This guy, Rick Barber, is running for congress in a primary in Alabama. This apparent drunken rant wouldn’t be a bit better if he were running for dog catcher.

He speaks to the ghosts of Washington, Franklin and Sam Adams and plans to overthrow the IRS.

Holy cow. Who needs South Carolina!

From Huffington Post:

Yes! Talkin’ sedition with the Founding Fathers! It doesn’t get any better than that.

“Is it worth digging into the substance here?” asks Dave Weigel, who makes a spirited attempt to do just that. But for all intents and purposes, what Barber is doing is railing against modernity itself, working himself into a fantasia of bellicosity.

Anyway, in the next scene of the story, we’ll have a terrified George Washington exclaiming: “WTF, dude?! Why didn’t you tell us that they have Hellfire missiles, mounted on robot planes, capable of cutting a man in half from 30,000 feet in the air? You do know that we are armed with muskets, right?”

Whoever came up with the notion that we were going to throw the bums out and bring in a new breed apparently hadn’t given much thought to what the new breed was like. New breed…be very afraid. It looks like we are all going to have to talk Emma into making those tinfoil hats again.

44 Thoughts to “Jumping Founding Father poltergeists! Gather Your Armies!”

  1. Starryflights

    Does this guy know that President Washington personally commanded troops against backwoods Americans who were rebelling because they didn’t want to pay taxes? Google “whiskey rebellion.”

  2. Wolverine

    Another one of Washington’s military failures. I hear they’re still making whiskey out in the back woods and driving the revenooers crazy!!!!

  3. Wolverine

    Well, the bums of the “old breed” sure aren’t impressing me much. I’m becoming “very afraid” of that “old breed.” In my opinion, they are leading us down a road to economic and fiscal chaos. We owe our soul to the Chinese company store and are printing Monopoly money at the Bureau of Engraving and Printing.

  4. Starryflights

    Aside from conjuring up ghosts, just what are Mr. Barber’s solutions to economic and fiscal chaos, Wolf?

  5. Second-Alamo

    Allowing more financially dependent people into the country isn’t one of them I bet!

  6. Starryflights

    Just as I thought – neither Mr. Barber nor his adherents have any solutions whatsoever to economic and financial chaos that purportedly ails this nation. I

  7. Starryflights

    I just can’t get over how many so-called tea party activists are stupid enough to fall for these snake oil salesmen.

  8. Censored bybvbl

    Ha ha – I see a couple Southern states are bringing to mind that old saw “be careful what you wish for …”

    Having seen first hand at a very local level just what a bunch of yahoos might do (lose the records of the association, fail to keep a financial accounting, misinterpret what they read, write venomous letters to the BOCS threatening things which they can’t do, etc.), I say that often it’s best to stick with the devil you know.

  9. marinm

    I wish we had this guy in Virginia. I’d vote, give money, and give my time to this guy.

    Is he a -D, -R, -I, or -L?

  10. You would give your hard earned money to someone who is a laughing stock of millions via yourtube and yet you are moaning and groaning because some of your money might be going in to the VRS?

    Marin, I hope you are kidding. What is this guy really going to do for you? I am speechless.

  11. marinm

    MH, it’s about choice. 🙂 I choose to give money to this one person who may represent my values and interests while with VRS that money is being redistributed from me. I have no children right now yet I pay for schools and teachers I don’t ‘use’.

    1. And Virginians have chosen to have this fund for state, county employees and teachers for 70 years and 30 years more than that for teachers. 100 years of a custom and you come through here and tell others that the system should go. Then you praise someone who is making a total AH of himself?

      It destroys your veracity or any willingness for discussion.

  12. marinm

    Because slavery existed for thousands of years didn’t mean it wasn’t a good idea for someone to say; no more.

  13. However, VRS isn’t slavery, now is it?

    I guess I am just going to say that you do use county services and roads. If trash is picked up at your house it is taken to a county run landfill. The animal rescue keeps other people’s dogs from running over your property. If your house catches fire or if you are in an accident you get rescue services, so now you have that assurance.

    Do you really want to live in a community that doesn’t value literacy?

    Everyone profits from a literate society, often in ways that cannot be ennumerated. Check out the GNP of Afghanistan and compare it to the USA for a sneak preview.

  14. marinm

    VRS will have no effect on services, literacy rate or how many animals are maintained in a county run shelter. The arguement just doesn’t make any sense.

    VRS is slavery when I as a taxpayer am forced to pay for something I don’t use on threat of going to jail if I don’t.

  15. No one ever said it did.

    You use, either directly or indirectly county services. I didn’t even get in to state services.

    You don’t have a line item veto on any of this stuff. You were grousing about schools and teachers you don’t use. You use other things. I don’t use the Chinn Center either. However, I bet some of my local tax money goes in to it. Oh well. Someone gets to use it. I probably use something they pay for.

    You don’t want to live in an area that doesn’t value having good schools, just to save some bucks.

    Apparently you would rather be assessed for welfare for retired people rather than allowing them to earn it, like you do, as part of their salary package. That is really what it boils down to.

  16. Its basic selfishness. Let’s let Marin earn his supplemental pay and save for his retirement. However, lets pull the rug out from under all the county workers, state workers, judges, cops, libarian, teachers, hospital employees, firefighters and not let them have a retirement fund.

    yea, selfish and self-centered is sort of the way I am looking at it. Furthermore, you have not offered one shred of proof that the fund is not self supporting. It is. You are quoting people who offer nothing but opinion. It has also recovered nicely from the 2008 crash. Why is it missing a few billion? The state has borrowed from it. That is a bad precedent to set.

  17. marinm

    I believe that county/state benefits are too high in comparison to what the free market provides. The level of compensation should decrease. When the economy improves compensation can rise. I don’t see the logic of having a certain class of workers insulted from job loss risk and getting more benefits than those that are paying those salaries for them.

    Just not sure you can rail on CEO salaries vs. the worker bees and then side with govt benefit packages vs. what the kid at taco bell makes.

  18. marinm

    Being called selfish is a compliment to me.

  19. Wolverine

    Starryflights, the Left cornered the snake oil market a long time ago. None left for the rest of us.

  20. I know you consider it a compliment and I find that disturbing also.

    I find them fairly in keeping with private industry.

    State and local workers are not insulated from job loss risk. However, they do involve due process, unlike some private industry, where you can be salesman of the month and get called in for your plaque and your pink slip…to have your desk empty by cose of business.

    I don’t think I have railed at ceo’s although I probably could. And why shouldn’t a clinical psychologist working for the state make more than a kid at taco bell makes? huh?

    A state employee in food service probably makes about the same if they are serving tacos or similar fast food.

  21. Now Wolverine, do you think the left has it all? (snake oil market?) I think it is pretty evenly divided actually.

    I prefer the devil I know in many cases, not all, but many. I sure wouldn’t vote for this guy in this video.

    I think what has happened is that there was much fizzling after a year of posturing. Those posturing found out that often it is the system that needs resetting rather than those serviing in it.

  22. Wolverine

    Let me cut to the chase by lodging a disagreement here. This thread condemns a young political candidate based on one ad which is clearly intended to be clever and probably does go overboard in its symbolism. How common is that, I ask you? Doesn’t “Hope and Change” come immediately to mind? Moreover, the ad is being depicted as a “drunken rant” based on no visual or other evidence. Finally, it is being suggested that this man is somehow an oddball because he has been labelled as such by the Huffington Post. No kidding. The Huff Post seems to label almost anyone with whom it disagrees politically as being somehow tainted. I do not believe that the ultra-biased Huff Post opinions should be used as a standard for anything except liberalism.

    Where is the effort here to reveal the background of Mr. Barber? He is a four-year veteran of the US Marine Corps with a military specialty of information technology. He started a computer consultancy business in Alabama which was so successfull that it was bought out by InLine, and Mr. Barber was named a corporate vice president of InLine. He has since started another successful business in Montgomery which involves upscale billiards franchises and has apparently received a number of awards for his entrepeneurial and small business skills. He is married and a family man. He is conservative in his political outlook. Despite being a political novice and being outspent heavily, he has forced a member of the old line Alabama GOP into a run-off primary in a congressional race where the current Dem incumbent is viewed as potentially very vulnerable. Mr. Barber is adamantly opposed to the current modus operandi of the tax system in this country, as are millions of other Americans, especially many, many small businessmen who are key to raising the levels of employment. He is not the first political person to criticize the IRS. How many have called , for example, for the alternative of a flat tax? Mr. Barber’s views are available on the web at his own site and elsewhere in the Alabama milieu. It is unfair to suggest that his entire proposed program should be laid out in a 30-second TV commercial.

    Disagree with Mr. Barber’s political views as much as you want, but I request that the Huff Post not be cited as the last word on the seriousness or probity of any conservative candidate for office. If one objects to the manner in which Glenn Beck does partisan political business, then it is only fair to view the Huff Post in the exact same way. Politics should ideally be a frank and honest debate over ideas. We will not get such a debate if we allow the more biased commentators on either side to set in cement the parameters for the way we view candidates.

  23. I criticize the IRS every day. I haven’t ever threadened to take an army against it.

    Yesterday Capt. posted a link to the Ethridge incident. Not too flattering. Same thing on Huff post. Not too flattering there either.

    The Barber post was other places. I tend to pick up all from one place on a given night. Its just easier. Blaming the Huff Post isn’t totally fair.

    Washington Post:

    it worth digging into the substance here? Well, okay. First, the ad begins mid-conversation, with Barber saying, “And I would impeach him.” Tea parties aside, we haven’t seen many candidates openly mulling an impeachment of President Obama.

    Second, I’m not sure Barber’s argument here makes sense. His pitch to the founders is a jeremiad against the IRS and “what they call a progressive income tax” (although what else you could call a tax on income that hits high-wage earners harder than low-wage earners is a mystery). He appeals to Washington as the owner of a distillery who “knows how tough it is to run a small business without a tyrannical government on your back.” But President Washington presided over, and approved, the first tax levied by the federal government — the 1791 whiskey tax. When the tax met resistance, he approved the assembling of militias to enforce the law and mobilization of agents to collect the revenue. So the Barber daydream of Washington angrily ordering a “gathering of armies” to oppose a tax is… well, entertaining, I guess

    I find the video threatening. Any time a camera pans to a pistol, any time someone says in a menacing voice, gather your armies, the average person takes noice.

  24. This Barber video is a little more to the point and more straight forward. I don’t agree with him blaming the president but I don’t disagree with his intent. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GwCa-1MQ9V4

    Obvioulsy 9/11 is a man made disaster rather than one from natural causes.

    Is he right that the mosque is supposed to open 9/11/11? I don’t think so.

    He just seems horribly angry. Anger really isn’t going to accomplish anything. It is an emotion. I would rather vote for someone who appears to have throught something throught and is being guided by gray matter rather than raw emotion.

  25. Wolverine

    Moon, I do not think that the WaPo comments cited accurately address Barber’s total viewpoint on the current tax system. He is an advocate of the “Fair Tax” system to better allow small businesses to prosper and hire as the principal engine of our current economy. He is also admantly opposed to a VAT. These are not unusual opinions on our political spectrum. Why always this focus on Washington and the “Whiskey Rebellion”? In Washington’s time, the entire federal tax system was far different. There was no IRS and no income tax. In fact, I am wondering if a Washington brought back to life might not blanche upon seeing our current tax system and, indeed, many of the unsavory aspects of our current political governance.

  26. The swinging donkey would be my favorite ad to make fun of.

    Is Alabama really this provencial? I just don’t think people’s religious beliefs belong in politics. Evolution is a reason not to vote for someone?

    http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20004740-503544.html?tag=contentMain;contentBody

  27. Wolverine, then why is he conjuring up those founding fathers to address a current issue?

    I also never quote Huff Post unless I see it somewhere else. I have a built in checks and balance \device in my head.

    Richmond Times Dispatch is another story. I would quote them without back up because they are fairly mainstream and often have state news not covered by other papers.

    Many people around the internet are saying that Barber is advocating treason. I take the commercial in the spirit of a political commercial and won’t go so far as to make that claim. I just think the ad is over the top and I find it threatening and offensive. I really don’t like the portrayal of Washington.

  28. Wolverine

    As far as I can see, 9/11/11, the 10th aniversary of the World Trade Center attack, was the original proposed opening date for that mosque and Islamic center. No doubt that will change as the controversy continues. I don’t know about Barber on that second video. Was that anger or simply intensity? These are intense times.

    BTW, there is one thing on which Washington and Barber might very well agree. Barber is in favor of term limits. Barber seems not to mince words when laying his conservative principals out there. That’s good. It sets up any future debate between the candidates in an absolutely clear and understandable manner. No obfuscations. That, in my opinion, is the way in which our political battles ought to be conducted.

  29. Starryflights

    According to the Tax Foundation website, the state of Alabama for the past 25 years has received more federal aid in dollars than it has paid. In 2005, it received $1.66 for every dollar it paid, ranking them 7th of the 50 states.

    Don’t take my word for it – see for yourself:

    http://www.taxfoundation.org/files/ftsbs-timeseries-20071016-.pdf

    So for this stupid moron to sit there and bash Washington for taxation is the absolute height of idiocy, ignorance and rank hypocrisy. It is sickening and disgusting.

  30. What did he say that was treasonous or false? He was right in everything he said. He is trying to make a point about how tyrannical the federal government has become and how far we have fallen away from the ideals of the founders. The Whiskey Rebellion was a success in the long term. Most whiskey producing areas paid no taxes.

    Barber is trying to make a point as to the constitutional basis of our current government and showing the outrage that the Founders would have over the current system? The bigger question is “Why aren’t there more people outraged over the current system.

    If I had any money to send, I’d send it to Barber.

  31. Wolverine

    Agree that the pistol in that ad was a dumb mistake. The term “Gather your armies”? I took that to mean political armies. We use symbolic military terms all the time in our political speech — on both sides. As a born and bred Southerner, I would suspect that you would find the South very much used to that kind of political reference. Unfortunately, some — again on both sides — choose to view such terms too literally. I think that the charge of “treason” is absurd. That kind of talk is what gave birth in part to the old Aliens and Sedition Act.

    As far as convoking the images of the Founding Fathers in our current political circumstances? I find that pretty natural when the base issue is the Constitution and how we ought to be interpeting that document in our modern governance. In my view, we have come down to a very essential debate in this country on the basic fundamentals of our future governance. I think that clearing the air on that issue is a good thing which has been a long time coming. Hopefully, the people in the polling places will have the final say in the debate —not the career politicians, not the special interests, not the lobbyists, not the unabashedly biased political commentators — just the people, each one of them alone with their own beliefs and conscience behind the closed curtain of the polling booth.

  32. Cargo, people have always thought the federal govt was tyrannical. I suppose that will be an on-going feeling of Americans. I can’t help but have Maryland, My Maryland play in my head. We used to have these great tumbers with the song on them. The despot’s heel is on the shore…Maryland my Maryland. The state song calls the feds a despot.

    Historically, the feds claimed more and more power as the country expanded.

    It didn’t just happen overnight. It has been going on a long time. There is probably a proportional correlation between rapid communication and travel to federal power.

  33. Wolverine

    Starryflights, can the name-calling. You are damaging your own relevancy in any debate by the use of such language.

  34. And wolverine is probably right. The voting booth is the best place to sort all this out.

    Funny, three different reactions. Starry from one, Wolverine and Cargo from another and me from a third. I just find the guy foolish and offensive.

    As for guns, I guess I am just southern enough to assume when a person eyes a gun, they aren’t kidding around. Of course, I grew up in a house with guns and a mother who thought she was Annie freakin’ Oakley, according to my father.

    I don’t like political ads in the first place. I really thought this one was horrible. I felt like the founders of the country had been hi-jacked for political gain.

  35. I was just bad myself about name calling. I called someone a troll and said they were vicious. (Cooch thread) Taking the high road here. in the corner now. sigh. self imposed. It had to be done.

  36. Poor Richard

    Mr. Barber seems to be an apt pupil of Fox News, especially Glenn Beck.

  37. Emma

    For you, Moon, I almost went to Costco for the restaurant-sized tinfoil until I actually watched the video. I thought it was clever and funny! I think it was intended to be somewhat tongue-in-cheek while still making the point about excessive government.

    Lighten up, HuffPo!

  38. It wasn’t just the Huff. It was almost everywhere. I almost thought it was funny too. Almost. Then I opted for offensive at the end.

    Better go on to Costco. I am sure we will need it before all is said and done. I will split the cost with you.

  39. Poor Richard, that was sort of Beckian, I agree. Beck has now decided the Prez is a racist. Conspiracy theory and all. I tried to watch today and I just couldn’t.

  40. marinm

    I shared the vid with a few more of my conservative friends.. MH, you’ll be surprised to know I’m the moderate of my peers.

    They’re all sending donations. 🙂

    I’m holding off because I don’t think a Virginian should have a say in ‘bama politics but dang if I don’t like this guy.

    1. People are free to contribute to anyone they choose. Look at the money Rep. Wilson brought in for bad behavior.

      What happens in ‘Bama stays in ‘Bama.

  41. I think the inclusion of the flint lock pistol was to more firmly entrench the idea of revolutionary time and to whom he was speaking, not an actual call to arms. Theatrics.

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