My first thought is that this will lead to thinning of the teaparty herd. I mean, you give guns to people who can’t spell the word ‘moron’, there are gonna be some accidents. I’m thinking every time they gather, for target practice, they’re likely to lose a few.
Critical thinking isn’t exactly their strong point though, so it’d be only a tiny step for them to convince themselves they were being oppressed by the government. Woo boy, what that could lead to.
That whole ‘right to bear arms’ thing is pretty damn frightening when the section of the population taking advantage of it, is the same one that are hogging all the stupid.
They are, however, the section of the population likely to have the most experience with guns, starting in childhood. I wouldn’t count on them taking themselves out in any large numbers. Besides, it’s the Democrats who are masters of the circular firing squad (metaphorically speaking).
Zeriel - I understand the reality behind why they’d be more concerned about one set of laws over another. I just think they’re hypocrites for suddenly claiming that it’s all about freedom and the Constitution rather than about the money.
Do people believe that Bush’s interventions do not need to be paid for? Was expansion of prescription benefits for seniors free? No Child Left Behind certainly wasn’t. From the Heritage Foundation
Clearly this was not a huge problem for Bush supporters, who elected him again in 2004.
The preferences of tea party supporters are still somewhat murky, but there are preliminary results. See for yourself.
Let’s take an example. The question is, “Should all undocumented immigrants in the US be deported immediately?” 45% of the tea party supporters said yes compared to 11% of the non-tea party crowd. There are about 11 million undocumented immigrants in the US. Eleven million. I give the tea party supporters a little bit of credit: I bet they have considered the massive cost and governmental apparatus required to find and deport 11 million people.
And people say liberals want the government to provide services that they don’t wish to pay for.
Not counting, of course, the cost of thousands of businesses going belly-up overnight because a sizeable majority of their workforces suddenly disappeared.
The federal government has a right to levy taxes. That isn’t an “intrusion.” It’s called Democracy.
It’s also an obvious pretense and a pretty flimsy one too. They didn’t give a fuck about losing Habeas Corpus or being spied on by Bush, so they have no credibility in whining about getting a few protections from health insurance companies, or about having to penalized if they decide to be a burden on their fellow tax payers.
I have to say I think it’s highly disingenuous to pretend that what these dipshits are truly motovated by is a health insurance mandate that probably doesn’t affect a single one of them anyway. It’s obviously about much more than that. These people have been stoked into a hysterical, slobbering frenzy by talk radio and Fox News into believing that Barack Obama is a Manchurian, Muslim Communist, fascist, Stalinist Nazi who’s probably the antichrist.
Racism is a huge part of it, no question (a a new poll shows that a majority of teabaggers think that black people are “less intelligent” and “less trustworthy” than white people, and the militia imbeciles are the baggiest of the baggers). There has always been a crossover of white supremacist bullshit with the militia bullshit (I’ve actually been around some of these types and seen the Nazi tables at gun shows), but it’s not just racism, it’s also Left behind religious nuttery, anti-immigration xenophobia, Islamophobia, single-issue gun right crankery, anti-abortion crankery, anti-gay crankery, etc. The Teabaggers are a trailing rump on the body politic, and the militia idiots are pimples on that rump. Trying to take up arms against America, though, is just the rupturing of those pimples. They might stink and ooze a little bit, but they can’t do any significant harm.
I would dearly love to watch them try to fight the US Military, though, or even their own National Guard. I recently read an article someplace written by some military guy who said that these militia clowns are basically the equivalent of a bunch of fat, middle-aged, out of shape, untrained bozos thinking that they’re going to be able to start up their own professional level football team and compete with the NFL.
At the end of the day, they’re just pathetic and impotent, not a real danger. Plus, they’re mostly all talk. When push comes to shove, none of them (except the most unhinged psychopaths) are ever actually going to try to get in a firefight with anybody, as entertaining as it would be to watch them try.
Still – these morons are actually talking about taking up arms against their own country, and their own democratically elected leaders because they didn’t like the results of a fair election. There are words for that – words like “sedition,” and “treason,” and “terrorist.” If a bunch of American Muslims did this, if the Black Panthers did this, these exact same idiots would call them terrorists and want them arrested.
Well, they say they’re not going to plot to attack the police, so that’s a good start.
If someone wants to start an organization, and one of the first things they say is “we’re not going to plot to kill law enforcement officers”, you have to wonder about them.
Of course, none of them bother to think about the fact that documenting those undocumented eleven million people would do more to shore up the Social Security system than it would adversely impact the rest of the social safety net. Those undocumented workers work fucking hard doing shitty ass jobs that nobody much wants to do–and we’re facing a huge bubble of old people retiring without a corresponding group of young people coming into the job market to compensate for that so allowing illegals to get citizenship or guest worker status would be very beneficial to the economy over time. If we could get a modern day WPA going, get the fucking corporations to pay something close to the fair share they’re regularly ducking out on and regulate the financial sector we’d be setting fairly pretty. But no, according to teabaggers we just need moar gunzez. Morans.
That poll is a bit suspect. The “full table of results” shows only the findings among white people who strongly support the Tea Party movement and people who strongly oppose it.
That leaves us with sample sizes of 105 supporters and 66 opponents, respectively, even though 1006 people were actually polled.
Their earnings get reported to the SSA, which collects its share, but can never be collected for obvious reasons (ie., the SSA is happy to accept payments even under Social Security numbers that don’t exist, but actually makes sure you’re a real person before paying benefits).
I’m guessing the militia tards strongly support it.
I would also guess that a great majority of those who are actually IN the teabbager movement strongly support it, or why else would they be in it? Isn’t “strongly support it,” just another way of saying “in it?” Are there a significant number of members who do NOT strongly support it?
That’s not the point - I’m saying the poll results as shown are based on an effective sample size of 171 people, but appears on casual inspection to be a sample of 1006 people.
Um . . . is it just me or isn’t advocating armed resistance against the duly empowered agents of the federal government treason? As in, not covered by the First Amendment, if two or more witnesses testify to it in Federal court, the defendants could be found guilty and sentenced to death treason?
Or at least sedition?
You know, for all their talk of governance, democracy, and freedom, these guys have about the worst grasp of civics that I’ve ever seen.
Well, sort of, but the right to rise up and overthrow the government is enshrined in some state Constitutions (New Hampshire, for one, I think) and obviously lots of the founders alluded to it.