This just in: ThinkProgress cites a new poll conducted by the New York Times that shows that public approval of the Tea Party has dropped below the always-disappointingly low rating for atheists. Interactive poll results here.
Tag Tea Party
Stay Classy, Maine Tea Party
For a short time the other day, the official homepage of the Maine Tea Party declared Norwegian mass murderer Anders Breivik their “Man Of The Year”.
Nice.
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A BKO Exclusive: Tea Party Truth REVEALED!!
As this photograph CLEARLY shows, suspicions that the rank-and-file members of the Tea Party were actually Lizard People From Another Planet has been CONFIRMED!!
Lizard Alien Commander Slitheragorth (a.k.a Michelle Bachmann) has issued this statement: “Well, you people had it all figured out anyway, and, frankly, we were getting tired of wearing the geezer bodies, so we decided it was time to just give up on the charade and get down to the business of eating you. Assistant Commander Gatoragon has assembled enough 55-gallon drums of remoulade to consume approximately 30 million of you, which ought to keep us busy for the next month or two. You’ll receive instructions when and where to report for your devouring via e-mail soon.”
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Imagine A Boot Stomping On A Human Face FOREVER
“If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stomping on a human face — forever.” — George Orwell
So I guess the Tea Party really IS the future of America.
Thanks to the current flood of posts and arguments about the Tea Party over at MetaFilter, last week I learned about a political movement in France in the 1950s and 1960s called Poujadisme. The movement is named after the man who created it, Pierre Poujade, and was a right-wing countermovement that sought to undo many post-war economic reforms in France. A lot of the rhetoric and ideology behind Poujade’s party, the UDCA (Union de Defense Commercants et Artisans), sounds very much like the complaints of the Tea Party, as this PoliticsUSA article explains. Robert Zaresky, a professor of French history, also explains the rise of the Poujadistes in this NYT op-ed from February.
In the face of incidents like the one in Kentucky this week and the illegal handcuffing and intimidation of a journalist at a Joe Miller campaign event in Alaska, there is the inevitable comparison being made between the Tea Party and the rise of the Nazis in Germany. I have even made this observation myself here, and I continue to believe that the parallels exist. However, I also now see that perhaps the parallel to the rise of the Nazis is merely one possible path, and the parallel to the Poujadistes another. The fulcrum that tips the balance one way or another is likely to be not the short-term outcome of next week’s election, but the longer-term outcome of what actually happens in government once the Tea Party candidates are installed in office. In the case of France and the Poujadistes, the advent of DeGaulle as president co-opted much of the nationalist and center-right elements back into mainstream politics, even as such individuals as Jean-Marie LePen were able to use the UDCA to launch their own more extreme parties. In the case of Germany, the much more radicalized political environment was poorly manipulated by the powers-that-be and in short order the Nazis had completely usurped them.
Even though I’m more than a little disquieted by the willingness of the current campaigns to flirt with violence, I am a bit relieved to learn that there is a way in which a group as unfocused as the Tea Party can be defanged a bit, even if it means having to put up with a much more explicitly right-wing government to mollify them. But I also remain convinced that the Tea Party harkens the specter of something far more sinister that could become an unstoppable force if they ever coalesce around a credible charismatic leader, which, luckily, they still have not done.
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They’re White, They Make A Lot Of Noise, And They Shit On EVERYTHING
Why the seagull should be the symbol of the Tea Party:
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Tea For Two
Required reading:
This Vanity Fair profile of Sarah Palin by Michael Joseph Gross hit the web yesterday. Let’s hope it does for her career what the VF profile of General Stanley McChrystal did for his.
Jane Mayer’s profile of the Kochs, David and Charles, in The New Yorker a couple of weeks ago also helps to put a little sunlight on the monsters behind the Tea Party. If nothing else, it shows that Rupert Murdoch isn’t the only evil supervillian trying to take over the world. Now we just need a real-life James Bond to take these motherfuckers out.
Matt Taibbi is up to his usual snuff with a Rolling Stone post about the recent primary elections and the influence the Tea Party did and did not have on the outcome, and the insidious race-baiting of Murdoch’s FOX News.
Christopher Hitchens proves that he isn’t dead yet by giving the ol’ one-two to the Beckapalooza of last weekend. As infuriating as he is, we are going to sorely miss Hitch when he is gone. (If you’ve got the time, I also recommend this long video featuring interviews with teabaggers at the Beckapalooza for an up-close-and-personal look at the terminally stupid)
The always-funny “stupid customer” website Not Always Right.com had a little precautionary tale about what happens when teabaggers show up to vote.
And here’s a little history lesson about the origins of the Tea Party and its ilk:
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Maine-iacs, Indeed
Congratulations to the Maine Republican Party on completing the transition from Reality to Nutjobistan this week as the Teabaggers took full control of their party convention and imposed their bizarre list of demands onto the party’s official platform for the 2010 elections.
Among their demands:
- making atheism illegal
- an investigation of “collusion between government and industry in the global warming myth”
- reject the UN Treaty on Rights of The Child, the Law Of The Sea Treaty, and, while you’re at it, just abolish the whole damn UN
- “Discard political correctness, make public the declaration of war (Jihad), made against the US on 23 Feb 1998, and fight the war against the United States by radical Islam to win.”
- “Repeal and prohibit any participation in efforts to create a one world government.”
- “Return to the principles of Austrian Economics”
And the really scary thing: these people are probably going to win whatever they are running for in November. All that inbreeding and Allen’s Coffee Brandy have finally taken their toll.
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Unclear On The Concept, Teabagger Edition
Sarah Palin and the Teabaggers were in town yesterday. According to most of the local media, the total crowd was about 5000-6000 people, about only half of which were actual teabaggers and the rest of whom were counter-protesters. This local blogger who posts at True/Slant says that the whole event was pretty lackluster, which is pretty much corroborated by this live-blog of the event. As is usually the case with these rallies, the huffing and puffing of FOX News and other rightie media outlets came nowhere near the reality on the ground.
This just in from the Department of the Screamingly Obvious: The New York Times did a little demographic polling of teabaggers and found that most of them are wealthy, well-educated, middle-aged white Republican men. Whodathunkit?!?!? This group’s agenda boils down to two issues: they don’t like paying taxes and they don’t like that secret-Muslim nigger socialist in the White House. Did anyone think this would play big with anyone other than angry rich racist geezers? The only thing that strikes me at all is the part about them being well-educated — just look at the signs. I guess it does prove how crappy education is in this country that even the “well-educated” can’t spell, but it doesn’t make me have a lot of confidence in the overall brainpower of these people.
Problem is, as a whole, the general public isn’t any more clued-in than these idiots. To wit:
You might have encountered this infographic last week. It’s from a poll conducted by The Economist and YouGov.com. Among other things, they asked people what they thought the government should reduce spending on as a way to reduce the budget deficit, and the Number One Answer was “foreign aid”. But as the graph below shows you, foreign aid makes up a teeny-tiny part of government spending:
(the blue bar shows the percentage of people who said “reduce this”, the red bar shows the percentage that item accounts for in the federal budget. link to original post).
Nobody wants Medicare or Social Security or veteran’s benefits cut, not even the Teabaggers. That kind of “socialism” is just fine and dandy with the “Don’t Tread On Me” crowd. So why is ANYONE paying attention to the Teabaggers at this point? Oh, that’s right…it’s because this greedy, racist, right-wing white guy has devoted an entire news organization to making sure that’s all they talk about.