Ah yes, the Glenn Beck citizen patriots! They turned out in force last night to disrupt yet another town hall meeting on health care reform. I wonder when the union members start showing up? (Read Bill Mann's Four Creative Ways to Deal with Right-Wing Rent-a-Mobs. Great ideas!)

From the St. Pete Times, one account:

TAMPA – Bitter divisions over reforming America's health care system exploded Thursday night in Tampa amid cat calls, jeering and shoving at a town hall meeting.

"Tyranny! Tyranny! Tyranny!" dozens of people shouted as U.S. Rep. Kathy Castor struggled to talk about health insurance reforms under consideration in Washington, D.C.

"There is more consensus than there is disagreement when you get right down to it," Castor offered, immediately drowned out by groans and boos.

She pressed on, mostly unheard among the screams from the audience of more than 200.

"Tell the truth! Tell the truth!"

"Read the bill!"

"Forty-million illegals! Forty million illegals!"

The spectacle at the Children's Board in Ybor City sounded more like a wrestling cage match than a panel discussion on national policy, and it was just the latest example of a health care meeting disrupted by livid protesters. Similar scenes are likely to be repeated across the country as lawmakers head back to their home districts for the summer recess.

Thursday's forum/near riot was sponsored by state Rep. Betty Reed, D-Tampa, and the Service Employees International Union, who apparently had hoped to hold something of a pep rally for President Obama's health care reform proposal.

Instead, hundreds of vocal critics turned out, many of them saying they had been spurred on through the Tampa 912 activist group promoted by conservative radio and television personality Glenn Beck. Others had received e-mails from the Hillsborough Republican party that urged people to speak out against the plan and offered talking points to challenge supporters.

An overflow crowd of critics was left waiting outside the building – and in some cases pounding on the meeting room doors – while health care reform activists complained that Democrats and union members were guided into the room for prime seats.

"They can't even run a meeting, and they want to run health care?," scoffed Kevin Grant, a Tampa printing business owner, standing near someone wielding a "Shame on you America. You sold your soul to the Devil" sign.

From the Tampa Tribune:

The problems began when a crowd of around 500, many of them recruited to attend by interest groups both for and against the proposal, sought to enter the meeting room. The room, in the offices of the Hillsborough County Children's Board on East Palm Avenue, has a capacity of only about 250.

Several hundred people, mostly opponents, wound up outside or packing a hallway leading into the meeting room. Some scuffled with members of the sponsoring groups who manned the doorway.

(h/t Josh @ The Seminal)

'Nuff said.

Newt Gingrich -- the King of the Teabaggers -- was on NBC's Today Show today slamming President Obamam for shaking hands with Hugo Chavez. In the mind of the Teabagger King, that looks bad.

The importance of the Chavez hand shake is the report you did just now, on the jump in book sales from #54,000 to number 2. Everywhere in Latin America, enemies of America are going to use the picture of Chavez smiling and being with the President as proof that Chavez is now legitimate, that he's acceptable, He's a dictatorial figure, he's an anti American figure, but what I find distressing is this administration is opposed to looking for oil off shore, but the President bows to the Saudi King...

It does matter to the world...

He's doing his best to lead the Fox News cult, isn't he? Obama is just so weak on North Korea too. Teabaggers like Newt will stare in the face of history and go blank. The Teabagger King will lie about all things and be strong for his people. Nixon/Brezhnev, Reagan/Gorbachev none of those great Republican presidents ever shook hands with dictators. Nope, that never happened. George Bush never bowed to a Saudi King. Nope, never happened. Poppy Bush never used cash he got from the Saudis to bail out his son over bad business deals. Nope, never.

What crime has President Obama committed? He's trying to restore the image of America overseas to the rest of the world and he's being successful at it. And the Teabagger King can't have that.

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It's been very illuminating to watch the non-existent conservative leaders in this country freak out over the new DHS terrorism bulletin.

Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment.

Why would people like Malkin, Beck, Hannity and Pat Robertson be so offended by a report that is made to only send up a warning flare about the possible people who could go off the deep end and be the next Poplawski? Glenn Beck was so shaken up about our reporting that he made some fanatical reference to himself as just being a flight attendant.

Police officers over the weekend were killed by a crazy with a gun and blaming anybody else besides him is like blaming the flight attendant after a terrorist takes down a plane. Giving passengers a nice little safety talk to prepare them doesn't mean your responsible should a terrorist actually make that worst case scenario happen.

It's called "guilt." Not guilt by association, but a deep down personal knowledge that tingles someplace locked far, far away. There's a "knowing" that what one is doing is contributing to the madness all around us, but scream in denial that we're out to get them.

It's like the alcoholic saying they can stop drinking at any time as they are being hauled off in an ambulance, red lights a blazin' in a full body brace as they struggle to look back to see if there is one last drink left in the broken bottle of Tanqueray in the front seat of their car that is wrapped around a telephone poll. Two people are left bleeding on the road, moaning in pain while a third isn't moving at all.

As C&L's David Neiwert writes:

In fact, Smith confirms everything we've reported here: Not only is the report focused entirely on the very real problem of the lethally violent potential of extremist right-wing terrorism, but mainstream conservatives' wailing and teeth-gnashing over it is -- besides being an egregious display of a persecution complex -- if anything a tacit admission of their own complicity in fueling extremist rhetoric.

Take the poll if you can, because we all know that FOX news monitors these Hot Seats all the time.

Matt Taibbi takes the Republicans apart for becoming the party that has removed itself from the legislative process. When MSNBC's Carlos Watson tries to tell him that since they're in the minority all they can bring to the table is guerrilla warfare, Taibbi responds.

Taibbi: What you are saying when you say that is that the GOP is serving as the rodeo clowns or the class clowns of this horrific financial era.

One of the problems they have is that they've really taken themselves out of the picture as a serious force in the Congress. The Minority Leader, John Boehner, has told the party that the GOP has to get used to being not legislators, and they have to focus on being instead communicators, which means they really haven't proposed any serious alternatives to the Obama budget which makes them really non-players in the whole congressional picture.

Watson: Hang on for a second, because they could legitimately say the way the House of Representatives works, those who are in the minority, particularly those who have 80 fewer votes than the Democrats, they realistically don't have a role to play. The best thing they can do is offer guerrilla tactics, if you will, and they can say in the Senate they are doing as much as they can.

Taibbi: The business of legislating is a long, hard slog, and you have to form these bills in committee and all these guys work together constantly. And when they say at the outset that they're not going to propose alternatives, that takes them out of markup process, it takes them out of the committee process. It really makes them non-players throughout the nuts and bolts of the bureaucratic legislative process, and that's what they've done.

Taibbii has a great post at his blog today on the irrelevance of conservatives, reflected in their little Tea Tantrums: "Teabagging Michelle Malkin". It was the reason he was asked on the segment. In it, he teabags the teabaggers with an incredible rant:

Continue reading »

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:

Media Matters put together a mashup of what's happened so far. FOX News Gone Wild!

What a sad, sad network FOX is along with their new website.

Most of the people I've watched are disenchanted conservatives who don't even understand what's going on in the country. And the parents are bringing out their little kids as props.

Jane Hamsher has a great post refuting Malkin's time line of the Dick Armey led teabaggers:

A Teabagger Timeline: Koch, Coors, Newt, Dick Armey There From The Start

And I'm trying to find the time to watch Hockey playoffs tonight. The Rangers vs The Caps. The Dynamo (Ovechkin) vs King Henrik (Lundqvist)

I'm supposed to go to a Santa Monica tea party, but I'm swamped here. Neiwert went to one in Seattle. In Chicago the wackos are out in force.

Wingnut: He's a fascist.

Roesgen: Why do you say he's a fascist? He's the President of the United States. Do you realize how offensive that is?

Wingnut: I think he's a fascist.

Roesgen: Why?

Wingnut: Because he is.

She then questions a man asking him what does any of this have to do with taxes...

Then we have this: Parts of WH in lockdown after tea bags thrown over gate. Protestors yelling death to president. #teaparty

Amanda: MSNBC: White House lawn evacuated bc someone threw a tea bag over the fence.

The crazies are out in force today. be careful.

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Jed Lewison has some good stuff over at Kos.

The bizarroland of teabaggers has begun and Cavuto is all over it up in Sacramento. People dressed up in costumes that can't even speak make up the drama that Cavuto is trying to bring to his republican day. As he interviews weirdos who attack President Obama, who wants to bring change, the teabaggers don't want no stinkin' change.

I'm very angry. We don't want change. They can keep the change.

Cavuto finds some kids holding signs against paying taxes. They sure are worried about paying taxes.

Kid: We pay too much taxes and I don't want to pay for someone else's debt...

I guess they enjoyed the Bush administration that brought us nothing but chaos and ruin to America and the world. They seem to forget that it was under the Karl Rove and his merry band that helped destroy the financial sector.