Tea-Partier Explains How Our Freedoms Are In Jeopardy (Animation)
I feel like this is a conversation most people would like to have with members of the Tea Party. Job well done.
Miss Liberty America: The First Tea Party Beauty Pageant
They’ve got their own baby clothes, their own universities, and now they have their own beauty pageant. On July 4th weekend of 2012, the inaugural of edition of Miss Liberty America will be held in Las Vegas, with the “ultimate mission of promoting Liberty, the military, and the documents of our founding fathers.” In honor of those ideals, tea baggers will choose a winner from a field of young, swimsuit-clad female contestants who will have to shoot firearms and answer questions about the Constitution.
The brain behind the event is Alicia Hayes-Roberts, sister of Tea Party presidential candidate Rutherford B. Hayes, who explains the mission on the Miss Liberty America website:
MISS LIBERTY AMERICA is dedicated to discovering America’s elite feminine patriots and giving them the opportunity on a national stage to showcase their patriotism, intelligence, talent, and beauty. The contestants will be judged in categories of personal interview, swimsuit, evening gown,…
A British View of the Tea Party
British journalist Andrew Neil assesses the Tea Party movement with some sorely needed perspective. Here he writes an essay about it for the Guardian. Also shown is a trailer for a documentary film he made this past summer for the BBC, Tea Party America.
It’s 2am on a balmy August morning in Lexington, Kentucky, and the hotel car park is a flurry of activity as people arrive in cars and scurry on board two hired coaches, which rev up their engines in expectation of a long drive through the night. There is excitement in the air but also some apprehension: these are ordinary folk from the American heartland on a mission that will take them into the heart of enemy territory – Washington DC. America’s Tea Party is on the move…
Why You Shouldn’t Vote … Ever
Site editor’s note: This post from DJ Pangburn originally appeared on death + taxes.
What to do if you’re courageous enough to admit the Obama administration and Democrats are full of shit and the Tea Party and Republicans are dangerous and stupid?
Barack Obama the messenger
President Barack Obama soared into the public consciousness with a stirring speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention. He then took Howard Dean’s example and used the power of the Internet to create a fundraising juggernaut for his historic 2008 Presidential run. With a swiftness not seen since JFK’s political ascendancy, Obama became president and claimed broad power to affect “change” across the country. But Kennedy only had to surmount his Irish Catholic background — Barack Obama had to transcend the fact that he is African-American.
But appearances are, in the final analysis, immaterial. Just as a magician uses scenery and sleight-of-hand to divert the audience’s attention, Barack Obama has…
All Hail The Tea Party
For me this is the clearest sign yet that Rupert Murdoch has turned the Wall Street Journal into just another political mouthpiece, little different in its Republican boosterism from his tabloid New York Post. The Journal’s lead story today, titled “Birth of a Movement” is a fawning assessment of the Tea Party with the message that it’s here to stay and that’s a wonderful thing:
Less than two years ago, Amy Kremer and Jenny Beth Martin were 30-something suburbanites in metro Atlanta, frustrated by recession, dismayed by the election of Barack Obama and waiting for the next chapter of their lives.
Ms. Kremer, a former Delta Air Lines flight attendant, had quit her career to raise her daughter. The child had grown up and just moved out, and now Ms. Kremer was filling her time with two blogs—one on gardening, one on politics.
“I had this empty space in my life,” Ms. Kremer recalls.
Ms.…
Keith Olbermann: The Dangers Of The Tea Bagger Candidates
In a special twenty-minute commentary, Keith Olbermann blisteringly indicts this election season’s wave of “tea party candidates,” entirely by quoting their own words. The picture revealed is of “a group of unqualified, unstable individuals who will do what they are told, in exchange for money and power, and march this nation as far backward as they can get.” Via MSNBC:
Christine O’Donnell Attacks Gawker Via Facebook
The witch throws a hex on Gawker, responding to the blog’s now infamous O’Donnell one-night-stand story (header: an intoxicated Christine O’Donnell showed up at the apartment of a 25-year-old Philadelphian and ended up spending the night in his bed). From her Facebook page:
“This story is just another example of the sexism and slander that female candidates are forced to deal with. From Secretary Clinton, to Governor Palin, to soon-to-be Governor Haley, Christine’s political opponents have been willing to engage in appalling and baseless attacks — all with the aim of distracting the press from covering the real issues in this race. Even the National Organization for Women gets it, but Christine’s opponent disturbingly does not. As Chris Coons said on September 16th he would not condone personal attacks against Christine. Classless Coons goons have proven yet again to have no sense of common decency or common sense with their desperate attacks to get another rubber…
Moe Tucker: Tea Party Member, Patriot
The Velvet Underground in 1966, with Tucker pictured on bottom-right.
Noted percussionist and original member of the Velvet Underground, Moe Tucker has recently been pursued by mainstream media for “her support of the Tea Party movement”. Left-wing and right-wing media and politicians have seized upon her statements and a brief appearance on a local news broadcast (a year and a half later) to celebrate or decry her positions and use her as a pawn in their respective arguments, but both sides are ignoring the truth of her message, which is the pressing need for a true third party option in the United States.
She does, in fact support the Georgia politicians that comprise the local Tea Party, but with a close parsing of her comments and viewpoints what you find is a very straightforward approach to reforming the bloated government and endemic corruption the American people are seeking today.
Moe Tucker is not a…
Veteran Who Killed Unarmed Iraqis Wins Tea Party Support
Ilario Pantano (Ilario Pantano personal collection, CC)
Ed Pilkington writes in the The Guardian:
The basic facts are undisputed: on 15 April 2004 Ilario Pantano, then a second lieutenant with the US marines, stopped and detained two Iraqi men in a car near Falluja.
The Iraqis were unarmed and the car found to be empty of weapons.Pantano ordered the two men to search the car for a second time and then, with no other US soldiers in view, unloaded a magazine of his M16A4 automatic rifle into them, before reloading and blasting a second magazine at them – some 60 rounds in total.
Over the corpses, he left a placard inscribed with the marine motto: “No better friend, No worse enemy.”
Six years later Pantano is on the verge of a stunning electoral victory that could send him to the US Congress in Washington. He is standing as Republican candidate in North Carolina’s 7th congressional district,…
Tea Party Climate Change Deniers Funded by BP and Other Major Polluters
The Guardian reports:
BP and several other big European companies are funding the midterm election campaigns of Tea Party favourites who deny the existence of global warming or oppose Barack Obama’s energy agenda, the Guardian has learned.
An analysis of campaign finance by Climate Action Network Europe (Cane) found nearly 80% of campaign donations from a number of major European firms were directed towards senators who blocked action on climate change. These included incumbents who have been embraced by the Tea Party such as Jim DeMint, a Republican from South Carolina, and the notorious climate change denier James Inhofe, a Republican from Oklahoma.
The report, released tomorrow, used information on the Open Secrets.org database to track what it called a co-ordinated attempt by some of Europe’s biggest polluters to influence the US midterms. It said: “The European companies are funding almost exclusively Senate candidates who have been outspoken in their opposition to comprehensive climate policy…
Rand Paul Backer Stomps on Woman Outside Kentucky Senate Debate
Don’t say you weren’t warned about these people. From Tom Diemer at AOL’s Politics Daily:
A Rand Paul supporter stomped on the head of a MoveOn.org volunteer Monday night outside of a debate between the Kentucky Senate candidate and his opponent, Jack Conway.
The woman, identified by CNN as Lauren Valle, was pushed to the ground — her blond wig was pulled off in the scuffle — and then held down…
Joe Miller Handcuffs Democracy
Joe Miller. Photo: Paraserv (CC)
Aaron Cynic writes at Diatribe Media:
Republican Senate candidate Joe Miller, one of the more extremist Tea Party darling candidates of this election cycle, seems to have his own set of brownshirts. Joe Miller’s private security detail handcuffed and detained Tony Hopfinger, editor for the Alaska Dispatch and reportedly pushed him into a wall at an event for the GOP Senate candidate. According to Miller’s website, Hopfinger “appeared irrational, angry and potentially violent” and apparently “assaulted another individual.”
Hopfinger’s account of the incident appears slightly less hyperbolic. He stated he was surrounded by both private (non-uniformed) security guards and Miller supporters after he followed and attempted to ask uncomfortable and unwelcome questions. Hopfinger admits to pushing a guard out of the way, but only after he began to feel threatened by what seemed like a mob. While Miller’s campaign said Hopfinger was trespassing on a “private” event, that event…
The Tea Party: A “Slave Management” Operation?
Mark Ames, founding editor of The eXile, dissects the Tea Party movement on the Dylan Ratigan Show:
Obama Administration Declares the Attorney General Above the Law
Watch the Tea Party not get up in arms over this bit of Bushesque tyranny. Jonathan Turley on Countdown With Keith Olbermann:
Peter Berkowitz: Why Liberals Don’t Get the Tea Party Movement
Another take on this disinfo.com post. Peter Berkowitz writes in the Wall Street Journal:
Highly educated people say the darndest things, these days particularly about the tea party movement. Vast numbers of other highly educated people read and hear these dubious pronouncements, smile knowingly, and nod their heads in agreement. University educations and advanced degrees notwithstanding, they lack a basic understanding of the contours of American constitutional government.
New York Times columnist Paul Krugman got the ball rolling in April 2009, just ahead of the first major tea party rallies on April 15, by falsely asserting that “the tea parties don’t represent a spontaneous outpouring of public sentiment. They’re AstroTurf (fake grass-roots) events.”
Having learned next to nothing in the intervening 16 months about one of the most spectacular grass-roots political movements in American history, fellow Times columnist Frank Rich denied in August of this year that the tea party movement is “spontaneous and leaderless,”…
Tea Party Candidate: Abolish All Public Schools
Thought Americans were dumb enough as is? Apparently you’re just not ambitious enough; this from David Knowles at AOL’s Newsdesk:
School’s out … forever?
Tea Party candidate David Harmer, who is running as a Republican for the U.S. House of Representatives in California’s 11th District, thinks the nation’s public education system should more closely resemble the way it looked in 1825. In other words, Harmer would abolish public schools altogether.
In an op-ed in the San Francisco Chronicle in 2000, Harmer wrote the following:
To attain quantum leaps in educational quality and opportunity, however, we need to separate school and state entirely. Government should exit the business of running and funding schools.
This is no utopian ideal; it’s the way things worked through the first century of American nationhood, when literacy levels among all classes, at least outside the South, matched or exceeded those prevailing now, and when public discourse and even tabloid content was pitched…
Tea Party to America: Y’Alls Have TOO MANY Rights!
Infuriated by the notions of popular democracy, millionaires paying income tax or a colorblind society? Some Tea Partiers are, too. David Knowles from AOL News writes about it in his article “8 Candidates Who Want to Amend the U.S. Constitution”:
Does the U.S. Constitution grant Americans citizens too many rights?
That seems to be the conclusion reached by some tea party activists and the candidates they have helped propel to victory. While in years past, a scattered number of political aspirants have spoken about scaling back the Constitution so that it more closely resembles the original version, this year’s rise of the tea party has resulted in a slew of candidates who view the revered document as bloated.
Surge Desk has a roundup of the politicians who believe that, when it comes to the number of amendments tacked on to the Constitution, less will mean more.
THE 17th AMENDMENT
Before the 17th Amendment was ratified in 1913,…
The Story of Delaware Senate Hopeful Christine O’Donnell (Animated)
Thank you, thank you, thank you Next Media Animation popularized here in the U.S. by Apple Daily. As described:
A Tea Party insurgency has left rancor and discord within the GOP’s big tent. Led by Sarah Palin, Tea Party candidates have scored several primary upsets against establishment candidates. The latest victor is Christine O’Donnell.
The anti-masturbation candidate has won the Republican senate nomination in Delaware, causing strategist Karl Rove to self-immolate on national television.
The Democrats, believing the Tea Party cannot win in a general election, are predictably happy with Tea Party’s primary success. But are the Democrat’s underestimating the strength of this populist movement?
Why is This Republican Candidate for Congress Dressed as a Nazi?
Rich Iott, second from right, in a Nazi SS Waffen uniform.
First saw this on Bill Maher’s show over the weekend, he was discussing this story from Joshua Green on the Atlantic:
An election year already notable for its menagerie of extreme and unusual candidates can add another one: Rich Iott, the Republican nominee for Congress from Ohio’s 9th District, and a Tea Party favorite, who for years donned a German Waffen SS uniform and participated in Nazi re-enactments.
Iott, whose district lies in Northwest Ohio, was involved with a group that calls itself Wiking, whose members are devoted to re-enacting the exploits of an actual Nazi division, the 5th SS Panzer Division Wiking, which fought mainly on the Eastern Front during World War II. Iott’s participation in the Wiking group is not mentioned on his campaign’s website, and his name and photographs were removed from the Wiking website.
When contacted by The Atlantic,…
Meet the Tea Party’s Corporate Puppet Masters
Profiled by Jane Mayer in the August 30 New Yorker, brothers Charles and David Koch are two libertarian billionaires who have been quietly funding the Tea Party and other anti-Obama campaigns:
“The Kochs operate oil refineries in Alaska, Texas, and Minnesota, and control some four thousand miles of pipeline. Koch Industries owns Brawny paper towels, Dixie cups, Georgia-Pacific lumber, Stainmaster carpet, and Lycra, among other products. Forbes ranks it as the second-largest private company in the country, after Cargill, and its consistent profitability has made David and Charles Koch—who, years ago, bought out two other brothers—among the richest men in America. Their combined fortune of thirty-five billion dollars is exceeded only by those of Bill Gates and Warren Buffett.
“The Kochs are longtime libertarians who believe in drastically lower personal and corporate taxes, minimal social services for the needy, and much less oversight of industry—especially environmental regulation. These views dovetail with the brothers’ corporate interests. In…
