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msnbc.com's Carrie Dann
msnbc.com's Carrie Dann
Tea Party activists gather in the shadow of the Capitol to urge budget cuts.
From msnbc.com's Carrie Dann
As budget negotiations continued inside the halls of Congress Thursday, a gathering of Tea Party activists huddled at a cold outdoor rally on Capitol Hill to send a message to the deal-makers inside:
They're ready to pick a fight.
A few hundred people -- far fewer than the massive rallies seen before last year's midterm elections -- who braved the dreary weather urged lawmakers to push deep cuts to the federal budget even if it results in a temporary shuttering of the government, chanting "Cut it or shut it!" and punctuating cheers with calls to "shut it down!"
"If Harry Reid wants a fight, let's give it to him!" said Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN), one of a parade of conservative lawmakers who made remarks at the event sponsored by the Tea Party Patriots.
Many of the rally's speakers were careful to note that Democrats are "rooting" for a shutdown and that GOP budget-cutters hope to avoid a funding lapse that would turn off the government's lights.
Democratic leaders "want to turn you into their scapegoats and blame the Tea Party for shutting the government down," said Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN).
Rep. Allen West (R-FL) declared, "We are not here to talk about shutting the government down... But if you want to talk about shutting down the government, go over there and talk to Chuck Schumer and Harry Reid and the folks at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue!"
Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) told reporters after his brief remarks to the crowd that a federal closure is undesirable but would not be catastrophic.
"No Republican wants to shut the government down. I don't think anybody here really wants a shutdown," DeMint said, "but we shouldn't be so afraid of a shutdown that we can't make the right decisions right now." He added, "We can't be cowed by this threat."
The preemptive finger-pointing over a potential shutdown likely stems from the scars of the budget fights of the mid-1990s, when the public soured on GOP leaders in the wake of a series of federal closings.
A full federal closure "is not going to be very popular with the American people," warned Clinton-adviser-turned-conservative-commentator Dick Morris, who instead suggested a "targeted shutdown" of agencies -- like the EPA and the National Labor Relations Board -- that are loathed by Tea Party activists.
"We don't have to close down the government. We're going to close down the parts of the government we can't stand!" Morris said.
That sentiment was met with cheers -- as well as a smattering of shouts to "shut it down!"
*** UPDATE *** Here's a dispatch from NBC's Catherine Chomiak:
As the continuing resolution currently funding the government inches closer to its expiration date of April 8, Tea Party activists rallied today for a budget battle. Reps. Steve King (R-IA), Mike Pence (R-IN), Michele Bachmann (R-MN) and Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) fired up the crowd on a dreary day in Washington, D.C., with calls for a fight and threats of a government shutdown.
Congressman Pence, citing the current deficit, debt, and “defiant liberal majority in the Senate” said the time was right “to pick a fight."
“The debt stops here,” he said. “If liberals in the Senate would rather play political games and shut down the government instead of making a small down payment on fiscal discipline and reform, I say, 'Shut it down.'”
Representative and potential Republican presidential candidate Bachmann hit Democrats saying they are hoping for a government shut down. “That’s their plan," Bachmann said. "They want to shut the government down, and they want to turn you into their scapegoat and say, 'It’s the Tea Party’s fault for shutting the government down.'"
Paul urged the Tea Party members to keep up their political involvement. “The fight is just beginning,” he vowed. “Keep their feet to the fire, call them, email them, let them know that you are prepared for America to move forward, but only by balancing the budget and making government smaller.”
In addition to a fight on the budget, King showed support for his fellow House Republican saying, “We need to fight on Mike Pence’s proposal on unfunding (sic) Planned Parenthood… And we need to fight on cutting off the funding that implements Obamacare.”
Bachmann also got loud cheers from the crowd when she proposed sending “a change of address form to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.”
This is something Bachmann has said before and will probably be said again, as she continues to consider a 2012 presidential bid.
Leave a Comment:
I've really got to ask you Tea Partiers and Neo-Cons out there, because I honestly can't wrap my head around this line of thinking, and this article just brings the questions up again.
1. Shut down or cripple the EPA to the point of being useless.
What possible benefit could come from this? Without the EPA regulating industry, we'd have to rely on corporations to always choose to do the right thing when it came down to a choice between the bottom line and protecting the air we all breathe and the water we all drink, and no one can be that naive or stupid, so please explain to me what we gain from that?
2. Ditto with the FDA
Again, what do we gain? We've been shown, time and again, that we can't trust industry to self regulate when it comes to choosing between the health and safety of the public versus the all powerful profit margin. So what will scrapping or hobbling the FDA gain us?
3. Cut education funding to oblivion
Our country already ranks fairly low when compared to the education provided by other developed nations, and you want to cut funding even further without fixing the problems with the system first? How stupid do you want our children to be? Is there some benefit I'm not seeing?
And please, no hiding behind links to your extremist sites. Explain it to me in clear english in your own words. I'm not entirely sure most of you even know what the hell you're fighting about any more, you've gotten so used to just fighting. Knee jerk reactions.
For full disclosure, I'm neither a Democrat or a Republican. I've voted for candidates from both parties and chosen to vote against candidates from both parties, based on those candidates' apparent willingness to try and do what's best for as many people as possible, not just their fanatical base, and it saddens me that the current political climate with the Obermans and Becks rallying people on the extreme left and right, makes it so that the views of REASONABLE people get drowned out by the extremist vitriol.
It is because it will further enrich their corporate owners. These teahadists have no principle, scrupples, compassion or even common sense. The whole lot of them need to be run our of town and made to get jobs in those areas where they claim people are "overpaid" and "scum of the earth" thieves of our tax dollars. In reality they are describing themselves.
we spend more money per student than any other country and they still way down on list.so cutting that part won't have any effect.
@dumbass american
That really makes sense to you? If you aren't being sarcastic, you have my pity. Leaving kids floundering simply because the current system failed them makes no sense at all. It's like amputating a man's leg because the bone he broke in it didn't heal correctly, making it difficult for him to run long distances. No one but an idiot would think it was a good idea.
Respect for at least responding to my request for an answer, though. It looks like none of the Tea partiers or Neo-cons here are willing to even try and come up with a justification for their line of thinking when directly confronted. It's a little telling.
Don't forget about the Tea Party psycharistrist's and psychologist's who are being paid to create liberal scripts from events that have occured in a person's past to force them to vote Republican, Conservative and the way that the Religiou Right wants a person to vote.
I have had enough of the constant harassment, menacing, stalking and over all attempt to force me to believe that what your religious laws say is the truth of how I should I be. If it does not stop I name EVERY SINGLE NAME from 1996 to the present day that I have known to be involved with drug's and or drug dealing in Canton and Bolivar.
Staring with the KOA Campground....
Do you really want everyone to know who you really are or do you want your secret told right here on a national media outlet for all of America to see? Think I'm joking? Let me hear ONE MORE form of inuendo or someone coming up behind me at work and making comment's about what has happened in my past and you will all be named....This isn't a joke, move on with your life.
This is your final warning.
Starting with you Mike Johnson...Now what was that about being sorry psycho?
King, Pence, Bachmann, Paul - these and the other nut jobs associated with the corporate sponsered and owned "tea party" are a bunch of bought and paid for loons. Why don't we do this: Let the districts of all the teahadists live for one year under the effects of the cuts that they are proposing and the shut down that they are trying to bring about. No social security or medicare checks for the seniors, no aid for schools, no federal subsidies for highways, non of the things that people take for granted and that they have no idea are funded by their and other's taxes. The problem would be that the leaders of this "movement" couldn't care less what pain it causes people or the devestating effects it will cause to our economy. All they care about is absolute power and swallowing and the spiting out whatever their corporate owners give them.
I can't help but notice that while they wrap them selves in the American flag and profess their love for America, the Tea Party doesn't seem to like Americans very much. You seem to relish calling so many different people and groups vile names. By the time you get done nobody but a very narrow portion of the electorate will vote Republican. I see where now the Tea Party is going after the AARP. That is truly a recipe for disaster.
You ran on a platform of Jobs, Jobs, Jobs. So far all we've seen is meaningless tripe being churned out that would never pass the Senate.
Here's a jobs bill for you. Create legislation that would reward companies that bring outsourced jobs back to America and truly punish ones that continue to outsource. I know that will upset your corporate masters, but so what?
Why don't you attack farm subsidies or massive aid to oil companies? No GOPTP person will address that. Why not attack waste in the military industrial complex. NADA, NOTHING, ZILCH. Nope, all you want to do is dismantle and defund all of the programs you've hated for many years. All that amounts to is legislation by retribution. That is not how you govern. This is what happens when you elect a gaggle of new Representives that have zero idea about how the government works. Mindless cutting will only serve to harm this country.
I think Obama is the absolute best thing that has happened to America since Reagan.
He has thoroughly destroyed the potential for the progressive movement to ever again be in a position of power.
He has caused a reawakening in the core values that made America the greatest nation on Earth, as is reflected in the diverse yet united themes of the various Tea Party-style grassroots activists groups that have organically swept the nation.
He has caused us to go back and learn the true history of our Founding Fathers, the creation of America and its roots in Christian principles despite decades of revisionist history and indoctrination by the progressives trying to smear those truths.
He has made it possible for us to look over the cliff that the progressives are rushing America toward s and see the destruction of our Constitutional Republic by the progressives who want to “fundamentally transform” America into just another weak European-style welfare state with no sovereignty left under a new one-world order.
He has shown us that progressives want to dismantle the free-market system and replace it with socialism, stifle the First Amendment, and on, and on, and on.
Thank you, God, for giving us Barrack Obama, for now we are truly awakened never again to fail our civic responsibilities to this great nation, and will rise to our just and righteous position as the beacon of freedom for the world once more.
Repeating your mindless drivel does not make it true. Not that you'd let that stop you. This is why the Tea Party is a one trick pony. Your credibility is just about shot.
All you good folks have been doing for the last 3 months is dismantle. You have, as usual, built nothing or created anything. The GOP used to have some statesmen. Not anymore. Just a gaggle of corporate toadies, nothing more.
In case anyone hasn't seen this, the above poster reminds me of it:
"Hi, I'm a tea-partier":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnUfPQVOqpw
Tea Party pseudo-patriotism and historical mythology is certainly not populism. These self-described "Real Americans" are a small, prejudiced minority that apparently denies the legitimacy of anyone that doesn't share their dogma or doesn't look like their neighborhood friends.
The Republican Party has a coalition of interest groups embedded in its base, but has managed before to keep them under control with promises and demagoguery. This group bit the hand that fed them and is holding them literally accountable for campaign talk. Republicans need to clean up their act, stop propaganda baiting, and get serious about real American challenges instead of diverting into political grandstanding and manipulation. Pop politics sells short the responsibility they were given by voters and the Constitution.
There are far fewer thoughtful, respectable, Republican politicians in the Party than there were just a few years ago. The dignity of the Republican Party has been deteriorating for over 40 years. The Tea Party characters had better wake them up. Frivolity and temper tantrums are gaining too much influence and creating too many side issues and conflicts than they are worth. I hope they will take three giant steps in the other direction and get down to the serious business of their offices. Their ideological heritage is flying apart.
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Nice to see a couple dozen t-bag knuckle heads show their paid/forced support of such garbage.
tea party fan:
"I don't know how much it would save, but I will guess that it will be many hundreds of billions of dollars. As far as the regulations since 2000 - I needed to pick a date (I thought) and that one just came out of midair. Really, I just want to get rid of the crazy ones that hinder job creation and burden small businesses with a ton of paperwork and does not solve anything. You can pick any date you want."
Just like your comrades you have no real ideas, facts or figures to report. Maybe you should educate yourself about programs and taxes (as they are actually at lower rates now than in the 1950's and 1960's). (I know that this should shock you as these were the good old days in your mind) additionally, water and air are cleaner now which is good for the many children you have probably brought into this world which you would love to fill with filth and pollution.
Let's not forget about when I was growing up either.
Here are the attack methods that the Republican's and the Conservatives have done to me to force me to vote Republican and the way that the Religious Right force people to believe or be put out into the street.
Two men show up and tell me that I am supposed to hate firefighter's and police officer's when I was still in Kindergarten.
First grade - Beaten with a board for reading one line up during reading class.
Second Grade - Was told that I was not allowed to goto the bathroom because I had just gone a fewe minutes before even though I had drank some water on the way back and had to urinate again thus resulting in peeing myself out of fear of what happened in the first grade.
Third Grade - Was beaten with a board for jumping up and touching a poster after the same kid that I had told on for damaging a hand heater in the bathroom had told on me.
The I moved to another school district.
Everything went fine until certain member's of my family thought that I should live my life the way they lived their lives.
Seventh Grade - Was punched after a kid from Canton that was from a grouphome felt that he should be allowed to score during a soccer game but instead I chose to block him thus knocking him on the ground and causing him to not only keeping him from scoring and but causing him to lose face with his boys.
A few days later he punched me in the kidney's for not reason as I walked to art class. I am quiet certain that I now know the network of the person resposnisble for the attack in my family. The punch was on the left side of the body
Then there was the intentional clipping in the back when I played reserve football. It is obvious that the hit was planned because the play was twenty yards down field. The illegal hit was on the right side of the body.
When I turned 18 I was told that I needed to vote. I said that I was not going to vote because I did not know the candidate or the issues and did not want to throw my vote away based upon how I belived growing up. A vote just cast away is vote saying that those who died for my freedom during the Revolution really didn't matter. Not even wrong. But I was still forced to vote. When I asked who to vote for I was told to vote all Republican.
The there was my joining of the USMC of which I was told the night that I was supposed to leave that I wanted to think about it a few days longer. Joining the Marine's is not a light hearted choice to make. But I was told that if I didn't go that I wouldn't be able to use the car to goto work.
Then while serving in the Marine's my roomate brought home Marijuna for another Marine in the barracks. He said that since the illegal drugs were in my car that it was my responsibility to get rid of the illegal drugs becasue as he put it. "Possesion Is 9/10th's of the Law."
Subsquently I was found with Marijuana in my car that was not mine thus causing me to become demoted and put on 45/45. During this time I discovered that numerous Marines were involved with selling LSD, Marijuana and the then legal drug called X to Marines in the barracks. During the first 45/45 days of EPD I went to the same guy's house that had placed the marijuana in my car to gather information. I ended up getting drunk and asked for a cigarette as I had ran out. Come to find out that the cigarette that I had taken was laced with cocaine and marijuana as the next day the whole battery had to take a urinalysis. I am quite certain that the person involved with setting me up with the marijuana reported that I had willing taken the drug even though I had been drunk just so that I fail the urinalysis so that any reports made by me against him and any subsquent reports made by me on those I came across involved with drugs could be discounted as lies based upon my discharge from the military. Needless to say I failed my urinalysis but could not bring myself to dishonor my fellow Marines even though they had set me up.
After leaving the Marines I followed the trail of drugs to various people in Canton and Bolivar Ohio. I had given up trying to upgrade my discharge due to all of the roadblocks that I came across.
Upon leaving the Corps I had two of my tires slashed for no reason, had my break lines on another vehicle cut just to the point of allowing enough pressure to build up in the lines to make it appear like it a break.
If your going to cut someone's break lines your should really learn to make the break look like a break and not a cut.
Since then I was involved in a drunken driving accident that I do not remember leaving the bar but remember putting my face through the window...on the passenger side which would mean that I was not driving that night and someone else was. Otherwise the sterring wheel would have being damaged due to me being forced up against it.
After that I decided to leave Canton to get away from those harassing me and ended up working as a armed security guard for a company in Columbus, Ohio. Everything went fine until the election of 2004 when I had a .45 placed to my back along with a sword in an inuendo attempt to force me to vote Republican or how the owner or owner's of the company wanted me to vote. After I told them I had voted Democrat I was fired as well as my DD-214 coming up missing.
After a few months I started working for temporary agencies and went back to school to better myself at Devry. During this time a "state girl" as they call them move in next door. All types of problems started to happen. Eventually she burnt down my apartment along with hers. During the fire the local Police department said that I was going to be charged with felony possesion of a firearm stemming from a disability for being caught with marijuana and rolling paper's the year before. Of which during the police officer's intial search they inquired about the firearms but did not take them. it was only after the fire in the apartment that another police officer said that I was going to be charged with a felony.
I was not charged nor did I put up with the attempts to draw me into a position of being a "snitch" rather I dropped out of school and moved back home to begin again.
Now it has come to my attention that the reason why all of these events occured was because The Republican's needed someone that they could force to vote without question for their values and beliefs not based upon choiced but being forced to vote based upon being persacuted for event's in my past. A past that is now open to anyone in managerial position's via the Patriot Act that they can use to extort me to be quiet and vote the way that they want me to vote along with "feeling" "actin" or "believing" the way that they believe with any choice being present based upon what their religious belief's say a person is without regard to the laws of reality.
These are all attack methods of the Republican's and the Religious Right of whom cannot create anything new based upon progress nor do they have any leadership to lead from the front but can only extort people to force them follow.
Signed
Sincerely, Dwight M. Huth
Romeo Battery 5th Battalion Tenth Marines, Camp Lejuene NC MOS 2512 SAW 249 LMG
1983 - current.
The Tea Party is like country music and Ronald Reagan - pining for a simpler time that never existed.
Are dems really this uneducated?
Wow. Non sequitur, much?
SDH JC
Good Lord almighty, have mercy on these clowns.
Hate is like bad cholesterol, it kills you slowly but surely.
In the end, after all these years of hatred; you die with a filthy grotesque white look on your stupid face, full of dump and hatred. All alone. Then what? Good luck with your hatred on the other side...if at all it exists
Nobody ever remembers a hatred-filled dead pig....
Doc,
I know...how did the dems get this way....is shameful to be honest.
ROTFL This from the party of: we hate gays, Muslims, anyone not anglo, teachers, policemen, nurses, all public employees, anyone including the children who are poor and need help, anyone who cannot afford your big business health insurance companies, and let's not forget President Obama.
A couple of hundred against the couple of hundred thousand who gathered in Wisconsin a few weeks ago and the countless other rallies across the WORLD! There were 2000 just in Los Angeles. LOL
laura,
you forgot about the million that were there last year?
or the largest landslide in 60 years last November?
Yeah, have to admit, the left got a little lazy. But have to thank the fascist teabaggers for waking us up. Thank-you.
Oh...and btw, 87,000 is not even close to a million.
This is the way a republican counts: 1;2; 3;.....87,000; 1,000,000
Tune in Turn on and Drop out hit up the parks and sit it out TODAY!!!! End the Baggers HERE AND NOW ON ALL FRONTS with 60's style sit ins!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! they are gonna poop all over their good conservative church clothes
Think about it.......seriouslyl, think about this for just a moment.
Based on the number of TeaPublicans reported as members and supporters and the media coverage via TV, online, print and photo........how many of these folks ALSO benefit from the same govt programs they are screaming to dismantle? Profiling - not really, just common sense based upon appearance AND their own spoken words. How about Social Security Retirement benefits? Think any TPs receive them? Social Security Disability Benefits? Does any of the media coverage of events bring visions to mind of really healthy, wealthy and physically active members of society? What do you estimate their average age is? How many look to be 60 yrs of age or older?
How about any of their family members? Think any spouses, children, elderly parents depend on them for financial and housing support of any kind?
Seriously, what are the odds that a very large percentage of TeaPublicans really DO receive one form of govt. assistance or another and lack the ability to realize that they too will lose their benefits as well?!! Just like Duffy and other new TP members of Congress who are whinning about the chance of NOT being paid in the event of a govt shut-down - they not only ACT like, but BELIEVE that the rules don't apply to them!! Remember the TP congressman who cried out in rage because his luxury, tax payer paid for Health Benefits did not kick in for 30 days??! The loss of govt wages and benefits will not effect ANY of them......YEAH, RIGHT!!
I receive SS Total Disability benefits from an accident at work. This is my only source of income since 1994 - when I first became disabled! I haven't been able to afford medical treatments, surgeries, monthly prescription expense, etc. and have been going without most all of it for some time now. If the govt shuts down, of course OUR Medicare and Medicaid benefits will be among the very first to be cut off. I don't care anymore!!
I say give the TeaPublicans what they are screaming for......shut down the govt!! Let's see how many of them end up suffering from their loss just as much as the rest of us! Only difference between the TPs and the REAL WORLD is the fact that those of us who's lives depend on our benefits - thru no fault of our own - benefits that most of us worked all of OUR lives and paid into for the future benefit of ourselves and the present benefit of those who paid in before us.............the TPs are not intelligent enough to realize that they will lose their benefits - or their families - just like the rest of us!!
Shut it down.........I don't care anymore - the Loop Holes in our Laws and failure to ensure MY RIGHTS, under our Laws has already caused me to be disabled, destroyed my quality of life, caused me to be in constant, agonizing pain and physical exhaustion from fatigue and my "life expectancy" is determined on a day to day basis!! I can not wait to really be........OUT OF HERE - so to speak!
As has been pointed out earlier, 25 rednecks with misspelled anti-Obama signs get massive coverage. It has been widely reported that there were 4 members of the press for each teabagger present. Amazing seeing that when over a 100,000 true Americans including farmers on 50 tractor protest in Wisconsin and the press hardly notices.
At least with teabagger's poll number positives have dropped to around 30%. Perhaps Americans are finally waking up to exactly who these idiots are.
I watched the Madison rally live on Uptake.org. It was incredible. The tractor parade was very moving. So wish I could have been there standing with them.
That is the true American Spirit. I would have been proud to be among you. This is our civil rights movement. Scott walker was right about one thing, this is the moment of our time. Except it's America's time. The Right acts like its on their final straw. This is a desperate move by a desperate people. 2012 will be a wakening for these people.
This is for Madison from NY (I'm repeating my response to your post at #1.35 because both your post and my response were collapsed along with Feisty's post #1 which the conservatives must not have liked very much because it's not obscene or offensive to others' posts. I guess you could say our posts were just collateral damage).
Anyway, in post #1.35 you quote Obama as saying "no boots on the ground in Lybia" and cite a link to a story which supposedly proves your extremely derogatory comment against the president - calling him a pathological liar, because of the fact that CIA agents were sent there (and they're wearing boots that touch the ground). Here's your insulting comment (below that is what I learned on checking it out):
The problem Madison, is that the link you gave to back-up your insult does NOT contain the quote (about boots) that you claim it does!
Now I don't know if Obama ever used the phrase "no boots on the ground" or not. But you haven't proven it and I'm not going to do your work for you and try to find something that may not even exist.
So Madison, it's up to you: You must either find and post the correct link, or else people here might conclude that YOU are the pathological liar.
(I'm rooting for you Madi, but you gotta help to make it happen!)
welcome to the dark side all you haters. may the force not be with you.
I'm glad the anti-gvt tea party agenda is finally revealed. As a veteran and more patriotic american than any of these "Tea party" folks could ever claim to be, I say the greatest threat to the United States is the Tea party. Destroying our country from within.
One of the reasons for the lack of video? Good grief look how small the crowd is, and I'm sure that has to be embarassing! The Tea Party will be like Nader to the GOP. I thank God for these nuts every day!
How many showed up at this thing -- 100 -- perhaps even 200? I'll give the tea bag people something - they know how to work the press -- turn a non event into some kind of bid deal. My guess -- no more than 4 years from now the tea party will be nothing but a memory just like the Ross Perot movement in the 90s and the George Wallace clowns of the late 60s. These things make a lot of noise but have a short shelf life.
I am ssssooo tired about hearing about these tea parties. Start making the rich pay their taxes and we could pay off the national debt!!!!! It is always about cutting services for the poor, why doesn't no one ever say anything about making the rich pay their taxes, instead all I hear is the Republicans and the so called tea partiers say is that the rich need more tax breaks. I am so fed up with all this ridiculous crap!!!!!
Does anyone really know what will happen if the Debt keeps rising? I do. Nothing! Debt is our currency! Without debt, The country could not survive. How m If things get too bad then other countries like China will forgive all or a portion so trade can continue. What do you think is going to happen, China's going to repossess Texas? Taxes are always going to be here. So stop your fear mongering, Please!
Hmmmmmm, I have a feeling that when the Republicans start "adjusting" Social Security, Medi-Care etc, the Tea Partiers will indeed scream at them to "Cut it out!" Do they honestly believe that cost-cutting doesn't apply to their entitlements?
Peace and God's blessings to all this day.
Time the flea party was shut down for being stupid in public. If you look at these people its very telling isn't it