Tea Party

“okay, so vote all the incumbents out. How can you be so certain the douchebagery won't continue.

Sorry, I will not believe it until it happens.

This is kinda like all that global warming talk. They got all this evidence that it is happening, but few really believe.”

“oH i AGREE, WK, what we need to do is FUNDAMENTALLY change the way the Government Runs.

One of the reasons I like the Fair Tax is that it eliminates the power of the IRS and most lobbyists.

Once you take the "money" out of something the greedy crap disappears.”

“



sooooo.... � � Busted.

”

“The tea baggers are a bunch of fruity basterds”

“Racistis descriptive enough.”

“Viva el revolu-she-own!”

“So tilty and S-Break apparently you still look at things in a matter of skin color and sexual preference...REALLY advanced there”

“Ron Paul”

“Who's gona vote for Ron this time? You'll find that the TeaTeaers will show their true colors when they run Ron out of the house and prove they're nothing but angry republicans with their guns and bibles up so far up they can't see the forest cause they burnt all the trees.”

“Yet t*lty still sees NO racism in Reid's comments. HA HA”

“This Is Your Country on Progressivism
by David J. Bobb

Picture an incandescent light bulb. This is your country.


best light bulb

Now imagine a compact fluorescent light bulb. This is your country on Progressivism.

What does a country on Progressivism look like? To start with, in the evening hours it’s pretty dim. Have you tried reading at night in a hotel room recently?

With more than 300 million of those little curly-Q fluorescent light bulbs now sold annually, our country is looking a lot less bright. Ever since Congress a few years ago declared that by 2012 Americans needed to be more energy efficient, it’s been out with Edison, in with the EPA. And turn on some more lights—I can’t see a thing!


worst light bulb

When the CFL’s (even light bulbs get an acronym in our age) first hit the market, proponents of the new bulb responded to frequent complaints by insisting that their product would get better. Since that hasn’t happened, maybe the old model could be improved, some thought. Tweak Thomas Edison’s invention and bring it up to current standards.

As the New York Times reported this past summer about new efforts to update the Edison bulb, “Indeed, the incandescent bulb is turning into a case study of the way government mandates can spur innovation.”

In that single sentence we can see a whole volume about what Progressives believe.

Progressives, imbued with an undying confidence in the vitality of the federal government, see it as a goad to “goodness.” Government can mandate its way to “innovation.” And that “innovation” can, over time, make us good.

We should learn to love the new light bulbs, its proponents say, because it will help us all save the planet. The act of adopting something as small as a new light bulb molds us into better planet-loving people. Pro-actively energy-efficient in all that we do, we can become better citizens.

The Progressive view of the Constitution, strangely enough, mimics Progressive advocacy of the new light bulb. Update the old thing, Progressives say of our Constitution, and make it fit our times. It’s too ancient—too inefficient—for our age. A little mandate from the President, Supreme Court, or Justice Department, surely will spur constitutional innovation. This change will create a “new” Constitution, and a better country.

What is this “new” Constitution? It’s a living document—vital, dynamic, active—that allows for the greatest “innovation.” Such innovation is possible because the new Constitution grants each branch of government maximum leeway to advance the administrative state—the behemoth that brought you inferior light bulbs screwed into their sockets by Uncle Sam.

The old boundaries—separation of powers, federalism, checks and balances, and a jurisprudence of original meaning—can be swept away with the confidence of a new enlightenment that says, “Government is here to help, and the Constitution must not stand in its way.”

We should learn to love this “new” Constitution, its Progressive proponents say, because it will help us all become better people and better citizens. We will finally have the security that should have been promised by the Founders.

It’s been widely reported that when one of the new CFL’s breaks, the clean-up is a little messy. Kids have to be cleared out of the room for fear of neurotoxic poisoning, and adults are left with 12 steps, according to a handy EPA guide, for cleaning up the mercury. All you need, the EPA tells you on its Web site, are the following items: “4-5 ziplock-type bags; trash bags (2 to 6 mils thick); rubber, nitrile or latex gloves; paper towels; cardboard or squeegee; an eyedropper; duct tape, or shaving cream and small paint brush; a flashlight; and powdered sulfur (optional).” Must be simple, huh?

It’s kind of difficult to clear the kids out of the country when there’s a constitutional crisis. And while a Constitution can’t exactly be broken, it can be rendered irrelevant. Thankfully, ours is a resilient document. Its strength lies not in the parchment but rather in the immaterial principles of justice, the rule of law, and liberty and equality to all. We will find lasting greatness only in an appeal to those principles, and not in reliance upon government-mandated “innovation.”

This is your country, after all, and not that of the Progressives.”

“HPD...if Ron Paul had eliminated the "Surrender to Islamo Facisim" out of his lexicon it would be easier to take him seriously.

Many of the " get America out of the world" crowd seem to miss the fact that we have been involved in world affairs since Jefferson sent the navy to Stop the Barbary Pirates.”

“I knew you are not a Ron Paul believer. Can't take a little of his bad for the rest of his good, strange, his foreign thinking is the most important part of his whole political views. You cannot think as Ron does and think that 4 1/2 % of WP funds 61% of the worlds military. You are as sick as the rest of the World Takeover Mongers. Remember the Algoremo.”

“HPD...if Ron Paul had eliminated the "Surrender to Islamo Facisim" out of his lexicon it would be easier to take him seriously.

Once again, I will ask you ... have you read his book yet?”

“I am sorry ONCE again..but WORDs MEAN THINGS. HPD that is an easy thing to say yes or no to. Weasel words and doubletalk are not positive when it comes to this for me.

HE made the statements, he NEVER denied it.”

“My CFs work great. I've never had to replace any of them in three years. Get glasses.”

“Twentieth Century Fux, you're talkin' to.”

“
Crazed Teabagger Flies Piper Cherokee Into IRS Office....

Film at eleven.

”

“yeah, seriously... his "suicide letter" did seem to be more than a little teabaggish.

Sad thing is, I agreed with most of what he said, aside from the "woe is me" stuff”

“Tilt loves nature in spite of what it did to him. He has delusions of adequacy. He can compress the most words into the smallest idea of any man I know. He's a modest little person, with much to be modest about. He isn’t exactly hostile to facts, but he is apathetic about them. Suppose you were an idiot...And suppose you were Tilt. But I repeat myself.”

“I love it when simpletons like tilt have to boil something down to one simple thing just so he can wrap his weak mind around it.”

“It's nothing original, Nigal.


“If you can't answer a man's arguments, all is not lost; you can still call him vile names.”

Elbert Hubbard”

“What cracks me up is the white trash Republicans whining about how they're not Republicans anymore.”

“racist remarks again?”

“Negroes and spicks picked on by pricks.”

“y u call tilt a prick? thats mean”

“You qualify. Why aren't you southern trash talkin' bout your bother Joe Stack - make you a little uneasy another hate filled weasel couldn't afford his private plane life?”

“salebored, you are boring”

““What cracks me up is the white trash Republicans whining about how they're not Republicans anymore.”

I know how disorienting it must be for you when you see people calling out their party for what they are doing and actually leaving that party because of accountability. Cause I mean, you are so married to your party you'd kill yourself before you would acknowledge your party's shortcomings or leave it.”

“Crazed Teabagger Flies Piper Cherokee Into IRS Office....

Film at eleven.

�
Troll
6:33:11 PM
2/18/10



Tw*t and MSNBC spend more time in one night over the (alleged) "teabag terrorist" than they do in several weeks over the loony lefty Obama fan who shot up her colleagues, lol.”

“excellent point Nigal”

“A Lack of Healthy Boundaries

A creepy--but hilarious--look inside the Obama cult.


By JAMES TARANTO

Somehow we ended up on the email list for Tikkun, the Jewish-themed far-left magazine edited by Michael Lerner. (You may remember Lerner as the originator of the phrase "the politics of meaning," for which then-First Lady Hillary Clinton had a brief enthusiasm around 1993.) Yesterday brought an email touting a Puffington Host post by Lerner titled "Reviving the American Liberal Movement."

We knew this was going to be good when we read in the email that Lerner was unhappy with the headline:

By the way, Rabbi Lerner's article was originally called:

Reviving the Spirit after Post-Traumatic Obama Abandonment Syndrome: Developing a Strategy for ailing and despairing Liberal and Progressive Movements in the U.S. Huff Post turned it into milquetoast with its title. Still, please read the story itself.

And indeed the article, describing a Monday conference Lerner held in San Francisco, is a doozy--an inside look at a political phenomenon that, while tiny and marginal, is somewhat disturbing nonetheless. "The politics of meaning" seems to refer to a mental attitude characterized by the complete absence of healthy boundaries between the public and the private, the personal and the political. When Obama's critics mock his backers for seeing the president as their personal savior, it sounds like right-wing crankery. But Lerner admits that, at least in his crowd, they are quite on target:

"What do we in the liberal and progressive world do now, if we face three, or hopefully seven, years of an Obama presidency?"

The first step toward answering that question was to grieve what we had lost, honestly acknowledging the painful, for many quite humiliating, fact that after having built so many walls of self-protection against allowing ourselves to get sucked into some new moment of idealism, we had allowed those walls to come down as we became energized about Obama, only to find that once again our hopes had been dashed. . . .

What happened in Obama's first year is that most of those who had allowed themselves to hope began to appear to themselves and others as naïve fools, and the humiliation that they experienced will take some years and psychologically or spiritually sophisticated interventions. . . .

So, the most important first step for liberals and progressives is to explain to themselves and each other that history is not over, that the Obama years still retain some possibilities, and even though we need to give up our (often unconscious) fantasy that Obama was our messiah who would save us and the world, we can and must still retain our understanding that the suffering in this world through poverty and oppression, the destruction of the environment and the possibility of ending all human and animal life on the planet Earth, and the survival of our own souls and mental health requires that we revive a movement based on love, kindness, generosity, ecological sanity, and caring for each other, including everyone on the planet.

Yikes, we'd hate to hear what Step 2 is!

Lerner writes that "most people have a strong voice in our consciousness telling us that 'everyone is just out to promote their own narrowly conceived self-interest and that they will seek to manipulate or even dominate you unless you can more effectively manipulate and dominate them first.' " But "there's another voice in most people that advises them . . . that safety and security can sometimes be achieved much more effectively by communicating genuine love, caring and a generosity of spirit and of deed toward others."

To put it more succinctly, people can be both selfish and generous. By presenting this utter commonplace in terms of voices inside people's heads, he gives it the appearance of insanity, which to him no doubt looks like profundity. But Lerner sees what he calls "the Generosity world view," as a political program. One might say he wants the Golden Rule enacted into law. But the Golden rule advises each of us about what to "do unto others." It is not a call for the government to do unto all of us.

And actually, our Golden Rule caricature makes Lerner look more reasonable than he actually is. Among other things, he urges Congress to enact "educaiton [sic] reform to teach students that what should count in life is to maximize our own and each other's capacities tor [sic] be loving, kind, generous, caring for each other, ethically and environmentally responsible, and filled with gratitude and awe at the grandeur of the universe."

Harry Pelosi and Nancy Reid should get right on that! After all, the schools are already doing such a bang-up job of teaching kids how to spell. (But is our Lerners learning?)

Anyway, read the whole thing. We did--we laughed, we cringed. We hope Lerner's followers get the help they need to overcome their Obama-induced depression. The first step is admitting they have a problem. Check. The second step, however, is understanding the nature of the problem, which in this case consists of unrealistic expectations of politics--and not just unrealistic political expectations, but the expectation that politics can provide personal meaning and salvation.

Lerner suggests that the cure for this ailment consists in "psychologically or spiritually sophisticated interventions." We have a better prescription: Get a life.

A Crisp Fog Blows In--II
You know the global warmists are in trouble when they start getting advice on rhetoric and communication from Thomas Friedman. And the advice is hilarious:

In my view, the climate-science community should convene its top experts--from places like NASA, America's national laboratories, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford, the California Institute of Technology and the U.K. Met Office Hadley Centre--and produce a simple 50-page report. They could call it "What We Know," summarizing everything we already know about climate change in language that a sixth grader could understand, with unimpeachable peer-reviewed footnotes.

They could call it "The Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change." And they'll get it right this time, they promise!

Then there is this advice:

Avoid the term "global warming." I prefer the term "global weirding," because that is what actually happens as global temperatures rise and the climate changes. The weather gets weird. The hots are expected to get hotter, the wets wetter, the dries drier and the most violent storms more numerous.

The fact that it has snowed like crazy in Washington--while it has rained at the Winter Olympics in Canada, while Australia is having a record 13-year drought--is right in line with what every major study on climate change predicts: The weather will get weird; some areas will get more precipitation than ever; others will become drier than ever.

Blogger Jim Hoft notes a pair of news stories that illustrate why this is the case. From the San Francisco Chronicle, July 6, 2009:

The Bay Area just had its foggiest May in 50 years. And thanks to global warming, it's about to get even foggier.

And from London's Daily Telegraph, Feb. 15, 2010:

Fog Over San Francisco Thins by a Third Due to Climate Change

The sight of Golden Gate Bridge towering above the fog will become increasing rare as climate change warms San Francisco bay, scientists have found.

See, it works either way! More fog? It's global weirding, man! Less fog? Also global weirding! What if the amount of fog stays exactly the same? Well, how weird would that be!

Earlier this week National Public Radio visited some natives of an erstwhile Indian island. This is from a transcript of a report by NPR's Philip Reeves:

Reeves: A group gathers in a farmyard to tell the story of a tiny island nearby. That island completely disappeared beneath the waves 20 years ago. Rada Ranijana (ph) and her family used to live there and had to move here.

Ranijana: (Through Translator) Our house and our farm all got submerged.

Reeves: The families worry that one day the rising sea will compel them to move again. They, too, see this as the work of the gods rather than people.

Has anybody here heard of global warming, manmade global warming? Has anybody in this group heard of that?

No one, none. Nope.

Unidentified man: None.

Reeves: We ask again using different words. Again, there are blank faces.

The islanders of the Sunderbans, the people in the frontline of the rising seas, know much about the dangers of tigers and crocodiles, but little of the damage mankind is doing to their world.

Reeves scoffs at the islanders for their primitive belief that the gods cause natural phenomena. Meanwhile, Thomas Friedman asserts that all weather is proof of man-made "climate change." These are equivalent beliefs, in that both presuppose an overarching explanation that applies equally well no matter what happens. About the natives, however, it cannot be said that they ought to know better.

Accountability Journalism
"Congressional Republicans see a chance for political gain in President Barack Obama's televised health care summit next week, even though the president will be running the show," reports Erica Werner of the Associated Press.

Werner's report includes one quote from a Republican congressman and one from a GOP congressional staffer:

"I think what we have to do is keep it on the policy and really continue to describe that we have listened to the American people, and anyone listening to the American people would say scrap this bill and begin again, and let's begin again by focusing on lowering costs," Rep. Dave Camp of Michigan, who will be attending the summit as the top Republican on the House Ways and Means Committee, said Tuesday. . . .

"Americans don't want another 2,700-page bill that raises taxes and slashes Medicare for our seniors," said Don Stewart, spokesman for Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.

Neither of these quotes supports Werner's contention that "Congressional Republicans see a chance for political gain." Indeed, elsewhere in the dispatch Werner herself sums up the politics of the meeting this way:

The president has already said he'll moderate the forum, and the location and staging at the Blair House guest residence are of the White House's choosing, giving Democrats home-court advantage. But Republicans say they have a different advantage: Polls show Americans side with them on the substance. All they have to do is remind viewers that's the case, and they could chalk up something like a win that could make the going even tougher for the Democrats.

Now it may well be true that congressional Republicans see a political opportunity in the meeting. But if the source of that opportunity is that voters think they are right on the substance, isn't that how politics is supposed to work?

Great Moments in Socialized Medicine
Australia's Daily Telegraph reports on allegations of corruption against Belinda Neal, a member of Parliament:

Last night Ms Neal denied allegations that she had offered to help a 72-year-old senior Labor Party branch figure get her hip-replacement surgery performed earlier if she voted for Ms Neal in the pre-selection.

The allegations have been made by Louisa Sauvage, the acting president and treasurer of the Wamberall/Terrigal branch of the ALP, in Ms Neal's seat of Robertson.

Ms Sauvage said Ms Neal visited her home last Friday to ask whether she would sign the MP's preselection nomination form.

"She saw me with a walking stick and asked me what was wrong," Ms Sauvage said.

"I told her what the problem was and she said, 'I think I might be able to do something for you.' I said that would be nice," Ms Sauvage said. . . .

But last night Ms Neal denied acting improperly. She said: "After I visited Ms Sauvage and requested her support . . . she then raised her pain and her distress at having to wait a long time for an operation.

"She asked if I could help. I told her I was happy to try but it was sometimes successful and sometimes not.

"Over the next couple of days I investigated and determined it might be possible for her to have her operation earlier if the operation were undertaken by a doctor who might have an earlier available vacancy.

"I rang her on the Monday and told her that I would do a representation on her behalf and that I might have some success if she was prepared to consider another doctor.

"She said she would consider that and I said I would go ahead and do a representation. I directed my staff to make this representation and they were sent the morning of the following day."

We're afraid the differences between the two ladies' accounts is lost on us. We're not sure why Sauvage's version amounts to an act of corruption while Neal's is innocent. What is horrifying, though, is the thought of living under a system where you need political pull in order to get a hip replacement.”

“Where the Tea Parties Should Go From Here

The power of the movement is its independence from Democrats and the GOP.

BY KARL ROVE

There has been a lot of talk about combining the tea party movement with the Republican Party. And on a small scale, that seemed to happen last week in South Carolina after state GOP representatives agreed to create a "Tea Party Republicans" group to coordinate activities with tea partiers in Greenville and Spartanburg.

This week, however, those arrangements fell apart as some tea party groups dissented from the decision. Other attempts to draw tea party groups into formal alliances are running into similar difficulties. That is a good thing. The tea party movement will be more effective than it otherwise ...”

“It's interesting that your article mentions Tikkun, strat. Jonah Goldberg has much to say about Michael Lerner and Tikkun in Liberal Fascism.

Lerner is a very disturbed person. He claims to be a former member of the non-violent wing of the Weathermen.

In 1973 he wrote The New Socialist Revolution, about the coming socialist takeover.”

“The TP will have forces from both sides to move the TP towards the opposite side. ie ,The (D) will want to move the TP more toward the Right so it sucks votes from the(R) and vice f--king versa.

Ralph Nader probably needs a job and he's experienced. Good luck with that mangy changey thing there pilgrims.”

“Tea Baggers are cultists.”

“ka-ching!”

“I have a patient who is a die hard Dittohead. Every day during our visit he has Rush on. I find him more funny than anything. Hannity on the other hand is just hateful and rabid.”

“Let's talk about Liberal Conservatives like Bush and Cheney and and all of the other Connie Weenies.”

“�Let's talk about Liberal Conservatives like Bush and Cheney and and all of the other Connie Weenies.�

Is that what "liberal fascists" are?

The lite version, perhaps?”

“Everyone that doesn't own at least 30 guns and 40 bibles is a Liberal, so start counting or my buddy John Birch will come count for you. AMERIKKKA -Love or Weave it.”

“It just drives the left crazy when people call for accountability and lower taxes.”

“Cut taxes and start another war. Now let's do some accounting, mongers.”

“It just drives the left crazy when people call for accountability and lower taxes.

When those doing the "calling" are not accountable it is merely white noise.”

“Ah the leftists have gathered here to indulge in name-calling and Henny-Youngman-like witticisms. I wondered where they went instead of answering some simple economics questions.

Maybe they just didn't consider them questions for discussion but merely white noise.



"The more one considers the matter, the clearer it becomes that redistribution is in effect far less a redistribution of free income from the richer to the poorer, as we imagined, than a redistribution of power from the individual to the State."

The Ethics of Redistribution, by Bertand de Jouvenel

For feds, more get 6-figure salaries
Average pay $30,000 over private sector
http://www.usatoday.com/printedition/news/20091211/1afedpay11_st.art.htm?loc=interstitialskip


I wonder if Paul Krugman has read de Jouvenel? Nah, he probably just considers it white noise.”

“I heard the crazy broad was sucking hind tit at the teabagger hootenanny.”

“You shouldn't expose yerseph in public, Marko.

It's really, really funny, but not like you probably think it is.”