Indeed, Teabaggers and their defenders keep claiming that their movement has nothing to do with social issues, gays are welcome in the teabagging tent, etc. Really?
COUNCIL BLUFFS, Iowa — About 35 people gathered for a Tea Party rally in Council Bluffs calling for a ban on gay marriage and stricter abortion laws in Iowa.
Republican legislator Kim Pearson, of Pleasant Hill, was among the speakers at Saturday afternoon’s gathering at the Mid-America Center. The Daily Nonpareil reports that Pearson said a ban would be quicker to pass than a constitutional amendment.
Etc.
Same old Religious Right, just fitted with tri-cornered hats now!
UPDATED: The New York Times’ star columnist Frank Rich agrees with me that Sarah Palin may get the GOP presidential nomination in 2012. With 80-percent of Republicans holding a favorable opinion, it seems Sarah Palin is the only person who can stop Sarah Palin. This may lead to a cake-walk for Obama….or maybe it won’t as the economy continues to have problems.
If we get President Palin, how many of you will move to Canada, Europe, South America or elsewhere? I’m opting for Vancouver….
On behalf of limited government conservatives everywhere we write to urge you and your colleagues in Washington to put forward a legislative agenda in the next Congress that reflects the principles of the Tea Party movement.
Poll after poll confirms that the Tea Party’s laser focus on issues of economic freedom and limited government resonated with the American people on Election Day. The Tea Party movement galvanized around a desire to return to constitutional government and against excessive spending, taxation and government intrusion into the lives of the American people.
The Tea Party movement is a non-partisan movement, focused on issues of economic freedom and limited government, and a movement that will be as vigilant with a Republican-controlled Congress as we were with a Democratic-controlled Congress.
This election was not a mandate for the Republican Party, nor was it a mandate to act on any social issue, nor should it be interpreted as a political blank check.
Already, there are Washington insiders and special interest groups that hope to co-opt the Tea Party’s message and use it to push their own agenda – particularly as it relates to social issues. We are disappointed but not surprised by this development. We recognize the importance of values but believe strongly that those values should be taught by families and our houses of worship and not legislated from Washington, D.C.
Here is the thing, though: one of the hallmarks of the 2010 Teabagger Candidate was that she was, among other things, extremely anti-gay. I understand the frustration that some Tea Party people must feel, those who really bought into the idea that their movement was somehow new and different and removed from the Republican party, but that’s mostly a media myth. And the fact that so many of these new legislators, besides being teabaggers, are anti-gay, has never been a secret. So this press release, to me, is kind of sad. If GOProud really feels they can have a positive impact in holding back the gnarled jaws of some of their candidates to keep them from hurting LGBT people, though, more power to them, I suppose.
In a few hours elections will be held that will likely degrade our quality of life and send the country hurtling on a downward spiral. If polling projections are correct, America will bring the very people who trashed the economy back into power to finish their unfinished business of destroying our way of life. I fear that this election will mark the end of America as a superpower, and a magical land where people dream of coming to find fortune, fame, and freedom.
In 2008, Barack Obama was elected on a platform of hope and change, but his grandiose words were quickly devoured by the thankless task of cleaning up the mess left by George W. Bush. The president’s efforts to put Humpty Dumpty back together were hobbled by his naïve idea that Republicans wanted to fix America’s problems. Each time he scooped dirt to dig us out of ditch, the GOP would take a steam shovel and pour mud into the abyss.
The strategy from Day 1 was to sabotage Obama at the expense of the country. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell summed up his post-midterm election strategy by saying, “The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.”
And what about our country?
The Democrats, as is often the case, were timid and failed to fight back against this onslaught of intransigence. They consistently forgot to define their priorities and frame the issues, thus making it easier for the Republicans to falsely define them as radical socialists who were on a wild spending spree. In a serious miscalculation, Obama, tried to appease his sworn enemies at the expense of his base. The result on Election Day is fired-up Republicans and demoralized Democrats.
But, the larger and more serious question is this: How could American voters be so stupid as to return the culprits of our economic meltdown to power while we are still battling to get out of a recession?
The Republicans have worked to turn America into a Third World nation with huge disparities between rich and poor. They have gutted common-sense regulations, turning Wall Street into a casino and food safety into a crapshoot.
Only a country comprised of voters who are poorly educated, easily distracted, emotionally immature, temperamentally volcanic, economically illiterate, and spiritually superstitious, would go down this road to oblivion.
This election (if the pollsters are correct) is the product of a failed educational system, combined with a entertainment obsessed mass media that rarely asks tough questions, nor follows up with due diligence. Their cowardice and incompetence allowed George W. Bush to lead us into a war with Iraq over nonexistent weapons of mass destruction. And, now we may be led into a government of mass destruction that will turn this one-time nation of dreams into a shell of its former greatness.
Our infrastructure is crumbling as fast as our education system. America is losing its competitive advantage, falling behind on alternative energy, lagging in science and math, and our toxic politics has lead to paralyzing gridlock.
Instead of this election focusing on answers to save the State, it has zeroed in on the emotional state of angry and embittered suckers known as Tea Baggers. These are the gullible fools and religious fanatics who have been tricked into doing the bidding for radical and enormously rich anti-regulatory and anti-tax zealots such as News Corp’s Rupert Murdoch and oilmen David and Charles Koch. The joke is really on the members of the Tea Party, because they think they are working for “The People”, when they are unwittingly shilling for the Royalists. As a result of their wide-eyed buffoonery, we will all suffer the consequences.
The most disheartening part of these elections is the broken system, which is pumping unlimited money into campaigns. Thanks to the Supreme Court’s grotesque Citizens United ruling, candidates are quickly becoming nothing more than spokesmodels for wealthy special interest groups. (This year’s Colorado Senate race alone cost $33 million).
What does this have to do with gay rights?
An uneducated, vulgar, decaying country with a fixed market posing as a free market, with a busted political system and a contracted Middle Class that votes based on mood swings instead of wise policies, will not be a nation that is friendly to LGBT equality. Even if pro-gay laws are eventually passed, the daily lives of LGBT people will suffer as anger erupts from families looking for scapegoats to help explain how they slipped through the cracks. Such rage will produce more hateful and harsh demagogues such as Sharron Angle and Sarah Palin. History has taught us where this leads.
Superpowers are almost always brought down by corruption, cronyism and conflict of interest. However, such problems are complex and difficult to understand. It is always much easier for ambitious politicians to blame minorities, such as the Jews, immigrants or gays.
If the election turns out as projected, there is good reason to worry. I’m not so optimistic America will recover this time. At least the Tea Baggers won’t have bailouts to get angry about. America, thanks to the politicians they helped elect, will be too poor to afford them.
There was an interesting article in the New York Times detailing how some fundamentalists and Tea Party enthusiasts do not believe in Climate Catastrophe, which is backed by almost every real scientist in the reality-based community.
Exhibit A of this backwards mentality is Norman Dennison, founder of Indiana’s Corydon Tea Party. At a forum for Rep. Baron Hill (D-Ind.), the Tea Bagger chastised the congressman for supporting efforts to keep this planet from being ruined.
“It’s a flat out lie,” said Mr. Dennison, adding that he had based his view on global warming from the preaching of Rush Limbaugh and Scripture. “I read my Bible. He made this earth for us to utilize.”
During his presidential campaign, Barack Obama liked to say, “We are the change that we have been waiting for.” In the parlance of these dangerous fundamentalists: “We are the apocalypse that we have been waiting for.”
Unfortunately, the rest of us have to live through the dire consequences of their delusional fantasy that earth’s resources can mindlessly be exploited with reckless abandon. Indeed, in their warped worldview, God encourages, even applauds, when “God’s People” despoil precious resources.
When the polar bears eventually drown; when lovely homes on Florida’s coast wash into the sea; when drought, dislocation, disease and wretched refugee camps kill millions of people; when bloody wars are started over dwindling resources; when intense storms drown American cities; these fundamentalists should be blamed. Thanks to their remarkable ignorance, spiritual arrogance, and selfish disregard for their fellow man, we may all pay unthinkable consequences.
Isn’t it time that people take pause and ponder the viability of fundamentalism in modern civilization? What does it mean when a religious worldview is so neanderthal that it threatens the existence of humanity? How can America prosper and advance when leaders scorn science and potentially lead us off of a cliff at full speed? Is the majority just expected to sit around and reverently express our “respect” for such nihilistic beliefs?
No – we must speak out against such scripture-based suicide. Sure, fundamentalists have the right to believe such nonsense. But, we also have the right and responsibility to say such beliefs are destructive to the planet. It is our duty to do so, because we inhabit the planet their beliefs are strangling.
While our opponents like to idiotically say that marriage equality will end the earth, the archaic policies to keep the planet frying actually does present a genuine threat. These “moral” scolds love to talk a good game about “family values”, but what type of world are they leaving for the next generation and beyond?
The New York Times article listed recent polling data that shows the Tea Baggers are an unmitigated disaster for our planet and a threat to life as we know it.
Those who support the Tea Party movement are considerably more dubious about the existence and effects of global warming than the American public at large, according to a New York Times/CBS News Poll conducted this month. The survey found that only 14 percent of Tea Party supporters said that global warming is an environmental problem that is having an effect now, while 49 percent of the rest of the public believes that it is. More than half of Tea Party supporters said that global warming would have no serious effect at any time in the future, while only 15 percent of other Americans share that view, the poll found.
And 8 percent of Tea Party adherents volunteered that they did not believe global warming exists at all, while only 1 percent of other respondents agreed.
Someone has to say this: The Tea Baggers are by far the stupidest people in America. They operate in a blind, all-consuming rage, that includes not an iota of brain power. They consistently get suckered and duped into regurgitating lies from discredited sources.
For example, the Tea Baggers are the ones who are most likely to believe the garbage spewed by fake think tanks, funded by Big Oil money, that claim there is no such thing as Climate Catastrophe. They get their information from FOX News, which is a front for the corporate interests of the GOP and billionaire media baron Rupert Murdoch. What these pea-brained Tea Baggers don’t seem to comprehend, is that they are not working for “the people”, but doing the bidding of the royalists, such as Murdoch, and billionaire-brothers, David and Charles Koch.
With the elections only days away, our nation may be saddled with extremists placed in positions of power. Their retrograde policies will make us the laughingstock of the world, harm our national security, and put The United States of America at an economic disadvantage. While our Tea Party leaders are living in the past — busily extracting and profiting handsomely from fossil fuels — countries like China, India and Denmark are busy investing in the clean alternative energy of tomorrow.
It takes brainpower to remain a superpower — which means that America will continue slipping if Tea Party con artists candidates are victorious on Election Day. Without enlightened policies, the only thing America will be number one at — is claiming that we are Number 1. (We’ve already seen a great erosion in our worldwide education rank — thanks to the glorification of ignorance, exemplified by the Tea Baggers)
I’ve said this before: The more fundamentalist a nation, the more anachronistic it is — and the worse it is economically, spiritually and culturally. If our nation embraces stupid politicians with dumb policies, there will be consequences. And if disaster strikes mankind, there are many of us who are keeping score and will hold these religious fanatics responsible for the living hell they brought to our planet.
There was an excellent article in today’s News Journal by reporter Ginger Gibson on the campaign of Delaware GOP Senate nominee Christine O’Donnell.
O’Donnell founded a group, The Saviors Alliance For Lifting The Truth (SALT) that had an “ex-gay” ministry run by Wade Richards, who has since come out of the closet and renounces such “pray away the gay” groups.
Interestingly, Christine O’Donnell has a lesbian sister, Jenny, who lives in California. Many of us were wondering how she felt about her rabidly anti-gay sister’s campaign. Well, we got the nauseating answer in the News Journal article:
“A lesbian, liberal Democrat for Christine, right here,” Jenny O’Donnell shouted.
Huh? So, Jenny, you have such low self-esteem that you would help elect your sister, who would work to take away your most basic and fundamental rights?
I do understand that it is important to stand by family. But, in her entire public career, when did Christine ever stand up and support Jenny? It is quite clear that family values in the O’Donnell household is a one way street. Jenny is a dupe and a sucker to not recognize that she is being used by her sister to help moderate her extremist image. Shame on Jenny for leaving the LGBT community high and dry, so she can help her sister get elected to pass hateful anti-gay legislation.
Moving along, in the News-Journal article, I had a few choice words to say about O’Donnell:
Besen, who debated O’Donnell in the 1990s, said her attempts to ignore past statements don’t add up.
“I’m not buying it,” Besen said. “This is someone who was a radical.”
Besen said when he and O’Donnell were facing off, it wasn’t in their youths, but when they were adults with formulated opinions.
“I don’t disavow anything I said,” Besen said.
Besen said he wasn’t shocked that O’Donnell’s message has remained consistent, but broadened to capitalize on a fiscal conservative movement.
“I think Christine is being politically opportunistic,” Besen said.
I also talked about the fact she was a “true believing” zealot, that had real trouble with reality.
The founder of Truth Wins Out, a group that works to discredit programs that claim to cure homosexuals, Besen said her views were radical for conservative thinking at the time.”She really struck me as someone who didn’t just drink the Kool-Aid,” Besen said. “But was standing with the Kool-Aid guy stirring the pitcher.”
I think O’Donnell is nuts. But, she is not nearly as loopy as voters in Delaware if they elect her to the Senate, knowing full well her bizarre past, extreme positions and poor management of money.
As the teabaggers have taught us, the real racists are, of course, those who point out racism and call it by name, but maybe this is also racism?
Jim Russell, a right-wing activist running against Congresswoman Nita Lowey in the 18th district mid-state, has a rather interesting past. Specifically, writing lengthy essays in support of white supremacy.
Russell wrote an essay entitled “The Western Contribution to World History,” which was published in the 2001/2002 issue of the magazine “Occidental Quarterly,” which has been described by the Southern Poverty Law Center as “racist” and whose “editors and advisory board members have constituted a ‘Who’s Who’ of the radical right, and its regular publication of extremists’ articles has made it a favorite among academic racists in America.”
Let’s look at the essay:
It has been demonstrated that finches raised by foster parents of a different species of finch will later exhibit a lifelong sexual attraction toward the alien species. One wonders how a child’s sexual imprinting mechanism is affected by forcible racial integration and near continual exposure to media stimuli promoting interracial contact. The most serious implication of human sexual imprinting for our genetic future is that it would establish the destructiveness of school integration, especially in the middle and high-school years. One can only wonder to what degree the advocates of school integration, such as former NAACP attorney Jack Greenberg, were conscious of this scientific concept. It also compounds the culpability of media moguls who deliberately popularize miscegenation in films directed toward adolescents and pre-adolescents. In the midst of this onslaught against our youth, parents need to be reminded that they have a natural obligation, as essential as providing food and shelter, to instill in their children an acceptance of appropriate ethnic boundaries for socialization and for marriage.
The sociobiological warfare that our youth is subjected to is likely to be even more diabolical since it appears to deliberately exploit a biological theory of sexual imprinting at the critical period of sexual maturity. Movies like this past year’s spate of miscegenationist titles, Save the Last Dance, Crazy / Beautiful and O, a parody of Othello, appear deliberately designed to exploit the critical period of sexual imprinting in their target audiences of white pre-adolescent girls and adolescent young women.
There is now afoot a conscious effort to de-Europeanize and to re-Judaize Christianity, through scriptural revision, internal treachery and external pressure.
The importance of applying eugenic measures in the West becomes evident from Richard Lynn’s recent work on Dysgenics and his just-released seminal work Eugenics: A Reassessment.
Wow! But as Digby points out, these people don’t think they’re racist, therefore they aren’t, Q.E.D., etc. Digby also reminds us of the teabagger candidate for governor in the state of New York, Carl Paladino, who likes to e-mail pictures like this to his friends:
But really, it’s really so rude of you to accuse them of being racist, based on these isolated cases that come up no more than several times a week, like clockwork, from all corners of the insurgent teabagging movement.
Wade Richards helped Senate nominee Christine O’Donnell rail against gay rights—until he came out. He tells Michelle Goldberg how O’Donnell abandoned him, and how her lesbian sister helped him accept his sexuality.
A little more than 10 years ago, Wade Richards, a tormented, deeply religious 20-year-old gay man, took his Bible school tuition money and used it to fly to Los Angeles to join forces with Christine O’Donnell, a budding Christian right activist. O’Donnell, a former spokeswoman for Concerned Women for America, had founded an organization called The Savior’s Alliance for Lifting the Truth, or The SALT, in 1996; it was meant to organize young people around opposition to abortion, sex education, and homosexuality. Richards had just graduated from an ex-gay rehab program and had been interviewed about it on 20/20. Ostensibly cured, he got in touch with O’Donnell and became The SALT’s outreach coordinator and spokesman on homosexuality.
Eventually, Richards reached out to Wayne Besen, the founder of Truth Wins Out, a group that battles anti-gay religious extremism. The two had met when they debated on Alan Colmes’ radio show. Richards finally came out in an article in The Advocate in 2000. After that, he says, O’Donnell “totally turned her back on me. I never heard from her ever again. That’s been my experience with the Christian community in general. The minute I was struggling and saying, ‘Hey, listen, I don’t know really where I am with this,’ that’s when everyone really turned their back on me.”
O’Donnell did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Today Richards, who works as a hairdresser in Arizona, says he is doing fine, but, says Besen, “I think he was harmed by Christine O’Donnell. Christine O’Donnell was toeing the party line at the expense of an individual. Often these groups, in pushing their dogma, they overlook that there’s a human being that’s having their lives upended.”
First, an exquisite rant from John Cole. I’m going to quote liberally here:
I’m seriously psyched about all these teahadist victories, and I want each and everyone of you to vow to help me to never let anyone forget that the jerkoffs at Reason have been pimping the tea parties from day one. I wonder how Angle, O’Donnell, and Miller feel about marijuana legalization, John Stagliano’s occupation, torture, civil liberties, no-knock raids, warrantless wiretaps, military adventurism, and all those things you all pretend to care about?
Oh, you’re gonna get your limited government, Christian style, and you’re gonna get it good, you morons- I may even chip in for the wetsuits and dildo for you special cases at Hit and Run. I can’t blame crazy people for being bat shit crazy, but I sure as hell can heap some scorn on pricks like the Reason writers for running rhetorical cover for the lunatics and helping to mainstream their insanity (I know, I know- you don’t PERSONALLY believe Obama is a Kenyan!). Y’all might as well write for Red State.
I just hope you chumps lose the leather jackets and designer wayfarer prescription specs, because those look vaguely French. Your days of esoterically talking about the virtues of Ayn Rand at DC wine and cheese parties are over, because you’re now bitches for Real ‘Murrika. Yeefuckinghaw! Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition.
Douchebags.
Real ‘Murrika indeed.
It’s going to be fun watching the Villager media try to explain away their asinine narrative that “The teabaggers aren’t about social conservatism, just limited gubmint!”
The GOP have chosen their candidates, and it’s a veritable Funny Farm of the biggest morons ever to grace these United States. And any LGBT voter who has stupidly fallen into the trap of the teabagger cries of “Freedom and liburtee!” needs to just get used to the idea that if it takes one second longer for gays and lesbians to move into first class citizen status, resulting from the possible election of an unhinged loon like Sharron Angle, we shall not be forgetting any time soon.
Of course, the GOP voters in Delaware chose Christine O’Donnell, so everybody better keep their hands where we can see them. Here’s Christine’s anti-masturbation video from the 1990′s:
Yes, Christine, why are you in the picture, indeed?
The mid-terms are going to be hilarious.
MEANWHILE, the Democratic nominee for the House in Rhode Island’s 2nd is the openly gay mayor of Providence, David Cicilline, so that’s pretty awesome.
Truth Wins Out called on GOP Senate nominee Christine O’Donnell, last night’s victorious Tea Party candidate in Delaware, to apologize for running a failed “ex-gay” ministry while she headed the Savior’s Alliance for Lifting the Truth (SALT). O’Donnell heavily promoted the “ex-gay” industry and hired Wade Richards, an “ex-gay” poster-boy, to deliver this message .
“Christine O’Donnell is an extremist and was a staunch supporter of the lie that people can ‘pray away the gay’,” said Truth Wins Out’s Executive Director Wayne Besen. “It is time that she apologizes for harming people with her failed ‘ex-gay’ program and for pushing a lie that obviously did not work.”
SALT staff member, Wade Richards, came out of the closet and renounced the “ex-gay” ministries in an August 14, 2000 Advocate magazine article.
“I’ve been through so much in my life already,” Richards, 21, told the Advocate in 2000. “But the one constant is I’m gay. I just want to spend some time being who I am.”
Richards made the decision to come out after he and Truth Wins Out founder Wayne Besen, who at the time worked for The Human Rights Campaign, debated on the Alan Colmes Radio Show. Richards was featured in the movie “Fish Can’t Fly”, which detailed the harm done by “ex-gay” organizations.
O’Donnell defeated nine-term Representative Mike Castle, a mainstay in Delaware politics and a political moderate. O’Donnell also opposes masturbation.
Truth Wins Out is a non-profit organization that fights anti-gay religious extremism. TWO monitors anti-LGBT organizations, documents their lies and exposes their leaders as charlatans. TWO specializes in turning information into action by organizing, advocating and fighting for LGBT equality. Our goal is to create a world where LGBT individuals can live openly, honestly and true to themselves.
With a gift of $35 to Truth Wins Out, you can receive an autographed copy of "Anything But Straight: Unmasking the Scandals and Lies Behind the Ex-Gay Myth."
There was an excellent article in today’s 
“ex-gay” ministry while she headed the Savior’s Alliance for Lifting the Truth (SALT). O’Donnell heavily promoted the “ex-gay” industry and hired Wade Richards, an “ex-gay” poster-boy, to deliver this message .
