What if we called health care reform a war?

Life in Upstate South Carolina:

Tea party rally vents political anger

Obama among targets at Bi-Lo Center rally

By Clark Brooks

and Rudolph Bell

Anger and indignation were served up in giant helpings outside the Bi-Lo Center Saturday as several thousand Tea Party activists cheered speakers who attacked President Barack Obama as a lying, taxing, foreign-born, anti-American socialist.

Waving signs and flags with slogans including, “It’s the Constitution, stupid” and “Vote them all out,” people gathered around a stage where keynote speaker Tom Tancredo, former Colorado congressman and 2008 candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, said Americans have reached the point where “we’re going to have to pray that we can hold onto this country.”

As for Obama, Tancredo said, “If his wife says Kenya is his homeland, why don’t we just send him back?”

People watched and listened from all levels of the parking garage. Seated below them, Ron Ball, 66, of Simpsonville said Obama can’t hide from his record on spending and unemployment that remains above 9 percent.

“Our president and Congress are out of control,” he said. “They’re spending money that we don’t have. They are putting us in debt to foreign countries — China is one of them — that if we don’t stop spending we’ll never be able to pay back. It’s going to bankrupt this country.”

He granted that President George W. Bush put the costly Iraq War on the national credit card but said that isn’t the same as spending on social and “giveaway” programs.

“I am in agreement of borrowing money for a war,” he said. “That’s a legitimate expense.”