Teabaggers getting nastier.

[The Yosemite Bear]

Well since the Teabaggers and the birthers are a completly made up phenom it's not suprising. Thank you Fox echo chamber.

[Liberty]

Well since the Teabaggers and the birthers are a completly made up phenom it's not suprising. Thank you Fox echo chamber.

You think birthers are made up? Because I've actually had interaction with some of them.

[The Yosemite Bear]

By made up, the movement was created by our 'friends' at the Fox's lair

[Liberty]

By made up, the movement was created by our 'friends' at the Fox's lair

Ah. Now that makes sense.

[The Yosemite Bear]

They talk about conspiracies against them, yet they are all the result of some folks deciding to endlessly supply tlaking points and way too much money and attention to their own monsters.

[Crossroads Inc.]

They talk about conspiracies against them, yet they are all the result of some folks deciding to endlessly supply tlaking points and way too much money and attention to their own monsters.

Whenever I htink about exactly what sort of effect FoxNews has on America, I htink of this:

[Patrick Degan]

They talk about conspiracies against them, yet they are all the result of some folks deciding to endlessly supply talking points and way too much money and attention to their own monsters.

Whenever I think about exactly what sort of effect FoxNews has on America, I think of this:

Yet another gem from the poison pen of Pat Oliphant —one of the most brutal political cartoonists ever to wield ink.

[Mayabird]

By made up, the movement was created by our 'friends' at the Fox's lair

Ah. Now that makes sense.

The term people have been using is "astroturf." As in, the opposite of grassroots campaigns. Instead of being a natural-ish outgrowth of popular sentiment it's an artificial construct made to resemble it.

[Surlethe]

I don't know if I would so far as to say Fox is manufacturing the movement. There is certainly popular sentiment to support teabagging in the far right. Fox is not so much creating the movement as it is amplifying it. Fox caters to an audience of teabaggers and people sympathetic to the teabaggers, so their reporting will favor it and their opinion people will support it. The teabaggers are emboldened by Fox and whipped frothier. Fox's reporting seizes on that. Et cetera.

[irishmick79]

I don't know if I would so far as to say Fox is manufacturing the movement. There is certainly popular sentiment to support teabagging in the far right. Fox is not so much creating the movement as it is amplifying it. Fox caters to an audience of teabaggers and people sympathetic to the teabaggers, so their reporting will favor it and their opinion people will support it. The teabaggers are emboldened by Fox and whipped frothier. Fox's reporting seizes on that. Et cetera.

There's an interesting op-ed piece by Colbert King in the Washington Post that explicitly links to the modern day tea partiers to the southern whites who gleefully supported George Wallace's presidential run. Basically, a lot of the right wing talking heads on FOX who are so popular now wouldn't be getting nearly so much attention if it weren't for the voters like these guys, and these voters have been around for a long long time.

The angry faces at Tea Party rallies are eerily familiar. They resemble faces of protesters lining the street at the University of Alabama in 1956 as Autherine Lucy, the school's first black student, bravely tried to walk to class.

Those same jeering faces could be seen gathered around the Arkansas National Guard troopers who blocked nine black children from entering Little Rock's Central High School in 1957.

"They moved closer and closer," recalled Elizabeth Eckford, one of the Little Rock Nine. "Somebody started yelling, 'Lynch her! Lynch her!' I tried to see a friendly face somewhere in the crowd -- someone who maybe could help. I looked into the face of an old woman and it seemed a kind face, but when I looked at her again, she spat on me."

Those were the faces I saw at a David Duke rally in Metairie, La., in 1991: sullen with resentment, wallowing in victimhood, then exploding with yells of excitement as the ex-Klansman and Republican gubernatorial candidate spewed vitriolic white-power rhetoric.

People like that old woman in Little Rock, the Alabama mob that hounded Autherine Lucy, the embracers of Duke's demagoguery in Louisiana, never go away.

They were spotted last weekend on Capitol Hill under the Tea Party banner protesting the health-care-reform bill. Some carried a signs that read "If Brown [Scott Brown (R-Mass.)] can't stop it, a Browning [high power weapon] can." Some shouted racial and homophobic epithets at members of Congress. Others assumed the role of rabble, responding to the calls of instigating Republican representatives gathered on a Capitol balcony.

Tea Party members, as with their forerunners who showed up at the University of Alabama and Central High School, behave as they do because they have been culturally conditioned to believe they are entitled to do whatever they want, and to whomever they want, because they are the "real Americans," while all who don't think or look like them are not.

And they are consequential. Without folks like them, there would be no Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity or Pat Buchanan. There would never have been a George Corley Wallace, the Alabama governor dubbed by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Diane McWhorter in a 2008 Slate article as "the godfather, avatar of a national uprising against the three G's of government, Godlessness, and gun control."

Hence, an explanation for the familiarity of faces: today's Tea Party adherents are George Wallace legacies.

They, like Wallace's followers, smolder with anger. They fear they are being driven from their rightful place in America.

They see the world through the eyes of the anti-civil rights alumni. "Washington, D.C." now, as then, is regarded as the Great Satan. This is the place that created the civil rights laws that were shoved down their throats. This is the birthplace of their much-feared "Big Government" and the playground of the "elite national news media."

And they are faithful to the old Wallace playbook.

McWhorter wrote how Wallace, in a 1963 speech to the political arm of Alabama's Ku Klux Klan, "referred to the recent bombings in Birmingham against prominent black citizens, citing the lack of fatalities as proof that the 'nigras' were throwing the dynamite themselves in order to attract publicity and money."

Fast-forward to today. Note the pro-Tea Party conservative commentary debunking last weekend's racist and homophobic slurs as a work of fiction and exaggeration strictly for political reasons. Noticeable, too, is the influence of George Wallace, Limbaugh, Beck and their followers on outcomes.

The angry '50s and '60s crowds threatened and intimidated; some among them even murdered. That notwithstanding, Americans of goodwill gathered in the White House to witness the signing of landmark civil rights laws.

Schoolhouse doors were blocked, and little children were demeaned. Yet the bigots didn't get the last word. Justice rolled down like a mighty river, sweeping them aside.

They insulted, abused, lied and vandalized. Still, President Obama fulfilled his promise to sign historic health-care reform into law by the end of his first term.

Those angry faces won't go away. But neither can they stand in the way of progress.

The mobs of yesteryear were on the wrong side of history. Tea Party supporters and their right-wing fellow travelers are on the wrong side now. It shows up in their faces.

[ShadowDragon8685]

The most scary part about that the "some among them murdered" bit.

Just how long until they start planting bombs again? How long until people are founding hanging from trees, or shot from out of nowhere?

There's a long, bloody, painful battle to be won I fear. Justice seldom comes easily, especially when the unjust fear it being thrust unto them.

[Broomstick]

Just last night I mentioned to my Other Half that it's starting to look more and more like the 60s all over again.

He nodded and mentioned how, as a little boy, one of his earliest memories was watching President Kennedy getting his head shot off live on TV.

I'm not quite old enough to remember that, but I remember assassinations, riots, college students being shot by national guardsmen, and all the other scary bullshit that happened during the "summer of love" 1960's and early 1970's. It's been quiet for 30 years in this country, we've forgotten what violence in the street is like... except a lot of those calling for it are older than me, they fucking remember what it is like and yet they still want it...? What the fuck is wrong with these people?

The US is not immune to street violence or political violence. Yes, it most certainly could happen again. I don't want it to, but yes, yes it could.

[Darth Paxis]

I posted the Washington Post article mentioned a couple of posts above on Facebook (what can I say, I like sharing this stuff with my friends) and this is the response i got from a right leaning friend of mine:

uhhhh....wow. I didnt know that liberals like comparing people who are concerned about the finiancial future of our country and comparing them with racist southern folk. That actually proves liberalism is a mental disorder. That person should probably see a doctor. From that article, the writer is showing signs that he is mentally incompetant.

I responded:

Well the vibe I got from it was that he was comparing the nutjobs in the Tea Party movement to the racist movements in the 50s and 60s, not necessarily the entire movement.

If we can now call Liberalism a mental disorder, then what's stopping us from labeling all political beliefs mental disorders? Surely Conservatism has at least one nutter for every nutter that liberalism produces, if not more.

And then as I started to write this post he posted this:

Actually i dont think any sane person could draw a comparison between any person in the TEA Party movement and racist people

And I really thought he was a smart guy too.

[Patrick Degan]

Funny how all these people "concerned about the financial future of the country" were mystifyingly silent when Chimpus Caesar was financing two wars entirely on credit and letting his Wall St. friends help themselves to the commonwealth. Yes, odd that...

[Liberty]

That reminds me of my sister. She was flipping through the channels several days ago and paused to see Rachel Maddow explaining what is in the health care bill. She doesn't know who Rachel Maddow is, so she accepted what she said at face value, and she knew that the things Maddow said were in the bill sounded like god things. However, she was raised a fundamentalist and has been fully indoctrinated into the religious right, like I was until several years ago. So, she turned to me, confused:

Her: Then what in the health care bill is bad?

Me: Uh...I don't think it's bad.

Her: But the Republicans hate it, so it must be bad.

Great. Just great.

[Darth Paxis]

Ok, I responded to him:

Wow really, because I consider myself to be a sane person, and the comparison made a lot of sense to me, given the crap the Tea Party has been pulling lately.

And he responded:

Ok. Ill give you sane. Ill accept that there might be some wack jobs in the TEA movement, maybe 1 out of every 15 or so. Since wer all about differant viewpoints, i wanna share a theory of mine that isnt so far fetched. All the people obama has appointed r radicals. Now with that no sane person can argue with that. When his appointees say their favorite leader from the past is Mao, thats a problem. a big problem. and when his appointees say b4 a meeting of the Davos forum that capitalism is a joke and that the administration believes that power comes from the barrel of a gun, thats another huge problem. and my belief is that 2 simply squash all other political forces, alot of these wacko people could be bought and paid for by people sympathetic of the administration. and one last thing: those people r not part of the TEA movement. Its a peaceful movement based on truth. as much as i hate liberal polcies, i dont want them out from the public arena. But obama does want conservative voices squashed.

Not quite sure what to say to this, although I did note his contradiction, I'll mention it to him when I respond.

[Patrick Degan]

And he responded:

Ok. Ill give you sane. Ill accept that there might be some wack jobs in the TEA movement, maybe 1 out of every 15 or so. Since wer all about differant viewpoints, i wanna share a theory of mine that isnt so far fetched. All the people obama has appointed r radicals. Now with that no sane person can argue with that. When his appointees say their favorite leader from the past is Mao, thats a problem. a big problem. and when his appointees say b4 a meeting of the Davos forum that capitalism is a joke and that the administration believes that power comes from the barrel of a gun, thats another huge problem. and my belief is that 2 simply squash all other political forces, alot of these wacko people could be bought and paid for by people sympathetic of the administration. and one last thing: those people r not part of the TEA movement. Its a peaceful movement based on truth. as much as i hate liberal polcies, i dont want them out from the public arena. But obama does want conservative voices squashed.

Not quite sure what to say to this, although I did note his contradiction, I'll mention it to him when I respond.

Sounds like he's simply regurgitating whatever spew he had his empty little head filled with. He is certainly repeating urban legend, especially about Obama "appointing radicals" who are fans of Mao Tse-Tung. Your friend, I'm afraid, took the express train to La-La Land.

[Darth Paxis]

First off, I apologize for screwing up my quoting in the last post, didn't notice it until it was too late.

The latest crap:

I like how you said that there are some wackjobs in the Tea Party, then in the same post say that they aren't really part of the party. Which is it, in or out? And since when is Obama squashing conservative voices, i've been hearing a lot of conservative voices lately, they don't sound squashed to me.

No. I mean THEY associate themselves with the movement. But the movement does associate with them. And yes obama does try 2. Esp with the Fairness doctrine and saying FOX news is an unreliable source of news because its the only channel that disagrees with the president. All the others r sucking his penis big time.

You mean the Fox News that is deliberately egging on the nutjobs, inciting them to be even more violent. You mean the Fox News that consistently labels Republicans who say left leaning things as Democrats ( not saying "hey, he sounds like a democrat, but actually putting a D instead of an R in their title at the bottom of the screen). You mean the Fox News that when Obama went to get some fast food, ran the headline "Obama Murders Cow". You mean the Fox News that supports protest when a Democrat is president, but not when a Republican is. The list goes on and on.

Sounds like he's simply regurgitating whatever spew he had his empty little head filled with. He is certainly repeating urban legend, especially about Obama "appointing radicals" who are fans of Mao Tse-Tung. Your friend, I'm afraid, took the express train to La-La Land.

I'm starting to agree with you, this is really getting ridiculous.

[The Romulan Republic]

OK, you're not a Beck fan, and you may be a liberal, but you still have the blinkers on if you think you can defend the US response to this as in any way not inappropriate or disproportionate.

I don't think that's what he's arguing. General Schatten said that there was no chance that this guy could get tried and convicted because he was a white Christian conservatives. For all the faults and tilts in the playing field that favor white Christian conservatives, they can't get away with everything. It is still possible to get these guys; harder, but not impossible.

I'm glad to see someone got my point.

Edit: looks like some arrests of radical Christian militia members are being made, though in this case its for threatening Muslims, not Democrats: http://wbztv.com/national/hutaree.milit ... 95616.html

FBI Arrests 7 With Ties To Christian Militia
WASHINGTON (CBS) ―
Click to enlarge
1 of 1
A member of the Michigan Militia shows off one of his tattoos reading "We the people," at a training event in Brighton, Michigan on Dec. 30, 2009.
Claire E. Schneider/CBS
A joint-terrorism task force led by the FBI has arrested at least seven people with ties to the militia group Hutaree in Michigan, Ohio and Indiana, the Detroit News reported Sunday.

The Hutaree describe themselves as Christian soldiers preparing for the arrival and battle with the anti-Christ.


The FBI is believed to have targeted the Hutaree after its members made threats of violence against Islamic organizations. A U.S. official says some of the people arrested in the raids will face gun charges.

The law enforcement official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the investigation. Federal warrants are sealed.

Michael Lackomar, spokesman for the Southeast Michigan Volunteer Militia, an unrelated organization, says a member of his group was called by members the Hutaree Saturday who claimed their property was being raided. Lackomar says the Michigan militia member is cooperating with the FBI.

Michigan Militia members define themselves as survivalists who favor larger local government and smaller federal government. The group has been recognized recently for helping local officials in Bridgewater Township, Mich. locate missing persons.

The suspects in the Hutaree raid will make an appearance in a U.S. District Court on Monday.

[Samuel]

Esp with the Fairness doctrine and saying FOX news is an unreliable source of news because its the only channel that disagrees with the president.

The fairness doctrine is not currently in effect. As for FOX being the only source that disagrees with the president... you do realize external reality means that there is one side is correct? Which means it is possible they disagree because the conservative position is wrong.

When his appointees say their favorite leader from the past is Mao, thats a problem.

Hey, my governor admires Hitler's speaking skills. I doubt Arnold will start rounding up the jews though.

my belief is that 2 simply squash all other political forces, alot of these wacko people could be bought and paid for by people sympathetic of the administration.

Tell him... that even with our freedom threatened by terrorists we didn't take extreme measures I want to make him dig up dirt on Bush in order to argue the government will crack down.

Its a peaceful movement based on truth.

So the indoctrination wing of the SA?

[The Yosemite Bear]

also he can't spell worth a damn.

then again most TEApers can't either.

A funny thing, purhaps more part of the censervative tendancy to project, amoung the most cited wastefull government programs: The Post Office, which is ungodly cheaper, and as fast as FexEx/UPS but no one will except that as truth because the postage rates go up every few years (what doesn't), letters get lost for decades (in the volume they deal with?), and the commercials say that the delvery companys are the fastest (ok, next day same package is $25 USPS, vs $35-$50 from FedEX/UPS)

les not even mention Social Security, Medicare, OSHA, FDA, etc.

[Darth Paxis]

I know that the spelling most likely comes from the fact that he does all his Facebooking from his iPod Touch, so I've ignored it for the most part.

Well, I told him that I was posting his comments here, he said he didn't have a problem with it, so here goes:

Haha. actually, FOX did protest policies bush did. Just not to the degree. Just like democrats howl about stuff bush did but if obama does it, its ok cuz hes part of their party. Well i dont support them purposely calling a registered republican a democrat, They r only doing wat a liberl channel would do if a southern democrat started voting the ... See Moremajority of the time with the opposition party. And of course they have a right to encourage the TEA movement. Liberal channels encourage liberal causes. so dont get ur nickers in a twist.

His response to telling him about the forum posting:
Haha.interesting [my name here]. I dont have a problem. Because u cant say with an honest face or brain that fox isnt any more biased than the mainstream media. so i think all media outlets should stop mudslinging.

Ok does TEA stand for something? And I'm noticing that his argument is really going towards "well, the dirty liberals do it too, so it's ok."

Then another friend of mine with Righ leaning tendencies, decided to put his two cents in, currently asking him if he minds if what he says ends up here too.

Thanks for the input, I'll mention your points to him, see what happens.

Edit: second Right leaning friend agreed to crossposting if I gave him the link to this topic, will post his stuff later.

[The Yosemite Bear]

Taxed Enough Already

which is Ironic, since all of us who aren't making a quarter mil. or more recieved a nice tax cut, and those making over 250k profit a year had to pay a little more.

[ShadowDragon8685]

Yeah. He's been fully indoctrinated by now.

It's hopeless. He's terminal. I'm afraid there may be no saving your friend.

[PeZook]

I just checked the income tax rates in the US and holy shit some people in your part of the world need a kick in the balls. 35% top income tax bracket? VAT rates between 0-13%? For fuck's sake...