Happy Hour Discurso

Today's opining on the public discourse.

Glenn Beck's super-awesome Million Moron March on Washington was, like, super awesome! It was a crowd of two million! No, wait, one-and-a-half million! Really - ABC said so, even though they didn't!

ABC News reports on Tea Party organizers falsely citing ABC News as source for 1 - 1.5 million crowd size estimates.

Aren't they precious when they try to wildly inflate their numbers by citing news sources that don't exist? A D.C. local compares their crowd size to Obama's inauguration and comes up with a few double-handfuls of angry white Teabaggers. And were they ever white:

Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.), the Senate's most right-wing member, thinks conservative activists demanding a right-wing shift in government policy are just the regular ol' American mainstream.

"This is not some kind of radical right-wing group. I just hope the Congress, the Senate and the president recognize that people are afraid of what's going on."

I see. Confederate-flag waving conservatives, who think Democrats are Nazis, are just normal, middle-of-the-road Americans.

DeMint went on to say that "a fair analysis" of the right-wing crowd would show that it's "a cross-section" of the U.S. population. Asked why the protestors were almost exclusive white people, DeMint added, "It's probably just the time and organization and the media that promoted it."

I have no idea what that means.

Neither does Jim DeMint, I'm sure. People who start babbling nonsense in defense of the indefensible usually don't.

They ran about waving signs like "Bury Obamacare with Kennedy" - at least, when they weren't waving around racist messages:

Members of ThinkProgress attended today’s march and the signs carried by these protesters were hardly nonpartisan — and were often racist, radical portrayals of Obama, despite DeMint’s claim. Some examples of what we saw:

But, remember, they're not racists! They're just protesting against the commie negro in the White House who plans to ride to commie negro heaven on the backs of white babies:

Despite the tea parties’ ostensible purpose of opposing taxation, many of the signs today at the 9/12 march attacked President Obama using explicit racial and ethnic smears. Glenn Beck, who helped initiated the idea for the rally, has come under fire for similarly stating Obama has a “deep-seated hatred for white people.” ThinkProgress documented some of the hate at the protest, and also spoke to one attendee who shared Beck’s views. The attendee, like Beck, thought Obama hates whites, but also believed he will oppress the white race with communism. We asked him about the sign he was holding up, which showed Obama riding a white baby:

ATTENDEE: Barack was the name of the horse that Mohammed rode to heaven, alright a white horse.

Q: What does the white baby represent?

ATTENDEE: White America, because I do believe our President is a racist [...] But I think it’s mainly communism that he’s going to want to tell us what to wear, what to do, have his little red book like Mao because he really is a communist.

You know, I know there's some fucked-up people on the far left fringe. But they're the very image of sanity and calm rationality compared to these fucktards. We don't have anyone quite this nuts, except for the poor souls who really are this mentally ill.

I just have two things to say to these losers. First, you're a deluded bunch of racist numbnuts. Secondly, if you're going to scream about English being the official language, fucking well learn how to write it:

"Obama, we have waken up to your evil plans to destroy our country. Take your racist unamerican Acorn groups and arrogant wife back to your own country and strip their rights away!" [on a Teabagger sign]

[snip]

The upshot seems to be that these people believe that the entire world has completely turned upside down in just eight months to the point at which their everyday lives are unrecognizable to them. Considering that the only thing that's happened is the bailout of auto companies, some stimulus spending and cash for clunkers I'd say their lives must have been pretty bizarre to begin with.

You know what I think it is? I think these assclowns saw the liberals protesting Bush and got jealous. They couldn't protest the President because Bush was their buffoon. So when a dirty Dem who also happens to be half black managed to get elected, they didn't even wait for plausible reasons, they just jumped straight in with both feet. And since this kind of shit can only escalate, they passed hysteria before the election and headed straight for paranoid schizophrenia at Mach 11. Histrionic? Oh, you betcha.

As for those who are tempted to equate liberals protesting Bush with Teabaggers protesting Obama, let's remember something important here:

Ron Brownstein took a closer look at the Census Bureau's latest report on income, poverty, and health insurance, and what the data tells us about "the economic record of George W. Bush."

On every major measurement, the Census Bureau report shows that the country lost ground during Bush's two terms. While Bush was in office, the median household income declined, poverty increased, childhood poverty increased even more, and the number of Americans without health insurance spiked. By contrast, the country's condition improved on each of those measures during Bill Clinton's two terms, often substantially.

The Census' final report card on Bush's record presents an intriguing backdrop to today's economic debate. Bush built his economic strategy around tax cuts, passing large reductions both in 2001 and 2003. Congressional Republicans are insisting that a similar agenda focused on tax cuts offers better prospects of reviving the economy than President Obama's combination of some tax cuts with heavy government spending. But the bleak economic results from Bush's two terms, tarnish, to put it mildly, the idea that tax cuts represent an economic silver bullet.

When it comes to judging presidents by their economic performance, Brownstein noted, Bush "flunked on every relevant dimension." After eight years of Clinton's presidency, the nation saw improvements on median household income, poverty rates, and the uninsured. After years of Bush's presidency, the nation saw striking declines in every category. (Indeed, Bush is the only recent president to "preside over an income decline through two presidential terms.")

This seems relevant for a couple of reasons. First, I continue to believe Bush simply hasn't been blamed to the extent he should be. Indeed, his name has all but disappeared from the national discourse, despite the fact that his spectacular failures are at the root of almost every relevant challenge the nation is current facing (economy, budget, health care, environment, national security, etc.).

Second, the Republican Party still believes Bush's policies -- the ones that failed on a historic level and created messes we're still struggling to clean up -- were right. If given the opportunity, they'd like to implement them again. GOP lawmakers endorsed these failures as they occurred, and don't regret their positions in the slightest. They're proud to have supported misguided policies that didn't work, and insist that voters should reward them for failing -- and help them bring back the very policies that produced disastrous results.

And that's leaving out the torture, shitting on the Constitution, the wholesale spying... The man and his party are disasters. They turn everything they touch to shit. Yet liberals waited until there was good reason to protest the despicable son of a bitch before marching on Washington.

All I can say is, if my fellow Americans are stupid enough to vote the Cons back in, well, they'll deserve what they get. It's too bad the rest of us will have to suffer alongside them.