SWAT teams
I like to keep track of fables and narratives within the tea party movement, and we learned of a new one this week—the story of the “SWAT team” called out to threaten tea partyers in Quincy, Ill. In the words of Jim Hoft, the Gateway Pundit:
The SWAT Team was called in today at the Quincy Tea Party Rally … local Quincy Tea Party Leader Steve McQueen was directing protesters when the SWAT team was called in.
The only problem with that? The SWAT team wasn’t called in. Local police, wearing riot gear, briefly marched down the street to clear it for the president’s motorcade.
You know, if these patriots would just agree to be implanted with microchips, maybe they wouldn’t get attacked by jack-booted government thugs so much.
Update. NRO and Redstate are already on it.
Update. Wonkette really captures the enormity of what happened.
Arresting Bush protesters = Patriotism!
Asking Obama protesters to move = Tyranny!
April 30th, 2010 at 1:03 pm
It seems like Limpballs is suggesting a possibility that Obama’s SWAT teams blew up the Gulf oil rig.
April 30th, 2010 at 1:04 pm
I’m pretty sure that if we looked to see what microchips were implanted into Moe and his fellow RedState writers, we’d find some surplus 8086s or similar.
dms
April 30th, 2010 at 1:05 pm
You know, more proof none of these people have ever been to a protest or watched one. I haven’t been to a protest where the armored dudes aren’t present.
Me thinks you patriots should spend some time in one of GW’s Free Speech Zones before you start yapping about Herr Obama.
April 30th, 2010 at 1:05 pm
@Breezeblock—I was wondering how long that would take. (I’m such a kidder. I wasn’t wondering at all; they are so goddamned predictable.)
April 30th, 2010 at 1:06 pm
OT: Michael Ware’s leaving CNN because they wouldn’t give him time off to deal with PTSD. This after losing Christianne Amanpour. But Erick Erickson should more than make up for the loss. :/
April 30th, 2010 at 1:07 pm
I was just about to mention the other “SWAT team” idiocy going around, which is even in the traditional media: the idea that Obama has sent SWAT teams to oil rigs, which leads to the conclusion that terrorists are attacking the rigs.
Apparently this started when someone was quoted talking about a “’SWAT team’ of inspectors”, using the phrase figuratively, but those who thrive on sensationalism have run with it, and it’ll be yet another one of those unkillable myths beloved by the right.
April 30th, 2010 at 1:08 pm
The Republicans astroturfing the tea parties will do absolutely anything to keep these people riled up and disorganized.
They need to be riled up to vote against Obama, they need to be disorganized to prevent a significant threat to the wastrel GOP.
April 30th, 2010 at 1:10 pm
Steve McQueen,a Tea Party leader? Unpossible, he is dead! The King of Cool is dead!
Oh, another Steve McQueen? Never mind. /Emily Litella
April 30th, 2010 at 1:10 pm
Occasionally rational conservative Rick Moran calls the wingnuts out.
April 30th, 2010 at 1:12 pm
A local blogger from St. Louis has already debunked this crap more than once:
April 30th, 2010 at 1:13 pm
OT: More Wall Street whining – http://wonkette.com/415151/wal.....ore-415151
Seriously, what would it take to get these guys to finally follow up on all their “go Galt” threats? Can we start a petition?
April 30th, 2010 at 1:13 pm
Aren’t we burying the lede here? The real story is that a Hollywood icon apparently faked his death, only to resurface 30 years later as a Tea Party leader.
April 30th, 2010 at 1:13 pm
@KCinDC: It’s that Marxist Xenu Obama, after detonating nukes in Iceland volcano to advance his fascist global warming liberty-sucking conspiracy then directed his secret SWAT army to blow up a gulf oil rig merely to send a message to the beloved virgin Sarah Palin and coat patriotic southern Republicans in God-provided crude so he can then direct the EPA to round up and send them off to ‘environmental cleanup internment camps’ for reprogramming. Not to worry, he’s arranged to have illegal non-english speaking Muslim Mexicans temp their jobs while that oil comes off.
Y’all are a bunch of fucking sheeple!
April 30th, 2010 at 1:20 pm
Sigh. “God Bless, America”? I wish we could call out a spelling and punctuation SWAT team on the idiots who write a blog entry or newspaper article or carry a sign and screw up the basics of our language.
Or microchip them with a dictionary, but do something! I can’t take this anymore!
April 30th, 2010 at 1:21 pm
“I hate Illinois teabaggers.”
April 30th, 2010 at 1:24 pm
@Sue: Got to figure the bad spelling and grammar has to go with the kind of thinking (or lack of it) they are doing. If they slowed downed to double check what they wrote they might slow down and start thinking.
April 30th, 2010 at 1:37 pm
I was arrested for starting a peaceful riot when all I wanted was a cup of tea.
Or not arrested…whatever.
April 30th, 2010 at 1:40 pm
As great as the Wonkette video was, they seem to have missed the real action happening that day: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r37RKoRn8ys.
April 30th, 2010 at 1:50 pm
I love the shout out after being asked to move off of the street, “This is communism”, tea baggers need a dictionary. Being asked by the secret service and then local police to clear a road so your President can drive down it isn’t by any stretch of the imagination Communism.
April 30th, 2010 at 1:51 pm
Waaaaaaaay too cool to be a Teabagger.
April 30th, 2010 at 1:54 pm
@Evinfuilt: This is Obama’s America—everything is now communism. At work I have to turn on my communist lights, boot up my communist computer, and deal with my communist co-workers. Stretching the imagination has nothing to do with it—we’re all comrades now!
April 30th, 2010 at 1:58 pm
@FormerSwingVoter:
Never happen. Rather than “stopping the motor of the world” they’re spending all their time licking the electrical socket of wingnut-o-sphere
April 30th, 2010 at 2:05 pm
As someone who was in Seattle for November 30th, I have a few questions:
How many canisters of tear gas were opened?
How many people got shot with rubber bullets?
How many arrests, mass or otherwise?
How many hundred cops?
Seriously. What a bunch of wussies.
April 30th, 2010 at 2:25 pm
It’s about fucking time the grammar police showed up at one of these Tea Party spelling bees.
April 30th, 2010 at 2:47 pm
As usual, the Tea Party is 25 years behind the times: Everyone knows Steve McQueen’s name was changed to Two Wheels Good.
.
April 30th, 2010 at 2:54 pm
This is soooooo ripe for a remix with ‘Hell March’ from C&C Red Alert…
April 30th, 2010 at 2:56 pm
I’m going to buy stock in tinfoil companies, because the teabaggers and other wingnuts are going to cause a shortage as they add another layer of the stuff to their hats.
April 30th, 2010 at 3:09 pm
Wait—weren’t the Teabaggers in a “Freedom of Speech Zone?”
April 30th, 2010 at 3:32 pm
I love how Google matches itself to the thread topic – for instance, the current Google Ad:
... with a link that takes you to The Washington Post.
.
April 30th, 2010 at 3:32 pm
@anticontrarian: Seriously. I was a reporter covering many of the Seattle protests post-WTO and even I got pepper-sprayed. In Seattle, that city of love, the cops arrest people for literally stepping off the curb into the street as they marched. These folks need to get a clue.
April 30th, 2010 at 4:07 pm
What whiny pussies….
I’ve been going to demos for years, and the riot squad is always lurking around somewhere, no matter how many people turn out…
April 30th, 2010 at 7:33 pm
@Sue
Ha! I love it. That’s the best idea yet.
May 1st, 2010 at 7:10 am