Deleted Comments: Sure, Oklahoma Can't Pay Teachers Or Cops, But At Least We Aren't In Debt.
And when somebody's being a IDIOT in the Wonkette comments, well, I'll be there, too...
As always happens following a mass shooting, Republican politicians sent their thoughts and prayers, a certain segment of the population ran to buy more guns, and idiots popped up in our comments to let us know we'll never take their guns away because FREEDOM. We'll get to those in a bit, but first, let's hear from an Oklahoma gentleman, "Patrick," who simply couldn't believe all the lies in our piece on howyears of tax cuts in Oklahoma have left the state unable to pay its bills. "Patrick" was so angry at all our lies that he couldn't quite identify any of them:
This article is COMPLETE SHIT! Too many outright falsehoods to address in a single anger management rant, however:
Oklahoma has a balanced budget amendment. So before you go pointing fingers and call us a FAILING state you might want to check the balance because you'll find we have no debt. And yes in lean years it can be pretty lean, such as when oil has been so cheap for so long that Venezuelan's are eating their pets.
I'll skip reading the comments of the numerous fools who've chimed in and shown about as much knowledge of this state and it's politics and they did in the last Presidential election, need I ask "How did that work out for you"?
So, sure, maybe Oklahoma is so strapped that highway patrol officers have a strict mileage limit, the state couldn't fight wildfires because it had fired its own wilderness firefighters, and hospitals are shutting down thanks to Medicaid cuts. BUT THEY HAVE A BALANCED BUDGET, SO STOP SAYING THEY'RE IN TROUBLE! We'll give "Patrick" this: we would happily issue a correction had we said Oklahoma was running a deficit. But they're not, and we didn't, so we're not sure what the other lies in the piece were.
Also, hooray for what Molly Ivins called the "awl bidniss," even if now and then when revenue falls short you have to eat your pets.
Here's the one "lie" "Patrick" found: We noted -- citing NPR and the Guardian -- that school budgets are stretched so thin that about a fifth of the state's schools have gone to four-day weeks. NOT SO, says "Patrick," because he hasn't seen that:
Don't know a single school district that only has a four day week...who makes up this tripe?
Obviously, the lying national media, like NPR and those dirty lying limeys. When a reader posted a link to a Washington Post piece that focused on 4-day weeks in some Oklahoma schools, with plenty of specifics, "Patrick" made fun of their username, which pretty much refuted the Liberal Media Lies. Strangely, "Patrick" didn't reply to a Tulsa World story saying many of the schools still can't go back to a full week schedule. Heck, you know how those libs in Tulsa just make stuff up.
Still, "Patrick" had some pretty good zingers, like this witty takedown of Wonkette:
International home of FOOLS. When one day anyone who reads and believes the drivel on this site GROWS UP and GROWS A BRAIN, take the RED PILL.
See how he pointed out the many errors in our lying article? As for Oklahoma's economy, "Patrick" is sick and tired of how hardworking Oklahomans' tax dollars and taken away to pay for welfare in all the blue states, where everyone is on WELFARE:
I'd say stick a sock in it and worry about your own problems, now one is asking you for anything unlike all you blue state maggots who cannot survive without the WELFARE of the entire nation, get used to paying your own state taxes for a while before you decide that you know better that those states that don't depend on others for a FREE RIDE!
Some troublemaking Wonker just had to go and point out that, on the whole, Oklahoma gets more in federal money than it pays out in taxes. But "Patrick" was ready for that: Oklahomans are NOT takers, no matter what the numbers are, because he's not a taker:
Keep telling yourself that Nancy...but most people with any sense of purpose don't equate monies spent on the Military with Section 8, food stamps, welfare, Obama phones and ghetto insurance!
Yup, "Patrick" does spend most of his time at Breitbart. How could you tell? When someone else pointed out that in general, red states get more tax money than they pay in, "Patrick" explained that nearly all the federal spending in Oklahoma goes to military bases, which are good investments. And never mind that one in four Oklahoma kids live in poverty; if anyone in Oklahoma has ever lost a job, well, that's Barack Obama's fault for making them takers:
Stay away from the pony's and pay others to manage you money...The majority of individuals in Oklahoma look at all forms of WELFARE as a FAILURE of ONESELF and to be AVOIDED! The VAST MAJORITY of Federal tax dollars spent in our state have historically gone to the MILITARY, U S Interstates and FEDERAL GOVERNMENT EMPLOYEES and the RETIRED. Oklahoma has around 10+ military installations, the FAA and the National Weather Service are also located here along with thousands of miles of U.S. Interstate highways to be maintained.
That said Obama did his hope and change number on the Oklahoma population just as everywhere else and a substantial amount of UNEMPLOYMENT dollars and now that they've been replaced with cheap off books Mexican labor; both Social Security and Welfare dollars come here.
As for the the "homemade meth industry", it's very unlikely that meth in any substantial quantity is being produced here given the ease of bringing in across our southern borders, however people do respect the law and will report you if the believe you to be engaged in potential illegal activities...
We were sort of hoping maybe "Patrick" was warning about the dangers of addiction to "My Little Pony" plushies and those excellent Funko vinyl figurines, because then we could truly empathize, but we suppose he just thinks everyone in Florida, the writer's home state, is a gambling addict.
Also, there are no meth labs in Oklahoma. Other than, say, the 979 meth labs busted in Tulsa County from 2004-2012. Maybe it's a lot better now!
As for paying a decent wage for teachers, get real: Teachers don't even work, so why pay them much?
Find me a teacher who works 40 weeks in a year and I'll find you a plain ole run of the mill liberal liar...
In one of the stranger nonsequiturs of his visit, when someone pointed out to "Patrick" that bragging about Oklahoma's balanced budget is sort of pointless, since states, unlike the federal government, just plain can't run deficits. Well, duh, replied "Patrick," because something something windmills:
More likely all the "feebies" given to green energy companies that 20 years down the road still can non show the ability to survive without being funded by the taxpayer: Can I hear you say "WIND..."
Guess he taught us a thing or two about logic.
Moving right along, we heard from Turgid Love Muscle guy again, this time with yet another new identity, "RemoveDangerousLiberals." After posting one of his typical anti-gay slurs in our first story on the massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School ("Liberals believe the following is in the Constitution: "A well stretched out b*tthole, being necessary to the pleasure of a free state, the right of deviant men to b*gger other men in the a** shall not be infringed"), he got on to the really important stuff: telling us we'll never take his guns, because he reveres the law and America so very much:
Hey liberals, you're not taking our guns. If you try, we'll kill you. Got it?
Hey liberals, if you propose to ban "assault weapons," which is a made up term, you're either ignorant or dishonest. Which is it?
Funny, he needs to go back in time and have a word with the marketers who thought that was a fine way to sell some guns:
Look at all those magazines! Or are they clips?
Our piece on the shooter's history of racist, sexist social media postings (and the now-withdrawn claim by a white supremacist group that he'd been a member) brought a visit from "T Minus," who just wanted to set the record straight:
Of course he’s a white supremacist - except, UPDATE - no he’s not.
What kind of white supremacist goes on a shooting spree to kill random straight, blond hair/blue eyed white males, who aren’t Jewish?
That will certainly be news to the families of the eight girls who died, at least one of whom was mourned by her rabbi. And while the reports that the shooter belonged to a racist group turned out to be false, CNN confirmed -- with his former chat buddies -- the killer's online chat was persistently racist. Perhaps "T-Minus" simply didn't want white supremacists to be slurred by association with a mass killer: his own throwaway email address was "theredpill88@[redacted]" ("88," of course stands for "Heil Hitler" -- but maybe he was "joking.") "T Minus" closed with this brave prediction of online martyrdom:
You can go ahead and ban me now... again. I know your censorship policy here isn’t as liberal as authoritarian China’s state run Global Times. Sorry to interrupt your awfully serious & homophobic crusade against “toxic masculinity” (aka simply being male *GASP!!).
Gosh, we feel so totalitarian.
Then there was "John Smith✓ᵀʳᵘᵐᵖ ˢᵘᵖᵖᵒʳᵗᵉʳ," who had the charming Pepe the Frog avatar there. He had many thoughts on guns-n-stuff in the same thread, and just wanted us all to know that the shooter couldn't possibly be a white supremacist, because he had a Latino last name (He was adopted, and his birth mother was Jewish, which is insane too, but shhhh, "John Smith✓ᵀʳᵘᵐᵖ ˢᵘᵖᵖᵒʳᵗᵉʳ" is rolling). In reply to someone who asked if any NRA members would ever consider giving up their guns in exchange for an end to mass shootings (a hypothetical tradeoff, the question made clear, since there are more guns than people in the US), "John Smith✓ᵀʳᵘᵐᵖ ˢᵘᵖᵖᵒʳᵗᵉʳ" had a ready answer: Not even if it magically ended mass shootings, because some dead schoolchildren are an acceptable tradeoff for freedom:
No. I won't give up my rights to free speech because someone might say something someone is offended by, or even because people might be incited to riot because of it. Neither will I give up my guns because 10,000 some odd people out of 300+ million are murdered with firearms (only 300 by long guns, including so-called "assault rifles") each year. I didn't do that and I'm not about to pay for it, especially when so many of the people doing the killing are criminals who can't legally buy guns.
Moreover, in countries with a lot of gun control, like France, Islamic terrorists had no problem finding machine guns to kill hundreds. They sure didn't get them at a gun show.
We love how gun-humpers always disappear the roughly 20,000 annual suicides involving firearms, because obviously they have nothing to do with our country drowning in guns. 20,000 deaths is a pretty small price for freedom, isn't it? Also, how about all those school shootings by disturbed French teens?
Asked how he thinks school massacres might be reduced, "John Smith✓ᵀʳᵘᵐᵖ ˢᵘᵖᵖᵒʳᵗᵉʳ" went for the obvious: Nothing to do, free society, mental illness, and WE NEED MOAR GUNS:
I'm not sure we can, if we live in a free society. It is going to involve stepping on someone's freedoms. I would say better procedures for vetting those who are mentally ill regarding purchase of firearms, full due process for any decisions made to deprive them of those firearms, and more security in schools (including armed security, which would include trained teachers and police), with mandatory reporting requirements for anyone who has had a history of aberrant, violent behavior so they don't get kicked down the road to the next school.
Yup, arm the teachers. Who we can't afford to pay already. For more on the insanity of that, see this Twitter thread. (For non-gun folks, "ND" in the context of that discussion stands for negligent discharges of weapons). Gee, could there be any downside to arming tens of thousands of teachers who'd really rather be teaching? Presumably, since no teacher works 40 weeks in a year, they can spend all their free time at the gun range.
Ugh, what bottom feeders.
It's about goddamn time.