Moonhowlings

 Interesting.  I would think that the tea party would value free speech.  The teacher was on his own time.  Yet the tea party wants vengeance.  The local school board wisely will take no action against the teacher. 

I thought the tea party folks were rude and and strident.  I found it especially offensive that the teacher was told not to teach liberal ideas.   The kids were brought there as children.  The Dream Act  is for children who have been schooled in the United States and who are good students.  It is simply an investment in America.  We need good students to fill our work force.

Those kids are here.  We can turn them in to productive students or we can send the message that they are trash and should be gang members.  Those tea party folks sent the trash message.  I support the government teacher 100%.  He showed self control.  Nazi was mild compared to what he was thinking. 

Seriously, should Mr. Govt. Teacher even be teaching if he thinks all his students should be deported?  NO.

Fox News is giving its usual propaganda statement. 

Here is how the scenario might work down the line.  Some politician will put the squeeze on the school board to punish Bryant.  They will gave and find fault with his style or lesson.  Teaching is an art, after all, not a science.  They will find a way to mete out some hurt.  I would bet money, however, that it isn’t the end. 

From the Huffington Post:

WASHINGTON – A top goal of the nation’s most influential national Tea Party group is to stop Mitt Romney from winning the Republican nomination for president.

Interviews with top officials at FreedomWorks, a Washington-based organizing hub for Tea Party activists around the country, revealed that much of their thinking about the 2012 election revolves around derailing the former Massachusetts governor.

“Romney has a record and we don’t really like it that much,” said Adam Brandon, the group’s communications director

So if Romney is the front runner, then who does the Tea Party want to put in there?  Does Palin’s hour long video have anything to do with this plan?

If the Republicans want to hold on to their party, it seems to me that they need to tell the Tea Party who runs things.

I am just not sure I understand all this.  Does someone want to enlighten us all?

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Rick Santelli has been called ‘the Father of the Tea Party’ because of his 5 minute rant on the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. Before that, most people couldn’t begin to tell you who Rick Santelli is/was.

According to the Huffington Post:

People ask me if I’m the father of the Tea Party movement…I was the spark …that started it. If being the lightning rod that started the Tea Party is what’s written on my tombstone, I’ll be very happy.”

Santelli was catapulted to instant fame after his five-minute outburst on CNBC in Feb. 2009–where he decried government bailouts, called struggling homeowners “losers” and speculated aloud that a new Tea Party might be needed–went viral.

In the Sun-Times interview, Santelli called the rant “the best five minutes of my life,” but said he has not tried to influence the direction of the Tea Party in any way. He did call the rise of the movement “a proud moment for America.”

He also said that Franklin and Jefferson would be rolling over in their graves. Perhaps he should read a little history of Jefferson. Jefferson was not the most financially responsible person. His personal library had to be sold to pay his debts. Its a lot easier to say platitudes.

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Isn’t film footage wonderful?  It captures those moments that people want to immortalize, for a day or 2. 

Karl Rove capitulates.  He gets dommed by the girls.

So the pretty girls fight back.  Poor Karl.  Back to the lunchables.  Too funny.  Just waiting for the pretty girls to get tapped by the National Honor Society.

Part 3 takes a closer look at the various Tea Parties and how they got started.  

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Strange. Senator Brown certainly doesn’t seem to be all that conservative to me.

I feel like many I have seen in this movement are bullies. I got that feeling watching the town hall meetings on TV and on the internet. I can’t believe that every thing I watched just showed the bad side. I can’t believe that every rally I saw only showed the bad side.

I honestly think people aren’t really sure what they want. Senator Brown is more like a person I might vote for than someone Sarah Palin might vote for.

Christine Todd Whitman has always been one of my favorites since she was governor of New Jersey. Whitman knows what it is like to be shot at from all sides, being a moderate herself. She says she will be moderate on some times and more liberal on others. So how to label her? Tell her the issue, she will tell you where she stands and you can decide.

Is this nomenclature helpful or is it off-putting? Is this the kind of press the Tea Party wants? Would it fare better being a third party? Is it possible for a third party to win in America?

If the Tea Party became a third party, would they just continue to court old Republicans who sang the right music? How would that work? Maybe Newt has better thing before he inserts his foot. I have heard people do not like what he said.

A call for anarchy?

From the News & Messenger regarding the local Tea Party Rally yesterday:

Stewart, a Republican, said he will ask his colleagues to approve a resolution that would prevent county employees from implementing new Medicaid regulations when they take effect in 2014.

“That is a public option that increases Medicaid to beneficiaries by more than 40 percent,” Stewart said at a Prince William County TEA Party Patriots rally at the McCoart Administration Center on Thursday.

Stewart, who seemed confident that his resolution will pass, said the county would not provide the benefits until it is compelled to.

“We will not implement those regulations until we are required to do so through injunction, which can only be initiated by the attorney general of the Commonwealth of Virginia,” he told the crowd of about 100.

Additionally, Stewart said he believes the regulations will not bear legal scrutiny.

“I do not believe they are legal,” he said about 2 p.m., when the crowd had dwindled from a high of about 200 at noon when the rally started. “I do not believe they will serve anyone.”

He continued, “I do believe that they will hurt the current beneficiaries of Medicaid—the disabled, the poor children and others—who already have difficulty finding physicians who will treat them on the low reimbursement rate.”

Stewart said the regulations amount to “unfunded mandates” that will cost taxpayers money and divert resources from other areas.

“I don’t think the county should be responsible for administering a federal program,” he said.

Still, Stewart said he didn’t know how thing would shake out legally.

STOP!  Stewart doesn’t know how things will ‘shake out legally?  That might be a real good question to ask before everyone jumps on the bandwagon trying to get re-elected.  Injunctions are orders by a court of law to do or not do something.  When the feds are involved, ‘an injunction’ can also come along with some enforcement  like the National Guard or US Marshalls.   Is that what we want?  Another University of Alamaba situation?

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That darling of the nativist crew, Tom Tancredo,  opened the Tea Party Convention in Nashville last weekend with a litany of insults towards President Obama, John McCain, and the culture of multiculturalism (whatever that means).

ABC news reports:

The opening-night speaker at first ever National Tea Party Convention ripped into President Obama, Sen. John McCain and “the cult of multiculturalism,” asserting that Obama was elected because “we do not have a civics, literacy test before people can vote in this country.”

The speaker, former Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo., told about 600 delegates in a Nashville, Tenn., ballroom that in the 2008 election, America “put a committed socialist ideologue in the White House … Barack Hussein Obama.”

Tancredo did not stop at the Democratic president — ripping McCain, R-Ariz., the 2008 Republican presidential nominee, for shaping up to be a repeat of “Bush 1 and Bush 2.”

“Thank God John McCain lost the election,” he said, voicing his belief that McCain would have presided over big budgets and lacked a tough stand against immigration.

Tancredo served 10 years in the House of Representatives and made a name for himself with his ardent opposition to immigration. He believes the 2008 election served to galvanize the right.

“This is our country,” he told the crowd. “Let’s take it back.”

Is anyone else uncomfortable with Tancredo’s words?  Calling the president of the United States a “committed socialist ideologue” is disturbing.   One wonders who he means when he says ‘our.’ 

Tancredo further described the American electorate as “people who cannot even spell the word vote, or say it in English.”  Additionally, he called for a culture war in the name of preserving “Judeo-Christian principles whether people like it or they don’t.”

His rhetoric is unacceptable to many Americans.  Hopefully the Tea Party people or whatever they want to be called will reject this kind of political mentality.  It certainly doesn’t represent MY America.  It is still unclear  exactly who these folks are or what they want.  To the best of our  knowledge, and looking at who seems to identify with them, the Tea Party folks seem to be to the right of Republicans.  Tancredo, Bachmann, Beck  and Palin would fit this description.  However, Scott Brown does not.  It is  expected that  they will kick him to the curb now he is no longer needed to prove a point.  Brown seems far too moderate and more like John McCain or William Weld.

Many of our contributors defend the Tea Party with their last breath.  How do you see the Tea Party?  What is their cause?  Are they simply a grass organization?  If so, why are there so many groups?  Are they a populist group similar to the Perot people?    Is there one definition of this group or does each splinter group have its own persona?

Convention Attendee

View of the Gaylord Opryland Hotel

This political movement  needs a new name. What group of adults says they belong to the Tea Party. What does it stand for? Does anyone remember? From all reports, the Tea Party Convention this week in Nashville isn’t going too well.  Various people have stomped out and there is plenty of bickering. 

Why? The average person can’t afford to go. There are a bunch of Tea Party grassroots organizations. Many of them are squabbling already over the overly priced accommodations and set up in general. The Washington Post describes the following problems:

… [T]he first gathering of a sprawling movement, made up of hundreds of disparate Tea Party groups, has been marred by controversy. Some high-profile speakers and activist groups have canceled their appearances in protest of alleged profiteering by the convention organizers.

Attendees have been charged $549 a ticket (plus hotel and transportation) to gather for three days at the luxurious Gaylord Opryland Hotel and Convention Center — an expense that critics say is out of reach for the average grass-roots activist. Some of the proceeds will go to cover former Alaska governor Sarah Palin’s reported $100,000 fee to deliver Saturday’s keynote address.

There was also some mention of a $600 per person lobster dinner that one person who sat home described as a typical Republican fundraiser dinner. That sure doesn’t sound like an ‘average Joe’s’ kind of meal.  Sarah Palin is a keynote speaker who has said she will not profit from her honorarium but has yet to say who will receive her speaking fee.

What has happened to the grassroots, ‘tired of high taxes’, just your every day average person who showed up at town hall meetings to shout his or her outrage at the ‘system?’  The Post article indicates that those in attendance at the initial Tea Party Convention in Nashville are not your ordinary people being taxed to death.  The people attending the Convention are staying in  opulent accommodations, eating fancy meals, and living high on the hog.  The little man probably can’t afford the plane ticket much less the accouterments that go with that plane ticket.

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