"It is unclear how disarming law-abiding citizens would better protect them from the dangers and threats posed by those who would flout the law." —Florida governor Rick Scott, explains his decision to refuse Tampa mayor Bob Bruckhorn's request that he sign an executive order to ban the carrying of concealed weapons at the GOP convention which will be held in the city in August. Here's a scenario: One of those who would flout the law pulls out a plastic toy gun in a crowd. Then, 200 law-abiding citizens pull out their real guns and start firing in a legal act of self-defense. But they all have bad [...]
“Now, if we have a more decentralized mass transit system using buses, if the terrorists blow up a single bus, we can work around that. When they blow up a rail, that just brings the system to a grinding halt. So how much security are we going to have on this rail system, and how much will it cost?” —That's J.D. Van Brink, of the Georgia Tea Party, explaining why trains shouldn't be built in the US of A. So, I guess the terrorists won? Also, I would like to report that I saw the movie Unstoppable recently, because I was sure the "runaway train" concept was just [...]
The last time gas prices spiked over $4 per gallon, the Tea Party exploded with rage against the sitting president, hanging the totality of the blame on his administration. Of course, by "exploded with rage," I mean "didn't exist."
This time around, the Tea Party is taking action to draw attention to the fact that Barack Obama is gouging Americans by making sure gas prices are high by causing war in Libya, not opening Alaska to drilling and saving our national energy reserves to power Chinese tanks after China's inevitable invasion of the U.S. We spoke with Chris Lotto, Arizona activist and co-creator of the "The 'Hope and [...]
Ah, this just in from the new "Take Back Our Country From the Fat Cat Special Interests" election of 2012, in the great state of Wisconsin.
• "Republican Gov.-elect Scott Walker plans to give any excess money raised for his inauguration to his campaign fund and the state Republican Party—instead of to charity—in a move that drew ridicule Wednesday."
• "Sen.-elect Ron Johnson has just hired his chief of staff, Don Kent. While the official release describes Kent as a former Dept. of Homeland Security worker, that’s not Kent’s only job experience. After leaving DHS, where Kent worked for Michael Chertoff, Kent became a lobbyist at Navigators Global, [...]
I have a weird thing about the Tea Party type of people, in that, while I don't think the Jews are running black helicopters from NATO down the Mississippi nor do I think Obama is "sekret Muslin usurper President of Kenya," I do actually find it exciting that there are pissed-off bands of people in this country-and I don't believe they're all astroturfed and I do think a great deal of Tea Party members have come to the tea party organically and with some not-terrible complaints, particularly those about the disinvolvement of Americans from politics. The problem is so many of them go awry with the whole birther crowd, [...]
Gingrich: There is a lot of big government behind Romneycare, not as much as Obamacare, but a heck of a lot more than your campaign is admitting.
Romney: Actually, Newt, we got the idea of an individual mandate from you.
Gingrich: That's not true. You got it from the Heritage Foundation.
Romney: Yeah. We got it from you and the Heritage Foundation and from you.
Gingrich: What you just said is not true. You did not get that from me. You got it from the Heritage Foundation.
That exchange, from the October 18th GOP presidential primary debate, likely caused a good number of clenched sphincters within the drop-ceilings of power at The Heritage Foundation. Until [...]
"Next to being a Republican, the strongest predictor of being a Tea Party supporter today was a desire, back in 2006, to see religion play a prominent role in politics. And Tea Partiers continue to hold these views: they seek 'deeply religious' elected officials, approve of religious leaders’ engaging in politics and want religion brought into political debates. The Tea Party’s generals may say their overriding concern is a smaller government, but not their rank and file, who are more concerned about putting God in government." —Much as we described to you in vivid detail yesterday, the hard data also shows that the Tea Party has little [...]
Here is a video of a group of Americans who call themselves "We Surround Them OC 912," protesting a fundraising dinner for a social services charity organization in California a couple weeks ago. The protestors should probably—among other things—read up on what they're screaming about. (Via.)
The miles of Highway 41 in Wisconsin north of Fond du Lac feature a lot of billboards. Somewhere just before the town known as "Sawdust City," a succession of billboards advertise both the Supreme adult gift and lingerie store and "All Life Is Precious" anti-choice abortion messages. This juxtaposition of open sin and Christian values has historic president in Oshkosh. The raging alcoholic for whom the city is named died in a drunken brawl in 1858, years before the Menominee chief could see Oshkosh become the annual home to the Christian music event, LifeFest.
Soon, the night will be summed up by John Boehner crying over my [...]
Bill Ayers is the human wormhole linking those mythical dirty, un-American hippies of the 1960s to the Obama administration to the also-dirty socialists of the rising #occupy movement. On October 13th, the conservative blog American Thinker giddily entertained the hypothetical of an Occupy Wall Street movement that would "morph into something resembling the radical factions of the late 1960s and 1970s"—when "it will not be just Ayers and [spouse Bernardine] Dohrn with blood on their hands. It will be their young protégé in the White House as well."
For some, the stretch to make the 60s connection is done out of ignorance. For others it is a way [...]
When I started going to Tea Party meetings two years ago, I was sympathetic. Just after attending one in North Dakota in August of 2009, I wrote: "Most tea partiers are not bad people. They're just mad. In many meaningful ways, today's Tea Party attendees' lives have gotten consistently worse for the last 20 years, regardless of which party was in power." I concluded that trying to figure out what they wanted was a dead end because what they wanted was simply to complain—that the Tea Party "is not a group of listen and respond; this is a group of respond and respond."
One doesn't need to go to the Middle East or Northern Africa to find a people-versus-government showdown. At this very moment in Wisconsin, one of the most important labor battles in decades is already going down at the state capital in Madison.
On one side is Tea Party Republican Governor Scott Walker and a GOP legislature hell-bent on making Wisconsin "open for business." On the other side are the state's labor unions, which Walker's latest budget aims to fully field dress, gut and strap down to the hood of his car, tongue hanging out and all. Across the state, Wisconsinites are organizing for protests and vigils, [...]
Come November, it is the intention to throw the bums out. All of them. Many Senate seat challengers, while running as Republicans, have risen to the top with backing from the "tea party." Wisconsin's Ron Johnson is just such a candidate. A fiscally conservative businessman, Johnson has never run for public office and is an inexperienced campaigner. But the way his rhetoric matches with fact, he already seems the pro. Ron Johnson can now distinguish the bum's face. That bum is incumbent Senator Russ Feingold.
Now campaign finance filings found by The Awl show that despite his vigorous denouncement of the bank bailouts, Johnson's campaign has received funding [...]
