Day 16 and it sounds as if this nightmare may be coming to a close. Damage has been done, but some things have also become clear.
One is that the Tea Party tolerates and promotes racism.
Yesterday Democratic Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz said that a major reason for the government shutdown was dislike of President Obama. In other words, this was never a fight over principles. It was rooted in personal animosity.
She should have gone on and said what she wouldn’t say. That this personal animosity stems from a racism that is endemic to the Tea Party movement. The Confederate flag on display in front of the White House during this week’s Tea Party rally said it all.
Let’s get real and stop trying to make nice with people who are not nice at all. When you question this President’s birthplace, you are a racist. When you reject this President’s self-professed Christian faith, you are a racist. When you tell jokes with racial overtones, you are a racist. When you email race based cartoons to your friends, you are a racist. When you continue to listen to racist talking heads like Rush Limbaugh, you are a racist.
One of the reasons this country made progress toward racial justice was because racist comments, actions, and jokes in public became socially and politically unacceptable. We called people out for their racism and would have laughed had we been accused of “playing the race card” for doing so.
But some people have decided we now live in a post-racial America, and, therefore, racism by a different name is somehow not racism. Well, it is. So when that young white man waved his Confederate flag in front of the White House he showed he was a racist. And the Tea Party members who supported his doing so as an expression of “freedom” were also racists.
President Obama is the President of the United States. He deserves respect for that reason alone. This has nothing to do with his policies or his leadership. It has to do with the office he holds.
I for one am sick of racists who claim to be patriots while questioning the legitimacy of Barack Obama’s presidency. Freedom of speech may protect their right to be openly racist. It also protects our right to name them for what they are.
We should never be hesitate to do so.
linnposts.com 
You “hit the nail on the head”, Jan. This is an excellent and truthful analysis of the extremist right wing in the U.S. We should call the Tea Baggers behavior what it is–racist.
“Tea Baggers” ???? Do you not realize how really BAD, how “racist” YOU ARE??!!
I love your article. keep up the good work. I’m borrowing it to spread it around. if you don’t mind!
Thanks. Kay!
Questionman. Feel free. The more people we talk to the better it is.
I absolutely agree with you.
Let’s get real and stop trying to make nice with people who are not nice! Southerners during the Civil War were Democrats–they WANTED people enslaved to work the cotton crops! President Lincoln was a Republican who wanted to unite the nation as free from slavery. So where did “Racism” start?? Not hard to figure.
Obama has his feet planted firmly in cement–REFUSES to listen or to negeotiate with those who want to CUT SPENDING and fraud. “Every action has an equal and opposite re-action.” He is too much of a bully who refuses to see another view than pressure his own single-minded demands. He expects opposite party to roll over and play dead to his dictatorial ways. A quality leader has ability to work WITH opposition, back off and give a little in order to make government work. B.O. is NOT that person!
Obama met with Republicans shortly after his 2009 inauguration, , invited them to the WH to watch the Superbowl, non accepted. The ACA was a Heritage Foundation idea endorsed by the Republicans until Obama Compromised, giving up the single payer plan we Democrats wanted, This past August Reid and Boehner with support of Obama agreed to a 987 billion dollar budget that most democrats went along with reluctantly, the republicans rejected it. The plan all along was to shut the government down thinking Obama would cave, thank goodness he did not.
I think Jan’s blog is right on target, and considering the hatred, obstructionism and the my way or the highway by the T-party Obama has done a hellava good job.
Amen, Bro. People who support the Tea Party make up stuff about Obama just like the Tea Party itself does. Then they believe the myths of their own creation even though facts prove them to be just that – myths. You can’t make this stuff up.
Dear Marvin and Elaine,
Four years ago, I went in to the drop in centre at St Mary’s Hospital in Portsmouth (Hampshire UK), with severe chest pains. Immediateley, I was seen to by the nurses, who referred me to St Mary’s Hospital, where I was assessed for treatment. At Southampton General Hospital, a procedure was carried out in that place’s state-of-the-art facilities, in which I had two stents put in to allow the blood to circulate more freely. After the procedure had been successfully carried out, I asked the Ward sister there how much this operation cost, and she quoted me a figure of £6,000 – a sum that I daresay would have clobbered me financially if I’d had the misfortune of being an uninsured person in your country. Here in my country, It cost me not one penny. That’s why we support the NHS here.
As for this spectre of socialism you insist on raising, as far as I know, the concept of collective social provision in my country dates from 1890, when the Treorchy Medical Aid Society was set up by the miners in that town in South Wales, to provide all medical needs in return for a weekly contribution. And if to be ‘socialist’ is some sort of a crime, then the good people of Treorchy would enter the plea: ‘Guilty – and proud of it!’
Sincerely yours,
Nigel Baldwin
. . . well, lucky you . . . you got service you like. The stats on medical responses in the USA vs. ANY/ALL other countries of the world say that USA is way on top of prompt responses, quality service better all around.