Teabaggers getting nastier.

[Shroom Man 777]

Why is it so easy for them to say such bullshit? Is America that fractured, to the point where this kind of crap is boiling over and becoming common place? Is there that much ill-will, with American politics stop resembling First World western standards and now looking more like something out of the Third World?

[Covenant]

Why is it so easy for them to say such bullshit? Is America that fractured, to the point where this kind of crap is boiling over and becoming common place? Is there that much ill-will, with American politics stop resembling First World western standards and now looking more like something out of the Third World?

When it comes to politics, certainly. Your day-to-day life doesn't involve risk of death due to a political leaning, but people can be pretty paranoid. A co-worker was talking with barely contained glee to about this awesome thing he saw, which was a Darwinfish car magnet, apparently so rare he hadn't seen 'em before. He's from, I think, Kentucky and probably never had much of a chance to see such brazen defiance as a Darwinfish. And this is in Chicago here, not a bastion of creationist thought, but even so you have a serious set of hotbed issues at play.

It's an absolute embarrassment. You end up feeling helpless when someone like Palin starts talking, because nothing you say will matter to the people listening to her. People will believe absolutely insane things. America is so big and so relatively wealthy that the places that breed this insane thought rarely suffer the effects of it, since there's enough barely more rational people out there to help mitigate this. If the country were broken into four smaller portions along political lines you'd see half of the new states spasm and start to become modern, and the other half turn into despotic theocracies. I mean, hell, look at the idiocy of the Texas schoolbooks. Not only does their bullshit hurt kids there, but the rest of us as well due to how textbooks are purchased.

Our political system is thoroughly broken because there's no rational response cycle. Hell, a good portion of the ideas in the democratic party would send a modern, liberal European into a rage due to their conservative bent, and they can barely exercise any power for fear of retribution.

[Lonestar]

This is one of the reasons I like to keep my finger on the pulse of what ordinary morons think, by participating on the CNN forums. It's extremely low-quality discussion, to say the least, but I get a better idea of how the average numbskull thinks, and I don't envelop myself in an isolating viewpoint.

Or Facebook debates.

Sometimes I get little inklings that the teabaggers are starting to make the more "moderate" far right recoil. My mother(who referred to the Dem ticket in '08 as "Osama Bin Biden") grudgingly accepted that the Dems should have been able to pass their HCR bill, because when you win elections, you get to do stuff like that. Alternatively my Brother the Birther ended up correcting my sister about how the HCR wasn't "real socialism" because of lack of universal government healthcare in it. Little pin holes of light in the dark.

And then I go on facebook and see professor of Political science at the USNA have his status "looks like Kruschev was right" the night HCR is passed.

[Broomstick]

Great. So how are these people supposed to be conducting traffic stops....? They are not police. I see potential for tragedy here.

Did you happen to look at the thing linked in the story about the clown who allegedly (and repeatedly) bumped the car of someone who was sporting an Obama/Biden sticker?

Yes, I saw that.

But it makes me think not so much of the car-bumping but the case of Vincent Chin in 1982. It wasn't politics in that case, but it was a couple of private citizens taking it upon themselves to stop someone else and "express" their opinions.

As for Palin - I loathe and detest that woman.

[Broomstick]

Why is it so easy for them to say such bullshit? Is America that fractured, to the point where this kind of crap is boiling over and becoming common place?

Yes.

[CaptainChewbacca]

Its starting to circulate around conservative blogs here and there that nobody has proof any racist slurs were shouted at black congressmen

After 14 months of committing 100% to health care reform, the day after the signing of the Health Care bill was to mark the Democratic Party’s new primary concern: destroy the uprising, annihilate by all means necessary, the Tea Party movement.

The first sign that a plan was in place was the ham-fisted, high-camp posturing of the most controversial members of the Democratic caucus walking through the peaceful but animated “Tea Party” demonstrators on Capitol Hill. There is no reason for these elected officials to walk above ground through the media circus amid their ideological foes. The natural route is the tunnels between the House office buildings and the Capitol. By crafting a highly symbolic walk of the Congressional Black Caucus through the majority white crowd, the Democratic Party was looking to provoke a negative reaction. They didn’t get it. So they made it up.

The proof that the N-word wasn’t said once, let alone 15 times, as Rep. Andre Carson claimed, is that soon thereafter — even though the press dutifully reported it as truth — Nancy Pelosi followed the alleged hate fest, which allegedly included someone spitting, by walking through the crowd with a gavel in hand and a shit-eating grin on her face. Had the incidents reported by the Congressional Black Caucus actually occurred the Capitol Police would have been negligent to allow the least popular person to that crowd – the Speaker – to put herself in harm’s way.

That crowd was a sea of new-media equipment. Not only were tens of thousands people armed with handicams, BlackBerrys and iPods, so also was the mainstream media there, covering every inch of the event. Why did not one mainstream media outlet raise the specter that perhaps a video would exist to prove the events occurred? I am still dealing with the same press telling me we didn’t prove that ACORN was aiding and abetting criminal activity because we “did not provide enough audio and video evidence.” (Insert laugh track.) Is there not a blatant double standard at play here? Nancy Pelosi tipped her hand that race was a central part of her strategy. She invoked the Civil Rights Act and compared it with the universally reviled health care bill. Her caucus is doubling down on the civil-rights rhetoric. There are no coincidences.

Its a really partisan blog but it has a LOT of video clips, and I'm not seeing any racism in there. Also, the alleged spitting incident that happened has been retracted by the congressman who claimed it occurred.

[Crossroads Inc.]

If this is so it really changes nothing... One or two accusations of hat mongering that turn out nOT to be true, do nothing to counter balance the dozens upon dozens of factual documented and nation wide incidents of REAL hate mongering, and racism.

That it seems no TeaBagger indeed shouted "the N word" does not lesson that virtually all evidence we see form them points to an All white group of people who come form routinely anti-ethnic anti-"anyone not white and christian!" parts of the country.

Though I have no doubt the far Right will do with it what they do with every other piece of 'false evidence' they find in something they don't like, IE claim "This false evidence Totally disproves your entire theory!!!"
They do the same thing with Climate change.. Oh look, we found a single report that is wrong, THIS DISPROVES YOUR ENTIRE CASE!!!

I mean, just reading the article you quoted shows a person dripping with venom and sarcasm concerning the allegation that the TeaBaggers might just MIGHT not be all sweet puppies and flowers.

[Surlethe]

Its a really partisan blog but it has a LOT of video clips, and I'm not seeing any racism in there. Also, the alleged spitting incident that happened has been retracted by the congressman who claimed it occurred.

Dude. They're a partisan source. If it happened, they're not going to post a video clip of it happening.

[D.Turtle]

This wouldn't be Dale Robertson, one of the leaders of the Tea Party movement and founder of TeaParty.org:

Racism, what racism?

[salm]

Slave owner = niggar.

What´s that even suppsed to mean?

[The Spartan]

No, he's trying to say, "Congress=Slave Owner; Taxpayer=Nigger". In other words, we're all slaves and Congress are the masters.

He just can't spell.

[salm]

Ah, ok, thanks, Spartan. Brainfart on my part.

[lance]

Wasn't that the word used in the spelling B on Tosh.0? Unless the word I'm thinking of only had one g, niggar means king.

[Ghost Rider]

Wasn't that the word used in the spelling B on Tosh.0? Unless the word I'm thinking of only had one g, niggar means king.

With one *g* the word is a Pakastani award.

With the way that idiot spelt it, he's either failing to spell said word correctly or he's trying to use a Chappelle joke. I sincerly doubt he has an inkling of the latter.

[wolveraptor]

Man, it's hard to get even mad at that level of stupidity.

[lance]

Wasn't that the word used in the spelling B on Tosh.0? Unless the word I'm thinking of only had one g, niggar means king.

With one *g* the word is a Pakastani award.

With the way that idiot spelt it, he's either failing to spell said word correctly or he's trying to use a Chappelle joke. I sincerly doubt he has an inkling of the latter.

It was a recent episode. I don't know how popular Comedy Central is, around the time TDS and CR air, for these people though.

[Ritterin Sophia]

It was a recent episode. I don't know how popular Comedy Central is, around the time TDS and CR air, for these people though.

Four years is not recent. The Niggar Family skit was added to the Comedy Central Website in '06 and in all actuality it probably aired sooner than that.

[lance]

It was a recent episode. I don't know how popular Comedy Central is, around the time TDS and CR air, for these people though.

Four years is not recent. The Niggar Family skit was added to the Comedy Central Website in '06 and in all actuality it probably aired sooner than that.

We're talking about different things. I'm talking about the clip on Tosh.0 were a 10ish year old was asked, at a spelling B to spell nigar. With the context of it meaning king.

[ArmorPierce]

Yet many Americans are convinced that we pay the highest taxes in the world....

I agree, many seem to believe it and 'experts' attempt to perpetuate it. Even in my Taxation text book from my tax class, a section with it went on a tangent (whilst not stating exactly their position on it) stating "There are many who believe that it is wrong to tax earnings twice [talking about corporate tax and capital gain taxes]. It is true that it the United States is unique in that it is highly peculiar for a country to tax earnings twice."

The text book failed to mention that the tax rate that Americans are taxed at are far lower than other developed countries.

Very objective, huh

[Master of Ossus]

Yet many Americans are convinced that we pay the highest taxes in the world....

I agree, many seem to believe it and 'experts' attempt to perpetuate it. Even in my Taxation text book from my tax class, a section with it went on a tangent (whilst not stating exactly their position on it) stating "There are many who believe that it is wrong to tax earnings twice [talking about corporate tax and capital gain taxes]. It is true that it the United States is unique in that it is highly peculiar for a country to tax earnings twice."

The text book failed to mention that the tax rate that Americans are taxed at are far lower than other developed countries.

Very objective, huh

Actually, that's true. The US Corporate tax is structured in a highly anomalous way, from a global perspective. I am aware of no other country that taxes both corporate earnings and distributions in the same manner as the US. Virtually all experts agree that it's a disaster in both conception and implementation (although I would argue that it's not unusual for a country to tax earnings twice--it just depends on how "earnings" is defined). So it's objectively reasonable, IMO, for a textbook to criticize the US corporate tax.

Moreover, that the US individual income tax is "far lower than other developed countries" (not sure how you reached that conclusion, btw--we're not the highest but we're not the lowest, either), is almost certainly a red herring when discussing the corporate income tax, because the textbook is probably trying to discuss the effects of the corporate income tax (either the rate or the structure, but probably both) on behavior of individuals and companies--something that can be viewed in isolation of the rates on individual income taxes and that really has nothing to do with individual taxes. And, incidentally, it is inarguable that the US corporate tax rate is among the highest in the entire world (developed or not), although it's debatable whether its impact is that high because of different legal rules between countries.

[Liberty]

Wait - how do other countries do taxes different than the U.S?

[Master of Ossus]

Wait - how do other countries do taxes different than the U.S?

Many other countries tax either only on distribution or only on corporate earnings, but not both, and the vast majority of countries that do nominally tax both earnings and distributions impute distributions (through one method or another), so it really becomes another form of an earnings tax, albeit an indirect one--there's some debate as to whether this difference leads US companies to retain or distribute earnings (although the emerging consensus as of a few years ago when I studied the subject last was that it has opposite effects on mature companies and new ones). There are also lots of permutations on precisely how to treat corporate dividends in other countries, and the deductibility/creditability of distributions that are essentially permutations of the above distinction.

Also, that the US elimination of the pyramid structure is basically a tax innovation that (I believe) no other country has followed, and that seriously affects the corporate tax structure, since in other countries it's possible for a single small group of investors (usually a family) to highly leverage corporate control and management over a much more valuable "group" of companies. The US eliminated that with a complex inter-corporation dividends rule. It's also unusual in that the US, essentially, allows companies to declare whether they want to pay corporate taxes or not, assuming various procedural things like them having fewer than 100 investors in total.

Furthermore, subpart F (I believe) is a totally bizarre American system that's a ridiculous bastardization of different rules that we could adopt when determining whether to levy a tax on earnings from a company that has business dealings in multiple countries. Even though most countries use some arcane combination of residence- and source-based taxation of corporate income (that is, they can tax a corporation if it either is headquartered in their country or when it generates earnings in that country), the US system is structured completely absurdly, with arbitrary distinctions galore that allows for strategic positioning in terms of how companies incorporate and do business.

[Samuel]

Has there been a serious attempt to fix the corporate tax structure?

[Master of Ossus]

Has there been a serious attempt to fix the corporate tax structure?

Not that I've heard of. One of the claims in favor of the Bush tax-cuts was that they would eliminate one layer of US Corporate Tax inefficiency by coordinating the capital gains tax with the corporate rate, but it also introduced its own layers of bizarrity (e.g., the one-time exemption for repatriated earnings from abroad). Frankly, that was the last time I've heard of anyone promoting anything like a major change in the US Corporate Tax in the popular press, and to my untrained eye that seemed like about the least of corporate tax problems in America.

Another problem is that, even among scholars, there's very little consensus as to which extreme would be better. Last I had heard, for instance, most scholars agreed that either moving to a purely residence-based system OR a source-based system would be better than continued use of Subpart F for all sorts of efficiency reasons, but there's profound disagreement as to which of the two they should advocate, and so they argue back and forth and don't get us anywhere.

Also, by-and-large, the corporate tax just isn't one of the ones that people complain about because, for whatever reason, they don't think it affects them that much (even though, by all measures, the incidence of the tax is highly regressive and hits workers much harder than it hits anyone else). Maybe it's just because it's hard to see, when you get a dividends check, how much has been deducted and how much more of "your" money the company has retained that it would pay to you if the tax were restructured, or because it's hard to immediately see how it's regressive if companies are paying it, but for whatever reason, there's vastly more popular outrage over other taxes like the income and payroll taxes and the inheritance ("death") tax.

[FSTargetDrone]

Eh... More of this shit:

Wash. man charged with threatening Sen. Murray

AP

By GENE JOHNSON, Associated Press Writer Gene Johnson, Associated Press Writer – 7 mins ago

SEATTLE – A Washington state man has been charged with threatening to kill Democratic Sen. Patty Murray over her support for health care reform, leaving voicemail messages at her office saying she had a target on her back and "it only takes one piece of lead."

Federal agents arrested Charles Alan Wilson in Yakima, Wash., on Tuesday.

Murray's office in Seattle reported the threats amid a rash of ugliness aimed at lawmakers who supported the sweeping federal health care legislation. Some lawmakers have been spit on and several have reported receiving threatening calls.

The messages to Murray were left on voicemail from a blocked telephone number, FBI Special Agent Carolyn W. Woodbury wrote in a probable cause statement. Agents said they traced the calls to Wilson's home in Selah, near Yakima.

Wilson has a .38-caliber revolver registered to him and has a concealed carry permit for it, Woodbury wrote.

To confirm Wilson was the caller, one agent telephoned him and posed as a member of a group working to repeal the health care legislation, the statement said.

According to a excerpt of the conversation, Wilson confirmed he repeatedly called Murray as well as Washington's other Democratic senator, Maria Cantwell. He then stated: "I do pack, and I will not blink when I'm confronted. ... It's not a threat, it's a guarantee."

Murray's office told the FBI it had been receiving harassing messages from the caller for months, but they became more threatening as Congress was voting on the health care legislation.

"There's a target on your back now," said one message on March 22. "It only takes one piece of lead. Kill the (expletive) senator! ... Now that you've passed your health-care bill, let the violence begin."

In other messages over the next several days, the caller said, "I hope somebody puts a (expletive) bullet between your (expletive) eyes," and "I do believe that every one of you (expletive) socialist democratic progressive (expletives) need to be taken out."

And, he said, "I want to (expletive) kill you."

Wilson was scheduled to make an initial appearance at federal court in Yakima on Tuesday on one count of threatening a federal official. It was not immediately clear if he had obtained a lawyer.

Murray's office declined to comment on the arrest.

___

AP writer Devlin Barrett contributed from Washington, D.C.

Yeah, so it doesn't really get more explicit than that. I'm amused that he apparently thought he could cover his tracks by blocking his caller ID.