What Happens When Cowboys Get the Blues But Don't Have Public Subsidies to Share Poetry About It?
No more public money for cowboy poetry festivals? That's just mean, man! Or so says Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid:
(Via Guy Benson.)
For the video challenged, here's the quote:
"The mean-spirited bill, H.R. 1,, eliminates National Public Broadcastin…It eliminates the National Endowment of the Humanities, National Endowment of the Arts. These programs create jobs. The National Endowment of the Humanities is the reason we have in northern Nevada every January a cowboy poetry festival. Had that program not been around, the tens of thousands of people who come there every year would not exist."
Gone! Vanished! Like the rapture! Except different. Poor phrasing aside, what sort of stories do cowboys tell at publicly funded cowboy poetry festivals, anyway? Philip Klein found some video from the festival. Yee-haw!
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Good cowboy poets don't need subsidies. Baxter Black always drew crowds.
Don't forget me!
Or me! (Maybe NSFW.)
There was a young cowgirl named Alice ...
The people wouldn't exist...
I rhyme, therefore I am.
The National Endowment of the Humanities is the reason we have in northern Nevada every January a cowboy poetry festival. Had that program not been around, the tens of thousands of people who come there every year would not exist
Holy Shit!!! Now government programs can actually create life!!!
Funding goes away; people disappear.
Explain that, pinhead.
You can't explain that.
*Lives created or saved
+1
Hmmm, prostitution also creates jobs yet Harry Reid wants to get rid of that.
I guess Harry the unhorny Reid wants to "create jobs" with OPM.
Hey Harry? You know what creates jobs? Lowering taxes and red tape. You ought to try that.
Congressional report demands more "diversity" in the military.
http://libertarians4freedom.bl.....-more.html
And process involved in prostitution at least stands a chance of creating people
Not really, you do wear a condom.
http://libertarians4freedom.blogspot.com/
I always thought Grandpa Simpson's rambling stories were exaggerations... then I watched that cowboy poetry video. I was seriously waiting for one of them to tell me that they wore an onion on their belt.
That poetry was just terrible.
Cowboys. They are one of the most unpleasant races in the galaxy. Not actually evil, but bad-tempered, bureaucratic, officious, and callous. They wouldn't even lift a finger to save their own grandmothers from the ravenous Bug-Blatter Beast of Traal without orders signed in triplicate, sent in, sent back, lost, found, queried, subjected to public inquiry, lost again, and finally buried in soft peat for three months and recycled as firelighter. On no account should you allow a cowboy to read poetry to you.
Uh, I think you're confused.
Cowboys =/= Vogons.
These programs create jobs.
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
Which word..jobs ? or create ?
Yes
anybody want a peanut?
If they are unwilling to cut even wasteful extravagances like funding for cowboy poetry, there is just no hope--it will take a Greek style crisis for anything to change.
Isn't the disappearance of cowboy poets enough of a Greek-style crisis?
Well you do have a point . . .
Of the brokeback variety, yes...
I think we'd all be better off if the sort of people who go to cowboy poetry festivals didn't exist.
Any kind of cowboy that reads government-funded poetry is not the kind of cowboy this rounder wants to know.
Speaking of piss-poor cowboy-themed art, Job for a Cowboy is fucking terrible.
Why do we have to go there? Can't we just ignore JFAC forever? I managed to not listen to them for around 5-6 years since I'd known of their existence. They somehow managed to combine all the awful elements from hardcore and death metal while winning praise from an army of tasteless hipsters, then transitioned to the most mind-numbingly generic death metal ever. Just more proof that nothing good comes from Glendale.
Damn cowboys.
Had that program not been around, the tens of thousands of people who come there every year would not exist.
OMG! Tens of thousands of people would have done something else with their time. Spent their money in tens of thousands of dispersed places instead of concentrating that spending in a Nevada locality. The sheer horror of it all.
No, they wouldn't have done something else with their time. They would not have any time because they simply would not exist!!!
Without the Mana of Government Subsidy sustaining them, the people don't exist.
I thought that was roads. I'm so confused...
How big of an overlap do you supposed there is between the cowboy poetry crowd and the cowboy action shooting crowd? I hope zero.
I'm not sure how anybody could do that without the Mana of Government Subsidy.
And, if the fact, as even Reid states here, that cowboy poetry festivals could not exist without state intervention, and that is not sufficient reason to abolish the state, well, sirs, you have more stomach for gauche than I.
This just in: we have confirmed that yes, Harry Reid IS a blithering idiot - still. In other news...
We're losing two ill advised wars, a fiscal train wreck is on the horizon, the evisceration of the 4th and 5th amendments continues and the Speaker of the House(R) is worried about teh gayz getting married while the Senate Majority Leader(D) is worried about taxpayer funded cowboy poetry festivals.
But if you don't vote for one of the two major parties you're not a serious person.
Don't forget..the President wants a choo-choo train.
If you laid $100 million on the cowboy poetry festival this year, and wanted to cut it back to $95 million next year, you'd be criticized for having no heart, not respecting tradition, costing jobs, forcing tourists to find other outlets, etc. etc. And that's after weathering the storm from those still bitching that $100 million isn't enough to do justice to the downtrodden cowboy and uplifting aspects of poetry.
Down here in Texas, most politicians are in the pocket of Big Cowboy Poetry.
We need the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering because otherwise cowboy fairies would have nothing to do with themselves. Well, except for you know what.
Who you calling gay, Assman?
A good friend of mine got very involved with this cowboy poetry crap.
http://www.westernfolklife.org/site1/
The director of the Western Folklife center was nice artsy guy with a knack for vacumning up the state, local and federal grants.
After attending one of their events, my previous apathy toward arts subsidies - turned to loud, vocal and sometimes violent opposition to them.
NEA delenda est
Wow, how did Reid get reelected? He's gone full-retard. People of Nevada: WTF?
Two words: unions and mormans.
Without those two groups, he'd have gone down in flames.
Actually, I would not be at all surprised if Harry Reid gets pretty much none of the Mormon vote.
No cowboys, no assless chaps. Think about it.
Cowboys reading poetry... Made me think of independent films
So a cowboy poetry festival isn't so much about cowboys reading poetry as it is about about cowboys telling each other about how much they suck at their jobs? These have seriously got to be the shittiest cowboys ever. One was shot by his own goddamn mule, and another was run over by his own truck. I didn't watch any further than that.
It's boorish ingrates like you who keep my budget low. Fine. Don't come crying to me when the only American art is sitcoms and reality shows.
I have friends that have attended the Elko festival of cowboy poetry; from what I gather the hangovers are epic.
It's true, all-night drinking like Vegas, with none of the distractions (you know, concerts, good-looking strippers) that might help keep you sober. It's Elko in January for Christ's sake.
I do have a solution to fund Harry's poetry-reading. Donations from two local producers here and here. They're both swimming in money that they're willing to give away if they can paste a few logos up to bump their stock price. Free market charity in action.
Harry Reid is a good hand.
It looks like these Montana cowboys ain't too sad and blue, seeing how they just flew the biggest herd of beef cattle to Russia -- and the operation is subsidized by the Russian govt.
Good for them. We need more agricultural subsidies in the USA.
http://billingsgazette.com/new.....03286.html
Romo and Jerry
still got no Super Bowl wins
thanks a lot assholes
Win.
By listening to these cowboys Harry Reid should be more interested in enforcing OSHA regulations on the ranching industry to keep them from bankrupting government healthcare. And also he should look in to that cowboy that says he had a 'tobacco business' on the side to make sure he's sending his love to the IRS.