Some footage from the Teabaggers Parade. Holy fuckin’ yip-yip-yikes.
No wonder these people were nowhere to be found when Bush was shredding the Constitution, spending like a drunken sailor, spying on citizens without warrants, mortgaging the country to China and reducing the US dollar to Monopoly Money — they probably just got released from The Home.
One of the things that came to my mind while I was watching this was that famous Sinclair Lewis quote, from “It Can’t Happen Here“:
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“Pelosi is a Jezebel?” WTF?!
I seriously wanted to smack that lady who claimed Obama’s a Muslim with a copy of the Constitution. “Haven’t you read Article VI, bitch?! NO FUCKING RELIGIOUS TEST FOR PUBLIC OFFICE!!”
(Cue Twatsy shrieking that I threatened an innocent, God-fearing woman.)
Not a clue in a closet with that crowd.
See what happens when you start inter-marrying?
Curious, they didn’t know about the czars as being
a Republican creation even though there have been
many over the years! So doesn’t Fox news mention
the czars from time to time when reporting news or
does the information go in one ear and out the other
with no layover in the brain?
Thanksgiving’s coming soon. I’m so thankful about
being on this side of the border. All apologies
to the Americans who comment here, but I certainly
am so much greater blessed by being here.
JA Baker
Why is it that almost every public official in the US
is asked his/her religious affiliation before filing
nomination papers? Why is America so afraid of atheists?
After all, the country was founded by Deists and they’re
not mainstream Christians.
Granted there’s not a TEST per se but you find me an
atheist or agnostic in public office south of Mason-
Dixon.
Religion has always been one of the country’s greatest
hang-ups. Now it’s becoming its downfall.
Because people have been propagandized into believing that atheists are amoral bastards who want to rape their daughters and turn their sons gay.
De jure religious tests may be unconstitutional in my country, but there sure as hell is one MASSIVE de facto religious test here!
Just one more reason for me to consider fleeing northward.
Where are the head-cracking Fatherland security stormtroopers when you actually want them to show up? Cheney wouldn’t have put up with this, he’d have had them gassed!!
JAB – That’s what’s really scary, if you ask me — these people are definitely angry, but none of them appear to have Clue One what they’re angry about. When they get asked to explain themselves, which normally would be a great opportunity to wax eloquent about their grievances, they really don’t have much to say. (Other than the implied “There’s a Negro in the White House and I don’t like it”.)
That’s what makes this phenomenon so fascinating for Canadians to observe. We really don’t have this kind of mentality up here, other than the odd anomaly. I wouldn’t go so far as to say Canadians are colour-blind, but compared to Americans? Absolutely.
I’m stunned at how deep the trauma from the history of slavery runs in American culture.
Torontonian –
They’re probably also completely unaware than George W Bush had more “czars” than Obama has.
I think part of the problem is that these people have limited information sources. Rush Limbaugh and Fox News wouldn’t have spent a lot of time criticizing Bush for hiring too many czars. In fact, I would bet that if you search fox for “George W Bush czars”, you’d come up empty.
Rev.
Or at least waterboarded
Seriously though, Cheney never had to worry about being confronted by any kind of protest because the Bush administration used “free speech zones” to keep protesters at bay. To be fair, I’m sure all administrations practice this to some degree, but the Bush admin took it to great lengths.
First amendmend! Free speechitude!
Torontonian
You kid, but I’m starting to wonder if this might have something to do with it.
Watching this video, there can be no doubt that most of these people are catastrophically stupid — even when someone tells them the truth, they just nod dully and carry on blathering. They seem unable to even make an attempt at any critical thought.
I guess the other possibility is that they’re zombies
How on Earth did so very many people get dropped on their heads as infants? Was there a two decade epidemic of post-natal clumsiness that we didn’t hear about? I can’t think of another explanation for so much concentrated stupid.
psa – I don’t know about you, but I heard the unmistakable sound of dueling banjos as that video was playing.
All this ginned-up anger…brrrrrrrrr.
What I wanna know is, who passed out the wood alcohol?
Wood alcohol? The brown acid is more like it. That’s how they visualized a crowd of 200 million fucktillion teabaggers.
Just watch. By next week they’ll be claiming that 6.02 x 10^23 teabaggers were there. (Can you tell that chemistry was one of my favorite subjects in high school? I think it might be because my chemistry teacher was a bit of a pyro.)
Well, considering that we essentially fought a civil war (*snicker*) over the issue of slavery (shrieking of the Tenthers be damned), it’s small wonder that the “trauma,” as you so aptly put it, still runs deep to this day.
Meanwhile, guess what popped up on Bartcop.com today? Ahem:
Bart – So Glenn Beck’s hate rally produced about 60000 fuckheads to march on Washington. Sounds like a lot? Well, on Saturday, Sept. 5, Alabama and Va Tech sold out Atlantaa’s Georgia Dome to the tune of 71, 500 fans. So this outpouring of Beck’s special brand of douchebaggery produced less interest on a national scale than a college football game played in Georgia.
–Mark in Morehead City, NC
D’oh!
BTW, I meant what I said about wood alcohol–that shit doesn’t merely distort your vision, it makes you stone blind.
Bina
So does masturbation!!!
Coincidence??
Bina – Indeed. It’s a fair turnout for a demonstration, but it’s nothing for the sane part of the country to get worried about.
Let’s look at the math: even if we’re really generous and say there were 100,000 teabaggers, and then use their own number that for everyone in the protest, there were 20 at home who wanted to come but couldn’t, that’s 2 million people who support this teabagging “movement”. There are about 160 million voters in the US. That makes the teabaggers about 1.25% of the electorate.
Let’s try it again, this time being SUPER-generous, and say there were 100 teabaggers at home for every one who made it to the march. Even by that outrageously exaggerated standard, total Teabagger support would be 10 million — or about 6.25% of the electorate.
If these people were moderates, 6.25% might be a commanding figure. But teabaggers aren’t moderates, most of them already vote GOP right down the line, and they’re not going to swing any election results.
So, getting back to the numbers you pointed out, this whole teabagging exercise is a tribute to their free speech rights, but not much more. It’s not a movement that’s actually going to affect the body politic in any way. What it CAN do is put a severe damper on getting any progressive legislation passed, just because they have the ability to make themselves sound a lot bigger than they really are. The Democrats mustn’t lose sight of that, press on, and do what the majority elected them to do, teabaggers be damned.
JAB – It’s too bad no aerial photos have surfaced, because that’s the only way to really see how many were there.
I’m wondering if maybe there were aerial photos and they got “disappeared”. For whatever reason
ETA – Thanks for the link to the Carlin routine, gawd I miss him.
Yeah, math isn’t their strong suit, is it?
BTW, I found a picture of the archetypal teabagger:
http://www.bartcop.com/birther-country-back.jpg
Warning: not for sensitive souls!
HA! I love BartCop! I credit him with inspiring my foray into blogging.
Bina – EGADS!!!
ugh…
There is a facinating article in Salon about one of Glenn Becks key influences.
The guy, W. Cleon Skousen was a right wing Mormon crackpot, (new world order conspiries etc) apparently Beck was sent one of his books (The 5000 Year Leap from a friend in Toronto. He was so out there about the only people who didn’t disown him were the Birchers.
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2009/09/16/beck_skousen/
From Bene’s link:
How ironic. He was nothing but a lousy FBI bureaucrat, never a field agent–and he turned into the very subversive bureaucratic menace he claimed to be “warning” the world about! Project much, Mr. Skousen?
Bene D – Thanks for the article, very interesting!
This Skousen character is apparently so out to lunch that even wingnuts don’t like him… and yet, his writings seem to be very influential with Mr. Beck.
I’m seriously starting to think Glenn Beck has mental problems… I thought it was just cynicism, using the dumb base to improve his standing (and bank account), but I don’t see how anyone could be that cynical.
You have to wonder, after all the trouble he went to promoting the protest on Saturday, why didn’t he show up at it? I really think he’s spiraling into a nervous breakdown or some kind of psychotic episode.
Bina
This is what concerns me about the teabaggers. For all their shrieking about fascism, they are borderline fascists themselves, and don’t even know it.
I mean, those T-shirts and signs calling for a new McCarthy era…
WTF? That’s fascism.