Meanwhile, Over At John Boehner's House...

House Republicans have been busy being fitted for foam Lady Liberty headwear and parlor hats made of dangling teabags. And now they have introduced hundreds of silly amendments to their own H.R. 1, the Continuing Resolution to fund the government for the next seven months. Illinois Democratic Rep. Jan Schakowsky and her staff saved you and me a lot of time by leafing through the House GOP's cynical hit list, coming up with these 10 truly stupid amendments proposed by actual Republican House members, all of whom purportedly claim to be actual adults. She calls it the 'So Be It' Awards:

HT: HuffPo:

1. Amendment Nos. 150 / 151 -- Rep. Neugebauer (R-TX): The amendment would prohibit funds made available in this Act from being used for repair, alteration, or improvement of the Executive Residence at the White House and the Executive Office of the President.

2. Amendment No. 8 -- Rep. Stearns (R-FL): The amendment would restrict funds made available in this Act from being used for the design, renovation, construction, or rental of any headquarters for the United Nations in any location in the United States.

3. Amendment No. 34 -- Rep. Garret (R-NJ): The amendment reduces funding for the National Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities, National Endowment for the Arts, Grants and Administration by $145 million eliminating funding for the account.

4. Amendment No. 271 -- Rep. King (R-IA): The amendment would reduce funding for the Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Disease Control, Research, and Training by $750,000,000. (Amendment Nos. 550 / 551 -- Rep. King (R-IA) do the same.)

5. Amendment No. 420 -- Rep. Issa (R-CA): The amendment would prohibit the funds made available by this Act from being used by the Department of Health and Human Services to study condom use skills in adult males.

6. Amendment No. 405 -- Rep. Thompson (R-PA): The amendment would amend the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act to provide that payments made for standard power wheelchairs furnished in 2011 are subject to a 1 percent reduction in the covered item update made under the Social Security Act.

7. Amendment No. 422 -- Rep. Issa (R-CA): The amendment would prohibit the funds made available by this Act from being used by the National Science Foundation to study whether video games improve mental health for the elderly.

8. Amendment No. 346 -- Rep. Pearce (R-NM): The amendment would prohibit any funds made available under the Act to be used to provide trade adjustment assistance to wild blueberry producers.

9. Amendment No. 483 -- Rep. Fortenberry (R-NE): The amendment would prohibit funds made available by this Act to be used for or in sterilization campaigns.

10. Amendment No. 92 -- Rep. Heller (R-NV): The amendment would prohibit any funds made available in this Act from being used to designate monuments under the "Antiquities Act of 1906" (16 U.S.C. 431, et seq.). (Amendment No. 203 -- Rep. Labrador (R-ID) does the same thing.)

And a special mention goes to Rep. Tom McClintock (R-CA): The Flintstone Car and Candlelight Award for his series of amendments to prohibit funding for an expansive list of energy innovations and clean technologies, including Water Power (Amendment No. 318), Wind Energy (Amendment No. 320), Vehicle Technologies (Amendment No. 316), Solar Energy (Amendment No. 314), Industrial Technologies (Amendment No. 312), Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Technologies (Amendment No. 309), Geothermal (Amendment No. 307), Building Technologies (Amendment No. 302) and Biomass and Biorefining Systems (Amendment No. 300).

The last time I checked, John Boehner said his House members' focus was on "jobs, jobs, jobs." It seems to me they are spending most of their time reigniting the culture war and wasting time on idiotic amendments, as Rep. Schakowsky pointed out above.

Earlier this week, Boehner shrugged off concerns over job losses that would surely result from the $61 billion his chamber wants to slash from government programs.

"So be it," the Bronze One replied.

This is your country.

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These People Walk Among Us

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Junkyard Dogs

(H/T: Salon.com)

Toeing The Tea Party Line

To a Republican, mimicry is the sincerest form of flattery.

H/T: HuffPo.

I've Seen The Future, Brother: It Is Murder.

Thanks to Leonard Cohen for this post's title.

"This party that we call the Tea Party is the future of politics." That's Sarah Palin, in the ad above.
Palin has been wrong about absolutely everything since she was shoved onto the national stage by a desperate, erratic John McCain, but if the angry and aggrieved born decades too late for the John Birch Society yet intent on conflating socialism, fascism, and Nazism while confusing the Bill of Rights with the Constitution and befuddled by both and wearing foam Statue of Liberty hats while routinely voting against their own best interests are the future, I think I've found the new National Anthem:

Teabaggin' Touchhole Tony La Russa Strikes Out.

From ESPN.com:

St. Louis Cardinals manager Tony La Russa says he supports Arizona legislation calling for tougher enforcement against illegal immigrants.
Opponents of the law have called for Major League Baseball to move the 2011 All-Star Game out of the state.
La Russa says Arizona has a problem that the national government has failed to remedy. The manager, who lives in northern California, spoke this week before a game in St. Louis between the Cardinals and Arizona Diamondbacks.
"I'm actually a supporter of what Arizona is doing," La Russa said. "If the national government doesn't fix your problem, you've got a problem. You've got to fix it yourself. That's just part of the American way."
Gov. Jan Brewer signed a state law in April requiring police officers to question a person's immigration status if there's reasonable doubt he or she might be in the country illegally.
Dozens of St. Louis Tea Party members were at Busch Stadium to show their support of the Arizona immigration law, prompting La Russa to touch on the subject.
La Russa told reporters he encouraged the presence of different points of view, and said he believed the Tea Party's stances were "correct" on "a lot of things."

That's La Russa's mug shot above. Funny; he didn't seem so "law and order" when he fell asleep at a red light because he was loaded. But I guess his papers must have been in order...

Teabagger History 101: Fairly Unbalanced.

"Tax" Day Wasn't "Facts" Day In Teabag Nation.

H/T: New Left Media/Buzzflash.

Tea Parties: "Old Wine In New Skins."

From Tim Rutten of the Los Angeles Times:

As it turns out, fewer than 1 in 5 Americans "supports" the tea party movement in any respect, and just 4% of all adult Americans have contributed to it or attended one of its events or both. (On any given day, you probably could drum up twice as many people who think the Pentagon is hiding dead aliens in Area 51.)
Of the 18% of all adults who expressed support for the tea party, the overwhelming majority were white (89%), male (59%) Republicans over age 45 (75%) and significantly more affluent and better educated than the majority of Americans. One in five has an annual income greater than $100,000, and 37% have advanced degrees. More than 9 out of 10 think President Obama is pushing the country into "socialism."
The (New York Times/CBS News) survey also found that more than half of the tea party supporters say "the policies of the administration favor the poor, and 25% think that the administration favors blacks over whites -- compared with 11% of the general public."
If all this is beginning to have a familiar ring, it's because you've met these guys before: They're the "angry white males" we've been reading about since political strategist-turned-analyst Kevin Phillips first identified them as an electoral presence during Richard Nixon's successful presidential campaign in 1968...

They aren't, however, implacable foes of "big government" or even of taxes. More than half (52%) told the pollsters they think their own "income taxes this year are fair," just 10% less than all American adults. Moreover, a majority told follow-up interviewers that, though they wanted "smaller government," they didn't want cuts in our largest social programs, Social Security and Medicare.

So much for the surge of a new anti-government populism.

What the movement really amounts to is old wine in new skins, a re-branding of the old-fashioned angry white male in a camera-ready package tailored to the demands of the 24-hour cable news cycle.

Michelle Malkin Is Scared (Again.)

Oy...

To your bunker, honey...

Jon Voight: Just Another Doomsday Teabagger Auditioning For Fox News.

It's As Simple As 'Simon Says'!

Click here to watch Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Mark Fiore teach you how to speak teabag!

Goin' Down The Road Feelin' Bad.

Sarah Palin was in Harry Reid's hometown of Searchlight, NV over the weekend to mingle with other nitwits at a Tea Party rally. Simple Sarah hates health care reform, of course, and urged her fan club to stop drivers with Obama bumper stickers. You'll recall that a Nashville man was the victim of road rage last week when he was run off the road by a deranged SUV driver because he had an Obama-Biden sticker on his car.

Regardless, Simple Sarah apparently advocates roadside political debate:

It's like that old bumper sticker that says, "Government: If you think our problems are bad, wait until you see our solutions."

Or that bumper sticker you see on the next Subaru driving by, an Obama bumper sticker. You should stop the driver and say, "So how is that hopey, changey thing working out for you?"

Honey, I don't drive a Subaru, but my Honda Fit still sports an Obama bumper sticker. That "hopey, changey thing" is working out much better for me lately, thank you very much, and if one of your Tea Party touchholes runs me off the road because I have a sticker on my car, I hope the hospital that treats him after I run his ass over gives him the very best health care his insurance company thinks he's worth.

Hannity's America (Without The Fox News Edits.)

I recently mentioned Fox News fuckwad Sean Hannity's denials regarding racist and homophobic slurs during the last weekend of the health care reform debate. His panel--comprised of D-list conservative media rejects with Ann Coulter fetishes--nodded like the bobblehead doggy in the rear window of Rupert's limousine. I imagine Hannity's own nodding noggin at that News Corp meeting when Fox announced they'd be going all-in on Glenn Beck.

An indignant Hannity claimed that he would offer cash for the video.

Here ya go, asshole.

Here is Sean Hannity's e-mail address. Another one is: hannity@foxnews.com. Remember, Hannity also promised to be waterboarded for charity and wound up lying about that, too, so good luck getting this failed construction worker-turned-TV/radio-shouter-turned-opportunistic-teabagger to come clean on his latest bullying boast. But, please--send him a little reminder...

And, Sean: pay the f#&% up.

Teabag Nation.

From Sam Stein of the Huffington Post:

Abusive, derogatory and even racist behavior directed at House Democrats by Tea Party protesters on Saturday left several lawmakers in shock.
Preceding the president's speech to a gathering of House Democrats, thousands of protesters descended around the Capitol to protest the passage of health care reform. The gathering quickly turned into abusive heckling, as members of Congress passing through Longworth House office building were subjected to epithets and even mild physical abuse.
A staffer for Rep. James Clyburn (D-S.C.) told reporters that Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-Mo.) had been spat on by a protestor. Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.), a hero of the civil rights movement, was called a 'ni--er.' And Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) was called a "faggot," as protestors shouted at him with deliberately lisp-y screams. Frank, approached in the halls after the president's speech, shrugged off the incident.
But Clyburn was downright incredulous, saying he had not witnessed such treatment since he was leading civil rights protests in South Carolina in the 1960s.
"It was absolutely shocking to me," Clyburn said, in response to a question from the Huffington Post. "Last Monday, this past Monday, I stayed home to meet on the campus of Claflin University where fifty years ago as of last Monday... I led the first demonstrations in South Carolina, the sit ins... And quite frankly I heard some things today I have not heard since that day. I heard people saying things that I have not heard since March 15, 1960 when I was marching to try and get off the back of the bus."
"It doesn't make me nervous as all," the congressman said, when asked how the mob-like atmosphere made him feel. "In fact, as I said to one heckler, I am the hardest person in the world to intimidate, so they better go somewhere else."

Think of this the next time a Republican tries to tell you the teabagger movement is patriotic. At its roots, it's just an unhooded Klan.

The Heart & Soul Of Teabaggers: None Of Either.

Teabagger Serenade.

More on the (Constitutionally-protected) self-executing rule here.

Are we there yet?

Well, That Didn't Take Long.

Teabag Nation is mad, mad, mad at brand-spankin'-new Massachusetts Senator Scott Brown for bucking GOP wishes and voting in favor of debate on a Democratic jobs bill.
In other breaking news, they are also mad at almost everything else.

Sarah Palin's Hand Job.

H/T: HuffPo.

Sarah Palin chided President Obama (again) about his Teleprompter use in her snarky speech to Teabag Nation Saturday night. As for Simple Sarah, all she knows can be written in the palm of her hand.

Danger, Scott Brown; Glenn Beck Doesn't Trust You!

Teabaggers are already eating their own tails. Welcome to 2010.