Why is it no Tea Partiers were arrested in the Capitol, yet, over at the WH… Anti-war protesters rally near White House; 5 arrested

“They don’t care about health care and never have. They care about power, and denying it to those who don’t already have it. ”

‘They’ ‘They’

Generalizing a whole group of people while criticizing some bigots.

Ironic? Hmmmmm.

I suppose if we expanded the “they”, we might find some of “them” who are protesting the expansion of government entitlements in a financially bankrupt country. It’s possible that some non-assholes share some ideas with assholes, after all.

Perhaps these are the they who had apoplectic fits over the last 8 years when the executive and legislative branches tripled the size of government and charged the prosecution of two wars to the country’s credit card? These are the same they that protested with as much fervor and media savvy when the Vice President said, infamously, “Deficits don’t Matter.”

Yes, the Tea Party was those “They”.

They only had a few fringe in their midst. Those were clearly outlying loons.

The underlying anger of the movement is hypocritical if it is truly with regard to spending and deficits. The expansion of the safety net is what is needed most in a country still sore from economic trauma. And if you want to take that position, nothing is stopping you, but it is not a slippery slope argument, nor a strawman to speculate as to whether you want to use resources to help the downtrodden or to cut taxes. That is to say, the aims of current government “entitlements” as you call them are not all that comprehensive or sweeping, but they do help those that are receiving them. You are on the record as being against that. I don’t think that’s bigotry, per se, but it is kind of disgusting, as a philosophical position.

A recent conversation between Vanity Fair’s James Wolcott and comedian Marc Maron parses the subject quite well:

Wolcott: It’s almost impossible to think about the future now because, because everything is so jammed up, it’s like there’s no planning for the future because everybody is so jammed up in the present with all these ridiculous- I mean, You take- I mean, at first I thought I was just being a snob, but the fact is that, something like the Tea Party Movement. They are genuinely DUMB. I mean, you see it in their signs, in the things they say that are like half-cocked, or that are, you know, have no sense of history, or history as they got from Glenn Beck that morning.
[...]
M: The counterhistory is essentially that they’ve gotten- somehow or another, the moneyed interests that own the government have gotten fairly ignorant and dumb people who are very angry to defend corporate interests, by using a different language.

W: Yeah.

M: It’s, It’s baffling to me. That what they’re really fighting for, is this corporate order that they’ve gotten, somehow into their head, that that somehow, is populism. They don’t seem to realize the disconnect between who is their puppetmaster and what is really happening. That’s the most frustrating thing about it, is that, to me, the only real question when it comes to politics is- and where you stand is, like, “Do you really- Do you care about poor people at all?”

W: Mmm-Hmmm.

M: And if you can shamelessly say “No! If they can’t afford to play along, they deserve to die.” Then you’re on that side. It should just be “Kill the Poor!”, but what I don’t understand is how people who are economically compromised and still have those values, can- can accomodate that in their own minds knowing that they’re just, y’know, a paycheck away from being exactly what they’re mocking.

It’s not just the tea party people, this attitude is pervasive across the right wing, from the average idiot man-on-the-street voter, to its presidential hopefuls, to the carnival barkers and bloggers of AM Radio and conservative websites. When Spencer states that they care only about power, he is not referring to the specific acts of loathsome individuals, but the underlying philosophies, fears, and hatreds that enable them and allow their expression. It’s not that some freak called Barney Frank a “fag” that’s indicative of how the Conservative movement thinks, it’s that that asshole had a crowd of people surrounding him laughing instead of chiding him and telling him what a prick he was.

[Today's Conservatives] would be happy living homeless under a bridge cooking sparrows over a trash can fire, as long as the family under the next bridge over didn’t have any sparrows.
a forgotten commenter at Balloon-juice.com

But maybe youre right, perhaps Im being unfair. It’s not like they had multiple, professionally inked signs warning of armed violence or comparing the CinC to a Nazi Fuhrer. No, nothing like that to be found anywhere.

You’re an idiot.

Or are you a fake idiot?

“You’re an idiot. Or are you fake idiot?”

Such an apparently reasoned argument, dashed in a second when you decided to end it by metaphorically shitting all over the living room rug.

I’m no water carrier for misinformed populism, though I tend to at least sympathize with the tea partiers’ instincts. And I prefer Rick Moran to the exaggerated dandy Wolcott, despite the eloquence of the latter’s prose.

http://rightwingnuthouse.com/archives/2010/03/21/shallow-misinformed-and-fearful-tea-partiers-or-their-critics/

Marginalizing an entire half of the political spectrum by highlighting the worst loons among them is a well worn tactic, on both sides of the aisle. I admit that I’ve fallen prey to its siren song, but I would hope Ackerman – who is a generally smart guy, if too attached to his narratives – and perhaps you would have been around the block enough to be bored with it.

As far as the tea party movement being “generally dumb,” so is the antiwar movement. So is humankind, right or left. One can be partisan, but to be smart, or at least aware, you have to recognize that most of your fellow travelers are idiots or poorly informed, by simple statistical measures.

You might be dumb as well (I’m tabling judgment), if you think the cost of the Iraq War + Bush’s worst entitlements (Medicare Part D) stack up as equivalent abuses in the canon of tea party, small government ideology as the stimulus and a reform and entitlement program that significantly alters 1/5-1/6 of the US economy. In the tea partiers’ frame of reference:

1. War is one of the few things that actually falls under the original mandate of the fed.

Under my frame of reference:

2. The cost of the wars in Astan + Iraq, including supplemental budgets, do not eclipse defense spending as a percentage of GDP in the 40′s, 50′s, 60′s 70′s, 80′s and even during the first Gulf War.

http://www.willisms.com/archives/2006/08/social_security_50.html

In contrast, entitlements are outpacing defense spending, and will only outpace it more as this wishy-washy monstrosity passes.

Yes, I view it negatively. No, I don’t tend to hold protest signs and watch Glenn Beck. But if I did either of those things, it wouldn’t automatically associate me with some idiots on the street who shouted the N word.

I think the dissenter was trying to point out that the second-oldest trick in the book is to lump like-minded people in together in order to generalize against them– the oldest trick is calling someone “stupid” when they don’t agree with you. Believe it or not, it is possible to be a conservative and not be in love with the idea of machine-gunning the poor. It used to be possible to be a liberal and not believe everyone on the other side was either stupid, evil or both. During ghe Bush years, dissent used to be the highest form of patriotism. Now it’s an excuse to be attacked and denigrated. I’m sure my comments will single me out as a racist moron as well.

During ghe Bush years, dissent used to be the highest form of patriotism.

Then why did they (Bush Co) call anyone who disagreed with them traitors?

No, the left claimed this constantly, but it was never the case. Show me one example? There are many of people on the left doing exactly that– now that they are in the majority. The problem is that leftists think they have a lock on truth and righteousness, so that everyone who disagrees with them can be swabbed as evil. The list is endless, but can you imagine the uproar that would have been touched off if a Fox newser had made the type of “watermelon” comments that Dan Rather just indulged in? He wasn’t fed through the shredder because he’s a good member of the collective, so his motives must be pure. Those who choose to be divergent, by worrying about the fact that the Obami have run up as big a deficit as the Bushies did in about a seventh of the time– well they must be destroyed.

Outing Valeire Plame as a CIA NOC because her husband refuted lies told by Bush was just coincidence then.

“You’re either with us or against us”

Gingrich: “It’s not an insult[ ]” to compare Bush administration critics “to those who enabled Hitler”

A small sample

Plame was outer by Armitage– Powell’s bitch. Didn’t you KNOW that??? Gingrich never served in the Bush admin and need to check the veracity of that quote.

Gingrich was supporting Rumsfeld who did make the quote. I seem to recall him being quite active as a member of the BushCo.

Rove was one of the “confirming” sources for Novak (as well as trying to interest Matt Cooper and Judy Miller in the “Plame Story”)

Armitage was just one of a number of folks trying to take out Plame.

OK, so you have a Republican politician who didn’t work Bush, who may or may have not uttered a stupid “Nazi” comment– how does this equate to the Bush administration labelling anyone who disagreed with them as traitorous?

Your “info” on Rove is fiction.

Any inside info on 911? I hear fire can’t melt steel…

you might have some trouble reconciling all the Cheney statements about this administration not keeping us safe or not being devoted to the defense of our interests with that.
they’re sure happy to rub right up against talk of traitor now.

show me where cheney or any other bush administration official called someone a traitor. show me. you can’t. put up or…

by the way, show me where cheney said barry was “clean looking” or that you had to have a “slight indian accent” to own a 711 in delaware, or who claimed that fdr went on tv after the market crashed to calm the people, or who referred to a “typical black person” or sat in a pew listening to a guy who thinks the CIA created the AIDS virus to kill black people, or who thought there were 57 states, or that Austrian is a language, and on and on and on.

You guys have an entire world outlook shaped by misinformation, half truths and lies. Lincoln would have been a Democrat, MLK wasn’t a Republican, JFK was killed because he wanted out of Nam instead of by an avowed communist, Clinton’s lying under oath wasn’t really a crime, The Soviet Union didn’t want to take over the planet, Mao was a great leader, despite the 35 million plus dead, and on and on and on.

You have your day in the sun now. But the American people are on to you. Wait until Granny and Grandpa find out that their lives aren’t worth as much to the Dems as younger, more pliable illegal aliens; wait till all the Obamabots in their twenties realize they will HAVE to buy health insurance so that the great unwashed can get a free ride.

Maggie Thatcher had it right when she pointed out that the problem with socialism is that pretty soon you run out of other people’s money. Wait until your wallets are the ones that start getting drained.

You’re correct. I can’t find any thing where Cheney explicitly stated those opposing were traitors. Just where he implies it by saying that those who oppose BushCo policies were “not supporting the troops.”

Nothing like hiding behind those who took a step forward that he was afraid to do since he had “other priorities” than to serve in a war he supported.

Cheney’s Rules of Evidence

But I’m sure he really doesn’t mean the words he uses.