Hey, there! Log in / Register
He must be so proud
By adamg on Sat, 07/04/2009 - 11:54pm
Libertarians, anti-income-taxers, Barney Frank haters, birthers, objectivists, Reagan lovers, Sarah Palin fans, Oath Keepers and gun owners descended on Christopher Columbus Park this Independence Day to vow to retake America from the the jack-booted heel of socialized medicine and pollution caps, or something, in yet another Tea Bagging.
Most of the 300 or 400 protesters were from out of state, but at-large City Council candidates Sean Ryan and Doug Bennett also attended. Bennett, in fact, was the first speaker of the day, moving further away from his Republican roots by complaining about tax-and-spend "Republicrats" who are putting us deeper into a depression. I ran into him before the speechifying; he said that while he might not agree with everything the protesters said, he did agree the income tax was unconstitutional, because the founding fathers didn't include it in the Constitution.
Girly men can't appreciate a pit bull with lipstick:
There were a fair number of mostly young Ayn Rand fans, holding signs with slogans like "Selfishness IS a virtue, Mr. President."
Ooh, clever: See how much distress the country is in?
True confession time: I managed to embarrass the kidlet at Quincy Market, because as the assembled throngs moved through the market area toward the park, I started yelling "BAR-NEY FRANK! BAR-NEY FRANK!" and "O-BA-MA! O-BA-MA!" at them. My father, up for the weekend, quietly suggested that yelling stuff like that at beefy shaved-head guys who were bigger than me was perhaps not the best of ideas. The worst I got, however, were looks of disgust. And later, both my wife and father had quite nice discussions with some of the out-of-towners at the park.
Neighborhoods:
Topics:
Free tagging:
Ad:
Support Universal Hub
Help keep Universal Hub going. If you like what we're up to and want to help out, please consider a (completely non-deductible) contribution.
Comments
Daddy Went Galt
but all I got was this lousy Fairey parody T-shirt.
As for Mr. Self-stimulating, well, some people show up and are thought to be wankers, and some make signs and remove all doubt.
Sigh, I always felt it was
Sigh, I always felt it was better to have someone help in the stimulation process but I guess doing it yourself is fine if your a right wing wacko and can not find any willing partners.
Who Needs Socialized Medicine
Not him. He's protecting his own health!
That's individualism for ya
But I still say he needs a better health plan.
And Bennett would be right
And Bennett would be right about the federal income tax being unconstitutional (as the Pollock opinion from the Supreme Court made clear) if it were not for the 16th Amendment, which, you know, amended the Constitution. I wonder where he's been for the last 96 years?
Not to mention...
...the fact that the Constitution provides a mechanism for amendment, in case say, the Founding Fathers forgot to put something in or the need for something arose that did not exist at the time of its drafting. Some people seem to forget this little fact at the most convenient time for them.
Tyranny Response Team
I feel safer knowing the guy in the last picture is defending our shores from...well...er...our duly elected representatives, I guess.
Or maybe "Tyranny" is a misspelling of "Twinkie".
When I first read it
I thought it read "Tranny Response Team". Just sayin'.
Ooh, clever: See how much
In America you have the freedom of speech and can do whatever you wish with the flag. That being said these are the types who would stomp all over democrats if an upside down flag showed up at a liberal rally.
I personally think it is tacky to use the flag in such a way regardless of the point they are trying to make.
Bennett
Bennett is everywhere. He's been running for City Council full time for a year now.
He appears to be seriously whacky. I'm going to vote for him for the guaranteed entertainment value. Someone has to replace Chuck Turner when he goes to jail, and the City Council has no power anyways.
With rights come responsibilities
Oh sure, they definitely have the right to hang the flag like that. People also have the right to say really disgusting hateful things about people or groups of people. Doesn't mean it's a good idea. Things are still tacky and rude and hurtful to varying degrees even if you have the right to do them.
When I worked on an adolescent inpatient unit, the kids would frequently tell me that something was their human right, as if that somehow negated their responsibility for their behavior.
Kid: Unlock the fuckin bathroom, lady.
Me: Wanna ask nicely?
Kid: It's my human right to use the bathroom.
Me: Yep, it is, and I don't plan to deny you that right. It's also one of your rights here that adults provide you with feedback about how various behavior comes across to other people. Next time you ask me to do something that isn't a right, like to use art supplies or go for a walk, I'm still going to remember how you spoke to me about the bathroom.
http://1smootshort.blogspot.com
Nice Work
I've already invited my kids to "Go Galt" on a number of occasions when they think that doing their chores is an unreasonable and unfair infringement of their rights. Not that I would actually kick them out, which they often note would be illegal, but that they need to think about exactly how many privileges and services that their parents provide them and how trivial it is that they have to put away the dishes and sort the recycling and sweep the dining room.
I wonder how many of these Teabaggers have considered the amount and scope of ways that government aids and enriches their lives and ensures their and their family's safety. Even Lindsey Graham (R-SC) will talk a blue streak about how he and his sister were supported and educated by Social Security after his parents died.
There are any number of regions where government has gotten quite small and gotten out of people's lives, to no good end. I don't see any of these guys in any hurry to move to Somalia.
Somalia?
SwirlyGrrl wonders why people are not interested in flocking to Somalia, which she apparently sees as the model of freedom and small government being advocated by others. This shows exactly what she, and many other people commenting on this forum, fail to understand. When freedom-loving people like those you so disparagingly call teabaggers*, protest against the growth of government intrusion and intervention into our lives, we are not advocating anarchy and the elimination of all government as we see in hellholes such as Somalia. Instead, we argue for a government properly limited to its Constitutional mandate to protect the liberty and individual rights of its citizens - and nothing more. We are advocates for a society that makes it possible for individuals to follow their personal dreams and live by their own independent judgments, interacting with others on a purely voluntary basis. This is a critical distinction that is papered over with glib remarks and insults.
I think that the opening remarks made by adamg explain the true nature of what is wrong with this country. Liberals have spent decades advocating for tolerance, appreciation and acceptance of blacks, women, gays, Hispanics, and other groups of people that they see as not fully accepted by society at large. How then can you turn around and be so insulting to "Libertarians", or "Objectivists", or "Sarah Palin fans" or "guns owners"? Is the idea that we must be tolerant of others for what they are, but can openly display contempt for anyone who doesn't agree with our personal views? These diatribes certainly do not come across as demonstrating any level of real tolerance. Maybe you need to reexamine your own core beliefs.
Regards,
--
C. Jeffery Small
"I am neither a ward nor a slave of the state."
* Ridicule, poorly disguised as humor, is always the last refuge of those lacking any real ideas or critical insight into an issue.
Tolerance
"Liberals have spent decades advocating for tolerance, appreciation and acceptance of blacks, women, gays, Hispanics, and other groups of people that they see as not fully accepted by society at large. How then can you turn around and be so insulting to "Libertarians", or "Objectivists", or "Sarah Palin fans" or "guns owners"?"
In my case, it's the difference between insulting a belief (to which you can add "hippies", "UFO cultists" or "Yankee fans") or insulting something like race/gender/sexuality, which is inborn and innate. And "tolerance", to me, means "accept and learn to live with and not pass laws to restrict and punish", which seems to happen all the time to groups based on those inborn qualities and not ever to people based on their mutable beliefs. We can tolerate you and your ideas without having to agree with them or even treat them with undue respect.
Endowed
Inborn and innate like natural rights (life, liberty, self defense, property rights, etc.) -- or are these merely beliefs to be insulted?
Racists can be viewed as simply opposed to the beliefs of some who hold they are human and as such have certain rights that exist irrespective of government and its laws.
Nice Dream
Right. Sure. Now explain how government protects the poor from the rich (e.g. robber baron era) and your liberties from the attempts of others to, oh, enslave you if there are no structures present to do so?
Now, sit down and list all the things you have derived from government from birth onward. Count everything from vaccinations to school to student loans to a heavily subsidized highway system and federally backed home loans.
Then think about it a bit. Chances are, like most tea partiers, you have received a great deal of advantage from the governments you have lived under and not given much thought to how that has likely changed your life. Funny how many of those who participate in these events have extensively benefited from the privileges provided from the government - many have benefited much more than many who actually have to work day in and day out and can't take a day off to hold a sign. Remember: it is federally subsidized schooling that permits the tea party crowd to sit around on their rears and read Ayn Random instead of having to quit school at eighth grade to support the family like my grandfather did.
Tolerance means accepting that everybody has the same civil rights. It doesn't mean that anybody has violated your rights by laughing at the naivete of your blustering idealism or disputing your assertions.
Teabaggers appointed the
Teabaggers appointed the name to themselves.
It shows you just how out of touch these ignoramuses are, they were flaunting a name for themselves in pride, while others knew it's other meaning. They choose poorly, which isn't a surprise when you talk to most of them.
Poor Insulted Child
I'm sure this lad has no idea that the freepers had no idea what "TEABAG" means in current slang, and was offended when some democrat freeper handed him this insulting sign just to make him look dumb.
Uh huh.
Actually, I suspect he knows more than those who printed up the sign. Somehow, the failure of the tea partiers to use google before printing signs and declaring their "teabagging" to the media proudly is now "those evile democrabs are picking on us no faiiirrrrr".
I just want to say to all
I just want to say to all conservatives who have, by virtue of invective and repetition, turned the word "liberal" into epithet (like b-stard, a--hole, commie, d-ck, c-nt, n-gger and cr-cker) here is the definition of the word "Teabagging", which your movement has chosen:
I'll be happier when Republicans jettison the idea that the common uneducated Joe the plumber type should be running this country.
Did you explain to Mr.
Did you explain to Mr. Bennett the "16th amendment"?
Nah
I left that for my father, the New York lawyer. But instead all he did was ask Bennett if he had any absentee ballots on him. Doug did offer him a voter-registration form.
ohboy
The only reason I remember which one is the 16th amendment is because in my 9th grade civics class, there were a few kids (who'd also been disturbingly interested in the 2nd amendment) who spent days spouting off about how it wasn't ever ratified, and that's why their parents didn't pay taxes on their various corrugated metal shacks and trucks with large tires.
http://1smootshort.blogspot.com
You sound like my father
When he used to complain about hippies and bearded weirdos - only now the shoe is on the other foot. Most social movements start with the fringe before moving to the middle. Liberals had better be careful - there is a lot of conservative rage out there - and not just the kooky kind. There are a lot of reasonable "white picket fence" conservatives who share this opinion but won't be out marching with stupid signs. The momentum is certainly on the side of the left for now - but the pendulum always swings a little too far to one side and just when that side begins to gloat - which I'm hearing already in the tone of these posts - it starts swinging back. I figure it swings fast and furious when the bill comes for all the spending in Washington and the bills start hitting everyone - not just the over $250k a year crowd.
And remember - unlike the hippies these people have money-boatloads of it - and they aren't going to be in the mood to share like they used to. A whipped animal eventually bites back - and the results won't be pretty if you keep teasing the beast.
True: They even had a folksinger
On an acoustic guitar, of course, singing about the evils of government or something.
My visceral reaction was probably due to two things: Hey, this is Boston (and yes, I realize they have a right to protest, but I also have a right to yell "BAR-NEY FRANK!" at them) but more strongly in reaction to the fringers - the people who demand to see Obama's REAL birth certificate and all the "Selfishness is a human virtue" types (hey, dudes, how did you get here? Did you by any chance drive on a government-built road or fly in a government-subsidized airplane?). But there seemed to be quite a few of the fringers there (so again, maybe it's just like a lefty demonstration).
Well, the self-importance there is pretty revealing
Do these people REALLY think that Obama ran for president and was sworn into office without a thorough background check as to his eligibility? Like they're the first ones to have thought of looking into the citizenship of the president? Dude, you're not that important or original.
I wonder if these are the same people who are against supports for people with mental illness, stating that they should stop spending their days focused on whatever obsession and start working instead. As if these people's families and treatment providers have overlooked an obvious solution to mental illness.
http://1smootshort.blogspot.com
Delusional *like a Fox*
Fox News and other propaganda/rabble-rousing outlets both plant and 'legitimize' these ideas.
In this case, it's not necessarily self-important, thinking one knows better than the experts and professionals[*]. Rather, "the news" has "raised questions," which are never resolved, so any humble person can adopt the belief without presumption.
[*] = Though there is a lot of that going on too, and some degree of that (at least, to the point of healthy skepticism) is generally good for the individual and for society.
ironic
Ok where were these protesters when our country was going down the drain further for years during the last regime? if you spoke out against the last regime you were unpatriotic. now if you protest against the current president you are patriotic. isn't it ironic. Now that we have a new president in place they are swiftly coming out to bash him. Why? one reason Because he's a democrat. they care more about their political party then they do their country. They are probably all the highest bracket earners and are just pissed cuz their taxes are going up to where they were pre bush. They care more about their pocket books then they do about their country. I also smell bigotry.
UH's tagline is *not* "Like the Herald for Liberals."
I think you need to provide more argument or revise your assertions, because these look like wild assumptions and leaps of logic.
Why Don't you
Read the whole post next time Then you might get the point
I get the point
It's the presumed argument that I don't get.
Agreed
Just because most of one's audience is likely to all be on the same side doesn't mean that one should revert to shorthand and empty logic.
http://1smootshort.blogspot.com
These protesters were around
These protesters were around during GW's presidency. You just didn't see them on the news over all the pundits calling Bush a war criminal and Hillary screaming that it was patriotic to disagree and protest.
Seems now that the dems are in power, those who were in their shoes a few months ago are now kooks. Progressives are just as intolerant as the right wingers were.
BTW most of these tea party protesters are just as anti-republican as anti-democrat.
Lunatic Fringes
First of all, there is a difference of sheer numbers here. 100,000s of people flooding the streets of Manhattan for a war protest were not all kooks. Some were, but they were vastly outnumbered by workaday folk, and many were carrying signs questioning whether or not we could afford a foreign adventure war through deficit spending. Note also that the user-generated ad that won the Move On contest was created by a person with a heavily republican family and explored the concept of how long our kids were going to have to work to pay for this foolish war. Nearly a million people in the streets on a single February Sunday and an ad about war and deficit spending that was peer-selected by thousands of people isn't loony. There just aren't that many lunatics out there - sorry.
A mere handful of very recognizable people repeatedly showing up with reality-free signage (if not conspiracy theories) and Randfandom are not a movement - even if a "major" network chooses to promote them rather than ignore them. A few extra bussed in for the fun doesn't make their numbers that notable, even in a small enough space to look "crowded".
You have been around UHub long enough to know that left-wing kooks and lunatics are usually subject to similar derision here anyway. When it comes to idiocy, I think there is pretty much equal opportunity derision - including the 9/11 truthers and the Palestinian Wannabes that have wrecked the Green Party with their extremist rantings and try to destroy every public event with the slightest hint of Jewishness associated with it. These guys don't get the Murdoch Stamp of Approval and get their lunatic ravings showcased 24/7 by Faux News, so I guess that makes them nuts and therefore fair game, but the Faux news coverage makes the teapartiers sane?
Here's another lunacy criterion: how focused is the protest? Are the vast majority of people on theme or variations of a theme, or are many bringing their own laundry list of "issues" to the table? From what I see of Adam's and other pictures, this teaparty is a pretty messy mashup of the mainline issues and fiscal issues with a substantial quantity of outright outer limits insanity. The crazy is out in force - even by the "resist against this that something else kill God smash the state and my pet conspiracy theory" standards of left lunacy.
agreed
First of all, there is a difference of sheer numbers here. 100,000s of people flooding the streets of Manhattan for a war protest were not all kooks. Some were, but they were vastly outnumbered by workaday folk, and many were carrying signs questioning whether or not we could afford a foreign adventure war through deficit spending.
Any movement/protest brings out the kooks in force. I'm pretty sure the anarchist are equal opportunity kooks and are at every one, lefty and righty.
This July 4 rally was kook heavy, but the large, nationwide ones on April 15 were very large. I believe middle of the road estimates were 250,000 people.
I was at the state house one and it was very a very boring normal middle workaday people as well. At the same time, the guys who made the news were the "Obama is Hitler" and the Gun Nutz.
The problem is that you are deriding all the TeaParty wannabees as fringe kooks where that isn't the case. It's the same thing you just defended against. We're not all "Obama birth certificate deniers" as much as you are all not the "Palestine holocaust" enthusiasts. It's hard to keep them out, and fringe elements are like fast food to the media. It's easier than writing something w/ nuance
Note also that the user-generated ad that won the Move On contest was created by a person with a heavily republican family and explored the concept of how long our kids were going to have to work to pay for this foolish war.
The most comon sign, or at least the ones that stuck out w/ me, were the ones questioning how long our kids were going to be in debt to pay off the bailouts.
Libertarians...
... were out protesting George W.'s war right alongside the liberals, same as we were out there protesting tax hikes right alongside the conservatives, same as we were promoting more liberal marijuana laws and less-stringent gun laws. We aren't that easily pigeonholed.
(Oops! Does that have some new risque meaning now, too? I'd better be careful or else all of the kids who know all the hep new lingo will jump all over me for my stupfuckdity.)
I can't speak for the Republicans and other possible dolts you folks so readily disparage, but I know damn well where I was. And proud of it, too.
Suldog
http://jimsuldog.blogspot.com
Oh man ya don't want to be
Oh man ya don't want to be pigeonholed, oh man not fun. I was at a bar last week yada yada yada and I woke up to a picture one of my friends took of me being pigeonholed.
I wonder if Doug Bennett
I wonder if Doug Bennett tells people that when he knocks on all those doors?
The Reagan myth
Recommended reading: "Tear Down This Myth" by Will Bunch.
http://www.amazon.com/Tear-Down-This-Myth-Distorte...
"Tear Down This Myth"
Not before we put his name and face on National Airport and Mt. Rushmore.
Just remember Reagan didn't ignore the AIDS epidemic because he disliked gay people he ignored it becuase he thought government had no role in public engineering and yet he had a CDC. WTF?
Star Wars however was a creation of his own imagination and we are still paying for it. BY the way, conservatives a re criticizing Obama and Sec of Def for cutting back on the program. sheesh.
Selfishness is not a virtue
Greed is not good.
Read "Conscience of a Liberal" by Paul Krugman.
What's more greedy?
A person who doesn't like having his work taxed to give to someone who didn't earn anything?
or, the person who expects to free stuff/services from your work?
Strawman alert
It's the old Reagan "welfare queen" canard in 3, 2, 1 ...
No doubt there really are people who are lardasses trying to live off the dole (as opposed to oligarchic Wall Street smart guys trying to live off the dole, but I digress) but:
A) Anybody who assumes that most people on welfare want to be on welfare has never been on welfare himself (trust me, it's no picnic).
B) Remember all the changes that great conservative Bill Clinton made to shrink the welfare rolls?
I think it is you who are
I think it is you who are building up those strawmen.
A) Giveaways and entitlements are way more than unemployement and welfare. Healthcare subisdy, cash for clunkers, $8,000 housing stimulus, buyouts of the finance and auto industries.
B) The current president and the senate are working on rolling back the majority of Clinton's wellfare reform. Obama's doing a great job growing those welfare rolls.
I don't care if the people receiving these payouts want it or not. The government is still taking from the earners and givng to the takers, "spreading the wealth"
Welfare wants people to be on it more than the people do
Many of the parents we see in our program want to work, but the state agencies only give out daycare vouchers for people who are on welfare first. Then they yank the voucher as soon as you're working (but haven't worked your way up enough to make more than daycare costs). So parents have to go on welfare for a while in order to be able to go back to work before their kids are five (Boston also doesn't provide preschool spots for all three-year-olds, and Head Start doesn't take anyone who makes over FEDERAL poverty level, which basically means any family who has one person making MA minimum wage 40 hours a week. Early Head Start for 0-3 year olds has a waiting list of two years, plus most of the spots are reserved for people on welfare). They'd rather pay people to sit on their asses AND pay for their kid to be in daycare while they're sitting on their asses rather than just pay for daycare like civilized countries do. Oh, and the only options for school for parents who want to get ahead are getting into a university and getting a full ride (riiiight), or things like free nursing aide training programs and daycare worker programs that require you to be on welfare in order to take part.
Same with SSI. Massachusetts doesn't have a "medically needy" category for Medicaid like most states do. If someone makes more than 150% of federal poverty level, they can't get MassHealth based on their income. If they are not deemed unable to work, they aren't considered to have a disability by Massachusetts standards. So people with disabilities who are working and making more than about $20K are on their own for insurance, even if that means they have to pay $1000 a month in copays because they have a lot of appointments and meds that each have a copay (plus expenses that insurance doesn't cover, like wheelchair refittings more often than the five years private insurance allows). Clearly no one who makes $25,000 a year can pay $12,000+ per year in out-of-pocket medical expenses. MassHealth's solution to this is to go on SSI, and then get fully covered MassHealth for free. They'd rather pay people MORE to sit on their asses than let them work and just cover the medical expenses of being a person with a lot of medical stuff.
http://1smootshort.blogspot.com
I hear this all the time.
I hear this all the time. There are allot of people on welfare who would rather be working but would lose the additional benefits they really need (and the jobs they can get do not supply) so they just stay on the dole.
Agreed
Too many times the recipients of welfare/services/etc are the target.
In a large part it's the bureaucracy which becomes the monster. In order to keep or increase funding, they need to show that they are necessary. The best way to do this is to increase rolls.
It becomes a self fulfilling nightmare where people never get off the system and more people are added as the directors, VPs, etc seek to increase their budget and power. If these programs were successful in getting people off their service, they'd effectively manage themselves out of existence (or more realistically, less funding and a smaller voice at the table).
Homeland security is a prime example. They get funding by promoting fear and vulnerability. If there is no longer an "immediate threat" boogeyman, they can't then get extra funding for all the new staff, toys, and unconstitutional powers.
Welfare does a mediocre job at helping people in need. It does an awful job getting people off the dole. It's part of the system's design.
My fear with increasing entitlements/welfare/cars for the unemployed, is not helping people, it's helping them get out from the system.
I don't know the homeland security answer....
"If there is no longer an "immediate threat" boogeyman, they can't then get extra funding for all the new staff, toys, and unconstitutional powers.
"
But when was there an "immediate threat"? Before 9-11? Right after? Now? Ten years before?
Homeland Security
Is the sickest of out of control bureaucracies. There is no realistic yardstick by which success can be measured - everything is ad hoc and fudgeable. What's a success? We haven't been bombed by A-rabs lately! Whether that fact has anything whatsoever to do with low-rent play nazis in rubber gloves is not demonstrable, and by that token not falsifiable. Line up for the Rape-i-scan so a bunch of perverts in a back room can yuk about your folds. Throw out your baby's yogurt because it might be A BOMB! The DHS needs more, more, more. If we haven't been bombed, claim victory. If we have been bombed, claim underfunding. It is a license to print money for any corporation that can field a dubious security device and schmooze its way into testing.
The flip side
The system also seems to be designed to create festering resentments among the working poor. I remember that kids who had dental care (including braces) and food stamps and a number of other supports, while we often struggled to buy groceries at the end of the month because we fell a few dollars short of the eligibility criteria. If my dad made a few dollars less, it would have been easier.
I somehow doubt that those gaps in coverage are anything but intentional. The benefits stop well short of a phase-out to parity of quality of life ... so much so as to create a blame game at the lower end that distracts from other things. I have no doubt that the "Welfare Queen" meme was generated by an intense exaggeration of the quality of life of a welfare recipient versus the typical working poor family.
I think it is made even
I think it is made even worse by the fact that growing up in a lower income household with parents (parent) who works may be harder then growing up in a household with parents (parent) who does not work. If person A makes 100 dollars and has to work for it and person B takes in 75 dollars but does not have to work that breeds resentment by the 100 dollar person.
I have always felt that instead of flat out welfare we should use that money for more services for ALL poor people. I have also always felt that people on the public dole should do some work. Even those people with disabilities that make it so they can not hold down normal jobs can do SOMETHING. I mentioned that to a professor once and mentioned how dirty the streets seemed and how maybe people on welfare can do "chores" around their cities like sweeping sidewalks or something. The professor said that was degrading for the person on welfare and I was made to feel awful for saying it. I pointed outside to the groundskeeper , who happened to be loved by everyone because he was so nice, and said how degrading it is for him to be out their cutting the grass. I thought her head was going to explode, I forget what her response was. Point is plenty of poor people work in "degrading" jobs. No job is degrading and honestly the harder people have to work the more respect I have for them, my life is easy in comparison.
Degrading?
Sure it's degrading. The only thing more degrading than getting paid by the government to scrape gum off the sidewalk is getting paid by the government to do nothing. Below nothing? Dunno - what's lower than zero? I guess they could pay you to do negative work so that other people could then go back and redo it...
you're too late
They already do that - as you may recall:
http://www.universalhub.com/node/25780
:-)=)
Let's see: when liberals
Let's see: when liberals protest, "dissent is patriotic", but when conservatives do it, they're lame, stupid losers. I get it.
Note to editors: You've got a pretty nice blog here, don't spoil it with rank hypocrisy.
Apples and oranges
When liberals protested anything over the past eight years, they were derided as kooks and treasonous traitors. Surely you follow your Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter enough to know that.
If you took this scene and
If you took this scene and stripped the messages out and said it was from 2006 many conservatives would say "damn hippies", that is what it looks like just from the other side.
I am always amazed at how fast these things change and people swap sides.