The coverage of the various Tea Parties protesting big government is demonstrative of just how far outside of the mainstream the mainstream media are. Since when did supporting low taxes make one a radical? This is about the closest thing to a default position for the American electorate as any issue is. Add to this the timing--April 15 is tax day after all--and I'm left scratching my head why CNN, MSNBC, NBC, and other broadcast news outlets covered the protests so smugly. Take heart, modern-day tea partiers. Your forebears didn't get a universally friendly reception at first either. Benjamin Franklin spoke for many in labelling the destruction of 342 crates of tea on Griffin's Wharf "an act of violent injustice." Ultimately, however, the Tea Party galvanized the colonists around an issue--no taxation without representation--that had widespread appeal. Maybe these Tea Parties will do the same thing for conservatives. "Keep your hands out of the pockets of the Americans," Member of Parliament Isaac Barre counselled his fellow Englishmen, "and they will be obedient subjects." Barack Obama would be wise to heed Barre's 236-year-old warning.

Much of political discourse in this country is so polarized that the response of the MSM is typical. The mainstream is now what applied to the extreme leftists of the 60's and 70's. This leads to the fact that when the MSM responds the way they do- you ARE doing the right thing. Counter intuitive thought is required at this time in history. For too long the conservative has been pre-occupied with pleasing the leftists among us. At this time its time to bask in their ridicule and to toughen up as much as we can so that the truth of the cause becomes more paramount than pleasing the libs. In other words START believing that we don't give a crap what they say in response.

Much of political discourse in this country is so polarized that the response of the MSM is typical. The mainstream is now what applied to the extreme leftists of the 60's and 70's. This leads to the fact that when the MSM responds the way they do- you ARE doing the right thing. Counter intuitive thought is required at this time in history. For too long the conservative has been pre-occupied with pleasing the leftists among us. At this time its time to bask in their ridicule and to toughen up as much as we can so that the truth of the cause becomes more paramount than pleasing the libs. In other words START believing that we don't give a crap what they say in response.

Dan, it should not surprise you that those in favor of low taxes are called "radical."

In socialist Canada, the big government types are referred to as the conservatives and those in favor of less spending and lower taxes are called "liberal."

How long do you think before that becomes the norm here? I say about 12 years.

Be well,

Sponge

It should be ironic, but it isn’t, that the same leftists who were verklempt and hand wringing about G.W. and Cheney’s Halliburton conspiracy machine listening in on terrorists or potential terrorist cell phone calls are now just hunky dory with Janet Totaliano and Homeland Security targeting and monitoring innocent American citizens that they have concocted as a threat.

So it seems that the anti-tax protestors are now more of a problem than our new friends Al-Qaeda.

The reporter from CNN is the poster child for what's wrong with 99% of the MSM.
I thought the coverage of my local tea party by one of our tv stations was rather amusing though. We're a small market, the station tends to get newbies who are just starting their careers or people at the tail end of one. The newbie covering it either didn't understand what was really going on or he didn't know he's not supposed to show bias. The poor guy was actually asking people to "come on down", "a fun time to be had by all"....lol
I liked the positive coverage but he should have just stuck to reporting about it.

"The Tea Parties represent real citizens' anger over watching powerlessly for the past two months as a president, who ran as a moderate to get elected, has taken the fastest, boldest leap to the far left of any president to date. Not only has President Obama upped the ante on the failed policies of FDR and Lyndon Johnson, he has gone on an apology tour of Europe, bowed to a Saudi King, and promised billions more of our hard-earned money to global entities over which we have absolutely no control.

At a time when we Americans in the vast middle write checks to our federal government as we try to balance household budgets already stretched to the max, we read about the Obamas flying in a pizza chef and Michelle hiring her own full-time makeup artist to go with her already full-time hairstylist. We're stunned by a $150-million plus price tag on an inauguration carried out at the same time this president was telling the rest of us we needed to put our "own skin into the game" of saving America from the "worst financial crisis since the Great Depression." We're shocked to see a president using tax dollars to pay for cocktail parties, elaborate entertainment and $100/lb. Japanese steak as he continues his campaigning from the White House."

Can I get an Amen!!?

I was at the TEA Party in Harrisburg, PA. I didn't think the views the speakers expressed were all that radical. It's just common sense not to want the government picking your pocket.

John Kass, a Chicago Tribune columnist wrote a very favorable column on the Chicago Tea Party in today's (4/16/09) Tribune. Kass has a libertarian slant. At the end of his column he has some interesting ideas with respect to tax withholding and elections.

Here's a link to the column:

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/chi-kass-16-apr16,0,7670103.column

C'mon, let's do it: The United States Tea Party. Let's close the door on the GOP, with this kind of momentum.

Sea King, with all due respect, we are at such a dangerous place in our history as a nation, this is not the time to be thinking third party.

Not more than a month ago, I was thinking in that direction. But Obama's radicalism has convinced me that we can not take a chance of fracturing the very flawed GOP going forward.

I have distaste for that club of phonies too. But a third party will only further weaken the only chance we have to extract the dangerous, radical Marxist charlatan who now controls this country.

It was a great idea in November of last year for some Conservatives/Republicans to cast protest votes for Obama or make a legitimate Conservative statement by voting for Ron Paul or some other. But is was not realistic to assume that by doing so, you would lose but get your chance in 2012 to make amends.

Why doesn't someone just admit that these tea parties are really stupid? Let's get this straight: conservative Republicans didn't mind huge budget deficits and more spending during periods of economic growth, but now that we're in a recession it's all of a sudden important to practice fiscal restraint?

Might have something to do with the Obomanation spending a trillion dollars of our money right off the bat to pay back those who got him elected and to solidify his initial plan to build the socialist state. And it might have something to do with the Obomanation using our money to nationalize banks and businesses thus taking control of the foundations of our economy. And it might also have something to do with the Obomonation borrowing more money to pay for it all while printing mo' phoney money while in the process raising our taxes to pay for the ultlimate destruction of our economy and our country.

I know you know better Eric. Don't act stupid.

I understand now, ASDF. Spending lots of money during a recession is Socialism but spending lots of money while the economy is growing is capitalism.

Uh, yes. Conservatives minded deficits, but now we have doubled them. And unreservedly. This is a sharp departure from the already flawed practices of Bush. So yes, this is a new day.

Protesting the outrageous reach of new financial responsibilities taken on by the new prez on our behalf? Good God, why not? Where is the argument that this is sensible in any way? Conservatives were very uncomfortable with Bush's spending, but they put up with it because the Dem alternative was what we are now at the mercy of. Times are bad; time to protest.

The worse you can say about Obama is that he is following the advice of Dick Cheney: "Deficits don't matter."

Right. "Deficits don't matter...so take over GM and rearrange the pay schedule." I remember him saying that. "And while you're add it get some pitchforks and meet at the house of a financial exec," he must have said that too.

Must have been Cheney's idea as well to bankroll and entrench every aspect of the Democratic party machine.

As a moderate Keynesian, I'm okay with deficit spending in an economic downturn, but I'm okay with spending it smartly, not passing bills that spend years in the future as part of a "stimulus bill".

And if we don't watch out, we'll have another of Cheney's favorites, leaping energy prices courtesy of Cap'n Trade.

Cheney was wrong. And Obama is at least 2X wronger.

There is also the difference of Obama wanting me to pay for your hellth insurance, insurance that will $uck BTW. And Obama wants the government to control business, which is the height of folly since governent cannot even control government. The attack on private property is a fundamental shift toward big brother. Forgive me for not cheering loud enough.

I will be on Michael Graham's program on 96.9 WTKK at 11 a.m. talking, among other things, about the Tea Parties. Graham has an excellent article in the Boston Herald on the Boston Globe's deafening silence on the movement inspired by the faux-Narragansett tea partiers dumping crates of the stuff in Boston Harbor more than two centuries ago. Here is the link:

http://www.bostonherald.com/news/opinion/op_ed/view/2009_04_17_Tea_Party_won_t_end:_Our_cup_runneth_over/srvc=news&position=also

I'm listening now. Will be looking forward to it.

Michael Goldman can't possibly believe everything he says. I'd like to think that he's just an antagonistic entertainer. But if he's not, he's another stellar example of how liberalism is a mental disorder. Especially with regard to his concerns on torture and the reality that information extracted from unlawful enemy combatant perps during its use has saved American lives.

Alas, I think I'm expecting too much.

Lemme get this straight, they cut away from coverage that was called not "family viewing" to make jokes about an perverse sexual activity just a step or two above a "Rusty Trombone" or a "Cleveland Steamer"??!!!

LOL.

I'd like to know who takes seriously anything that 24 troll Janeane Garofalo has to say.

“Let’s be very honest about what this is about,” she said. “It’s not about bashing Democrats, it’s not about taxes, they have no idea what the Boston tea party was about, they don’t know their history at all. This is about hating a black man in the White House. This is racism straight up. That is nothing but a bunch of teabagging rednecks.”

When they don't have a come back or a factual position on something, you can always count on liberals pegging you as a Nazi, homophobe or racist.

How original and intellectual.

So, here's the score:

Obama loving the leader of the former Soviet Union - 1 point
Obama loving the leader of France - 1 point
Obama loving the leader of Venezuela - 2 points
Obama loving the leader of Cuba - 5 points
Obama loving the United Nations - 5 points
Obama REALLY loving the leader of Saudi Arabia - 20 points
Obama giving a pass to the leader of Iran - 1 point
Obama giving a pass to the leader of Korea - 5 points
Obama liking Israel as a conduit to free the Palestinians - 1/2 point

Obama loving his own country - 0 points

That's World - 40 1/2, America 0. Looks like they win.

I like the liberal definition of "intellectual", making sequential ad hominems, straw men, assumptive characterizations.

Not to gloss over the ubiquitous mind-reading liberal act there.

Just watched the woman.

I like how she says that our brains "misfire". As if there were a purpose for our evolved brain. In a directionless sense, the brain has whatever purpose the organism can make out of it. We might have a statistically different firing, and that might explain why we can't seem to make sense of them or them of us.

However, Garofalo is INVALIDATING her hero's idea that he can NEGOTIATE with people doing a lot worse than drafting signs with comparisons between Obama, Hitler, and Stalin.

What is Iminajihad's limbic system like? What are the really murderous countries like? She suggests that you can't reason with enlarged limbics like us right-wingers, and the left has a completely unfocused view of who they're dealing with in Islamics. Sometimes it's all right-wing religious nuts--and they're just like us, other times it's understandable outrage from our victimization.

They believe that they can reason with the latter, but if it's all right-wing brain incapacity, and they can't reason with people in a different party, then how can Obama do the job simply by discussion??!!

She's vitiating her own (lack of) argument, for Obama being reliant on dialog. What an idiologue!

Assuming Garofalo is in earnest, she is either obtuse or she simply knows no conservatives. The latter is probable. You'd think she might take the trouble of discussing issues and arguing with conservatives in order to know them, but then she would be forced to evaluate comprehensively the sense of her positions. That she vitiates her argument is not surprising since she clearly engages in no polemics whatsoever. She is a flinger of poo.

A good question for Garofalo would be if she thinks that a Venezuelan style government would be a good thing for the United States and if she likes it that Barack Obama is moving in the direction of Hugo Chavez.

I doubt she would have a clue either way and label the inquirer a racist.

Just about taxes? I don't think so.

"Obama also extended a hand to a leader Ronald Reagan spent years trying to drive from power: Nicaragua's Daniel Ortega. The Sandinista president stepped up and introduced himself, U.S. officials reported.

Yet soon after, Ortega, who was ousted in 1990 elections that ended Nicaragua's civil war but who was returned to power by voters in 2006, delivered a blistering 50-minute speech that denounced capitalism and U.S. imperialism as the root of much hemispheric mischief. The address even recalled the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba, though Ortega said the new U.S. president could not be held to account for that.

"I'm grateful that President Ortega did not blame me for things that happened when I was three months old," Obama said, to laughter and applause from the other leaders."

Whether or not you agree with our position on Nicaragua or the Bay of Pigs, it was American policy so you've got to love how this guy consistently deflects blame or discredits our policies using the "wasn't on my watch" argument.

"I was three months old"? So, if he had no play in events and struggles of the United States at the time, there weren't significant?

The bigger problem is that he is cozy and comfortable down there with dangerous enemies of the United States who he shares beliefs and political and/or social philosophies with.