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Posts tagged as:
teabaggers
Josh Marshall probably has known this for some time, but writes it today, citing the now famous video of teabaggers mocking a sick man.
Pay particular attention at the :50 second mark, where anti-reform protesters yell and throw a few bucks at a man holding a sign claiming he has Parkinson’s.
Those guys screaming about “handouts” would be perfectly at home at a rally in the 1990s, or the 80s, or the 70s and so on. This isn’t new, and it’s not original. The social and cultural currents running through this debate exist independent of the debate, and the anger can’t be tempered or avoided by procedural figleafs that few people inside Washington understand or by better messaging. At the end of the day, even abandoning reform won’t calm that kind of anger.
None of this “debate” was ever about health care. Not for one second. The Republican Party, their cheap hookers on the hard right, and their progeny the Tea Party, have watched their ideology proven spectacularly wrong by events, and they are in panic. With American economic power lying in tatters at their feet, brought down by their own hand, and their ignorant adherence to the ideology that destroyed it, they know that they have no more leg to stand on, no more legitimacy, and nothing to offer the majority of voters of this country without those voters laughing in their faces. And the election of a black man to the White House has merely been gasoline on the fire of their rage.
It’s a shame that Democrats in Congress have bought into this rage, letting it affect every vote they cast, despite that rage being completely irrelevant to the matter at hand at any given moment. It says a lot about our discourse that such a lack of leadership, even in the face of incoherent babbling rage about fantastical myths, can still be counted upon to make cowardly congresspeople cower in fear of it. What a crying shame. When this health care bill passes, perhaps Democrats in Congress will finally find the courage to stand up to a whirling machinery of fictitious hysteria, on this issue, and every other issue.
The myth peddlers’ heads will now explode further. If you thought health care reform brought out the psychosis, wait until immigration reform. DADT. DOMA. The bad news is that fact has lately been drowned out by fiction, in a media environment that rewards not fact but fiction. The good news is that their hysteria is now itself a proven fact, and health care reform may now become reality in spite of it. Perhaps this will mark a corner turned.
But make no mistake – the rage will get louder. The seething seedier. The myths deeper. The hate harder. They will twitch at an ever increasing pace, sweat heavier beads down their red faces, as the long march of history inexorably leaves them and their tired world view behind forever. It’s going to be a long road, but it carries on forward to the horizon without regard for their myth.
This country will keep moving down that road.
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I’ve been thinking this for a while, having conversations about it, but what got me to blog it? Listening today to Morning Joe’s circle of clamorous glitterati repeat every single thing the GOP wants them to repeat. Karl Rove must have jizzed his pants if he was watching – There’s not just a conservative resurgence, not just an anti-big government insurgence, but as Joe Scarborough just said, an “anti-Obama feeling that will be with us for a very long time!”
When this crowd of money chasing, narrative parroting, celebrity gossiping ratings obsessed navel gazers are talking like some giant hatred of Barack Obama is their next gravy train, the shit’s played out, bitches.
The electorate is just about done with their teabagging one night stand. Guilty pleasures have a funny way of losing staying power. Again, see Ross Perot. Eric comments that even he voted for Perot – hell, I was intrigued by the guy for a hot minute in early 1992, until it became clear Perot was bat shit crazy, his proposals were little more than talking point catnip, and the vast majority of his supporters were early stage, pre-evolutionary teabaggers in utero. When that bubble burst, it burst pretty quickly.
The Republican bubble is ripe for that pin prick. Just watch living hypocritical self-contradictory suckling of the government teat, Homeland Security consultant Jon Keeling, who is so obsessed with getting John Kasich to hire him again to another taxpayer funded existence, that he’s written post after post in total freak out mode over one poll showing Kasich fading like the memory of a bad night of embarrassing teabagging.
Republicans know they’ve made yet one more deal with yet one more devil via their full lipped, slurpy teabagging. They know this is fleeting. They know how fickle is this meager, generously estimated at 20%, loud and freakishly crazed minority. Hence the acceleration of their lips on the teabag. Do it faster, harder, yeah, that’s it, faster faster. But soon, they will beg it to slow down….they know that if they climax too soon, the rest of the night is basically over. Cue the walk of shame.
Well, they’ve climaxed. Yeah, Dems will lose some seats this fall. But like all schizophrenic weirdos, the teabaggers will move on to the next thing that outrages them once they realize they’ve been used, again. And Republicans will be left to clean up a sticky, frothy mess of Santorum, who happens to be running for president.
Sublime.
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I’m old enough to have been paid staff on both the 1992 and 1996 Clinton Gore campaigns in Ohio, and remember Ross Perot well. As teabaggers are now the flavor du jour, I thought it might be time to step into the ol’ time machine.
Teabaggers are the same people as Ross Perot voters. Exact. Same. People.
They poll well in exactly the same places Ross Perot polled well, at almost precisely the same levels Ross Perot polled at his height. If you’ll recall, there was even a point in the summer of 1992 when Ross Perot led the three way presidential race.
In fact, the dynamic which has produced the teabaggers is almost the same as the dynamic that produced Perot voters. In 1992, economic recession was the dominant force – “it’s the economy, stupid.” Remember that? Perot tapped that anger and directed it at “big government” and the budget deficit. Remember that?
What did all that deliver for Ross Perot? Nothing. Perot got to 19% in 1992 nationally, and in Ohio, I think he won Trumbull County that year (correct me if I’m wrong, please). And as teabaggers do now, Perot voters took way more votes from Republicans than they did from Democrats, likely electing Bill Clinton president.
The only difference between teabaggers and Perot voters is that teabaggers are now even more angry because the guy in the White House is a black man. Which means their moment in the political sun will probably be a bit shorter. Ross Perot flamed out with a flurry of crazy. Teabaggers already got their crazy on, and have plenty of crazy left in the tank.
So when someone tries to tell you teabaggers are the new political movement of our time, just ask them if they remember this guy.
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Republicans are as predictable as the movement of the solar system. At the moment, this is manifesting itself in their continued pursuit of the margins of political thought in pursuit of power. After a moment of reflection in 2009, in 2010 they are all in.
For perhaps two decades now, the GOP has been captive to a hard right core of activists whom official Republicanism uses like whores to win marginal elections, then ignores utterly. In that period, that core has been the God, guns, and gays neanderthal knuckle dragging rejectionist wing of anti-abortion sexual obsessives. And yet, abortion remains legal, reasonable gun control remains firmly in the mainstream, the inevitable pursuit of gay rights continues its march forward, and immigration continues to change the county for the better. Oh darn.
After the election of Barack Obama, that core of Republicanism has gone well beyond beating their Bibles, headlong into racism, hate, violent rhetoric, and violence itself. They are now the teabaggers, a paranoid strain of mutant political thought based on the embrace of pure fiction as philosophy. They no longer base their world view on a set of assumptions that are arguable, such as when does life begin, or how much gun control is good or bad, or whether or not gay rights are civil rights. Teabaggers base their world view on a set of assumptions that are literally false, provably false, whose sum total amounts to fiction.
For example, teabaggers cite the constitution endlessly, like the Bible itself, but not constitutional law, a 230 year accumulation of legislation, amendments, and jurisprudence a bit too long to actually read. They complain about how many thousands of pages are in a health care reform bill, how can you expect them to read one volume of case law? No sir. Just the words on the parchment signed in 1789 as if they are on Moses’ tablets, even though they have evolved over more than two centuries to fit our country’s own evolution, dressing themselves in colonial garb and shouting the preamble as if this makes them an authority to declare an inviolate truth only they know.
These parasitic whores, who have been contracted out by Republicanism, are just as predictable as their johns. They are now even more angry. Like every self-respecting prostitute, no amount of abuse will prevent the teabaggers from getting on their knees again, opening wide, and teabagging their master further to full climax. The GOP, despite knowing full well how this wretched addiction of theirs has marginalized their party, can’t pull away. It feels too good.
Thus, Mark Naymik today details the teabaggers’ symbiotic fellating of the GOP, which has now reached the point of teabaggers attempting to take official control of their host. The maggots now want to become the carcass on which they feed.
The outcome is just as predictable. Further into the margins Republicanism drifts. For a brief moment last year, official Republicanism wondered whether or not going in for one more fellating was a good idea. What we have seen in the past two weeks, at CPAC, the Tea Party convention, and now in the media, is the total abandonment of that brief moment of sanity. Once more into the bedroom, they march, to the point of wildly cheering none other than Dick Cheny, yes, Dick Cheney, shouting “run, Dick run”. They’re all in.
It may take a while to play out at the ballot box, but this way lies catastrophe for the Republican Party. And it brings such a smile to my face.
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Again, apparently completely unaware of the concept of irony, Sarah Palin gives a speech in which she criticizes President Obama for using a teleprompter and reads crib notes off her hand! LOL
So.
Great.
Sarah Palin is a blogging gift that keeps on giving. I can’t wait to get to interview more supporters. My guess is the next craze will be to get Sarah to sign the palms of supporter’s hands. They, like her, are completely and totally unaware in general.
PS: My other choice for headline was “Sarah Palin gives Nashville a handjob”
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Ralph King is a teabagger from central casting. A Republican Party insider wannabe, King has run for various Republican Party positions internally. Turns out the insiders realized he was a repulsive racist nutjob, so now, Ralph King runs all things Tea Party in Cleveland.
Ralph King started and manages the Cleveland Tea Party website. He’s been at every teabagger event in NEO since February, 2009. King appears in this video I shot of teabaggers at a Marcia Fudge health care event, running the show. If the Tea Party became an actual political party, Ralph King would be it’s Cuyahoga County chairman.
In other words, Ralph King is the Kasich/Taylor ticket’s reason for being. Ralph King is who John Kasich is hoping will get a hard on from Mary Taylor’s presence on Kasich’s ticket. Here’s what Ralph King, Lord High Teabagger in Cleveland, thinks of the Kasich Taylor ticket.
If this is true…. State Auditor Mary Taylor should be ashamed and shows she is no better than the rest of the politicians. Taylor was easily the best State Auditor OH had in a long time. The women found untold millions of wasted tax payer dollars.
I understand she may have been worried about the size of her campaign chest and that the dolts in the ORP were not supporting her enough. Like that’s a surprise!
Good thing Mary Taylor appeals to NEO voters!
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Proving that no good deed goes unpunished in Kos-land, I posted this diary today, and got flamed like a champ.
Ok, so I wrote a diary with a lot of invective in it against Jane Hamsher. I apologize to this community for the invective. I do not apologize to Jane Hamsher. Here’s why.
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Like the Kos diarist who called this to my attention, I didn’t know much about Jane Hamsher until she started getting paid to advocate for the public option. I never even read her blog, Firedoglake. I had barely come across her in 2008 as yet another whiny blogger complaining that the Obama campaign wasn’t advertising on her website. Called her out on it during the general. Called her out on her thinly veiled blackmail threat last summer. Told her to blow me once. Good times.
So it’s no surprise to me that Hamsher is now advocating a sordid alliance with teabaggers to kill the health care bill, and wallowing in the attention by pimping it further, complete with another pitch for another blog of hers. The pimping never stops with these people. Never.
What was surprising is that Bob Brigham would work for her this summer, getting paid by Firedoglake to advocate to state blogs for the public option. In Ohio, we remember Brigham for his brief tangential role in payola-tinged Jerome Armstrong infected blog bullshit during the 2005 Sherrod Brown primary early days. Not the most fond memories of Bob Brigham on my end. So this summer, when Bob Brigham called me on the phone, completely out of the blue, that was surprising, too.
But I’m all about building bridges to get something done to move our country forward, so I took the call from Bob Brigham, heard him out, and helped out with some pretty damn good public option blogging. I support the idea, still do, liked the idea of making House members pledge to vote “no” on a bill without a public option. I had no delusions that any of this would make the public option reality, I just wanted to do what I could do. Put my money (which equalled zero) where my mouth was (which equals something more than zero).
So it didn’t take much convincing from Bob Brigham, who at the time was pitching the same schtick to every prominent blogger in Ohio. I pressed Bob Brigham on his funding sources, which he said were all small online donors. I have no reason to doubt that, so I even gave Bob Brigham advice, some intelligence, some inside scoop, over a few Gmail chats and long late night phone calls. I got nothing out of it, just a few links to my blog, and a good warm fuzzy feeling that I was doing good.
Then Jane Hamsher, who paid Bob Brigham to “reach out” to bloggers in Ohio and other states, decides to align with teabaggers to kill the health care bill.
So here’s my advice to Bob Brigham, and anyone else who is paid to “reach out” to bloggers for any reason. If you ever, EVER work for someone this duplicitous, this disloyal, who will turn on Democrats in such a manner, DO NOT CALL ME. I don’t want to hear from you. Bob Brigham, that means YOU. This is Ohio. Democrats in Ohio fight for Democrats to win. We do not, EVER, pull the horseshit your paymaster just pulled. Maybe your previous experience with Ohio didn’t teach you that lesson, Bob, but I certainly hope this one will.
And to my readers who may wonder why I was the most vocal public option blogger in Ohio, here’s your answer. I believe it’s a good idea. Period. I was asked to blog louder on the public option, repeatedly, by a paid member of Jane Hamsher’s staff. And I still support this health care bill without it.
Why? Because I’m a Democrat who supports a Democratic president who I helped elect. And if you’re not on board with that, at any time, on any issue?
Eat me.
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And with this, I am now quite certain the health care bill will pass.
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I wander over to the teabagger websites on occasion, sometimes to see what they’re up to, sometimes to find opportunities to put lunatics on Youtube….and what did I see this morning on the Cleveland Tea Party Patriot blog?
Two of the videos on the Cleveland Tea Party Patriots’ blog video feed are teabagger videos I shot myself. The teabaggers love me!!
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Update: You ask. We answer. For those wondering if Republicans are fucked up, thanks for searching and stopping by. Your answer is below.
Hanging around the Palin idiots as much as Eric and I did yesterday really gets you down. It’s hard to believe there are this many people in America this ignorant, and so proud to be so. Exhibit A is their utterly predictable reaction when someone tells them, straight up, “You voted for George W. Bush twice, you fucked up our country, you can’t have it back.”
There are no two single acts in the average American’s engagement in politics more responsible for the current state of our country than the act of voting for George W. Bush, twice. Try naming two bigger things the average American could have done to create the mess that Barack Obama has to clean up. Try it. You can’t.
Here’s how that conversation went whenever we began it yesterday with the Palin morons. After the initial shock that someone might actually call Republicans on this, the litany begins. All totally predictable, the same every single time, WITHOUT VARIATION, delivered with increasing agitation to the point of twitching rage.
First Utterly Predictable Spew of Horseshit – DID YOU EVER SERVE IN VIETNAM?
Hey, stupid. I was in elementary school when we pulled out of Vietnam, you dumbfuck. In fact, half the electorate doesn’teven remember Vietnam, which is a major reason Barack Obama got elected. So shove it up your ass, go wipe your tears with your American flag, can’t you even count?
Second Utterly Predictable Spew of Horseshit – IT’S THE DEMOCRATS’ FAULT!
George W. Bush took a $6 trillion surplus and turned it into debt as far as the eye can see with a Republican Congress. Then, George W. Bush gave us two unfunded wars, one of his choosing, the other of necessity, both of which he fucked up so bad not even Barack Obama may be able to fix the necessary one. Then, he drove the entire economic system to total collapse, like Herbert Hoover on crack, right before he handed it off. You voted twice for that, you stupid mother fucking dumbass fucktard. Twice.
Third Utterly Predictable Spew of Horseshit – BILL CLINTON GOT HIS DICK SUCKED!
As always, it inevitably turns to a discussion of genitalia, because Republicans are the most sex-obsessed dipshits in all of political discourse. This is also about the time the twitching begins, largely because of the mention of Bill Clinton’s name.
Fourth Utterly Predictable Spew of Horseshit – LOOK IN THE MIRROR, YOU FUCKED UP THE COUNTRY, NOT ME!
This is what a child sounds like when you catch them spraying their own urine all over the kitchen floor because it’s funny. Like children, Republicans who voted for George W. Bush, TWICE, still think it’s funny that they did this. Ha fucking ha.
It’s not funny. You fucked up our country, you god damned fucking idiots. And you cannot have it back. And until you accept responsibility for your actions, you won’t get it back. So pick up a mop, start cleaning up the mess you created, or eat me.
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