Because they’re huge fans of it.

This has been yet another edition of simple answers to simple questions.

Here’s the thing: I do not support the teabaggers or the NRA. Happy to take their money, but don’t take that to mean that I agree with them.

Also, I wonder who will be the first person to accuse the black congressmen who witnessed the incident of “playing the race card?”

A new CNN poll sheds light on who makes up the Tea Party movement. According to the results, tea partiers are richer, more male and have more education than the general population.

Eleven percent of respondents to the poll said that they had in someway participated in the tea party movement, either by going to a rally, donating money, or “taking some other active step to support the movement.” The demographics among that 11% are much different from the rest of the U.S. population.

“Of this core group of Tea Party activists, 6 of 10 are male and half live in rural areas,” CNN reports. “Nearly three quarters of Tea Party activists attended college, compared to 54 percent of all Americans, and more than three in four call themselves conservatives.”

Sixty-six percent of the tea party activists reported an income higher than $50,000 per year. Among the overall sample in the poll, that figure was 42%. The group is 80% white, as opposed to 71% among all respondents to the poll.

• The fact that the Tea Party convention proudly featured crowds of white people cheering for Tom Tancredo’s suggestion that we reinstate Jim Crow laws proves that this has nothing to do with race.

In fact, the party of Limbaugh and Beck could well make major gains in the midterm elections. The Obama administration’s job-creation efforts have fallen short, so that unemployment is likely to stay disastrously high through next year and beyond. The banker-friendly bailout of Wall Street has angered voters, and might even let Republicans claim the mantle of economic populism. Conservatives may not have better ideas, but voters might support them out of sheer frustration.

And if Tea Party Republicans do win big next year, what has already happened in California could happen at the national level. In California, the G.O.P. has essentially shrunk down to a rump party with no interest in actually governing — but that rump remains big enough to prevent anyone else from dealing with the state’s fiscal crisis. If this happens to America as a whole, as it all too easily could, the country could become effectively ungovernable in the midst of an ongoing economic disaster.

The point is that the takeover of the Republican Party by the irrational right is no laughing matter. Something unprecedented is happening here — and it’s very bad for America.

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“Be assured not one Republican will vote for this bill,” [Rep. Eric] Cantor said, to big cheers and shouts of “Kill the bill.”

But we must have bipartisanship because, um, Olympia Snowe? Or maybe it’s because David Brooks will be sad? Ugh. If the Democrats have learned anything from Tuesday night (and I wouldn’t be surprised if they haven’t) it’s that Democrats don’t show up to vote for candidates who insist on running far to the right.

In the morning, as Vice President Joe Biden rallied Democrats in Watertown by portraying Hoffman as the candidate of Rush Limbaugh, Sarah Palin, and Tea Party activists. Outside, two dozen Hoffman supporters lined the sidewalks with signs that attacked Owens as a “Pelosi puppet” and an agent of ACORN.

“I was at a Tea Party, but this is too slow a process for me,” said John Dewitt, a contractor from Adams, N.Y. “I’m more on the violence side. I’m more of the Civil War, revolutionary kind of guy. I’m of the old school–you kick them in the ass and be done with it.”

The Hoffman backers outside of the Biden event all said they’d attended Tea Parties. Some were affiliated with Glenn Beck’s 9/12 Project. All worried that ACORN was going to show up in the district, or even at the Biden event–a paranoia that led to some minor awkwardness when an African-American Hoffman worker walked by.

“This guy’s with ACORN,” said Dewitt.

“Definitely, not from around here,” said businessman Erik Dunk.

A fine representation of Sarah Palin’s “Real America.”

If this is organized, we suck.

–Teabagger Joann Abbot, after only ten people showed up to this morning’s well-advertised tea party “flashmob” in response to Nancy Pelosi unveiling of the House healthcare bill.

They’re just not sure.

Posters portraying President Obama as a witch doctor may be racist, organizers of Tea Party protests say, but they reflect anger about where he is leading the country.

The posters, showing Obama wearing a feather headdress and a bone through his nose, have recently popped up in e-mails, on Web sites and at Tea Party protests.

The image has stoked debate and cast attention on the rallies, which have drawn people Tea Party organizers describe as on the fringe and not representative of the overall movement. Their general viewpoint, leaders say, is that there’s been too much federal government intervention, particularly concerning health care and taxes.

Yeah, because that picture is clearly about government intervention in healthcare and taxes, right? Right?

You may have heard [ed.: here] that GOP Rep. Kevin Brady, staunch tea partier, is protesting that the taxpayer-funded D.C. Metro didn’t adequately prepare for the anti-government 9/12 rally. He’s even suggesting Metro’s failure to transport tea partiers may have hurt turnout.
…
But earlier this year, Brady voted against the stimulus package. It provided millions upon millions of dollars for all manner of improvements to … the D.C. Metro.

Update: Not surprisingly, it gets better:

Back in July HR3288, a Transportation and HUD appropriations bill, came up for a vote. It included $150 million for emergency maintenance funding for the DC Metro.

Brady voted against it.

Rep. Kevin Brady asked for an explanation of why the government-run subway system didn’t, in his view, adequately prepare for this past weekend’s rally to protest government spending and government services.

Seriously.

The Texas Republican on Wednesday released a letter he sent to Washington’s Metro system complaining that the taxpayer-funded subway system was unable to properly transport protesters to the rally to protest government spending and expansion.

“These individuals came all the way from Southeast Texas to protest the excessive spending and growing government intrusion by the 111th Congress and the new Obama administration,” Brady wrote. “These participants, whose tax dollars were used to create and maintain this public transit system, were frustrated and disappointed that our nation’s capital did not make a great effort to simply provide a basic level of transit for them.”

A spokesman for Brady says that “there weren’t enough cars and there weren’t enough trains.” Brady tweeted as much from the Saturday march. “METRO did not prepare for Tea Party March! More stories. People couldn’t get on, missed start of march. I will demand answers from Metro,” he wrote on Twitter.

Now, I know members of Congress probably never ride Metro, but here’s a little protip from someone who has: Metro is always crowded when there is any kind of event going on downtown. It’s crowded after baseball games, and the way our team plays, nobody goes to those. But I’m sure this was all part of some Nobama socialist conspiracy to silence you. Ugh.

More importantly, though, sorry that Metro didn’t increase government spending to provide more government services for the teabaggers who showed up last weekend to protest increased government spending and more government services.

By the way, Congressman Brady, just who’s going to pay for this frivolous investigation?

Behold the media’s glaring double standard. Today, the Post puts the “tens of thousands” of Obama-hating tea bagger protesters on A1; makes it the lead story as a matter of fact.

Back in 2002, when more than 100,000 anti-war protesters gathered in the nation’s capitol to protest the Bush administration, the same WashPost did its best to ignore them:

The Washington Post put the story not on the front page, but in the Metro section with, as the paper’s ombudsman later lamented, “a couple of ho-hum photographs that captured the protest’s fringe elements.”

This simply proves again that when right-wing (and mostly white) conservatives get angry, it’s big news. When liberals get angry, it’s just annoying.

We should really make the evil, no good, liberal media elites like David Broder, Charles Krauthammer, Bill Kristol, Pat Buchanan, and Joe Scarborough answer for their obvious liberal bias.

• Newt Gingrich’s PAC has rescinded its earlier announcement naming adult film company Pink Visual as “Entrepreneur of the Year,” for stimulating the, err, economy. (CityDesk)
• The Obama Administration is making it easier for college students to apply for federal student aid. Like his earlier message to stay in school, this is obviously socialism at work! (Student Life)
• The highly tasteful “Bury Obamacare With Kennedy” signs seen at yesterday’s teabaggerpalooza were printed and distributed by the American Life League, a group that is very interested in keeping fetuses alive but could apparently care less about whether they get adequate healthcare once they’re born. (Matt Yglesias)
• Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) does not support a “trigger” for the public option because it means that there might actually be a public option, at some point. (CNN Political Ticker)

Conservative activists, who organized a march on the U.S. Capitol today in protest of the Obama administration’s health care agenda and government spending, erroneously attributed reports on the size of the crowds to ABC News.

Matt Kibbe, president of FreedomWorks, the group that organized the event, said on stage at the rally that ABC News was reporting that 1 million to 1.5 million people were in attendance.

At no time did ABC News, or its affiliates, report a number anywhere near as large. ABCNews.com reported an approximate figure of 60,000 to 70,000 protesters, attributed to the Washington, D.C., fire department. In its reports, ABC News Radio described the crowd as “tens of thousands.”

Who will be the first to say that the fact that they won’t let the teabaggers keep lying only proves that ABC is part of Obama’s socialist agenda?

A printed–as opposed to scrawled by hand on a piece of posterboard–sign being distributed at Glenn Beck’s 9/12 teabagger rally in DC.

(via)

That’s Bishop Emilio Alvarez of Stamford, CT, a person of Hispanic descent, having the sheer audacity to ask his Congressman, the Spanish-speaking Rep. Jim Himes (D-CT), a question about healthcare en español! Naturally, the wingnuts in attendance are none too pleased about this man speaking Mexican when he should be speaking ‘Murican, so they responded in the only responsible way: shouting down a man of the cloth.

Government health officials are mobilizing to launch a massive swine flu vaccination campaign this fall that is unprecedented in its scope — and in the potential for complications.

The campaign aims to vaccinate at least half the country’s population within months. Although more people have been inoculated against diseases such as smallpox and polio over a period of years, the United States has never tried to immunize so many so quickly.

The real patriots–you know, the ones who wave “Obama is Hitler” posters and hang their congressmen in effigy–should just refuse this government-run healthcare.

Here is a video of a woman (in an Israel Defense Forces t-shirt??) shouting “Heil Hitler!” at an Israeli Jew for defending Israel’s national health system and decrying the shameful treatment of our returning soldiers. Then, when he confronts the woman about the $8,000 emergency room visit that he had to pay for out-of-pocket because he doesn’t have health insurance, she responds by pretending to cry like a baby. Everything this woman does makes me cringe.

And these are the people to whom supporters of healthcare reform should respectfully defer? These are the people whose opinions must, must!, be listened to by policymakers if our Republic is to remain whole?

What. The. Fuck?

As Barney Frank observed at one of his town halls, trying to argue with these people would be like trying to argue with a dining room table.

You can’t have a “civil discussion” or “rational debate” or whatever politicians are trying to call this month of nonsense with people who have the shameful audacity to compare efforts to improve Americans’ access to healthcare with the wholesale slaughter of millions.

(via 1 and 2)

(via)

• Rep. David Scott (D-GA) arrived at his Smyrna, GA, office today to find huge swastika spray-painted on a sign outside of it. (Atlanta Journal-Constitution)
• Well-known jerks “CNN” have made the Woodhouse family’s next Thanksgiving really awkward by forcing brothers Dallas and Brad Woodhouse to fight about healthcare on teevee, for America’s amusement. (CNN Political Ticker)
• Somehow, nobody can get President Obama on the record about how he is personally going to exterminate the Greatest Generation and Sarah Palin’s kids. (USA Today)
• How long until the teabaggers realize that they are all socialist community organizers now? (Washington Independent)
• Public option opponent Sen. Ben Nelson (D-NE) has launched TV ads to respond to the horrible liberals who have the audacity to want other people to have health insurance. (The Plum Line)

Most people want to have access to members of Congress to talk about a specific issue and they really think a one-on-one meeting is more access than a town hall meeting, and that’s what I’ve done.

So we were puzzled when we got, when we started getting calls in the last two weeks demanding a town hall meeting. And my staff would say, “Wouldn’t you just like to sit and have a private conversation with the congressman, and explain your position and ask him about his?”

They didn’t want that. They wanted a town hall meeting and I think we’ve seen why.

– Rep. Brad Miller (D-NC), who has received death threats over his support of healthcare reform, on the town hall-disrupting teabaggers.

• Teabaggers are now threatening violence against the SEIU and other pro-healthcare reform groups for daring to show up at town halls. Let freedom ring! (The Plum Line)
• Rep. Thaddeus McCotter (R-MI) is introducing legislation to give tax credits to pay for pet care. Healthcare for humans? Not so much. (Michigan Messenger)
• A GOP town hall turns ugly when Rep. Bob Inglis (R-SC) dares take the name of Glenn Beck in vain. It was only a matter of time before Republicans got a little taste of their own medicine. (Think Progress)
• Bill O’Reilly secretly wants to make out with Barack Obama, but it’s okay because the real wingnuts have all switched over to Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh already. (Mediaite via Wonkette)

* Cf.

• Hiding cash in the freezer did not go well for former Rep. William Jefferson (D-LA). (New Orleans Times-Picayune)
• A new poll shows that old people on Medicare don’t think anyone else should have publicly-funded health insurance. (CNN)
• Rep. Brad Ellsworth (D-IN) usually spends his recesses hanging out at grocery stores to help seniors and veterans navigate the federal bureaucracy, but not this summer because he doesn’t want to get beat up by teabaggers. (The Plum Line)
• Nobody could have predicted that a sign saying “The President is a nagger” could be changed to say something less appropriate. (WLWT)
• In a few hours, Sonia Sotomayor will be a Supreme Court justice. (Voice of America)