13 percent of adults who are homeless. In a recent survey of homeless people in San Francisco, more than a quarter had served in the military, and on a given night in 2012, the Department of Housing and Urban Development estimates that over 62,000 veterans were without a home. While overall homeless vets tend to be heavily male, female veterans make up the fastest growing segment of the homeless population.

4. Mortgage problems: Foreclosure rates among members of the military have been very high since the crash in 2008, with more than 20,000 active-duty veterans and reservists with government-sponsored mortgages losing their homes in 2010. That figure was up 32 percent from 2008 and was the largest loss since 2003. Worse, up to 5,000 active members of the military may have been improperly foreclosed on thanks to robosigning and falsified paperwork and others were overcharged on their mortgages. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is on the case in protecting veterans, and President Obama announced a plan to address improper foreclosures in early 2012 that had a particular emphasis on helping military veterans.

America's veterans deserve better.  We asked them to sacrifice for our country and then we turned our backs on them.  While we're celebrating what it means to have served, let's remember that the contract with our country goes both ways, and that we as taxpayers need to return that favor.

It's Always About Power

What better way to signal you don't agree with a meeting of gun control activists in Dallas than gathering outside the meeting point, ready to ambush them with your open-carry firearms in order to terrorize the entire group?

On Saturday, nearly 40 armed men, women, and children waited outside a Dallas, Texas area restaurant to protest a membership meeting for the state chapter of Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, a gun safety advocacy group formed in the aftermath of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting.

According to a spokeswoman for Moms Demand Action (MDA), the moms were inside the Blue Mesa Grill when members of Open Carry Texas (OCT) — an open carry advocacy group — “pull[ed] up in the parking lot and start[ed] getting guns out of their trunks.” The group then waited in the parking lot for the four MDA members to come out. The spokeswoman said that the restaurant manager did not want to call 911, for fear of “inciting a riot” and waited for the gun advocates to leave. The group moved to a nearby Hooters after approximately two hours.

MDA later released a statement calling OCT “gun bullies” who “disagree[d] with our goal of changing America’s gun laws and policies to protect our children and families.” The statement added that the members and restaurant customers were “terrified by what appeared to be an armed ambush.” A member of OCT responded by tweeting, “I guess I’m a #gunbullies #Comeandtakeit.”

This is not the first time that gun advocates have rallied at MDA events. In March, a group of armed men crashed a MDA gun-control rally in Indianapolis. Other gun advocate groups will hold rallies this upcoming December 14th, the anniversary date of the Sandy Hook shooting. 

This is all about power, like most bullying stories.  The message from OCT is simple: if you dare to hold a public meeting about gun control in the state, you're going to be harassed by a platoon of armed "concerned citizens".  That's not a recipe for disaster or anything, right?




I wonder what the reaction of police would have been if all these "responsible gun owners" had been, you know, black or Latino.  Probably "Obama's Thug Army!11!!" all over Breitbart and Drudge, how there were now "roving gangs of Obama New Black Panther thugs" terrorizing the good white people of Texas, and Obama's DHS is clearly arming black people for a national uprising against Whitey.

40 white guys with guns in a parking lot?  Open carry protest because FREEDOM and who needs the government anyway?  40 black guys with guns in a parking lot?  They'd all have been killed and the government couldn't have gotten there fast enough to take care of the situation, and by "take care of" I mean shoot all the obvious dark-skinned terrorists.

So yes, this was domestic terrorism.  This was the response to say "Our second amendment right to bear arms beat your first amendment freedom of peaceful assembly rights because we have the guns, so screw you."  Also, the fact that we had multiple men with guns versus four unarmed women in a restaurant shouldn't be lost on anyone.

It's always about power with bullies.

[UPDATE]  As the Rumproast crew reminds us, Texas is NOT an open carry state for handguns, so some of these assholes were openly breaking the law on top of everything else.  So yes, everything in the above three paragraphs goes triple in that case.

StupidiNews, Veteran's Day Edition!

• US Marines are bringing in emergency aid to the Philippines to help survivors of Super Typhoon Haiyan, government officials are now saying the death toll could be 10,000 or more.
• Some 40 years after the end of the Vietnam War, some US veterans are returning to the country to volunteer or just to revisit, tourism is at an all-time high.
• Congress is moving ahead with a Senate vote to rewrite the US military's sexual assault policy as early as this week, ahead of Pentagon recommendations.
• The US Navy has turned over the nation's first supercarrier to be scrapped, the USS Forrestal was launched in 1954 and its decommissioning cost: $2 billion.
• The Navy is also looking into new coveralls that don't burn nearly as much when they catch on fire, in a relief to sailors everywhere.