Summations Only

I guess that's why he halved the deficit.

Well, you do have to wonder. In the last week I've seen these people attacking Michelle Obama for being spoiled and pampered because she has (as it turns out) exactly as many assistants as Laura Bush did, and fewer than several First Ladies before that; and attacking Obama for being a "dictator" because he has a veto and occasionally uses it --- to be precise, he's used it twice, nine times fewer than GWB, and as many times as George Washington, and in fact you have to go back to the 1880s to find a President who's used the veto less often than Obama^*. Or remember Buzsaw (MHRIP) complaining about Obama appointing "czars" ... just like, y'know, everyone else did. So you have to wonder, why are he and his wife being judged by a different standard to everyone else who's inhabited the White House? * James Garfield, assassinated after only six months in office.

Because that was then and this is now. Old news is good for nothing. New news on the other hand wraps fish and lines bird cages. It also fills white space between ads.

Sure, it can.The Republican party has been encouraging racism and fundamentalist Christian extremism since around 1980. Sure, they encouraged it with a wink and a nod, so that they could maintain plausible deniability. But what they were doing was well understood, even if it was hard to directly point the finger.They created a monster.

One-word answer?Melanin.

I gave Jar a + for his answer, which was more true than I think he intended.Then along came your answer.If I could give you two ++ I would.Consider it done.

Hi Rahvin again. Thank you for your response.I do not agree with you that the racism within the tea party is just an undercurrent. I firmly believe that it is the core as well as the mainstream of the tea party. Like I said before, I simply do not believe in coincidence. But since I can't really use coincidence to legitimately support my position, let me take a more supportive approach.You say that the smokescreen is only used by some teabaggers to hate Obama while still remain politically correct. Let me prove to you that all official positions held by the tea party at large are just a series of smokescreens to cover their bigotry.Before I continue, let me define what a smokescreen is and how we can identify it. A smokescreen is a politically correct reason for someone to hate someone else or something because the REAL reason is politically incorrect. An example is the current KKK movement's excuse for what they believe in. You see, they no long claim to hate other races. They just want to keep the races separate the way god made us, supposedly. That would be an example of a smokescreen. Another example is when someone tries to weasel out of going somewhere. I'm sick. My wife is in the hospital. Etc.Take my smokescreens for hating women, for example. They smell, they're gross. They're annoying. They're selfish. Etc. All are just smokescreens to hide the fact that I'm a misogynistic pig.How do we identify smokescreens? Smokescreens are not as easy to identify like most people believe. Clever smokescreens can be very convincing. What I've noticed in my life is that smokescreens have 1 universal property: the basis for them is a lie.So, let's look at the tea party's official positions.(1) They hate Obama. Can we at least agree on this point? Ok, let's go on.(2) They hate taxes and are claiming that Obama has raised taxes.This is downright lie. Obama has in fact lowered our taxes.(3) They are concerned that Obama is on a spending spree and is spending our country into bankruptcy.Again, the basis behind this claim is a lie. Clinton left office leaving us a big-ass surplus. Bush not only spent the surplus but actually put the country into the biggest deficit we ever saw. Obama has halved Bush's deficit.(4) Obama is the worst president in history and that he is more like a dictator.Again, not true. As Dr pointed out, Obama has only vetoed twice. That's a small fraction of the times Bush used his vetoing power.(5) Ok, let's talk about taxes. Tea party members really hate taxes, yes?Bush the father raised taxes. Clinton also raised taxes. Where the hell were the tea party members back then? Just when a black guy that has not raised our taxes at all, tea party members sprung up in opposition of taxes. Please explain this bit.(6) Tea party members hate the gheys. Oh, I'm sorry, they love us. They just hate our sins.Bullshit.....(7) They really really hate social programs.It just happens that some of us actually know tea party members. The ones I know are the construction workers that we hire. You know what they do during the winter months when constructions are suspended? They receive unemployment.There, I just showed you that every one of the tea party's official stances is a smokescreen.It is understandable that you are taking the middle, more politically correct position. It's usually the safest position to take. All I'm saying is I have not seen a single shred of evidence that the tea party is anything but racist.Edited by yenmor, : No reason given.

Bravo yenmor. I would have clicked a hundred times on the 'Cheers' button if the system allowed me to do it. :-)One thing I would also go one further on is the Tea Party's unrelenting hatred of 'progressives' and 'liberals'. You will often see Tea Party pundits scream buzz words like 'socialism', 'liberalism', 'communism', and yes, even 'nazism' when describing the so-called 'left'. Yet they actually have no idea what these words even mean or how they precisely apply in this circumstance. They are just parroting Glenn Beck or Rush Limbaugh but like any parrot, they can repeat the words but not fully grasp their meaning.While this has been a core aspect of the right's views over the years, it has become even more frequently used during Obama's tenure. And once again, a nice smokescreen for the bitter resentment that a black man is in public office.

Lowering the deficit is not lowering the debt.

That's not quite true. What you showed is that Tea Party members are often ignorant, misinformed, plain stupid, or have an ulterior motive like racism or anti-gay bigotry and so on.You've blasted their individual positions as often but not universally the result of hypocrisy and untruth. That's fine, but it doesn't prove or even significantly support racism as the sole or primary motivator.I agree that some or many or even most of the teabaggers are racist, and that racism is the underlying motivator for some or many or most of them.But I do not agree that the Tea Party movement can be oversimplified as the result of racism.I think other factors, including misinformation (whether originally supplied by racists, the Koch brothers, or someone else), ignorance (which correlates and even causes racism, but is not actually synonymous with racism), simple tribalistic hooliganism (the Other Team is in charge, and so all of the problems real or imagined are the Other Team's fault), and so on.I'm unwilling to dismiss these other potential factors because I don't believe that any group of individuals can be so homogeneously described with a singular ulterior unstated motive. People are too different, people are too ignorant, people are too gullible, people are too easy to rile up against The Other Team for imagined issues. That's not at all what I'm doing, yenmor. While yes, I do find it easier to maintain a dialog with people when I don;t accuse them of racism whether they are racist or not, I'm actually just stating facts as I;ve seen them, including alternative hypotheses as I can imagine them, and making tentative conclusions based on the evidence I've seen.So I'll repeat: I agree that some or many or most of the Tea Party is racist.I disagree that the Tea Party can be wholly simplified into a "racist organization." I disagree that all of their members are just racist, that all of their arguments stem from racism, and that racism is the sole and possibly not even the primary motivating factor.Nothing you've said has specifically pointed to racism as the reason for all of the hypocritical, ignorant, false positions in the Tea Party. You've provided evidence that the arguments are bullshit...but people believe bullshit all the time, for more reasons that just racism. And a group can have more than one motivating factor among its members, and they need not agree on everything.

It's important to note that many people can find charismatically insane people like Beck and Limbaugh convincing even as they lie, without actually being racist. You don't need to be racist to believe a lie, even if the liar is himself a racist.

Hi Rahvin,
I think that depends on the lie that is being told.

How about "He's going to raise your taxes, and drive the country deeper in debt, and he'll be the ruin of us all?"I can picture those same lies being used against Clinton back in the 90s. I don't need to invoke racism or any other sort of bigotry to imagine people believing those lies. I think the only reason the racism hypothesis is being privileged is because some (or many, or most, I have no way to know which ) teabaggers are racist, and because the President happens to be black. It makes for a very convenient and easy way to dismiss the entire movement, but I don't think it's as accurate as we can be, and I think it's less effective in challenging them than we should be.I'd rather just use yenmor's nice, convenient list of challenges to the Tea Party positions and expose them as the ignorance, falsehoods, and examples of hypocrisy that they are.

I'm not as familiar with Beck, but Limbaugh's racism is so blatant, pervasive, and nakedly expressed that I simply cannot give a free pass to people who listen to his show just for the conservatism. At a minimum such people are unforgivingly indifferent about racism. Surely there is a way to get your small government, anti-abortion fix elsewhere.It's like those joke claims that you are read Playboy and Penthouse just for the articles. I suppose it is possible that for someone those claims were true, but I could never take such claims seriously.I'm with you regarding your comments regarding the tea party, but I have to draw the line at Limbaugh.

Perhaps 1.61803's comment would be better said like so: