Countdown — One More Day Until the World’s Biggest Teabagging
One more day until the big event — and one more day to ponder the sheer hypocrisy of these tea party events. One of the things I notice over the past week or ten days is how fast the folks trying to put this on are trying to re-spin the purpose of this thing. They are trying really hard to downplay the crazy, make this look like a bi-partisan thing, restate the purpose to protest spending rather than taxes and of course, to plump up their more-patriotic-than-thou cred. And very much like the guy who wrote the article below, I really want these people to explain where the hell they were when BushCo and the Republican Congress were busily burning down the house. But now that someone is trying to put out the fire and rebuild, they want to stop all of that in favor of — what, exactly? Even they don’t know. More news of the crazy, but first DV wants to know what you would ask the teabaggers if you could. News:
- Where were these Teabaggers during the Bush years?
- Via Teablogging — Cryin’ Glenn Beck is backing out of being the keynote speaker at the San Antonio Teabagging. (And Teablogging is also one of the homebases of the Teabag Infiltration Teams [TITs] reporting incognito from the teabaggings…)
- Historical Resonance FAIL — Lawyers, Guns and Money reports on a bit of weirdness from a Nebraska teaparty as celebrated by the Instapundit:
Hundreds of Nebraskans chanted no taxation without representation in protest of increased government spending spawned by the stimulus bill at the state capitol Saturday.
As they go on to note, Nebraskans certainly do have plenty of representation and most of these chanters got tax cuts. Matt Yglesias reads this and points out that every citizen of DC pays plenty of taxes and they really do have no representation. Do you think that we can get Nebraska ACORN to circulate petitions among the Nebraska teabaggers to support the DC folks getting some representation in Congress? While you’re at it, don’t miss Instaputz’ flashback to Why Dems Will Lose in 2006.
Which leads to me wonder: where in the f*ck were these protesters during the administration of George W. Bush?
Bush, as you’ll recall, inherited a $128 billion budget surplus from Bill Clinton when he took office in 2001. Bush quickly squandered that and then proceeded to rack up gigantic budget deficits every year of his two terms in office.
Under Bush, the national debt grew by more than $4 trillion: the biggest debt increase of any president in U.S. history.
When Bush took office in 2001, the national debt stood at $5.7 trillion. At the end of Bush’s two terms, the debt had skyrocketed to more than $9.849 trillion. And remember: Bush enjoyed a Republican Senate and House of Representatives during most of his time in office.
Things weren’t helped along any by Bush’s illegal and totally unnecessary Iraq War. That disaster will probably wind up costing the U.S. $3 trillion. It would be nice if some of these Tea Party protesters asked for an immediate halt to the $10 billion a month that America continues to squander in Iraq every month to this day. But I suspect there won’t be too many “Stop the Iraq War” signs at these Tea Party events.
Like I said, where were these “tea party” protesters during the Bush years? Where were they when Bush was handing out billions of our tax dollars to his wealthy friends? Where were they when Dick Cheney’s former company, Halliburton, was pocketing billions of dollars in closed, no-bid contracts? Where were they when $12 billion in cash disappeared without a trace after it was shipped to Iraq?
Obama has only been in office a few months. He inherited the worst economy since the Great Depression.
Read the Whole Thing.
Tags: Obama
Here’s a perspective on the Tea Parties from a Libertarian point of view. Some of them feel the movement has been co-opted by Republican politicians and fringe activists.
They’re really using the left as a model!
Tea baggers are to grassroots as Pat Boone was to rock n roll.
Gallup released a poll yesterday showing how out-of-step the teabaggers are with the national mood. In the survey 48% said taxes were “about right” and 46% said “too high.” Also, 61% thought this year’s taxes were fair.
Link
So, there isn’t a sudden change in mood about taxes in the country. If anything it’s moved the opposite direction.
This is seriously the biggest faux-outrage, farce-fest of all time, BFOFFOAT?
Follow the money, and I guarantee it leads to 3 old white men with dandruff the size of corn flakes on their impeccably tailored, pinstriped shoulders and their mercenaries…Geppetto Corp.
UI — you keep getting one step ahead of me! Tomorrow’s mercifully final post talks about how hard these people will have to work to overcome the current mood that Obama is basically on the right track and that for the first time more Americans think of their taxes as being about right. But that number has been trending to that for awhile. On top of that, I think that at the local level leadership has been working hard to talk about the link of taxes to services that people say they want, so perhaps this is the result of wingnuts not being able to make a credible case that taxes victimize people.
Cassandra is right on target. This is also from yesterday’s Gallup poll:
By the way – if you are going to infiltrate a tea party, don’t forget most of them are collecting food donations. So bring something.