Wow. What a p.r. master.

Nevada’s Tea Party right-wing Senate candidate, Sharron Angle, finally pops up in big media. She’s been dodging reporters and writers and TV people and internet sources and everybody on the planet because she’s a laughable whackjob whose public numbers are doing a Titanic now that her clownish personal views are known. Let’s abolish Social Security, Medicare, the Department of Education and fluoridation of your tap water, good ideas all.

Here, she finally sits down for an interview with a friendly face, Fox’s Carl Cameron. Carl asks her about her recent allergies to media, to which she rebounds with about as good a 25 seconds of ‘WTF?‘ as you’ll get.

The impersonation is spot on. The combination of animal self-assurance and prideful clod-hopping down the simplest path to a rout invokes Dwight Schrute in oblivious glory. The lack of awareness is nothing to be ashamed of, no, it’s a killer feature of the overall Angle nature. Albeit a disturbingly, psychotically grinning and head-bobbing nature.

Sharron Angle will just do what Sharron Angle will do. For example, if you, say, try to use her personal views, once proudly laid out for all to see on her former website, against her in a political campaign and the tactic begins to work, you will be accosted with lawsuits. You must be stopped from being effective. That’s what Sharron Angle will do. It’s not about Sharron Angle, it’s about Sharron Angle simply winning.

Speaking of which, help out Carl, here, Sharron — why were you having such a bad time dealing with the media? What were you trying to do?

[grin] Well . . .

1.) We had to transform the media into friends.
2.) SO that they would ask the questions we wanted them to ask.
3.) SO that we could get the answers out that made us look good.
4.) SO that we could lobby the audiences to go to Sharron Angle dot com.
5.) SO that they would donate at Sharron Angle dot com.
6.) LIKE your listeners, who can go to Sharron Angle dot com.

A Senate campaign’s pretty simple, really:

Well, the elected and powerful have officially joined the Tea Party. ‘Officially joined’, here, means the new faithful called a press conference last Wednesday to announce a list of House members that have joined the shiny new Tea Party Caucus.

Minnesota’s greatest, Michele Bachmann, and several other patriotic congressmen held a presser today announcing the launch of the House Tea Party Caucus! Her office also released a list of inaugural members — some of whom didn’t know they’d signed up.

Oops. Tea Partiers hazy in the head? I mean, err, huzzahs! I’m sure they’ll be blazing bold new paths and breaking down barriers unilaterally because this is some radical new political shit, indeed. You cannot box this sort of lightning, no sir, not this ball of fire.

Tea Party Caucus members endorse Israeli attack on Iran
Posted By Josh Rogin | Monday, July 26, 2010 – 2:30 PM

Now that the congressional supporters of the Tea Party movement have formed their own caucus, their policy positions are becoming easier to track. Expanding their foray into foreign policy, 21 members of the new caucus have now come out explicitly endorsing Israel’s right to strike Iran’s nuclear program.

Aww, fuck. Ball of Fiery Armageddon, anyone? So much for all that “The government’s out of control!!” And “It won’t listen to the people!!” Now, for the Bachmann Tea Party, it’s “The government needs to start a World War!!” And “It’ll totally be worth another trillion of your hard-earned tax dollars!!”

Almost two dozen Tea Party-affiliated lawmakers cosponsored a new resolution late last week that expresses their support for Israel “to use all means necessary to confront and eliminate nuclear threats posed by the Islamic Republic of Iran, including the use of military force.”

That’s great. I’m sure that while Israel launches a massive airstrike against Iran, and the Tea Party Caucus are all excitedly jumping up and down, creaming in their shorts, they’ll also be inventing all sorts of clever strategies to sidestep being sucked into a Middle East conflagration.

Unless, you know, the new House version of the DIVERSE TEA PARTY is merely made up of hysterical far right-wing Republicans. Because those guys would likely happily march thousands of Americans into the maw of Looks Like The Apocalypse in defense of Israel. And isn’t that very minimally governmental? Doesn’t that reek of fiscal responsibility? Isn’t that deeply respectful of individual freedoms?

Well, lookee — here’s a list of those freshly minted Tea Party rebels, and, yes, it’s the usual assholes. Founder Batshit Bachmann loved the trillion dollar wars and George W. Bush so much, she couldn’t stop kissing and hugging the chicken hawk budget buster.

Steve King never met a war he wouldn’t fund but was one of only 11 congress people to vote against the $52 billion in aid appropriated after Hurricane Katrina. Pete Hoekstra called a press conference in 2006 to claim the Iraqi weapons of mass destruction — voila — had been found. Moron. Pete Sessions voted for the Iraq War and for that Tea Party vat of cyanide, The Bailout, but just opposed a few billion bucks for unemployment benefits in the middle of the Great Recession. Paul Broun opposed healthcare reform so vigorously — which will save us money — that he said Socialists “don’t have the appreciation of life as we do in our society, evidently.”

Right, Paul. Very right-wing, the lot of you. You’re not co-opters of a popular and ill-defined movement merely to get back in power. No, you just care about life and freedoms and responsible public service, so go ahead and vow you’ve always been about limited government. And do that while you want credit for the ‘win’ produced by wasting 100,000-plus lives and a trillion dollars in that unintrusive government program you concocted the last time you ran the show: The War in Iraq.

Why yes!

. . Tea Party Mary. Aw, bless her heart.

“They make more money off of race than any slave trader ever. It’s time groups like the NAACP went to the trash heap of history where they belong with all the other vile racist groups that emerged in our history…”

“. . I am disinclined to take lectures on racial sensitivity from a group that insists on calling black people, ‘Colored.’”

“Dear Mr. Lincoln

Precious Ben Jealous, Tom’s Nephew
NAACP Head Colored Person”

Tea Party Mark Williams sits in an internet hot seat. That’s the way he likes it.

Because Tea Party Mark is a rebel patriot, and Tea Party Mark is an upstart winner, and Tea Party Mark loves America. Not as much as he loves Tea Party Mark, or the attention and glory Mark gets, but let’s not quibble you baboon fucking racist.

Mark Williams is the former head and current spokesman for the Tea Party Express. It was he who, when the NAACP denounced Tea Party folks for tolerating racists in their ranks, went flat berserk over the allegation. But that’s no surprise, because Mark goes berserk, that’s what he does. The surprise is how shockingly dumbstruck Mark’s day-to-day brain is.

He doesn’t seem to know what racism is. Well, at least in any local sense. Doesn’t seem to know that he is, at least, a perfect facsimile of the type. Better yet: if you call him a racist, he’ll retort with something like “you n*gger!” because that’s just how disgusting a person you’d have to be to dare say that about him.

So, Mark is the type of guy to rip off an amputee’s prosthetic leg and beat him with it. Or pull the oxygen mask off an asthmatic until they offered him a long-winded apology. You, you’re not a victim — patriots like him, they’re the real victims you knuckle dragging shit-butt gorilla.

“It’s impossible — it’s impossible for there to be a racist element in the tea party, you don’t get it! The tea party is about human rights, it’s about the United States constitution. The United States constitution mankind’s foremost human rights document.”

“. . repeat after me: Islam is a 7th Century Death Cult coughed up by a psychotic pedophile and embraced by defective, tail sprouting, tree swinging, semi-human, bipedal primates with no claim to be treated like human beings or even desirable mammals for that matter.”

There is no ‘free’ lemonade
In giving drink away, girls ignore rules of economics — and sum up what’s wrong with U.S.
July 5, 2010
BY TERRY SAVAGE Sun-Times Columnist

This column is a true story — every word of it. And I think it very appropriate to consider around the Fourth of July, Independence Day spirit.

After you read this, you’re gonna wonder why she would brag about it.

The three young girls — under the watchful eye of a nanny, sitting on the grass with them — explained that they had regular lemonade, raspberry lemonade, and small chocolate candy bars.

Then my brother asked how much each item cost.

“Oh, no,” they replied in unison, “they’re all free!”

Ah, kids. Even rich ones living in the same neighborhood as finance tubedork Terry Savage. They dig adults because their parents are so wonderful. They just wanna be nice to them, so you get a free lemonade stand in a quiet, affluent neighborhood.

I sat in the back seat in shock. Free? My brother questioned them again: “But you have to charge something? What should I pay for a lemonade? I’m really thirsty!”

His fiancee smiled and commented, “Isn’t that cute. They have the spirit of giving.”

. . 3 . . 2. . 1 . .

That really set me off, as my regular readers can imagine.

“No!” I exclaimed from the back seat. “That’s not the spirit of giving. You can only really give when you give something you own. They’re giving away their parents’ things — the lemonade, cups, candy. It’s not theirs to give.”

You can’t give me lemonade, it isn’t ethical. You’re carrying loans against your inventory. Time for their parents to foreclose.

I pushed the button to roll down the window and stuck my head out to set them straight.

“You must charge something for the lemonade,” I explained. “That’s the whole point of a lemonade stand. You figure out your costs — how much the lemonade costs, and the cups — and then you charge a little more than what it costs you, so you can make money. Then you can buy more stuff, and make more lemonade, and sell it and make more money.”

Stupid fucking kids, listen to limo-mommy Terry Savage. There’s no point in running a lemonade stand outside of optimizing your margins.

I wouldn’t recommend a giddy googling of your name every couple of hours:

It’s ABOUT TIME. I was tired of coming across the posts that talked about all the great hip-hop that attended the Tea Party events. I stupidly kept looking, kept clicking stale links, kept seeing laughable crap. Will Ferrell could have done a passable imitation of the anti-government gangstas.

Still the talk went on: oh, the multi-colored patriotic peoples and their ‘raps’, the rebel shizzle stoking the Tea Party patriots.

Well, I finally found it: meet ‘Jon David.’ Actual name Jonathan Kahn, and he apparently is the Tea Party shit:

Friday, May 21, 2010

High Tea in the Wilderness
by Suzanne Fields

The pundits, wonks and wannabes are busy debating what this week’s primary elections mean . .

Suzanne Fields

Punditry and wonkery are great fun, and occasionally get things right, but a man named Jonathan Kahn actually represents something new for conservatives to sing about. He’s on his way to becoming an authentic hip-pop culture hero.

When he made the front page of The Wall Street Journal, it looked like the journal of high finance had been smoking something from the ’60s . . But you quickly learn that he’s not a throwback, but a leap forward. His lyrics to “American Heart’” appeal to patriotic derring-do:

“Go on, raise the flag
I got staaaarrrs in my eyes.”

It’s tea party time from Searchlight, Nev., to Music Row in Nashville.

So I plugged in the name and lyrics and — lo and behold — pulled a clip. Biotches, this is how an “authentic hip hop cultural hero” operates:

The kids and their pre-recorded tracks.

TESTICLES! CRISES! BLOG POSTS! ATLAS! SHRUGS!

NUTS BRANDISH CAN’T EVEN GET HIS FACTS STRAIGHT. IDIOT. HA! PTEW! PBBBBBBT! YOU HEAR THAT MISTUH SHIZZLEDENT? MIGHT I BEG YOU TO TAKE OFF YOUR FLOPPY PURPLE FELT CAP AND BOA, BRO-ACK O-PIMP-AH? SO THAT YOOUUU CAAAANN HEEEAAR MEEEEEEEE?

THEY DIDN’T COME ALONG AT ONCE YOU JERK.
THEY CAME ALONG AT LAST YOU DORK.

WHAT IS YOUR OBJECTIVE TO BE PETTY EGOTISTICAL AND SMALL? OR IS THAT YOUR OBJECTIVE TO BE PETTY EGOTISTICAL AND SMALL? WHERE THE FUCK IS THE COLON SEMI-COLON BUTTON IS IT OVER HERE? WOULD I USE IT IF I COULD FIND IT@ I’D LIKE TO THINK SO?

AND BY CRISIS I MEAN SAYING ‘TEABAGGER.’ IT’S NOW, LIKE, THE GREAT TEAPRESSION OR WORLD WAR TWOBAGGER OR NUCLEAR TEABAGEDDON. IT’S LIKE JESUS BEING TEABAGGED TO THE CROSS BY TEABAG PEOPLE AND THEN TEA SAYS FATHER FORBAG THEM FOR THEY OKAY THAT’S ENOUGH.

I’M SO FUCKING ANGRY I CAN’T EVEN TYPE IT.

OKAY I’M BEGINNING TO LOSE IT HERE.

HE’S BLACK% WHAT DID YOU EXPECT?

HE’LL KILL US ALL.

What is the Tea Party? Who is the Tea Party? Here are two of the faithful.

Which of these is a true representative of the ‘movement’? Lloyd Marcus, the singer? Or David Duke, the Klansman?

Or is one perhaps (or both) merely co-opting it for his own purpose? Is that the sanguine simplicity of the true nature of the Tea Party: everybody is, including Republican Party operatives, just out to get theirs? It’s no design inspirationally sheepish or foreign to the right wing.

One thing’s for sure, both of these guys can’t be experts on what makes their good buddies tick:

h/t Crooks and Liars . .

Was Timothy McVeigh a dangerous right-wing anti-government extremist that eerily and disturbingly pre-dated the angry right-wingers we see today, as Rachel Maddow wonders? Or was he a lone druggie whackjob bearing no resemblance to the current spate of law-abiding protesters, as Ann Coulter kids?

How about we go to Tim McVeigh’s actual words? Let’s see who’s closer to being right about any connection between him and the current anti-government types. Okay?

On taxes:

Taxes are a joke. Regardless of what a political candidate “promises,” they will increase. More taxes are always the answer to government mismanagement. They mess up. We suffer. Taxes are reaching cataclysmic levels, with no slowdown in sight… Is a Civil War Imminent? Do we have to shed blood to reform the current system? I hope it doesn’t come to that. But it might.

Guns:

The government is afraid of the guns people have because they have to have control of the people at all times. Once you take away the guns, you can do anything to the people. You give them an inch and they take a mile. I believe we are slowly turning into a socialist government. The government is continually growing bigger and more powerful and the people need to prepare to defend themselves against government control.

The Constitution being the source for righteousness and rebellion:

Those who betray or subvert the Constitution are guilty of sedition and/or treason, are domestic enemies and should and will be punished accordingly.

It also stands to reason that anyone who sympathizes with the enemy or gives aid or comfort to said enemy is likewise guilty. I have sworn to uphold and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic and I will. And I will because not only did I swear to, but I believe in what it stands for in every bit of my heart, soul and being.

I know in my heart that I am right in my struggle, Steve. I have come to peace with myself, my God and my cause. Blood will flow in the streets, Steve. Good vs. Evil. Free Men vs. Socialist Wannabe Slaves. Pray it is not your blood, my friend.

Maddow wins that one, hands down. That is a remarkable pre-imitation of the people we’ve been seeing for months now, as far as words alone go.

But it doesn’t stop there. Maddow was right to point out how bizarre, if not downright disgusting, it is for the Second Amendment March-ers to have picked April 19th for their day of symbolism and protest. It is a day far better known to Americans for the Oklahoma City bombing tragedy than for the anniversary of Lexington and Concord.

And gun nuts are fully aware of the significance of April 19th — it being the anniversary of the end of the Waco Branch Davidian siege, resulting in a fire and mass-killing 50 days after ATF agents raided the compound to seize the cultists’ guns. That was the day McVeigh chose to strike back at the government:

1993 Waco siege and Gun shows

In 1993, [McVeigh] drove to Waco, Texas during the Waco Siege to show his support. At the scene, he distributed pro-gun rights literature and bumper stickers, such as “When guns are outlawed, I will become an outlaw” . .

For the five months following the Waco Siege, McVeigh worked at gun shows and handed out free cards printed up with Lon Horiuchi’s name and address, “in the hope that somebody in the Patriot movement would assassinate the sharpshooter.” He wrote hate mail to the sniper, suggesting that “what goes around, comes around,” and later considered putting aside his plan to target the Murrah Building to target Horiuchi, or a member of his family instead.

McVeigh spent more time on the gun show circuit, traveling to 40 of the 50 states and visiting about 80 gun shows in all. McVeigh found that the further west he went, the more anti-government sentiment he encountered, at least until he got to what he called “The People’s Socialist Republic of California.” McVeigh sold survival items and copies of The Turner Diaries. One author said:

“In the gun show culture, McVeigh found a home. Though he remained skeptical of some of the most extreme ideas being bandied around, he liked talking to people there about the United Nations, the federal government and possible threats to American liberty.”

For Coulter to pretend that the day is wholly irrelevant to the paranoid second amendment movement is disingenuous at the very least. Not that that’s odd territory for Coulter, as she begins the post this way . .

And just where, Ann, was the pre-cursor to Timothy McVeigh? She’s acting like the bombing either never happened or could never happen again. How stupid and reckless would we be to assume that it was all an astronomical fluke? It happened, we know who did it, and he looks awfully familiar.

George W. Bush ran up far, far bigger deficits than any of the 42 previous presidents, but that didn’t seem to bother many Conservatives. “Why should that be any big deal?” they seemed to be saying. Since that stuff is supposed to be a whopping violation of your espoused beliefs, I’m guessing? The 8 years of Bush administration policies created ever-eye-poppingly larger debts, culminating in a projected 1.2 trillion dollar deficit for 2009.

But now that the new(er) President has wisely decided to use the power of the government to ease the pain of the Republican Recession and to bring some reform to the broken healthcare system, government debts are causing Americans to consider armed revolution or secession from The Union. It’s even inspired a popular political movement: the Tea Party.

Why the sudden political firestorm over ‘reckless’ spending? It’s not like the Iraq War wasn’t around from 2003 on, costing us more than 10 billion dollars every month – and, for what? For Americans to die in faraway places? What a great return for your tax dollars.

Jonah Goldberg has got it all figured out, as usual. It’s not that Conservatives have no actual principles, and that whatever values they say they hold dear are nothing more than weapons of convenience in a war for political power. And it’s not that Conservatives believe the un-American Democrats have no rightful claim to the political power they duly win in elections, that’s not it. And it’s not that right-wingers are angry at and wholly uncomfortable with a black person at the top of the heap, that’s not it, either.

What it is, is this: Conservatives are just now speaking out about President Bush.

April 21, 2010 12:00 A.M.

Jonah Goldberg
A Delayed Bush Backlash
Conservatives don’t want to be fooled again.

. . One of the more widespread anti-tea-party arguments goes like this: Republicans didn’t protest very much when Bush ran up deficits and expanded government, so when Obama does the same thing (albeit on a far grander scale), Republican complaints can’t be sincere.

This lazy sophistry opens the door to liberals’ preferred argument: racism. “No student of American history,” writes Paul Butler in the New York Times, “would be surprised to learn that when the United States elects its first non-white president, a strong anti-government movement rises up.”

Butler, a law professor and author of the no-doubt-seminal Let’s Get Free: A Hip-Hop Theory of Justice, speaks for many in the media when he insinuates that nearly unprecedented stimulus spending combined with government takeovers of the health-care, banking, and automotive industries are dwarfed in importance by Obama’s skin color.

I speak for many who have actually spoken to tea partiers when I say that is slanderous hogwash.

Amount of time available for Conservatives to wake up and put a stop to the overspending disaster under Bush: 8 years. But they never did do it. Amount of time it took for them ‘realize their mistake’ and ‘vow never to let it happen again’ once a Democrat was in charge? What, weeks? Hours?

The truth is Conservatives don’t actually hold any of their precious values sacred, those are only used for political gain. Otherwise, this rebellion over the government’s being out of control would have started when the government began to get out of control, under the Bush administration, when idiotic tax cuts and the brutal War in Iraq hit the TNT of growing deficits like a series of atomic bombs.

If Goldberg’s ridiculous argument isn’t already laughable, witness Jonah himself try the patriotic ‘waking up’ to the wayward Bush administration, but this time with a difference: while the Republican was in power and vulnerable to criticism. With respect to the Iraq War, was it a mistake? He says he has come to his senses in this 2006 post, but it’s all really actually perfectly fine, there’s no sense in getting all overworked into a pro-war/anti-war thing, sheesh:

Just think if Obama had started and essentially owned the War, the way the Republican Bush had. In that case, Jonah himself might patriotically speak of secession, Tea Party style.