In addition to being a tireless advocate for his constituents and the American LGBT community, Rep. Barney Frank is well known for telling things like he sees ‘em. I find his candor and passion refreshing, especially in the often stilted world of contemporary American political discourse.

Three of my favorite examples of Rep. Frank’s famously quick wit follow below:

1.) In 1995, Republican House Majority Leader Dick Armey infamously referred to Rep. Frank as “Barney Fag” in an interview. Armey retracted the slur and chalked it up to an innocent slip of the tongue. Frank responded: “I turned to my own expert, my mother, who reports that in 59 years of marriage, no one ever introduced her as Elsie Fag.”

2.) During the height of debate in the summer of 2009 over the then-proposed (and subsequently enacted) health reform bill, a constituent confronted Rep. Frank at a town hall meeting in Dartmouth, Massachusetts about his support for health reform, asking why he continued to support what she offensively termed a “Nazi policy.” Frank responded:

“On what planet do you spend most of your time? … You stand there with a picture of the President defaced to look like Hitler and compare the effort to increase health care to the Nazis. My answer to you is, as I said before, it is a tribute to the First Amendment that this kind of vile, contemptible nonsense is so freely propagated. Ma’am, trying to have a conversation with you would be like trying to argue with a dining room table. I have no interest in doing it.”

Watch:

3.) Rep. Frank made the following remarks at the enrollment ceremony in December 2010 where Speaker Nancy Pelosi signed the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” repeal law:

“Four years ago, a Republican running for congress in Indiana said… [that] if [his Democratic opponent] won, Nancy Pelosi would become speaker, and she would let me enact the ‘radical homosexual agenda.’ So let me own up to that agenda: it’s to be protected against violent crimes driven by bigotry, it’s to be able to get married, it’s to be able to get a job, and it’s to be able to fight for our country. For those who are worried about the ‘radical homosexual agenda,’ let me put them on notice: two down, two to go.”

Watch:

If you’re looking for more of Barney Frank’s greatest hits (including an epic takedown of Bill O’Reilly and a confrontation with our favorite Rep. Michele Bachmann), Elspeth Reeve at the Atlantic has a great compilation.

Under the leadership of former House Majority Leader Dick Armey, and other Republican lobbyists, thousands of angry, politically illiterate people stormed town hall meetings to throw tantrums at members of Congress in a shameful effort to subvert Obama’s helathcare plan.

In the short term, the scheme was a success and almost derailed healthcare. However, the Gestapo-like tactics, boorish behavior, intimidation of public officials, bullying of average citizens, profound ignorance of the Tea Baggers — many of whom did not know Medicare was a government program, and the carefully calculated chaos, undermined democratic discourse.

Thanks to the tea-baggers, the New York Times writes that many members of Congress are skipping town hall meetings, so they do not degenerate into town brawls.

The sentiment that fueled the rage during those Congressional forums is still alive in the electorate. But the opportunities for voters to openly express their displeasure, or angrily vent as video cameras roll, have been harder to come by in this election year.

If the time-honored tradition of the political meeting is not quite dead, it seems to be teetering closer to extinction. Of the 255 Democrats who make up the majority in the House, only a handful held town-hall-style forums as legislators spent last week at home in their districts.

In other words, thanks to these thugs, your average Joe (Real ones, not Joe the opportunistic Republican non-plumber) will have less access to members of Congress than ever before. The very people the Tea Baggers purported to be helping will have less of a chance to discuss genuine issues and concerns with politicians.

Dick Armey and his band of loudmouth louts has harmed America. Thanks, Tea Baggers, for degrading democracy with irrational tirades that poisoned politics more than ever before. You ought to be proud of your “patriotic” actions.

The majority of the “pro-family” movement is simply anti-gay. They do virtually nothing to assist parents with child rearing or creating marriages that last. The one organization that occasionally seemed to offer some value to Christian parents was Focus on the Family.

However, in recent years, the somewhat constructive work was largely overshadowed by the destructive, aggressively political agenda of the organization’ founder James Dobson. His addiction to bullying leaders in Washington, purification purges of the Republican Party and an obsession with attacking gay and lesbian people branded the organization as mean-spirited and intolerant.

“Dobson and his gang of thugs are real nasty bullies,” House majority leader Dick Armey (R-Texas) once complained.

Fortunately, Dobson recently left Focus on the Family and has been replaced by Jim Daly (pictured), who pledges to take the organization in a new direction. One of the first things he did was dump the group’ obnoxious “ex-gay” road show Love Won Out. Over the years, it became a fountain of fabrication and a mountain of misinformation on LGBT issues.

Daley claims to hold similar social views to Dobson, but he does not appear to want to shove his religion down peoples’ throats. At least that is the message he is trying to sell us. On the surface, he seems more open to dialogue and not quite as arrogant at his predecessor.

For example, instead of the propaganda-spewing Love Won Out conference, Focus on the Family actually participated in a Colorado Springs panel discussion where dissenting views were allowed. AOL News reports that some panelists were openly gay, while Focus on the Family provided “ex-gay” employee Jeff Johnston, who discussed his “journey out of homosexuality.”

Daly was out of town for the panel, but taped a welcome message. “We’re not always going to agree,” he said on the video, but added, “I’m not here to tell you what to do.”

The fact that Focus on the Family is still pushing the tired and tragic ex-gay myth is dispiriting. But, allowing openly gay people who actually live fulfilling lives to speak is a definite step in the right direction.

More important, Daly seems to be moving away from Dobson’ quest for Christian dominion over government. “The Christian label means a lot to me,” Daly said in the AOL interview. “We don’t want a theocracy. We want a government informed in moral principle.”

While we hold different viewpoints on marriage, Daly, seems to understand, on some level, that allowing gay couples to wed isn’t catastrophic.

“I’m not fearful that change will happen in America. It will happen. … I don’t know what will happen with same-sex marriage, but I’m not going to be discouraged if we lose some of those battles,” he said, noting that for “98 percent” of people, traditional marriage will remain relevant. “It’s going to be difficult in this culture and the way the demographics are going right now,” he continued. “You look at the under-35 age group. I think it’s splitting 60-40 support for same-sex marriage. There’s a lot of people in the U.S. [who] basically come to the conclusion that this is something between two adults. I will continue to defend traditional marriage, but I’m not going to demean human beings for the process.”

Compare this to the doomsday response to marriage equality from Dobson: “Homosexuals are not monogamous,” Dobson told The Daily Oklahoman on Oct. 23, 2004. “They want to destroy the institution of marriage. It will destroy marriage. It will destroy the Earth.”

Focus on the Family is also striking a different tone on abortion. It ran a controversial feel-good ad during the Super Bowl featuring football star Tim Tebow. Strategically, it seems like a wise move to persuade mothers to “choose” to give birth, rather than have angry zealots browbeating pregnant women in front of abortion clinics. (Of course, Focus on the Family would have more credibility pushing the “choose life” message if it actually weren’t cynically working to overturn Roe v. Wade.)

Additionally, Daly has started a program to reduce the number of legal orphans in foster care by recruiting families to adopt hard-to-place children. His Wait No More program has expanded to five states and has already halved the number of children in foster care in Colorado.

Daly’ cheerful style is particularly welcome at a time when many fundamentalist organizations are losing their marbles. For instance, Andrea Lafferty of the Traditional Values Coalition is running around Capitol Hill demanding that Congress defeat the Employment Nondiscrimination Act (ENDA) to keep “she-males” from becoming gym teachers.

Eugene Delgaudio the executive director of the anti-gay organization, Public Advocate of the U.S, sent out an insane fundraising letter this week. It warned that “Radical homosexuals will terrorize day care centers, hospitals, churches and private schools…Wedding-gown clad men smooching before some left-wing clergy or state official is just the beginning….You’ll see men hand-in-hand skipping down to adoption centers to “pick out’ a little boy for themselves.”

Still, not everyone is sold on the surface changes at the Colorado Springs-based mega-ministry.

“There is clearly a concerted rebranding effort within FOtF, with the communications team placing a focus on creating a nicer, sweeter, less hostile Focus on the Family,” wrote blogger Jeremy Hooper on his popular Good As You website. “But they seem to want this change in impression without actually creating any change within their own operation… We on the side of LGBT equality buy into the “nicer, softer” myth at our own peril!”

Hooper (pictured) points out that, “This is still the group that, just two weeks ago, declared that an openly gay SCOTUS nominee is automatically a non-starter, regardless of merit and qualifications. This is still the outfit that donates hundreds of thousands whenever gay rights are up for contention at any one of our state’s polls.”

Will Focus on the Family actually start helping real families rather than fixating on gay people? With Daly’ leadership, there is at least hope that the culture war will eventually turn into a civil cultural discussion.

But if this is all spin and no substance his plan will sow distrust and backfire. It won’t take long to know if Daly’ hugs are thinly disguised headlocks. While outspoken homophobes are unpleasant, they are always preferable to insincere hypocrites.

The more I read about the Tea Party, the more it becomes vividly clear that this is nothing more than a Great Tea Purge of Republican moderates and independent thinkers. This process was already underway for years. It began when Ralph Reed was hired by Pat Robertson to form The Christian Coalition. Reed took the huge mailing list compiled from Robertson’s quixotic run for President in 1988 and transformed it into a movement.

Having placed basically every blue-nosed busybody in a database, Reed set out to hijack the Republican Party. He had a stealth strategy of taking over school boards, local GOP committees and city councils under the radar. Once this was accomplished, his largely clandestine movement came out of the closet and stole Congress. Unfortunately, Washington has never been the same, with collegiality in shambles and extremism replacing reasonable debate. In short, Reed and Robertson soiled our nation to fulfill their sinister goal of turning America into a theocracy.

The Christian Coalition ran out of steam. However, this new Tea Bag movement has picked up where they left off. Phillip Glass is using his National Precinct Alliance to hijack the GOP by signing up Tea Baggers to run the party. In the process, they are running out moderates and finishing the job that the Christian Coalition’s Reed set out to do.

So, what is the Tea Party (Purge)?

It is a brilliant coup by Big Business to co-opt the American government, by using dim-witted fundamentalists and under-educated, under-employed rural folks to carry their water. Look at the issues:

1) Climate Change: Irresponsible members of Big Business do not want to pay to stop the damage corporations have done to our planet. They want to continue polluting and exploiting our natural resources. The best way to do this is to trick people, by flooding the Internet with fake science, into believing climate change is not man made. The next step is to turn the government into a bogeyman, so “the people” will reduce its power to regulate corporate excess and corruption.

The end result will be dirtier water, filthier air, sicker families and dwindling natural resources. Of course, the powerful and wealthy CEO’s won’t notice. While your children choke on the dust and grit, they will be yachting off to the few remaining private islands that are not despoiled by greed and pollution.

2) Taxes: One of the most irresponsible parts of this “movement” is that Americans should not have to pay their fair share of taxes. This whole idea that you can get something for nothing is a mirage and the poor families who scream and act the fool at Tea Bag protests are the ones who will be left without basic services if this radical agenda becomes enacted.

Here is a dirty little secret. Developing countries are only “Third World” for the desperately poor (i.e. the majority.) The sliver of wealthy people in these nations often live like kings. They have privatized services and are pampered in every imaginable way. They frequently jet off to beautiful flats in Paris, New York and London, while “the people” suffer in anonymity back home. While living in such luxury, these elites have little incentive to make life better for the impoverished masses.

By significantly eroding or eliminating the tax base, the majority of Americans would lose government services – from clean water to garbage pick-up, to affordable education to job training, to pathogen-free meat to reliable transportation (such as train service). The CEO’s would save a fortune on taxes, while using private companies to pay for services no longer available to average Americans.

They win. You lose.

Meanwhile, when people become angry over the situation, these titans will spend millions of dollars on propaganda to blame the deterioration of America on liberal morals and government incompetence – even as they starve the government of the resources it needs to effectively do its job.

What a scam.

The hard truth is, these avaricious conservatives and their Tea Party tools are going to turn America into a Third World nation, where there is a huge gulf between rich and poor. Look around – it is already happening.

Wake up Tea Baggers. You are dupes who are forfeiting your family’s future and don’t even realize it.

3) Health Care: CEO’s and their families will always receive top-notch health care and cutting edge medicine. But, increasingly, they see little incentive for workers and average Americans to get the same benefits and level of care. By crushing labor unions and buying off politicians, thanks to our Supreme Court, they can easily replace sick workers with younger, healthier models.

The CEO’s have used this gullible Tea Bag crowd to convince a majority of people that the government is inefficient and should stay out of health-care. I guess these “real Americans” are content having potential treatments for their children rejected by faceless insurance company bureaucrats sitting in sterile cubicles with the job of protecting a corporation’s bottom line.

Do these tools realize how they have been tricked by hucksters like former Congressman Dick Armey (R-TX) – who now runs FreedomWorks, an umbrella for Tea Party groups? Armey is a corporate shill who is robbing your family of its future. However, too many people think he is on their side because he wears cowboy boots and uses quaint, folksy sayings.

Catch a clue – Armey cares nothing about your freedom. Armey is a con artist – an actor – posing as a good ole’ boy outsider, when he is the ultimate insider. Yet, countless Americans keep falling for his phony snake charmer act.

4) Illegal Immigration & Gays: The corporate titans realize that if they ran on a platform of, “We manipulate the system to steal your money and you go broke”, they would not do so well in elections. So, they have developed the cat-with-a-laser technique.

When I want to distract Critter, my cat, I shine a laser on the wall and he runs to attack it. He never actually catches the gosh-darn-red-light, but he always feels like he’s getting close. More importantly, he expends a lot of energy – and then takes a multi-hour slumber.

Tea Baggers – you are the cat and the issues of immigration and gay rights are the laser. You are being distracted, busied on a circular obstacle course and ultimately being put to sleep – even as you feel you are accomplishing something.

I have news for you.

You are never going to stop people from crossing the border, as long as there are better economic opportunities in America. You are never going to stop gay people from dating and mating. No matter how high you build that wall, or how many Proposition H8 measures you spend millions of dollars to enact. You are essentially wasting your time and money. You will eliminate gay people and immigrants, right after you accomplish winning that great war against marijuana or electing pure Christian politicians who won’t cheat on their spouses.

It ain’t going to happen, so the sooner you drop the expensive fantasy, the sooner we can all move on to real issues that will actually improve the lives of our families.

Of course, by adopting extreme anti-government, anti-regulatory economic policies, we will ruin the economy for all but the robber-barons. With few decent-paying blue-collar jobs left in America, hard-working Mexican immigrants will just stay at home. And, those loudmouths at the Tea Party rallies will have no choice but to fill their threadbare shoes – picking tomatoes and mowing laws.

Sadly, these folks will be happy performing such labor-intensive, menial tasks, because – a bad job is better than no job. And, the joke is, the radical politicians they helped elect to destroy America’s economy will make these dupes feel important by feeding them propaganda about opportunity, freedom and hard work.

“If you just scrub that toilet a little bit harder, you’ll be an entrepreneur in the opportunity-based society and one day smoke cigars on the country club golf course with Rush Limbaugh,” I can hear the hired PR guns say. (Read More)