If Rand Paul, questionably skilled ophthalmologist & narcissist, kidnapper & pervert, had been campaigning in Japan, he would have committed ritual suicide by now. Sadly, he's running for U.S. Senate, so that option is off the table.
If he had the decency of a rattlesnake, he would have at least suspended his campaign, or even quit in shame after this took place at tonight's Paul/Conway debate:
And to the prick that commented on YouTube that this was likely a MoveOn.org staged event and the woman was likely faking, MoveOn.org doesn't do staged drama, unlike Tea Party darling James O'Keefe. So you're either really stupid, or just cruel. Either way, fuck off and die, please.
Contrary to Dr. Paul's assertion, the Tea Party will make you free. Well, this is real Free:
That a tsunami of anger is gathering today is illogical, given that what the right calls “Obamacare” is less provocative than either the Civil Rights Act of 1964 or Medicare, an epic entitlement that actually did precipitate a government takeover of a sizable chunk of American health care. But the explanation is plain: the health care bill is not the main source of this anger and never has been. It’s merely a handy excuse. The real source of the over-the-top rage of 2010 is the same kind of national existential reordering that roiled America in 1964.
In fact, the current surge of anger — and the accompanying rise in right-wing extremism — predates the entire health care debate. The first signs were the shrieks of “traitor” and “off with his head” at Palin rallies as Obama’s election became more likely in October 2008. Those passions have spiraled ever since — from Gov. Rick Perry’s kowtowing to secessionists at a Tea Party rally in Texas to the gratuitous brandishingof assault weapons at Obama health care rallies last summer to “You lie!” piercing the president’s address to Congress last fall like an ominous shot.
If Obama’s first legislative priority had been immigration or financial reform or climate change, we would have seen the same trajectory. The conjunction of a black president and a female speaker of the House — topped off by a wise Latina on the Supreme Court and a powerful gay Congressional committee chairman — would sow fears of disenfranchisement among a dwindling and threatened minority in the country no matter what policies were in play. It’s not happenstance that Frank, Lewis and Cleaver — none of them major Democratic players in the health care push — received a major share of last weekend’s abuse. When you hear demonstrators chant the slogan “Take our country back!,” these are the people they want to take the country back from.
Here's what hasn't been talked about much: the utter hypocrisy of the goals, and the conflation with the early American revolutionaries.
The original Boston Tea Party was a protest against taxation from Britain, which the Whig Party of the time felt was against the British Constitution. While some Tea Partiers of today also feel that the Health Care legislation is unconstitutional, there are vast differences between then & now.
In 1773 the colonies were largely under the rule of Britain, and were controlled militarily certainly by Britain. But today that's hardly the case. The US is a sovereign country, with both Federal & State laws, and no foreign control (well, supposedly).
So what are the Teapartiers mad about? What exactly do they want? They yearn for the country that never was, where people can get unemployment benefits yet rail against government handouts, especially if it's someone else's hand out. A country where folks know their place, especially if their place is below yours. A country which gives all an equal chance to excel above those who aren't equal. And a place that patriots can call home, and where they can call those who disagree traitors.
Yes, America in the 1950's was a great place, as long as you were white, and had access to a pension when your working years were over.
But we had no foreign military on our streets, no distant King taxing our products, and internal threats other than from Joe McCarthy's fevered fantasies. And neither do we today, other than from Glenn Beck's & Sarah Palin's and Michelle Bachman's fevered fantasies.
So Teapartiers, please get a grip, study some history, and shut the fuck up.
No one can call Glenn Greenwald a pollyanna, at least, not usually. But this time, I think he's being too hopey-changey:
There's a major political fraud underway: the GOP is once again donning their libertarian, limited-government masks in order to re-invent itself and, more important, to co-opt the energy and passion of the Ron-Paul-faction that spawned and sustains the "tea party" movement. The Party that spat contempt at Paul during the Bush years and was diametrically opposed to most of his platform now pretends to share his views. Standard-issue Republicans and Ron Paul libertarians are as incompatible as two factions can be -- recall that the most celebrated right-wing moment of the 2008 presidential campaign was when Rudy Giuliani all but accused Paul of being an America-hating Terrorist-lover for daring to suggest that America's conduct might contribute to Islamic radicalism -- yet the Republicans, aided by the media, are pretending that this is one unified, harmonious, "small government" political movement.
Indeed. Please read the rest of the article. As usual, Glennzilla nails it, and nails the hypocrites in the Conservative & Tea Party movements to the wall.
But at the end, Glenn drops the ball a little:
There literally is no myth more transparent than the Republican Party's claim to believe in restrained government power. For that reason, it's only a matter of time before the fundamental incompatibility of the "tea party movement" and the political party cynically exploiting it is exposed.
Yes, it's only a matter of time before we have a functioning press & media, and opposition politicians with the cojones to make these points loudly and often.
And curiously, during the Bush43 regime, the only supporters of Ron Paul were Ron Paul and a small band of Libertarians. Now we have 1000's of Paulites, all united by what? Dislike of mainstream conservatives?
Maybe. But what else changed Jan. 20, 2009? Could it be the color of the President's skin?
I'd like to point out some news today that got eclipsed by a white, upper middle class, college educated male who had a problem with the IRS and flew an airplane into a building that housed the IRS and left a manifesto behind and who matches the FBI's definition of terrorism, but wasn't a terrorist, but just happens to match a CNN poll of folks who make up the Tebaggers.
Nope, I'm not going to point that out at all. I just want to point out what CNN didn't in their article about their own poll; Teabaggers are 80% white.
Color me surprised. Not.
The teabaggers' constant claims that they cross party and racial lines has always been a cover for the facts; they didn't object to Bush trashing the Constitution, they didn't object to Bush taking a surplus and driving it into deficit due to tax cuts for the rich, they didn't object to illegal wars, they didn't object to torture, they didn't object to anything ... until the new sheriff, umm Obama, was in town
