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The wingnuts were out in force yesterday denouncing that Washington Post/ABC News poll showing strong public support for the public option.

But as Keith Olbermann pointed out last night, there was a lot more data in the poll that should really have them clutching their pearls and fainting:

OLBERMANN: When anti-government protesters targeted President Obama and other Democratic leaders on April 15, the party took a hit. When town halls raged and the Tea Bag crowd hit Washington, the party staggered further. Now, the Tea Bag guys are on the move again. But in our third story tonight, signs that the party getting hurt by the anti-government Tea Bag people is the Republican party.

This week's "Washington Post"/ABC poll found 51 percent of Americans say that in next year's Congressional vote, faced with the generic Democrat versus the generic Republican, they'll vote for the Democrat; 39 percent will vote for the Republican. Only 19 percent have at least a good amount of confidence in Congressional Republicans to make the right decisions, far lower than Democrats or the president, for that matter.

And the number of Americans calling themselves Republicans has fallen to 20 percent -- 20, the lowest since 1983. A closer look shows that number has fallen from 25 percent just since mid-August. That's not a five percent loss for Republicans. Dropping from 25 percent to 20 percent is a loss of a fifth. Meaning since the height of town hall, Palin, Beck, death panel palooza, one out of five Republicans has stopped being Republican.

Republicans stopped at 25 percent back in March too, nine days after Tea Bag nations. Republicans were down to 21 percent. Naturally, Republicans are trying again. That's right, Tea Party Express II launches this weekend, coming to 38 cities, according to its press release, 37 on their website. Oh, well.

Previous Tea Parties so successful, they now have to hold them in such venues as Wichita's Lawrence Piedmont Stadium (ph) parking lot, Fallon (ph) Nevada's old Walmart's parking lot, a high school auditorium in Tri-Cities in Washington, Bozeman, Montana's Heritage Christian School gymnasium, and in Amarillo, Texas, John Stiff Memorial Park, picnic area number four. Seriously, picnic area number four. Don't interrupt the outing in area number three, please.

A dozen cities have no venue listed at all. According to the tour's Facebook page, "192 people are planning to attend these rallies."

In its own press release, a spokesman says about its new video, the web video promoting the tour, quote, "the tone of the ad is upbeat and positive." The name of the upbeat, positive ad is, "Countdown to Judgment Day."

And here's what upbeat and positive sounds like to these people.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: If you had enough of the out-of-control spending, bailouts, higher taxes, a spiraling national debt and big-government liberalism, then we invite you to join the Tea Party Express rally nearest you. We'll send a message to the politicians. Come election day, we're going to hand you a pink slip and take our country back.

Of course, it was simpler for Sean Hannity to just be in denial, since the poll made a liar out of him the day before when he tried to claim all the polls showed the public hated the public option. So he went on his show last night and said this:

Hannity: The business of this White House is division. And the White House's war against Fox News Channel is the latest evidence that it will throw its principles by the wayside to ensure that everybody falls in line with their agenda. And with the exception of Fox News, the other networks, they're receiving gold stars on their White House report cards.

And the latest case in point is the Washington Post/ABC News poll that shows that 57 percent of Americans support a government health-care takeover, and only 40 percent oppose it.

Now, a closer look at that poll explains why. Now, get this: They polled 13 percent more Democrats than Republicans! That explains a few things!

Of course, if Sean Hannity worked for a real news organization, he would likely know -- or have somebody around to explain to him before committing idiocies like this -- that polls use what they call "sampling" to get accurate results. In this case, they sampled more Democrats than Republicans for a very simple reason: The latest party-identification polling shows a 13-percent difference between Americans who call themselves Democrats and those who (shudderingly) admit to being Republican.

But then, Hannity doesn't work for a real news organization. So of course this kind of propagandistic crap is what we get polluting our teevees. Which, anymore, is the only thing the shrinking ranks of the rabid right have going for them still.

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Peggy Noonan with a double dose of her typical snobbery on This Week with George Stephanopoulos. Noonan first calls the President "boorish" for doing his "Full Ginsburg" on the Sunday shows and for all the town hall meetings he's had. Then she goes on to excuse the racism at the tea bag parties and town hall protests.

Stephanopoulos: Peggy one of the arguments the White House makes is they're dealing with a very different media environment than any other President in the past has ever had to deal with. There's such a fracture in media environment that even someone like Ronald Reagan, who you worked for would have to do more of what you're seeing the President do in this environment.

Noonan: Oh I don't know. I think the President is doing what he's doing now, being all over today and the past few weeks--he's doing it because... he can, because people do what they know how to do.

Stephanopoulos: Because no one is going to turn him down.

Noonan: This is his way. Because everybody will say yes. I don't think it's about the media environment but I do think the media environment allows a modern leader to be something subtly damaging and that is boorish. They get their face in your face every day all the time. It's boorish and it makes people not lean towards you, but lean away from you, no matter what the merits of the issue and the merits of this issue are not such great merits.

[.....]

You know what I think. When I look at this I step back a little bit and I think there is a lot of anger now. Mrs. Pelosi had a point. Things get high. It's always good to cool things down, but essentially what we have here is a very new president. He's only been here for ten months. He is a young man. He didn't have deep, long, profound experience. He is attempting right now to change, what it is, seventeen, eighteen percent of the GNP of the United States of America, changing how it works, health care.

This is problematic on the face of it. People will argue about that, but on top of that people are thinking about, in America the economy, unemployment, war and peace, two wars that are going. This president who is new and young comes along and says "Oh, that's not the issue. The issue is health care". It seems not like a program but a non sequitur and it angers people.

Inland at DailyKOS reminds of us what the definition of a boor is and tries to figure out what Noonan may have been implying by using the term.

boor definition boor (bo̵or)

noun

1. Archaic a peasant or farm worker

2. a rude, awkward, or ill-mannered person

Inland also points to this post at Firedoglake by Blue Texan with more of Noonan's hackery on the town hall protesters. Peggy Noonan: Health Care Protests Haven’t “Gotten Out of Hand”, Just “Plenty of Booing”:

Nooners surveys the mob scenes, the hangings in effigy, the assaults, the unhinged rhetoric -- and blames it all on Obama.

All of this is unnecessarily and unhelpfully divisive and provocative. They [the White House and Democrats] are mocking and menacing concerned citizens. This only makes a hot situation hotter. Is this what the president wants? It couldn’t be. But then in an odd way he sometimes seems not to have fully absorbed the awesome stature of his office. You really, if you’re president, can’t call an individual American stupid, if for no other reason than that you’re too big. You cannot allow your allies to call people protesting a health-care plan “extremists” and “right wing,” or bought, or Nazi-like, either. They’re citizens. They’re concerned. They deserve respect.

Shorter Noonan: if the Democrats would stop dressing like slutty socialists, they wouldn't get raped.

h/t to Bob Cesca who also noted..

Adding... Peggy Noonan was at the top of her passive aggressive condescending game. Bravo. Referring to the president as "boorish" in her trademark insufferable hushed tone doesn't make her "graceful" or "civil" -- it just makes her look ridiculous, since she clearly doesn't know what "boorish" means.

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Star Parker who decided that wingnut welfare paid a lot better than actual welfare was one of the speakers at the Values Voters Summit 2009 this year, so C-SPAN decided to grace us with her presence on Washington Journal.

Here's Brad at Sadly, No!'s description of a wingnut welfare queen which I could not have described any better.

Basically, I define wingnut welfare queens as people who:

a.) Have very little talent.

b.) Work in the right-wing media machine, think-tank circles, or the Republican Party.

c.) Are employed solely on their willingness to act as shills for the GOP or wingnuttery in general.

When a Democratic caller noted the racism coming from the likes of Glenn Beck and many of those at the Tea Bag protests and said there is racism on all sides of the aisle, and asked Ms. Parker why evangelicals don't get upset about the death penalty or about the number of Iraqi babies killed in "this useless war we had", here's how she responds.

Parker: He's also not the first President that has gotten opposition from day one. We saw it under Bush and even before Sept. 11th. This is what we do as Americans. This is our society.

Now getting to the question of racism, you're absolutely right. I am sure that there are racists in this society on both sides. There are white racists, there are black racists, there are Korean racists, there are Japanese racists, there are... race is an issue regardless.

But now what we have to say are... is that everybody in the Republican Party racist. See this is what liberals have tried to convince society of. All of the racists are in the Republican Party.

Well I think it's just as racist for ah... for somebody to say that black children cannot learn in a private environment, so we're going to force them to a government school. I think it's just as racist to say that black people will never be able to learn how to save and invest their money, so we're going to force them into a Social Security that we know that they're going to die before they recover all of the money that they put into it.

I think it's just as racist to say that when we're having health care discussions we have to start at the premise that people can't fend for themselves--that they will not be able to look at private insurance options and choose one.

So, you know we can keep throwing that term on the table and acting like either everybody has to be all pure or everybody is not, but we can say let's move beyond the name calling and talk about the issues of the day. And on this issue of the day with health care and with this expansion of government, from the stimulus, to the auto industry, to the banking industry, you're absolutely right.

There is tremendous push back from the right against Barack Obama's policies and it's because we disagree with him.

Wow. I'm white, but I have quite a few very good black friends and I cannot imagine any one of them being able to listen to this tripe without being completely insulted. I don't think I've ever heard anyone denigrate their own race this badly before with the exception of possibly Michelle Malkin.

So apparently in Star Parker's world, if you're not for funneling tax dollars to private religious schools, you think black children can't learn in that environment. Social Security is somehow keeping black people from understanding how to invest their money if they’re lucky enough to have any to invest in the first place. And last but not least saying that anyone that thinks everyone should have affordable health insurance coverage which is possibly provided by the government thinks that black people are too stupid to pick from the non-existent choices they have now.

These wingnuts sure know how to pick 'em for their choice of speakers at these conferences, don't they?

Maybe Star Parker could just get all of the black people in America jobs shilling at right wing think tanks and Fox News for the Republican Party like she did and all of their problems would be solved.

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David Sirota takes on Florida GOP Chairman and Obama school speech fear monger Jim Greer on Don Lemon's weekend show on CNN. This time the topic is the collective freak out by people at these Tea Bag protests now that the scary black man has been elected.

Sirota asks Greer where the protests were when Bush was trampling all over our constitution and running up the deficit and you've just got to love Greer's response here -- deflect and denial.

First Greer cites Bush's terrible poll numbers and tries to conflate the protests going on now to the people protesting the Iraq War, who as Sirota correctly points out were completely different protesters and not the people taking to the streets now.

After admitting that they are different people Greer tries to paint the Tea Baggers as just every day Americans from all political walks of life, and not the fringe right of the conservative movement.

Then Greer tries to pretend that race isn't part of the problem with these protesters, which Don Lemon calls him out for.

LEMON: David, what's happening here?

SIROTA: Well, again, I think that there's a segment of the population that does not want to accept President Obama as a legitimate president. And I think that you can tell that this is really a partisan lynch mob by understanding that these people were not out making the exact same criticism of President Bush. Where were the people who were worried about the constitution when President Bush trampled the constitution with the Patriot Act? Where were these people talking about government spending when President Bush inflated the deficit to record proportions?

LEMON: Jim, that's a good question.

SIROTA: Where were they?

GREER: Well, I think you saw where they were when the polls showed that unfortunately from a Republican standpoint, President Bush was down in the 20s. I mean, the American public -

SIROTA: Where were the protests?

GREER: Well, you know, there were people protesting President Bush because I saw them quite often as I traveled the country.

SIROTA: Do you think conservative tea partiers are protesting --

LEMON: I do have to say no that people did protest the Iraq war. I saw a lot of that. I covered a lot of it.

GREER: A lot of that.

LEMON: People said they had pictures of President Bush. They hung things of him in effigy. They put it in on fire, lit them on fire. So there were things, but they were protesting a war, and that they were looking for evidence that never turned up. So it's kind of a different thing, but he was protested.

SIROTA: Those are different protesters.

GREER: Where we are today --

Well, they may be different protesters, but you asked me, where were they? And there were people protesting President Bush. Where we are today, Don, David, is that this administration has tried to radically change the role of government in our daily lives and the role of government in major industries that have made this country great. And that is why Americans, not just Republicans, but Americans are frustrated. They can't get answers to their questions. They're concerned about President Obama's views of what America should look like today and what it will look like in the future. And they just reject that. And they're angry. They're frustrated because it's not the America that they brought up to have great respect for, and they're concerned.

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Incertus takes aim at "probably the dumbest thing you'll read all day."

Emptywheel: So sorry we tortured you. Oh, and about that truth commission…

Pharyngula: A review of Stephen Jay Gould and the Politics of Evolution.

Les Enragés: The Million Can March – respond to tea bag demonstrations with a food drive for Independence Day.

Corrente: The Shock Doctrine comes to California.

Guest post by Batocchio. Temporarily e-mail tips to Batocchio9 AT yahoo DOT com. Thanks!

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There's just so much garbage in this clip, it's hard to sort it all out. But garbage it is and sort we must. I think that it's instructive to remember as we wade through this textbook example of fallacious logic that Newt Gingrich is considered the great scholar of the GOP. No wonder the GOP doesn't seem able to think their way out of the tea bag they put themselves in.

Still holding the talking points given to him by the Bush administration's Revisionist History Tour™, Newtie tries to muddy the waters by simultaneously claiming that the Clinton and Obama administrations did or do not take the War on Terror™ as seriously as the Bush administration, but also find that the tactics used by the Bush administration in their pursuit of against terrorism are so acceptable that they haven't tried outlawing them yet. HUH????

(S)ince 1993 when seven people were killed at the World Trade Center, we’ve had two cycles. We had a Clinton administration that thought this was a criminal problem, that issued -- that refused to allow the CIA and the FBI to cooperate, that refused to pressure Saudi Arabia or Yemen to go after people who were killing our folks. And then you had a Bush administration that said this is a war.

Hmm...interesting revisionism. Let's recall, Newtie, that the Clinton administration actually caught and prosecuted the "blind sheik" responsible for the 1993 WTC bombing, unlike the Bush administration, who declared war on a country that had nothing to do with 9/11 and killed millions of Iraqis but left Osama Bin Laden uncaught. That's a successful strategy, innit?

WALLACE: I want to ask you about one other aspect of this. Pelosi says even if she was briefed on this that there was nothing she could do because these were classified briefings. She and the Republican chairman of the committee got this information. There’s nothing they could do.

You as House speaker received these kinds of briefings back in the ‘90s. If you objected to a secret operation, was there something you could do?

GINGRICH: Sure. I mean, the first thing you do is call the president and tell him you will feel compelled to pass a law cutting off the money. I mean, there are lots of things you can do if you want to do it. The Congress is pretty powerful if it wants to be.

And second, you know, they’ve had control since January of 2007. They haven’t passed a law making waterboarding illegal. They haven’t gone into any of these things and changed law. In fact, they’ve had several -- they -- recently, you find that Attorney General Holder’s own Justice Department is saying, “Well, you know, some of these memos are actually right. They’re not wrong.”

Um, Newt? You do know that waterboarding is already illegal, don't you? Oh great historian of the GOP, can you tell me what happened to those Japanese soldiers who waterboarded American GIs during WWII? So Congress should make waterboarding illegal again otherwise they condone the act? Astonishing lack of logic there.

So this is -- what we’re seeing now in a very sad way is as bitter a partisan attack on the Bush people as we’ve seen since the McCarthy era. The degree that they’re putting specific people at risk for criminal prosecution is unprecedented in modern America.

Never let be said that today's GOP isn't the most persecuted bunch of privileged white folk in the history of mankind. Jeez. Here's another way to look at it, Newt: Specific people are at risk for criminal prosecution because of THEIR UNPRECEDENTED CRIMINAL ACTS. "Rule of Law" party, my aunt Fanny.

Which brings me to my final point, the implied slur against AG Eric Holder for his firm's representation of Yemeni detainees at Gitmo. Somehow this is siding with terrorists to actually respect our legal system. While Holder himself did not actually work on those Gitmo cases, the fact remains--and I'm sure that this comes as a shock to Gingrich--but not all attorneys think their clients are innocent. They are just interested in making sure that justice is served by a fair trial.

Obviously, the concepts of fairness and justice are alien to Gingrich.

Transcripts (courtesy of CQ Politics) below the fold

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David Shuster responds to Bill O'Reilly's criticism of MSNBC for making sexual jokes about the tea bag protests and replays some of the Fox News wall to wall coverage of the events.

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It wasn't just Fox News that was there to cover the tea bag protests. The Daily Show was there as well. John Oliver takes the tea bag protesters to task for their comparison of the Obama administration to just how bad the Brits were during the American Revolution. Sadly as with Glenn Beck, most of the protesters don't seem to be up on their American history.

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Both in his Talking Points Memo segment and later on in "Policing the Net," Bill O'Reilly is shocked, shocked that those dirty-minded liberals at that competing network actually had a little fun with the "Tea Bag" protests.

In the later segment, O'Reilly brings on Amanda Carpenter, who can't bring herself to openly reference "teabagging," and the Gallant Sir O'Reilly won't let her go there. Of course these scumsucking perverts earn nothing but contempt from him for their dirty-mindedness and low sexual mores.

So sayeth the author of Those Who Trespass:

"Say baby, put down that pipe and get my pipe up."

"I would like you to unhook your bra and let it slide down your arms. You can keep your shirt on."

"Cup your hands under your breasts and hold them for ten seconds."

Funny thing: I always thought it was liberals who lacked a sense of humor.

We can only hope they don't decide to hold any Bareback Parties, or Fudgepacking Parties. Or even worse, Santorum Parties. It will drive us all insane with suppressed laughter.

Meanwhile, I'm sure Amanda and Bill will be appalled, but I had to share this shot from a lonely liberal who showed up too early yesterday (like me) at Seattle's Tea Bag party site:

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Rachel Maddow gives her recap of the tea bag protests today and a few double entendres thrown in for good measure. For all the time Fox put into promoting these protests it seems the turnout was not quite what they had hoped. And apparently Republican protesters don't understand much about permits and not throwing things that could get you into trouble with the Secret Service on the White House lawn.

Ana Marie Cox was at the D.C. tea bag protests today and fills Rachel in on her experiences there.

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From a March 27 tea party in Hartford, CT:

Photo Credit: Tia Ann Chapman / Hartford Courant

Note to winguts: When you decide to draw up a sign accusing others of being incompetent or, you know, "morans," (or demanding that immigrants use the "offical language") you might want to double-check your spelling. Contrary to what you might be hearing, dictionaries don't hate America.

(Cross-posted at BobCesca.com)

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From The Daily Show March 17, 2009. Jon Stewart has some fun with the "tea baggers" and crazy-eyes Weepy McBeck this St. Patrick's Day.