Who's Appalled at Those Appalled

I am appalled that the mainstream media has treated these paranoid aberrations as anything but paranoid aberrations.

President Obama gave a speech to school age children. Before he even gave the speech, the religious right, the ultra-conservative, the wingnuts of the world, mostly Republicans were appalled.

The President's address to kids actually was a pep talk.

The president charged students to find what they're good at and stick with it. He also encouraged every student to understand that they each have something to offer their nation. The president also said that support from parents and teachers won't matter if the kids don't take responsibility for their own success.

The speech didn't include any references to controversial issues, such as health care reform, although one student did ask the president why we don't have universal health care.

All the controversy over the address initially stemmed from a line where President Obama encouraged the students to "help the president." The White House revised that line before he spoke.

So why were Republicans appalled?

Did any Republican remember that Republican Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and George H.W. Bush both addressed school kids during their terms in office.

On April 15, 1907, Republican president Theodore Roosevelt issued a strong "Message to School Children" addressing the need for conservation and the importance of our environment. At the end of his message, President Roosevelt asked the youngest citizens to go out and help the president - by planting trees. Here's an excerpt:

We of an older generation can get along with what we have, though with growing hardship; but in your full manhood and womanhood you will want what nature once so bountifully supplied and man so thoughtlessly destroyed; and because of that want you will reproach us, not for what we have used, but for what we have wasted... Source: New York Times Archives - Roosevelt to Children

On October 1, 1991, on the eve of the 1992 campaign, President George HW Bush gave a speech at Alice Deal junior high school in DC. Bush specifically asked the students to "Let me know how you're doing. Write me a letter. I'm serious about this one. Write me a letter about ways you can help us achieve our goals." You can watch an excerpt by clicking here. And most famously, President George W. Bush was sitting in an elementary school classroom when he learned of the attacks on the World Trade Center.

Maybe they forgot that on November 14, 1988, President Ronald Reagan addressed the nation's schoolkids.

His address, including a 'Q & A', was pumped live, via CSPAN, into classrooms all around the country. Reagan grabbed this opportunity to push tax reform. Here's an excerpt:

Q. My name is Cameron Fitzhugh, and I'm from St. Agnes School in Alexandria, Virginia. I was wondering if you think that it's possible to decrease the national debt without raising the taxes of the public?

The President. I do. That's a big argument that's going on in government. And I definitely believe it is because one of the principal reasons that we were able to get the economy back on track and create those new jobs and all was we cut the taxes. We reduced them because, you see, the taxes can be such a penalty on people that there's no incentive for them to prosper and earn more and so forth because they have to give so much to the Government. And what we have found is that at the lower rates the Government gets more revenue. There are more people paying taxes because there are more people with jobs. And there are more people willing to earn more money because they get to keep a bigger share of it. Source: Reagan gave Obama-like speech to school children in 1988, Below the Beltway

WATCH:

And the Republican parents forcing truancy on their children that day? Probably none.

Can you imagine what the right's reaction would be if President Obama said something even remotely similar?

But what is even more appalling is that all the major networks and mainstream media treating these over-the-top ridiculous reactions to the President speaking as "news". I am appalled that the mainstream media has treated these paranoid aberrations as anything but paranoid aberrations.

The fear in the air is being elevated by the mainstream news as real instead of unsubstantiated right-wing rantings.

The 'GOP' has become the 'WP'

If you don't believe that the 'Grand Old Party' has become the 'Wingnut Party,' just consider the messages of three prominent Republicans.

Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN)

Bachmann has claimed that health care reform is unconstitutional.

It is not within our power as members of Congress, it’s not within the enumerated powers of the Constitution, for us to design and create a national takeover of health care. Nor is it within our ability to be able to delegate that responsibility to the executive.

Of course she is dead wrong.

Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC)

DeMint claimed that health reform violates the Tenth Amendment and urged state legislators and governors to "champion individual freedom" by resisting the bill.

DeMint said he would love to see states go to court to invoke the Tenth Amendment: "If we had some states come together and say the only way to save this country is to push back."

Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R)

Perry has endorsed "state sovereignty resolutions" that demand the federal government "cease and desist" enforcing many laws with which conservatives disagree.

Perry — who suggested in April at one of the right-wing “tea parties” that Texas may have to secede from the union — even went so far as threatening to invoke the 10th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution to resist health care reform and suggested other states would do the same.

Ian Millhiser in an article titled, Rally 'Round the "True Constitution" defines "tentherism."

Tentherism, in a nutshell, proclaims that New Deal-era reformers led an unlawful coup against the "True Constitution," exploiting Depression-born desperation to expand the federal government's powers beyond recognition. Under the tenther constitution, Barack Obama's health-care reform is forbidden, as is Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. The federal minimum wage is a crime against state sovereignty; the federal ban on workplace discrimination and whites-only lunch counters is an unlawful encroachment on local businesses.

The Progress Report lends some historical perspective to this issue.

Indeed, while "birther" conspiracy theorists make increasingly outlandish attempts to dismantle President Obama's legitimacy, "tenther" constitutionalists like Bachmann, DeMint, and Perry hope to dismantle an entire century's worth of progressive legislation.

Tenthers derive their narrow vision of the Constitution from a strained reading of the Tenth Amendment, which provides that the Constitution contains an itemized list of federal powers and anything not contained in that list is beyond Congress' authority. In the tenthers' eyes, Congress' powers must all be read too narrowly to allow most federal statutes to exist. However, the tenther constitution bears little resemblance to the words of the document itself.

Contrary to tenther claims that federal spending programs like Medicare or Social Security are unconstitutional, Article I of the Constitution empowers Congress to "lay and collect taxes" and to "provide for...the general welfare of the United States," which unambiguously authorizes it to spend money in ways that benefit the nation.

Similarly, Congress' broad authority to enact regulatory schemes that "substantially affect interstate commerce" easily encompasses laws like the federal minimum wage and the requirement that businesses do not discriminate on the basis of race. As Roosevelt chided tenther-like conservatives from his era, "The Constitution of 1787 did not make our democracy impotent."

Where do other Republican politicians stand on the issue of radicalism in the Republican Party?

US House Representative Wally Herger, of California’s 2nd congressional district, expressed “enthusiastic approval” of a town-hall attendee who described himself as a “proud right-wing terrorist,”

Recently, Rex Rammell — a Republican candidate for governor in Idaho — joked to an audience that he’d like to hunt President Obama.

Even some Republicans have recently commented on this trend toward radicalism.

In April, 2009, Sen. Arlen Specter announced that he was switching parties to become a Democrat. In a statement released to the press, Specter explained that the GOP has left moderates behind and “has moved far to the right.”

Since my election in 1980, as part of the Reagan Big Tent, the Republican Party has moved far to the right.

In May, 2009 on "Meet the Press," MSNBC's Joe Scarborough took issue with this popular yet obviously debatable theme:

[W]hen I hear Democrats like Arlen Specter and read editorialists like E.J. Dionne saying how liberal--or, or how conservative the Republican Party's become, they've got it backwards. We have not been conservative as a party, we've been radical.

UPDATE: The following article by Adele M. Stan, The Wing-Nut Code: What Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin Are Really Saying to Their Followers, states:

You thought they were just unhinged. But here's what they're really saying to the armed and dangerous.

The point is that when Beck throws up a graphic of a segmented snake as his project's mascot, or Palin speaks of her native land as the "sovereign" state of Alaska, they're blowing a kind of dog-whistle for the armed and paranoid who make up the right-wing, neo-militia "Patriot" movement and the broader "Tea Party" coalition.

The 10th Amendment movement is tied in with the Tea Party and patriot movements: On the Web site of the Tenth Amendment Center, one finds yet another version of the "Don't Tread On Me" flag, and links to 35 state groups identified as part of the patriot movement -- a number of them state chapters of Glenn Beck's 9-12 Project.

Jon Stewart's Message to Wingnuts:

Defeat Is 'Supposed to Taste Like a Sh*t Taco'

thedailyshow.com

Stewart: Yes, tyranny. A.K.A. our democratically elected President. You know what guys....I think you might be confusing tyranny with losing. And I feel for you because ah...I've been there. A few times. In fact one of them was a bit of a nail biter. But see, when the guy that you disagree with gets elected, he's probably going to do things you disagree with. He could cut taxes on the wealthy. Remove government's oversight capability. Invade a country that you thought should not be invaded but that's not tyranny. That's democracy.

See now you're in the minority. It's supposed to taste like a s#%t taco. And by the way, if I remember correctly when a disagreement was expressed about that President's actions when ya'll were in power I believe the response was "Why do you hate America?". "Watch what you say." "Love it or leave it." "Suck on my truck nuts."

.....

For god's sake guys. You've been out of power for ten f*%#ng weeks. You've got a mid-term election in twenty months. Pace your rage! (h/t BNF)