Teabagging: More, more, more!

I enjoyed reading about the roundup of yesterday's tea party convention festivities. Sort of the way I enjoy a jab in the eye with a sharp stick, but I enjoyed it nonetheless!

One of the speakers was Judge Roy Moore, and I wrote a little about him yesterday. When he signed on to speak at the convention, he remarked that "Our rights are being taken away and they never stop—whether it's our right to our guns, as outlined in the Second Amendment, or our right to religious expression as outlined in the First Amendment, or our property rights, as outlined in the Fifth (Amendment) or state sovereignty" in the Tenth Amendment.

Once again, we're delving into paranoiac behavior with a persecution complex. This seems to be the mantra of many of these folks. Obama is not going after your guns, people. No one is denying your right to religious expression, unless you do it as part of government business, something that Moore doesn't quite seem to comprehend. Religion has no business in government. As for state sovereignty, didn't we settle that for good about 150 years ago? Didn't we fight a war about that, or am I just imagining it? States still have rights, but they are also beholden to follow the law of the land in certain overarching issues including civil rights and equality for all. Last time I checked, we were still the United States, although Texas doesn't seem too happy about that lately.

In his speech yesterday, apparently Moore quoted scripture and Patrick Henry, much to the delight of the attendees. He said that America's "borders are open to criminals and terrorists who now roam among us." Again with the stuff about Canadian immigrants! Man, they must be badass to be generating such hatred and fear among the teabaggers. I'm really going to be on the lookout for these marauders.

About President Obama, Moore said he "has ignored our history and our heritage by denying we are a Christian nation. An appeal to the God of hosts is all that is left." Either that or "300 million people armed in the cause of liberty."

I have written about this before. For all this speechifying about how we are a Christian nation, and all their orgasmic love over the Constitution and our Founding Fathers, they are completely ignoring both by their continued clinging to the "Christian nation" meme. It is simply not so. And did he just advocate an armed insurrection? Isn't that considered treasonous?

By the way, Moore is running for Governor of Alabama in 2010, and has been endorsed by Chuck Norris, who pushes the levers in the voting booth with a roundhouse kick.

Another speaker was Joseph Farah, who is the editor of WorldNetDaily, a conservative website. (I think I've seen a few of their stories here and there.) He opened his speech with jokes about...President Obama's citizenship. That's right. The Birther movement is alive and well at the tea party convention.

To loud approval from the crowd, Farah said his dream is that if Obama seeks re-election in 2012, he won't be able to go to any city in America without seeing signs that ask, "Where's the birth certificate?" The fact that the rest of the media has declared the issue settled is proof, he said, that it's not.

To me, this speaks of the irrationality of this group more than anything else they do and say. The twisted logic of thinking that because the media says it's no longer an issue only "proves" that it still is...that's just beyond paranoia and frankly, it's pretty fucking stupid. It wasn't up to the media to "prove" anything, anyway. It was up to the hospital where he was born in Hawaii, by them producing his birth certificate, which they did. It was up to the judges who heard the continued suits filed by wild-eyed, batshit crazy Orly Taitz; the judges threw the suits out as having no merit, one of them even slapping her with a hefty fine for filing a frivolous lawsuit. If you're sticking with Orly Taitz and continue to believe that President Obama is not a U.S. citizen, you're just as batshit crazy as she is. Get some help. Seriously. Or maybe you're just a dumbass. That can be even harder to fix.

[As an aside, speaking of Hawaii...back when McCain picked Palin as his running mate, I was making fun of writing about her foreign policy experience, which consisted of Alaska sharing a border with Canada, and being able to look over and see Russia (As well as Putin rearing his head into U.S. airspace...hahaha...still a classic!). I said that since I've been to other countries, I thought I was qualified to be Vice-President, too, and since I eventually want to go to Hawaii one day, that would give me even more foreign policy experience. Someone actually thought I was serious, and believed that I thought Hawaii is a foreign country. heehee I still find that funny, and it says more to me about that person's obvious lack of any sort of irony or sarcasm detector. Or maybe it goes back to the dumbass factor.]

Some of the topics covered today included involving youth with the conservative movement. Apparently not too many young people showed up.

Jordan Marks, executive director of the conservative Young Americans for Freedom, suggested that activists use Facebook, volunteer to speak at high schools ("bastions of liberalism") and simply do fun stuff that hooks high school and college-age kids. Marks described a bowling party he organized - "Knock Down the Pinheads of Communism." A strike equaled Mao, a spare, Pol Pot. Mishelle Perkins, a 44-year-old mother of five children, said she supplements her children's education with books by Tea Party authors, but right now it's hard to get them too interested.

No doubt. That bowling thing sounds pretty fun, though. "Woohoooo, I got a Pol Pot!" But wait...high schools are "bastions of liberalism?" I'd like to see their evidence on that. I suppose that colleges are some sort of Dantean level of liberal hell for them.

Another speaker today was Steve Milloy, a guy who believes that global warming is not connected to human behavior, and owner of the site junkscience.com. He referred to modern environmentalism as “totalitarianism,” criticized Lindsey Graham for working with John Kerry on climate change legislation, and called for "reverse immigration" for Gov. Schwarzenegger for his work on environmental efforts.

Milloy...questioned the sanity and morality of cap and trade supporters, whom he called "bad people."

"Bad people?" He's giving a lecture at a convention about a topic he's focused on for years and presumably feels passionate about, and the worst he can come up with is that they're "bad people?" Oh yeah, Steve? Well...I know you are, but what am I? Man, he really needs to work on his Rickles skills.

I tell you what, it's a good thing this convention isn't a long one and is drawing to a conclusion tonight. I don't know how much more of this I could take. I find myself immersed in their words, slack-jawed and glassy-eyed, wondering what Bizarro World I've wandered into. If I stayed there too long, you'd probably find me rocking back and forth, holding onto myself, a little runner of drool descending from my bottom lip. Being the trooper that I am, I'm going to see if there's a live stream on the web of...gulp...Sarah Palin's speech tonight. If I need to, I've got that bottle of tequila that I haven't cracked open yet. I'm thinking that it might be kind of fun, though, if I get myself in the right frame of mind. It looks like it's going to be live on CNN tonight, but I'm not sure if I can handle her on the big screen, so I might have to watch it online; it looks like this site is going to stream it.

Anyone brave enough—or liquored up enough—to join me?

Note: I hope that everyone who got socked by the storm is safe and warm. Don't go out there if you don't have to!

Teabagging: Day Two

Last evening, Tom Tancredo got things going with his kickoff speech. He had some very interesting things to say, things like calling the tea party movement "the most important political movement in the United States since the Civil War." What does that even mean? Is he advocating secession? He called the "cult of multiculturalism" as big a threat as our fiscal problems. He called Sarah Palin a "really, really pretty Margaret Thatcher." He called for implementing a "literacy test" for voters, a tactic that was used in the segregationist South in order to keep blacks from voting, saying that President Obama was elected because "we do not have a civics, literacy test before people can vote in this country." He went on to say this:

People who could not spell the word vote or say it in English put a committed socialist ideologue in the White House—his name is Barack Hussein Obama.

Although cheers erupted at this, apparently, the room wasn't filled; I guess that's a good thing, since as few people as possible should hear such bigotry, misogyny, and narrow-minded idiocy as fell from his lips.

Here we've got an older, white, conservative male talking about how he hates multiculturalism. How he wants to go back to segregationist tactics designed to keep uneducated people (i.e., blacks) from voting. How people who couldn't spell or speak English are the ones who voted Obama into the White House.

Have you looked at any of the demographics, Uncle Tom? You are factually inaccurate. College graduates constituted a huge portion of Obama supporters. For anyone who supports Tancredo and others of his ilk, you might want to think long and hard about why you are doing so; unless you are also a white, conservative male, or a MILF, they are not your friend and they are not your advocate. Let’s go over that again. He wants to put segregationist tactics into place. Yes, teabaggers…this is what you are following. This is what you—YOU—are advocating if you are supporting them.

By the way, if we focused more on education, they way our President is trying to do, perhaps the illiteracy rates in our country would drop. There are plenty of people who can't read because they don't have access to safe schools and a good education. That doesn't mean that they can't listen to the news and learn about things that way. His condescending, patronizing tone is an affront to all of us—or it should be.

One of the speakers today was Judge Roy Moore. This was the guy who was removed from his position as the Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court because he refused to remove the monument of the ten commandments he had erected at the state judicial building. Moore said the monument "reflects the sovereignty of God over the affairs of men" and "acknowledge[s] God’s overruling power over the affairs of men." He did not feel that this violated the separation of church and state, and when the deadline for removing the monument came and went, they yanked him from the Court.

So now in addition to needing to be a white, conservative male or a white, conservative MILF, you must also ignore the Constitution (despite your strident call to follow it in other matters) and acknowledge that God rules the affairs of men, although that Constitution for which you profess such undying love explicitly says that that is not the case.

We're not a theocracy, folks. You know that, right?

There were several breakout sessions today (believe me, if I were there, I think I would have been finding a way to break out), with topics that included:

• "Why Christians must engage"
• "How to do Voter Registration Drives and Where to Find Conservative Votes"
• "Women in Politics" [They allow that? I thought we were supposed to keep our mouths shut and look pretty. Like a pretty version of Margaret Thatcher.]
• "5 Easy Fixes to the High Cost of Mass Immigration" [Tancredo's solution is immediate deportation of all of them.]
• "Defeating Liberalism via the Primary Process"
• and oddly enough, "Emergency Preparedness" [What sort of emergency? Heart attack? Bioterrorist attack? Nuclear bomb? Black man in the White House?...D'OH!]

They'll wind up tonight's festivities with a "tea party discussion" and another movie: "Generation Zero: The Inconceivable Truth."

Did I mention that there was no booze at these events? Gahhhh! I was telling a friend today that I would have liked to have seen them have this convention in Las Vegas. Vegas corrupts everyone. I'm picturing these matronly Midwestern women shooting craps, jiggling those die like…um, never mind…yelling, "C'mon baby, Mama needs a seven!" and staid, repressed Texas milquetoasts stuffing dollar bills into the G-string of a past-her-prime downtown pole dancer.

That would have been fun. But we wouldn't want a hangover to lessen our enjoyment of the 9 am lecture, "Correlations between the current Administration and Marxist Dictators of Latin America." Subtle. After that, a panel discussion, "Where the Tea Party Movement Goes from Here."

I recommend Vegas. I think they all need to cut loose a little bit.