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some tea party thoughts
Apr. 15th, 2009 03:00 pmThings that have occurred to me about the "tea party" protests going on across the U.S. today, random and possibly contradictory in nature:
1. A friend pointed out she didn't understand all the fun being made of the tea party protesters, since everyone has the right to an opinion. I don't understand it either. I mean, the GOP and Fox News (along with some mainstream media, at first) either made fun of, reviled, or refused to cover war protesters for several years. But that doesn't mean an answering wrong from the other side makes any of it right.
2. I DO, however, understand making fun of the self-labeled "teabagging" thing. Does nobody in the planning arm of the GOP have even a tenuous relationship with pop culture of the past two or three decades? Didn't somebody's kids hear the term and start sniggering? Do none of them watch "Sex and the City?"
3. I am puzzled by the tea party protesters who happened to be Bush supporters. So, they were OK with how their money has been spent on wars (vis-a-vis a great bulk going to contractors who have been shown to not have been doing a very good job, and very little going toward war gear the troops might actually need, i.e. body armor, tough boots, proper weapons, etc.) and giving the very rich tax breaks for taking their manufacturing and customer support overseas for the past eight years - but they're against putting money into our own economy in the form of less taxation on the lower and middle classes, and in venues where the money is supposed to be recycled back into spending in this country?
4. There's a deficit in the new proposed national budget. We've had one since after Clinton left office.
5. I'm not sure if the GOP-led protests are anti-Congress or anti-Obama, or a bit of both. I'm not even sure specifically what they're protesting. The original Boston Tea Party was done by people angry at "taxation without representation." They had no Congress, no president, and no Supreme Court. But we have all those things. And history books. And yet, we still managed to start two wars with money provided by a majority of taxpayers who were against spending to finance said wars. And Republicans have held majority power in Washington for more than 20 of the past 29 years. And the financial problems we have weren't created overnight. So again, I ask ... if these people were happily content with all this congealing at the same time over the past seven and a half years, why are they just now protesting?
6. The self-labeled "teabagging" label is hilarious. Trufax. ETA: For those of you not in the know but too embarrassed to ask, THIS is teabagging.
7. In completely unrelated pondering, is Norm Coleman going to become a "sore loser" like Al Gore and fight for an office he thinks was stolen from him all the way to the Supreme Court? Inquiring minds ...
1. A friend pointed out she didn't understand all the fun being made of the tea party protesters, since everyone has the right to an opinion. I don't understand it either. I mean, the GOP and Fox News (along with some mainstream media, at first) either made fun of, reviled, or refused to cover war protesters for several years. But that doesn't mean an answering wrong from the other side makes any of it right.
2. I DO, however, understand making fun of the self-labeled "teabagging" thing. Does nobody in the planning arm of the GOP have even a tenuous relationship with pop culture of the past two or three decades? Didn't somebody's kids hear the term and start sniggering? Do none of them watch "Sex and the City?"
3. I am puzzled by the tea party protesters who happened to be Bush supporters. So, they were OK with how their money has been spent on wars (vis-a-vis a great bulk going to contractors who have been shown to not have been doing a very good job, and very little going toward war gear the troops might actually need, i.e. body armor, tough boots, proper weapons, etc.) and giving the very rich tax breaks for taking their manufacturing and customer support overseas for the past eight years - but they're against putting money into our own economy in the form of less taxation on the lower and middle classes, and in venues where the money is supposed to be recycled back into spending in this country?
4. There's a deficit in the new proposed national budget. We've had one since after Clinton left office.
5. I'm not sure if the GOP-led protests are anti-Congress or anti-Obama, or a bit of both. I'm not even sure specifically what they're protesting. The original Boston Tea Party was done by people angry at "taxation without representation." They had no Congress, no president, and no Supreme Court. But we have all those things. And history books. And yet, we still managed to start two wars with money provided by a majority of taxpayers who were against spending to finance said wars. And Republicans have held majority power in Washington for more than 20 of the past 29 years. And the financial problems we have weren't created overnight. So again, I ask ... if these people were happily content with all this congealing at the same time over the past seven and a half years, why are they just now protesting?
6. The self-labeled "teabagging" label is hilarious. Trufax. ETA: For those of you not in the know but too embarrassed to ask, THIS is teabagging.
7. In completely unrelated pondering, is Norm Coleman going to become a "sore loser" like Al Gore and fight for an office he thinks was stolen from him all the way to the Supreme Court? Inquiring minds ...
