...or be fired.

Ms. Carender does realize that the term of office is 4 years unless you can impeach and convict the office holder, doesn’t she?

Jesse, they have ideas, like Cut Taxes! and Cut Spending!, Stop Immigration!, Healthcare For Me and Not You!, and Let’s Make Iran a Glass Parking Lot!.

Coming up with these marvelous ideas is the hard part.  Making them work is just trivial implementation detail and not worth spending much effort to follow through.

***

Remember:  These are the same Real Americans who said nothing while Bush Jr. doubled the national debt after first destroying the budget surplus he inherited from Clinton.  They didn’t say anything because the “Fiscal Conservatives” were in power and all was well, whether it looked that way or not.  Besides, they had to deal with the aftermath of Clinton’s failure to anticipate 9/11 (which, of course, took place just before the Republicans came in to protect America from liberalism).

But when The Kenyan Usurper stole the presidency from the Real President, John McCain (even though they hate McCain), then they were able to see clearly just how mind-bogglingly nefarious the Democrats really are.  Imagine, the Democrats started racking up the debt the whole time that Liberal Bush Jr. was a RINO president!  And then Obambi caused the financial collapse!  The horror!

No wonder The Teabaggeratti need to take control…

Shorter Carender: I realize that the quickest ride to political oblivion is sticking to my so-called principles and condemning Medicare.

Ms. Carender only knows that she has a number of enablers/fans to her blog, gets some attention when she waves her flag and protests whatever it is that she protests, and is far too self-important to ever step back from herself to see if she even makes sense.

I am honestly starting to think that once a black man became President, very large numbers of morons simultaneously figured out for themselves that they’re entitled to their own turn in the Oval Office.  Of course it became a movement, as anger at GWB* will bring out an organized motivation for change in certain segments of the populace.

*Governing While Black.  Of course it means that, why do you even have to ask?

Shorter Jesse : I’ve never raised a two year old, and therefore can’t quite make the comparison…

We can’t let the teabaggers write the history textbooks cause they will make themselves out in a good light.  The teabaggers are an embarrassment, history should look at them as a cross between the KKK and the Know-Nothing Party.

I think she’s still waiting for the underpants gnomes to explain step 2

Ms. Carender does realize that the term of office is 4 years unless you can impeach and convict the office holder, doesn’t she?

That kind of talk is indicative how far the corporation is right ideal has pervaded the right.  They talk in terms of management, hiring and firing.  They live in a fantasy land where making money is right and those who make it are the best at everything.  Governing a nation is far different from the running of a country. 

Course she knows damn well she can claim these overarching terms but the second she cements herself her base will start tearing itself apart.  This whole movement is going to begin tearing itself apart mid-2010 when candidates need to start standing for things and either they’ll alienate the tea party or independents.  This jello approach is fine when you’re complaining but the reality is a small minority of people support this asinine ideal.

OMG they’re so incoherent.  I don’t think they even know what they want.  They just know there’s a black man in the white house and they ain’t happy about it.

Just going to submit that Rand did believe in charity, she just believed that it shouldn’t be expected, or encouraged.

Actually, my recollection of those awful, awful books was that Rand considered any sort of charitable impulse to be “the Sanction of the Victim.”  You were free to donate to charity, but you were, under Objectivist theory, morally deficient in doing so and were not truly enlightened until you demonstrated the moral courage to scrape off the parasites and leave them to their fate.

Of course, I have repeatedly told Objectivists I have known that I consider Atlas Shrugged to be the one true Satanic Bible, so perhaps I am not an unbiased critic.

Damaged.  Goods.

For the Movement Conservative Movement (The whole “Tea Party” moniker is just a formal tag for them), the only goal is cultural dominance. Full stop.

They have no ideals. They have no plans. They have no ideas. They don’t even have concepts. All they have is the idea that they need to “win” and that “liberals” need to lose. That’s all they have.

It’s been oft-said that if Obama gave them everything they could ever want, they’d still oppose it. And it’s not so much because he’s black, but because it’s more about the fighting than anything else for them.

Albert has it mostly right.. For some historical perspective, I’d read The Five Stages of Fascism, by Paxton.  It kind of outlines the needs for a facist movement to develop: A weak (perception) government, massive appeal, anti-EVERYTHING, victim mentality, no clear-cut ideology, and a love of violence. Kinda sounds like the tea-partiers? Doesn’t it?  Scary, huh?

Paxton’s journal article is found here: http://www.salemstate.edu/~cmauriello/pdfEuropean/Paxton_Five Stages of Fascism.pdf if you want to read it.

Since Todd Browning’s film “Freaks” was a major influence on my childhood, when someone speaks of a “Randian squirrel”, I picture something like a feather boa: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zAZROWA8EB4

It seems that recently there has been some growing friction between the official-unofficial Teabagger movement and the Republican Party - namely that many teabaggers don’t want to be directly co-opted by the GOP.

My sincere hope is that these idiots decide to hijack a lot of elections where Republicans are slightly favored and run 3rd Party Teabagger candidates and split the wingnut votes.

Irony of ironies - Rep. Ron Paul, who is considered among some teabaggers to be an ideological founder of the <bowel> movement, is himself being challenged in a primary by at least two (or maybe three) teabaggers who don’t think he’s true enough to whatever conservative principals the teabaggers are supposed to be loyal to.  And simultaneously, his son Rand Paul has become the darling of the teabagger faction in the Kentucky U.S. Senate race, where he’s now polling ahead of the establishment GOP candidate, mucyh to the chagrin of the NRSC.

There may be a silver lining to this whole teabagging thing - hopefully they cause enough disruption between themselves and the establishment Republicans that they wind up blowing a lot of winnable elections by taking votes from each other.  They already did it once last year in NY-23, where a Democrat managed to win a Congressional seat that had been held by the Republicans since the Civil War.

All this thinking about what the hell your formless, aimless mass protests are about is really hard, you know?

Oh hell- we know what it’s about.  Watching Tea Partiers trying to explain their outrage without sounding racist is like watching a man who has just smashed his thumb with a hammer in the presence of small children.

Let’s Make Iran a Glass Parking Lot!

...except that the Teabaggers have a pretty big ideological rift on that subject.  The Ron Paul faction wants the U.S. to engage in a totally isolationist policy where we cut ourselves off from the rest of the world entirely and shut down every foreign military base (and cut off all foreign aid as well), but the neocon types want to bomb Iran to smithereens.

There are a hell of a lot of fissures among the wingnuts lately… Glenn Beck got blasted by, of all people, Rush Limbaugh last week because Beck accused the Republicans of being equally responsible for for the deficit as the Democrats (which is actually one of the few semi-truthful observations that whackjob has ever made).

purplegirl, there is such a thing as a recall election in many states.  I really wish that MA had them, but that would conflict with the “in crowd decides who gets to run and who gets bullied out of the race” ethos around here - the same attitude that brought us Martha Coakley.

“Ms. Carender, 30, began paying attention to politics during the 2008 campaign, “

I think that explains it all right there. If you never paid any attention to politics before the year 2007 then obviously you wouldn’t understand why the stimulus bill was in any way necessary. Thus you would complain a lot about it, even if Bush had tried to solve the same problem in 2008 by just throwing money at corporations.

Since Palin is very good at being vague and cutsy and not able to articulate actual solutions, I think she is the perfect representative of the tea party. 

And the fact that tea partiers don’t know what their goal is doesn’t surprise me in the least.  I haven’t met one of them that seemed very smart.  They like rhetoric and protesting, but governing would be beyond their mental powers.

Leaders, no. Sponsors, yes (ExiledOnline link—may not be SFW). It’s not really a conspiracy, but follow the money and favour-banking and you the same Rotarian Socialist sugar daddies behind the astroturf protests, the pro-insurance-industry “citizens’ groups,” the Libertarian orgs like Freedomworks, and the journalists who are shills (e.g. CNBC’s Rick Santelli) and apologists (e.g. The Atlantic‘s Megan McArdle) for the above.

BUt it seems that the NYT continues to engage in the toothless liberal’s tactic of mocking the dullards who are the dupes of the worlds’ Kochs and Murdochs. Though I will admit that Know-Nothing idiots like Carender have their entertainment value:

“Well,” she said, thinking for a long time and then sighing. “Let’s see.

The reporter kindly omitted the distinct sound of rusty, clanking gears that accompanied Carender’s statement. She may be unsure of Palin’s cred, but at least Palin knows enough to write her key talking point on her hand in magic marker.

There may be a silver lining to this whole teabagging thing - hopefully they cause enough disruption between themselves and the establishment Republicans that they wind up blowing a lot of winnable elections by taking votes from each other.

For that to happen, the Dems have to articulate a reasonable alternative to the GOP’s cheap-labour position and Teabaggers’ xenophobic and racist one on the so-called immigration issue, which is the key wedge. Ted Kennedy was making a start on it before he died, but the current bunch of Dems are either incompetent or sort of agree with the neoCon preference for multi-generational gastarbeiters.

“Ms. Carender, 30, began paying attention to politics during the 2008 campaign, “

That’s hilarious, she didn’t start following politics until she was 28 years old.  That’s might partially explain her poor grasp of the subject.

this is true, but has nothing whatever to do with the president:

“purplegirl, there is such a thing as a recall election in many states.”

which is what ms.  carender was referring to.

i have yet to see one of these people (teabaggers) interviewed who was able to clearly articulate what they’re angry about, who exactly it is they’re angry at and why, and what their proposed solutions to the problems they haven’t clearly articulated are. they all come across as uninformed, ignorant twits.

for reasons not yet clear to me, i am supposed to pay attention to them.

It might, leedevious, but… you can learn a whole lot in 2 years if you put your mind to it.  They just don’t care.  It’s about the rage and hate.

That kind of talk is indicative how far the corporation is right ideal has pervaded the right.  They talk in terms of management, hiring and firing.

I’m not sure about the ‘corporation is right’ thing. The teabaggers seem to distrust Corporations as much as liberals do. What they are against is ‘bigness’, whether it is big business or big government. ‘Bigness’ represents power and forces that are out of their control. It also represents issues that are larger than they can comprehend, which is one reason why we get slogans and not policy.

There may be a silver lining to this whole teabagging thing - hopefully they cause enough disruption between themselves and the establishment Republicans that they wind up blowing a lot of winnable elections by taking votes from each other.  They already did it once last year in NY-23, where a Democrat managed to win a Congressional seat that had been held by the Republicans since the Civil War.

This is why I’m not terribly worried about November. The Republicans will pick up seats, but far, far fewer than they would without the Teabagging. This goes for the Senate, too, Rand Paul is much more vulnberable to a Democrat as is Marco Rubio.

As for balancing the budget, if you take tax rates back to Clinton levels and cut the fat from the military budget you’re more than halfway there.

“Governing a nation is far different from the running of a country. “

Oh, Xerinar, I do not think that what you said was what you meant to say. Last word should be corporation?

Also I’m thrilled that Bill Halter is running in Arkansas now. He has a much better chance of holding onto that seat than Lincoln, and would be a much better Senator. He reminds me of Bill Clinton.

I’m not sure about the ‘corporation is right’ thing. The teabaggers seem to distrust Corporations as much as liberals do. What they are against is ‘bigness’, whether it is big business or big government.

Unless, of course, they’re in charge—they want power, they want to be the bosses they simultaneously fear and worship. At that point, they’ll be peachy keen with the “‘corporation is right’ thing” (alternately known as the 4th Purpose/Human Resources Culture) which has been knocked into their heads since elementary school. JoeDaPlumber’s fantasies (and Ayn Rand’s for that matter) involved the power that comes with owning a big corporation and screwing over others.

What the Teabaggers are against is not so much “bigness” as it is complexity. In a way, it’s unfair to expect a sequential thinker to form a coherent and realistic public policy position, unless that position involves some sort of authoritarian control. The ignorance that leads one to become a Teabagger only exacerbates that problem.

The problem in California is that people want government services but don’t want to pay for them, this lady seems like she would like to take that style of governance to the national level.  I guess it is not surprising that the movement is based on fictional books as they are about as realistic as Atlas Shrugged.

I don’t think she wants charities or states to handle Medicare.  She simply wants it to go away completely, even if that means people will die.  But of course it’s an unpopular position to say “Just let the old and poor people die so I can have slightly more money”, and she’s smart enough to realize how bad that really sounds to normal, ethical people.  So she tries to sugarcoat it in a way that doesn’t sound so selfish, and other selfish or brainwashed people buy it because it’s exactly what they want to hear.  And she has convinced herself that she’s fooling the rest of us too.

Rand is a prime example of why people need to be much more careful about judging human behavior based on fiction.

All of this shit is complicated enough that it’s sometimes difficult to know who to be against or what to be angry about (except in the broadest terms) or what to be for (should we go with a crappy partial reform or hold out for single-payer?) even for political junkies.

What marks the teabaggers as movement conservatives is their anger at having any of the complexity pointed out by others, and their complete lack of interest in learning.

Btw, I’m not even sure that california is about people not wanting to pay for services; when you set things up so that even a tiny minority of freeloaders can stop everybody who wants to pay for services from doing so, you’re structurally screwed.

“I’m not sure about the ‘corporation is right’ thing. The teabaggers seem to distrust Corporations as much as liberals do. What they are against is ‘bigness’, whether it is big business or big government. ‘Bigness’ represents power and forces that are out of their control. It also represents issues that are larger than they can comprehend, which is one reason why we get slogans and not policy.”

...but because they’re not really clear on what they’re “fighting against”, it’s all too easy for the Corporations and other large power holders to manipulate them in doing their bidding.  See the bullshit response they have toward Healthcare Reform — which in many cases is against the Teabagger’s own interests and in favor of the Large Evil (Big Insurance and Big Medical) Corporations they claim to loathe.

Ultimately they’re just another group of Useful Idiots to use by anyone who can work out how to pull their strings…

I know I’m overly snarky here, but I keep hearing “I’m ignorant, and angry about things which I’m ignorant of, but by God if you tell me I’m ignorant and try to educate me I’ll get even more ignorantly angry about these things I’m ignorant about!”

Unless, of course, they’re in charge—they want power, they want to be the bosses they simultaneously fear and worship.

Of course. ‘Do As I Say, Don’t Do As I Do’.

“I know I’m overly snarky here, but I keep hearing “I’m ignorant, and angry about things which I’m ignorant of, but by God if you tell me I’m ignorant and try to educate me I’ll get even more ignorantly angry about these things I’m ignorant about!”

I wouldn’t say you were being overly snarky. I’d say you’ve hit the nail on the head perfectly.

That’s hilarious, she didn’t start following politics until she was 28 years old.  That’s might partially explain her poor grasp of the subject.

Other way around; if she’s been working this hard for two years, and she’s still that stupid, there are reasons information isn’t getting in.

And now I fight in Canadian forums with Canucks who want to import TEA party “priniciples” north and have read that UK versions are starting up. This shit is contagious.

2008, 2008…. hmmm. Didn’t something happen in 2008?  Oh yea, a black man was elected president.  That made her sit up and pay attention.

At least the white guys in this article are honest about it:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/28/magazine/28Alabama-t.html?hpw

I’m not even sure that california is about people not wanting to pay for services; when you set things up so that even a tiny minority of freeloaders can stop everybody who wants to pay for services from doing so, you’re structurally screwed.

They raised the tax rates and lowered the exemption amounts on the CA state income tax, which is precisely the wrong thing to do given the present recession, and it will arguably drive more business activity out of the state, which of course contributes to the downward spiral.

But, the biggest threat to the state is the Demon Sheep, according to Carly Fiorina.

You Tube Link

No wonder The Teabaggeratti need to take control…

They are bitterly disappointed that in the past year Obama has not been able to clean up all the messes that it took Bush eight years to get us into. Obama is shirking ownership of our problems

That’s hilarious, she didn’t start following politics until she was 28 years old.  That’s might partially explain her poor grasp of the subject.

That’s nothing. Meg Whitman didn’t start following politics till she was almost twice that age. And now she feels entitled to become Governor of California by acclamation. Because she’s not a career politician. Apparently she doesn’t realize that eight years of Schwarzenegger are not an ad for non-career-politician governors.

“purplegirl, there is such a thing as a recall election in many states.”

which is what ms.  carender was referring to.

There is no recall at the federal level.  Yet another example of Ms. Carender’s astounding ignorance.

Incidentally, I don’t believe for one second that she hadn’t paid attention to politics until 2008.  That’s another “aw, shucks, I’m just folks” Sarah Palinesque argument, which teabaggers eat up like fried pork rinds.  She’s a born-and-bred Republican.  Mark my words.

I’m not even sure that california is about people not wanting to pay for services; when you set things up so that even a tiny minority of freeloaders can stop everybody who wants to pay for services from doing so, you’re structurally screwed.

The situation in California is what you get when a state is simultaneously very liberal and very conservative.  The liberals push through heaps of entitlements and services, while conservatives hold off any and all necessary tax hikes to actually pay for those services.

purplegirl, there is such a thing as a recall election in many states.  I really wish that MA had them, but that would conflict with the “in crowd decides who gets to run and who gets bullied out of the race” ethos around here - the same attitude that brought us Martha Coakley.

Correct, but only state officials can be subjected to recall… federal officials - meaning U.S. Representatives and U.S. Senators - cannot be recalled by a vote, per the Constitution.

This goes for the Senate, too, Rand Paul is much more vulnberable to a Democrat as is Marco Rubio.

Rubio would be easier to pick off than Crist, but the current Democratic candidate, Kendrick Meek, has no realistic shot against either one of them.  He has no money and very little name recognition outside of South Florida, and he’s consistently getting blown away by 15-20 points in every poll putting him against either Crist or Rubio.  Every analyst seems to believe that either Marco Rubio will win as a Republican, or Charlie Crist will win - as a Democrat.  If Crist doesn’t switch parties, Rubio is gonna roll him, and then probably cruise to victory over Meek.

I know I’m overly snarky here, but I keep hearing “I’m ignorant, and angry about things which I’m ignorant of, but by God if you tell me I’m ignorant and try to educate me I’ll get even more ignorantly angry about these things I’m ignorant about!”

Comment #37: tannenburg on 03/01 at 12:24 PM

QFT.  Tanneburg, THANK YOU FOR THIS. I’ve been arguing this exact thing, but I couldn’t put it as eloquently as you did.  If I was Empress of the World, you’d win today’s Internet.

I’m not sure about the ‘corporation is right’ thing. The teabaggers seem to distrust Corporations as much as liberals do. What they are against is ‘bigness’, whether it is big business or big government. ‘Bigness’ represents power and forces that are out of their control. It also represents issues that are larger than they can comprehend, which is one reason why we get slogans and not policy.

They ‘hate’ corporations the way all republicans ‘hate’ corporations.  If you’ve looked at even establishment candidates in the Republican party depending on the region they either loathe corporations or blindly support them.  It’s a crafty game of believing that corporations are absolute good because they are rich and thus should be loved and simultaneously hating them for realizing they’re the money grubbing bastards they really are.  Normally they level their anger at more socially responsible corporations (the few that do exist) and bitch endlessly about characters like Bill Gates who tends to be charitable with his money rather than spending it to support their crazy ideological zeal. 

Oh, Xeranar, I do not think that what you said was what you meant to say. Last word should be corporation?

Yes, time stamp says I was too tired to keep my mind even remotely ordered.  I meant corporation or company.  Really the government at best should be balancing the budget but not afraid to raise taxes as necessary.  This concept that the government is a business is a terrible analogy simply because the government isn’t designed to make a profit, sell anything, or really do anything but help OTHERS which is the antithesis of business.  If you want a business-like analogy think of the government as a non-profit charity.  But those things don’t really exist in teabag land.

It seems a bunch of others have taken up the torch where I left off.  The teabag movement wants to get the benefits of the corporate teat without the control aspect which is why nobody claims control.  The only real control is in the executive boardrooms of News Corp and the major contributors.  As the Tea Party express idiot convention set off the originators of the name refused to go because it just became another corporate function.  The greatest irony was that Obama’s grassroots support was truly grassroots.  Did his campaign support it and start it in some respects? Sure, but they also raised millions in cash from truly small donors.  The teabaggers are still looking for corporate handouts and buying books from shills who will them how the black man isn’t really his president.

orrect, but only state officials can be subjected to recall… federal officials - meaning U.S. Representatives and U.S. Senators - cannot be recalled by a vote, per the Constitution.

This is something I hinted at, Federal officials can only be impeached not recalled for this exact reason.  Even now some states are changing the rules on recalls because Republicans want the system to be more parliamentary (something that goes back to the 1994 take over).  They think whipping up a frenzy in angry crazy people will draw them out to the polls.  I’m more for the opposite, remove recalls and term limits.  If they can win reelection year after year they deserve it and the people deserve what they get for it, good or bad.

The teabaggers seem to distrust Corporations as much as liberals do. What they are against is ‘bigness’, whether it is big business or big government.

You are right. They hate bigness - and shop at Wal-Mart and eat at McDonald’s and Applebees. They don’t want the government in their lives, and expect Medicare, Social Security, and Unemployment. They demand freedom of speech and freedom of religion - and want everyone who disagrees with them silenced and disenfranchised.

The above comparison to two-year-olds is incredibly apt. They want to be raging individualists - in a publicly funded and maintained infrastructure. They want to do anything they want, and have the right to force everyone else out of their way.

Personally, I think that things like recalls and initiatives are potentially good - but they need to have very, very high bars and a significant cooling off period, like the way some states require two or three successive ratifications of things before they go to the ballot.

It is stunning how the same people who insist that “the majority is always right” insist on having the ability for a loud minority to overturn the majority’s votes, via recall, etc.