There's a sucker born every minute

Rolling Stone on Koch Bros.

Roger Ailes on the Tea Party

Believe it or not, it took Roger Ailes, the boss of Fox News, to figure out the Tea Party:

 "Listen, one out of every 25 people in America is a psychopath." 
-from Art

 

Insightful Comment on Tea Party from Art Woodstone

Someone recently said,  "Religion was the first politics." Sounds right. But when politics become the very source of worship... Sounds wrong. Worshiping a political party, treating it with the same abiding passion and faith as you would Christianity or Judaism, reacting  angrily to criticism,  hating disbelievers, even exhibiting delight at the deaths of human beings whom these true believers find inferior and unGodly....Isn't that a  definition of religious fanaticsm? When was the last time you heard someone becoming outraged  because his political party was  the subject of criticism. I was asked a couple of months ago  a beautiful woman asked me how I felt about the Tea Party.  When I answered, she shocked me by calling me a bigot.  You'd think I'd just attacked Jesus and and all the Jews in the world. Most Democrats don't take it seriously when someone attacks their party; most Democrats these days don't even take the Democratic Party seriously. But the Tea Partyers and so many Republicans  have transformed themselves into  crusaders, eager to defend  the new, true faith against their  enemies. And they see enemies everywhere.  You are ostracized if  you so much as hint  that these new and still novel religionists worship false idols, or that their responses are unbecomingly joyful  when told that renegades and other lesser humans have died. This morning I received an  email from a furious neighbor  in Ocala. He was incensed that I dared strike out against his party by accusing Tea Partyers  and their right-wing GOP allies of callousness. .  He took such offense at my lack of virtue that he cast me out and vowed never speak to me again. Twenty-four hours earlier,  I  had observed in an email to him that the audience at a debate sponsored by the Tea Party loudly applauded  the news that Texas had run up a record number of executions on  Rick Perry's watch  as governor.  I was reminded of "The  Tale of Two Cities." Each time the guillotine lopped off another head, the mob cheered. So at one debate the right-wing audience  applauds executions.  At a second debate, the Republicans and  Tea Partyers in the pews  actually  cheer Ron Paul for declaring that if an American died because he chose not to invest in health insurance, that--in our free society-- was  his own problem. These worshippers profess to be charitable.  Perhaps, but if so, it is a charity governed by whim.  They  show no charity toward those of us, not  all of us murderers,  who in their eyes can never measure up to the faith. Our crime against the Church of the GOPTP is less one of criticism than of failing to accept the truth. On the other hand, when the devout members of this historic church sneer at liberals, they are being, forgive a familiar expression, fair and balanced. If we cannot accept that gospel and keep our mouths shut, it only proves we  have no place in the new god's  America. It doesn't take  much imagination to  guess where these protectors of the faith might lead us next.  Art  Woodstone

Bigots alive and well in TX teaparty

Please see the attached clip