Tea Party Capitol Video was Wrong Video - Racist Slurs May Still have Happened

[Ecofarm]

Remind me, which is for big government economically?


Do you even realize that the TP is about economics, not social policy?

[DinoDoc]

No they don't

Correct. For instance, Palin is actually not argueing for a return to the Gold Standard nor is she likely to view the Fed as a sinister cabal.

[HalfLotus]

Remind me, which is for big government economically?

Palin is a neocon. Neocons support big government.

[DaShi]

It's not the Economy, stupid!

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/18/weekinreview/18zernike.html?hpw=&pagewanted=print

April 16, 2010
Tea Party Supporters Doing Fine, but Angry Nonetheless
By KATE ZERNIKE

It makes sense that people would take to the streets to protest government spending and enormous deficits during the Great Recession, when they are feeling economic pain most acutely.

But the Tea Party supporters now taking to the streets aren’t the ones feeling the pain.

In the results of the latest New York Times/CBS News poll, they are better educated and wealthier than the general public. They are just as likely to be employed, and more likely to describe their economic situation as very or fairly good.

Yet they are disproportionately pessimistic about the economy and the nation. A breathtaking 92 percent said the country is on the wrong track.

What accounts for this gap between how they are faring and how they feel the country is faring? History offers some lessons. The poll reveals a deep conviction among Tea Party supporters that the country is being run by people who do not share their values, for the benefit of people who are not like them. That is a recurring theme of the previous half-century — conservatives in liberal eras declaring the imperative to “Take America Back.�

“The story they’re telling is that somehow the authentic, real America is being polluted,� said Rick Perlstein, the author of books about the Goldwater and Nixon years.

Liberal regimes tend to bring out these resentments, Mr. Perlstein said, because conservatives have equated liberalism in the popular mind with the expansion of government power, something that has always stirred distrust among Americans.

The Tea Party supporters recycle their language from the conservative movements of the early 1960s in response to the Kennedy presidency, the resistance to busing, gay rights and the Carter administration in the mid 1970s, and the opposition to the Clinton health care plan in the early 1990s.

“It is entirely predictable,� Mr. Perlstein said. In the poll, Tea Party supporters said they want to focus on economic issues. But the widest gulfs between Tea Party supporters and others — Republicans and the public in general — are in their responses to questions about social issues, from gay marriage to abortion to immigration to global warming.

And they were almost unanimous in their dislike of President Obama. Overwhelmingly, they said he does not share the values most Americans live by and does not understand the needs and problems of people like them. They are significantly more likely than Republicans or the general public to say that too much attention has been made of the problems facing black people, and that the policies of the Obama administration favor blacks over whites and the poor over the rich or the middle class.

And 3 in 10 do not think he was born in this country.

The president’s race adds a new element to conservative anger, historians say. But it’s not the whole story. Consider the echoes of the early 1960s, as Lisa McGirr describes them in “Suburban Warriors,� her 2001 book about the rise of the new American right.

The first years of that decade were “a time of effervescent liberalism,� she writes, “a climate of change boosted by the energy, dynamism, and youth of the Kennedy administration.�

The censure of Senator Joseph McCarthy and the death of Robert A. Taft in the 1950s had left conservatives feeling bereft of power and influence, she writes, and Republicans had been losing more seats to a rejuvenated Democratic party.

Conservative activists felt compelled to enlist “because of their sense of the widening chasm between the world of the New Deal liberal state and the values they found meaningful.�

Groups pledged to repeal “the socialistic laws now on our books,� a phrase that might be lifted from last week’s tax day rallies, where Tea Party supporters pledged to overturn the recent health care legislation.

Then, as now, conservatives embraced the Constitution and declared that “a sleeping giant has awakened.�

The books of W. Cleon Skousen, an anti-Communist snubbed by conservatives like William F. Buckley because of his extremism, are now promoted by Glenn Beck (a Tea Party favorite, according to the poll). The National Center for Constitutional Studies, which Mr. Skousen founded, says that it is on track to teach twice as many courses this year as it did last, many of them to Tea Party organizations.

Rick Shenkman, a history professor at George Mason University, said in some respects, he is inclined to take the Tea Party supporters at their word, that they are like the founding fathers in fighting an ideological battle — this one against what they believe is socialism.

“They are concerned that the federal government is too big, and these numbers are incomprehensible in terms of deficits and budgets,� he said. “They are so large that nobody can grasp them. It’s no wonder that people are baffled by what’s going on.�

Still, he and others argue that race and age are the biggest factors in shaping the mindset of Tea Party supporters. They tend to be white and male, with a disproportionate number above 45, and above 65. Their memories are of a different time, when the country was less diverse.

Conversations with Tea Party supporters often wind their way into nostalgia. Even those out of work aren’t mourning the loss of a job so much as what they see as a loss of an era.

“The Tea Party is saying, ‘We’re tired of this, you guys caused this, and if we don’t wake up to this, the American dream we’ve talked about since the ’50s will die,’ � said Jeff McQueen, a Tea Party organizer in Rochester, Mich., who was laid off from his job in international sales for an auto parts company. “Things we had in the ’50s were better. If a mom wanted to work, she could, if she didn’t, she didn’t have to. Tell me how many mothers work now? Now it’s a necessity.�

Mr. McQueen is 51 — born into the 1960s, not the ’50s. But he is not alone among Tea Party supporters in his conviction that something has been taken away from him.

“I’m the 50 percent stuck paying for the other 50 percent,� read one sign on the Mall in Washington Thursday as Tea Party supporters gathered for tax day rallies.

It was a thought echoed in interviews with those who identified themselves as Tea Party supporters in the poll.

“I do believe we are responsible for the widow and the orphan, but I think there is a welfare class that lives for having children and receiving payment from the government for having those children,� said Richard Gilbert, a 72-year-old retired Air Force officer and teacher in South Carolina. Perhaps, the most telling evidence that these avowed critics of big government are really mourning an America of the past is in their shifting attitude toward George W. Bush. Only a short time ago, he was reviled on the right for his spendthrift ways (his Medicare expansion), his federalizing of education standards (No Child Left Behind) and his creation of a vast new government agency, Homeland Security.

At rallies, Tea Party supporters often nod to President Bush’s role in creating the deficit. Yet in the poll, 57 percent of them view Mr. Bush favorably — about the same percentage in the general population that has an unfavorable view.

In the new world led by President Obama, Mr. Bush is apparently a figure these new populists can pine for.

[Ecofarm]

Today’s tea party conservatives, like the gold bugs of yore, have put fear of inflation at the top of their political agenda. Tea party protesters are demanding a return to the gold standard.

http://dyn.politico.com/members/forums/thread.cfm?catid=1&subcatid=4&threadid=3753880

Is Palin not a TP leader?

Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin fired a shot at the Federal Reserve in her coming-out speech in Hong Kong today, blaming the central bank for the current crisis and disagreeing with the idea that the Fed should have a greater role in preventing the next crisis. It was an echo of fellow Republican and Texas congressman Ron Paul, who has led the charge in Congress to perform an audit of the Federal Reserve with an eye to eventually eliminating it.

http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2009/09/23/palin-sounding-like-ron-paul-takes-on-the-fed/tab/article/

[HalfLotus]

Is Palin not a TP leader?

No, she's not. She's a political opportunist, and a TP hanger-on.

[Ecofarm]

Believing the worst about everything and everyone is sick.

[giblets]

Believing the worst about everything and everyone is sick.

That's why it's important to have faith in Ron Paul.

[Elok]

The "our guns might keep the government in check" argument could have actually worked back then too, back when muzzle-loading cannon were the pinnacle of land-based military technology and your average civilian could own everything else...it's just now that said argument is absurd.

Yes, because we all know that ordinary citizens wielding small arms and improvised explosive devices can't possibly stand up to the U.S. military.

Wow, that's a stupid thing to say. Iraq/Afghanistan have done pretty well with that tactic for a number of reasons which simply would not apply in a "government turns tyrannical" scenario.

A. We are an occupying army of relatively small size maintained at great expense. We will have to go sooner or later, and the insurgents know this. A government crushing a rebellion is in an existential struggle, and will not stop fighting until it is toppled or victorious. The resistance couldn't do this low-level **** forever, they'd have to stand up and fight sometime and when they did they'd be slaughtered.
B. We are in foreign countries, relying on interpreters and our own limited understanding of local politics. Our intelligence is fairly clumsy as a result. If the U.S. went vicious, it would be much better at understanding the situation and perfectly capable of infiltration.
C. Both countries are in that large part of the world where Kalashnikovs are disturbingly common, and generally not through what one would call legal means. Assuming the 2nd Amendment hasn't somehow caused everyone to buy an assault rifle without my noticing, that doesn't apply here. If hypothetical American rebels wanted AKs, they'd have to smuggle them in. In practical terms, all our rights mean is that we can get handguns and semi-automatic rifles. A few diehard nuts have heavy stuff, but that's it.
D. Perhaps most importantly, in both countries we are attempting to win the population over. Our hands are largely tied by something resembling civilized behavior. We cannot take hostages and shoot one per hour until the ringleaders are surrendered, we can't destroy buildings on a whim, we can't have gunships patrol Baghdad every night and hose down the street wherever they see movement. And we have to at least pretend to respect the local government. In short, we have very little ability to use our overwhelming firepower advantage.

[Drake Tungsten]

A government crushing a rebellion is in an existential struggle, and will not stop fighting until it is toppled or victorious. The resistance couldn't do this low-level **** forever, they'd have to stand up and fight sometime and when they did they'd be slaughtered.

There are any number of successful guerrilla struggles in the historical record that show you to be completely wrong on this point.

Assuming the 2nd Amendment hasn't somehow caused everyone to buy an assault rifle without my noticing, that doesn't apply here. If hypothetical American rebels wanted AKs, they'd have to smuggle them in.

Jesus Christ dude, you have absolutely no idea what its really like out there. I know several individuals that already own AKs. Hell, I even know of a guy who owns a Barrett 50 cal sniper rifle. Americans are already armed to the ****ing teeth, and that's before the inevitable defection of various active-duty military and National Guard soliders.

Perhaps most importantly, in both countries we are attempting to win the population over. Our hands are largely tied by something resembling civilized behavior.

I'm sure the American military is going to willingly participate in the uncivilized slaughtering of fellow Americans.

[HalfLotus]

I'm sure the American military is going to willingly participate in the uncivilized slaughtering of fellow Americans.

[Drake Tungsten]

Unbelievable!

[Elok]

We're talking about a hypothetical tyrannical government here, Drake, or at least that's how the argument went every time I heard it. The Nazis (of "the first thing Hitler did was to take away all the guns!" fame) felt no compunctions about murdering their fellow citizens themselves, or just shipping them off to die in camps. Try to keep up. Also, please indicate a successful guerrilla struggle wherein the victorious rebels won using mostly legal armament. If they smuggled in or stole heavier stuff in such amounts that it tipped the balance, that invalidates the whole argument. And if you know lots of people with AKs, that just shows you know a lot of the serious gun nuts. I'm not surprised, but such people are not a majority of gun owners. Most people who own guns just own stuff like deer rifles or pistols for self-defense.

Look, I've had this stupid argument before, and always won because it's a stupid argument. Ultimately the most important factors are human: a free press, due process of law and the conscience of a citizen army. Beside those, the presence or absence of handheld firearms is insignificant.

[Drake Tungsten]

We're talking about a hypothetical tyrannical government here, Drake

No, "we" aren't. You're apparently going to once again try to change your dumbass statements after the fact so they only seem somewhat stupid and not monumentally retarded, as you did in the rich people thread where "you have to be pathological to want to spend a million dollars" quickly changed to "more than 30 millions dollars" and then "more than you need". At least you've gone straight to a Nazi-equivalent U.S. government in this thread, saving us the time needed to stop by China and the Soviet Union on the way...

Look, I've had this stupid argument before, and always won because it's a stupid argument. Ultimately the most important factors are human: a free press, due process of law and the conscience of a citizen army. Beside those, the presence or absence of handheld firearms is insignificant.

Your inital argument was that modern military technology makes it "absurd" to think that the American people could ever effectively rise up against the government, which is ****ing retarded. Advances in military technology have made it easier for insurgent groups to win military struggles around the world, which you would've known if you had even a cursory knowledge of post-WWII military history.

[MrFun]

Your inital argument was that modern military technology makes it "absurd" to think that the American people could ever effectively rise up against the government, which is ****ing retarded. Advances in military technology have made it easier for insurgent groups to win military struggles around the world, which you would've known if you had even a cursory knowledge of post-WWII military history.

Drake wins, Elok loses.