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
lottakatz,
A necessary warning … well done
Am I banned too, Gene?
Crazy dudes or dudetts, first, your obsession with BIL and Gene is unhealthy and is starting to look akin to stalking. The setup of a blawg dedicated to this obsession confirms the unhealthy nature of your obsession. You’re moving your bad manners into a mode a mode of behaviour that may well cross into behaviour that is actionable. You need to get a life/lives.
You entered a blawg that used guest blawgers. If you jumped in without recognising that your information may be if not shared then available to guest blawgers then you haven’t been around much or long. There may be a way for the blawg-owner to block that access but I always assume that information might be available to others if for no other reason that the more accessible a software it is the less secure it is.
For that reason I wouldn’t click on your juvenile Buddha link if you paid me- it’s radioactive, you’re not in a healthy frame of mind and I don’t want you having any info of mine. What are you people 10? This isn’t MySpace. Don’t your parents monitor your computer use?
The Professor actually polled his blawg participants about using guest blawgers and when people answered “yes” he did so. I trust his judgment and that trust is conferred to secondary, designated keepers of my info. If you came late then you take the blawg as found. If you don’t like it then hit the road.
If there is anybody here that doesn’t know that going to the Buddha link will give people with an unhealthy obsession your wordpress info or at the very least the email addy you log on from, IT WILL. Be careful.
Nal:
Thanks for that info. I will avoid it now that I know it’s out there on the site.
And into the moderation queue you go.
Do you think Byron or bdaman would have posted here knowing that Jonathan would turn their information over to Buddha? Where’s Turley’s assurance of anonymity now?
I’ll say this, the only thing that bothers me is that BIL was the master planner in an effort to expose people known as trolls just a few short months ago. If fact he claimed that the days of such people were numbered. We already went through this drill.
If in fact, Gene Howington is aka Buddha is Laughing, and because Buddha is Laughing admittedly expressed it was his goal to expose people whom he considered to be trolls, there can be no question that given the power of being a quest blogger with access to the information at hand compromises the anonymity of the people to which he could choose to target. It is unfathomable the damage one could inflict simply knowing ones e-mail address, style of writing, to which comparisons of a few chosen posters here were just made in the last two weeks and a anonymous handle by which one goes by. I myself have no fear, I know who I am and I know what am. I be who I be and that be me.
Believe it or not I know exactly what is going on. It’s getting ready to get real ugly if you folks don’t straighten out the mess you created.
Word to your mother, peace, I’m out
BTW, I am interested to see what information gets posted on the outingbuddha site Byron is Laughing posted above. I am concerned about how my personal information is being handled based on the petty threats being bandied about tonight.
I always admire an opponent who, after having thrown mud all day, quite piously proclaims that mud throwing is bad and should stop. I note this usually occurs right about the same time he’s lost all of his ground. Quite courageous and principled to be sure, but awfully transparent.
kderosa,
If I were childish, I’d have banned you day one you tried to say I’m somebody else. That I’ve tolerated your disruptive nonsense this long is a testimony in restraint. Keep slinging though. You’ll end up in the moderation queue yet.
Byron:
One wonders also if you suffer from dizziness from, in the first instance, complaining virulently about breaching your anonymity while at the same time complaining just as forcefully that it wasn’t breached to support your contention. Some tea with that cake?
Byron Is Laughing,
This is something that Professor Turley needs to deal with and perhaps we can all discuss it since guest bloggers were suggestions from some of the regulars here. I am certainly okay with them posting to help Prof T. especially on weekends and vacations.
I had little doubt that you have my e-mail and IP addresses.
Thank you for considering my request.
All the GBs have access to IP addresses and the e-mail account (whether real or not) that the commenter has entered in the first line. I believe all the GBs hold this information inviolate. We would never violate the trust placed in each of us by JT.
If the commenters find this situation unacceptable, suggest to JT:
How To Enable Guest Blogging in WordPress Blogs
It appears that JT can set up user accounts that would allow guest blogging and that may not have access to the above information. He may feel it’s not necessary.
Thanks, Nal, but it is ok if it stays up, for the time being at least.
@geneh and @mespo, you two can posture and lie all you want.
And I agree with ffleo this nonsense should stop while JT is on vacation. Obviously some of the guest bloggers are too childish with the authority they’ve been given. Nonetheless, the personal attacks should stop. Now let’s see who will do it and who won’t.
Byron Is Laughing,
I suggest that would also be your problem and doubly so since if you are indeed the Byron of days past that I’ve already had to add you to the blacklist for again assuming someone else’s identity since I started posting. That you’ve returned under another IP and e-mail does not mitigate that you are a previously banished and repeat offender of blog policy. It only exacerbates it.
@mespo
“One must wonder though why you would take such umbrage”
Who took umbrage? I denied your false accusation and stated that you could provide support for you accusation should you desire to. In the end, you don’t care if your accusation is true. For you, the important part was to make it.
@Former Federal LEO
I will do as you ask. I ask that you also address this breach with Professor Turley.
My problem was just with Buddha/Gene having access to this information.
In case you think I am just here to out people, let me just say that I could have responded to “R”. I know more than I let on. I do respect your anonymity.
Byron:
“You, unlike those of us without administrator access, have the ability to support your claim. You will not because you cannot.”
*******************
I have no desire to find out if what you say is true or not. I respect anonymity and have no desire to find out anything about you or anyone else for that matter. I judge only on the quality of the posts. I also call ’em the way I see ’em. You may feel that just because one can do something, he should do something. I do not. You can call me sanctimonious, if you like. it really doesn’t matter to me. One must wonder though why you would take such umbrage if what I said was from left field or why you would renew an old fight with one you associate with Buddha. Methinks the poster doth protest too much.
kderosa:
Please provide a link, I’ll delete any personal information about you.
Is that so, kderosa? Then I suggest your problem in that regard doesn’t involve me.
Byron Is Laughing,
Out of respect for Professor Turley, especially given his vacation absence, please wait until he returns to continue this discussion.