Teabaggers rally on WA Capitol steps. (Photo courtesy of Fuse)
You know that huge teabagger rally in Olympia yesterday… the one which spooked the GOP caucus into introducing a bunch of crazy-ass bills based on bizarre, tentherist bullshit? Well apparently, the only thing that can stop loyal patriotic Americans from defending the Tenth Amendment against the threat of Obamunist oppression is a little rain.
Frightened Republican legislators expected thousands to rally on the steps of the state Capitol yesterday, as evidenced by the dozen porta-potties set up to accommodate the nonverbal excrement they spew, but according to local observers the much publicized rally attracted little more than a hundred angry, deluded righties… maybe two hundred, tops.
That’s some populist revolt the righties have going for them. And yet, they managed to dominate the Republican agenda for the current legislative session. Go figure.
It seemed quieter than most rallies. When I went down to look, they were very quiet, respectful. Contrast this to others which are very “I AM ANGRY! LOUD NOISES!”
And Pam Roach was at least 1% of ’em.
Maybe they heard that the Teabag Party was actually the creation of a Republican PR firm, which was simply testing the re-branding the Republican Party? These PR guys thought that they could create a different brand which appeared to be a grassroots movement seperate from the Republican Party, but really was under the control of the same people. Kind of like a different brand of potato chips, but still made by Frito-Lays. But they got greedy and took all those people’s contributions, so I wonder how many are now pretty ticked off about that.
The Tacoma paper is running the Tea Baggers and Rep. Matt Shea’s bills as a serious article.
Hilarious headline+photo pairing here.
Check out the link to more of the pictures on Fuse’s facebook! http://www.facebook.com/#/albu.....038;ref=mf
It really was more of a clan rally than an anti-tax rally. These people are buying into the thinly veiled and racist arguments that most of the people who use the government services that are on the chopping block are minorities so who cares what happens to them!
Seriously these people have no idea what they are talking about, with federal help our deficit problems last year would have been even worse!
Are those even Wasingtonians? Awful big percentage of umbrellas for such a little bit of people. You know what they say; “If you can’t be bothered to do it in the rain, don’t bother doing it.”
@5
The paper version of the Trib’s article ran a picture on a guy with a picket sign announcing that he was a “trained veteran.” I’m assuming that means that he’s willing to use his military training on people he disagrees with. I’m hoping he spent his time in the military as a file clerk.
@3 “Kind of like a different brand of potato chips, but still made by Frito-Lays.”
And still just as greasy and upsetting to the stomach; and with the same cholesterol-boosting, waistline-expanding, and artery-hardening ingredients.
@4 Funny how the federal government wasn’t abusing power when it started wars and tortured foreigners, but passing legislation to make health care more accessible and affordable for American citizens provokes them to contemplate armed revolt. What a sick, twisted, insane bunch of people. Thank God there’s only 300 of them, although that’s still 300 too many.
@7 It could mean he’s received training from a veteran’s group on how to claim as many federal veterans benefits as possible.
What’s with the Klan flag there?
Don’t these people love America?
I liked how so many were medicare using, social security receiving old folks. Irony is crunchy.
DavidD @ #6: Good point. Most people from Washington don’t even bother with the umbrella. After all, the wind ruins them most of the time anyway. They just dress in layers with Gortex and caps, and ignore the rain.
I’ve yet to see a picture which would show anything like “as many as 300” protesters. The pictures I’ve seen so far probably don’t even have 50 people in them, and some of them might be news folks.
The pic of the guy with the Confederate battle flag was a hoot. I bet he doesn’t have the slightest idea of the origin or use of the Confederate battle flag during the Civil War. When those of us from the South used to say “the South will rise again”, nobody expected it to be attempted by a handful of people in Washington State.
I’ve been doing a study of the Battle of Chickamaugua during the Civil War. Most volunteer regiments, upon being organized at the start of the war, had approx. 1,000 men. By the time this battle started in Sept. 1863, they had been considerably whittled down by disease, desertion, and battle casualties, to the point that some regiments entered that battle numbering only two or three hundred men, and some brigades (consisting of two to four regiments) numbered only five to six hundred men. By the time the battle was over, many of these units had lost half of those already-low numbers, with regiments reporting for duty with scarcely a hundred men under the flag.
These idiots who fly the Confederate battle flag and speak of seccession with such bravado think they would have liked to live in the “romantic” time of the Civil War. But they would have run for the rear at the first volley of musketry. They hardly would have had the cajones to charge an entrenched enemy supported by artillary firing double-shotted cannister in their faces.
You folks might consider listening to Thom Hartmann (over at Air America) as to “progressives” and tea-baggers have areas in common. You’d do well to form alliances with the tea-baggers and work on common issues in which you share agreement.
Hey, it’s not my idea. If you don’t like it, talk to Thom Hartmann.
@5 Except that you can see it’s clearly on the state capitol steps (because there’s so fee of them) the shots on Fuse’s page could just as easily be from the “People of WalMart” site.
The teabaggers are the future of the Republican Party. That means the future of the Republican Party is pretty damned bleak.
@13
Yeah but most folks don’t even know that that flag was not one of the three Confederate national flags nor was it the battle flag (which was square). It is a bastardized version of the Second Naval Flag and was made popular during the early twentieth century by the Klan and by politicians favoring segregation and Jim Crow laws.
Most people who fly it don’t know a damn thing about it.
It makes these folks look stupid.
If I was in charge of this rally I would have asked him to put it away.
Freaking amateurs!
Just so those seccessionists will understand the sacrifices of the men who fought to support seccession, and despite their best efforts failed, resulting in the destruction of their states, their industry, their economy, their farms, and their families:
Daily Ritual of the Army of Tennessee (AoT) (during the spring of 1864, as it retreated before Sherman’s army between Dalton, GA and Atlanta:
(1) march 20 miles, carrying everything you own, a cartridge box, canteen, and a very long and awkward rifle.
(2) upon reaching your new destination, immediately dig out an entrenchment, using only your bayonnete and tin canteen cup, or a tin bowl or plate, if you have one.
(3) when the ax (usually one or two per regiment) gets passed to your company, cut down enough trees in front of your position to form a field of fire, preferably 50 to 100 yards deep. Take the trees and drag them trunk-first to the entrenchments, then intertwine the branches (facing away from the entrenchemnts) and sharpen them with knives or bayonnets to a point, forming an abitas.
(4) After (and only after) all this is done, send out parties to get aged wood to build a fire, a party to take the unit’s canteens and find a relatively safe water source from which to fill them, and then as darkness falls pull out half a hardtack bisquit (infested with bugs) and about four ounces of salt pork (referred to as bacon). Soak the hardtack in a cup of water to drown the bugs, then soak the salt pork to disperse enough salt so it becomes roughly edible, then warm both of them over the fire before eating. That is the entire content of your daily meal. Your one redeeming factor is that at least it’s not half-rations, like the army was on while “beseiging” Chattanooga – an advantage of falling back on your own supply lines.
(5) Sleep on the ground, with only a ragged wool blanket, infested with lice, to cover you, with your hat as your pillow.
(6) When your turn comes and you are awoke, head out in front of the lines to stand picket duty. If you are lucky, you don’t see any Yanks. If you do see Yanks, you are to capture them (if there are only one or two), or if there are more than that, shoot at them (thereby providing a warning to your unit), and then run like hell and hope you don’t catch a bullet in the back.
(7) At the first rays of light (before dawn), turn out for morning muster, roll up your possessions in your wool blanket and loop it over your left shoulder, then line up in formation for march.
(8) Repeat again, starting at # 1, for as many times as is necessary to get to Atlanta.
Footnote to #18: During this time, one Union soldier marvelled at the Confederate’s ability to quickly dig entrenchments after marching all day, thereby discouraging attacks. “They seem to carry their entrenchments with them, wherever they go!”
Remember that these were the guys who stuck with “The Cause” throughout the war or until death, yet still LOST. After the war they pretty much unanimously agreed that seccession was a terrible idea.
Yet there are still some nut jobs who keep bringing up the idea!!!!!
# 17: Agreed on all counts.
Your history of the flag is correct. I might add that even the square version wasn’t universally used as a battle flag throughout the Confederate armies, it started with the ANV, I believe, and spread to some extent thereafter. It was never an official flag, it did somewhat resolve the problem that the Confederate national flag (the second one) was often indistinquishable from the U.S. national flag on the battlefield where the wind wasn’t blowing briskly. Of course, it didn’t help that there was usually a lot of smoke from artillary and exchanges of musketry from black-powder rifles (one of the reasons the officers continued to be on horseback – so they could see over the smoke).
I agree that most of the people who use the battle flag (or the rectangular modified version) have no idea of it’s history. The fact that nobody told this guy to put it way shows the lack of organization among the leadership, or simply shows that these guys are sufficiently rebellioius that if you told them to get out of the way of a freight train, they would remain on the tracks just to prove that you can’t tell them what to do.
I’m wondering why the news media is even bothering with estimates. With those numbers, you could just count them.
@13 But they would have run for the rear at the first volley of musketry. They hardly would have had the cajones to charge an entrenched enemy supported by artillary firing double-shotted cannister in their faces.
Presumably, you would have had the cojones to charge straight into the artillery, RHP! Very smart!
@14 Will we be forming an alliance with the guy holding the “FOX News for the truth” sign? The guy with the Confederate flag? Geez, I hope not.
@21 I don’t think there’s much more than fifty in the one photo, counting the baby.
22:
I don’t know how they did it. I certainly wouldn’t want to make such a charge. But then, I don’t wave a Confederate battle flag and make loud noises about secession, either, betraying a complete ignorance of history and the proven consequences of such stupid ideas.
But during the Civil War, infantry on both sides did charge entrenched infantry with supporting artillery over and over again. Most realized that they were going to keep getting hit by the cannon until they captured or disabled them, so there was considerable effort made at trying to capture the guns.
The one thing they hated MOST was having to charge against cannon, only to have it limber up and withdraw right before the infantry reached the lines. So the most dangerous job on the battlefield became that held by the artillary horses. The moment a unit would bring forward it’s horses to limber up the cannon, the infantry would turn all their attention to the horses, trying to kill every one of them. Both sides did this. There were several reports of a battery commander seeing almost all of his horses killed, while in harness, within only two or three minutes time.
And thanks for the spelling corrections – I don’t normally proofread comments I make on blogs, and spelling was never my strong suit.
@22, 25
Ha! perfect rhp6033
24
CPS should remove that baby from its parents. They are plainly unfit. Of course, on a broader level, we need to revisit the issue of eugenics. We all know that the world cannot survive if teabaggers are permitted to reproduce.
Dear Goldy:
Why don’t you, Joel Connelly, Kari Chisholm, Andrew, and the rest of the blue wave for once be the ‘progressive’ enlightened you claim to be and quit using the vile, disgusting ‘teabagger’ term?
Can you do it? Can you all reject the Olbermann/Maddow/Shultz/Matthews/MSNBC/Daily Kos marching orders just one time? Or are you too much of a hate-filled partisan?
Where’s that Northwest/Blue Wave tolerance you guys are always claiming exclusive rights to? Why don’t you make it a topic at your next Tuesday night drunk-fest? I can send you a email reminder the night before, if it would help.
Hoping for change, but not expecting much from the no-class/intolerant/anti-freedom/big-government/anti-God/open-borders-loving/anti-capitalist/Chavez-loving/tax-hiking/cradle-to-grave-govt-control-loving/man-made-climate-change-hoaxing left,
Orb
P.S. – I hope those terms weren’t too offensive. I mean, they’re just words, right?
You really need to get a job Goldy. This is pathetic, even for you. And the word “teabagging” is a sexual slang. Since you never get laid, I’m not the least bit surprised you misuse this word. T.E.A. (Taxed Enough Already) party movement participants by definition do not fall under that word. Get it together asshole.
We’ll stop using it when you wingnuts stop behaving like fools in a cult.
RHP @25 spelling was never my strong suit.
You no doubt have other talents, RHP, so keep your head high!
Here’s a picture of a teabagger:
http://www.thestranger.com/ima.....bagger.jpg
He’s holding a teabag. Nothing sexual about it.
Typical right wing. Always has its mind in the gutter..
@28
Apparently they call themselves “Tea Partiers” these days. But, it wasn’t the left that came up with tea bagger. With all the hate, the marching around with guns, the calling people Nazis, fascists, commies and so on calling them tea baggers pales in comparison.
Calling them Tea Partiers”would also give them a degree of legitimacy that given their behavior, lack of understanding of how government works:
keep government out of Medicare!
Lack of understanding of political philosophy:
Hitler wasn’t a member of the left and he was a fascist not a socialist.
You can’t be both a fascist and a socialist.
Calling yourself a patriotic American while waving a confederate flag.
that they do not deserve.
When the WSRP comes up with legislation that is clearly and blatantly unconstitutional, harmful to the people of the state of Washington (legalizing armor piercing bullets, increasing pollution levels) and just plain nutters to boot the last thing in the world we should do is grant them legitimacy or equivalency.
When they behave in a sane and helpful manner, as my (Pierce) county council member, Terry Lee (R), does we should grant them legitimacy and equivalency and work with them.
@22, 25
I bring you people with cojones. And a hell of a lot of skill.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v.....ature=fvwp
tea “partiers”?
They can’t be serious.
Of course they aren’t serious – they’re nuts!
nevermind…
@33
There’s also a lack of understanding as to what the Boston Tea Party was about. It wasn’t about taxes, it was about corporate welfare.
@29 and 30 – The term “teabaggers” didn’t come from the Left. It was a name the “teabaggers” gave themselves: http://unrepentantoldhippie.fi.....#038;h=358
The Left shouldn’t be blamed for the sheer stupidity of the lunatic right.