Racism and the Teabaggers

Even though we tend to post on teabagger insanity as comic relief around, I hadn't written anything about NAACP resolution because... well it's such a fucking no-brainer that I didn't think it would make that much noise.

I guess I should have known the media would have pushed this into a story/controversy/Sunday talk show topic, so here are a few fairly obvious points:

The teabaggers care more about being called racists than they do the actual racism prevalent in their ranks, and this should be pointed out. The NAACP resolution only calls on the teabaggers to condemn racism that exists in their own group! This isn't hard, and shouldn't be something you fight against, unless you think that a lot of your members are racists, and well, that leads to the next problem...

... Racism is pretty prevalent at these gatherings, and is why their leaders are so hesitant to make it look like they might not hate black people. Ours was only one example, but I walked through every corner of Beck's 9/12 rally with a sign that said "Gee, a whole lot of white people here today..." and was approached dozens of times WITH COMPLIMENTS. "Yeah, isn't it great none of them showed" up was the average comment. Three people saw my sign and called me out. All of them were reporters. Again, this is one example, but if I went to a rally for my cause and someone had a racist sign, I'd tell them to get the fuck out. People who aren't racists don't feel comfortable associating with racists, it's just that simple.

One more thing: If you are trying to show everyone you're not a racist, don't have the spokesman for one of the biggest teabagging organizations in the country do shit like this:

In the post, Williams calls NAACP President Ben Jealous "Tom's Nephew" and ties tea party calls for smaller government to "emancipation" (which, of course, is just steps away from the standard tea party line that Democratic policies amount to "tyranny.")

But the central theme centers around, as Williams writes, the "absurdity of a group that calls blacks 'Colored People' hurling charges of racism."

Here's a sample (the post is written in the form of a mock letter to President Abraham Lincoln from Jealous):

We Colored People have taken a vote and decided that we don't cotton to that whole emancipation thing. Freedom means having to work for real, think for ourselves, and take consequences along with the rewards. That is just far too much to ask of us Colored People and we demand that it stop!

That's just the introduction. Here's the good stuff:

Perhaps the most racist point of all in the tea parties is their demand that government "stop raising our taxes." That is outrageous! How will we Colored People ever get a wide screen TV in every room if non-coloreds get to keep what they earn? Totally racist! The tea party expects coloreds to be productive members of society? Mr. Lincoln, you were the greatest racist ever. We had a great gig. Three squares, room and board, all our decisions made by the massa in the house. Please repeal the 13th and 14th Amendments and let us get back to where we belong.

Again, for the record: this how an official at the Tea Party Express explains how not racist the Tea Party is.

It's no wonder this guy won't denounce racists within his group, huh?

Score one for the NAACP's tactics, because thanks to the news generated from his letter, he was forced out of the professional teabagging circut for... wait for it ... "racism". It does exist!

It doesn't take much effort to figure this stuff out:

Are the leaders of these groups doing/saying racist things on a regular basis? They are? Ok.

Are their members often seen carrying racist signs and saying racist things? They are? Ok.

Did the leadership of every teabagger group just go ape-shit at an organization that ASKED THEM TO CONDEMN RACISM? They did? Noted.

Hey teabaggers? Tired of being called racists?

Then stop saying racist shit!

It really is that fucking simple.

The Other Side is Nothing But Crazy People

Darksyde at dailykos does something that needs to happen every 24 hours:

Let me see if I have this straight: in the last few days members of the GOP have savagely screwed the unemployed, protected the bankstas, trashed Thurgood Marshall, implied rape and incest is part of God's plan, defended BP, threatened to either end social security or screw over 20 million plus people who have paid into the system for at least 20 years by making them wait until age 70 to see their benefits, and screwed homeless veterans with children. That about it, or is there more?

The Republican party is a joke, and is doing offensive/extremely unpopular things just about constantly. We try to point out the most absurd stuff on this site, but it really makes you wonder how conservative messages continue to dominate almost every media narrative.

I'm not sure what the solution is, but there's really no excuse for not making every news cycle about Republicans defending slavery/that day's idiotic statement. The opposition party is 90% full of crazy people, and they're not going to stop saying things that are objectionable to non-crazy people. The fact that this hasn't been turned into a larger advantage is kind of stunning.

Humble Teabaggers

At least they're level headed:

In doing so, the Florida Tea Partiers become just the latest to sound the alarm about what they see as the increasing co-optation of a grassroots movement by political insiders. "We have a very successful movement, similar to the Civil Rights movement, or women's suffrage. And we have a political entity that's trying to take advantage of that," one of the plaintiffs, Everett Wilkinson, told TPMmuckraker in an interview. "They're trying to take that success and momentum and hijack it for their own political and/or personal needs."

I don't really remember civil rights groups suing each other to acquire the most profitable name for their groups, but maybe that's me.

Attention Guys in Costumes: Gather Your Armies!

We've been following the crappiest/most awesome political ads that the 2010 cycle has to offer. Our latest entry won't disappoint: (Via kos)



So there's no threat of horse shooting, but this one might be more insane. Straight out of a Glenn Beck novel, he's sitting down talking to the founding fathers talking about how paying taxes to your elected government is spying on yourself. My favorite part is when he talks about how insignificant their grievances with the British were (TEA!!!) in comparison to the problems that today's conservatives face with a democratically elected government.

Not only are the teabaggers helping the Democrats electorally, but they are also producing some of the greatest unintentional comedy the world has ever seen. Keep at it guys!

America Speaking Out!

One of the more fun aspects of the modern Republican Party is that teabaggers manage to teabag their way into anything the GOP does.

Example: A seemingly harmless idea where the GOP creates a site to to submit ideas they have about how to improve the government. What pressing issues of the day are Republican voters concerned about?

On Tuesday morning, GOP leaders unveiled americaspeakingout.com, a website that they pitched as a "giant step forward" towards popularizing the Republican platform. The idea is simple -- allow viewers to suggest legislative remedies that they and others could then debate and vote upon. The top suggestions would, naturally, rise to the top.

But opening up the process of debate means inviting in uncomfortable voices. Within minutes, a poster on the site suggested repealing Section II of the 1964 Civil Rights Act because it was "UNCONSTITUTIONAL, PROGRESSIVE and HITLER." [yes, they used Hitler as an adjective]. (That entry has since been shut down by the GOP.)

"Hitler" often goes underused as an adjective, but that clearly didn't stop this guy.

I was originally going to end the post there, but luckily I decided to click through the links and head over there myself. It's a fantastic combination of people trolling the site and morons, absolutely worth checking out for yourself.

The first idea I saw:

There are too many states these days. Please eliminate three. I am NOT a crackpot.

Abe Simpson, fucking awesome. The people who weren't trolling were equally hilarious:

Just get out of the way! Businesses do fine on its own if you don't saddle them with taxes and regulations.

Because that's working so well! And speaking of those regulations...

eliminating minimum wage laws will allow companies to hire many more Americans for just a fraction of the price. If Mexicans can work for 2$ an hour, so can we.

Like millions of Americans, this person wakes up every morning and asks themselves: "How can our country be as poor as Mexico?" That idea has 130 votes.

My best part of this rant is that it showed up under the site's "Job Creation ideas" page:

Good white christian folk everywhere must stand up and refuse to apologize for committing crimes that infuriate the communist democRATS: 1) Being white and proud of it! (Black people are allowed to declare their racial pride!) 2) Being a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ. 3) Not accepting being a sodomite as legitimate lifestyle much less grant these AIDS infected beasts the same rights normal non-child m0lesting people have. 4) Demanind that this white christian nation retain its racial and cultural heritage by rejecting the marxist multi-culturalism of the left. 5) Knowing for a fact that the black communist muslim in the white house was NOT born in the U.S.A. and therefore is not legally president! 6) Demanind that Barack HUSSEIN Obama stop taxing us to death already! 7) Respect our inherent God-given right to own whatever firearm we like! We don't need to justify owning an M4 or AK-47. We may need them when Obama orcastrates a distaster as an excuse to throw us into his FEMA death camps. Stand up America and be counted in November! Kick some communist butt and take back this country for future generations before the allah-loving stalinst in the white house makes us his white slaves permanently!

It's so over the top you'd have to assume that it's someone trolling the site, but real life teabaggers are so out of their fucking minds you can never be sure.

So keep at it guys! Pushing the Republican party into insanely stupid positions might be the best chance we have this November!

GOING LOLT: The Rand Paul Story

Ladies and gentlemen, I present Rand Paul on the subject of whether lunch tables (slash, everything) should have been desegregated during the Civil Rights era:

"What I think would happen -- what I'm saying is, is that I don't believe in any discrimination. I don't believe in any private property should discriminate either. And I wouldn't attend, wouldn't support, wouldn't go to. But what you have to answer when you answer this point of view, which is an abstract, obscure conversation from 1964 that you want to bring up. But if you want to answer, you have to say then that you decide the rules for all restaurants and then you decide that you want to allow them to carry weapons into restaurants."

Ahahahaha, there you have it, the Teabagging Prince, the future of the movement. Great stuff.

I'm Proud to Be a Teabagger!

Can't figure out if this is a parody or not, but it was featured on Andrew Breitbart's blog:



The fact that the right is completely insane may destroy all hope of good governance for a while, but at least they do things like this to ease the pain.

The Thomas Friedman Tea Party

It's been at least a few days since somebody pointed out what an unbelievable idiot Thomas Friedman is, so I figured it's my turn.

Some recent Friedman statements, as complied by Sadly No:

March 24, 2010:

That is why I want my own Tea Party. I want a Tea Party of the radical center.

April 25, 2010:

So if there is going to be a Green Tea Party, it will have to emerge from a different place — the radical center, a center committed to a radical departure from business as usual.

A few points:

1. Anyone who uses the term "Radical Center" should be banished to an island until they understand the consequences of their actions. If you think about it for too long, you can feel your brain looking for ways to kill itself.

2. Of all the formulas that Friedman uses in his columns, probably his most charming is when he assumes masses of people will be instantly captivated by his stupid ideas.

Idea 1: Talk about climate change and making things "green" (without disrupting any of the pro corporate globalization policies he's built his career around worshiping.)

Idea 2: Find a way to talk about "Tea Parties"

Solution: Let's forget that most teabaggers would rather impale themselves on their one of their tri-corner hats before associating with something "green", I declare this a movement! I will also repeatedly reference this same idea in later columns, as if it existed somewhere other than my imagination caught on as a trend.

3. Is there anything more arrogant/egotistical/narcissistic than declaring in your national column in the New York Times that you want a movement dedicated to yourself?

That is why I want my own Tea Party.

He actually wrote that.

Before he even decides on the "green tea party" insanity, he honestly wants to create a political movement based on whatever the fuck he's excited about this week. Knowing Friedman, that can range anywhere from invading a country to tell them they can suck on it, having ironclad knowledge that something important will happen in the next 6 months or supporting any legislation that contains the words "free trade" (for those who think I'm exaggerating, check the links, he actually said all of those things). That's a solid group of ideas to build around.

In the end, the idea of a "Tom Friedman/green tea party" idea gets 4 out of 5 Friedmans. It's about as Thomas Friedmany as you can get, but he didn't include a reference to a corporation or a world leader, so he can't get the full score.

What If The Teabaggers Weren't White?

Pretty amazing stuff:

Imagine that hundreds of black protesters were to descend upon Washington DC and Northern Virginia, just a few miles from the Capitol and White House, armed with AK-47s, assorted handguns, and ammunition. And imagine that some of these protesters - the black protesters - spoke of the need for political revolution, and possibly even armed conflict in the event that laws they didn’t like were enforced by the government? Would these protesters — these black protesters with guns — be seen as brave defenders of the Second Amendment, or would they be viewed by most whites as a danger to the republic? What if they were Arab-Americans? Because, after all, that’s what happened recently when white gun enthusiasts descended upon the nation’s capital, arms in hand, and verbally announced their readiness to make war on the country’s political leaders if the need arose.

Imagine that white members of Congress, while walking to work, were surrounded by thousands of angry black people, one of whom proceeded to spit on one of those congressmen for not voting the way the black demonstrators desired. Would the protesters be seen as merely patriotic Americans voicing their opinions, or as an angry, potentially violent, and even insurrectionary mob? After all, this is what white Tea Party protesters did recently in Washington.

Imagine that a rap artist were to say, in reference to a white president: “He’s a piece of shit and I told him to suck on my machine gun.” Because that’s what rocker Ted Nugent said recently about President Obama.

Imagine that a prominent mainstream black political commentator had long employed an overt bigot as Executive Director of his organization, and that this bigot regularly participated in black separatist conferences, and once assaulted a white person while calling them by a racial slur. When that prominent black commentator and his sister — who also works for the organization — defended the bigot as a good guy who was misunderstood and “going through a tough time in his life” would anyone accept their excuse-making? Would that commentator still have a place on a mainstream network? Because that’s what happened in the real world, when Pat Buchanan employed as Executive Director of his group, America’s Cause, a blatant racist who did all these things, or at least their white equivalents: attending white separatist conferences and attacking a black woman while calling her the n-word.

I'd say you'd be hard pressed to find many conservatives who'd disagree with this assessment, but a decent number of them think Obama is a socialist and a secret Muslim so maybe not.

Train of Thought Lounge- Lloyd Marcus

Oh you have got to be kidding me:



Where do you even start with that?! The background dancers, the generally nonplussed crowd, the lyrics... I'm speechless.

We Aren't Racists!!!1!1!

There are no racist teabaggers!

Ok, but everybody has a few bad apples!

Or maybe the teabagger candidate for Governor in New York is a racist that's into videos of people fucking horses: (via TPM)

An online news outlet in New York state has obtained dozens of emails, many of them racist and sexually graphic, which it reports were sent by Carl Paladino, the Tea-Party-backed Republican candidate for governor of New York, to a long list of political and business associates. One email shows a video of an African tribal dance, entitled "Obama Inauguration Rehearsal," while another depicts hardcore bestiality.

• An October 2009 email with a photograph showing President Obama and the First Lady dressed in 70s-era blaxploitation pimp and prostitute costumes while attending a formal event at the White House.

• A December 2008 email showing a video of African tribesmen performing a traditional dance. The video is entitled "Obama Inauguration Rehearsal."

• A September 2009 email entitled, "Easy Steady Big Fella....XXXX," with a photograph that graphically depicts a horse having sex with a woman.

• A July 2009 email showing a photograph of an airplane landing directly behind a group of black men. The caption reads: "Holy Sh*t. run ni**ers, run!"

When one recipient complained about the "Obama inauguration" email, calling Paladino a racist, Paladino responded by apologizing "if that is offensive." He added: "I'm not a racist and have never related Obama's color to my political distaste for him....I'm not sensitive to ethnic humor."

When questioned about the emails, Paladino responded:

I'm going to be the same Carl I have always been. I'm not going out of my way to be blunt or politically correct or anything. I'm going to be me.

Can't argue with that!

We Are So Screwed...

I don't doubt that this happened:

"I knew that we'd be buddies when I met her when she said, 'Drill here, drill now.' And then I replied, 'Drill, baby, drill' and then we both said, 'You betcha!'"

-- Sarah Palin, quoted by the Wall Street Journal, recalling a previous meeting with Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN).

It's worth noting that no matter what else Obama does, if unemployment stays this high in the run up to 2012, there is a very real possibility that Sarah Palin is elected president.

Next time this blog is ranting on about how much Summers, Geithner and Bernanke suck, keep that in mind.

Idiot With A Megaphone Wants To Be Heard

Apparently transcribing the rantings of a crazy person is worthy of front page coverage in the Washington Post:

IOWA CITY, IOWA -- He had no plans to throw bricks, issue death threats, spit in faces or scream racial slurs. But Randy Millam, 52, intended to make a scene, so he woke up early Thursday morning to prepare for President Obama's visit.

Millam sat at his kitchen table in Lowden, Iowa, with 14 Sharpie markers and a piece of foam board, working to condense a year of frustration into a 3-by-3-foot catchphrase. "Chains We Can Believe In," he wrote, drawing the communist hammer and sickle on the poster's top left corner. Then he grabbed an American flag, inserted batteries into a megaphone bought on the cheap for $25 and guzzled a 24-hour energy drink. Just as Obama took off in Air Force One for Iowa City, Millam loaded into his muddy Ford Fusion and drove 50 miles across the cornfields of eastern Iowa.

"The president just about declared war against the American people last weekend," he said. And it is a war Millam intends to fight.

Millam's resolve Thursday was reinforced by the sense that he was taking part in a movement -- a rising tide of anger, fear and vitriol in the wake of the health-care overhaul signed into law by Obama this week. Millam joined a chorus of discontent surrounding the president's visit: a warm-up protest Wednesday night, a greeting party of protesters waiting at the airport and hundreds more with plans to chant outside the downtown arena while Obama spoke. In the hours before he left for Iowa City, Millam watched reports on Fox News Channel about vandalism at Democratic offices and visited a Web site of the conservative "tea party" movement, where he was inspired by a Thomas Jefferson quote about how bloodshed might be necessary to protect a country from tyranny.

"I'm not ready for outright violence yet. We have to be civil for as long as we can," Millam said. But, he added, "we are watching the infrastructure of this country crumble under our feet. The government doesn't want to hear us. We have to make them listen."
. . .
He walked to the front of the protest crowd and lifted the megaphone to his mouth.

"Fellow patriots," he bellowed. "We are standing outside the arena right now because the president controls the crowd, controls the message, controls the people of this country. That is not freedom! That is not democracy! That is not the America I grew up in!"

. . .

Another: "It's communism!"

Another: "Obamunism!"

. . .

Millam rested the megaphone on his stomach. His voice was getting hoarse, and his legs ached. He'd been shouting for almost two hours now, and some protesters were beginning to leave. "Where is Obama?" he asked. Another demonstrator told him that the president had finished his speech, entering and exiting the arena through a different entrance, and Millam snorted in disgust.

"Why does the president of the United States have to sneak in the back door to avoid seeing the real people in this country?" he shouted into the megaphone. "That's not right. That's just not right."

His words died out. The rally was over. He turned off the megaphone and walked to his car. While the president flew back to Washington, Millam drove home on the rural highways of Iowa. He wondered: What would it take to be heard, and what would he try next?

Other than one sentence that describes a college student mocking them, the piece never once brings up the fact that this man is living in a fantasy world. Nothing that he states in the article has even the slightest bearing on reality. Instead, it glorifies him as a downtrodden political activist, wondering if his voice will ever be heard. He's portrayed as the average American, compared to the unfair caricatures of teabaggers that have dogged their movement (they're so reasonable that he said it's not time for outright violence, yet).

What is the purpose of publishing this man's thoughts, unedited? To paraphrase atrios, what is their goal? They clearly aren't interested in educating their readers, so what is it?

The real value of the article is marking another milestone on the post's path towards irrelevance: The day the published a teabagger's rantings as front page news.

Feeding the Beast

Cause:

Mike Vanderboegh of Pinson, Ala., former leader of the Alabama Constitutional Militia, put out a call on Friday for modern “Sons of Liberty” to break the windows of Democratic Party offices nationwide in opposition to health care reform.
. . .
Vanderboegh posted the call for action Friday on his blog, “Sipsey Street Irregulars.” Referring to the health care reform bill as “Nancy Pelosi’s Intolerable Act,” he told followers to send a message to Democrats.

“We can break their windows,” he said. “Break them NOW. And if we do a proper job, if we break the windows of hundreds, thousands, of Democrat party headquarters across this country, we might just wake up enough of them to make defending ourselves at the muzzle of a rifle unnecessary.”

Effect:

-Early on the morning of March 19, someone threw a brick through the window of Rep. Louise Slaughter's office in Niagara Falls, New York, doing $350 of damage, the Buffalo News reported. Slaughter (D-NY) briefly attracted the ire of conservatives over the "Slaughter Solution," a procedural maneuver that was considered (but, ultimately, not used) to pass health reform.

-Also in Slaughter's district, a brick was thrown through the glass doors of the Monroe County Democratic Committee office in Rochester, NY, over the weekend, the Democrat and Chronicle reported. A note attached to the brick bore the Barry Goldwater quote, "Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice," a spokesman for the committee told the newspaper.

-In the early hours of the morning on Monday just after the House health care vote, someone smashed the glass front door of the Tucson office of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ), the Arizona Daily Star reported. "The perpetrator likely had to hop the gated fence to get access to the door, since it's not viewable from the parking lot," the paper reported.

-On Friday night or Saturday morning, a brick bearing unspecified "anti-Obama and anti-health care messages" was thrown through a floor-to-ceiling window at the Sedgwick County Democratic Party headquarters in Wichita, Kansas, CNN and the Kansas City Start reported.

-After the passage of the bill Sunday night, a "fist-sized" rock was thrown at a window at the Hamilton County Democratic Party in Cincinnati, in the district of Rep. Steve Driehaus (D-OH), the Enquirer reports.

U.S. Rep. Tom Perriello’s brother received a threatening letter in the mail on the same day that someone apparently severed a gas line at the home in Ivy.

Two conservative Tea Party activists posted the address of the home on the Internet on Monday, mistakenly believing it was the home of the congressman. One of the activists urged others to “drop by” and “express their thanks” for Perriello’s vote in favor of health care reform.

Law enforcement officials say a package with white powder was sent to Congressman Weiner's Queens office today.

A preliminary review shows the letter in part complained about the historic health care legislation passed by Congress this week, according to the source.

This is nothing new, and it sure as hell isn't surprising. The right created monster, we all live with the consequences.

Teabaggers Continue to be Teabaggers

Fresh off the heels of their last incredible misadventure, the teabagging crowd does not disappoint:

Federal and local authorities are investigating a severed gas line at the home of U.S. Rep. Tom Perriello’s brother, discovered the day after Tea Party activists posted the address online so opponents could “drop by” and “express their thanks” for Perriello’s vote in favor of health care reform.

No better way to gain mainstream acceptance than by trying to kill the brother of a U.S. Representative, that's what I always say!

Teabaggers Being Teabaggers

Filled with racists and homophobes, but you knew that already:

Tea partiers and other anti-health care activists are known to get rowdy, but today's protest on Capitol Hill--the day before the House is set to vote on historic health care legislation--went beyond the usual chanting and controversial signs, and veered into ugly bigotry and intimidation.

Civil rights hero Rep. John Lewis (D-GA) and fellow Congressional Black Caucus member Andre Carson (D-IN) related a particularly jarring encounter with a large crowd of protesters screaming "kill the bill"... and punctuating their chants with the word "nigger."

Standing next to Lewis, emerging from a Democratic caucus meeting with President Obama, Carson said people in the crowd yelled, "kill the bill and then the N-word" several times, while he and Lewis were exiting the Cannon House office building.

. . .

And that wasn't an isolated incident. Early this afternoon, standing outside a Democratic whip meeting in the Longworth House office building, I watched Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) make his way out the door, en route to the neighboring Rayburn building. As he rounded the corner toward the exit, wading through a huge crowd of tea partiers and other health care protesters, an elderly white man screamed "Barney, you faggot"--a line that caused dozens of his confederates to erupt in laughter.

This isn't anything new, but I post it because the coverage these assholes get in the mainstream media portrays them as political activists with ideological disagreements with the legislation. And there may very well be a few of them may fit that description.

The problem is that quite a few teabaggers are crazy people that either are bigots themselves or seem perfectly fine with the bigots that also claim membership to their "movement". Again, not that any of this stuff is news, it would be nice if more people with mainstream media microphones would point this out.

TEABAGGIN' TO THA X-TREME!1!!

There is seriously nothing greater then when conservatives try to reach out to those under the age of 50. Introducing XPAC:

Both Thursday and Friday evenings this week, if you’re attending CPAC, or are in the Washington DC, Virginia, Maryland, or Delaware areas, you are invited to enjoy “Epic Nites.”

On Thursday night, Stephen Baldwin will conduct an insightful conversation between Fox News’ Andrea Tantaros and Sarah Huckabee over the future of the GOP, the ideas of conservatism, women in politics, and the outlook for the nation. The “10 questions with Stevie B” is something worth making room in your schedule for. Gov. Mike Huckabee will be making a special appearance, and several additional surprises also await.

Michael Steele! Brit Hume! Stephen Baldwin! You know, the people your kids keep talking about! Wait... did they say additional surprises?

"We're gonna have the most popular games. There'll be Guitar Hero. There'll be Dance Revolution. There'll be Call of Duty," said Kevin McCullough, the radio host who created the XPAC Lounge with actor Stephen Baldwin .

"I wouldn't be surprised if somebody of Joe-the-Plumber stature came in three times a day to come in and rally the kids," CPAC spokesman Ian Walters said.

Somebody of Joe-the-Plumber stature? You mean someone else pretending to be a plumber might show up? XTREME!!!!! Any other heroes of the conservative movement plan on attending?

McCullough said young conservatives are plenty capable of being active in the movement, particularly with new media. He said they just need to be "empowered."

He cited James O'Keefe and Hannah Giles, activists both in their 20s known for their ACORN sting operation last year. The activists dressed up as a pimp and prostitute and used hidden cameras to capture ACORN workers at offices across the country offering them tax advice.

O'Keefe has since been arrested and charged in an alleged plot to tamper with the phone system in Sen. Mary Landrieu's New Orleans office. But McCullough said both O'Keefe and Giles will be honored with the "XPAC Annual Award for Impact" this weekend -- it's an award aimed at activists under 30 who did not "wait their turn in line" to make a difference, he said.

Giles is scheduled to attend. O'Keefe has been ordered by a judge to temporarily stay with his parents in New Jersey.

Nothing says "not waiting their turn to make a difference" like wiretapping a senator's phone! RADICAL!

But if James O'Keefe's facing prison time didn't give the event enough street cred, Friday Night is for you:

11pm – XPAC “Late Night” – “Music Jam”
sponsored by Parcbench.com
LIVE MUSIC PLUS Special performances by:
Rappers: Hi-Caliber, Young Cons*, and many more!

A "music jam" with Hi-Caliber and Young Cons? Ok... now that $15 entrance fee makes sense. I guess with Sarah Palin out of their price range they had to perpetuate the conservative welfare state somehow. Seriously though, I'm sure Hi-Caliber and Young Cons have no trouble finding work during the 364 days a year that don't include Teabagger youth conferences.

And one last note, in case you want to crappily astroturf your own youth conference:

Brought to you by the GNARLY work of Stephen Baldwin & Kevin McCullough: Xtreme Media, Baldwin/McCullough Radio & Parcbench Media

Teabaggers, please, don't ever stop.

Teabaggers in Action

The heroes at New Left Media covered the Teabagger convention.

Enjoy:



As a poll on Fox News discovered:
That seems about right.

Not Even Trying to Conceal Their Racism

Fresh totally not racist ideas from the teabagger convention: A return to Jim Crow laws!

Yesterday was the start of the National Tea Party Convention, which is “aimed at bringing the Tea Party Movement leaders together from around the nation for the purpose of networking and supporting the movement’s multiple organizations’ principal goals.” One of the featured speakers during the convention’s kickoff was former Republican congressman Tom Tancredo. Tancredo told the audience that the country had elected “a committed socialist ideologue in the White House” because “we do not have a civics, literary test before people can vote in this country“:

The opening-night speaker at first ever National Tea Party Convention ripped into President Obama, Sen. John McCain and “the cult of multiculturalism,” asserting that Obama was elected because “we do not have a civics, literacy test before people can vote in this country.”

The speaker, former Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo., told about 600 delegates in a Nashville, Tenn., ballroom that in the 2008 election, America “put a committed socialist ideologue in the White House … Barack Hussein Obama.”

Given that the convention is being held in Nashville, Tennessee, Tancredo’s remarks are particularly offensive. For years, literacy tests were used across the South to disenfranchise African-American voters, who generally had illiteracy rates 4-5 times as high as whites due to historical discrimination and lack of opportunity. Unfortunately for Tancredo, the 1965 Voting Rights Act makes literacy tests illegal.

Why people keep confusing this well meaning libertarian movement with a group of racist nuts we'll never know...

Snowed in with Sarah Palin

JN and RB have decided to snow themselves in at the Palace/Train HQ with DCJonesy and I for the snowpocalypse. Luckly for us, we still have power, and Sarah Palin's speech at the teabagger convention will be broadcast live on Fox News. Obviously creating a drinking game was necessary:

THE RULES:
One (1) shot for-
-Specific mention of Wasilla
-Trig
-Going rogue/ being a maverick
-Actually saying "teabagging"

One (1) sip for-
-"Politics as usual"
-Alaska
-Vague mention of "change"
-Hockey reference/ analogy
-"You Betcha" or other faux-folksiness.
-"Government takeover"
-Free market ideology being threatened by wave of socialism
-Real Americans/Rugged Americans/ Strong Americans
-"Straight talk"
-Evil lying media
-Creepy reference to freedom
-Vague reference to the Constitution

Wish us luck...

Update: Too bad we didn't add writing notes on your hand...