Keep the Government’s Hands Off My Medicare!
reverse racism!
That’s one of my favorites.
Someone in an earlier post said that their observation was that most of the TeaParty people were regular folk. My observation is that many (most?) looked a bit like low-income, maybe low education, red-neck-ish type fold who are very possibly on some form of government assistance programs and would also probably stand to gain the most from reform. It reminded me a lot of what I saw driving through Kentucky, Tennessee and Georgia last fall. This group invariably votes Republican, a party whose platform is diametrically opposite of what would benefit them most economically. I assume a lot, but it sure is what it looks like.
On a separate, but related note, something about this Scott Brown character from Mass, his claims to fame are having posed for a nudie magazine and driving a pick-up truck. When he was interviewed on one of the news channels yesterday, they even made it a point to announce he arrived in his pick-up. This is what appeals to the American electorate?
Well, it’s not exactly easy to revoke the membership of some of the fringe - I mean you can’t really tell a hooligan that he’s not allowed to be fan of X team, and you can’t exactly tell a radical Muslim, or textbook changing fundamentalist Christian that they’re not allowed to be Muslim or Christian anymore. You can publicly disassociate yourself from them as much as possible.
As far as the media thing, I was thinking more about social media tools than the mainstream media. A non-racist Tea Partier could very easily do something like start a Facebook group “Tea Partiers against racism” if they were disturbed by the behavior of the fringe. They could go into the right wing blogs and tell people who say unacceptable things that they are out of line. Maybe people are doing these things, I hope so. The leadership, of course, has a whole lot more visibility. Will Palin or Beck come out and criticize what happened yesterday? (some Republicans did do this, good for them) For what it’s worth, the lumping that I would apply to Tea Partiers is more like easily manipulated, not prone to critical thinking, and somewhat reactionary. I think it’s pretty undeniable that, for some portion of the people involved, race is a motivator, but I don’t think it’s fair to assume they are all racist. However, the more these incidents happen without any sort of backlash or criticism, the more you have to wonder.
I thought the Tea Party was an astroturf group for lobbyists and the only people they could sucker into it was dirt-dumb toothless hillbillys. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that.)
Pretty much…
Why the need for the insulting generalization?
The basic Tea Party message of smaller government and less taxation works for me (although I don’t share their views on health care). One of the things I like best about living in Taiwan is the low taxation. I pay virtually no income tax because I don’t earn much and I pay very little in other taxes.
I think a lot of Americans are pissed off with both main parties and if a third party were formed you’d actually see more of the Tea Party lot vote for it than they would for the Republicans.
That’s why I said that there’s nothing wrong with that. I have good friends who are dirt-dumb toothless hillbillys.
How could you find a basic TeaParty message through the noise, chaos and various references to Nazis and Socialists?
[quote=“Mother Theresa”]Sad times, for sure. Recall that congressmen yelling “you lie” at the president. And if you do a google image search or youtube search for racist tea party you’ll find endless crap like this. . .
And then they go and deny it. . .
[/quote]
I can’t believe the usual suspects haven’t come out of the woodwork to insist that America, the land of free speech, isn’t just the perfect place for these teaparty bigots to unleash their bile. And then they’d usually follow that up with an argument or two along the lines that “faggot is just referring to a stick or, in Britspeak, a cigarette” and how “nigger isn’t offensive because rap music stars use the word and because it’s derived from some Spanish/Portuguese terminology meaning ‘black’ anyhow” and how showing Obama in whiteface means nothing at all. Where are they? Have they skedaddled like cockroaches into their copies of the Turner Diaries?
No, a Fag is a cigarette, a faggot is something different 
Coming from a “socialist” country and having lived and living in other countries that provide “free” healthcare, I don’t see why there’s so much upset about it, but then again, I haven’t spent a lot of time reading into it all so I guess I don’t have the right perspective to comment. However, there’s a lot of very nasty people saying a lot of nasty things because of this and it show how mature some people are. I guess I’m just to used to the fact that healthcare is something that people should have a right to, not something you only get if you can afford to pay top dollar for it.
I’ve heard some of the gripes that the Tea Partiers claim they have, and ironically I’ve found it’s the Republicans who are at fault for most of the things they don’t like (unemployment, outsourcing, crappy economy, massive government spending, government intrusion into private life, etc.). And they lost a lot of credibility at the very start by protesting against taxes right when their taxes were being lowered by Obama.
Of course, the Tea Partier’s leaders – notably Dick Armey and Glenn Beck – are sick, vile, disgusting people.
I believe the original “Tea Party” rant was brought about by an MSNBC business reporter who voiced extreme displeasure at bailing out millions of idiots who lived far beyond their means and the banks which gave the means to do so.
What happened after that, I dunno. I stopped watching the America Show long ago.
[quote]
I can’t believe the usual suspects haven’t come out of the woodwork to insist that America, the land of free speech, isn’t just the perfect place for these teaparty bigots to unleash their bile.[/quote]
Were I to question it, I’d go at it from the “Are those signs photo-shopped?” angle.
[quote=“zyzzx”]Well, it’s not exactly easy to revoke the membership of some of the fringe - I mean you can’t really tell a hooligan that he’s not allowed to be fan of X team, and you can’t exactly tell a radical Muslim, or textbook changing fundamentalist Christian that they’re not allowed to be Muslim or Christian anymore. You can publicly disassociate yourself from them as much as possible.
As far as the media thing, I was thinking more about social media tools than the mainstream media. A non-racist Tea Partier could very easily do something like start a Facebook group “Tea Partiers against racism” if they were disturbed by the behavior of the fringe. They could go into the right wing blogs and tell people who say unacceptable things that they are out of line. Maybe people are doing these things, I hope so. The leadership, of course, has a whole lot more visibility. Will Palin or Beck come out and criticize what happened yesterday? (some Republicans did do this, good for them) For what it’s worth, the lumping that I would apply to Tea Partiers is more like easily manipulated, not prone to critical thinking, and somewhat reactionary. I think it’s pretty undeniable that, for some portion of the people involved, race is a motivator, but I don’t think it’s fair to assume they are all racist. However, the more these incidents happen without any sort of backlash or criticism, the more you have to wonder.[/quote]
It wouldn’t be entirely effective, but you could, for instance, only sell tickets and merchandise to club members and boot out members who misbehaved. Of course, there’d be some who would get around it, but it would be a start.
Likewise, for radical Muslims or Christians, the mainstream, as well as politicians and other important people could actively distance themselves from them, but not enough do. If necessary, the government could step in and charge the relevant people with hate speech or incitement to violence (I believe anyone calling for the killing of abortion doctors, Jews, homosexuals, adulterers or apostates, amongst others, would fall into this category), and any place of worship that allowed hate speech to be preached could be heavily fined and/or closed down and the property sold off. I’d say go one step further and purge their so-called holy books of hate speech also. A casual reading of these antiquated desert guide books reads like an instruction manual for raping, pillaging and commiting genocide. If anyone published a modern book condoning or promoting such things, all hell would rightly break loose. There are lots of ways to deal with these arseclowns. Of course, people would get around them to a degree, but it would send a more public message at least.
The Tea Party movement was started by Freedom works, some special interest group funded by right wing billionaires. Another reason why democracy doesn’t work. People are not intelligent or well informed enough to vote for their own interests. Public opinion is very easy to manufacture.
According to CNN, Tea Partyers are white, educated, wealthy, and rural Republican men.
coloradoindependent.com/47615/wh … republican
Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
[quote=“almas john”]Let’s look at the thread title.
“TeaParty mob spit on Congressmen, call them N#ggrs & F@ggots”
It was a “mob” was it? Why use “mob” rather than “protesters”?
And the whole mob were spitting and calling the congressmen those names?
Or was it just a few individuals?
And do we have any audio or video footage to back up the claims?
Mother T kicks off this thread with “Impressive tactics, sure to rally support from their Republican base.”
The word “tactics” implies organization and planning and the whole sentence suggests that Republicans would support these alleged incidents.
Geez. If you guys want more civic discourse in the public debate, why not start with yourselves. On forumosa.
The Tea Party movement certainly has some nutjobs in its ranks but from what I’ve seen the majority look like regular folks. How many have been arrested at rallies for violent behavior? How many have attacked cops? Compared to the rabble that turn up for anti-globilization protests they are a model of good behavior.[/quote]
Exactly. There are nutjobs on the left and right, and these days you can’t decry racism on the right without at least addressing it on the left as well. We can’t forget, it was William F. Buckley Jr. on the erudite right 
that severely criticized the John Birch Society and other more radical fringes in the 60s and helped to weaken such fringe groups.
I’m interested in hypocrisy, and frankly I’m not seeing Forumosans that are criticizing the racism of certain TeaParty elements, provide the same commentary on well known Democrats such as Rahm Emanual (criticizing mentally challenged people), Harry Reid (African Americans), or Robert 'KKK" Byrd—president pro tempore of the US Senate. Hate is certainly not limited to one political party. In fact, I’d go as far to say hate is probably very well and alive in blue-collar labour union circles with the Democratic Party and that this hatred based on narrow economic nationalism is probably more ingrained on the left…
These anti globalization type of folks are almost David Duke like in their hatred of foreign workers, aren’t they?