John Avlon: Ugly to compare tea party with terrorists

(CNN) -- The cycle of incitement continued this week as Democrats frustrated with the debt-ceiling deal equated the tea party with terrorists, just weeks before the 10th anniversary of 9/11.

It is an ugly and unacceptable comparison, especially coming -- as it did -- on the heels of U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords' triumphant return to Congress after being shot in Tucson in January.

The instinct to raise funds off fear-mongering was also deployed in record time, as GOP presidential hopeful Michele Bachmann -- no stranger herself to the politics of incitement -- fired off an e-mail which read: "The Democrats have stooped to a new low. This afternoon, Vice President Joe Biden reportedly led a congressional meeting where tea party members were labeled as 'terrorists.' "

Biden was falsely implicated in initial reports, and on CBS' Face the Nation, Biden said: "What happened was there were some people who said they felt like they were being held hostage by terrorists...I never said that they were terrorists or weren't terrorists, I just let them vent." He added: "I said even if that were the case, what's been happening when you now have taken and paid the debt and move that down so we can now discuss, the nuclear weapon's been taken out of anyone's hands."

full: http://www.cnn.com/2011/OPINION/08/07/avlon.political.partisanship/index.html

Avlon is the author of Wingnuts: How the Lunatic Fringe is Hijacking America.

exactly what the fuck SHOULD they be called???

ter·ror·ism
   /ˈtɛrəˌrɪzəm/ Show Spelled Show IPA
noun
1.
the use of violence and threats to intimidate or coerce, especially for political purposes.
2.
the state of fear and submission produced by terrorism or terrorization.
3.
a terroristic method of governing or of resisting a government.
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/terrorism

"No to congess spending" and "replace comunist in DC".
Of course it's kinda hard to point that out to a guy holding a rifle.

Tsk. Tsk The stars should always be in the upper-left.

There are no investigative reporters there at CNN--they are guilty of enabling Bush's war of lies in Iraq by never asking the hard questions (seemed afraid of Cheney). I hold CNN as accountable as the Bush administration for the war debt that sunk the U.S. economy--CNN has aided the enemy whose agenda of "Starve the Beast" was started years ago.

Starve the beast
"Starving the beast" is a fiscal-political strategy of some American conservatives to cut taxes, depriving the government of revenue that enables spending on social programs such as Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, in an effort to create a fiscal budget crisis that would then force the federal government to reduce spending."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starve_the_beast

Which is why we see so little of it in mass media these days.

calling them "terrorists" is "untrue" ... or a lie ...

You start a war, what your get is war.

they seem to have no other agenda beyond mindless destruction...

so okay, they're not terrorists (who deserve due process), they're mad dogs (who don't).

I'll settle for that.