Wherein I Agree With Occupy Wall Street Protesters
Thursday, October 13th, 2011The Occupy Wall Street folks have finally, at long last, figured out that the Bank Bailouts did nothing but help the rich and powerful. Too bad they didn’t join with the Tea Party who also balked at the huge transfer of wealth from the middle class taxpayers to irresponsible investment bankers who gave loans to people who couldn’t afford them.
Unfortunately, the OWS folks put their hope in Obama’s promised change and got more of the same. I remember a conversation with a prominent liberal activist. She was decrying the money in politics and corruption of the power. I said to her, on election day,”How do you think Barack Obama got elected? All that money came from Wall Street and lobbyists. They’re your problem now.”
Three years later, disenchanted socialists drum in circles and scream in frustration at what was blindingly obvious. The Dems are wholly bought and paid for.
Where the Occupy Wall Streeters differ from Tea Partiers is fundamental philosophy: Instead of the middle class bailing out banks and investment houses and GM, the Occupy Wall Street folks would prefer that the money had come directly to them. Pay off their student loans. Pay off their mortgage. Pay them $20/hour whether they work or not. Just pay them. In short, they want a socialist society where behavior is completely untethered from consequences.
Tea Partiers want to keep what they earn. They don’t want to pay for someone else’s stupidity. They don’t want someone to pay for their stupidity. They want to be free from the burden the Smartypants Set™ put on them and their children. They fear that this debt will make slaves of American citizens. They worry that their children will have less opportunities to pursue the American dream–to pursue happiness.
Like Tea Partiers, the Occupy Wall Street crowd feel disregarded and diminished. They feel that the little guy doesn’t get a break.
Students are disillusioned: They have student debt for worthless degrees for jobs that don’t exist. Many kids live with their parents and will never be employable with the education they have. As an aside, David Mamet has a wonderful essay on the hopelessness and entitlement of these folks in his book The Secret Knowledge.
The Occupy Wall Street folks have plenty to be angry about. Many Tea Partiers are angry, too. It’s just the cause and solutions that differ–well, solutions, and tactics.
Starting riots, pooping on police cars, laying in filth, sharing drugs, making it impossible for the working class people to work, is no way to make a point. Or rather, it makes the wrong point.
The Democrats will use the Occupy Wall Street crowd to foment discontent and cause confusion going into the 2012 election. It should be noted that they (hello Chuck Schumer, Chris Dodd and Barney Frank) were architects of both the absurd lending practices and then the bailout of those same institutions when they failed.
For those on the conservative grassroots side, it’s unwise to dismiss OWS’ers all out of hand. Some of these people really believed that Barack Obama was going to bail them, personally, out. They believed that he cared about them. They believed that he was a man of the people and understood them and would bring fundamental change in America that would benefit them.
Many of these people are seeing the suffering and believed the Democrats had the solution.
These folks share the alienation from the “elites”. Tea Partiers are scorned, loathed and feared by establishment Republicans. Now, politicians try to curry favor from Tea Party types, but it’s only to save their own hides. Will real reform ever come? Can the Tea Party expect transparency from the GOP when the Republicans are in charge again? It will be demanded. Will the demands be heeded? The Occupy Wall Street folks face the same problem with the Democrats.
The average American citizen feels profoundly alienated from the leadership who continues to make promises and continues to break them. This electoral swinging is a desire, on the part of voters, to find leaders who are responsive to the average, working middle-class person and small business guy who doesn’t have lobbyists making sure to guard his interests. The only place the citizen has to express their discontent is the ballot box. They’ve been doing it over and over and the message keeps resulting in disappointment.
Here are some areas where both sides can agree:
Government transparency
No more bailouts
Higher Education reform
Re-looking at American foreign policy and the best use of military resources
Government-corporate nexus (aka crony capitalism)
There’s more, but this is a start. There are many dark elements of the Occupy Wall Street crowd–the use of intimidation and violence to achieve ends, for one. Still, the alienation and betrayal and the looking helplessly toward the future seems to be a universal American citizen phenomenon these days.
America’s elected leaders no longer seem to serve their citizens but themselves and the big money folks who put them in power. Changing that is something everyone can believe in.
Think Progress Uses Tea Party Infiltrator As Proof Tea Parties Are Racist [Video at link]
Friday, July 16th, 2010div class=Amp_Commentary_Wrapdiv class=Amp_Post_TextpThe Left is so eager to make the case that the Right is racist, that they’re willing to make stuff up to prove it. Of the thousands of videos out there, of the hundreds of Tea Parties videotaped, there is zero evidence of racism. But this isn’t about racism, ultimately. This is about getting the Democrat base riled up, fearful and willing to vote now that Obama isn’t on the ticket. Trumping up a racism charge is the way to do that. It’s despicable./p/div/divdiv class=Amp_Content_Outerdiv class=Amp_Top_Wrapdiv class=Amp_Source_FirstspanAmplifyrsquo;d from a rel=clipsource target=_blank title=http://confederateyankee.mu.nu/archives/303685.php?utm_source=twitterfeedutm_medium=twitterutm_campaign=Feed%3A+ConfederateYankee+%28Confederate+Yankee+Blog%29 href=http://confederateyankee.mu.nu/archives/303685.php?utm_source=twitterfeedutm_medium=twitterutm_campaign=Feed%3A+ConfederateYankee+%28Confederate+Yankee+Blog%29confederateyankee.mu.nu/a/span/div/divdiv class=Amp_Middle_Wrapblockquote class=Amp_Content_Item cite=http://confederateyankee.mu.nu/archives/303685.php?utm_source=twitterfeedutm_medium=twitterutm_campaign=Feed%3A+ConfederateYankee+%28Confederate+Yankee+Blog%29table cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0trtdh3 id=AutoGeneratedID-0Think Progress Ripped Content From Tea Party Video To Create Fraudulent Racism Vid/h3/td/tr/table/blockquotediv class=Amp_Content_Hr/divblockquote class=Amp_Content_Item cite=http://confederateyankee.mu.nu/archives/303685.php?utm_source=twitterfeedutm_medium=twitterutm_campaign=Feed%3A+ConfederateYankee+%28Confederate+Yankee+Blog%29table cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0trtdp id=AutoGeneratedID-1Remember Activist 2, span id=IL_AD2the Saint Louis/span Team Party infiltrator, that claimed I’m a proud racist, I’m white?/p/td/tr/table/blockquotediv class=Amp_Content_Hr/divblockquote class=Amp_Content_Item cite=http://confederateyankee.mu.nu/archives/303685.php?utm_source=twitterfeedutm_medium=twitterutm_campaign=Feed%3A+ConfederateYankee+%28Confederate+Yankee+Blog%29table cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0trtdp id=AutoGeneratedID-2It seems that Think Progress used a clip from this video, a video entitled a rel=nofollow href=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GYfmShJe5MAfeature=player_embeddedProof that the Tea Party is not racist/a./p/td/tr/table/blockquotediv class=Amp_Content_Hr/divblockquote class=Amp_Content_Item cite=http://confederateyankee.mu.nu/archives/303685.php?utm_source=twitterfeedutm_medium=twitterutm_campaign=Feed%3A+ConfederateYankee+%28Confederate+Yankee+Blog%29table cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0trtdp id=AutoGeneratedID-3The guys at SharpElbows.Net thwarted this infiltrator, a rel=nofollow href=http://sharpelbowsstl.blogspot.com/2010/04/dem-shill-wears-nazi-gear-to-tea-party.htmlheavily documenting/a his attempt to mingle with Tea Party protesters in Saint Louis. /p/td/tr/table/blockquotediv class=Amp_Content_Hr/divblockquote class=Amp_Content_Item cite=http://confederateyankee.mu.nu/archives/303685.php?utm_source=twitterfeedutm_medium=twitterutm_campaign=Feed%3A+ConfederateYankee+%28Confederate+Yankee+Blog%29table cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0trtdp id=AutoGeneratedID-4Think Progress misrepresented everything this video and the Tea Party stands for, and against./p/td/tr/table/blockquotediv class=Amp_Content_Hr/divblockquote class=Amp_Content_Item cite=http://confederateyankee.mu.nu/archives/303685.php?utm_source=twitterfeedutm_medium=twitterutm_campaign=Feed%3A+ConfederateYankee+%28Confederate+Yankee+Blog%29table cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0trtdp id=AutoGeneratedID-5If staffers, including editor-in-chief Faiz Shakir should not be terminated for this behavior, I’d like to know why./pspan class=Amp_Source_Buttona rel=clipsource target=_blank title=http://confederateyankee.mu.nu/archives/303685.php?utm_source=twitterfeedutm_medium=twitterutm_campaign=Feed%3A+ConfederateYankee+%28Confederate+Yankee+Blog%29 href=http://confederateyankee.mu.nu/archives/303685.php?utm_source=twitterfeedutm_medium=twitterutm_campaign=Feed%3A+ConfederateYankee+%28Confederate+Yankee+Blog%29Read more at confederateyankee.mu.nu/a/span/td/tr/table/blockquote/divdiv class=Amp_Bottom_Wrapnbsp;/div/divdiv class=Amp_LinkSee this Amp at a href=http://bit.ly/da2qqKhttp://bit.ly/da2qqK/a/divbr/
The Key To Socialism In The USA: Destroy The Tea Party Movement
Saturday, March 27th, 2010
Why stop at socialism? I mean, really. That’s just a pretty way of saying communism. Here’s the most accurate label for the New Left: NeoComms. I plan to use it everywhere.
Think I’m being extremist? Well David Frum and all his smooth talking moderate talkers can chew on this:
These debates are happening on the basis of charges like reformism, revisionism, and right opportunism. For me, this is proof that not enough has been done to modernize our organization and to transform Marxism from an old catechism into a real guide to action and a way of understanding the concrete conditions of struggle in our own country and in our own time. As one of the main preconvention documents said, “We have to accept and adapt to the reality that times have changed” (from U.S. Politics at a Transition Point).
The growing influence of the Tea Party movement, the long and grueling fight that was healthcare reform, and so many other features of the current struggle should demonstrate convincingly that though the 2008 election dealt a major blow to the ultra-right, it did not knock them out completely as we had hoped.
Rather than jumping to the conclusion that we need to shift our focus to criticism of Obama, the Democratic Party, or the labor movement, we should instead be seeking to recommit ourselves to defeating the ultra-right and building the broad democratic coalition more strongly than ever. This is the orientation that the main discussion documents point us toward. We have to keep in mind who the “main social force(s) hindering progressive development” are and keep our fire aimed at them (from U.S. Politics at a Transition Point).
If the policy of defeating the ultra-right was correct in the 1980s, the 1990s, and 2008, how can it not be just as correct now that we are in a moment of transition toward a time when we can more forcefully go on the offensive? Let’s update our strategic policy to take account of post-election developments of course, but let’s not take a path that would isolate us from the rest of the coalition for change.
So the threat to Marxism-Leninism isn’t from President Obama and the Democrats. Indeed, the problem with the Democrats is their implementation. The communists merely disagree with how it’s happening. They like that it’s happening.
And in fact, the real problem is the Tea Partiers. The pesky folks pushing back against socialism must be stopped. Notice that they didn’t mention the Republicans.
The article ends with a plea to change the communist movement, maybe even renaming it and making it more palatable to the modern world.
Why? Why hide what you are? Ultimately, don’t bother. Just call yourselves Democrats and be done with it. And commies should worry about Tea Partiers. They name you. And the Democrats, too.
Communists. Socialists. Statists. Totalitarians.
NeoComms.
The name change won’t disguise a NeoComm. The ideas reveal the heart of these people.
Much as they’d like to destroy the Tea Party movement, it won’t happen. The Tea Party movement is organic. It will morph and change and grow. It isn’t headed by an organization. It doesn’t require one leader to exist.
But most of all, the beliefs of the Tea Party folks will help them win in the end. Liberty. Ingenuity. Creativity. Life. Happiness. Freedom. Those values beat the smallness of socialism. Always.
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The Tea Party Movement, Tea Party Nation & Judson Phillips: A Round-Up
Friday, February 5th, 2010Well, this is the big weekend. I’m seeing tweets coming from the gathering. Nothing splashy yet–just lots of pictures of a very up-scale hotel.
Luke Obrien of AOLNews has a fascinating exposé on Phillips. Here’s a snippet:
Phillips’ big idea was a social network for conservatives. It would eventually be called Tea Party Nation. In Phillips’ mind, it could be bigger than Facebook. And it would be his. But he couldn’t build it on his own. Over the course of 2009, he cajoled others into volunteering hundreds of hours of their time to help. Most thought they were giving structure to the broader, inchoate movement.
The first sign that something was amiss was the donation box on the Tea Party Nation Web site. Smith says he felt uncomfortable linking the box directly to Sherry Phillips’ PayPal account, but that Judson assured him the arrangement was temporary. It wasn’t. More than $4,000 in donations came in while Smith was helping Phillips. “We don’t know what happened to it,” Smith says. “We still don’t know.”
Indeed, the Phillipses have refused to fully account for the money that continues to flow into their personal coffers. When Phillips registered Tea Party Nation as a for-profit company, Smith walked out. Other volunteers were alienated as well. But Phillips bulled forward, persuading a new crop to help him take Tea Party Nation to a bigger audience. “I thought he was very kind, a real sweet guy,” Kilmarx says. “Maybe that’s the charm of a viper.”
As Phillips jockeyed for supremacy in the Tea Party movement in Tennessee, he undermined people he saw as rivals and lashed out at those who challenged his decisions, most notably through the forums of the Tea Party Nation Web site. Phillips deleted posts when people disagreed with him over candidate picks. He banned people when they questioned the direction he was taking the organization. The more outspoken dissenters received bilious e-mails threatening legal action.
More here.
For Sarah Palin’s part, Andrew Malcolm believes she’s forging her own, new political path. Palin explains her reasons for going to the Tea Party Convention here.
Sarah Palin will also be at other events. I’m going to be reporting from the Perry-Palin gathering here in Houston, February 7 (for free, I might add).
And what of the Tea Party movement, generally? Can it get its act together? Does it need to? From Newsweek:
Though tea-party activists still tend to look askance at political professionals and the Republican Party as an institution, such veterans have provided strategic leadership, even on the grassroots level. In a movement that prides itself for being “leaderless,” groups like the Nationwide Tea Party Coalition have drafted 28 local activists to form a “national leadership team” to sift through the noise. The group is spearheaded by Michael Patrick Leahy, a former delegate to the Republican Convention who had last agitated to elect Romney in 2008.
The group’s habitual conference calls, however, have produced neither a set of Republican talking points nor a singular national agenda, but rather an opportunity for certain messages and calls to action to become amplified on a larger scale. “We have a healthy distrust of political folks, whether they’re Republican or not—we tend to trust fellow tea-party organizers,” says Hennessy. “It’s like neighbors talking over a fence.”
The Tea Party movement is evolving. Some parts are more productive. In fact, many groups growing out of the movement aren’t using the “Tea Party” name, but infusing new political activism with Tea Party ideals.
Some groups are doing great works in the Tea Party name.
And some groups exploit the whole idea for personal gain.
This outcome is really kinda predictable. There are bad actors, good actors who are stupid, and then there are good actors who manage to lead with inclusion.
Tea Party people aren’t thrilled with overlords and some Tea Party self-proclaimed leaders are notoriously tyrannical–something they vehemently oppose in their own leaders. This irony is not lost on their followers.
In this movement, though, there are some very good fruits being borne of the energy and ideals of the people. Very talented folks who had remained anonymous and behind-the-scenes are getting involved and contributing.
The Tea Party energy is classically different than the Obama enthusiasm. Tea Partiers are less personality-driven and more policy-driven.
They are looking for people to reflect their values rather than a person on whom they can project their values. They have also shown themselves to be pragmatic. Many of these people are the people contributing to a New England Republican like Scott Brown. People know he’ll be better than Ted Kennedy or Martha Coakley. That’s obvious.
But there are limitations, too, but this sort of thing takes time to experience. There are many opinions and no one voice is going to represent such a diverse group of people.
The liberals and media would like to paint the movement with a broad brush, but that’s just not possible.
The Tea Parties are just getting started. It’s only been one year. A year ago, politicians and pundits alike scoffed at the whole notion. No one is laughing now.
The movement may have hiccups as it grows, but it is a big mistake to underestimate its power to change the political scene. And that’s a very good thing.
Tea Party Implosion?
Friday, November 20th, 2009The Politico has an interesting article about the Tea Party groups dividing. Read the whole thing. I disagree with this conclusion:
The organizational chaos — combined with a widening apathy at the edges of the movement — has produced a growing consensus among local, state and national tea party leaders that for the movement to evolve from the loose conglomeration of fired-up activists who mobilized this summer to register their dissatisfaction with Obama and Congress at town hall protests and marches across the country into a sustainable bloc with the power to shape the GOP and swing elections, it will require the emergence of a national leader, group or structure.
Ned Ryun, president of American Majority, a nonprofit that has conducted organizer-training sessions for many tea party activists, said “the next three to six months” are going to be critical in determining “what’s going to happen with the tea party movement. Are they going to be a bunch of fingers, or are they going to come together to be a fist?”
The diagnosis is wrong. Why will someone have to be in charge? The movement has done fine and no one is in charge of the Tea Parties now. The national organizations could be best described as facilitators and supporters.
Do they want to be in charge of the Tea Party movement? I don’t even know. So I contacted Freedom Works to find out. Here’s what Press Secretary Adam Brandon said:
“FreedomWorks is looking to facilitate the Tea Party in any way that we can. We were never looking to own or control it. The focus needs to be on the issues at hand.”
And then, I contacted American’s For Prosperity Director of Membership and Online Strategy Erik Telford, who has been heavily involved with the Tea Party movement and asked him if AFP would like to be in charge of the Tea Party movement [Full Disclosure: AFP has sponsored me to go to some workshops and I won their 2009 Award for Online Excellence]. Erik said, “No, the Tea Parties are a grassroots, bottom-up movement. We feel privileged to be a part of it.”
Asking the “who’s in charge” questions about the Tea Party movement is to fundamentally misunderstand conservatives. Conservatives do not like being told what to do. The notion of subsuming self-interest for “the greater good” is anathema to them. That makes replicating the Borg-like work of ACORN and Moveon.org organizations nearly impossible on the right. When conservatives see a goal, they’ll take 50 roads to get there. The left will get on the Huffington Post highway and ride along together.
Because of the uniqueness of the conservative activists, there has been some jostling. Impassioned individuals, some with exotic backgrounds like paralegal or college student as examples, were thrust into the spotlight in their respective cities. No training. No experience. Boom! Life transformed in an instant by an internal feeling and desire to get the country going the right direction. Some of these patriots were unprepared for what it all meant. Others have grown and shone in their new-found roles.
And now, the movement as a whole is morphing. Without giving away details, I know of grassroots planning that includes going after corruption, tackling voter fraud and filling precinct chairs. New organizations are growing out of the Tea Party movement and it is all grassroots work.
The national conservative organizations have been trying to help–give training, give funding for venues, give advice for growing organizations. They have been invaluable, background players in a emotionally-charged, fired-up grassroots phenomenon.
The Tea Party movement isn’t imploding. It’s maturing. And that’s a good thing. There’s lots of work to be done. So now that everyone has found a like-minded community, well, the real work begins. So new outgrowths will sprout to fill the many needs out there. That’s what’s happening now.
The Tea Party Movement Is Not A GOP Creation
Monday, November 16th, 2009The Tea Party movement is a reaction against the Republican party. Sorry to keep beating this drum, but this truth needs to be said loudly and often. It is popular among the press, the left and even some within the Republican party to paint the Tea Party movement as an Obama-hating reaction to socialistic impulses. That is part of it. The heart of it, though, is that many Americans, across the spectrum, felt betrayed by the GOP for abandoning fiscal conservatism and ethical governance.
So here’s a letter from a Texas blogger friend and typical Tea Partier attacking this meme in a letter to the editor of the Houston Chronicle:
Ms. Burton (It feels weird typing that BTW).
My name is Stan Burton (no relation that I am aware of, but we Burtons have multiplied like rabbits, so it is entirely possible that we are related somewhere back in the depths of time.). I am both a Harris County GOP Precinct Chair as well as one of the founding members of the Texas Chapter of the American Conservativer Party. Your story today makes a bad assumption that is simply unsupported by the facts.
The tea party movement is not, and never was “created by the GOP”. If anything, it was created in response to the GOP as it exists today. The GOP contingent in Congress has over the last few years attempted to move to the left and has become virtually indistinguishable from the Democrats. The Tea Party movement was created by the grass roots in order to show our leaders in Washington DC that the people are not leftist, we are by huge majorities, right of center. I realize you may not understand the true meaning of the words “Grass Roots” because it has been misappropriated and misapplied to groups that are in fact “astroturf” groups. Most of these astroturf groups are in fact promulgated by democrat organizations to support democrat causes. The most famous of these is ACORN and it’s hundreds of front organizations, including SEIU. Let me be clear here, the true meaning of a grass roots organization is one that SPONTANEOUSLY forms by individuals, not by groups in order to give political cover to said groups. The Tea Party movement is just such a spontaneous group, as is the ACP.
The Tea Party movement was not formed by the GOP, at least not intentionally. It was formed BECAUSE of the GOP and it’s shift leftward. It is not in of itself partisan, but it does lean to the right, on both fiscal as well as social issues. The ACP however IS partisan and it too was formed as a response to the GOP’s shift leftwards.
You really should do a bit more homework before you dive off into such rhetoric because you just look like a democrat toady and hack propagandist instead of an actual unbiased journalist. Frankly your biases are showing in spades. Talking to your leftist co-workers over beers at some trendy bar is NOT research. You really should have contacted Felicia Cravens or someone else in the tea party movement before you went and stuffed both of your feet in your mouth.
The Tea Party movement is a problem for many in the GOP. They did not create it, nor do they control it, much to their chagrin.
Podcast: NY 23 With Susan B. Anthony List President Marjorie Dannenfelser And Valour IT With Marine Steve Schippert
Thursday, October 29th, 2009An inside look at NY 23 and conservatives versus the Republican establishment. Also, we talk about identity politics and Republicanism.
Steve Schippert joins me to discuss what it means to servicemen and women to be connected during their times of rehabilitation. Remember, you can donate at this site.
To subscribe on iTunes, just click here!
When Melissa isn’t on the radio, you can find her at melissaclouthier.com and on Twitter. Her username is MelissaTweets.
What Is Sarah Palin Up To?
Friday, October 23rd, 2009In my editorial at Pajamas Media today, I talk about Sarah Palin’s decision to endorse the conservative, rather than the Republican candidate and what it all means:
With her decision to endorse Doug Hoffman, the conservative (not Republican) candidate, Sarah
Palin sends the Republican Party a very clear message. She will be using her considerable fundraising ability to fund candidates who ideologically match what it used to mean to be a Republican. Since the Republican Party, from its toes to its nose, has difficulty identifying candidates with those credentials, she’ll help them do it.
The Republican Party has a choice. They can continue to antagonize those who vote them into office or they can start paying attention. They mistakenly buy the D.C. bubble philosophy that moderation is the way to find good candidates. What they’re seeing is a base willing to lose if the Republican Party doesn’t change its ways.
I also talk about identity politics and how it is blowing up for the Republican party. The love the party has for Sarah Palin has less to do with her beauty or gender than her beliefs and ideology. So the Republican party, while looking for women candidates needs to remember what’s most important: the beliefs. The base is sick of people who pay lip service to ideas like small government and fiscal responsibility and then turn around and govern like drunk liberals spending other peoples’ money.
Protests Reveal The New Civil Rights Issue: Ignoring The Will Of The Majority
Friday, August 7th, 2009The Left, exasperated by being thwarted both without and within, have taken to distortion, demonizing, and violence. Discussion not allowed.
This is expected.
Conservatives and small government types, have had it. The press has been in the business of painting those on the Right as psychotic, baby-killing, meanies. If you doubt the bias, tell me how many soldiers have been killed in Iraq and Afghanistan since President Obama took office. Yeah, suddenly body counts don’t count. They don’t fit the narrative. So of course, the press will lie about the protests. Nothing much new here.
But it hasn’t only been the press. For six years, Republicans controlled the House and had an evenly divided Senate and Republican president. And still, the government expanded. It wasn’t just war spending that did this. Big fat government freebie programs like the Prescription Drug Benefit passed under President Bush did this. Wars come and go. Entitlement programs live forever.
Conservatives and libertarians wondered why they should vote Republican. Some didn’t. Some just did not vote. Others voted for Ralph Nader or Bob Barr. And some disgruntled conservatives and libertarians voted for Barack Obama because they hoped for change.
The most bitter pill is being swallowed by those in the latter category. For now, they see the government expanding exponentially bigger. The growth of the government is so staggering, the average person can’t comprehend the scope and the size. They can only feel the oppressive magnitude.
So, when the cameras turn onto the faces of average Americans, and the people watching see themselves in those faces and those faces are portrayed as “mobs”, the people get angrier. This is not a group who has been content for a long time. This is a group who have seen their hopes for a smaller, leaner, sensible, more efficient government thwarted over and over and over.
The Republicans still don’t seem to get it either. It’s not just the President and his pet progressives who have insulted the tax payers and citizens. They just seem to be more ribald and open about their contempt.
Protests over health care are the current topic. Expansion of the government’s scope and intrusion is the underlying concern. That the political class don’t seem to care one iota about how the American people feel reveals a general contempt for democracy.
That the President and Representatives and Senators don’t even read bills before passing them symbolizes everything wrong in America right now. And these same people are surprised that something like the Tea Party movement emerged? That they’re surprised reveals their disconnect with the American people.
It would be more comforting if it seemed like the Republican party was more in touch, humble, and responsive. But, like their Democratic buddies, so far they haven’t been.
Maybe the Town Hall protests are making a point. Maybe. The discontented need to keep the ultimate goal in mind and understand that freedom’s enemies will distort even the smallest disrespectful action. The Anchoress has wisdom here.
This is a civil rights issue, ultimately. When a small percentage of the population impose their will against the majority and the majority must pay for the minority, the notion of representative democracy is turned inside out. A vote means nothing.
I suggest that our representatives Meet the Mob. They have lots to say that’s worth listening to. Our Republic depends on it.
John Hawkins Tea Party Leader Steps Down After Provoking Jealous Lovers Rage
Friday, May 15th, 2009I’m not saying that John Hawkins is the leader of the Tea Party movement because I write for his blog and I’m trying to score brownie points. I’m not saying that John Hawkins is the leader of the Tea Party movement because he says so and because he says so it makes it so. I’m saying that John Hawkins is the leader of the Tea Party movement because of this:
“In my book, there is no “leader” or “spokesman” for the Tea Party movement. It’s a pack, not a herd.”
Not parsing here, but he said, “leader”…”for the Tea Party movement” and that’s good enough for me.
So, why don’t the Democrats feed the legacy media’s darling, Keith Olbermann the real story..the story that hasn’t been told? Well, of course, it’s because Janeane Garofalo is involved. See, what really happened, is that Tea Party leader John Hawkins dumped Janeane Garofalo because behind her pseudo-intellectual discussions of frontal lobes and reptilian brain parts like amygdalas, she’s actually not that bright. Tea Party leader John Hawkins was disappointed. He had heard that liberal feminists were smarter and hipper. They didn’t wear lipstick or comb their hair, or even shave their armpits much, so he figured they MUST have brains. Imagine his surprise to find out that his rabid spaz of a dog Patten, hell the feral cats living beneath his house, had more executive brain function than the dour Ms. Garofalo.
Rebounding from that coupling, Tea Party leader John Hawkins heard that Maureen Dowd wore lipstick and was still single. Since she was a legacy media leader, having won a Pulitzer for her incisive writing and fierce investigative reporting, he figured they’d be a power couple. Alas, this union was doomed. Janeane Garofalo might not be that smart but her work as a CIA operative made her cagey and more than a little immune to the moral vagaries of torture. Ms. Dowd met an unfortunate end. She was found Manolo-up with some form of microcomputer sewn into the skin of her mid-back but that’s a story for another Bourne novel.
Why Keith Olbermann refuses to report Tea Party leader John Hawkin’s sordid social past is itself a murky tale. Evidently, the news would be a boost to the true media leader, Chris Matthew’s TV show Hardball because Chris Matthews and Maureen Dowd were tied together (not literally, well, not for long anyway) by a common leg shivering malady. It’s incurable.
Never mind that Tea Party leader John Hawkins gets marginalized while guys like Dick Armey, Newt Gingrich, Erik Telford, Michael P. Leahy and Eric Odom get all the credit. Lameness.
When. Will. The. Bias. End? I ask you. Really, Keith. Get it right! Your petty professional jealousy. Your not-so-secret lust for torture-loving, lipstick-averse CIA operatives. It all reeks of a complete lack of professionalism. You have a reputation to uphold. Get your stories right.
John Hawkins, leader of the Tea Party movement, a man swirling in controversy, can’t buy press because of the horrendous bias. Still, he found it better to step down than subject Patten, the cats, and, the Tea Party movement, who follows his brave lead, any more shame. Anyone else, and this is a story. Tea Party leader John Hawkins, is too big, it seems for bad press. He, like Democratic populist mansion-living, super-rich, loving husband and lawyer John Edwards and law and order focused, corruption-fighting, straight arrow Eliot Spitzer, decided to spare the Tea Party movement, his party and his dull-witted ex-girlfriend any more shame.
You heard it here first.
