Meanwhile conservatives complain that a small tax increase on people in the top income tax bracket is comparable to the oppression of the Jim Crow South.

They're playing for small stakes. Didn't Grover Norquist compare the estate tax to the Holocaust?

They can call it whatever they want but it's basically a call to all those who are anti-Obama. It will make them "feel good" to see themselves on tv and think they speak for ALL MERICUNS....

it's always a bad idea to underestimate intellectual firepower of the other side. but is there someone on the right these days capable of putting together a serious argument for the conservative cause? i mean these people are funny in every sense of the word.

And I am sure none of them know what the term 'tea bagging' implies...

Why is Steinhauser writing letters to the racist Vanguard News Network?

http://www.vanguardnewsnetwork.com/letters/12804letters.htm

Why was he covering anti-gay bigot Ryan Sorba's speech in front of what the SPLC calls a racist hate group?

http://theconservativerevolution.com/campus-politics/ryan-sorba-part-two/

And why did his co-author of his anti-Obama book do an interview with the leader of the same group, well after the same leader had invited a holocaust-denying white supremacist to speak at an event attended my members of the National Alliance?

spartanspectator.blogspot.com/2008/08/exclusive-interview-with-steve.html?showComment=1219169340000

Interesting, no?

This isn't the first time recently that I've read a conservative invoking Alinsky. It's odd. After spending all of the 2008 campaign dropping Alinksy's name as some sort of boogeyman, now they're using him as a talisman to ward off criticism of whatever it is they're up to.

If they are truly protesting on behalf of the downtrodden, oppressed millionaires, I wish they'd just come right out and say so.

The tea baggers have no coherent message because they are the same lot who could inexplicably never exactly say why they voted for McCain. Did we ever have any doubt they were just racists. Sweet little innocent pie eating flag waving patriotic polite don't like to say it but racists.

And then there are the activists who are looking forward to tomorrow because they think the president is a secret Muslim fascist/socialist who wasn't born in the U.S. and intends to impose a global currency on us while building concentration camps with FEMA money, and then transporting real Americans to the camp in UN black helicopters.

Fixed it.

The only strange thing is that conservatives haven't adopted "methods that the Left has used" more often. If government is the problem, after all, then the solution should come from direct action, not democratic tinkering with government. Of course, there's no money in grassroots organizing.

As far as I'm concerned, if they want to complain about the tax cut Obama gave them, then let's just raise their taxes.

And then there are the activists who are looking forward to tomorrow because they think the president is a secret Muslim fascist/socialist who wasn't born in the U.S. and intends to impose a global currency on us while building concentration camps with FEMA money.

You forgot guns, Steve. Obama's gonna confiscate all the guns and ammo in the hands of private citizens, leaving them defenseless when the Obama cult-fascist-nazi army rounds us all up. And I heard that one on NPR.

Newsflash: Hyperbole is the lifeblood of the GOP. Random comments by liberals, moderates or the dreaded MSM are regularly compared to Hitler. Nutjob Glenn Beck regularly points out that he thought Bush was also leading us into fascism, although he neglected to make an issue of it at the time.

The nice thing is that they don't even see how they're marginalizing themselves. The dangerous thing is that more conservatives are moving into rightwing militia territory. RW extremists will use these events to recruit new members, be sure of that.

The teabagging wingnuts are just pissed that King Jr. won and they lost.

The 'content of their character' is increasingly being judged more than the 'color of their skin', so they are now officially up in arms about it.

"The comparison itself is ridiculous enough to be insulting."

WRONG WRONG WRONG

The comparison itself is EXTREMELY INSULTING.

That Glen Beck & Rushbo & Sean are angry that the taxes on their multimillion dollar incomes will be marginally raised is laughable.

We have had almost 3 continuous decades of republican presidents (including the DLC/Rethug-Lite Billy Bob Clinton) who have based their 'success' in winning elections upon getting stupid white trash to vote against their own economic self interests. That the reich-wing republican hate talk hosts are working to organize the republican base of low information voters for a national protest against higher taxes on the wealthy is typical rethugnican.

It was mentioned on NPR this morning that "If they are going to do the amount of teabagging that they expect, they will need a few more Dick Armeys."

David Eicher makes the case in "Dixie Betrayed" that the Southern secession and the Civil War and collapse of the Confederacy that followed had less to do with slavery than a near-psychotic mindset that kept patrician slaveowners and their followers from believing they were no longer in control of the country. The same argument can be made for the racist, rightwing events of the subsequent 150 years: Plessy v. Ferguson, Jim Crow, Dixiecrats, the Klan, Nixon and Reaganism. They truly believe they've been given the world by their God, and any proof to the contrary throws them into paroxysmns of violent self-pity. In the 60s and 70s, this was linked by Freudian liberals to mental illness. Time to bring back that idea; they were right.

It's impossible to see the tea parties as anything other than a juvenile temper tantrum, orchestrated by people used to getting their way on all things, all the time.
As for the fools who actually attend? I suspect the majority of them to be mildy to severely racist/sexist (protesting the demise of the white male), with a smattering of far right culture warriors.

What kind of narcissistic asshole do you have to be to think you have a real grievance because the guy you voted for didn't win? Obama announced all over TV, the radio, and the fucking internet what he was going to do if he won the election, and he won, and now he's doing it. And these people think they love democracy.

Well, as David Shuster explained on MSNBC:

if you are planning simultaneous tea bagging all around the country, you’re going to need a Dick Armey.

Yes, he really said that. :)

http://wonkroom.thinkprogress.org/2009/04/14/schuster-dick-armey/

Steve: "The most obvious problem, I suppose, is the idea of a Republican activist comparing his plight to those who suffered under the violence and discrimination of segregation. The comparison itself is ridiculous enough to be insulting."

Insulting to you, perhaps, but Republicans have long since learned to score points by appealing to white fears and resentment. The GOP has become rotted to its core through its encouragement of racism and racial discrimination. I needn't remind everyone here that:

(1) President George W. Bush's first cabinet appointment was Attorney General John Ashcroft, whose 1998 interview with Southern Partisan magazine praised that white supremacist publication for "defending Southern Patriots like Lee, Jackson, and Davis" and scoffed at the notion that such Confederate leaders were "subscribing their sacred fortunes and their honor to some perverted agenda."

(2) Georgia GOP Governor Sonny Perdue specifically campaigned in 2002 on a pledge to restore the Confederate battle flag to his state's banner, and derisively mocked the memory of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., in his ensuing 2002 victory speech, much to the delight of his Stars & Bars-waving supporters.

(3) Then-North Carolina GOP Congressman Cass Ballenger noted to reporters of the Charlotte News & Observer in December 2002 his "segregationist feelings" toward Georgia Democratic Rep. Cynthia McKinney, calling her a "bitch."

NOTE: Ironically, when Ballenger sought to apologize the very next day, one of his congressional aides was videotaped by local news outlets on that same day at the congressman's residence in suburban Charlotte, hastily painting white a black lawn jockey that was posted prominently in the front yard.

Out here in Hawaii, Republicans have been behind several lawsuits that literally claim that whites have been victims of reverse discrimination on the part of native Hawaiian organizations and programs:

(a) Rice v. Cayetano, 528 U.S. 495 (2000), resulted in the U.S. Supreme Court granting non-Hawaiians the right to vote for native Hawaiian OHA trustees.

(b) Two weeks ago, the U.S. Supreme Court further eroded native Hawaiian claims to the Crown trust lands, which were summarily seized in 1898 by the U.S. government after its ambassador, naval commanders and U.S. nationals had conspired successfully to overthrow Queen Liliuokalani by force of arms.

(c) Several lawsuits filed by the Heritage Foundation specifically target the Kamehameha Schools, which was founded through an 1885 bequest of the late Princess Bernice Pauahi Bishop, who sought to improve the prospects of native Hawaiian children through education.

The GOP's occasional yet transparently token efforts at racial inclusiveness and diversity, i.e, the buffoonish RNC Chair Michael Steele, are always offered without any sincere commitment to tolerance and equality.

Therefore, when the avowed "Party of Lincoln" once again trolls for votes by blatantly pandering to neo-Confederate race-based fears and ideology, we should not shirk our obligations to call out Republicans on their vile hypocrisy, and not allow them to take umbrage at such richly deserved accusations.

Aloha.

Brings to mind the bit from Aaron Sorkin's underappreciated show Sports Night, where Isaac (who runs the station) gives Dan Rydell a little advice:

"No rich white boy ever got anywhere with me by comparing himself to Rosa Parks."

Just another whining minority group with a list of grievances. Tell 'em to grow up and get a job. A little more time on the books, a little less time shopping for guns & guzzling miller lites, I say.

Jon: "Just another whining minority group with a list of grievances. Tell 'em to grow up and get a job. A little more time on the books, a little less time shopping for guns & guzzling miller lites, I say."

That's such a vicious stereotype. They're actually quite the busy beavers, some of scrounging for parts at the local junkyard to repair all those household appliances littering their yards and trailer courts, and others standing obligatory watch for their families' meth labs.

What's more, the Tea Baggers continue to think they have "a real grievance" to justify their Fox News rallies, but they haven't quite explained what that grievance is.

I think they're just aggrieved that they no longer control the federal government.

"Indeed, no one seems capable of explaining why, exactly, tomorrow's events are taking place."

Because Television told them to.