Monday, August 02, 2010

Watauga GOP Shows How It's the Party of the "Little People"

The Watauga County Republican Party will host former legitimate journalist and now born-again Fox propagandist Bernard (Bernie) Goldberg at the outrageously over-priced Broyhill Inn for a ritual seance during which Goldberg will see "liberal elites" in all the Broyhill woodwork, busily munching the oak and taking over America, and Congresswoman Virginia Foxx will bring news that allowing the Bush tax cuts on the 2% of America’s richest to expire will lead to homosexual nuptials and the gnashing of gold-filled teeth and the probable selling off of 3rd and 4th vacation homes just to make payments on the 2nd yacht, and how can the "real" America withstand such blood-sucking socialism? Huh? How can it ever?


Anonymous said...

How much are they charging?

Anonymous said...

JW, don't you ever get tired of your class hatred and wealth envy?

Just because you were so sorry as to barely pay for one house doesn't mean that everyone who owns a second home is a thief.

They just work harder than you, or maybe they're just smarter.

Matt Robinson said...

Oh gosh, one can only hope to be called out personally at such an event! I mean, come on, it's Appalachian State people!

Mike D. said...

Dr. Robinson,

I'm still waiting for your response from a previous thread, so please allow me to cut and paste my original post to you:

"Do you believe that the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, were an inside job?

I am not interested in a convoluted answer that points me to what other people have said.

I am asking you, Matt Robinson, do you believe that the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, were an inside job?

It is a very simple question to answer with a 'yes' or a 'no'. My answer is 'no'."

Thank you in advance for your response.

Anonymous said...

Mr. Goldberg will be a welcome change from the usual liberal propagandist trash that is paid to speak at ASU.

Matt Robinson said...

Mike, I never saw that question before from you.

My answer is NO.

The details are on my website of course.

Mike D. said...


Thanks. See? We agree on something. :)

You'll please pardon me if I don't study your website. I have read only two articles by you to date, and they were virtually identical:

1) Identify bogeyman.
2) Ridicule bogeyman's followers.
3) Offer suggestions to explain the mental deficiency of these individuals who not believe as you do.
4) Neglect the most basic, obvious explanations because the truth would not paint your bogeyman as evil.

As I said, I read two of your articles, years apart, and they both followed this general form.

Was it just a bad coincidence that those were the two I read? If you tell me your writing is mostly not like that, perhaps I'll give it another chance.

I just don't feel like reading another article that judges a group of individuals, puts them in a box, and slaps a label on them for public consumption. I celebrate diversity, so that kind of crap really doesn't interest me.

BikerBard said...

Come on, Mike. You find middle ground with Matt and then you rip him? Bad form.

"And Brutus was an honorable man!" - W.S.

Matt Robinson said...

Interesting point, Mike. I can see how you might say that. Actually though, what I try to do in my LETTERS TO THE PAPER is pose questions for people who hold different opinions from me.

My most recent one was for the Tea Party folks (for example, where were you during the Bush years with all his wasteful spending?). And not a single Tea Party member bothered to respond. Sort of like when I posed questions for conservatives during the Bush years about spending on the war, all of which was NOT in the budget and was thus added to the national deficit. Not a single response. The silence to me speaks volumes. But of course that is just my humble opinion, and that, plus $2, gets you a cup of coffee!

But my ARTICLES are academic in nature, including the ones I've written about 9/11.

My conclusion from my study of 9/11 is that one of three things could have possibly happened:

1) Bush/Cheney made 9/11 happen to achieve their long stated goal of invading Iraq

2) Bush/Cheney let 9/11 happen to achieve their long stated goal of invading Iraq


3) Bush/Cheney were so incompetent that they truly did not see 9/11 coming in spite of the numerous warnings (

I always end with this question -- which is the scariest possibility? Personally I think it is the last one! To not be able to see this coming when we were warned very specifically numerous times about what was coming, how it would come, who would do it, where they would do it, and even when they would do it, just boggles the mind! But I have seen literally NO credible evidence to support the first two.

Personally I think Bush/Cheney were so focused on the threat posed by Iraq that they just did not take al-Qaeda seriously, in spite of all the warnings.

brotherdoc said...

Matt, may I be allowed just just to expand on what your point in the last post re: Bush-Cheney were "focused on the threat posed by Iraq"? That threat of course proved in re: WMD to be totally w/o foundation, as was pointed out by Hans Blix and his UN team before the war was launched--but he was ignored and Colin Powell was given all sorts of "cooked" material to tell the world about the threat from Saddam Hussein. So, what threat was, realistically, posed to America by Iraq? The threat perhaps to raise oil prices? On 9/10/11 the price of oil averaged about $25.50 per barrel, Iraq was under sanctions but still was supplying its own needs and exporting oil. America was some trillion dollars less in debt, and many thousands of people, military and civilian, were alive and millions displaced by war were leading ordinary the Iraqi "threat" in their wee minds a/o 2001 was...? Saddam had said some mean things about Dubya's daddy, as I recall. Saddam was a braggart. Was the the only one (who stood under a "Mission Accomplished" banner in a flight suit)?

oatz said...

Matt Robinson how do you explain the debt Obama has piled on to your kids backs to them? Gitmo closed? Out of Afghanistan or Iraq? Bills posted online before votes? All Healthcare debates on Cspan? Three vacations during the Oil spill? Do you subject your ASU students to anti-Obama rants during class like you did during the Bush years?

BikerBard said...

Oatz with no cut and paste? Amazing! And how do you know WHAT Dr. Robinson teaches in his classes? YOU'VE never been inside of his college classes, have you?

I know Matt to be a professional, regardless of his personal opinion. Period!

And so what if a professor gives his opinion on a subject. The object, dear Oatz, is to get your students to THINK FOR THEMSELVES!


You just tried it, and it must feel damned good! You are to be congratulated for not cutting and pasting someone else's words.

PS: Were you once bitten on the ass or something like that by a teacher? :-)

Mike D. said...


You gave me a hard time for my treatment of Matt (call me Dr.) Robinson. So now it's my turn to return the favor.

Oatz has not posted here for a long time and just posted one item of original material. To immediately pounce on him is not very welcoming.


Good to see you back. I heard some student reports that between 2002 and 2005, there were some professors who awarded class credit to students who participated in anti-Bush protests. Did you experience or hear about this?

Mike D. said...


Ever hear of Babylon? Mesopotamia? The Tigris-Euphrates delta?

Any chance the United States realized that an aggressive religious and cultural ideology is marching through the Western world, and decided to take over the cradle of civilization, the confluence of Shiite and Sunni tribes, fight forward instead of fighting back?

Any possibility you could extract yourself from the 'Bush/Cheney/Rove/Rumsfeld/Wolfowitz/Feith' jargon and speak about the issues?

All that 'blame-game' stuff was pretty hip a few years ago, but it's trending rather passé at this point.

Mike D. said...


I'll check out your site, and give your writing another try.

Matt Robinson said...

You guys give us professors way too much credit (and blame). What we say or do in class means very little in the big scheme of things. After all, we come into contact with so few Americans over the whole course of our careers.

As for our job, the Faculty Handbook says that our primary job is to tell the truth as we see it, not to be "neutral" or to give "both sides" equal attention. Yet, it also says we must respect the rights of students to think for themselves and that we should encourage this ability too.

I take that challenge very seriously. My job is not to produce little Matt Robinsons but rather to challenge students deeply held beliefs about crime and justice and to encourage them to think about them in new ways. They are graded on whether they know, understand and can use the information, not on whether they agree with me.

As for Obama, I have been highly critical of him in my classes, just as I was of Bush. The difference is I actually approve of some of the things Obama has done, so he is an occasional disappointment, whereas Bush was a constant disappointment to me.

brushfire said...

Mike - When you talk about the "aggressive religious and cultural ideology marching through the western world" I assume you are talking about the ideology as explicated in "Rebuilding America's defenses" published by the Project for the New American Century. Am I right?

Mike D. said...


I searched an Acrobat file of the entire document you mentioned, "Rebuilding America's Defenses", searching for any use of the words 'God', 'Christ'(incl. 'Christianity'), 'Jew'(incl. Jewish), 'Religion', or 'Religious', and I came up with not one single use of any of those words. I am not sure how you interpret this as an "aggressive religious and cultural ideology".

You seem to reference this September 2000 document quite frequently. Have you become unstuck in time?

BikerBard said...

Mike D.:

(part of my post to Oatz)


You must have passed over these accolades in my post to Oatz.

At worst, my post was a "mixed review." (theatre lingo)