Wingnuts

Tea Party morality

US politics, Wingnuts
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Matt Taibbi gets to the core of it:

This whole concept of “good welfare” and “bad welfare” is at the heart of the Tea Party ideology, and it’s something that is believed implicitly across the line. It’s why so many of their political champions, like Miller, and sniveling Kentucky rich kid Rand Paul (a doctor whose patient base is 50% state insured), and Nevada “crazy juice” Senate candidate Sharron Angle (who’s covered by husband Ted’s Federal Employee Health Plan insurance), are so completely unapologetic about taking state aid with one hand and jacking off angry pseudo-libertarian mobs with the other.

They genuinely don’t see the contradiction, much in the same way that some Wall Street people genuinely can’t see the problem with their company, say, taking $13 billion in bonuses in the same year that they accepted $13 billion in state bailouts. You wave a pitchfork at them with little post-its of the relevant figures taped to the ends, and ask them to confess – and they can’t, because they literally don’t see your point.

The politics of envy indeed.

Anonymous cowards smear Tim Ireland’s children. Could Nadine Dorris get them to stop it?

Tories, Wingnuts
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For more than a year now Tim Ireland has been subjected to an ongoing if sporadic internet harassement campaign, after he had gotten into conflict with several online Tory bigwigs. The party of Churchill being the natural home of the coward and bullyboy, it’s no surprise that some of the internet hard men and women tried to smear him, spreading false rumours about him being a stalker or a paedophile and fabricating all other sorts of accusations which could’ve turned very nasty if taken serious by the wrong parties. It’s not too long ago a tabloid-fed mob burned down a paediatrician‘s house after all… It all may seem fun and games until somebody loses an eye and it doesn’t get better when certain Tory MPs are, if not involved perse, at least seemingly condone this behaviour.

Recently things took a turn for the worse: now his children are smeared too:

…Recently, someone involved in this ongoing campaign of harassment began publishing material targeting my wife, my children, and other members of my extended family.

This has included false accusations aimed at my kids, making specific allegations of criminal behaviour that are not only entirely untrue, but extremely damaging (and, it must be said, upsetting).

It’s not yet known who’s behind these allegations, but one person who should be wondering how this reflects on her is Nadine Dorris MP, who has history with Ireland:

A damaging role has also been played by Nadine Dorries MP, whom Tim has attacked and satirised on numerous occasions. As as I blogged in May, Dorries retaliated by seeking to portray a mocking Tweet as some kind of death threat, and when she later closed down her blog she claimed that she had been advised to do so following the stabbing of Stephen Tims MP – the implication being that she was in physical fear of Tim. This was despite the fact that she had closed her blog down a week before Tims had been stabbed.

Far be it from me to allege she’s behind these smears, but as somebody who has at the very least encouraged such irresponsible and cowardly behaviour, she should now do her part to reign this in — before itnernet grandstanding leads to real life tragedy.

It helps sometimes to state the obvious

Race, Wingnuts
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Tim Wise on white privilege:

Imagine that hundreds of black protesters were to descend upon Washington DC and Northern Virginia, just a few miles from the Capitol and White House, armed with AK-47s, assorted handguns, and ammunition. And imagine that some of these protesters–the black protesters–spoke of the need for political revolution, and possibly even armed conflict in the event that laws they didn’t like were enforced by the government. Would these protesters–these black protesters with guns–be seen as brave defenders of the Second Amendment, or would they be viewed by most whites as a danger to the republic? What if they were Arab-Americans? Because, after all, that’s what happened recently when white gun enthusiasts descended upon the nation’s capital, arms in hand, and verbally announced their readiness to make war on the country’s political leaders if the need arose.

One minor quibble: if we imagine the tea party protests happening not against Obama but against Bush and his policies, do we think they would have recieved the same amount of media and political support/approval as they do now? It’s not just white privilege that gets the teabaggers their free out of jail cards: it’s also that they are broadly in line with an important part of elite opinion as well. Setting aside their own motivations, rightwing leaders in politics and the media find the movement an useful tool to pressure Obama. This perhaps as much as white privelege explains the indulgent way the teabaggers have been treated.

Speaking of insane wingnuts banging on about football

Football, Wingnuts
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As predicted yesterday, American rightwing pundits are once again going apeshit about football and the Worldcup. Media Matters has some hilarious examples of which this is the nuttiest:

MRC’s Dan Gainor: “Soccer is designed as a poor man or poor woman’s sport,” “the left is pushing [soccer] in schools across the country.” Also on the June 10 G. Gordon Liddy Show, Media Research Center’s Dan Gainor said, “the problem here is, soccer is designed as a poor man or poor woman’s sport” and that “the left is pushing it in schools across the country.” He added: “generally football games in this country don’t devolve into riots or wars.” He later added that the sport of soccer “is being sold” as necessary due to the “browning of America.”

Sexism, racism and classism in one shitty package. Bravo.