Submitted By Mark Esposito, Guest Blogger
The wrath from the right has been scortching ever since VP Joe Biden commented that certain freshman tea party congressmen were acting “like terrorists” in negotiations to raise the debt ceiling. There was equally no love lost when John McClain commented that the tea party freshman were acting as “deceivers” and their ideas were “bizarro.”
Now Tea Party freshman Rep. Joe Walsh (R-Ill.) (No, not the one with the Maserati that goes 185) has produced his own video decrying the incivility and telling us that “Vice President Biden, I’m not a terrorist. Terrorists target and kill people.” You can watch the lament here.
While the language employed by the VP was quite over the top, and especially so given Biden’s challenge to introduce more civility into public discourse, our freshman congressman fails to see the irony of his words. No one suggests the Tea Partiers are calling for mass extinction of liberals or undocumented aliens, or gays or the poor. But what do they want?
Here’s Nevada GOP Senate Tea Party candidate Sharon Angle on the frustration of her comrades:
“I hope that’s not where we’re going, but you know if this Congress keeps going the way it is, people are really looking toward those Second Amendment remedies and saying my goodness what can we do to turn this country around? I’ll tell you the first thing we need to do is take Harry Reid out.”
Some Tea Party candidates are a tad less discrete in their call for violence. Here’s Texas Tea Party candidate Stephen Broden, “Our nation was founded on violence. The option is on the table. I don’t think that we should ever remove anything from the table as it relates to our liberties and our freedoms.”
Alaska Tea Party candidate Joe Miller found a lot to like in East Germany’s “checkpoint Charlie” system of stemming the tide of freedom-seekers “immigrating” to West Berlin during the Cold War:
“The first thing that has to be done is secure the border … East Germany was very, very able to reduce the flow. Now, obviously, other things were involved. We have the capacity to, as a great nation, secure the border. If East Germany could, we could.”
And the Tea Party has a thing or two to say to liberals about the notion of any separation between church and state:
“Do you know, where does this phrase ‘separation of church and state’ come from? It was not in Jefferson’s letter to the Danbury Baptists. … The exact phrase ‘separation of Church and State’ came out of Adolph Hitler’s mouth, that’s where it comes from. So the next time your liberal friends talk about the separation of Church and State, ask them why they’re Nazis.” —Glen Urquhart, the Tea Party-backed Republican nominee for the Delaware House seat. You can even watch him here.
And then there’s that “witchy woman,” Delaware’s own Christine O’Donnell, who, when questioned about whether the Constitution calls for separation of church and state during a debate before an audience of legal scholars and law students at Widener University Law School delightfully noted, “You’re telling me that’s in the First Amendment?” Ahems were heard around the world on that one.
New York Tea Party darling Carl Paladino had this suggestion for the poor:
“Instead of handing out the welfare checks, we’ll teach people how to earn their check. We’ll teach them personal hygiene … the personal things they don’t get when they come from dysfunctional homes. These (prisons) are beautiful properties with basketball courts, bathroom facilities, toilet facilities. Many young people would love to get the hell out of cities. You have to teach them basic things — taking care of themselves, physical fitness. In their dysfunctional environment, they never learned these things.”
Then there’s the First Lady of the Tea Party, Michele Bachmann, sharing all the inside dope on what it really means to be gay (no husband jokes, please):
“If you’re involved in the gay and lesbian lifestyle, it’s bondage. It is personal bondage, personal despair and personal enslavement.” — then Minn. state senator Michele Bachmann
There’s scores more and they deal with all manner of insensitivity to the poor, immigrants, the 45000 Americans who die every year from inadequate health care, and just about everyone else the right likes to pillory.
Now most of these quotes were from losers in their electoral races and maybe they represent only the most extreme dunces the Tea Party has produced, but that’s not really the point is it? The point is that while the far-out Right might be justly indignant for the rhetorical excesses of the Left, they can’t seem to find the words to decry the excesses of their own camp.
There’s a word for that.
Source: Huffington Post
~Mark Esposito, Guest Blogger
Roco, in this forum “disrupting” obviously means disagreeing with the most uncivil of the regular posters. There’s no way around it. The take ofense at any disagreement and start in with personal attacks. If you reply in kind, they say you are disruptive and trolling. If you don’t reply in kind, they form the herd and bully in the most disruptive fashion.
@GeneH
It also coincides with your guest posting and commenting antics. Make of that what you will.
Also, once again you’ve taken your typical cowardly way out. You make your bold statements. You are challenged to provide support. And then you inevitably fail to provide said support, relying instead on personal attacks to provide cover. It is these tactics that cause the derailing of discussion.
revolting!!!!!!!
Commas are important.
“simple, tedious and ineffective.”
kderosa,
Once again, I don’t care about the name calling. I care about your repeated disruptions of threads. That does not eliminate that your playing the victim card is simple tedious and ineffective. If you didn’t act like a troll, people wouldn’t treat you like one.
Roco,
Mean isn’t the issue. Disruptive is the issue.
Also, out of curiosity, I looked at the site stats to check your other claim. Without going into details, it is false. Average readership is trending up, but the last week Buddha Is Laughing posted was actually the high point to date for this year. Despite whatever you and your buddy’s problem is with him, his driving off readers and posters was not historically the statistical case. He posted from 2008/10/06 until 2011/07/14. The trend indicates that he was a poster over a period in which readership doubled (almost tripled). To the extent he had any influence at all over readership (instead of the most likely influence, the growing popularity of Jonathan Turley), it was not a negative influence by the numbers. I will note though, that since his departure (which closely coincides with the arrival of your buddy), average weekly readership has been trending downward.
Make of that what you will.
AY,
Thanks for getting the discussion going 🙂
Gene:
From what I can tell kderosa just gives what he gets. But is not at all as mean as Buddha was. Where is he anyway?
It is rather interesting that since Buddha is Laughing left, there have been more people posting. Quite interesting. Hopefully Buddha will either not come back or come back a new and improved Buddha is Laughing.
All the wit and wisdom but sans the offensive delivery.
GeneH, point to any evidence where I was the instigator who provoked the name calling or uncivil discourse.
I’ve already shown where you (as Gene H) were the instigator.
The open discussion is mostly among the instigators. That’s convenient.
Lastly, I don’t need to play the victim with the quality of your arguments. Merely another one of your deflection mechanisms.
So go ahead and back up your assertion for a change.
kderosa,
Evidence points to you not getting along with anyone but Roco or people who otherwise agree with you. That your repeated disruption of threads is a topic of open discussion attests to this, so quit playing the victim. It wasn’t impressive the first time you tried it, it’s less so now.
@FFLEO says “although I always tune out when the name-calling begins, which is most often.”
And it inevitably begins with one of the regulars. Which is why your admonishments should be directed more at them, not me. I get along just fine with regulars who don’t engage in personal attacks — Lottakatz, Rafflaw, Elaine, and sometimes Otteray off the top of my head. The rest are childish instigators that coarsen the discourse, usual with their first comment. They are the problem in this forum, their protests to the contrary notwithstanding.
FFLEO, I don’t know if Obama is the most hypocritical president of all time or if millions of us just projected qualities onto him that he didn’t possess to begin with. I do know that the change I was waiting for wasn’t the one I got.
“I’m not a terrorist. Terrorists target and kill people.”
Teabaggers just target and kill people’s dreams, aspirations, and livelihoods.
ekeyra,
That is a very good, concise chronicle of Mr. Obama’s Admin. I have not read each of the 100 for accuracy, but I plan to do so.
Yes, as a registered Republican, I can easily admit that I made a grievous mistake when I voted for Obama. He has now done more harm than Mr. Bush did because Obama continued and *enhanced* Bush’s lawlessness when he pledged to do just the opposite. Obama is the most hypocritical president of all time.
Speaking of hypocrisy,
http://www.humblelibertarian.com/2011/08/bush-20-100-ways-barack-obama-is-just.html
Also considering how many tax-evaders he tried to appoint to his cabinet, I can only conclude that obama has the same high opinion of tax dodgers that I do.
Mike Spindell, AY, Ms. EM, Blouise, The Moar You Know et al.
I am not suggesting that you never reply to Kderosa if you *disagree* with him. By all means, refute what he states when the facts are with you. I have learned some things in the back-and-forth between him and others, although I always tune out when the name-calling begins, which is most often.
Kderosa has some good arguments, so counter those and ignore any off-topic, ancillary, nonproductive aspects of which he posits—that is, those issues for which you *disapprove* (per Ms. EM’s question). I simply prefer not to correspond with him, which does not mean that I am opposed to everything he states. By all appearances, he is here to stay—and yes Ms. EM, like it or not—that means he qualifies as a regular, as you suggested.
@Spinwell
When you say: “The even more effective minority is members of the upper 2% of the citizenry who control most of the country’s wealth. They can control the media to propagandize, they can buy Legislators, Governors, paid disinformation agents, thugs and they can create seeming “grass roots” movements to intimidate and to vote as they are told.”
You obviously have a grand scheme in mind to get this evil top 2% from to;
1. stop “control[ling] the media to propagandize”;
2. stop “buy[ing] … Legislators”;
3. stop “buy[ing] … Governors”;
4. stop “buy[ing] … paid disinformation agents”;
5. stop “buy[ing] … thugs”; and
6. stop allowing them to “create seeming ‘grass roots’ movements to intimidate and to vote as they are told.”
Unless you think this is going to happen by magic. Do you believe in magic Mike? Or are yu just sounding off so that others will pick up the cause?
FF LEO,
“…something is vastly amiss when extremely educated, talented people cannot also ignore those with whom they disapprove.”
Did you mean disapprove or disagree?
“I defer to your wisdom in this, my lips will be mostly furthered sealed when Kenny is afoot.” (Mike S.) (emphasis added 🙂 )
I can go along with that.
“If you reply to Kderosa when he is off-topic, then you—not he—might be the problem perpetuating any discontent.”
FFLEO,
I defer to your wisdom in this, my lips will be mostly furthered sealed when Kenny is afoot.
“You fail to realize that some form of censorship will be required to effect your grand scheme.”
Another avoidance Kenny. what specific “grand scheme” are you referring to? Can you provide me a quote on any of my writing s here laying out a “grand scheme?” All you do is the old dodge and weave, or rope-a-dope as
Ali called it. Grover Norquist and the Koch Brothers have a “grand scheme”. They’re the admitted “grand schemers”. Is this the best you’ve got Kenny?