This is really great reading. You know what else would be great reading?

The permit applications for these events.*

I’m just saying…

*Except in D.C. where, apparently, the person who “organized” the D.C. teabagging, didn’t know WTF she was doing.

Fcuking fascist oak trees!

MY ONLY goal is to facilitate a great event.

This is great line. A little like “We’re here to help” or people in agribusiness calling themselves “farmers.”

and the caption is something like, “Cripes, is that Godot already?”
It does sound as if Gary Larson is inhabiting a corner of your brain. How much rent are you charging him?

In my opinion we need … a bunch of stuff I haven’t had time to think of yet.

Conservative activism in a nutshell.

According to them, these tea parties were funded, organised, and promoted by large, moneyed right-wing interest grouups. A reality check: the Boston Tea Party was organised by myself (a law school grad), a college student (Corie), and a stay-at-home mom (GOPMom), with the help of several other people.

Corie squeezed all the lemons and mixed the lemonade herself, and I set up the folding table in our yard and GOPMom got poster-board and magic markers and made the sign “Lemunaid 4 Sale.”

And then Fox News Channel promoted our stand 24 hours a day for two weeks and Corie’s arm got awfully tired from squeezing all those lemons.

Rush (the band that tormented me every moment in the dorm in 1983, not the pedophile addict) is applicable in more ways than one: “There’s no swimming in the heavy water/nor singing in the acid rain” describes the dilemma of a teabagger faced with the consequences of excessive fealty to musical theater.

Call the wahhhmbulance!11!

Dana Milbank is having a sad.

That Milbank [rant? nervous breakdown?] is a piece of work.

Milbank: But now, even under Obama, the anger on the left is, if anything, more personal and vitriolic than on the right.

A reader in an online chat brought this to my attention a couple of months ago, noting the animosity in the comments following a column. “Did you torture their cats and grandmothers? Most of the truly unhinged comments appear to come from Democrats, who apparently think you’re Cindy McCain in reverse drag.”

How absurd. I, for one, don’t think that Dana’s drag is “reverse.”

“Cripes, is that Godot already?”

That’s actually pretty hilarious.

Wiki sez ~600,000 people live within the Boston city limits, and 4.5 million live in the metro area.

And they got 2,500 people to show up at their tea party.

Well done!

I’m not sure I understand all this furor over “astroturfing.” Why is the fact that these things are sponsored by behind-the-scenes Republican Interests an issue? Does it somehow make the idiots who show up to them less real?

I mean don’t we do our shit the same way?

Wasn’t Obama’s “grassroots” movement essentially a well-funded, well-sponsored, highly-coordinated operation?

Didn’t we celebrate it for being exactly that?

Is the only difference that the baggers are a bunch of idiots?

I mean don’t we do our shit the same way?
=================================
Yeah sure, remember that Swiftboaters for the Truth operation, funded by George Soros, to expose the facts about Dick Cheney’s and G.W. Bush’s tours of duty in Vietnam?

The 2,500 crowd estimate is not only inflated but doesn’t take into account all the people who were there to laugh at them.

2,500 people out of 4.5 million is about .056%.

WOLVERINES!

Oh, and fuck Charles Krauthammer. DId I say that already?

I have to mention this every time someone brings that godawful Rush song up – the forestry is totally fucked. Oaks don’t grow faster than maples. The oak is one of the slowest growing trees there is. That is one of the most basic and elementary facts about oaks. Also, if you had a grove of mixed oaks and maples, you would be much more likely to cut down (or at least coppice) the oaks, because oaks are really only useful for timber, while you might leave the maples standing because you were harvesting syrup from them. There is not a single point of arboriculture that they got right.

“Cripes, is that Godot already?”

Jon Stewart worked that in Thursday as well. I laughed (then had to explain why to the less literate).

MY ONLY goal is to facilitate a great event…

…to use you as a propaganda tool to support lower taxation on the rich…

“Is the only difference that the baggers are a bunch of idiots?”

Well, that’s number one.

“Is the only difference that the baggers are a bunch of idiots?”

The second difference is that the teabaggers are protesting something that hasn’t happened yet, whereas the anti-war protestors were complaining about the mounting death-toll of the Iraq War that was already well in motion at the time of the biggest protests.

Another difference was that in the anti-war protests, there were several people with whom I would have sex.

But the attendance figures seem pretty realistic, and match up with Nate Silver’s numbers.

Doesn’t Nate get his numbers from newspapers?

I’d bet my eyeteeth that Salt Lake City’s newspapers overstated the tea party attendance here by a factor of three to five.

I figured it would be a Zildjian cymbals T-shirt. After all…

Avedis Zildjian I (the first) was an Armenian alchemist in the city of Constantinople in the seventeenth century. His attempts to create gold by combining base metals led instead to an alloy of copper, tin and traces of silver with unique sound qualities. Avedis used this discovery to create cymbals of spectacular clarity and power. The sound of the instruments was extraordinary, and as his reputation grew he was given the name “Zildjian”, an Armenian word meaning “son of cymbal maker.”

Surely nothing is better at a metaphor for the modern conservative movement than someone attempting to make gold out of nothing and ending up being famous instead for tremendous clanging and clashing noise of great volume but which fade quickly.

Wasn’t Obama’s “grassroots” movement essentially a well-funded, well-sponsored, highly-coordinated operation?

Even though there were some individuals and groups out there that took grassroots action in support of Obama, I am not aware of anyone, anywhere, that claims the Obama campaign was “grassroots.” He was just popular and inspired many people to help him out on top of the “well-funded, well-sponsored, highly-coordinated operation.” In general you cannot organize a presidential campaign on a grassroots basis and expect it to get anywhere; even the third party candidates rely on preexisting networks and organizations to organize their campaigns. The possible exception being the weird Ron Paul thing that popped up out of no where and seems – as far as I know, and perhaps I am wrong – to have a been a genuine “grassroots” initiative among libertarians and conspiracy theorists. Despite the incredible dedication of the Paulbots to their cause (that led to a number of great publicity stunts) and receiving far more MSM press than the “movement” really deserved thanks to those same publicity stunts; in the end it made no real difference at all. There wasn’t even a party to benefit in those few areas where Ron Paul honestly polled well, so the whole thing was just a waste of time.

There have been some genuinely “grassroots” movements recently: many of the small town anti-war protests, the massive mobilization against Michael Powell’s moves at the FCC, the enormous immigration reform mobilizations that was embraced by the Latino community and resulted in many of the largest demonstrations ever in many places, and so on. While I think it is fair to say that there was a wingnut “grassroots” element involved in the Teabagging – note all the horrible handmade signs, terrifically off message ranting, &c. – the “movement” was certainly NOT “grassroots” in organization or substance.

Why does it matter? Realistically it doesn’t. Wingnuts have as much of a right to vent their frustrations and express their stupidity as anyone else. The problem is that they are misrepresenting their little orchestrated temper tantrum and as natural, popular, and “grassroots uprising,” which it most certainly was not.

Actually, let me take that back: I don’t want to insult the ancient Zildjian guy or the modern company by saying they’re the best metaphor for the conservative movement.

They are, instead, I believe, the best cymbal-related, historically justified metaphor for the modern U.S. conservative movement that I have recently considered.

This is all a distraction, though, because the real problem is that Obama is apologizing / surrendering to the whole world and we’re so horrified at our genuflecting Preznit that we’re all ashamed of his evil America-hating and terrorist-emboldening cowardice.

So now Obama is laughing it up with a Socialist dictator.

Disgusting!

So now Obama is laughing it up with a Socialist dictator.

What makes it even worse was that that very same Socialist dictator was overwhelmingly elected in several elections including recall petitions, by the vast majority of his own people — just like the Socialist dictator Obama!!!

What makes Hugo Chavez even more evil is the way that his time in office has resulted in better living conditions for the vast majority of his people, unlike Superpatriot George W. Bush Jr., who made sure to bring His people so much closer to complete collapse and a 2nd Great Depression, the better which to prove their spirit and their worthiness to God, as suffering is beautifully wont to do.

The only just and democratic government consists the most conservative politicians from the American South, particularly Georgia, Mississippi, and Alabama. Anything else, elected or not, is clearly Socialist tyranny.

I live in a town of 40,000 people and we used to get 1,500 people for our war protests. Usually, the protests wouldn’t even make it in the local paper. In larger cities, you could have 1,500 people crowd around spontaneously to watch a street performer juggle chainsaws. And imagine how many he could get if he had Fox News promoting him…

“What makes it even worse was that that very same Socialist dictator was overwhelmingly elected in several elections including recall petitions, by the vast majority of his own people”

Bullshit, those elections were unfair. The opposition parties were barred from using media and the full resources of the state were used to shut them down.

Try reading someone a little more intellectually serious than Naomi Klein next time, lib.

I know the left loves to romanticize Third World dictators so long as they’re anti-American, but doing so is an insult to people suffering under Chavez’s rule.

APPEASER! APPEASER!

…who was Wilt Chamberlain again?

…who was Wilt Chamberlain again?

He appeased Bill Russell.

…who was Wilt Chamberlain again?

Boombaataa. The guy who made Conan look small.

“Bullshit, those elections were unfair.”

Well, duh – of course they were. By definition, any election is unfair when the wrong guy wins (cf. MN Senate and NY House district 20(? was it?) for recent examples.

The Boston Common tea party drew over a thousand protestors, and Michael Graham’s event at Boston Harbour drew 1,500 patriots.

Well, they’ll definitely avoid the humiliation of being out-attended by a Queensryche concert, unless the House of Blues pulls some shit and overbooks the room.

Bullshit, those elections were unfair. The opposition parties were barred from using media and the full resources of the state were used to shut them down.

Try reading someone a little more intellectually serious than Naomi Klein next time, lib.

The elections were fair, you haven’t read a thing, and your head is full of shit. The opposition parties weren’t banned from using media. Jackass, the main newspapers of Venezuela and every major TV station are controlled by the opposition and run anti-Chavez rants 24 hours a day.

The argument is laughable too — the Venezuelan opposition is the most jackassed bunch of ignorant plutocrats since the tycoons funding and running the Teabagging Parties. The sad fact for the Venezuelan opposition is that if they had had any decent candidates who ran on any platform other than some retard revenge and a credit card for government benefits, they might have run.

It’s as if the Cuban exile nut squad anti-Castroites had run for U.S. President entirely on a platform of getting Cuba back for the original owners.

And this isn’t secret info. If you feel like it, you can use the magic of the intertoobz to read any one of those opposition newspapers or listen to the opposition radio or watch the opposition TV channels

Now, maybe if Chavez had lost or nearly tied and then got 5 Supreme Court judges of his own party to stop the vote counting and hand him the election so that he could spend 8 months allowing the greatest ever terrorist attack on U.S. soil to take place and then use that event to invade a completely unrelated country, partly so his Vice President’s company could get billions in profit from noncompetitive government contracts, you might have a point.

You couldn’t intelligently comment on Latin American affairs if you had the Cambridge Modern History of Latin America implanted in your head, which would, of course, be an improvement from the pop-rocks and mentos which currently reside there.

Try knowing something before opening your mouth, Hannitard.

There is not a single point of arboriculture that they got right.

That reminds me – there’s an apt. complex in the Chicago burbs called “Arboretum Woods”.

Just sayin’…

We didn’t send gunboats to Venezuela or Bolivia during the Bush administration

Those coup attemps generally got in the way.

s/b might have won

Attempts, even.

“Now, maybe if Chavez had lost or nearly tied and then got 5 Supreme Court judges of his own party to stop the vote counting and hand him the election so that he could spend 8 months allowing the greatest ever terrorist attack on U.S. soil to take place and then use that event to invade a completely unrelated country, partly so his Vice President’s company could get billions in profit from noncompetitive government contracts, you might have a point.”

I see BDS is alive and well. No wonder you’re in love with Chavez.

The American Left–always useful idiots for dictators around the globe, be it Lenin, Mussolini, Castro, or now Chavez.

All that matters to the left is that they too hate the Republican Party and American conservatives.

Wow, reading about the electoral process in Venezuela is awesome…

Wiki: After the vote is cast, each machine prints out a paper ballot, or VVPAT, which is inspected by the voter and deposited in a ballot box belonging to the machine’s table. The voting machines perform in a stand-alone fashion, disconnected from any network until the polls close.

Lol, wat?

54% of voting machines audited.

*Facepalm*

“… he was given the name “Zildjian”, an Armenian word meaning “son of cymbal maker.” ”

RB, the breadth of your no doubt Classical Education is amazing. However, you have made a fatal mistake. Curious as to why the *inventor* of this cymbal should be named “son of cymbal maker”, I looked it up. Zildjian means zil = cymbal + dji = maker-seller + ian = the ending of every Armenian name in history because shut up that’s why.

Personally, I think the t-shirt should have a picture of one of those Newton’s Balls toys, only with the balls painted blue and covered with hair, with the text reading, “Equal and Opposite Reaction, My Ass!”

I see BDS is alive and well. No wonder you’re in love with Chavez.

I’m not in love with Chavez. Chavez is a ‘miraculous’ seeming leader of Venezuela because a great deal of his policies are what would be considered entirely ordinary social policies for the poor and national economic development in the rest of the world, say, South Korea. But in a place like Venezuela, governed for over half a century by a plutocratic compact which occasionally turned to mass slaughter of civilians for power’s purposes, you have to think you’re a revolutionary “Bolivarian” socialist to do what Western Europe could do for its citizens and economy a century ago.

Chavez is a mixture of ordinary social democrat and ego-inflated boob — but, hey, it’s what worked, so to the vast poor majority of Bolivia, they get a serious net improvement. It’s particularly galling to the anti-Chavez nut squad incompetent, self-pitying plutocrat “opposition” that the non-oil sectors of the economy have grown way faster than the oil-related sectors, because they thought they’d just wait out CastroChavez’ failed economy to collapse and then they’d clean up. And that hasn’t happened.

I hope someday the Venezuelans can indeed return to a ‘normal’ politics in which various parties fight over different but relatively sane goals. Right now, though, there’s a region that liberal-socialist governments have swept elections from the bottom of South America right up through to Central America except Colombia & Mexico — they lived under U.S.-promoted right wing bullshit, and they finally got rid of it.

And just like Republicans here who thought their idiot tax cuts and “free trade” agreements with the Mexican and Chinese tyrannies (remember, NAFTA was negotiated under the PRI dictatorship) and their deregulation of banking and their hiding of economic indicators would make America happy and successful and get them a Permanent Republican Erection Majority FOR-EVAH, and then the whole bubble crashed down before poor Bush Jr. could escape office and blame it on Black Hussein Castro Obama X., the anti-Chavezites have thrown the same laughable hissy fit that the tea-bagging idiots here have.

But hey, if you want the U.S. right wing opposition to be just as whiny and incompetent as the anti-Chavez opposition is in Venezuela, more power to your self-pitying.

You’re in love with a bunch of right wing liars. I prefer the historical record.

You know who else has Bush Jr. Derangement Syndrome?

The vast majority of the entire fucking country, you know, all the non-white Southern right wing vast majority of the U.S. population, the same one which kicked your corrupt, authoritarian, incompetent, nation-destroying, economy-savaging asses out of power and which still poll their opinion of Bush (much less Cheney) as about as desirable as maggot-infested pork.

I don’t think you get it yet — the vast majority of Americans detest Bush Jr. and hate his idiot acolytes even more.

No one, no one was “afraid” of your Tea Parties, not even with all the stuffed animals, frilly pink dresses, and fine miniature teacups and teakettles you brought along. We laughed at you, and beg you to have more public jackass protests which cause your public approval rating to sink just as much as your idiot jackoff fetish Sarah Palin did help tank your McCain campaign. And you all thought we were afraid of Palin — hell, no, we thank you heartily for every bit of that.

Sorry, but America is a big country, and the redneck right fronts of the South and West think they are the natural owners of the country, but you’re not, and the rest of the population hates you.

RB, the breadth of your no doubt Classical Education is amazing.

I learned everything I know from El Cid.

However, you have made a fatal mistake. Curious as to why the *inventor* of this cymbal should be named “son of cymbal maker”, I looked it up. Zildjian means zil = cymbal + dji = maker-seller + ian = the ending of every Armenian name in history because shut up that’s why.

I was quoting from the Zildjian website, if you click the link it’ll take you to the “About Us” or whatever page. You should write them.

PRI was a leftist dictatorship.

Mexico operates under the worlds first Socialist constitution, and that’s a big part of its problem.

PPlease provide data from an objective source that states Venezuela is “improving”, unless you count oil-funded social programs that are unsustainable as “improvement.

In the 1920s, I’m sure El Cid would be telling us how much the lives of ordinary Italians had improved under Mussolini.

As for Palin, I do think the left is afraid of her. I remember when the left laughed at Ronald Reagan and said he was too far right to win in 1980 back in 1977, too.

So laugh it up, libs. In your heart you know she’s a threat to you.

PRI was a leftist dictatorship.

Yes, indeed, that’s certainly how it started. How ironic then that tyrant Carlos Salinas began his NAFTA accord negotiations with U.S. corporations, lobby groups, and George Bush Sr.

But a tyranny it was, and that’s exactly what the right wing business lobby Republican crowd wanted when they sought to destroy both U.S. and Mexican jobs.

Similarly, Communist China is a completely totalitarian leftwing tyranny that U.S. right wing corporate lobby groups and Republicans love dry-humping throughout the night in order to send manufacturing and labor processes over there so that they can fuck over any possibility of paying 1st world wages. I bet the average Republican Chamber of Commerce member has a copy of Mao’s Little Red Book that they jack off to while thinking of how China can completely bust up any labor union, just like they got their rocks off on how Mexico’s “union movement” under the PRI dictatorship was a government-run bunch of gangsters.

PPlease provide data from an objective source that states Venezuela is “improving”, unless you count oil-funded social programs that are unsustainable as “improvement.

Just out of curiosity, why? Why the fuck does your babbling get to be the naturally assumed truth? Is that how it works? “Oh, I’m a loudmouth rightwing fucktard and I’ll call Venezuela a dictatorship which is making life work for the majority and my magic tea party powers make me correct until other people document the opposite to MY satisfaction.” Really? Is that how it works? Hannitards and other movement idiots spew out a bunch of jackhold propaganda and somehow it’s got a natural right to sit on top of the shelf until such time as they themselves feel their points have been disproven?

Explain to me why I owe a twerp like you the god-damn time of day, much less an exegesis on the current economic status of ordinary Venezuelans?

Chavez: No, not a dictator, but seems to wish he was. Still a legitimately democratically elected leader. I do believe that whatever dictatorial tendencies he has, he’s a legitimate populist, not just someone who treats the poor as warm bodies at the ballot box (see: Citizen’s Energy Corp in Massachusetts); however he does have an out-of-control ego and is a documented attention whore.

Venezuela: Some major culture war action there. Chavez is the man of the Native American and poor populations, not so much your average white Venezuelan.

Rush, “The Trees”: Now I know why I’ve never heard that one on classic rock radio. “Fuck you, Maples. We’re just better than you.” -The Oaks

Latin America: it’s only when you actually look at the history of the Cold War and the idea of American exceptionalism that you realize the Monroe Doctrine may not have been such a good idea after all. But then the whole problem here in the first place is that the right doesn’t want to admit that the train wreck that has been the last hundred years or so of Latin American history has been primarily our fault. (Betcha “Chiquita Banana” is fightin’ words in Guatemala.)

CNN and other liberal media sources, after being crushed on the “only five conservatives are going to go to these tea parties” meme,

But the Tea Parties were a success, because they achieved their primary goal, which was to anger liberals. (only, funny thing is….they didn’t even do that. We’re still laughing)

They mistake “shaking with laughter” for “quaking in fear.”

I feel a lot of anger coming from you, El Cid.

Could it be because most objective sources do not consider Venezuela to be a free and fair democracy>?

Angry Left–still angry, even when they control the entire federal government.

In the 1920s, I’m sure El Cid would be telling us how much the lives of ordinary Italians had improved under Mussolini.

Um, because back then U.S. Republicans and right wingers were against fascism? Really? Good thing you’ve never been to the history section of a library.

Ooops. I’m sorry. How rude of me.

A library is a big building where nice people keep all sorts of things called books, which are these things which have some printed “writing” or “words” in them on paper. It allows you to go into one of these places, choose a “book”, and “read” it which is sort of like hearing the words in your head the same way that Mommy tells you when it’s time for dinner, or when you have to tell Mommy that you’ve dirtied your pants and need to be changed.

Fascism was a movement of the left.

Liberals today still live in a house of decidedly Fascist architecture.

What the fuck, libs? I hate peas.

As for Palin, I do think the left is afraid of her.

well, if I lived in Alaska, I might. Did you read about that wacko she tried to appoint to Attorney General? Fortunately for Alaskans, the legislature rejected that nutcase.

I don’t think Palin’s popularity is going to last till the next general election. She’s making enough enemies of her own party’s establishment, no one’s going to back her, and enough P.R. mistakes to show the public how poor her judgment is. She’ll burn her own bridges, not with liberals but with conservatives.

Who cares if we’re afraid of Palin or Reagan or Bush? People are also afraid of Dracula too and I wouldn’t vote for him.

a house of decidedly Fascist architecture.

Well, I’m not fond of Richard Meier, either.

G–

They once said the same thing about Reagan.

The left was afraid of Goldwater, too.

In the 1920s, I’m sure El Cid would be telling us how much the lives of ordinary Italians had improved under Mussolini.

What, like over telegraph?

Are you aware of what sort of people were supporting Mussolini in the US in the 20’s? Basically I’m asking if you have a high-school level grasp of world history and are just being disingenuous or what. If you’re still with me, did you pick up on the fact that Chavez was able to gain power because of 50+ years of stupid US foreign policy?

Could it be because most objective sources do not consider Venezuela to be a free and fair democracy?

I suppose it could be because you’re a cheap, lazy, uninformed jackass spewing talking points you don’t even understand. But it also could be that I haven’t had enough coffee this morning. Then I could be really grouchy.

Actually, the vast majority of sources not only consider but, having monitored the elections, have verified that Venezuela is a “free and fair” democracy. Now, my standards are a lot higher than what passes for “democracy” in the world today, but by the world’s standards, Venezuela is freer and fairer than it has ever been. Which isn’t a whole lot to go on, but people take improvement where they can get it.

People are also afraid of Dracula too and I wouldn’t vote for him.

Really? ‘Cause he’s got that suave mittleuropa charm, the ability to turn into a bat, and some damned fine real estate in Transylvania and London.

“Chavez was able to gain power because of 50+ years of stupid US foreign policy?”

Blame America fist clap trap.

Tell me, libs,is there any problem in the world that you think ISN’T America’s fault?

*crickets*

Fascism was a movement of the left.

Liberals today still live in a house of decidedly Fascist architecture.

OK, you got me. It’s a spoof on Jo’berg troll. Funny. Good work.

The left was afraid of Goldwater, too.

And Alan Keyes.

Chavez was able to gain power because of 50+ years of stupid US foreign policy?

I didn’t argue that. Cut the spoof. It’s not funny. Why do people think doing this shit is funny?

This is why Obama won’t last in the 2012 election.

Americans don’t like having their President trash their nation overseas and shake hands and smile with anti-American dictators like Chavez, Raul Castro, and Danny Ortega. Obama is already fast exposing himself for what he really is–a radical leftist (how could he not be if he went to Rev. Wright’s Church for 20+ years? Or associated with Bill Ayers)?

*waits for some lib to say Rev. Wright was correct about America inventing AIDS)

They once said the same thing about Reagan.

Actually, they didn’t.

There’s nothing similar about the two situations. Reagan had major corporate backing; Reagan was supremely skilled at crafting his public image, and didn’t have the personal baggage that Palin does. He also didn’t piss off his fellow republicans, which is a major part of Palin’s liability. He wasn’t a backstabber like she is.

Buckminster Fuller–the Albert Speer of Liberal Fascism.

“Rev. Wright was correct about America inventing AIDS”. There, now you can breathe again.

Americans Mississipians / Texans / Alabamans don’t like having their President trash their nation overseas and shake hands and smile with anti-American dictators like Chavez, Raul Castro, and Danny Ortega. Obama is already fast exposing himself for what he really is–a radical leftist (how could he not be if he went to Rev. Wright’s Church for 20+ years? Or associated with Bill Ayers)?

Fixt. For the fake troll.

For others, here’s the funny bit.

The difference between anything with Reagan and now is that in the late 1970s and right up to the 1990s, Republicans were still gaining votes in the South from conservatives who were transitioning from being conservative, anti-Civil Rights Democrats to conservative, fake populist Republicans.

That ship done sailed, though. The Republitards got every last one of the Dixiecrats who was gonna come your way.

I’ll give them credit — they dipped that well pretty damn hard for the last 40 years. But, sorry, this is how things happen. That well done run dry. They ain’t got no more Dixiecrats and Sagebrush nuts to fill the party coffers with, and the rest of America in the Northeast, Midwest, Pacific Northwest, and even West, and pretty much major urban areas throughout the nation, have seen very clearly the results of 30 years of Reaganism.

The right wing, Southern and Western-led populist ideas that used to be dominant are now pretty thoroughly rejected throughout the country. And while for a time it was fashionable for moderates and conservatives in urban and non-Southern / non-Western parts of the country to go along with this nonsense about ‘real America’ and how really the country would be best run by a bunch of right wing Southern and Western freaks talking about ‘big Gubmit’ and all that shit, nobody outside the right wing South & West believes that anymore.

You try convincing Pennsylvania moderates that what they need is to have this country run by more Newt Gingriches, Tom Delays, Dick Armeys, Phil Gramms, Sarah Palins, so on and so forth.

Actually, you don’t have to suppose — the Republicans are still ‘purifying’ their party based on the notion that only by returning to their most reactionary roots and acting like Southern Dixiecrats (except not mentioning all the federal money that Southerners always need to keep their failed state economies going) will they win again. Just watch and see how that plays.

This is why Obama won’t last in the 2012 2016 election.

*Now* I am concerned.

“Liberals today still live in a house of decidedly Fascist architecture.”

Still?

Dude, we moved.We now live in a decidadiddly african/muslim inspired mudhut/mosque.

Lessee, seven posts on the Tea Parties, events that supposedly are as artificial as saccharin, as insignificant as navel lint, as meaningless as static.

SEVEN POSTS.

LOL!!

*sniff*

*sniiiiiff*

Can you smell it?

It’s jealousy mixed with a little fear, I do believe.

And it smells delicious.

All that matters to the left is that they too hate the Republican Party and American conservatives.

Because… because… shut up, that’s why!

The reason the Tea-baggers are so adamant about the “grassroots” thing is that it’s one more example of the right wing establishment trying to co-opt what the Democrats did so successfully.

But in all cases, it’s hilarious how lame they get it.

Hillary Clinton was a popular female candidate, so they pulled Sarah Palin out of their ass.

Obama was successful, so they propped up the laughable Michael Steele.

The Obama campaign was a major grassroots-and-establishment success, so they decided to market their “grassroots” effort, too.

Because they had to be MORE grassrootier than the left, they indignantly proclaimed it to be ALL grassroots, and then denied their own establishment connections when they were revealed.

Fascism was a movement of the left.

Oh goodie, a Pantload devotee!

For a second there I was tempted to feel sorry for No Appypollyloggies for the intellectual caning he’s about to receive; but anyone who tries to run behind Jonah Fucking Goldberg’s skirts deserves everything he gets.

Oh, and the DHS report on “rightwing extremists”? It was apparently rushed to coincide with the Tea Parties. Sorta to say, “SEE? There’s a good example of rightwing extremists: TEA PARTIERS!!”

So Obama WAS paying attention after all.

Go back to sleep, liberal schmucks. Nothing to see here.

It’s jealousy mixed with a little fear, I do believe.

You go right on believing that, dear, if it makes you feel better.

“alpha winger?” what’s that moniker supposed to mean? Have a high opinion of yourself, don’t you, dear? Is that how you sign in on your gaming thing?

So does this mean whenever a rightblogger circa 2003 mocked an Iraq War protest, they were actually terrified and jealous?

This is why Obama won’t last in the 2012 election….. Obama is already fast exposing himself for what he really is–a radical leftist (how could he not be if he went to Rev. Wright’s Church for 20+ years? Or associated with Bill Ayers)?

Thanks for giving us a sneak preview of the Republican campaign talking points. “Obama and Bill Ayers! Obama and Rev. Wright!!”

That’ll be just as effective as it was last time. good luck with that!

I love how “scared” all we liberals are supposed to be after trampling the wingnuts two elections in a row. I guess they’re just hoping that they’ve destroyed American infrastructure enough so that in 2012 everyone will blame Obama.

You go right on believing that, dear, if it makes you feel better.

And you go right on sleepwalking through your liberal dreamworld, dearie.

Or just throw eggs..

http://news.yahoo.com/s/politico/21380

Keep it classy, libtards.

Words with boobs are cool.

And chain saws. Chain saws kick ass.

Know what would be really cool?

Chain saaws with boobs…

mikey

Keep it classy, libtards.

Boy, that stands on it’s own, doesn’t it??

If McCain had had the balls to release a Rev. Wright ad in late October he would have won.

Check out the one he was supposed to release: The ad starts at 1:13.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YK5ueV-dqsc&feature=related

McCain was too soft on Obama.

How about boobs with chainsaws, mikey?

So does this mean whenever a rightblogger circa 2003 mocked an Iraq War protest, they were actually terrified and jealous?

Nope. Apples, oranges.

Then again, you moonbats have never been adept at discerning true nuance.

Almost like little children, you are…

LOL!!

And there’s the tell.

Hi, Troofus.

Oh. I didn’t realize we were arguing with idiots again.

I read gavin’s brilliant piece, added my tiny bit of stupidity to the bottom, and then started to check out the comments.

To borrow a manner of expression:

Arguing with idiots. Do not want.

mikey

Hi, Troofus.

Still haven’t found help for your delusional disorder, eh Simba?

LOL!LOL!LOL!LOL!LOL!LOL!

HEH. INDEED.

<blockquote.As for Palin, I do think the left is afraid of her. I remember when the left laughed at Ronald Reagan and said he was too far right to win in 1980 back in 1977, too.
Hey, Numbnuts To Appeasement, we are STILL laughing at Reagan! His turning chicken in Beirut, his polluting-trees, his borrow-and-spend, his billions wasted on ‘star wars’, and especially, his trading missiles to Iran for hostages. His secret deal to keep americans prisoners until his inauguration is one of his most hilarious gambits. The history books will be chock ablock with the Reagan funny.
Palin? Bring her on, numbnuts.

How about boobs with chainsaws

See: Bush administration, 2000-2008.

Reagan defeated you twice in a landslide election,.

You really wanna go through that again, libs?

It’s jealousy mixed with a little fear, I do believe.

This is a humor blog. They post more about the stuff that’s really funny.

Piefilter!

If we keep yelling ‘WRIGHT’ loud enough, the American people will realize Obama’s a n—-r! Eventually! Any day now!

“It’s jealousy mixed with a little fear, I do believe.

And it smells delicious.”

Actually, that’s my assbox in which your nose is parked.

Why are the Hannitards and Beckists not going nuts over the violation of civil liberties in the DHS publishing its review of possible sources of left-wing extremism? Just to be FAIR and BALANCED to the Hannitards, I will link the copy of the report as found on FOXNOOZ (PDF).

January 26, 2009:

(U) Appendix: Leftwing Extremists

(U//FOUO) DHS/Office of Intelligence and Analysis defines leftwing extremists as groups or individuals who embrace radical elements of the anarchist, animal rights, or environmental movements and are often willing to violate the law to achieve their objectives. Many leftwing extremist groups are not hierarchically ordered with defined members, leaders, or chain of command structures but operate as loosely-connected underground movements composed of “lone wolves,” small cells, and splinter groups.

— (U//LES) Animal rights and environmental extremists seek to end the perceived abuse and suffering of animals and the degradation of the natural environment perpetrated by humans. They use non-violent and violent tactics that, at times, violate criminal law. Many of these extremists claim they are conducting these activities on behalf of two of the most active groups, the Animal Liberation Front and its sister organization, the Earth Liberation Front. Other prominent groups include Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty; and chapters within the Animal Defense LeagueUSPER, and Earth First!USPER.

— (U//FOUO) Anarchist extremists generally embrace a number of radical philosophical components of anticapitalist, antiglobalization, communist, socialist, and other movements. Anarchist groups seek abolition of social, political, and economic hierarchies, including Western-style governments and large business enterprises, and frequently advocate criminal actions of varying scale and scope to accomplish their goals. Anarchist extremist groups include entities within CrimethincUSPER, the Ruckus SocietyUSPER ,and Recreate 68 USPER.

Oh, because, um, shut up, and Obama is Hitler, that’s why.

Yeah, and we told all the right wing fuckers not to work so hard trashing the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and shouting their Unitarded Executrix and Fourthbranch shit so that Bush Jr. and Cheney could sexually satisfy rightists by giving them visions of torturing NOW members, but now that you gave all this unwarranted surveillance, break-in, and spying powers to Black Hussein Chavez Obama X., now all you righties can eat the shitbread you’ve just spent 8 years baking. Happy eating!

The United States of AmeriKKKa is to blame for everything int world

GODDAMN AMERICA!

And don’t any of you crackers put no AIDS in my drink!

The teabaggers deserve many posts of pointing and laughing.

They’re hilarious, that’s why.

Let’s cling to Reagan’s corpse too! Who cares if its been twenty-five years since he beat his last lib and the Appeaser landslided a military hero? The American people will take us seriously again! Wenck and Steiner shall save us!

The Republican Party is already coming back.

We’re ahead in the polls for the VA Governor’s race, and we’re catching up in the NJ race.

The comeback starts this November!

Palin’s not going to make it through a primary. It’s not the liberals opinion that’s her problem – its the opinions on her own side. And with the way she handles the dynamics of a rivalry, I can just imagine the bloodbath. You thought the PUMAs were bad?

I predict that the crazed Palinites, having lost the primary, are going to make the PUMAs look as grave and serious as a church choir.

Seriously. Why on Earth would anyone go one the very blogs they read and see how long they can pretend to be an asshole right winger? Is that supposed to be some sort of achievement?

‘OMG I iz reel talented cuz I can post comments whut sound like a Hannitard ha ha ha they get so mad OMFG.’

Really?

Reagan defeated you twice in a landslide election,.

You really wanna go through that again, libs?

Zombie Reagan will be the 2012 Republican nominee?

Assbox Oldfuck said,

April 18, 2009 at 18:46

Best. Pseudonym. Ever.

Zombie Reagan will be the 2012 Republican nominee?

How will they tell the difference from later year Alzheimer stage Reagan? Or did he get zombie-bit before he ever left office?

If you’re 25, living in a basement, and mom had just kicked you off of Warcraft for a week, trolling blogs is the highlight of your life, El Cid.

If McCain had had the balls to release a Rev. Wright ad in late October he would have won.

Yeah, the old man still had a shred of decency in him.

“Apples, oranges.”

Absolutely right. The comparison of teabagging parties to 2003’s anti-war protests is invalid because the anti-war protests were truly spontaneous gatherings with a clear message, at which millions of average Americans across the country voiced their opposition to the war. The teabaggenings, however, were orchestrated events without a coherent message, at which perhaps thousands of people like Michelle Malkin voiced their opposition to losing the last election to a black Kenyan Muslim Socialist. Oh, another difference between the anti-war protests and the public teabagging: Fox News covered one and not the other.

If we get someone like Romney or Newt next time, they won’t go so easy on BO.

If you’re 25, living in a basement, and mom had just kicked you off of Warcraft for a week, trolling blogs is the highlight of your life, El Cid.

I still don’t get it. If you’re not a right winger, why would you pretend to be one on a non-rightwing blog? I seriously don’t get the motivation. I could see somehow faking up your identity and discussion style to go onto rightwing blogs and try to stir sh*t up; and I can certainly see how bored rightwingers would want to go pester non-righties. But I just don’t understand why a non-rightie would pretend to be one just to bother similar non-righties. I just don’t get it. So, you might be able to prompt an irritated response from people you basically or maybe fully agree with? Okay? Is that somehow satisfying? Or humorous?

Well, some people are just assholes.

Or alternatively, the Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory.

“If we get someone like Romney or Newt next time, they won’t go so easy on BO.”

Alright, I’m beginning to think El Cid’s right. Somebody’s just trying to make teh wingnuts look extra stoopit, because nobody with a functioning limbic system could possibly believe that Romney or Newt (haw haw!) could win a presidential election.

From ‘After Party”: Our super high-tech sound system was three bullhorns, daisy-chained together.

I know it’s juvenile, but has there ever been another grass roots movement where every single blade of grass was oblivious to the fact that it was coated with a fine dusting of le double entendre?

(Or as we 8 year olds like to say, “in you end-oh!”)

Alright, libs, who ARE you scared of in 2012?

Now that BHO won the presidency, weren’t Wright and Ayers supposed to be part his inner council? Isn’t that what the wingtards promised us would happen last October? You mean the wingtards were full of s**t on that too?
But running one more advertisement about Wright back in October would’ve changed everyone’s minds and McCain would’ve won? BHO won by more than 9.5 million votes.
Almost six months after the election, Wright and Ayers are still in Chicago, doing whatever they did before the election. And the wingtards still care. Isn’t that the sweetest thing?
Hey Numbuts to App-blabla, maybe McCain didn’t run the ad because it wouldn’t change anyone’s mind, and it would’ve looked like he was grasping at straws.

If McCain had had the balls to release a Rev. Wright ad in late October he would have won.

Right, because nobody had heard of this obscure and unknown Reverend Wright fellow by late October. Revealing the existence of Reverend Wright to the American public would have certainly gained McCain those last ten million votes he needed to get over the top.

the funny misspelling of ‘groups’ that makes the word have boobs

Vacuum considers itself kind of stacked.

Alright, libs, who ARE you scared of in 2012?

The troll is WAITING…!

right on, JK47!

“Alright, libs, who ARE you scared of in 2012?”

Rush Limbaugh! Please, please don’t run Rush Limbaugh for president. We’re really really askeered of him.

You don’t get it.

That ad was different. It not only talked about Rev. Wright, but Obama’s character, and contrasted it to McCain’s.

McCain had the courage to refuse early release from a prison camp, while Obama didn’t even have the courage to stand up and leave a racist, anti-American church.

“That ad was different. It not only talked about Rev. Wright, but Obama’s character, and contrasted it to McCain’s.”

Truly, it was the magic advertisement that would have fixed the economy and brought the proper focus of election coverage back to Obama’s skin color.

Skin color?

So you’re saying the typical black church is like Rev. Wright’s?

How racist.

a racist, anti-American church.

Pssst! Pssst! It was full of – (look right, look left) – Black people! Who were Black!

“The buffet isn’t ready, we are waiting for to-goes”

No, fucktard, I’m calling you a racist, but you’re so stupid that you make me call you a racist to your face.

Hey, according to all the released memos from the Bush Jr.-era legal advice on torture, I think we can finally bring some happiness to John McCain and let him know that he never was really tortured, his captors just subjected him to enhanced interrogation techniques simply to obtain information.

This will make him feel better, because McCain has been thinking for about 40 years that he had been held and tortured, whereas it turns out it was all a big mixup about terms and stuff and he was really just detained for a long time for a series of harsh interviews.

So are you all suggesting that the typical, average black Church has a man like Rev. Wright at the pulpit ranting about the government creating AIDS and “AmeriKKKa”?

You sound like the racist ones!

killfile to fake troll # 8,042

If we get someone like Romney or Newt next time, they won’t go so easy on BO.

Well, Numbnuts, whoever the republicraniums select will be white. Something for you to look forward to.

I shall make the blockquotes submit to my will! I shall!

“Well, Numbnuts, whoever the republicraniums select will be white.”

No, it could be Bobby Jindal.

Just as the teabaggers didn’t understand the word teabagging, and fascist, and socialist, the troll doesn’t understand the power dynamic implied in the words racist. Literally, Rev. Wright cannot be racist. He could be prejudiced. That may be within the realm of possibility. But not racist. The troll, however, is expressly racist. If the Klan robe fits, asshole…

Hey, have you guys ever heard of Orange Roughy?

It’s what you call the shit you have to take after eating an entire bag of Cheetos.

Oh I forgot, only WHITE people can be racist. Because of power, or something.

Nevermind a black guy is fucking President now, no sir, blacks CANT be racist.

Racism is the tool of of the dominant culture. Just like you.

I wonder how many black or hispanic or Asian people were at these public teabaggings? Except for one lone fellow at the New York City protest, every picture I saw showed a sea of pasty white gobs. I suppose Michelle Malkin attended one somewhere. Grassroots!

Nevermind a black guy is fucking the President now.

Numbnuts To Appeasement, if you think one teevee advertisement can make ten million people change their minds, and their votes, then you are the stupidest…Can I interest you in this ShamWow? They’re quite inexpensive and you get a whole set.

Can I interest you in this ShamWow? They’re quite inexpensive and you get a whole set.

With the whole set you can beat up a hooker. Act now and you can chop my nuts.

I am torn. Because I am an authoritarian, I need a strong father analog; some higher force to direct me and make me feel safe. For the past eight years, I had such an analog in the person of George W. Bush. Now, a Black man is president, and I can no longer identify with the authority in my life, neither can I accept that a colored person might be above me and thus I am doubly alienated from the mythical father I so desperately require for proper functioning. Hence, teabagging.

“With the whole set you can beat up a hooker.”

You need a whole set to do that? What if I just want to kiss her? Is one enough to wipe up the blood?

Billy Mays kicks Vince’s behind.

From ‘After Party”: Our super high-tech sound system was three bullhorns, daisy-chained together.

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x7mj98_the-simpsons-bullhorn-experiment_shortfilms

ITTDGY, that was awesome. It reminded me of this awesome tragicomic story, purportedly an online review of the Shamwow product itself:

Father died thinking of this crappy product!

2/24/2009 – Bryan of Washington, DC, USA writes:

My father had an illness that didn’t let him get out of the house much, and his memory was on the downfall over the last few months. He was in his room watching tv and he saw the shamwow commercial and for some reason really wanted one. Since he doesn’t ask for much, me and my wife (his daughter-in-law) decided to buy him a set to use around the house, as he didn’t get out much.

The product arrived and we had him wait to open it until we got back from the hospital because we thought he was having a stroke. When we returned he was out of it and went to bed. We woke up in the middle of the night to him crying loudly in his room, which is next to ours. He has spilt his bed pan and tried to clean it up with the shamwow cloth. It wasn’t working and he thought it was HIS fault! After hours of calming him down, while I cleaned up the mess with towels, we took him into the kitchen to show him it works. WELL IT DOESN’T, and our neighbors also tried it with theirs that arrived the next day, and theirs was a bust as well.

My father was always in a sad mood after that, as he thought it was his fault it didn’t work and he could only seem to remember the commercial saying how good it was and his failure with it.

My father died at the age of 72, crying mad as my niece brought in some shamwows her boyfriend had bought to show them to us, not knowing she was there to see my father on his death bed! HE SAW THEM, and we all tried to take them out before he saw them!!! He started to cry and yell, and as I took my niece out of the room, my father yelled out a scream of anger and pain I had never heard before.

He never got to say his last words to me or our family, all he saw was his own failure and shame and he died in tears, thinking only of an angry world, and not of our LOVE FOR HIM! This product is garbage, and should be banned, burnt, and that evil man selling it to be drowning and try to save himself by using his own product to soak up the water, as he WOULD DIE!

I don’t think this ever happened, but it’s a very funny way to create tragedy from this weird chammy.

I don’t understand. If the left is terrified by teabaggers, howcum so many of us spent all day Tuesday with them?
I spent almost 4 hours listening to Ron Paul freaks yell/converse with Hannity freaks over whether the Bush Admin was part of the NWO and precisely how we should abolish all (corporate) taxation. The only vaguely frightening part wuz one or two “lone wolves” who looked both like they might have been carrying and like they were twitchy enough to use it.

As for the astroturfing, I’ve been to several spontaneous protests in my life, and none of them had professional soundsystems and stages with a banner listing corporate sponsors. Neither did they have over a week’s worth of nonstop promotion by a national… schmews network like Fox.
Neither did they feature making the crowd wait 10 minutes between speakers so the cheering from the intro of one could be shown on a propaganda show on the shmews network.
Y’know what does feature things like that? Pre-shows of professional sporting events, and carefully planned, well funded, political performances.
Also, none of the spontaneous protests featured professionally made mass produced protest signs that pop up in the crowds of these grassroots folks across the country.
I don’t even understand why they feel a pathological need to call this grassroots…
oh, wait, yes I do. Because the whole thing is about opposing slightly higher taxes for the wealthiest Americans who paid their hacks to organize these protests, and pretending it’s a grassroots movement mildly distracts from that, especially in the mushy minds of the conservative movement.

I met a hooker,,,excuse me, a ‘bride of the multitudes’, and she said her name was Lolo Price and that I should act now because someone was standing by.
Obscure movie factoid: Jackie Earle Haley wraps his fist with a chamouis to punch the time clock in “Breaking Away”.

I can’t spell shammy!

“Obscure movie factoid”

More obscure than it deserves, really. I watched it again via Netflix a few weeks ago, and it holds up surprisingly well. “Refund!?!”

#

No to These Peas, Man said,

April 18, 2009 at 18:00 (kill)

What the fuck, libs? I hate peas.

Well, then…

Pass The Peas.

This–

“If McCain had had the balls to release a Rev. Wright ad in late October he would have won.”

–is what you’re arguing with? Puh-leeze. Thank you for not feeding the trolls, regardless of how adorable and amusing they are.

Hey Teabaggers, you should really demand the ‘Flat Taxers’ provide Fireworks and Bar-b-que for the 4th of July festivities.

Your time is worth that much isn’t it?

I thought its permitted to taunt trolls if you put a ‘St.’ in front to activate killfiles of those who decline to play.

All we are saying, is give peas a chance!

P.S. El Cid, that shamwow review does sound a bit over the top. Bryan of Washington went for it, bigtime!

Kids, why can’t you at least get your stories straight? Some of you are complaining about our sound system, while others believe (erroneously) that we were funded by interest groups.

If hard-core right-wing interest groups are actually funding this, GOPMom, Corie, and myself would be thrilled to get paid for all of our work. I’m sure that our speakers, none of whom received an honourarium nor reimbursement for expenses, would also be happy to be paid for their efforts.

Now, a note to the logic challenged amongst you: the fact that Fox News promoted this event does not mean that they were financial backers of it. If every news network that discussed a cause, with bias, were a financial backer of that cause, then CNN, ABC, NBC, the NYT, the LAT and every news media outlet in this country that is not the Wall Street Journal nor Fox News would then have been a financial supporter of the Obama campaign. That would make for an interesting McCain-Feingold issue, and on that the FEC would like to investigate. Care to continue that thought?

Our Boston event was part of a nationwide, grass-roots protest. We used free social media to promote our event. After news of the Tea Parties spread, people began asking their local talk radio hosts for information. Once the event was planned – speakers, location, permit, etc – Brad Marston and other politicians, seeing a crowd and an opportunity, did their best to jump out in front of the crowd, having pretended to been leading it all along.

To the person who said that he would love to see our permit: if GOPMom is up for showing it to you, would you eat your words? Last time I checked, we were turned down for a City Hall Plaza permit, as we didn’t have a $1,500 “rental fee” to pay for the use of public, outdoor space. Our Boston Common permit was limited to the “free speech zone” in front of Brewer Fountain. We had to use bullhorns, as a professional sound system would have changed the nature of the event into a performance. We would have had to pay more for insurance, more for a permit, and for union workers to be there to oversee our sound system.

Mince your words; it makes them easier to eat when you have to. 🙂

I’m afraid of a gorilla wearing a creepy realistic rabbit mask running for president.

Can anyone direct me to your local patisserie?

Three quick words for lady grey as the killfile activates.

Who.

Fucking.

Cares?

mikey

Not long ago I went to a totally grassroots local beer festival that was sponsored by the local radio station and had nice sponsor flags all over the place and various sound stages for bands to play. This sort of grassroots activism shows that we are tired of the Temperance League and their intents to ban alcohol. We won’t take it any more.

Don’t look! Someone has mistaken us for people who actually care about her opinion. Geez, I said don’t look!

I looked it up. Zildjian means zil = cymbal + dji = maker-seller + ian = the ending of every Armenian name in history because shut up that’s why.

“ian” is the ending of every Armenian name in history because it means “son of”, or “of the family of”. HTH.

Who gives a shit what YOU think? I researched you; you only held the English throne for nine days. Forget Barack Obama, William Henry fuckin’ Harrison laughs at you.

Shorter lady grey,

It was all my idea!

And CNN shouldn’t cover presidential elections, also.

Brad Marston and other politicians, seeing a crowd and an opportunity, did their best to jump out in front of the crowd, having pretended to been leading it all along.

For a crowd that pretends that it isn’t being led, (not to mention objecting to inconsistent stories), how did the teabaggers come to decide that our income tax system is unfair to rich people?

Ummm, Lady Grey?
I was in NYC, not Boston. I wasn’t complaining about the sound system, I’m saying the expense involved in its presence helps to disprove the grassroots claims being bandied about across the country. I also notice you ignored my mention of a banner listing corporate sponsors of the event.

Now, a note to the logic challenged amongst you: the fact that Fox News promoted this event does not mean that they were financial backers of it.

So, how much is air-time worth per minute on Fox News? They ran inserts, spots, promo-stingers, etc. and they did them all for free. I call that financial backing. Same as any corporate radio station sponsor who advertises a concert on the air without charging the promoters for it, in exchange for associating their name and logo with the event, and sending their DJs to serve as MCs. (I assume that Hannity, Beck, et al were still “on the clock” and collecting their Fox salaries for their promotion.)

Strangely, I don’t recall MSNBC or CNN doing anything of the kind for the anti-war or WTO protests (like, “it’s Anti-War Rally Day on MSNBC!” or “Join us with CNN’s Anderson Cooper and Wolf Blitzer for the WTO Freedom Day in Seattle!”), even though the turnout for those events utterly dwarfed the teabagger’s numbers.

Pull the other leg, Lady, it has bells on it.

Also, yeah, Fox contributed financially to the Tea Parties. With all the free promotion. That much airtime is worth millions.
Fox ran ads for the Tea Parties.

Typically, grassroots gatherings don’t feature printed step-and-repeat backdrops with corporate logos.

That was the first clue for me.

Fox is so fucking ethics-challenged that their news anchor bragged about providing more promotion than any other network.

I imagine we’ll be hearing a sharply worded response from “Earl of Grey”.

On Wednesday I saw a colonially garbed wingtard with his patroutotically garbed three sons on the Metro Center platform of the DC subway, switching trains. I went up to them and belligerated “hey homeschoolt, why are you taking tax subsidized mass transit? Whyncha take a private sector taxi? Is the subway cheap and convenient even though it was a $200m stimulus to the local economy in 1973? Whycha tell yer kids about this, so when they have private sector jobs mopping out bathroom stalls in the publically funded airport they can remember this day. And which founding father are you supposed to be? Thomas Paine? Roger Sherman? Lars Thorwald?”

It was proven for all time 100% that the media outside Fox NOOZ are all completely liberal socialist biased when Katie Couric asked Sarah Palin that gotcha question about naming what newspapers she reads. No more definitive proof of the Leninist-Maoist nature of CNNBCSNBCBSABC than that.

True unbiased patriotic networks were the ones that helped us invade Iraq and defend America from the 9/11 hijackers trained by Saddam Hussein and Bill Ayers who were putting nuclear weapons on anthrax drones to fly from France to attack rural Mississippi.

These two photos cheered me up.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/37455905@N04/3447789934/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/37455905@N04/3447789904/

Ok, three
http://www.flickr.com/photos/37455905@N04/3446975917/in/photostream/

We didn’t have corporate sponsors of our event, nor did we have banners for them. We did have a few people who printed up posters and post cards at their own expense, however.

Here’s the thing: the original post was referencing my website and my comments about the Tea Party that I helped to coordinate. It also made mention of my co-organisers. There were over 800 additional Tea Parties around the country. I certainly cannot provide you with detailed data on each one, but I certainly can discuss the genesis of my own event, of which you are all completely mistaken.

If you want to slam Tea Parties for having a lot of special interests, then don’t mention Boston. Since you mentioned us and stated that we were funded by special interests, I’m more than justified in smacking you all down.

Please. I’m far too busy.

Shorter Lady Grey:
Iiiiiiiiiii’ve got no strings,
To make me fret, or make me frown
I had strings
But now I’m free
There are no strings on me.

If you took the time to read the Sadly, No! posts about the Tea Parties (noted: name change), Lady Grey, you would know more about the genesis of all of them.

Also, no one has yet to address the issue of the fact that the media was obviously in the tank for a presidential candidate. The air time, cost of printing newspapers, and other expenses associated with the biased promotion of one candidate over another has a much, much larger monetary value than anything given by Fox News.

My point, for those in the cheap seats, is that you can’t have it both ways. If you want to claim that media promotion is a form of sponsorship, then yes, Fox News sponsored us, but that also means that a variety of news networks spent millions, if not billions, in sponsoring a candidate for the Presidency – a candidate whom you support.

Now, if you want to continue the “media promotion = donations” meme, you’re more than welcome to, but it will also cause a tremendous amount of problems for liberal causes.

, they already have their talking points pre-packaged. BO and his Chicago goons thrive on their collective ignorance.

Don’t try to confuse these liberal children with facts and data, Lady Grey. they have the talking points pre-packaged. BO And his Chicago goons thrive on their collective ignorance and immaturity.

It also made mention of my co-organisers.

What’s with the English-socialist spelling conventions, Lady Grey? Good ol’ Amurrikin ‘z’ ain’t good enough fer ya?

Um, wasn’t the original Boston Tea Party about kicking some Limey butt?

“Lady Grey”. Pretensions to English royalty. That’s really all-American, ah tell you what.

Lady Grey, I have a question for you. Unless all of you out there are earning over $300,000 annually EACH, what’s your beef exactly? The middle class just got the largest tax break it’s seen in decades.

Individual tax refunds, up about 16%, or $30 billion, compared with last year, “amounts to a substantial short-term boost to disposable income that may have contributed to the relatively mild recovery in consumer spending in January and February after the disastrous holiday shopping season,” wrote David Greenlaw and Ted Wieseman, economists for Morgan Stanley. Non-withheld taxes are likely to fall about $80 billion compared with last year, the economists said. Non-withheld taxes are typically paid by people who are self-employed, or those who have substantial income from capital gains or financial assets.

If you took the time to read the Sadly, No! posts about the Tea Parties (noted: name change), Lady Grey, you would know more about the genesis of all of them.

That would make sense, but for two things:
1. I know the people who ran other events, and am well aware of how they came to be, and
2. you were wrong about the Boston event – from sponsorship to permitting – so why would I assume that your other posts (likely full of nothing but the same lies and distortions) have any correlation to reality?

Why don’t you actually answer her question about media bias rather spew the stale talking points, libs?

Wow. “Talking points pre-packaged”. Not to be confused with your “REVEREND WRIGHT IS SCARY AND DROPPED THE D-BOMB!!!!!” mewling. Also, thank you for mentioning that Barack Obama “thrives on our collective ignorance and immaturity” while protesting a tax cut for yourself because it’s an increase for rich people who told you you hate it.

Also, no one has yet to address the issue of the fact that the media was obviously in the tank for a presidential candidate.

No, they weren’t.

The non-stop mainstream media coverage of Rev. Wright and Bill Ayers still rings in my ears.

Lady Grey, if I jump to your defense will you be my gurl-friend?

The left was afraid of Goldwater, too.

It’s true, I won’t shower in that stuff.

Actually, considering the teabagging and daisy-chaining, I bet they celebrate the birth of the new GOP with golden showers.

Man, those trolls are gayer than Christmas.

Oh, be nice.

Did we date?

Second question: Of the paltry thousand that turned out to stand on tax-funded bricks, how many were children? (I’m surprised you would “exploit” your children to promote your own interests. Oh wait. Was that mean of me? Ok, how about you shut the fuck up about liberals including their kids in demonstrations then.)

There’ll be golden showers of liberty as the Right proudly plays their rusty trombones on the way to the Liberty Bell rimming.

Meanwhile, in Cleveland, this stimulus is getting conservatives steamed!

Why is Lady Grey not answering my question? I’ll repeat.

Unless all of you teabaggers are earning over $300,000 annually EACH, what’s your beef exactly? The middle class just got the largest tax break it’s seen in decades.

Lesley,

First of all, it’s $250,000/year, or $200,000/year, depending on what Barack Obama thinks of today.

More importantly, those tax cuts are necessarily temporary and will cause further problems for America. In order to pay for the huge increase in the national debt that we’ve seen in the past few months (IIRC, Barack Obama is set to match Bush’s 8-year debt increase in a mere 20 months), taxes will have to go up – and not just on the “rich.” There simply are not enough of the “rich” to pay for this.

More importantly, there is the issue of who is contributing to our society, for what, and for how much. Hyperinflation will harm everyone. As we move towards the point that fewer American pay taxes, we come more towards the idea of democracy as ten wolves and one lamb deciding what do have for dinner: there will simply be no check on the power of the unpaying majority to ensure that they will never again have to contribute. Finally, the nature of our taxation – and the stimulus and bailout packages – are problematic. We are not paying just for things like defence, military, roads, and schools; we are paying the salaries of professional bureaucrats. Many of the federal programmes are things which should be done on a state or local level; the centralisation of power makes politicians less responsive to their constituency, is a less efficient way to spend money, and creates a situation in which it is more difficult to create solutions which are targeted towards state- or locality- specific problems.

Finally, you’re mistaken, Lesley, in your most basic assumption. Taxes on energy (through cap-and-trade), gasoline, cigarettes, and the like will affect Americans of all incomes. Many of the taxes proposed by the Obama and Patrick administrations are highly regressive, which hurt the working poor the most.

Lesley – if you can’t wait a few minutes for an answer without throwing a fit, then you need to head over to CVS for some Midol and Kotex. I would send you some, but the right-wing interest groups that funded my Tea Party don’t have a line item for your well-being.

Lady Grey said,

April 18, 2009 at 21:08

Also, no one has yet to address the issue of the fact that the media was obviously in the tank for a presidential candidate.

Sure, I’ll address that. Your so-called fact is horse manure. No one every got more undeserved corporate media love than Saint John McCain. David Broder and the rest of the WaPo bent over backwards to help him.

But his party had just spent 8 years raping this country, and John McCain himself had just completed a sell-out to the fringe lunatics who make up the GOOPer base.

So it was still President Obama in a landslide. Maybe you can move to Texas and secede with Governor Perry Good Hair.

Lady Grey, if I jump to your defense will you be my gurl-friend?

This begs the question: are red-headed blogger/blawgers your cup of tea?

I just got PWNED!

An astroturfed, pathetic attempt to imitate Progressive initiatives that is named after a particular sexual act… gee, now that’s irresistible!

People with no sense of humor even get it.

Hey, No to Appeasement, when your girlfriend said Lesley was on her period just now, was that some of the maturity the Left (lightning crashing) has been so sorely lacking?

Well Marlowe, we can’t all get off on hours and hours and hours of scrotum-based humor. Now THATS maturity!

As we move towards the point that fewer American pay taxes, we come more towards the idea of democracy as ten wolves and one lamb deciding what do have for dinner:

Nifty!

You slide easily from taxes = income taxes to taxes = all kinds of taxes in the same comment.

Where were the teabaggers when this was happening?

The Price of Loyalty by Ron Suskind:

As the meeting in Mr. Cheney’s office progressed, it became clear that the vice president was ready to weigh in on what the president should do to bolster the economy, and his standing with voters worried about the economy, as the second half of his term began. A package of tax proposals, led by a 50% cut in the individual tax on dividends, had been all but buried since Mr. O’Neill took his stand against it in early September…

After the midterms, though, Mr. O’Neill could sense a change inside the White House…Now Mr. Cheney mentioned them again, how altering the double taxation of dividends would provide some economic stimulus. Mr. O’Neill jumped in, arguing sharply that the government “is moving toward a fiscal crisis” and then pointing out “what rising deficits will mean to our economic and fiscal soundness.” Mr. Cheney cut him off. “Reagan proved deficits don’t matter,” he said.

Mr. O’Neill was speechless, hardly believing that Mr. Cheney — whom he and Mr. Greenspan had known since Dick was a kid — would say such a thing. Mr. Cheney moved to fill the void. “We won the midterms. This is our due.”

So the result of GW Bush’s deficits…caused in main by his tax cuts for the rich, is that we need more tax cuts for the rich?

Yet no one is pulling your strings, Lady Grey? It is to laugh.

As for the sexual act: could someone explain why your side uses this? Thinking through it logically, if we are doing the teabagging (gender of protestors aside), then the Left would be on the receiving end of the teabagging. Like in many situations, isn’t this a time when it’s better to give than to receive?

It’s more the fact that it took you SO GODDAMN LONG to realize what you were saying.

You’re ignoring three crucial things:
1. Decreasing some taxes (such as on capital investment) will often increase revenue, although not in the short term.
2. The scale of the debts in question and the reason for them: Bush’s 2005 deficits are much smaller than Obama’s, and were used to fund military operations (a fundamental role of government); Obama’s are much larger and are used for things that the federal government should not be involved with anyway.
3. It’s not just about deficits, but about how they can be paid off. Reagan ran a deficit, but the subsequent years showed an amazing growth in our economy which ultimately resulted in more money for the government. Obama’s plans are likely to harm the economy, could cause hyperinflation, and simply cannot be paid for by any means other than raising taxes.

Thinking through it logically

UR DOIN’ IT WRONG

Shorter troll: Also, no one has yet to address my pet issue!! Why? Why?”

Fox News’ Megyn Kelly actually SAID that Fox provided “promotion and P.R.” for the Teaparties – I guess she forgot you’re not supposed to say that on air.

Why don’t you actually answer her question about media bias rather spew the stale talking points, libs?

The troll’s self-pwnage is almost as funny as the whole “teabagging” thing.

“This begs the question: are red-headed blogger/blawgers your cup of tea?”
Well, my mother always warned me to have nothing to do with ethnics like the Irish, and Hibernians are known to have red hair, so I think that’s a little too close for comfort.

1) The right wing always insists their tax cuts will pay for themselves. Reagan’s tax cuts for the rich did not. Neither did G.W. Bush’s.

2) A disastrous war of choice in Iraq is not a fundamental role of our government. Instead, it is the opposite. In any case, funding for the war in Iraq was not counted in adding up the Bush deficits (although we still have to pay for them…remember, the war in Iraq was going to pay for itself, too).

2.b) Here’s a thing that Herbert Hoover proved: you don’t try to get conservative on the fiscal side after a huge asset bubble has burst.

3) Reagan ran a deficit, reignited inflation, and G.H.W.Bush paid for that problem in 1992. Under G.W. Bush, the biggest real estate bubble of all time grew and burst. Now we have to deal with it, along with the two wars he left us.

In sum, your standard GOP boiler plate ignores the actual history of what has happened under Presidents Reagan, GHW Bush, and GW Bush.

But the electorate has finally figured it out.

The only people getting “pwned” are the liberals that can’t answer Lady Grey’s points.

Don’t worry, liberals, it’s not to late to take Econ 101 again.

No to Appeasment: without logic, how should I respond to “g”? Why can’t I point out that you can’t do “promotion” for an event that hasn’t been planned? Why no mentions of the fact that a well-funded group doesn’t need Fox to promote and PR it?

That also blocks me from pointing out that the entire argument against me (i.e. based on Brad Marston’s ning site) says right in the website that there are “at least eight” different sites for the little Tea Party – a sure sign of decentralised planning if there ever was one. Logic also dictates that, as Marston commented on my website well after it had gotten underway, that he obviously wasn’t planning this thing. Oh, yeah, and that Corie, GOPMom, and I had all met each other before Marston came on to the scene.

A “no logic when fighting liberals” rule is like “don’t use Rid-a-bug to fight pests.”

More importantly, there is the issue of who is contributing to our society, for what, and for how much. Hyperinflation will harm everyone. As we move towards the point that fewer American pay taxes, we come more towards the idea of democracy as ten wolves and one lamb deciding what do have for dinner: there will simply be no check on the power of the unpaying majority to ensure that they will never again have to contribute. Finally, the nature of our taxation – and the stimulus and bailout packages – are problematic. We are not paying just for things like defence, military, roads, and schools; we are paying the salaries of professional bureaucrats. Many of the federal programmes are things which should be done on a state or local level; the centralisation of power makes politicians less responsive to their constituency, is a less efficient way to spend money, and creates a situation in which it is more difficult to create solutions which are targeted towards state- or locality- specific problems.

Man, this is so chock-full-of-nuttiness I’m not sure what to address first.

All economists agree that inflation isn’t a problem now, let alone hyperinflation.

So now fewer Americans being taxed is a BAD thing? The right certainly does turn on a dime!

Are you aware that the “federal programs” actually give stimulus funds to the very state and local agencies?

Your championing of state and local bureaucrats over those of the federal level is touching….but nutty. I fail to see why, if you hate feds, you would embrace the others.

I know I tuned into CNN several times during the presidential campaign, and often minutes would go by when no one mentioned BILL AYERS or REVEREND WRIGHT, so this means they were totally in the tank for Obama and they would not let Sarah be Sarah.

My pet issue is people who say something “begs the question” when they mean raises. Luckily I’m in a forgiving mood, because otherwise some weak-ass bergamot-scented tea sachets would be floating down the Charles. With frownie faces drawn on each one.

Lady Greymatter has to be a parody troll. either that or we’re witnessing the return of Annieangel and Shlimpy.

It’s a beautiful day. I’m outa here.

My pet issue is hitting on Lady Grey by bleating about libruls in a way that makes Gary Ruppert sound like Betrand Russell. I am so much more mature-er than the left; this is very clearly a high school crush and not a schoolboy crush.

…the media was obviously in the tank for a presidential candidate.

I call horsesh*t on this one, Lady Grieve. McCain invited the press to his Sedona house for bar-b-q, and gave Couric a swing. In return, when she interviewed him on CBS news, they edited out a particularly stupid answer and replace with something he said in another interview. Reporters made comments about how much they liked him. They ignored the drug charges on McCain’s wife, and repeated lies (she said “whitey”!) about Obama’s wife. By the way, I think Numbnuts has a crush on you. Let him down easy…or not.

g –

Economists agree that we are likely to see hyperinflation in a few years. Your group is the one who raises hell about a possible 1/2 of one degree increase in the Earth’s temperature in a century; you could at least muster up some feeling for a huge increase in interest rates in the next decade.

The problem with giving stimulus money to state and local agencies is that they do not have unbridled discretion in how to use it: most of it is dictated by the federal government, negotiated in back rooms, and shoved into a stimulus bill that no one had time to read. Furthermore, many of the strings attached to the money will remain long after the funds have all been used. Finally, why not let states decide what money they need and how to spend it, rather than having Nancy Pelosi make those decisions?

Sorry to be so late to the party.

*sniff*

Can you smell it?

When will you learn to not pick the lint out of your navel and sniff it?

Lady Grey at 21:51
…without logic, how should I respond …also blocks me…the entire argument against me…a sure sign…Logic also dictates that…

She’s a man, baby !!!

As for media bias: try this. Last time I checked, Pew Research is left-leaning group. Pray tell, then, why did they say that the media gave better coverage to Obama?

And also, this, said without apparent irony:
If hard-core right-wing interest groups are actually funding this, GOPMom, Corie, and myself would be thrilled to get paid for all of our work. I’m sure that our speakers, none of whom received an honourarium nor reimbursement for expenses, would also be happy to be paid for their efforts.

That’s their secret genius, Lady. They get you to do their work for free. Did people get paid? Yes. But those were the important people. The Dick Armeys and Newt Gingriches know they can get you to do the dirty work for free. You pwn yourself for their benefit.

Lady Grey at 22:05
…Last time I checked, Pew Research is left-leaning group….

Hah! Liar, you never checked!

…Pray tell, then,…

Hah! You’re such a crossdresser! Prithee, pray tell, then kind renaissance faire pansy, whither shouldst you deny, pointlessly, your astroturfiness, yet we maidens continue to present evidence of your collusion and obfuscatory oratory.

Much of the increased attention for McCain derived from actions by the senator himself, actions that, in the end, generated mostly negative assessments. In many ways, the arc of the media narrative during this phase of the 2008 general election might be best described as a drama in which John McCain has acted and Barack Obama has reacted.

Because there is a difference between “bias” and reporting the facts: in this case, the self-destruction of John McCain’s campaign following his decision to make Sarah Palin his V.P. nominee.

This is a better summary of campaign coverage.

Thinking through it logically, if we are doing the teabagging (gender of protestors aside), then the Left would be on the receiving end of the teabagging. Like in many situations, isn’t this a time when it’s better to give than to receive?

Except for all those protesters wearing teabags on their own heads and faces.

nice work, St. N.C.

Jennifer: you are inadvertently highlighting a huge and fundamental difference between conservatives and liberals: we volunteer. You don’t.

Conservatives earn slightly less than liberals but give more to charity. We even give more blood. As with this Tea Party, we do not need a group of professionals on the government dole to make it happen; we care enough about the issue to do it ourselves. Nor, unlike liberals, do we need to be directed via things like Obama’s plan for mandatory community service in order to do things which benefit our nation and home towns.

That, Jennifer, is also why we so insist on keeping the money we earn for ourselves: we will use it to do good in the world, and don’t need politicians – from Barack Obama to Newt Gingrich – to do good with our own money for us.

This is not the first comment on this thread which has expressed nothing but incredulity at the thought of actual selflessness (as opposed to the “generousity with other people’s money” brand practised by liberals); one of your cohorts, Lesley, asked why I should care if other people pay more in taxes.

Hahahaha. Pull the third one.

Let’s be real about the Sarah Palin issue: had the Left put up a mother of five governor who took on her own party, you would have made a Lifetime movie out of her.

As it stands, though, your side put forth lies faster than they could be debunked. Trig not her son? Complaining about the fact that Gov. Palin went back to her own doctor when close to labour? (I thought that the Left thought that we should let women and their doctors make these decisions.) The debunked lie about making victims pay for their rape kits? The lie about cutting the budget for the SO, when she increased it by at least 10%? Accusations of adultery?

The one good thing is that every time the Left pulls something like this, people start watching Fox and listening to Rush. Their ratings have done nothing but go up since the media firestorms have happened, and you’re just making it worse on yourselves by trashing tea-party attendees.

Sure, if by ‘doing good in the world’ you mean dropping bombs on it.

As for your alleged selflessness, under Reagan, Bush I, and especially Bush II, the rich got richer, and everyone else got poorer.

Frankly, most of us are sick and tired of the right wing shtick. But you keep playing it, the 2010 elections for Senate are going to be entertaining.

I predict the GOP finishes its steady decline into a Southern regional party of white people.

Hi, I’m Kenneth Lay.
Hi, I’m Randy Cunningham.
Hi, I’m Tom DeLay.
Hi, I’m Jack Abramoff.
Hi, I’m Bill Frist.

Tea euphemisms, redux: the Boston Tea Party was a historical event that happened in the late 18th century, from which the modern protests derive their name. When your kids come home from school telling you that they learned about the Boston Tea Party, do you make jokes about how our Founding Fathers were engaged in deviant sexual acts? Do you snicker to your 10-year-old and then tell him all about “teabagging”?

Any insult thrown at the name of the recent events will also tarnish the eponymous historical event. Is that really what you classy people are aiming for?

Psst, Lady, we’re different things.

Any insult thrown at the name of the recent events will also tarnish the eponymous historical event. Is that really what you classy people are aiming for?

Take notes, pay roadie trolls. This is how you do it.

How about some charity over here? My balls need shaving, and my shitbox needs tongue-jacking.

As for your alleged selflessness, under Reagan, Bush I, and especially Bush II, the rich got richer, and everyone else got poorer.

Proof, especially for the last part? If you mean by income disparity, perhaps, but you must necessarily ignore the fact that the standard of living has done nothing but get better in America, for all classes.

As I’ve often pointed out, the Left needs to harp on income inequality, because, in America, it’s really stupid to complain about the quality of life. Other countries laugh at what we call poverty – to be poor here is to live better than almost anywhere in the world. While it is a struggle to live paycheck-to-paycheck (which I’ve done), it’s a struggle with a standard of living that is unbelievable.

In case you liberals missed it, we have a problem with immigration because so many people in the world would happily risk their lives to be poor in America. If the plight of the lower classes were really so bad, Floridians would raft across the sea to Cuba, not the other way around.

The Boston Tea Party featured the dumping of loose tea into the Boston Harbor, to protest taxation without representation.

The pathetically ill-attended teabagger parties of 2009 featured the usual right wing operatives trying to gin up outrage about the high taxes paid by hard working John Galts such as Steve Forbes, not to mention their outrage about losing the 2008 elections.

Democracy. Right wingers hate it.

“In case you liberals missed it, we have a problem with immigration because so many people in the world talk funny.”
FTFY

Now, I’m off – food, fun, updating my site, etc. I’ll let No to Appeasement take over.

Oh, wait, one more: define “pathetically ill-attended.” Crowd estimates for the 800 tea parties nationwide range from a quarter-million (on a workday) to several million.

Lesley – if you can’t wait a few minutes for an answer without throwing a fit, then you need to head over to CVS for some Midol and Kotex. I would send you some, but the right-wing interest groups that funded my Tea Party don’t have a line item for your well-being.

Lady Grey, your sexist, ad hominem, totally unnecessary attack, qualifies as a fit. How uncharacteristic for a “lady.”

Aw, do I GOTS TA take over? No fair. Aw, well. Dancin’ with myse-elf…

Crowd estimates for the 800 tea parties nationwide…

There are often problems with crowds estimating themselves.

you are inadvertently highlighting a huge and fundamental difference between conservatives and liberals: we volunteer. You don’t.

There was nothing “inadvertently” highlighted. You are correct that there is a huge and fundamental difference between conservatives and liberals, but it’s not the difference you portray.

The real difference is that liberals do go out and volunteer for causes that serve both their own and the interests of people who are less well off. Conservatives on the other hand willingly sacrifice their free time, money, etc dutifully working towards ends that screw themselves, which they are fine with, so long as people who are worse off than they get screwed even harder.

That’s the “huge and fundamental difference” – it’s that you willingly screw yourself at the command of those who own you. We don’t.

Now, I’m off – food, fun, updating my site, etc.

Let’s take this apart, piece by piece:

– Person on the Internet claims to have a life, better things to do than arguing on said Internet, etc. I believe we’ve seen this before.
– Food: Jalapeno Cheetos and Mountain Dew Game Fuel.
– Fun: Let’s not go there…
– Updating my site: what part of “I don’t want to talk about wanking” don’t you understand?

Do I mean income disparity?

…the standard of living has done nothing but get better in America, for all classes.

Lady Grey, your talking points are seriously out of date. The right relentlessly wages class warfare on behalf of the wealthiest members of society, and then shrieks “class warfare!!11!” when anyone points out the obvious facts.

While total reported income in the United States increased almost 9 percent in 2005, the most recent year for which such data is available, average incomes for those in the bottom 90 percent dipped slightly compared with the year before, dropping $172, or 0.6 percent.

The gains went largely to the top 1 percent, whose incomes rose to an average of more than $1.1 million each, an increase of more than $139,000, or about 14 percent.

The new data also shows that the top 300,000 Americans collectively enjoyed almost as much income as the bottom 150 million Americans. Per person, the top group received 440 times as much as the average person in the bottom half earned, nearly doubling the gap from 1980.

So what do you think has happened to the standard of living since 2005, Lady Grey?

Any insult thrown at the name of the recent events will also tarnish the eponymous historical event.

A Fail that fails to reach Epic Fail status.

If the rich are so evil, why not tax them at 100% libs? Wouldn’t that fix all our problems using your logic?

Just STFU parody troll.

That, Jennifer, is also why we so insist on keeping the money we earn for ourselves: we will use it to do good in the world, and don’t need politicians – from Barack Obama to Newt Gingrich – to do good with our own money for us.

BS. Huge, ripe, stinking, BS.

You want to convince me about what a charitable saint you are? Great, name the causes you’ve been involved with “to do good in the world”. And, I mean actual things that “do good in the world”, not things like kvetching and bitching about rich people’s taxes going up by 3 stinking percent.

“you are inadvertently highlighting a huge and fundamental difference between conservatives and liberals: we volunteer. You don’t.”

Eat me, you stupid cunt.

As it stands, though, your side put forth lies faster than they could be debunked.

SN puts ’em forth as fast as Republicans dish ’em out, which is a feat.

If it’s hard to keep up, stop lying.

Proof, especially for the last part? If you mean by income disparity, perhaps, but you must necessarily ignore the fact that the standard of living has done nothing but get better in America, for all classes.

Yes, over the past 30 years, those of us in the bottom 98% have seen our standard of living – actual wages – rise an incredible 18%. The top two percent saw their income increase by 250% in that same time period.

Sounds totally fair to me! And I’m sure it has nothing at all to do with the economic mess we’re in now.

Johnny – Lady Gray isn’t a cunt.

She lacks both the warmth and the depth. Apologies to cunts everywhere are in order.

#

Lesley said,

April 18, 2009 at 21:27 (kill)

I just got PWNED!

I didn’t write this.

Lady Grey & trolls, at least have the decency to not impersonate people here.

Jennifer, you are correct. To cunts everywhere, and the people who love them, I am sorry.

“I didn’t write this. ”

Oh, I thought you wrote it as irony, to illustrate the depth to which you had -not- been ‘pwned.’

we will use it to do good in the world, and don’t need politicians – from Barack Obama to Newt Gingrich – to do good with our own money for us.

I agree about not needing Newt Gingrich. For anything.

Lesley: ROFLMAO.

Some of your pals think that Obama, as a black man, cannot be racist; ergo, as a woman, I cannot be sexist. 🙂

Second of all: it was not an ad hominem response; it was actually rather appropriate. You snitted at me for not answering your question, despite the fact that you were hardly the one person who merited a response. (This might be a tough concept if you think that the world revolves around you.)

More importantly, your fellow posters have been making crass comments about deviant sexual acts. That is okay with you, but it’s not okay to point out that your response was fueled purely by emotion. If I can read this b.s. about teabagging, you can read about a Kotex. Unless, of course, you’re too weak and fragile.

This is why the Republican party is still dying.

Good riddance, too.

I just want to take a moment to say that all you whining, crying right wingers bitching about how income taxes are undemocratic, well, you’re all wrong, you’re losers, you’ve got no power, you lost, and my side won.

I want there to be income taxes, I want the income taxes (etc) for the wealthiest to go up (and, no, I’m not talking about all the vain small businessmen with their bullshit little insta-mansions — sorry, you are not the real wealthy), I want even more government social programs.

For the last 30 years the right wing bitchers and moaners have gotten their way on every major argument, taxes and social programs included. And it led to the U.S. being buried under a giant pile of rotting shit.

But your 30 years are up. The U.S. isn’t run by Republican Dixiecrats no more. Your bullshit arguments about TAXATION = TYRANNY don’t hold, and you can get teabagged by as many people as you want and carry posters of Obama the Magic Kenyan with a Hitler mustache etc etc etc.

And you can cry and bitch and moan, and you’re going to lose, over and over and over and over.

You lost, you’re going to pay your taxes, and they’re going to go to government programs that you don’t like but that I do. Tough shit. If you don’t like it, feel free to protest if you like, and whine about it online and in the news media, but seriously, you need to either win elections or get the fuck out of the country.

Eat me, you stupid cunt.

Sorry, I’m a vegetarian.

According to Lady Grey, all of the teabagging protestors are in the 200K income bracket. (Above aways, she says/acknowledges people below this amount are getting a tax break.)

It saddens me that so many spelling-challenged people are earning this much money. What are they doing for a living now that subprime mortgage selling isn’t an option?

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/election_2009/virginia/election_2009_virginia_governor_election

The rumors of my death are greatly exaggerated.

PS – I did not impersonate Lesley. I’m sure that whomever runs this site can find the IP address of that commenter and compare against mine. When that happens, I do expect an apology.

“Sorry, I’m a vegetarian.”

I doubt it. From where I sit, I can smell you sweating gravy, sweetheart.

The rumors of my relevancy are greatly exaggerated.

Heh, you might want to read the link, numbnuts.

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/election_2009/virginia/election_2009_virginia_governor_election

Lesley: I never said that all of us were in that bracket; I know that I’m not. You liberals seem to have trouble with the concept of how conservatives don’t think that the AIG bailouts and the stimulus bills are legitimate, no matter who pays for them.

Furthermore, to those who asked what I do with my life that benefits others: I’m on the board of directors of a 501(c)(3) that helps with educational efforts in Africa, volunteer my time teaching at inner-city schools, and have given time and money to providing health care and resources for low-income pregnant women.

Another epic fail by the liberals.

I love it when Republicans announce they are leaving the thread to wash their hair and redecorate their web sites, but lurk instead.

The secret to convincing us you’ve left the thread is to not respond to comments past the time you’ve stated you’re leaving.

If you’re afraid that by leaving the thread you might miss the tomatoes hurled in the direction of your previous comments, you might want to behave a little more civilly yourself, “Lady” Grey.

Might want to read this one, too, before you pronounce me “dead”:

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/election_2009/new_jersey/election_2009_new_jersey_governor

Yeah, it sure sounds like a turnaround in Virginia. Five months from election day, the Republican has a 10 point lead in the polls. Wow!!!!!!111!1

Yes, a ten point lead in a “blue” state and an even bigger lead in bluer New Jersey.

Wake up and smell the coffee, it’s not October 2008 anymore.

Hey El Cid, here’s a song.

All You Republicans Bound To Lose!

This is good news for John McCain.

Lesley: I never said that all of us were in that bracket; I know that I’m not.

Bingo. So now explain why you would organize a protest against tax cuts that benefit you.

(After your Midol and Kotex slur, I’m swallowing bile to even respond to you at all. Note, it’s not me calling you the C word and I’m not going to lower myself to your level in any exchange with you.)

“”There are no good numbers for Gov. Jon Corzine in this poll, and since it was taken before his Draconian budget was released, his numbers could be even worse today,” Clay F. Richards, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute, said”

So, the assistant director of the polling firm characterized the Gov’s budget as Draconian? Fair and balanced!

Rasmussen is a respected and accurate pollster.

All the other polls show Republican leads in both VA and NJ, btw.

And in VA you’re nominating Terry MacAulliffe, lol!

By the way, Jennifer, still awaiting an apology (both for the “c-” remark and for the fact that I do, in fact, spend a good deal of my time helping out other people).

“Note, it’s not me calling you the C word”

No, that was me, and I already apologized to honest cunts everywhere. The comparison to Lady Gray was unfair.

“Rasmussen is a respected and accurate pollster.”

Rasmussen didn’t conduct the poll, Dr. Von Braun.

Shorter analogy lady grey:

Pol pot, WW2 japan, Medieval inquisitors tortured, so whats wrong with us doing the same?

PS – I did not impersonate Lesley. I’m sure that whomever runs this site can find the IP address of that commenter and compare against mine. When that happens, I do expect an apology.

That’s funny. As the victim of the offense, I expect an apology. But if you’re asking on my behalf, that’s fine.

I’d also like an apology for the Midol and Kotex slur.

Well, guess what?

Quinnipiac is left-leaning.

You’re waaaaay behind in both races, and in one of them you’re on track to nominate an utter moron and carpetbagger

and have given time and money to providing health care and resources for low-income pregnant women.

Speaking of EPIC FAIL, you’ve gotta be a special kind of stupid to give your time and money to helping low-income pregnant women and then turn around and vote for and support people who want to 1) make sure they work for low wages 2) make sure they have no access to health care once the baby arrives and 3) make sure they have no access to decent day care for that baby while they go out and work the lowly-paid minimum wage jobs you insist they must work so they don’t become a “welfare burden” on society. And that’s not even getting into the shitty schools you insist on for the child, to make sure it grows up to find itself in similar circumstances as its mother.

Lesley, you poor wilting flower, I’ve already explained it to you. That you don’t like the explanation does not mean that I’m bound to provide another one.

If you can be here – and read this “tea bag” stuff, see John call me a “c-“, and watch Jennifer tell him that I’m worse – you can handle a justified comment about your hyper-emotionality. The “choking back bile” comment just underscores it.

If you would like a more civil forum, then start with yourself and your friends. Clear?

“I’d also like an apology for the Midol and Kotex slur.”

See, that remark from Lady Gray makes me think she’s no lady at all. Generally, only men are all “you’re on teh rag, snurr snurr snurr.” I don’t know any women who go there when they’re trying to disrespect/dismiss another woman.

Lady Grey, you can’t claim the protest was about AIG et al bailouts. If it had been, liberals would have joined you in huge numbers.

“you’re on track to nominate an utter moron and carpetbagger”

Too bad you beat us to that in 2000, huh?

Johnny Coelacanth, neoconservative women aren’t generally supportive of women.

But you’re right that she’s no “lady.”

Keep making Bush jokes–it will be little comfort when you lose the executive branch in two “blue states and the resulting momentum we will get from the media because of it.

I rescue clown college dropouts, founded the non profit- TBA,
send my rice to those poor starving indians, write music for republican candidates (FU, Don Henley), think nice thoughts about things, HATE taxes, and do more than anybody especially liberals.

Also.

How does “Draconian” even apply to a budget? People shouldn’t use big words they don’t understand.

Quinnipiac is generally good, though. But I still don’t see how a couple unpopular Democratic governors (throw Paterson in too) changes the reality. In a two-party system, a crappy incumbent Dem typically hands the advantage to the Republicans by default.

But a quick glance at Nate Silver’s Senate race rankings shows how fucked you are. If we’re lucky, we’ll break 60 by a few seats, and we won’t even have to listen to useless dipshits like Ben Nelson.

Jennifer: it’s not an “epic fail,” and I suspect that’s what upsets you. First of all, the policies I vote for are not the ones that you portray them to be. Second of all, pro-choicers the world over ask why pro-lifers don’t do more to help out pregnant women. Well, I am, which is probably what pisses you off. Third, the policies which I vote for are the ones more likely to ensure that women aren’t in need of abortion, don’t live in low-income neighbourhoods, aren’t working in minimum-wage jobs, and are going to be better off than they would be on the government dole.

The only “epic fail” was your assumption that I don’t care about other people.

Lesley: what about the Kotex remark bothers you? Why are you bothered by that and not by the “tea bag” slurs? Is it only about who it is aimed at?

“Quinnipiac is generally good, though. But I still don’t see how a couple unpopular Democratic governors (throw Paterson in too) changes the reality.”

How about Virginia, home of DNC Chair Tim Kaine?

Senate races numbers are meaningless two years out.

I must say I’m very, very impressed by the -totally- grassroots Teabagging movement to get a total of, what, 2200 people to come out in Boston. Wow. What overwhelming support.

You know what was more popular a few years ago? Opposing the war:

“In Boston, Massachusetts 50,000 people attended the largest rally in the city since the end of the Vietnam War. Thousands of people blocked Boylston Street in a die-in along the Boston Common. A handful of arrests were made.”

Re antipathy toward the stimulus. Name one Republican governor who isn’t taking stimulus funds. Even Perry, who is threatening to secede, just accepted $17-billion in federal stimulus funds for Texas.

Additionally, Republicans can’t now pretend to care about how tax money is spent after George Bush literally “lost” tens of billions spent in Iraq. I’m not speaking of the wasteful spending that happened in Iraq – which is also highly problematic – but of the tens of billions of dollars that remain unaccounted for, money that was given to private contractors who did no work. Where were your protests then?

Lady Grey, you can’t claim the protest was about AIG et al bailouts. If it had been, liberals would have joined you in huge numbers.

Lesley, I organised the protest; I think I know what it was about. I’m also pretty sure that liberals not only joined us, but helped us to plan it.

If you looked at the “about” section on my website, I mentioned that. Then again, figuring out from us what we are protesting about is a lot harder than just listening to people who do your thinking for you.

As a NJ resident, a Republican governor of NJ would be somewhat to the left of the Blue Dogs; one of those RINO-types.

“Senate races numbers are meaningless two years out.”

As meaningless as governor’s races six months out, but do keep telling yourself that they mean your party’s coming back. All you have to do is keep pushing Limbaugh/Palin/Jindal and you’re sure to win.

“As meaningless as governor’s races six months out”

No. No they’re not.

If the Republicans manage to gain the governorship of the ultra-radical liberal state of Virginia, it clearly means we’re doomed, and Obama is doomed. And if New Jersey elects a Republican governor, Obama might as well resign, because that will be the equivalent of some sort of revolution. The Governor of New Jersey is, in fact, lawfully obligated to take over the White House if it’s a Republican Governor.

Sigh.

Lesley, Lesley, Lesley. We need a paradigm shift here. My entire point, all along, is that this isn’t about Republicans drumming up support for the Republican party; it’s a way for people who believe in fiscal responsibility to chastise both Republicans and Democrats who are not following that.

If you were to pay attention to conservative movements over the past several years, you would see that our displeasure with the things going on in Washington has been growing. Even if you had not, it should have been very clear. For example, George Bush had a 22% approval rating, which means that about 60% of the people who voted for him in 2004 did not approve of the job he was doing.

We’re ready to throw the Republicans out, too – that’s what happens in non-partisan movements.

Why do you persist on spreading lies?

“No. No they’re not.”

Stamp your feet louder, troll.

This is rich: ” … it’s a way for people who believe in fiscal responsibility to chastise both Republicans and Democrats who are not following that.

If you were to pay attention to conservative movements over the past several years, you would see that our displeasure with the things going on in Washington has been growing. ”

Yes, and when a Democrat won an election, then; then it was time to protest the irresponsible fiscal policies that brought us to this place.

Looking at the Republican slate, it doesn’t seem like they’ve got many big names lining up for the election, either. One former U.S. attorney, two mayors (one of whom, Lonegan, is insane), an assemblyperson and a self-described “businessman”.

I think a lot of the current polling is voters registering their dissatisfaction with Corzine’s austerity budget, rather than any real desire to put a Republican in power.

“If you were to pay attention to conservative movements over the past several years,”

… you would notice that we had Liberals at our big tea party, too, so nya nya nya!

Um, I’m confused on something here. For the first time in three decades, a Democrat won a majority (not a plurality) of the vote for the Presidency. This, apparently, means that the Republican party is doomed and will go the way of the Whigs. Explanation?

As for Virginia: it’s counter-cyclical. Since 1973, IIRC, the governor’s race (held the year after the Presidential race) has gone to the party that is not in the White House. Tim Kaine’s win – pro-death penalty, pro-life, low tax – is hardly an indicator that Old Dominion is going blue. Nor is the fact that the GOP will take it back an indicator of anything but Virginia’s constant state of buyer’s remorse.

Appeasement: why not cite Chris Dodd? Isn’t he getting creamed in fundraising or something?

“the current polling is voters registering their dissatisfaction with Corzine’s austerity budget, rather than any real desire to put a Republican in power.”

That was Rasmussen’s assessment of the situation, as well. They don’t seem to think it’s the big Republican Comeback, for some reason.

“pro-death penalty, pro-life” Sounds like a good Republican; oxymoronic.

Yes, and when a Democrat won an election, then; then it was time to protest the irresponsible fiscal policies that brought us to this place.

??? You all don’t make much sense.

Barack Obama ran on a platform of fiscal conservatism. He promised that every increase in spending would be offset by a decrease in another area. Her promised to go through the federal code, line by line, to eliminate waste. He promised to balance the budget every year. More importantly, Barack Obama did this after the financial crisis hit; it wasn’t as if he is acting differently in response to changing circumstances.

The first protest against spending policies was the 2006 elections. The second was in rejecting McCain (although I don’t think that was rational). The third, now that Obama is in and doing the same thing, is the Tea Parties.

That, however, is context and nuance, which talking points are not meant to handle. Think about what you are doing, stop playing mind-reader (i.e. telling us what we think, believe, and are protesting about), and then evaluate this movement on its merits.

Leave it to a liberal to not be able to tell the difference between a murdering rapist and an unborn child.

No, you’re not alone! I had the exact same reaction!

The merits. Ha.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/real_bostonian/sets/72157616871560884/

My entire point, all along, is that this isn’t about Republicans drumming up support for the Republican party; it’s a way for people who believe in fiscal responsibility to chastise both Republicans and Democrats who are not following that.

Name one Democrat (politician or non-politician) who was invited to speak at any Tea Party gathering. Name one progressive of any stripe (Green, Naderite, etc.) who was allowed to say his or her piece at any April 15 rally.

Leave it to a troll to not fucking shut up because nobody cares jesus fucking christ you cunt

every picture I saw showed a sea of pasty white gobs. I suppose Michelle Malkin attended one somewhere. Grassroots!

You ever pull up a blade of grass? What color is the root?

I rest my case, loony libs, badoodle-hoody-poo-yeah &c.

Lady Grey, you’re very articulate for a conservative. Brava.

“a Democrat won a majority (not a plurality) of the vote for the Presidency. This, apparently, means that the Republican party is doomed and will go the way of the Whigs. Explanation?”

Paradigm shift. Despite the fact that the opposition painted him as an unamerican, scary black socialist with a black radical for a wife, an inexperienced African-American candidate won the election by a wide margin. It was a repudiation of Bush and conservatism. You lost. Get over it.

Lady Grey at 23:19 Lesley, you poor wilting flower, I’ve already explained it to you.

She’s a man, baby !!! He really, really screams it out in every post. Maybe he’s not a man, but he’s definitely male. She’s not Lady Grey, she’s Mrs. Non-robinson, saying “There, I’ve run rings around you logically”.
There are screen captures of “FNC Tea Parties” and still denies that Fox was sponsoring the crap. This was not a success, so we’ll see if the July 4th shows will be better. I’m so looking forward to those sillinesses.

Lesley again:

That’s funny. As the victim of the offense, I expect an apology. But if you’re asking on my behalf, that’s fine.

That, too. I’m asking for two: one for you (as you shouldn’t be impersonated), and one from you, to me, for falsely accusing me.

Or peace, if you will

Lesley, I organised the protest; I think I know what it was about. I’m also pretty sure that liberals not only joined us, but helped us to plan it.

Pretty sure is the same as “not sure.”

Pretty sure = “I’ve got nothing, really, but since I’m backed into a corner, I think I’ll pull this rabbit of this hat in the hopes of fooling Lesley into thinking her peeps were milling with us.”

Then again, figuring out from us what we are protesting about is a lot harder than just listening to people who do your thinking for you.

I’m clear on what the overall protest was about; as are the huge majority of Americans, conservatives included, who did not participate. (The protest, even at a “crowd estimate” of half a million, is tiny.)

I’m asking you to explain why your own participation, given that:
a) you’ve acknowledged you are not in the affected income bracket for higher taxes
b) are going to benefit from an unprecedented tax cut/break
c) the overall theme had nothing to do with the bailouts
d) Most of the teabagger signs complained about higher taxes
e) Republican states welcome the stimulus funds
f) even the bricks you milled on were laid using tax dollars. As are roads, bridges, schools, hospitals, the military, and a whole host of other beneficial things that make society worth living in.

Name one Democrat (politician or non-politician) who was invited to speak at any Tea Party gathering.

We invited someone who was heavily involved in Hillary Clinton’s campaign.

Here is the list of speakers for the Boston event on Wednesday.

* Jim Stergios – Pioneer Institute
* Carla Howell – Libertarian
* Bob Hedlund – Senator, R-MA
* Michael Johns – Heritage Foundation
* David Tuerck – Beacon Hill Institute
* Chip Faulkner – Citizens for Limited Taxation
* Brad Marston – Conservative Solutions
* Barry Hinkley – Fair Tax
* Kris Mineau – Massachusetts Family Institute
* Paul Jehle – The Plymouth Rock Foundation
* Dale Graessle – Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights

I’m still searching for the list of speakers from the Tea Party events of 2002-2008.

Lesley: the “pretty sure” was sarcastic.

As to why I organised this and protested: it’s on my website. I’ve already explained the tax issue (ad infinitum, it feels like). Seriously, if all you have is to call me a “tea bagger,” miss obvious sarcasm, and refuse to read my responses, then I’m done with you.

Or if not Tea Parties, their equivalent pre-11/4/08 grassroots mobilizations to protest fiscal irresponsibility on the part of the federal government. Perhaps someone could help me out.

Actually, Les, in case it’s too hard for you to figure out, here’s the relevant, non-historical portion of my website’s “About” section:

The Boston Tea Party protested the taxation imposed on the colonies, the lack of representation in a remote and unresponsive government, and an instrusion into private commerce.

A government need not prohibit a certain man from going into business to ensure that he cannot be in it; nor it need grant a monopoly by law in order to create one. It does not need to prohibit members of a certain political party from gaining office in order to hinder their efforts.

The “stimulus” bill and TARP subsidise some favoured companies, banks, and people at the expense of those that the government does not take as kindly to. Any company whose cost of doing business decreases is given an advantage over its competitors, not on the basis of excellence or ingenuity, but on the basis of favourable government treatment – bought and paid for by its competitors and the American people. Less costly and more ingenious ideas, rather than pushing the American economy forward, will be sidelined as the government artificially lowers the cost and increases the resources given to more expensive and less effective business models, inventions, and ideas.

A well-meaning attempt to discount the cost of a mortgage blocks tax-paying renters from the homeownership market by giving their tax money to mortgagees and driving up the cost of housing.

Government funding to media outlets ensures that the marketplace of ideas will never flourish, but will be dominated by newspapers and TV shows that find favour with the current administration. Americans no longer have the option to boycott a particularly odious news source or business: their tax dollars force them to subscribe.

Against this, we protest.

Here is the list of speakers for the Boston event on Wednesday.

How non-partisan!

Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights

That group of morons must be getting into fights over corner offices and coffee stirrers on a daily basis.

That, too. I’m asking for two: one for you (as you shouldn’t be impersonated), and one from you, to me, for falsely accusing me.

It’s logical that I would assume you capable after you wrote “you need to head over to CVS for some Midol and Kotex.”

You lack the class of a “Lady.”

You have yet to apologize for that, btw.

“The protest, even at a “crowd estimate” of half a million, is tiny.”

Quoted for Truth. In 2003, in NYC, hundreds of thousands more people than that protested the war. At least that many people showed up to protest for immigration rights in Los Angeles in 2006. In the end, this was a tiny, tiny minority protesting the policies of a popular president, and blaming him for the failings of his predecessor. Keep it up; 2012 is going to be Great.

Lesley: the “pretty sure” was sarcastic.

A heads up: it’s never wise to go with a response that weakens your argument.

J,

Oh sure. Solid progressive, liberal-leaning groups and individuals. Each and everyone of them. Lady Grey’s definition of liberal Tea Bagging participants: People who might not strenuously oppose the legalization of the dreaded cannabis.

The Ayn Rand Center’s Tea Party resource page.

Right back at you, liberals!

You only blame the former President Bush and the Republicans for the war in Iraq. In 2006, Democrats took over Congress, promising to end the war in Iraq in six months. Congress, in fact, must continue to fund the army (and any wars) every two years. Yet, no one runs around complaining about how Speaker Pelosi is a warmonger, despite her role in all of this.

Rationale?

At least with us, we’ve been slowly building our protest of fiscal irresponsibility – we’ve voted people out, voted other people in, and, when that didn’t change anything, protested. Your position the war makes less sense.

Lady Grey at 23:46 “Barack Obama ran on a platform of fiscal conservatism… He promised to balance the budget every year…”

I call horsesh*t on this, I demand proof from this obvious liar.

As far as Obama unveiling the puppy to upstage the Tea Parties, either he’s the greatest political operator in the last fifty years, or the wingtards are the lamest dumbasses who only represent their secret plutocrat overlords.

A tiny, tiny minority, kicking their heels against the ground and whining that we shouldn’t blame them for the mess this country’s in, because some Democrats won an election two years ago.

“You liberals seem to have trouble with the concept of how conservatives don’t think that the AIG bailouts and the stimulus bills are legitimate, no matter who pays for them.”

I have trouble with the concept that nobody was running through the streets telling us all how illegitimate all this reckless spending and bailouts was when Bush was signing similar things through.

I have trouble with the concept that many conservatives were telling us that the economy was doing fine and this was only a minor trouble on the horizon, up until one Barack Hussein Obama was inaugurated, whereupon these same people looked at each other and suddenly realised that prospects might just be, possibly, a bit shitty.

I have trouble with the concept that someone professes to care about hyperinflation as a pressing issue that will be ruinous to the lives of many ordinary people – an issue I have seen rarely, if at all, mentioned by any credible economist, because the credit crunch has sod all to do with inflation, and because no First World nation has suffered from hyperinflation since Germany in the 1920s, because hyperinflation only happens to states which have completely lost all political authority or are wracked by civil war, neither of which seem likely to happen to the United States, barring unforseen circumstances – but doesn’t seem to realise that the collapse of the global financial system, and/or many of its largest actors is just as ruinous to the welfare of ordinary folk, even if the steps to prevent that are unpalatable, for both sides of the ideological divide.

I have trouble with the concept that someone can complain that a majority “aren’t paying their way” in taxes, then complain about how new regressive taxation will shift the tax burden unfavourably on the working poor – the very same people she said weren’t paying their way (if one excludes everything but income taxes, of course).

I have trouble with the concept that you are arguing in good faith, especially when a hell of a lot of these tea party folk are hurling whatever epithet or conspiracy theory they can at the president, no matter how ridiculous it is.

I think there’s a lot to be angry about in general. But a lot of the tea party folk are indulging in conspiratorial fantasies which only serve to marginalise them from the public debate on a number of very serious issues because their policy prescriptions add up to:

a) remove the marxist fascist illegitimate traitor President.
b) tax cuts.

neither of which seem remotely at the scale that is necessary to pull the world out of recession.

But then, I’m not a liberal.

The fact is, as even Gary Ruppert – highly esteemed resident conservative – would say, the teabagging protest wasn’t about higher taxes (since the vast majority of participants aren’t in the affected tax bracket ); nor the stimulus (because Republican governors welcome the stimulus money ) ; nor the bailouts of finance (since many Republicans have defended executives receiving bonuses and most of the signs at the protest didn’t mention finance at all)… The teabagging was a post election sore loser demonstration that coincidentally served to defend the lower taxation of wealthy Republicans who, for the most part, didn’t attend these pathetic events but championed them from the sidelines on Fox.

You only blame the former President Bush and the Republicans for the war in Iraq.

Dude only started the damn thing, after all.

Lesley: this is painful.

Let’s be clear: the “pretty sure” was a sarcastic understatement. That should be obvious, but you’re pretty good at missing things like that.

Now, as for your fit about the Kotex comment: you started it, sweetie. You asked me a question, and, when I was typing up my response, snottily asked why you had not gotten an answer yet. So yes, you got a snotty answer in return. Don’t like it? Don’t be a snot in the first place.

Also, you’ve repeatedly referred to my event as a “teabagging party” (and variants thereof). You then think that you’re a lady worthy of an apology for a substantially more mild (and deserved) PMS joke? You think that Jennifer, who said that I’m worse than a “c-“, is somehow better than I am, when the worst I’ve done is to point out that you’re overly emotional? Cry me a river.

I’m betting that most of the attendees were persuaded (by their preferred media) to believe that their taxes are going up, which they aren’t.

I’m confident in saying this because an overwhelming number of protest signs contained factual errors as well as spelling errors; a sign of mass haplessness and general incompetence.

would say, the teabagging protest

Tea Party, you PMSing moron.

STOP BLAMING CAPITALISM FOR THE FAILURES OF GOVERNMENT.

Tea Party, you PMSing moron.

Sure, teabagger, sure.

I don’t care for the bailouts, which of course Bush Jr’s Hank Paulson started, but I think I might have liked even less a complete collapse of our banking and financial systems.

But I’m one of those liberal weirdos who thought watching the “Mad Max” movies was enough, and I have no interest in living those, much less the wonders of the last Republican Great Depression.

My taxes went down this year. I really like the Obama tax cut.

“Tea Party, you PMSing moron”

Ha ha! Lady Gray, perhaps you need an herbal infusion to help calm your nerves. Just teabag away until your cares are all gone.

Tea Party, you PMSing moron.

Both “tea party” and “tea bagging” have been used by the right. Indeed, if one googles the phrase “tea bag obama”, one gets a lot of (unintentionally hilarious) blog posts and merchandise.

It’s not our fault if some of you guys didn’t check urban dictionary first.

I rebutted your claim regarding the standard of living, L.G.

…the standard of living has done nothing but get better in America, for all classes.

While total reported income in the United States increased almost 9 percent in 2005, the most recent year for which such data is available, average incomes for those in the bottom 90 percent dipped slightly compared with the year before, dropping $172, or 0.6 percent.

The gains went largely to the top 1 percent, whose incomes rose to an average of more than $1.1 million each, an increase of more than $139,000, or about 14 percent.

The new data also shows that the top 300,000 Americans collectively enjoyed almost as much income as the bottom 150 million Americans. Per person, the top group received 440 times as much as the average person in the bottom half earned, nearly doubling the gap from 1980.

You have yet to answer my question:

What do you think has happened to the standard of living since 2005, Lady Grey?

Terrorists teabagged my rally!

You think that Jennifer, who said that I’m worse than a “c-”, is somehow better than I am

I said no such thing. I emphatically stated the following:

Lady Gray isn’t a cunt.

She lacks both the warmth and the depth.

I guess you could construe that as ‘worse than’ if you believe that warmth and depth are positive attributes, but I certainly never said that you are “worse than a “c-“” as you so delicately abbreviated it.

From Lady Teabagger’s site: “one of Obama’s blind spots: his lack of understanding of the conservative position, after having spent his entire life among radical liberals. From his perspective, his agenda is moderate, and his mode of governing is bipartisan.”

Obama just don’t understand about -our- perspective; it’s scary ooga-booga socialism!

I have to wonder: why do liberals like Lesley think of nothing but “tea bagging” in the sexual sense?

We think of tea parties with Earl Grey and historical allusions; you all think of oral sex. A Rorschach test?

Why the fixation? Why can’t Lesley and Jennifer go through a single post about protests for limited government without thinking of male genitalia?

Let us remember the words of noted conservative Gil Scott-Heron.

Lesley: this is painful. Let’s be clear: the “pretty sure” was a sarcastic understatement. That should be obvious, but you’re pretty good at missing things like that.

It’d be easier for you to claim you hadn’t meant to be sarcastic. “Pretty sure” by itself, is not sarcasm; but leaving that aside, whether it was or wasn’t in your mind, it didn’t serve you to employ “pretty sure.”

You claimed liberals attended. This was something new that you introduced. It would serve you to be sure they attended, not “pretty sure” since you were asked to account for their attendance.

You’re “pretty much” a failure at conveying sarcasm and honesty and I’m not being sarcastic when I say that.

Kris Mineau of the Massachusetts Family Institute spoke at the event. The FMI focuses on the following issues:

* Gambling
* Parents Rights and Education
* Marriage and Family
* Human Life and Bioethics
* Human Sexuality
* Internet Safety
* Pornography
* Religious Freedom
* Other Issues

Where to put teabagging? Take your pick. I guess federal fiscal policy falls under Other Issues.

Just as I suspected, her Ladyship came up empty when asked to name a single progressive/liberal/leftist speaker at any Tea Bagger event.

Oh, and in case you’re still lurking, LG: Tea Bagger! Tea Bagger! Tea Bagging! Tea Bagging!

Sorry, make that MFI, not FMI. The FMI certainly does know about fiscal policy. In Spanish.

Mrrmph wh cnt tlk wth ths blls n m mth

Why the fixation? Why can’t Lesley and Jennifer go through a single post about protests for limited government without thinking of male genitalia?

I can’t speak for them but as far as I’m concerned, PENIS is much more interesting than anything you’ve had to say.

By the way, heres a tip for ya: this is not a post “about protests for limted government.” This is a post about making fun of people who think it’s a post about protests or some such inanity. FAIL.

I have to wonder: why do liberals like Lesley think of nothing but “tea bagging” in the sexual sense?

Nowhere in this thread have I mentioned the “sexual sense” but since Lady Grey brings it up – why does she do this to herself – the verb “teabagging” has only one definition (which is why its use by the protesters has been mocked by all the networks.)

YOUR PUBLiC SERVENTS

STOP TOLLS & PENSIONS (WTF?)

I em aginst public rulers yu shuld keep al yor mezurmints privit.

YOUR PUBLiC SERVENTS

And as they put tea in little baggies in the late 18th century, so did they write the word servants back then.

Respect for the Boston merchant smugglers of the 1770s!

Just as I suspected, her Ladyship came up empty when asked to name a single progressive/liberal/leftist speaker at any Tea Bagger event.

She was too busy being sarcastic.

Somebody is tired of driving—or paying for driving—the Mass Turnpike, I guess. Pensions, who knows.

That was good, RB. If only they had forgotten the Ls on that sign. That would have been pure win.

Btw, Lady Grey, plenty of conservatives used “teabag” as a verb, eg. “We’re gonna teabag Washington tomorrow.”

Shouldn’t you be going after them?

Hey, it looks like Gil Scott Heron was there. This changes everything!

Why can’t Lesley and Jennifer go through a single post about protests for limited government without thinking of male genitalia?

I can’t speak on Lesley’s behalf, but you are welcome to cut and paste any comment I’ve made on this thread in which I have in any way referred to male genitalia.

That having been said, I have and will continue to engage in juvenile sniggering over the right’s teabagging. Why? Because it’s fucking funny, that’s why. It’s funny as shit to see a bunch of brainless lemmings declaring themselves teabaggers (it happened, you can look it up) without a clue of the double entendre. It’s even fucking funnier that they adopted a word so apropos, though to be technical, it’s not the protestors who were doing the teabagging – the protestors were the teabaggees, as have they always been, holding their mouths agape like baby birds, waiting for another dunk of the rich man’s testes and thanking him for the honor.

It’s funny. If you don’t get it, it’s not because it isn’t funny – it’s because your sense of humor is impaired. Then again, we already knew that – you’re a rightwinger.

Now, as for your fit about the Kotex comment: you started it, sweetie.

Yet more self-pwnage.

Countdown to the person who made this childish, pathetic comment issuing yet another lecture on maturity, class and etiquette…5…4…3…2…

This one works any time any place.

From a aign RB linked above: “Individual rights are not subject to a public vote.”

I guess marriage isn’t an individual right so that’s okay with them.

The president’s a fag. Ha ha!

I have to wonder: why do liberals like Lesley think of nothing but “tea bagging” in the sexual sense?

This statement has so much to admire.

Congress is unconsitutional. The founders only empowered Congref, not Congress. Stupid libz.

If there were a course in how to think and write like Lady Grey I wouldn’t be able to pass it.

the scene would be something like the husband in an apron holding a fondue pot, and the wife in a shower cap leaning out of the bathroom in a cloud of steam — and the caption is something like, “Cripes, is that Godot already?

Actually that’d be kind of funny. Certainly it has that New Yorker feel to it…

Lessee, seven posts on the Tea Parties, events that supposedly are as artificial as saccharin, as insignificant as navel lint, as meaningless as static.

And it smells delicious.

Actually, it’s best described as ‘low hanging fruit’.

Oh, for heaven’s sake. Lesley, here is the quote in question:

Lesley, I organised the protest; I think I know what it was about. I’m also pretty sure that liberals not only joined us, but helped us to plan it.

Notice the parallelism between “I think I know what it was about…” and “also pretty sure.” Classic textual interpretation: read similar provisions in a similar manner. The first is obvious: of course I know what my own protest was about. The second, therefore, would be read in light of that: “pretty sure” is analogous to “I think,” and is therefore a sarcastic understatement.

Maybe this doesn’t make sense if you spend all of your time looking at something like a “Tea Party” and making it into something sexual. Heaven only knows what you do when your little four-year-old girls take their dolls and bears and fill fake tea cups with water.

With that, I’m done with this – you can all have your liberal echo chamber back.

Actually, it’s best described as ‘low hanging fruit’.

There you go with the sexual connotations again.

This pleased and happy fellow seems to have teabagging on his mind.

Is it possible to describe Tea Bagging events as “low hanging fruit” without breaking some juvenile humor barrier at SN?

Shorter Lady Teabagger: “I’m pretty smart for an ignorant, conservative fuckstick.”

With that, I’m done with this

You have to declare victory. Then you’re done.

I’m also pretty sure that liberals not only joined us, but helped us to plan it.

If it is indeed the case, my hat is off to them. Did they encourage you to make signs that were misspelled? Sings that made no sense? Signs that were full of bigotry and hatred? Or did you come up with those on your own? If there were libs helping, you’ve been had bitch, in a major way.

PENIS. Also.

I think Godwin was very slightly off. It’s not an essentially 100% chance of Hitler, it’s a 100% chance of “I care less about this comment thread debate/struggle for self-worth than you do”.

An evil servant of Satan.

With that, I’m done with this – you can all have your liberal echo chamber back.

Until the next time you decide to delurk. That should be about 5 or 10 minutes from now.

So when are we going to organize the Tang counter-protests?

Hey, it’s lively in here this evening.

Hey, it’s lively in here this evening.

I know. We leave the house for a few hours to buy a baby cage, and look what happens?

I feel as though I’m somehow responsible for some of this disunion.

I blame the baby.

Baby cage? Do you mean a garage?

I am aware of all internet traditions, yet teabagging isn’t on there.

It’s a baby cage for baby cage fighting, obviously.

TWO BABIES ENTER
ONE BABY LEAVES

Predictable but cute teabagger pics.

Yes, Gavin, you falsely and maliciously published facts about the organizers of the Boston Tea Party.
Then Lady Grey took some stuff I said about the NYC gig and totally proved that the NYC gig didn’t happen in Boston.
I think, I haven’t caught up since I went out to enjoy the day.

Heaven only knows what you do when your little four-year-old girls take their dolls and bears and fill fake tea cups with water.

Lady Grey pulls out her boomerang thinking it’s a knife, and FAILS YET AGAIN.

I don’t organize protests and call them “teabagging” events.

I certainly wouldn’t take my kids, if I had any, to a protest of idiots holding sexually suggestive signage, like this asshole, someone you admire so much you took his picture and posted it on your flickr page. DUMBASS.

Suggesting I’m a pedophile is slander. And further, anyone who could suggest I’m a pedophile is capable of anything, including impersonating me.

You keep promising to leave, so do that will you BITCH?

Go wash your hag hair and be thankful we’re not face to face.

This statement is the truth! This little gem even has a moral. Some people say this and others say that so I believe those things that feed my fears.

Oh and by the way, these two thing added together equal twice what their values would indicate. Yes, that is the way it is.

Ta…

So when are we going to organize the Tang counter-protests?

Fourth of July.

Baby cage? Do you mean a garage?

I thought they meant a crate. But, I kind of like N.C.’s idea.

I wish now I’d referred to the Lady Grey as a cunt right from the start. My civility was clearly wasted. She IS a cunt.

This is awesome:

In front of photographers, Chavez gave Obama a copy of “The Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent,” a book by Eduardo Galeano that chronicles U.S. and European economic and political interference in the region.

I’m willing to give a very small probability that Obama will actually read it.

This too is awesome. Maybe awesomer.

Sales Soar of Book Chavez Gave Obama

April 18, 2009 4:49 PM | ABC News | Political Punch

Just after Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez gave President Obama a present this morning of a book that criticizes the role of the United States in Latin America — “Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent” by Uruguayan author Eduardo Galeano — its Amazon sales rank was No. 54,295.

Just a few minutes ago it was No. 20.

– Jake Tapper and Sunlen Miller

UPDATE: At 4:54 pm EDT – rank is #17.

UPDATE: At 5:42 pm EST – rank is #14.

Holy mackerel. I never thought anyone would be reading that book these days. Just awesome.

We leave the house for a few hours to buy a baby cage, and look what happens?

It was Godot, and all the friends he brought with him.

“Cripes, is that Godot already?” reminded me of a cartoon I did in art class, of the Disneyland Castle, mMckey and Minnie and various Disney characters peeking out the windows, and a man standing outside scratching his head in bafflement. It was titled “The Castle”. I never got further than one-third of the way before getting a headache. Guess I’ll never know how it turns out.

(Art teacher gave me a C)

It is a lively thread.

Lady Grey, if you’re still here and that IS your real name, you seem to me to be a fairly intelligent, articulate, decent person, KOTEX and cunts back-and-forths aside.

I just don’t get your politics. I’m having the same troubles as Freshly Squeezed Cynic, probably because I’m only liberal about a few things, too. (I don’t trust authority in general.) Anyway, this was well said:

I have trouble with the concept that nobody was running through the streets telling us all how illegitimate all this reckless spending and bailouts was when Bush was signing similar things through.

I have trouble with the concept that many conservatives were telling us that the economy was doing fine and this was only a minor trouble on the horizon, up until one Barack Hussein Obama was inaugurated, whereupon these same people looked at each other and suddenly realised that prospects might just be, possibly, a bit shitty.

I have trouble with the concept that someone professes to care about hyperinflation as a pressing issue that will be ruinous to the lives of many ordinary people – an issue I have seen rarely, if at all, mentioned by any credible economist, because the credit crunch has sod all to do with inflation, and because no First World nation has suffered from hyperinflation since Germany in the 1920s, because hyperinflation only happens to states which have completely lost all political authority or are wracked by civil war, neither of which seem likely to happen to the United States, barring unforseen circumstances – but doesn’t seem to realise that the collapse of the global financial system, and/or many of its largest actors is just as ruinous to the welfare of ordinary folk, even if the steps to prevent that are unpalatable, for both sides of the ideological divide.

I have trouble with the concept that someone can complain that a majority “aren’t paying their way” in taxes, then complain about how new regressive taxation will shift the tax burden unfavourably on the working poor – the very same people she said weren’t paying their way (if one excludes everything but income taxes, of course).

I have trouble with the concept that you are arguing in good faith, especially when a hell of a lot of these tea party folk are hurling whatever epithet or conspiracy theory they can at the president, no matter how ridiculous it is.

I think there’s a lot to be angry about in general. But a lot of the tea party folk are indulging in conspiratorial fantasies which only serve to marginalise them from the public debate on a number of very serious issues because their policy prescriptions add up to:

a) remove the marxist fascist illegitimate traitor President.
b) tax cuts.

Like most people at least here in the good old USofA, I’m not fond of taxes, but unlike doctrinaire Republican thought, I take them as a necessary evil, and enjoy many of the benefits they give me. The data over the past 30 years is pretty clear on the wealth gap growing larger. So what drives me nuts is my tax dollars going to people who use it pay their landscaping nut on their vacation home, or upkeep on the Ferrari I perceive my tax dollars over the past 8 years benefitting the few, not the many, which I think is backwards.

And if you read here, you’ll see that I’m not exactly a big fan of the bailouts, too.

And judging by the last election, where an inexperienced black guy named Barack Hussein Obama actually won, well, just how much of the country had to overcome their natural disinclination for change, how positively fucked up did most Americans see things, for that to happen?

Clinton, a Democrat IIRC, left Bush extra money, which he quickly handed over to those who needed it least. The results are in. And both parties love of being teabagged by their moneyed interests when it came to regulation of the fancy new fake-wealth financial instruments didn’t help.

I appreciate protests, but yours, as well-intended as it may have been, was hijacked by FOX “News,” and populated with too many bad spellers, racists and obviously not very bright people to make me do anything but laugh.

So I urge you to carry on!

I’m willing to give a very small probability that Obama will actually read it.

If he does, he’s going to have to go out and get another copy. Chávez gave it to him in Spanish.

El Cid thinks we’re “awesome”.

Our political prisoners and murdered opponents, not so much!

Lady Grey, if you’re still here and that IS your real name, you seem to me to be a fairly intelligent, articulate, decent person

Clearly John O hasn’t read her comments.

All any troll has to do to receive the benefit of the doubt is use “Lady” in his nickname.

All any troll has to do to receive the benefit of the doubt is use “Lady” in his nickname.

Just to be clear, when I said she was articulate, I was just trying to be a head-patting, condescending dickweed.

Lesley, I didn’t go all the way through. 🙂

But she (?) did spell better than a lot of the teabaggers I saw in the pictures!

Jeebus. Has that fucking cunt shoved off yet?

Oh, sorry. I apologize to cunts the world over. Lady Grey doesn’t have the warmth or depth to be considered a cunt. (BTW – whoever brought this to our attention, I thank you.)

I’m not caught up yet, but Lady Grey is an organizer of the event, and there was some point of controversy about corporate funding, yes?

I guess I was unduly impressed with her description of her own life’s work.

Figured she couldn’t be that bad, and as a veteran victim of gross overgeneralized evisceration over at Pandagon, I’m perhaps a bit sensitive to assuming I know the worth and decency of a human being from a few words on a screen on a relatively narrow topic.

Color me soft.

Eduardo Galeano wrote the book while he was being pursued by right wing, U.S.-propped up dictatorships in 3 countries.

Hugo Chavez, on the other hand, is an elected President. Just like Salvador Allende was elected President of Chile and Jacobo Arbenz was elected to head Guatemala. The reason the right hates Chavez so much as that the coup attempt against Chavez failed, unlike the other two.

But then, the right should be used to losing these days, both in Latin America and the U.S.

Yes, Gavin, she was a Boston organizer, and took great offense at the idea it was not a grassroots effort.

Tell me, El Cid, do you also think Howard Zinn is the best historian EVAR?

I’m guessing “yes”.

Is there any problem in the world that is NOT the fault of the United States according to you and your fellow travelers?

You’ll notice Lady Grey makes no mention of Whalen’s affiliation with the College Republicans.

Is there any problem in the world that is NOT the fault of the United States according to you and your fellow travelers?

I’m pretty sure we weren’t responsible for the extinction of the dinosaurs, but you should double-check that with the Creationists.

Leftist Dictators said,

El Cid thinks we’re “awesome”. Our political prisoners and murdered opponents, not so much!

Oh, the, irony!

Is there any problem in the world that is NOT the fault of the United States according to you and your fellow travelers?

Such a cute little Straw Man! I love his gingham overalls!

I’m guessing “yes”.

Then why do you fucking ask? Shove off, troll.

and let’s not forget… turns out, he was.

Every #1 Superpower in the history of the world has blown it for themselves, sooner or later.

This probably has something to do with a widespread perception held by the ruled that the ruler has a lot to do with their problems.

Are we the fault of everything? Nah, that’s just stupid.

But with great power comes great responsibility. Bush didn’t exercise it worth a shit.

You know, I thought after the coast-to-coast teabagging, the fun quotient would ramp down for a bit. I’m pleasantly surprised to see that now, wingnut howls of outrage over using the terminology they themselves coined to describe their teabagging events will continue the fun until some yet unknown point in the future.

And the irony of it all – the rugged individualist Galts who need no “socialist” help, now wailing about how we should have stepped in and saved them from making even bigger asses of themselves.

Is there any problem in the world that is NOT the fault of the United States according to you and your fellow travelers?

Is there any problem in this comment thread that is NOT the fault of some baiting uninterested-in-meaningful-dialogue neoconservative troll?

Lady Grey has either scampered back to her maggot-infested lair or she’s changed up her nickname.

Yes, Gavin, she was a Boston organizer, and took great offense at the idea it was not a grassroots effort.

So… she’s thinking she would have had the same turnout if FoxNews hadn’t been actively promoting the events, then? Ummm hmmm.

Notice, with leftists, how it always comes back to George W. Bush, no matter how ridiculous the moral “equivalence”.

Just as libs can”t tell the difference between a convicted murderer and an innocent unborn child, they can’t tell the difference between a radical Islamist terrorist and Cuban/Venezuelan democracy activists.

I sure hope not, LDMM.

That’s one of the funniest things about it. Even the high estimates are pretty pathetic measured against recent protests.

Dave, just who are you talking to?

Only 2,200 turned out in Boston, apparently. For a corporate-sponsored, Fox advertised event this should represent a massive failure and further evidence that Republicans are has-beens.

Gavin started it. He called us all “whelps.”

I like me some whelps. Puppies are always cute.

Is that teabagging cunt still around?

Is there any problem in the world that is NOT the fault of the United States according to you and your fellow travelers?

Is there any problem in the world that cannot be solved with taxcuts on the richest 1% according to idiot teabaggers and the other assorted tools, flotsam, jetsam, and wastes of air that make up the repig party?

Since Simba and others think I’m Troofie (actually, I’m “goober” if anyone remembers) I’ll just play along:

OK, HERE’S HOW IT’S GONNA GO DOWN: THIS TEA PARTY THING IS GONNA CATCH ON AND THE NUMBERS WILL BE A MILLION OR MORE. REPUBLICANS WILL MAKE MAJOR GAINS IN 2010, PERHAPS NOT A MAJORITY BUT WILL BASICALLY EVEN THINGS UP. MANY CONGRESSIONAL DEMOCRATS WILL TURN ON OBAMA, RESULTING IN HIS IMPEACHMENT OR HIS DEFEAT IN 2012. REPUBS WILL GAIN CLEAR MAJORITIES IN BOTH HOUSES IN 2012, PLUS THE PRESIDENCY. AND ALL YOU LIBTARDS WILL BE LEFT TO WONDER, “WHERE DID WE GO WRONG?”

BOOKMARK IT, LIBS.

THIS TEA PARTY THING IS GONNA CATCH ON

I would cut my losses and concentrate on turning them into teabagging parties. At least you repigs that are living closeted lives of secret misery can come out and give your fellow deluded tools some sexual enjoyment.

Is there any problem in the world that cannot be solved with taxcuts on the richest 1% and bombing whoever the bad-guy of the week happens to be?

There, fixed it for you.

Yes, Gavin, she was a Boston organizer, and took great offense at the idea it was not a grassroots effort.

Well, but it wasn’t a grassroots effort. That’s what these organizers are supposed to say, but as soon as a political party or a lobbying organization is involved, calling something ‘grassroots’ means deceiving people though one means or another.

I mean, if ‘grassroots’ includes 501(c) foundations and Republican activists, then why go to so much trouble to conceal those relationships?

Gavin gets round Tuits.

I never get a round Tuit!

Gavin gets round Tuits.

And baby cages!!!

BTW, Obama just threw away any chance he has to win Florida in 2012 today by buddying up to the Castro Bros. and Chavez.

Thanks for those 27 EVs, Hopey!

Just as libs can”t tell the difference between [a fully grown human] and [a fetus].

You’d have to be stupid, wouldn’t you. Almost as stupid as a person who can’t distinguish verbs from nouns. (See teabagging.)

Republicans excel at double standards. The fetus is sacrosanct. Babies, children, and adult humans are not. Republicans reserve the right to torture, maim and kill all independently living humans at their whim, with no accountability or consequence. Some advocate the wholesale slaughter of Muslims and liberals – babies, women, children, the elderly. None of these hold any value.

Thanks for those 27 EVs, Hopey!

In contrast to repigs like El Chimpo who had a political office in the White House run by Rove dictating all decisions, sometimes Democrats do things because it is the right thing to do, and not just a political act to get more votes.

so no one bothered to Google teabagging, before they came up with this foolishness?

BTW, Obama just threw away any chance he has to win Florida in 2012 today by buddying up to the Castro Bros. and Chavez.

Thanks for those 27 EVs, Hopey!

Right, because a group of bitter, senile farts in a far corner of the state who cannot let go of events of a half-century ago speak for THE ENTIRE STATE OF FLORIDA.

Moron.

I’d really like to see Obama be defeated by barely losing Florida.

The liberal whining for the four years after that would be so sweet to hear!

The fetus is sacrosanct. Babies, children, and adult humans are not

Don’t forget all the pregnant Iraqi women who died as a direct result of El Chimpo.

Only white and preferably rich fetuses matter to the repigs – and then only as a political wedge issue. All the repigs really, really care about is getting more money into their pockets with taxcuts on the top 1%

Even better if it were Jeb Bush that defeated him. Which might just happen!

The teabaggers should be embarrassed by the low turnout. Two thousand people? Feh. Porta-potties at Coachella will see higher numbers. Again, inflated estimates say a half-a-million might have protested. U.S. Population = 300,000,000 so, 500 000 / 300 000 000 = 0.00166666667. There’s your grassroots movement, folks; 1.6 thousands of a percent of the population.

Dave, you’re a moron, I’m pretty sure. Predicting the future, especially that far out, is a fool’s game, that I am sure about.

Fidel will be long dead by then, and I suspect a lot of Cuban Floridians are going to enjoy the ability to visit their families and other similar stuff, should that come to pass. If I had to guess it will be a wash, among that one single voting bloc.

Even better if it were Jeb Bush that defeated him. Which might just happen!

You want us to bookmark that?

I think Hopey will lose for sure in 2012, you can bookmark that if it floats your boat.

I’m not sure which rock-ribbed conservative will defeat him, though, But he WILL lose.

Obama=black Jimmy Carter. Carter had approval ratings in the 70s at this point in his term. And we all know how THAT ended!

I’d really like to see Obama be defeated by barely losing Florida.

Because making libs angry is all we have left!

Lady Grey’s web site http://helvidiuspachyderm.wordpress.com/

The first blog on her “sites for sore eyes” blog roll is Ann Coulter, followed by
# Burdick Chocolates
# Federalist Society
# Federalist Society of San Diego
# Feminists for Life
# Heather MacDonald
# Independent Women’s Forum
# Libertarians for Life
# Michelle Malkin

Photo of the not a lady.

Dave = the big yawn = the über boring parody troll.

He does not deserve vowels!

“I’m not sure which rock-ribbed conservative will defeat him”

That’s what we call a ‘tell,’ folks.

Your “rock-ribbed” conservative better be able to convince a lot of us independent-minded souls that it won’t be back to the future in terms of policy ideas, and FL alone sure ain’t gonna do it.

On April 14th, the US Federal Reserve continued on a path that was almost unthinkable as little as six months ago.

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York bought $7.3 billion in US Treasuries on Tuesday, part of a program to improve conditions in private credit markets and spur lending. The debt bought included notes maturing between 2013 and 2016. Dealers submitted $26.4 billion in debt to be purchased. The Fed will continue its buybacks with a third operation this week, heading towards purchasing $300 billion in Treasury securities over the next six months.

To put this in perspective, $300 billion is larger than the annual entire federal deficit for the years 2005 to 2008 (before TARP). The Federal Reserve is essentially printing this money.

Foreign central banks, particularly the Chinese, have lost their appetite for US debt. They have also publicly raised concerns about the drastic increase in US debt over the last six months and America’s ability to repay it.

Although seemingly absurd, this move by the Fed will in fact help private credit markets in the short term. Since the Chinese have stopped buying US debt, the Treasury would have to attract new buyers by offering higher interest rates. These higher interest rates would take money out of the private credit markets. By buying this debt at an artificially low interest rate the Fed is helping the private sector.

Normally this would be highly inflationary. When foreign governments, little old ladies and even the government itself buy US debt it is not inflationary. Those dollars, whether they are from US tax revenue or the sale of Chinese products, have economic activity associated with them. The dollars in effect printed by the Fed do not have economic activity associated with them.

With the economy in recession inflation is not an immediate problem. Deflationary pressures from the recession, particularly falling real estate prices, are countering the Fed’s inflationary actions. As long as the inflationary forces (money going into the system) and deflationary forces (money coming out of the system) stay even, the money supply (the number of dollars in the system) stays stable. A stable currency and low interest rates are critical to economic growth.

However, as the economy begins to recover and real estate bottoms out, the deflationary pressure will disappear. The Fed, Treasury and Obama administration will be faced with unpalatable options.

It is important to note these options are not mutually exclusive. It is far more likely a combination of these options will be used. But we will not return to the economic boom of the 1980s and 1990s.

Option 1: The US Treasury raises interest rates on US debt instruments to attract new buyers. This would make the private sector compete with the government for credit. The double digit interest rates normally seen on credit cards would make their way to mortgages and car loans.

This is what consumers experienced in the late 1970s and early 1980s. It ended with the deflationary pressures brought by the recession of the early 1980s. Without a recession these higher interest rates would remain. If the interest rates rise too high they will definitely slow private sector economic activity.

Also, this means the US government, and not the Fed will be driving US interest rates. The Fed has a stated goal of keeping the currency stable and promoting economic growth. The US government has a tacit goal of continuing to spend money and provide services to Americans.

In the 1980s the Fed increased interest rates, tightened the money supply and forced the US into a recession to stop inflation. With inflation gone and investors willing to buy US debt with very low interest rates there was no tension between government spending and economic growth. We emerged from the recession and entered two decades of prosperity.

Today, with investors openly questioning how the US can repay its debt (which stands at roughly $36,100 per citizen of the US) they will soon demand higher interest rates. The US Treasury, not the Fed, will be driving interest rates as it tries to convince increasingly skeptical investors to buy debt to support government spending. The Congress and President will have to choose between government spending and economic growth driven by low interest rates.

Option 2: The Fed could continue to print money to buy US debt. This would continue to increase the money supply without deflationary pressures. Interest rates could stay low because the government would not be competing with the private sector for credit. The Fed could buy treasuries at whatever interest rate they see fit. However, more dollars chasing the same number of goods means prices will rise.

The dollar would then weaken against foreign currencies. Major exporters, particularly energy exporters, would be encouraged to stop conducting commerce in US dollars. If we cannot convince countries like Russia, Iran and Venezuela to go against their own interests, the US dollar would lose its status as the world’s de facto reserve currency. The cost of goods in terms of US dollars, especially imported goods, would continually rise as the money supply is increased to fund government spending.

Option 3: The Chinese return to purchase US debt essentially supporting the US standard of living. This would require the Chinese economy to dramatically improve. It would also require the Chinese to have faith in our ability to pay off the nearly $2 trillion in debt they already own. Chinese actions and statements over the last 30 days make this seem unlikely.

The US might be able to elicit temporary support from the Chinese if we support, or at least turn a blind eye, to Chinese adventures in Asia. But this quid pro quo would not be permanent. As US real and perceived power wanes, so does the incentive for the Chinese to pay tribute to the US by purchasing debt. Eventually, US prestige and the incentive for Chinese purchases of US debt will be expended.

Option 4: The US government could slash spending to a level supportable by non-Fed purchases of government debt.

In short, the purchase of US debt by the Federal Reserve has created a direct link, and conflict, between economic growth and government spending. It is unlikely that most members of Congress comprehend this looming disaster. It is even more unlikely those who do have the political power to stop it.

Ann Coulter?

OK, I take back anything even remotely hopeful I said about her.

But I’ll add one, too: She’s cute enough for me!

Oh Jeebus, the subhead for her blog is:

Musings on federalism, feminism, and food.

Because, you know, it’s totally feminist to accuse another woman of PMS’ing the minute you don’t like what they have to say. Yup.

At least I assume that’s her web site because the person who calls herself “Lady Grey” links to it in “recent comments” on the after party page.

Obama=black Jimmy Carter. Carter had approval ratings in the 70s at this point in his term. And we all know how THAT ended!

Hmmm. Looks like someone has been reading John Cole, who, eerily pointed out earlier today that some tard somewhere would advance this as the next “Obama’s a failure” meme.

There’s your grassroots movement, folks; 1.6 thousands of a percent of the population.

I seem to remember the wingnuts making the argument that since 297 million people (or whatever) didn’t turn out for the antiwar protests, that meant they all supported the war. I wonder if that principle is still in effect?

I know all y’all remember
all about the Breakdown;
now, I got somethin’ else
that’s really rockin’ the big town.
Heard about them other dances,
some of them wasn’t so hot.
This is what I want you to do:
a brand new thing called the Robot.
Robot! Funky robot.
Robot! Funky robot.

You know dances come and go,
just like the Push-and-Pull;
I ain’t the kind of a man
to shoot nobody no bull.
I got to keep up with the times
and that’s why I’m so hot.
I just want you to get on with it—
the thing you call the Robot.
Robot! Funky robot.
Robot! Funky robot.
Now you got it.

I know you tried the Popcorn
and you couldn’t make it.
Then you tried the Funky Penguin
but you really couldn’t take it.
All them other dances,
I tell you they wasn’t so hot.
I ain’t gonna say no more.
I wanna see you do the Robot.
Robot! Funky robot.
Robot! Funky robot.
Everybody do it!

About herself she writes:

Right-wing thoughts* from a left-coast** girl in exile. …The left coast thing is fairly recent. In fact, it was a way to misspend the remains of my youth before 3L year of law school. Law school, in the grand scheme of things, is also a recent development – or at least a big change from structural composites and nanotechnology for various military applications. Before that, I studied engineering and classics in college. This all adds up to a vegetarian from Massachusetts who is, rather improbably, quite conservative.

She’s blocked the web site now. At least, I can’t view it anymore without a password.

Lady Gray is protective of her WordPress blog. I was in the midst of reading it, clicked on a link and all the sudden it’s “This blog is protected, to view it you must log in.” Nothing worthwhile there anyway; purposeful mis-readings of evo-psych and nothing updated since April of 2008. I’m sure Google still has a cache, if you care that much.

“On April 14th, the US Federal Reserve continued on a path that was almost unthinkable as little as six months ago.”

TLDR

aw, thank you cache.

so no one bothered to Google teabagging, before they came up with this foolishness?

That’s the cherry on top! Not only did no one google it, but we had all been openly ridiculing it for over a month! And they still didn’t catch on.

In fact, some of us even suggested to them, way back when they were holding their first tea party a couple of months ago, that “tea party” sounded girlie and weak, and they should instead call themselves Teabaggers for FREEDOM!!!

snicker….

All that teabagging and our winger trolls STILL have a nasty case of blue balls.

Guys, an icepack’ll probably soothe you quicker.

Lady Grey, February 12, 2008:

Yes, Virginia, There is an Alternative to John McCain

Virginia votes today; so does this blogger. (Shes’ a sucker for the franchise.) Go Dr. Ron Paul! Tough on immigration, a softie for human life at all stages. My kind of guy.

Link, but as others have said, you need a password.

Lady Grey is a veritable winged nut.

Lady Gray fancies herself a feminist. “… my three great loves: federalism, feminism, and food.” You know how I could tell when she was a feminist? When she started insulting Leslie with Kotex and Midol remarks. Federalism? Michelle Malkin, Rush Limbaugh and Jonah Goldberg profess to love federalism too. Food? She’s a vegetarian (not saying that’s wrong, just saying, as an omnivore, I love food more than you do.)

How do we innocently suggest they adopt something with “pegging” for their next motto? I’d love to see their “pro pegging” and “peg me” movement.

Any ideas?

I can see the Fourth of July celebrations now; “Peg me, Lady Liberty!”

PeeJ – if you could figure out a tie-in to pirates, that might work. They’ve been buzzing about pirates recently. And pirates sometimes had peg legs…

Well, given the teabaggers’ new-found concern over inflation, perhaps something to do with pegging the dollar. Would “Bring back the gold peg!” work? Maybe not.

Q&A on Lady Grey’s web site (firefox cached)

By: Tim on 19 May 2008
Woo-Hoo! Free Republic! By any chance are you a FReeper – I am…

By: theobromophile (aka Lady Grey)
A sometimes FReeper. 🙂

While we ponder it, I want to remark again how odd whinger/troll behavior is. Lady Graything _could_ take a very quick look at this here blog and see immediately that it’s a goddamn humor blog. But noooo, she storms in and insists that we act according to her desires. Like a bible thumper striding into a building and preaching without first bothering to see if it might be one of them mooslimer moskey things. St00pit™ st00pit™ st00pit™.

Then we’ve got the regular troll who knows very well what happens here. And it just can’t stop from asking for shit to be smeared on its face. Pathetique, aintit?

Lady Grey wrote: As for law-leaning websites on the right, I’ll recommend either Stubborn Facts or Patterico’s Pontifications (two of my favourites).

Kind of says it all. Why she blocked her web site is puzzling. Is she ashamed or something? After all, she included liberals in her tea party so what’s the big deal?

There are a number of posts on and links to the Federalist Society at that site. If she’s a member, well, you don’t any more grassroots than that.

According to her web site, PeeJ, she is humour-impaired. This may be due to her rigid diet of chocolate and fruit.

How do we innocently suggest they adopt something with “pegging” for their next motto? I’d love to see their “pro pegging” and “peg me” movement.

Patriots for the End of Globalization.

most unbearable thread EVER.

I can’t begin to tell you how saddened I am that Sadly, No has become AmericaBlog.

If this is really what you wanna do with the intert00bz, all I can say is have fun with the idiots…

mikey

if someone comes over and finds you out back chainsawing squirrels in a rain of green acorns
As well as a baby cage, you should consider investing in a woodchipper.

Just a thought for our friend Lesley.

If you need to post SIXTY comments in order to argue with trolls, one might think that the self defeating nature of the undertaking might become apparent. Of course, you’d have to think about it to get there, but I remain unconvinced you lack the wherewithal to do so….

mikey

What would we do without Mikey bitchslapping every second thread?

I hate it when the grown-ups fight.

Mikey, there you go unfairly picking on moi. I’m not the only person who gave Lady Asshole the benefit of the doubt for too long (until she inferred I was a pedophile).

I should have seen the line with the Midol and Kotex insult, but I’m a sucker sometimes.

Also, I rarely engage trolls as my bulging killfile can testify.

Pretty much as expected.

Excuses and rationales.

**YAWN**

mikey

In other news, I exploded a baked potato in my oven yesterday, for the first time ever.

And I finally got a round Tuit, and cleaned it out.

Ta-DAH!

Jeezus, man, you actually wasted time counting my comments.

No wonder you are aggrieved.

This isn’t another passing troll, mikey, but the subject of the post. I think the standard is different in cases like this.

Girl. You posted SIXTY comments arguing with idiots.

Do you even HAVE a fucking life? Have you ever posted ONE goddam funny comment? Do you even understand the point? Fer cryin out loud, who the goddam hell ARE you?

And why do you think that your SIXTY posts in a single thread are important?

Please. Feel free to either answer or insult. We’ll know what it is when we see it…

mikey

And I finally got a round Tuit, and cleaned it out.

Huzzah!

ittdgy, you are supposed to poke holes in it with a fork. First.

Jeezus, man, you actually wasted time counting my comments.

Um, these things that glow in your room at night? They’re called COMPUTERS! I know it’s hard to grasp, but they COMPUTE! Weird, huh? Anyway, you can ask them numerical questions and they can give you immediate answers. I don’t know, Lesley, it’s almost like they were prescient or something. Maybe it’s magic. I dunno…

mikey

ittdgy, you are supposed to poke holes in it with a fork. First.

Why would you poke holes in a round Tuit?

OK, I know the conversation has long moved on, but this:

I have to wonder: why do liberals like Lesley think of nothing but “tea bagging” in the sexual sense?

We think of tea parties with Earl Grey and historical allusions; you all think of oral sex. A Rorschach test?

made me imagine a bunch of Republicans sitting around going
“I say old chaps, a delightful fellow on Fox has suggested some teabagging. Capital idea, what?”
“Oh, absolutely spiffing, good man. I’ll bring the Darjeeling, and the good Wedgewood china. Perhaps we shall even have some cucumber sandwiches.”
“Jolly good! Ah, but we mustn’t forget the smelling salts for Lady Grey. Those beastly liberals will be around, referring to unmentionables with their uncouth gutter language.”
“Oh, how perfectly horrid! Still, stiff upper lip, eh? All right, chaps! Tally Ho!”

Also, the whole ‘civil’ vibe of that comment reminded me of that Simpsons episode where they throw a party and Homer gets drunk and looks down Maude Flanders’ shirt, and the next day remembers himself as having entertained guests with his sparkling wit. Aha! Wiki sez

Homer’s false memory of the party is a reference to the Algonquin Round Table, a group of New York City writers, critics, actors and wits. The guests and the party and the way they are drawn resemble Al Hirschfeld’s caricature of the group.

Gavin, I assume that the last two lines of the original post are a footnote, but there is a preliminary ‘1’ missing (to match the ‘1’ in the text).
This is the consequences of exhausting your footnote supply in previous posts.

Do you even HAVE a fucking life? Have you ever posted ONE goddam funny comment? Do you even understand the point? Fer cryin out loud, who the goddam hell ARE you?

How is this venomous insulting crap not an over reaction.

Why do you care so much? Why would you count my posts?

If you hate my posts, add me to your kill file.

I did poke holes in it with a fork, I always do.

I generally just take the fork, and jam it almost all the way through, and say: yep, that awtta do it. (I see recommendations to just go Anthony Perkins on the potatos, I say, hey what am I, some kind of psycho?)

However, I was experimenting with a lower heat, longer cooking time with the roast beef that was also hanging around in the oven (r.b. got to go in first).

Anyways, one of the three potatos exploded. Everything else came out great!

Um, these things that glow in your room at night?

Enormous heads… anal probes… those are not computers.

Aw, what happened to my linky? I swear I did it right.
Anyway, Wiki sez that stuff above.

AAAAARGH Why won’t it work?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_War_of_the_Simpsons
trying again because I’m pigheaded and stubborn

Btw, I’ve done and said nothing to indicate I think I’m important.

Not sure where that’s coming from either.

Even if you’re not done yelling and blaming, I’m done responding to this crap. I won’t tolerate abuse from you any more than I will from trolls, Mikey.

it’s funny how the trolls seem to disappear when the sun goes down…..

It’s not about the kill file, young lady.

It’s about what this site was, and what it has become.

I know. Fuck it. I should walk away. And it’s becoming obvious that’s what will happen. But god damn IT, I don’t want to. I don’t want to see the smartest, funniest and most clever site on the t00bz disappear. Under the weight of the the thugs that have that goal in mind, and the players that think there’s something clever in engaging them.

I will, of course, slowly wean myself from a site gone from brilliance to mediocrity on a good day, but I won’t do so happily…

mikey

it’s funny how the trolls seem to disappear when the sun goes down….

Well, of course. If they don’t get back home, all the good spots under the bridge will be taken.

Well, “young man”, whatever you think the site’s become you seem to be burdening me with the responsibility for it. Not just today either.

It’s about what this site was, and what it has become.

Sold out, got rich, and forgot about the MUSIC, MAN!!!!!!

Alternate:

They were SO much cooler before they got famous. Now they just suck!

Sixty comments. Honestly. None of them funny. All of them argumentative. You are what, the defender of liberty? An idiot? Who could tell?

What are you trying to do? What are you trying to say? Have you ever considered your own blog? ‘Cause you’re just wrecking this one.

Oh, sure, you’re not alone. But fer crissakes, SIXTY comments. Go back an read them. Am I better for your contribution? Am I smarter, or better prepared? Nope. You’re an idiot, arguing with idiots. And wrecking something very special. Can’t you go back to Kos?

mikey

When I was a senior in college, I had a sophomore girl fan club. For reelz!

It’s been over 25 years now, so I’m over it.

Almost.

Wahhhhhhhhhhhh!

Lesley and a number of others did not engage trolling trolls like “No to Appeasement” or “Dave” or “alpha winger” but rather “Lady Grey,” one of the organizers of the Boston Tea Party. Lady Grey was particularly nasty to Lesley. For me Lady Grey’s appearance and performance do not with the usual disruptive trolling that has been a problem here, but are more along the lines of Dogstar and Gay Patriot.

I’m visualizing the SadlyNo of yore, whose elite readership adhered to a strict code of conduct, only to be polluted and ruined by less clever, witty and educated liberals – albeit with a good heart (head pats) like myself.

I keep forgetting my place. That is to read the posts – and vote correctly – and leave the speaking to the erudite.

do not fit with

When I was a senior in college, I had a sophomore girl fan club. For reelz!

…and did this lucky sophomore girl enjoy having a fan club?

Sixty comments. Honestly. None of them funny. All of them argumentative. You are what, the defender of liberty? An idiot? Who could tell?

What are you trying to do? What are you trying to say? Have you ever considered your own blog? ‘Cause you’re just wrecking this one.

Oh, sure, you’re not alone. But fer crissakes, SIXTY comments. Go back an read them. Am I better for your contribution? Am I smarter, or better prepared? Nope. You’re an idiot, arguing with idiots. And wrecking something very special. Can’t you go back to Kos?

You win, Mikey. Hope you enjoy the victory. Oh, and for the record, you also hurt my feelings big time. Thanks for that.

Jeez, mikey.

I had at least 20 comments of argumentation with the Teabag Lady, meself.

If you want an apology, you’re gonna have a long wait.

and leave the speaking to the erudite.

Or at least those who understood the point of the endeavor….

mikey

Hmmm… I told my husband I was craving a new thread for people to comment on, and we all know preggo ladies get what they want. Stand by, a new post is coming…

mikey has a point. The community aspect here has declined over the last year or so, in part because every extended thread, with a few exceptions, have been piss poor troll feedings.
However, Shoelimpy shouldn’t be too proud of himself. There’s another, more significant, cause for the decline; Obama.
These pigfuckers are out of power and not in position to return in the foreseeable future. They’re just not as frustrating when they have no means to implement their batshit self(and everyone else)destructive urges.
Y’know, once you punch the bully in the face, it all changes. He might still tease, and it might still bother you, but the magic is gone.
All the good people are still here, or at least most of em, I think. We just have less stress to work off through laughter.

If you can post sixty plus comments on a single thread and feel like you have somehtin worthwhile to say and it takes nothing more than somebody pointing out to you that you’ve posted sixty fucking comments without anybody telling you you’re contributing importantly to the dialog for your feelings to get hurt you need to shut up and think about who you are and what you have to say.

Sheesh…

mikey

ADB, I would like to see the relentlessly boring parody troll banned for good, disemvoweled, or whateves.

It makes this place worse, and there is zero upside value to it.

Arguing with the teabag lady, subject of the thread, was a little different. We don’t get an earnest troll often.

That’s my opinion, and I’m sticking to it until I change it.

No, you know what? Fuck it.

I’m fed up. I came upon this site in the spring of 2006 from a sad comment on World o’crap and I found a place where I belong. Where we could support one anonther and feel like the world still had a place for us. A lot of the madness was absorbed by the humor and the winking crazy of this site.

Now I’m supposed to. What? I’m supposed to let people who weren’t there and didn’t get it turn it into AmericaBlog? Into fucking Kos?

Well, fuck. It might well happen, but if you think I’m not gonna tell you you’re wrecking something special, something you’re gonna miss when it’s gone, well, uh uh. Screw that.

I don’t think it’s over. I see the disemvowler and the occasional thread of genius, and I maintain hope. But tenuous hope, at best…

mikey

Well, yes, ittdgy. I mildly disagree with mikey in that respect. I was among the first to engage her, as I happened to come by at the ‘right’ moment.
But it rapidly degenerated into the worst kind of online bickering. Lesley was provoked, and as I have a potent temper myself I’m not judging too harshly, but this thread was not her finest hour.
Lady Grey just wanted the power of having annoyed liberals. She has no other way to make us pay for making her feel like the broken person she is, deep inside.
Me, I almost pity her. As much as the right annoys me, they play no part in my self-identity. We pretty much determine who they are by providing them with something to be the opposite of.

Mikey, often your own comments are angry, and righteously so. You’re often not humorous. I’m not saying I care, just pointing out that you’re no different sometimes.

I don’t have to defend or explain my comments to you. You weren’t even here for fuck’s sake but wandered in after the fact, and for some reason, decided to read through the thing getting angrier by the minute because it doesn’t suit you. And lashed out at me, as if I was the only person engaging Lady Grey. If I go back and review I’ll likely find some humour in my own comments but I’m not going to do that because I don’t have to justify myself to you or defend anything I’ve written.

Regardless of how annoying the thread is to you – regardless of how you interpret the tone of anything I’ve said, you’ve surely poisoned it with your insulting bitchslapping reminding the readers about who matters here – and goddamn it’s you and the people you decide are worthwhile and the rest of us – especially me, should not speak at all.

How am I not supposed to view you as an elitist patronizing fuck with a rage problem?

I won’t tolerate abuse from you any more than I will from trolls, Mikey.

I guess that means we’ll be having this dialog pretty much forever, eh?

‘Cause I’ve noticed how willing you are to refuse to interact with trolls.

Just don’t count on my being willing to participate. I think the whole concept’s stupid…

mikey

These pigfuckers are out of power and not in position to return in the foreseeable future. They’re just not as frustrating when they have no means to implement their batshit self(and everyone else)destructive urges.
Y’know, once you punch the bully in the face, it all changes. He might still tease, and it might still bother you, but the magic is gone.

True enough. Still they need to be mocked thoroughly to keep them disabused of the notion that they’ll return to power anytime soon.

I admit the trolls make it suck, and I do feed them occasionally, when I get a wild hair or I have bit too much to drink. But the real thread-derailing troll disruptions of a couple months ago are [knock wood] thankfully gone.

That troll got nasty and personal with Lesley. I can see why she’d feel like responding. I my self wrote about as many posts, but because I’m an old lady and infinitely patient (or actually, really slow) I ended up deleting them. But I can purely understand the impulse to respond back. And they weren’t even saying nasty shit about me – they were really nasty about Lesley, and it sucked.

I’m sorry for not defending her directly – Lesley, the posts i ended up deleting certainly got your back. But it’s pointless with these fucking trolls.

What I ended up doing was going away and going for a 3 hour hike in the mountains. Which is way better than sitting here, now, with a glass of old vine Zinfandel and posting. But what can you do? I can’t be entirely redeemed.

mikey has a point. The community aspect here has declined over the last year or so, in part because every extended thread, with a few exceptions, have been piss poor troll feedings.

Lady Grey didn’t seem trollish in the beginning and she is an identifiable person, one of the organizers of the Boston teabagging. And as J pointed out, I didn’t engage the other trolls who showed up.

True, Newbie, but for me, at least, it’s turned from a necessity for my sanity’s sake to a hobby.

N mikey, is everything all right? I don’t wanna be condescending or any stupid shit, but it seems like maybe something more is bothering you.

‘Cause I’ve noticed how willing you are to refuse to interact with trolls. I guess that means we’ll be having this dialog pretty much forever, eh?

Glad to see you identify yourself as one, in relation to me. Cuz you sure as hell are behaving like one, “comrade.”

Also, see earlier thread in which you implore other commenters to follow Lesley’s request to stop feeding the trolls.

Good luck finding other threads where I’ve engaged trolls. This is pretty much it.

How am I not supposed to view you as an elitist patronizing fuck with a rage problem

Of course, ONE of us posted SIXTY motherfucking comments on this thread. ONE of us felt they had SO much to say that was critical and humerous and topical and important that they posted SIXTY comments.

But of course, that same brilliant observer of our time thinks that asking why and what exactly is the fucking point of posting SIXTY comments on a single thread, none of which are even the slightest bit interesting, funny or clever considers the very question “elitiest”.

Goddam, Lesley. You channeling you some Palin or what?

mikey

Lesley, as I said, I understand fully what it’s like to see red. But I’ve also learned the wisdom of what g was saying. I don’t like getting angry, tho I can be good at it, and just getting up and walking away from the internet is just…. wonderful, once you learn how to do it.
Lady Grey wanted a kind of power over you, and she got it. You can be smarter than that.

The community aspect here has declined over the last year or so, in part because every extended thread, with a few exceptions, have been piss poor troll feedings.

Indeed, and I think they’ve proven that the no-ban rule as written doesn’t work when faced with a completely unstoppable, obsessed wankbot. Still, not my site and if teh Sadlies believe that to ban even somebody like that outright is a slippery slope thing or whatever, it’s their call.

ObFunny: What has a Hitler mustache and flies? A copy of “Liberal Fascism” wrapped around a rotting fish!

Lord knows what we need after a hostile 400-comment thread is a circular firing squad of purity concern trolling.

, but it seems like maybe something more is bothering you.

Hey Brad. You’re goddam right something’s bothering me. Wanna know what it is? Click the archives. ’06. ’07. This site was a place that really helped me deal with the madness. And now it’s mostly crap. And nobody gets it, and nobody cares and nobody’s trying to…

Ahh, I know. Nothing stays the same. Nothing CAN stay the same. I’m fighting to keep something that’s already gone. I oughta know better, but I there’s this niggling little hope that maybe, just maybe, if I can find a way to explain it better….

Shit. It’s me. I’ve gotta learn to live in a world that doesn’t have the Sadly that I came to depend on to entertain and educate me. Life will go on. Dosages will be adjusted. But I WILL miss it…

mikey

Lord knows what we need after a hostile 400-comment thread is a circular firing squad of purity concern trolling.

Well, that’s where I was going with my dumb joke. Inducing a sort of humor deficit in the hope that it would act as stimulus.

Lord knows what we need ….. is a circular firing squad.

um. yeah. please, guys.

not to put too fine a point on it, but if this keeps up, we’ll get to sixty comments with mikey complaining about Lesley feeding the troll, and if the ones we’ve seen so far are any indication, they also won’t be funny.

I Do. Not. Get. all the hand-wringing about troll feeding. It doesn’t impair my enjoyment of the observations of regular commenters in the least – or at most, only rarely does it bother me.

As always, YMMV.

g, that sounds like a good idea (the hike, the wine) and I appreciate your support.

Oddly, until she inferred I was a pedophile I wasn’t offended by her. I didn’t think I sounded pissed. I didn’t feel my posts took her seriously at all.

I’m far less offended by the trolls than a fellow commenter – someone I’ve defended and supported in the past – telling me I’ve ruined this blog.

Lady Grey, if she’s still around, must be getting a kick out of this.

Oh, fiddle-faddle.
Well, I did try…
Where’s that new thread, what ho?

Oh, and since tempers are running a little high in here, I was doing a moronic fake-upperclass-Brit thing there, not calling anyone a ho.
Uh, not that there’s anything wrong with that.
“Ho? What ho?”

Lady Grey wanted a kind of power over you, and she got it. You can be smarter than that.

She got me riled to an extent. You’re right that it is possible to be smarter than that. I’ll take the lesson and apply it to the current situation. 😉

g, that sounds like a good idea (the hike, the wine) and I appreciate your support.

Don’t let the mutherfuckas get your goat, Lesley. They’re trolls. That’s what they do. I’ve seen how they’ve fucked with other people on this thread – mikey is one of them. I’ve been lucky – they fucked with me a couple of times and it’s only because I actually had something else to do that I didn’t let myself get upset by it. Yeah, I throw them some puppy chow from time to time. But they’ve never been as nasty to me as this one was to you.

But when people in your real life act like this, you turn away from them, you don’t engage them. Because they’re sick fucks. So don’t respond to sick fucks. Don’t let them push your buttons.

El Cid said,

April 18, 2009 at 23:02

Oh yeah, that’s the stuff.

All any troll has to do to receive the benefit of the doubt is use “Lady” in his nickname.

“Lady Gary Ruppert” and I might could believe in God again.

Another week gone and no jokes.

mikey, I know. There isn’t a month that goes by that I don’t think of the CTY nerd camp I went to the summers I was 12-16 and the sheer bliss I had there. Just geeks, taking classes that included the polisci course where I began to be politically aware, and being one of the cool, hot, guys, having my pick of smart, cute, ripe girls.
Bush is gone, and for me, at least, that has been an extraordinary weight off my mind. Obama is not the messiah, all is not now nor will ever be perfect, but that gibbering fool and his pack of greedy sociopaths are gone, and to me that’s a change that’s worth a lower calorie S,N!.
Gavin is risking COMEDY DEATH* by having a kid, but even if he’s just not as funny after I suspect it’s a trade off worth making.
I’m sorry I’m not around as much to help you be the funny happy mikey we all love more easily, genuinely. I know what it’s like to have a hard time keeping everything in tune.
I’m being kind of random, but that’s because I don’t have the focus for the several hundred word speech half stuck in my craw.

* The only comedian I can think of whose talent survived reproduction was George Carlin, and he was open about having been a distant dad, at least in the early years.

Please. Y’all are making spending one’s entire life at a keyboard before a monitor expressing oneself seem like a less than honorable vocation.

There is absolutely no point swapping talking points w/ authoritarians. Get on Twitter & start replying to rupperteria if you want to do battle w/ parodists.

As for legit trolls, the only way to get through to them is replacing their current controller, who or whatever that may be. Na’gonna happen here. (Or anywhere, short of performing actual lobotomies on top of their self-inflicted ones.)

Either way, look what they’re doing here, or what they’re making us do. As in, “Stop hitting yourself! What’s the matter w/ you? Stop that!”

Gavin is risking COMEDY DEATH* by having a kid…

So far, so good, though. I know what you mean and agree about Carlin (RIP George).

All any troll has to do to receive the benefit of the doubt is use “Lady” in his nickname.

I’m glad someone saw the humour in this comment.

But when people in your real life act like this, you turn away from them, you don’t engage them. Because they’re sick fucks. So don’t respond to sick fucks. Don’t let them push your buttons.

Trolls of the wingnut variety – even the vicious ones – are meh, for the most part. They’re not even particularly clever at being vicious. Until Mikey started, I didn’t feel personally attacked.

The bigger issue is being told to STFU altogether because I detract from someone’s entertainment or their need for this blog to fulfill a personal need. Having no voice at all or not being permitted to have one is problematic, it’s fucked up. It’s far more fucked up than any thread being invaded by trolls or people responding to those trolls.

You liberalz are such a bunch of immature meanies – you just need some Midol & a Kotex! Network sponsorship via promotion doesn’t count & neither do grassroots outfits like Americans For Prosperity – your tinfoil hats are on too tight if you don’t agree with me & Michelle Malkin!

You shouldn’t EVAR refer to our noble protest as “teabagging” even though we started it, because shut up. Also, it’s sheer coincidence that my blog is now suddenly blocked from your evil tentacles of reality, & I was too busy helping poor African refugees for the last 8 years to notice that the GOP pimped my kids’ college-funds & pensions out to a pack of corporatist filth who didn’t even send me a thank-you note for doing their bidding this week.

GRRL POWER!!1!!one!

Trolls of the wingnut variety – even the vicious ones – are meh, for the most part.

Cool. Sixty comments for “meh”.

Can’t begin to imagine what commitment might look like…

mikey

For some reason I am reminded of this.

And what do you know? I’ve just been told to come to bed. Also.

You shouldn’t EVAR refer to our noble protest as “teabagging” even though we started it, because shut up.

As soon as you phrased it like that, I started imagining the comments as read by Vicki Pollard, and suddenly feel a lot more amused by Lady Grey.

Thank you Arky. I’m being told to come to bed, too. And tonight I’m by myself.

Do. Not. Get. all the hand-wringing about troll feeding. It doesn’t impair my enjoyment of the observations of regular commenters in the least – or at most, only rarely does it bother me.

As always, YMMV.

I agree with Jennifer. Also, as others have said, this was not a parody troll but the actual subject of the post. I rather enjoyed watching the back-and-forth, Freshly Squeezed Cynic’s superb response especially, and J- as usual producing good data to refute the grey one.

Sometimes, the complaints about troll-feeding are more annoying than the actual trolls. But, as Jennifer said, YMMV. I just scroll past that too. There’s plenty of good readin’ in these here parts.

For those of you keeping score at home:

First No to appeasement post: 16:44
Last No to appeasement post: 22:49
First The “Dying” Republican Party post: 23:03
Last The “Dying” Republican Party post: 23:35
Total time spent trolling S,N!: 6 hours 51 minutes.

First Lady Grey post: 20:24
Last Lady Grey post: 00:56
Total time spent trolling S,N!: 4 hours 32 minutes.

How can anyone feel personally attacked in an anonymous internet forum?

Seriously. Why on Earth would anyone go one the very blogs they read and see how long they can pretend to be an asshole right winger? Is that supposed to be some sort of achievement?

I maintain that at least one of our trolls is a frustrated regular commenter who just couldn’t get the type of satisfaction he wanted out of commenting here so he decided to achieve something else instead. His extreme funniness was going unrecognized so the only alternative was to fuck things up for everyone else. And there are still plenty of funny comments in the threads here but fuck things up he certainly has. To come here and see 200 comments in a thread and realize about 20 in that the usual suspects are being strung along by their own egos again is always a shame. The only time it gets mildly funny is when someone starts begging for a troll response by being all like , “oh ho, notice how the troll isn’t responding to me, that’s because I totally pwned him that time we argued about economic theory. Behold my genius fellow Sadlynaughts.” Please. You’re ludicrous. And it’s somewhat considerate to put St. Jesus in front of a pseudonym but it doesn’t really make the threads much less unwieldly (especially for those who are reading on a machine that doesn’t support greasemonkey) and it ensures that the trolls will keep on coming back. So call this hand wringing if you want but I’m sick of trolls making me laugh at you and not with you. Thanks for nothing except liberating me from the guilt of leaving an unfunny comment of my own.

But J- is right, this thing with Lady Gray is very different than the regular brand of troll feeding here even if it’s not funny like the dogstar or GayPatriot threads. And lets not forget Dave From Texas or Fauxhammer. They were awesome.

Hey Everyone,

Here’s all you need to know about Lady Grey, aka Elephantsonparade, aka Theobromophile: AGW denier. Get a load of her ‘reasoned debate’ on her own blog! (This is obviously why she switched from engineering to law — engineering deals in reality; law, perception. Deniers — often conservatives and vice versa — are often drawn to the “intellectual safety” of these fields, where they can excel despite their handicap. Granted there are notable exceptions, take your Michael Behe’s and such.)

http://74.125.47.132/search?hl=en&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&hs=xX4&q=cache%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fhelvidiuspachyderm.wordpress.com%2F2008%2F03%2F06%2Fbeautiful%2F&btnG=Search

It’s no wonder she’s so uneasy on neutral ground; she’s so authoritarian on her home turf. Using the Google cache, because obviously her absolutely dickish behavior must remain super-secret now that it’s under scrutiny.

Heckuva job, Heckuva job, Whitey: When the actual object of inspired ridicule by the hosts/instigators chooses to respond under its own pseudonym, & attempts to justify its inane typings, rather than a dimbulb parroting/defending talking points, well, it wouldn’t be fair not to point out her/his silliness.

But once Ms. Feminazi (I see what Limbaugh has done there: projected) gets to “PMS, Midol & Kotex,” it’s just not fair (or worth it) to continue piling on. That’s where the ignoring should come in.

P. S.: Having read what I just posted, who died & left me in charge?

Hey Heckuva job, Whitey,

It’s obviously not anonymous here, or I wouldn’t know you from Mikey. See what I did there? That said, it was absolutely appropriate to address Lady Grey, as this whole fucking thread was about her. That’s why it’s hurtful when you say shit to people you know on the internet… what some might call internet friends.

and Mikey,

To come in here after the fact and piss and moan and purity troll and list your demands and concerns — yeah that’s exactly what this thread wasn’t about. You know what’s just as close to your browser as Sadly, No!? Porn. That’s right. Do something more useful than bitching about comments on a thread you could have skipped and just jack off. It’s probably much more enjoyable too — for everyone.

Let’s be clear on the whole Lesley thing. She called me a bit of a witch, a c—, a effing c– (IIRC), said I have hag hair, told me to STFU before I had even responded to her, referred to my event as a “teabagging,” etc.

In comparison to Lesley, I’m Mother Teresa. (In fact, Amanda Marcotte on a bad day is like Mother Teresa – or at least a standard nun – in comparison.) The reason why she didn’t feel “personally attacked” is because she wasn’t being attacked. Funny how that works.

Now, Lesley, a little piece of advice: if you don’t want to be relentlessly mocked, don’t swear like a drunken sailor and then get the vapours when someone makes a period joke. That is funny, but not in the way that you – or anyone else here – is hoping for.

Oh, yeah, and don’t say that women like me have hag hair. That’s right up there with the “stupid, uneducated hick man” ad hominems that liberals make about me that are the exact opposite of reality. It’s a new one, to be sure, but amusing in how erroneous it is.

Good tidings, Lesley. You’ll need it.

It’s always cute when they star out the words like this is “a family newspaper” or something like that. Who’s more childish—people who use the words in culturally-accepted context, or people who tip-toe around the words like they will make baby Jesus cry if they even think them in their thoughts?

You are a cunt, btw. Or douchebag/cobag, as you prefer. Asshole. When someone posted upthread that you were a warming denier who was in engineering and then in law…I thought about the only thing that wouldn’t make you a caricature is that you are a woman and that you’re not a droning Randroid. Seriously, wtf is it with you engineering types that you have to be brilliant with .000001% of things and stupid as a pile of putrid dogshit with everything else?

That we could make jokes at your expense is nothing but your own doing. Maybe not you personally, but that so many of your fellow travelers could be so lacking in self and cultural awareness might make you want to reconsider your political leanings—I’d imagine you consider yourself a pretty smart cookie, but you’re obviously massively insecure, hence the need to be such a gigantic asswipe—people really are pretty predictable when it gets down to brass tacks.

Sheesh: okay, let’s go at it.

Your position is that a woman who had an ongoing medical crisis, was traveling for days on end straight, and attended a conference, did not put forth a totally coherent argument because, her degree in chemical engineering aside, she’s bad at science?

“Misogyny” doesn’t quite cover that one, but it’ll do for starters.

If you’re a global warming denier, you’re bad at science.

If you have an engineering degree, you are good at engineering, not science. (I say this as a civil engineer.)

But it is happened unto them according to the true proverb, The dog is turned to his own vomit again; and the sow that was washed to her wallowing in the mire.

Unlike the troll, the thread doesn’t lie and that’s all that needs to be said.

Sometimes, the complaints about troll-feeding are more annoying than the actual trolls.

ALWAYS, not sometimes.

Seriously, wtf is it with you engineering types that you have to be brilliant with .000001% of things and stupid as a pile of putrid dogshit with everything else?

Simba B., playing along and pretending that you’re not actually being a total jerk to me… let’s investigate this idea of the idiot savant (or similar).

Engineers all make sense to each other. Outside of our field – wherein non-engineers aren’t experts, so they don’t prejudge us – we tend to be good Rorschach tests. People who think that we are smart and reasonable (even if they don’t agree with us) will listen, cock their heads, translate, let the words simmer, and figure out what we are saying. It’s like translating from a foreign language with a different syntax. Those who are inclined to view us with scepticism will hear the words and the ideas that are not patterned in the way that they are used to hearing, and dismiss us as idiot savants or irrational morons who shouldn’t be allowed outside of a laboratory.

As someone who has spent many years teaching, I’m used to figuring out how different people’s minds work, what helps them to process information, how they learn, etc. The differences are very real, and are present across all disciplines (although, as you point out, one type does gravitate towards engineering). Problematically, on a blog, in a debate with multiple people, I can’t tease out how to explain my ideas to each person who participates.

Sheesh, Bryson Nitta’s comments were civil, on topic, and about the only thing worth reading in that thread. There isn’t a single instance of him engaging in name-calling, only disagreement. Can’t say the same for the blogger who seems incapable of leading by example.

Thanks for the concession speech, Lesley.

Sheesh, Bryson Nitta’s comments were civil, on topic, and about the only thing worth reading in that thread. There isn’t a single instance of him engaging in name-calling, only disagreement. Can’t say the same for the blogger who seems incapable of leading by example.

Lesley, when someone’s nasty comments are deleted, it stands to reason that the only ones remaining would be civil and on-topic. Your reasoning is wonderfully faulty and would be a great exercise for a freshman logic course, but are totally irrelevant here.

This all begs the question, of course: why does any of it matter? Isn’t the real issue the grassroots nature of the Tea Party protests? Have you all conceded the loss on that one and are now moving straight to ad hominem attacks?

Hey Lady Grey,

You didn’t make an argument, that’s exactly the point. As you know from your studies (you did do real science getting an engineering degree, I would assume), you provide evidence contrary to my theory and I throw it out and go back to the drawing board. Instead, you went straight to ‘haw haw, the ipcc is a conspiracy and climate scientists and those that cite their claims are all half-wits.’ It’s a common tactic for deniers/skeptics to just throw out assertion after assertion, claim after claim, and then declare victory, while people that are actually scientists, or work in the field, or at the very least interested parties that have degrees in hard sciences (even goofy ones like computer science) scramble and fret to provide links and evidence. The trick is, you can claim-spam us faster than we can dig up the evidence to the contrary; that is until you just declare victory, edit out our comments, ban us, and then claim ‘something came up.’ The thread I linked to is a perfect example. When someone says, even on your own blog, “Hey, all the evidence suggests that the average global temp. is rising faster than it would be without post-industrial human activity,” the normal, rational response for a non-climate scientist is, “I have no reason to disbelieve scientists with expertise in this field.”

All that said, misogyny it isn’t, obviously, because I was addressing your claims and opinions in the most general and gender-neutral way possible. Again, that’s just another claim to derail honest debate. (Because again, debate is not what you’re after, especially not on your own blog.) But, we can make it one: what generally agreed upon evidence do you have that any of my comments on this blog represent misogyny or indicate I am a misogynist? Posts in this regard are the only ones I’ll reply to.

What’s there to concede? When a “protest movement” is orchestrated by right-wing lobbying firms and the GOP’s basic-cable propaganda outlet, it ain’t “grassroots”.

Isn’t the real issue the grassroots nature of the Tea Party protests?

Yes. Yes, it is.

As a matter of fact, I seem to remember that your assertion was that they were, as a matter of fact, grassroots protests. And to back that up, you pointed out that you had not been paid, and several people you knew of had also not been paid.

What you did not address, however, is the involvement of 501(c) organizations, Republican PR, consulting, and advertising firms, and various other hucksters whose shtick seems to reduce to: “Hey, this Twitter thing seems pretty popular. How can we use it to win elections?”

Gavin has meticulously documented these links, and done an amazing job of it given the efforts to conceal them. Likewise, others (Firedoglake) have noticed similar things. This is all out there as a matter of record—it isn’t a matter of serious dispute. That is, unless you haven’t read the posts, followed up on the relevant information, and maybe, just maybe, you have just now realized that you were a half-witted tool of powerful interests and individuals, and are now trying to rationalize this. This isn’t working out very well for you, of course, because it’s all right there, staring you in the face.

Foot soldiers in the wingnut welfare machine often aren’t paid, that’s the beauty of it. These guys are stupid enough to believe luminaries such as Jonah Goldberg, and thus think they are serving a greater good, when in fact they are serving the interests of the wealthy contrary to their own. What sets you apart, however, is self-awareness. They’ll never realize they’ve spent their lives being manipulated. You’ve just realized that you were mislead, and you fancy yourself smarter than that.

If you would like to address the content of Gavin’s posts on the subject, please do. I’m sure he’s willing to engage. But if you just want to throw all of his work out the window just because you were not compensated, that’s just weaksauce. When you don’t have an argument worth addressing, that’s when the ad hominem personal stuff starts to come out.

Nitta’s manner is consistently polite and civil throughout, even after you attacked and called him names several times. It’s therefore reasonable to conclude Nitta didn’t call you names. There isn’t a single instance of him provoking you, either. All he did was disagree and tell you he thought you were wrong.

This all begs the question, of course: why does any of it matter?

It also doesn’t beg the question.

Simba Bi said,

April 19, 2009 at 8:40

Oh wow. There’s a great way to ensure no one remembers nothing I wrote.

It’s 3AM, I need to go to bed.

Bleh. Goodnight.

Of course, we’ll never know for sure since you censored his comments and all we have is your claim (which isn’t worth dogshit given your propensity for name calling, lying, and obfuscating here).

You could always uncensor them so we can see the abrupt change in his character.

Sheesh,

Your explanation refutes your own point. You said something about claim-spamming faster than someone with a science or engineering degree could refute. That someone = Bryson; that engineer = me.

As I said, multiple times (that you missed, because it doesn’t fit into your talking points memo), when traveling for 33 hours in a car, attending conferences, and running around going to doctors for treatment of a rather scary medical condition, commenting on blogs isn’t exactly the top priority – or even a possibility. That a first-time commenter expected complete attention, rather than being a normal human being who sees “I’m busy, more later” as meaning, “I’m busy, more later,” is no requirement on me to drop my life and address his needs.

Legal conference aside, do you have any idea what went on that weekend? Any clue what I was going through? ANY at all? Ever think that I didn’t want jerks like you and Lesley reading everything I’ve ever written because you obviously lack any sense of decency? Who in their right mind (or, more importantly, heart) starts criticising a woman for not having the time to do extensive research when she’s in one state and needs to be in another to find out whether or not she needs a mastectomy?

Seriously. What the hell is wrong with you?

Lesley: what lies have I told here?

Is that the meme you’ve got going on, now that you’ve called me a hag-haired c— and really don’t have any grounds to complain about anything I’ve said to you?

Have fun with that. What that meme bites the dust, you might try being a lady who apologies for trashing my Tea Party, going along with Gavin’s suppositions on the genesis of this particular event, calling me all sorts of names, and, in general, being a completely horrible person.

But hey, it’s your karma, not mine.

Also, PENIS.

Back to the original subject:

Gavin said, via email to me (an email that I initiated, which he should have initiated before trashing me in a post) that he could not be sure of how the Boston party was funded. He supposed, but did not know why, there were two separate events; he guessed wrong. He then claimed that the fact that Brad Marston entered the picture made the entire thing not a grass-roots effort, despite the fact that he came in
a) two weeks and three days before the event;
b) as a speaker; and
c) with no other role than to make a ning site and some posters.

That’s all that Brad Marston did, folks. As I pointed out to Gavin, the real irony claiming that Brad was behind this was that, even as he tried to dictate what was going on, he used all of the networking we had set up.

FreedomWorks didn’t do anything for us, either; although they had put up the money for insurance policies in many states, they were tapped out and could not afford to help in Boston.

Now, while we’ve been criticised for having a lot of right-wing speakers, what no one has been able to tell me is who in the vast, right-wing conspiracy got people from organisations as diverse as the Mass Family Institute and the Ayn Rand Centre to speak? Yes, we got high-profile names, but, obviously, the people who support them are very different.

A fair number of them actually sought us out and asked if they could speak. IIRC, that is how we got ARC and MFI, among others.

But hey, facts get in the way of a good trashing of some girl whom you’ve never met, right?

do you have any idea what went on that weekend? Any clue what I was going through? ANY at all? …Who in their right mind (or, more importantly, heart) starts criticising a woman for not having the time to do extensive research when she’s in one state and needs to be in another to find out whether or not she needs a mastectomy?

Seriously. What the hell is wrong with you?

This is classic passive-aggressive manipulation. The delivery is stereotypically perfect. Almost cartoonish.

Heehee.
Randroids and an organization whose website states

We live in a time of un- precedented chaos. In Massachusetts, we have a rich cultural heritage extending from our critical role in the American Revolution. However, the family structure is constantly under attack. Recognizing that healthy families are indispensable to the preservation of a strong and free society, MFI is dedicated to strengthening the family and affirming the Judeo-Christian values upon which it is based.

= diversity.
How many different flavors of self-involved crazy can you get?

How would any of your readers who don’t know you have any idea about your fucking weekend? The attempt to guilt them and us fails, if for no other reason than you took time out from that particular weekend not only to check your blog and edit a bunch of comments by Bryson, but write a lengthy diatribe filled with insults at someone responding your other (mostly insult-filled) comments.

Get your own priorities straight.

on a blog, in a debate with multiple people, I can’t tease out how to explain my ideas to each person who participates.

Who the fuck cares?

Go take a flying fuck at a rolling donut. Go take a flying fuck at the moon.

Hey Lady Grey,

We seem to have a different perception on who the claim-spammer is in the linked thread. So we really aren’t going to reach and understanding I suppose. (Perhaps you misunderstood my definition. I specifically mentioned that making claims with evidence, as Bryson was providing, is not like the denialists’ tactic of providing claims without evidence.) No need to go round and round. I’ll leave it with this. If one doesn’t have the time “to do extensive research” a normal, rational person would accept prevailing mainstream science as John Mashey describes in section 1.4(a) here: http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2008/08/john_mashey_on_how_to_learn_ab.php

Who in their right mind (or, more importantly, heart) starts criticising a woman for not having the time to do extensive research when she’s in one state and needs to be in another to find out whether or not she needs a mastectomy?

I’m obviously not doing that — criticizing you for not having the time to do extensive research. If anything, I was using your assertion

[this image] http://www.seed.slb.com/uploadedImages/Science/Earth_Science/Global_Climate_Change_and_Energy/Related_Articles/global_temp2.jpg “It is what some of us would call ‘prima facie evidence that anthropogenic global warming is a questionable theory.’”*

as evidence that you have poor judgment when it comes to matters of reality in combination with the ham-handed treatment of seemingly respectful (though dissenting) commenters on your own blog. I don’t want to call you a liar or anything, I’m basically just calling you wrong; just like the commenter you abused on your own blog. I know it can feel bad to be called wrong, and I’m sorry for that.

I hope you are in good health.

*The evidence for global temperatures from ice-cores over the last half-million years is not prima facie evidence that AGW is a questionable theory. http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/globalwarming/home.html if you want to dig into the data and this addresses current warming wrt cyclical warming http://ipcc-wg1.ucar.edu/wg1/FAQ/wg1_faq-6.2.html

Latin America: it’s only when you actually look at the history of the Cold War and the idea of American exceptionalism that you realize the Monroe Doctrine may not have been such a good idea after all. But then the whole problem here in the first place is that the right doesn’t want to admit that the train wreck that has been the last hundred years or so of Latin American history has been primarily our fault.

Well, the fReichtards basically think the Monroe Doctrine established “our” hemisphere as their very own gated community, and they don’t want to bring down everyone’s property values by encouraging the ignernt & unsofistimacated to let their kids run wild & their yards get overrun with soCialism or worse. Uniform values and turfgrass for *all* Americans, whether they want ’em or not!

“Now, while we’ve been criticised for having a lot of right-wing speakers, what no one has been able to tell me is who in the vast, right-wing conspiracy got people from organisations as diverse as the Mass Family Institute and the Ayn Rand Centre to speak? Yes, we got high-profile names, but, obviously, the people who support them are very different.

A fair number of them actually sought us out and asked if they could speak. IIRC, that is how we got ARC and MFI, among others.”

Speaking of turfgrass and other parasites on the body politic… the Mass Family Institute, for those of you lucky enough not to have been exposed to them, consists of a handful of religious bigots who don’t want their kids to be exposed to diversity in any format, but most especially “gay marriage” or even the concept that gay people exist. Boston is one of the hotspots of the Catholic church’s little pedophilia problem, so it’s been widely assumed that the MFI is largely supported by the “Kiddy-diddlers?!? You think Bernard Cardinal Lawless would support — look, over there! Two kweers, kissing each other like Dubya kissed the Saudi ambassador!!!!” apologists. (The fact that support for gay marriage keeps increasing every month our proud commonwealth has permitted gay marriage is driving the MFI peeps right out of their tiny lizard minds.) The Ayn Rand Institute, well, we’ve all met Randroids, and if Alan Greenspan’s genius at wrecking the global economy hasn’t discredited the whole “Objectivism” scam among sane people, then…

In other words, the Masshole Teabaggers were able to attract, solely by virtue of their sterling grassrooty-ness, the same range of grifters, bigots, hypocrites and moral monsters as every other damn Teabagger party in every major-media-market city. And this is supposed to leave us astonished by the totally spontaneous outpouring of support for the concept that giving the top three percent of the population less than 95% of our country’s total wealth is a crime against nature and the Founding Fathers!

After the applause had died down
And the people drifted away

She climbed down off the bar
And went out the door
To the hotel
That she called home
It had greenish walls
A bathroom in the hall

And i said no, no, no
Oh, lady grey
And i said no, no, no
Oh, lady grey
I said no, no, no
Oh, lady grey
And i said no, no, no
Oh, lady grey

Powerline blames Gays (except Gay Patriot) and depraved sexually experienced straight people for the sexual innuendo.

Wow. This thread is just full of POOP.

Ought to make one hell of a shit-moat once it gets harvested.

What I came by to mention was something I just saw that sort of made me feel like the guy in the joke whose wife comes back from turning tricks with $84.75, and when asked which cheap sonofabitch gave her seventy five cents, replies “All of them.”

They waterboarded KSM 183 fucking times in one month.

Yup, that must be one really fucking effective technique if you only have to do it six times a fucking day.

Fuck.

Hey Justme,

That’s a weird coincidence — I wanted to link to that earlier on but didn’t want to send the thread spinning wildly off on a tangent. In hindsight, I probably should have!

This is the one I was going to drop in here.

While we’re off-topic, I’m kinda sad that the circle-circle-bar-circle meme isn’t still gathering steam. I don’t want the April Fool’s budget diagram to fade into obscurity.

“A gathering on April 15th to protest taxes.” Can’t claim that as an innovative NEW idea.

“A Boston tax protest thought up by a resident of Boston that takes as it’s inspiration the Boston Tea Party.” heh…

“We’ll call ourselves ‘Tea-baggers’!” Apparently we can thank “Lady Grey” for that gem?

mikey, quit being a dick. you’re getting to be worse than the trolls.

There isn’t a single instance of him provoking you, either. All he did was disagree and tell you he thought you were wrong.

The answer to this is obvious: “Look what you made me do” or maybe “How dare you challenge me” or maybe “The gun just went off.”

I rather enjoyed watching the back-and-forth, Freshly Squeezed Cynic’s superb response especially, and J- as usual producing good data to refute the grey one.

Awwww, you guys. Now if only I could say shit like that more than every month or so.

Group hug, everyone!

I love group hugs!

Jeebus. So the crazy cunt came back? Love the passive-aggressive guilt trip, that’s a classic.

“I’m going through a major medical crisis, so the least you can do when I come trolling your thread is be nice!”

Wow.

I just got here with my Sunday morning coffee and began reading. I admit to reading veryveryquickly in the middle there, only because I wanted to make the coffee last until the final comment and…

Okay, virtual hugs from me, everyone, and if you want to hug me back in a completely witty and ironic way while still meaning it, I’d really appreciate the gesture right about now since it was that kind of bloody week (again), with next week promising to pile it on just as overbearingly, perhaps more so.

As for the old Grey mare and her I’m-not-a-hag-they-dressed-me-up-like-this-and-this-isn’t-my-nose-it’s-a-false-one issues, well, I have much nicer hair. So there.

Oh, and Mikey, I’ve always enjoyed reading your comments, especially re: firearms and ordnance (two of my many interests), but you were a bit harsh–and unnecessarily so–to dear Leslie. Please, both of you, take a deep cleansing breath, stay away from all things tea-related for a few hours, and most importantly, remember what this place has going here. It doesn’t exist elsewhere, and nor does its community.