Between the Teabaggers and the Birthers, I’d thought I’d pretty much seen the pinnacle of evolution for Rightist nutcakes.

Then, the Oath Keepers showed up, a bunch of current and retired military and cops howling about the new dangers to the Constitution they’ve sworn to uphold with all the bluster they can muster on a Web site which, like all similar right-wing sites, is hopelessly swimming in Revolutionary War-era metaphor and imagery. Oh, and don’t forget to check out their video, in which they declare their intent to disobey their Top Ten Unjust Orders with a lush backdrop of inspiring patriotic and military imagery and overwrought music. Yeah, you might think we Lefties get a bit over the top, but for sheer Drama Queen goodness, you can’t beat the Right Wingnuts.

What’s especially interesting about this bunch is that they were founded just this past March, not even two months after Barack “Timberlake” Obama took office. Now, mind you — during the eight goddamn’ years in which the Bush Regime was instigating illegal wars of aggression, censoring the news, arbitrarily declaring people “enemy combatants” and detaining them without charges or a trial, criminalizing Muslims and the Left, suppressing dissent, allowing torture, and otherwise generally pissing on the Constitution at every opportunity, the people comprising the Oath Keepers were nowhere to be found. In fact, when US service personnel were refusing to comply with illegal or unconstitutional orders under Bush, you could hear the future Oath Keepers howling for courts martial and trials for treason.

Now that there’s a Donkeycratic administration in power, though, the Oath Keepers have suddenly appeared out of nowhere, bellowing at full throat about illegal orders and detention camps and the military occupation of American cities and threats to the Constitution. Never mind that Obama’s pretty much continuing all of Bush’s favorite programs such as imprisonment without charges, rendition, torture, suppression of the news — not to mention that he’s escalating the war in Afghanistan. That sort of pertinent information is totally lost on these doorknobs: all they know is that now the Donkeycrats are in the White House, the President is a N!gg3r, and the Republic is in grave danger. Oh, yeah, and they don’t want to pay taxes, either; they want highways and schools and National Parks, but they don’t want to pay taxes — like the Teabaggers, but with more brass and swagger. Basically, the Oath Keepers are for people who think the Teabaggers are too liberal.

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(…and read more about the Oath Keepers’ association with White Nationalists at Lady Liberty’s Lamp.)

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The recent Teabaggers’ Shindig over at Senate Park(viewable above) has certainly left me inspired, to say the least. Never did I hear a gang of astroturfers yell more loudly about not being astroturfers even as they were funded by big, fat rightist PACs run by characters like Tom DeLay and Dick Armey, and never did I hear more yelling from a group about how they aren’t about Left or Right, even while they never missed an opportunity to slag the Left — or even on ordinary Liberals, for that matter — as the lot it was my fortune to cover this past Fourth Of July.

Even more hilarious was their total ignorance of the causes and effects of events that happened before January 20, 2009 — forgetting, for instance, that the current corporate bailout fiasco was pushed by George W. Bush. Listening to the howls from the stage and checking out the composition of the crowd, it was as if the single reaction from the Teabagger Massmind boiled down to “OMFG, the President is a N1GG3R!” — like the old-timer in Mel Brooks’ Blazing Saddles, hollering from the top of the church steeple, “Here comes the new sheriff, and he’s a big…” …and it sure as hell didn’t help any as their event was organized and staged by members of a well-known White Power band, Pokerface.

So, considering all this, I thought to myself, “Self, it’s time you did a poster that announces the imminent arrival of the National Teabaggers’ Convention coming to town on the 12th of September, and maybe inspire some of the local anarchists and antifascists to organize a little welcoming committee.” So, I did.

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Organic cotton t-shirt at cafepress.com, $17.99

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