ScottaWhite wrote:Quickilkav, I must disagree about the Dems shouldering future political losses.
1) O.B.ama is black + he's cool+ probably getting some strange on the side.
2) Dems have a win-win situation here. If the economy rebounds, O.B.ama and Co. will take credit for it as proof of his genius... However, if his policies fail, we will once again be subjected to commercials of "8 years of failed Bush republican policies cannot be fixed overnnight, and we are still suffering the aftereffects of his mismanagement"
3) See #1.
FReQ GTO eSquIRE wrote:ThatGuy85 wrote:Because protecting the environment isn't caring about the homeland?
there's other ways of protecting the environment than those fanatical bastards. besides... when the country is broke, divided and wrecked... are you seriously gonna have "environmental concerns"?
Harrington (Fiber Faber) wrote:You make me sad, no one ever said that there was not a single Democrat at any one of these demonstration. Care to print me a link where I said that. Quickcav said they are non-partisan, I say they are not. The whole notion of using the words TEA PARTY is in reference to the Boston tea party, which was the start of the American Revolution, why would you use the term tea party if you weren't insinuating you want to throw the current government out and start anew.
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Obviously the wrong person was voted in your opinion or you would not be complaining. If all these welfare cases decide all the elections how did Bush get elected? See I can put words into your mouth too.
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What does that have to do with anything I said? I said: The county was not founded on Republican principals. It was founded on the idea that all men are created equal and the we have the right to the pursuit of happiness. Republicans believe these ideals only apply to upper class people that believe in God and donate money to support their political agenda.
1. The Republican party was not even around when our forefathers made this country so how can it be based on Republican policies as Quickcav said?
2. When did I ever say "teaching people to feel they deserve free handouts from people who are actually attempting to better themselves is right", are you serious? Do you like trying to put words into peoples mouths or is it just a bad habit?
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I never said that it was not a reason to be pissed, I for one was pissed at the first TARP. So your telling me that the first TARP was ok? Because the way you make it sound there was no reason to be mad until the money they spent after the first TARP. I just asked why people didn't start this tea party stuff at the onset of the bailout mentality.
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Ok, so I should have said further damage at the hands of Democrats and Republicans I do agree with that. How can i be partisan if I loathe Democrats and Republicans alike?. My point is that this movement is backed by Republicans for the sole purpose of regaining power, if it truly were a grass roots movement by the people there would not be a single politician involved because after all they are the cause of all this, if you can't see it well thats cool too.
Harrington (Fiber Faber) wrote:Hahaha amazing. Didn't see that coming a mile away.
Cracks me up, anyone who has an opinion that does not follow yours to the T is either stupid or ill-informed. How do you fit through doorways with a head that big? Is it a huge responsibility to be the foremost political authority in the country?
The county was not founded on Republican principals. It was founded on the idea that all men are created equal and the we have the right to the pursuit of happiness. Republicans believe these ideals only apply to upper class people that believe in God and donate money to support their political agenda.
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That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness...But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security.
Harrington (Fiber Faber) wrote:This "outrage" is a minority. For it to be a majority there would have had to been over 150 million people at these tea parties yesterday, was their even 1 million total across the country? They have allot of work to do to become a majority.
Harrington (Fiber Faber) wrote:...until we get career politicians out of government, nothing will change.
Harrington (Fiber Faber) wrote:The Democrats will only shoulder the majority of losses if the GOP finds a way to revitalize their base, until they get rid fringe elements that run the party and distort their message this will not happen. Third party candidates will not gain any ground because people still believe for the most part it is a waste of a vote.
Harrington (Fiber Faber) wrote:I realized years ago that there is no such thing as a career politician that cares about anything but themselves, you on the other hand still believe Republicans are on your side and willing to represent your views, that is the biggest badge of fail and you wear it proudly. Of course you will laugh at this post and tell me how blind I am and how full of fail my post is and how no one but you knows what is really "going on" because I don't agree with you but thats fine. I won't change your opinion and you won't change mine.
Harrington (Fiber Faber) wrote:how a non-partisan movement is ran by former Republican House Majority Leader Dick Armey, the only speaker at one of these tea parties I read about was a Republican and it was promoted by Shean Hannity and he even did a broadcast form the Atalnta tea party. Sounds non-partisan to me.
john317(AKA Gary the Old guy) wrote:This is what CNN and MOST of the MSM think it's about;
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Teabaggin' the Square
BY CHRIS POTTER
OK, back from the Market Square "Tea Party." I have a mild headache as a result, and not a lot of time to really describe this event in all its splendor. I will say that for me, the high point was when a small number of black observers began chanting "Obama" in defiance of the general mood. They were shouted down with cheers of -- what else? -- "USA! USA! USA!"
Note to tea-partiers: Obama actually IS the president of the USA ... though judging from a couple "Impeach Obama" signs I saw, some teabaggers wish he weren't.
(The counter-demonstrators were also told to "learn how to talk" and "get a job" by a couple members of the nearly-all-white Teabaggin' crowd. The latter charge is especially mystifying: We were ALL here on a weekday, during the lunch hour. Why would anyone assume the counterdemonstrators were the only ones who needed a job? Unless, of course ... )
Anyway, while I wait for the aspirin to take effect, i'll just share some of my favorite posters from today's event.
This one actually made me laugh out loud, and unlike the vast majority of rhetoric from the stage and the crowd, it did contain a bipartisan critique:
By contrast, this was one of the uglier entries. If you're going to accuse people of extortion, isn't a a swastika overkill?
Perhaps it never occurred to you that "Obama"sounds like "Osama"?
Did I mention there were some Ayn Rand fans in the crowd?
The picture quality here isn't great, I'll admit. But the sign says "Enslaved by big government spending. Slavery is back!" If you think black people had it bad in the 19th century, I hope this puts things in perspective.
Finally, it seems fitting to end on this note ... though I suspect I'd diagnose a different cause of death than many of the other rally participants.
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The Consciousness (?) of a Conservative
BY CHRIS POTTER
As you might expect, being the editor of City Paper means you'll spend a certain percentage of your day talking to misfits, whack-jobs, and malcontents.
And that's just the staff meeting. There are also plenty of phone calls that come in from various members of the tinfoil-hat community, folks who want you to get to the bottom of their sinister conspiracies.
But I got a call just now that I thought I'd share. It came from a perfectly pleasant gentleman who wanted to know details about a "Tea Party" event that is apparently coming up tomorrow, which will feature former Presidential candidate (and perennial nutter) Alan Keyes.
Information is my business, so I help the guy out by providing him time and location details. The event is being held at Allegheny Landing (that sculpture park along the Allegheny River, just east of PNC Park), and the guy asks if there's a specific street address.
"I need an address to give to my ACCESS driver," he says.
ACCESS, of course, is a door-to-door transit service that the Port Authority provides to elderly riders and people with disabilities. In other words, this guy was going to use government-provided transit to attend a rally opposing big government.
Of course, this particular protest, we're told, is being directed only at "a long train of abuses and usurpations of our tax dollars to bail out banks, financial institutions, and special interests." But the broader agenda here is pretty obvious: The home page of the official 'Tea Party' Web site features Ronald Reagan asserting, "In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem. Government is the problem." Elsewhere, the site decries the fact that "We, the People, face foreclosures, hardships, and distress without any assistance whatsoever."
I'm not a big fan of the bailouts myself (who is?). The whole way this is shaking down confirms my longstanding fear of the financial sector's influence on Barack Obama. I also don't want to single my caller out. (I resisted the temptation to tell him to trust the free market to get him to the rally.) After all, people with disabilities should be able to participate in empty-headed political gestures too. That's one of the things that makes this country great.
But this just sums up our political situation, doesn't it? For decades we've heard right-wingers denounce "government intervention" in the economy ... with the fully predicatable result that once financial markets were deregulated, the whole system turned to @!#$. We've got flat-taxers and flat-earthers who have sought to strip revenues from government ... and all of a sudden, people are wondering why our bridges and roads are in such miserable shape.
Somehow, we've ended up with a political scene in which millions of people demand the abolishment of institutions that, while they are far from perfect, have made our way of life possible. And hardly any of them are even aware of the hypocrisy.
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Keyes Shows up at the Wrong Door
BY CHRIS POTTER
Did you miss Alan Keyes' big speech on the North Side this past weekend? You're not alone: While the Tribune-Review's coverage estimates the crowd at "several thousand," the Post-Gazette puts it at a more modest 1,500.
Which sort of sums up our plight as a country: Competing media outlets cover a political rally, but can't even agree on how many people were there.
Anyway, you can watch Keyes' speech for yourself by following these four links. Or you could, say, drive rusty nails into your gums. Your choice. But having sat through the full 40-minute experience -- no need to thank me -- I can tell you this speech is almost exactly what you'd expect.
It starts with Keyes comparing the Obama team to Al-Qaeda:
We have had foreign enemies who have sought to terrorize us with attacks, and we have domestic enemies who seek to terrorize us with economic collapse.
And works its way to a vision in which we are being led
happily into the slaughter pens where we shall go from being proud citiziens of the United States, fearing no one but our God, to being the subjects of a government where we must fear its every shadow.
In the spirit of the day, Keyes was willing to make a nod to bipartisanship. Leaders in both parties, he said, were
walking us over the cliff where our Constitution is destroyed, where our economy is bankrupted, where our independence is forfeited, where our sovereignty as a people is no more.
Note the stirring cadence of those remarks. Keyes is a good speaker, despite his tendency to start waddling back and forth like an overexcited penguin for emphasis. He can effectively move from a conversational tone to a Voice of God bellow, and then drop down to a whisper, all within the space of a few minutes.
The problem is, the guy is bat@!#$ nuts. I'm not just talking about garden-variety silliness. (For example, Keyes spoke derisively of "educated [people] with fancy degrees" -- even though he himself had been introduced as "Doctor Alan Keyes.") I'm talking serious cognitive dissonance here.
Let's recall that one week to the day before Keyes gave his little pep-talk, three Pittsburgh police officers were gunned down -- apparently by a guy who thought the government was going to take away his guns. It is in this context, in this city, that Keyes chose to praise his audience as a group in which "every individual is an army empowered by their faith in God."
I'm willing to bet that's how many lone gunmen see themselves. Especially the ones who would admire this line from Keyes' speech:
[N]ever as long as we have breath [will we] surrender the instruments with which we can defend [our] liberty against the depradations of a government no longer committed to it.
Make no mistake: I'm not suggesting that Keyes is encouraging people to go shoot cops. (His political program, such as it is, seems to involve "throwing the bums out" -- voting against every incumbent in 2010.) Nor would he be responsible if one of his audience later goes out and does just that. But Keyes talked quite a bit about how "liberty" wasn't all about doing whatever you wanted -- at least not when it applied to things like gay marriage. Maybe a word about the moral obligations of gun ownership would have been in order?
If you're in a city still grieving from a terrible shooting, you might want to think these things through. If only to show you actually give a damn about the city you happened to parachute into that morning with your rantings. This is almost like Charlton Heston showing up in Littleton, Colorado to do the NRA "not from my cold, dead hands" shtick after the Columbine shootings.
The temptation is to say there's something "chilling" about all this, but actually it's sort of sad. The folks at Media Matters have posted footage from other recent "Tea Parties," which pretty clearly shows what's going on here. Despite the rhetoric, the real grievance these folks have isn't that America has "lost its democracy." It's that these folks lost the last election. And they just can't imagine how the hell that happened. Look at this guy, for example:
Uh, buddy? Sometimes a person gets elected even if you, personally, didn't vote for him. That isn't called "stealing" an election; it's called "winning." Aren't you and your buddies the same folks who called Democrats "sore losers" and "whiners" back in 2000? What's striking is the sense of entitlement here: If I can't have my way, I'm going to take all my Mausers and go home. Where I will await the End Times.
Keyes, to his credit, appeared to be slightly less delusional than some of his followers. His rhetoric, at least, seemed to acknowledge that that most Americans simply don't agree with him or his audience:
We will have truly rediscovered our moral strength when we discover the strength that we find as we stand alone for what is right ... [T]hough you bow your head beneath the weight of all that loneliness, when you lift it up, you shall be standing in the light of our Almighty God.
Judging from the crowd response, it's pretty obvious that this sense of isolation flatters the audience's desire to be courageous. But it's probably also helping to drive them nuts. As polling data suggests, Obama remains quite popular. And my guess is that if Obama becomes even more so, these folks will become more resentful. It'll be bad for everyone if Obama fails, of course. But it will be terrible for these folks if he somehow succeeds. They won't be able to wrap their minds around it.
Which is to say that maybe, just maybe, these folks aren't feeling oppressed by their government. Maybe they're feeling oppressed by their fellow Americans.
john317(AKA Gary the Old guy) wrote:
This is what it's really about;
Mr.Goodwrench-G.T. wrote:
One day there will be a REAL protest with all walks of life attacking this issue, what happened yesterday was not it.
KevinP (Stabby McShankyou) wrote:
and I'm NOT a pedo. everyone knows i've got a wheelchair fetish.