Archive for the ‘Tea Party’ Category
Tea Party’s assist from the old guard
I’m on a few Tea Party email lists, and occasionally I actually read the mailers to see what my insane political cousins (twice removed) are up to. Tonight, the local NYC Tea Party chapter will gather for a panel titled “One Nation Under Arrest: How Crazy Laws, Rogue Prosecutors, and Activist Judges Threaten Your Liberty.”
In order to give the anti-justice system tirade a thin glaze of legitimacy, a couple panelists have been scraped from underneath the boots of the old guard and pasted onto the press release. There’s Paul Rosenzweig, the founder of Red Branch Consulting PLLC, a homeland security consulting company, and former Deputy Assistant Secretary for Policy in the Department of Homeland Security.
There’s also Brian W. Walsh, Senior Legal Research Fellow in The Heritage Foundation’s Center for Legal and Judicial Studies. Walsh also worked on contract with the Department of Homeland Security where he “integrated private-sector organizations into government emergency preparedness and disaster response efforts at the federal, state, and local levels.”
Unsurprisingly, the panel consists of two privatization hawks who would really, really, really love to gut the public sector and sell it off, piece-by-piece, to corporations.
But this is yet another example of just how stale the whole “revolutionary” Tea Party really is. When it comes time to present the bestest, brightest examples of the party’s shiny, new ideology, frantic Tea Party organizers have to scour the bargain bin of Conservative intelligentsia to find a fear profiteer, whose most recent achievement appears to be penning a column titled “No Wonder The French Are Crazy,” and being cut from the Washington Post‘s Next Great Pundit contest, and another creature, Walsh, who probably pleasures himself to the idea of drowning the TSA in a bathtub.
United States of Alternative Reality
Bobo took some time off from writing wrongheaded columns to sit down with his best gal friend, Gail Collins, and bitch about bloggers.
David Brooks: The second reason Obama’s behavior is depressing is that it shows that the administration is getting mentally captured by the lefty blogosphere. The real secret of mature leadership is that you can’t confuse your party’s information food chain with reality. The lefty blogosphere, like the righty blogosphere, exaggerates or makes up facts that flatter its world view, ignores the rest and ends up in a comforting fantasy land. The Obama people used to understand this. In this case, they seem to have lost their distance from it.
Gail Collins: You’ve lost me on that one. The lefties aren’t particularly obsessed about foreign money. The special interests they hate most are right here at home.
I mean, really, how much incorrect shit can two people cram into a thirty second interaction?
In no way has the administration been “captured” by the lefty blogosphere. Believe me, I write that with profound regret. I really do wish Obama was held up in a room somewhere behind a steel door being guarded by sentinels Glenn Greenwald and Jane Hamsher, while inside a foaming-at-the-mouth Markos Moulitsas forces our trembling MoveOn.org puppet to sign comprehensive climate legislation, a repeal of DADT, and, oh, I don’t know, one of the other eight million “wish list” things Progressives wanted (public option, withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan,) but failed to obtain.
The lefty blogosphere just doesn’t have that much power, and any self-aware lefty blogger will tell you that.
The morality disconnect
Bob Herbert wrote a very good column today about what he calls the “campaign disconnect” between Democrats, Republicans, and average Americans. I highly recommend reading the whole thing, but essentially Herbert makes the argument that neither party has adequately addressed the economic desperation of citizens. Democrats have decided to humor the disastrous idea of austerity measures, while Republicans behave as though they’ve “lost their minds completely,” an assessment that I think is way too generous on Herbert’s part.
I prefer his latter description when he accuses Republicans of “peddling a fantasy that has already damaged the country profoundly.” That definition contains the acerbity needed to fully grasp how poisonous the GOP’s philosophy is these days.
Yesterday, I briefly recapped the blatant hypocrisy displayed by certain Republicans in regards to the stimulus. Bobby Jindal and Jeb Bush, two “stalwart Conservatives” both greedily gobbled up stimulus cash before returning to their roots: bashing any recovery plan the Democratic administration proposes.
But hypocrisy aside, the GOP, and the elite in general, have genuine disdain for the underclass. The truly sad part is that they’ve brainwashed poor Republicans into going along with their scheme to permanently quarantine the undesirables. That’s when you get elderly people showing up at healthcare reform town hall meetings, screaming that they want the government to keep its hands off their Medicare. Sigh.
Senator Orrin Hatch proposed an amendment that would demand mandatory drug tests for welfare and unemployment beneficiaries because, as we all know, the only people out of work these days are worthless drug addicts. Sharron Angle implied unemployment benefits make people lazy, and that there are lots of jobs out there, but workers just refuse to buckle down and find them, and Rand Paul told them to quit being cry babies and go flip fries at McDonald’s so they can feed their children.
The myth of Beck’s ‘apolitical’ event
I have no idea what Ross Douthat is doing. Now that he appears to have gotten all the baddies out constructing weird arguments against gay marriage, he’s moved on to defending Glenn Beck and his totally “apolitical” geriatric love-in.
This, among other reasons, is why I have appointed Ross my new David Brooks for his awe-inspiringly hapless work. David Brooks has been promoted to my new Maureen Dowd, and Maureen is my new drunk aunt. Congratulations, everyone!
In today’s mistake, Ross states the following:
The Fox News host had promised that the rally, billed as a celebration of American values, would be an explicitly apolitical event. And so it came to pass: save for an occasional “Don’t Tread On Me,” banner, the crowded Mall was nearly free of political signs and T-shirt slogans, and there was barely a whisper of the crusade against liberalism that consumes most of Beck’s on-air hours.
Here, Ross neglects to mention that signs and banners were banned from Beck’s gathering. You see, teabaggers have had a little problem with certain members carrying incredibly racist and provocative signs in the past, so instead of letting their racism shine through — unfiltered for all the world to see — Beck and his handlers preemptively censored his base. Furthermore, what appeared on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial was a watered-down, “safe” version of Beck’s philosophy.
It’s not racism when we say and do racist things
Remember how the movement to ban Muslims from gathering in Lower Manhattan is really a movement to preserve the sanctity of titty bars protect the hallowed shrine of Ground Zero, and is not – at all!- tied to Islamophobia?
Yeah:
Imam Abdullah Salem arrived at the Madera Islamic Center on Tuesday to find a pair of menacing signs, including one that read “Wake up America, the enemy is here.”
It was the latest in a series of incidents that the Madera County Sheriff’s Department is investigating as hate crimes. On Sunday, a brick nearly smashed a window at the center on Road 26 just outside Madera. Last week, another sign left on the property read “No temple for the god of terrorism.”
It goes without saying that the designer of this sign (it’s being credited to the American Nationalist Brotherhood) obviously has no concept of religious freedom, tolerance, or even the history of New York (Lower Manhattan used to be called Little Syria due to its thriving Arab population). And of course, Islam didn’t attack America on 9/11 – it was the action of a small group of religious extremists.
The sudden fixation on the Park 51 cultural center has nothing to do with the existential threat of ‘them turrists stealin our freedums’ and everything to do with racism, bigotry, and religious intolerance. Of course, if you point out this extremely obvious reality to a red-faced, cardboard sign-waving paranoid, they come down with a case of the vapors.
Tea Party favorite continues class war against the poor
I write a lot about how certain elite (pundits, politicians) have made it their quest to criminalize poverty. David Walker, a lackey of billionaire and Social Security pirate, Pete Peterson, openly pined for the days of debtors’ prison, which is actually already a reality in six states. Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) proposed an amendment that would demand mandatory drug tests for welfare and unemployment beneficiaries. A particularly enlightened commenter on my blog summarized the logic behind the amendment thusly: “you gotta make sure they’re not on the crack pipe.”
Previously, I have also written about hiring practices that act to preserve America’s permanent underclass, and how some employers are now making it a practice to check potential employees’ credit scores. Poor people are buried under extravagant loans, which they might never fully pay back, simply for attempting to pursue higher education. Some students actually resort to killing themselves to escape debt, but these are isolated instances that shouldn’t overly concern anyone.
Then there was the embarrassing spectacle of the ruling elite dangling the carrot of unemployment relief before the noses of millions of jobless Americans. There were actual lengthy debates about if the country could really afford the lavish benefits ($300 a week per person) to help people survive the recession during a time when the U.S. is engaged in two separate tremendously expensive military occupations – not to mention the shadow wars in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, etc. – and after taxpayers spent trillions bailing out the crooks on Wall Street.
Now, a Tea Party favorite Carl Paladino has thrown his hat in the poor-bashing ring.
Paladino said he would transform some New York prisons into dormitories for welfare recipients, where they could work in state-sponsored jobs, get employment training and take lessons in “personal hygiene.”
Don’t worry. The program would be totally voluntary.
Surprise! Some of these teabaggers may have a case of the racism
Anyone who’s been paying even the slightest bit of attention knows there are more than a few crazy racist people within the Tea Party movement. However, it appears as though the mainstream media is finally awakening to this reality (via)
In several instances, tea party members with racist backgrounds such as Roper have played a role in party events. At the same time, The Kansas City Star has found, white nationalist groups are encouraging members to attend tea parties. One organization based in St. Louis is sponsoring tea parties of its own.
Yes, it’s true. The Tea Party has a bad case of the racism. For example, SPLC recently profiled former Olympic athlete Bob Richards, who has minutely strayed from his career in pole vaulting in order to become a full-time bigot. Richards has taken up with a white supremacist group called the American Third Position (A3P).
That A3P’s cause is to “represent the political interests of White Americans,” according to its mission statement. The California-based organization hopes to unite disaffected racists and field candidates for political offices across the United States.
And A3P has apparently found some kindred spirits within the Tea Party movement.
