it just inspires all kinds of confidence in the mental stability of the Teabaggers...now don't it?

It's amazing to watch CNN try to make the Tea Party convention in Nashville look like a serious movement. They get it all hyped up and you might start thinking that there's something to this and then they mess it all up by actually interviewing one of the tea baggers usually dressed in a goofy costume who then proceeds to ooze the crazy all over your tv screen. A movement that rants about God and Country would have more cred if they had actually opened their convention with a prayer and the Pledge Allegiance to the Flag.

What? No pledge of allegiance? That's right. Turns out they have their own flag and it's not the flag of the United States of America. Some tea bagger guy in a suit just showed their new flag on CNN. He said he had been attending their media workshops learning how to use the media to get their message out. His suit looked brand new and there may have been racoon hair still stuck in his hair from the cap he was wearing before he took the media course. He said the flag was their "Second Revolution" flag and that it was the one they were going to use from now on. I think his bulb is too dim to light up his own mind to the fact that he just announced his intent to overthrow the government of the United States of America on national TV. Most rational Americans would call that treason.

One thing you notice behind the TV shots is that there aren't any people. High School chess tournaments get better attendance and far more coherent speakers. After they interview one of them and the TV guy says, "Well there you have it" the most common reaction I have is:

"Huh?"

They had a guy whose grandparents were from a foreign country give the first speech and rail about foreigners coming into this country. Tom Tancredo's main talking points seemed to be that Barack Obama won't show his birth certificate and on top of that looks like he might be black.

They also declared war to..."...take over not only the political institutions, but the cultural institutions, like the press, the entertainment industry, the universities, and yes the churches" because they don't want to be "oppressed." I think their role model for their organization is Hitler's SS.

Good thing there's only 600 of them...After all, they are armed with bagpipes and muskets.

There's a troubling undercurrent to this "new revolution" stuff. They claim allegiance to the Constitution, and see the 2nd Amendment as a license for violent political overthrow. (The mostly apolitical, low-information gun fetishists go along for the ride because it legitimizes their fantasy hobby.)

The disconnect is that the Constitution they claim allegiance to was designed to ensure there would never be a need for a violent upheaval by installing a system government "by the people for the people" with checks and balances and peaceful transitions of power.

The problem is that people aren't using the tools provided to them by the Constitution, i.e. voting (wingnut arguments that there's no right to vote enumerated in the Constitution notwithstanding), petitioning for redress, etc., and are allowing the same career bozos to get elected over and over.

I would almost sympathize with the teabaggers on that point, except that would be taking them seriously. Which, fortunately, most serious people don't.

If you go to one demonstration and then go home, that's something, but the people in power can live with that. What they can't live with is sustained pressure that keeps building, organizations that keep doing things, people that keep learning lessons from the last time and doing it better the next time.

Noam Chomsky.

Keep 'em coming, educate them, hand them some tools, try to make the good ones Democrats, and keep looking for Senators with some "hope-y change-y stuff" that will work for us.