{"id":22593,"date":"2010-02-13T08:06:36","date_gmt":"2010-02-13T13:06:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/?p=22593"},"modified":"2011-09-24T16:11:59","modified_gmt":"2011-09-24T20:11:59","slug":"sipping-tea-while-america-burns","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/by-judith-gayle-2\/sipping-tea-while-america-burns\/","title":{"rendered":"Sipping tea while America burns"},"content":{"rendered":"

Judith Gayle<\/strong> | Political Waves<\/a><\/p>\n

An originator of the Tea Party movement, a big, loud Texan by the name of Dale Robertson is warning that Sarah Palin is a wolf in sheep’s clothing, attempting to ‘bastardize’ the principals of the populist movement and hijack the Baggers into the Republican stronghold.<\/p>\n

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The movement distanced itself from Robertson during the summer when he was photographed with a controversial homemade sign that represented his passionate thoughts on taxation — and said a little something about his personal bias, as well. Well, so much for the notion that we’ve gone post-racial, now that we have a president of color.<\/p>\n

Or perhaps this isn’t a question of either\/or. Maybe, in our big divided nation, this is always a question of percentages.<\/p>\n

Representative Michelle Bachmann of Minnesota is a particularly visible Tea Party proponent. Frequently over-the-top, she’s a proud ‘birther’ <\/a><\/strong>and a FOX News darling, and is in the news constantly due to her immoderate commentary. Despite a poll of GOP ‘movers and shakers’ indicating that 87% consider birthers fringe members of their party, her state was recently surveyed and it was discovered that her popularity breaks down as one would expect along Right\/Left party lines; but the surprise, given the supposed leanings of the Independent vote, was that only 26% of them are proud of the job Bachmann has done in Congress, while 62% call her an embarrassment.<\/p>\n

Gosh, ya think?<\/p>\n

Moral of the story: the more infighting the Republicans do, the more they attempt to use one another while seeking to recapture their power base, the more they fracture and offer nothing to a national conversation in search of solutions. By the way, 78% of the anonymous GOP leadership mentioned above also think that Obama is a Socialist. I guess that’s why Republicans demured on unemployment extension for 1.2 million laid-off Americans last night, unwilling to give up on their “death tax” a.k.a. the Paris Hilton tax.<\/p>\n

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These folks just can’t help themselves. Their message is clear: we’re not giving anything away until we get a perk for the wealthy. One has to wonder what the Republican unemployed think about all that.<\/p>\n

In a nation badly in need of sound governance, the Republican desire to drown it in a bathtub now looks like what it is — political nihilism. Jon Stewart<\/a><\/strong> took on their reluctance to actually participate in the transparent debate they’ve howled for last night, making them look like … well … who they are. I don’t think that was their plan.<\/a><\/p>\n

Today the news of their shadow budget, including assaults on Medicare and Social Security which I <\/strong><\/a>detailed in the weekly<\/a><\/strong>, has legs that will walk into the homes of horrified Seniors everywhere. In his New York Times op\/ed, Paul Krugman called it “a breathtaking act of staggering hypocrisy.” FOX News will spin it to keep the true believers calm, I expect, but you know the old saw — where there’s smoke, there’s fire. The smell of scorched earth economy is hard to ignore, no matter what your political affiliation. Maybe this is the point where we give up either\/or ideology in favor of calling in the fire fighters … or maybe we’ll just burn awhile longer.<\/p>\n

The thing with this notion of either\/or is — it’s an illusion, deliberately brewed, bottled and sold like Budweiser. The Bush administration gave us an absurd and manipulative choice between being patriotic Republicans or weak-kneed liberals trying to pull the nation down into Third World status. It’s a tired old meme that still floats around out there, but the truth is harder to hide these days — the Bushies are the ones that brought the nation to her knees with their tax cuts and loop holes and elective wars, and the Party of No isn’t clever enough to hide their desire to put her flat on her back by continuing to ‘stay the course.’ If the Seniors are abandoned and the middle-class disappeared, who will they appeal to in the future? Makes no sense to me. It seems like a last-ditch effort to keep the plutocracy in power, even as the rest of the nation burns to ash and the golden goose cooks.<\/p>\n

Either\/or can only sustain itself as long as the plan is working — it didn’t, it isn’t, it won’t. Even its illusory charm is losing steam. People are waking up and having a dialogue, shouted at one another over a picket line and leading off the letters to the editor. Take that as a good sign. That’s what democracy looks like, messy in its practice and a blast of fresh air against the smoke of rhetorical smoke and mirrors.<\/p>\n

Because the squeaky wheel gets the grease, all we hear about is the squeakers but the press has finally picked up the larger conversation about Pub obstruction, sensing drama in the GOP’s vulnerability. Nothing smells quite so sweet to media folk as desperation. The Massachusettes vote had them sniffing around the deflated Democratics but these last few days have turned their heads toward the minority party.<\/p>\n

Establishment pundits are telling us how confident the Republicans are, how they’re measuring for drapes in their new congressional offices as they rub their palms in glee over their proposed wins in November. We’ll see. The Pubs are confident as a matter of policy, unbending in their self-aggrandizement. Give us another eight months of this and perhaps the frustrated Dems, the skeptical but demographically powerful Indies and even a few disenchanted Pubs will be more interested in a Plan — ANY plan — than None At All.<\/p>\n

Jude<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

McConnell Objects To One-Week Extension Of Unemployment Benefits (VIDEO)<\/a><\/p>\n

Republicans and Medicare <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Judith Gayle | Political Waves An originator of the Tea Party movement, a big, loud Texan by the name of Dale Robertson is warning that Sarah Palin is a wolf in sheep’s clothing, attempting to ‘bastardize’ the principals of the populist movement and hijack the Baggers into the Republican stronghold. The movement distanced itself from … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"generate_page_header":""},"categories":[1744],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22593"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22593"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22593\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22593"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22593"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22593"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}