Tea Party is a Joke

[JoB]

I am not really a Huffington Post fan…

but this article is both well written and germane to this discussion…

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-creamer/why-republicans-persist-i_b_844860.html

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[waynster]

Wait I can see Ballard from alki no thats russia from alaska he is muslum not a christian he was born outside the USA…. lies ? Tea Party doesn’t lie or is a mad west seattleite seeing things again from the 70’s what was he smoking…..or is the tea party blowing smoke up our…?

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[JoB]

waynster…

if that smoke was getting us high there would be a lot more people attending tea party events…

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[redblack]

quoth rich:

They didn’t know the value of a hard days work. They didn’t honor their elders as much. They started worshiping the pursuit of happiness through money. They became greedy. They have been in charge of many institutions since 80’s.

and they voted for reagan, who institutionalized and legitimized these sentiments and a general distrust of government.

self-entitled describes the tea party pretty aptly.

nonetheless, you’re talking about my parents, who both worked their asses off for the federal government – until reagan introduced the wonderful concept of contracting to their workplace, and dumped a bunch of self-entitled leaches onto the federal budget. do less with more!

ken:

thanks for the education. again. i find it troubling that conservatives attempt to paint democrats/socialists/leftists as authoritarian or fascist, or claim that hitler was a socialist or a liberal.

i didn’t realize that hitler coined the “liberalism is a disease” meme – which is being dusted off and paraded around the town square again.

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[JoB]

redblack…

do you have the demographic studies to back up that “they” voted for Reagan claim ?

Baby Boomers were and are still pretty diverse politically…

heck.. i am not sure even the leading contenders were over 30 when the Reagan bus hit town.

***

i just checked… and some of us.. including me… were :(

i guess you can chalk that up to wishful amnesia

but i still don’t think that means “we” can be blamed for Ronnie Raygun …

you can pass that one along to grandma and grandpa :)

at least that’s my story and i am sticking with it until proven wrong :)

I only hope that as we boomers become the voting block that they were..

and we are rapidly becoming that voting block…

that we have more sense.

i don’t count on that…

after all I am the politically oddity in my family..

but i hope.

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[waynster]

Job it wasn’t amnesa just the hang over from the 70’s as boomers we now have a chance to redeem our selfs by making sure tea party advocates don’t get elected. These are not true reagenites. The tea party is all about their greed as long as they get richer and the middle class gets poorer and the poor well it will look like a 3rd would country around here and the nra becomes the police guarenteed they will be singing about paradice and we all know what happens to paradice…. kiss it good bye

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[JanS]

I had to laugh this morning reading about the Tea Party Governor in Florida (Scott), who was elected last November. Already he has fallen out of favor with the people in Florida, who put him in there. Their beef? He’s cutting too much stuff that impacts them….

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[JoB]

waynster…

I am so sorry

but i am one of the boomers who think that describes Reagan and his motives accurately…

it’s just that back then

greed was still considered right up there with gluttony..

as a sin.

who knew it would become a “christian” virtue?

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[redblack]

jo: well, he got elected, and the baby boomers were the largest demographic – and the most active voting bloc – at the time…

and the term “reagan democrats” was born in the ’80’s, which means a lot of folks defected from carter because of that smooth-talking labor turncoat (reagan) and his deficit-spending, free trade handlers.

i’m not laying the blame at your feet, but i believed my parents when they said they didn’t trust reagan. (they worked for DOD, after all, and reagan was the first blatantly anti-government candidate.) as is common, reagan got elected because people wanted to believe him and they weren’t necessarily looking for the truth.

on the other hand, americans blamed carter for raising interest rates to quell vietnam war-era inflation. they blamed him for high energy costs. the blamed him for the iranian revolution and the tehran hostage crisis. they blamed him for asking them to be conservative with gasoline and water.

and big money eviscerated him when he demanded that they spend money to curtail pollution.

in short, carter asked people to look in the mirror. and evidently, the electorate didn’t like what they saw.

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[JoB]

redblack..

LOL… so did you “kids” elect Bush or do we blame that on the boomers too?

buried at the bottom of this link is demographic info on the 1980 Carter/Reagan presidential election…

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_1980

it should come as no surprise that the older, more christian, more affluent, republican, conservative voters favored Ronald Reagan…

as did independents.

What will surprise you is that the baby boomers mostly weren’t old enough to be in that older group in 1980. The bulk of the boomers were split right down the middle on Ronnie…

the oldest of the boomers are aggregated with the next highest age group who favored Reagan but not by much.

i am too tired to do it today..

but it might be interesting to look at the demographics on every presidential election following Reagan to see what those boomers were really up to…

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[redblack]

jo: meh. yeah, i suppose we gen-xers are responsible for bush to some degree, and i’ve heard rumors that, as a whole, we lean right. (not me, though! i voted like three or four times in as many states as i could get to in one day – all for gore and kerry. and i’m not even a citizen!) bush was mainly the result of voter apathy and contentment that the economy was doing fine, i think. well, that and al gore’s scintillating personality.

remember how gore talked about making the national debt a priority?

interesting side note, while we’re on generational voting blocs: generation x is the smallest since the early 20th century. there are about 75 million baby boomers, 46 million gen x’ers, and 76 million millennials/gen y-ers.

independents? ahh, yes. the mythical, elusive “independent.” voted for reagan – or bush – then the next election cycle claims he didn’t vote to ship american jobs overseas, for example, and that he’s “never been affiliated with any party.”

do i have a point here? not really.

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[casaboba]

In the Thursday April 7Th edition of the Seattle Times (Page 2 / L.A. Times News Feed) it was reported that Mount Vernon Washington State’s own Glenn Beck will NOT have his nightly FOX-TV show renewed.

Perhaps ANOTHER sign the “Tea Partay” is of shrinking significance…

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[waynster]

Sadly Job I must admit I too was convenced by uncle ronnie only if I had seen what they would do some 30 yrs later. Tea partyers are not true reagenites their goal is to close the boarders outsource every manufactoring job overseas and create a service oriented work force making a true split of rich and poor. Minumim wage jobs would drop to 1970 levels unions would be banned immigration stoped prices would sore and they would call this capitalism. Religious freedoms banned unless we all had christian beliefs faiths in other words we would isolate ourselfs from the world. The sad thing is some realy do want this.

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[JanS]

well, I am 64…I was 33 in 1980, when Reagan was elected. I had just given birth to my one and only child…and I truly questioned the minds of the people who elected him. It was a very sad day…I looked at my daughter, who was about 2 weeks old, and said aloud…”what have I brought her into?”

It’s 2011….and we survived it…just not well :)

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[Jiggers]

Donald Trump is trying to be the king leader of the teahags now. He’s now questioning Obama’s legal birthplace. Find something else to do chump, Obama’s been down that road before.

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[JoB]

Waynster..

there is still time to turn our world around..

after all.. just because you fall for a con job once doesn’t mean you have to let the shysters clean you out.

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[HMC Rich]

Red Black, something happened in the early 70’s which may have lowered how many people were born in the Gen X years. Roe v Wade. What would have happened if the 40 or so million absent souls had been able to vote?

Really!! Trump is now the leader of the Tea Party? I thought it was the Koch’s… or Sarah Palin… or maybe the CEO’s of the big nasty corporations and conglomerates (except Mr. Obama’s friend …. wait for it…. GE – No taxes paid) Hmmmm.

Would you guys and gals make up your minds in who to trash!!!

Just for fun, lets look at what is happening right now.

A guy makes $1,000,000 a year. He is taxed by the Federal Government 35%. I believe that he pays $350,000 to the government to spend that money on government programs.

And the government spends the former surplus of Social Security, and now spends 40 more cents on the dollar to take care of the nation’s business.

We are fast approaching the debt ceiling once again. If it is not raised it will cause a real and total federal government shutdown. It may throw the country in chaos.

Come on my friends, if this was Bush or Reagan you would and you were screaming at the injustice of it all. Be honest, there is a large problem here. It can be fixed if the can is not kicked down the road.

OK JanS, say you are completely correct about Reagan starting all of this. But I thought Clinton and the congress fixed it. Sorry, that line of thought never quite followed in my book. But it is your view so it is Reagans fault.

Yes, W and the congress also brought us the beginning of the debt after Clinton cleaned it up. Now it is even worse under Obama and the two houses.

Sure, lets be partisan about some social issues, fine. But the spending is madness. And the problem has been “brewing” for a long time. Since it has been a growing problem that took a lot of time to get to this point, it will take time to fix too.

Remember, even when Social Security was started they did not envision people living so long in the future. Time to get serious. Obama is right, we all need to cut back a bit. And so does he and his government.

So, between the misinformation about the Tea Party that some of you believe, the main factor is they do not want the country to spend itself into oblivion. Fight them on other issues near and dear but the GAO says the country would be unsustainable by 2037. Wow.

An actual prediction of the end of the United States. Please read the conclusion, the first line. Pretty chilling. http://www.pgpf.org/Issues/Fiscal-Outlook/2011/03/23/Report-on-GAO-Budget-Analysis.aspx

Time to get real. The good news is we are not at the level where deep austerity cuts need to be taken immediately. We have a small window left. Paul Ryan has proposed a plan. It closes loopholes so that corporations start paying their fair share. It is a plan. It has been rated as a plan that would work but it would take time and everyone would be affected.

We maxed out the credit card with our partying and giving, now it is time to pay it off. If there is one thing this country’s citizens can do is bear down when needed. Or is it too late?

Sorry for the long post.

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[redblack]

something happened in the early 70’s which may have lowered how many people were born in the Gen X years. Roe v Wade. What would have happened if the 40 or so million absent souls had been able to vote?

actually, 1970 – 4 years before roe v wade – was the lowest birth rate year in modern history, and there was an even bigger reason why fewer kids were born then:

vietnam.

that limbaugh abortion myth is pretty funny, but it doesn’t explain why the generation after mine was the largest in modern history. abortion is still legal, after all.

back to the debt.

no, clinton and the republican congress didn’t fix it. while clinton wrote (and republicans approved) budgets in the black, he didn’t pay down the chronic republican debt. it didn’t get worse, but it didn’t get better.

paul ryan? please. i’m going to say this again:

you can’t cut $1.4 trillion from a $3.5 trillion budget. you have to raise revenue. we’re talking about a deficit that’s equivalent to the HHS and pentagon budgets combined. even the “draconian” republican budget proposals amount to less than 3% of the total deficit. in other words, republicans are proposing to turn the $1.4 trillion deficit into a $1.36 trillion deficit. BFD.

until i hear anyone in congress – and the corporate media – talking about cutting corporate subsidies, i’m going to continue to say “screw it” and cheer on democrats to spend all they can and republicans to attempt a shut down. i’m calling the republican bluff, and i wish harry reid would do the same. please default on our debt. do it, sissies!

Sorry for the long post.

don’t hold it in. you got to let it flow, ese.

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[redblack]

We maxed out the credit card with our partying and giving, now it is time to pay it off. If there is one thing this country’s citizens can do is bear down when needed. Or is it too late?

oops! can’t let this blatant lie slide by.

i challenge you to show me one tangible thing this country owns as a result of all of this republican debt. jobs? infrastructure? technological advancement? sustainable energy sources?

one thing.

and a transference of wealth to the top doesn’t count, because they’re not spending it.

in other words, i refuse to “bear down” any more. i’m paying way more in bills than i am in taxes – half of which congress is giving to the same people i’m paying bills to.

partying? what an insult of my intelligence. flat wages, no economic growth and $5,000 debt for every man, woman, and child in this country – all so that some fat bastard in a mansion can buy another television network to whine about the “death tax.”

i’m having trouble stopping here, but i’ll finish by saying, man, rich, you are on the wrong side of the fence.

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[TDe]

You have a point HMC. There IS a problem with debt level and we need to address it. But, do we need to address it with a sledge hammer just as we’re coming out of a deep recession and just as gas prices are climbing to levels that are again beginning to affect every household budget? Do we address it by making drastic cuts as the housing markets are still shaking and as unemployment is just now beginning to turn around? Where will all those unemployed federally subsidized workers find jobs if those cuts are enacted? Will the guy who makes $1M suddenly decide to trickle some of his wealth down and create new jobs? He hasn’t done that yet, so what will make him magically do that when all those federal and federally subsidized workers find themselves unemployed?

Where will the elderly find funds for health care if Ryan’s plan is adopted? Will private insurance agencies suddenly offer affordable policies to those who barely subsist on social security or disabilty? They haven’t done that yet, so what will magically make them do that if Medicare is cut?

Or do you guys just not give a rip? Are some Americans lives just collateral damage to you in your pursuit of… what? More wealth? Political gain… To what end? Please enlighten me. I really don’t understand the end vision to all these Republican plans. What’s the ultimate goal here?

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[redblack]

rich: sorry, but i’m a little bored this morning, and after reading this, it occurs to me that you either don’t understand deficit and debt, or you have been believing a few untruths told by right-wing talkers:

Yes, W and the congress also brought us the beginning of the debt after Clinton cleaned it up. Now it is even worse under Obama and the two houses.

by beginning the great experiment of deficit spending to hamstring the government’s social program budgets, reagan and a democratic congress tripled the national debt – from $800 billion (after 200 years of modest debt and mostly neutral budgets) to $3 trillion. bush 1 and clinton almost doubled that, bringing the debt to $5.6 trillion by 2000. (the first three or four years of his presidency, clinton also wrote budget deficits.) then, of course, bush 2 doubled that number to $12 trillion by the time he left office by writing nothing but deficits, which the republican congress had no problem signing. then came the housing crash and TARP when democrats took control of congress – nothing but red ink.

and here we are, with a dead economy, lower tax revenues, and soaring outlays to private interests.

so to correct your history in other words, under reagan, the U.S. went from the world’s biggest creditor to the world’s biggest debtor.

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[JoB]

HMCRich…

there is a huge difference between the tax rate and the effective tax rate..

that is what is actually paid to the US treasury.

The poor millionaire in your example can afford a good tax attorney who will be able to reduce that nasty 35% to something less than 10%.

something the “poor” working stiff who only makes a hundred or a hundred and a half is unlikely to be able to do without a side business creating write-offs.

i willglady cry a river..

but not over your example.

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[JoB]

HMCRich…

LOL.. how conveniently you pass over the 8 Bush years :))))

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[JoB]

HMCRich…

hmmm…

if the republicans didn’t hand 70 billion in tax cuts to the wealthy.. would we be talking about the 60 billion in “savings” those same republicans want to take out of benefits for it’s most needy citizens?

and we haven’t even started talking about the tax breaks that make our national corporate rate one of the lowest effective tax rates in the world.

heck.. we even pay many of them very big bucks to do business…

but yeah… our most vulnerable citizens should feel the pain..

after all.. they don’t have the deep pockets to fund elections

so they don’t have anyone to speak up for them.

But if you think only American business matters..

then i guess this makes sense.

perhaps it’s time to amend the constitution

to the reality of “we the wealty” ?

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[dobro]

One note about “the deficit” and how it got bigger under Obama…many(especially the right wing deficit whiners) may not recall that under the Bush administration the ENTIRE cost of Iraq and Afghanistan was not listed in the budget. That’s right, the ENTIRE cost was paid for with borrowed money using a budget trick called “emergency supplementals”. These so-called emergency bills put the money in another column.

When Obama came in he put all of that debt ON the books in the interest of transparancy and honesty about how much money we were really spending (and borrowing). There’s close to a trillion bucks of your “deficit” without Obama spending a single penny, just putting the actual cost of the Repub wars on the budget, unlike the thieves and liars that previously held power over the spreadsheets.

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[Author]

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