You are correct. Your definition of “wealthy” and mine probably differ, but your post is right on point. That’s my main problem with him.
I thought Obama was a typical democrat as a candidate. “Centrist? Why of course!”. As President, he has been honest about his goals and intentions, however.
I thought a “teabagger” was somebody who waits until you are passed out drunk and then takes a picture of you with his balls on your face.
It is. Using the term in this context is “low hanging fruit” (if you will) to compare the people at the tea parties to those individuals you are alluding to.
Sure, claim you were passed out now. But that doesn’t explain the smile.
Surely you have some pictures of you out there somewhere from 2000-2008 protesting government spending with a clever sign, right?
As usual, not that simple. Originally a sexual practice amongst deevs, it later devolved as a term of ritual humiliation. The notion is that the victor dangles the Family Jules over the face of the vanquished and repeatedly “dips”, much like someone brewing tea in a cup. Given that the possibility of unforeseen catastrophic retaliation is so dire, I personally doubt this has ever actually been practiced.
The term somehow spread to include athletic humiliations, and eventually, multi-player video game platforms such as Halo. To be utterly humiliated in virtual combat by a twelve-year old girl from Petaluma, the unfortunate young man may be said to have been “teabagged”, and is subject to widespread derision. I have this on excellent authority.
How the term crept in to our political discourse is far from clear, but quite early on participants of “tea party” demonstrators began to refer to themselves as “tea-baggers”. It’s most like to have been an inept imitation of the slang of much younger persons, in a forlorn attempt to be a “hep cat”.
I think, then, that the best record would show that the “tea party” participants referred to themselves as “tea baggers”, and the rest of us, stunned by the clarity of their insight, adopted the term.
Is this your way of trying to say that my statement somehow lacks legitimacy because I don’t have one? You apparently need to believe that I cheered Bush on instead of thinking he was spending too much. I suppose the next step for you is calling me a racist because I disagree with Obama.
Why is that important? Spending has been going up and up and up for years. Let’s say there is some point at which the masses will have had enough and start to march. At whatever point that is, someone can say “Ah, so people are complaining now when so-and-so is in office, but they didn’t claim when the last guy of the other party was in office and spending was high…therefore: HYPOCRISY!!!”
Thinking about how good its gonna feel when he bites down.
I’m saying your claims of being non-partisan on the issue of opposing big spending is bullshit.
No. This idea has no logical connection to what you just said. You’re just trying to discredit my me. A weak attempt at that.
For one thing, Bush and the Republicans have actually spent far more than Obama has yet. Most of the spending that gets credited to Obama is not his.
The teabaggers want to derive credibility from the idea that they’re just not a bunch of partisan hack hypocrites, that they’re making principled stands on an issue, so they claim “oh, we oppose big government and big spending by both parties” - and it’s so clear that it was bullshit because when Bush & Co. RAN UP THE DEFICIT MORE THAN THE ENTIRE HISTORY OF THE COUNTRY COMBINED there was nary a peep from these staunch, principled teabaggers. Obama comes in and adds a little bit on top of that giant clusterfuck and it’s OH NO, IT’S TIME FOR OUR NON-PARTISAN PRINCIPLED STAND NOW!
Right.
Because I haven’t produced a notarized statement dated prior to 2008 to that effect? Because I didn’t come to Las Vegas and seek you out for a personal briefing? If you choose not to take me at my world because it’s more comfortable for your world view, that’s your choice.
Ever wonder why the Pubbies aren’t all upset about food stamps? Oh, sure, they don’t much care for this sort of socialist spending, all touch-feely nanny statey…but they don’t seem to be very upset about it, they aren’t tearing their hair and setting the furniture on fire.
I suspect that the answer may lie within the spreadsheets of the Cargill Corp and Archer Daniels Midlands, as they proceed with their plot to make corn the dominant life form on the North American continent.
But only a darkly cynical radical might suggest that if the insurance companies could make a buck off this, a new light of comity and harmony would arise. If Obama were to propose that all the uninsured would be insured by directly paying the “going rate” to the insurance companies, he would find receptive ears on the right. Their newfound compassion for the disadvantaged would rise like a gorge, they would glow like angels of mercy, if we would just install a pipe from the treasury to their coffers.
Now, we would have to be stern! None of the fines and penalties imposed for fraud can be paid from government funds, they would have to pay that from a seperate account! Thats the give and take of politics, you know. They make a sacrifice, we give something too.
Maybe the tea-baggers wouldn’t vanish. But their money would.
How about some message board posts, from any message boards, to prove this? You know, the sort of stuff you’re saying now - have any of that from the past?
Now - I can’t say that you, as an individual, are definitely guilty of this. I don’t know what you personally have said in the past. I can only conclude that it’s likely that you are guilty of this, because so many of the teabaggers claim to be non-partisan people driven by ideology, and yet these rallies only formed when a democrat came into office. If everyone in these rallies were what they claimed, this wouldn’t be a recent phoenominon.
But it’s not comfortable for my world view, dipshit. Read the OP. I’m not a democrat. I would love to see a legitimate, grass roots protest of government size and spending. Which is why it saddens me that these rallies are partisan bullshit, run by the rich and orchestrated by Fox News.
I would love for there to be a legitimate movement in the US for the reduction of the size, power, and spending for the government - not a movement for the reduction of government when the other party has power.
Indeed. What we have a distressing number of - and always have - are petty authoritarians. A man’s home is his castle, spare the rod and spoil the child, and all that. They’re angry, they’re scared, they’re proud, they think they know it all, and lately, they’re prone to speechify.
A primal concern among this class of heavily armed ninnies is Loss of Control. Not self-control - obviously; for cry-yi, just* look* at them - but what I’ll call capital-C Control over their families, their money and property, and not incidentally, over any noses that may impede the free swing of their arms. They have very little control in their work lives or in the institutions they value (eg: the church or the armed services), so they rationalize this as The Way Things Ought To Be and seek ever tighter Control of their private spheres, and those of others who might come close to them.
In this scenario, Big Gov appears to be out to take away their Control through higher taxes and an unwelcome lack of moral reservation about who deserves help and who doesn’t. A national health care plan will thus somehow unman them (or their men, if they’re female). Liberty is just another word for being the boss of the house; Big Gov allows petty authoritarians to deflect the idea of bossism away from themselves and say Washington is the real tyrant.
People left-of-right who either fulminate or scratch their heads about all the vehement anger over a plan to give a break to folks without a lot of money might consider that a lot of those very same folks consider Loss of Control a greater and more immediate threat to their lives - and just as importantly, to the ideal they call “America” - than either serious illness or poverty.
In hindsight, of course, it might have been better to leave Japan to the Chinese . . .
From The Nation:
Mike Malloy? The guy’s a fruit-loop, arguably as bad as the likes of Glenn Back. But he’s also the exception that proves the rule: last I heard, his show came on at midnight on about six radio stations across the country. He certainly doesn’t have Congressmen rushing to “clarify their statements” when they imprudently speak against him, as has happened many times with regards to Rush Limbaugh. Not even the much less extreme and much more mainstream Keith Olbermann or the downright sweet-natured Rachel Maddow get that sort of consideration. Even with the left enjoying our greatest political clout in decades, we still get flat-out insulted by Rahm Emanuel with no repercussions whatsoever. (Not that I’m really arguing there should be any.)
You might be surprised. Long article in the New York Times just yesterday about how lax enforcement of the Clean Water Act has gotten. I learned that the plant nearest me has failed twelve of its last twelve inspections, on grounds of releasing polluting effluent into the the groundwater local to the Hudson River. Total formal actions taken against them during that time period: 1. Total fines levied: Zero.
Naturally, the plant is located immediately adjacent to a poor and mostly Hispanic community. It’s not up on top of the hill where my wealthy neighbors and I live.
I do agree that the particular phrasing Jones used in this case counts as race baiting, but that’s hardly the topic at hand, so I’ll leave it there.
Isn’t that exactly what Baucus et al tried to do? I do believe you’re right.
I’m a pessimist, I’m pretty much always right. Just don’t like it very much…
Drug makers, not the insurance companies. Still don’t like it much.
They’re a bunch of peasants.