Three Senate Teabagger Profiles

Courtesy of Daily Kos (for aggregating), here are profiles of three Rethuglican/ Stupid Party / Tea party/ N.R.A. darlings, starting off with Carl Hiassen's sketch of Sen. Marco "Glug Glug" Rubio (Coward-FL):

Marco Rubio showed his true yellow colors last week, joining 45 other cowards to defeat Senate legislation designed to stop criminals from buying firearms online and at gun shows.

The vote was nauseating. So is Rubio.

A few days earlier, he’d admitted to Fox News that he hadn’t read the complete bill that would expand federal background checks of gun buyers, but he was opposing it anyway.
Other pertinent materials that Rubio obviously didn’t read included a recent New York Times sampling of nut jobs, convicted criminals and even one fugitive who purchased assault rifles and other weapons over the Internet.

Who's next?  How about Sen. "Tailgunner Ted" Cruz (Coward-TX), courtesy of Dana Milbank:

Is there nobody who can tell Ted Cruz to shut up?

The young senator from Texas has been on the job for about 100 days, but he has already turned the Senate’s ancient seniority system upside down and is dominating his senior Republican colleagues. He’s speaking for them on immigration, guns and any other topic that tickles his fancy; Republican leaders are seething at being outshone yet are terrified of challenging him.

Finally,  Sen. "Ayn" Rand Paul (Coward-KY) gets the Leonard Pitts treatment:

Rand Paul did just fine at Howard University, thank you very much. Or at least, that’s how he remembers it.

Paul, GOP senator from Kentucky, told the Christian Science Monitor on Wednesday that his recent visit to Howard didn’t go so bad at all. He said any perception to the contrary was created by — all together now — the “left-wing media.”

Knowing what we do about the political right’s capacity for self-deception, we may trust that he’s telling it like it is — or at least, telling it like he believes it to be.

But reality-based Americans know it wasn’t left-wing media that insulted students at the historically black school by acting as if a visit to their campus was like a visit with headhunters. “Some have said that I’m either brave or crazy to be here,” Paul said, somehow resisting the urge to add, “Me come-um in peace.”

Of course, to get the full picture, read each article in its entirety.  Then join us in congratulating the dimbulbs voters of Florida, Texas and Kentucky for sending us these twits. 

Today's Class Warfare Cartoon

(Matt Wuerker via goComics.com)

Discovering Journalism

A small glimmer of hope appears on the front page of today's Kaplan Daily in an article describing how the federal budget deficit ballooned into the trillions of dollars over the past decade. The hope is that the Kaplan Daily (once the respected Washington Post) will return to its tradition of informing the public, rather than its recent habit of regurgitating talking points in a he-said-she-said attempt to provide an inoffensive "balance" of opinion at a time when one side is clearly (ahem) unbalanced. Here's one of reporter Lori Montgomery's aha! revelations:

"...All told, Obama-era choices account for about $1.7 trillion in new debt... Bush-era policies, meanwhile, account for more than $7 trillion and are a major contributor to the trillion-dollar annual budget deficits dominating the political debate."

And what has been the "biggest culprit, by far" in this Bush-era inherited debt? "...[a]n erosion of tax revenue triggered largely by two recessions and multiple rounds of tax cuts."

Teatards! Where were you when the country needed you?! Oh, now I remember -- it was a white Rethuglican president and Congress running things, so all must've been well.

Teabaggers Dump Maine Rethug Platform

Good news for Sens. (for "sensible?") Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins and all loyal Maine Rethugs! At the Rethug convention in Maine yesterday, teabaggers and Paultards succeeded in scrapping the existing right-wing platform and replacing it with... well, you be the judge.

Can this be anything but good news for the Rethugs?! Isn't it always?!

Quote of the Week

"[W]here was the Tea Party crowd? Isn't the whole premise of the Tea Party movement that overreaching government poses a threat to individual freedom? It seems to me a law allowing individuals to be detained and interrogated on a whim -- and requiring legal residents to carry identification, as in a police state -- would send the Tea Partyers into apoplexy. Or is there some kind of exception if the people whose freedoms are being taken away happen to have brown skin and speak Spanish?" -- Eugene Robinson in today's Kaplan Daily, on the racial profiling immigration law recently passed by extremist right-wingers in the Arizona legislature.

Imagine

Tim Wise wants us to play a little game he calls "Imagine if the tea party was black." (After playing Tim's game, another game suggests itself to us, one we would call "Imagine if the media were doing their job.")

Sunday Morning Reading, Teabagger Edition

This morning, it's Charles Blow on the teabagger meeting he attended in Dallas, Texas: "a political minstrel show" by and for people on the "rim of obliviousness."

Also, Dan "No" Balz is finally catching on (as we think more and more of the "mainstream" media is) to the fact that the teabaggers are really just the right-wing base of the Rethuglican Party, all dressed up, ill-informed, and angry that they lost the 2008 election.

At Least Teabaggers Aren't Racists!

Stop saying patriotic American teabaggers are racists! Especially, stop saying that about Tea Party backed Rethug candidate for Governor of New York Carl Paladino! What's a few harmless, "politically incorrect," sexually explicit, bestial e-mails among teabaggers?

And while we're at it, teabaggers aren't uninformed, stupid, far-right crackpots either!

Why would Centerfold Brown (see below) want to keep his distance from these nice people?

(Image: 'Nuff said.)

Tea Baggers and Social Darwinism

Germantown Bureau Chief Brian has alerted us to a good read by Christopher Malone, "Finding the Forgotten Man," which explores the relationship between social Darwinists and their latest "populist" incarnation, the teabaggers. Interesting dynamics, given the Rethugs' cynical attempts to capitalize on the anger of these low-information, quasi-sociopaths.

Worth 1,000 Words

Diagram by New York writer/artist Trish Wend. (click on image to enlarge)

Reality Bites

We saw this quote from Bill Maher's "Real Time" show the other day, and thought it was appropriate after the Conservative Political Action Committee's recent hate-fest in DC. Maher's talking about teabaggers, but it really applies to all fringe wingnuts:

"In a recent poll almost ninety percent of Tea Baggers said that they thought taxes had either gone up or stayed the same under Obama. Only two percent thought they went down. But the reality is taxes have gone down for ninety five percent of working families.

Think about that. Only two percent of the people in a "movement" about taxes named after a tax revolt have the slightest idea what's going on...with taxes."

The "conservative" movement -- as symbolized by CPAC -- has become a home for the John Birch Society and militia nuts more than ever. Reality won't intrude into their world. It's much more comforting for them to believe the nonsense they tell each other.

Libtard Rethugs Gone Wild

TBogg has the sad story of how some in the tea party movement are having at each other (although from the looks of some of them, they haven't had a "movement" in a while). Petty power struggles, litmus tests, money issues, lawsuits... can't these superpatriots just get along? There's so much more astroturfing to be done and so little time!

Sunday Funnies

This guy (after you click on "continue to the Onion") is the perfect Tea Party candidate for office. "We're mad as hell... and just as confused!"

He'd certainly appeal to this crowd...

(h/t to Germantown Bureau Chief Brian)

Post Election Punditry 101

Winners:
candidates who didn't distance themselves from Obama (Cong.-elect Owens, NY-23);
Rethugs who didn't invite Sarah Palin to campaign for them (McDonnell, Christie);
Rethugs who ran ads incorporating Obama and his hope message (Christie);
Rethugs who didn't display their party label and ran to the "middle" (McDonnell and Christie).

Losers:
candidates who distanced themselves from Obama and his programs (Deeds);
Rethugs who backed far-right Doug "Crazy Eyes" Hoffman in NY-23 (Palin, Pawlenty, the Tea Baggers, etc.);
candidates with Goldman Sachs/ Wall Street bloodlines (Corzine);
oh, and Doughy Pantload's bro'.

"10 Lessons for Teabaggers"

Over at Crooks and Liars, Jon Perr has a helpful tutorial for the teabaggers and 9/12-ers whose anger is irrational and anti-historical, and thus grossly misdirected. (But since much of it is based on their revulsion at an African-American in the White House, who cares about facts?!) Conveniently, as Perr notes Jon Stewart commenting, they're confusing tyranny with losing an election.

We Teabaggin'!

Think the 99.9 percent white, middle-aged and senior teabagging "million-man-mob-minus-950,000" that plopped on DC this past Saturday like a Metamucil-induced dookie wasn't nasty, racist, gun-happy and 100 percent deluded? Check out "Teabaggers in their own words", courtesy of Daily Kos.

Now let's see if the Rethugs are able to contain the beast they're feeding.

"Old Yeller" and Inchoate Rage

Your Saturday morning reading is a piece by Gail Collins on Rep. Joe Wilson* (Rethug-SeCession) and the "inchoate rage" among the far-right libtards/ teabaggers/ tenthers/ birthers/ wankers, some of whom are in D.C. today as part of a "Taxpayers March." Fun and insightful reading. Next: watch tonight's "mainstream media" coverage of the "March" to see how it's parlayed into "widespread anger and questioning of the Administration's economic and health care policies," rather than as an astroturfed gathering of assorted nuts, sheeple, and mouthbreathers.

*Choose your nickname: "Old Yeller," "You Lie!," "Shit for Brains," etc.

Rethug Police Blotter, Teabag Edition

Idaho Rethug party official cum Paultard cum teabag enthusiast Challiss "Cuz Chalice Would Be a Sissy Name" McAffee has been arrested and charged with felony assault with a deadly weapon for pulling his penile compensator out in a confrontation over a foreclosed property. You da man, uh, Challiss.

Joe (Not His Name) the Plumber (Not A Plumber) Should Follow His Own Advice

Speaking to fellow wingnut teabaggers in Houston on Saturday, Samuel Wurzelbacher wants to close our borders and "get (the undocumented immigrants) the hell out of our damn country. . ." We would go further in the case of Wurzelbacher himself. Since we're certain that "Wurzelbacher" isn't a Native American name, let's make sure that this immigrant "plumber" is at the head of the line out of the U.S. And by the way, it's interesting that he referred to our country as "our damn country." Wingnut patriotism on display for everyone to see.

Teabagging Tax Cheat

Why is this not surprising? Crooks and Liars has this piece about Michael Leahy, a leader of the "teabagging" "grassroots" "movement." Leahy apparently has over $150,000 in State and federal tax liens, judgments, and civil suits hanging over him. No wonder the putz is on the front lines of "the rules are for everyone else; I've got better things to do with my money" crowd.

Leahy also co-founded something called "Top Conservatives on Twitter." Yeah, now I'm impressed!