[Nemesis6]

http://mediamatters.org/blog/201003260027

I wonder if they know how much of a laughing stock they are. No matter how much they try, they always manage to marginalize themselves even further. Fortunately, they always do it in hilarious ways like this!

[iamzack]

I hate to say the tea party peeps are altogether crazy, because I've met some profoundly paranoid (very crazy) people at anti war rallies. But then when's the last time a liberal lunatic flew a plane into a building?

I figure a big percentage of the tea party folks are just repeating what they hear on tv/the internet, like most of the rabidly liberal teenagers I know.

[Bobboau]

***WARNING*** LIBERAL CIRCLE JERK EMINENT IMMINENT***WARNING***

[General Battuta]

Imminent, darn it!

Eminent means 'honorable'. Which is probably not what you meant. 

[NGTM-1R]

The ad I'm getting for this page is "Online Tax Revolt".

[StarSlayer]

Its probably worth mentioning that while its easy to make fun of all the crazy yahoos that make up these things, and point and laugh at the uneducated rabble swinging "Communist Czars" posters you shouldn't ignore the elephant in the room.   A movement like this is like an iceberg, what you see is the crazy extremist tip.  Now if that many people are motivated to go to Washington and actively *****, even if they are the ignorant, racist , Fox News zealots then you better believe there is a much larger segment of the population, while not angry enough to go demonstrate, are still very unhappy.  Quite frankly people have a reason to be afraid, the majority of our population is on the verge of retirement.  They are at the stage where they are going to need healthcare and the government seems to be severely rocking the boat and doing a poor job assuaging those fears.

Now I'm not saying the opposition is right.  It's quite possible the Healthcare reforms will prove very successful.  But to be honest it was the Gov't responsibility to have properly promoted this project as a fiscally possible solution that will benefit all Americans and come next November we might find out they failed miserably.  So sure you can laugh at the Tea Parties but I look at them and cringe at what kind of Conservative backlash might be coming down the pike.   It took Dubbya eight years to nearly put the GOP in the ground, the Dems might manage to resurrect it in two.

[Snail]

Imminent, darn it!

Eminent means 'honorable'. Which is probably not what you meant. 

Are you saying circle jerks aren't honorable?

[Klaustrophobia]

there are loons in both parties.  need we bring up ACORN?  while i'm not marching on washington, i am genuinally pissed about this.  the government has NO right to mandate that i carry health insurance.  it does NOT have a responsibility to provide health care to everyone.  some of the insurance policy reforms sound great, and i can't disagree with them from a humanitarian standpoint, but economically they just don't work.  accepting people with (certian) pre-existing conditions means they are now forced to pay extreme medical bills and recieve essentially nothing.  where do you think that money comes from?  the real solution would be to get a handle on rediculous healthcare costs at the base and make the racket that is medical insurance irellevant.

[Turambar]

Oh Klaus....

I DISAGREE

*drives off*

edit:  Also, only fox news thinks ACORN are loonies.  The first ACORN scandal thing involved them having a pile of fraudulent registrations.  They are required to take all of the voter registrations and pass them on, and those were the ones that they had specifically marked as fraudulent, so they wouldn't be actually registered as voters.  The second scandal involved a retard dressed like a pimp and some heavily edited video.  That retard then went on to try and wiretap a senator.  Pretty much all of the outrage here was unjustified and manufactured.

As for healthcare, there is quite a bit still wrong with the system.  The important part was getting a foothold so that the next set of reforms can go in.  As it is, there's entirely too much profit being made on the system being inefficient.  We  have doctors doing too many tests because if they don't they might get sued, we have them paying for huge amounts of malpractice insurance in case they do get sued, we have people's health insurance paying the prices that the doctors have to inflate to carry those costs.  What this bill fixed is when people come in to the ER with no insurance and then the government has to pay, and when people get sick without insurance and then don't get medical help until it's an emergency, at which point the treatment is likely too much for them to pay, causing them to go bankrupt, unable to pay for their house, unable to contribute to the economy etc.  If people can stop being morons for a bit, they'll use their new health insurance to make it affordable to deal with their problems before they are too expensive.  

The bill is a start, still have a long way to go.

(also, i know tort reform is a major right wing point.  even though they are wrong on lots of things like gay folks and war, they actually have a point on this one.  not saying it will solve the problem though, it's only part of the bigger solution)

[Sushi]

Starslayer is correct. Ignore the crazy people in a movement, and pay attention to what the sane people in that movement are saying. Unfortunately, sane people don't make as good television as crazy people, so that doesn't tend to happen very often.

IMO, one of the biggest problems with pretty much all (political) media is that the viewers/readers reward them for painting with the broadest possible brush in the ugliest possible colors.

[iamzack]

There are no sane teabaggers. Maybe Fox should stop giving them airtime.

[Klaustrophobia]

Oh Klaus....

I DISAGREE

*drives off*

that's fine, i know people will.  there is every possibility that i am wrong, and this bill WILL be a vast positive change.  i just don't see it.  there is definitely a case for health care reform, and i won't fault anyone for that (well within reason).  i have to somewhat remove myself from this whole cluster**** altogether, because it doesn't hugely affect me.  i am in great health and have coverage.  but the mandate stuff still pisses me off.  giving up more to unecessary government control, whether it has an actual effect or not, is TERRIBLE direction to be taking.

and just as a preemptive argument, NO i'm not regurgitating anyone else's arguments or theories.  i don't watch TV or get my information from any sort of opinionated programming.  this is MY logic and conclusions, based off of information gathered from mostly internet news articles, nearly all of which put the liberal spin on the whole thing, some more subtly than others

[General Battuta]

IMO, one of the biggest problems with pretty much all (political) media is that the viewers/readers reward them for painting with the broadest possible brush in the ugliest possible colors.

There's a human heuristic bias to value the strength of an argument (how 'intense' it is) over the reliability of the source.

So loud angry arguments by nutty people (on either wing) actually feel more convincing than moderate arguments from reliable, well-researched people.

Silly brains.

[Blue Lion]

there are loons in both parties.  need we bring up ACORN?  while i'm not marching on washington, i am genuinally pissed about this.  the government has NO right to mandate that i carry health insurance.  it does NOT have a responsibility to provide health care to everyone.  some of the insurance policy reforms sound great, and i can't disagree with them from a humanitarian standpoint, but economically they just don't work.  accepting people with (certian) pre-existing conditions means they are now forced to pay extreme medical bills and recieve essentially nothing.  where do you think that money comes from?  the real solution would be to get a handle on rediculous healthcare costs at the base and make the racket that is medical insurance irellevant.

But you ARE paying it. Where do you think people without health insurance go when they need medical attention? Someone is paying for the emergency room visits.

Those people with extreme medical conditions that health insurance companies decide aren't profitable enough to cover don't just stop going to the hospital, we end up paying for it, either through increased premiums or higher taxes for medicare and medicaid.

I think we need some kind of government system (single payer/public option) because I'm not particularly fond of "Well they have to make money off of our health somehow"

[StarSlayer]

There are no sane teabaggers. Maybe Fox should stop giving them airtime.

I don't think your getting my point.

It's not even that you need to find sane tea baggers or treat them like they're a legit.  You can ignore the entire movement quite frankly, more then likely they are already so entrenched you are not going to change their opinions anyway (assuming their opinions are something other then screaming about CommieFacism).  The problem is that its a symptom of a larger issue.  If you get that many folks pissed off enough that they are willing to truck to Washington to raise hell, then you can bet there is a much larger group of people, that while not upset enough to join the movement are not sold on the healthcare reform.  Those people are not the lunatic fringe, they aren't dumb or zealots or wing nuts, they just have not been convinced it will work and those are the folks that are going to be important come election day.  Couple that with the Mass Senate vote this spring and it becomes pretty clear the government has not addressed people's concerns.  Rather then taking a step back and try to get the populace to rally round the idea they decided to just ram it through, with all the seedy back end deals that entails.  

Now I certainly could be mistaken, but I figure there are going to be repercussions over this come the next voting cycle.  I cringe at the thought of a new wave of NeoCons riding the Dems' inability to make the sale on Healthcare into Office

[Nuclear1]

Which is why i'm personally (mark my ****ing words) going to knock on the doors of every registered Democrat in eastern Nebraska come election day.

[Turambar]

Which is why i'm personally (mark my ****ing words) going to knock on the doors of every registered Democrat in eastern Nebraska come election day.

all 14 of them?  sounds like a lot of driving :-P  I'll definitely be going out to vote myself, my state just barely pulled for Obama in the presidentials.  We've got a Senator up in 2010, Richard Burr, and he needs to go (anti-choice, pro-death penalty, anti-freedom sort).  He was against the healthcare bill, and with that position having failed, he's joined with the Republican party in being giant babies and not coming to work.  Hopefully I'm not the only one in NC who thinks that **** shouldnt fly.

[Nuclear1]

Which is why i'm personally (mark my ****ing words) going to knock on the doors of every registered Democrat in eastern Nebraska come election day.

all 14 of them?  sounds like a lot of driving :-P

Eastern Nebraska, not Western.

[Nemesis6]

I don't really think the tip of the iceberg thing applies to the tea baggers - They are basically a movement born out of the paranoid delusions and conspiracy theories of Alex Jones, Glenn Beck, Ron Paul, and the John Birch Society(THE COMMUNISTS ARE EVERYWHERE!). Where the whole "Obama is a secret communist Muslim Kenyan socialist sand-nigger" thing comes in, I'm not sure, but I'd say it's just the typical redneck racism. I know the tea party protests were formed as some kind of protest against taxation, but I don't see anything resembling that. All you need to do is look at their protests to conclude that they're lunatics whose messages are so varied, and downright crazy, if their signs are anything to go by, that is. From what I can tell, all they have in common is paranoia and bigotry. They feed off of the ignorance that's promoted by the Republicans, and between those two, I can't see any difference, which is probably why the republicans are so eager to support them -- There IS no real ideological difference to speak of. They're just an extension of crazy right-wing.

By the way, I need some help here... Can someone explain to me what this means: http://dailyhurricane.com/racistteabagger.jpg

[Galemp]

"The President is a Communist, the government is evil, and someone has to do something about this! And I learned it all from Glen Beck!"

Yep, that's totally mainstream and not marginalized at all.