Monday Open Thread
Welcome to your Monday open thread. Yes, it’s Monday. Ugh.
An “Uni-Tea” party rally was held in Philadelphia this weekend to highlight the diversity of the Tea Party. TPM has the story:
Even as just a regular old tea party rally, the event fell flat. Though organizers said the event’s website had been visited more than 2 million times in the days leading up to today’s rally outside Independence Hall, for most of the afternoon there were fewer than 500 in attendance. It was clear from the large numbers of volunteers and the 1,500 bottles the organizers put on ice that they expected a big crowd to turn out. They did not get it by a long shot. They blamed a traffic jam on I-95 for keeping people away (for the record one organizer said that she counted 1,500 on the high end of attendance, but that appeared a bit generous to us).
Among those who did make it, for most of the time the numbers of non-white faces could be counted on two hands, and maybe a foot.
The same can’t be said for the group who went up on the event’s small stage. Organizers promised the most diverse cadre of speakers ever to grace a tea party rally, and they delivered. For the most part their message was the same: tea partiers are not racists and never were — but liberals are.
I’ve seen estimates from 5 to 20 for non-white participants. (I assume this doesn’t include the invited speakers. Yay for diversity! Using the high estimate, that means the Tea Party is 4% non-white. That’s not much different than the Fox News demographic which is 1.5% African-American. It’s funny that everytime the Tea Party tries to prove how non-racist and inclusive they are, they end up showing the opposite.
Paul Krugman talks about unemployment and how we’ve become a heartless, do-nothing nation.
I’m starting to have a sick feeling about prospects for American workers — but not, or not entirely, for the reasons you might think.
Yes, growth is slowing, and the odds are that unemployment will rise, not fall, in the months ahead. That’s bad. But what’s worse is the growing evidence that our governing elite just doesn’t care — that a once-unthinkable level of economic distress is in the process of becoming the new normal.
…
First, we see Congress sitting on its hands, with Republicans and conservative Democrats refusing to spend anything to create jobs, and unwilling even to mitigate the suffering of the jobless.
We’re told that we can’t afford to help the unemployed — that we must get budget deficits down immediately or the “bond vigilantes” will send U.S. borrowing costs sky-high. Some of us have tried to point out that those bond vigilantes are, as far as anyone can tell, figments of the deficit hawks’ imagination — far from fleeing U.S. debt, investors have been buying it eagerly, driving interest rates to historic lows. But the fearmongers are unmoved: fighting deficits, they insist, must take priority over everything else — everything else, that is, except tax cuts for the rich, which must be extended, no matter how much red ink they create.
The point is that a large part of Congress — large enough to block any action on jobs — cares a lot about taxes on the richest 1 percent of the population, but very little about the plight of Americans who can’t find work.
I feel sick now too. I know it’s a stretch, but could we actually elect politicians that care more about the American people than their jobs or their donors?
Tags: Open Thread
It’s funny that everytime the Tea Party tries to prove how non-racist and inclusive they are, they end up showing the opposite.
Can we just call them the Whi-Tea Party now?
I know it’s a stretch, but could we actually elect politicians that care more about the American people than their jobs or their donors?
We didn’t get the New Deal until we had starved for five years.
It was never realistic to expect Americans to support New Deal type policies while we are still driving SUVs and taking vacations to Disney World. As long as we are fat and happy we will remain susceptible to Republican demagoguery, and they will win.
We are nowhere near the level of deprivation needed to reverse the current path.
I recently read that the economy is in the toilet and businesses are not hiring because they fear the socialist confiscatory taxation plan and regulatory thumb screw treatments that Obama is about to roll out. In fact, that’s why the downturn started in 2007. Companies knew the black guy elect was going to go all socialist.
“I know it’s a stretch, but could we actually elect politicians that care more about the American people than their jobs or their donors?”
not as long as half the country thinks Fox News tells the truth.
more nazi policies from the Obama administration http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/08/02/jon-kyl-repeal-14th-amendment-immigrants_n_667098.html … wait, i mean….
Americans will choose to believe FOX News until enough of them lose their house, are down to one car, and run out of groceries at the end of each month. Then they will take to the streets, and it won’t be spending cuts they are demanding.
Our progressive ancestors literally fought in the street for their jobs. They busted trusts, raised taxes on the rich, and built Social Security.
Now we can’t manage to get a vote on a job program, public option health care, or negotiation of drug prices. And worse, half of today’s liberals are OK with that.
The best lack all conviction, and the worst are full of a passionate intensity.
saddly anon, when they have lost it all, Fox will tell them liberals killed their country and they only have a short time left to use their guns…. kind of like they are doing right now.
We may lose Social Security, but we’ll always have William Butler Yeats. In your face FOX “News!”
True/Slant being absorbed into Forbes. They aren’t keeping all of their writers and can’t tell which ones are gone.
Sadly, another part of my youth has left us. We used to watch, and yes sing along, with Mitch Miller every week.
In a complete non-sequitor:
“Monkeys hate flying squirrels, report monkey-annoyance experts”
csmonitor.com headline and sub-head writers are definitely getting their Onion on.
Man, i majored in the wrong thing. who knew i could have gone for my PHD in monkey antagonism
I’m sad that monkey-annoyance expert was not listed among the science-related jobs when I was a student. Listen up students –> monkey-annoyance expert. Big future in it.
I also like to piss off the teaparty
Personally I’d rather piss ON the Tea Baggers – that would make for some great tea
I’m sorry for that….wellllllll not really
OK – lets repeal the 14th ammendment and make it retro to 1492 – we can all pack up and go home…
and if the Tea Baggers want to use their guns – might I pleasantly suggest they do so – on themselves first?
Last night I dreamed we were becalmed.Harsh measures were called for.I placed my trusty mount first in line and fled below.Machismo allows no tears.
When I awoke I remembered Jim Morrison’s HORSE LATTITUDE’S.
When the still sea conspires an armor
And her sullen and aborted
Currents breed tiny monsters
True sailing is dead
Awkward instant
And the first animal is jettisoned
Legs furiously pumping
Their stiff green gallop
And heads bob up
Poise
Delicate
Pause
Consent
In mute nostril agony
Carefully refined
And sealed over
Secretary of Defense Gates announced that Obomba was lying and that we are not going to withdraw from Afghanistan next July.
Endless war. Endless lies. Why do we have to nominate Obomba again in 2012?
Stop Obomba. Stop the war.