Alternet: Turning to Crazy

It looks as though those angry tea-baggers and conservative Christians who don’t think health insurance should be an option for those who don’t have it have turned their pleas of mercy towards the craziest person in congress…Michele Bachmann.

According to a post on Alternet:

Quoting scripture, spouting lies and blowing dog-whistles to violence, the right wing’s queen of crazy takes center stage in desperate, last-gasp fight against health-care reform.

Read more at: Alternet!

White Wing…I Mean Right Wing Tea Party

From The Atlantic:

Despite the right’s efforts to tout its diversity, left-wing firebrands continue slapping the white-people label on conservatives. Last week, Keith Olbermann led the charge asking “Where are the black faces?” at Tea Party gatherings. On Monday night, Jon Stewart called CPAC “this year’s Festival of Whites.”

There is of course some truth to the charge. A new CNN poll shows the Tea Party movement is 80 percent white. As left-leaning blogger Matthew Yglesias said dryly of the poll:

The “tea party” movement sweeping the nation is disproportionately composed of individuals who have higher-than-average incomes. It’s also disproportionately composed of men. And disproportionately composed of white people.

I find I have to agree. Tea-baggers have gone to great efforts to show the (usually one) person of color in attendance, but lets face it, those who oppose health insurance reform have never done without health insurance. It always amazes me to here those Republican lawmakers bellow about “government run health care” when the very health care they have is government run. I wonder, is their health care inadequate? Why do they deserve it, yet nearly 40 million other tax-paying Americans don’t? And what about the economy? The tea-baggers are the ones who have chosen not to participate in the recession. These aren’t people out of work. These are people who don’t like immigrants, don’t like a man of color in the White House, and don’t like paying taxes (which who does, but at least I understand the necessity of). These are not the unemployed. These are not those who are dying because they don’t have health insurance and can’t afford health care…the tea-baggers are those who have…and feel strongly about maintaining the segment of population that are the ‘have-nots’.

The Right Right and the Wrong Right

After spending the weekend listening to the extremely immature, unrealistic, predominately anti-gay, extreme right of the GOP at CPAC, it does a body good to see some rational thinking come from those who stand on the right.

Watch CBS News Videos Online

1% of CPACers List Gay Marriage as Priority

That’s a big menu and the winner was a fait accompli thanks to The One’s agenda and tea-party fee-vah, but still. Only 16 percent had abortion, gay marriage, or “promoting traditional values” as either of their top two priorities? Granted, students comprised 48 percent of the sample — how else could Paul have won? — but that might be less significant as evidence that the poll’s an outlier than as evidence that it may not be such an outlier a few years from now. (More than half the votes cast in the poll were by those 25 years old or younger.)

More at: Hot Air!

Expanding or Jumping Over the Fence?

According to a post on AlterNet:

As the populist influence of the religious right finds itself eclipsed by the vitriol of the Tea Party movement, religious right leaders are courting the Tea Partiers, seeking to introduce their notions of America as a “Godly nation” into the neo-libertarian ideology of the Tea Partiers.

I first saw the seeds of this phenomenon sown on the eve of the 9/11 march on Washington, when religious right co-founder Richard Viguerie offered a free organizing seminar to Tea Party activists. Just weeks later, at the Values Voter Summit hosted by the Family Research Council, Tea Party leaders were featured on the agenda, even as FRC tried to damage-control the newcomers’ racist image.

Now, reports Bill Berkowitz at BuzzFlash, Pastor Rick Scarborough, working through his S.T.O.P. Obama Tyranny National Coalition, Tea Partiers are being encouraged to sign a “Mandate to Save America,” a 10-point manifesto that begins with a demand to “Acknowledge the centrality of faith in America.” In fact, it’s not until you get to point no. 4, “Stop judicial tyranny,” that one gets to one of the priorities of the more secular Tea Partiers. (Points 2 and 3, respectively, decry abortion and same-sex marriage.)

Now as much as it makes sense the religious right would be courting the tea-baggers of the “Tea Party”, especially since the likes of Sarah “dumb as a rock and pray away the gay” Palin and Michele “bat shyt crazy and hide in the bushes at gay events” Bachmann are strongly tied to the movement, party, or what ever the hell they are, it makes me wonder, are they abandoning the GOP or are they simply expanding their horizons to glob onto the “Tea Party” and hi-jack it as they have the Republican party?

I would hope the religious right is looking to the “Tea Party” for a place to call home.  This already fringe and extreme group has somewhat become the laughing stock of politics, unless you like FOX News.  This may lend to more freedom of those GOPer’s who are stuck hating the gays because their voter base believes Jesus rode dinosaurs to work.  Perhaps if Republicans stop fearing their Bible beating constituency, they’ll slowly start to come around on equality.  Yes, let the tea-baggers have the religious right.  Hopefully they’ll both fall overboard when they’re dumping tea!

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