Monsignor Frank J. Hendrick of Pinehurst writes:
The March 3 column by Dusty Rhoades concerning Pope Benedict Emeritus causes pain to me and your Catholic subscribers.
Mr. Rhoades has a right to write such and present it for publication.
However, I feel that your position as guardians of the press would
protect your readership from the harm that ensues.
I am not suggesting that you engage in censorship when facts are
presented for publication, yet I suggest that you engage in civility and
gentility when such is demanded.
So, he's not suggesting that they engage in censorship, but they should have spiked my column for "civility and gentility's" sake. Got it.
Monsignor Jeffrey A. Ingham of St. Anthony of Padua Catholic Church writes:
I am not surprised that someone would write such a piece, but I am surprised that you would publish it.
You know what this means, right? If this kind of condemnation by the Church picks up speed, I'm on a one-way express elevator to Dan Brown level controversy, followed by Dan Brown level money. Yippeee!
Showing posts with label letters. Show all posts
Showing posts with label letters. Show all posts
Wednesday, March 13, 2013
Friday, August 26, 2011
Local Idiot: Tax The Poor!
In a letter entitled Rhoades At It Again in The Pilot (where my weekly column appears), local idiot Jack Jakucyk once again raises that old discredited argument that it's not the rich, but the poor who aren't paying their fair share. In reference to this column, he starts off with the name-calling right wingers claim to despise, unless they're engaging in it:
Dusty, with his degree from the Karl Marx School of Economics, suggests that the rich not only don’t create jobs, they also don’t pay their “fair share” of taxes.
Then he goes on to parrot one of the more egregiously stupid arguments of the American Right:
At the other end of the spectrum, the bottom half (71 million returns) contributed only 3 percent of total tax revenues. And 51.8 million of the 142 million returns from your fellow Americans had no income tax liabilities due to deductions, tax credits, etc. This may seem counterintuitive, but I wonder if it’s a good thing for our society when half the population pays essentially no taxes. They have no dog in the fight. But Dusty Rhoades is on their side.
They don't pay taxes because they're poor, doofus. It's the old "lucky duckies" argument that was so roundly mocked when the WSJ first floated it. Take, for example, this article by Noble Prize laureate Paul Krugman which points out that:
The Journal considers a hypothetical ducky who earns only $12,000 a year ? some guys have all the luck! ? and therefore, according to the editorial, "pays a little less than 4% of income in taxes." Not surprisingly, that statement is a deliberate misrepresentation; the calculation refers only to income taxes. If you include payroll and sales taxes, a worker earning $12,000 probably pays well over 20 percent of income in taxes. But who's counting?
Or then there's Reuben Bolling, who brilliantly skewered the whole idea with his character "Lucky Ducky":
It's such a persistent fallacy of the Right that I thought it merited being addressed for a wider audience.
Just keep in mind, every time someone raises this claptrap about how "some people at the bottom don't pay any taxes, and that's not fair" that:
(a) it's a deliberate misrepresentation; and
(b) what they're really demanding is more taxes on the poor.
As Jonathan Chait wrote:
One of the things that has fascinated me about The Wall Street Journal editorial page is its occasional capacity to rise above the routine moral callousness of hack conservative punditry and attain a level of exquisite depravity normally reserved for villains in James Bond movies.
So I guess we we can say that Mr. Jakucyk studied at the Blofeld School of Economics.
Oh, and he conveniently fails to address the statistics showing that tax rates don't affect job creation. Wonder why that is? Maybe because he can't...Fox News hasn't told him how.
Dusty, with his degree from the Karl Marx School of Economics, suggests that the rich not only don’t create jobs, they also don’t pay their “fair share” of taxes.
Then he goes on to parrot one of the more egregiously stupid arguments of the American Right:
At the other end of the spectrum, the bottom half (71 million returns) contributed only 3 percent of total tax revenues. And 51.8 million of the 142 million returns from your fellow Americans had no income tax liabilities due to deductions, tax credits, etc. This may seem counterintuitive, but I wonder if it’s a good thing for our society when half the population pays essentially no taxes. They have no dog in the fight. But Dusty Rhoades is on their side.
They don't pay taxes because they're poor, doofus. It's the old "lucky duckies" argument that was so roundly mocked when the WSJ first floated it. Take, for example, this article by Noble Prize laureate Paul Krugman which points out that:
The Journal considers a hypothetical ducky who earns only $12,000 a year ? some guys have all the luck! ? and therefore, according to the editorial, "pays a little less than 4% of income in taxes." Not surprisingly, that statement is a deliberate misrepresentation; the calculation refers only to income taxes. If you include payroll and sales taxes, a worker earning $12,000 probably pays well over 20 percent of income in taxes. But who's counting?
Or then there's Reuben Bolling, who brilliantly skewered the whole idea with his character "Lucky Ducky":
It's such a persistent fallacy of the Right that I thought it merited being addressed for a wider audience.
Just keep in mind, every time someone raises this claptrap about how "some people at the bottom don't pay any taxes, and that's not fair" that:
(a) it's a deliberate misrepresentation; and
(b) what they're really demanding is more taxes on the poor.
As Jonathan Chait wrote:
One of the things that has fascinated me about The Wall Street Journal editorial page is its occasional capacity to rise above the routine moral callousness of hack conservative punditry and attain a level of exquisite depravity normally reserved for villains in James Bond movies.
So I guess we we can say that Mr. Jakucyk studied at the Blofeld School of Economics.
Oh, and he conveniently fails to address the statistics showing that tax rates don't affect job creation. Wonder why that is? Maybe because he can't...Fox News hasn't told him how.
Friday, July 01, 2011
Letters, Oh I Get Letters
Today in The Pilot:
Dusty Rhoades’ petulant column attacking Michele Bachmann and Mitt Romney (June 19) displays a prepubescent proclivity (for name-calling), when rational, cogent analysis would be the most powerful way to pose one’s argument.
Indeed, character assassination is the last refuge of a mind sadly bereft of ideas.
Dixie Chapman
Pinehurst
I always love the people who write in, excoriating a satirical column for not being serious enough.
Hey, Dixie, I do cogent analysis and argument, but for a hell of a lot more money that The Pilot pays me. For these prices, snark and mockery are what you get.
In conclusion, let us remember the immortal words of Sgt. Hulka:
Sunday, April 19, 2009
You're So Vain, You Probably Think This Column Is About You
It seems that self-proclaimed "radio talk show host" Pamela Furr felt that she was one of the targets of a recent column about what it takes to become a right wing pundit. She posted on her blog:
I've got much to say since I've been on hiatus, but this is a very interesting "column" from a local attorney here in Moore County, NC.
Those that know me realize that I had to respond. After all, this is what I do as a right winged, wingnut! LOL Here is my letter to the editor for the Pilot Newspaper in Southern Pines, NC.
Those that know me realize that I had to respond. After all, this is what I do as a right winged, wingnut! LOL Here is my letter to the editor for the Pilot Newspaper in Southern Pines, NC.
Dear Editors:
My name is Pamela Furr and I guess I am one of those "right wing" radio talk show hosts that Mr. Rhodes fulminated about in his highly entertaining column last Sunday. OK, let's face it -- the column was wrongheaded and full of hyperbole. Call me a nut, though (and Mr. Rhodes already has, I guess, by inference) - but a full life and a profession spent interviewing politicians (yes, including Mr. Obama) have caused me to consider extreme wrongheadedness to be highly entertaining!
Imagine my surprise and delight while visiting my parents on Easter Sunday as I opened up my hometown paper to stumble upon some of the vilest tripe masked as satire I have read in quite some time (I have to think that somewhere in Dublin, seismologists are scratching their heads over the rhythmic spinning underneath Jonathon Swift's grave). Normally one does not encounter such vitriolic wit outside of rest stop bathroom walls. Bravo, Mr. Rhodes!!! Bravo!
I am not interested in matching Mr. Rhodes' feeble attempt at satire by going point-by-point (though this might be an excellent exercise for a conservative Poli Sci class, if such a body existed), but one thing especially tickled my funny bone:
Mr. Rhodes -- None of us "right wing nuts" has EVER said Obama was a bad speaker. That is, not as long as the teleprompter doesn't go on strike. I mean, have you ever heard such a chorus of uh's, um's and ah's in your life as when that screen goes blank?
Ronald Reagan could talk all day about substantive things without a cathode ray tube anywhere nearby. So could Bill Clinton. Well, Clinton could talk all day - how substantive his talks were, varied from day to day (or… cigar to cigar?).
And neither of these men had to fill time with a Special Olympics joke [to digress a bit - a SPECIAL OLYMICS JOKE???? Imagine a Republican making such a joke - he would have to commit honorable hari kari before the press let go of THAT story].
Sincerely,
Pamela Furr, right winged wingnut talk show host
This raises a number of questions, most notably "who the hell is Pamela Furr?" Fortunately, the Google is our friend, and it tells us that Ms. Furr was recently canned from her job at Hunstville Alabama's WVNN, so her claim to be a right wing radio talk show host is dubious at best. I suspect that her "visit to her hometown" is more akin to moving into her parents' basement. (A suspicion which she has since confirmed in her comments, BTW)
We don't really know why Ms. Furr lost her job. We don't know if it was for making racist or anti-catholic comments on the air, as she seems fond of doing on her blog. Since spelling isn't really crucial on the radio, it's probably not for her inability to spell simple things like "Olympics" or my name. I thought for a moment it might be for her utter failure at fact-checking, since another quick Google reveals that St. Ronnie did indeed use a teleprompter. Often. But then I thought, "no that can't be it, because since when do right wingers give a damn about fact-checking?"
So it remains a mystery. We here at Fresh Hell wish Ms. Furr good fortune in her future job searches. We would also seek to reassure her that no, the column was not directed at her, because until she decided to poke her head up and yap, I had no earthly idea who she was.
But thank you so much for proving the point of the column, which was that the right wing is totally obsessed with meaningless trivia like teleprompters. This is most likely because they have no ideas, no coherent plan, no solutions of their own, and as we've repeatedly seen, no principles other than IOKIYAR!
Monday, February 09, 2009
Illiteracy Is a Terrible Thing
From the letters colum of The Pilot:
It appears Dusty Rhoades must have been "in an absolute frenzy of pants-wetting fear" himself when he wrote his usual finger-pointing baloney for Feb. 1. How else can he explain why he uses the same lame expression twice in the first four paragraphs?
Before he writes his column and before the paper prints it, maybe you could look for some facts:
Ali al-Shihri was released from Gitmo in 2007. The FBI suspects he helped plan last year's deadly bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Yemen's capital.
Abdullah Salim Ali al-Ajmi was released from Gitmo, and he turned around and blew up a police station in Iraq in a suicide mission.
These are just two of over 30 former Gitmo inmates who have resumed their terrorist activities.
The Gitmo inmates' complaints of cold meals, hard plastic soccer balls and paperback Qurans fall on mostly deaf ears.
Except for pansies like the ACLU, the media and whiners like Rhoades seem determined to put these terrorists back out on the street, no matter who they may kill next.
Curtis Richie
Whispering Pines
See, now if Curtis had actually been able to, you know, READ THE COLUMN, he might have recognized that the whole point was that terror suspects being moved to U.S. Prisons would NOT be "back out on the street". But since Curtis apparently has the reading comprehension of a scallop, the whole thing just goes past him.
And since Curtis also apparently can't remember who was President when, it doesn't seem to occur to him that the people he complains about being released to wreak more havoc were released by......the Bush Administration. Which sort of undercuts the whole argument that detainees should be kept or released purely at the whim of the Executive.
But you know, I'm glad Curtis keeps trying to read the column, even though he's apparently too dumb to understand it. I hope he can find the remedial reading help he apparently so desperately needs.
It appears Dusty Rhoades must have been "in an absolute frenzy of pants-wetting fear" himself when he wrote his usual finger-pointing baloney for Feb. 1. How else can he explain why he uses the same lame expression twice in the first four paragraphs?
Before he writes his column and before the paper prints it, maybe you could look for some facts:
Ali al-Shihri was released from Gitmo in 2007. The FBI suspects he helped plan last year's deadly bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Yemen's capital.
Abdullah Salim Ali al-Ajmi was released from Gitmo, and he turned around and blew up a police station in Iraq in a suicide mission.
These are just two of over 30 former Gitmo inmates who have resumed their terrorist activities.
The Gitmo inmates' complaints of cold meals, hard plastic soccer balls and paperback Qurans fall on mostly deaf ears.
Except for pansies like the ACLU, the media and whiners like Rhoades seem determined to put these terrorists back out on the street, no matter who they may kill next.
Curtis Richie
Whispering Pines
See, now if Curtis had actually been able to, you know, READ THE COLUMN, he might have recognized that the whole point was that terror suspects being moved to U.S. Prisons would NOT be "back out on the street". But since Curtis apparently has the reading comprehension of a scallop, the whole thing just goes past him.
And since Curtis also apparently can't remember who was President when, it doesn't seem to occur to him that the people he complains about being released to wreak more havoc were released by......the Bush Administration. Which sort of undercuts the whole argument that detainees should be kept or released purely at the whim of the Executive.
But you know, I'm glad Curtis keeps trying to read the column, even though he's apparently too dumb to understand it. I hope he can find the remedial reading help he apparently so desperately needs.
Monday, January 26, 2009
Concern Troll Is Concerned
From the Pilot Letters Section:
I do not usually read Dusty Rhoades in The Pilot, but I did see the Jan. 18 column on Sarah Palin.
Even President Obama would not endorse this pathetic, backward and small-minded-thinking article using the Beverly Hillbillies to project a point about Palin. Perhaps a column like this sells newspapers to a select few, but it certainly detracts from a positive attitude when Obama is working so hard to bring all Americans together, regardless of their political choice.
Rhoades should contain his self-appointed lofty ego and be more focused on uniting our country.
.Jack Duvall
Pinehurst
In Internet-speak, a "concern troll" is one who pretends to be on the side you're on, but who, in reality, is just trying to silence criticism of his actual position by expressing his "concern" over "tone" or, in this case, lack of a "positive attitude."
However, there's usually a "tell" that gives them away. Can you spot the "tell" in Jack's letter that lets us know he really isn't sincerely behind the Obama message of bringing people together?
I do not usually read Dusty Rhoades in The Pilot, but I did see the Jan. 18 column on Sarah Palin.
Even President Obama would not endorse this pathetic, backward and small-minded-thinking article using the Beverly Hillbillies to project a point about Palin. Perhaps a column like this sells newspapers to a select few, but it certainly detracts from a positive attitude when Obama is working so hard to bring all Americans together, regardless of their political choice.
Rhoades should contain his self-appointed lofty ego and be more focused on uniting our country.
.Jack Duvall
Pinehurst
In Internet-speak, a "concern troll" is one who pretends to be on the side you're on, but who, in reality, is just trying to silence criticism of his actual position by expressing his "concern" over "tone" or, in this case, lack of a "positive attitude."
However, there's usually a "tell" that gives them away. Can you spot the "tell" in Jack's letter that lets us know he really isn't sincerely behind the Obama message of bringing people together?
Saturday, July 26, 2008
Because Nothing Shows Off Your Erudition Like a Fart Joke
From the Letters Section at ThePilot.com :
Dusty Rhoades, when you look up "liberal media" in the dictionary, your picture is there.
I beat out favorite wingnut whipping boy CBS? Awesome.
As a matter of fact, if you were any further to the left, you'd fall off the page.
Admiral Smith was dead-on with his Wesley Clark quote. Sen. McCain didn't bring up his Vietnam service. Wesley Clark did.
Yes, as we know, John McCain never, ever mentions his service in Vietnam and his time as a POW. Never. He's just modest like that.
In contrast, John Kerry flaunted and exploited his service with his "Reporting for Duty" salute. That brought out people who actually served with him and questioned some of that service.
And by "questioned", we mean "told a bunch of lies which were easily refuted, and which John McCain himself said were dishonest and dishonorable* , yet are still mindlessly repeated by Kool-Aid drinking 27 percenters like this letter writer."
The liberal media now love to use the words "swift boating" whenever one of their own is scrutinized.
I believe you still might have some time to change the title of your next book. May I suggest "Breaking Wind"? Perhaps your falling off the page might not be such a bad idea.
Dennis Strojny, Pinewild
Oooh, snap! Dennis, with witty repartee like that, the National Review is not beyond your reach.
*before, that is, Mr. Straight Talk Maverick McCain started taking their money.
Dusty Rhoades, when you look up "liberal media" in the dictionary, your picture is there.
I beat out favorite wingnut whipping boy CBS? Awesome.
As a matter of fact, if you were any further to the left, you'd fall off the page.
Admiral Smith was dead-on with his Wesley Clark quote. Sen. McCain didn't bring up his Vietnam service. Wesley Clark did.
Yes, as we know, John McCain never, ever mentions his service in Vietnam and his time as a POW. Never. He's just modest like that.
In contrast, John Kerry flaunted and exploited his service with his "Reporting for Duty" salute. That brought out people who actually served with him and questioned some of that service.
And by "questioned", we mean "told a bunch of lies which were easily refuted, and which John McCain himself said were dishonest and dishonorable* , yet are still mindlessly repeated by Kool-Aid drinking 27 percenters like this letter writer."
The liberal media now love to use the words "swift boating" whenever one of their own is scrutinized.
I believe you still might have some time to change the title of your next book. May I suggest "Breaking Wind"? Perhaps your falling off the page might not be such a bad idea.
Dennis Strojny, Pinewild
Oooh, snap! Dennis, with witty repartee like that, the National Review is not beyond your reach.
*before, that is, Mr. Straight Talk Maverick McCain started taking their money.
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