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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Brumar89 who wrote (576801)	7/18/2010 2:23:09 PM
From: tejek	1 Recommendation Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1570940

The tea party makes trouble with a capital T By Dana Milbank Sunday, July 18, 2010 The peaceful hamlet of Mason City, Iowa, hasn't been in the headlines much since it served as the model for River City in Meredith Willson's "The Music Man." But this week, Mason City raised a real Fuhrer. The geniuses of the North Iowa Tea Party erected a billboard in town depicting three leaders: Adolf Hitler (with swastika), Vladimir Lenin (with hammer and sickle) and Barack Obama (with 2008 campaign logo). Over Hitler were the words "National Socialism," over Lenin was "Marxist Socialism" and over Obama was "Democrat Socialism." "Radical leaders prey on the fearful & naïve," the billboard informed passing motorists. Folks, we've got trouble in River City. The Tea Partyers eventually took the billboard down -- to hush the national uproar they provoked, not because they thought they had done something wrong. "There's going to be a lot of billboards just like this across the United States," the group's leader told the Des Moines Register. He's probably right about that. The vile sign in Mason City was not a one-off by a fringe group. It was a logical expression of a message supported by conservative thought leaders and propagated by high-level Republican politicians. Late last month, Thomas Sowell of the conservative Hoover Institution penned an irresponsible column likening Obama's presidency (particularly his pushing BP to set aside funds for oil-spill victims) to the rise of Hitler in Germany and Lenin in the Soviet Union. After the column came out, Sarah Palin tweeted her followers with instructions to "Read Thomas Sowell's article." Sowell's theme -- that Obama, like Hitler and Lenin, exploits "useful idiots" who don't know much about politics -- was strikingly similar to what wound up on the Iowa billboard. Sowell to Palin to Mason City: They spread Nazi labels as smoothly as Tinker-to-Evers-to-Chance turned double plays. And let's not deny an assist to Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Tex.), who went to the House floor to read aloud the Obama-Nazi comparison by the "brilliant" Sowell. Twenty years ago, the dawn of the Internet Age gave us Godwin's Law: If an online argument goes on long enough, somebody will eventually invoke Hitler. When that happens, it's basically the end of the conversation, because all rational discussion ceases when one side calls the other Nazis. These sentiments have long existed on the fringe and always will. The problem is that conservative leaders and Republican politicians, in their blind rage against Obama these last 18 months, invited the epithets of the fringe into the mainstream. Godwin's Law has spread from the chat rooms and now applies to cable news and even to the floor of the House of Representatives. Consider these tallies from Glenn Beck's show on Fox News since Obama's inauguration: 202 mentions of Nazis or Nazism, according to transcripts, 147 mentions of Hitler, 193 mentions of fascism or fascist, and another 24 bonus mentions of Joseph Goebbels. Most of these were directed in some form at Obama -- as were the majority of the 802 mentions of socialist or socialism on Beck's nightly "report." It's not strictly a phenomenon of the right. California's Democratic gubernatorial candidate, Jerry Brown, likened his opponent's tactics to those of the Nazis, while Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.) talks blithely of a health care "holocaust" and an aide to Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) dubs the opposition "Brownshirts." But at the moment, the anger pendulum has swung far in the conservative direction, and accusations that once were beyond the pale -- not just talk of Nazis and Marxists but intimations of tyranny, revolution and bloodshed -- are now routine. A few from recent weeks: Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) comes out in favor of lawsuits alleging that Obama was not an American citizen at birth. Sharron Angle, the Republican candidate challenging Sen. Harry Reid in Nevada, speaks about the possible need for violence to overcome the "tyrannical" government. Gohmert, the Sowell admirer, says the children of illegal immigrants are going to return and "blow us up." Isn't there a grown-up to rein in these backbenchers when they go over the top? Don't ask House Minority Leader John Boehner, the man who would replace Nancy Pelosi as speaker. He accuses the Democrats of "snuffing out the America that I grew up in" and predicts a rebellion unlike anything "since 1776." Boehner also said one Democratic lawmaker "may be a dead man" for his vote on health care and predicted that the bill would bring "Armageddon." Recall, Mr. Leader, the wisdom of the Mason City billboard: "Radical leaders prey on the fearful & naïve." washingtonpost.com

To: Brumar89 who wrote (576801)	7/18/2010 4:36:54 PM
From: tejek	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1570940

Tea Party Federation kicks out Williams over blog post By the CNN Wire Staff (CNN) -- The National Tea Party Federation, an organization that represents the Tea Party political movement around the country, has expelled conservative commentator Mark Williams and his Tea Party Express because of an inflammatory blog post he wrote, federation spokesman David Webb said Sunday. Appearing on the CBS program "Face the Nation," Webb said that Williams and the Tea Party Express -- which has held a series of events across the country to generate support for the movement -- no longer were part of the National Tea Party Federation. "We, in the last 24 hours, have expelled Tea Party Express and Mark Williams from the National Tea Party Federation because of the letter that he wrote," Webb said of the blog post by Williams that satirized a fictional letter from what he called "Colored People" to President Abraham Lincoln. Webb called the blog post "clearly offensive." Williams did not immediately respond to a request for comment Sunday afternoon. Williams wrote the blog post in response to a resolution by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) that called on Tea Party leaders to crack down on racist elements in the movement. The NAACP, the nation's main group advocating civil rights for African Americans, cited signs carried at Tea Party events and racial slurs reportedly shouted at black congress members during an event as some examples of racism in the movement. The announcement by Webb on a Sunday talk show demonstrated that the public outcry over the issue had resonated with the Tea Party movement, and indicated a possible split within its leadership. NAACP President Benjamin Jealous told CNN that other Tea Party leaders besides Webb, who is African American, should come out against racist elements in the movement. "We hope that the household names, Sarah Palin and so forth, will come forward and say the same thing," Jealous said, later adding: "We don't think the Tea Party is racist, but we don't think they've gone far enough yet either." Some political leaders interviewed on Sunday talk shows also said the Tea Party movement itself wasn't racist, but needed to distance itself from any elements that bring prejudice and bigotry to its events. "There are some members who have used the Tea Party -- whether it's the Tea Party itself, there are some individuals who have tried to exacerbate racial tensions in this country," House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Maryland, said on CNN's "State of the Union." "I have seen some virulent fliers that have been directed at our members, clearly referencing race, the president's race and race generally." On the same show, however, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, steered clear of the issue, saying: "I am not interested in getting into that debate." "Dear Mr. Lincoln," began the fictional letter posted by Williams. "We Coloreds have taken a vote and decided that we don't cotton to that whole emancipation thing. Freedom means having to work for real, think for ourselves, and take consequences along with the rewards. That is just far too much to ask of us Colored People and we demand that it stop!" Williams went on to write that the Tea Party movement couldn't be racist because it opposed government bailouts for Wall Street banks and big corporations. "Bailouts are just big money welfare and isn't that what we want all Coloreds to strive for?" the posting said. "What kind of racist would want to end big money welfare? What they need to do is start handing the bail outs directly to us coloreds!" Williams, a conservative talk radio host, said the post was intended as satire. He took it down as criticism mounted. cnn.com

To: Brumar89 who wrote (576801)	7/18/2010 5:23:23 PM
From: tejek	Respond to of 1570940

Hypocrisy......they name is Republican! NH-01: Republican stimulus hypocrisy! (Episode #9492) This might be my favorite story of the week, and it comes with a tip of that hat to DavidNYC over at the always excellent Swing State Project, who ran this in his Friday morning "daily digest" over at SSP. It seems like GOP Congressional frontrunner Frank Guinta probably needs to give a stern lecture to former Manchester Mayor...Frank Guinta. As a candidate, Guinta has ripped Democratic proposals like the stimulus package and the cap-and-trade bill. As mayor, however, Guinta complained that the Granite State wasn't getting its stimulus cash fast enough, and he signed onto municipal petitions endorsing such green-friendly stuff as the Kyoto protocols. Better still: in his bluster over the stimulus funds, he raised such a stink that he was mocked by the woman who may very well be the GOP standard-bearer in his state this year. New Hampshire Attorney General (and U.S. Senate frontrunner) Kelly Ayotte dubbed Guinta a "grandstander" in a year-old email released last week.