The voice of millions and millions of Americans was nowhere to be heard Thursday as Tea Party partisans gathered in groups of many in cities across the country for their big tax-day tea party protests. The ignorant and gullible railed against the lowest income tax rates in decades. They also pledged to defend America from President Obama's secret plan to send 16,000 armed IRS agents throughout the country to enforce healthcare reform legislation while he gives amnesty to hoards to illegal immigrants to man his personal army of armed shock-troops who will guard the concentration camps housing uncooperative citizens and the elderly before they are euthanized at the government's convenience. It was no surprise when Nashville rally speaker, Republican Tennessee State House Representative Glen Casada, encouraged the multitude of about 200 to "educate themselves". This is no surprise because Tea Party followers have been hearing that suggestion since there have been Tea Party followers. This is the very same Representative Glen Casada who suggested to the unemployed they should "find a job" when asked how families should feed their children without the unemployment benefits he had introduced legislation to end in March. |
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I love the smell of vindication in the morning. The Tea Party has been definitively exposed as a pre-planned scheme, heavily influenced by GOP-backed PACs and corporate interests, to make tons of money by exploiting a growing and potentially significant grassroots political movement. In a project proposal draft obtained by POLITICO, The Our Country Deserves Better Committee (OCDB) basically laid out the blueprint for the Tea Party Express, how to use the Tea Party to create a self-perpetuating cash cow and as a means to gain political influence in the 2010 mid-term elections. This draft includes detailed plans such as participants, tour routes, casting calls for for political ads, fundraising, viral marketing and online grassroots support. After the OCDB's Tea Party Express went public last summer, it took in about $2.7 million in the following six months. Far be it for me to toot my own horn but I will because I can. In January of this year I wrote "Tea Party: GOP Lackey & Corporate Prostitute (Parts I & II)". In those pieces, I spelled out the connections between the Tea Party and GOP backed political organizations and their corporate interests. Yes, once again, you heard it first here on Smack on the Web. Much like me predicting last year that a healthcare reform bill would be passed "sometime next Spring". What was the date the final bill passed the Senate? I do believe it was March 21st - the official first day of Spring. Imagine that. As far back as last summer, as the tea party tours rolled across the country, I was banned from numerous tea party websites for simply pointing out and making inquiries about those connections. When organizers of this February's Tea Party convention were exposed as self-serving opportunists in cohoots with clandestine GOP operatives and organizations, local Tea Party organizers fell all over themselves trying to distance themselves from the very same elements I had been questioning their alliances with for months and cranked up their indignant objections to suggestions of their roles as facilitators to outside GOP influences of the Tea Party. What will these new revelations mean to the Tea Party and particularly this November's mid-term elections? At this point - nothing as far as tea partiers are concerned I am sure. The reality, however, will be what I have claimed for nearly a year. That being, the Tea Party is going to ensure the number of seats the Republicans were assured to win this year will be significantly lower specifically because of the Tea Party. The GOP thought it only had to ride the Tea Party wave into a majority in both Houses of Congress and into state legislative and gubernatorial offices. Thanks to the Tea Party, that ride isn't going to be nearly as smooth as their GOP masters had originally planned. |
A day after crazy went full tilt Bachmann-Palin overdrive in Nevada, the Tea Party Express rolled into St. Paul
Minnesota where Michele Bachmann told a gathering of 300 Tea Party faithful they were "leading the way back to
constitutional conservatism."
Move along folks, there's nothing to see here. There was no train wreck that we have come to expect from a cross-country Tea Party tour-stop. Bachmann offered up no new treats during her reality-bending diatribe to the crowd. There was the usual mindless, pandering shibboleths and self-serving, nonsensical tortured truths from her on this stop but, no angry mob could be found, no aspersions hurled, no spit spat. A reporter for the Star Tribune described the scene as a "high-energy pep rally, conservative revival and campaign event". A great-big fat bunch of nothing here right? Wrong! This seemingly insignificant news blip speaks loud and clear to a number of realities Michel Bachmann, the Tea Party and it's members are either unable or unwilling to see. Specifically, I would like to address two of these realities here. Those being unity and numbers. First, the numbers. 300 people - are you kidding me? Go to any Tea Party affiliated website and you will find them touting poll after poll that "proves" their claims of millions upon millions of followers and the "great majority of the American people" they speak for. The 2008 population estimate for the Minneapolis St. Paul metropolitan area from the U.S. Census Bureau is 3.2 million people (Minneapolis-St. Paul-Bloomington, MN-WI Metropolitan Statistical Area). The 300 Tea Party members at that gathering represented a miniscule .009% of that area's population. 
Nashville was recently host to the Tea Party Express tour where it was reported 400 were on hand to show their support.
That's a laughable turnout considering one local Tea Party supporting website claims "One Of Ten Tennesseans In The Tea Party".
As of December 2009 there were 3.8 million registered voters in Tennessee.
If one of ten voters are Tea Party members, that gives us an estimated 380,000 members. Out of that number the Tea
Party was only able to muster up a measly 400 to show up to one of their premier events? This pattern of real number versus
poll numbers clearly shows the Tea Party's popular majority exists only in it's collective delusion.
Unity within the Tea Party is a myth. One need only look at the number of competing Tea Party organizations to see that myth flat-out busted. Tea Party Nation, Inc., Tax Day Tea Party, Tea Party Express, Tea Party Patriots, Tea Party U.S.A., Taxpayer Tea Party, THE Tea Party... These are just a few Tea Party organizations of about a dozen that in one way or another, lay claim to the title of "official" Tea Party. This is at the national level, it goes off the chart at the state level. Recently, a new Tea Party "federation" has been formed to "promote the movement's conservative message and to counter the idea that the tea parties are politically unsophisticated and disorganized." 
Enter the National Tea Party Federation. The Tea Party's solution to what they percieve as unity is to create yet another
Tea Party organization. In Tea Party reality, in order to dispel false accusations of disorganization, racism and
advocating violence you simply give yourself another name and distance yourself from the "farflung" groups at the
same time you work "to improve communications among them" thereby reaffirming your connection to them so as to
gleen the benefits of carrying the Tea Party brand.
At the end of the day, the Tea Party will always be a splintered and very loose confederation of groups run by competing motivations and egos. In the end it is always going to be about how best to exploit and who benefits the most from the Tea Party brand. It is convenient to denounce the misbehavings of the other Tea Party group all the while using the numbers of that other group to paint your own as legitimate. This is the Tea Party Two-Step. This routine can also be witnessed in their "take on one, take on all" repsonse when they percieve an attack on one of their own. They can disavow the "uncontrolable few" in one breath, in the next they proclaim persecution as a group when those few are called out. |
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Dig A Little Deeper - You'll Find A Traitor 
They claim it's about taxes yet for most of them their taxes have been lowered. They have no doubt that President Obama has a secret plan to enslave them and claim he has taken away all their rights. They have convinced themselves beyond all reasonable doubt of the existance of death panels, concentration camps for Americans citizens and armies of armed IRS agents and secret domestic security forces. They have no doubt whatsoever that equitable health care is a Socialist plot designed to enslave all Americans and turn the United States over to China. There is no law prohibiting anyone in this country from thinking whatever they choose to think and real Americans will defend the right allowing them to do so. They have every right to believe the things they choose to believe no matter how irrational or completely unattached from reality it may be. The problem begins when their delusions turn to threats of violence and implications of armed insurrection. From that point on they can no longer be considered as just vocal, angry, fearful citizens expressing their point of view. Once they begin issuing threats of violence and call upon their numbers to prepare for a new revolution or civil war, they stop being simple harmless racists - they chose to become common criminals and traitors. 
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Would It Make A Difference? "Maverick" is a mantle McCain no longer claims; in fact, he now denies he ever was one. "I never considered myself a maverick," he told me. "I consider myself a person who serves the people of Arizona to the best of his abilities." Yet here was Palin, urging her fans four times in 15 minutes to send McCain the Maverick back to Washington. (more) |
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Apologizes to "simpletons in the audience" Online viewers commenting about a Bradley County straw poll on Nashvillepost.Com's Post Politics were treated to the following exchange between Republican candidate for governor Joe Kirkpatrick and the online forum's participants:
I have been posting on that site under the same username for quite a few months and have never attempted to pass my posts off as anonymous. If anyone wants to know who 'SmackontheWeb' is, there is a link to this site for anyone who would click on my username. If the information here does not satisfy anyone's curiosity as to who I am, all they have to do is ask. Republican candidate and teabagger poster-boy Joe Kirkpatrick wants your vote to make him the next governor of Tennessee. I don't think it would be out of bounds to suggest to Mr. Kirkpatrick that the good citizens of Tennessee generally expect a little more decorum (or at least restraint) from someone aspiring to be our state's next chief executive. |
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Less than a week after a man was driven off the road for sporting an Obama bumper sticker, Palin told teabaggers at a rally in Searchlight, NV to stop cars with Obama stickers on them. If you are like me and can't stand to hear the sound of the queen bagger's voice and really don't want to have to listen to her spew her ignorance, the quote begins at 2:54 in the video. "…that bumper sticker that maybe you'll see on the next Subaru drivin' by, an Obama bumper sticker. You should stop the driver and say, “So how is that hopey, changey thing workin' out for ya?" I wonder, what do you think will happen when her fans "stop" people who drive cars with Obama bumper stickers? Think they will have a nice, peaceful conversation about what is right and wrong in current political affairs, and that they will all go home afterwards with the good feeling of having learned something about each other? I doubt it. Especially considering the exchange from her fans on the right-wing website 'Free Republic': How is that road-rage? I think it is pefectly reasonable for a driver to completely lose control of his vehicle after realizing the vehicle in front of him contains an idiot that is endangering the world. How would you expect someone to react? I love it. I feel the same way every time I see an Obama sticker. I want to knock the car off the road and destory the bumper sticker. Sucker punch the clown, just like zer0 did to Real Americans. This is child s play compared to what s coming. The bedwetters on the left have no idea. "Free Republic" has recently pulled this thread, which was only created on March 26, 2010. It was still available as a cached page until yesterday. Now it has disappeared for good... Or has it? |
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"I think on a national level your Department of Law there in the White House would look at some of the things that we've been charged with and automatically throw them out." Sarah Palin, referring to a department that does not exist while attempting to explain why as president she wouldn't be subjected to the same ethics investigations that compelled her to resign as governor of Alaska, ABC News interview, July 7, 2009 |
 Republicans will be going quixotic this week over President Obama's 15 recess appointments this past weekend, including two picks for the National Labor Relations Board. One of the nominees, Craig Becker, is strongly opposed by Republicans. You can bet your last shilling the teabaggers will be going all fifes and drums by at least Tuesday over this as well. Gotta get those talking points from Glenn Beck on Monday first. The U.S. Constitution allows the President to install nominees without Senate confirmation during a Congressional recess [Article 2, Sec. 2]. Article 2, Section 2, clause 3 reads, “The President shall have Power to fill up all Vacancies that may happen during the Recess of the Senate, by granting Commissions which shall expire at the End of their next Session.” Basically, the President's appointments can only serve through the end of the next Congressional session, meaning the 15 appointed on Saturday will serve through the end of 2011 unless the Senate confirms them before then. 217 of Obama's nominees still await Senate confirmation, including 34 nominees that have waited for more than six months. By comparison, in his 2nd term George W. Bush also had made 15 recess appointments by this point in his presidency and made 170 recess appointments altogether. In his 1st term he had made 21 at this point in that administration. Bill Clinton made 139 [Congressional Research Service]. 
Not that tiny little details like the Constitution makes any difference to the hurt and delusional right. Republicans will
go full tilt patriotic indignation, claiming Obama is undermining the U.S. Constitution while the baggers will probably
have another one of their collective meltdowns.
Tea Party moonies will belly up to the trough of misinformation and guzzle down their daily dose of Fox News manufactured pap like manna from Hannity. They will whip themselves up into a founding father freenzy, proclaiming Obama is executing his evil socialist-facist-communist-marxist-whateverist plan to implant his fellow enemies of liberty throughout the government in order to pave the way for total liberal domination and enslave each and every one of us. |
NASHVILLE, Tenn. - A Nashville man says he and his 10-year-old daughter were victims of road rage Thursday afternoon, all because of a political bumper sticker on his car. Mark Duren told News 2 the incident happened around 4:30p.m., while he was driving on Blair Boulevard, not far from Belmont University. He said Harry Weisiger gave him the bird and rammed into his vehicle, after noticing an Obama-Biden sticker on his car bumper. Duren had just picked up his 10-year-old daughter from school and had her in the car with him. "He pointed at the back of my car," Duren said, "the bumper, flipped me off, one finger salute." But it didn't end there. 
Duren told News 2 that Weisiger honked his horn at him for awhile, as Duren stopped at a stop sign. Once he started driving again, down Blair Boulevard, towards his home, he said, "I looked in the rear view mirror again, and this same SUV was speeding, flying up behind me, bumped me."
Duren said he applied his brake and the SUV smashed into the back of his car. He then put his car in park to take care of the accident, but Weisiger started pushing the car using his SUV. Duren said, "He pushed my car up towards the sidewalk, almost onto the sidewalk." Police say Harry Weisiger is charged with felony reckless endangerment in the incident. [Reported by WKRN-TV Nashville] |
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Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer: "When people start talking in the rhetoric of putting people on firing lines, that if they don't do something they will have physical harm done to them... or they put a target on their faces, with cross-hairs -- that activity aught to be unacceptable in our democracy," (more) |
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''They're in charge of the U.S. Senate so if they want to they can really get in there with the senators and make a lot of good policy changes that will make life better for Brandon and his family and his classroom.'' Sarah Palin, getting the vice president's constitutional role wrong after being asked by a third grader what the vice president does, interview with NBC affiliate KUSA in Colorado, Oct. 21, 2008 |
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All aboard the crazy train! The teabagger express pulled out of the station this weekend and launched its 2010 Spring to Fall tour: 'Rightwing Racist Rage Review & The Traveling Clueless & Gullible Mob Brothers Freakshow'. Last week's tea party CODE RED! anti-healthcare reform protests in Washington D. C. gives us a just a morsel of the carnival of goodies the always entertaining tea party patriots have never failed to provide. Prepare to witness amazing acts of hypocritical highwire hijinks that will have you clinging to the edge of your seat. You'll see logic-defying feats of ignorance - the likes of which haven't been seen since last summer's teabagger tour. Magicians will blow your mind with reality spinning sleight of hand to conjure forth alternate realities right before your eyes. It's not a circus unless you've got clowns so get your popcorn ready because there's comedy aplenty as bitter tea party clowns entertain you with their side-splitting racist retrospect that is guaranteed to have the entire family rolling on the floor laughing out loud. Step right up folks to the greatest show on astroturf, brought to you buy those regular, everyday people of Koch Industries (only the largest privately owned company in the United States), a dozen GOP backed PACs and PR firms and your neighbors at the Faux News Network. While you're there, be sure to pick up your sterling silver teabag souvenir jewelry or a striking yellow Gadsden flag to commemorate your carnival experience. And kids, if you're lucky, maybe your parents will cash in your college fund so they can fork out $10,000 to get your picture taken with Sarah Palin AND have it autographed by Palin herself! Your friends will be steeped green with envy and you will be the coolest kid on the block. |
 This Time It's Local "I will say this as nicely as I can, and people can take it for what it is worth. If Congress succeeds in passing this thing with the dirty trick tactics, bribes and pay-offs we are seeing this week, then Charlie Smith had better call a lot more police officers. The next time we get together the gloves will be off and it is going to take a lot more than 2 police officers to keep us away from our elected representatives." (more) This is not the first threat of violence from the Tea Party. At a Tea Party protest In Alamogordo, New Mexico on January 10th, protesters were encouraged to bring their guns “Just because it’s legal.”. A protester at that rally claimed his wearing a gun to the rally was not a veiled threat but “a very open threat”. Tea Party activist and Indiana Senate candidate Richard Behney has stated; "If we don't see new faces, I'm cleaning my guns and getting ready for the big show". Featured speaker and Alabama gubernatorial candidate Roy Moore even drew standing ovations as he implied armed insurrection at the Tea Party convention in Nashville when he said; "An appeal to the God of hosts is all that is left." Either that or "300 million people armed in the cause of liberty." The same threats were echoed at this past weekend's Tea Party anti-healthcare reform protests as well. See also: "Tea Party becomes the 'Vote our way or we shoot you' Party" |
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"We realize that more and more Americans are starting to see the light there and understand the contrast. And we talk a lot about, OK, we're confident that we're going to win on Tuesday, so from there, the first 100 days, how are we going to kick in the plan that will get this economy back on the right track and really shore up the strategies that we need over in Iraq and Iran to win these wars?" -- Sarah Palin, suggesting we are at war with Iran, FOX News interview, Nov. 1, 2008 |
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Ignorance or Hypocrisy? In a February 8th interview on Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace, Sarah Palin talking about how to treat people accused of terrorism, said this: "[T]he way that we are treating these terrorists. Allowing them our U.S. constitutional protections when they do not deserve them... We need to treat'em a little bit differently than an American who is worthy, an American being worthy of our U.S. constitutional rights. I don't think the terrorists are worthy of our rights." Palin proves she knows nothing about the American constitution when she claimed only certain people, like Amercians, are worthy of having rights because the fundamental rights guaranteed by the Bill of Rights apply to all people, not just American citizens. The word "citizen" does not even appear in the bill of rights but the word "person" does. The 5th amendment for example, states: No PERSON shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law. Citizenship wasn't even defined in the U.S. constitution until the passage of the 14th amendment. After defining citizenship and mentioning it's privilages and immunities in that amendment, it goes back to using the word "person": Nor shall any state deprive any PERSON of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any PERSON within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. Of course Palin dosen't care about the law because in one of the most quoted soundbites from her speech to a Tea Party convention the night before her Fox interview, she mocked President Obama for having been a professor of law: "We need a commander-in-chief, not a professor of law standing at the lecturn." [standing ovation] Such distain for actual knowledge of the law is not only inappropriate in a person who has run for Vice President of the United States but it's emblematic of the hypocisy of a lot of so-called conservatives like Sarah Palin who have no regard for what the U.S. constitution actually says but who then go on to wrap themselves in it for applause when it suits them, as Palin did in that same speech: "The constitution. The constitution provides the best roadmap towards a more perfect union." [standing ovation] As I watched this I asked myself why those so-called conservatives would applaud a constitution they do not even understand or support but Palin made it even worse when she goes on to reference that American principle she previously trashed, that all people are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights: "And that only limited government can expand prosperity and opportunity for all and that freedom is a God given right." If Palin thinks freedom is a God given right but also believes that only Americans are worthy of rights, one has to ask: Does Sarah Palin actually believe God is an American? Regarding the way so-called conservatives in general selectively support the constitution, is it really conservative to oppose the traditional American belief that every person is endowed with certain inalienable rights? |
March 12, 2010 Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) has named Commerce Secretary Gary Locke and Census Director Robert Groves as CAGW’s February Porkers of the Month. As the deadlines for the constitutionally mandated decennial head count rapidly approach, audits and news reports have revealed that the process is at risk for significant cost overruns, mismanagement, and wasteful spending. The $2.5 million 30-second “Snapshot of America” Super Bowl Census Bureau ad was rated as one of the three worst ads, and the ongoing media campaign continues to confuse TV viewers and outrage taxpayers. The ads are just the latest, and most high profile, missteps of Census officials. The Bureau must deliver a full count of the population to the President by December 31, 2010. The count is critical to both the allocation of federal resources over the next decade and the integrity of the nation’s electoral process, since it will form the basis of future congressional redistricting activities. The entire process is expected to cost taxpayers more than $14 billion. A February 16, 2010 Commerce Department Inspector General (IG) audit concluded that the effort is plagued with software and information technology glitches and abusive spending practices. On March 5, 2008, the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) designated the 2010 Census as a high-risk program, at risk for significant waste, fraud, and abuse. Unfortunately for taxpayers, the GAO has been proven correct. Secretary Locke and Director Groves have failed to oversee and control the Census. The Bureau spent $1 billion to develop a handheld device to be used by Census workers as they go door-to-door to cull data from households which fail to return their paper questionnaires (expected to be about one-third of the 130 million households receiving the forms next month by mail). The handheld computer failed spectacularly, the program was halted, and the aborted process delayed the development of a back-up paper-processing system. The February 16, 2010 IG audit reveals that a key software component of that paper-processing system is also riddled with deficiencies. The audit also reviewed the performance of the 140,000 temporary census workers who went block by block in the fall of 2009 to update the Bureau’s maps and found that costs had ballooned by $88 million, or 25 percent, over the original estimate of $356 million. The bureau spent $3 million on more than 10,000 census workers who pocketed $300 each to show up for training sessions, but were either fired or quit before they performed any work. Another 5,000 workers worked for a day or less but were still paid $300. |
Voter turnout in last Thursday's Texas state primaries was the highest it has been in more than 20 years and what the voters of Texas had to say about the Tea Party, they said loud and crystal clear. Yet, in one more example of just how out of touch teabaggers are with reality and how impervious they are to truth and fact, the baggers have claimed victory in the Texas primaries even though every single teabagger candidate got their clocks resoundingly cleaned and their lunatic asses handed to them by the voters of Texas. Ignoring not just the facts but the vote count as well, teabaggers bray like jackasses as they claim "their" candidate, two-term Texas Republican Governor Rick Perry and his beat down of his two opponents, is proof of their electorial influence even though the official Tea Party candidate in that race never got out of last place throughout the campaign and only managed to garner 18% of the vote. Not a single Tea Party candidate in any of the primary contests came anywhere near close to serious contention in their respective races. Of the host of Texas House GOP incumbents who faced challenges from tea party opponents, the only one who faced anything remotely resembling a scare was Representative Ralph Hall - who dispatched his nearest competitor by nearly 30 percentage points. The highly touted primary challenge that Republican Congressman Ron Paul was supposed to have faced from three Tea Party activists never materialized and ended with a Ron Paul landslide. Paul won 80.8% of the vote against teabaggers Tim Graney (9.7%), John Gay (5.3%), and Gerald Wall (4.2%). [So much for the teabaggers who think Paul is a dried-up, washed-out, wrinkled old whackjob. That's twice Ron Paul has kicked teabagger ass in a little more than two weeks.] Teabaggers will use Sarah Palin's endorsement of Rick Perry to justify their imagined victory where utter defeat is a matter of reality. We are supposed to forget Palin and the Tea Party have stated time and time again that she is not their leader and they are not her followers. I've looked for any specific mention of the Tea Party giving Rick Perry any kind of official endorsement and it's just not there. What I did find in that search were more references to Dick Armey of FreedomWorks endorsing one of Perry's opponents, Kay Bailey Hutchison. FreedomWorks - one of the proud owners of the Tea Party wouldn't even endorse the official Tea Party candidate, gun-toting 9/11 conspiracy theorist Debra Medina - imagine that. Where does anyone but the delusional or just plain ignorant see a victory for the Tea Party in any of the irrefutable facts above? I cannot imagine the twisted logic used to claim any kind of Tea Party victory in the Texas primaries when the Tea Party was completely, categorically and overwhelmingly defeated. |
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Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy “I remember my brother, he burned his ankle in some little kid accident thing and my parents had to put him on a train and rush him over to Whitehorse…” Now, from a 2007 article in the Skagway News: Palin drew from her Skagway past to illustrate her point. Her brother burned his foot badly jumping through a fire, and her mother had to take him down to Juneau on the ferry to the hospital. Every time I see this dingbat's face or hear her spew more of her mindless ramblings, a song from way back when comes to mind. From "Signs" by the Five Man Electrical Band: "If God was here, he'd tell you to your face, man you're some kinda sinner..." |