What is a "Tea Party member"?

[Squink]

@Magiver

What does this even mean?

It means the Tea movement has likely reached it’s apex, and will soon start decreasing in size as it begins to feel the need to define what is inside and what is outside it’s tent.

Is Rand Paul a loose cannon, or does he speak for all of you?

[SenorBeef]

@Sam_Stone

And shame on the NY news for not knowing the difference between a libertarian and 'someone so conservative he scares Dick Cheney." When’s the last time you saw an arch-conservative oppose the Iraq war and favor drug legalization and more open borders?

Yeah, this is the inherent stupidity of looking at a giant range of political belief on one liberal-conservative axis. If you generally define conservatism as support for the status quo and traditional values, how could someone who has very radical views qualify as being extremely conservative?

[Squink]

Tea Partiers need to decide if this is their public face:
Rand Paul: Obama’s criticism of BP ‘un-American’

Taking another unconventional stand, Kentucky’s Republican Senate nominee Rand Paul criticized President Barack Obama’s handling of the Gulf oil spill Friday as putting “his boot heel on the throat of BP” and “really un-American.”

Paul’s defense of the oil company came during an interview as he tried to explain his controversial take on civil rights law, an issue that has overtaken his campaign since his victory in Tuesday’s GOP primary.

I can understand Sam’s frustration with the NY news slipping up on the Libertarian angle, but it’s not as if the teabaggers have been straight up from the start as to who they were. The movement’s membership has been a mystery wrapped in the enigma of ‘real Americans’ practically since day one, by the choice of the movement itself.
Of course, that’s not an excuse for the crummy job our free press has been doing:
How Rand Paul’s civil-rights views escaped media scrutiny

The editorial board of Louisville’s Courier-Journal didn’t mince words following its sit-down with Rand Paul last month. Much of what the Republican Senate candidate supports, it wrote, “is repulsive to people in the mainstream,” including “an unacceptable view of civil rights.”

And yet Paul’s view that the federal government should not have the power to force integration on private businesses — part of 1964’s landmark Civil Rights Act — didn’t get the attention of the national press until Wednesday,…

The press should have figured things out months ago, like many unpaid private citizens did.

[Hentor_the_Barbarian]

@Sam_Stone

I meant the stimulus, not the various bailouts. I think this was already mentioned.

Saw this today and thought of my buddy Sam:

Wall Street Journal:

“CBO: Economic Effect Of Stimulus Bigger Than Projected”

Since I don’t subscribe to the WSJ, and instead saw this first at The Wasington Monthly, here’s their link and a quote:

[…]the debate is over.

The $800 billion U.S. stimulus package has had a slightly bigger effect on the U.S. economy than was projected when it was passed more than a year ago, the Congressional Budget Office estimated Tuesday.

Through the first quarter of 2010, the stimulus boosted employment by an estimated 1.3 million to 2.8 million jobs, about a quarter or half million more than projected. Gross domestic product was 1.7 to 4.1 percentage points higher than it would have been without the stimulus, the nonpartisan budget office said.

Similarly, the unemployment would be up to 1.5 percentage points higher in the absence of the stimulus, according to the non-partisan CBO.

Looking ahead, the CBO projects that as many as “3.7 million American jobs could be attributed to the Recovery Act by the end of the September.”

Again, I would rather you just said “Thank you” and went on your way.