Tag: Teabaggers

Crossposted at Daily Kos

THE WEEK IN EDITORIAL CARTOONS

This weekly diary takes a look at the past week’s important news stories from the perspective of our leading editorial cartoonists (including a few foreign ones) with analysis and commentary added in by me.

When evaluating a cartoon, ask yourself these questions:

1. Does a cartoon add to my existing knowledge base and help crystallize my thinking about the issue depicted?

2. Does the cartoonist have any obvious biases that distort reality?

3. Is the cartoonist reflecting prevailing public opinion or trying to shape it?

The answers will help determine the effectiveness of the cartoonist’s message.

:: ::

David Fitzsimmons, Arizona Daily Star, Buy this cartoon

The Republicans have re-branded themselves after their embarrassing defeat to the second “black” president in 2008 as The Party of NO!. Their mantra is No. Their philosophy is No. And their tactical approach is to block, obstruct and hinder, or in the words of the great Republican anti-drug crusader and fashion maven, Nancy Reagan, “Just Say No!”

How ironic in this new age where wars rage and poverty ravages and disease devastates and all could be made right by saying Yes, that the Party of the Culture of Life condemns so many to death by just saying no.

At the outset of the Tea Party demonstrations, comparisons were made to The Civil War by myself and other people. In retrospect, this was far too generous a comparison to make. I hardly wish to grant such people so high a compliment, even one rendered ignobly. In much more eloquent terms than I, people have recently dissected the motives and behavior of the mob, and fortunately its crackpot ideology is not as widespread as was the secessionist sentiment in the South in 1860. Those times were the apex of more than two decade’s worth of upheaval and violence, the likes of which we have yet to see since, and which I hope to never see again. It takes more than just one unpopular bill to give people cause to most citizens to arm themselves en masse in open rebellion. Many may not support health care reform, but they feel no compulsion to vandalize offices, spit on legislators, and hurl epithets. These are merely the actions of a few reactionary imbeciles.

The behavior of the Republican Party towards the Teabaggers, by contrast, is what I find most reprehensible. Never was a mutually parasitic relationship more shockingly transparent. The GOP sees the Tea Party as its meal ticket back to power and will never condemn its tactics outright since doing so risks losing its endorsement. However, it is a slippery slope that Republicans are scaling here, and making a Faustian bargain has proven to be the eventual undoing of many. Fear of change and fear of the unknown is the energy source of this movement, but it goes much deeper than this, too.

Where has the new found slanderous noise gatherings, ‘teabagger patriot’s’, been for the past years, before the new administration, and their messages now?

Where is their noise about ‘their’ taxes, and children being left in debt, as to these State AG’s coming out to try and take down the Health Care Bill, just signed, I mean hey, it’s State funds and time by many being spent, that these States don’t have so will need to run up even further huge and growing deficits, don’t know about where you are but we’ve got libraries and schools closing plus, not to mention they certainly sound like lawsuits by Political Activist Lawyers, don’t they hate those.

Know where they were then, saw much of their thoughts on message boards with articles and such over these past years.

I’ll show you at the bottom where many are today, the day after, but first a few reports on the present results of that past.

Crossposted at Daily Kos

THE WEEK IN EDITORIAL CARTOONS

This weekly diary takes a look at the past week’s important news stories from the perspective of our leading editorial cartoonists (including a few foreign ones) with analysis and commentary added in by me.

When evaluating a cartoon, ask yourself these questions:

1. Does a cartoon add to my existing knowledge base and help crystallize my thinking about the issue depicted?

2. Does the cartoonist have any obvious biases that distort reality?

3. Is the cartoonist reflecting prevailing public opinion or trying to shape it?

The answers will help determine the effectiveness of the cartoonist’s message.

:: ::

R.J. Matson, New York Observer, Buy this cartoon

On the Limits of Tax-Exempt Status

Some of you know that a few weeks ago my hubby and I flew out to Oklahoma to help get Mom-in-law moved into assisted living due to some issues with failing eyesight, short-term memory non-existence and refusal to use a walker (resulting in her falling down a lot). Hubby’s family were lifelong Presbyterians by faith, his Mom and Dad were both Elders in the tiny church behind their house. My Dad returned to his family’s association with the Presbyterian church after retiring from the Navy, following some lengthy investigation of various denominations. My husband and I attended the same Presbyterian church as teenagers and young adults, though our attendance at any church over recent years has been reserved to weddings and funerals.

Now, the thing about protestantism is that it’s got a denomination for whatever flavor of natural inclination a person’s got. If your nature is parliamentarian nit-picking and resolution by argument, Presbyterianism is your cup of tea. If your nature is lightning-like bliss and gibberish, a Pentecostal or other “holy roller” denomination will serve. If you’re a liberal-minded type fond of social issues, some of the reformed orthodox denominations will be satisfying. And if you’re a hard right WingNut type Republican Talibangelist harboring too much leftover racism, the SBC [Southern Baptist Conference] churches are made to order.

My husband’s brother Joe “found God” some years ago as a result of a debilitating back injury and a lot of pain, subsequently immersed himself in the Baptist tradition of his wife’s family, and eventually made it through all the hoops to become a full-fledged Baptist preacher. And he’s a darned good one too – full of spirit, witty and amiable, stern when he needs to be, committed to working tirelessly in the various conference disaster relief operations, great with children, and inspiring if you’re into that sort of thing. He’s also the only Republican in the family and a social conservative of the extreme theocratic variety.

Crossposted at Daily Kos

THE WEEK IN EDITORIAL CARTOONS

This weekly diary takes a look at the past week’s important news stories from the perspective of our leading editorial cartoonists (including a few foreign ones) with analysis and commentary added in by me.

When evaluating a cartoon, ask yourself these questions:

1. Does a cartoon add to my existing knowledge base and help crystallize my thinking about the issue depicted?

2. Does the cartoonist have any obvious biases that distort reality?

3. Is the cartoonist reflecting prevailing public opinion or trying to shape it?

The answers will help determine the effectiveness of the cartoonist’s message.

:: ::

Steve Sack, Comics.com

Barack promised change — and sure enough, things changed for the worse



-Joe Bageant

To Hell with the ‘left’! I am finished, done, disillusioned and over it, the divorce papers have been filed and are now finalized and I am not going back. As of this day, I will no longer allow myself to be affiliated or endorse the ‘left’ in any way, shape or form. So long folks, it was real and it was fun but in the end it was unfulfilling and dare I say, a waste of time and effort. Is this overly harsh? Perhaps it is but the break had to be made and it can no longer be put off. I assure you, this was no hasty decision but rather something that has been a slow and agonizing process, a steady drip…drip…drip.., like Chinese water torture and suddenly the mind goes, the spirit breaks and the ugly reality of the situation cannot be denied or disguised. So to all of my good friends on the left I wish you the very best but I am no longer one of you and maybe I never was, it was never dogma to me only a desire for some sort of social fairness and a fair shot but the American left being a shell of it’s former self with labor broken and the DLC corporatists having taken over the Democratic party it has been reduced to shills for the Democrats and squabbling identity groups each with an agenda that prevents any sort of unity necessary for a mass movement for real change. Sucks but that is just the way it has to be.

This morning’s Politico attributes the death of centrism in the Republican party to the overwhelmingly insatiable demands of the far-right riffraff.   The sans-culottes throngs certainly have pitched some pretty parades over the past few months, haven’t they?  Heads have, metaphorically speaking, rolled and more are almost certain to take their place underneath the unforgiving guillotine.  Yet, to insist that this was a movement spearheaded by the party itself would not be correct.  This summer the GOP establishment tried to harness the energy of the rabble and found that it marched to no one’s orders but its own.  

“I don’t give a crap about party,” said Jennifer Bernstone, a tea party organizer for Central New York 912, which helped to lead the anti-Scozzafava charge. “Grass-roots activists don’t care about party.”

Says Everett Wilkinson, a tea party organizer in Florida: “We are not going to allow our [movement] to be stolen by the GOP or by any political party.”