Posted on 04/11/2009 3:21:50 AM PDT by Zakeet
I spent the better part of an hour earlier today scanning the various sites and blogs to try and understand what specifically the Fox-Pajamas tea parties are about. Having absorbed about as much of the literature as I can, I have to say I'm still befuddled.
Option 1: It's a protest of the bank bailouts orchestrated by Bush and now Obama. But surely these tea-partiers understand what would happen if we didn't bail the banks out. Are they advocating letting major banks fail? Or are they advocating a Krugman-style government take-over? No idea.
Option 2: It's a protest against tax hikes. But there have barely been any!
[Snip]
Option 3: It's a protest against illegal immigration. Ok, so why the tea? Weren't all the original tea-partiers illegal immigrants?
Option 4: It's a protest against government debt. Yay! I will leave aside the somewhat awkward fact that Fox News and Pajamas Media barely covered the massive debt racked up by the Republicans during a period of economic growth.
[Snip]
What it looks like to me is some kind of amorphous, generalized rage on the part of those who were used to running the country and now don't feel part of the culture at all. But the only word for that is: tantrum.
These are not tea-parties. They are tea-tantrums. And the adolescent, unserious hysteria is a function not of a movement regrouping and refinding itself. It's a function of a movement's intellectual collapse and a party's fast-accelerating nervous breakdown.
(Excerpt) Read more at andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com ...
Poor Andrew just doesn’t get it, does he?
He is wrong on so many pounts that this article should have been trashed. Let me try to refute his points:
1. Bank bailouts were wrong under Bush and we flooded Congress with a resounding “NO”. They did it anyway. The bank bailouts are wrong under 0bama and we flooded Congress with a resounding “NO”. They did it anyway. Now it’s our turn!
2. “Hardly” any tax hikes because they haven’t been passed, yet! I guess the higher taxes that have been passed don’t count.
3. Founders of this country were NOT illegal immigrants. Stop with the rationalizations.
4. See Number 1 Versailles on the Potomac doesn’t listen.
5. You want to hear some proposals for cuts. How about no Medicare (and I’m on it), no Depts of Education, HHS, Energy, Labor, Commerce, OSHA, EPA, etc? How about Zero earmarks? How about limiting Congress to two stff and 1 secretary? How about no pensions for Congress? How about no foreign aid? How about we drill for our own oil instead of paying tin horn dictators? And that’s just for starters!
The reason for the tea parties has not changed in over 230 yars - “Taxation without representation is tyranny.”
Most, if not all were Colonists ... second, third & fourth generation. Colonists were British subjects who immigrated to the Americas from mostly Britain, but also France and other European countries ... Huguenots for instance. In any case they didn't sneak into this country, or arrive legally only to overstay their visa and meld into the masses ... they were here legally. Entirely so ...
Andrew, shut your gay little pie hole. You have no standing in this country and we don’t give a damn what you think. Go back to Britain.
It is good that they are getting scared. Taxes + debt + loss of civil liberties = a lower standard of living and national indentured servitude to the debt-holding Chinese.
What?
Bone-smugglers. LOL!
I can’t get how these privileged, elitist scum justify to themselves how they’ll survive once Lord Voldemort attains total power.
Lord Vodemort being a figurative transliteration of the communist regime they’re dreaming of. These “journalists” will be lined up along with the rest providing garden nurture after their purpose is done.
What exactly does anyone expect to change because of the tea parties? All these people seem to be patting themselves on the back because they screwed up the courage to confess undying love for the prom queen, but she's still not going to go out with you.
He can’t leave his buddies “behind”
That’s one damn great list.
Please keep contributing.
SP,
Always nice to have a little perspective.
Thanks.
E01
>>What exactly does anyone expect to change because of the tea parties?<<
I don’t know about anybody else, but I expect that we will be not ignored. When Congress has the phones ringing off the hook and their e-mail box is overflowing and critical letters to the editor actualy get published - AND THEN THEY VOTE AGAINST OUR WISHES - it is time to take the initiative.
As a Marine, you do understand what taking the initiative means.
Semper fi do or die
I agree it’s a tantrum. I think these tea parties will accomplish exactly nothing.
There, fixed it.
Please take a look at the riots of last week's G-20. That is a tantrum.
On April 15th, there will a thousands of adults, protesting their governments involvement in the private sector business, you see we already have laws to deal with failed or failing businesses.
We had Bush spending and while we voiced our concerns about it, we didn't have 0bama’s massive trillion dollar debts being pushed through in the cover of darkness and against the will of the People. The taxes are coming Mr. Sullivan. Are you not listening to your representatives in Congress working out ways to tax things, fee things, and make it more difficult for business to operate. Have you missed the confiscation conversations of Oct. 2008? You see Mr. Sullivan we adults are trying to stop what is happening, before it happens. We are demanding temperance from our government. We are demanding that we not send debt to our grandchildren. Blessed is the man who leaves not an inheritance to his son, but to his grandson. We are protesting that debt is not our children's inheritance. Debt is our responsibility and we a demanding it be dealt with as our responsibility.
It's ludicrous to think that we who are the most upset think we ran the country when Dubya was president. It's all the more ludicrous when one looks at most leftist protests and realizes that what they come down to is being upset that reality prevailed over their fantasies.
(1) Tell us what would be so bad about letting SOME major banks fail? Tell us what would be so bad about letting SOME major auto manufacturers fail? One thing, fer shur, is that if the way Congress contributed to the failures came out it might be bad for the socialists.
(2) The vapidity of this point becomes clear when the word "extremism" appears. Sullivan doesn't have somehting to say so he resorts to name-calling.
(3)First, no the citizen's of Boston were not illegal immigrants. Second the tea parties have nothing to do with illegal immigration, while Sullivan's raising of the point suggests that he gets paid by the word, and didn't have anything relevant to say.
(4)So the way too large debt shouldered during the Bush year's means we should shut up while the current crop of live-for-today politicians take on a debt which will crush our children and grand children? No point here, so Sullivan, filling space, takes a deserved swipe at RINOs.
So having raised a bunch of spectres which he can vlow away with arch and snide remarks, Sullivan then makes a generalization about people who partake in tea parties which hve not yet happened and walks away telling himself and those who mistake glibness for wit that he and they are just SEW much better than we.
Man, I need to get a ob like his. No work. Just write like a high school senior girl and collect your check.
In what way? Sullivan makes several points. Do you agree with all? If so, why are you here on FR?
As a Marine, do you understand what "taking a defended position" means?
Liberals are angry that the tea parties have gained traction and reflect poorly on Lord Zero. Worse yet is the fact that a lot of protesters will be legitimate democrats who are legitimately angry at the expansion of government.
ACORN trouble may actually work to our advantage with these middle of the road democrats.
And what exactly do you propose doing?
Or are you just a paper tiger?
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