Tea partiers picketed state Republican Party HDQs in Raleigh yesterday, protesting Chair Tom Fetzer's intervention in the 2nd primary run-off between Machine Gun Tim D'Annunzio and Blown Dry Harold Johnson.
Angry voters with signs, marching up and down outside the dignified corporate offices of a major political faction? That's a scene we might expect more at Democratic Party HDQs!
Don't you just love to watch the Rethugs in a food fight?
ReplyDeleteDang! The Tea Party finally got one right! The Republican Party is the enemy after all....
ReplyDeleteThis minor example of Tea Party prudence is exemplary of Tea Party politics and dogma. The Tea Party does not choose a political party or position. The many Republican RINOs who attempted to attach themselves to the Tea Party found that out soon enough.
ReplyDeleteThe Tea Party seeks to hold accountable all politicans who denigrate important things like the Consitituion, public trust, government spending, socialist health care reform and a host of other issues. Is the Tea Party conservative in nature? Most certainly. Are they Republican in nature - certainly not.
What is interesting is that Pelosi and the other big government proponets have refrained from continuing their attacks on the Tea Party. We heard Pelosi use the term "Nazi" a few times in the early days of the Tea Party, however the term is now strangly absent from her polemic vocublary. This didn't happen by accident. Pelosi and gang understand the Tea Party is a phenomonon gaining strenght by the day. To abuse it further with deregatory language would only further the upcoming Democratic losses in November.
What will truly be intersting is when the Tea Party figures out how to exploit President Obama's inaction in the Gulf of Mexico as a means of stripping the liberals of what remaining credibility they have. The fact that President Obama has not done the following will soon be important:
1. Declared the area a Disaster Area. Too much rain, snow, or levee breaks in New Orleans are cause for the Presidnet to Declare a disaster area, but million of gallons of oil spilling into the gulf aren't?
2. The absence of federal resources to stop the oil from reaching shore (US Navy, Coast Guard etc)
3. The abscence of federally funded programs to clean up oil that has already reached shore. Talk about putting people to work, this would be another WPA/CCC event that President Obama could turn into a resounding success
4. Where is Hollywood in all this. They donate millions to Haiti or Tsunami victims, yet do nothing for a disaster in the US. President Obama could, if he would, start the public awareness campaign with one speech.
5. Instead of saying he is mad, perhaps he should do something about it. The disaster is made to order for Obama. If he wants to be a Saviour, he is sure missing the boat on this one
6. Obama and Congress seem non-plussed over the fact the Gulf of Mexico is dying.
The Tea Party will have a field day over these issues like nothing we have seen yet. Will be interesting to see the hope and change drowned in a cloak of oil like some of those poor Pelicans that the liberal news media won't show.
Dog Tom
"The Tea Party seeks to hold accountable all politicans who denigrate important things like the Consitituion, public trust, government spending, socialist health care reform and a host of other issues."
ReplyDeleteLMAO. Wow, I almost gagged on my own laughter when I read this one! (and never mind the spelling errors!)
Yeah Baby,
ReplyDeleteForgive me for the spelling errors. I laughed also when I was writing this piece. The hypocrisy of the liberal left is almost laughble!
Dog Tom. Please remember that the so-called conservatives are the ones who advocate that government should keep out of business affairs and not spend public money on public works. The Republicans are steadfast in their determination to filibuster any public works projects. The US Government is not responsible for the spill; BP is responsible. I agree with you that we should put thousands of people to work cleaning up the mess, and then sue BP for the cost. But congress has to pass a jobs bill first.
ReplyDeleteAnd it was "conservatives" who preached the mantra of DRILL BABY DRILL, DRILL HERE, DRILL NOW.
Of course Obama and congress are non-plussed. At some level they must have really believed that garbage about being able to trust big corporations to regulate themselves, and to know what the bloody heck they are doing.
Brushfire,
ReplyDeleteI agree with you on a couple of points and not on a couple. I agree that BP should be held monitarily accountable for the clean up like they have been so far. They should be made to pay like they make the American people pay for inflated gas prices that oil companies like BP say result from "speculators" or hurricanes in the Gulf or many many other bogus excuses. If they hurt a little then great, they should.
What I disagree with is your take on the role of government as it relates to conservatives. Conservatives, myself included, believe in an extremely limited role of government to include national defense, education and such. The oil spill qualifies as national defense. There is little difference between a terrorist bomber and an oil slick enveloping the southern US. Both will harm the life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness of US citizens; 3 things that the Federal Government is responsible for. Yet, this clear mission is the very one the Feds ignore. They are in our personal lives (health care for example), yet now they are not taking an active role in the defense of our country. They point fingers and blame others instead of keeping that oil from killing dolphins, storks, pelicans and other innocent wildlife. That is a travesty. Why not call several thousand National Guard Troops, Americorps, Peace Corps, National Fish and Wildlife Service, National Park Service, Bureau of Land Management, FEMA (especially) and the hundreds of other big government agencies and make them earn their money for once. All we have is silence. Not national disaster has been declared that would allow the alphabet agencies to respond. Nothing. This is in itself both disconcerting and weird. If the oil slick is not a national disaster then how could Katrina or the California Wildfires or any other natural disaster be? Makes not a lick of sense to me.
I don't think the Republicans would filibuster a public works project designed to put hundreds of thousands of Americans to work cleaning up marshland in the Gulf. In fact, the President himself could declare it a disaster area and open it up to public works without even having to run it by the RINOs in Congress. The Presidnet is missing out on a grand opportunity to truly become a Messiah. Not sure what he or his staff is thinking, but it sure cannot be about poor birds drowning in oil.
As for "drill baby drill", I am guilty of supporting that statement. If you drive, then you are too. The drilling is taking place a mile deep because of progressive policies and regulations that don't allow drilling in locations more amenable to that practice. If our oil derreks were in shallow water or on land, the leak would be non-existant. Until we come up with an alternative to oil (which no one seems interested in), then drilling for oil will remain our only option.
Some months ago, I posted some material on the prevalence of small hydroelectic dams on nearly all rivers and streams in Watauga County. The dams were used to produce power. Not a single initiative by our County Commissioners, state legislature, or Congress to re-establish these dams. Even at the local level we have no one interested in renewable energy. The Town of Blowing Rock has banned the use of windmills for electric energy. Then they turn around and trade 192 acres of land for "control" over their water supply on Park Service property. What they intend to do is expand their resevoir so they can build more summer homes and shops for tourists. This type of thing goes on around us, and no one says a thing.
As long as this is the mentality, then drilling for oil is our ONLY option. If we are going to drill for oil then lets do it in places conducive to drilling (ANWR, Western Slope of Rockies, etc).
Big corporations don't care about you or me. Big government doesn't either - not much to choose between the two except that a corporation does pay taxes and give something back to society.
Dog Tom
Dog Tom: "Big corporations don't care about you or me."
ReplyDelete100% agree.
Big Government - also, to some extent. It depends. The difference between corporations and government is that we all CAN influence who is in government. Whether government serves us, or whether it serves corporate interests depends on how involved we, the people, are.
I don't believe a small, limited government is possible in our society. I see a strong similarity between organisms, and human society. Both require energy, and resources, and both produce waste, and respond to environmental factors. As animals become larger, more complex, and develop a larger repertoire of behaviors, they require larger central control regions - brains. As human society becomes more crowded, complex, and has to deal with so many more variables, we either develop some strong effective central regulatory system, or we go extinct. The BP disaster shows us how close to extinction we may be.
I believe there will never be a power vacuum that lasts for long. Either we create a government that serves our needs and effectively regulates commerce, or else , corporations, mafias, or other opportunistic infections will parasitize us until we die out.
Big corporations don't care about you or me. Big government doesn't either -*Dog Tom
ReplyDeleteThen why are you pissing in the wind and still thinking Obama is not a tool of the Fascist Corporate empire?
Brushfire,
ReplyDeleteIf 100% of the people were involved and the government were far right conservative in nature, would you be satisfied? You say that as society becomes more complex in nature that government should also. I don't believe this to be a very good road to go down. Complexity doesn't change human nature or our morality or virtue; those stay the same throughout the ages. Human nature is a constant that our Consititution was formed around. The Constitution is designed to be rigid enough to not change given the fact that we will indeed change.
With this being said, the contrived need for a stronger government is the result of our capitalist society which has made us victims of our own success.
To much of a good thing tends to make us numb to the base fundamentals that led to us having everything we need and then some. Take hard work for example. The average American doesn't do a lot of hard work. Because our society no longer engages in hard labor, we look for ways to circumvent it. Mechanization, use of illegal labor, and just plain not doing it are the results. We are so focused upon continuing to make things easier that we are willing to forfeit basic freedoms and personal responsibility to continue our easy lifestyle. Some say that government is the answer. The Health Care Bill that passed through a unique government process known as reconcilliation is an example.
To inject an entity that will only gain in power over the electorate is not the answer. Less government and regulation will allow the market to sort itself out. Chevrolet made, and continue to make, crappy automobiles. This corporation should go the way of the Do Do Bird. Related, the Democrats trusted Fannie May and Freddie Mac yet don't trust BP. One gave us the housing crisis and the other gave us, along with government regulation that prevents onshore drilling, the current non declared natural disaster.
Government should be relegated to a few functions - providing for our national security and education. Corporations, although they could care less about you and me, do provide a massive tax base that funds our society.
Something we have not touched upon yet, are unions. A union is on par with a strong central government in terms of robbing liberty from the proletariat. Unions have driven most of our manufacturing overseas. If I were going to cite an entity that should be changed, it would be the unions who run counter to Capitalism.
Dog Tom
Dog Tom: Less government and regulation will allow the market to sort itself out."
ReplyDeleteWhat evidence do you have to support this assertion? When has this ever occurred?
Even in medieval times, regulation was necessary to prevent merchants from selling adulterated food products.
It was an unregulated, free market BP that destroyed the gulf of Mexico. If the rig had not exploded, BP would have enjoyed all the profits from the resource. Because they were trying to maximize profits and took safety shortcuts, we are bearing the cost of their failure.
In a dog-eat-dog society, the strong will devour everything and everyone and the powerful few will rig the game so that no one else has a chance. This leads to a class-based society which our founders hated. They were well aware of the tendency of the rich to abuse the workers who feed them. Read Thomas Paine's tract, Agrarian Justice.
As for the unions, you do understand they were created in response to need, the dreadful injustice such as described in the Grapes of Wrath, yes?
What would you propose to prevent those kinds of abuses occurring without unions?
"I don't think the Republicans would filibuster a public works project designed to put hundreds of thousands of Americans to work cleaning up marshland in the Gulf." - Dog Tom
ReplyDeleteWanna bet?
I'm not as optimistic as you, my friend. " Or have you not met Madame Foxx? She voted against aid for Katrina victims, for God's sake!
Actually, she voted against no accountability being required for the money being spent. There is a huge difference.
ReplyDeleteOnly in the minds of the two of you.
ReplyDelete