| Year | US | UK | Other | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2001 | 12 | 0 | 0 | 12 |
| 2002 | 49 | 3 | 17 | 69 |
| 2003 | 48 | 0 | 9 | 57 |
| 2004 | 52 | 1 | 6 | 59 |
| 2005 | 99 | 1 | 31 | 131 |
| 2006 | 98 | 39 | 54 | 191 |
| 2007 | 117 | 42 | 73 | 232 |
| 2008 | 155 | 51 | 88 | 294 |
| 2009 | 200 | 76 | 63 | 339 |
| Total | 830 | 213 | 341 | 1384 |
Did you know that Article 31 of the Iraqi Constitution, drafted by your right-wing Bushies in 2005 and ratified by the Iraqi people, includes state-guaranteed (single payer) healthcare for life for every Iraqi citizen?
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"....and I'm proud to be an American...."
"Thousands rally in capitol" reads the headline although the picture shows at most a couple of hundred white, middle aged people carrying all sorts of signs ranging from the inexplicable to the ridiculous.
Free Republic founder Jim Robinson attended yesterday's "anti-Obamacare" rally in Washington DC in his Medicaid-provided wheelchair. Robinson does not know the meaning of irony.
Andrew Sullivan: Congrats to the tea-partiers for the impressive crowds in DC today. One wonders where these people were when Bush was massively increasing debt, spending like LBJ, detaining citizens without charges and torturing them, and nation-building in Iraq and Afghanistan? I guess limited government is an elastic notion. But any serious grass-roots movement against constantly expanding government is fine by me. But then you see the images and pictures and hysterical rhetoric ... and you see that this extremism and demonization of the president is as damaging to their cause as ANSWER was to the anti-war movement.
Here's a test: when you see as many posters lambasting Bush and Cheney and the GOP for getting us into this crisis in the first place, I will take these people seriously as genuine small government non-partisan conservatives and independents. In so far as they can pressure the Congress and president into taking the debt seriously in the future, good for them. In so far as they are proposing no practical solutions, and echo truly disturbing hatred of a president barely eight months in office, facing huge crises on all fronts, they are doing their own cause far more harm than good.
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An odd thing about Glenn Beck's movement is the fact that it's intensely partisan, yet it uses the langage of unity:
I think Matt Yglesias had the clearest explanation for that a few months ago:
... the underlying issue seems to be that rule by conservatives is integral to the right's conception of the United States of America. This is part of the rhetoric of the "heartland" and "real America" ...
The people on the outs [now] are "normal" and the people running the show are "abnormal." ... the authentic America is seen as the white & Christian American, an entity in whose defense one can claim to rebel against the actual United States of America.
I think that's it - I think that's how they can talk of secession and overthrow while talking about "unity" at the same time. I think that's why they see protests against a decisively elected president as an effort to "take democracy back": They just don't think we're Americans. We're multiracial. A lot of us are coastal. Many of us aren't Christian. Therefore, we don't count.
I should point out that Matt was writing about right-wing militias. But there's really not much difference between those groups and the group gathering in Washington right now - and surely there's plenty of overlap.
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The Great Swine Flu Cover-Up: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/09/12-9
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Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R-receiving taxpayer-funded health insurance) appears to have joined those governors threatening constitutional challenges under the Tenth Amendment to any federal health care bill:
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The video below is of a devout Mormon (I'm so sorry for him) speaking out against the church policies of discrimination that led to all that money being sunk into Proposition 8 in California. It's good to be reassured that there are Mormons who aren't full of homophobia and hate. Unfortunately, the bishop there isn't quite so open-minded: he tells the fellow to stop, he cuts his microphone, and he has him escorted out.
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MRSA (methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus) is spreading in ordinary community settings such as schools, locker rooms and gyms - and now the beach.
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More photos of your fellow citizens without their white sheets: http://twitpic.com/photos/StephanieTaylor
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Hitler finds out Obama will speak to schoolchildren: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=adiLJxayfg8&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fmaruthecrankpot%2Eblogspot%2Ecom%2F&feature=player_embedded#t=117
