The Top 10 Craziest Quotes by Tea Party Candidates (so far)

The Tea Party is a "revolution" or so they would lead you to believe, but in the larger context of American history they're just the same nuts that always appear when a Democrat holds the highest office. But this year, the nuts on the far-right have taken crazy to a new level. Whether it's Former Nevada GOP Senate hopeful Sue Lowden telling people instead of health care they should just barter chickens or GOP candidate Rand Paul of Kentucky saying he thinks business owners should have the freedom to segregate lunch counters again, here are 10 quotes from the wacky Tea Party candidates that are sure to make you want to vote Democrat in the November elections.

1. "I hope that's not where we're going, but you know if this Congress keeps going the way it is, people are really looking toward those Second Amendment remedies and saying my goodness what can we do to turn this country around? I'll tell you the first thing we need to do is take Harry Reid out." —Nevada GOP Senate candidate Sharron Angle, floating the idea of an armed revolt by conservatives in a radio interview, Jan. 2010 

2. "I’m telling you that this works. You know, before we all started having health care, in the olden days our grandparents, they would bring a chicken to the doctor, they would say I’ll paint your house. I mean, that’s the old days of what people would do to get health care with your doctors. Doctors are very sympathetic people. I’m not backing down from that system." Former Nevada GOP candidate for Senate, Sue Lowden, defending her remarks about how people should barter chickens for Heatlh Care, April 19, 2010.

3."I don't want to be associated with those people, but I also don't want to limit their speech in any way in the sense that we tolerate boorish and uncivilized behavior because that’s one of the things freedom requires is that we allow people to be boorish and uncivilized, but that doesn't mean we approve of it." —Rand Paul, taking issue with the Civil Rights Act of 1964 while arguing that government should not force integration on private business, interview with MSNBC's Rachel Maddow, May 21, 2010  

4."Instead of handing out the welfare checks, we'll teach people how to earn their check. We'll teach them personal hygiene ... the personal things they don't get when they come from dysfunctional homes. These are beautiful properties with basketball courts, bathroom facilities, toilet facilities. Many young people would love to get the hell out of cities. You have to teach them basic things — taking care of themselves, physical fitness. In their dysfunctional environment, they never learned these things." - GOP New York gubernatorial candidate Carl Paladino, saying that the state's poor should be housed in prisons.

5. "I think that two wrongs don't make a right. And I have been in the situation of counseling young girls, not 13 but 15, who have had very at risk, difficult pregnancies. And my counsel was to look for some alternatives, which they did. And they found that they had made what was really a lemon situation into lemonade." —Sharron Angle, explaining why she is against abortion even in cases of rape or incest, July 8, 2010 

6. "What I don't like from the president's administration is this sort of, 'I'll put my boot heel on the throat of BP.' I think that sounds really un-American in his criticism of business. I've heard nothing from BP about not paying for the spill. And I think it's part of this sort of blame-game society in the sense that it's always got to be someone's fault instead of the fact that sometimes accidents happen." —Kentucky GOP Senate candidate Rand Paul describing how corporations like BP should be allowed to regulate themselves, May 21, 2010  

7."It is not enough to be abstinent with other people, you also have to be abstinent alone. The Bible says that lust in your heart is committing adultery. You can't masturbate without lust! ... You're going to be pleasing each other. And if he already knows what pleases him and he can please himself, then why am I in the picture?" —Delaware GOP Senate candidate Christine O'Donnell, advocating against masturbation in a 1996 MTV interview

8. "We needed to have the press be our friend ... We wanted them to ask the questions we want to answer so that they report the news the way we want it to be reported." —Sharron Angle, describing how her campaign belives media should work for her and not the people, during an interview with Fox's Carl Cameron, Aug. 2, 2010


9. 'We took the Bible and prayer out of public schools, and now we're having weekly shootings practically. We had the 60s sexual revolution, and now people are dying of AIDS." —Christine O'Donnell, during a 1998 appearance on Bill Maher's 'Politically Incorrect'"

10."People ask me, 'What are you going to do to develop jobs in your state?' Well, that's not my job as a U.S. senator." —Sharron Angle, May 14, 2010

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Freedom of Religion not Location should be focus of NYC Mosque debate

For the past month the political headlines have been dominated by news that the evil Muslims, who killed more than 3,000 Americans in the attacks of 9/11, are planning to build a Mosque on the "sacred ground" where the ashes and bones of those who lost their lives still lie. The site of the former World Trade Center buildings that currently houses 17 pizza shops, 18 bank branches, 11 bars, 10 shoe stores, 17 salons, a strip club, a off-track betting parlor and a smaller mosque, has suddenly become the talk of the nation as Republicans are using the volatile issue as a political football to force Democrats into defending freedom of religion.

Since this issue arose, right-wing swine like Sarah Palin have jumped all over this issue and attempted to pressure Democrats into a tricky political situation just before the crucial November elections that could swing control in the House back to the Republicans - which would in theory make the walking Melanoma tumor, John Bohener, the next speaker-in-waiting. If you ask me, Americans should be more concerned about a 60-year-old version of The Situation running the House than a well-known, peaceful Muslim sect exercising their constitutional rights to practice freedom of religion in the most diverse city on the planet - but hey, what do I know.

While this is obviously a volatile issue for many Americans, including the 9/11 victims families, who paid the greatest price, it is important that we look past the smokescreens that Republicans so graciously hypnotize our minds with and focus on the real issue in the debate - freedom of religion. Now Republicans have done a masterful job of framing this issue in a way that says, 'we aren't against a Mosque being built, just it being built at Ground Zero.' Of course I find it interesting that someone like Sarah Palin, who is constantly defending her own religious views and deeming people living in liberal city's like New York and San Francisco as not being "real Americans", has now found it important to defend the 9/11 site, where more than 3,000 New Yorker's of all different religious backgrounds lost their lives, but I guess even blatant hypocrisy is viewed as an opinion in today's America.

If this issue had arose say last summer, it probably would have been a non-issue nationally but since an election is right around the corner, the right is taking full advantage of distorting the facts and dividing us once again as a nation. Because at first glance a Mosque at the Ground Zero site might seem in bad taste to the average American. You might think the argument that Muslim's have the right to build a Mosque, just not on the site where 16 Muslim hijackers attacked us in the name of Allah, but I guess you could also argue that a Catholic Church should not be built across from the Oklahoma City Building because Timothy McVeigh was a Christian. But I guess philosophical arguments like the previously mentioned don't hold much weight in a country that is predominantly Christian. So maybe we should look at the facts about the Mosque. First, the Muslim group that is planning to build the $100 million dollar multi-use facility, which will house a pool, gymnasium, a 500-seat auditorium and a Sept. 11 memorial, in addition to a prayer space, has operated in and around the Ground Zero site for more than 30 years - making them more victims of the 9/11 attacks than Sarah Palin, myself and most any other American living outside of the 212 area code. Second, the local Imam, Feisal Abdul Rauf, has received high praise from Jewish groups, not to mention the State Department has declared him a "bridge builder" between the Muslim and Christian world. But all of this has been overshadowed by the angry right who continue to try to make themselves out to be the protectors of the Ground Zero site, while also torch bearers for freedom of religion and the constitution in this country. Unfortunately, I don't think they can have it both ways and when they start to take up this issue with other Mosque's being built in other locations across the country - like the act of arson recently perpetrated at the construction site of a Tennessee Mosque - I think the moderates in this nation will begin to realize the true intentions of the Republicans to divide us at the polls and extinguish religious freedom beyond Christianity. Of course it might be too late for the November elections, but historically speaking I think the right will lose in the end, just like they have on most every other controversial issue they have defended throughout our nation's history (i.e. segregation).

When it comes right down to it, this issue for me has nothing to do with the supposed hallowed ground of the Ground Zero site, I mean for god sakes there are numerous bars, strip clubs and gambling parlors, and other establishments of perversion in the same location and no one seems to find those places distasteful. It is about Republicans once again dividing us as a nation and further disrespecting the religious and cultural freedoms of the rest of the world. It is about the right taking the focus off the fact that they have no real plan to move this country forward by dividing us on issues that are in reality non-issues. And yes, the majority of New Yorker's and Americans don't support the building of a Mosque at Ground Zero, but a majority of Americans also didn't support Medicare or Social Security, which have today become the two most popular pieces of legislation in our nation's history. A majority of Americans at one time also supported George W. Bush, the Iraq War and Segregation, but that doesn't mean Americans were right. Actually quite often public support for an issue is wrong in the long run, let's just hope our public leaders, just like they did during the Medicare and Social Security debate, ignore the will of the people and do not what the people support, but rather what is morally and constitutionally right - for that is what this country was founded upon.

And all this is coming from a person who if they had their way, would rid the world of all religions and turn every church, mosque and temple in this country into a Chuck E. Cheese - hey, it couldn't make them any less useless.

Good Night, and Good Luck!