No_Man’s_Land, - “Nice to see such good Christian folk sow hatred and division like they did in the old days.”

Every poll I have seen, including the one I posted previously, and every protest I have witnessed through both the “Left” and “Right” media outlets, seems to illustrate there to be no leader of this seemingly popular protest movement.  Not sure how you assign Ms. Palin the position but I’m willing to listen.

I’m not particularly impressed with Gov. Palin.  She seems like a nice enough individual to me.  I see that her “plain spoken” demeanor is wildly popular.  Good for her.  She should use it to her every advantage.  She’s a politician.  Not a demon.

This subject of how Gov. Palin pens her notes is odd to me.  Taking and using notes, whether on hand or 3x5 cards during a public speech, is so common, so unworthy of notice, it’s odd to even speak of. - Billions of people do it.  I do not intend to belittle your feelings, however, don’t you inherently feel that it’s beneath you to take such umbrage?

-

What would your reply be if I were to say “Nice to see such good Black folk sow hatred and division like they did in the old days?”  What would you see in me?

Partisan politics coupled with stereotypes makes for divisive things to hate.  Tea baggers have not said anything coherent as far as I have heard, just spewing discontent and Palin as their spokes person, does not say much for substance. 

If someone wants to reference how others should live their lives, I sure as hell would not want it to be referenced by someone from Iowa or many other places where reason is seen as the great threat.

Tea Baggers! If you have a message, please say it and make it coherent, so people can understand what the tea bag statement is, instead of confusion or is confusion the point?  Just waving Pitch forks with tea bags on them shows something but what?

The central core organizing principle of the tea-party movement is racism.  I saw some Elvis look-alike at the Tennessee get-together giving the opening statement.  He said that he wanted to thank Obama (crowd boos) because by getting elected, Obama had succeeded in making “real” Americans finally get up and get organized.  He never said anything Obama had done to anger the crowd.  It was not necessary to speak the obvious.  The crowd was angry because a black man was president, and that, more than anything else, was the final straw for these people.

It’s a shame the Democrats are so corrupt.  People in this country are mad and should be mad.  But only the right-wing reaches out to those devastated by the Wall Street looting, outsourcing, “free” trade.  The Democrats don’t want their supporters organized, and tell them to be quiet and stay home, just send money.  The Democrats represent the corporations.  The Republicans don’t care if their grassroots gets angry and organized, because ultimately their grassroots just spends time praying, voting for Christians.

The Democratic grassroots wants real change, not prayer.  We want a redistribution of wealth, high taxes on the rich, 90% taxes on anybody making over $250,000, no more special treatment for capital gains, full employment, national healthcare.  In other words, we expect our government to exist solely for the purpose of making our lives better, not for the purpose of making themselves rich.

I wouldn’t laugh at the teabaggers.  Remember, when they started their crazy antics last summer screaming against healthcare, talking death panels, the Democrats were relatively silent.  The democrats were afraid to tell these loonies the truth:  the “reform” bill in the Senate won’t really change much at all.  It will just make the drug companies, doctors, hospital-owners richer.  How can the Democrats “defend” themselves with the truth?  It’s like the guy who is screwing around, and can’t tell his wife “I wasn’t with Susie last night,” because the fact is he was with Mary.  The democrats are too corrupt to do anything as our country continues to deteriorate.

Go Right Young Man:

I don’t know how legitimate the tea party is, given that its leader needs to write “lift American spirits” on her hand to remember such a thing or that it can’t seem to define the “Tyranny” of which it speaks. I will say, though, that watching the movement is like watching the national sequal to Leaving Las Vegas. Nice to see such good Christian folk sow hatred and division like they did in the old days.

Gerard,

Read the Socialist manifest, from Karl Marx-Friederich Engels, nothing nebulous there.

It are the humans who don’t stand the line, most are ill for MORE and MORE, and not sharing with others.

“Lost in the stories coming from the Tea Party convention in Nashville this weekend are some eye-popping numbers from a Des Moines Register poll. A third of all Iowa voters, including nearly half of all independents, say they support the tea party movement.”

Political Breakdown of Tea Party Supporters.

49% Indipendents
34% Republicans
17% Democrats.

http://realclearpolitics.blogs.time.com/2010/02/08
/one-third-of-iowans-back-tea-party-movement/

-

Ignoring this movement, or dismissing it as “ignorant”, or “embarrassing”, or “illegitimate”, or “contrived” is, well, not very smart.  It’s no longer, as some like to convince themselves, a fringe movement.

Is it not important to note that Sen. Brown won Ted Kennedy’s seat, in a bastion of Liberal politics, by openly supporting this movement?

I will comment much in the same way I did in 2003-04-05. 

For every protest there are those you will attempt to denigrate the participants.  The charges are ALWAYS the same.  Ignorant, mislead, contrived, manipulated etc.  It never changes.

One added complaint today by opposition to these protests -from the Left in this case- is that the Tea Party protesters are racists.  This observation is presented by those who think heavily in terms of a person’s color.  The true racists in American society.

-

When large numbers of people turn out to protest those protests are ALWAYS legitimate.  Isn’t the true “ignorance” in believing today’s protests, and protesters, is anything different?  Seems so to me.

Great Plan ITW….To get Baggers to see your point
            of view and get their vote

What I believe OUTRAGE was trying to tell you
Inherit the Wind

Quit calling good people idiots…Its not becomming
of you…....

I wasn’t just giving my vote away….

and of course Nader won out again….....

HANDS DOWN EVERYBODY…..I AM A PROUD NADER RAIDER

So really Mr.  Wexler, you are making (of course, my
opinion) a very good choice with Nader

the IOWA DEMOCRAT COMMITTEDD IS CONTROLLED BY
    THE   A A R P
    and i am sure others….and every state !!!!

Outraged:
I don’t sell “The People” short—they elected Nixon, Reagan and Bush43 each twice (OK, maybe not Bush43 the first time around).

And I surely don’t see the idiot tea-baggers short.  Can’t. Not possible.

Mr Wexler….I couldn’t at the time, get Sen Harkin
to comment…..

Did you know this about your caucas?
The DNC blamed it on the Iowa Democrat Party..
Which was really passing the buck….

At the very beginning of the campaigns,, well before
the actual primaries started, I was having a
delemma about my vote, you see,  I hadn’t voted for
any Dem or Pub candidate in the general election since my 72 McGovern vote…but I was at the point
OK, we really need to get rid of these impeachable
charachers that Pelosi refuses to address, and I
needed to make a decision, which one?..I thought for
sure my pick would be Kucinach but was going to give
everyone a fair chance for my vote..and was in touch
with EVERY candidate’s campaign office.  I was really
intrigued with Obama, studied him closly.
Finally the Iowa caucus…several days before the
caucus, I find that Kucinach wasn’t invited. I was
puzzeled, because, at the Iowa caucas there is much
exposure and it isn’t your typical stupid Tim Russert
type debate (sorry Tim, rest in peace, they sucked)
The candidates were allowed to actually give speeches
, long ones to lay out their platform.
So, I called the Kucinach , campaign ...at first
i was snowed,  then a nice spokesmen that the AARP
told the Iowa Democrat Committed that they were did
not saction Kucinach being their because of his anti
Ins. Co. health care plan..You starting to get the
picture?  I made many,  many, inquiries into this.
ask, DODD,  BIDEN, THE SEX SCANDEL, CLINTON, OBAMA
.........AND   THE   AARP….AND THE IOWA DEM COMM
AND THE   D N C   ....I pestered them. 
then I dared all the candidates to show up at a
cencored debate….which they all did with no shame

No_Man"s_Land:  Thanks for a breath of common sense!

“I think when we go issue by issue and get away from grand nebulous terms like “Socialism” and “Tyranny,” we begin to see that most Americans are actually appreciative of more progressive ideas than they may realize.”

No_Mans_Land…

Here is the link to the Nader campaign site from 2008.

http://www.votenader.org/index.html

I haven’t been in touch with anyone from the state organization since the ballot initiative in summer of 2008.

Nader has written a number of excellent books on public policy, some of which I got for campaign contributions.  His collected writings from about 2000 to 2004 are fascinating; it shows how prescient he was regarding the outcome of various blunders being made at the time.

There’s another site that I really enjoy,

http://www.nader.org/public_interest.html

which has many of those essays, editorials, and so on.  There are also speeches he’s given available on YouTube.

Nader is mostly reviled by Democratic Party establishment who tolerated him until the 2000 election.  That’s when they decided they needed a scapegoat to explain how the Democrats blew what should have been a slam dunk. 

That’s funny, because I’ve just finished re-reading the chapter in Al Franken’s book “Lies and the Lying Liars…” that talks about press coverage of the 2000 election.  (Al Franken is a friggin’ genious, BTW, and a bulldog.  He NEVER lets go and he is very detail-oriented, so everything in his book is carefully written, researched, and factual).  The reason I mention Franken is that his critique of the 2000 election press coverage was EXACTLY correct.  The media elected George W. Bush by creating two story lines.  First one, Al Gore lies, exaggerates, and flip-flops.  Second one, George W. is a well-meaning bumbling idiot who means us no harm.  The kind of guy you’d like to have a beer with.

So the Democrats ought to be railing against the media, they ought to be trying to curtail the right wingnut noise machine (which they could do VERY easily by having the FCC revise and reinstate the Fairness Doctrine).  But they know something that most people don’t know, namely, it doesn’t really matter who wins the elections in the long run.  American politics is now binary.  When we get tired of one party, we choose the other one.  This is pretty much locked up now and I don’t believe that we will EVER change it without a mass uprising that puts millions of people in the street.

Let’s just hope it’s not the TeaBaggers.

Wexler:

Any ideas on how the rest of us can get proactively involved with Nader? Would like to get something going in my area.

ofersince72…

Please be careful how you characterize things.

The Iowa Caucus is not rigged per se.  It is actually one of the most democratic institutions that we have.

Each candidate sets up an organization in the state to canvas and garner support. On the evening of the party caucus, anyone registered in the party can show up at the caucus location and when the doors close at 7, the local party chair conducts a head count to determine how many votes a candidate needs to be “viable”.

To be viable, you must be able to gather at least enough votes to win a delegate.  In our precinct, we have 4 delegates, so if 100 people show up to caucus, the successful candidate would have to attract at least 25 caucus participants to win a delegate. Additional delegates would be in percentages of 25%. 

I was a precinct captain for Obama and therefore was involved in this process directly.  The caucus is open to all registered party members and you can register when you come in. The process is completely transparent, and it is not possible to “rig” it because these people are your neighbors and everything is done out in plain site.

Remember that these caucuses are functions of the Dem Party and GOP Party.  The system itself is designed to exclude minor party candidates.  Minor party candidates are excluded from the “debates”.  The process varies by state, but it’s difficult to get on the ballot and some states (5 of them) don’t have any provision for minor parties on the ballot.

After disappointments with Obama I went to work for Nader; mostly that just consisted of working to get him on the ballot.  In Iowa the requirement is 3000 (or 3500?) signatures. The Nader organization wanted twice that amount to handle challenged signatures.

So, anyway, if your comment meant that the process is rigged against open elections, I’d somewhat agree with that. But the party Caucuses are clean.  At least the Dem ones are, I can’t speak for the GOPERs.  They’re probably rigged as sin.

-Wexler

johaness:

Our Consitution is more geared toward protecting political rights rather than defining tangible needs of the people. It protects things like speeach, religion, the assembly of people, elections, discrimintaion, etc. The theory of our Consitution is that the people remain free to create the type of society they live in, which is why one state will have health insurance for all and another won’t. The problem we are seeing in America is that the voice of people is being drowned out by large business. For example, last year when the government proposed the 700 billion dollar bailout of the banks, the calls were flooding into congressional overwhelmingly opposed to the idea, on a scale of 100:1. Big business has so much inlfuence though, that the wishes of the people were ignired and the US entered into the largest program of corporate welfare in the history of humanity.

What we think in Europe is this, its beside socialist thinking, but very suitable in an modern society.

All used energie, and drinking wather in hands of the governement, it are the daily used comfort by all citizen, this must be dilivered against cost price.

Same with health assurance, its an necessity, it follows as a matter of course that this is done against cost price.

I don’t know the commen law for protecting the USA citizen in the USA constitution, but in most countrys in Europe it is named in the constitution, they have to protect all citizen.

This means Food, Housing, clean wather, and health care, and home for the aged.

In an modern society people must be free of small problems, so to say they can easy pay for their first neccesities, zo they can real go for their work and famelies, and maby other citizen in need of help.

Thats how it must be, you paye but not millions for all kinds of criminals with salaries who are not of this world.

Thank you,,,,,  it is   always nice to converse

internationally !!!!!

GAnderson:

Finally! Something we can all agree on. The way DNC has been operating is as detested here as it is on your side of things. I would caution you on two fronts though.

1) The Tea Party does not have monopoly ownership on the definition of “The Average American”

2) Do not limit your critique to the DNC.

So are progressive (as opposed to DNC) ideals so detested, though? I think all we have to do is look at what is already in front of us to answer that question.

-If you wanted to mail a simple letter without regard to when it arrives, would you use the post office or Fed Ex?

-If your house was buring down, would you rather call the fire department or a private agency that would charge for the service?

-Do we want a federal mission-driven military or a private profit-driven one?

-Do average Americans want to end public education or expand it? Would average Americans rather pay significant portions of their income to pay for private education or would they rather make public education better?

-Do average Americans want a democratic elctoral process that they believe is fair and free of corruption, or would they rather have seats and legislation continue to go to the highest bidder?

-Do average Americans who pay rent want landlords who are held to a minimum standard or do they want landlords that are free to neglect their properties and hence, tenant safety?

Just a few examples that I believe challenge your thesis that progressive ideals are as detested as you claim. I think when we go issue by issue and get away from grand nebulous terms like “Socialism” and “Tyranny,” we begin to see that most Americans are actually appreciative of more progressive ideas than they may realize.

and since it has been proved time and time again

that there is no LESSER OF EVIL DOCTRINE

does it really matter if PALIN OR OBAMA IS

PRESIDENT….......????????????????????????????????
?????????????????????????????????????????????

To Ofersince72,

Most of my generetian born between 1930-40 are grown op with Karl Marx-Friederich Engels, bud, people are so stupid, and they go all for the Golden calf, thats to say, no moral, only sex-money, no respect.

Well its Babylon now, than comes the Grey Horsemen,
and we start all over again.

Salutation.

OUR WHOLE ELECTION SYSTEM IN   SN

  I N T E R   N A T I O N A L

E M B A R R A S S M E N T

especially with all the millions dead
in the name of freedom and   democracy
that we profess   we   are   spreading !!!!!!~

Is MARX even considered a German Philospher
anymore,  or have the Europeans made that
” C ”  word   a   dirty nasty word over there tooo

Anderson,,,,I will take care of this OUTRAGE
for you…

What corruption do you want to start with first
OUTRAGE,,,,\????
The SUPER DELEGATE SYSTEM?
The OUTRAGEOUS PRIMARY SYSTEM?
The RIGGED IOWA CAUCAS?
there are many, many,  many,  many, DNC corruptions
to choose from.  Ask Dennis why he wasn’t at Iowa.
See if he ,in all his integrity, will give you the
right answer or a whitewash.  I know the right ans.
find it yourself , I did.  It is disgusting!!!!

Then ask yourself…..Do you believe in the way
ALL votes are taken,  and counted..?
WHO WON FLORIDA?  WHO WON OHIO?
JUST FUCKING WHY , AFTER SO MUCH CONFUSION,
AND HAVING CONTROL OF BOTH HOUSES AND THE WHITE HOUSE
HAVEN’T THE   DEMOCRATS   INTRODUCED   SOME   SORT
OF   LEGISLATION   TO   STRAIGHTEN   AND
MAKE   OUR   F E D E R A L   ELECTIONS   MORE
UNIFORM     AND     BELIEVABLE????????
AND   ON   AND   ON   AND   ON !!!!!!!!!!!!!

To Jean Gerard,

On the side, I have two friends, one is Jean Bernard, second Jean Jaques.

As a young men a have studid most famous Europeên fhilosophers ” filosoof ” Marchifalli, spinosa, and than all the Germans.

A famous Japonaise theacher on our art school, has learnd to looke to shades like this.

Take two circels slowly close them to gether just that they go 25% over each other, than their is formed a ovaal form, this form is called Vesica piscis, or mandorla.

You think you have created an shade form, no its an all new form, but maby inside shady places.

This will say that inside Ying or Yang, their are dark and less darker places to be found, but they are still one unit.

I hope you can follow me, salutation

Re: G.Anderson

Your comment: “First of all it is not I that has to prove anything to you,”

Okay.  Don’t prove it to me.  Simply prove it to yourself and the rest of the world.  Again my premise.

” FIRST you would have to establish that truthfully…(paraphrased) “that progressive policies are “detestable” to the average American.”  Is that the case…?”

Old Ed—If you are indeed old, then you are receiving a form of “socialized” medicine, Medicare.  Your comments about how insurance companies should drop the sick show a lack of compassion.

As for the Tea Party people, take a survey the next time you attend one of their events.  Large numbers of them are on some sort of socialized medicine, either Medicare or Medicaid.  It is hypocritical for them to complain about “socialism,” when it is socialism that has kept many of them alive.

First of all it is not I that has to prove anything to you, it is you that must prove to me, the DNC’s policy’s are not detestable. I suggest you read ofersince72 post again, and again until you get it.

And since we’ve already established that no proof exists that meet your personal criteria, I will just wait until election day. Which is shaping up to be a very painfully sad day for progressives everywhere.

The DNC, has created a ideological Maginot line, and will be in shock, when the political blitzkrieg that’s about to happen to them takes place.

If they were hoping to recreate FDR’s adminstration, they can forget about it now. And that’s just why it didn’t happen.

John Ellis: The root of diabetes, cancer and heart disease related deaths is the american diet high in carbohydrates, not a diet high in fats and proteins.

.

ITW has good reason to be worried

To add to the Democrat woes,  many of the third
party votes who were out there in large numbers
in 2000 and 2004, the ones that thought for some
silly reason that Oh?Bama meant progressive change,

WILL BE BACK !!!

add this to the new baggers, the White House is not
a shoe in this time around.
Hey, DNC,  I am sure you have this picture quite well
Change your corrupt ways and you just might get
this old registared Democrat’s vote back once again,
you told me and others, you don’t need our vote,
and you didn’t this time because a BABOON could
have won this time around from the Repubs. Won’t
be so easy next time.
WHO ARE YOU GOING TO PUT UP?  HEY DNC, this time
why don’t you let the candidates show their wishful
cabinet picks, as a matter of fact ,,,make them,
DNC,,,,YOU HAVE A LONG WAY TO GO, TO GET RESPECT BACK

Re: G.Anderson

Your comment: “Progressives need to understand why their policy’s and ideas are so detestable, to the average American, otherwise there will be no hope and no future for any of us in this country that remain.”

To play devil’s advocate: FIRST you would have to establish that truthfully…(paraphrased) “that progressive policies are “detestable” to the average American.”  Is that the case…?  Personally, I think not, but you are welcome to disagree.  Have at ‘er.

Re: ITW

Your comment: “They are ignorant, confident that as White Christians they are superior, and they are TERRIFIED by the economics and that a BLACK man with a “funny” name is President.”

Really…. Sometimes you sell The People so short.  Certainly there are those who’ve been side-tracked, however this DOES NOT MEAN all is lost.  Keep the faith.  In the spirit of “brotherly love” keep your chin up.  Remember, (in the words of Scarlett O’Hara) “tomorrow is another day”.

You need to look up detest in the dictionary….

This is what always happens when the defense mechanisms of leftists are challenged, all the garbage comes roaring out, and they feel threatened, by their own delusions seen in the light of day..

It must come as a surprise to the left that, once the Bush regime collapsed, people didn’t begin to run right over to the progressive camp and look for a new savior, but instead began looking for a different conservative to carry the shield.

Thank God Bush was incompetent, because if he had been more intelligent, a more competant manager, then we would sweating bullets under McCain right now.

But that doesn’t mean the next neo con won’t be.

Progressives need to understand why their policy’s and ideas are so detestable, to the average American, otherwise there will be no hope and no future for any of us in this country that remain.

Re: ofersince72

Your comment:  “The Democrats are just competing for POWER with
the TeaBaggers,,,,who gets the money…....

Many around this Red area in which i live voted
Oh?bama,,,,,then , since have switched to the TEA”

OH BROTHER!

Oh?Bama is brazen and bold…...ice water with
a golden tongue

The Democrats are just competing for POWER with
the TeaBaggers,,,,who gets the money…....

It is very little about ideas…..

Many around this Red area in which i live voted
Oh?bama,,,,,then , since have switched to the TEA

Re: Hammond Eggs

Your comment: “Obama has done nothing to combat it and is, in fact, an ally of the nihilistic chickens waiting to come home and roost.  Obama and his family will be among the first to be destroyed by such a force.”

Pres. Obama is definitely NOT nihilistic, nor a chicken.  Where’ve you been?  He’s had more death threats than any other modern president.  Nihilisism as a description of Pres. Obama is incredibly short-sighted.  You need to start looking at the FACTS and not the rhetoric.  Which…. btw, it appears will be with us for quite some time.

The United States is exhausted.  In this atmosphere of utter middle class apathy and envy of its domestic oppressors, fascism - the Nazi kind - is a very real possibility which needs only the right set of the wrong circumstances to come to power. That is what Bush and Cheney set loose upon this nation.  Obama has done nothing to combat it and is, in fact, an ally of the nihilistic chickens waiting to come home and roost.  Obama and his family will be among the first to be destroyed by such a force.

Which do believe will come first…...

America getting socialized health care or

European nations losing theirs ????????????

I have my bets…

Movement buyout is cheap in America….
Just a few peanuts thrown on the floor.
Then start another war, instill nationalism
love of some god…
Really that is what both World Wars were
the corporate elites that ran the world , pulled
some strings to stop the world wide labor movement.
They once again got brother fighting brother.
Put the skids to labor…..
and Europe becomes victim to NATIONALISM just as
easily as Americans do.

The first Gulf War…..European and American
the second
afganistan
need I go on?
isolating Iran

As most movements end up being….
the Socialist in Eupope…was also a
self-interest movement…
not a social justice movement

If you read further in my post you could notice
it is hypocracy that I was addressing.

The Democrats have the same position as the
TeaBaggers on many issues
Such as education.

I will certainly concede that point to you…
and for a long time, since its European conception.
Just don’t recall Europe being a role model in
peace..

But your right a very aggressive labor movement
since the 19th century.

To Ofersince 72,

Excuse me, are you not an little bid to hypocrite, if you think or speak about war, its the USA who comes to mind.

And war and killing is inherent to the humanskind !

THE ULTRA-RIGHT WING POLITICAL PROGRAM FOR USA OF THE TEA PARTY LIBERTARIAN, PALEOCONSERVATIVE, NEOLIBERALS !!

http://thomaspainescorner.wordpress.com/2007/07/15/
slaves-to-christ-and-compassion-unite-free-markets-must-prevail-2/#more-1653

Here are the remedial steps that we must implement if we are to unleash the free market and reclaim capitalism’s former glory:

1. Eliminate the public education system. If you don’t have money, you remain ignorant.
2. Immediately cut public funding to maintain roads and highways. A toll booth at every other intersection would be a small price to pay for the reinvigoration of free markets.
3. Close all public libraries. If you want to read, buy your books.
4. Shut down all forms of public transit. Walking is good exercise.
5. Completely deregulate and privatize public utilities. If the market drives prices too high for you, you can buy candles, piss in buckets, sweat, shiver, and boil creek water.
6. Abolish police and fire departments. Settle your own disputes, protect yourselves, and keep your buckets and garden hoses handy.
7. Put the EPA out of our misery. It’s time to end the tyrannical reign of fear mongering environmentalists.
8. Labor laws, EEOC and OSHA? These anachronistic impediments to profit need to go. Let the market dictate wages, hours and working conditions. People need to be thankful to have a job, regardless of how miserable, discriminatory, or dangerous it might be.
9. Eradicate the FDA and USDA. If a food or drug starts killing large numbers of people, distributors and manufacturers will police themselves in order to sustain their profitability.
10. Dismantle the FAA. Plane crashes are simply a cost of doing business. Let’s put a sense of adventure back into flying.
11. Halt all Social Security and Medicare handouts. The programs are insolvent. Our elderly need to start fending for themselves. Wal-Mart needs greeters. And as for those who are too infirm or feeble to work, they’re fortunate to have lived as long as they have.
12. Kudos to Clinton for creating TANF, but he didn’t go far enough. Medicaid and TANF must go. It’s time we introduced our spoiled and lazy rabble to the concept of the workhouse. It worked for the Victorians; it can work for us.

Enacting these twelve reforms would go a long way toward restoring the supremacy of free market capitalism. However, our task would not be complete.

Consider an even more critical challenge. To unfetter the free market, we must divorce ourselves from the idiocy of Christianity. Let’s face it. Christ was about compassion, love, generosity, and forgiveness. In the final analysis, Jesus was a loser who provided false hope for misfits, outcasts, incompetents, and weaklings. As free market capitalists driven by greed, selfishness, and hyper-competitiveness, we need to exorcise Christ’s moronic teachings from our society and culture.

Now let’s get busy.

Someone had to say this, so I am glad someone did! One of the interesting aspects of this Tea Party movement is its support from authoritarian-minded Catholics who often do not know that they disagree with the authorities in their Church, including the Pope on global warming. The know-nothings used to be the enemies of the Church; too often today, they are its members!

Joe the philosopher as Joe the Plumber, seeking wisdom from a tooth ache, of course blamed on those ever present Zionists and all this time I thought it was the Gays or the Illegal aliens?

The “liberal media” line is pure-D bullshit.

Our media is not liberal. It is a business.

Whenever anyone says that they think there’s a liberal media bias, they IMMEDIATELY identify themselves as either idiots or as so far right that they don’t even know where the center is any more.

These are probably the same people who call Obama a “socialist”.

Tsk tsk.  Despite Bush, children got left behind.

-Wexler

i agree, Europe has never been a good model for
anything other than promoting war. We learned well
on that one.

One of the themes of the TEABAGGERS is the
privatizing of Public Education….
To achieve this ends, rather than using their
free market model,  they take the money from public
funding to do this..

What is the Democrat position on this???

Supporting contradictory sentiments defines the fanatic. Frenzied support of a cause, ah! religious furor comes to mind, burn the Heretics or as some would do blame the Jew!

Cause does not need fact, reason or truth. Blindness supports a movement, infact seems the very momentum of the cause itself. This lemming approach is what appeals to the true fanatic, any cliff will do.  Nobleness of a cause itself, whatever it may be is enough to support the blind leading the blind, one must right those supposed wrongs you know! Blame is ever present, but never will the fanatic blame oneself for the cause justifies and replaces supposed reason by its very existence. 

What seems most amusing is history has shown us, fanatics storming the Bastille waving pitchforks or today waving teabags may seek some restitution for their seemingly oozing wounds, but in the end causes end not as they start, for opportunists seem to take advantage. One need only look back at,  Hitler, Stalin and even the students who took over the American Counsel in Iran.  All causes which were taken over by opportunists when the fanatics have calmed down or where knocked down by the new power. 

So, what will the waving Tea Bag become? Such is the life of a fanatic for they more than others really have no idea.

You should take a lesson what is happening in Europe, do you know what is left from the Sicialist, not even the name.

It took time but slowly they have sold them selfs to the highest bidder, and now the citizen have lost all trust in the Socialists, and go voting right.

GAnderson

That our ideas are detested, I do not deny or challenge. The veiled threat of your statement stands as proof that politics and religion are no longer discernable for many in this country. It is proof that Christianity has been overrun with greed and contempt. What was once a message of compassion and forgiveness has been replaced with the rhetoric of violence and war. As the Tea Party movement illustrtes, it is being used to scapegoat innocent people for the choices we’ve made in our lives and the conditions they have wrought. Christiantiy has become as a poison for all the things it once puported to stand for. 

What the tea party/conservative movement truly represents is that America has a new national religion. It’s a movement that believes the Market is all knowing and all correcting. It is the Market that regulates humans, not God. It is the Market that will deliver us from poverty, not Jesus. Where Christianity once preached a community of bortherhood and helping the least among us, it now argues for winner take all capitalism. With the Market as our guide, we needn’t worry about human compassion or the consequences of our actions on others. It was simply the Free market at work. And when poverty strikes, its because the Market has deemed that person as unfit and weak. It was “the Will of the Market.” God no longer judges. The Market does.

To put it bluntly, Jesus is not your god and savior. The the Market is.

I choose compassion. I choose mercy for those less fortunate. I choose to give. I choose life over murder and genocide. I choose to let others live their lives as they see fit, so long as it doesn’t harm the rest of us. Finally, I choose a system of economics and governance that supports those ideals. If that puts me at odds with you, Sarah Palin, and Christianity, so be it.

Before you respond, remember the position you are arguing from. You are defending a movement that a week ago that without merit scapegoated innocent Hispanic migrants and Americans for their problems. There is another movement in history that did the same thing and what followed was a holocaust. I will nver stand with the likes of Tom Tancredo, Sarah Palin or the cheering rabid masses who would dare do such a thing. I will oppose it even if it kills me.

The lies, duplicity, and hypocrisy continue only because the people can be duped while a compromised media sustains duplicity, this while Republicans and tea-partiers collect monetary support from big business, which thrives under Republican control and division.
  Increasingly the evidence indicates that American citizens are too disengaged, if not too ignorant, to govern our country, at least by intelligently and conscientiously casting their votes.

and when Sarah Palin or someone just like her, is elected president of this country, maybe you’ll realize just how detested your ideas have become, hopefully you’ll have a come to Jesus moment before that happens.

GAnderson,

Next time you pay a bill on a loan or debt you owe, go ahead and make the check payble to “feminism.”

GAnderson

“They use reality to justify those facts.”

I’ll take that as both compliment and affirmation.

“In writing this, Anderson is choosing to ignore the tangible realities of our politics, economy, society, and legal system. It’s a worthless diatribe that is quite reprentative of this essay’s theme of incoherence and cause-and-effect conflation.”

Oh well, in my experience leftists, like yourself, only believe in ideas, which they reify, to fit their view of things, they will not accept the facts even when presented, because the live in a world of ideas, distorted to fit what’s in their head. They use reality to justify those facts. Ideas, are their defense against reality, not a way of looking at the damage they’ve done to this country, and the lives they’ve ruined by their delusions.

Anyway,  with at least six digs in four days
      about TEABAGGERS….

it is apparent

The DNC is doing damage control for their own ills

and wanting to scare us into the unproven doctrine

vote LESSER OF EVILS.

What I’m not hearing from anyone is the “why.” Why do the tea baggers support such oscilating and contradictroy sentiments?

Given that I’m in one of the reddest states around and that members of my family are similiarly frothing at the mouth with rabid tea party sentiments, I hope to offer some insights into the what’s driving this.

We have to remember that most of these people were once rational centrists in the 80’s. Thanks to the liberal media that many of them decry today, they grew up believing they could trust what the television or radio told them.  Their frustations and fears have been exploited for the better part of two decades by the likes of right-wing radio and the Fox News messaging.

The culmination of their efforts was realized in the election of George W Bush and the Republican majority. Their day had arrived and they were sure that America would be returned to her former greatness. He was their Messiah.

But that’s not what happened. For every hope they personified in George Bush, exactly the opposite happened. So emotional was their investment in their conservative ideology, they morphed their lives around it. Admitting fallibility in Bush was an implicit admission of failure for the better part of two decades of their lives and loyalties. They are like the war veteran who must believe that his pain and enumeral dead commrades was all “for something.”

The abject failures of the Bush adminsistration, forced them to analyze the country’s problems through the only lense they’d learned to objectify problems through: their conservatism. Coupled with the extreme ommission of fact and misinformation being given to them by their still trusted media outlets, the only option they had was to thro thier messiah under the bus. So, Bush was persona non-grata and they clinged ever tighter to their conservatism. Not unlike the self-mutilating priest who must pay pennance with pain, they opted to dedicate themselves further to their ideology. “We weren’t conservative enough” was the lesson they learned.

That left them little room for change. A sliver of movement to the left is seen as a similar admission of failure. Considering that for the last decade they have been regurgitating the dead themes of American exceptionalism and imperial hubris, they were forced to dissect their notions of American supremacy into sub-categories of social Darwinist analysis. American supremacy would become racial, ethnic, religious, and class supremacy.

Their ideology is all that matters now. Its all they have. History of the last 8 years, and indeed last week, is therefore rewritten to accomodate their facing their greatest fear: that the last 20 years of their dedicated emotion, effort and money has sown their fates.

So, in the tea party we see a process happening that took progressives a little over a decade to begin themsleves. Just as progressives are finally being forced to admit that the emotional support they invested in candidates for so long have other priorities, agendas and loyalties. There is a national awakening underway for more than just the tea baggers.

Though their movement is mostly driven by misinformation, the reality of the postions they find themselves in is real. Eventually, they will be forced to reconcile their position with thier rhetoric, but not before life gets worse.

How do we address this phenomenon? Like a bad flu, you have to let it run its course. Keep the conversation focused on the facts and the issues. Be civil non-appeasers. Be not afraid to call it what it is: a rabid fascism that is scapegoating innocent people for their problems. But be just as fearless to acknowledge the conditions they are reacting to. Do not bite when they goad you into the culture war. To them, conservatism is a celebration of their culture. Rather, craft solutions in terms of their culture. Be firm. Be fair. Be consistent. But most importantly, lead more by example than with words.

I gree with Wexler,,

most posters here right on….they said it well!!!!

my position remains
AIN’TNOPOLITICALFIX

glider wrote:

“If one wants to logically argue for reducing the size of government this group should simple argue that big government does not work because of a flawed and corrupt democratic system as has been exemplified by Congress and Obama’s so called “change you can believe in” lies.  The problem is that admitting that flaw brings up the natural response of “OK, the system sucks, so let’s fix it by publically financing elections, illegalizing lobbyists, and blocking career paths to riches for politicians leaving the public sector.  But these characters do not want to fix government because the real goal is the preservation and advancement of wealth amongst the elite class.  This is the fact that makes most tea baggers big dupes.”

Precisely.

Shouting for tax cuts and reducing deficits is not inconsistent and is rather about achieving a reduction in the size of government (outside of war-making at least).  Like this article argues the tea baggers are a frustrated lot being exploited and financed by monied interests.  I like this point of view as it alleviates one from just calling them idiots.  I think the fact that these people are corporate “tools” necessarily prevents them from making coherent sounding arguements.  If one wants to logically argue for reducing the size of government this group should simple argue that big government does not work because of a flawed and corrupt democratic system as has been exemplified by Congress and Obama’s so called “change you can believe in” lies.  The problem is that admitting that flaw brings up the natural response of “OK, the system sucks, so let’s fix it by publically financing elections, illegalizing lobbyists, and blocking career paths to riches for politicians leaving the public sector.  But these characters do not want to fix government because the real goal is the preservation and advancement of wealth amongst the elite class.  This is the fact that makes most tea baggers big dupes.

BEWARE OF THE PALEOCONSERVATIVES AND NEOLIBERAL LIBERTARIANS OF THE ULTRA-RIGHT WING TEA PARTY.  THEY ARE DANGEROUS PEOPLE. ANTI FOOD STAMPS, AND ANTI-TAXES.  TAXES ARE NECESSARY, EVEN HUGO CHAVEZ INCREASED TAXES TO FACE CRISIS.  RON PAUL AND LIBERTARIANS ARE ULTRA-RIGHT WINGERS.

Don’t believe in the ultra-right wing, libertarian conspiracy theorists.  The Tea Party, whos main ideologies and doctrines are classical-liberalism, paleoconservatism, neoliberalism and free-market libertarianism ultra-right wing movement is funded by Republican Party corporations like Wal Mart, Exxon, Mcdonalds and US oligarchies to destroy the American Socialist Parties.  And socialism, statism, and protectionist-welfare-state is the only solution for America

Here are a couple of links which explain in clear words how wrong free-market paleoconservatism and libertarianism ideology is:

http://martinkelly.blogspot.com/2008/03/why-libertarianism-is-wrong-and-will.html 

http://web.inter.nl.net/users/Paul.Treanor/libertarian.html

.

.

@ GAnderson

“In point of fact Feminism, has become another mutated form of slavery, and white supremacy, one in which mostly white women enslave men of color economically, while denying them even basic human rights. Millions of whom have the economic basis of their life destroyed permanently, and are thrown in debtors prison without trial, and remain there with no legal rights to extricate themselves. One in which their mounting debts turn them into legal slaves, without any recourse.”

This is a perfect example of simple facts being rewritten to appease an agenda.

There is no tangible entity or system of “white women” or “Feminism.”

We can make this much more accurate if we replace every use of the terms “white women” and “Feminism” with “Banks,” “Wall Street,” “US Chamber of Commerce,” or perhaps most accuratly “Corporations.” These systems are real. They have real entities and operations that reflect unity of effort. They have supporting institutions that manipulate power and money. And, they enjoy tangible status under the law.

I have yet to see an entity known as “feminism” or “white women” be represented in a court of law and win cases that peddle economic servitude. I have yet to see a notarized, predatory contract between those who are placed in “debtors prison” and an entity known as “femnism.”

In writing this, Anderson is choosing to ignore the tangible realities of our politics, economy, society, and legal system. It’s a worthless diatribe that is quite reprentative of this essay’s theme of incoherence and cause-and-effect conflation.

Well this people with their movements, are doing wath they think they should do, maby you don’t like their way and reason, but every thing is bether than sitting in your chair, and waithing to be slaughtered, underwhile writing over how you see it, and how it should be done.

DON’T BLAME OBAMA AND THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY. OBAMA IS CONTROLLED AND ENSLAVED BY THE REPUBLICAN ZIONIST JEWISH PARTY.

BEWARE OF THE TEA PARTY NAZIS. THEY ARE A DANGEROUS FAR-RIGHT WING MOVEMENT ADVOCATING A COUP DE ETAT AGAINST THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT.

http://thinkprogress.org/2009/08/02/malkin-counter-insurgencies/

This morning, right-wing blogger Michelle Malkin joined the ABC roundtable on This Week with George Stephanopoulos. Asked what the conservative opposition strategy is going to be this coming month while Congress is in recess, Malkin said there is a growing “tea party movement — these counterinsurgencies amongst taxpayer rights groups” — that is fomenting opposition to Obama’s health care plan.

Malkin claimed the Obama administration has “vastly underestimated just how grassroots this movement is.” Lawmakers are going to face “townhalls-gone-wild,” she added. Watch it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qh8IG8RrgB0&eurl=http://thinkprogress.org/2009/08/02/malkin-counter-insurgencies/&feature=player_embedded

The term “counter-insurgencies” does reveal the mentality of conservatives in opposition to Obama. Like Bill Kristol has said, the right wing is bluntly stating that it is going “for the kill.” Malkin has previously declare her hope that Obama fails.

As ThinkProgress has documented, these tea parties may indeed be “counter-insurgencies,” but they are hardly “grassroots” movements. Corporate lobbyists — led by Dick Armey’s FreedomWorks and Tim Phillips’ Americans for Prosperity organizations — have staffed and funded these gatherings. (They are doing so again.) The Fox News network, including Malkin’s frequent appearances, has taken the lead in publicizing and promoting the events among its right-wing base.

The tea-partiers have already proved that they can create a “townhalls-gone-wild” effect and are willing to demonstrate the violent qualities of an insurgency. Recently, Republican congressman Mike Castle (R-DE) faced down angry right activists who hijacked a townhall gathering by spouting crazy conspiracy theories. Right-wing protesters surrounded Rep. Tim Bishop (D) in New York and forced police officers to have to escort him to his car for safety. And anti-health care protesters hung an effigy of Rep. Frank Kratovil (D) in Maryland.

Concepts of being embarrassed by what others have promoted seems most ludicrous.

In the never ending grand Scheme of things, with contiues with unstoppable upchucking,  being embarrassed seems to mean one should feel accountable for the likes of Fox News, Joe the Plumer or The Tea Bag evangelicals escapades, maybe even Tiger Woods Indiscretions.  Everyone with half a brain knows these actions have been contrived by individuals or special interested parties and portrayed as worthy for contemplation. One should not feel guilty by these promoted actions.   

Being embarrassed seems to suggest a demanding of guilt, by actions preformed by others out of ones control.  For instance the people of Iran do not agree with their government and protested, they should feel embarrassed?  Bush, Palin and the likes of Limbaugh should provide embarrassment to all not just their supporters?

May I suggest embarrassment should be placed squarely on the shoulders of those responsible for the shrilling and promoting of these embarrassing Imbeciles.  One could start welding accountability and placing it where the sun does not shine.

Wow.  Great comments ahead of mine, I will try to live up to them.

ardee raises an excellent point in the first post regarding liberal activism.  There isn’t much of it.  I found this out last summer when I tried to use Twitter to start a HCR movement along the Iranian model.  When that didn’t work, I tried to engage the Green Party.  Nope, nothing there.  I still believe that American liberals could get health care reform that we desperately need but in order to do that they would have to get up from their comfy homes and get into the streets. No one seems to want to do that.

The TeaBaggers didn’t just materialize from nowhere. They are the perverted, ignorant, bastard child of Ron Paul’s Revolution movement from 2008.  The GOP establishment, including its propaganda unit Fox News, has sliced off big chunks of the Revolution for itself. (This is similar to what the Democrats did with the anti-war movement in the 60s and 70s). To them its a perfect integration of business and politics.  They make money while urging others to demonstrate for policies that will make them even more money.

There is a fight for the soul of the TeaBagger movement, assuming it has one. As noted in the article the movement has been infiltrated by GOP lobbyists and Palinistas.  Another group that would like to hold the reins is Glenn Beck’s 9.12 Project.  Glenn is of particular interest as he has attracted certain elements of the religious right who are unaware (apparently) that Glenn is a Mormon or are oblivious to the heresies of the Mormon cult.  Another contender is the “niggar” guy in the Texas flag shirt who claims to lead the movement.

The irony of this is that I was a third party activist in the last election (Nader) and through this I met some Ron Paul people.  They were young, intellectual, sincere, thoughtful, dedicated, and willing to get into the mess of it.  I haven’t seen any of them since the election, but I’m betting none of them would wish to acknowledge the TeaBaggers as their offspring.

Some have suggested that the TeaBaggers are a workers movement.  I can’t agree with that. There’s no room for workers to organize and bargain as a group with the only thing they own… their labor.

The TeaBaggers will ultimately fail because the GOP will co-opt them, absorb them, and stamp them out where necessary.  The GOP has the $$ to get that done and they will do it.  They will not allow another NY23rd to happen if they can stop it.

If legitimate political organizations with fact and reality based policies like Nader’s can’t make it, I have no reason to believe that a crackpot passel of pissed-off ignoramuses can.  They’re a flash in the pan, and will be a footnote in history books, if they make it at all.

Oh, and BTW, after 8 years of Bush, they pale in comparison as an national embarrassment.

-Wexler

Obama and the Democrats are in huge trouble with the ‘base’ of their support.  Somehow, most Obama voters didn’t think they were voting for more wars, more wall street bailouts, and the Health Corporation Enrichment Act of 2010.

So, what’s the response of the Democratic propaganda machine .... more stories on ‘tea baggers’ and Sarah Palin.  Got to distract that base somehow.

It’ll be an interesting exercise to watch how the Democrats work in 2010.  You’ll get to see all the tricks they use to get voters ‘on the left’ to vote for their pro-war, pro-corporation, basically-Republican slate of candidates.

As always this kind of theoretical liberal thought has no connection to reality at all.

It falls back on decades of beliefs that it feels to be unquestioned, and spouts all the same delusional mantras over and over again, that have no basis in fact at all.

In point of fact Feminism, has become another mutated form of slavery, and white supremacy, one in which mostly white women enslave men of color economically, while denying them even basic human rights. Millions of whom have the economic basis of their life destroyed permanently, and are thrown in debtors prison without trial, and remain there with no legal rights to extricate themselves. One in which their mounting debts turn them into legal slaves, without any recourse.

This is justified by racist views of men of color as being sup human Neanderthal like creatures, who deserve the bondage that feminists create for them, due to their biological attributes and genetic predispositions. Ignoring the fact that feminists themselves have created these conditions for men.  Racism pure and simple.

It is the greatest civil rights violation this country has seen since the end of slavery, and it comes closer to being actual slavery every day.

Yet liberals remain blind to this, and even tout the civil rights movement as an example of their support for civil rights, while ignoring the daily carnage and body counts, of men and children.

Yes, the Tea Party movement strikes liberals as irrational. And they can laugh at them, and try and make fun of them, in a condescending way.

Yes, Conservative politics is a failure. But the failure of liberalism paved the way for its existence. This is what liberals can’t seem to get.

They can look out over this land, while it’s people are destitute and starving, and pat themselves on the back. Believing they have championed civil rights, while the country circles around the drain on the way down.  And they are responsible.

I don’t see what is so hard to understand. People who are ignorant and revel in their ignorance are now panic-stricken by the collapse of the economy under their heros, the GOP, who SUPPORTED Bush’s insane expansion of the Deficit (like a compulsive shopper who keeps ordering credit cards and runs them all up to the limit).

They are ignorant, confident that as White Christians they are superior, and they are TERRIFIED by the economics and that a BLACK man with a “funny” name is President.

Their response is the simplistic ideas of fascism.  And, like most fascist movements, they are funded and manipulated by a few extremely wealthy and powerful people who want to extend their control over others—like Berlesconi, in Italy or IMMIGRANT Rupert Murdoch. (Anybody see Tancredo say we should toss Murdoch out?  Anybody think Tancredo won’t succumb to hypocrisy to avoid slitting his own throat?)

cslevine, February 14 at 12:27 am

I would hope you gave a bit more consideration to your vote than your post implies. Voting for Brown because he said the seat wasn’t Kennedy’s seems a bit shallow.

That you couldn’t cast your ballot for Coakley is understandable, given the abysmal campaign she ran, but I think that this, or any other, issue deserves a more considered discussion.

My other idea is that we should all sign up. Join you local “Tea Party” and bring some focus to real problems and their actual root. Listen to people and don’t go in preaching. We might not turn it around but we could create interesting schisms, and educate some folks in the process. The goal of progressives must be outreach and this is an opportunity.

I say we form a “Coffee Party” as an actual grassroots, folksy but progressive alternative to the nutty corporate from teabaggers. People drawn into the Tea Party DO have much to be angry about but the purpose of that organization (such as it is) is to mislead with racism, xenophobia and anti-rational emotionalism to turn righteous anger to corporate benefit. It’s an old trick. We have more to offer and can build a real anti-corporate, anti-imperialist movement. It would be more effective than calling folks names from the sidelines.

To Gerard,

You have to accept the facts of live.

Ying-Yang Live-dead, black-white, and last but not least intelligent-stupid.

Their are also in between feelings, shades, but thats unclear, and lead to an lethargic situation, and this lethargically thinking leads not to humanly thinking, it draws every thinking out of contex.

Its a way to let them see that you are as a citizen, not happy whit how you are treated, and lied to.

This is one way, to proprovoke an reaction, on your behaviour, and this one is good as an other.

I am embarrassed by the cost and use of America’s military.

I am embarrassed by the cost and management of Americas healthcare
system, as compared with those in the rest of the developed world.

I am embarrassed that our government flaunts international law by
coddling our war criminals.

I am embarrassed that our national infrastructure, is not competitive
with modern standards, and is crumbling beneath us.

I am embarrassed that my fellow Americans re-elect politicians that
have not protected us from corporate predators, and have done
nothing about the ruinous imbalance of trade for three decades.

We have plenty of national embarrassments, but a small band
exercising their right to be stupid in public is not one of them.

Stuart Whatley:  Please explain “a Manichean worldview” because it is a key concept in understanding not only the Right Radical viewpoint, but much of American political “reasoning” and I doubt that the vast majority of ordinary people have the vaguest notion of what it means.
  As I understand it, it means a tendency to think of everything in blacks or whites, rights or wrongs, always posing opposites against each other to the exclusioin of everything in between.  No shades of meaning. The elimination of possible alternatives. No half-way points,  no subtle judgments.  Either this or that, and nothing in between.  Correct me if I’m wrong, but Americans are more susceptible to this simple-minded way of thinking than many other nationalities, and radical political fringes are almost always victims of such oversimplifying.
  “Manicheanistic” thinking is what makes violence not only possible, but probable. (Remember Bush’s “axis of evil,”  “BinLaden dead or alive.”  “Win or lose.” “God versus Satan.”  etc. etc.
  Most reasonable choices are much more complicated, yet oversimplificatioin closes off the options. That’s what makes it so dangerous.

Hello,
I live in Massachusetts, yes that state that just voted a republican to Ted Kennedy’s senate seat. Notice I wrote Ted Kennedy’s seat. I voted for the man. Because he said, over and over again, this is not the Kennedy seat, it belongs to the people of Massachusetts. Many thought, pundits, talking heads on TV, that it was the “Tea Party” movement that got him elected. Nonsense! He was voted into office by a larger percentage of Massachusetts independent voters, like me. I have no grand expectations of this junior senator, but if he can get re elected, this is fine man, who just might not be corrupted by Washington. I guess if you do not follow the line of Republican or Democrat, you are bagged by a tea party! Lets not forget the Independent voters.. or should we be called the “INDEPENDENCE” party?

hello. liberals and democrats do not live in the
“valley”. it is mainstream hardworking Republicans
and illegal wannabes. the ‘valley’ is actually San
Fernando; not the agricultural communities of San Joaquin. i enjoy seeing articles slinging mud at Tea
Partiers -attacking alike they are threatened. it
gives more credulity to their existence, and
strengthens their resolve. working people being
politically motivated to get involved: is what
politicians have been wanting for decades; during
apathetic disinterest. now that it is happening, they
are all afraid of getting their personal boat
capsized. it is long overdue, and should be
celebrated by all politicians. the money it will
generate in your industry is going to set records.
mature the playing field and scoop the profits. want
some cheese with all your whining?

The problem with so-called “liberal” commentators like this one is that they bash movements like the Tea Party, which is full of nutbags, but offer no real alternatives, just recycled woes. As long as the “liberal” intelligentsia looks down at and mocks misguided movements that do appeal to the working class and poor, these movements will continue to grow.

I was in the Valley in California recently, near Fresno, and they had a Farmers’ Fair taking place. I strolled in out of curiosity and noticed that the Tea Party was there, handing out their literature, conversing with the people. There were NO so-called liberal or Democratic representatives there.

Well, embarrassment is such a harsh word after all. I concur with the author that these people ( so-called tea-baggers ) are being manipulated. I also agree that the performance of Tom Tancredo is as much a national embarrassment as is the supposed popularity of Sarah Palin.

But, given the history of political movements in this nation, touched upon by this author, one must at least acknowledge that the tea party revolution is people actually doing something. Call them misguided or use even more acerbic reference if you wish, but then stop and contrast the almost complete inaction on the left.