Category Archives: Tea Party

The United States Of Crazy!

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A recent survey by Public Policy Polling found that 13 percent of Americans actually think President Obama is the antichrist. An additional 13 percent are unsure.

The same survey found that 37 percent of Americans believe global warming is a hoax, while another 12 percent are unsure. The survey also found that 28 percent of Americans believe in the New World Order conspiracy. (The Black Helicopters are coming! The Black Helicopters are coming!). Yet another 25 percent think it’s possible,

If that news isn’t depressing enough, a 2011 Fox News poll found that 24 percent of voters believe our president is not even an American citizen. A stunning 72 percent of Tea Party Republicans and 63 percent of all Republicans thought there was cause to wonder about his birthplace!

Further, a new HuffPost/YouGov poll shows that 32 percent of Americans would favor a constitutional amendment making Christianity the official religion of the United States. An even larger 34 percent would favor establishing Christianity as the official religion of their state. Even though the First Amendment of the Constitution clearly states, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion…” these people seem to believe the Founders intended the US to be a Christian nation.

They apparently assume the Founders simply meant that there should be no establishment of any specific denomination of Christianity despite the fact that some of the Founders were deists and atheists. Many of these same clairvoyants have convinced themselves that the Founders also intended for individual Americans to own all forms of armament ranging from assault weapons to howitzers.

Except for the large numbers of crackpots, none of this is particularly surprising. The US is home to all sorts of crazy.

There are significant numbers of Americans who believe in unfounded conspiracies, such as the Agenda 21 conspiracy, the “truther” conspiracy, the Roswell conspiracy, the FDR-allowed-Pearl-Harbor-to-happen conspiracy, the Obama-is-going-to-take-your-guns conspiracy, the Obama-is-converting-the-US-to-sharia-law conspiracy, etc.

On a more positive note, a new Marist College poll found that 60 percent of Americans think the laws governing firearms sales should be more strict. (After all, who would want to put guns in the hands of the conspiracy nuts.)  59 percent favor a ban on assault weapons with only 37 percent opposing the idea. And 87 percent favor background checks.

Let’s hope those background checks include screenings for nut jobs!

The GOP’s Continuing Attack On Voters, Workers, Women And The Constitution.

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Still stinging from its losses in the 2012 election, the Grand Old Party is becoming a Grand Old Pain In The Ass.  Not just for Democrats…for everyone.

While opposing a bill that would raise the minimum wage, the GOP is attacking labor unions across the nation and successfully ending defined benefit pension plans.  Now the GOP is pushing a bill that would loosen the rules for overtime, allowing corporations to overwork and underpay employees.

Famously, the Ryan budget, which was passed by the House, would drastically cut Medicaid, repeal Obamacare and turn Medicare into vouchers.

Although 94 percent of Americans want comprehensive background checks for anyone purchasing a firearm, Teapublican senators are threatening to filibuster any bill that would limit the sale of guns.

In states across the nation, the GOP is pushing a variety of voter suppression laws through state legislatures under the guise of preventing voter ID fraud, a problem that has been proven to be non-existent.   After gerrymandering districts to all but guarantee a Teapublican-controlled House far into the future, the GOP now senses a way to control presidential elections by changing the Electoral College.  The idea is to end the “winner-take-all” approach to electoral votes for states and, instead, award each electoral vote district-by-Teapublican-controlled-district.

If successful, this would almost certainly ensure an endless reign of GOP presidents.

In North Dakota, Arkansas and elsewhere, GOP legislatures are attempting to make abortion illegal. (Of course, the bills will not actually end abortion.  They’ll just drive it underground, making doctors and patients criminals.)  Under the guise of religious freedom, they also want to eliminate contraceptives from health insurance plans and block sex education in public schools.

In Arizona and numerous states of the Old South, a variety of so-called nullification bills have been introduced in the state legislatures.  If passed, these bills would ostensibly give the states power to ignore any federal law the GOP deems unconstitutional.  (Of course, this power is reserved for the Supreme Court and the bills are in direct defiance of the Constitution’s federal supremacy clause.)

Finally, a bill introduced by North Carolina Teapublicans will allow the GOP-controlled state legislature to name an official state religion in defiance of the Constitution’s establishment clause.

Does anyone else get the feeling that the GOP would be happier if our Constitution didn’t exist?

Putting The Party In Tea Party.

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The Tea Party began as a group of individuals who claimed to be aghast at runaway government spending.  To fight back, they promoted a number of candidates who ran on a platform of fiscal responsibility.

That was 2010.

Just a few years later, those so-called fiscal hawks have decided that federal spending is a good thing…as long as it’s used for a good cause, such as paying large bonuses to their staff and friends.  According to the website, www.LegisStorm.com, Rep. Todd Akin (R-Mo.), who was defeated in his attempt at a Senate seat, used taxpayers’ money to increase his staff’s salaries 98.3% in the final quarter.

Many outgoing Democrats also gave large bonuses to their staffs, but the records show that Republicans were even more generous with taxpayers’ money.  Among the most generous were Tea Party Representatives Chip Cravaack (R-Minn.) and Allen West (R-Fla.), who ranked numbers 3 and 4 in giving pay increases to staff members.

In other words, these so-called deficit hawks are partying with our money as though it were 1999.

Moreover, if you think the Tea Party is any more serious about reducing the deficit than Democrats, compare the Paul Ryan budget, which was passed by the Teapublican-led House, to the People’s Budget proposed by the House Progressive caucus.

Both plans cut about the same amount from the federal budget.  But the Ryan plan does it on the backs of the poor and the middle class while cutting taxes for the rich and increasing the already bloated defense budget. On the other hand, the progressive plan cuts the defense budget, raises revenues by eliminating tax dodges for the rich, secures the future of Social Security and Medicare, and rebuilds our failing infrastructure.  And it does all this while reducing deficits by $5.6 trillion over the next decade according to the non-partisan Economic Policy Institute!

When you look past the Tea Party rhetoric and look carefully at its policies, you quickly discover that the teabaggers are more interested in self-interest, greed and ideology than principles, debt reduction and the future of our nation.

The Constitutional Fight That Never Seems To End.

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You may think that the current debate between the Tea Party and Democrats over the role of the federal government is relatively new. It’s not. The debate is as old as the nation itself. Following the Constitutional Convention of 1787, there was an intense debate over the same issue.

Anti-Federalists such as Patrick Henry, Samuel Adams, George Mason and John Hancock were against the Constitution. They feared that a strong federal government would lead to monarchy. They believed that the bulk of the power should rest with the states and saw no value in abandoning the original Articles of Confederation. They feared an independent judiciary and disliked the separation of Church and State.

On the other hand, Federalists such as George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and Benjamin Franklin believed the Articles of Confederation were too weak, and that a strong central government was necessary to hold the new nation together and raise the revenue needed to fund military pensions, foreign embassies, etc.

The Federalists won, but the fight has never ended.

One could make a strong case that this very issue led to the Civil War.  The South claimed states’ rights in order to maintain slavery.  And, following the war, former Confederate states complained of oppression by the federal government during Reconstruction, vowing that the South would rise again.

The issue resurfaced following World War II with the John Birch Society.  It was, once again, front and center during the civil rights movement of the 1960’s.

Now the Tea Party is leading the fight.

To support their beliefs, the Tea Party faithful, along with the nitwits on Fox News and talk radio, selectively quote the Founding Fathers in order to convince us that they (the Tea Party) are the true patriots; that they are merely doing as the Founders wanted.

What they neglect to mention is that there are at least as many quotes by Founding Fathers extolling the virtues of a strong federal government.  Moreover, the Constitution itself is evidence that the Federalists prevailed, as the Constitution is the very instrument that created the strong federal government in its current form.

The teabaggers can complain all they want about the federal government being too big and  too powerful.  They really can’t change that without abandoning the Constitution or starting another Civil War.  And we all know how the first one turned out.

If you’d like to learn more about this subject, I highly recommend That’s Not What They Meant!  Reclaiming The Founding Fathers From America’s Right Wing by Michael Austin.

His Highness Obama?

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Right wing nitwits continue to claim that President Obama has usurped the powers of Congress in order to pursue his liberal, socialist agenda. They derisively refer to him as King Obama or Emperor Obama.

Ironically, he very nearly earned such a title.

According to Jon Meacham’s book, Thomas Jefferson – The Art of Power, many of the Founding Fathers were strongly in favor of creating a new monarchy following the end of the Revolutionary War. Some wanted to apply for a sovereign of the house of Hanover. Indeed, Alexander Hamilton was said to favor the establishment of a monarchy with a family compact, placing the crown upon the head of a foreign prince.

Thankfully, Hamilton and the rest of his faction were overruled.

Even when the Constitutional Convention agreed to elect the head of our government, John Adams proposed that the president be called “His Highness the President of the United States and protector of their liberties.”

Imagine the knots in the knickers of Tea Party “Patriots” if they actually had to refer to Barack Obama this way.

Let Them Eat Horse!

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According to new studies, 1 in 3 Americans believe that hamburger tainted with horse meat should be given to the poor. In essence, they’re saying, “I wouldn’t eat it, but it’s good enough for the poor.”

Of course, in the minds of Teapublican deficit hawks, the poor are merely freeloaders who don’t deserve what the hard-working job creators enjoy. But why stop with horse meat? Why not subject the poor to other indignities?

For example, we could give them all of our outdated and spoiled food. Instead of paying rent for community food shelves, we could just throw the food in dumpsters and turn all of the poor into dumpster-divers.

Why waste perfectly good medicines on the poor? This is a perfect opportunity to get rid of expired medicines and avoid polluting the environment at the same time. And you know all of those medicines that have been deemed unsafe for consumption? If we gave those to the poor, we’d eventually have less poor – especially if we quit wasting money on MedicAid and hospitalization.

We could save even more money by throwing all of the poor out of public housing. And why waste money on educating poor children? If they learn too much, they’ll just call for class warfare. Finally, why not build a fence around our nation’s poorest land and let the poor create their own country (it worked for Native Americans). We could surround it with video cameras and broadcast it on a network channel as the hottest new reality show.

We could call it Les Miserables America.

Does Mitch McConnell Deserve The Title “Leader?”

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Following President Obama’s dinner with Senate Republicans, the invitees were asked to comment on the evening. All said it was productive and one stated that he was surprised to learn that the president had previously offered a variety of spending cuts to prevent sequestration.

Really?!!!

This is surprising on a couple of fronts. First, the president’s proposed budget cuts have been chronicled in the national media for many months. They even have been listed on the White House website for anyone with enough curiosity to read. Second, it would appear that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is guilty of sabotaging the budget negotiations by failing to communicate with members of his own party.

How can the president hope to negotiate deficit reduction when the Minority “Leader” fails to lead?

Of course, McConnell’s failure should come as no surprise to anyone who has followed his “leadership” the past four years. In the days immediately following the election of President Obama, McConnell famously stated that his number one priority was to assure that Obama would be a one-term president.

Try as he might, McConnell even failed at that.

Despite a record number of filibusters, stonewalling, caterwauling, and every other form of obstruction, President Obama was re-elected in a landslide. Now it seems McConnell has even failed to keep his budget sabotage secret.

McConnell’s failures should not only assure defeat in his own re-election efforts. He should be locked out of any further negotiations. By ignoring McConnell and Speaker John Boehner, Congress might actually get something done.

Tax Cuts For The Rich, Budget Cuts For The Poor.

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Following are a few numbers that clearly show the results of more than 40 years of Republican economic policies:

1 percent of Americans now control more than 40 percent of the nation’s wealth, while the bottom 40 percent of Americans control 0.2 percent of the wealth.

46.2 million Americans are living in poverty. 3.9 million working Americans are paid at or below the minimum wage. 12 million Americans are unemployed. 650,000 Americans are homeless. 50 million Americans, including 17 million children, don’t know where their next meal is coming from. 48.6 million don’t have health insurance.

Naturally, Teapublicans in Congress want to protect these people from further harm. I’m referring, of course, to the 1 percent! Even though taxes for the wealthy are at historic lows, Teapublicans believe they’re overtaxed. They absolutely refuse to consider asking these people to pay one more cent of their enormous wealth.

Those other people, according to Teapublican leaders, are merely the freeloaders who rely on the federal government for assistance. 

Is it any wonder, then, that Congress is locked in a budget standoff with the president? The austerity cuts resulting from sequestration will cut 9 percent from unemployment checks and $175 million from energy assistance for the poor. Sequestration will cut rental assistance to 125,000 low-income families. It will put 100,000 previously homeless back on the streets. It will cut 70,000 kids from Head Start. And it’s projected to cost up to 750,000 jobs.

But these cuts are less cruel than the Teapublican demands to end sequestration. They want to cut SNAP food assistance for the poor. They want to cut Medicaid health assistance for children and low-income families. They want to cut Medicare, Social Security and more.

But don’t worry about the poor. They’ll get by. After all, they still own 0.2 percent of our nation’s wealth.

Since Most Americans Want Compromise, Why Elect Those Who Don’t?

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A variety of polls show that the overwhelming majority of Americans want their elected officials to compromise. Yet the US House of Representatives is controlled by those who view compromise as a weakness.

Speaker Boehner can’t even bring himself to say the word!

As a result, President Obama was forced to sign an order implementing the most ill-advised, ham-handed budget cuts in history. $89 billion will be indiscriminately cut from every federal program except critical national defense and Social Security. If allowed to stand, these cuts will have devastating effects on our nation – especially those who are out of work, the working poor and others struggling to survive.

These cuts have been made because traditional Republicans are afraid of the Tea Party nitwits within their own party. They’re afraid to end tax loopholes that allow multinational corporations to stash money offshore. They’re afraid to end tax loopholes for the wealthy who are enjoying tax rates that are near historic lows. They’re afraid to compromise with the president for fear of being “primaried” and replaced by even more teabaggers. 

Although, I admit the prospect of even more angry teabaggers in Congress is frightening, it’s time for traditional Republicans to grow a pair.

It’s not that President Obama hasn’t reached across the aisle to avoid sequestration. After stabilizing our economy in the first year of his administration, the president has cut the deficit each year. In fact, we have already seen the largest deficit reductions since the years immediately following World War II. Yet that isn’t enough for the extreme wing of the Republican Party. Teapublicans have refused offers of $2 to $3 in cuts for every $1 of revenue created by eliminating tax loopholes.

Still there is no compromise from the radical right. They refuse to negotiate with the president and they refuse to listen to the American people. Of course, they won’t suffer as the result of their actions. We will.

I hope voters remember that next election.

Arizona Tea Party Patriots Es Muy Loco.

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I recently received an invitation to a meeting of the Sedona Tea Party “Patriots” for a “one-time” showing of Behold A Pale Horse.

Based on the title, one assumes this movie will prepare us for the coming political apocalypse. The movie “stars” Lt. Gen. Jerry Boykin, a leader of the Family Research Council, which has been listed as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center for defaming gays and lesbians.

The film also includes country music star, Charlie Daniels. Once acclaimed for his music, Daniels jumped on the wagon to Crazytown when President Obama was elected. He accuses Obama of trying to change America into a European-style socialist country, saying that “America will never be America again.”

Of course, the movie isn’t enough crazy for these self-styled “patriots.” The meeting will also address the “looming threat” of United Nations sovereignty, the threat of the UN taking our guns, a mysterious constabulary force that can be used against American citizens, the UN Agenda 21 conspiracy, and more.

After researching these supposed threats, I’m not ready to grab my Bushmaster AR-15 and jump in the bunker quite yet. I am, however, concerned about the coming shortage of tin foil which these “patriots” will need to make their hats.