PROOF! Republicans & Tea Partiers cut from same cloth

Tea party protesters call Georgia's John Lewis 'nigger'
By William Douglas, McClatchy Newspapers William Douglas, Mcclatchy Newspapers
2 hrs 34 mins ago

.WASHINGTON — Demonstrators outside the U.S. Capitol , angry over the proposed health care bill, shouted "nigger" Saturday at U.S. Rep. John Lewis , a Georgia congressman and civil rights icon who was nearly beaten to death during an Alabama march in the 1960s.

The protesters also shouted obscenities at other members of the Congressional Black Caucus , lawmakers said.

"They were shouting, sort of harassing," Lewis said. "But, it's okay, I've faced this before. It reminded me of the 60s. It was a lot of downright hate and anger and people being downright mean."

Lewis said he was leaving the Cannon office building across from the Capitol when protesters shouted "Kill the bill, kill the bill," Lewis said.

"I said 'I'm for the bill, I support the bill, I'm voting for the bill'," Lewis said.

A colleague who was accompanying Lewis said people in the crowd responded by saying "Kill the bill, then the n-word."

"It surprised me that people are so mean and we can't engage in a civil dialogue and debate," Lewis said.

Rep. Emanuel Cleaver , D- Mo. , said he was a few yards behind Lewis and distinctly heard "nigger."

"It was a chorus," Cleaver said. "In a way, I feel sorry for those people who are doing this nasty stuff - they're being whipped up. I decided I wouldn't be angry with any of them."

Protestors also used a slur as they confronted Rep. Barney Frank , D- Mass. , an openly gay member of Congress . A writer for Huffington Post said the crowd called Frank a "faggot."

Frank told the Boston Globe that the incident happened as he was walking from the Longworth office building to the Rayburn office building, both a short distance from the Capitol. Frank said the crowd consisted of a couple of hundred of people and that they referred to him as 'homo.'

"I'm disappointed with the unwillingness to be civil," Frank told the Globe. "I was, I guess, surprised by the rancor. What it means is obviously the health care bill is proxy for a lot of other sentiments, some of which are perfectly reasonable, but some of which are not."

"People out there today, on the whole, were really hateful," Frank said. "The leaders of this movement have a responsibility to speak out more."

Thousands of demonstrators gathered outside the Capitol on Saturday as the House Democratic leadership worked to gather enough votes to enact a health care overhaul proposal that has become the centerpiece of President Barack Obama's domestic agenda. Most were affiliated with so-called tea party organizations that originally sprang up during last summer's protests of the health care proposals.

Heated debate has surrounded what role race plays in the motivations of the tea party demonstrators. During protests last summer, demonstrators displayed a poster depicting Obama as an African witch doctor complete with headdress, above the words "OBAMACARE coming to a clinic near you." Former President Jimmy Carter asserted in September that racism was a major factor behind the hostility that Obama's proposals had faced.

The claim brought angry rebuttals from Republicans.

On Saturday, Frank, however, said he was sorry Republican leaders didn't do more to disown the protesters.

Some Republicans "think they are benefiting from this rancor," he said.

House Majority Whip James Clyburn, D- S.C. , said Saturday's ugliness underscored for him that the health care overhaul isn't the only motivation for many protesters.

"I heard people saying things today I've not heard since March 15th, 1960 , when I was marching to try and get off the back of the bus," Clyburn said. "This is incredible, shocking to me."

He added, "A lot of us have said for a long time that none of this is about healthcare at all. It's about extending a basic fundamental right to people who are less powerful."

 

Not surprising at all from that racist ass party.They were shouting the same things at McCain and Palin Rallies.Some one shouted the N word while Palin was speaking,not once did she tell them that that wasn't welcomed there

 

Pretty ironic to have a civil rights icon foisting the road to serfdom on us.




btw: Poor lil helpless impotent congressional black caucus.
Those paragons of economic freedom , meritocracy and color blindness.

 

probably just some stormfront guys interspersed amongst the crowd.. they don't see it just as a transfer from the wealthy to the poor but a transfer of wealth from whites to blacks

 

What the Tea Party Doesn't Know

Tea Party supporters don't know what they're talking about. That's what Bruce Bartlett argues in his latest Forbes column. He and David Frum—both Bartlett and Frum worked in the Bush administration—organized a survey of protesters at a recent Tea Party demonstration on Capitol Hill. And they found that "for an anti-tax group, they don't know much about taxes."

Tea Party protesters believed on average that federal taxes were around 40% of the GDP. But in fact federal taxes—including the payroll and social security tax—are less than 15% of GDP in 2009. The protesters also thought that a typical family making $50,000/year would pay more than 25%—or $12,710—of its income in federal income tax. But Congress' Joint Committee on Taxation calculates (pdf) that the average family with an income that size actually pays just 1.7% of its income in federal income tax. Even when you include other federal taxes, the average family owes just 12.3% of its income—about half what the protesters thought it would owe. In addition, more than two-thirds of the protesters thought that federal taxes were actually higher now than under Bush—with just 4% saying taxes were lower. In fact, Obama's stimulus package amounted to a tax cut of hundreds of billions of dollars. The Tax Policy center estimates (pdf) that almost 90% of us wiil pay fewer federal taxes this year than the year before.

http://bigthink.com/ideas/19173