Here is a roundup of the hijinks. Where can I find the funny pictures?
The protests, for some reason, were a little bit bigger than the massive wave of protests from these “fiscal conservatives” when the Republicans and George Bush passed on trillions of unfunded liabilities with the Prescription Drug Act. I just can’t figure out why. It is almost like this is just partisan nonsense whipped up by Koch foundation funded outlets.
I think the thing that pisses me off the most about this (apart from the obvious hypocrisy that none of these people would even flinch if any of this had been proposed by Bush and Tom DeLay) is that this is what happened in the real aftermath of 9/11:
And now, the memory of 9/11 is being latched onto by partisan hacks, astroturfing wingnut welfare foundations, right-wing radio hosts, wingnut bloggers, glibertarian shit-heels, and the usual hodge-podge of misanthropes, racists, and redneck socipaths to pursue a completely partisan agenda. These people really are shameless, especialy since the Republican party just spent the last eight years using 9/11 to do whatever they wanted. I guess now they have just moved on to 9/12. Assholes.
MattF
Tim Noah has an interesting find wrt to the 9/12-ers. There’s a big white-separatist crowd there, and it’s very clear that Glenn Beck has been dog-whistling them.
But there’s no racism among them, no, no, no. Just move along, nothing to see here.
SiubhanDuinne
I was amused to see this morning that MoDo has finally, slowly, reluctantly, come to the belief that some of the opposition to President Obama and his policies just might have to do with race.
Gee, Maureen, ya think?
Ash Can
Via the GOS, ABC calls bullshit on the teabaggers attributing their half-assed crowd-size estimates to ABC.
The Grand Panjandrum
General Winfield Stuck linked to this Flickr stream. TPM and Sully both have photos and links to some goodies as well.
Ash Can
@John Cole re pictures: I recall reading in a thread yesterday that calipygian, who was in attendance on the Mall, took pictures and e-mailed them to you.
Cat Lady
Fear of the other has always been with us, but 24/7 cable TV has moved the Overton window so far to the right, we can now see the ugly underbelly of the Republican emboldened extremists. I think ultimately it’s good. Sunshine as a disinfectant and all that – as long as they’re being watched with Bush’s warrantless surveillance program.
Aaron
Yaeh, I find it pissing me off to no end that all these Becktards were perfectly fine with government wiretapping, rendition, trampling of the Bill of rights, the Prescription Drug Act, at least 1 unnecessary war (and probably 2), “free speech zones,” and a wealth of other quasi-imperialistic bullshit the Bush Administration did. Oh, and don’t forget the gutting of regulatory agencies, as well as the massive bailouts, the took place under Bush.
But FSM help us if a dem(black)ocrat who wants to talk to kids and provide health(black)care to people who need it. And of course, race has nothing to do with any of this /eyeroll
angler
Here’s a lengthy montage: http://www.flickr.com/photos/42406957@N04
The Grand Panjandrum
This bullshit has been going on since Karl Rove told a partisan group that it was fair game to use 9/11 for partisan politics. That was either 2002 or 2003. Then came Rudy. But this has been building and now that the righties are out of power they’ve gone back to Clinton era style nuttery. Greenwald had a good piece up yesterday about this “new” found outrage from the right. He concludes this really isn’t anything new only that the racism angle may have the volume turned up from 11 to 12. If you haven’t already read the piece I highly recommend it. Read the pieces he links to in the updates. Excellent arguments all the way round.
The piece Annie Laurie linked to in her last piece is the best so far about the unadulterated bullshit coming from the opportunists seeking to make political hay out of that sad day.
Deborah
In the aftermath of 9/11 there was unprecedented (at least since Pearl Harbor) cohesion behind the US government and passing new laws to let it do whatever it suggested. If the 9/12ers had any coherence they’d be in favor of completely reforming national health care by the end of the month.
matoko_chan
This is just another force-amplification strategy, like yelling REAL LOUD at the townhalls.
They are done, and they are feelin’ it.
;)
They lost by 192 electoral college votes.
Yelling is all they have left.
I had an epiphany while a glibertarian website.
I realized that small government worked in America as long the population was 99% white protestant.
Because local religious welfare providers and locally elected governments were dealing with a homogeneous population. This worked fine as long as the America electorate was 99% white protestant.
The trouble began when women and blacks became citizens….women got some indirect benefits and representation because they were part of white protestant families….blacks didn’t.
So the federal government was forced to intervene to provide civil rights and welfare to non-white citizens.
Now this important….HAYEK WAS WRONG….the welfare state doesn’t lead to socialism…it leads to the death of the religious local welfare providers…..to Great Britain style secularization, where the churches are dying.
White is about 75% of the electorate now, and not all protestant and not all conservative. A third of whites vote democratice, and that third is primarily culture producers, academe, youth, the scientist community, etc.
The reason the Teabagger Demographic is so furious is that they had Obama forced on them basically because Bush was such a horrorshow.
A difference of 192 ec votes is huge…they are attempting to make up in volume what they lack in numerical representation.
TNC cites this piece on South Carolina ….the state didn’t approve woman’s suffrage until 1970!
Joe Wilson’s outburst was also influenced by rising tensions in the local job market with hispanics in his district I think.
The GOP is cognizant that it needs hispanic votes because of the demographic timer on non-hispanic caucs. They are realist enough to understand they are never going to get the black vote, or the majority of the women vote ever again.
The leadership is bitter and frustrated that it cannot go after those delicious hispanic votes (socially conservative, religious, family-orientated) because their base will rage-log on them at the first sign of hispandering.
Talk about riding the tiger…..immigration reform is next on Obama’s agenda.
After xmas healthcare will be just a memory.
It will be entertaining to see how Beck and Rush deal with hispanics.
Rush has some bad audio history…I haven’t relly heard Beck say anything…because I avoid hearing him…does he have an illegal immigrant posture?
matoko_chan
moderation again :(
i give up.
geg6
I pretty much beat these idiots into the ground yesterday, so I don’t have anything original to say about it at this point. But in the end, I will only say that logical consistency is obviously not their strong suit. Also.
HRA
I went to the ABC article cited by Ash Can and read some of the comments. What I saw was “we are not racist” as a running theme. Yet, yesterday when I saw the pics of the signs carried by those in attendance, racism is what I interpreted from a majority of them and I wasn’t ready to believe it the day before. Now I am wondering if those signs were the same used to protest civil rights and integration in the 1960s.
One commenter wrote Obama forgot his white side and it makes him racist. IOW they decry his being accepted by the Blacks. They clearly do not understand he was certainly not accepted by the whites back when he was growing up.
riffle
Oliver willis took some pictures i haven’t seen spread about the blogosphere much yet.
http://www.oliverwillis.com/2009/09/13/photos-teabaggers-in-the-wild/
Looks like a Confederate States of America Sympathizers group, basically
Ash Can
@HRA: Nobody wants to believe that something bad applies to them. Being able to believe that the bad thing in question not only doesn’t apply to them, but actually to the other person, doubles the layer of wallpaper being put over the blemish. Unless something happens to them to force them to break out of their denial, they’ll never change.
Mike P
Matt Welch went to the protest (shock!) and reports back. My favorite part:
“Political rallies are no place to seek the subtle truth, nor feel particularly glowing about your countrymen, and today was no different in that regard for me. But the meta-fact about a huge anti-Obamanomics protest eight months into his term is certainly significant, and very little of what I saw made me fear that Alex Pareene will be blown to smithereens by a suicide hijacker from Arkansas. I am confident, however, that I will soon be made to fear what I utterly failed to detect.”
Besides all the smugness, what kills me is that people like Welch, a smattering of other Libertarians, and the bulk of the Republican Party still don’t seem to be willing to grasp the simple fact that if George W. Bush didn’t leave the country with a shit sandwich, Barack Obama wouldn’t have had to engage in many of the actions that he’s more or less been forced to undertake.
I’m some of them will retort, “well, I didn’t support Bush, either”. And my response to this is why the hell weren’t you marching in Washington to stop the Iraq War? To stop the tax cuts? To stop the prescription drug benefit? Oh, that’s right, your supposed fiscal conservatism couldn’t do anything more than animate you to write glib blog posts calling anyone who pushed back against those things as losers and kooks who just needed to suck it up because their “side” won.
Whatever.
matoko_chan
@Ash Can
It is Social Brain Hypothesis in action.
Overt racism is a 21st century cultural taboo, so admitting being a racist expends social capital. So the Teabagger Demographic has to subliminate racism to something less expensive (in functional loss of social capital) ie: birtherism, fascism, communism, etc.
Fulcanelli
The teabagger demographic’s reasoning is “emotional” reasoning which leads to “emotional” facts which, once they take root are almost impossible to change.
This is the cause of their irrational anger. You can’t factually argue against someone’s feelings and emotions, and their emotions create their facts. Disputing their facts invalidates their emotions, makes them furious and suspicious of your motives and they dig their heels in even deeper.
The line between what they emotionally want to believe which creates their emotional facts, and what is actually, factually true has been obliterated.
This along with “all or nothing”, “us versus them” thinking (which they exhibit), the inability to see how they contribute to their own problems (which they also exhibit), and the inability to regulate, or put a throttle on their emotions (this, too) are symptoms of DSM, Cluster B Type personality disorders.
It doesn’t help that they have their own highly partisan cable TV network that exploits their delusions either. Also.
JGabriel
@riffle:
My favorite was:
A rather unfortunate choice of verb.
.
Trinity
@Fulcanelli:
matoko_chan
Fulcanelli, yup, Social Brain Hypothesis 101, How We Decide.
Non-hispanic cauc is 75% of the electorate right now, and declining.
32% of non-hispanic caucs vote dem….carter and obama both.
So that leaves the country at about 50% conservative voters right now.
Yet Obama won the ec 365 to 173….an unsurmountable difference of 192 ec votes.
Part of that was horrorshow Bush, part was the unattractive alternative of Sick Grandpa plus Replacement Dimbo, but the Teabagger Demographic does honestly feel their representation was stolen.
But turning on the traitors in their midst that voted for O as the lesser evil is not cost-viable.
HRA
The hypocrisy is mind boggling. They deny that which they believe in religiously and what they unabashedly use from the Constitution as their theme. It’s more than enough to wonder how this all came about. Was it handed down as a legacy or were they led to this moment by their environment? Who exactly is their enemy?
General Winfield Stuck
Everyone be on the lookout for suspicious Clown Cars.
matoko_chan
Uppity wymmins and uppity niggrahs.
matoko_chan
And…..college graduates, young people, university professors, Hollywood, scientists, and intellectuals of any stripe.
Suicidal Zebra
Given the sheer number of flicker albums kicking around you could almost be forgiven for thinking that 25% of the attendees were there to snap the crazies.
Aside:
In some of the photostreams I saw bumper stickers with a Confederate flag, tree and crescent moon. Any idea what that’s in aid of?
matoko_chan
It is the Bellcurve War….the lower left median against everyone else in America.
kay
Conservatives were holding up photos of the President at the podium with the words “parasite in chief” above the Presidential seal.
That didn’t sound right, “parasite” applied to the clearly hard-working Obamas, so, I looked at who paid what.
April 13, 2007
PRESIDENT AND MRS. BUSH RELEASE 2006 TAX RETURN
President and Mrs. George W. Bush reported taxable income of $642,905 for the tax year 2006. This resulted in a total of $186,378 in federal income taxes paid by President and Mrs. Bush.
The President’s 2006 income included salary earned as President and investment income from the trusts in which their assets are held.
April 15 (Bloomberg) — President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama paid $855,323 in federal taxes for 2008 on an adjusted gross income of $2.66 million, according to copies of his tax returns released by the administration.
The couple reported a total income of $2.73 million. The majority of their earnings, almost $2.5 million, came from proceeds on sales from the president’s books, “Dreams from My Father” and “The Audacity of Hope.”
matoko_chan
Zebra, the flag is for the successionists ie, the South Will Rise Again, the tree is a Tim McVeigh t-shirt rip-off about watering the tree of liberty with the blood of tyrants, and the crescent moon is teabagger-subtle for OBAMA IS A CLOSET MUSLIM.
liberal
@matoko_chan:
Historical comparisons between America-then and -now have this as their greatest failing: American then was mostly rural.
gnomedad
IIRC, someone discussed this in another thread — it’s a Palmetto tree symbolic of South Carolina secessionism.
steven
27:
isn’t the palmetto tree/crescent moon the south carolina state flag?
matoko_chan
A graphic of a hangman’s noose would be simpler and condense all three symbols into one…….but while that is likely their true sentiment, it expends too much social capital to acknowledge to themselves that the low information (read mid-to-low IQ) base are simple racists.
zoe kentucky from pittsburgh
Wow. I just looked at some of the pictures. Their signs covered all the bases– blatantly and proudly racist, sexist and xenophobic topped off with threats of violence. It should no longer be called the Republican Party– it’s completely de-evolved into the Reptilian (Brain) Party.
They really are just angry, frustrated ignorant white people who feel threatened by the changing world around them. If they weren’t so scary I might actually feel sorry for them.
matoko_chan
Yes, that is true…the federalist model of local government and local welfare ……and that why is why local religious welfare worked well….and why the EC vote in 2008 favored urban population centers.
But my point is the instantiation of the federal welfare state came about because the feds had to intervene on behalf of black citizens.
Bureaucracies are organic…. they grow.
And when the federal government hands out free welfare, citizens don’t have to invest energy to attend churches or conform to a community belief system.
That is why creeping secularization rules in England.
HAYEK WAS WRONG.
The welfare state doesn’t cause socialism…..it just kills off local welfare providers that can’t compete (lol). In rural America, and rural GB, those local community welfare providers were churches.
A sort of public option for religion.
;)
matoko_chan
is it socialism? i can’t say socialism?
matoko_chan
ok…two comments in moderation…..i can’t say s o c i a l i s m.
got it.
matoko_chan
here’s the gist…..without the dreaded s-word.
HAYEK was WRONG.
The welfare state doesn’t lead to s o c i a l i s m…….it leads to the death of local welfare providers (largely churches in heartland rural America).
A sort of public option for religion.
lawls.
kommrade reproductive vigor
Awesome. He’s a n!gger AND a n!gger-loving race traitor.
Whatever, I look forward to watching as the RNC tries use Michael Steele (remember him?) to distract the country from all the people marching around in white sheets.
Deborah
@matoko_chan: I think “soshalism” works.
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
Looking at pictures of Obama rallies and the teabagger rallies is an interesting contrast; Obama supporters are a happily diverse crowd representative of our population and the teabaggers are bitter, thin-lipped nasty white people whose faces would fracture if they had to smile.
I’ll take the happily diverse crowd, any day.
When not in control of our government, Republicans tell us how bad our government is, how only they can fix it and then just to prove it they proceed to do everything they can to prevent the Democrats from getting anything done. Finally, when the Republicans control our government they still tell us how bad government is and then they proceed to show us.
Republicans love bad government, without it they wouldn’t have a purpose.
kth
The antiwar protests were far, far larger than anything we have seen this year, and they were rightly disregarded by the msm. Not because the antiwar activists weren’t on the side of sanity and decency, but because the prior election had clearly been a referendum on the coming orgy of death and destruction, and “suck. on. this” won fairly decisively.
Likewise, had the current protests been 10 times larger, they would have signified nothing. We just had an election over precisely the issues the teabaggers are most excited about, and their side lost even more decisively than the antiwar vote did.
SGEW
@liberal:
Also important to note: “America then” was a rural agricultural economy based substantially upon slave labor and expanded through land acquired via wars of aggression and aboriginal genocide.
I sure find it funny that so many people yearn so strongly for this “original” America. You know . . . funny.
bago
OT: But has anyone really heard The Glitch Mob? It’s awesome to see them live with their multi-touch surfaces exposed glitching out a song live. That and the fatty SF synth sound. Yum.
JenJen
Nate Silver weighs in on Malkin’s Millions. Good stuff:
http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2009/09/size-matters-so-do-lies.html
kay
@kth:
When interviewed, they said things like “we won’t be ignored” over and over.
They simply cannot reconcile to the loss of power. They don’t want to be heard, they want to direct policy, as a minority, and those are two different things.
Suicidal Zebra
Thanks for the info gents :)
The Moar You Know
In some of the photostreams I saw bumper stickers with a Confederate flag, tree and crescent moon. Any idea what that’s in aid of?
@Suicidal Zebra: It’s the original South Carolina Secession flag, a precursor to what we know today as the “Stars and Bars” – which oddly enough seems to be a 20th century corruption of the Confederate Battle flag.
The moral? Like with so many other things, these folks worship something that never existed during the period of time they’re trying to bring back.
kommrade reproductive vigor
@kay: The dipshits marching around screaming about Islahomonazifacists never HAD any power. All they had was the ability to live vicariously through the asshole in the White House.
Zuzu's Petals
@The Grand Panjandrum:
The comments are hilarious. BJ quality, in fact.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Fulcanelli:
This is exactly right. You can’t “argue” with somebody’s emotions – even trying just makes them stronger. Half of what makes them so angry they can’t even express it because it is sub-verbal. They are like a 3 year old having a temper tantrum – all you can do is try to keep them from hurting themselves or anybody else or breaking anything valuable, and wait for exhaustion to set in.
Polish the Guillotines
@JenJen:
From Nate’s blog:
Now that, peoples, is komedy.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@kay:
Fundamentally, these folks hate democracy. Oh its all good as long as they win every election and get to tell the rest of us to “suck.on.this” and “American, love it or leave it” (c.f. Church Lady in yesterday’s thread), but when they lose an election then their commitment to the social contract upon which our system of self-government is tested, and they fail the test. A democracy is not really about how the winners win – every system has winners. What makes a democracy is how the losers lose – how do they react? Do they try to destabilize and delegitimize the system itself, and undermine and destroy the authority of the governing coalition at every turn, or do they work to find some way to appeal to the folks in the middle who didn’t vote their way last time, but might be persuaded to switch next time?
Has anyone seen anything, anything at all, at the teabag rallies which seems to be intended to persuade an Obama voter to switch sides? Any outreach, any attempt to understand why somebody might have voted for Obama, and seek to offer that person what they are looking for? Or are these rallies just a gigantic middle finger to anybody on the other side? Seems to me the pictures tell a pretty clear story on this score.
Bubblegum Tate
Had it not been explained in this thread (thanks, everybody!), I would’ve assumed it meant teabaggers want to lynch Islam.
Polish the Guillotines
@Bubblegum Tate:
Unfortunately, I don’t think you’re that far off the mark.
Gina
My dad is a Becktard. I’m wondering if he’s typical of the demographic. Never voted in all the time I remember growing up. Doesn’t participate in politics in any meaningful way – basically, forwards emails, goes to church, hangs out with other bitter fundies and complains about the state of the US now. Never protested the war, never got worked up about the deficit spending under Bush. No major problems with evisceration of personal privacy and liberty with the Patriot Act. Claims he’s a libertarian. Which is why I like reading John’s pieces calling people like this to the carpet.
Fun fact: Dad would forward a lot of Minuteman emails (proud supporter), and one was by his friend Whitey (I’m serious), who was bitterly complaining that our border problems were just the start. He’d forwarded about an article in the MSM about white European women taking vacations to African and Caribbean nations and sleeping with the natives! White Europeans!! Just the beginning of the fall of all decent society as we know it!!! Before you know it, there won’t be any ‘White Race’ left with these whores carrying on like this!!
Punch line: I’m white and married to a black man who was born and raised in Newark NJ. Whom my dad really likes, and my mom too. 12 years this April, we have two beautiful, smart, cool kids whom my parents also love. No, he didn’t forward it in error – he really thought it was something worthwhile to share with us.
I wonder what the hell makes this level of cognitive dissonance possible. My childhood was somewhat dysfunctional, and my parent’s have tons of issues, but this shit really scares me as they get older. I’m paranoid there’s a whole passel of these aging baby boomers out there who just latch onto causes, ignore contradictions, and by sheer numbers will embolden the true psycho masterminds to some point of no return. Must.hold.the.line.
ChrisB
@JenJen: The best part: Nate establishing that Matt Kibbe, the president of FreedomWorks, has a really small penis.
Not that surprising, actually.
J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford
@JenJen:
This is the best way to look at the size of the tea-baggers.
This weekend there will be much larger crowds watching college and pro football games across the country. In most every case, one game alone will attract as many or more people than the tea-baggers did.
Onihanzo
Just in case anyone doubts the power of mocking these fools till their skin peels off…
Allow a true master to show us the way:
http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/223279/march-31-2009/the-10-31-project
CalD
The good news is that the crazier the crazies get, the more people wake up and turn away. The more people turn away, the crazier it makes the crazies.
mutt
Any of you remember J Edgar Hoovers war against the Socialist Workers Party? The USG spent multi millions- back when a million as real money- and millions of man hours investigating/sabotaging/framing/defaming a group of US citizens bent on writing and talking. And it was, w/o FBI help, fading into irrelevancy. Hoover was asked once, as it was obvious the SWP was fading away, if the fact it was smaller & smaller- that FBI agents/informants made up a good proportion of its membership – if it meant it was “less dangerous” to the US. Hoover said the smaller it gets, the more dangerous it becomes. Which meant, if you took that sicko seriously, that when its membership hit zero, its danger would become infinite.
Look at what the SWP, VVAW, BPP, SDS, and dozens of other groups across the country, the Sancturary people, Quakers- LOOK at what was done to them.
Did ANY of those groups seem as batshit crazy , irrational, and violent as the Becktards? Ever? Even close?
And these sniveling cowards are wining about Obama, no prize, as far as Im concerned, but were bullyboys cheering Cheney?
Batshit crazy. Im very glad Im not “committed to non violence”- they WILL be targeting people they see as te “enemy”- especially tose they figure wot fight back. That dont work w/ black folk any more- part of the problem, no doubt- but they still think Gay folks are sissies. School teachers, wimpy anti gun liberals and the like.
Watch your backs, friends.
think Ill go to the range today…..
Bubblegum Tate
In the spirit of Look At This Fucking Hipster, I bring you Look At This Fucking Teabagger.
Enjoy!
smiley
@matoko_chan: remove the “so” and the “m” and you’ll see why.
Amy
#63 – What’s the message of that last sign mean? — “Show me your smallpox vaccination”
Bubblegum Tate
@Amy:
I’m guessing it just means the anti-vaccination crazies have joined the Million Moran March.
Little Macayla's Friend
href=”#comment-1367276″>Amy:
I think it means he doesn’t know what it means. At first I thought it was about s-izing healthcare, but it was largely gov’t. organizations that eradicated smallpox. Surprise – apparently it’s more Obama-is-one-of-them:
http://www.fark.com/cgi/comments.pl?IDLink=4633639&cpp=1@<a
Highway61Revisited 2009-09-13 10:29:48 AM
nbt: Did anyone understand the smallpox vaccination reference? Maybe I’m not stupid enough to get it.
The smallpox vaccine was given to american children at 1 year of age. It often leaves a lifelong scar at the site of inoculation (usually the upper arm).
However, in 1971, the practice of routine smallpox vaccination was discontinued.
The birthers are arguing that if he doesn’t have a smallpox scar, it would be conclusive proof that he wasn’t born in this country.
However, it’s stupid on a couple of levels. First, some people who got the vaccine did not produce a persistent scar. Second, it was given at 1 year of age, not at birth, so he could have been born in Kenya and emigrated to the US before the age of 1 and still received the vaccine.
It’s stupid.
But, then again, so are all the other signs.
I particularly am repulsed by the “Bury Obamacare with Kennedy” sign which seems to have been produced by a pro-life group. How very christian of them.
mattH
One day at a time…
Comrade Darkness
@kommrade reproductive vigor: Huh, nice observation. And it, very neatly, sums up the cult-like appeal of Palin, because she would be the next avatar.
“She’s just like us,” isn’t a reason I would ever vote for someone. I want someone way more qualified than me for the job. But for a chunk of the right, picking a candidate has zero to do with hiring the best person for the position. That clarifies a whole lot of stuff. Thanks for that.
Donny Sanders
Mr. Cole, I searched your archives to read what you were writing in the aftermath of 9/11. I couldn’t find anything farther back than January 2002, but what I did find seemed somewhat similar to what I hear and read now by wingnut welfare foundations, rightwing radio hosts, etc. You seemed pretty disdainful then of the folks who seem to comprise your readership now.
Docrailgun
What, they couldn’t sing the actual national anthem, which is totally appropriate for a 9/11 memorial?