Salon Article says Teabaggers have become the new counterculture

http://www.salon.com/news/politics/republican_party/index.html?stor...

Instead of "Summer of Love" , it's "Winter of Hate". Har, Har.

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Permalink Reply by Fang1944 on March 16, 2010 at 9:26pm

Well how does this grab you?

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Permalink Reply by Charles Lane on March 16, 2010 at 10:10pm

Looks like Voodoo economics to me.

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Permalink Reply by Van on March 17, 2010 at 5:43am

Even if the signs aren't explicitly racist, if you just scratch the surface of most of these people you'll find they are racist. What they really object to is government aid being given to poor minorities. For instance here's a video posted by SmackOnTheWeb elsewhere on this site:

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Permalink Reply by Van on March 17, 2010 at 5:38am

Here's the difference between you and me. I find the views expressed in the picture of the anti-Israel rally reprehensible. You can't find any progressives or Democrats lining up behind hateful leftist rhetoric. While I may share common cause with them on some issues( like I was against the Iraq war), I find most of their ideology to be rigid, extreme, hateful. ANSWER basically killed the anti-war(Iraq) movement. Mainstream people who were against the war went to their protests and found they were deluged with a grab-bag of weird lefty ideas and causes. This is the same thing with the teabaggers except they have Republican politicians kissing their asses despite the crazy right-wing ideas and rhetoric.

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Permalink Reply by Charles Lane on March 18, 2010 at 12:27am

The difference between you and I is that you think the government can solve problems. I think the government creates more problems than it solves. And yes I do think government can solve some problems, but here are just few examples of problems they have created: Social Security, Medicare, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Prohibition anyone? The war on poverty.... And lets face it the post office will become extinct due to technology. Of course the government could start charging us .25 cents to post or would that violate my freedom of speech?
Does this mean I think we should revert back to a nation of isolationist farmers thinking we had time warped back to the 18th century? No, I for one would not want to be a worker in 1900, nor would I want to have been a black man in 1840 or 1940. I think those are examples of problems the government helped to solve.
What I do see is this. Nations that go deeper into socialism lower their standard of living. Look into Ireland and Greece and see what is causing their collapse. We are headed in the same direction. I contend that a nation trying to tax or borrow itself into prosperity is akin to a man standing in a bucket and trying to raise himself by the handle.

Albert Camus said: "The welfare of humanity is always the alibi of tyrants."
And Charlie Daniels said, "I ain't asking nobody for nothing if I can't get it on my own. If you don't like the way I'm livin' then leave this long haired country boy alone." That's for you GHT!!!

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Permalink Reply by GodHatesTrash on March 18, 2010 at 5:16am

Not surprised that loudmouth Chickenhawk Charlie is one of your heros.

He looks like a billygoat, no wonder you love him.

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Permalink Reply by Van on March 18, 2010 at 6:37am

So why don't the teabaggers have signs saying " end Social Security and Medicare now" ? Dubya tried to get the American people to privatize Social Security but it went nowhere. Why? Because it works and people love it. Try getting private health insurance for the elderly. Only the very rich would be able to afford it. Most people would just be denied. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have been very successful in increasing home ownership in this country. Unfortunately they got caught up in the dynamics of the real estate bubble which was not created by them, but it could be argued that they exacerbated the problem. A lot of this was due to changes in lending policies under both Clinton and Bush that were intended to increase home ownership in the US. They didn't cause the problem as much as they got left holding the bag.
As for Ireland and Greece, their problems were caused more by capitalism than socialism. In other words they got caught up in the easy credit that was flowing around the world thanks to all the capitalist speculators. And when you talk about standard of living in countries that go "deeper into socialism", I'm not sure what your talking about. Most European countries, with their mixed economies(" Euro-Socialism"), have very good standards of living. They have rich people, big corporations, a thriving large middle class. What they don't have is the crushing poverty that affects much of the US. They also have democratic governments, and if things were so bad they could just vote for a government that would abolish it. But they don't. Also they have better internet access than us:)

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Permalink Reply by GodHatesTrash on March 18, 2010 at 2:27pm

The average Swede lives about 6 years longer than the average Tennesseean.

And the Swedish male gets to spend his adult life shagging long-legged Swedish blonds, while the Tennesseean is having sex with his fat slatternly sisters and cousins, and milking billygoats.

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Permalink Reply by Fang1944 on March 20, 2010 at 6:22pm

Well, of course, the government doesn't:

Deliver the mail faithfully every day.
Build the highways we drive on.
Defend the country (as in WW2 when it conducted a war in Europe, Asia and Africa).
Put men on the moon.
Send space probes to the other planets.
Create things like the Internet we're wasting our time on.
Operate our fine state universities that not only educate people but create scientific and medical miracles.
Protect us against harmful drugs.
Protect us against unsanitary food.
Arrest and prosecute criminals.