don't shoot until you see the reds of their necks!

The president is a black man.

Which is why all this Chicken Little stuff boils down there being a negro in the White House. Ironically, very little has changed since Obama took office. Many of their complaints point toward things Bush put in place years ago.

The crazies don't really warp anything on their own... they just listen to their hero's (Beck, Palin etc.) repeat "death panels" over and over and over again.

I really think I started to get some insight on the teeps when I put together a video on Michelle Bachmann:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7IZXXudRCwQ

The tea party is pushing a simplistic and incorrect view of the Constitution, that goes like this:

"Read the Constitution. Is there anything about healthcare in it? No. So any law about healthcare must be unconstitutional. Same with TARP. Same with anything. It's easy to overlook the clause where Congress is granted to power to make all laws that are necessary and proper to achieve the constitution's broad and undefined goals. And again, healthcare isn't mentioned."

This is what I hadn't really understood before, and I think it's key. Based on what I believe is an erroneous reading, the tea partiers believe they have proof that the Democratic Congress under Obama is ignoring the constitution. ( Of course, based on this reading, so has every congress under every president.) The whole tea party thing is based on that tenant. Becks incredibly racist statements and paranoid fantasies, e.g. that healthcare reform is Obama's plan to "settle old racial scores", all that stuff about the Reverend Wright, the birthers, the deep-rooted American fear of Communism that Fox news evokes at every opportunity... these things are not the central issue. These people have been conned into believing that they have proof that our government has put aside the constitution. I think they're wrong, but I think I understand them now, and I don't think they're bad people. If I believed what they believe, I'd be just as angry.

Of course, the powers that are selling them this snake oil, especially Fox News, are simply following the dictates of ratings and political opportunism. When Bush was in the White House, they defended Bush's efforts to ignore any constitutional restraints on the presidency. Now that Democrats are in power, it's expedient to claim that the Constitution restricts everything might do. It's a complete about face. Next time Republicans are power, the penetrating minds at Fox News will no doubt return to interpreting the constitution more... liberally.

My ride is here. So I will post without proofreading. I'm sure there will be errors, and I'm sure they will be grievous. Sorry.

They're capable of acknowledging the elastic clause when it suits them. Likewise, they're happy to ignore unconstitutional laws when they like them, and constitutionally-granted freedoms when they don't.

The TPers are old. Old enough to remember the era of Democratic city bosses, old enough to be legitimately scared of black people, old enough to be on all sorts of government programs that spoil them stupid, and old enough to not see the irony in that.

Some 10-20% of people are just crazy and/or dumb as shit, and are mentally equipped for living in the woods waving spears at strangers and attacking neighboring tribes and worshiping any large object that looks vaguely like a face.

What people get wrong is that it's not any particular race or minority, it's 10-20% of humans *in general* that are dangerously fucked in the head one way or another. God is not known for His quality control skills.

Meant to reply to jangbones.

Thank you. And they make it harder for us to point those things out, because well-meaning criticism gets lumped in with Fox's scared-geriatric-baiting.

Well, it's not that ironic. When Bush was president, they were FOR all those things. It can be seen as a rare bit of consistency.