Response to Anti-Liberal Article by Gary Hubbell
Updated 2011-09-25
I've just been threatened with a lawsuit over this entry, because I included the full text of Hubbell's article. I thought the manner in which I was using it would have fallen under fair use, so I didn't think I was doing anything illegal. But, since this blog is just a hobby of mine, I don't feel like getting caught up in a legal battle over it, especially since I'm not an expert on copyright law. So, for the time being, I'm going to remove most of the quotes from Hubbell and leave my commentary. I am going to leave the first sentence from each excerpt, so that readers can follow along in Hubbell's original article. Certainly, this must fall under fair use.
For reference, here's the e-mailed threat that I received. I suppose I should mention that it's possible to spoof e-mails, so there's no guarantee this is actually from Hubbell.
From: Gary Hubbell [e-mail address redacted]
To:
Date: 24 Sep 2011, 10:21:29 PM
Subject: You have one day to remove my copyrighted content from your websiteI will sue your stupid liberal ass for more than you ever knew you possessed if you don't remove my copyrighted content from your website at once.
If you don't believe me, contact your copyright attorney and see who's right and who is wrong. I know the law and you don't, you ignoramus.
It would be fun to go through with this, because you have defamed me, I can prove it, and you have violated my copyright.
tick...tick...tick...
Gary Hubbell, Broker/Owner
United Country Colorado Brokers
Hotchkiss, CO 81419
[contact info redacted]
On to the entry...
I got another e-mail forward that I couldn't resist replying to. The e-mail was basically just a copy of an article from the Aspen Times Weekly, Barack Obama has awakened a sleeping nation, written by Gary Hubbell.
Much of what this guy said was just outright wrong. Whether he's lying or misinformed, I'm not really sure. But considering that this is a monthly column that he writes for a paper, it doesn't really make much of a difference. He ought to have the sense of responsibility to fact check statements he wants in print.
Barack Obama has awakened a sleeping nationGARY HUBBELL
ASPEN TIMES WEEKLYBarack Obama is the best thing that has happened to America in the last 100 years. Truly, he is the savior of America's future. He is the best thing ever.
[remainder of quote removed]
Approval Rating:
The e-mail starts off bad, getting one of it's first claims wrong. You have to go back to Kennedy to find a president who didn't have a worse approval rating than Obama at some point during his term. In fact, Obama's approval rating has increased with the passage of the health care reform bill.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_approval_rating
http://www.examiner.com/x-5738-Political-Buzz-Examiner~y2010m3d22-Video-President-Obamas-approval-rating-went-up-slightly-as-health-care-reform-neared-passage
Debt:
I'll get to this a bit more below, but the short of it is that right now the country's involved in two wars and a recession. I'm not surprised we're in debt. Granted, the gross debt is pretty high right now, and in terms of dollars it's the highest it's ever been, but as a percentage of GDP, it has been higher in the past. In fact, during WWII, the gross debt briefly reached over 100% of GDP. After a steady decrease following the war, starting with Reagan the gross debt increased from 33.4% of GDP to 64.1% by the time Bush Senior left office. It decreased to 57.3% under Clinton, and then began increasing again under Bush Junior, reaching 62.9% by the time he left office. Since Obama's taken office, he's continued Bush's trend, and the gross debt was at 83.4% at the end of last year.
Public debt isn't quite so bad (gross debt less intra-governmental obligations such as the money that the government owes to the two Social Security Trust Funds, the Old-Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance program and the Social Security Disability Insurance program). It's still lower than what it was when Bush Sr. left office.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_debt_by_U.S._presidential_terms
Healthcare:
I'll get to this in more detail below, too. Yes, lots of people have protested health care reform. But lots of other people have supported it. But that's always been the nature of things. Lots of people protested the de-segregation of schools, too, and I think it's clear now who was in the right on that one. Just because a lot of people protest something isn't necessarily an indication that the thing is good or bad. It's just a measure of how much emotion it evokes.
Stimulus Spending:
To say that the stimulus spending hasn't worked is just an out and out falsehood. It has worked, and our economy would be in worse shape if it hadn't been passed. Granted, it could have been implemented better, but it definitely helped. Had it been bigger, it might have had even more impact.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/17/business/economy/17leonhardt.html
Also, given that this guy's whole point seems to be that Republicans, even if not perfect, are the better alternative to Democrats, it's hard to overlook the Republican hypocrisy on this issue - bragging about stimulus money in their home states to their constituents, while criticizing the stimulus when they're in D.C.
http://thinkprogress.org/touting-recovery-opposed/
Unemployment:
Of course unemployment is high. We're in the midst of the worst recession/depression since the Great Depression, and of course it's going to take some time to recover. Did this guy think we'd be back to normal in just a year? Is he blaming Obama for a recession that began before he took office? Or is he just listing all our nations woes and blaming them on 'liberalism,' despite the years of Republican controlled executive and legislative branches in the years leading up to this recession?
Entitlement Programs:
What exactly does he mean by unsustainable levels? I'm not arguing that welfare programs couldn't be modified to reduce their costs, but this seems like hyprebole since the programs are sustainable. Below is a link of the proposed 2011 budget shown in a graph to make it easy to see how much money those 'entitlement' programs receive relative to the total budget (The military and Social Security combined make up for 40% of the federal budget).
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/02/01/us/budget.html?hp
That's why Barack Obama is such a good thing for America.[remainder of quote removed]
I always wonder about this association of Obama with 'unchecked liberalism'. People lose a lot of credibility in my eyes when they insist on calling him a far left liberal. He's a moderate, a bit left of center. I know I've mentioned this before, but there are some actual, honest to goodness far left parties in this country - the Green Party, Communist Party USA, Freedom Socialist Party / Radical Women, the Party for Socialism and Liberation, Socialist Action, etc. Obama and the other Democrats? Not so much.
http://www.politics1.com/parties.htm
http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/09/11/navarrette.obama/index.html
And why even bring up Hitler?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin%27s_law
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductio_ad_Hitlerum
Average Americans who have quietly gone about their lives..[remainder of quote removed]
Activism like the Tea Party nuts? The people who threw bricks through a Congressman's window after the health care reform bill was passed? The ones who shot out a window? The christian terrorists who planned to kill police officers in Michigan? A lot of the so called activism making headlines right now is more rioting and vandalism than anything constructive.
http://bigthink.com/ideas/19284
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8593975.stm
Think of the crap we've slowly learned to tolerate over the past 50 years as liberalism sought to re-structure the America that was the symbol of freedom and liberty to all the people of the world.[remainder of quote removed]
Immigration:
To be honest, out of all the problems we're facing right now, people illegally entering our country just to find jobs is pretty low on my list of concerns. It's not right, and something needs to be done about it, but it's not worth throwing a fit over. (And now that I've actually met a fairThe bigger problems I'm concerned with are smuggling and border security.
Welfare:
I agree with his take on welfare. Through Irma, I've heard stories of women showing up in labor & delivery making comments on how the new baby means a bigger welfare check. As lots of people say, welfare should be a hand up, not a hand out. The program could definitely use some type of restructuring, but it still needs to stay in place in some manner. Ignoring compassion, when people are out of work and out of money, they become desparate and turn to crime. One purpose of welfare is to keep those people off the streets and from endangering those of us that are lucky enough to be gainfully employed. There are also those who for legitimate reasons (handicapped, retarded, etc.) simply can't work, and I don't mind supporting them. (I doubt my proposal for welfare would ever be accepted - mandatory birth control drugs for males and females at the same time they get their checks. If you can't support yourself, why bring in another life that you can't support?)
On the other hand, I'm not sure how many people actually abuse the welfare system. I've only heard anecdotes of the worst cases, which tend to stick in our memories, but I haven't seen any actual data. Certainly, the popular notion of 'welfare queens' is drastically overblown. Could it be that there's not really all that much of a problem? I don't know. Let's look at it hypothetically. Obviously, there are people that abuse the system. And it's our tax money that's being stolen, so that angers most of us, and we want to see something done about it. But what? It takes investigators of some sort to crack down on the criminals. If the problem of fraud is widespread, those extra employees would pay for themselves. If the problem's not widespread, their salaries wouldn't offset the savings, so we'd end up having higher taxes while making the government bureaucracy even bigger. We may have stopped a handful of frauds, but we'd have cut off our noses to spite our faces. That's why we need to base decisions on actual evidence, and not just gut feelings of right and wrong.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welfare_queen
Deficit Spending:
This is a bit tough for me to comment on, since I don't know enough about economics. It just seems to make sense that deficit spending doesn't work over the long run, but I've seen it argued many places that short term deficit spending during a recession/depression can help stimulate the economy. Indeed, there was massive deficit spending by the government for the military during WWII, and many have argued that that was the primary cause of getting out of the Great Depression. But was it simply correlation instead of causation? That's the whole problem with economics. It's so big and complicated, and you can't do many controlled experiments on it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Depression#Turning_point_and_recovery
But, given that economists recommend deficit spending to get out of a recession, I don't know that it's so bad right now, as long as it's curtailed once the economy starts recovering. It's also worth pointing out that the last time the budget was balanced was under Clinton, a Democratic president. So if you're looking to an alternative to Democrats, I don't see why people assume Republican means more fiscal responsibility or less spending.
http://thinkprogress.org/2010/01/28/senate-gop-paygo/
Schools:
I somewhat agree with this part. All the emphasis on self esteem above performance has hurt our education system, and those types of policies were never based on any sound scientific evidence to begin with. But in some cases, people have gone too far in other directions (again, ignoring evidence of what actually works), and we end up with boondoggles like the TAKS test here in Texas, where educators end up teaching to the test, instead of giving kids a solid education. I'm not sure what a good solution is, or if there are any other countries with good models to emulate. When you look at reports like the NSF's Science and Engineering Indicators, people are ignorant all over the world.
http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/seind10/c7/c7h.htm
Where I disagree with this guy is the nature of the problem. He mentioned 'basic functions of mathematics and literacy.' Those basic functions pretty much are covered already. The U.S. has a 99.0% literacy rate. I don't know of any stats on math, but I'd imagine that a similar number of people are capable of basic arithmetic. The problems aren't in basic skills, but in broader knowledge and critical thinking. And in a representative democracy where everybody gets to vote for elected officials, a well educated populace is very important.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_literacy_rate
Gun Rights:
What country, exactly, is this guy writing about? The U.S. has some of the most liberal gun ownership laws in the industrialized world. You have to really screw up (as in committing a felony) before the government prohibits you from owning firearms. Even with this current Democratic executive and legislative branches, we've gotten laws passed that allow people to carry firearms in national parks - i.e. more freedom, not less.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/18/AR2010021805124.html
Taxes:
I know that nobody wants to pay taxes, but you can't get something for nothing. If we want things like highways, NASA, the FDA, and the military, the money has to come from somewhere.
I don't understand why taxes all of a sudden became such a big issue when Obama took office. Why didn't we see the Tea Party protesters 3 years ago? The timing seems a bit suspicious. For most people, taxes are comparable to what they've been for the past 50 years. For the wealthy, they've increased slightly under Obama, but they're still significantly lower than they were during the Nixon & Reagan years. The tax burden in the U.S. isn't that bad compared to other countries, either. All the data just makes the Tea Party protesters seem like a bunch of whiners who don't want to pay their fair share to support society.
http://www.visualizingeconomics.com/2008/03/02/historical-tax-rates-by-income-group-part-2/
http://www.visualizingeconomics.com/2010/02/04/historical-marginal-income-tax-rates/
http://www.photius.com/rankings/tax_burden_country_ranks_2009.html
Criminals:
The incarceration rate per capita in the U.S. is the highest in the world. Think of every country that seems excessively opressive or totalitarian - Russia, China, South Africa, Saudi Arabia. The U.S. outdoes them all in the amount of citizens in jail. To put it in perspective, even though the U.S. only has 4% of the world's population, it has 25% of the world's inmate population. Does this guy want a complete police state?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration
Litigation:
This is another tough one. Through Irma, I've heard it from both sides regarding the medical field. Civilian doctors have to pay extremely high malpractice insurance, and people can sue over such frivolous things. But in the military, where it's very difficult for soldiers to sue, doctors get away with so much malpractice that would never be tolerated in the civilian world. Litigation does serve as a valuable check to keep doctors in line. And you yourself have told me about the problems you had trying to sue somebody in England, where the burden is placed on the person doing the suing. There has to be a happy medium, but with as reactionary as people are, the pendulum swings too wildly from over restrictive to over lenient.
In the time of Barack Obama, Black Panther members stand outside polling places in black commando uniforms, slapping truncheons into their palms.[remainder of quote removed]
Black Panther Members:
Well, there's not much to be said on this. A couple Black Panther members were standing outside a polling place, one of which had a night stick. After about an hour, cops came and removed the one with the night stick. It's definitely bad that it happened to begin with, but it was an isolated incident, not part of some larger conspiracy, and the police took care of it as soon as they found out. (It's a bit hard to try to pin the blame for this on Obama, though. It occured in Pennsylvania while Obama was a senator for Illinois.)
ACORN:
ACORN has certainly had some problems, but those problems are nowhere near as big as right wing pundits and politicians have made them out to be. The specific incident cited here, the prostitution ring, turned out to be a fraudulent video created by James O'Keefe (the 'pimp' in the video). When O'Keefe actually visited the ACORN offices (dressed in a suit and tie, not as a pimp as implied in so many news stories), one of the ACORN workers called the cops on the videographers, while another thought it was a joke and played along, not realizing what O'Keefe was up to. It was only through substantial editing that O'Keefe was able to make it appear that the ACORN workers were giving him advice on prostitution. (In another issue that speaks to O'Keefe's integrity, he's currently in hot water in Lousiana for tampering with a senator's phone.)
http://ag.ca.gov/newsalerts/release.php?id=1888&
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2010/01/okeefe_landrieu_acorn_telephon.html
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2010/04/06/let-them-eat-fake/
ACORN also doesn't have any role in taking the census. They're a 'partner', which basically means that they get the word out about the census. To put it in perspective, Avon is another partner, along with over 30,000 other groups.
http://www.factcheck.org/2009/06/acorn-and-the-census/
Communist in White House:
Well, it looks like a former communist, Van Jones, had been the Special Advisor for Green Jobs. In the 90s, he had been a communist and associated with an organization called Standing Together to Organize a Revolutionary Movement (STORM). For one thing, this isn't the McCarthy era. Being a communist may not earn you many friends, but it isn't a crime. And having been a communist at one point in time does not disqualify you from public office. Besides, Jones was no longer a communist when employed by the White House. In a book written by Jones released in 2008, The Green Collar Economy, he wrote, "We are entering an era during which our very survival will demand invention and innovation on a scale never before seen in the history of human civilization. Only the business community has the requisite skills, experience, and capital to meet that need. On that score, neither government nor the nonprofit and voluntary sectors can compete, not even remotely." That sounds rather capitalist to me.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Van_Jones
Still, aside from his former communist leanings, it doesn't look like Jones was a particularly good choice for the position. He had even signed the 911Truth.org petition.
Auto Company 'Takeover':
The auto companies approached the government asking for this help. It wasn't forced by the government. The government has also said repeatedly that it plans to sell the stock as soon as it's practical. Thankfully, it looks like that might be sooner than expected for GM, the company where the government actually owns a controlling share.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gDthEImr3_P0-59manCkynTnCl0AD9EUG5PG0
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/06/business/06auto.html
Wall Street Bailouts:
I think everybody, conservative and liberal alike, is pretty pissed at the bonuses being paid on Wall Street. I'm not sure whether the bailouts were necessary in the first place, but I tend to think they probably were. And at the time the bailouts were being debated, I certainly wasn't alone. 57% of the public favored the bailouts to begin with (64% or Republicans, 56% of Democrats, and 54% of Independents). However, looking at the way it's played out, it seems that it definitely could have been structured better, and Congress and Senate do deserve the blame for that.
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/32255149/wall_streets_bailout_hustle/print
http://people-press.org/report/452/public-favors-bailout
Habeus Corpus:
Honestly, out of all the points in this e-mail, I think this is the one that angers me the most. It's so hypocritical. He complains about an erosion of rights, but doesn't see the hypocrisy at all when he says that a certain group of people don't deserve rights. Whatever happened to that principal of innocent until proven guilty? Do we just trust police and soldiers to get the bad guys every time and never make mistakes? Why even have judges? The prisoners locked up in military jails may or may not be terrorists. How do we know without giving them their day in court? If there was sufficient evidence to lock them up in the first place, then a trial will convict them and they'll stay locked up. If there's not sufficient evidence, how can we be sure they're guilty? Maybe they were just in the wrong place at the wrong time, or maybe some soldier just didn't like the way they looked at him. I'm ashamed to be living in the 'land of the free', when we're willing to take away people's freedom just because we're scared.
It would be different in a real war. Prisoners of war would be kept locked up until the war was over and treaties were signed. But the 'War on Terror' isn't a real war at all. It's law enforcement, going after criminals. There's no end in sight. How can we justify locking up the accused indefinitely without ever allowing a judge or jury to see the evidence.
Health Care, Again:
First of all, the 'overwhelming public disapproval' is slightly less than half the country, with slightly more than half the country supporting the health care bill. Are the representatives supposed to ignore the majority of their constituents that wanted this bill?
http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2010/03/americas_views_health-care_reform_and_car_companies
Also, as I've written you before, the health care system in the U.S. is definitely in need of an overhaul. Compared to industrialized nations with universal healthcare, the U.S. spends about twice the amount on healthcare (from either a per capita or GDP basis), but our quality of care isn't any better and we have less access to physicians.
http://scienceblogs.com/denialism/2009/05/are_patients_in_universal_heal.php
It also seems that much of the Republican reaction to health care reform is simply obstructionism, dismissing the bill out of hand simply because it's coming from Democrats. Mitt Romney is a particularly clear case of this hypocrisy, considering how similar the national health care reform bill is to what he instituted in Massachusets.
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2010/03/22/mitt_romney_health_care_hypocrisy
Here's a good link covering a lot of the misinformation about health care.
http://www.factcheck.org/2010/03/a-final-weekend-of-whoppers/
I don't know about you, but the other day I was at the courthouse doing some business, and I stepped into the court clerk's office and changed my voter affiliation from "Independent" to "Republican."[remainder of quote removed]
World's Policemen:
We had a Republican president and Republican congress when the war in Iraq was started. The intelligence on WMDs was sketchy at best, and even if we accepted that the intelligence at the time was trustworthy, it wasn't an immediate threat to the USA (not until Iraq could have developed ICBMs). Sure, Hussein was a horrible dictator, and the region may end up being better off without him, but the war was definitely a case of the U.S. acting as the world's police and getting involved in a region that didn't directly affect us. So maybe this guy is tired ouf the U.S. acting as the world's police, but I don't see how he thinks that Republicans are the better alternative.
Republican Fiscal Responsiblity:
I included this link above, but it's worth including again. If Republicans are the more fiscally responsibly, why didn't any of them in the Senate support the pay-as-you-go rules?
http://thinkprogress.org/2010/01/28/senate-gop-paygo/
Literally millions of Americans have had enough.[remainder of quote removed]
This last paragraph is basically just more of the same from above, so there's really nothing else to add.
Comments
Both major parties are in serious trouble in the directions they are headed. The more we spend on wellfare the worse the situation becomes and we don't seem to have a clue on how to fix it. The people that can work should be stripped of all aid and forced to work. The writer of this rebuttal says that we are not in a real war. That is just not true. We are in one of the most serious wars we have ever been in. Why do we or should we treat Muslims more justly than they treat us. They have one aim and that is to cause the Western civilizations to fall. We are naive if we can't see that. Bush spent too much but Obama has just increased the amount of spending and there seems to be no slowing down. It's hard to imagine another person doing a worse job. Our debt to other countries is staggering. We had better hope they don't decide to collect.
Posted by: Walter McKibben | July 3, 2010 11:14 PM
I didn't say we're not in a real war. Iraq and Afghanistan are definitely real wars. The 'War on Terror', though, is not a real war in the conventional sense. Do you expect that we'll ever be able to sign a treaty with Al Qaeda to end hostilities? Exchange prisoners of war when the war is over? Actually, I think calling it an actual war gives Al Qaeda too much respect. They're criminals committing murder, not soldiers.
If you had said 'Al Qaeda' or 'Taliban' instead of 'Muslims', I'd have much more respect for your position. Wording it that way makes you sound like an ignorant bigot. Muslims are no more homogeneous than Christians. Should we blame all of Christianity for the Holocaust? Or should we attribute it to a totalitarian government? Why should it be different for Muslims?
I'm not sure I follow. If you think this is "one of the most serious wars we have ever been in", why would you think we should cut funding for it?
You don't even have to imagine. Obama may not be the best president ever, but at least he's an improvement over Bush. But if you do want to use your imagination, just imagine how bad off we'd be if McCain & Palin had won.
Posted by: Jeff | July 9, 2010 1:15 PM
Nice, exhaustive writing. But a Communist is still a Communist.
Posted by: MarkBench | July 27, 2010 9:34 PM
What part of fiat money printing don't you get? Government take overs? Internet regulation? Hyperinflation?
Hugo Chavez? Socialism has never worked anywhere.
Your writing talent is wasted. Heard it all before.
Posted by: MarkBench | July 27, 2010 9:38 PM
MarkBench,
The only communist I referred to in my essay was Van Jones. I think it was clear from his book that he's changed his views. Are you saying that he hasn't? Are you saying, 'Once a communist, always a communist'? I would certainly hope you're not one of those people who throws around the term 'communist' so loosely that you're referring to Obama, who is most certainly not a communist.
Could you please provide some references or further explain your second comment?
What does fiat money printing have to do at all with this article? The U.S. was taken off the gold standard in 1971 under Nixon.
What government takeovers are you referring to? I already discussed the auto company 'takeovers' (where the companies asked the government to do what it did). Are there any other examples?
The Internet regulation that I saw that made the news recently was regulation on ISPs to not restrict Internet access. Is there something more draconian I haven't heard of?
I checked the inflation rates for the past several years, and plotted the data below. There's nothing that seems out of the ordinary since Obama took office, and certainly no 'hyperinflation'.
US Inflation Graph
What does Chavez have to do with the current situation in this country? I haven't seen any mainsteam politicians advocating anything like what he's doing. If you have, could you provide some references?
If you check back in, could you please provide more info to back up what you've said?
Posted by: Jeff | July 28, 2010 1:41 PM
I,m drowning in coolaid.
Posted by: Wayne Skaggs | July 29, 2010 10:24 AM
Thank you for all of the clarity you have provided in rebuttal to this outrageous article. The mindless vitriol seems endless. If basing my opinion on facts and valid information with a touch of critical thinking means that I am a creeping liberal, then creep on free thinkers! The world is not black and white.
Posted by: Marian Samuelson | July 30, 2010 9:31 PM
Dear Jeff,
I have been a card carrying Democrat for my entire voting life. I am absolutely not a Republican and don't plan to register as one. I would prefer to be an Independent, but to vote in PA primaries, I must be aligned with either the Dems or Repubs.
I respect our right to agree or disagree on many things.
However, your description of the "Tea Party Nuts" may be your opinion, but it is not factual.
There are Democrat nuts, Republican nuts, Independent nuts, Socialist nuts...and Tea Party nuts, but they represent only a small fraction of each party.
I have been active with the Tea Party since the beginning, but this comment is not about my opinions, but about my experiences.
The huge Tea Party demonstrations in DC have not been plagued with violence, arrests or even trash!
Large portions of the Tea Party have white hair or are families with their children. We come from all over the country.
To suggest that this movement is overrun with violent vandals is simply untrue.
I live in York, PA. Our local Tea Party members are certainly activists, but rioting? Absolutely not. Our Tea Party has successfully encouraged individuals to run for office, even on school boards. We held a debate,(with 700 in attendance and no one even raised their voice)between local US Congressional primary candidates and held their feet (fairly) to the fire.
Do you honestly think that the incidents cited in your link to "Big Think" can be attributed to or encouraged by the Tea Party?
Speaking of dirty words, the broad use of the term "teabaggers" is insulting, but not nearly as reprehensible as using the "n" word. I have yet to hear it said at a Tea Party rally or meeting, although I believe it is a term that, regrettably, is used by bigots anywhere. It would be an insult to me to call me a racist, the most derogatory word of all, as I am not.
Who says that the Christian militia's plot had anything to do with the Tea Party? That is just plain crazy. The link from the BBC does not suggest that.
"Headlines"? from where? If you believe everything you see on MSNBC, FoxNews or even ABC, you are a fool, sir.
You, as most of us do, blur the line between fact and opinion, but you do not strike me as a fool.
Posted by: whamone | September 30, 2010 9:51 AM
whamone,
I never called the Tea Party protesters 'teabaggers', although I did call them 'nuts' once. In the section where I called them nuts, I wasn't trying to insinuate that they were the same people throwing bricks or forming terrorist plots. I was listing various groups that I don't think are constructive.
Like I already wrote, the reason I question the Tea Party, considering that most of them are, in fact, Republicans (or at least, ex-Republicans), is the timing of the whole thing. The country really hasn't changed direction much under the Obama administration or the Democratic congress (taxes are about the same, government spending is about the same, military spending is about the same, marriage equality is still being denied to certain segments of the population, Guantanamo is still holding suspected criminals without trial, the PATRIOT act hasn't been overhauled, etc.). And yet, most of the Tea Party protestors didn't start protesting until it was a Democrat in the White House. Now, I realize that you can't paint with too broad of a brush. Not all Tea Party protestors fit the above description. The earliest protestors were mostly Libertarians, and a few Democrats have also joined in. But, considering that the majority fit that description, doesn't it seem a little suspicious?
Here are two good articles on the Tea Party. The first is more entertaining and not really impartial, while the second is a report on the results of a poll of Tea Party members.
Rolling Stone -
Tea & Crackers: How corporate interests and Republican insiders built the Tea Party monster
NY Times - Poll Finds Tea Party Backers Wealthier and More Educated
Posted by: Jeff | September 30, 2010 4:57 PM
What is going on in Colorado? Hubbell is now in third place in the race to the bottom of bigotry snd ignorance. Tancredo and Buck are hands down leaders. Here in New York we have Palladino. but at least he gives his honest, wacky opinions These other jerks can't possibly believe their pandering to the lowest segments of our population.
Posted by: Ted | October 31, 2010 9:59 AM
Thank God there are some decent people like you in Colorado. The Big Three--Tancredo, Buck and nitwit Hubbell offend the sensibilities of everyone eho has a conscience. Keep up your commentary. Our country needs it.
Posted by: Ted Murray | November 16, 2010 9:30 AM
Hubbell may not be as smart as he thinks he is regarding copyright law. his email version of this story was circulated with the invitation to, "share this." in any event, Hubbell is not very smart about political policy either. there are intelligent conservative arguments to be made and Hubbell's argument is neither conservative nor intelligent. it is purely defensive/reactionary with no intent of conserving anything of value.
Posted by: jrbartlettjr | September 28, 2011 3:44 PM
Wow! You are perfect! This is liberal claptrap followed to every dotted i and crossed t. How such ignorance can be so prevalent absolutely boggles the imagination.
Thank God for the Gary Hubbells of the world.
Posted by: Den Hall | September 28, 2011 8:09 PM
Best to digest articles on www.HoaxoftheCentury.com before commenting on the national scene. America is being destroyed by a foreign plot with infiltrators in the White House, Congress, Fed, Supreme Court, state governments.
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