Right, So Why Do You Keep Wasting Our Time With This?

The potential bombshell of this election (0.00 / 0)

Nate Silver now says there's a 1-in-5 chance Dems keep House AND Senate. How game-changing would that be? Tea Party revealed as all talk, no action. Dems suddenly have House & may be emboldened enough to FINALLY reform the filibuster, making progress on everything from immigration to climate to education possible. Again, not likely, but would be amazing.

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by: TheGreenMiles @ Sun Oct 24, 2010 at 03:46:55 AM UTC

Good Story or Paid For By Murdock (0.00 / 0)

There has been an understory all along about how few in number the teabaggers are. Often presented as a throw away sentence at the end of a story.  

I tend to think the same mentality that presents a talking head TV show with three hard right Republicans and one Democrat to be, borrowing a phrase from a Republican propaganda machine, fair and balanced is at work. The media doing it's follow the herd act. Also, the media is no longer the news, it is entertainment and in the entertainment divisions of the big three conglomerates.

One huge problem is the Dem's apathy. A carry over from the 2008 election. The candidate is in office and those who made the difference tended to think that was all there was to politics. Now, I am seeing reports of the awakening to what is going on and what will happen if the Republicans return to the majority.

I just hope it is not too late.

Mere parsimony is not economy. Expense, and great expense, may be an essential part in true economy.
Edmund Burke

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by: blue bronc @ Sun Oct 24, 2010 at 05:26:09 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

Keep it up, media! (0.00 / 0)

Current thought is that the best thing that the media can do for us is to keep scaring the hell out of Democratic voters with the lunacy of the Tea Party.  Some pundits have said in recent days that the Christine O'Donnell phenomenon in neighboring Delaware is helping Sestak in Pennsylvania.  

With Sharron Angle, Christine O'Donnell, Rand Paul and Rev. Stephen Broden as the public faces of the Republican Party, getting more media time than John Boehner, independent voters are wondering just who these guys are.  

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by: cvllelaw @ Sun Oct 24, 2010 at 05:20:25 AM UTC

Media constructions (0.00 / 0)

I spent a lot of time in the 1980's reading about the 1960's.  I did this for two reasons -- one, I worked in the Special Collections Department of the University of Pittsburgh's Library, and they have one of the best collections of 1960's small press/"zines" in the country, so why not take advantage?  And second, I wanted to understand why, living as I was in the world of Reagan and trickle down economics, it had, from my perspective, all gone so horribly wrong.

What you come away with is the realization that for all of the sound and the fury the radical 1960's created in the media (Bra burning!), their actual numbers were very small.  And their long-term political impact was ultimately undone by intra-group wars and inability to decide on priorities (even good ones.)

So I keep all of this in mind as I watch the current radicalization of the right.  And you know what?  I feel badly for all of the young people who are out there now who are, whether temperamentally or ideologically, who will be reading and wading through media/books in the not-so-distant future and wondering, like I once did, what had gone wrong and how they could make it right.

Good luck.

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by: GretchenLaskas @ Sun Oct 24, 2010 at 17:25:13 PM UTC

60's and 70's (0.00 / 0)

What came out of the 60's and 70's was the wide dissemination of useful and not very useful drugs. Also, and probably most important "the pill". What happened with the pill and other contraceptives was mostly safe sex. That gave women power. Abortion came out of the ally's with the change in womens power. (granted womens power is relative to what it was before the pill)

The mass protests were large and vocal. We would have the same today if there was a draft. Bush and Cheney and Rove knew that if there was a draft then the bush wars would be well known and the country would rise up against him. With everything kept quiet there is nothing to know.

The period was also during the arms race; shortly after above ground testing of nuclear weapons had ceased. Unlike today with the stupid color code to encourage fear, we knew if something went wrong the entire planet would be killed within 30 minutes. No longer than that. That is the time from the first strike was launched and either side reached the launch time for retaliation. That was 30 minutes.

So the anti-nukes joined with other protest groups.

The changes made in the 60's and 70's so pissed of Cheney and Rove (I doubt the Bush has the brain power or memory of the era) along with the neo-cons that they have spent the time from that moment to take over the country and do the wars they wanted to do then.  If they return to power we will see them invade Iran, they promised that one first, possibly other mid-eastern countries. Here is one bet I am sure of, bet the neo-cons never go into Africa.

A lot of changes occurred, including rights and actions for minorities, all of which the teabaggers are trying to eliminate. It was a time that the social structure of countries changed. And, that is what the teabaggers are still trying to turn back.


Mere parsimony is not economy. Expense, and great expense, may be an essential part in true economy.
Edmund Burke

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by: blue bronc @ Sun Oct 24, 2010 at 18:52:34 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

This struck me too (0.00 / 0)

That the people who are the backbone of the Tea Party today are often the mirror image of their 1960's opposition.  Of course, as someone who was born in 1969, I'm so TIRED of it all.  One of the reasons I was supportive of the Obama candidacy was that I didn't want to go through the 1960's wars again.  Ha!  Jokes on me.....I'm going to be 80 and somewhere there will be two 100 year old baby boomers in the back room of the old folks home yelling about it while I have to listen!

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by: GretchenLaskas @ Sun Oct 24, 2010 at 22:20:21 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Why do we, even, (0.00 / 0)

accord them the respect of calling them a "Party"? They have no platform, no secific legislative agenda, no official representatives (chair, vice-chair, treasurer, etc) and no political candidates (every one of the Tea Potty endorsed candidates runs as a candidate of the Republican Party). At best, they're an amorphous coalition (or, more exactly: "collection", since most of them don't really work together, even if they do share the same funding sources) of various "I'm a mad-as-hell-victim-of-something-or-other" groups.

From where I sit, they're just a Tea Potty -- full of steamy hot, yellow liquid which might be mistaken for (weak) tea, as long as one doesn't get close enough to smell it.

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by: libra @ Sun Oct 24, 2010 at 20:30:37 PM UTC

Tea Time (0.00 / 0)

I refuse to call teabaggers anything other than what they told us what they wanted to be called "teabaggers".

Mere parsimony is not economy. Expense, and great expense, may be an essential part in true economy.
Edmund Burke

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by: blue bronc @ Sun Oct 24, 2010 at 20:50:01 PM UTC

[ Parent ]