Maybe a few of these Keyboard Revolutionaries should be incarcerated to test their mettle. It’s easy to foment revolution sitting in a lazy boy. Thoreau was a martyr next to them. And he actually had a worthy cause (possibly opposite theirs).
Don Douglas gives us this disgusting bit of correspondence sent to Michelle Malkin. I am denouncing it, by the way:
You are a shitty Filipino prostitute, your only hope is to marry a white man. you are cheep and ugly. When I look to your ugly Filipino eyes , I feel ,I want to throw up. You want to be white but you are not. You are a shitty Asian horn and you will be for the rest of your life. Clean your rotten cunt before you write Filipino monkey.
I feel dirty just putting it up here. And Don goes on to say:
These are the kind of slurs I get routinely from Repsac3's merry band of haters.
As has been said so many times, put up or shut up. You know how to copy and paste, Don. Let’s see the slurs from the merry band of haters that approaches the bit above. I apologize for fat neocon hobo. You’re not a hobo, you just dress like one.
Might as well do a PowerMad roundup. Here’s another posting about a nut who attacks a group of DLI students. Included is this editorial comment:
Remember my comments about Repsac3's merry band of extremist henchmen? "I expect physical threats to my safety as forthcoming ... so always remember --- leftists are pure evil..."
Of course, my brother went to DLI and I would have myself if I hadn’t chosen another career field. I believe Don, along with Dick Cheney and most other neocons had other priorities while I was keeping Plattsburgh safe from the Rooskies. Love “extremist henchmen,” though.
In this posting, Don takes some really nice photos of some really lovely people. I’m sure the Department of Homeland Security under Lord Obama appreciates the quality. Names would nice, too. Probably not necessary, though.
What really struck me though is, why the Hell is the price of gas so high there?
That’s probably 40 cents a gallon more than it is here. Of course I don’t drive, so like I give a rat’s behind. Just curious.
No, I’m just kidding! BTW, the column is called “Patriotic Opposition.” Just trying to remember if John would have called any dissent against George Bush, “patriotic opposition.”
How are those of us who stand in opposition to the domestic agenda and foreign-policy views of President Obama and his administration to think about this country in 2010 as we approach the nation's birthday on Sunday?
Or, to put it another way: How should a self-described patriot think, act and talk about the United States if that self-described patriot believes the elected leadership of the United States has led the country into a ditch that threatens to expand into a bottomless chasm?
You could just STFU. I believe that was the message to all who disagreed with the marvelous adventure in Mesopotamia.
Does the fault lie with the president and his party, or does it reside in the electorate that installed them? If it resides in the electorate, what does that say about the condition of the United States?
The third option, of course, is that it lies within you and the other idiots whom the GOP has yet to see fit to send to a desert island somewhere.
Conveniently, this kind of focus on Obama personally exempts the rest of the country from any blame, except for being so foolish as to fall for Obama's patter: The fault lies not in ourselves but in our leaders.
But for those who are unsatisfied with this, the blame attaches not to Obama himself -- after all, he really did tell us what he intended to do, by telling Joe the Plumber he wanted to redistribute wealth.
Rather, the blame attaches to the electorate for its foolishness in believing the hype, or for falling for the siren song of the European social democracy that Obama is eager to impose. So the root question here is: Have the American people changed?
So, we the American people are to blame for Obama? Even if his premise is correct and we are suffering buyer’s remorse, he never mentions John McCain in this column. Obama wasn’t elected in a vacuum. Maybe Pod thinks we should have all written in Joe the Plumber.
The body politic is not panicking, even though the news is dire -- because it knows, somehow, that this too shall pass. America has faced worse times and weathered them. Even within our memory, it has had other leaders who also misunderstood their mandates and offered solutions to the nation's problems that only exacerbated them.
The body politic learns from its mistakes and uses its power to correct them. Taken as a whole, this bunch of rubes and dupes and boobs shows a remarkably commonsensical approach to these things by saying, in essence:
Nothing is irreversible. Change is possible.
Once again, this requires that the right actually put up a candidate that a majority of the United States citizenry will vote for. Don’t see that right now.
I would like to suggest the possibility that the Tea Party loons are really being backed by the White House. Upon reading Ambinder’s piece, which seems to be required posting, this occurred to me.
Can anyone deny that the most trenchant and effective criticism of President Obama today comes not from the right but from the left? Rachel Maddow's grilling of administration economic officials. Keith Olbermann's hectoring of Democratic leaders on the public option. Glenn Greenwald's criticisms of Elena Kagan. Ezra Klein and Jonathan Cohn's keepin'-them-honest perspectives on health care. The civil libertarian left on detainees and Gitmo. The Huffington Post on derivatives.
Can anyone deny that having crazies running around babbling about birth certificates, shouting Socialist at the drop of a hat and repeating whatever Glenn, Rush and Sean tell them isn’t distracting the left from holding Obama’s feet to the fire?
Maybe some of the proposed actions by the president are insane. I don’t know. But when the opposition is led by Sarah Palin, Michelle Bachmann and Victoria Jackson, who the hell would notice?
Rahm are you running the Tea Party program?
The Tea Party folks aren’t going to do it, so I will. Thank you Barack Obama for cutting my taxes. I could afford to pay more, but who really wants to if they don’t have to. The Tea Party folks think they are paying more, but they are quite possibly cretin idiots.
"In all, we passed 25 different tax cuts last year. And one thing we haven't done is raise income taxes on families making less than $250,000 a year -- another promise that we kept," he told supporters at the Arsht Center for the Performing Arts. "So I've been a little amused over the last couple of days where people have been having these rallies about taxes. You would think they would be saying thank you."
The president argued that America is on the road to recovery and headed in the right direction -- something an overwhelming number of Tea Partiers disagree with.
The Tea Partiers don’t want to see us on the road to recovery. Fuck them and their willful ignorance.
The Republican Party having decided they hate everything about Barack Obama has gone in search of his antithesis.
Southern Republicans wrapped up a three-day meeting in New Orleans on Saturday unified in fervent opposition to President Barack Obama, but wide open at this early stage about whom they want to challenge him in 2012.
They have yet to find a candidate who combines all the qualities they feel will be needed to successfully challenge his Obamaship in 2012.
But they also readily volunteered objections to the same names: Gingrich has personal baggage, Palin's too inexperienced, Romney pushed Obama-like health care while governor of Massachusetts and Pawlenty lacks charisma.
If only they could find someone who combines the serial adultery of Gingrich with the tedium of Pawlenty and the pasty whiteness of Romney along with that deer in the headlights vacuousness of Sarah Palin.
I’m going to go out on a limb and give a big thumb up and Hometown boost to Haley Barbour. He’s white enough, he’s sleazy enough, he’s boring enough and with the endorsement of Gov. Bob McDonnell’s incredibly tone deaf proclamation: he’s proved he’s stupid enough to be the Republican nominee.
This is not Haley Barbour:
Accept no imitations!
And yes, carrying the concept out, I realize they would be looking for a fat, boring, albino, adulterous, woman since Obama is a man. But, this is not a serious blog. Please see LGM, Balloon Juice, Duck of Minerva or elsewhere for serious discussions. It’s seat of the pants all the way here.
Well we can hope anyway. And it’s hard to write that as I sit looking at the rain come down. Recessions make us pessimistic and always doubtful that the end will come. And of course are particularly hard on those who are out of work. But, they do end.
The American economy appears to be in a cyclical recovery that is gaining strength. Firms have begun to hire and consumer spending seems to be accelerating.
That is what usually happens after particularly sharp recessions, so it is surprising that many commentators, whether economists or politicians, seem to doubt that such a thing could possibly be happening.
If I had the time to waste I’d go over to AmPow and see how the polymath from Long Beach College is applying his great knowledge of economics to this to determine that it is bad news for Obama.
it is normal for recessions to make people pessimistic. “Go back and read what people were saying in 1982 or 1975,” said Robert Barbera, the chief economist of ITG. “Nobody was saying, ‘Deep recession, big recovery.’ It is quite normal to expect an abnormally weak recovery. It is also normal for that expectation to be wrong.”
I’m perfectly happy to hear the wingers keep saying we’re on the road to ruin. They can keep saying it right through the next few elections and look even more foolish.
In 1982, Democrats scoffed at a surging stock market and thought a severe recession would last for a very long time. They were confident that the economy would doom Ronald Reagan’s re-election campaign in 1984. All they had to do was make clear they offered a stark alternative to the failing policies of the incumbent
Change a few words (Reagan to Obama, Democrats to Republicans, 1984 to 2012) and you have an accurate description of the current political climate. Could the Republicans be as wrong now as the Democrats were then?
That’s the secret, get the recession out of the way early in your presidency. Dubya fucked up. He had one early and one at the end.
What did you expect? "Welcome sonny," "Make yourself at home," "Marry my daughter." You've got to remember, that these are just simple farmers, these are people of the land, the common clay of the new west. You know . . . morons.
The only way Obama is going to win over these people is if Mongo comes to town. And I hope that doesn’t metaphorically happen.
President Barack Obama says he believes the Tea Party is built around a "core group" of people who question whether he is a U.S. citizen and believe he is a socialist.
Apparently he feels there are some in the Tea Party who are sane. We can only hope.
But beyond that, Obama tells NBC he recognizes the movement involves "folks who have legitimate concerns" about the national debt and whether the government is taking on too many difficult issues simultaneously.
Please excuse all the verboten cut and paste.
Frank Rich in the NYT recaps some of the descent into chaos of our fellow citizens on the right end of the spectrum:
But the laughs evaporated soon enough. There’s nothing entertaining about watching goons hurl venomous slurs at congressmen like the civil rights hero John Lewis and the openly gay Barney Frank. And as the week dragged on, and reports of death threats and vandalism stretched from Arizona to Kansas to upstate New York, the F.B.I. and the local police had to get into the act to protect members of Congress and their families.
How curious that a mob fond of likening President Obama to Hitler knows so little about history that it doesn’t recognize its own small-scale mimicry of Kristallnacht.
He notes the reaction to the passage of this bill as compared to the passage of Medicare, Social Security and the Civil Rights Bill:
But there was nothing like this. To find a prototype for the overheated reaction to the health care bill, you have to look a year before Medicare, to the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Both laws passed by similar majorities in Congress; the Civil Rights Act received even more votes in the Senate (73) than Medicare (70). But it was only the civil rights bill that made some Americans run off the rails. That’s because it was the one that signaled an inexorable and immutable change in the very identity of America, not just its governance.
And of course, the gutlessness of those in the Republican party to do anything to tamp down emotions, in particular the most recent candidate for the Oval Office:
After the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed, some responsible leaders in both parties spoke out to try to put a lid on the resistance and violence. The arch-segregationist Russell of Georgia, concerned about what might happen in his own backyard, declared flatly that the law is “now on the books.” Yet no Republican or conservative leader of stature has taken on Palin, Perry, Boehner or any of the others who have been stoking these fires for a good 17 months now. Last week McCain even endorsed Palin’s “reload” rhetoric.
Are these politicians so frightened of offending anyone in the Tea Party-Glenn Beck base that they would rather fall silent than call out its extremist elements and their enablers? Seemingly so, and if G.O.P. leaders of all stripes, from Romney to Mitch McConnell to Olympia Snowe to Lindsey Graham, are afraid of these forces, that’s the strongest possible indicator that the rest of us have reason to fear them too.
Go. Read.
And if you want to, and I wouldn’t recommend it, go from the sublime to the stupid head on over to powerline. They haven’t quite claimed that John Wilkes Booth was a Democrat, but give it time.
I realize it’s all fun and games until someone goes full metal McVeigh. I can’t help myself. All afternoon I’ve been all, “Feel the power of the fang” and variations on it.
I’ve been enjoying the works of Bob Lonsberry since my sojourn at SUNY Brockport. Like many of his ilk, he seems to be slipping the bonds of sanity over the health care bill. This, of course, is someone who absolutely no problem with a needless war fought in Iraq or the spying done by the NSA on Americans wherever they might be.
Suddenly the right is re-discovering their libertarian roots, though. Big government declaring war and saying fuck your privacy is not a problem. Big government trying to do something about the 45 million Americans without health insurance is a call to arms (literally?).
For the last two days, I’ve worn the same shirt. Tomorrow I will wear one like it.
It’s yellow, with a rustic drawing of a rattlesnake, and a line of text below: DONT TREAD ON ME.
And when I can open my mouth, I will. And when I can’t, my shirt will speak for me.
Don’t tread on me.
That is a warning the Obama Democrats chose not to heed.
And now they will feel the fang.
No idea what feel the fang means. Wingers have a bad habit of talking in code. If he has only one fang, Obamacare may help. I trust there is some dental coverage included.
Hopefully some psychological coverage as well. Lighten up, Bob.
All you wingers make sure you take the Tea Bagger Socialist-Free Purity Pledge. Hat Tip to Parsley’s Pics.
No special reason for this. Just feeling good today. Don’t feel like pissing anyone off. And everyone knows that I’m a glass three quarters full sort of person, when I’m not being nihilistic anyway. And the more the tea party folks piss and moan the better I feel.
Armstrong could sing about it being a wonderful world after the life he had growing up and the tea party folks can gripe because of their imaginary concerns over health care reform? WTF? Maybe I don’t mind if I piss someone off.
DFH Bruce Bartlett has an article up in Forbes suggesting that the Tea Partiers might not be the sharpest tools when it comes to actually being aware of any facts about how much Americans pay in taxes. They likely don’t even have a good idea about how much they themselves pay. For the record, mine were actually pretty low this year. Hail Obama!
Tuesday's Tea Party crowd, however, thought that federal taxes were almost three times as high as they actually are. The average response was 42% of GDP and the median 40%. The highest figure recorded in all of American history was half those figures: 20.9% at the peak of World War II in 1944.
Automatons that they are the Tea Party folks seem to think that because Obama is a socialist Democrat liberal tax lover then taxes must have gone up since he was inaugurated.
Tea Partyers also seem to have a very distorted view of the direction of federal taxes. They were asked whether they are higher, lower or the same as when Barack Obama was inaugurated last year. More than two-thirds thought that taxes are higher today, and only 4% thought they were lower; the rest said they are the same.
And:
According to the JCT, last year's $787 billion stimulus bill, enacted with no Republican support, reduced federal taxes by almost $100 billion in 2009 and another $222 billion this year. The Tax Policy Center, a private research group, estimates that close to 90% of all taxpayers got a tax cut last year and almost 100% of those in the $50,000 income range. For those making between $40,000 and $50,000, the average tax cut was $472; for those making between $50,000 and $75,000, the tax cut averaged $522. No taxpayer anywhere in the country had his or her taxes increased as a consequence of Obama's policies.
Bartlett refrains from saying it, so I will, “Get a clue, morans!”
Whatever the future of the Tea Party movement in American politics, it's a bad idea for so many participants to operate on the basis of false notions about the burden of federal taxation. It only takes a little bit of time to look at one's tax return to see what one is actually paying the Treasury, calculate the percentage of one's income that goes to taxes, and compare it with what was paid last year and the year before.
Et tu, Wall Street Journal?
