Dismiss The Tea Party At Your Peril

"Those who doubt that the failings of higher education in America have political consequences need only reflect on the quality of progressive commentary on the tea party movement."

“Progressive” commentary about the Tea Party movement — such as E.J. Dionne’s assertion that it reflects the “anti-statism” of the Anti-Federalists who lost out at America’s founding — does more to illuminate the lack of knowledge of political history of the commentators than the reality of the movement:

To be sure, the tea party sports its share of clowns, kooks and creeps. And some of its favored candidates and loudest voices have made embarrassing statements and embraced reckless policies. This, however, does not distinguish the tea party movement from the competition.

Born in response to President Obama’s self-declared desire to fundamentally change America, the tea party movement has made its central goals abundantly clear. Activists and the sizeable swath of voters who sympathize with them want to reduce the massively ballooning national debt, cut runaway federal spending, keep taxes in check, reinvigorate the economy, and block the expansion of the state into citizens’ lives.

In other words, the tea party movement is inspired above all by a commitment to limited government. And that does distinguish it from the competition.

But far from reflecting a recurring pathology in our politics or the losing side in the debate over the Constitution, the devotion to limited government lies at the heart of the American experiment in liberal democracy.

Likewise, the fervently held beliefs that the Tea Party is racist and just “astroturf.” The desire to simply wave the movement off as irrelevant or even dangerous fuels conspiracy theories about the Koch brothers and the obsession with the handful of bad apples who show up with objectionable signs. Those attitudes certainly aren’t informed by an objective assessment of the hundreds of thousands of citizens who turn out for rallies, send reams of money to candidates, and continue to be engaged with politics a year and a half after the movement first arose. And casting support for limited government as “opposing government [as] a matter of principle” is a strawman of the most birdbrained sort.

Whether members have read much or little of The Federalist, the tea party movement’s focus on keeping government within bounds and answerable to the people reflects the devotion to limited government embodied in the Constitution. One reason this is poorly understood among our best educated citizens is that American politics is poorly taught at the universities that credentialed them. Indeed, even as the tea party calls for the return to constitutional basics, our universities neglect The Federalist and its classic exposition of constitutional principles….

[L]leading history departments have emphasized social history and issues of race, class and gender at the expense of constitutional history, diplomatic history and military history.

Neither professors of political science nor of history have made a priority of instructing students in the founding principles of American constitutional government. Nor have they taught about the contest between the progressive vision and the conservative vision that has characterized American politics since Woodrow Wilson (then a political scientist at Princeton) helped launch the progressive movement in the late 19th century by arguing that the Constitution had become obsolete and hindered democratic reform.

The Tea Party isn’t that complicated a phenomenon. Robert A. Heinlein described their essential nature decades ago:

Political tags — such as royalist, communist, democrat, populist, fascist, liberal, conservative, and so forth — are never basic criteria. The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire. The former are idealists acting from highest motives for the greatest good of the greatest number. The latter are surly curmudgeons, suspicious and lacking in altruism. But they are more comfortable neighbors than the other sort.

Yes, the movement has attracted some bizarre, even wacky, folks, some of whom see it as a vehicle for promoting an agenda squarely opposed to its limited government roots. But, for all that that minority tends to get most of the attention from people who really don’t want to understand it, the broader Tea Party movement represents the awakening of the ‘leave me be’ types. Such people, by definition, aren’t generally inclined to political activism. Perhaps that’s why more and more ordinary people identify with the movement and support its goals even as its detractors become ever more caustic in their attacks on it.

An expansive view of the state as a means of accomplishing good almost invariably carries with an attitude that one knows better than other people what “good” is and the concomitant belief that it’s acceptable to use the power of government to force such ideas on people “for their own good.” Regular Joes and Janes who prefer to be left alone can see the effects of this attitude in ever-expanding government. TARP, the “stimulus,” repeated bailouts, health care reform — each coming rapidly on the heels of the last — (and the promise of more such policy to come) were like a shock to the system, jarring them out of their inertia. And they don’t much appreciate the inherent condescension of their “betters” who rammed all of this through regardless of popular opinion either. So when they see a bunch of people a lot more like them than the ones trying to “fundamentally transform” their country being pilloried with vulgar sexual slurs as racists and extremists, it’s only natural that they start feeling more affinity for the Tea Party.

In short, the facile handwavium that underlies “progressive” dismissal of the Tea Party as a “crazy” bunch of astroturfed racists serves to highlight the ignorance and disconnectedness of those self-same “progressives” — and to promote, rather than marginalize, the movement.

FILED UNDER: *FEATURED, Democracy, , , , , , ,
Dodd Harris
About Dodd Harris
Dodd, who used to run a blog named ipse dixit, is an attorney, a veteran of the United States Navy, and a fairly good poker player. He contributed over 650 pieces to OTB between May 2007 and September 2013. Follow him on Twitter @Amuk3.

Comments

  1. michael reynolds says:

    So, summarizing: No, the Tea Partiers have no idea what a Federalist is, and no particular base of knowledge about anything.

    And no, we have no examples of particularly admirable Tea Partiers and have a seemingly endless supply of wack-jobs, imbeciles and racists, but don’t worry because they just wanna be free!

    Free, I tells you!

    Free to collect their Social Security checks and demand their cost of living increases.

    Free to pass their medical bills onto the government.

    Free to pretend the environment will just sorta take care of itself.

    Free to guzzle tax-subsidized gas in their giant pick-up trucks and run-down vans.

    Free to enjoy the freedoms guaranteed not by the shotgun they keep under their mattress, but by the rule of law enforced by the government.

    Free to collect their crop insurance subsidies and travel on roads paid for by previous governments and send their kids to government schools and worship at churches the government subsidizes with services for which those churches do not pay.

    Free to fantasize in their condos and their tract homes with their Mexican-tended lawns and gardens about being yeoman farmers in the 18th century.

    Free in short to suck at the government tit whenever it suits their purpose while denouncing any effort to actually pay the bill.

    You remain, Dodd, clueless.

  2. Dodd says:

    A more comprehensive, turgid example of the self-enforced ignorance underlying hatred of the Tea Party one could not have asked for. I am in your debt, Mr. Reynolds.

  3. Tim says:

    At last a writer who gets it. Congrats for finding one at OTB. But, I’ve been trying to tell you this.

  4. Brummagem Joe says:

    Dodd says:
    Saturday, October 16, 2010 at 18:51

    “self-enforced ignorance underlying hatred of the Tea Party”

    Actually the people who seem consumed with hatred are the tea party crowd. It’s an inchoate hatred to be sure but there’s little doubt many of them are consumed by it.

  5. michael reynolds says:

    Dod:

    And yet no refutation. Just the usual Tea Partier’s “Grrr.” The very limit of Tea Partier discourse.

  6. Dodd says:

    I also haven’t refuted Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy, Flat Eartherism, or Creationism.

    And for the same reason.

  7. DMan says:

    I agree that the left is too quick to dismiss the Tea Party movement. I think the broad support its receiving tells you something about the political climate of the country, namely that a large swath of the country is unhappy with the conditions in this country. This is something that Democrats need to recognize and attempt to address, though realistically there might not be anything they can do about it.

    At the same time I think the right is reading too much into the Tea Party movement. I think the Tea Party movement consists of broadly two types of people. There are the politically uninformed who are frustrated with the direction of the country and the economy. These generally consist of the less active Tea Party supporters, who nonetheless are willing to sign onto the idea that government is the fault for all that is wrong with the country, and these are the people who are showing up in large numbers in the polls saying they support the Tea Party movement. The other group consists of the conservative ideologues who wish to demonstrate that their ideas are superior to what they see as extremely liberal policy initiatives. These are the organizers and the people you see front and center, and these are the people who think the Tea Party movement is a profound shift in the country towards their ideas. They are wrong, because, well, the politically uninformed are a fickle group, they will go any way the wind blows, and soon they will reject the radical right agenda many of the ideologues wish to push on them.

  8. Tim says:

    Dodd, you seem incredibly self-absorbed. Were one half intelligent, they would have expanded beyond their own silly notion of importance and actually investigated the fact that in every Tea Party organization I have been involved in the Federalist Papers are mandatory reading, as are classes in the Constitution, the 5000 Year Leap and many more discretionary readings. Kind of blows that imperious attitude out of the water, does it not? Of course it does, you are just too silly to acknowledge it.

    What fools like you seem to misunderstand is that every objection you raise to the Tea Party Movement, has been answered fully and completely by the organizations themselves. They are generally about 42 years old on average, they are generally smarter than other citizens of like circumstances and they are generally wealthier. But, don’t let the facts stand in the way of perfectly good demonization.

    Btw, also about 56% of likely voters consider the Tea Party Movement a “good” thing in American politics, so while you are ignorant, I take comfort in the fact that of people who actually VOTE, you are in the vast minority.

  9. anjin-san says:

    > And for the same reason.

    Underperforming synapses?

  10. Dodd says:

    I think the Tea Party movement consists of broadly two types of people. There are the politically uninformed who are frustrated with the direction of the country and the economy. These generally consist of the less active Tea Party supporters, who nonetheless are willing to sign onto the idea that government is the fault for all that is wrong with the country, and these are the people who are showing up in large numbers in the polls saying they support the Tea Party movement.

    Doubtless every movement has its share of uninformed hangers on. But I submit you’re committing a different form of the same error in assuming the majority fall into that category.

    One thing you’re right about is the establishment mistaking broad voter shift to their side as support for their policies. But if you think the establishment Right likes the Tea Party, or thinks it’s Tea Party ideas that are driving it, then you really aren’t paying attention. There’ll be a lot more friction between the two groups after January, so perhaps it will become more apparent to you.

    What fools like you seem to misunderstand is that every objection you raise to the Tea Party Movement, has been answered fully and completely by the organizations themselves. They are generally about 42 years old on average, they are generally smarter than other citizens of like circumstances and they are generally wealthier. But, don’t let the facts stand in the way of perfectly good demonization.

    Btw, also about 56% of likely voters consider the Tea Party Movement a “good” thing in American politics

    Huh?!? Perhaps you meant to address this to someone here who was, you know, demonizing something? Because the latter sentence is kinda my point.

  11. Tim says:

    Sorry, you’re right, I mean to direct that toward Mr. Reynolds, my fault.

  12. sam says:

    “Born in response to President Obama’s self-declared desire to fundamentally change America, the tea party movement has made its central goals abundantly clear”

    Actually, according to Dick Armey, the Tea Partiers were galvanized by the the Bush bailout of the banks.

    I for one welcome the Tea Party candidates if only for the severe case of heartburn and indigestion they will give the establishment GOP in Congress. They’re far more of a problem for the Republicans than they are for the Democrats, and their effect on the national government is hypothetical at this point. Their, the Tea Partiers, biggest problem will be to resist being co-opted by the Boehners and McConnells. Since many of them are political neophytes, I’m willing to bet they will find the blandishments of the the GOP biggies hard to resist.

  13. Herb says:

    “Dismiss The Tea Party At Your Peril”

    Why? They gonna shoot me with their muskets? You say something like “Dismiss the Tea Party at Your Peril” and wonder why people think there is a dangerous undercurrent???? Oh, I’m sorry. You meant something completely harmless? Well I can see why used that “at your peril” phrase then……

    “Robert A. Heinlein described their essential nature decades ago”

    Ha! No, he was talking about something else, but that’s alright….if the shoe fits. (And really….Heinlein??? You couldn’t find a libertarianish sf writer who wasn’t a sexual deviant? Oh….never mind.)

    As to the essential idea in this post….that when a “progressive” snorts a Tea Bagger gets his wings, gimme a break. That flag says “Don’t tread on me,” not “Why’s everybody always picking on me?” It’s nice to know that “progressives” control the Tea Party’s actions and attitudes, but I think it’s high time they start taking some responsibility for their own damn selves.

  14. sam says:

    “Huh?!? Perhaps you meant to address this to someone here who was, you know, demonizing something? Because the latter sentence is kinda my point.”

    He thinks you’re Mike Reynolds. Prolly a hasty typo on his part, or he wasn’t really paying attention.

  15. Dodd says:

    Why? They gonna shoot me with their muskets? You say something like “Dismiss the Tea Party at Your Peril” and wonder why people think there is a dangerous undercurrent???? Oh, I’m sorry. You meant something completely harmless? Well I can see why used that “at your peril” phrase then



    Dude. Seriously?

    Image Hosted by ImageShack.us

    As to the essential idea in this post
.that when a “progressive” snorts a Tea Bagger gets his wings, gimme a break.

    So, in addition to straining mightily for any excuse to perceive dangerous intent, you also have a major problem with reading comprehension. Let me explain in smaller words: Behaviour such as yours helps rather than hindering the Tea Party while demonstrating your own ignorance. That is not even remotely the same as suggesting you or your ilk control it.

  16. anjin-san says:

    > they are generally smarter than other citizens of like circumstances and they are generally wealthier

    And you can support this statement how?

    Oh and Tim? If you are going to start calling people “fools”, perhaps you could take 10 seconds to review your post and make sure you are insulting the intended party…

  17. Tim says:

    Sam, I see a lot of “not paying attention” going on here, so I got caught up in the theme, sorry.

    All you guys are doing is regurgitating talking points from Keith Olbermann and Tom Brokaw.

  18. Tim says:

    Cheaps shots, that’s all you have? I made a mistake. I already admitted it and corrected it.

  19. DMan says:

    “One thing you’re right about is the establishment mistaking broad voter shift to their side as support for their policies.”

    It isn’t just the establishment making this mistake, it’s those who believe this is some referendum on limiting the expansion of government. My point is there are many fickle people who are showing support for the Tea Party in the polls simply because they are unhappy with the economy. The rallies aren’t being attended by these people so much as being attended by strong conservatives who are motivated by what they see as a radical liberal agenda being enacted by the government. These are two distinct groups that won’t align forever.

  20. Tim says:

    And, Anjin-san, I don’t feel compelled to “prove” statements that have been highlighted in the mainstream media, just like I don’t feel the need to negate charges of racism, since that also has been widely refuted. If there is some obscure reference I make that you need clarification on, I’d be happy to do that for you.

  21. Dodd says:

    The rallies aren’t being attended by these people so much as being attended by strong conservatives who are motivated by what they see as a radical liberal agenda being enacted by the government.

    And your evidence for believing Tea Party ralliers are just uniformed dolts and partisans hacks is?

  22. anjin-san says:

    > I don’t feel compelled to “prove” statements that have been highlighted in the mainstream media

    I see. That would be the same “lamestream media” that is so reviled by… the tea party. Hey, if its on TV it must be true.

  23. John Strong says:

    Every teabagger I’ve met has had a minimal understanding of underlying issues. Does this mean the all do? Hard to say.
    It’s quite true that the teabaggers are being manipulated by fear rhetoric paid for by special interests. Much of their rhetoric is repackaged Christian Reconstructionist, Neoconservative, and Family Values rhetoric. It’s not as if a bunch of new politically active people just sprang into existence–these far-right voters have always voted far-right.
    Which is a pity, because the teabaggers are partially correct–the system is badly broken. But vagueries such as “take back American” and “Taxed Enough Already” (when taxes are at an historic low), and “Return to the Values of the Founders” do not specify the causes of any of our real, entrenched problems. What will they do about the state of our infrastructure or our lost manufacturing jobs? Which parts of government will they cut?
    They are long on rhetoric and short on details.

  24. Tim says:

    Anjin, is that your debate? Belittlement? Seriously.

  25. Alex Knapp says:

    It would be lovely if the “Tea Party” were actually composed of principled libertarians. However, the available evidence — such as opinion polls and voting records — suggest that the vast majority of the movement are, in fact, socially conservative Republican partisans. I’m sure there are exceptions among different groups, but principled libertarians are a tiny minority in the movement.

  26. Zelsdorf Ragshaft III says:

    For a comparison the tea party was made up of citizens who paid their own way to the events. When BJ (first word blow) Joe and Reynolds as well as Anjin chime in about hate, I suggest they read their own comments they have made over the years. The failed event from the left joined the unions, who used union dues to pay the way of members who were forced to attend, with admitted communists. Even Van Jones was there. The left exemplifies everything they accuse the right of being. Like in all things, liars always think they are being lied to. Thieves believe they are being stolen from and cheaters think thay are being cheated.

    Special to the idiot Anjin. Which flag flew longer, dope? The Stars and Striped or the Hammer and sickle? Hint. The U.S. was established July 4, 1776. The Soviet Union some sorry time in 1917. Notice, the U.S. still exists inspite of idiots like you, Obama and Bill Ayers. The Soviet Union only exists in the mind of Vlad Putin.

  27. Dodd says:

    BTW, when you use the word “teabagger” in reference to the Tea Party, you demonstrate that nothing you say is to be taken seriously. See, also, “far right.”

  28. Zelsdorf Ragshaft III says:

    John Strong, the only teabagger is your daughter.

  29. Tim says:

    John Strong, do you really have an original opinion, or what? I’ve been hearing all of that for better than a year. They don’t have to tell YOU what their goals are, or motivations, they are speaking directly with their representatives and senators and the candidates for these positions.

    I guess if it doesn’t get on on TV, it doesn’t happen.

  30. ponce says:

    I see,

    The wingnuts are trying to pretend a nearly identical movement didn’t quickly rise up and just as quickly fade away under Ross Perot during the 90s.

    Talk about poorly educated.

  31. DMan says:

    “And your evidence for believing Tea Party ralliers are just uniformed dolts and partisans hacks is?”

    Since I never said that, I will try to say it again. I think* (not a lot of evidence, just observational) that the Tea Party movement consists of those who are unhappy with the economy and willing to blame the government, and those who are right-wing hacks who believe in their superior ideology. The later are running the rallies, the former are contributing to the high numbers in support of the Tea Party. My belief comes from the people I have spoken with that fall into one of these two categories. I have yet to conduct a large study on it though, maybe in time.

  32. Dodd says:

    “And your evidence for believing Tea Party ralliers are just uniformed dolts and partisans hacks is?”

    Since I never said that, I will try to say it again. I think* (not a lot of evidence, just observational) that the Tea Party movement consists of those who are unhappy with the economy and willing to blame the government, and those who are right-wing hacks who believe in their superior ideology. The later are running the rallies, the former are contributing to the high numbers in support of the Tea Party.

    Hard to square this statement with your earlier one:

    There are the politically uninformed who are frustrated with the direction of the country and the economy. These generally consist of the less active Tea Party supporters, who nonetheless are willing to sign onto the idea that government is the fault for all that is wrong with the country, and these are the people who are showing up in large numbers in the polls saying they support the Tea Party movement.

    No, you didn’t use the word “dolts,” but otherwise you clearly believe it’s fair — based on admittedly limited, purely anecdotal evidence — to describe the overwhelming majority of Tea Partiers as being either uniformed or simply hacks. It’s a wonder you avoided saying “bitter clingers.”

    In short, you are indeed committed another form of the same error and thereby helping prove my point. When you said “far right ideologues,” you pretty much outed yourself as one of the ones who really doesn’t want to “get” the Tea Party, so you resort to comfortable stereotypes. Helpfully, a phrase describing this phenomenon has recently come into vogue…

  33. ratufa says:

    Use of the word “teabagger” aside, John Strong makes some good points. But, I don’t expect any realistic details on how to solve this country’s problems from candidates this election season. Any sensible plan for doing so is going to have to include more than just happy talk about cutting taxes, eliminating government waste, and the other “avoid the real problems” crap that politicians like to dish out. But, voters don’t want to hear bad news, especially in a year like this, when so many of them are very pissed off.

    The interesting part will come if/when the elected Tea Party candidates in a Republican-controlled House (and/or Senate) has to deal with the realities of our fiscal mess and has to balance taxes vs spending on Medicare/Medicaid, defense and Social Security vs the feelings of the “throw out every bum who voted for higher taxes” crowd.

  34. anjin-san says:

    > Anjin, is that your debate?

    I am not trying to debate, you have not as yet said anything that really merits debate. You defense of the tea party smacks of underlying insecurity, and if you knew anything at all about Michael, you would know that he is a pretty bright guy, regardless of what you think of his politics. The name calling does not impress if you are trying to be taken seriously.

    The tea party movement is a well funded, attempt by insiders to rebrand the GOP in the wake of their disastrous leadership of this country in the early part of this century. The “grass roots” front is fooling no one, except perhaps you, Dodd, and the folks with the drums and hats.

    Its most prominent leader walked away from her sworn duty to the citizens of Alaska to pursue a quick buck. Its members did not seem to be concerned about record deficits under Bush, nor the runaway growth in the size & power of the federal government at the same time. Sorry, but I am not impressed.

  35. Tim says:

    Ratufa, at least you offer some insight and rational argument, instead of hurling epithets and repeating oft quoted pejoratives.

    But, your comments seem to suggest a certain bias. The “happy talk” you refer to seems to have come from Barack Obama, not the Tea Party. The belief that the voters don’t want to hear bad news is irrelevant, there is bad news. They have been hearing it. They want some solutions for the $1 trillion dollars invested. Is that wrong? Don’t they deserve an answer as to where that money was spent and why it didn’t make a difference in unemployment? Why it didn’t make a difference in economic activity? Do you accept the premise that it “kept it from getting worse?” Because that sort of answer would have never flown in the media had a Republican president offered it.

  36. Tim says:

    Anjin, your comments are falling on deaf ears. I responded to Michael’s words, his attitudes, in which I found no particular intelligence, mere repeating of the pejoratives I referenced above. And, of course, you are not going to debate, you don’t know how. Ratufa offered something to debate and was met with a completely different attitude from me, did he not?

  37. DMan says:

    Dodd,

    I never said anything about the uninformed dolts attending the rallies. And I don’t think the politically uninformed or uninterested are necessarily dolts. I also don’t think the politically uninformed or uninterested will waste their time attending rallies, but that doesnt mean they aren’t showing up in the polls by simply acknowledging their agreements for what they think the Tea Party stands for.

    And again, yes, I think that the Tea Party rally organizers and even attendees are mostly far right ideologues. Explain to me how their beliefs in broadly opposing any government expansion makes them anything but?

  38. Tim says:

    Just a question: have any of you folks, Dman, Anjin, Reynolds, or Ratufa been to a Tea Party rally? I don’t blame you if you haven’t, but I have been to a lot, none of which reflect anything you all seem to be talking about.

    That’s why I respond the way I do. I talk to these people. Many of them are former Democrats, like myself, who feel that the Democrat party has gone awry and has been possessed by too many of the far left wing. Most of them are independents, or recently motivated Republicans who thought all they would ever have to do is sit on their couch and vote every two or four years.

    And, it was Bush’s betrayal on TARP that motivated them, not Barack Obama, but he sure fueled the fire with his policies.

    Take it or leave it, that is the truth.

  39. Dodd says:

    yes, I think that the Tea Party rally organizers and even attendees are mostly far right ideologues. Explain to me how their beliefs in broadly opposing any government expansion makes them anything but?

    That question proves you have no idea either what the Tea Party is about or what “far right” means. Here’s a hint (as already stated): “Limited government: != “no government.”

    “Far right” in American politics generally refers to supremacism, ultra-nationalism, and fascism. The already mentioned occasional bad apple aside, those things aren’t what the Tea Party is about, as even your limited, anecdotal evidence should have shown you. Uncritically slinging around catchphrases like that to refer to a movement that seeks to restore fiscal sanity and Constitutional limits on government just further proves my overall point.

  40. John Strong says:

    Teabagger is their word for themselves. If they didn’t want the title, they should never have used it.

  41. Tim says:

    But you know better and you still use it, with idiotic joy, I suppose.

  42. John Strong says:

    Of course. Idiotic joy is the best joy.

  43. anjin-san says:

    > Democrat party

    And there folks, is the tell which makes it clear that we are not dealing with someone who has honest differences of opinion with Democrats. Any wonder that I am not interested in “debate” with this guy?

    Giants 2 Phils 1

  44. Dodd says:

    Teabagger is their word for themselves. If they didn’t want the title, they should never have used it.

    Yeah, that tired, old canard never gets old. One of the lamer excuse for ignorance and lack or thought of the last couple of years.

    And you can spare us the recitation of TPers with signs using the word “teabag.” We’ve all seen them. You just want an excuse to demean people you don’t like.

  45. Tim says:

    That’s just silly. I don’t hate myself. I am still registered as a Democrat. If it were so reviled, why would I not have changed it? It is easy. I still have hope.

  46. John Strong says:

    “You just want an excuse to demean people you don’t like.”

    If you need to think that in order to be happy, then be my guest.

    I will tell you my personal experience talking to teabaggers:

    A conversation about the risk-pool insurance model in which the teabagger turned out to have no underlying knowledge of how insurance works.

    A discussion of marginal tax rates that showed the teabagger to know nothing of how tax works

    A discussion of infrastructure that showed the teabagger to have no understanding of what infrastructure does, how pays for it, and what needs to be done to maintain it.

    A discussion of the Constitution in which the teabagger showed no knowledge outside of things he had memorized from the Glenn Beck show of the Constitution.

    I have yet to see a teabagger campaign speech or platform that specifies workable solutions to things like getting back lost manufacturing jobs, maintaining and improving infrastructure, laying in technology and other changes necessary to prevent an energy shock, reducing the deficit (outside of very general calls to “reduce the government,” and the list goes on.

    What I have heard is a lot of memorized sound bites clearly culled from TV and radio personalities.

    If that’s demeaning people I don’t like, then call me guilty. I concur the US is in trouble, but the teabaggers can’t save us.

  47. anjin-san says:

    > That’s just silly.

    So you whine about “Teabagger”, but it is silly if someone objects to the use of “Democrat Party” which is a calculated insult to Democrats courtesy of Rush Limbaugh.

    Run along Skippy. Go play with bithead and Juneau.

  48. schooner says:

    There is no “Tea Party”.

    They are Republicans. They run in Republican primaries and are running under the Republican banner.

    There is no coherent policy structure. Cutting spending but excluding the military and Medicaid and cutting taxes is essentially their fiscal policy, exactly that of the Republican Party.

    The main candidates like Angle, O’Donnell, Miller et al are incoherent babbling messes. Shouting fascist Marxism isn’t a policy, it’s idiocy.

  49. Tim says:

    The Tea Partyists aren’t there to save anyone. Not you, not themselves, that is not their job. Their job is to resist clearly flawed ideas like putting a trillion dollars into “shovel-ready” jobs that the president now confirms never existed. It is lies like that at the cost of our children’s futures that is alarming and deserving of resistance.

    So, I will say to you, sir, that a president should have known that. He is the one without an understanding of how things work and he is not just a man on the street he is the President of the United States and people like you put him there.

  50. John Strong says:

    Then why bother with “Take Back America?”

  51. ratufa says:

    Tim,

    By “happy talk” I meant the usual “no pain” rhetoric that politicians of all parties tend to provide during election season when asked about taxes, budgets, and spending. This includes saying that you’ll only raise taxes on the rich, which is a way to tell the average voter that somebody else will pay for it (I’m sure you can name Democrats who have said that). It includes saying that you’ll deal with government spending by cutting government waste and abuse (Christine O’Donnell has said that, along with more politicians of both parties than one can count).

    It’s true that whether or not the voters want to hear bad news doesn’t change the fact that there is bad news. But, it does change what politicians tell the voters, because voters generally don’t want to hear bad news and politicians want to be liked by voters.

    As for the stimulus, I think it may be correct to say that things might be worse without it — the Congressional Budget Offices believes that it had a positive effect, as do a fair number of economists. I also think it’s very likely that the bill was too filled with politically-influenced goodies and wasn’t structured to provide the best value for the money. See Martin Feldstein’s argument to that effect — and he supports the general idea of a stimulus.

  52. Tim says:

    For the most part this is a juvenile discussion and one of the reasons I rarely comment here and twice as rarely hang around long enough to flesh out all of the “silly” responses.

  53. John Strong says:

    It’s really, really hard to have anything but a juvenile conversation about a “party” whose rhetoric consists of calling people Marxist and claiming to have sole possession of patriotism.

  54. Dodd says:

    That’s just silly. I don’t hate myself. I am still registered as a Democrat. If it were so reviled, why would I not have changed it? It is easy. I still have hope.

    You’re dealing with a guy whose first contribution to the thread was an insult, who then bleated about “name-calling.” In short, ignore the whinging.

    Image Hosted by ImageShack.us

  55. Tim says:

    Ratufa, you are the exception.

    What if I say the stimulus had no effect or a negative effect because the lack of seriousness to it lent to the atmosphere a sense of doom that inhibited further growth that might have been realized? That what growth there was after the stimulus bill passed was a muted form of economic activity that would have been much greater had not the fear of future debt inhibited it? What if I said that the use of it largely to pay off unions and union dominated industries and the prospect of “shovel-ready” jobs who, anyone in the business of providing those jobs, knew it could not be true, actually hurt the economy? What if I said that even now, the uncertainty over tax rates, which will go up now regardless because steps to prevent the sunset of the law had to take place a long time ago to be in effect by Jan 1, continues to inhibit economic activity?

    Would that have any merit? IF not, why not?

  56. schooner says:

    @ Tim,

    We had years of tax cuts and the worst job growth of any presidency since the great depression and no gain in middle class and working class wages. All benefits rose to the top.

    Why on earth would you want to go back to those same policies. They failed.

    That’s why those arguments don’t have any merit.

  57. anjin-san says:

    Dodd, you wound me. I can only hope you do not trot out the “overmatched” and “ad hominem” that you have used so very often to such devastating effect the sound of general laughter.

  58. Tim says:

    That’s not a response, that is an attack on Bush. A flawed one at that. Were I to say that under Obama we spent $1 Trillion dollars and got nothing out of it, a degradation in the living standards of the middle-class. Why would I want to go forward with that?

  59. schooner says:

    Nonsense. It’s an attack on failed policies.

    Please tell me what new programs this administration has spent a trillion dollars on. It’s not the $800B stimulus. More than $200 billion of that was on tax cuts.

    It wasn’t health care, that hasn’t happened yet and the CBO says it will cut the deficit.

    What huge new program was launched ?

  60. anjin-san says:

    > Were I to say that under Obama we spent $1 Trillion dollars and got nothing out of it,

    You would be full of it. There are 2 critical, long-delayed infrastructure projects underway within 25 miles of where I live that are now underway in large part because of stimulus funds.

    Interesting that the right had no problem with infrastructure spending in Iraq, but when we spend money here they get quite hysterical.

  61. anjin-san says:

    > a degradation in the living standards of the middle-class.

    Ah yes, the old “the Bush economy never happened” gambit.

    Could we have some specifics about how Obama policies have damaged the middle class? Not vague boilerplate nonsense about “uncertainty” and “a sense of doom”. Specifics.

  62. Tim says:

    Schooner and Anjin, I recognize the ploy is to wear me down with nonsense, that’s the typical method around these parts.

    What failed policy caused the economic collapse? Which one?

    I can play that game of picking out whatever you say and challenge it with some bogus statement, like Bush’s policies failed. Okay, so which ones and how did they fail and what did it cause?

  63. anjin-san says:

    > I recognize the ploy is to wear me down with nonsense

    In other words, you can’t support your position. “Nuff said.

  64. Tim says:

    Anjin, if you want anecdotal evidence, let me offer you this: When Bush was president I put on seven employees. Since Obama has been president I have layed them all off. How’s that?

  65. Tim says:

    No, that is not ’nuff said. Pursuing a ridiculous argument with people unable to have a serious debate, who are uninformed on the facts and incapable of refuting statements made, but rather simply challenge them with other statements that are unqualified does not amount to “nuff said.”

    The sane man walks away from arguments with the demented. It doesn’t mean the demented were right, just infuriating.

  66. steve says:

    I have been engaged for over a year by email and on my own blog with some tea party members. I cannot find much of any consistent positive ideas tying them together. There are some diffuse ideas about smaller government or less debt. Some know and agree with the ten point plan that was published. Some agree with just parts of the plan.

    What I mostly get is a sense of anger about things having gone wrong. They are angry at the people in charge now. There is some anger at the people who were in charge before, but not much. I think that they certainly have enough energy to vote out some incumbents. I just dont know what they will do if they get in office. I am guessing that they will try to undo some recent legislation. Beyond that, I dont think they have any idea.

    Steve

  67. anjin-san says:

    > How’s that?

    Anecdotal evidence? Let’s have at it.

    Since Obama became President I have significantly increased my income and the scope of my job. My wife and I bought a beautiful home.

    Guess you need to blame your failures on someone. Might as well be Obama. I hear a lot of this from tea party types, they all seem to have forgotten that Bush left us teetering on the verge of a depression.

  68. Tim says:

    Who said I failed?

  69. anjin-san says:

    Tim you are the one who said Obama spend a trillion dollars (he has not) and we got nothing out of it (we did, I drive by the critical projects he helped fund every day). Please stop crying about how others are uninformed and demented.

    Do you really wonder why the tea party is taken seriously by no one outside the tea party?

  70. Tim says:

    I didn’t blame anything on anyone. You offered anecdotal evidence so I returned that to show the stupidity of it.

  71. anjin-san says:

    > Who said I failed?

    You did.

  72. Tim says:

    Here you go again, back to the loop of blaming the Tea Party for Obama’s failures, I feel ya man.

  73. Tim says:

    Quote where I said I failed.

  74. anjin-san says:

    Tim words mean things. You said we got “nothing” out of the stimulus. That is demonstrativly false. Critical infrastructure projects in a major urban area are not nothing, and they are not “Anecdotal evidence” they are evidence. Evidence that, as I said earlier, you are full of it.

  75. schooner says:

    From that left wing rag known as the Wall Street Journal.

    “President George W. Bush entered office in 2001 just as a recession was starting, and is preparing to leave in the middle of a long one. That’s almost 22 months of recession during his 96 months in office.

    His job-creation record won’t look much better. The Bush administration created about three million jobs (net) over its eight years, a fraction of the 23 million jobs created under President Bill Clinton’s administration and only slightly better than President George H.W. Bush did in his four years in office.”

    “The current President Bush, once taking account how long he’s been in office, shows the worst track record for job creation since the government began keeping records.”

    http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2009/01/09/bush-on-jobs-the-worst-track-record-on-record/

    Give it up Tim.

  76. Tim says:

    Quote where I said I failed

  77. anjin-san says:

    You failed to keep your employees employed. Where I work, we regard that as a failure. Perhaps you have a different philosophy.

  78. Herb says:

    “Behaviour such as yours helps rather than hindering the Tea Party while demonstrating your own ignorance.”

    Nonsense……my behavior (proper American spelling) is irrelevant to the Tea Party’s anything. I’m not a supporter, and they stand or fall on their own. If I were all powerful, I’d wave my magic wand and turn all you Tea Partiers into the Republicans you were…and the Republicans you will once be again.

    Nice picture, by the way. You’re an adherent of a fringey movement within the Republican party and I’m the one who’s reaching…….yeah, so says the guy who gets his political philosophy from science fiction novels and Rush concept albums.

  79. Tim says:

    Schooner, name me the policy that failed, which one?

  80. anjin-san says:

    Enough daylight burned on Timmy I think…

  81. Tim says:

    You said I said I failed, when will you quote that statement?

    When a business fails, it closes. I am not closed.

  82. anjin-san says:

    > the Republicans you will once be again.

    Hear, hear. Every time I listen to Harry Reid I long for a GOP that is a viable alternative to the Democratic Party.

  83. Tim says:

    Schooner says: His job-creation record won’t look much better. The Bush administration created about three million jobs (net) over its eight years, a fraction of the 23 million jobs created under President Bill Clinton’s administration and only slightly better than President George H.W. Bush did in his four years in office.”

    Okay and how many jobs has Obama created? Include the jobs lost in that tally.

  84. schooner says:

    Unfunded tax cuts, unfunded wars, unfunded drug plan, unfunded Homeland Security costs….

  85. schooner says:

    CHART OF THE DAY: It’s Official: Obama Is Creaming Bush When It Comes To Jobs

    Numbers don’t lie, do they?
    In the last year of the Bush administration, the monthly job loss numbers built steadily to a peak which then began to reverse itself during Obama’s first year.

    http://www.businessinsider.com/chart-of-the-day-jobs-lost-in-the-bush-and-obama-administration-2010-2#ixzz12ZyoCreP

  86. anjin-san says:

    There are degrees of failure Tim. A closure is a catastrophic failure. It is generally proceeded by a long string of lesser failures. This ain’t rocket science, it is business 101.

  87. Tim says:

    Those aren’t poicies, those are circumstances. Debt by its very definition means that none of this has been “paid for” and where that is concerned Obama has imposed much more policies that are not “paid for”

  88. Tim says:

    Anjin, you can define failure anyway you want that lets you win. I understand that.

  89. anjin-san says:

    > Unfunded tax cuts, unfunded wars, unfunded drug plan, unfunded Homeland Security costs
.

    Those were triumphs for our country schooner. Triumphs, I say!

  90. Tim says:

    Schooner, are you really that stupid?

  91. schooner says:

    Exactly how is A Drug Plan, a war of choice in Iraq, and a department created under Bush a circumstance?

  92. anjin-san says:

    I understand that.

    That’s good. It is too bad that you don’t understand that rebuilding crumbling infrastructure in our own country is not “nothing”.

    If you want to tell yourself letting people go is not a failure, go for it. Whatever gets you through the night.

  93. Tim says:

    If you start at 3% unemployment that rate goes to 10% there will be a moment when jobs will be lost the most, at about 7%, where it began to trend down.

    Not losing jobs is not the same as creating them.

  94. Tim says:

    Anjin, I am still working, the company still exists, I have lost 7 competitors. In Obama’s economy that is a fantastic victory.

  95. schooner says:

    Well I was being polite but if we’re going ad hominem…

    Tim you’re an ignorant ass that is far too dishonest to bother with. Stick to your teatardery you lying piece of crap.

  96. Gerry W. says:

    Tim,

    You say “I can play that game of picking out whatever you say and challenge it with some bogus statement, like Bush’s policies failed. Okay, so which ones and how did they fail and what did it cause?”

    There is a number of problems, if I can remember them all. While democrats are guilty of spending republicans just go on and on with failed ideologies.

    When Bush came into office, there was a surplus. Most everything was manageable and not out of hand. Bush pulled a “guns and butter” economics. The last time we saw a “guns and butter” economics (Vietnam and the Great Society) was LBJ. He had money printed and we had inflation for many years. Bush does something similar with Iraq, Medicare, and tax cuts. In this case it was deficits and debt. And if you recall, Cheney said “deficits don’t matter.”
    It was an ideology of “stay the course” as our problems piled up and running the country into the ground.

    What did I see from Ohio in Bush’s term? Bush came to Ohio many times and said “free trade is good” and our factories closed. What I saw was eight years of our jobs going overseas, our money going to Iraq, and the neglect of our infrastructure. The problem with tax cuts is that it is spent money and does us no good for today. And what happens when you have tax cuts, with the republican philosophy is that you have laissez-faire. You will get tax cuts and everything will be in neglect. So the tax cuts came at the sacrifice of our infrastructure.

    During this time as we were closing our factories and sending our jobs overseas, the democrats, republicans, and Alan Greenspan pursued a home ownership policy and targeted housing to create jobs. At this time the Bush administration “stayed the course” and ignored our economy and was consumed with the war in Iraq. And so consumed in Iraq that if forgot Afghanistan and Pakistan. The deficits and debt went higher, we lost jobs, our money going to Iraq, the tax cuts money spent, and our infrastructure in neglect, and all Bush could say was “stay the course.”

    Our biggest problem by far is globalization. Without jobs you cannot solve one problem. And you cannot create jobs if you keep sending them overseas. Other problems include the fed trying to lower interest rates and they can’t go lower and they are printing money in the hopes to keep the economy going and create jobs. Again, you cannot create jobs if they are going overseas. So the fed is printing money, the republicans want more and more tax cuts, and we are sending jobs overseas. Now that is what is going on. And to add to these big mistakes, the states wants cash for clunkers, extension of unemployment benefits, bailouts, and casinos. But none of this works of course if we keep ignoring globalization. The “experts” want a low dollar so that we can export goods. But the problem is, no matter what we do, we are no match to the potential 2 billion cheap laborers who want our jobs.

    Here are some other problems. To put tax cut money in the hands of consumers, when half the products are foreign made does not make much sense. The support of small business does not make sense if the factories are closed in small towns. And what widgets can we make in our country, that can’t be made in some other country?

    And all republicans talk about is tax cuts, laissez-faire, the constitution, free market principles, and God and country. These abstract ideologies does not make any economic sense when we are losing jobs, and these ideologies does not really fix our problems. They may be rules to go by, but the country still has to be managed. The Bush “guns and butter”, the total neglect of not investing in our country, in our people, and in the future will mean we will suffer 10 to 20 years of higher unemployment. The Bush economy was a house of cards of tax cuts and nothing else. And all that money is gone.

  97. Tim says:

    The drug plan was a Democrat bone, in other words a Democratic program. The war in Iraq was ill advised, but was part of a greater war started by 9-11, that was not a choice. Neither was DHS, though I thought that was a stupid move as well.

    I am not defending Bush on those things, but they are not policy failures. They all seemed to work.

  98. anjin-san says:

    > In Obama’s economy that is a fantastic victory.

    Of course Tim. of course. No one can possibly be profitable in the Obama Economy. From The Globe & Mail:

    Oct. 15 2010 – Jamie Dimon, the head of the second-biggest U.S. bank, had a chipper message for a gathering of the American business elite in Chicago this week.

    “I think corporate America is in fabulous shape,” the chief executive of JPMorgan Chase told a meeting of The Business Council, a group whose 150 by-invitation-only members personify industrial and financial power. Who could argue with him? Corporate profits have been rising faster than hemlines during a bull market. They leapt upward by 40 per cent in the second quarter of this year. Mr. Dimon’s bank this week reported a third quarter haul of $4.4-billion (U.S.), up 23 per cent from 2009. Overall, third quarter profits are expected to be up about 18 per cent over last year.

    U.S. non-financial firms have accumulated more cash, as a percentage of short-term liabilities, than at any other time in the past half century. They are flush, in fighting-trim and – as Mr. Dimon might say – fabulous.

    By all means Tim, blame your problems on Obama. Like I said, whatever gets you through the night.

  99. anjin-san says:

    > but was part of a greater war started by 9-11, that was not a choice

    See schooner, we had no choice but to attack Iraq over bogus WMD. None at all. TIm just offered conclusive proof.

    Well, if you are at a tea party meeting it is conclusive.

  100. Herb says:

    “Every time I listen to Harry Reid I long for a GOP that is a viable alternative to the Democratic Party.”

    If the Tea Party folks would have the guts to cut the umbilical cord, we might get it. There’s a big market for small, efficient government…but I can’t see many people really getting on board with the whole tri-corner-hat-holding-signs-at-rallies-hosted-by-Fox-News-personalities thing.

    In the minds of the Tea Partiers they’re the progenitors of a new political awakening, but they’re really just easily entertained cosplayers with delusions of grandeur. But don’t point that out, cuz that’s racist!

  101. Tim says:

    Okay, Gerry, I will concentrate on you and ignore the others who have devolved into some sort of eternal “no I’m not, you are” mentality that is destroying any reasonable discourse.

    First, at least you offer something of substance. Thanks.

    You omit 9-11 from your statements. What lead to guns and butter? Yes, there were surpluses when there was terrorism that could be ignored and only killed those oboard the Cole, in the embassies of Tanzania and Kenya, etc. Eventually that threat could not be ignored and required extensive expenditures as it continues to do. But, none of that seems to matter two years into Obama’s presidency.

    The Community Reinvestment Act was given teeth by the Clinton Administration which benefitted from the tech bubble and the housing bubble fueled by the CRA and Janet Reno came out to directly threaten banks to make the loans or risk indictment for discrimination. That was a heck of an incentive. ACORN was there, just in case the banks thought she was kidding.

    I’m not going to address anecdotal information.

    You say “we are sending our jobs overseas” as if it was an idea someone had, like Bush. What is sending our jobs overseas? You never quite get to that, just that it somehow benefits everyone but us. I take it these jobs continue to go overseas, like oil field drilling, off shore drilling, where we paid Brazil to fund Petrobas (sp?) like the production of solar panels, that China has the capacity and “rare earth minerals” to develop. A swedish company makes most of the wind turbines, some of it in America because the shipping costs would be murder, but the cash that goes to the corporation goes to Sweden, a thing you seem to think is the real advantage when it is an American company that ships jobs overseas, but has no effect when other countries do so.

    I could go, but I’ll stop there for now to see what you have to say.

  102. anjin-san says:

    > “no I’m not, you are” mentality that is destroying any reasonable discourse.

    Or course Tim. I am an unreasonable ideologue. A brainwashed lefty who blindly follows “The One”. That’s why I say things like:

    “Every time I listen to Harry Reid I long for a GOP that is a viable alternative to the Democratic Party.”

  103. Tim says:

    Yeah, I didn’t take the bait.

  104. anjin-san says:

    > Yeah, I didn’t take the bait.

    When reason reared its ugly head – he bravely turned his tail and fled…

    Adios, Sir Timmy

  105. Herb says:

    Tim, I’m sorry, but you don’t seem to be serious. The CRA? Acorn? What, no Trilateral Commission???

  106. melanerpes says:

    The economic and political philosophic principles that animate the tea party are at least as deep, subtle, and broad as any “progressive” principles. Milton Friedman is deeper than Karl Marx. Friedrich Hayek is deeper than John Kenneth Galbraith. Thomas Jefferson is deeper than Vladimir Lenin.

    The academic consensus that dismisses this is just group-think enforced by social and economic sanctions.

  107. Tim says:

    Those are facts, Herb, try one, it won’t kill ya. They were ingredients, to not acknowledge that reveals your sympathies. It is not a conspiracy, everyone acted in their own interest.

  108. anjin-san says:

    Certainly melanerp, Americans who disagree with your comic book world view follow Marx and Lenin. Simple common sense.

    When is the tea party going to take on the Texas Board of Education over its efforts to scrub Jefferson from the history books?

  109. anjin-san says:

    > Tim, I’m sorry, but you don’t seem to be serious.

    Actually the sad thing is that he is. The tea party is what happens when non-serious people try to be serious. You end up with someone like Sarah Palin being touted as a candidate for President, or Christine “I’m not a witch” O’Donnell running for senate under the banner of a major party.

  110. Tim says:

    108 comments, what a colossal waste of my time!

  111. Gerry W. says:

    Normally, you need two years or so of tax cuts and lower interest rates to jump start an economy. And since we had 9/11 and the fear of a possible recession I can see the easing of tax cuts and interest rate. However, this was the trickle down ideology and Bush embrace it and “stayed the course throughout, without paying attention to deficits and debt. And this is what you get when you have “guns” and “butter” economics. The budget was not cut and everything else was ignored “laissez-faire.”

    Iraq was a war of choice and was sold to congress to cost somewhere between 50 to 100 billion dollars. Today, we know better. Our original war was in Afghanistan and Bush ignored that war for some five years as he set his sights on Iraq. I often wondered during that time when he was going to pay attention to Afghanistan and he never did. And likewise on our economy.

    Obama has stepped up drone attacks in Pakistan, trying to fix both Iraq and Afghanistan which was totally mismanaged. Also Yemen is of great concern and he is aware of that.

    Everyone was involved in the loan crisis and even Bush said we should have “home ownership.” The mistake whether by democrats or republicans is that you don’t target a specific industry for prosperity. Everyone went along with that. But the biggest problem is that they took their eye off of globalization. And to this day, the “experts” embrace globalization while we lose the jobs. Personally, I did not pay much attention to the community reinvestment act. The thing we should have done was to have rules in place as what Canada has on loans.

    I am not going to get into this political rhetoric of ACORN as I can call republicans as a bunch of nuts.

    I will continue in a minute on jobs going overseas.

  112. John Personna says:

    Poor Dodd, the Tea Party has been around a year, has gotten the Chistine O’Donnells on the ballets, and he’s worried that they’ll drop off the radar.

    It’s not a done deal, but it could be.

    Life is hard, after you jump the shark.

  113. anjin-san says:

    > 108 comments, what a colossal waste of my time!

    Yea, you must have some employees that need to be let go. Remember, it’s all Obama’s fault.

  114. steve says:

    “The drug plan was a Democrat bone, in other words a Democratic program. The war in Iraq was ill advised, but was part of a greater war started by 9-11, that was not a choice. Neither was DHS, though I thought that was a stupid move as well.”

    The drug plan was pushed through by the Bush admin w/o any funding. It was a Republican president and a Republican controlled congress. Hard to lay the blame anywhere else.

    iraq was a complete war of choice. It meant deserting Afghanistan. It is also the first war, IIRC, that we made no effort to pay for while it was going on.

    Just for completeness sake, Bush created 1 million jobs. de Rugy breaks down the numbers here at National Review.

    http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/249516/job-creation-bush-vs-obama-veronique-de-rugy

    Steve

  115. Gerry W. says:

    Tim,

    I live in a small town in Ohio of 14,000. Three main factories closed with 2000 employees and along with them small businesses. There are some potential 2 billion cheap laborers who want our jobs. And merge that with our population of 300 million and what you get is lost jobs and wages. My town is destroyed.

    Free trade began with Clinton with republicans backing him up. Ross Perot talked about the giant sucking sound of our jobs leaving the country and he is right. And Bush embraced it also and he said free trade is good and our factories closed. Now, as long as we keep sending shutting down factories and sending our jobs overseas, we cannot create jobs here-no matter how much in tax cuts you have. We lost some 4 to 8 million jobs and you cannot make up those jobs. Add to that automation and lean principles of one person doing the job of two or three and the middle class is getting crushed. So, this is where we are. The fed is trying to stimulate the economy and the republicans want more tax cuts, and it won’t work as we have sent our jobs overseas. These were middle class jobs. And cities and states are going broke. And without people having jobs, they are a burden on our economic system and they do not pay taxes into the system to get the deficits down. And so, the republicans fail in trying to create jobs as they have no answers.

    You still have to invest in the country, in the people, and in the future and even Obama has not gone far enough.

  116. reid says:

    It says a lot that a conservative blog like this gets intelligent commenters from all points on the political spectrum. I have a hunch Tim’s blog gets nothing but a few Tim clones.

  117. Gerry W. says:

    Steve,

    I really think there is a conspiracy by economists to destroy the middle class.

    I listened to De Rugy on C-span and 30 minutes into the tape she answered a caller about jobs, and she basically said it was okay to have our jobs go overseas and that Wal Mart was creating more jobs. In other words, give up a high paying job and work at Wal Mart.

    Clarification: She was trying to say that business had a right to move jobs overseas. I don’t disagree with that, but she offered nothing but low paying jobs. I find her a joke.
    http://www.c-span.org/Watch/Media/2010/07/16/WJE/A/35612/Veronique+de+Rugy+George+Mason+UniversityMercatus+Center+Senior+Fellow.aspx

  118. Herb says:

    Tim, It’s very easy to dismiss people who pin the housing bust on Acorn and the CRA. Anyone who’s studied the issue knows there’s more to it than that. Anyone who harps on Acorn and the CRA has been listening to too much talk radio.

  119. anjin-san says:

    > I really think there is a conspiracy by economists to destroy the middle class.

    It’s not a conspiracy by economists, it’s simply the normal flow of history trying to reassert itself. The American middle class is a historical anomaly. Typically, a very small elite owns everything. There is a supporting casts that lives off the crumbs of the elite. The rest are serfs.

    Over the last 30 years, the conservative movement has worked hard to remold our country to a state more in line with historical norms. Certainly Bush worked hard to build a bridge to the 19th century. Dick Cheney would have made a fine robber baron.

  120. anjin-san says:

    > Anyone who harps on Acorn and the CRA has been listening to too much talk radio.

    Bingo. Tim & Juneau are interchangeable parts. Their commentary is pretty much a stream of consciousness rap informed by right wing talk radio, Red State, Beck, Hannity & Malkin. A large part of the problem is the inability to discern that most of those folks are simply entertainers who have found a winning formula.

  121. melanerpes says:

    anjin-san: Certainly melanerp, Americans who disagree with your comic book world view follow Marx and Lenin. Simple common sense.

    Straw man. Progressive academics share principles with Lenin, Marx, Galbraith, inter alia. Hayek, Friedman, and Jefferson are largely ignored or denegrated. “Comic book world view” is empty name calling; it is not an argument, or even the suggestion of an argument.

    anjin-san: When is the tea party going to take on the Texas Board of Education over its efforts to scrub Jefferson from the history books?

    Pavlovian knee-jerk straw man. Just what do you mean by “the tea party”? From what I can tell, the concerns expressed at demonstrations are largely fiscal (smaller government, limited government, balanced budget, and so on). See the Thursday, Oct. 14 WaPo article by Amy Gardner, “Few signs at tea party expressed racially-charged anti-Obama themes”. (The article debunked more “tea party is socially conservative and hateful” memes than just the “racist” one).

  122. anjin-san says:

    > From what I can tell, the concerns expressed at demonstrations are largely fiscal (smaller government, limited government, balanced budget, and so on).

    Yes, and none of these were concerns when Bush was President. Kind of funny how all this started when Obama took office.

    You make a brilliant argument. When “progressive academics” ignore Jefferson, they are Marxists. When the right not only ignores him, but tries to write him out of the history, it is a non-issue. Is there some sort of rule in the tea party handbook that says this issue cannot be addressed?

    > WaPo article – The Post is routinely dismissed by the right as a biased joke. Until they say something the right wants to hear. Suddenly it is being handed down from a burning bush.

  123. Alex Knapp says:

    melanerpes –

    I’m not sure how you can get a cohesive economic philosophy from reading Hayek, Friedman, and Jefferson.

    Thomas Jefferson believed that the ideal economy for liberty was a rural one, dominated by yeoman farmers. He was opposed to banking, wanted to outlaw speculation, and as President he enacted a devastating economic embargo. He was also opposed to the government borrowing money–he believed instead that the government should just print more money to cover its spending.

    Friedrich Hayek believed that wealthy societies should provide a minimal level of food, clothing, shelter, and social insurance (including health insurance) to its citizens, so long as measured were maintained to ensure market competition. Hayek was a supporter of central banking for most of his life, though in the 70s he disavowed that position in favor of eliminating government currency entirely in favor of private currencies. Also, he had no opposition to speculation — indeed, he thought it essential to market economies.

    Milton Friedman was primarily a monetarist, but also advocated private currencies traded as commodities. He also favored a negative income tax as a replacement for the welfare state and not only had no problem with speculation, he wanted money itself to be based upon it.

    Marx and Lenin had radically different ideas on economics, believe it or not. But that really doesn’t matter since most of those who I suppose you would consider to be progressive economists don’t use them as a basis for their models. Indeed, the common consensus in economics is one that agrees with Hayek’s critique of central planning.

    And putting Galbraith in the same group as Marx and Lenin is puzzling, considering that Galbraith was not a socialist economist. If anything, he was a corporatist, arguing for counterbalances between government and business as being essential for economic stability. Kind of a strange offshoot of Keynesian economics, really, but hardly socialist unless you’re completely clueless as to what socialist means.

  124. melanerpes says:

    anjin-san: Yes, and none of these [fiscal concerns] were concerns when Bush was President. Kind of funny how all this started when Obama took office.

    Tired, robotic talking point. Many were concerned and showed it (example: Glenn Reynolds’s “Pork busters” series). Obama and Congress blew through all prior deficit spending records by a factor of three.

    anjin-san: When “progressive academics” ignore Jefferson, they are Marxists. When the right not only ignores him, but tries to write him out of the history, it is a non-issue. Is there some sort of rule in the tea party handbook that says this issue cannot be addressed?

    That’s just silly. Who said ignoring Jefferson amounts to Marxism? I said academics share principles with Marx, and ignore principles espoused by Jefferson.

    As for some school board in Texas suppressing Jefferson, that is simply not high on the list of what “tea partiers” see as eating this country alive. Attitudes about whether Jefferson’s deism is being suppressed or whatever serve mostly as badges to help the shallow keep track of who the good guys and bad guys are. Just dog whistle talking points. Arf! Arf!

  125. anjin-san says:

    > Just dog whistle talking points.

    Interesting theory. I do almost all of my political reading right here. Aside from that, I read the Wall St. Journal and the Economist, which are both pretty conservative. So much for your boilerplate rebuttal.

  126. michael reynolds says:

    We’ve reached the dystopia of Idiocracy. It’s the Age of Ignorance.

    Smart, knowledgeable people like Anjin and Knapp argue not just facts but reality itself with people who are to political ideas as apes to a library. Jabbering monkeys waving their Glen Beck books like magic magic talismans and spouting their recycled talk radio gibberish apparently unaware that the very people who put words in their mouths hold them in contempt.

    The Tea Party is revenge of the stupid.

    And don’t imagine for a minute that they can’t win. History provides too many examples of the triumph of ignorance and brute stupidity.

    The one solace is that the party of stupid will eventually bring down the clever and ruthless people who currently manipulate them.

  127. TB says:

    Try as I might, I cannot find any evidence that Mr. Reynolds has talked to anyone who is representative of the tea party philosophies. Indeed, much of his attempted representations are opposite those I’ve witnessed. I will leave him alone with his calls to rebut his faith-based comments. I agree with Dodd’s initial assessment.

    Mr. Strong, despite using the sexual epithet, describes a more interesting, and perhaps personal, experience. I’d like to have been a fly on the wall during those encounters. I’d be happy to interact more with him. Why? I consider myself strongly sympathetic to the tea party movement. I agree that there is little focus in the media on rebutting the core issues they raise.

    While no one speaks for the tea party, I think I have something more than a minimal understanding of a number of those issues. For example, I hold (outdated) credentials as a benefits actuary, though I have not worked in that industry for more that 2 decades. (I left it for my first love, engineering.) I do believe in the wisdom of limited federal government, and I believe Wickard v. Filburn was poorly decided.

    If Mr. Strong believes that outdated infrastructure, manufacturing job loss, and where to cut are somehow the bellweather issues by which the tea party’s philosophies should be measured, let’s talk about those.

    First, I don’t know of a single tea partier that thinks there is no government role for furnishing infrastructure. If I were to represent that, my credibility with tea partiers would instantly vanish. I would become just another Reynolds, telling opponents what they believe, getting it wrong, and then wondering why they don’t listen to me.

    The tea party voices I have heard DO closely correlate to this one point: except for intra-state aspects of infrastructure, this type of power and spending belongs to the states. That makes it closer and more accountable to the taxpayers who both fund it and use it. The idea that I get more value by having my tax money make a round trip through Washington to fix a pothole or build a bridge is insane. Having the feds dole out money for local improvement projects is a fiscal subversion of the principal of federalism. By degree, it places control over local issues with the strata of government that has the most dilute representation and accountability, because that strata can tax with the most impunity. If the original tea party theme was “Taxation Without Representation”, today’s gripe might be “The Greatest Taxation Goes To The Most Dilute Representation.”

    Second, I agree that manufacturing job loss is one critical problem for the US. I don’t hear a cohesive solution to this coming from the tea party, nor any workable one from the Dems or GOP either for that matter. I can say the tea party philosophy would preclude subsidizing manufacturing wherever possible, and I think that is wise, with a few exceptions. (Keeping national defense supply chains under US control, for example.)

    Where is the solution to this? Again I represent no one, and I’ll be unusually candid about my thoughts here. Our manufacturing is competing with extremely cheap, nearly slave labor, in Asia. They have virtually no wage laws, no OSHA, no social security, no EPA, Medicare, etc. etc. Domestic manufacturing costs are driven up by 1) regulations and 2) collective bargaining. Let’s leave 2 alone for now, and perform a thought experiment about the differential around #1.

    If (and I do mean if — this is an experiment not a statement of my belief) the regulations represented by federal wage laws, SS, OSHA, etc. are somehow moral imperatives for all Americans to receive, why would it then be moral to accept goods manufactured without those moral safeguards from abroad? Should not we actuarially assess the cost of supplying those things on a per-product basis, collect that as a tariff, and use that money exclusively to fund private-sector equivalent programs for wages, retirement, safety and health in Asia? Yes, the tariff would be huge. Our cheap product driven economy would tank from the shock, then build. WTO would have to be somehow sold on the approach somehow not being protectionism. Good luck with that. And at the end of the day, we still would not be competitive.

    If federal wage, health, safety, and environmental laws are not universal moral imperatives, then why must the federal government decide them? Is it because only the federal government can tax foreign and interstate commerce? But the WTO related treaties have already castrated our sovereignty over trade.

    What does this have to do with the tea party? Not much. The tea party does not propose to solve every problem we can describe. They would take the bread-and-circuses-subsidies approach to propping up manufacturing off the table, I suppose. Those are not sustainable anyways, IMHO.

    Your final question was “Which parts of government would they cut?” Speaking for myself, and talking about the federal government, large portions. On the discretionary side, I’d kill NSF, DoL, HUD, DoE(except military support), HHS except for CDC, much of the undeclared war on terror, DHS (keep Coast Guard and DOJ), DoAg (except for a few interstate aspects), and the non-interstate portion of DOT. I might reduce the non-diplomatic parts of the State Dept.

    Let any state that wants those lost “functions” supply them, after justifying the cost to their voters.

    On the entitlement side, I’d probably vote for phased-in privatized SS.

    Oh yes, and I’d keep the federal govt. out of health benefits, to every extent possible. I would modify the Section 125 to stop penalizing medical consumers and plans for thrift. (BTW Pelosi-care went 180 degrees in the wrong direction here too.) And true to the federal government’s actual enumerated powers in this area, I’d revisit drug patents with a vengeance.

    The sad thing is, even if we were to do all of this, It would still be too late for my children to see the national debt paid off, but perhaps my grandkids, if I every have any.

  128. splitpaw says:

    David Koch – Evidence Of Direct Tea Party Link

  129. splitpaw says:

    David Koch – Evidence Of Direct Tea Party Link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0JjQxPJOAfg

  130. sam says:

    Look, everybody, the proof of the pudding, assuming the GOP takes the House and the TPers are a significant part of that victory, will be the first budget submitted. That will give us a very good indication of the effect of the Tea Party on the Republican Party’s governance. My guess is the consternation the TP will cause among the establishment GOP will dilute any real effect it might have, that is, I think the TP will induce, if not paralysis, then dystrophy within the House GOP. A House majority divided against itself cannot function effectively. As I said upthread, the TP is the establishment GOP’s worst nightmare. And the cream of the jest is that the establishment GOP brought it on itself. Watch out what you wish for…

  131. Brummagem Joe says:

    I largely agree with Michael’s characterisation of the tea party crowd who are largely a mass of angry and ill informed white people with an inchoate and consequently contradictory agenda. Thus they are against govt but don’t touch my SS. The vast majority of them are Republicans from the hard core extremist base, the sort of people who regularly pop in these polls claiming Obama is a muslim and similar tripe. And yet ultimately the main organisation they are a peril to is not the Democrats, but the Republican party outside of the south or in rural areas. There are a plethora of polls showing they are held in fairly low esteem across the country and particulary so amongst the well educated, ethnic minorities, and city and burb dwellers. They were conjured into existence by corporate money whose goal is to protect economic privileges they enjoy and don’t find it to difficult to arouse the passions of the ignorant. It has no future because basically it has no theory of governance just a lot of ill digested and usually contradictory notions that don’t survive first contact with reality. This is why any loonies they elect will always disappoint them because as someone once pointed out facts are stubborn things. It’s going to help Republicans mobilise their core constituency but in the process it’s going to alienate much of middle America from Republicanism, particularly middle America in the blue and purple states. It’s hard to know whether the Republican leadership have lost sight of this reality because they see some short term advantage in appealing to base passions or are essentially prisoners of this extremism. I lean to the latter view which seems to be confirmed by the procession of establishment Republicans who have been displaced by loonies of various stripes and then the official GOP has fallen in behind the loonies. They should bear in mind that when you sleep with dogs you get fleas.

  132. Here’s a fact about Alexander Hamilton federalism that needs to be understood today by the clueless cranks on the so called left and right. In his report to Congress as Secretary of the Treasury on the subject of manufactures, Hamilton openly and unambiguously attacks by name Adam Smith! The reason we are currently reeling in the midst of economic hell is that we have allowed an unfettered, oligarchical clique of private financiers to loot this once great agro-industrial economy. The Heritage Foundation right hails this as a free trade race to the bottom capitalism a la Adam Smith. The environmentalist left abhors Hamilton’s correct understanding that technologically progressive manufacturing is the real source of wealth. The irony is that China, with its investment in high speed rail and water projects, is functioning much closer to what Hamilton’s economic genius was about. So much for the meaningless debate of left versus right in our hallowed halls of academia. Both their roads equally lead to hell…

  133. Davebo says:

    Let’s review the image Dodd chose.

    “Throw out every Bum who voted for higher taxes”

    OK, so every congressman gets re-elected as none voted for higher taxes. Not exactly the sharpest bowling balls on the rack.

    It seems these days being able to spell your own name qualifies you as an “elitist”. Though obviously that task is easier when only two letters are involved as in Dodd’s case.

  134. Brummagem Joe says:

    “The reason we are currently reeling in the midst of economic hell is that we have allowed an unfettered, oligarchical clique of private financiers to loot this once great agro-industrial economy.”

    Private financiers have been looting this great agro-industrial economy since the founding of the Republic. Or have you never heard of Jay Gould, Jay Cooke, Charles Yerkes, Cornelius Vanderbilt, E. H. Harriman, Daniel Drew, Collis P. Huntingdon and others too numerous to mention.

  135. Gerry W. says:

    TB,

    On the tariff deal. What should have been done in the beginning of “free trade” is to have a wage/tariff scale for about 20 years. As wages went up in China and other countries, the tariffs would have come down.

    Anyway, a lot of us view that the Tea Party has been taken over by the republicans. And we are getting mixed messages from the Tea Party. There is just not one agenda, but it is all over the place.

    But anyway, here is my agenda:

    1. Invest in your country: That is energy independence for security and jobs. Also a new air traffic control system that will save 12% on fuel. The savings to the airlines can go to build new aircraft. A high speed internet system. Perhaps high speed rail.

    2. Invest in your people: That is mandatory vocational training. We live in a globalized world and you can no longer rely on factories. We have to be an educated society.

    3. Invest in the future: Federal research grants to be given to universities and business to bring out new technologies. Today there are no new jobs to go to for those unemployed. You need new areas of growth. No playing games with embryonic stem cell research.

    4. Fix the antitrust laws that Reagan relaxed. Monopolies and consolidations destroyed jobs.

    5. Consider an “American job elimination tax” on companies that move out of the country. These companies do not pay middle class wages, healthcare, pensions, social security, or city and state taxes.

    6. Get away from failed ideology. We saw it for 8 years. Tax cuts was used as an ideology. It did not prevent recessions. And did not create prosperity. You still have to solve problems. Ideology does not solve problems.

    7. Supporting small business sounds nice and it is heard in Washington, but it does not work in my community as the big business left. That means you cannot have small business as people lost their jobs. Besides, small business will never pay what big business paid in wages.

    8. We are losing the middle class. We cannot compete with 2 billion cheap laborers in the world that want our jobs. There are not enough jobs to go around. Competition is good, but it can be harmful also. All we are doing in this country is build the same business environment so that we can knock the other guy out. A person loses his job and has no place to go to. And the reason is that we did not invest in our country, in our people, and in the future.

    9. Have commissions to cut government spending. It seems to be the only approach to doing this. Obviously, one side or the other will complain, but something has to be done now.

    10. Government appointed jobs and organizations need to be slimmed down. Every 50 to 60 years we need to go through this. There are too many secretaries, deputy-secretaries, under-secretaries, and under-under-secretaries. Information gets loss through the process and government becomes ineffective. The last time this was done was with the Hoover Commission in the late 40’s.

    11. Pour money into new drugs and preliminary medical science. Drugs are becoming less resistant to diseases. And potential super bugs are coming.

    12. Fix the infrastructure. It is the reflection of our country and to the rest of the world.

    13. And if we have not kept up with it, every school should have physical education. Also wash your hands when you come home to prevent viruses and less trips to the doctor. And as we see so often, stop throwing pop cans, etc. outside the car.

    14. We need to slow down urban sprawl. Inner cities are being abandoned. As people leave there is no money left to support the inner city. This maybe controversial to some, but at some point we will have to deal with the problem. Sprawl also takes away from farms and spreads cities out too far in a time when you have empty buildings. We cannot have cities in decay. And cities in decay cannot create jobs and small business.

    15. Create an hour period each school day for freshmen high school students to study any subject for a month (9 months-9 subjects) that they would have not normally have taken. It may be the hardest of subjects in which students would have been afraid in failing like algebra, geometry, calculus, languages, music, or any other subject including learning sports, like golf, football, baseball, or tennis as examples. There are many retired people who would like to teach what they learned in life. There could be a test at the end of the month, but this would only to see if the student learned anything in that subject and would not count against him in his grade average. The point is to have students learn as much as they can on different subjects and to see if they like a certain subject that they did not anticipate.

    16. And finally, I don’t think our electoral political system works anymore. Every candidate is bought off and it takes huge amounts of money to run a campaign. I would suggest a management team or a turn around specialist to be appointed as president for a couple of years or more. And there would be a board of directors who he answers to and for the middle class. The parties are riddled with failed ideologies. We can do better that what we have.

    17. One final point. I have tried to think of everything to preserve the middle class. I am afraid that the elites and the republicans and the economists will have their way, and their way to create jobs is to have you do away with the minimum wage and and all wages and pay people a dollar to five dollars an hour. The forces of a potential 2 billion cheap laborers is too powerful for any economic response on our part. Only then, according to them, will we have an equilibrium capable of producing jobs in our country. At the loss of the middle class.

  136. Yes, indeed I have heard of these and many more. But do not lump all financiers together so. Hamilton’s national bank paid down the Revolutionary War debt by promoting manufacturing. Aaron Burr’s and Albert Gallatin’s private financier patrons wanted no such national bank so that they might swamp the nation with their worthless scrip. Let me recommend a very interesting book by William Lyon Mackenzie for some historical perspective on how this oligarchy has put its toadies in the White House in times gone by. It is called The Life and Times of Martin Van Buren. Some quite disgusting practices seem never to change at all.

  137. Nightrider says:

    I hate to even add a comment as I’m so tired of the overanalysis of the so-called Tea Party like it is something new. My guess is that most of the people who identify with it fall into two groups. The largest by far is Republicans in search of a new brand for this election season. Not even like New Coke, that was something different. More like Comcast to Xfinity. The second is from the pivotal group of people that waffles back and forth between Republicans and Democrats, usually making up their minds based on how much they dislike what the current party in power is doing. It is frequently one of the great mistakes of BOTH political parties to think that these people, who are the ones who decide elections, put them in power to do the things they campaigned for. A new Republican majority in Congress, if elected, would succumb to the same thing that befell their Democratic victims — an incorrect assumption that the median voter of America has now endorsed their 75th percentile/25th percentile policies and political tone and messages.

    Limited government, whatever. Everyone always says that until they run it. Excepting the too-rare Jeff Flakes, the Republicans want massive military, Medicare basically as big and socialized as any Obama proposal, immigration enforcement, invade-my-bedroom policies, a war on drugs.

  138. Brummagem Joe says:

    Thingumbobesquire says:
    Sunday, October 17, 2010 at 09:48
    “Yes, indeed I have heard of these and many more. But do not lump all financiers together so.”

    I didn’t. I just pointed out that the category of financier you described is not exactly a new phenomenon. Nor are we in particularly bad economic hell by comparison with the great depression of the thirties or the long depression of 1873-1900

  139. Brummagem Joe says:

    “CARL Paladino began his New York gubernatorial campaign by bragging he’d “clean out Albany with a baseball bat.” When an ally likened his main Albany target, the (Jewish) leader of the State Assembly, to “an antichrist or Hitler,” he enthusiastically endorsed the slur. We also learned of Paladino’s repertory of gag e-mails — among them a pornographic picture of a woman having sex with a horse and a photo of an African tribal ritual captioned “Obama Inauguration Rehearsal.” How blind we were not to recognize that his victory in a Republican primary under the proud Tea Party banner was inevitable.”

    Any questions?

  140. Since 1971, when Nixon pulled the plug on the gold reserve Bretton Woods system, we have been spiraling downward into the bucket shop, derivative securities pit. (Much like Dante in hell on the back of Geryon.) We are now enmired in pure monetary crapola, my friend. And no mater how much quantitative easing helicopter Ben dishes out, it still smells the same to yours truly. (And I might add to most of my fellow citizens.) Until and unless, we put these lunatic financiers through chapter 13, return to Glass Steagall (for starters,) we will sink further and further into it.

  141. Brummagem Joe says:

    “And no mater how much quantitative easing helicopter Ben dishes out, it still smells the same to yours truly. (And I might add to most of my fellow citizens.)”

    95 out of one hundred of your fellow citizens haven’t the slightest idea of what QE is. Most would have difficulty spelling it.

  142. G.A.Phillips says:

    lol……Obama sucks!

  143. Fen says:

    Why do the Libtards here keep flirting with their “teabagger” slur?

    You can’t suck our balls, go back to NABMLA you sickos

  144. Fen says:

    Libtard: “ill informed white people with an inchoate and consequently contradictory agenda. Thus they are against govt but don’t touch my SS”

    Apart from being racist, your statement only reveals your own ignorance. I’ll try to put it into simple terms you can understand:

    less government != no government.

    Did you get that?

  145. True enough, given the mis-educated and bread and circused-up populace. But they certainly do smell a big fat rat nonetheless…

  146. Picachu says:

    Because some people who attended a Tea Party used “Teabagger,” John Strong thinks its appropriate to tar them all with an epithet he knows the vast majority consider degrading.

    By his logic – the logic of the enlightened, tolerant, compassionate, understanding, intelligent, champions of civic discourse, I can only presume he calls all African Americans the N-word because some of them use the word to describe themselves in music lyrics.

    With geniuses such as him, who needs fools?

  147. Brummagem Joe says:

    Fen says:
    Sunday, October 17, 2010 at 11:20
    “Apart from being racist,”

    Actually it’s an observation of fact and no more racist than saying the annual convention of the NAACP is largely made up of black people. But as I can tell from this little beauty that you’re probably a fairly typical tea bag type:

    “You can’t suck our balls, go back to NABMLA you sickos”

  148. Brummagem Joe says:

    “less government != no government.

    Did you get that?”

    Good luck with telling all your over 65 supporters that their SS and Medicare is ending.

  149. Fen says:

    Libtard: “Actually it’s an observation of fact – ”

    That you use in a racist context. Why do you need to bring up their race at all? Because you want to imply they exclude people who aren’t their skin color. But the fact is that the Tea Party is open to anyone of any race.

    Libtard: “But as I can tell from this little beauty-”

    Thats rich, coming from someone you uses a homosexual slur to define the Tea Party.

    But keep telling us how enlightened sophisticated intelligent you are. I’m sure us “rubes” will finally get it…

  150. Fen says:

    / edit, should be:

    Thats rich, coming from someone who uses a homosexual slur to define the Tea Party.

    And no, Libtard, you still cant suck my balls. Try a gay bath house.

  151. Fen says:

    “Good luck with telling all your over 65 supporters that their SS and Medicare is ending”

    Well, since you are SO intelligent, we’ll start with you:

    Less government != no government

    When you demonstrate that you can descriibe your opponent’s position accurately, we’ll get back to you…

  152. An Interested Party says:

    It’s interesting that so many are enraged at the use of “teabagger” and yet, many of these same people use “Democrat Party” as a perjorative, and the writer of this post turns around and calls someone a whiner for pointing that out…meanwhile, the calls of these Tea Party people to get our fiscal house in order seem quite silly until they start talking about addressing the really big parts of the budget like Defense, Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid…talk of cutting or getting rid of the Department of Labor, HUD, the Department of Energy, HHS, etc isn’t serious…if they really want to balance the budget, are they prepared to call for massive cuts in defense, like bringing the troops home from places like Germany and Japan? Or perhaps means testing Social Security (good luck getting even a bare majority of Congress to agree to privatizing SS)? And perhaps, the Tea Party people might be taken more seriously if they had emerged during the Bush years when the fiscal mess was also taking place…it’s not it all started on January 20, 2009…

  153. Fen says:

    “14. We need to slow down urban sprawl. Inner cities are being abandoned. As people leave there is no money left to support the inner city. This maybe controversial to some, but at some point we will have to deal with the problem. Sprawl also takes away from farms and spreads cities out too far in a time when you have empty buildings. We cannot have cities in decay. And cities in decay cannot create jobs and small business.”

    The reason for the sprawl is that anyone who can is getting far far away from the inner city disasters created by Libtard policies. Fix the inner cities and you won’t have to deal with more sprawl.

    Or, ya know, keep poking at the people who just want to be left alone. See what that gets you.

  154. Fen says:

    Libtard: It’s interesting that so many are enraged at the use of “teabagger” and yet, many of these same people use “Democrat Party” as a perjorative

    What perjoratives? Please come up with something as offensive as my scrotum in your mouth?

    “the Tea Party people might be taken more seriously if they had emerged during the Bush years when the fiscal mess was also taking place”

    They did emerge during the Bush years – they were known as “Porkbusters”.

    Yet more ingorance from those who insist they are more intelligent that the rest of us….

  155. Fen says:

    To be more precise:

    Please come up with something as offensive as you lusting for my scrotum in your mouth?

  156. Fen says:

    “When Bush came into office, there was a surplus.”

    Of course there was, it came from the Peace Dividend.

    So we had a big party in America for 8 Clinton years, while all the tough decisions were kicked down the road for the next guy to clean up.

    Maybe if Clinton had spent less time molestng the stafff while Al Queda plotted 9-11…….

  157. b geiser says:

    for every tea partier you see in a rally there are 10 people who silently agree with them…who sit back and nod their heads in agreement….those are the people the liberals should be worried about…the 4/5th of the iceberg you dont notice

  158. Brummagem Joe says:

    Fen says:
    Sunday, October 17, 2010 at 11:49
    ‘That you use in a racist context.’

    I’m afraid this preoccupation with racism is entirely in your mind along with the rather unhealthy obsession with sucking scrotums. It’s people like you that give the tea party it’s well deserved reputation for intellectual distinction.

  159. Brummagem Joe says:

    “the 4/5th of the iceberg you dont notice”

    Well it’s true Mencken said no one ever went broke underestimating the stupidity of the American people.

  160. nevrdull says:

    “for every tea partier you see in a rally there are 10 people who silently agree with them”

    if anything this is a testament to the vagueness of tea party goals.
    most people would like to pay less taxes. but then again most of us also live in the real world and realize that sh#t needs to get done and nothing happens without money.

  161. anjin-san says:

    > And don’t imagine for a minute that they can’t win

    That is the scary part, especially as we have recent evidence as to the result of putting someone in charge who is not especially bright.

    Now we get to crawl out from the wreckage of that disaster, while the peanut gallery blames the whole mess on the damage control crew, at the same time working furiously to reset our course for the nearest iceberg.

  162. JIMV says:

    This bit “the Anti-Federalists who lost out at America’s founding” is a bit off…the anti-Federalists did indeed lose the argument against the Constitution BUT, they won the argument demanding a Bill of Rights. Their writing on individual rights carried that argument and have been the legal understanding for most such federal court cases.

  163. seguin says:

    Thomas Jefferson was not scrubbed from TSBE standards. He was removed only from a list of Enlightenment writers whose contributions are to be studied under the new standard. He still makes numerous appearances throughout the TSBE standard.

    Source: http://pajamasmedia.com/zombie/2010/08/31/whats-the-matter-with-texas/

    I disagree with Zombie, though. Thomas Jefferson’s distrust of organized religion pales in comparison to Voltaire’s antipathy, so logically I would assume that his views on the church and state were not the main reason for his writings being excluded from that particular category.

    If you’re going to insult someone using an example, please, next time make sure you understand the example that you are going to use, anjin. The TSBE did not ever write Mr. Jefferson out of history.

    Ever.

  164. tman2000 says:

    1. Invest in your country: That is energy independence for security and jobs. Also a new air traffic control system that will save 12% on fuel. The savings to the airlines can go to build new aircraft. A high speed internet system. Perhaps high speed rail.

    *Because transportation industries are just too stupid to want to create these savings on their own? Or maybe such infrastructure ‘investments’ actually won’t save money. But hey, anjin-san’s “great urban infrastructure” projects probably were worth Barbara Boxer’s ‘1.2 trillion dollar’ tax cut, I mean, sorry, $800 billion+ stimulus, er, darn tea party, I mean, progressive congression leadership*

    2. Invest in your people: That is mandatory vocational training. We live in a globalized world and you can no longer rely on factories. We have to be an educated society.

    *Because federally funded secondary education has done such a good job at this? Because federal projects to get everyone to college, thereby eliminating almost all vocational training from public schools, have been such wonderful ventures of public initiative?*

    3. Invest in the future: Federal research grants to be given to universities and business to bring out new technologies. Today there are no new jobs to go to for those unemployed. You need new areas of growth. No playing games with embryonic stem cell research.

    *Wow you set this up well. I could talk about federal farming iniatives taht caused the dust bowl, in the name of mandated science, publicly funded to seek out some ‘common good’, or I could look to more recent history and….*

    4. Fix the antitrust laws that Reagan relaxed. Monopolies and consolidations destroyed jobs.

    *Monopolies like including a little blue ‘e’ with Windows? You really think that whole fiasco had no depressing effect on the technology revolution? I’m looking now, and my Windows 7 sure has the little blue ‘e’. So what was the point of that? Anti-trust fear is one of the most misunderstood strawmen in economics. Consolidations meaning mergers to increase efficiency and save consumers money at the expense of jobs? Oh, like what’s going on right now as companies try to survive the Obama economic disaster?*

    5. Consider an “American job elimination tax” on companies that move out of the country. These companies do not pay middle class wages, healthcare, pensions, social security, or city and state taxes.

    *Consider eliminating the Wagner Act and federal minimum wage, because that’s the cause of the problem. If automobile workers have gold-plated pensions, an $80,000 salary, well, then, the automobile will be priced out of the middle class. Profit margins aren’t these like monstrous things, industry cost money, and there isn’t enough of it around for everyone to live some cushy life.*

    6. Get away from failed ideology. We saw it for 8 years. Tax cuts was used as an ideology. It did not prevent recessions. And did not create prosperity. You still have to solve problems. Ideology does not solve problems.

    *You’re actually right here. Tax cuts were used as an ideology, and it didn’t prevent a recession. But fast and loose money policy – i.e.: government intervention to ‘prevent’ recessions – is what caused a recession. But that stimulus! Because God knows ideology does not solve problems.*

    7. Supporting small business sounds nice and it is heard in Washington, but it does not work in my community as the big business left. That means you cannot have small business as people lost their jobs. Besides, small business will never pay what big business paid in wages.

    *Wait a minute buddy, I’m thinking we need to prevent consolidations that cause job loss. Isn’t that what you wanted? I mean, yeah, these cosolidations lead to wage increases, but what about the little guy?*

    8. We are losing the middle class. We cannot compete with 2 billion cheap laborers in the world that want our jobs. There are not enough jobs to go around. Competition is good, but it can be harmful also. All we are doing in this country is build the same business environment so that we can knock the other guy out. A person loses his job and has no place to go to. And the reason is that we did not invest in our country, in our people, and in the future.

    *Okay, I can’t be sarcastic here. Competition is what creates higher efficiency at lower prices. It’s what creates higher wages too. This is simple economics. The last time the federal government tried to lower competition was during Hoover and FDR, and studies have shown those efforts to be behind the worst of the Great Depression. When a person loses their job and has no place to go, it is because some government rule is reducing competition through force, and therefore decreasing the possibilities in society. Yes, that includes the possibility of finding a job that might have a lower wage. It’s called economics. We do invest in our country, people, and future, it’s called commerce, capitalism, etc. Are you crazy? Ideology does not solve problems.

    9. Have commissions to cut government spending. It seems to be the only approach to doing this. Obviously, one side or the other will complain, but something has to be done now.

    *That way we can cut the defense budget just enough to defeat any effect of deterrence our current military posture provides us, thereby enabling countries like China and Russia who increasingly desire to use war and violence to get their way – since they both follow statist models that disdain ‘competition and business knocking the other guy around’. Or, if we’re lucky, they’ll reccommend cutting $100 million in office supplies, while borrowing $1 trillion so we fund California’s office of rubber stampers’ pensions for another 3 years. Seriously, you are serious about this and yet so disdainful of the tea party. You are SERIOUS, yet you want infrastructure like ‘high speed rail’*

    10. Government appointed jobs and organizations need to be slimmed down. Every 50 to 60 years we need to go through this. There are too many secretaries, deputy-secretaries, under-secretaries, and under-under-secretaries. Information gets loss through the process and government becomes ineffective. The last time this was done was with the Hoover Commission in the late 40’s.

    *Yes, let’s cut out the DoD, all those under-secretaries. But no cuts for the office of Anti-trust, we’ll need a new DoL ‘jobs czar’, don’t forget the DoC under-secretary of ‘fair business in the marketplace’, or the DoT ‘infrastructure officer’.*

    11. Pour money into new drugs and preliminary medical science. Drugs are becoming less resistant to diseases. And potential super bugs are coming.

    *Yes, more money to more drugs so we can have more things for super bugs to resist. And since this will be a federal project, let’s allocate funding to innoculating the populace with last-generation’s drugs, which some bureaucrat fancied, while taxing and regulating out of the market actually effective private drugs, as an effort to pay for the project. We need to invest in our people!*

    12. Fix the infrastructure. It is the reflection of our country and to the rest of the world.

    *Darn Brooklyn Bridge keeps falling down, falling down. Where’s my $878 billion stimulus? Last one only got half the work done.”*

    13. And if we have not kept up with it, every school should have physical education. Also wash your hands when you come home to prevent viruses and less trips to the doctor. And as we see so often, stop throwing pop cans, etc. outside the car.

    *PE can wait until after college. Gotta go to college. Gotta go gotta go. PE teachers need pensions too right?*

    14. We need to slow down urban sprawl. Inner cities are being abandoned. As people leave there is no money left to support the inner city. This maybe controversial to some, but at some point we will have to deal with the problem. Sprawl also takes away from farms and spreads cities out too far in a time when you have empty buildings. We cannot have cities in decay. And cities in decay cannot create jobs and small business.

    *Let’s just mandate that everyone live in the crumbling inner city. Well call it project: red line.*

    15. Create an hour period each school day for freshmen high school students to study any subject for a month (9 months-9 subjects) that they would have not normally have taken. It may be the hardest of subjects in which students would have been afraid in failing like algebra, geometry, calculus, languages, music, or any other subject including learning sports, like golf, football, baseball, or tennis as examples. There are many retired people who would like to teach what they learned in life. There could be a test at the end of the month, but this would only to see if the student learned anything in that subject and would not count against him in his grade average. The point is to have students learn as much as they can on different subjects and to see if they like a certain subject that they did not anticipate.

    *Actually, I don’t want to be sarcastic here. Your idea is a very good one. The problem is that this requires that schools be structured in a way whereby they can be flexible, and try new and interesting idea. The public school system is structured to absolutely prevent this sort of experimentation. Keep that in mind next time you balk when someone proposes repealing the DoEdu.*

    16. And finally, I don’t think our electoral political system works anymore. Every candidate is bought off and it takes huge amounts of money to run a campaign. I would suggest a management team or a turn around specialist to be appointed as president for a couple of years or more. And there would be a board of directors who he answers to and for the middle class. The parties are riddled with failed ideologies. We can do better that what we have.

    *This is called a parliamentary democracy. You sort of vote for a party, but don’t get to decide who runs it or their specific agenda. It works much like you are saying, actually. And, should I mention that it is entirely unresponsive to the people? Does that matter? Do you wonder why people shut down their countries in protest when a retirement age is raised by 2 years, but do nothing as every conceivable liberty is regulated away?*

    17. One final point. I have tried to think of everything to preserve the middle class. I am afraid that the elites and the republicans and the economists will have their way, and their way to create jobs is to have you do away with the minimum wage and and all wages and pay people a dollar to five dollars an hour. The forces of a potential 2 billion cheap laborers is too powerful for any economic response on our part. Only then, according to them, will we have an equilibrium capable of producing jobs in our country. At the loss of the middle class.

    *Okay, really? The middle class only exists because of modern industry. It arose because dirt-poor serf farmers were given a chance to purchase quality goods and services previously unavaible. Oh, you know, things like latern light, clean clothes, reliable food supply, other such ‘luxuries’. Some people had the opportunity to be workers, and produce these things. Some little prick named Malthus whined about smoke stacks in a city in England. Meanwhile, the pace of industrialization and progress made the modern world possible. As we’ve increased our wealth as a civilization, as we’ve allowed industry to progress and create that wealth, we’ve afforded ‘luxuries’ that define the middle class. Things like, you know, basic health care, heat in the winter, refrigeration, sanitation, these silly little things.

    All of these things cost money, someone has to collect the resources needed to produce them, and then figure out some way of using those resources for that production. If you taxed the rich at a 100% rate, there wouldn’t be enough money raised to provide anything near a ‘middle class’ living for close to all the world’s poor. These low-paying jobs you lament make it all possible, because the alternative is dirt poor farming.

    Instead, as more and more dirt poor farmers have access to these awful low-paying jobs, they’ll earn just a little more money. They’ll afford just a few more ‘luxury’ goods. This will create just a few more jobs. Over time, most of these people won’t be working in jobs that are all that low-paying anymore. This is in fact, where the middle class came from in the first place.

    But it’s not as if the process just stopped. We don’t live in some robot-computer society of the future – yet. There is still a need for relatively worse-paying labor. And I don’t think it should be outsourced to foreign brown people. There are plenty of American citizens who aren’t cutting it when it comes to college and the service sector. Let these people work! Let them earn what they have, even if it’s very little.

    At the end of the day, if the economy is growing, you can skim a little off the top and provide services for the super-needy. Stuff like basic health clinics, and food stamps. Nothing extravagent, but enough to prevent people at the lowest point from suffering. And why should we do anything else?

    This skimming off the top is what Hayek was talking about, and it’s compatible with Clintonian Neoliberalism. Obama’s wannabe Progressivism is different. It destroys the growth engine in the economy, and makes it so that even those little things like food stamps become unaffordable. That’s the irony.

    This notion of runaway greedy business merging, monopolize, centralizing, crowding out the middle class, making the poor poorer, etc. is nothing more that classic, original, Marxist folklore. I’m not using that as hyperbole. That’s classic Marxism, and history has after 200 year proven it to be completely phoney. There are a lot of reasons why it’s false, but for now I just want to remark that I find it ironic that Progressives that oppose the Tea Party cling to this essentially Marxist narrative about income distribution and government interventionism. It’s ideology, there’s nothing factual about it. And yet, unlike the Tea Party wilderness, liberals seem to think they’re really smart.

    It’s ironic because the free market, where it could operate, allowed the middle class to exist at all. This middle class, via the free market, is what prevented Marx’s predictions from coming true. The middle class are humans who have economic value beyond being just bodies to operate machines. And to further the irony, after the big revolution failed to materialize, socialists realized the middle class had to be destroyed in order to realize the awful world with big industrialists at the top, and the suffering poor in polar opposition. This is exactly – no this isn’t Glenn Beck conspiracism, this is factual – where movements such as post-modern deconstructionism come from. Saul Alinsky quite literally, i.e.: in no uncertain terms, made this goal clear: destroy the middle class so that socialism can happen. One way to destroy the middle class is just waste all of society’s money through government borrowing and distribution. Once the value of the service worker doesn’t give him a paycheck – but a bureaucratic decision does – then the middle class no longer exists.

    I’m not trying to insinuate that this has anything to do with Obama per se. I just find it ironic that the liberal narrative about ‘saving the middle class’ always comes packaged with these Alinsky-lite policies that are very much designed to destroy the middle class. Especially because the ‘save the middle class’ narrative is always framed according to blatantly Marxist ‘us vs. them’ crises of capitalism.

    So, about the Tea Party: Hell Yes! to anything that says Hell No! to more government action in the economy.

  165. seguin says:

    http://ritter.tea.state.tx.us/teks/social/HS_TEKS_1stRdg.pdf

    Here’s the standard. Enjoy. Heck, Jefferson’s political philosophy DOES make an appearance. Just in a different section.

  166. anjin-san says:

    > The TSBE did not ever write Mr. Jefferson out of history.

    >He was removed only from a list of Enlightenment writers whose contributions are to be studied under the new standard.

    Entirely? No, it would be difficult fro even Texas BOE to entirely dismiss such a key figure in our history. I am afraid I do not have the patience to wade through the PM piece you referenced that details how only those on the right are patriots in our land. It would be useful for birdcage lining, except I do not own a birdcage. (7 feeders in the back yard, though).

    At any rate, you do not seem to have a problem with replacing President Jefferson’s writings with those of that great American John Calvin. Duly noted.

    Well, I guess it is patriotic to replace the thoughts of our founding fathers with religious Indoctrination. Ironically, this is just the sort of thing the founders feared.

  167. george says:

    “for every tea partier you see in a rally there are 10 people who silently agree with them
who sit back and nod their heads in agreement”

    That’s true for every kind of rally, of every ideology. The Tea Party is for the most part a protest group, the kind that comes up every generation or so, and only has a semblance of unity in so far as they’re so far removed from power that they don’t have to propose anything specific. If they get some power they will either fracture, or drift into an established lane.

    A good example of the same thing is the Reform Party in Canada, which in the end merged with the Progressive Conservatives to become the Conservative Party, and now have a platform not notably different than any previous Canadian gov’t. The same thing had happened in the past with a farmer’s protest party (CCF) which became the NDP, and which governed several provinces over the decades – without any notable differences in anything but rhetoric from other gov’ts. In fact, in Saskatchewan they turned out to be far better financial stewards than the conservatives, and were routinely criticized from their own fringe that they were too centrist … which is the fate of almost all protest parties.

  168. Gerry W. says:

    tman2000,

    I appreciate your candor. It took some time to type that all up. I will try to make this short.

    The U.S. has lost 32% of manufacturing jobs since the year 2000. China will make most of the wind turbines by 2030. And the list goes on from what I read at Busness Insider. You may not like government but seeing eight years of Bush following the ideology that republicans preach about, that is, tax cuts and laissez-faire, we see that nothing has gotten done and we lost a lot of jobs. Even when we had the tax cuts. We cannot make up for the millions of lost jobs. The problem today is that there is no upward movement. As companies consolidate, as companies outsource, it means less jobs for the uneducated. It means less jobs for engineers and sales people. And without that upward movement, we are stuck and especially small towns that relied on manufacturing as they cannot diversify.

    Today, we see the fed printing money. We have used tax cuts and that is spent money. But we lost the jobs, and there is no new industry to go to. Even Apple gets their products made in China, in which, 30 years ago, those problems would have been made here. And that is where the government comes in for investing in the country, in the people, and in the future. The private sector has abandon the middle class and is not doing its job. All parts of our economy from the private sector, to government, and to the fed is failing us. How much more in tax cuts is need to create jobs? What jobs? How much more money can be printed to keep the economy going or to keep the dollar low to rely on exports? How much lower should our dollar go? What widgets can be built here and not some other country? What good are tax cuts if small business does not have the traffic as factories have closed? What good is money in the hands of consumers if the product they buy is foreign made?

    These are questions to ask as the dynamics have changed. And let us not forget, with the world open, there is a potential 2 billion people who want our jobs. And there is simply not enough jobs to go around. And without jobs, we cannot solve our problems. And you cannot create jobs here if we keep sending them overseas.

    So what company or companies are going to save the day for us as I see factories of 1300, 500, and 200 closed in my town? What will replace them? Even solar farms require only 5 people to maintain them. What small business will hire hundreds of people?

    So, I am waiting for answers as the politicians, the fed, and the economists have no answers.

  169. Gerry W. says:

    correction: those products would have been made here.

  170. tman2000 says:

    Gerry W.,

    I agree with you about tax cuts, in the sense that under current conditions cutting taxes just gives banks more money to spend on nothing.

    In other words, I think your concerns are valid.

    However, I do think the solutions involve more ‘laissez-faire’.

    There’s an important distinction to make between government regulating business, and government regulating the economy.

    For example, the government can say to business: “You can’t lie about where you’re spending your customers’ money.” It cannot say, “Don’t sell that product, it’s too competitive, it doesn’t give the other guys a chance, it’ll hurt the economy.”

    Bush’s ‘laissez-faire’ basically relaxed oversight over the financial sector. That’s not what we needed. We need to relax government involvement in the financial sector (the Fed, etc.). This is the problem with Republicans, they only go far enough in their free market rhetoric to make a few rich people a little bit more money. They never endorse meaningful changes to the status quo.

    While only part of the problem, Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac/CRA etc. are the Democrats’ baby, which many Republicans wanted to tackle, but which too many Democrats wouldn’t budge over.

    My point is that most of the damage from the recent crisis is directly related to what the government has been doing, not one ideology or the other.

    More oversight wouldn’t have changed the fact that during the 2000’s, policies made it so that there was way more money out there than what there should have been, with way fewer places to invest it than what there could be.

    If we could pay road workers half of minimum wage, or offer property deeds for certain orbits or lunar locations, or – I’m trying to run the gambit here – even were allowed to experiment more with stem cells, you’d see plenty of places to put money besides into housing or stupid financial products. Oh, and like Microsoft’s case, if investors knew they wouldn’t be punished for actual success.

    The problem is that the government has created an environment where you can make more money by investing into ‘money’ than if you invested in actual real products. The guys who can repackaged debt will make more ‘money’ than guys who find underdeveloped markets for investment. Creating money out of thin air is uncontroversial, and universally appreciated until its abstract effects are felt later on. Building a new product that makes certain jobs obsolete (even if it creates more jobs down the road), that’s too controversial.

    I haven’t meant to single you out, but your one comment most comprehensively outlined some ideas of substance, and I wanted to comment on something of substance.

    That’s my personal concern with the Left in particular. Right or left, politicians usually do little of substance that is actually taken into account when they’re elected. But, if they did, I would have big problems with the progressive agenda as actually being able to solve more problems than it would create.

  171. matt says:

    I went to a tea party rally and it was pretty much a KKK meeting minus the hoods. At the time I brushed it off as being a result of going to a tea party in the deep south. I assume/hope that the tea parties up north are much more civil. Naturally almost everyone I met there were partisan right wingers but I did get to meet a couple cool libertarians in the middle of the hatefest. Oh and yes the speeches were all platitudes about “taking back our country” and “reigning government spending in” and “democrats are taking our freedoms!” and “cutting taxes since we’re so taxed already”. There was a lot of nifty slogans but no real solutions or propositions..

    Tman2000 is either being completely dishonest or he hasn’t a clue how corporate America works. Generally the short term profits to boost stocks so the CEOs can make millions take priority over long term planning/savings…

  172. anjin-san says:

    > Oh, and like Microsoft’s case, if investors knew they wouldn’t be punished for actual success.

    Perhaps you could elaborate on this thought. As I recall, the Justice Department’s position was that yes, we find Microsoft to be engaging in anti-competitive practices based on a monopoly position (they were) but the government is not going to do a heck of a lot about it.

    Are you saying that we should get the government out of the business of trying to prevent monopolies? They damn near are already, just look at the proposed Ticketmaster/Live Nation merger, which will almost certainly reduce choice in the marketplace and screw consumers.

    Over concentrations of power can be just as damaging in the marketplace as in government. Corporations enjoy a vast power differential in their favor when dealing with an individual consumer. I am not putting forth a “corporations are evil” line, I make my living in a Fortune 500 setting and love my job. I would be interested in hearing some concrete examples of:

    >It cannot say, “Don’t sell that product, it’s too competitive, it doesn’t give the other guys a chance, it’ll hurt the economy.”

  173. Bilwick1 says:

    Basically all comments by “the New Tories” such as Dionne can be reduced to the phrase, “Submit quietly, peasants.” So it’s pretty much a waste of time reading any of them since they are basically regurgitating the same stuff over and over again.

  174. JIMV says:

    I am afraid all the ‘racist’ comments about the tea parties are about as valid as saying every anti-war rally was little more than a Stalinist march down Red Square…simply words…

  175. 00stephen says:

    Within the first dozen posts, someone whose who shares a name with an aluminum foil broker lamented that nobody was responding to his troll in the manner he preferred.

    So to keep him happy and in balance with his meds, I’ll respond to his “summary”:

    I am way below the age to collect Social Security, and have no misconception of it being solvent when I retire.

    I have no medical bills, nor the inclination to pass any along to the government, nor even at the risk for incurring any in the foreseeable future… because I’m a responsible person who takes care of his health.

    I do my part as an individual to protect the environment, encourage others to take everyday actions of their own… and see no need to employ a bureaucracy out of ‘green guilt’ for personal inaction.

    Among other cars, my “gas-guzzling pickup” TJ gets about 13 mpg — about the same as my “run down van” VW camper. But I still have a lower carbon footprint than those who prefer to wear self-righteous environmentalist pretension on their sleeve while driving their bumper-sticker laden hybrids. Because the total annual mileage of all vehicles I own, combined, is less than 7,000 miles per year. (and no, I don’t patronize the tax-payer funded, overpaid, unionized, empty metro buses either… I just make prudent decisions about where I work, live, and play).

    My firearms are locked in a safe… and I’m the guy who took a break from a comfortable, well-paying cushy career to voluntarily serve the country who offers the protections you espouse so much.

    I have no crops, kids, or church commitments you appear to resent so much.

    I detest condo associations, have no garden, and do my own yardwork.

    I have never, ever taken participated in any government subsidy, bailout, program.

    So all things considered it is you, Reynolds, who remains clueless about who the Tea Party is, and for what they stand.

    Please don’t forget to do your part on November 2nd, I look forward to seeing the results.

  176. matt says:

    Look at me I’m an exception to your stereotypes!

  177. To the First Douchebag says:

    One wonders if Mr. Reynolds has ever worked, with his hands, in his life. The cursory dismissal of “giant pick-up trucks” belies an incredible ignorance of how our economy works in the United States. Sales of “giant pick-up trucks” are often a principle indicator of economic growth, because, although some can smugly live off the work of others, there are many people, millions in fact, in this country who need pick-up trucks to ensure that Mr. Reynolds can have his asparagus delivered to the Whole Foods. In fact, a trip anywhere west of Kentucky heading on through California (AND INCLUDING large parts of California) is the agricultural economic backbone of this great country. You simply cannot work a farm without getting a pick-up truck. These trucks are vital to the cushy life that Mr. Reynolds lives and to the real workers which he despises, which I find to be the case with many pampered people who live in gated communities and rail against the very workers they are purporting to “help”. We will keep working, Mr. Reynolds, and you will continue to suck the life from us for a time. As Charlie Daniels said, “Redneck is just another word for the working man”, the MAN who keeps selfish children like you warm, clothed, and fed.

  178. anjin-san says:

    > nor the inclination to pass any along to the government, nor even at the risk for incurring any in the foreseeable future
 because I’m a responsible person who takes care of his health.

    I had a friend who died of cancer not too long ago. He never smoked, never drank, worked out all the time, was really in amazing shape, ate a good diet. Being a responsible person who takes care of himself does not mean you will never get sick. If you think you are not a risk of a serious or catastrophic health problem, possibly as soon as tomorrow, you are living in a fantasy.

    And we have not even brought accidents into the equation.

  179. thomass says:

    anjin-san says:

    “So you whine about “Teabagger”, but it is silly if someone objects to the use of “Democrat Party” which is a calculated insult to Democrats courtesy of Rush Limbaugh.”

    Its not all insult. ‘Democratic party’ just doesn’t flow right. On the other side it is the Republican party… not the Republic party. So why is saying Democrat (vs. democratic) party a put down?

    If you want an apples to apples translation of the teabagger insult, it’s D-bagger.

    But anyway, the party is offically named the democratic party and if that is what they want to be called… they should be….

  180. anjin-san says:

    I am pretty sure that Mr. Reynolds does not object to a working man driving a large pickup that is necessary to his work, On the other hand, I know that he, like myself, lives on one of those wealthy enclaves full of pampered folks, many of whom drive tank sized trucks and SVUs for no good reason that i can detect beyond “a large truck makes me feel powerful”.

    Most of these folks are pampered as a result of someone working their ass off and making the American dream a reality, but that is a different discussion so I will ignore the whiff of wealth envy and the seemingly unavoidable sense of right wing victimhood I see here.

    If I am speaking out of turn I hope Michael will correct me, but I suspect that I am not…

  181. anjin-san says:

    > Its not all insult. ‘Democratic party’ just doesn’t flow right

    It is certainly an insult. It was created for that purpose by Limbaugh, parroted by Bush, and now is in common usage by people who cannot articulate good arguments.

    Remember the guys who would deliberately mispronounce someone else’s name as a put down when you were in the 8th grade? That is expected behavior for 14 year olds. When an adult engages in it, you learn something about their character, or lack thereof….

  182. Tom Perkins says:

    “95 out of one hundred of your fellow citizens haven’t the slightest idea of what QE is. Most would have difficulty spelling it.”

    They know that having the government print money for no good reason is a bad idea, they’ve all heard about the need to use wheelbarrows to of money to buy bread in inflationary periods–they don’t want that to happen here.

    They are brighter than Bernanke.

  183. anjin-san says:

    > they’ve all heard about the need to use wheelbarrows to of money to buy bread in inflationary periods

    And most of them have heard this without doing the necessary study in the realms of history and economics to really understand what happened during periods of hyper inflation. “wheelbarrows to of money to buy bread” is simply trotted out as a scare tactic. At this point in time, deflation is probably a bigger concern than inflation.

  184. Tom Perkins says:

    Wheelbarrows of money is what happens when you print too much money, it isn’t really better if Bernanke holds it down to just a coffee can being required, now it it?

  185. Tom Perkins says:

    Also, deflation without a concomitant decrease in either population or long term net demand per person is just what winds the spring for the next period of growth–people get real about what they have and need, and their income. Spending resumes when the feeling of security increases, and more of it than had been goes into areas of the economy that are new entire or are newly evaluated–and with better grounding–to be productive and rewarding.

  186. matt says:

    While I admit your post is incredibly romantic it’s very far from reality. Farmers don’t use pick up trucks to deliver asparagus. Most farm commodities are delivered in large delivery trucks or via semis. I lived on a farm in central Illinois through the 90s and I’ve scooped more shit and tossed my bales then you’ve seen in your life. The small time farmers would/will run one beat up old truck as a “farm truck” and usually have a shiny large truck as their car and/or for towing their livestock trailer to shows (of the livestock variety such as county/state fairs). In the middle 90s the local farmers in my area started selling off or renting their land to the big farmers and even corporations which obviously use semis as they are much more cost effective in large production situations. At this point the farmland in my hometown is worked by massive farm complexes and there’s very few small time farmers able to keep afloat at this point..

  187. matt says:

    I would like to clarify that I actually grew up working a family farm. Quite frankly most of the work on farms are done with tractors and you could easily go without a pickup truck..

  188. matt says:

    My hometown has been dying a slow death due to some of the canning companies moving their equipment and jobs out of country not long after NAFTA passed.

  189. To the Matt Douchebag says:

    Matt,

    Being a hobby farmer on your mom and pop’s large suburban tract, where you used your “beat-up” truck to get your land zoned ag to avoid taxes is hardly “farming”. You simply did not work a “farm” without a pick-up truck. A farmer has to be part everything – he has to be a mechanic, an animal handler, a roofer, a plumber, a businessman, the list goes on and on forever. The notion that you would use only tractors for your farm work shows that you really have no idea what you are talking about or are being willfully obtuse. Especially since tractors have regular maintenance problems, many of which require a pick-up (implements, anyone?) to get resolved. Or are you carrying your draw bars and hydraulic oil in your Prius? And the idea of one “shiny pickup” for shows betrays exactly what your “family farm” was up to. I don’t know anyone who has a “shiny pickup” who doesn’t work in town. They just don’t stay shiny when you have to use them. In fact, some of them have hardly any miles and already look like shit.

    As to the “wealth envy” guy: Here’s the crux of the problem at its very core – that the modern, effete liberal does not understand that some people have higher priorities in life that affluent smarminess. I know a lot of people who absolutely work hard, but do not “envy” anyone, and not because they don’t think it would be nice to be rich, but because family and decency take priority over being a resume junkie. And the truth that will most bother you is that many of them are very happy. My grandfather was such a man and there were 500+ people at their funeral. At one time in my life I lived in a nice, liberal town. I saw countless lonely communityless people whose last gasp of anger in old age was to throw around corny phrases like “wealth envy”. Liberals are, ultimately, homeless, communityless, angry and depressed people. But you’re right, increasing numbers of them have money – they are more and more America’s golden class.

  190. Gerry W. says:

    It is interesting how economists and politicians are getting away with this. They always say there may be pockets of disruption on outsourcing, but they never admit to the extent of it, and they expect that our exports will deliver more than the jobs we lost. In the meantime we have had years of tax cuts and the fed keeps printing more money with no results in creating jobs. And what will replace those jobs we sent away?

  191. anjin-san says:

    > I know a lot of people who absolutely work hard, but do not “envy” anyone

    So do I. Sadly, you do not appear to be one of them.

    > And the truth that will most bother you is that many of them are very happy.

    You know, I was in the nightclub business for a long time. One of the things that kept me in it is that I like to see people enjoying yourself. A lame, uninformed comment.
    > Liberals are, ultimately, homeless, communityless, angry and depressed people.

    Good Lord, you really are kind of a hateful little turd, aren’t you? Your own comments paint you pretty clearly as someone who is trying to talk himself and his own belief system up at the expense of others. Go project elsewhere…

  192. To the Other Douchebag says:

    For example of what I mentioned, see above post.

  193. Juneau: says:

    Lots of comments here, which is a good reflection of the new reality – the TEA Party is here to stay, and the left is STILL trying to get a handle on exactly what it means to the future of government in America. Also, unfortunately, the left is till pushing the “uneducated and stupid” meme in order to dismiss the new power being exhibited by the great unwashed middle (majority) of America.

    My advice is to get used to the idea that “ordinary” folks are now doing their own political thinking. As they are merely human, some will do this better than others. Just like with everything else.

  194. anjin-san says:

    > some will do this better than others. Just like with everything else.

    When the ones who do it better show up, please send them here. Would love to talk to them 🙂

  195. The Monster says:

    Teabagger is their word for themselves. If they didn’t want the title, they should never have used it.

    Let’s apply this same logic to another word that ends with the same four letters. Certainly there are blacks who have used a well-known pejorative to describe each other. I invite anyone who calls TEA partiers by this name to go into a nightclub that caters to a predominantly black crowd and use that word vociferously. After all…

    *gger is their word for themselves. If they didn’t want the title, they should never have used it.

  196. anjin-san says:

    > For example of what I mentioned, see above post.

    When inferiority overcompensation runs amok… guess I should have been tipped of by the use of “douchebag” in his handle. Interesting Freudian slip.

  197. matt says:

    Alright it’s obvious you’re a troll and you have NO interest in hearing the truth. I’m going to bite this one time though because I’m bored.

    You are quite a bit more concerned with making lies about people then actually listening to their personal experiences. I love how you think growing up on a farm in the country 10 miles from a town of 5000 which was another 40 miles from a town of 30k (largest town nearby) is a “large suburban tract”. I also spent a time at my great grandparents farm which was litterly +40 miles from anything resembling a town. Where they had to cut wood for heating/cooking and to have hot water up until the late 80s. Honestly though it was the first farm that I had most of my experience of farming.

    “You simply did not work a “farm” without a pick-up truck. A farmer has to be part everything – he has to be a mechanic, an animal handler, a roofer, a plumber, a businessman, the list goes on and on forever.”

    A farmer had to be that +40 years ago but not anymore. Now I imagine there are still people living off the land without modern conveniences but there’s utterly no way their produce is ending up at whole foods lol. Yes I can thank farming for giving me my great mechanical skill (and my appreciation for jbweld and bailing wire). Also obviously I handled many animals in my time (chickens cattle hogs and even rabbits). I’ve even done a bit of plumbing in my time but the reality is NONE OF things have anything to do with a truck. I don’t need a truck to fix a leak in my plumbing and I sure as hell don’t need a truck to pop the heads off chickens. Granted it’s a bit slow to use a tractor to take your cattle/hogs into town for the auction so from a matter of convenience a truck is nice but quite frankly that’s what you use the old farm truck to do (you don’t want to mess up your or make your nice truck smelly). AS for roofing well we didn’t have time for that but there’s always someone around who will do it for cheap.

    “the notion that you would use only tractors for your farm work shows that you really have no idea what you are talking about or are being willfully obtuse. Especially since tractors have regular maintenance problems, many of which require a pick-up (implements, anyone?) to get resolved.”

    I said you could get by without a truck and if you would meander back up you’d see that I never said it wouldn’t be more convenient to go without one but that it would be entirely possible to go without. Yes we had a shop and yes we worked on our own tractors but the reality is even in the cold of winter when it’s -10 outside we could count on our tractors to start. Now I cannot comment for you because for all I know you could of not properly maintained your equipment. BTW it was quite common to see tractors in the parking lot of my high school near the end of the school year because as a tradition seniors would drive one of their dad’s tractors into town on a specific day.

    “Or are you carrying your draw bars and hydraulic oil in your Prius?”

    uh dude the point of a draw bar is to errr be attached to something to haul. So why the hell would I haul the bars separate from the vehicle doing the hauling (which btw they can fit nicely even in a car). As for the hydraulic oil you can easily fit that in a SUV or a shiny truck or hell a car (I’ve seen it but of course you wouldn’t believe it). Why the hell would I want a prius? Based on what you’ve said so I could blow your mind for hours with stories of shit we’ve hauled in cars or with improvised methods.

    “And the idea of one “shiny pickup” for shows betrays exactly what your “family farm” was up to. I don’t know anyone who has a “shiny pickup” who doesn’t work in town. They just don’t stay shiny when you have to use them. In fact, some of them have hardly any miles and already look like shit.”

    Dude you’re an idiot if you think someone is going to buy a brand new pickup truck and then just destroy it with farm work. They buy a brand new pickup use it as a car/tower and then replace their old farm truck with the “Shiny” truck they are replacing because it’s nowhere near shiny anymore. Now I don’t know where you’re from but in my rural neck of the woods people liked their pickups and shiny is a relative thing. When I say shiny I mean straight panels with only minor damage but then again our perspective appears to be quite different as I’m obviously from the lower class compared to you.

    You also don’t seem to understand the concept of a hog/cattle show. I’m sure your big city brain is thinking car show when I say that but you’re not quite right. I’m talking about County and state fairs where we would show hogs win a few ribbons and then sometimes sell em. We’d use the nice truck and clean the trailer so we would be putting forth the best image possible for our operation/business because these shows are excellent opportunities to sell stud services and such.

  198. matt says:

    And yes the tractor in the -10 degree event was plugged in as it’s pretty much impossible to get that cold of a diesel to fire up. We did on the other hand fire up a tractor more then once in 10-20ish degree weather without warming the block first (took a bit of work).

    I’ll tell you that I’m glad I’ve been out of the farm life for years and I don’t miss it or the rusty tasting water. The one thing I do miss is the people (good natured hard working folks)as my High school was small enough that I knew everyone’s name in my class and the other classes.

  199. matt says:

    I take back the easily comment but that’s it 😛

  200. anjin-san says:

    >Teabagger is their word for themselves.

    It seems pretty obvious that tea party folks object to this descriptive, and I don’t think it is too much of a courtesy for everyone to drop it. There are plenty of legitimate things to take them to task for – “teabagger” does not even have novelty value any more.

  201. c.red says:

    Dodd,
    I recently had occasion to give my opinion of the various OTB commentators to a friend. My personal description of you was “borderline sociopath with schizophrenic episodes”. This doesn’t do much to change that..

    Reading Heinlien (yes, I am a fan) without realizing he was, at best, an idealist and incredibly simplistic and had no ability whatsoever to predict the future indicates your level of thought.

  202. sam says:

    Why the Tea Party is the mortal enemy of the establishment GOP:

    Republicans, Democrats who criticized stimulus wrote letters seeking funds

    Rep. Pete Sessions, the firebrand conservative from Texas, has relentlessly assailed the Democratic stimulus efforts as a package of wasteful “trillion-dollar spending sprees” that was “more about stimulating the government and rewarding political allies than growing the economy and creating jobs.”

    But that didn’t stop the Republican lawmaker from seeking stimulus money behind the scenes for the Dallas suburb of Carrollton after the GOP campaign against the 2009 stimulus law quieted down.

    Sessions wrote Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood in February urging him to give “full and fair consideration” to the affluent city’s request for $81 million for a rail project, according to a copy of the letter obtained by the Center for Public Integrity. His letter suggested that the project would create jobs, undercutting his public arguments against the stimulus.

    When asked about his letter, Sessions defended both of the positions he has taken.

    “What I have not done is allow my strong, principled objection to the bill to prevent me from asking federal agencies for their full consideration of critical infrastructure and competitive grant projects for North Texas when asked to do so by my constituents,” he said.

    Sessions was hardly alone. Scores of Republicans and conservative Democrats who voted against the stimulus law subsequently wrote letters seeking funds. They include tea party favorites such as freshman Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.) and Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.), as well as Rep. Ron Paul (R-Tex.) and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), former presidential candidates.

    Like their Republican counterparts, Democratic critics of the stimulus also sent letters seeking funding afterward. Rep. Walt Minnick (D-Idaho), one of seven Democrats in the House to vote against the bill, has written letters to Commerce Secretary Gary Locke requesting funds for four broadband-related projects in his state.

    What would a Tea Partier make of all this? Now the thing to note in this hypocrisyfest is the rationale given by Sessions: “What I have not done is allow my strong, principled objection to the bill to prevent me from asking federal agencies for their full consideration of critical infrastructure and competitive grant projects for North Texas when asked to do so by my constituents [my emphasis].”

    What’re you gonna do when your constituents ask you to get them some federal dollars for critical infrastructure projects, tell them, Hell no? Apparently not, if you want to get reelected, but then you run the risk of having a gang of exuberant Tea Party congresscritters chewing on your leg. These are nasty earmarky things, of course, and earmarks are really small, small potatoes budget-wise, but now imagine the tensions between the establishment GOP and the TPers when serious budget-cutting is discussed, when entitlements are on the table. (I’m giving the Tea Party folks the benefit of the doubt and assuming that they are serious about restructuring entitlements, and reflecting that no one in DC seems to want to mess with entitlements in any serious fashion.) Does anyone really believe that this bodes well for the GOP? Of course, as I indicated upthread, the establishment might be successful in co-opting enough TPers so that the movement is rendered ineffective. That would be fun to watch. Whatever happens, the Tea Party is going to be a monstrous distraction for the GOP. The Democrats will be loving every minute of it. So, I think Dodd’s headline, Dismiss The Tea Party At Your Peril, is best seen as a warning to the GOP that a shitstorm is coming its way, and that the thrust of his post, Progressives Beware, is misplace.

  203. Slartibartfast says:

    Heinlien (yes, I am a fan)

    Probably that would be more convincing with a correct spelling of Heinlein.

  204. Slartibartfast says:

    My personal description of you was “borderline sociopath with schizophrenic episodes”.

    Oh, you have so missed out on a career in Internet Psychology. You can earn a degree in that at DeVry Institute, I hear.

  205. JR, a tea partier says:

    Thank you for an entertaining article and it’s subsequent thread. Simply put, both the GOP and the progessive left should be prepared for a ‘shitstorm’ in November and beyond.

    You should have boiled the frog instead of cranking that heat to high, you would have been more successful but alas, it’s too late for personal recriminations. The only thing left is sad spin.

  206. MIke says:

    Hilarious. The comments from the left illustrate the point that Dodd is trying to make far better than the actual article.

    “Every teabagger I’ve met has had a minimal understanding of underlying issues”

    “The Tea Party is revenge of the stupid.”

    “a mass of angry and ill informed white people with an inchoate and consequently contradictory agenda.”

    “I went to a tea party rally and it was pretty much a KKK meeting minus the hoods.”

    And yet you are honestly puzzled (and angry) that everyone doesn’t see it your way. It’s really getting sad.

  207. Slartibartfast says:

    My caricature of the left formed from the zombietime hall of shame trumps your caricature of the right formed from wherever you’re getting your Tea Party propaganda.

    So say I, and I am right.

  208. Dodd says:

    I recently had occasion to give my opinion of the various OTB commentators to a friend. My personal description of you was “borderline sociopath with schizophrenic episodes”. This doesn’t do much to change that.

    You’re obviously proud of that little turn of phrase. But all it proves is that you don’t know what those words mean. Your attempt to read my mind re: Heinlein based on my quoting a few sentences of his without more doesn’t do much to improve the impression you’re creating of your own competence to question my mental faculties.

    I’d like to thank you and your fellow travelers again for going above and beyond to prove my point.

  209. matt says:

    “And yet you are honestly puzzled (and angry) that everyone doesn’t see it your way. It’s really getting sad.”

    I’m not angry I went to the tea party for the lulz and to see for myself what kind of people where there (very angry older white people). While facts might annoy you the fact was in my area in the deep south the Tea party was a big ol hate everyone but the white guy fest with some very outright racist elements who were not being shamed at all. Now being that I’m a tall well built white guy and from a rural background I was more then welcomed by the elements but I still found the outright open racism about the blacks and mexicans stealing our money to be ridiculous…

  210. Slartibartfast says:

    I went to the tea party for the lulz

    But not unencumbered with preconceptions, it appears.

  211. Harley2002 says:

    Well after reading the comments you are right some will never get it. Take that bald Marxist at the top. All the stereotypes he obviously has learned from MSNBC or some other Marxist station. Shotgun under the bed, Gas guzzling pick up truck etc. Just another Marxist projected the hatred and bile that resides inside himself. I have been to many Tea Party rallies and of course there are a few and I mean few fools but how many fools are at the Marxist rallies in DC ? They just are not shown on the biased media. So we will just keep marching down our path accepting the insults as a badge of honor from the Marxists who are to lazy to think for themselves.

    One last point Baldy of course I will want my Medicare and Social Security. I was not alive or at the age to protest when both were created. But I have been forced to pay into that system since my first job delivering newspapers at 10 years old. So I want what they made me pay into. But that is no reason to go even farther down the road to Marxism.And also there is no reason we can’t find some way to phase out the current systems over time to something better.

  212. Mike says:

    “phase out the current systems over time” End a government program?!? Are you mad?

    Oh, and facts never annoy me. Condescension does though.

  213. matt says:

    “But not unencumbered with preconceptions, it appears.”

    Honestly my motivation for attending pretty much any rally thing is for the lulz so take it as you want. Almost every movement in existence have some unintentionally hilarious elements..

  214. Scagsdale says:

    It’s funny to read the hate-filled comments of Marxist/Progressive “useful idiots” and their attempts to minimize the Tea Party movement. You guys really want to give up your liberty to the collective? Maybe you feel you’ll be on the “inside” and will be part of the ruling “elites”. Pretty funny. Good luck with that. In reality, the Marxist/Progressives, when they have total power, act exactly like any other despotic form of government. Look at the Marxists running North Korea – notice how power has passed down to family members EVERY TIME? Kinda reminds one of a “royal family”, doesn’t it? How did Raul Castro get his job? And of course that new hero of the Marxist/Progressives, Hugo Chavez, wants to be in power for longer and longer periods of time. If you idiots would pull your heads out of your butts, you might recognize where that is going. Obama and many who surround him have some very scary ideas. They want to take us in a radical Progressive (nearly Marxist) direction, and have already pulled off some of their objectives thanks to their majorities in the House and Senate. That is what has caused the Tea Party movement to grow (yes, it did exist before Obama was president, thanks to “RINO” Republicans). So this coming November, we will see who wins (I don’t count my chickens before they hatch). I ended up getting to like Clinton because, after the rebuke he took in 1994, he moved to the center and became a fairly good pragmatic President. Obama will probably have the same choice to make after the November elections. If he continues on with the radical progressive nonsense, he will end up in the trash bin with the likes of Jimmy Carter. It will be up to him.

  215. Radegunda says:

    Putting it simply:
    The ruling powers vowed to “fundamentally transform” the country. And they’re doing it by grabbing more and more power over our lives, and more of the fruits of our labor (taxes, ballooning debt, devalued money, costlier energy), and making the government class larger and richer while the rest of us get poorer.

    The Tea Partiers are saying: Stop. We want to keep our country. We don’t want a “fundamentally” different one, or a greatly impoverished one. We don’t want the economy to be micromanaged by people who are clueless about how wealth is generated.

    Large majorities of the citizens are against the policies of the current government, but Obama & Pelosi et al. openly scorn the citizens. They deride the concept of constitutional restraints on their power. The Tea Partiers are aiming to restore the principles of “enumerated powers” and “consent of the governed.”

  216. Gerry W. says:

    Scagsdale and Radegunda:

    What is your agenda. I have previously posted a 17 point plan. You have a mob mentality. Where were you Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Fox when Bush was saying “stay the course” and he ran both the wars and our economy into the ground. Why is it we hear ideology, but not pragmatism? And I watch a lot of people and they have to be crazy.

    The latest is former Defense Secretary Willian Cohen on C-span yesterday. He talks of globalization and that we will pursue the high end jobs. So we give up our low end jobs according to him and others. They are nuts. Several things is wrong with this. My town only had low end manufacturing and we have no jobs. There will be no high end jobs in my town. Those high end jobs are few compared to a factory of a thousand people that has closed down. And what is going to keep any job in America? Any widget can be made anywhere. And we used to put people to work without an education. We could put a person into a middle class environment if that person has no direction in his life.
    http://www.c-span.org/Watch/Media/2010/10/18/WJE/A/39594/William+Cohen+Cohen+Group+Chairman+CEO.aspx

    I want my country back too. But there is no one out there that is saying anything. I hear no answers in the political arena. We used to work together. We built the interstates and put men on the moon. We had economic growth. Where is that today? Today, we watch China build whole cities and high speed rail. All I hear now is failed ideology. Come up with some answers. The Sarah Palins and the O’Donnells are a joke. And everyone else seems to be clueless.