Interesting piece. If you’re interested, I would also recommend Matt Taibbi’s coverage of the Tea Party also. It includes gems like:
“A hall full of elderly white people in Medicare-paid scooters, railing against government spending and imagining themselves revolutionaries as they cheer on the vice-presidential puppet hand-picked by the GOP establishment. If there exists a better snapshot of everything the Tea Party represents, I can’t imagine it.”
and
“t’s not like the Tea Partiers hate black people. It’s just that they’re shockingly willing to believe the appalling horseshit fantasy about how white people in the age of Obama are some kind of oppressed minority. That may not be racism, but it is incredibly, earth-shatteringly stupid. I hear this theme over and over — as I do on a recent trip to northern Kentucky, where I decide to stick on a Rand Paul button and sit in on a Tea Party event at a local amusement park. Before long, a group of about a half-dozen Tea Partiers begin speculating about how Obamacare will force emergency-room doctors to consult “death panels” that will evaluate your worth as a human being before deciding to treat you.”
If you care to go by the history of the past 80 years, as you know, then you would predict that they would be worse. You’d predict this because, on average, any economic indicator you could choose has done better under Democrats than Republicans.
During the GWB Administration, Congress was in the hands of the Republicans when the bulk of the reckless spending was done. When the Democrats took over, the deficit decreased.
Hmm, Health or death, based on worth as a human being.
I better bite my tongue harder
We are the only true Americans. The people who voted Barack Hussein Obama into office are filthy foreigners who have invaded our country
Hmmmm, maybe treatment should be based on level of stupidity.
Okay, so I currently have a working theory that Republicans are going through the list of logical fallacies, and testing to see how far they can push.
Starving Artist has so perfectly illustrated the No True Scotsman Fallacy. And so I can’t help but feel the Republican Party has built the Tea Party as a way of making sure that no member can speak for any other member.
If Joe Blow spouts a bunch of shit about how great the Nazis were, the tea party can dismiss him as “not a real Tea Party member.” No one is ever a true member, until they are, and even then they might not be.
Keep an eye out for other examples, it could be amusing.
Starving Artist, would you care to name a Tea Party member who, you feel, does speak for them in an intelligent and articulate manner, who can summarize their genuine and valid concerns?
I’m basically asking if you’ve the guts to hitch your wagon to someone who may later make a speech betraying utter insanity.
Actually, I was responding to the accusation that Bush spent too much money. I remember all of the crap that Reagan and Bush(s) went through to try to get Congress to curb their spending, including shutting down the government, and so this accusation seems totally asinine to me.
If you’re asking whether or not I have more than three brain cells, yes, I believe that I do. However, I do not accept the “shorthand”, as you call it, of blaming the president for runaway spending by Congress. The president has very little control over it.
How would you summarize the Tea Party? What are they all about?
Before you start off with “they’re all about hating niggers and putting them in their place”, keep in mind that the Democratic Party was basically put together for that purpose.
Who got us mired in 2 wars that have cost us over a trillion dollars already and are nowhere near being through with financially draining us? And that’s not to mention the human cost of those wars. Obama hasn’t killed anyone yet, except through the passive act of not bringing all of our troops home, but I think any reasonable person would agree that that’s impractical.
I know Congress bent over and let this happen, but they weren’t the ones pushing for it.
What makes you think that the Tea Party embraces racism? I assume you are referring to racism, but keep in mind that it works both ways. The race baiting that has been going on with Obama is disgusting. It’s sick. Anyone who does not go along with Obamacare, who believes that people should work for a living, who believes that taxes are crippling the economy, must be a racist? Sometimes I wonder if Obama was deliberately put into the White House just to make sure that no black man has a chance of becoming president again in our lifetime.
This is the sort of crap that the Democratic Party has always been pulling, and has continued to do. They tell black people that the reason that they are down economically is because white people are keeping them in their place. That is most certainly horse shit, but they go along with it because it is easier than working hard, getting an education, and bettering themselves. Fortunately, more black people are turning conservative now, recognizing the shit for what it is, and making something of themselves, and I think that is a great thing.