some tea party thoughts

[veronica_rich]

Things 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 ...

Comments

[nobleplatypus]

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 ...

Knowing Norm... yes. Yes, he totally is.

[concertigrossi.livejournal.com]

"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."

Number 3 answers number 1. As I posted in deadarmadillo, being for small government and low taxes is a perfectly valid political stand. Suddenly being for small government and low taxes as of January 20th, well, that gets you made fun of.

[virginia-fell.livejournal.com]

This. ^

It'd be a lot easier to take seriously if there were any indication that the protesters know what they want. But looking out of the window of my workplace? All I see is RAAAAGGGGGGHHH EVERYTHING DEMOCRATS DO IS BAD WE MUST TAKE BACK OUR COUNTRY. From whom? The voters?

All they have is running around stomping their feet because they lost. The actual items they're objecting to don't matter a whit, which is why they can't decide on any.

[porridgebird.livejournal.com]

And this. ^

[giselleslash.livejournal.com]

I can't get past the whole 'teabagging' thing to even consider whether or not the protest has a point.

As a Minnesotan I can safely say that, yes, Coleman will be a terrifically sore loser and will beat the proverbial dead horse on this one...especially since he all but told Franken to give up and think of all the money he was wasting on a "useless" fight/court case when it was believed Franken was the loser. Streets don't go both ways in ColemanLand.

[nobleplatypus]

Woo Minnesota! *fives*

Yes, I remember well Coleman's "Gee, it sure would be gracious of Franken to just bow out now!" stance immediately post-election. His face makes me angry.

[giselleslash.livejournal.com]

Minnesota represent! :)

So do I, let's see how quickly that opinion goes screaming out the window.

And Olive Snook FTW!

[johnnypenn.livejournal.com]

Obviously they aren't doing the Tea Party's right. When the original Tea Party was held, they dressed like Indeans, snuck aboard a merchant shipman, and dumped the tea into the Boston Harbor. None of that is happening and so I must point and laugh. Why recreate a historical situation against the Crown of England and not do it right???? 0_o do they not know their history?
*lol*

I think its just stupide, what is worse is the HLS believe that people who protest and believe in pro-life are terrorists. As if, these people just want the Government to own up to their mistakes. Even if some Bush Supporters are involved, not all Bush supporters, like myself, do these sorts of things. I do think that some of the money is being spent wrongly, but, President Obama is trying to help us. There must be a bigger picture here the we are not seeing, but that he can see.

Though, I do think that putting Hilarly Clinton in charge was a mistake. Instead of helping her own people she's going abraod for shit that doesn't even matter. She should stay home and help us.

[gobsmacked.livejournal.com]

As I understand it, it's her job to go abroad, not stay home.

[gobsmacked.livejournal.com]

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?
From where I sit, that's how it looks.

[lazy-daisy64.livejournal.com]

jesus H -AMEN! I've been arguing with people at another site about this...why is it so hard to admit that there is an ulterior motive here? It really pisses me off.

[the-dala.livejournal.com]

It's the name that bothers me the most. Entirely aside from the twelve-year-old giggle factor, when I first heard about it I thought it was a protest for residents of D.C. Too many "taxation without representation" license plates around my area, I suppose.

My aunt took off work to go downtown and protest ::facepalms:: For some reason she's recently become a fundamentalist who believes Obama is the Antichrist - even though she's in education and has been a staunch Democrat for many years. Now I have two nutjob aunts. White trash roots rock!

[xzombiexkittenx.livejournal.com]

I think the reason they're being made fun of is because of precisely the reasons you mentioned. No one is quite sure what it is they're talking about, they don't seem even seem to agree half the time. That said, I haven't seen a lot of the news coverage on it, so I might be a little off base.

But mostly I think it's that. That, and the teabagging. It's very hard to stop laughing when people keep crying out TEABAGGING! I can't undersatnd how not a one of them sat the others down and went, "uh, guys...no."

[porridgebird.livejournal.com]

Pssst: Follow the money. Lipton (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lipton)'s behind the whole thing...

[veronica-rich.livejournal.com]

See, I would've guessed Luzianne ...

[johnnypenn.livejournal.com]

Well, at least someone doesn't care as long as its their tea to be purchased for teabagging. At first I thought a bunch of people got together to enjoy well brewed tea and to study the affects of tea verses coffee.

[a-silver-rose.livejournal.com]

Granted, I got this off MSNBC, but is it true that some big-money types are actually behind this supposed "grass roots" venture, by way of the politicians who are the most vocal about it?

[a-silver-rose.livejournal.com]

Ooo, ought to mention this. Fox News, in their copious coverage of the tea-bagging, interviewed a young (as in less that teenaged) girl, who, after a bit of gentle prodding, admitted she didn't know why she was there. I'm torn between terrible amusement that Fox actually showed that clip, pity for the girl for being dragged there, and fear that kids these days are suffering an extreme lack of education with regards to the social sciences.

[idle-curiosity.livejournal.com]

Oh, why not.

Would I have gone to one of these? If I wasn't working and earning my living, that is? I might have.

Protesting, boycotting, none of this is new. Both sides do it, to make a point.

Last year was the first year that I didn't vote. I didn't like McCain, at all. I didn't like Obama, at all. I didn't really like the Libertarian candidate either. I couldn't find anyone that didn't leave a bad taste in my mouth.

If I would have gone to one of these, it would have been about taxes and spending. Mainly spending. I live in Wisconsin, one of the highest taxed states in the union. Nobody who retires here stays here, because the taxes play hell on a fixed income.

The federal government taxes me at 28% right now.

We have a 7% county sales tax. This must make up for the fact that our previous county supervisor voted himself and his board the golden parachute of all golden parachutes, a retirement package to die for, and then retired. It was perfectly legal, and there was *nothing* that we could do about it.

My school board just raised our property taxes 14%, to pay for the crap schools that I send my sons to. Yet our school system is at the bottom 1/3 of our state. I don't know why, because I pay enough.

I didn't vote for anyone, because both Bush and Obama were/are spending like it's going out of style. The debt keeps growing and growing ... stimulus, bailouts, tarp, national health care, etc., etc., etc. I will admit it. Trillions of dollars in debt scare me.

Look, I live within my means. If I want something, I have a budget for it. If I want something badly enough, like a vacation or a car or anything, I squeeze my budget like a turnip until I figure out how I can pay for it. If there is something that is truly important to me, or something that I need, I make a way to pay for it.

If something else has to go, something else has to go. And *that* is what I want from my government. I want them to stop spending, and take a good look at what is truly important. National health care? Fine. Make a way for it. Cut something else. Get rid of some unnecessary spending. Come on, I know you can find it. Ah, whatever happened to the Golden Fleece award? Died with Willian Proxmire, I think. Too bad.

Medicare, medicaide, social security. Great. But prioritize, for fuck's sake. You can't have everything. How do I know this? Because I can't have everything. I'm smart enough to realize that there isn't enough money between what my husband and I bring in every two weeks to pay for all those things out there that I want. I would love to have an Escalade. But it'll be a cold day in hell before the budget will allow for it.

That's what I want from my government. Because I know for a fact that if I did what they are doing, I would be foreclosed on, my cars would be repossessed (laughing at the idea of being on the repo reality show, running down the street, sobbing as they tow away my cars), I would be hounded day and night by creditors who would be calling me at home and at work, yada, yada, yada.

This response is not political. It's not meant to be. This is just me, as a taxpayer, wondering why it is that my government is spending my hard-given money like the well will never run dry.

And maybe, in the spirit of giving till it hurts, they could vote themselves a paycut for starters. Possibly restructure those wonderful retirement bennies that they have that I'll never have. I hated the spending when Bush was doing it, and it's no different when Obama's doing it.

[veronica-rich.livejournal.com]

This response is not political. It's not meant to be.

But I think this tea party stuff is meant to be political - which is why I brought up #3. Someone who's been to a war protest and today's tea party could, IMO, be consistently concerned about their tax dollars and govt. spending. My purely unscientific guess is that you will not find the same people at these tea parties as at the war protests.

From a purely fiscal POV, a lot of people saw Afghanistan and Iraq as an opportunity to profit the nation a la WWII. While I wouldn't necessarily expect anyone under the age of maybe 70 to understand why WWII helped better the U.S. economy, I do expect the 540+ elected people - not to mention their highly paid and educated advisors - running our country to KNOW it was for two major reasons which were not present in 2001 or 2003:

1. American manufacturers and farmers profited off of supplying other nations with clothing, machines, food, and weapons before 1941 - when we were not yet involved and throwing money at the war - and then from selling to their own government between 1941-45 for the same purposes. We came in toward the end (and got a major boon from Hitler being deterred by that good ol' Siberian winter) to do cleanup, which doesn't cost nearly as much as starting a war.

2. The Marshall Plan. People yelled then about all the credit we were "giving" overseas nations for reconstruction - until they realized the stipulation was that those countries had to spend that money with American suppliers. (I sort of see the current tax reduction and stimulus plan in that light; time will tell if I'm massively wrong. But at least it's not going into Cheney's, Bush's, and Rumsfeld's pockets through private contracting.)

Both of these were predicated on America having the capability to meet manufacturing needs. We had plants, tools, and personnel in 1935; now we just have an excess of potential personnel and defunct plants. My point is that THIS is the lie a lot of war supporters were resting upon, and why they've become so disillusioned and puzzled in the past three years by our going deeper into the hole and getting nothing for it.

(As for the moral aspect of the wars? At least in Iraq, our actions were based on lies. I'd love to be noble and stick around and help finish rebuilding what we tore apart, but unless someone can come up with a way to magically make all our manufacturing plants jump back into production, I don't see how we could possibly avoid sinking even more money into the effort with no return. And we have so many problems here at home we need to fix - we cannot break our own economy to fix somebody else's. (It's the same principle as fastening on your own oxygen mask in a plane that's lost pressure, before you help the child next to you do the same thing - if you're passed out or dead, you're not much help to them.)

So, yeah. If I thought all these people were consistent between presidents/parties in their protests, I'd look at them a lot less critically.

[roguedemon.livejournal.com]

Go out and read about economics. Then you will understand why Obama's administration may have a point. I suggest you start with Keynesian economics, then move on to Paul Krugman, a liberal economist who has criticized the Obama administration for not having a more aggressive relief package, but likes the new budget proposal. After that I suggest reading some George Soros in order to gain some understanding of exactly how we got into this mess. Maybe you can go back and look around for articles on how Reganomics and the agressive anti-regulation policies of the Republican party (and often, moderate Democrats), led to this mess. Also, you might read about the measures FDR took to get us out the the Great Depression. He didn't exactly worry about balancing the budget right off the bat.

In short, read something (the above are just things that came to me off the top of my head, but really, all you need to do is get on the internet or go to a bookstore and/or library), and think about what you are reading. Educate yourself, because you don't sound like you know what you are talking about. There are no easy answers right now, and it's definitely not as easy as you are making it out to be. Furthermore, if you didn't vote, you lose any right whatsoever to complain about anything. Ever. Again. If you can't find any difference between the parties and candidates, then and now, you aren't paying attention.

[idle-curiosity.livejournal.com]

This is why I usually don't do this.

Because it's always nice to know that when I give an honest response, there is always someone who is willing to shed the light on how uneducated you are and how much you don't know.

Thanks.

[veronica-rich.livejournal.com]

Dudes, don't be unkind to each other. You still have the evil sparrabethers to bind you, remember that. ;-)

Seriously, for both of you: I think everybody could stand to be better self-educated. Including me. Including both of you, and everyone else here. Because really, the day anyone stops learning, they might as well settle into their grave and start the dirt nap. (My mother's 57 years old and voted Republican her entire life until 2004 - what turned her against the neocon contingent initially were all the soldiers who died in a war she came to see as unjustified and unwinnable. She listened to the news a little each day and read a few things here and there - mainly newspapers or magazines, I don't think any books, since she's not a big book person - and began questioning what was going on in other parts of the government. This is a woman I NEVER thought would change her mind about politics, for real.)

BUT - and there is always one - I don't want to see friends feeling personally jumped on in my journal, either, or jumping. I know neither of you thinks the other is stupid or mean. Hell, sometimes I forget not everybody is as armor-plated as I am (which comes chiefly from my job ... although I think working in public utilities would give one the chance to be bitched at a lot for things they have no control over, either *G*).

Play nice, guys. And don't take debating personally. As Jack pointed out in AWE at allies temporarily smashing bottles over each other's heads and shooting one another, "This is politics."

[idle-curiosity.livejournal.com]

I wanted to clear up a couple of things, I guess.

One would be that I actually did lie about not voting. Honestly, I really, really didn't want to vote, because what I said was true. I didn't like any of the candidates, for different reasons, none of which I want to go into.

I ended up holding my nose and voting for McCain. You might now see why I didn't want to state such. I just simply didn't want to be piled on.

What I wrote was never meant to be political. It was what I was thinking and feeling, that's all, and that's all it was meant to be.

I was quick to take offense, and I apologize for that.

[concertigrossi.livejournal.com]

(BTW, apropos of the voting thing, if you really hate all the candidates, writing in "None of the above" is a perfectly legal and valid option.) :)

[veronica-rich.livejournal.com]

There's more than one person who reads this journal who voted McCain. I think there's a Nader in here, too (or at least Bill the cat). Who knows, you might be able to say "I told you so" when it's all said and done. Personally, I hope not, since I voted Obama. It all depends what happens in the next few years ...

I think anyone in this day and age is going to get more shit for not voting than for voting the way a majority doesn't like. At least a voter is engaged and has the right to yell when things don't work out, even if it's their candidate who screwed up.

[roguedemon.livejournal.com]

Okay. I will retract most of what I said, based on V's reminder. You hit a very sore spot with me -- the not voting thing. And that one I won't take back. If you don't see a difference between parties and candidates well, there *are* too many differences to be listed here. And if you don;t vote, you have no right to complain.

[veronica-rich.livejournal.com]

*goes back to writing porn ... heh heh heh ...*

[veronica-rich.livejournal.com]

Dudes, don't be unkind to each other. You still have the evil sparrabethers to bind you, remember that. ;-)

Seriously, for both of you: I think everybody could stand to be better self-educated. Including me. Including both of you, and everyone else here. Because really, the day anyone stops learning, they might as well settle into their grave and start the dirt nap. (My mother's 57 years old and voted Republican her entire life until 2004 - what turned her against the neocon contingent initially were all the soldiers who died in a war she came to see as unjustified and unwinnable. She listened to the news a little each day and read a few things here and there - mainly newspapers or magazines, I don't think any books, since she's not a big book person - and began questioning what was going on in other parts of the government. This is a woman I NEVER thought would change her mind about politics, for real.)

BUT - and there is always one - I don't want to see friends feeling personally jumped on in my journal, either, or jumping. I know neither of you thinks the other is stupid or mean. Hell, sometimes I forget not everybody is as armor-plated as I am (which comes chiefly from my job ... although I think working in public utilities would give one the chance to be bitched at a lot for things they have no control over, either *G*).

Play nice, guys. And don't take debating personally. As Jack pointed out in AWE at allies temporarily smashing bottles over each other's heads and shooting one another, "This is politics."

[roguedemon.livejournal.com]

Okay, fair enough. I was too extreme, sorry about that.

[roguedemon.livejournal.com]

Maybe people ave been mocking them because they're, well idiots? It's for the reasons you mentioned -- because their cause seems to be rather silly and ill-defined, and downright counterproductive. Maybe some of us are annoyed with people who sit around and whine without understanding what is really going on -- or at least trying to figure it out, which is probably more accurate. And blaming Obama for using sensible economic theory to try to fix the problem -- I mean, how dare he! And the "teabagging" thing just clinches it. However, I have not seen the TV coverage, so I don't actually know just how bad the mocking is.

You know, I have a feeling that Obama would probably have loved to have a balanced budget. I've gotten the distinct feeling, based on comments he's made and things he's said, that he is not happy with inheriting Bush's mess, and that he's rather be working on all the things he wanted to do to bring real change to the country. But he also seems determined to try to make it work. It's too bad that this mess is especially tricky. I've read so many conflicting viewpoints that I have come to the conclusion that a solid majority of pundits understand what is going on no better or worse than I do.

Hell, I just read something that listed the amount of years the U.S. has run a deficit in modern memory. Scary. After this mess is solved, we need to turn this around. In summer fantasy (Doonesbury nod there), Obama gets re-elected and taxes the *shit* out of the rich in his second term.

If Coleman takes this all the way to the SC, that could be bad, for obvious reasons. Eeek. I actually hadn't thought that far ahead. I keep thinking he'll throw in the towel any day now.