Slog
News & ArtsThursday, November 15, 2012
2012 No End to the Tea People
Posted by Charles Mudede on Thu, Nov 15, 2012 at 8:30 AM
This batch of crazy is in Wisconsin, a state Obama handily won:
All nine also told a tea party-aligned group they backed passing so-called "right-to-work" legislation; allowing people to carry guns without having to get permits from the state; allowing people to buy raw, or unpasteurized, milk; and blocking state funding for the federal Real ID law that requires states to develop more secure driver's licenses.But their stance on the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, could cause the most fireworks in the upcoming session. Walker must decide by Friday whether the state will create a health care exchange under the health care law or leave those duties to President Barack Obama's administration.
Rep. Chris Kapenga (R-Delafield) is one of the nine from Wisconsin who told the Campaign for Liberty he would back legislation to declare Obamacare illegal and allow police to arrest federal officials who take steps to implement it in Wisconsin. He said he believes the health care law is unconstitutional, despite the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling that it passes constitutional muster.
"Just because Obama was re-elected does not mean he's above the constitution," Kapenga said.
Because the stupidity in all of this is so astonishing, I'm beginning to wonder if I'm missing something, if this is a kind of performance art whose joke has flown right over my head. I really want to give these tea people the benefit of the doubt. They know very well what they are doing, they know it is entertaining, they like to mix a little fun with their politics. This has to be it. I love humans. Humans have big brains. These tea people are humans, and so they have to have big brains. Am I wrong? What am I missing?
50
State police cannot arrest federal officials. That's not how it works. This guy, who claims that certain things are unconstitutional, needs to take another look at the Constitution, and he'll learn that what he's proposing is against the law.
46
@44 for the win.
Say what you will about raw milk, but it's better than raw goat's milk, let me tell you.
Say what you will about raw milk, but it's better than raw goat's milk, let me tell you.
45
My guess is the raw milk issue is symptomatic of a relatively isolated, rural, agrarian-based demographic that views the increasing urbanization of this country as a direct threat to their way of life. Not withstanding the fact that this trend has been ocuring for more than a century, it seems that the notion of a multi cultural, ethnicly diverse, and predominantly secular America has finally impressed itself sufficiently in their consciousness (aided in large part by the Chicken Little prognostications of FOX News, Linbaugh, Beck, etc al) to send them into some sort of state of mass panic, wherein "real America" (ie rural, white, conservative, Protestant) is in imminent danger of being overrun and sub summed by rampaging hordes of colored gay Muslims from the coastal metropolises, backed by Godless Commie-Pinko foot soldiers from Russia and China, with auxiliaries comprised of scimitar-and-IED-weilding Islamo-fascists hot on their heels, and all intent on confiscating their guns and Bibles, forcing their wives and daughters to have mandatory abortions, and demanding they all swear an oath of fealtyto the ghost of Osama Bin Laden.
In short: they're all bat-shite crazy...
In short: they're all bat-shite crazy...
42
I wonder how many thousands upon thousands, if not millions, of people didn't lose their lives to food-borne illness since the widespread introduction of Pasteurization? Jesus...
41
I also wonder what you are missing, Charles. Earlier this week you wrote a post about Greek Austerity that supported seccession from the Euro, a position that is pushed by the radically right-wing and racist Golden Dawn party. Why is crazy hater politics OK for Greece but not for Wisconsin?
40
Raw milk is a fetid stew of bacteria and viruses. It's only legal in a few states, and those states regulate the fuck out of it. I'm guessing the tea people wouldn't approve of that.
38
@33: Honestly, the most confusing thing about the entire American electoral system, to an outsider, has to be this. The control by partisan political entities of the process - the setting of electoral boundaries, voting rules, all of it. It's baffling that anyone thinks that's a good idea.
36
I say we give them all the raw, unpasteurized milk they can drink, delivered in unregulated, uninspected tankers from unregulated, uninspected dairy farms.
34
Big brains are ideal containers for big delusions. Social groups of big brains can plunge more determinedly off-track than individual brains.
BTW, given abundant evidence of how easy it is to go so far wrong, how do you know yours is right and theirs is wrong?
BTW, given abundant evidence of how easy it is to go so far wrong, how do you know yours is right and theirs is wrong?
33
@15 (marie): Wisconsin (like every other state except for Maine and Nebraska) has statewide winner-take-all presidential voting, so all of its electoral votes go to whichever candidate wins a plurality of statewide popular votes. But Wisconsin is also one of the states that Republicans controlled when the results of the 2010 census came out, and they gerrymandered merrily away to ensure that douchebags like Ryan would have a disproportionate number of safe congressional districts. See:
Why John Boehner Has Gerrymandering to Thank for His Majority | Mother Jones
http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2012/11/…
- OR -
http://goo.gl/0CAyD
Why John Boehner Has Gerrymandering to Thank for His Majority | Mother Jones
http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2012/11/…
- OR -
http://goo.gl/0CAyD
30
Is raw milk allowed in California? It must be cow milk only, because unpasteurized camel milk is illegal other than for personal use (if you own your own camel).
I've a feeling Wisconsin tea people aren't fussing about camel milk though. It doesn't matter whether Jesus drank it, it's nasty and foreign.
I've a feeling Wisconsin tea people aren't fussing about camel milk though. It doesn't matter whether Jesus drank it, it's nasty and foreign.
29
Wouldn't exactly say it's what you're missing.
More likely, they're missing the concept that a family tree has branches.
More likely, they're missing the concept that a family tree has branches.
28
Charles, I think that Lee Atwater summed it up in his "Nigger Nigger Nigger" comment in 1981, as well as his action throughout his career. It's the conservatives flaying around for the next rebranding of white fear. It's abstract performance for the monkey brain.
Via Krugman, we now have audio of his quote...
http://www.thenation.com/article/170841/…
Via Krugman, we now have audio of his quote...
http://www.thenation.com/article/170841/…
27
The teabaggers are going to be around for at least another four years: until a Republican is back in the White House or until the Koch brothers get tired of funding them. Considering how effective the teabaggers are at hijacking the narrative, with relatively modest investment on their part, I highly doubt the latter.
24
#9
Yes, I am seeing some possible fractionalizations in the Republican Party a,d some possible mergers with the subgroup.
One such combination, small perhaps, might be a Republican-Occupy alliance. Melding environmentalism with anti-regulation.
Yes, I am seeing some possible fractionalizations in the Republican Party a,d some possible mergers with the subgroup.
One such combination, small perhaps, might be a Republican-Occupy alliance. Melding environmentalism with anti-regulation.
23
@ 15, Ryan was just running for the House, not the Senate, so it wasn't a statewide election.
When I tried to look for something reporting how his district voted, I found this:
I think most people who voted for both Obama and Ryan did it out of knee-jerk preference for the incumbent - probably in both cases. A lot of voters are just lazy that way.
When I tried to look for something reporting how his district voted, I found this:
Wisconsin voters delivered a mixed verdict on Paul Ryan this week.
His House constituents returned him to Congress. They also voted narrowly for the Mitt Romney-Ryan ticket.
But his congressional victory margin was his smallest ever (11.5 points).
He lost his hometown of Janesville twice: by 10 points for Congress and by 25 points for vice president.
And the GOP ticket lost the battleground state of Wisconsin by 7 points in a race Republicans thought would be far closer. In Ryan’s southern Wisconsin district, the Romney-Ryan ticket ran about 3 points behind Ryan the congressional candidate.
In the end, there’s little in the numbers to suggest Ryan provided a meaningful home-state boost to Romney.
I think most people who voted for both Obama and Ryan did it out of knee-jerk preference for the incumbent - probably in both cases. A lot of voters are just lazy that way.
22
I know friendly, sane people who want to buy raw milk to make their own cheese. They want it taxed and regulated. Because they're not demented.
21
Wait, raw milk isn't legal in Wisconsin? Why not? It's legal in California, you just have to have a license to sell it and well, pretty much everyone knows the risks.
20
@8 Okay, which fascist movement would you prefer to use as a comparison? It's early days yet, but something is clearly going on with these folks, from the disparagement of swaths of the population, to the violent invective, to the denunciation of our government.
19
@5 and 7 - I'm from Wisconsin and worked on a State Assembly campaign for a Democrat in one of the very red rural areas in 2008. The raw milk thing has to do with the the sacredness associated with the family farm in Wisconsin. "My cows, my milk, I'll drink it however the fuck I want, and sell it to my neighbors the same way my great-great granddaddy did when he settled this land in 1847." It's mostly libertarian (hence the Ron Paul quote), but the anti-vaccination people, the super-religious folk who don't believe in any kind of human intervention with God's plan, and some of the crunchy granola local food hippies all jumped on the bandwagon, making for some very strange bedfellows. Only a teeny-tiny percentage of people gives a shit about raw milk, but the ones who do REALLY FUCKING CARE, and they're LOUD about it. And they care for wildly, comically diverse reasons.
18
If people want raw milk, fine, but as a microbiologist I wouldn't recommend actually drinking the stuff that way.
17
@ 3, the real parallel here is with the founding of the Weimar Republic, when the "Stabbed in the Back" myth took root, thanks to the fact that the Imperial government kept the German citizens misinformed about how they were faring in WWI. The teabaggers have similarly been kept in the dark, with the main difference being that they volunteered for that.
@ 8, if the comparison is legit, it isn't Godwin's. If you're going to call it, you have to show why @ 3 is wrong.
@ 13, lulz.
@ 8, if the comparison is legit, it isn't Godwin's. If you're going to call it, you have to show why @ 3 is wrong.
@ 13, lulz.
15
Isn't Wisconsin the state that voted for Obama and yet where Paul Ryan also won the popular vote? I've still been trying to wrap my head around who would vote for Obama AND Ryan.
14
Charles, I get your point about this being some freaky sort of performance art. The first time I heard of Westboro Baptist Church I honest to god thought it was some twisted out of control Off Broadway group trying to make some sort of social statement about religion.
12
They still need a vote of the people or the people's representatives to do any of these things. Let them try their best. They will keep losing.
11
@6 Also a lot of these Tea Bagger types are virulently anti-immigrant and you can't have proper immigration enforcement w/o a secure ID system.
10
Yes, the tea people are humans, with human brains. But the political tea people (the politicians, that is) are catering to a group of mostly isolated, insulated tea people who are misinformed and frightened. These people are told over and over by their idols (the above mentioned tea people politicians as well as national figures like rush limbogh) that Obama is going to take their guns away. They don't have proof of that, but they're frightened it's true. They're told Obama's going to let all illegal Mexicans move into their neighborhoods. They're told Obama's going to let those illegal Mexicans vote - multiple times - in every election. They're told blacks and gays and muslims are going to be moving in as well, and that Obama is going to force everyone to follow muslim laws, and allow gays to have anal sex in front of children at sunday school, and end christmas. They have no proof of any of that, but the only people they listen to are telling them that day after day after day. They're scared shitless.
You know all this already Charles.
You know all this already Charles.
9
Politically I'm not sure why they're all concerned about being able to buy unpasteurized milk. This doesn't seem like the normal things they go on about. However, I do think consumers should be able to buy raw milk if they so choose. I wish I could get my hands on raw milk and raw milk cheese. And no, I'm not some crazy anti-science, anti-vaccination, anti-health code nut.
7
Domestic abusers have your big brains too, Charles. And if that woman's not theirs, then she just can't live. Same thing with the teabags and this country.
@5 Ron Paul brought it in. I just saw him a quote from him about it.
@5 Ron Paul brought it in. I just saw him a quote from him about it.
3
Perhaps you're missing the parallel with latter Weimar Germany, when through a series of public acts of subterfuge of the Parliament, and orchestrated shows of violence against their opponents and popular scapegoats, the National Socialists fought their way to power.
These people are fascists, and they appear to be ruthless. We need to sit on them soon.
These people are fascists, and they appear to be ruthless. We need to sit on them soon.
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