Sarah Palin Boston Commons April 14, 2010

Now that thousands of barrels of oil are spewing into the Gulf of Mexico by the hour, Republican senators are pretending that “Drill, Baby, Drill” was never a party slogan.

“I think there was a candidate that used that,” Senator Jon Kyl (R-AZ) said. “I think our phrase was ‘drill here, drill now,’ meaning here in the United States and as quickly as oil and gas leases are going,” reported The Hill’s E2 Wire blog.

Read this entire story on Examiner.com.

So even if the Tea Party folks saw the light, what can ordinary Americans do?

That’s the question I want to put to my guests, Simon Johnson and James Kwak. They have written this new book, 13 Bankers: The Wall St. Takeover and the Next Financial Meltdown. It’s a must read – already a best seller — and it couldn’t have come at a better time. This book could change the debate over financial reform by tipping it in favor of the public.

Read this story on AlterNet.

Sarah Palin Boston Commons April 14, 2010

Whether like it or not, Sarah Palin gets to say whatever she wants, and the mainstream media will simply regurgitate it.

The Associated Press ran a story on Sunday about how Sarah Palin was taken aback by President Obama’s comment regarding the US as a superpower. What she said was a total misrepresentation of the facts and the AP story just went with it.

Here’s what’s got Palin all riled up.

Obama said earlier this week that the United States must do its best to help resolve conflicts peacefully around the world, because if we don’t, it will fall on our shoulders – militarily and economically – to fix the problem.

Obama said:

But what we can make sure of is, is that we are constantly present, constantly engaged, and setting out very clearly to both sides our belief that not only is it in the interests of each party to resolve these conflicts but it’s also in the interest of the United States. It is a vital national security interest of the United States to reduce these conflicts because whether we like it or not, we remain a dominant military superpower, and when conflicts break out, one way or another we get pulled into them. And that ends up costing us significantly in terms of both blood and treasure.

Here’s what Palin said on her Facebook page:

Mr. President, is a strong America a problem?

Asked this week about his faltering efforts to advance the Middle East peace process, President Obama did something remarkable. In front of some 47 foreign leaders and hundreds of reporters from all over the world, President Obama said that “whether we like it or not, we remain a dominant military superpower.”

Whether we like it or not? Most Americans do like it.

Maybe Palin really is just as dumb as a box of hammers and she just doesn’t understand what the president said, but what Obama meant was that whether we like it or not, the US will get pulled into international conflicts because of our superpower status if we don’t work to resolve conflicts peacefully.

And if we do get drug into a conflict, it will cost American lives and treasure.

Maybe that’s the part Palin really likes – seeing people killed and taxpayer money spent on international conflicts – and any attempt to prevent that is just un-American gosh darnit.

Thanks John McCain. Thanks for introducing Sarah Palin to us, because now we get to spend an inordinate amount of time debunking her outrageously ignorant lies. It’s not like we don’t have anything else to do.

Tea Party Express Bus April 14, 2010 Boston

The people that are dumping millions of dollars into the Tea Party “movement” don’t want you to know that they’re dumping millions of dollars into the Tea Party. The problem is that their logos are all over Tea Party documents and Web sites.

Koch Industries went out of their way to tell the news media that they don’t have anything to do with the Tea Party – nobody asked. But their claim is only true if you don’t look at the facts. Koch CEO Charles Koch has been involved with Tea Party sponsor Americans for Prosperity for years and years. Koch Industries has shoveled more than $4 million into AFP since 2005. Just visit the AFP Web site and you’ll clearly see that they support the Tea Party.

The Tea Party is not a grassroots, or populist, movement. It’s not a movement at all. It’s a well-funded political operation designed to get Republicans elected in November.

–
I Get the Tea Party Now by keith
Keith Olbermann on the Tea Party Ruse with Politco’s Kenneth Vogel by keith

Keith Olbermann Apr. 14, 2010

Here’s more evidence that the Tea Party movement is not a movement but merely a political operation geared towards getting Republicans elected and making lobbyists rich.

On Countdown with Keith Olbermann last night, Olbermann interviewed Politico’s Kenneth Vogel about his story on Sarah Palin’s Tea Party Express and the lobbyists who are backing it. As it turns out, this so-called grassroots movement is little more than a well-funded old-school political operation funded by Republican political consultants Russo Marsh + Rogers out of Sacramento, California. That’s the same group that helped boot out Democratic Governor Gray Davis in 2003.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Tea Party follower Portland, Maine

I’ve been scratching my head as to what this Tea Party thing is all about since it started last April 15 with people protesting paying their taxes, it didn’t make sense to me then, but I’ve got it figured out now.

What has had me perplexed, besides the contradictions in their message, is why the Tea Party people crawled out of the woodwork now. I mean, we’ve been paying taxes for a long time. Congress has been wasting our money for as long as there’s been a Congress. None of the issues that they complain about are new. So why now?

At first I thought, it’s because we have a black president and a lot these people are just old white racists who can’t stand seeing a black man in the White House. While that’s undoubtedly a motivating factor for some Tea Partiers, it doesn’t explain it all – it’s too simplistic an answer.

Here’s why the Tea Party exists today, and it didn’t in 2008.

Once the Democrats took over the Congress and the White House, really really rich people started freaking out in their really really rich people way; they hired lobbyists and agitated a faction of the American population.

One of the lobbyist they hired was former House Majority Leader Dick Armey. Armey is the chairman of FreedomWorks. FreedomWorks is a lobbying organization headquartered in Washington, DC and it’s a major backer of the Tea Party movement.

To get enough white people riled up, the scared filthy rich folks then turned to Fox News. The cable “news” channel not only covered the events, Fox News employees even egged on the crowd to shout louder, louder and louder while the cameras were rolling. Rupert Murdoch’s news network sponsored and promoted Tea Party rallies with virtually 24-hour coverage of Tea Party events.

Fox News commentators and anchors banged the drum that President Obama is a socialist, a communist, a Nazi, not really American, a Muslim, etc. They successfully created the illusion that Obama isn’t legitimate. He’s not one of them. He has no right to tell you what to do. That’s where the subtle racism comes into play.

So with the money and organization flowing through FreedomWorks and the propaganda spewing forth from Fox News the Tea Party movement was born.

It has the illusion that it’s just a grassroots organization that just popped up out of nowhere, but no, this is a political organization funded by scared rich white people who need these angry lower and middle class white people to travel around the country to do their bidding, which is to stop government regulation of their industries and taxing their billion dollar bonuses.

It’s really the same old story, people with money convince average Americans to rally for their cause despite the fact that what the average person needs is exactly what they’re fighting against.

A perfect historical example of this was slavery. The average poor white southerner not only didn’t benefit from cheap slave labor, but it drove down their own income potential, yet, plantation owners convinced them to protect slavery and even fight a war over it.

The Tea Party backers have been able to tap into existing animosity towards Congress, and now a black President, to push their real agenda which is to stop any and all Democratic policies. If the Democrats lose the Congress and the White House, the Tea Party will fade into the background – at least that’s what the GOP and rich and powerful hope.

Sarah Palin Boston Commons April 14, 2010

Today Sarah Palin brought her Tea Party Express to Boston.

During her speech she rolled out her usual suspects.

“Drill baby. Drill,” Palin said and the crowd chanted her slogan calling to expand domestic oil drilling.

A couple weeks ago President Obama announced that he too wanted to see more domestic oil exploration.

The crowd was about 3,000 people. Most people weren’t native Bostonians, but Tea Partiers who’ve been following Palin’s Tea Party Express national tour.

At least half of the crowd couldn’t hear Palin because the volume was turned down so low only those near the former Alaska governor could hear what she had to say. All of the other speeches were delivered loud and clear.

Many of those from Boston were either just curious or outright opponents of Palin and her Tea Party followers.

Tea Party Express Bus April 14, 2010 Boston

“Fake America welcomes Sarah Palin,” one sign read – referring to Palin’s claim that “real Americans” don’t live on the east coast, despite the obvious reference to the Boston Tea Party that is a fundamental symbol employed by the Tea Party.

As usual, the message of the Tea Partiers is confusing. They claim to be against taxes, and at the same time supportive of the Iraq war.

While Tea Party followers are sensitive to accusations of racism, at least subtle racism was on display today.

Tea Party Follower "Don't Tax Me Bro" Sign April 14, 2010

“Don’t tax me bro,” said one Tea Partier’s sign. Not overtly racist, but if Obama weren’t black, the word “bro” probably wouldn’t have been employed.

One can’t help but wonder where the anger over taxes was during the Bush Administration. Obama hasn’t raised taxes, and if anything, additional tax credits have resulted in lower taxes under Obama.

Perhaps they just don’t like a “brother” managing their money.

Update: The “Don’t Tax Me Bro” sign was likely a reference to University of Florida taser incident in which a man said to the police, “Don’t tase me, bro, don’t tase me!” I didn’t catch that reference, but there you have it, likely no racial connotation meant here.

Anybody can tell you this, but it’s clear that the current economy recession is not just a normal economic downturn. For many Americans, this is a depression. All told, the US is down 11 million jobs and the deficit hawks are circling above hoping to prevent any real recovery. Why? Who knows.

According to Bob Herbert:

The evidence is stark. More than 44 percent of unemployed Americans have been out of work for six months or longer, the highest rate since World War II. Perhaps more chilling is a new analysis by the Pew Economic Policy Group that found that nearly a quarter of the nation’s 15 million unemployed workers have been jobless for a year or more.

The sad reality of our political climate is that getting anything important done is unrealistically difficult. We have the Teabaggers on one hand (many of home could use a job) bemoaning taxes and government spending. On the other hand we have Democrats who are all-too-often scared or incompetent to make a coherent argument for spending money to create jobs.

Herbert wrote:

Everything in Washington is a heavy lift. The successful struggle to pass last year’s stimulus package fended off an even worse economic disaster, and the Democrats have managed to enact their health care initiative. But the biggest threat to the health of the economy — corrosive, intractable, demoralizing unemployment — is still with us. And the deficit zealots, growing in strength, would do nothing to counter this scourge.

The bottom line is that if the federal government doesn’t spend money right now to create jobs, we aren’t going to have a meaningful recovery. And for Democrats, they will have to do this alone – just like health care. They’ve been bolstered by the health care reform win and they need to carry that momentum forward.

Herbert said:

Right now there is no plan that can even remotely be expected to result in job creation strong enough to rescue the hard-core groups being left behind. These include: long-term unemployed workers who are older; blue-collar workers of all ages; and younger people in the big cities, in the rust belt and in rural areas who are jobless and not well educated.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said that they can’t pass another big bill so they’ll have to do it piecemeal.

“You can do smaller pieces,” she said. “You can break the task up into segments, into discrete pieces of legislation. If size is a problem, we should not let it be an obstacle.”

Tina Fey is a hoot, but when she does Sarah Palin she’s rididonkulously hootie. Here’s her as Palin doing a commercial for the Sarah Palin Network.

Sean Hannity

On Mar. 30, 2010 at the Reagan Library in Simi Valley, California, Fox News’ Sean Hannity publicly admitted that he thinks the Tea Party movement is comprised of anti-government extremists, or as he said, “Tim McVeigh wannabes.”

“I think we won the debate,” Hannity said. “When you think of the vast majorities that they have in Congress, and they had to bribe, back room deals, corruption; that’s all because of the Tea Party movement – all these Tim McVeigh wannabes here.”

Wow. That’s nothing short of shocking. Of course, Hannity is a total freaking moron, so take what he says with a huge grain of salt, but to call a crowd of people Tim Mc Veigh wannabes and to get cheers in return, that’s amazing.

Tim McVeigh Mugshot

For those too young to remember, McVeigh murdered 168 people in Oklahoma on April 19, 1995. He killed innocent women and children when he blew up the Alfred P. Murrah Building. At the time, it was the single biggest terrorist attack ever in the United States.

Each year, anti-government extremists celebrate this event along with the Waco Seige by the FBI of the Branch Davidian Seventh Day Adventists on April 19.

Tea Party Protester Apr. 1, 2010

Tea Party Protester Apr. 1, 2010

The Tea Partiers will fail because for them to succeed we would need to shred the US Constitution and start over. That would require a revolution, and that’s not going to happen.

You just have to examine what they stand for. They claim to be strict constitutionalists, but they can’t stop screaming that what Democrats are doing is unconstitutional – against the will of the people.

The Tea Partiers must have forgotten that Democrats won two elections – one in 2006 and another one in 2008.

Obama and Congressional Democrats campaigned on health care reform. So it’s disingenuous for the Tea Partiers to now claim that Democrats are defying the will of the people by pursuing the agenda that they campaigned on.

In a representative republic, the people’s will is determined by elections and not protests – just ask liberals who rallied by the tens of thousands to stop the Iraq war in 2003.

But if the Tea Partiers have their way, no matter who gets elected, a radical right-wing agenda must be adhered to. If not, bricks will be thrown, guns will be drawn, politicians spat on and death threats – thinly-veiled  and otherwise – will be hurled.

The problem with the Tea Party is that they have no faith or respect for our democracy. They seem to not realize that when liberals win elections, they have not only a right, but an obligation, to implement the agenda that they campaigned on.

Racist Tea Party Sign

I don’t know what’s scarier, Victoria Jackson screeching into a microphone, Joe the Plumber bragging about his big truck and guns, Andrew Breitbart claiming liberals “firebombed” a church or that there are people out there that watch Glenn Beck every day.

Here’s a video montage of Tea Party rallies across the country this week.

SarahPAC Crosshairs on Democrats

Where does the GOP go from here? Now that the party has been taken over by conspiracy nuts, racists and other loons, where does that leave them?

Over the weekend a “Christian militia” was taken out by the FBI over its plot to murder a police officer and then attack the funeral procession with IEDs.

In a matter of hours, Greg Reynolds at Instadick Instapundit defended these homegrown terrorists.

THE TIMING APPEARS CONVENIENT: FBI stages domestic raids.

Convenient for what exactly?

Here’s what Media Matters for America figures.

Reynolds, along with other right-wing bloggers, suggested the arrests were politically motivated. The theory seemed to be that the bust was part of a government plot to, I guess, make the Christian militia look bad, as well as conservatives in general.

So does that mean that any time a right-wing lunatic fringe group is raided by the FBI – it’s not to stop a terrorist plot but to make conservatives look bad? Why would this make conservatives look bad? And why would the FBI want to make conservatives look bad? That assumes that the FBI has now been infiltrated by leftists. I find that hard to believe, but then again, I’m not a conspiracy nut.

All I can say is that, while the raid didn’t initially make conservatives look bad, it sure does now.

They did the same thing when that guy in Texas crashed his plane into an IRS building.

The GOP has a real nutcase problem.

Jared Bernstein

Despite what right-wing fringers like Bill Kristol and Glenn Beck say, the White House hasn’t raised taxes and they even show you have to take advantage of new tax cuts.

From the White House: “Did you know that there are more than a dozen Recovery Act tax cuts working families can take advantage of this tax season? Check out this online tool and find out how much you can save.”

Media Matters for America

I hate cable news. At least 99 percent of all cable news is a bag of throwaway garbage that serves no purpose other than to confuse, distract, misinform and stink up the room. The same can be said about talk radio. It’s not that broadcasting can’t be used to inform and educate the populous, sometimes it is, but the trend has been to simply chase ratings and fill airtime with whatever is cheap and easy.

And what’s the cheapest and easiest content to produce? Opinion masquerading as news, or as Glenn Beck likes to say ‘Truth.’

Take this story for example. It’s easy for me to sit here and blast out an opinion story bemoaning the horrors of cable news, but if I actually wanted to do an investigative piece about cable news and why it got this way, well, that would take time and money – none of which I have.

But I’m not Rupert Murdoch. He does have money. He could pay people to investigate stories and produce in-depth analysis segments on things like health care reform, the Iraq war or the nation’s struggling education system. So could GE’s MSNBC and CNN, but they don’t do that.

I know, I’m taking a long time getting to my lead, so let’s get down to it.

Today, Eric Boehlert of Media Matters for America, a liberal media watchdog organization, published a story detailing the conservative nervous breakdown we’re watching unravel across this once great nation. The thesis of Boehlert’s story is that conservatives believed their own hype, and now they’re freaking out that they weren’t able to kill health care reform. Now they’re worried about what else they won’t be able to stop the liberals from doing.

What happened was that Fox News, along with other right-wing media, convinced the Tea Partiers that they were winning. They believed Fox News when they said 2 million people rallied in the nation’s capitol last September, even though there might have been 100,000. They believed Fox News and Rush Limbaugh when they were assured that after the gun-touting town hall screamers had shouted down Democratic politicians that health care reform was dead.

I believed them too. Not more than a month ago, I was convinced that health care would not happen.

But what everyone forgot is that the people get to speak in the voting booth and that’s pretty much it. Anti-war protesters couldn’t stop the Iraq war no matter how many people rallied against it because George W. Bush was elected, well sort of, in 2000, and Congress was controlled by the GOP. In a republic, the people vote for their representatives in November and it’s up to those elected leaders to lead. And leading doesn’t mean changing your mind every time the New York Times or Fox News publishes a public opinion poll. Depending on your point of view, that’s either the upside or the downside of living in a republic.

And so now that health care reform has passed, conservatives are losing their shit.

Boehlert said:

After all, late last week the nation stood on the precipice, just three “days away from the United States of America being over as we’ve all known it,” according to Rush Limbaugh, who warned that reform would drive every private insurance company out of business. Glenn Beck also went full tilt, warning that the bill represented a “turning point,” like the Civil War and Peal Harbor, while colleague Sean Hannity pinpointed the health care vote as the ‘very hour’ that America turned ‘completely towards socialism.’

The Washington Times likened reform to the “Black Plague,” and the online reaction was somehow even more unhinged. It was “RIP USA,” because with the vote, America would become “occupied by a hostile foreign power.” Indeed, a “socialist putsch” had been sprung and “America’s Day of Wreckoning [sic]” was at hand. Why? Because the Democrats’ health care legislation “will make every American a POW, strip them of their Freedoms and Liberty and shove them in a meat cellar for cold storage.”

Basically what Fox News, Rush Limbaugh and the Tea Partiers want is to run the government regardless of whether or not they win elections. To them, it doesn’t matter who gets elected, what matters is that politicians do what they tell them to do. And because Fox News effectively created the illusion that they were winning the debate, right-wing fringers are now throwing a hissy fit.

When health care reform passed Congress, Boehlert wrote, “It was the sudden and rude realization that, instead, they’d spent the past few months trapped inside an echo chamber, I think, that created the volcanic and unhinged response we’ve seen play out in recent days. It’s the kind of childish and hysterical reaction I didn’t think we’d ever witness from a major political movement.”

So the Tea Partiers and other conservative groups out there need to understand that in order effect change in this country they’re going to have to organize into a political movement. It takes more than a few gun-touting fanatics to pass legislation, and most people would agree, that’s a good thing. So turn off Fox News and actually engage in the process or you’ll be left on the corner shouting to no one.

Read Boelhert’s story.

President-elect Obama

The consensus among the talking heads, political wonks, hacks and bloviators is that Democrats will lose big in November’s elections.

The logic is that the party in the White House always gets their ass handed to them in the first election after the president takes office. That’s what happened in 1994 after Clinton beat Bush in 1992. It didn’t happen in 2002 following George W. Bush’s controversial election in 2000.

The mainstream media and pundits are also convinced that voters are going bludgeon Democrats over their passage of health care reform. Following passage of Medicare in 1965, Republicans picked up 47 House seats in the 1966 election. Democrats still held a 247 to 187 majority in the House, but it was a good year for Republicans. Besides Medicare and Civil Rights legislation passage, there was also an unpopular Vietnam war raging and race riots sweeping the nation.

However, just like the prospectus for a mutual fund, past performance is not proof of future performance. And if you think that people paid to blather on MSNBC, Fox News and CNN are speaking the truth, or know what they’re talking about, means you haven’t been paying attention – these fools are wrong more than the weather man. Just remember what Bob Dylan said about the weather man.

As far as health care reform is concerned, it’s hard to see how getting beat by the GOP and failing to pass health care reform legislation would have proved a winner for Democrats in November. One things that is a constant in US history is that Americans like it when things get done and they like to vote for winners and not losers.

But if Democrats want to pull out big wins in November there’s a hanging fastball that they just need to swing at – take on the bankers. It’s a guaranteed home run. Everyone from all walks of life, whether Tea Partiers or left-wing anti-war activists, everyone hates bankers. Many Americans reflexively loath bankers and Wall Street big shots.

Senate Democrats and House members need to go back to the drawing board and produce some tough new regulations on bankers and Wall Street fatcats. There needs to be a campaign to rid the nation of banks “too big too fail” and to set up a strong consumer protection agency that’s not part of the Federal Reserve. Democrats need to beef up the Securities and Exchange Commission and other regulatory agencies either with new legislation or with the power of the Executive.

Let the GOP campaign supporting of Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan and Wall Street hucksters.

This the issue an overwhelming majority of Americans care about, and if the Democrats hit it hard – they not only won’t lose in November, they could even have greater majorities in both houses.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi

Barack Obama has been talking about health care reform since 2007. Back then he talked about single-payer and universal health care – and you elected Obama with a landslide victory. While you didn’t get universal health care or single-payer – you did get health care reform.

Last night’s vote in the House of Representatives to pass health care reform was historic. But what makes it so amazing is that the Democrats didn’t cave – they actually passed a huge piece of important legislation despite the lies and fear mongering spewing from the mouths of Republicans and so-called “conservatives.”

The campaign to misinform you about health care was quite effective. Support for health care reform did fall substantially as more and more Americans started to believe Republican liars. Sarah Palin kicked off the “death panel” lie. And who knows where all the crazy numbers about the cost of the bill came from – yesterday someone said the bill could cost $10 trillion. Abortion, the GOP’s old fallback position, became a central theme for the opposition. Some Republicans even said that this bill will not only fund abortions but it will “promote” them – as if you’re going to see ads on TV for abortions next to ads for Viagra.

The list of outright lies are too many to list but they’re irrelevant now.

What is relevant is that Democrats did what they needed to do and they didn’t cower in the face of the vicious hate-filled opposition to health care reform. They didn’t quit when they were called socialists, communists, niggers, faggots, baby killers and when they were spit on. So if you have a moment, send your member of Congress an e-mail or call them on the phone and say thank you.

And remember that while it’s easy to say that there’s no difference between Democrats and Republicans – there is. Paul Krugman made a great point in his column today by highlighting a fundamental distinction between what Democrats and Republicans believe.

The day before Sunday’s health care vote, President Obama gave an unscripted talk to House Democrats. Near the end, he spoke about why his party should pass reform: “Every once in a while a moment comes where you have a chance to vindicate all those best hopes that you had about yourself, about this country, where you have a chance to make good on those promises that you made … And this is the time to make true on that promise. We are not bound to win, but we are bound to be true. We are not bound to succeed, but we are bound to let whatever light we have shine.”

And on the other side, here’s what Newt Gingrich, the Republican former speaker of the House — a man celebrated by many in his party as an intellectual leader — had to say: If Democrats pass health reform, “They will have destroyed their party much as Lyndon Johnson shattered the Democratic Party for 40 years” by passing civil rights legislation.

The GOP sees the world in purely cynical political terms. They don’t see you. They don’t see your family. They only see the next election and the next tax cut or war profit. And maybe Gingrich is right, maybe passing civil rights legislation was wrong politically, but who, besides racists, can argue that it wasn’t the right thing to do.

Looking back at our nation’s history, how many politically challenging decisions were still clearly the right choice? Civil rights, Medicare, Social Security, and let’s not forget that great Republican President Abraham Lincoln who ended slavery despite a nation that had yet to cleanse itself of overt racism. President Lincoln was murdered for that decision.

No, despite the cynicism of people like Gingrich and Karl Rove, politicians sometimes need to make unpopular decisions, even if that means they will lose their seat in Congress. That’s what a republic is. To paraphrase James Madison, a republic is virtuous men making virtuous decisions in spite of what an excited faction may want.

So please, call your members of Congress and tell them you’ve got their back. Tell them you will vote for them in November. While you’re at it, why not sign up to volunteer for them too?

Tea baggers harrassing man with Parkinson's

A few days ago some Tea partiers taunted a man with Parkinson’s disease. Now today they called civil rights activist Rep. John Lewis a “nigger” and Rep. Barney Frank a “faggot.” It’s not really shocking considering that one of the Tea party leaders, Mark Williams, calls people “faggots” and “retards” on his blog.

Talking Points Memo has the story about the latest outrageous rage from right.

Tea partiers and other anti-health care activists are known to get rowdy, but today’s protest on Capitol Hill–the day before the House is set to vote on historic health care legislation–went beyond the usual chanting and controversial signs, and veered into ugly bigotry and intimidation.

Civil rights hero Rep. John Lewis (D-GA) and fellow Congressional Black Caucus member Andre Carson (D-IN) related a particularly jarring encounter with a large crowd of protesters screaming “kill the bill”… and punctuating their chants with the word “nigger.”

Here’s the video from March 16 of Tea partiers making fools of themselves.

Politico Exclusive

Politico broke a scary story today. They’ve un-earthed a PowerPoint slideshow detailing the GOP strategy to use fear and mockery to stop Obama’s “socialist” agenda. It includes pictures of the president as the Joker, House Leader Nancy Pelosi as Cruella DeVille and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid as Scooby Doo.

The Republican National Committee plans to raise money this election cycle through an aggressive campaign capitalizing on “fear” of President Barack Obama and a promise to “save the country from trending toward socialism.”

The strategy was detailed in a confidential party fundraising presentation, obtained by POLITICO, which also outlines how “ego-driven” wealthy donors can be tapped with offers of access and “tchochkes.”

Read the entire story on Politico

Tea Party Leader Mark Williams

You can tell a lot about a movement by its leaders. One of the Tea Party leaders is Mark Williams. On his blog he refers to people as “faggots” and “retards.” He even called President Obama as a “racist-in-chief.”

His blog’s tag line is: “It’s not Right vs Left, It’s Right vs Wrong.”

Williams is supposedly a radio host, although I’ve never heard of him, and he’s a regular contributor to Fox News – that’s not surprising.

Here’s a snippet from his blog post calling people “retards” and “faggots.”

Did I say retard? I meant to say; genetically defective, circus freak, tiny cranium, hairy-arm-pitted female & faggot alleged male biological train wrecks who totally make the argument for forced Eugenics, starting with anybody with a Vermont return address. They could drag the entire gene-pool to the bottom if they ever bred with normal homo sapiens.

Williams’ blog is filled with hate-speech. While I could keep quoting him – it’s sickening.

My point is that while the Tea Party seek to gain a foothold in US politics, it’s becoming more and more clear that racism, homophobia and hatred are key driving forces behind this so-called movement.

While the Tea Partiers are loud, they don’t represent the values that most Americans adhere to, which is tolerance and acceptance of others. These people represent the fringes of our culture and not the mainstream – despite their undue media coverage.