Saturday, August 28, 2010
Politics Tea Party: Victims?
Posted by Max Brantley on Sat, Aug 28, 2010 at 7:31 AM
- The Stranger
- TEABAGGER: His emblem held high.
In the Tea Party’s talk of states’ rights, critics say they hear an echo of slavery, Jim Crow and George Wallace. Tea Party activists call that ridiculous: they do not want to take the country back to the discrimination of the past, they say, they just want the states to be able to block the federal mandate on health insurance.Still, the government programs that many Tea Party supporters call unconstitutional are the ones that have helped many black people emerge from poverty and discrimination. It is not just that Rand Paul, the Republican nominee for Senate in Kentucky, said that he disagreed on principle with the provisions of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that required business owners to serve blacks. It is that many Tea Party activists believe that laws establishing a minimum wage or the federal safety net are an improper expansion of federal power.
Critics rightly note that Dr. King spoke over and over of the need for this country to acknowledge its “debt to the poor,” calling for an “economic bill of rights” that would “guarantee a job to all people who want to work and are able to work.” In Mr. Beck’s taxonomy, this would make him a Marxist.
Meanwhile, a group financed by the Koch billionaires that is also working to encourage the Tea Party events is under fire for its overtly political advertising while enjoying tax-free status.
And speaking of the Kochs, Frank Rich also wrote Sunday about the billionaires feeding the Tea Party movement. Rich suggests a simple question (will the 'baggers ever realize they are being used, ultimately to their disadvantage?):
Tea Partiers may share the Kochs’ detestation of taxes, big government and Obama. But there’s a difference between mainstream conservatism and a fringe agenda that tilts completely toward big business, whether on Wall Street or in the Gulf of Mexico, while dismantling fundamental government safety nets designed to protect the unemployed, public health, workplace safety and the subsistence of the elderly.
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Crasher disrupts Tea Party
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Keystone pipeline: Libs and 'baggers join forces
February 27, 2012Another strange bedfellows coalition: Environmentalists and Tea Party activists with an intense dislike for abuse of eminent domain by corporate interests have joined hands to oppose the Keystone pipeline that is intended to bear problematic tar sands from Canada to Gulf-area refineries. /more/
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Comments (63)
Showing 1-50 of 63
If you want a good laugh, read Mike Masterson's column in today's Demo-Gaz. He paints Glenn Beck as a uniter, and tars those who disagree as “part of a larger agenda to silence those who think critically.” Then he quotes someone who wrote something called the “Tea Party Song” that said the blow-hard Beck and the great Martin Luther King were one in the same when it came to views on race.
I think the space aliens Masterson is so fascinated with have finally come to earth and stolen his brain.
like
dislike
The Koch Billionaires article in the link was discussed on Fresh Air this last Thursday. Link to the story here - http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.p…
These guys are beyond wealthy and the fact that they are confirmed hard-core Libertarians who favor repeal of Social Security, minimum wage, environmental protection laws and the numerous other laws that benefit our Society.
Their connection to funding the Tea Baggers is interesting - as the story points out the brothers Koch would prefer not to talk about that though.
Bob Lancaster's column on lying this week is a perfect commentary on what Beck and his well-heeled supporters are doing. They're trying to turn the moral insight of our culture upside down through lies so bold that only a fool would believe the ones telling them are morally grounded.
Unfortunately, more than a few of us are plain fools. Or willing to be deceived, because our attention span is the size of a gnat's, when it comes to seeking to understand the real political game being played in our country through groups like the tea party.
That game is to distract us from the picking of our pockets, while we fight about issues of race, gender, sexual orientation, and ethnic and religious identity.
From the NYT piece: "In the Tea Party’s talk of states’ rights, critics say they hear an echo of slavery, Jim Crow and George Wallace. Tea Party activists call that ridiculous: they do not want to take the country back to the discrimination of the past, they say, they just want the states to be able to block the federal mandate on health insurance. "
Umm. South Carolina tried that over tariffs in 1832. They called it Nullification. Didn't fly then, won't fly now.
Amazing how people will suppport those who would do so much harm to them and their way of life. As for the Kochs, they are nothing but vermin.
Bobby Kennedy and Jack Kennedy and LBJ ...all saw M L King as the serial adulterer that he was...had him wiretapped. "The Dream"---phooey
Dave Elswick says "marshalls" have estimated the crowd at 330,000. So you guys were all way too low.
Courtesy Pam Spaulding through Facebook, I'm just now seeing Glenn Greenwald's commentary at Salon yesterday about how those who want to divert our attention from their economic rapacity are exploiting scripts about race and other divisive issues now: http://www.salon.com/news/politics/democra….
Greenwald says,
"It requires extreme blindness or extreme dishonesty to deny that our politics is more racially and ethnically polarized than it has been in a long time."
Indeed.
Yes, what Wm. D. said! Glenn Greenwald had a piece in Salon pointing out that the Fox News crowd and Republican leadership have distracted populist rage because of their fear about economic conditions -- much of it legitimate fear -- from its proper target by pointing it toward minorities and the civil rights movement and labeling Obama and his supporters "racist." Then Greenwald adds:
"That crisis [Great Recession that began in 2007] presented a huge opportunity for Obama and the Democrats to bring about real change in Washington -- the central promise of his campaign -- by capitalizing on (and becoming the voice of) populist anger and using it to wrestle away control from Wall Street and other financial and corporate elites who control Washington. Had they done so, they would have been champions of populist rage rather than its prime targets. But, as John Judis argues in his excellent New Republic piece, they completely squandered that opportunity. Rather than emphatically stand up to the bankers and other oligarchical thieves, they coddled and served them, and thus became the face of the elite interests oppressing ordinary Americans rather than their foes. How can an administration represented by Tim Geithner and Larry Summers -- and which specializes in an endless stream of secret deals with corporate lobbyists and sustains itself with Wall Street funding -- possibly maintain any pretense of populist support or changing how Washington works? It can't."
http://www.salon.com/news/politics/democra…
Masterson had no brain for a space alien to steal. Didn't he once nominate himself for some journalism prize under an assumed name? As for President Kennedy and adultery, he could have written the book on it. LBJ? Phooey. Glenn Beck? A reptile, as Mr. Blow says today in the Times.
Synchronicity, maybe, Snapback? When both of us are thinking of the same link at the same time?
And thanks, Norma.
"Dave Elswick says "marshalls" have estimated the crowd at 330,000. So you guys were all way too low." a troll
Stupidity has no limits or boundaries.
These commentators masquerade as legitimate journalists spiking the fertile minds of the weak with ideologies that seem on the surface as freedom based when in fact these ideologies serve to further line the pockets of the uber-rich.
The state of our press and it's service to this Citizens of this Country is no doubt at an all time low.
I fear that the Press today has shirked it's responsibility to the American public. Journalists like Walter Cronkite, Edward R Murrow or Daniel Schorr recognized their duty to seek out and report the truth to the American public.
Our nation has become full of below average thinking and analytic capable thinking people. We are about to get what we deserve for teaching to standardized tests rather than teaching to think.
I am not a troll, wannabee. I post here fairly frequently. I was referring to your earlier guessing game about how high the crowd estimates would get from the organizers. That said, I find this a surprisingly hostile and intolerant place. I've lived here for nine years, and I find a lot of the comments here to be rude and unwelcoming.
" I was referring to your earlier guessing game about how high the crowd estimates would get from the organizers." by not a troll
What game was that?
Hostile and intolerant? What is it with conservatives screaming about hostility and intolerance when that has been their MO all summer? You guys play a really poor victim role.
I have just discovered I have an acquaintance who is there. He took vacation to be in D.C. It's one thing for us to share our astonishment and dismay on the blog (good to be with friends.) But I really don't know how I'm going to deal with this in mixed compony if it comes up.
Seems to me after reading the Jane Mayer Koch brothers piece and reading the comments of the trolls here, it's really all about a fundamental greed. A lot of these people just do not want to pay taxes. They don't want to give up a dime of their money for any common benefit. And they do not recognize that they, themselves, have received any benefit from tax dollars directed to the common good.
The acquaintance I'm speaking of has personally benefitted from Medicare's existence. He's in the medical field and without Medicare, he'd have seen a great deal less billable work. Without Medicare, I guess many of those he has billed for would have died. I guess he thinks there are enough of the "right kind" of patients to sustain him if we eliminated any of that "socialist" health care support.
It is a blindness so profound I don't know where to begin to approach it.
>>I am not a troll, wannabee. I post here fairly frequently. I was referring to your earlier guessing game about how high the crowd estimates would get from the organizers. <<
Kinda gd, but NO cigar. We were guessing how large FAUX News would raise the crowd estimate.
**Dave Elswick says "marshalls"**
Now come clean gjdodger...WHICH "marshalls" chosen by whom?
.
..............."Marshalls".........oh my what an official sounding label....and
by the way gdodger, our estimates went as high as ONE MILLION would be claimed
by FAUX News..at least one blogger said 500,000 so..............
your spiffy report of 330,000 from a "MARSHALL ?" is not surprising.
.
The current headline on CNN regarding Beck-
Conservative talk show host Glenn Beck struck a spiritual tone in opening remarks at his "Restoring Honor" rally today. "America today begins to turn back to God," he told the crowd.
These people are frickin' wackjobs.
I'll say one thing, from that picture: That's no place to go to look for a feller. Besides the obvious handicap of being crazy, they all look like .......... weenies. Real men dont go around waving tea bags or Lipton boxes, ya jackass.
never mind these jerks, the little league world series is on including hawaii v. texas some time this afternoon. Blind ladies without their glasses are not good reporters. But I got my assessment of the tea party trolls correct anyway.
I just watched a T'baggers prayer and saw thousands of white angry Scotts-Irish mulling around on CNN....now gospel group is doing a "thank you Jesus" song which is unique because in those thousands of angry Scotts-Irish faces there are 3 black ones singing praises to Jesus.
Jeesh, I love it how self-righteous a "dry drunk" like Glen Beck can become.
Here's CNN link to the action
http://www.cnn.com/video/flashLive/live.ht…
My favorite moment will be where one of the award-winning preachers referred to "Doctor" Beck, the Son of God, and added something about a blond chick kissing Jesus' feet with her, "antiseptic mouth."
The bagpipes run a close second.
I propose we shut down any argument about crowd size because there will not be a definitive answer. According to the Washington Post:
The size of the crowd promises to be a subject of contention. Estimates from organizers ranged from 100,000 (from Beck) to 300,000 (from Beck's permit application to the National Park Service) to 500,000 (from the head of the tea-party organizing group FreedomWorks).
But crowd sizes on the Mall are notoriously difficult to estimate - and there is no longer an official source for such figures. Congress ordered the U.S. Park Police to stop estimating crowd sizes after organizers of the Million Man March threatened to sue the agency for saying that 400,000 had attended the 1995 event. (Authorities have provided an estimate only once since: Obama's 2009 inauguration, which they pegged at 1 .8 million.)
This has been big news for, what, about a week? All over the tube today. Probably tomorrow. 47 years from now, history will remember this date as...the 94th anniversay of Dr. King's speech.
ELwood: "In those thousands of angry Scotts-Irish faces there are 3 black ones singing praises to Jesus."
And sad to say, one of them is the eminently clueless Alveda I-Have-Martin's-DNA-and-I-Don't-Like-the-Gays King: http://www.salon.com/news/glenn_beck/index…
What a disservice she's doing to the King legacy, and what a dim-witted service to those who are shamelessly exploiting and trying to overturn that legacy.
Most news websites are saying in the "tens of thousands." As I posted previously, no limits on stupidity.
mag,
What I began last night (open line) was contest to see who could get the closest to what FAUX News would report as crowd size. Recall several times in the past T'bagger crowds were reported at 3x to 5x any reasonable number that could have been in attendance. Our wagering game has nothing to do with the actual crowd size, only what FAKE News would report. Apparently they embarrassed themselves so badly in the past that now, like the ADG, they will only say "large number" of t'baggers....here's today ADG latest "report".....
"The crowd — organizers had a permit for 300,000 — was vast, with people standing shoulder to shoulder across large expanses of the Mall. The National Park Service stopped doing crowd counts in 1997 after the agency was accused of underestimating numbers for the 1995 Million Man March."
So now "vast" could mean 80k, 200k or 300K, we just know that it's "vast", like the
the Sahara Desert or the Pacific Ocean...vast, like the space between Sarah Palin's ears.
So for now, I'm hanging out in the VAST cyberspace until FAUX News has a number for the Scotts-Irish gathering, featuring Negro entertainers.
It's all about brain wiring, brain wiring and money, brain wiring and fear, brain wiring that tells you, you are superior than others, God is even in your brain wiring.
The Republicans-Tea Baggers have one agenda, to not have any government that removes taxes from their pockets, snoops into safety and wage violations in their factories or offices, or in any way pulls a single penny from their pocket or costs them a penny of precious profit.
Look and you'll see they're mostly older white people. This is how their brain works: I made my own way! I pulled myself up from nothing! I've earned every penny I've got thanks to NO ONE! I don't depend on anyone, I take care of me and mine! Nobody gave me anything! And on and on.
I think most of us think that way, it's never been an honorable thing to be seen as a mooch or freeloader. It's hard to have pride unless you can think you made your own way in life. But really, that Howard Roark type is very rare in America. Most of us have someone to thank for where we are today. Half of us understand this, half of us don't.
But because of bad brain wiring about half the US thinks they can do without any government. The Haves, the real Haves could live without Social Security and Medicare therefore FK you if you need it. They think if you aren't rich, you're lazy. It's a dandy thought but not supported by any facts.
Did these old Tea Baggers turn any money they inherited over to charity? NO! Do any of them refuse their Social Security checks? NO! When they get sick do they refuse Medicare? NO! Did they send their kids to private school from 1st grade thru college? NO! Do they depend on the cops and firemen? YES! Do they haul their own sewage to the public treatment plant? NO! Have they ever been to a public library? YES! Do they drive on public roads? YES! Use the US Postal Service? YES!
They don't think of these things and won't admit it if you catch them using public services or inheriting a fortune....by god they stand on their own 2 feet! And sadly, they honestly don't care if the sick die or the poor starve to death or if your old granny rots in her little hovel. It actually helps them if your kids are illiterate, it gives them a larger, cheaper, work force to work to death for peanuts.
They don't like brown/black people except for tools of labor and they expect them out of the city limits by sundown. They don't want gays marrying because it will cost them money providing benefits for a bunch of extra spouses. They love Jesus because they're scared. And back to that bad brain wiring, they know that this country, our flag, belongs to them. The rest of us are just wannabees, lazy, shiftless, maggot-like subhumans who are highly disposable and mighty undesirable.
They're brains are wired wrong. They have no concept of a nation. They don't understand the concept of Democracy. They don't believe we're all in this together. They just want the government's hands off their money and they want to do anything they want to do with no one snooping around. Go back to 1820 and you'll find the Tea Party-Republican nation they want to see come back again.
William, MLK's mentally challenged niece only made one reference to, "the threat against "the procreative foundation of marriage."
Doc, I'm not quite sure of your point. Do you mean that today she made only one reference to that issue?
But she has made numerous references to these issues in the past, and is vocal in her opposition not only to gay rights, but to the attempt of other members of the African-American community to oppose homophobia.
And she has allied herself with a group of right-wing Catholic thinkers who use what they think of as natural law to oppose same-sex marriage on the ground that marriage should be reserved only to those who can procreate. (Never mind that churches and civil society have long since chosen to marry heterosexual couples who do not intend to or cannot procreate.)
William, I was being sarcastic. Like most of these "conservatives", she wants to be controlling what everyone is doing in their private lives. That was evident from nearly everything she said.
The repeated references by the speakers to "black, white, red, etc.", and "I have a dream," were laughable. I expected someone to say, "Some of my best friends are colored."
Sorry I missed the sarcasm, Doc! That's what comes of working myself into a blood-sugar slump on my treadmill. Makes the cogs of the brain turn too slowly.
And I completely agree with your analysis. Poor Alveda King is a willing tool in the hands of folks who could not care less about her community and its needs.
As usual, DBI should have the last eloquent word on this string, but I have to add that whenever you confront one of the baggers teas spouting in public -- say, in the smoke shack or other mixed crowd -- he (usually a white middle-manager type) darts his eyes furtively loooking for allies and, lacking any, resorts to something like, "Well, that's what I think, and a lot of other people feel the same way." So that's why the crowd count is going to matter on some superficial level after today's gathering of the Beck-dom. It's the argumentum ad populum fallacy fixing to pollute the public dialogue even more. The simple fact that ten people show up to hear this crap will serve to prove their point.
There are TWO PHRASES in Martin L. King's "I have a dream" speech. The two phrases are separated by one chorus sentence. One phrase is highly emphasized by today's Tea Baggers, the other, NEVER. Here they are:
"I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.
I have a dream today.
"I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification; one day right there in Alabama, little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers."
"Nullification and interposition" have almost become bylines for those funding the Tea-baggers and those leading it.
http://www.usconstitution.net/dream.html
These "common"people are supporting the ideals of the Koch brothers who want to be allowed to freely poison these same people's homes with the formaldehyde from carpets and plywood and who will laugh all the way to the bank about how a few millions dollars, spread around as "astroturf", got so many people to actually act against their own best interests while further enriching the Koch brothers.
Also very smart to not allow signs since the obvious racism in the signs at the last Beck-a-thing made it obvious to all but the mentally ill (re FAUX watchers) that the group is overtly racist. They are standing on a government supported mall with government-supplied security (by the DC people no less) after driving up on federal interstate highways. And while being sure that they didn't leave their Medicare and Social Security cards at home.
And while they may have contributed some to SS, those drugs in their suitcases were bought with government-borrowed money from China at the behest of Bush II(which was passed by reconciliation, the same technique the Democrats were berated for in the Healthcare debate).
No one ever heard of the Koch Bros so this was totally manufactured in the press.
http://www.nhteapartycoalition.org/tea/201…
The media can repeat this lie all it wants but there is no 'funding' for this movement, not like Soros is funding the Democrats, the White House and all the radical leftists groups that are perpetrating voter fraud and violence.
Yes it is amazing how anyone could support someone who is doing so much to hurt them (Obama/Soros) and as for this "The Republicans-Tea Baggers have one agenda, to not have any government that removes taxes from their pockets, snoops into safety and wage violations in their factories or offices, or in any way pulls a single penny from their pocket or costs them a penny of precious profit."
This sounds reasonable to me ---- only Nazis want bigger gov't more controls and more taxes.
To NH, who is generating your copy? You have to be joking, right? Please say yes!
Why must you reference Tea Party people as "tea baggers"? Why the sexual reference? Whenever someone resorts to namecalling, doesn't that normally mean they're hiding a weak argument?
I think MLK Jr.'s niece put it nicely. She said her uncle would have loved Glenn Beck. She also said he would have loved Barack Obama. Sometimes we need people to rise above politics. Now is one of those times.
I'm actually not a big fan of Glenn Beck or Barack Obama. But resorting to namecalling doesn't seem like the answer to me.
-Jack
Arkansas Hunting Land.net
"She said her uncle would have loved Glenn Beck."
Then she did not know her Uncle very well.
MLK was a proponent of social justice, Beck says it is socialism and wrong.
and really NH? The Koch brothers are funding the tea party movement though Freedom Works. sheesh.
I love Facebook. When I identify the tea party members, right-wingers, etc., as merchants, large or small, I make sure I don't spend another cent with them.
As the Tea Party movement takes its eye off the ball -- at least, the ball described by some of its proponents early on: smaller government, lower taxes, personal responsibility -- it seems to me headed for Same Song, Sixth Verse.
Fundamentalist. Christian. Social Conservatives.
Nothing new about that. But are there Tea Party members who don't care if a million gays get married tomorrow, so long as tax cuts are retained and extended? Are there those who don't care whether America turns to God or not, so long as the Arizona immigration law is upheld and health care reform is repealed?
Is there really anything new under the sun?
Or is it just The Book of Falwell, Part II?
Martin Luther King was also a womanizin' CHEATER....so let's just worship
the man who had a speach but NO Morals or loyalty to his family. Maybe he learned it from the Kennedy's
I think the idea, Backgammon, is to appreciate the value of Dr. Martin Luther King's ideology and the principles he espoused for our country -- whatever his personal flaws. I *know* worship isn't the idea.
It's like the admiration I have for much of what Thomas Jefferson thought and espoused -- even though there is strong evidence he was a slave-raping adulterer.
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