[Vision2020] Teabaggers

[Saundra Lund]

Roger wrote:
"I have yet to see you Tom, Nick, or Wayne say anything about the left wing nuts that think that 9/11 was an inside job by the Bush Administration."

First, Roger, focus:  this discussion is about teabaggers-cum-Tea Partiers, not about every whack job of whatever political persuasion since the beginning of this country's time.

Second, I NEVER identified myself with or defended the "truthers" movement, which most certainly was NOT limited to left wing nuts.  You, OTOH, are full of excuses for the teabaggers-cum-Tea Partiers yet you have remained conspicuously mute about their outrageous tactics, blatant lies, racism, hate-mongering, etc.  Why, Roger, do you expect others to speak out about things "on the other side" you find outrageous or offensive when you yourself fail to do so about your side???

The same question fairly applies to Dan Carscallen as well, although I think Garrett did a great job of highlighting that particular piece of hypocrisy.

Roger also wrote:
"You seam to think that I am ill informed."

Not exactly -- I think you read a lot of stuff and make an effort to be well-informed.

However, where you fail on this topic is in not understanding that your *idealism* of *your* definition of the Tea Party absolutely does NOT mesh with the *reality* of the actual Tea Party.

Many a worthy movement has failed, and failed miserably, because of the failure of adherents to speak out against sheer lunacy within.  I see the teabaggers-cum-Tea Partiers as an excellent modern example of impending failure because those involved lack the stones to denounce the scads of freaks within.

If you believe in the ideals of the Tea Party, Roger, you have an obligation to speak out, and speak out LOUDLY, against the lunacy within rather than make excuses for it.

It really is that simple.

Roger also wrote:
"I will politly ask you, Tom, NIck, and Wayne to comment on the the nut ball idea that 9/11 was an inside job of the Bush Admisinstration."

Again, there's no reason for me to do so since I NEVER identified with or offered any defense of the truthers in contrast to your identification with and defense of the whack job teabaggers-cum-Tea Partiers.

I think Wayne Fox already pointed out the problem with your formatting -- I don't mind you interspersing your comments (although it would be helpful if you would also delete the parts you aren't responding to) in previous posts, but please try to make your comments clear from the original text -- maybe add a blank line before & after your comments or something.  I'm not sure I caught all your comments below.


Saundra Lund
Moscow, ID

The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good people to do nothing.
~ Edmund Burke

***** Original material contained herein is Copyright 2010 through life plus 70 years, Saundra Lund.  Do not copy, forward, excerpt, or reproduce outside the Vision 2020 forum without the express written permission of the author.*****

-----Original Message-----
From: lfalen [mailto:lfalen at turbonet.com] 
Sent: Friday, March 12, 2010 11:30 AM
To: Saundra Lund; 'Joe Campbell'; Vision2020 at moscow.com
Cc: 'lfalen'
Subject: RE: [Vision2020] Teabaggers

I will make some comments after some of your statements.
Roger

-----Original message-----


From: "Saundra Lund" v2020 at ssl.fastmail.fm
Date: Wed, 10 Mar 2010 23:01:23 -0800
To: "'Joe Campbell'" philosopher.joe at gmail.com, Vision2020 at moscow.com
Subject: RE: [Vision2020] Teabaggers

> Hi Joe,
> 
> Great to read you again, and thanks for such a cogent post, with which I
> wholeheartedly agree.
> 
> Just another comment or two, and a couple or three comments back to Roger.
> 
> You wrote:
> "In fact, teabaggers initially called themselves “teabaggers”!"
> 
> Exactly.  It was a self-chosen label, unlike the GOP's inclination to call
> all with conscience and who put people above profit "socialists" and
> "communists" and "anti-American" and all that other nonsense.
> 
> I suppose it would be fair to say that the teabaggers were FOR their
> self-chosen label before they were against it.  How positively GOP of them
> :-)
> 
> Perhaps, though, a good compromise would be to refer to them as
> teabaggers-cum-Tea Partiers  ;-)
> 
> In a separate response to me, Roger wrote:
> "The bulk of them however are for smaller government, freemarkets, and
> adhering to the Constitution."
> 
> Really, you need to get OUT more because you are completely out of touch
> with how the movement has . . . evolved.  Heck -- I can't even call it an
> evolution because it was defined by wingnuts from the very beginning, I'm
> sorry to say  :-(
> I did not say that there were not any wingnuts in the Tea Party. I said that there were some in all movements. I have yet to see you Tom, Nick, or Wayne say anything about the left wing nuts that think that 9/11 was an inside job by the Bush Administration. If you buy into that then you are further out on the fringe than anyone in the Tea Party. You seam to think that I am ill informed. It is true that I do not listen to tv new, even Fox. I get my information from the following- Newsweek, U.S. News and World Reports,Newsmax, Reason, American Heritage, American History, Wild West, Natural History, Discover Magazine, Mayo Health Letter, Health News, Archaeology, Kiplinger's Personnel Finance, Money, Scientific American, Nation Geographic, National Review, Skeptical Inquirer, Drug Policy Alliance, Tuffs Health and Nutrition Letter, Citizens Against Government Waste, The Heritage Foundation, Americans for Prosperity, National Taxpayers Union, History Channel Magazine, The  Amer
 ican
Legion, Worst Pills, Best Pills, FDA Veterinarian, Mind Mood and Memory, University of California Wellness Letter, Judicial Watch, Smithsonian Magazine, Harvard Health Letter, National Trust for Historical Preservation, FAME, FIRE, Parents television Council, AARP, NRA, Institute for Justice. and the Hightower Lowdown( to keep track of what the left wing nuts ar thinking). This last one also puts me on a lot of left wing mailing lists. I occasionally listen to Glenn Beck Laura Ingraham, Neil Boortz, and Jerry Doyle. I think that this makes me as well informed as anyone on the vision.
Roger
l
> I'm really sorry, Roger -- you don't get to define the movement according to
> your ideals.  I wish you did, though, because this country would be a better
> place if those were the genuine motives of the teabaggers-cum-Tea Partiers.

> Leonard Pits was fairly accurate on his description of the Tea Party member, I few he did not mention were JFK Democrats and those that have been asleep politically. This group does not have well defined political views. They just do not like the big increase in federal spending(simulus and Obamacare). The Palouse Group(Pullman and Moscow)are primarily JFK Democats, those that were politically asleep, NRA types, and Ron Paulers.
> In a response to Nick, Roger also made the comment:

> "What the mainline media says does not confirm anything. they have been
> consistent  either in ignoring the Tea Party or downplaying it."
> 
> Again, Roger, and I say this with love:  you really need to broaden your
> horizons.  The Teabaggers-cum-Tea Partiers have been ALL over the news,
> including that embarrassing 9/12 Teabaggers-cum-Tea Partiers attendance
> gross overestimation.  Indeed, I would argue that the mainstream media has
> overblown the whole thing.  Most likely, the movement is going to implode
> precisely because honest people were initially drawn to a movement that is &
> was from the very beginning grossly overpopulated by wingnuts.  Basically,
> it's become a freak show with the likes of lunatics like Tancredo providing
> scary entertainment for the rest of us.

> Like I said they twist it to protray them is as negative a light as possible.- Roger

> In a response to Keely, Roger wrote:
> "There are also a substantial number of Black Americans in the Tea Party."
> 
> Who am I going to believe:  your statement or my lying eyes?  Absent proof
> to the contrary, I'm going to believe what I've seen with my own eyes.
> 
> IOW, Roger, put up or shut up.  Nick provided statistics from a libertarian
> delegate to the Tea Party Convention that 99.5% of the delegates were WHITE.
> If there are so many "Black Americans" in the Tea Party, why were 99.5% of
> the delegates WHITE?  And, of course, there are my own lying eyes that tell
> me there aren't "substantial" numbers of anything but white folks in the Tea
> Party.

> I did not give a number as to how many there were in the Tea Party. There are some. Agian the media is going to down play their involvemnt.- Roger

Nick Callanged me to respond on Libertarians. I do not like the word callange used in that context. It is too close to a dare. I have never responed to a dare and do not intend to now. It is something we should be teaching kids not to do.
I will politly ask you, Tom, NIck, and Wayne to comment on the the nut ball idea that 9/11 was an inside job of the Bush Admisinstration- Roger
> 
> Saundra Lund
> Moscow, ID
> 
> The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good people to do
> nothing.
> ~ Edmund Burke
> 
> ***** Original material contained herein is Copyright 2010 through life plus
> 70 years, Saundra Lund.  Do not copy, forward, excerpt, or reproduce outside
> the Vision 2020 forum without the express written permission of the
> author.*****
> 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: vision2020-bounces at moscow.com [mailto:vision2020-bounces at moscow.com]
> On Behalf Of Joe Campbell
> Sent: Wednesday, March 10, 2010 2:15 PM
> To: Vision2020 at moscow.com
> Subject: [Vision2020] Teabaggers
> 
> A few comments on the use of the word “teabaggers.”
> 
> 1/ Nick was not the first person to call folks in the Tea Bag movement
> “teabaggers.” The term “teabagger” was a finalist for the New Oxford
> American Dictionary’s “word of the year.” And not for the “sex act”
> use of the term but for the usage that refers to members of the Tea
> Bag movement – as Nick used it. Dictionaries have no political agenda.
> They just register usage. In fact, teabaggers initially called
> themselves “teabaggers”!
> 
> 2/ According to the Urban Dictionary, “teabagger” has FIVE distinct
> meanings, the FIRST of which is “one who carries large bags of
> packaged tea for shipment.” Only one of the five meanings has the
> explicit sexual connotation.
> 
> 3/ Why does the use of the word “teabaggers” make folks “cringe every
> time” they hear it? I’m no psychologist but my guess is the term has
> gay connotations and the CONSERVATIVE – not libertarian but
> straight-up conservative – folks in the tea bag movement are
> homophobic. Maybe there is another reason that the term makes you
> cringe, Dan, but if there is I don’t get it. Maybe it’s just the
> sexuality of the connotation but when my softball teammates call me a
> “baller” I laugh, I don’t cringe.
> 
> 4/ Teabaggers pretend to be libertarian but how many of them voted for
> a state constitutional amendment against gay and lesbian marriage?
> Let’s face it, once you give the state the right to tell you whom to
> MARRY, you’ve crossed over to the non-libertarian side of the
> political spectrum. Like Garrett, I applaud much of the teabaggers’
> platform, especially the limitation of “government intrusion.” As Nick
> notes, teabaggers are for “economic liberty” not freedom from
> government intrusion. And they are not for economic liberty for all.
> Otherwise, why on earth wouldn’t they favor gay and lesbian marriages
> so that gays and lesbians can enjoy the same tax benefits as straight
> married couples? This is just standard George Bush, religious-right
> conservatism wearing a new hat. If it were otherwise, it would have
> started long before Obama was elected.
> 
> 5/ Dan, as much as I like and respect you, you are a hypocrite, as
> Garrett suggested. You POSTED on Tom Forbes’ website back when he had
> a tagline that was insulting to academics, like myself. When the
> Christ Church guy held up the sign that said that Linda Paul, Tom
> Lamar, and Aaron Ament were bigots, you told me in an exchange on the
> Daily News blog that the right approach to insulting “idiots” was to
> ignore them. You even went so far as to openly criticize Tom’s wife
> and daughter for confronting the Christ Church bigot guy. Dale
> Courtney essentially called all liberals and progressives “communists”
> in the header of his blog for years – a practice that is shared each
> day by Rush and Beck – and I never hear a peep from you about that. As
> much as it bothers you to hear the word “teabagger,” how would you
> like it if folks regularly called you a “communist”? My brother, my
> father, and my grandfather fought in wars against communists to help
> secure our freedoms and I can tell you I don’t like it one bit. I’ve
> never heard you condemn the usage of that term in reference to
> liberals and progressives.
> 
> I’ll tell you what. The next time that Donovan Arnold, or some other
> Christ Church dupe, writes an insulting comment following a post by
> Nick, or Tom, or Keely and you make a similar condemnation of his
> language, I’ll apologize for calling you a “hypocrite.” A slight
> parenthetical remark here is not convincing. Sorry. Back it up with
> action. Please.
> 
> 6/ I’m going to continue to use “teabaggers.” It reminds everyone of
> how out of touch the movement is, and how hastily developed it was.
> Anyone who forms a political movement without taking enough time to
> research the alternative connotations of the NAME of their group
> deserves to be reminded of it regularly!
> 
> The term is a reminder, also, of how narrow and conservative the true
> aims of the Tea Party are. They are concerned merely with limited
> economic relief for some, not liberty and freedom for all. They don’t
> even want to think about gays, let alone afford them equal rights. It
> is faux-libertarianism disguised as the real thing, the government
> telling us whom to marry but giving us tax relief. Yipes! Essentially,
> they are saying that they’re willing to accept the governmental
> suppression of others just as long as they get some tax money back!
> What a perverse “libertarian” nightmare.
> 
> Libertarianism is a tough row to hoe. It entails giving folks the
> right to do things that are against your own personal beliefs, for it
> puts freedom from the state ahead of all other concerns. I am far more
> libertarian than ANY teabagger I know!
> 
> Best, Joe
> 
>