A Million Texans in Tinfoil Cowboy Hats

So, I've asked my readers a couple of times now if anyone knows what sort of 'tyrrany' the teabaggers and wingnuts have been complaining about specifically. Finally, thanks to a blog post over at Think Progress, I get a few answers. Apparently they define tyrrany as:

• Social Security
• Medicare
• The federal highway system
• Federal currency
• Not being on the gold standard
• Enforcing the 1st Amendment's Establishment Clause
• Health care reform
• Federal education spending
• Almost all federal spending

So finally we have something like a list of complaints. These 'tenthers' are employing the narrowest possible reading of the Commerce and Welfare clauses, one that has been supported by almost no legal scholar. On the other hand, the use the broadest possible reading of the Tenth Amendment to claim that the Constitution gives Texas the right to secede if it feels like it.

The part that really gets under my skin is the fact that there's nothing new on this list. Nothing that has been enacted more recently than Medicare back in the 1960s. Suddenly and with vigor a movement arises to oppose... changes that have been in effect for decades.

Are we really supposed to believe that these secessionists actually give a shit about the constitutionality of Social Security? Is any reasonable person fooled by this so-called list of grievances to think that this movement is anything other than a bunch of racists pissed off that they lost the election to a black dude?

Racist and Threatening Right-Wing Reactions

Cenk Uygur at The Young Turks covers the story of the man who showed up at an Obama rally with a visible gun strapped to his thigh and carrying a sign that reads, "It is time to water the tree of Liberty." This is in reference to a Thomas Jefferson quote which reads,

What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.

Timothy McVeigh also referenced this quote on the t-shirt he was wearing at the time of his arrest. The sign and the gun taken together send an unmistakable message: this man advocates advancing his political agenda through violent means, possibly even assasination. I cannot understand how he was not arrested. A commenter (padlok47) on the YouTube video writes, "and now everyone who quotes jefferson is a mcveigh?"

No. Everyone who shows up at a political rally packing heat quoting Jefferson or anyone else about the right to political violence is advocating the sort of political violence that McVeigh committed and should probably be arrested on charges of incitement and threatening the president.

Meanwhile Georgia Rep. David Scott's office sign was vandalized with a large swastika. I'm not quite sure of the intent here, but I assume that it means one of two things, both of which aren't good:

1. David Scott is being accused of being a Nazi. This makes no sense. Is David Scott the first black Nazi in history?
2. The vandal is a Nazi and is putting this black elected official "on notice". Apparently David Scott should stop provoking the Nazi party?

These incidents arrive within a storm of accusations of socialism, communism, tyrrany, dishonesty, death panels, eugenics, euthanasia, baby killing and elder killing. These things are being yelled by wingnuts uninterested in thoughtful debate at town hall meetings and political rallies. This time around there are two identifiable sources of all this vitriol. First, we have the teabaggers, still shouting about tyrrany and still upset that their guy lost the election. Second, the health industry astroturf paying people and paying travel expenses and issuing talking points. Millions of dollars are being spent by the companies who have a stake in this debate to make the reactionaries look stronger than they are. In the meantime all rational debate has been squeezed out and Obama has to spend his time answering questions about death panels instead of the merits and limitations of the policies being proposed.

One more time I'd like to put the question out there to any teabaggers who might be reading this. When the left accused the former president of tyrrany we pointed to specific examples such as the suspension of habeas corpus and the declaration of unilateral and preemptive war and the ordering of torture as acts of tyrrany because they threatened the republican institutions of this country. You shout 'tyrrany' at the top of your lungs but I don't understand what it is that Obama has done that you think counts as tyrrany! Which of Obama's specific actions taken since he took office do you view as tyrranical, and why? Quick caveat: proposing to extend medicare-type benefits to essentially everyone over 18 doesn't count.

Busy News Day

There's too much happening this week to cover all of it in much depth, so here are some more quick news stories.

• An city bus ad run by Iowa Atheists and Freethinkers got pulled by DART. This is a clear-cut case of religious discrimination and unconstitutional an illegal censorship. The existence of atheists and atheists groups is offensive? Get a hold of yourself, Iowa governor Chet Culver.
• Sonia Sotomayor was confirmed to the Supreme Court after a noticeable period of relative quiet from the Republicans on this issue. Apparently after the confirmation hearings were over they decided they had ridden that horse as far as it would take them, but that didn't stop them from taking a few parting shots at her as she sailed through the Senate.
• Teabaggers think that the proposed health care reform plan really really is single-payer even though it's not. If they believe that this really is single-payer, so we're having to fight for it as if it were, why wasn't single-payer put on the table to begin with? I'm sick of Democrats pre-compromising things, it doesn't help.
  
• Right-wing protesters at health care town hall meetings are being supported aggressively by health industry companies and incited towards violence by the right-wing media. Once again we hear accusations of tyrrany and comparisons to Nazis but very little policy discussion. The teabaggers have a lot of anger, and little else.
• Over two hundred freethinkers led by PZ Myers and the Secular Student Alliance will gather to tour Ken Ham's creationist theme park tomorrow morning. I wish I could be there, I'm looking forward to seeing the pictures and reading the blog posts about it.
• George Sodini is a terrible human being who walked into a Pennsylvania gym and murdered three women and wounded ten more before ridding the world of his disgusting existence Wednesday. This is a clear case of violence motivated by mysoginy. Sodini targeted women specifically, blogging about his hatred for women before the attack. Pandagon writes,

  George Sodini was angry at the entire world of "desirable" women for not up and volunteering to have sex with him, and every day anonymous men around the country and world beat, rape, and even kill women because said women were also considered insufficiently compliant, often to unstated demands that women were supposed to just anticipate and fill without complaint.

• Unscientific America is on the bookshelves now, and serious scientists are ripping it apart.
  

Teabaggers boo Cornyn, Perry

It's tea party time again, so we get another opportunity to hear what the crazies have to say. I just saw Richard Wolfe and Keith Olbermann talking about this on Countdown, and the AP also picked it up (via Houston Chronicle).

Videos of this event are interesting to watch, too, if you can find them on YouTube. It's fun to watch the Republican party continue to implode in on itself. I do get the sense that they're not really booing Cornyn and Perry, but rather the failure of their leaders to lead effectively and keep their party in power. At this point we can speculate on whether GOP leaders can lead the teabaggers back into the party, or if some outsider will be able to pick up their support, given their current mood.

What particularly struck me, though, is this: attendees booed Rick Perry over his support of toll roads. I would have thought that Perry had given these folks enough to like him with his anti-Washington and secessionist rhetoric lately. And also, are these folks opposed to toll roads? You have got to be frakking stupid to show up to an anti-tax rally and oppose toll roads. Listen people: if the government lowers taxes, then the services that it provides now will have to be paid for by fees or eliminated. Do Texas teabaggers oppose road construction and maintenence?

I have another question for tea party attendees, also. It's been barely six months since Obama took office, and while some big changes are being debated right now, there aren't yet many points where the government is very much different then it was under Bush. This was particularly true during the first round of tea party protests back in April. Despite the fact that not very much has changed in Washington, we are hearing a lot of talk about 'tyrrany' and an abandonment of the Constitution.

Where is this coming from? I've been hearing this tyrrany talk a lot, but it never comes along with any specific complaints. It's always just given as a bald assertion: the Obama administration is tyrannical, or the Obama administration is fascist. No details are offered in support of the claim. When we were out of power we sometimes threw strong language around, but it was always to make a specific point. We complained when Bush declared preemptive war, or suspended habeas corpus, or tortured people. When stuff like this happens, it justifies strong language. But as far as I can tell, Obama hasn't done anything yet, or at least nothing that the teabaggers are willing to point out as the source of their angst.

So if there's anyone out there who's been to a tea party protest and can offer and explanation, I'd like to hear it in the comments. As it stands right now, I'm forced to make uncharitable assumptions about the motivations of these complaints: the protestors are whiny babies who can't take the fact that their party is out of power, or they're all just racist and don't want to own up to the fact that they fervently wished there would never be a black president.