The deafening silence of the Tea Party demographic over yet another unfunded mandate

Where's all the outrage over the extension of Bush II tax-cuts for the rich? OK, we all saw this coming since Libertarians and the other red-headed stepchildren on the right ditched rational thought and a sense of social responsibility ages ago, but where is it? Where's that traditional conservative force and principle?

The fact is, the tax-cuts are one of the most massive unfunded mandates in our history. Cue the sound of crickets until another African-American makes it to the White House...

They shouldn't worry so much about this president, but being what they are, they're going to keep begging the question since they cannot cope emotionally since we have a Black one, and one I don't even like, trust, or support. Let me be crystal clear: I didn't vote for this asshole. I understand that the lawn jockey was recently stolen from the Bush dynasty's compounds, but no worries--the current president should be attending their next family reunion, so it's good, it's doss.

Meanwhile--back at the ranch--white closet racists will have to cling to what's left of their puerile fantasy while little has changed for the good in America, and that their irrational support for an empty-suit was just one more case of the mirror being held-up to them.

Once again, they failed the test. How are they so different from the Tea Baggers?

Happy holidays Bill Ayers!

"I am not a witch" is added to the political lexicon

Did people react like this during the Great Depression? Did they vote for dimwits like Christine O'Donnell? Sadly, they nearly did, there being no real "good old days" in the real world. As a matter of fact, people acted about as crazy as they are now, albeit with better results. True, the New Deal didn't go far enough--thanks to the business sector--but at least they voted for FDR.

Americans are a pretty nutty bunch, and O'Donnell just reminds us of this fact. Being "nutty" is alright at parties, but not likely to get good results as a congressional representative, especially a Senator. Yet, nutty is what we tend to elect. O'Donnell is another kind of nutty altogether, however, not that she's hateful.

Fine, lots of young women screw around with the Occult during their teen years, sit on a Satanic altar on their first date...they don't? Really? Whoopsie! Hey, when I'm wrong, I'm wrong. Remember 1999? Me either! What were you having for lunch on June 21st of that year? Me either! Remember the impeachment hearings of Bill Clinton? Remember unlimited credit disguising the fact that Americans were making shit wages, even then? What a time! But it had to end, like all false Edens.

O'Donnell said this on her 1999 Bill Maher appearance (apparently, she blew the entire production staff, starting with Maher): "One of my first dates with a witch was on a satanic altar, and I didn't know it. I mean, there's little blood there and stuff like that," she says. "We went to a movie and then had a little midnight picnic on a satanic altar." As nutty as it sounds, I know of a woman from college who did this! "A little blood"?! OK, we don't want to start throwing the blood libel around here. Would this be tolerated from a Democratic candidate or anyone on the Left? Of course not.

Let's be clear: this isn't "normal" behavior, even to someone like myself who doesn't even believe in the Christian cosmology and certainly doesn't believe in the Devil, Belial, Cheeseburglar, and all shim's other supposed guises. Interestingly, we've gone from denying that we're actually the Devil (Nixon, during the Watergate hearings in 1973) in our politics to denying that we're a holder (witch) of the franchise license (O'Donnell), like a local businessperson who owns a Howard Johnson's (who?). OK, fine, you're not a Republican, just nuts...

So, here were are, 37 years later from the Watergate hearings, and somehow, some way, the GOP is still around. We've gone from "I am not a crook," to the obvious detached insanity of "I am not a witch." If that's not a warning sign with the bodies of dead canaries littered all around it, I don't know what is. What a fuckin' bimbo in our political stasis and limbo. We probably deserve her winning the election. Now dance, bitch...er, witch.

Once again: on the non-existent "Tea Party"

I'm not understanding what so-called liberals, Democrats, and the rest of us on the left and throughout the public aren't getting about these people: they're not a real political party or a movement, they're really just Republicans with no sense of irony or satire.

What don't you people get? They're still Republicans, they haven't changed at all, and no, it's not all about the fact that they cannot emotionally cope with a Black American president. It's not the entire picture with these clowns. Yes, I agree with the logic of the question, "Well, where were they when Bush was wrecking the country?" Where indeed?

I'll tell you where: they were yelling that they were part of his camp, crowing "WE'RE driving the bus NOW!" and making general asses of themselves as is their wont to do. They can't help it. This is why they're continuing on their Children's Crusade over a cliff, and once again, parading their insufficiency as functional, reasoning human beings. We already know that many of them are small businessmen over 40. When you look at the composition of their rallies, it's not inclusive. The majority of the faces are white, male, and middle-aged. What it comes off as is a last, dying gasp of the worst elements of the Baby Boomer generation, a generation fixated on their own entitlement, but not especially atypical in such regards.

None of this flailing, posing, and of course, yelling, is going to fix America anytime soon, but that's why billionaire far right extremists like the Koch dynasty are bankrolling many of these fake populist gatherings. They know that these are the inevitable deficits of humanity that one finds in all modern societies, the eternally lost, the naive, the stupid. None of this is truly real. Yes, some of these people began at the urging of the small-minded Texas Republican Rep. Ron Paul, but this was never a spontaneous rising of the public.

An admittedly compacted and generalized schematic is in order:

1. A segment of fiscal and socially conservative Republicans feel burned by the Bush II administration at its endpoint. They got even more government under his term, and Roe v. Wade is still standing. They begin denying in public that they're Republicans, and frequently misquote the Constitution for no apparent reason.

2. Barack Obama is elected the first African-American President of the United States because he is not George W. Bush or a Republican.

3. Shit hits the proverbial fan and freaks like Ron Paul and Dick Armey begin the push to stimulate what has been mislabelled ever since (by the very people within it and backing it) as a "movement." It is not a movement, more a controlled rabble. The fragmentary "group"is really just a demographic of mostly petty bourgeois held together by one thing: they don't like that the Democrats won the election (some even hinting at insurrection, no less), but that they really don't like Barack Obama. Oh yes, and they don't like paying taxes...at all. Many of them also have a weird emotional attachment to the rich and perversely fight for that group's right not to pay any taxes.

4. No need for a replay of the health care debate.

5. Meanwhile--back at the ranch--all these "Tea Baggers" are denying that they're Republicans.

6. The 2010 midterms loom, and people denying they're Republicans vote once again for Republican candidates, most-of-whom are chosen by the RNC to run, to serve the interests of Wall Street and the rest of the Lollipop Guild.

Now, exactly why are they any different and what are they doing that's any different, ultimately? This is truly impossible to satirize. There is no Tea Party. It's not a party. It's not a real group. It's a Shibboleth, put out there as a distraction. Mission accomplished.

Redneck piss-tests

Hahahaha, no, they didn't have to "cram" for it, an image I'd rather not have in my head now, and it's of G.G. Allin ('nuff said).

But what is a redneck piss-test? Easy: your'n.

That'll learn 'ya (or not).

Is there really a Tea Party Movement?

No, there is not. There's a loose conglomeration of the reactionary right, conservative (whatever that means) senior citizens who have been mislead in thinking that their Medicare is going to be cut, closet racists who had no problem with eight criminal years of Bush II but don't like having a black president, tax protesters, gun rights activists, the rural and suburban unemployed, wacko evangelicals, Libertarians, disgruntled former Republicans, militia nuts, neo-Nazis, and a lot of other people I'd never invite over for a drink or a cookout anytime soon.

What the so-called "Tea Party movement" is constitutes reactionary, rightist populism. In other words, misguided, misdirected populist rage that's apparently not willing to be "co-opted" by the GOP let alone the DNC.

In some crucial sense, they're the opposite side of the coin to the progressive left, meaning the majority of the public when you look at the polls regarding social issues and the spending to combat social problems. The majority is for a leftward reformist model, not a rightward trend. Where does that leave these red-headed stepchildren of the right? As far as anyone can tell, an ineffectual demographic minority that, yes, gets it that Wall Street is the problem, yet doesn't like the idea of New Deal reforms and progressive taxation of the wealthiest.

You know: the dumb assholes who still cling to the American Dream.

There is an off-chance that some of these folks will have that "road to Damascus" conversion and actually see that their own interests are best represented in joining the antiwar and progressive left in the streets (as well as on the Internet), in joining together to stop the corporate assault on our rights, but so far it's a pipe dream. Instead, we all harp on more fringe elements of this demographic, and while that's not entirely misplaced in its importance, it's not all about the problem children, it's about the overall group that's been labelled as "Tea Party." Some have implied that many of these self-styled "Tea Baggers" could only attend many of these events by being small business owners, and indeed, there's a kernal of truth to this. But it's not the entire story, some are simply retired baby boomers.

I'm not really sure why the GOP would even want this disparate gaggle of the terminally confused, but what else do they have left as a base? Yet, as stated before, the demographic is fundamentally mistrustful of the entire political establishment and stubbornly resists being used, of being co-opted. Regardless of that, they have been used pretty effectively by both the GOP and DNC to assist in a creating a smokescreen so that bogus health reform could be passed. It doesn't surpise me that this pseudo-movement began with Texas congressional representative Ron Paul since it's as confused in its viewpoint and message as much as he is. To add to the confusion, the mainstream corporate media affixed the labels to them and let things fly, and fly they have, right out the window.

Is there really a Tea Party movement? I don't think so, and it's not going to decide any national elections anytime soon. What it will do, and has done, is to provide one more spectacle, one more distraction, from the worthwhile goals of reformists and the dreams in the hearts of American populists of every stripe. The Mesopotamian priests used the corruption of language to control the builders of the Tower of Babel--but it went bust, and no one could understand each other anymore, and the pillar that was the society of that time, the work towards real civilization, remained unfinished and the people disbursed. The show was effectively over. Funny that religion is part of the equation again, but if it's broken don't fix it when it comes to holding onto power.