Wild_Cat, you got it right there, I totally believe you should be able to say anything you want to or about the government and/or government officials. The kinda state I promote is one that serves the people completely. With full transparency and accountability. I believe that if any politician commits fraud or a crime while in public office they should go spend life in prison. I see it as a crime up there with murder and rape.
Mind you, in my perfect government politicians would have to pass minimum IQ and compency tests and be under constant review before people are allowed to vote for them
Politicians talk the talk, but for the most part cannot live up to their promises and are downright inconsistant. Ideologicaly, both the social progressives or liberals and the mainstream conservative movement have major flaws and inconsistancies inherent in their ideologies.
Conservatives pro-war? It is a complete tragedy of the conservative movement.
As for the tea partiers, the movement has been co-opted by the mainstream Republican/Conservative movement, i.e. the neocons. The modern tea party movement started with libertarians at a Ron Paul tea party actually dumping tea in the boston harbour in protest of tax and war.
"After I appeared on MSNBC talking about Sarah Palin’s appearance at the Nashville tea party convention, several libertarian friends pinged me to say they were unhappy with the exchange.
I said that Sarah Palin’s hawkish message on Iran was oddly out of place in a group whose roots belong to the Ron Paul anti-interventionist libertarians, particularly as the anti-interventionist Rand Paul is looking strong in the Kentucky Senate race – and Palin just endorsed him.
The woman I appeared with, who said she was representing the tea partiers, was quick to say that there were many who were NOT anti-interventionist, such as herself. My libertarian friends couldn’t figure out WTF she was doing on MSNBC representing the tea parties in the first place, and said it was embarrassing when the opposition did a better job stating their case than their purported advocate.
But it underscores a rift within the tea parties between the anti-tax, pro-civil rights libertarians who started them and the corporatist neocons who are now trying to swoop in and capitalize on all of the hype. I’ve now spoken with no small number of journalists reporting on the tea party phenomenon who don’t even seem to know that the first tea party in 2007 was held by Ron Paul supporters, and they actually dumped tea into Boston Harbor.
Ron Paul appeared on Rachel Maddow last night to speak about the fact that he himself is being challenged for his House seat by those who claim to represent the tea party movement. Rachel asked him about his relationship to the tea parties, and he said:
I think the message gets a little bit diluted when a lot of people come in and the Republican party wants to make sure that maybe there’s a Neocon type of influence.
Alan Grayson worked closely with Ron Paul to pass Audit the Fed in the House, and we worked with the Campaign for Liberty to support them in that effort. Ron Paul was reluctant to denounce Sarah Palin’s endorsement of his son, and mostly tried to change the subject.
But this morning Doug Bandow, a Senior Fellow at the Campaign for Liberty, has a piece denouncing the Daniel Pipes foolishness (echoed by Sarah Palin last weekend) which says Obama would help himself politically by bombing the bejesus out of Iran:
There are no good solutions in Iran. The world will be a better place if Iran becomes democratic and abandons any nuclear weapons program. But initiating war likely would inhibit reform in Iraq while making the world a more dangerous place. The disastrous experience of Iraq should teach us many lessons, the most important of which is that war always should be a last resort. That standard is no where close to being met in Iran.
Masaccio stopped by the Nashville tea party and said there was a promo booth set up by ConAgra. ConAgra. Agricultural subsidies are one of the biggest forms of corporate welfare around, and there’s a HUGE corporate push on to convince the tea party activists that they’re not. They are. Red State has endorsed Stephen Fincher for John Tanner’s seat, despite the fact that he’s taken over $300,000 in campaign contributions from families who have received over $80 million in farm subsidies. The mid-south arm of the organization did an impressive investigation into it and called him out for it (below the jump). In it, they cite the work of the progressive environmental organization EWG." - by Jane Hamsher
Friggin politicians... it really irritates me when something noble and just was co-opted by Palin and pals.
It is really scary when someone like Palin is able to have so much influence on people.
PS: Apologies for the language...joke removed.
