How far we've come. 8 years into Bush's presidency and openly criticizing him meant censure by the House and tearful apologies. Today, it's called Super Tough Guy Patriotism!!

Does this movement, in its tone and content, appeal to anybody who wasn't already there in the 2008 campaign? These seem to be the same people who backed Palin (while holding their noses for McCain). Is this a hardening, shrinking core, or a growing movement? Aren't they alienating the broader electorate?

I'm uncomfortable raising the question, but it is an honest one, if anyone can enlighten us. Why aren't Jewish organizations flipping the eff out over this stuff? It seems to me that, of all the groups that can claim moral outrage at this teabagger rhetoric, the ADL (et al) could cut through it with a sharp "Oh, no, I'll tell you what fascism is..." line. I'm curious if any journalists have approached them for comment on any of this stuff...

I wonder if anyone is organizing a counter protest for the same time?

They LOVED fascism when Bush and Cheney were practicing it.

September 12th in DC? The same weekend of the Black Family Reunion on the National Mall.

Does anyone else find the right's comfort and familiarity with the players and events of the third reich a little disconcerting? Granted, I am no scholar of the period but I have only a vague notion that Goebbels was a nazi and if you said Dr. Mengel to me I'd be likely to respond: "that's Mendel and actually he was priest, not a doctor".

It probably doesn't require mention (due to obviousness), but they do seem to have an unsettling fascination with all things nazi.

Here's what this gang has in common;

All are a mile wide and a half inch deep.

Most get their news exclusively from right wing sources.

Most are undereducated and politically unsophisticated.

Most couldn't last past the first 2 minutes in a debate.

Most were never picked to play in a choose up game.

For the first time in their lives they feel as though they belong to something.

Most haven't had an original thought in 30 years.

They finally find one another in the world, they come together, then its, Group love in; Group hate out.

I can assure you that the majority of people in the tea party movement arn't the extremists your choosing to focus on. The majority of us are tired of all politicians that have been lying to all of us in order to control a base of power. We are sick of the lies from Bush, Obama and all those elected officials who have stopped listening to the people they are there to serve. I would love to have a country where we could all have the same health plan as those we send to Washington have. However reality rears its ugly head. Our country is crippled with debt, Our government has chosen the path of political expediency over wisdom. Its now easier to promise us what ever it takes to pacify the masses than it is to fix the problems we have. If Health care for everyone is the goal shouldn't we first make our elected officials fix the deficient. While we reign in our own habits of living on credit and then once we have a solid stable financially sound base to build from then as we can afford it work on a solution for the country. To think that our country can support this Debt at this time is insanity. If we allow the monstrosity that this public health care bill has become to be added to Medicare and Social security as they now stand we would be doing nothing more than building this countries future in quicksand and we will topple and sink.

These Tea party people are delusional. Go to the Al Franken posted on the front page today and check out the T-shirt the woman in the middle of the picture is wearing. You would think that if she just looked down from on top of her neck she'd see that the logo isn't really a teapot, it's the red, white & blue Repub elephant on it's back, which is a true fact. Just look down lady!!!

These comments by the fringe right aren't all that surprising anymore. It doesn't help to point out the irony of their remarks or to ask them where they were when Bush was screwing over the country. Here are some of the fringe elements I photographed in Sacramento:

http://www.coffeesee.com/2009/09/02/151/

Must be the rent a mob Limbaugh is always talking about...

He is also Lenin and Marx, hahahahahahahahahaha

Nobama1, the Newest Virus
Of a Political Pandemic

During recent congressional townhall meetings, “healthscare” advocates have released a new virus which is spreading across the nation at a pandemic rate. The virus, labeled as “NoBama1”, is very contagious. It results in the disease Hypobamaparonoiditis”, for which there is no known cure as yet. The symptoms are hallucinations that cause victims to become overly suspicious and fearful. As a result they see their mission as scaring others into believing that their lives, freedom and wealth are being put in jeopardy by sinister motives of President Obama and his administration. Because the illness affects the way a person thinks, those infected no longer are able to distinguish between fact and fiction or between truth and lies. Symptoms are easily recognizable by disruptions, shouting and screaming and the repetition of “Rushed”, “Foxy”, and “insaHannity” messages that “Beckon” them in the radio and TV airwaves that pollute the atmosphere.

The Nobma1 virus was first detected in January 2009 in tea bags being sent to congressmen in protest over the medicine being prescribed by the government to help overcome the discomforts and pain of a once-healthy economy that had collapsed because of a systemic lack of oversight. Democrat congressmen mostly tossed the tea bags into wastebaskets while Republican congressmen who savored the tea-bag nectar were rapidly infected. The effect was traumatic; so much so that not once, but twice, the infected congressmen shouted in unison to oppose and vote against the administration’s prescriptions. By the beginning of spring, the virus had spread to Bluedog Democrats were tempted to sip the tea-bag nectar. These Democrats began displaying symptoms of “Hypobamaparanoiditis” during the debates over the second round of government prescriptions to restore the economy’s health.

The symptoms continued among Republicans and the Bluedogs as Congress debated national healthcare reform. But not until the August recess when Congressmen held townhall meetings did the Obama administration realize how contagious the Nobama1 virus is. With pandemic speed “healthscare” advocates coughed up their infectious, identical hyperbole from one meeting to the next unconcerned about the true facts.

Apparently there is no stopping the spread of the Nobama1 virus and the resulting disease. Its carriers see insidious motives in every attempt by President Obama to bring about his pledge of “change.” Even a televised speech to school children across the nation as schools reopen, encouraging them to pursue educational goals and not become dropouts, has become the target of Obama protesters with the same familiar use of scare tactics successfully used by the previous administration to stay in power for 2 terms.

As Congress returns this week to resume its work on Obama initiatives, Republicans seem pleased with their pandemic. The summer recess failed to ice the tea, and the tea pot filled with tea bags continues to boil. On Wednesday when President Obama speaks to a joint session of Congress we will know if his promise of bi-partisanship reform is doomed and in the subsequent weeks we will find out if Hypobamaparanoiditis can survive a full term of the Obama administration.

I'm with Obama, and was with the anti-Iraq War movement from the beginning, but I also remember cringing at some of the behavior of demonstrators during the war. The coalition was heterogeneous to the point that for many it was simply an opportunity for people to get their fifteen minutes, or for celebs to get on camera. You had the celebrants who were just there to party. Then you had the well-meaning who diluted the message with items from their own agenda.

The present administration has adopted many of the programs and even methods of the previous one and I can't fault them in every case, because they can't afford to let some of the powers that Cheney/Bush seized to be removed from the presidential tool kit (note the return of the GWOT, for example). I hope that they will be as steadfast as their predecessors in ignoring the noise made by people who failed to defeat them in an election.