Widespread teabagging in the U.S.

Ze wrote:

Er, they do know what teabagging's common colloquial meaning is, don't they? 

Um, I think it's pretty clear that they do.

The quote in the OP is filled with sexual entendres and "nudge wink" kinda jokes. Feels like "dialed down for mainstream" frat boy jokes actually.

Now, normally I'm all for a good old chuckle at right-wingers expense, but I'm uncomfortable with how that language is used and the underlying sexualized racism against Obama.

A woman fell into the Susquehanna River today while dumping green tea bags in protest of government taxes.

Joanne Miller, 68, a resident of Riverfront Apartments, was rescued a few minutes later by the Wendy Herrold, manager of the apartments, and Sunbury police.
http://www.dailyitem.com/0100_news/local_story_105110929.html

Teabagging FAIL!

ElizaQ wins the thread.

A reporter actually tried to have a "conversation" with that "person"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wCA-3q6t57Q

Let there be teabagging!

http://www.dailykostv.com/w/001140/

Ze wrote:

 

Today I got a robo-call asking if I knew today was Tax Fightback Day or some such BS. Lots of money behind this protest, clearly. 

 

Lobbyists Planning Tea Parties

Quote:

Today on Fox News - which has actively been promoting the protests - Glenn Beck pushed the tea party talking points, similarly claiming that the protests aren't "coordinated" and are fully organized by "regular" people

Despite these attempts to make the "movement" appear organic, the principle organizers of the local events are actually the lobbyist-run think tanks Americans for Prosperity and Freedom Works. The two groups are heavily staffed and well funded, and are providing all the logistical and public relations work necessary for planning coast-to-coast protests
---------------
This type of corporate ‘astroturfing‘ is nothing new to either organization. While working to promote Social Security privatization, Freedom Works was caught planting one of its operatives as a "single mom" to ask questions to President Bush in a town hall on the subject. Last year, the Wall Street Journal exposed Freedom Works for similarly building "amateur-looking" websites to promote the lobbying interests of Dick Armey, the former Republican Majority Leader who now leads Freedom Works and is a lobbyist for the firm DLA Piper.
-----------
Americans for Prosperity is run by Tim Phillips, who was Ralph Reed's former partner in the lobbying firm Century Strategies. The group is funded by Koch family foundations - a family whose wealth is derived from the oil industry. Indeed Americans for Prosperity has coordinated pro-drilling ‘grassroots‘ events around the country.

-------------
This afternoon, former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich, leader of the corporate-funded American Solutions for Winning the Futures (ASWF), blasted an e-mail to his supporters with a reminder to attend the protests, along with a "Toolkit" of talking points.

This one's too good! Yes - stop the insanity...with plastic straight jackets!

Tommy_Paine wrote:

I had to look up "teabagging".

I did too. Whatever would we do without google?

NoDifferencePartyPooper wrote:

And in true neocon fashion, it capitalizes on the working class' inchoate anger at the ongoing screw job they've been getting from both parties"

"Inchoate" anger, NDP????  In "true neocon fashion" ?   You mean, the neocons were bright enough to play on working class ignorance of alternatives???   

Or what?

to learn what?

If there ever was a viable 3rd party option in the US that targeted disaffected libertarian types,the right wing vote would be split and would keep the Dems in power for a very long time.I'm not sure that's a good thing for democracy as a whole,but that would cause some real "change" to take place down there.Having said that,there is no possible way of this ever taking place....

As Harold Meyerson, editor at large of American Prospects shows us, "the left" in the U.S. isn't up to mounting the "in the street" protests of the self-absorbed right:

"To be sure, loosing the activists would have brought problems of its own: Unlike Roosevelt of Johnson, who benefitted from autonomous movements, Obama would be answerable for every loopy tactic his followers employed. But in the absence of both a free-standing movement and a legion of loyalists, Congress isn't feeling much pressure from the left to mvoe Obama's agenda."

Congress "isn't feeling much pressure" is the understatement of the post-election period, and is causing great concern about Democrat chances in the mid-terms. It's almost as if the 13 million on-line supporters do not feel safe away from their monitors. (Could be the situation, of course. Not sure that I would feel safe with a picket sign supporting anything progressive there, these days.) But I think that for members of Congress, there would have to be promise of $ support for their campaigns greater than those flowing from the establilshment to stiffen their spines...even more important than activist demonstrations.

Although as this post from from April last year shows that the supporters of Newt Gingrich are more easily moved to action:

"This afternoon, former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich, leader of the corporate-funded American Solutions for Winning the Futures (ASWF), blasted an e-mail to his supporters with a reminder to attend the protests, along with a "Toolkit" of talking points." Sounds almost like Steve's instructions to his MP on how to deal with parliamentary committees that get too close to the truth....by the right, quick, march... Not the stuff for a freedom-loving "left", for sure.

No, Boom Boom, no!!! Not snowballing in a thread about tea-bagging!!!

I can't take it!!!

P.S. Google is your friend, but NOT safe for work!!! Yikes!

Um, Boom, I was suggesting you google the word "snowballing".

I mean, no I wasn't. 

Don't say I didn't warn ya.

Mr. Grimes, who receives Social Security, has filled the back seat of his Mercury Grand Marquis with the literature of the movement, including Glenn Beck’s “Arguing With Idiots” and Frederic Bastiat’s “The Law,” which denounces public benefits as “false philanthropy.”

“If you quit giving people that stuff, they would figure out how to do it on their own,” Mr. Grimes said.

The Michigan State Police is investigating a threatening letter sent by an anti-government group to Gov. Jennifer Granholm and more than 30 other governors demanding that they leave office within three days or be removed.

The letter, sent by a group called Guardians of the Free Republics, was received in the governor's mailroom Monday, said Tiffany Brown, spokeswoman for Granholm.

Very interesting article nbeltov, thank you..

Quote:

The possibility that, in not a few cases, extreme conservative, anti-Communist and reactionary attitudes and behaviors may be symptoms of deeper underlying physical or psychological sickness can no longer be minimized or discarded out of hand by thoughtful progressives.

Naturally, one must be extremely cautious before arbitrarily declaring any given right-winger "mad." Long-ago abuses perpetrated by twentieth-century socialist governments in locking up nonviolent dissidents, reactionaries and political enemies as "insane" must never be entirely forgotten. And, anyone of whatever class who is materially prospering from the current state of things, or who has rational plans for somehow doing so, is by no means crazy to oppose progressive change.

And, when overwhelmed by fear (of unemployment, poverty, homelessness or simply of change), some working people may become irrationally conservative even while still perfectly sane. Today, given the immense harshness of the current crisis, honest, thoughtful workers who look backward to some imaginary "good old days" instead of forward for a better model of affordable health care, employment, peace and prosperity can hardly be faulted for a lack of rationality, This is particularly true when the Left has, at least up to now, enjoyed minimal success in educating, agitating or organizing unemployed workers on a mass basis, even as Teabagger-style lunacy stands ready and eager to take up our slack.

However, the first practical lesson that liberals and progressives can draw from recent studies may well be that rather than wasting time rationally answering every new barrage of hair-brained, anti-human, right-wing claptrap that comes across the media, it may be far more fruitful for progressive writers and communicators to concentrate on broadly de-legitimizing conservatism and the right wing by proving that extreme right-wing ideology is, in fact, objectively insane; as disordered and dangerously deluded as believing one is Napoleon or is being pursued by flying pink elephants.

And secondly, these material findings strongly suggest that it is not nearly enough for us as progressives to appeal only to the relatively miniscule number of "rebels by temperament," or to imagine we can coldly and objectively place the facts before some rationally-calculating, fantasy working class who, if given access to solid evidence and free choice, will always logically choose socialism as the best option for themselves and their families. This tactic hasn't worked yet, it isn't working now, and, we can confidently predict, won't work in the future either.

Very much to the contrary, in order to grow as a party or movement we must creatively develop appeals that truly communicate with (and carefully listen to) wounded working people who may have (tragically) been raised by their parents to stand at attention and salute, with fragile workers whose voices tremble with disgust and change-phobia every time their state changes the number on their license plates, with fear-haunted working people who stay awake at night in stark fear of terrorists under the bed, and all those temperamentally wound-up workers who jump through the roof every time the mechanic in the next repair bay drops a wrench.

The 18 percent of Americans who identify themselves as Tea Party supporters tend to be Republican, white, male, married and older than 45.

NO?! But there is other interesting stuff in the poll - and this was kind of funny:

“I just feel he’s getting away from what America is,” said Kathy Mayhugh, 67, a retired medical transcriber in Jacksonville. “He’s a socialist. And to tell you the truth, I think he’s a Muslim and trying to head us in that direction, I don’t care what he says. He’s been in office over a year and can’t find a church to go to. That doesn’t say much for him.”

If you read the entire article, then you'll see that the Koch fortune is also based on outright theft.

Ze wrote:

Er, they do know what teabagging's common colloquial meaning is, don't they? 

I prefer to think there are a few gay fifth-columnists in there who are weeping with laughter …