A Blog Version Of The Inside Of My Head. The place where politics, film, the media, music, pop culture, and random topics collide in an orgy of neo-philisophical randomness that would make your mother scream.
I've met two Census workers in my neighborhood this month and both were very polite, not at all intrusive, and were generally nice people. I didn't feel threatened, like my personal liberties were be infringed upon, and the encounters left me with a sense that conservatives have really hyped these people up to be beasts to be feared.
In response to inquiries by Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.), Census Director Robert Groves said the bureau’s temporary workers knocking on doors to collect information have faced 29 threats involving a gun, four robberies and three instances of being held against their will or carjacked.
Bureau officials said the overall pattern and types of incidents are similar to the 2000 census, but cautioned this year’s figures are already much higher than ten years ago and include a mix of news accounts and formal reports to the bureau’s safety office.
The later paragraph is going to give conservatives somewhat of an "out" when they are faced with the task of responding to information regarding Census workers being attacked. However, the level of hatred towards Census workers by the likes of Glenn Beck, Michelle Bachman, and Michelle Malkin leads me to believe that they won't be talking about reports of these attacks, as they have - in more ways than one - invited them.
- Looks like one of the leaders of the Republican party isn't entirely pleased with Rand Paul's performance. Mitch McConnell, Republican minority leader and Senator from Kentucky, is taking on Rand Paul on his home turf. This is going to get even more interesting the closer we get to November.
- Isn't it convenient when conservatives at Fox"News" continually use the "technical error" excuse? They are at it again after a video clip of Obama giving a commencement speech at West Point was used online and the applause was strangely absent. I guess that "zero tolerance" policy for these types of "mistakes" isn't working out so well.
- Looks like someone took Erick Erickson's "shotgun" threat to heart, only she ended up pulling it on the cops too. So are we going to stop allowing conservatives to claim that there is no violent actions be perpetrated by the Tea Baggers?
- Conservatives and Fox"News" are practically wetting their collective Depends in trying to claim that the Obama administration isn't doing anything about the Gulf oil spill. A Republican Congressman from Louisiana recently took after the President on the House floor in a seriously misleading tirade. The reality that every conservative in America is missing is that the government is actually doing a lot.
- There really is no Godwin's Law within the conservative realm. And with DADT finally on the chopping block, conservatives are all in when it comes to discussing the Nazis, gays, and the military.
- After Rand Paul's admission that he thinks that private businesses should be able to discriminate on the basis of race, and the rightfully ensuing media coverage, it appears that there is a shake-up within his campaign to try and find some people that will help control the message and perhaps shield Paul from any more justifiable criticism. The trouble with this new campaign structure is that one of the key players on Rand's team was the man that defended Ron Paul for taking donations from neo-Nazis.
Seems that Glenn Beck might be having a Census worker coming to visit his home.
What does Beck think is a "Constitutionally acceptable" question?
I filled out my 2010 Census and didn't feel that my privacy, my rights, had been infringed upon. I even filled out the part telling the Census Bureau I was "white" ( GASP! )
So what happens when a person, regardless of political stripe, doesn't completely fill out their Census form? A Census taker is likely to come to your house to ask you the remaining questions. And guess what, that costs money - taxpayer money. Glenn Beck isn't the only one who's causing this money to be spent.
The congressman refused to answer questions about the sex and age of occupants, ancestry, or whether he lives in a rental or owns. “That’s none of their business,” Broun said in a recent phone interview.
“The Constitution requires the federal government to count the number of people in this country every 10 years,” the congressman said. “It doesn’t require them to ask a lot of personal information. People are very concerned about an invasion of privacy, and I have those same concerns.”
The outrage and paranoia from people like Broun and Beck doesn't seem to be resonating with their base like they had hoped.
Reps. Michele Bachmann (MN) and Ron Paul (TX) have also said that they would be answering only how many people live in their household. Luckily, it doesn’t seem that many people are taking the conservatives’ advice so far. Census director Robert Groves said that so far, he hasn’t seen any evidence of a large-scale boycott of the Census; just “1 or 2 percent of the 10-question forms returned so far have been incomplete.”
We all should know by now that not completely filling out your Census or ignoring it all together is not only illegal, but detrimental to receiving Federal funding for a vast array of needs your state/district/city may have. There could even be loss of Congressional seats.
So not that Beck and company have only partially filled out their Census, and will likely have a Census take come to their home, I wonder what they are going to say once they have been paid a visit. I don't think Beck would go so far as to shoot at somebody, but he'll likely fabricate some elaborate conspiracy that this person was doing "surveillance" of his home. Guess we'll just have to wait and see.
That's precisely what Erickson's not so carefully planned spin is on this - the good old "context" argument.
In response to criticism, CNN's Erick Erickson is claiming that liberals are "misconstruing" his remark about pulling out a shotgun if the government tries to arrest him for not filling out the American Community Survey. Erickson also lashed out at "people" who "linger on every word I say" by stating: "You people are nuts. Absolute nuts. Where do you get off misconstruing that I'm agitating for killing Census workers when you people are out there advocating for the killing of the unborn on a regular basis. You have no shame."
I'll pass on the "advocating for the killing of the unborn" schtick, as that it hardly grounded in any form of reality.
Does anyone remember how O'Reilly used his "context" argument when trying to defend his racially ignorant prattling regarding Sylvia's restaurant? That didn't work out so well, did it?
Erickson's "you kidz get off muh propurtee" speech does tend to prove that he isn't quite ready for his job as a political pundit on one of the most well known news networks in the world. Does he seriously believe that advocating the use of weapons against a census worker has no consequences?
Is Erickson going to be doing his best Hannibal impersonation soon?
Seems that the population within conservative counties across the country are returning their census forms at a higher rate than anyone else.
Here’s how we did our (somewhat unscientific) analysis. We took the 20 most conservative counties on this list compiled by the Daily Caller, which uses a variety of criteria, including voting patterns, legislative history, and local culture and tradition. We then looked at the percentages of households in those counties that have returned their census so far and compared them to the national average return rate, which is 56% right now.
Result: Of that 20, only six are returning their census forms at a rate below the national average. Thirteen are above, some by significant margins, and one is tied.
This leads me to question whether or not people like Michelle Bachman and Glenn Beck are going to spin this or simply ignore it. After all, these are the two loudest voices in the "anti-Census" movement. Surely, Michelle Malkin and Erick Erickson have their own loony points of view when it comes to the Census, but my question is still this - this is the same form we all filled out 10 years ago. Where was the paranoia of the conservative movement then?
In Part IV of my "best of the year/decade" series, we take a look at how the conservative movement embraced conspiracy theory as fact and made not only a laughing-stock of themselves, but somehow managed to take away the mantle of "lunatic-fringe" from the likes of Alex Jones.
Since she burst onto the scene, I've often asked myself how someone so completely unglued from the fabric of reality is not only allowed to practice law but has the mental capacity to do so. It is, for that same reason, the many of the members of the tea-bagger movement are seen as just as crazy and ill-informed as she is, considering they cite her claims as fact.
But it isn't just Taitz or the tea-baggers that continually espouse this assertion that Obama was not born in the US. Rush Limbaugh, one of the leaders of the conservative movement, gives voice to this inane prattling:
2 - Obama is the Anti-Christ
Conspiracy theories that involve the Bible and politicians are not new in the least. I can still remember people insisting that Reagan was the Anti-Christ because of the numerical value of his name.
Many cite the fact that this has some relative truth to it simply because it comes from the Bible. However, there are many passages within the Bible that are so vague, so lacking in context, that they could mean anything. After all, the entire book of Revelations was allegedly written by a man marooned on an island and was hallucinating.
3 - Obama is a Muslim
This has got to be one of the most crystal-clear examples of how racism and xenophobia were part of the campaign against Barack Obama and not just used as conspiracy theory. Also, it is the video above - actually the 13 second sarcastic response to the allegation - that birthers and religious paranoid delusional reference as a "confession" that Obama is in fact a Muslim.
4 - Beck's Communist Art Project
Of all the conspiracy theories that Beck puts forward on literally a nightly basis, this one has got to be one that has got to be one of his best. And by that, I mean his craziest. Well, the FEMA concentration camps were a good one, but he back-peddled on that one while he was trying to pass it off as fact - he just didn't have the courage at the time to listen to the voices in his head like with the art one.
Keith Olbermann had a nice response to this, I thought:
5 - Census workers are coming for you
This bit of conservative paranoia was brought to us from someone whom is almost as crazy as Orly Taitz and somehow managed to get elected to Congress.
In this one, we get a two-fer. Beck and Bachmann, in the initial throws of the "warn on ACORN", claim that they have control over the 2010 Census and that within the form there is information that will be used against you - perhaps placing you into one of Beck's FEMA camps.
Conspiracy theory within the Republican party and it's voters has become the new fact, just as the fringe-conservative has become the traditional conservative. Not in my lifetime has a group of people been so willing to insist that their very freedoms, their liberties, and life own lives are in danger. And while some will cite the theories behind Sept. 11th and many actions that George W. Bush took during his two terms as President, those were never embraced as fact the way that conservatives are reacting now to Barack Obama.
Yes, the "Truther" movement was most certainly anti-Bush, it was - and continues to be - roundly rejected by liberals/progressives within the Democratic party. Aside from that, there were really no conspiratorial movements on the Democratic side, or at least none that were given such a monumental platform as those espoused by the modern conservative movement.
It's been said by so many that it has become quite cliche - be careful what you wish for, you just might get it. In this particular instance, this tried and true statement revolves around the Glenn Beck's favorite conspiratorial wet-dream-fantasy-girl Michelle Bachman.
Considering that the census data taken every two years is used in a variety of ways, it is to Bachman's interest that all within her district fill theirs out. Why, you ask?
An editorial in the Star Tribune highlights Bachman's conspiracy laden political career and what it will likely get her if her wishes do, in fact, come true.
The 2010 census will likely determine whether Minnesota loses one of its eight U.S. House seats; population determines seat allocation. Political experts agree that a few thousand people not filling out census forms may be all it takes for the state to lose a congressional advocate in the nation’s capital. If Minnesota were to lose a congressional seat, Bachmann’s district appears to be candidate for absorption. Bachmann has been careful to say that she’s willing to tell the census how many people live in her household, the basic information that will determine whether Minnesota keeps a congressional seat. But that’s a message that’s easily lost in her fear-mongering; Beck didn’t help when he pantomimed flushing census documents down the toilet.
If Bachaman convinces enough people in the 6th district in Minnesota to not fill out their census forms, then not only will she be out of a job, but they will lose federal money for a variety of projects, their fire department, police forces, and schools.
Keep it up Michelle - you're doing a fantastic job.
Ever since Glenn Beck got his show on Fox"News", the network seems more eager than before to promote rampant conspiracy theory than ever before.
Michelle Bachman - quite possible the nuttiest person next to the Mad Hatter - was on Fox recently to discuss the 2010 Census with stereotypical "pretty-blonde-girl" Megyn Kelly. But there was a problem with their analysis.
Bachman has previously discussed her abject fear of ACORN with Glenn Beck, as well as her assumption that the long-form ACS ( which is going to only be distributed to approximately 0.0028% of Americans ) and the 2010 Census. Now, she's meshed all three together in her mind and convinced herself that if she fills out the census that someone's going to come to her home and take her away.
Nevermind that ACORN isn't even conducting the 2010 Census. Nevermind that Bachman and Kelly on attempting to make their audience believe that the ACS and the 2010 Census are the same - which they aren't. The questions that Bachman is expressing fear over have been in place for quite some time.
Most importantly, the questions that Bachmann is so concerned about — questions she suggests might somehow lead to internment — are not new questions (not to mention they frequently overlap with information given to the IRS every year). Census questions on race have been asked since 1790; home language since 1890; rent since 1880; and income since 1940. The Census has asked what kind of heating fuel heats Americans’ homes since 1940.
Here's her and Beck going on into their little delusional, fantasy-world.
The 2010 Census has a FAQ as well as a page on how their data is protected.
It's this same abstract, illogical, blathering that creates a fear within people that leads to some nutty things. It's not a grand leap of rational thinking to assume that some person, quite possibly in a staunchly conservative region of the US, is going to assault a census taker - should that person be so amped-up with Beck and Bachman's rhetoric.
Here's a simple question for Bachman, Beck, and Kelly - did they have this much of a problem with the 2000 Census?
