“Hang ‘em High”
Twitter user rkref captures this image from the DC Tea Party:
I’ve been to some protests in my time, and it wasn’t rare to see an over-the-top anti-Bush sign around. Which, as best I understood it, was why mainstream politicians usually stayed away from those kind of things even when the underlying cause was something fairly mainstream like opposition to the Iraq War. These tea parties are being organized by Dick Armey, publicized by Fox News, and feature members of congress as speakers. You’d think they’d be able to avoid calling for the deaths of large numbers of duly elected members of congress.
Amanda Terkel has a full report from the DC party including some folks in “Chairman Maobama” t-shirts. Because restoring Clinton-era tax rates is just like mass murder.
61 Responses to ““Hang ‘em High””
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April 15th, 2009 at 12:34 pm
And this is in DC. I hope some brave souls are documenting the teabaggings in the remaining Republican strongholds–it should get interesting.
April 15th, 2009 at 12:35 pm
Clinton? In Congress?
April 15th, 2009 at 12:35 pm
I want a Chairman Maobama t-shirt right fucking now.
April 15th, 2009 at 12:52 pm
Oh God, PLEASE let me know where I can get a Chairman Maobama t-shirt!!!!!
April 15th, 2009 at 12:54 pm
Me too. Are these the ones?
http://www.mikechurch.com/zenshop/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=1&products_id=152
April 15th, 2009 at 12:57 pm
Shirts available here.
April 15th, 2009 at 12:57 pm
Leave it to the Republicans to make Mao and socialism popular again.
April 15th, 2009 at 1:04 pm
Alright, now can we get an ironic leftie company to make them so I don’t have to give my hard-earned cash to a right wing DB?
Man, those are SWEEEEET!
April 15th, 2009 at 1:04 pm
“Maobama Tee Shirts” are the new “Members Only” jackets
April 15th, 2009 at 1:07 pm
Clinton isn’t even in Congress anymore.
April 15th, 2009 at 1:10 pm
That’s quite an odd list. Maxine Waters? John Conyers? John Kerry? You’d think they’d mention the actual socialist Sanders, or at least the leadership like Hoyer and Durbin.
April 15th, 2009 at 1:12 pm
Off topic, but Kudlow from CNBC used the word ’spontaneous’ 5 times this morning in a span of 45 seconds.
I thought to myself if a fairly popular conservative national personality has to work so hard to frame this sham as spontaneous it must not have much legs.
Two questions for the board:
1. Do you think this is a sham?
2. Do you consider these shams and the associated hyperbole anti-american?
k1
April 15th, 2009 at 1:12 pm
Also, whatever happened to that list of the 17 socialists Bachus was going on about last week? You’d think he would have thought to release that before today so protesters could have more accurate information about whose hanging to call for.
April 15th, 2009 at 1:13 pm
At least the had the sense to not include Obama in the sign, avoiding the implications of KKK-style lynching.
April 15th, 2009 at 1:16 pm
Do you consider these shams and the associated hyperbole anti-american?
Oh, no, not at all. Shams and hyperbole are very American.
April 15th, 2009 at 1:19 pm
Someone sounds awfully jealous that liberal Bush-era protests weren’t as well organized or as well covered by the media as the Obama protests have been so far. Buck up Matt, the government ignored protesters then, I’m sure it will do the same now.
April 15th, 2009 at 1:20 pm
1. Do you think this is a sham?
Yes.
2. Do you consider these shams and the associated hyperbole anti-american?
Ehh…whatever. America wouldn’t be American without a healthy dose of anti-American activity. We’re like a snake devouring its own tail at this point; I just kind of expect large elements of our society to work against the interests of the whole, especially if there’s a potential for profit in it.
April 15th, 2009 at 1:28 pm
Organized by Dick Armey? Are you seriously that stupid?
April 15th, 2009 at 1:33 pm
Someone sounds awfully jealous that liberal Bush-era protests weren’t as well organized or as well covered by the media as the Obama protests have been so far.
There are certainly things one could say about the contrast between the coverage of 500k people protesting a war (which they turned out to be correct about), and that of a few thousand protesting…something. At least you admitted that it’s purely anti-Democrat protests though, since you’d get laughed out of here if you said they were anti-deficit or anti-spending after their behavior the past eight years.
Anyway, I’m not sure that jealousy is the word I would use. Bemusement comes to mind. I mean, you do realize a news network whose tagline is “fair and balanced” is doing 24-hour live coverage of these anti-Obama protests that said network has been gushing about for weeks, right? And how, exactly, did the liberal biased media cover the war protests? Just like that, right?
April 15th, 2009 at 1:33 pm
Great sign. My only complaint is that I hate the irrelevant and incorrect use of quotation marks.
In any event, AstroTurfer Extraordinaire Matthew Yglesias, of the AstroTurf organization CAP, in incorrect to say that the Tea Parties are “organized by Dick Armey”.
April 15th, 2009 at 1:36 pm
1. Do you think this is a sham?
I wouldn’t say that. There are obviously people like James here that are strongly anti-spending. The tea parties were originally Paul supporters, and they really believe what they’re protesting about. The problem is that it morphed into a general anti-Obama/anti-Democrat protest, in which they’re not actually advocating for anything at all. It’s not a sham in the sense that it’s a fake protest, it’s just a stupid and meaningless protest. But the actual numbers of protesters don’t nearly justify the amount of coverage it’s gotten.
Organized by Dick Armey? Are you seriously that stupid?
Not in the “George Soros controls all the liberals” meaning I’m assuming you’re using. But yes, Dick Armey is chairman of FreedomWorks, and FreedomWorks has had a very strong hand in organizing these protests (as they’ll openly admit). So there is certainly a relationship there, not that anyone’s suggesting it’s nefarious or whatever.
April 15th, 2009 at 1:37 pm
James Robertson:
“Organized by Dick Armey? Are you seriously that stupid?”
Um, these protests are in large part in fact organized by Dick Armey. This is not controversial. It’s publicly avaliable factual information.
Check out the FreedomWorks.org front page. It’s all dealing with how to throw a successful Tea Party. FreedomWorks is Armey’s organization. What they are doing, he is doing.
Armey’s also directly involved in a high-profile way – he’s been writing Op/Eds promoting the Tea Parties and is lending massive logistical support for the effort.
Do you know what organizing is?
April 15th, 2009 at 1:39 pm
1. Do you think this is a sham?
Let me put it this way: I expect a lot of relatively tight shots of the “crowds” on Fox News–and even then, I expect to see some grass.
April 15th, 2009 at 1:40 pm
My only complaint is that I hate the irrelevant and incorrect use of quotation marks.
That’s not necessarily an incorrect use of quotation marks. Maybe he’s quoting somebody. Like, say, one of his forefathers. I hear they used to say that a lot back then.
April 15th, 2009 at 1:46 pm
Apparently you didn’t get the memo.
Obama is building a larger deficit for this year, that’s larger than all eight years of Bush combined. After 6 months the deficit is already $1T.
April 15th, 2009 at 1:50 pm
“Obama is building a larger deficit for this year, that’s larger than all eight years of Bush combined.”
Huh? You want to give us an English-to-English translation on that fine sentence? It doesn’t seem to make a lick of sense.
April 15th, 2009 at 1:51 pm
Obama is building a larger deficit for this year, that’s larger than all eight years of Bush combined. After 6 months the deficit is already $1T.
And this is in no way completely disingenuous because of a one-time emergency spending bill to try to keep us out of a deregulation-caused depression.
And it’s also not completely disingenuous because Bush’s budgets never included ANY of the war spending that Obama’s so graciously actually put on his budget so as not to be dishonest.
No, Bush’s actual 2008 budget of $3.6 trillion and Obama’s actual 2009 budget of $3.7 trillion are massively different, right? Do you think we’re idiots?
April 15th, 2009 at 1:52 pm
That’s quite an odd list. Maxine Waters? John Conyers? John Kerry? You’d think they’d mention the actual socialist Sanders, or at least the leadership like Hoyer and Durbin.
Right-wing radio doesn’t make a lot of noise about Steny Hoyer. The signholder likely doesn’t know who he is. However, I’m sure he’d be glad to suddenly feel an intense passion that Hoyer should be hanged as well if you told him he’s a Democrat.
April 15th, 2009 at 1:58 pm
It’s fucking hilarious that Matt is so blinded by class privilege that he thinks networks avoid protestors because of signs.
Get real. They ignore protests because they are part of what is being protested. That’s why they love covering these. They fucking paid for them
April 15th, 2009 at 2:00 pm
errr… wow.
Bush’s “combined deficits” are low only because Bush started out with a surplus, which he happily pissed away while so-called-conservatives everywhere cheered him on. he turned that surplus into a massive deficits, which Obama has inherited. Obama also inherited Bush’s TARP spending, Bush’s two wars and a severe recession.
in picture form
April 15th, 2009 at 2:16 pm
Wow–I just caught a Fox News shot of a protest. I was a bit wrong.
What they actually did was take the shot from up a busy pedestrian sidewalk at a relatively low angle, such that at first it kinda looked like all the people on the sidewalk were part of the protest. Until you noticed half the people were walking away.
April 15th, 2009 at 2:24 pm
I want a Chairman Maobama t-shirt right fucking now.
I want want too, even if by purchasing one I am helping the teabagging cause.
April 15th, 2009 at 2:26 pm
more where that came from:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/thisainthell/3337166693/in/photostream/
April 15th, 2009 at 2:38 pm
Someone should get Rahm Emmanuel a Chairman Maobama T-shirt –he could wear it with a Navy blazer when he next heads over to Capital Hill to talk with the Republicans.
Where he could propose a stimulus bill to create Homeland Security reeducation camps ..er .. “WPA Projects” in heavily Republican areas.
April 15th, 2009 at 2:44 pm
It’s a travesty of a mockery of a sham of a mockery of a travesty of two mockeries of a sham.
April 15th, 2009 at 2:47 pm
Ah, Lafayette, LA . . . now we are getting to the good stuff.
April 15th, 2009 at 2:52 pm
more where that came from:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/thisainthell/3337166693/in/photostream/
So Obama is between Communism and Nazism? That’s…bad?
April 15th, 2009 at 3:05 pm
Do you think we’re idiots?
Actually, yes. You obviously don’t appreciate the magnitude of deficit spending Obama is handing us. Think about all the noise around lost revenue because of the taxcuts, recession, wars, etc. All that deficit spending over eight years will be eclipsed in just one, under Obama. But you’re OK with that. Tsk.
Meanwhile, more taxation is on the way, the war in Afghanistan will be escalated, Wall St is being given golden crutches with no transparency, the trip to Europe gained nothing but a bow to a Saudi King, and apparently none of that matters. In fact the only good news is that Jack Bauer from “24″ is alive, well, and killing pirates with sniper shots. Heh.
April 15th, 2009 at 3:05 pm
Obama is building a larger deficit for this year, that’s larger than all eight years of Bush combined. After 6 months the deficit is already $1T.
Um, not so much. Total increase in federal debt from 2000 to 2008 was $4.6 trillion. So the one year projection is about one-third of that.
April 15th, 2009 at 3:23 pm
Actually, yes. You obviously don’t appreciate the magnitude of deficit spending Obama is handing us.
The difference is that Obama is spending during a recession where the Fed has already reduced interest rates to zero. Bush spent during a bubble boom.
If you don’t understand this fact, you don’t understand basic economics, but I bet you’re just being ideological.
April 15th, 2009 at 3:25 pm
All that deficit spending over eight years will be eclipsed in just one, under Obama.
This is a blatant lie. You’ve repeated it even after I already pointed it out.
Now, while I’m not a huge fan of big deficit spending, I do think Keynes is a pretty good guy, and in severe downturns deficit spending is the right thing to do. In good times, it’s time to raise taxes and cut spending. Specifically raising the top bracket and capital gains rates and cutting defense spending.
See, what your pea brain fails to understand is that sometimes deficit spending is the right call and sometimes it isn’t. Specifically, if you have a surplus already and a good economy, maybe you should try saving some of that instead of massive tax cuts. And if you’re in a recession, maybe you try a bit more spending to get out of it faster so your future revenues are higher. These are pretty basic principles.
But uh, thanks for throwing in every right-wing meme of the past few weeks and saying absolutely nothing of substance and offering not a single actual proposal, like usual.
April 15th, 2009 at 3:28 pm
Nice to see shooter242 of Salon.com fame has found a new place to play Bill Kristol (you know, ALWAYS wrong)!
April 15th, 2009 at 3:53 pm
@ 39 Buzz,
After checking other sources, I see you are right. Mea Culpa. So it seems Obama will match Bush’s addition to the national debt in 2.5-3 years rather than just one. If we’re lucky.
@ 41 Adam
The key phrase is “cut spending”. Not going to happen. As for the Clinton surplus, you might note it disappeared before the tax cuts kicked in in 2003. You might also note the recession Bush inherited began in 2000 right after the .com bubble burst. Clinton was still President at the time.
Interestingly, the surplus was also concurrent with the Clinton tax cut of 1997. Hmmmm. But I’m interested in seeing what happens when Obama follows your prescriptions. It’s why I voted for him. It was the only way to kill the myth that tax increases bring prosperity.
April 15th, 2009 at 4:08 pm
This, of course, is why it is important to understand the difference between structural deficits (basically the deficits you run during the expansionary portion of the business cycle) and cyclical deficits (basically the deficits you might run during the contractionary portion of the business cycle, minus any structural deficit).
Obama’s budget calls for running a large cyclical deficit, which is fine under the circumstances (indeed, arguably it should be bigger). Unfortunately, his budget also ends up with a structural deficit of about 3%.
Again, though, this is essentially attributable to the compounding interest on the debt he inherited. You can do the math yourself: Bush handed him a national debt of about 75% of GDP. The average interest rate of outstanding Treasuries is around 4%, so you are looking at a handoff of . . . almost exactly 3% of GDP in interest. Of course without compounding this would go down as GDP grew, but since it is compounding (we are just putting the interest right back onto the national debt), it will roughly keep pace as a percentage of GDP.
April 15th, 2009 at 4:19 pm
The key phrase is “cut spending”. Not going to happen.
It is indeed incredibly hard for either party to cut spending on anything, ever. Republicans certainly don’t. Thus for deficit reduction purposes it’s preferable to at least have a party that will raise what taxes they can, and not hide massive spending off-budget to make their deficits look better to people like yourself.
As for the Clinton surplus, you might note it disappeared before the tax cuts kicked in in 2003. You might also note the recession Bush inherited began in 2000 right after the .com bubble burst. Clinton was still President at the time.
Interestingly, the surplus was also concurrent with the Clinton tax cut of 1997. Hmmmm.
Christ you’re dense. Yeah, Clinton cut taxes in 1997 and a surplus! Let’s imply that tax cuts cause revenue increases! Which of course has not ever actually happened once since we’ve never been on the right half of the Laffer curve, but I digress.
You don’t have a single good argument here. The closest we’ve been to fiscal discipline in a long time was when we had the increased revenue from Clinton’s 1993 tax increases, and Bush cost us $1.6 trillion by going back to big deficit spending, which he proceeded to make worse and worse the remainder of his term. Going back to the tax rates of the 80s and 90s is the only way we’re possibly going to avoid massive deficits, unless you plan to drastically cut defense and entitlement spending. And we’ll probably need to do all of that anyway if we ever want to balance it again.
But first, there’s the little recession problem. Hard to get back to solvency with 9% unemployment.
April 15th, 2009 at 4:57 pm
You might also note the recession Bush inherited began in 2000 right after the .com bubble burst.
Economic activity was still booming into March 2001 and didn’t start to shrink until then.
April 15th, 2009 at 5:33 pm
@ #46 Jeffery Davis
This says otherwise. Negative growth in 2000 III is not booming.
April 15th, 2009 at 5:52 pm
Um, not so much. Total increase in federal debt from 2000 to 2008 was $4.6 trillion. So the one year projection is about one-third of that.
Much of that federal debt was issued to the US government, and not held by the public, which makes for an apples to oranges comparison with the federal deficit.
Apples to apples, you have to look at the debt held by the public. I would estimate it will take Obama about 2 years or so to rack up the amount of debt owed to the public that Bush racked up in 8 years.
April 15th, 2009 at 8:46 pm
Funny how dishonest conservatives are these days. First the recession of 2001 gets placed in 2000, which is a lie, and then it is blamed on Clinton even though he opposed the 1997 tax cuts which certainly were more the cause of the dot com bubble than any economic policy he supported. Why are all the conservatives on the blogosphere and on TV such liars?
April 15th, 2009 at 8:52 pm
Because we’re going to fund a TARP and a Recovery Act every year. Right, that makes sense.
You people don’t even care if the things you say are untrue, do you?
April 15th, 2009 at 9:38 pm
1) As I recall, the federal debt was around $5 Trillion when Bush entered office — and was supposed to shrink greatly by 2009. Any Republicans want to look at his 2001 Budget projections?
But by the time he left office, Bush had asked the Congress to raise the debt limit to $11.3 Trillion. That’s a $6 TRILLION increase by my calculation.
2) Another $3 Trillion had been ran up by Ronald Reagan and George H Bush. That’s probably closer to $4 TRILLION in todays dollars — Clinton had to struggle just to pay the interest on Ronnie and George H’s fuckups.
Plus Bush is handing Obama a far worse economy than what he received from Clinton. I don’t recall the Government having to risk almost $10 TRILLION in guarantees, Bailouts and loans in 2001 to keep the economy from caving.
3) Look at the fucking data — I think it shows clearly that Republicans are the “Borrow and Spend” incompetents:
a) When Republican Ronald Reagan took office, federal debt was only 32.6 percent of GDP. By the time his Republican successor George H Bush was voted out of office, federal debt had soared to 66.2 percent of GDP.
b) Bill Clinton managed to reduced the federal debt from 66.2 percent of GDP that he inherited to 57.4 percent of GDP
c) But the George W Bush ran the debt back up to 68.2 percent of GDP
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_debt_by_U.S._presidential_terms#Gross_federal_debt
4) PS Saying that only “Debt held by the public is important” is utter bullshit. George W Stole $3 Trillion out of our Social Security accounts and left IOUS (Treasury Bonds) that are worthless unless we pay ANOTHER $3 Trillion to pay them off.
That $3 Trillion doesn’t show up as debt held by the public –it shows up as intergovernmental debt.
5) How can you tell that when Republicans are lying? When their lips move.
April 15th, 2009 at 9:44 pm
Whatever debt Obama incurs in the next two years should also be laid at the foot of the Republicans — because if the Republicans had not let Wall Street go hog wild with the “get the government off the backs of our campaign donors” bullshit, we would not have to be spending huge sums to keep the economy from collapsing into a Second Great Depression.
April 15th, 2009 at 11:08 pm
Wow Don, that post 51 looks like something I would write. But hey, Republicans were controlling congress from 1995 to 2006. Less than half that time they were deficit hawks, and more than half that time they were not, but conservatives will politely ignore the big spending days of recent and try to remind you over and over again how they were so conservative, even though their overall policies were essentially the same as 2000-2006; ie cut taxes no matter what the economic or political situation is, and fight to raise spending on defense even though the Cold War is over and there is no country that can field a conventional war against us. But just remember, this is all Clinton’s fault!
April 15th, 2009 at 11:29 pm
Very good turnout across the entire for the Tea Party events. Very Good! The people that turned out there were able to connect with so many other people. The work goes well and growth continues. MGK/GDW!
April 16th, 2009 at 12:14 am
Barack Obama has given speeches to crowds larger than the entire national Teabagger turnout.
There was an antiwar rally in Boston – just Boston, population 560,000 or so – that drew 50,000 people in March 2003. You remember how popular not invading Iraq was in March 2003. The national total of this heavily-advertised, generously-backed, nationally-promoted day of protest was about the size of that rally in Boston.
April 16th, 2009 at 12:41 am
@55: It was pathetic. In fact, it must be viewed as a shocking f~ck up. Stress levels in whatever leadership groups are left in the GOP must be reaching the boiling point.
I mean, essentially, within the GOP, its down to 15-20 senators. They have to pissed. They have to go out and spin this. What an impossible task. I bet when they get together they all agree FOX NEWS needs to be strung up by the nuts.
April 16th, 2009 at 8:22 am
This says otherwise. Negative growth in 2000 III is not booming.
And 2000 IV was fine.
*****
And I luvs me the anti-tax protesters that ignored the fact that their taxes just went down. So fierce. So committed. So phony.
April 16th, 2009 at 12:00 pm
It is part of conservative doctrine that the money owed to the Social Security fund will not be repaid. The money was borrowed from the fund in order to lower taxes on the wealthy. Paying it back would require raising them again. That is unthinkable to them.
April 16th, 2009 at 10:13 pm
Could you help me. Nothing is said that has not been said before.
I am from Gabon and too bad know English, tell me right I wrote the following sentence: “More options for cheap tickets – search by airline exclusive deals on cheap tickets.”
With respect 8), Tibor.
April 18th, 2009 at 3:55 pm
[...] course they want him to fail!” he said. Tea party protesters carried signs with racist and violent messages and accused the federal government of heading “toward fascism” and “toward [...]
April 21st, 2009 at 12:19 am
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