Poll finds people who want fiscal responsibility actually want more spending

So I've been harping for a year that this whole "fiscal responsibility" movement is largely a sham. Not that we don't need it, but it's been my feeling that the Obama-hating right just uses this as a meme to tie Obama to the stereotype of a tax-and-spend liberal.

They might scream for fiscal responsibility at the town halls, but what they really mean is 'screw the poor and the blacks and the Mexicans'. I've wanted to see what happens when and if deep cuts happen. Do you think angry grandpa is going to be happy when his Medicare gets slashed? Do you think angry roughneck is going to like the gigantic 8-foot pothole in front of his driveway that doesn't get fixed for 3 years? Do you think mama grizzly wannabe is going to be happy when her child's Head Start funding is cut?

Hell no.

And that's why this whole thing is a crock of shit. The Tea Party likes slashing programs in theory, as long as the theory is that it's minorities and liberals getting hit. The reality is that cuts as deep as they want are going to wreck many of the programs they depend on.

There's a new Pew Poll out. As Greg Sergeant writes in the Washington Post:

The poll finds that in general, more Americans think deficit reduction is a more important priority (49 percent) than spending to help the economy recover (46 percent). But check out what happens when Americans are asked what they think about spending on specific programs:



More favor an increase in spending than a decrease on 15 of 18 issues tested in the poll. Now, these numbers aren't all that clear-cut. But the overall conclusion is clear: Once you start to talk specifics, the public's aversion to government spending rapidly evaporates.

This is why the Tea Party can't be taken seriously. It's populated by people with an agenda. an agenda that can be boiled down to "Gimme mine and screw the rest of you."

The Tax Foundation did a study in 2007 (that they're seeking to update) that shows Federal Spending per dollar of federal taxes. Basically, do you get back more or less than you give. Here's the chart for 2005, and next to it is a map I put together based on the Tax Foundation data:
You can't overly generalize. But it's not hard to see where the biggest tax hogs are. Anyone care to overly a Tea Party activity map on this?

Tea Party network straightens out Bachmann's rebuttal; confirms teleprompter usage

HuffPost TeaPartyHD, the television and internet network behind now-infamous video of Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) delivering her own rebuttal to President Barack Obama's State of the Union address, endeavored to straighten out the conservative congresswoman on Friday, the Minneapolis Star Tribune reports.

Bachmann made headlines for her response to Obama and not just for the controversy it stirred within the Republican party. In one version of the video, the Tea Party darling doesn't appear to be looking into the camera. Instead of addressing her audience, she seems to be looking off to the side.

Per the Star Tribune:

The reason, it appears, is that Bachmann delivered her speech to TeaPartyHD's camera, which had the teleprompter she used. But most of the world -- well, nation -- saw the footage shot by network cameras that were allowed to video the speech.

TELEPROMTER??!!!!!

SOCIALISM!!!!!!!!!!!!




Really, don't we all see how silly this is? Can't we see how unserious they are?

Red-state welfare: the hypocrisy of the tea party

The New York Daily News has done an incredible piece about how the states governed by Republicans, the anti-handout, bootstraps crowd, actually gets more federal money back then they pay in taxes. Should anyone be surprised at this point? It's more hypocrisy from the Paliners, and the Paulers and the Teabaggers.

At this point, my suggestion to them is this: leave. Go. Try and make it on your own and see how quickly you become an impoverished third-world hellhole.

But to stand up and scream about how repressive the federal government is when you're reaping the benefits of the work of the blue states is startlingly stupid. Or as they call it, Monday.

Alaska gets $1.84 in federal spending for every dollar it pays in federal taxes. We in New York get just 79 cents on the dollar.
Which means we subsidize Alaska even as it enjoys a $2 billion-plus budget surplus.

Even as New York faces a huge deficit that will require ever more painful cuts.

[...]

Maybe there will be more reality shows featuring other big names in the Tea Party who call for cuts in government spending even as their home states are subsidized by the rest of us.

There could be Sen. Jim DeMint's South Carolina, which gets $1.35 on the dollar.

There could also be Sen.-elect Rand Paul's Kentucky, which rakes in $1.51.

Compare those states to two that are in financial crisis and suffer an even worse balance of payments than we do in New York.

California receives only 78 cents on the dollar.

And New Jersey gets just 61 cents, though it does have a hit reality show.

h/t Cesca

Olbermann brilliant Special Comment: If the Tea Party wins, America loses

Here's the guy who stomped a woman's head at a Rand Paul rally posing with.... *gasp*

MSNBC

The volunteer with Rand Paul's Republican U.S. Senate campaign who stepped on the head of a liberal activist and pinned her face to the concrete said Tuesday the scuffle was not as bad as it looked on video and blamed police for not intervening.

His name is Tim Profitt and here he is with Rand Paul.



This sounds a lot like Joe Miller's Goon Squad illegally detaining a reporter two weeks ago.

Is this the America the Tea Party envisions?

The Tea Party/GOP noise machine

Watching Bill Maher last week, he confronted his guest, St. Louis Tea Party radio host Dana Loesch guest with the following indisputable facts, all of which she denied were true or claimed were in dispute:

1) the stimulus cost less than the war in Iraq. Her response: "those numbers are in dispute"

2) the stimulus contained almost $300 million in tax cuts that were demanded by Republicans who then opposed it. Her response: "no it didn't"

3) the stimulus saved 3 million jobs. Her idiotic response was "then why is unemployment still at 10%?" to which John Legend responded (barely concealing his disgust) that without the stimulus, unemployment would be at 13%. Loesch responded that that was in dispute.

4) the bailouts worked, it saved GM and millions of jobs, and we got our money back plus some, making a profit. Her response: 'why does the government get to decide who survives?'. She sidestepped the truth that didn't support her assertions and asked her question in a manner that suggested that saving a million jobs is somehow worthy of derision.

Interestingly enough, she got upset when Maher used the term "teabagger" (even though the teabaggers are the ones who called themselves teabaggers first), yet she had no problem, and Maher raised no objections, when she used the backhanded-slur "Democrat party".

This illustrates the fundamental problem with debating the functions of government in this Tea Party era: they have no sense of truth or fact. It's all subjective reality. Present them with numbers from the CBO and they'll scream that those are "government numbers" and therefore ought not to be trusted. Present them with fact and they'll sidestep, or cry conspiracy, or deflect ('remember 30 years ago when...'), or just scream "lamestream media... AIIIIEEEEEEEE!!!!".

There is no reality with them, other than the shifting constructs of the day-to-day. Yesterday they were supporting Juan Williams and complaining (erroneously) that his First Amendment rights were violated. Yet when real First Amendment rights are being violated by Joe Miller's hired goons illegally detaining a reporter for asking questions of the candidate, they claim that the reporter deserved it.

How does one debate a group of chronically lying hypocrites?

The gun industry has no oversight? Really? It polices itself? Does that seem like a good idea?

CNBC has an article about problems at the Remington Firearms Company. It seems that their signature weapon, the model 700 bolt action rifle may have a defect that the company has known about for 60 years.

A 10-month investigation by CNBC has found that at least two dozen deaths and more than 100 injuries have been linked to the signature product of an iconic American company.

The Remington Model 700-series rifle - with more than 5 million sold - is one of the world’s most popular firearms. Famous for its accuracy, the rifle is now the target of a series of lawsuits claiming that it is unsafe and susceptible to firing without pulling the trigger.

Of course they claim that there's nothing wrong. Few companies will admit to a design flaw in a product. That's not unusual. But over 60 years, there's bound to be a paper trail and the stunning part is what it would have cost Remington to fix the flaw-that-doesn't-exist-but-has-been-alleged-for-decades.

The documents reveal that on at least two occasions, the company considered – and then decided against – a modification of the original trigger design intended to eliminate inadvertent discharges. One of those proposed fixes would have cost Remington 5.5 cents per gun, according to the company’s own calculations.

5.5 cents. They declined to spend less than 6 cents per rifle to ensure that their weapons would be safe. 5.5 cents was too much to protect lives.

So the government will step in, right? Right?

Wrong.

(F)rom the very beginning, the company looked at ways to fix its bolt-action rifle, even contemplating a nationwide recall. But on more than one occasion, Remington decided against a recall.

And it turns out that decision is Remington's, and Remington's alone.

For most products – cars, toys, food, even BB guns - the government can order a recall. In 2010, for example, the Eagle 5 Rifle crossbow made by Master Cutlery was recalled after regulators found it could fire, without pulling the trigger, when the safety is switched off.

But the Consumer Product Safety Commission cannot recall guns. Nor can the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms or the Justice Department.

Guns hold a special place in American life - and American law, says Dallas attorney Jeffrey Hightower.

“Remington polices itself,” he said. “The gun industry polices itself.”

A federal law, passed in 1976 and upheld repeatedly in court, specifically bars the government from setting safety standards for guns, because of the Second Amendment.

While some estimates now say that the cost is as much as $100 per rifle, I'd be interested in seeing the new calculation. Even accounting for super inflation, 5.5 cents in 1960 isn't $100 now.

This is a wonderful repudiation of the Tea Party and their 'get the government off my back' mentality. This is why the Tea Party is wrong when it claims that regulations aren't necessary. This is a perfect example of an unregulated company doing exactly the wrong thing - or more correctly, behaving like a business.

There's nothing wrong with a business behaving like a business, but let's not pretend that business interests always coincide with public interests. They don't.

If you correct teabagger ignorance, you're a condescending elitist

via Hammerito

"I give up. I fucking give up.

When I first started hearing right-wingers claim that separation of church and state is a liberal myth, I wondered why no one sat them down, shoved the document in their face, and made them read those three lines out loud. Now I see that it doesn’t matter.

Something like 30% of the country has gone mad. That’s the only explanation I can think of. This is not an exaggeration. They are literally standing there pointing at the sky and saying “the sky is red” and when you try to convince them that it’s blue and bring them a color chart and other blue things for comparison they stare at you blankly for a few seconds and then go back to repeating “the sky is red”. And even if you convince them for a moment that it is indeed blue, you were being condescending while you did it. So you’re an elitist. And therefore you’re wrong. The sky is red.

No, I’m done with the appeals to bipartisanship, the platitudes that we all share a common dream, that people are just frustrated with government. A country where this kind of thing constitutes mainstream political debate is not worth fighting for. I’ll stay on the coast where it is relatively safe, but I’ll be ready to jump ship at any moment. I suggest anyone with half a brain do the same."

Gawker commenter on Christine O’Donnell not knowing, and then NOT BELIEVING that the first amendment contained the provision of separation of church and state during a debate with Chris Coons. Coons recited the text of the amendment “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion”, to which she responded “That’s in the first amendment…?”

Seriously, nearly every time I hear a Teabagger open his/her mouth, I feel like I’m back in second grade and being made fun of for knowing the right answer to the teacher’s question.

So much truth. In a world where Republicans can make headway by being completely disingenuous, what's left of real political debate?

Disingenuous? Absolutely. How about we just call it hypocrisy? Or outright lies. They advocate that we have to reduce spending while simultaneously arguing for an unfunded $4 trillion extension of tax cuts that primarily benefit the top 2%.

They scream for getting government off of our backs while they move to allow the greatest government intrusion in our personal lives ever. Using the most extreme positions on abortion by trying to disallow abortion even in the case of rape and saying that the government should root out teachers who are gay or straight and co-habitating, they're inviting the government into our homes in ways that have never been allowed.

When they say that they're against the stimulus because it didn't create jobs, and yet write letters asking for stimulus money to create jobs in their states, they are at best prevaricators. At best.

The party that trumpets the Constitution doesn't know the First Amendment or the Establishment Clause, doesn't believe in freedom of the press, refuses to talk to them and uses their own private security goons to illegally detain a reporter asking difficult questions

What's worse, they live in a factless reality. Everything is relative. When proven wrong by facts, they ignore the facts or decry them as creations of the lamestream media.

Where are we headed when there are no objective facts and the media has completely abdicated its role as gatekeeper and fact-checker?

The America of Glenn Beck and the tea party

This is the America that the tea baggers "want back". The post WWII, pre-Vietnam days, where everything was fine. Just ask the Cleavers.



Which of these aspects of Beck's World is most offensive in a 2010 context?
A) A woman's place is in the home, and if they're in the home, why not be in the kitchen? Giving me a blowjob.
B) Women do alright with modern conveniences, but if you take away the blender, they're shit.
C) Women can't handle the rugged outdoors, where us cavemen peel pre-pressed burgers off of wax paper?
D) That "less government regulation" will allow a return to the time when asbestos gloves could be sold?

Here's what else was happening in Beck's hunky-dory post WWII period: thalidomide babies because of a lack of government oversight of medicine, civil rights protests for basic rights, beatings and dogs being turned on protesters and lots of other good nostalgic stuff.

It was a great period, if you were a white man.

Yeah, let's go back.

Matt Taibbi on the nucleus of the Tea Party

Brilliant. The whole thing is brilliant. There is no better commentator on the state of America than Taibbi. read the whole thing at Rolling Stone.

The dingbat revolution, it seems, is nigh.

"We're shaking up the good ol' boys," Palin chortles, to the best applause her aging crowd can muster. She then issues an oft-repeated warning (her speeches are usually a tired succession of half-coherent one-liners dumped on ravenous audiences like chum to sharks) to Republican insiders who underestimated the power of the Tea Party Death Star. "Buck up," she says, "or stay in the truck."

Stay in what truck? I wonder. What the hell does that even mean?

Scanning the thousands of hopped-up faces in the crowd, I am immediately struck by two things. One is that there isn't a single black person here. The other is the truly awesome quantity of medical hardware: Seemingly every third person in the place is sucking oxygen from a tank or propping their giant atrophied glutes on motorized wheelchair-scooters. As Palin launches into her Ronald Reagan impression — "Government's not the solution! Government's the problem!" — the person sitting next to me leans over and explains.

"The scooters are because of Medicare," he whispers helpfully. "They have these commercials down here: 'You won't even have to pay for your scooter! Medicare will pay!' Practically everyone in Kentucky has one."

A hall full of elderly white people in Medicare-paid scooters, railing against government spending and imagining themselves revolutionaries as they cheer on the vice-presidential puppet hand-picked by the GOP establishment. If there exists a better snapshot of everything the Tea Party represents, I can't imagine it.

Anti-elitist, anti-establishment teabaggers sport serious Ivy League credentials

The anti-establishment Tea Party has backed some candidates with some serious elitist, establishment ties.

Alaska Senate candidate Joe Miller - Yale Law
Kentucky's Rand Paul - Duke Medical
Colorado Senate candidate Ken Buck - Princeton
Pennsylvania Senate candidate Pat Toomey - Harvard

Hypocrites. The Tea Party is being used.

Even Christine O'Donnell (R-witch) claims to have gone to Princeton. Of course, that's a lie, too.

MSNBC

Let's celebrate Columbus Day the Tea Party way!

Wingnuts on parade: kill minimum wage, "small" gov't should patrol bedrooms

Remember folks, these are the people that the polls say will be in charge in 3 months:

Cesca

(Senator Jim) DeMint said if someone is openly homosexual, they shouldn't be teaching in the classroom and he holds the same position on an unmarried woman who's sleeping with her boyfriend — she shouldn't be in the classroom.

How does DeMint plan to enforce this? Government raids on bedrooms? This is small government?

Meanwhile Alaskan crackpot Joe Miller comes out against the minimum wage. Really.

Washington Monthly

We asked him, for example, if there should be a federally mandated minimum wage, something that has existed since Congress passed the Fair Labor Standards Act in 1938.

"That is clearly up to the states," Miller said. "The state of Alaska has a minimum wage which is higher than the federal level because our state leaders have made that determination. The minimum level again should be the state's decision."

So there should not be a federal minimum wage?

"There should not be," Miller answered.

How the hell can someone in this day and age argue that there should not be a minimum wage? As Cesca notes, this is like coming out against child labor laws.

This is, of course, the same Miller who also believes that federal unemployment benefits, Medicare, and Social Security should all be eliminated.

This is your new government America. You're turning in to a laughingstock and you're becoming too stupidly ignorant to notice it. Or care.

Question: why do we get mad when Ahmadinejad spouts shit, and orgasmic when teabaggers do?

MSNBC

The U.S. and several European delegations walked out of the U.N. speech of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Thursday after he said most people believe the U.S. government was behind the Sept. 11 terror attacks in order to assure Israel's survival.

In his speech to the annual General Assembly, Ahmadinejad said it was mostly U.S. government officials who believed a terrorist group was behind the suicide hijacking attacks that brought down New York's World Trade Center and hit the Pentagon.

Another theory, he said, was "that some segments within the U.S. government orchestrated the attack to reverse the declining American economy, and its grips on the Middle East, in order to save the Zionist regime" — his way of characterizing Israel.

Nuts, right?

But when Palin and Gingrich go full birther and allege the President is a secret Muslim, when Christine O'Donnell insists that scientists are engineering mice with human brains, when Jan Brewer lies about beheadings, when Palin lies every time she speaks, half the nation stands and cheers. The Tea Party can claim that Obama is an African-born, socialist, Muslim, terrorist-coddling, white-people hating, anti-colonial, white-people hating rat out to undermine America - and they pick up support.

I thought a lie was a lie.

What the fuck?

Republican election strategy = The Amazing Race

The GOP has gone full on nuts, nominating some real doozys (doozies? - whatever). In New York, you've got Chuck Paladino who sends out emails like this, "all in good fun".

In Delaware, they nominated anti-masturbation, pro-lying/crazy quotes, no intelligence Christine O'Donnell over Mike Castle. Castle, by the way, was up 10 points in head-to-head polling versus Chris Coons. O'Donnell is down 16, with Karl Rove - KARL FREAKING ROVE - calling her "nutty" and admitting she's unelectable.

The GOP/Tea Party feud has begun.

So where does The Amazing Race fit in? Well, the GOP electoral "strategy" (used loosely) of nominating fringe, far-right whackjobs might just cost them the gains they'd been hoping for. In other words, it will have same effect as the watermelons fired from this slingshot. Start at :20 for the good stuff. Show that knight who's boss.

Ground Zero mosque hypocrisy from the GOP, Tea Party and Fox News

Yesterday, Fox News ran this map showing the proximity of the Park 51 center to the location where remains were found after 9/11.


The implication is simple - this is sacred ground where no mosque should be built. Of course, the hosts of Fox and Friends didn't imply anything. To them, this was a simple matter of right and wrong and all Americans should be opposed mad insulted OUTRAGED.

However...

I took this map from McClatchy D.C. and overlaid it with this map from the N.Y. Post, which was the source of the Fox map, and this is what I got.



What I got was hypocrisy. According to Fox and most of conservative America, it's wrong to build a mosque near Ground Zero because it's sacred ground. I have no argument with the special place that ground holds in the hearts of millions. My issue is that it is apparently OK with the right to have a Burger King, a strip club, a betting parlor and it's doubly OK to have plans to build a strip mall, with a McDonald's, ON the remains of the trade center towers. But it's not OK for our fellow Americans to build a place of worship. And please be correct, they are not Muslims trying to build that mosque, they are Muslim-Americans.

"I’ve got Muslims who are fighting in Afghanistan in the uniform of the United States armed services. They’re out there putting their lives on the line for us, and we’ve got to make sure that we are crystal clear, for our sakes and their sakes, they are Americans, and we honor their service. And part of honoring their service is making sure that they understand that we don’t differentiate between them and us. It’s just us. And that is a principle that I think is — is — is going to be very important for us to — to sustain. And I think tomorrow is an excellent time for us to — to reflect on that."

President Obama

So which is it? Is it sacred ground? If so, there shouldn't be any strip clubs or crass tourism or fast food. But you can't logically justify a titty bar where human remains were found. But since when has the right been logical? For them, it's all black-and-white (often literally), right-and-wrong.

However, consider this quote from David Foster Wallace, framing 9/11 as the sacrifice that America must sometimes make:

“Are you up for a thought experiment? What if we chose to regard the 2,973 innocents killed in the atrocities of 9/11 not as victims but as democratic martyrs, “sacrifices on the altar of freedom”? In other words, what if we decided that a certain baseline vulnerability to terrorism is part of the price of the American idea? And, thus, that ours is a generation of Americans called to make great sacrifices in order to preserve our democratic way of life—sacrifices not just of our soldiers and money but of our personal safety and comfort?

In still other words, what if we chose to accept the fact that every few years, despite all reasonable precautions, some hundreds or thousands of us may die in the sort of ghastly terrorist attack that a democratic republic cannot 100-percent protect itself from without subverting the very principles that make it worth protecting?”

David Foster Wallace

h/t Hammerito

Here's what the Tea Party has wrought at the local level: CRA-ZEE!

Absolutely, positively bat-shit crazy.

Quote: "Politics is not about service, it's about WINNING!!!!!"

(Note: that's the first time I've ever typed multiple exclamation marks and really thought that I was understating things)



This is what the tea party has wrought. More crazies who think politics is literally - not figuratively, but literally - a contact sport. This is also why Democrats have to have a strong November showing. This nonsense has to be made to look as ridiculous as it is in order that it be discouraged.

Glenn Beck rally-goers in their own words

HUGE win for NewLeftMedia, letting the Beckolytes speak for themselves, unfiltered. (h/t Cesca)

Slate

The Washington Post quoted Linda Adams, a Beck supporter from Colorado, who said, "We want our country to get back to its original roots," adding that "her ancestors were on the Mayflower and fought in the American Revolution."

Really? I love the Founding Fathers and what they've wrought, but it's "original roots" were a bunch of slave owners in the south and witch-hunting religious zealots in the north.

A response to those advocating violent Tea Party revolution

Bob Owens, who blogs as Confederate Yankee, posted the following on Sunday, titled A Nation on the Edge of Revolt. It's stunning in that he admits what many progressives have long felt, that the Tea Party and it's affiliated movements are not peaceful, but in fact are threatening violence. the reasons are irrelevant - they are threatening violence and bloodshed.

I'll lay it out bluntly for you; either the American people—not extremists, but good and decent patriots like your neighbors and yourselves—will revolt and destroy the ruling class and reform our government based upon first principles, or the United States we know as our forefather conceived it is dead. (...)

We can dispose of this government, and restore the Constitution that has served us and the rest of the world so well for so long. (...)

Revolution is a brutish, nasty business. Innocents will fall along with patriots and the corrupt, and success is not assured. (...)

The question for you, my fellow Americans, is simple.

Will you fight, or will you surrender your liberties?

I pray for peace.

But I prepare for war.

Prepare for war. Gather your armies. He's not the only one. Media Matters notes other instances, including "Sarah Palin telling the Tea Party convention that 'America is ready for another revolution and you are a part of this' and Glenn Beck asserting that 'the second American revolution is being played out right now.'"

Predictably, the progressive side didn't take Owens' encouragement of sedition lightly. Media Matters, for one, chose to shed some light.

Owens responded with a threat:

I hope they do feel threatened. Attempts at peaceable protests have been met at turns by feigned ignorance, then mockery, then attacks on the character and motives of those would not sit quietly by. Perhaps it will take a serious review of our capacity for violence to get them to realize we shall not surrender our individual liberties to their lust for power.

Here is where I realize that we are two different countries. Why these people oppose Obama is almost irrelevant at this point. I will submit that it's because of race, but mostly it's because of fear. These are the growing pains associated with the change that most people of these people so fear. I also know, from working with kids, that very few of them share this fear that their parents so obviously suffer from. As we move into a multi-racial society, people like Owens will simply die off and become discredited by history, much as the beliefs on race held by many middle aged whites in the 1950's have died away.

But... the hate and fear of change that these people feel for Obama has so warped their world-view that they see violence and bloodshed as the answer. "Innocents will fall along with patriots and the corrupt" .

Their views are not rooted in reality. Ask a Tea Partier how Obama has subverted the Constitution and you won't get a coherent answer. They might cite the health care act, which was passed through an act of a dually-elected Congress as specified in the Constitution. They might cite "activist judges" that he's appointed. Never mind that he has every right to appoint judges, as every president has as specified by the Constitution. The answers you do get will be speculative and without any real proof other than the feelings of the Tea Partier: "he's taking away gun rights", "he's taking away OUR America", "he's not a citizen". No real proof, but it's enough for them to threaten violence.

Americans lost real rights under the Bush Administration, but the Tea Party was nowhere to be heard. Start with thew ultimate act of an activist court, the 2000 Bush v. Gore decision which took the election out of the hands of the people and put it in the hands of the court. The Patriot Act, which allowed the government to spy on its own citizens without a warrant. The repeal of the Posse Comitatus Act, which was enacted after the Civil War to prevent the federal government from using troops as law enforcement. The 2001 act that allowed NSA monitoring of domestic phone and internet traffic. Allowing the government to monitor religious and political institutions without suspecting criminal activity. Secret detentions of hundreds of people without charges. Government encouragement of bureaucrats to resist public records questions. The seizure of papers and effects without probable cause to assist terror investigation. American citizens jailed indefinitely without a trial, without being charged, or being able to confront witnesses against them.

Those are real rights infringements. But not a peep out of the Tea Party. They never lifted a finger until a black Democrat came to power.

When this paranoia takes the form of fomenting revolution, something has broken. They have the ability to change government without revolution, through the Constitutionally mandated electoral process. But that's not good enough for them, because that process produced the election of Barack Obama. The group that claims to love the Constitution wishes to overthrow the free, fair and Constitutional election of a president, since they lost the last 2 elections by running on their principles.

Apparently loving the Constitution means subverting the Constitution.

This isn't even about views anymore, because to Owens and his ilk, progressives are "statists", who want more government. Never mind that we share many of the same views, that we are disgusted by the politics of Washington as well. Never mind that we don't want more government, just better government, that cares for the rights of all of its citizens, even you. When you advocate criminal activities to get what you want, we have a break. I cannot work with you. In fact, I want the government to protect me by arresting you and charging you with the crimes you've just committed.

Owens and his crowd obviously do not understand history. They cite the Sons of Liberty and the Founders, but fail to understand the differences in situations.

The founders revolted over a litany of minor taxes because those taxes were placed by a government over which they had no say. It wasn't the taxes, it was that they had no say in those taxes. There is a HUGE difference here: as English citizens, they were used to paying taxes. The growing problem was a lack of say in the government that placed those taxes.

Further, it was frustruation that those taxes were going to pay for England's wars in Europe that were accomplishing nothing good here. These wars were sucking us in to conflicts (The French and Indian War) that had nothing to do with this continent. They were wrecking our economy and we didn't think we should be obligated to fund them.

But it was also about many events besides taxes. It was the feeling that, after almost 170 years here we had earned the right to self-determination (as Thomas Paine said "It was absurd for an island to rule a continent"). It was about alienation from Britain and a feeling that we were really no longer English. Any ties we had were residual.

It was about mercantilism, that England was using us as a cash-generating ATM. They told us who we could buy from and who we could sell to and at what prices. Mercantilism and the Navigation Acts, over which we had no electoral say, caused a lot of law-abiding families to have to resort to criminal smuggling.

The American Revolution was about a lack of representation in Parliament. The Boston Massacre and the propaganda created by Paul Revere, silversmith and member of the Sons, was the spark that blew the powderkeg.

Argue the merits of the Revolution all day, but there is no tax or law on the books in America that has not been lawfully passed by your representatives in Congress and signed by the President as proscribed by the Constitution.

They might not like the laws. But that doesn't mean I get to cry "unfair! illegal!". They have representation in Congress that they are allowed to petition for redress of any perceived grievances.

This situation of "I don't like the laws, so they must be illegal and therefore I can take up weapons against those with whom I disagree" is so different from the complaints of the Sons of Liberty. The American colonists literally had no representation in Parliament. Not representation that they disagree with. They literally had no representation.

I wonder, then, since they're willing to take illegal extra-Constitutional means to get what they want, then what next? How can we trust a group that would usurp the Constitution to overturn a free election and restore power to themselves to then follow that document once they've regained the power they crave? So what next? Executions of anyone who doesn't subscribe to their point of view? Jails for progressives and liberals and immigrants? Re-education for faggots and union members? Elimination of inferior races?

As one of the commenters on Owens's site noted:

You're openly supporting violent takeover because you don't like how the majority of people in the country voted a couple years back. What gives you the moral standing to say that your preference is more valid than theirs, or to forcibly replace it? Absolutely sickening. I'm ashamed to share a country with you.

As I quoted earlier, Owens is upset that their "attempts at peaceable protests have been met at turns by feigned ignorance, then mockery, then attacks on the character and motives".

How can you not be met by mockery and questioning of your motives? You are advocating criminal sedition and usurpation of Constitutional law in order to enforce your vision of what you think it says. You indict Obama for violating the rule of law and yet advocate violating that same rule because you supposedly know better; because you haven't been able to persuade the majority of Americans to agree with you at the ballot box.

Isn't THAT how tyrants operate?

Bush "tax cuts" will represent a HIKE in taxes for those making under $300K in 2011

via Cesca

This graphic needs to be seen by everyone. From the pages of the Wall Street Journal - read that again... the Rupert Murdoch-owned WALL STREET JOURNAL - comes this graphic showing taxes in 2011 if the Bush "tax cuts" were still in place, versus a 2011 under the Obama plan, with the tax cuts for the wealthy being allowed to expire while middle-class tax cuts (for those making under $250,000) are extended.

Read very carefully. The Bush "tax cuts" are only a tax cut if you make over $300,000. For anyone under that line, these "tax cuts" are actually a tax increase.

As the GOP - and it's house organ Fox News and it's lunatic fringe the Tea Party - attempt to flog the Bush "tax cuts" as a tax cut for anyone other than the wealthy, remember this graphic. As Fox trots out commercials for their Sunday programming that suggest that everyone is talking about the Bush "tax cuts" as a way to stimulate the economy, remember this graphic.

Also remember that when it comes to direct injections into the economy in the form of unemployment benefits that are immediately spent, they oppose it. When they scream about fiscally responsible policy that must be paid for before it goes into effect, they don't mean the Bush "tax cuts" for the wealthy. They're perfectly OK with that.

When they yell about deficits, they don't take into account the effect that the Bush "tax cuts" will have (see graphic at right) at ballooning the deficit.

This is a microcosm of how Fox and the Tea Party and the GOP work hand-in-hand-in-hand. Fox has spent a decade setting up strawmen to strike fear into the hearts of Great Americans everywhere, so that like Pavlov's dogs, they react whenever Fox tells them to. Then Fox trots out a meme, such as "the Bush Tax Cuts will spur the economy that the Kenyan Messiah has wrecked". And respond they do. Never mind that the economy went under during Bush 43. Never mind that whatever gains we've had have come as a result of Obama and the stimulus. If Fox says Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest are good, the fearful will respond.

How do I know this? It's obvious. Look at Fox's viewership in terms of the commercials they run. Gold. Diabetes supplies. Senior insurance. HoverRounds (go, go, go). Home security. Their viewers are, by-and-large, older white people. Older white people who are scared, of death, illness and Kenyans wrecking the economy, seeking reparations and Islamicizing their grandkids. They're so scared that they'll vote against their own economic self-interest because Fox News tells them that the Black Kid is bad.

Look at the chart again... the majority of Fox's viewers are not making over $300,000 a year. So why would they push for policies that hurt their pocketbook? Because they're scared of what the Tea part and the Tea Party mouthpiece that is Fox News tell them to be scared of.

The politics of killing the tax breaks for the wealthy while maintaining the middle-class breaks is a risky one. It shouldn't be, but given the climate in the country right now where the right wing can make up their own facts while ignoring the real ones (about the impact of the deficit, for example) this threatens to be the key issue of the midterm elections.

And while the Democrats are finally starting to try to tie the GOP in to the more extreme beliefs of the Tea Party candidates they support, they're not doing enough. This is bareknuckle politics and the Democrats have to become far more aggressive in not letting the GOP/Tea Party/Fox News dominate the conversation with half-truths.