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The 1773 Boston Tea Party was a rebellion against British rule that foreshadowed the American Revolution. It was predicated on the resistance of taxation without representation. In other words, colonists resented being taxed by a government of people they didn’t personally elect. The colonists snuck aboard the ships at night to dump the tea into the harbour rather than acquiesce to the tea tax imposed by what was becoming viewed as an increasingly meddling foreign country.
Similar elements are embodied in the core of the modern day Tea Party.
- T hey’re angry (as in Carl Paladino’s campaign rhetoric “I don’t have any specific policies but I’m as pissed off as you are”)
- They feel unrepresented (rightly so)
- They are unsatisfied with the status quo (welcome to the club)
Apparently the Tea Party meme isn’t new. It was tried back in the 1970’s by the LEFT wing. According to the research team at The Rachel Maddow Show, a group of people entertained an idea of a Tea Party that stood for ‘Tax Equity for Americans’ rather than the ‘Taxed Enough Already’ meme displayed at current Tea Party rallies. The primary difference in messaging being one was for equitable taxation and other for less taxation.
Both groups co-opted the Boston Tea Party for their own purposes. How can both sides of the political spectrum claim the same historic ideals under the same banner? Simple. Both sides identified with having their ideology oppressed. That was an overriding characteristic in 1773, 1974, and now, 2010.
So instead of accepting the tenets of a democracy (that a majority decides policy through elected officials), today’s Tea Party is merely a group of sore losers who do not accept the outcome of the democratic process. And we wind up with the insane posse of unqualified candidates that have cropped up on the ultra conservative side. Palin, Paladino, Angle, ‘chickens for checkups’ Lowden, O’Donnell, Ashjian, Miller, Paul; the list keeps getting bigger. They don’t necessarily care about the message as much as they care about getting messengers in the arena.
I’m not even sure if the modern day Tea Party understands the subtle differences between their movement and the original Boston Tea Party. The fact that they missed the negative porno meaning in the term ‘teabagger’ is a testament to their naiveté. They just know it’s a rebellion and they need a cool ‘Don’t Tread On Me’ moment to identify with. And history gets a big Tom Sawyer-like whitewash.
538 Refugees 
Look at this new article by Jeff Zeleny.The wave election appears not to be happening. And the major thing holding it back is, I believe, the highly visible extremism of the Tea Party. People like Sharron Angle, Christine O’Donnell and Carl Paladino are just fatal to the brand… because they are both attention-getting and SCARY.This is not a time to be scaring the electorate. Right now voters want to be soothed and reassured that everything’s going to be okay. They don’t want to take risks on a party that appears to be embracing the borderline insane.Maybe in better times, a group like the Tea Party could make real inroads. In these scary, uneasy days, it is simply costing the poor old GOP (which has been so co-opted it almost doesn’t exist anymore) a real opportunity to regroup and get its mojo back.
oh damn. sorry…(but it IS a great article)
The Revolution and the constitutional republic which it established was hardly limited to electing ones’ own representatives and the allowing them to run the lives of the citizenry as the saw fit. Rather, the elected government was expected to implement the will of the people and in doing so was forbidden to abridge the liberties of the individual. It is to restore the last two principles our Republic that today’s is dedicated.BTW, The New Left’s theft of the Tea Party symbol to impose even more onerous redistributive taxation hardly puts them in the same company of the original Tea Partiers or those who share the founders love of freedom today.
Bart… it’s great that you’re traveling with your laptop. You can send us updates from Italy and tell us about the great wine and food you’re enjoying. (And as somebody who’s spent many a long hour cooling my heels at O’Hare, I know how slowly the time passes there. )However, I really think for this two weeks you should swear off politics. Anytime you’re tempted to post something about politics, go and hug your wife instead. You’ll come home rested, happy, and fighting-fit for that final two-week push.(Actually, I predict you’re going to come home to quite a different political landscape… one that will take all your considerable resources and resilience to get through. But that’s a different story…)Ciao, Bart. Travel safely. We’ll miss you 🙂
I happen to know Filistro is a good Mom but she sure does orphan HTML tags. 😀
Fili, it’s only a vacation for Mrs. Bartles 😉 as it’s a business trip for 538’s 24/7 winger troll.And after living (25) years w/our fav teabagger, I’m sure she’s used to the routine lol.>But there are lots of gigolos in Italy, maybe she’ll get lucky 🙂
I got called by a pollster for the very first time in my life today. Yes, I still have a land line for some reason.
Mr. Universe said: “So instead of accepting the tenants of a democracy (that a majority decides policy through elected officials), today’s Tea Party is merely a group of sore losers who do not accept the outcome of the democratic process.”============There is a vast difference between not accepting the outcome of the democratic process, and not liking the outcome and resolving to work together to change the outcome of the next election.Are you actually saying that it is somehow illegitimate to oppose incumbents with whom you disagree? Are you saying that the TP shouldn’t have been allowed to oppose HC or the stimulus program? That it is inappropriate in some way to enter primaries, or organize to elect candidates who share your philosophy? ========You also say, when talking about a 70’s leftist group vs. the TP: “The primary difference in messaging being one was for equitable taxation and other for less taxation.”Your source: The Rachel Maddow show. I’m so glad you went for a famously neutral source to describe “equitable taxation.”Actually, the TP stands for a lot more than just lower taxes. It stands for smaller government, less regulation, and less arrogance from government. It believes that BOTH parties have a considerable number of politicians who don’t have the best interests of the country in mind, and who use the Treasury to buy votes. I don’t believe you understand fiscal conservatism and small government conservatism. In many respects, Tom DeLay was as conservative as they come, but he would have been the first target of a Tea Party challenge.You said: “I’m not even sure if the modern day Tea Party understands the subtle differences between their movement and the original Boston Tea Party. The fact that they missed the negative porno meaning in the term ‘teabagger’ is a testament to their naiveté.”I don’t consider myself naive, but two years ago I didn’t know the porno meaning of “tea bagger.” Guess I spent too much time working and too little time watching porn.I am fascinated by the concept that the Tea Party movement should have looked for a different name because opponents might change the name and tie it to gay porn. Or perhaps they knew, and didn’t care because their objection is to government, not gays. And when the left talks about “tea-baggers” and giggles over the porn implications, it isn’t addressing political differences. It’s more reminiscent of a couple of 12-year-old sniggering over a girlie mag. Not what I would call mature. As for “subtle differences” between 2010 and 1773: Don’t be so sure. A small minority of colonists felt that their government wasn’t fair, was taxing too much and inappropriately, was far away and not responsive to them. That’s exactly what today’s TP believes. And they have a significantly larger percentage of the population behind them than was the case in the 1770’s.
Totally off topic, and from a different thread:# shortchain wrote:You have to close the tags here, as proven when people don’t.I think you can be safe using italics or bold provided you follow the safety play: always close your tags. If it’s not necessary, it will be ignored, but if it’s necessary, the closures have to be there.shiloh wrote:My HTML mistakes are almost always not putting the “/” character in the closing tag er typos.==============I know I’m not doing it right, and could use a brief instruction. This is the only place I ever have had occasion to use html tags.And perhaps that instruction (with examples) could be posted on the main page.Much of what I say is contrary to the prevailing opinions here, but I would at least like to be a good participant…
Jeff, I will attempt to give you a quick HTML 101, but I’m not sure how to type it so that my examples will appear somewhat logically. It may take a couple of tries.To do italics: text to be in italics To do bold: text to be bold To start each tag, you put the letter/tag between the . To close the tag, you add a “/” before the letter.As such, you’ll sometimes see people “tag” things with things that aren’t actual HTML tags. For example:Sarah Palin is so smart!Get it?
Obviously, it trying to do my examples, it ended up creating orphaned tags. It also didn’t show the starts of my examples and hid the “sarcasm” tags around the Sarah Palin comment. Who knew the blog software would accept “sarcasm” as a legit tag!
Another attempt to create the examples…”” starts an italics tag. “” ends an italics tag.Clear as mud?
I’m curious as to where all the tea party patriots were during the Bush administration. I can’t recall hearing a peep out of them…but, perhaps I just missed it.
mclever —Thanks for the HTML primer. I’ll try to make it work.
To the HTML wannabee it may concern:At the risk of creating a monster, I’ll suggest that you might look for something like this.And, for Mr. U., forgive an old pedant for this, but it’s “tenets”, not “tenants” Ignorance is almost a defining characteristic of all the teabaggers I’ve met. Maybe one in 20 has any depth of knowledge in history. And the ones that do are like Bart, GOP stalwarts.
While we’re doing primers, allow me to repeat mine:T-baggers: people who engage in a specific kind of oral-genital sex playTeabaggers… people who wear teabags on their clothes and use teabags as a symbol of their political movementThese two words are NOT synonyms. They are homonyms.And anyone strongly opposed to the use of either word in its proper context is (as Mr Universe has famously stated…) a homonymphobe.(Don’t you just LOVE this place? 🙂
mostlyilurk wrote:I’m curious as to where all the tea party patriots were during the Bush administration. I can’t recall hearing a peep out of them…but, perhaps I just missed it.==============You didn’t hear from the TP during the Bush years because they didn’t yet exist. However, many conservative Republicans started disliking Bush when he introduced the Medicare prescription drug benefit and No Child Left Behind. We just saw him as the lesser of two evils. If you ran in GOP circles you’d know his domestic and budgetary policies were not at all popular, and the failure to control earmarks was strongly criticized.There are a number of different strands in the Republican party — religious conservatives, cultural conservatives (big overlap, but nowhere near 100%), fiscal conservatives, national security conservatives, libertarians, and supply-siders. The party used to be strongly dominated by “country-club” Republicans (Ike, Rockefeller, Bush I), also known as the North-East establishment. They’re now gone — in more ways than one. Mike Castle may have been the last of the breed and in the NE, the Democrats go to the country clubs to raise money. And much to most Republican’s chagrin, for a brief period starting around 1964 there was a racist fringe who came over with Goldwater (mistaking a libertarian for a “states-righter.”). That group went back to Wallace in 1968, and back to the Republicans in 1972 against McGovern (along with most of the rest of the country). Ford couldn’t stand them (mid-west Republicans never could), and they lost the last of their influence under Reagan, who had no tolerance for them.And finally, there’s the “corporate Republicans.” They tend to be pro-big business, middle of the road (mustn’t upset customers) who actually like regulation, since it’s easy for them to comply and tough for upstart competitors. They’re fair-weather friends, and often donate as much to the Dems as the R’s (more in the last cycle) to keep a foot in both camps. One of the reasons for the Tea Party movement is that the Republican’s were so disappointing in the last eight years. The only reason why Bush retained any GOP support was that the Dem’s looked even worse. I never saw any polling on this, but the majority of staunch Republicans I know weren’t upset when Obama won — Dole was embarrassing, and we thought there was a CHANCE that Obama meant what he said about being post-partisan. If he had been, and if he had forced Pelosi and Reid to go along with him, my guess is that we would still be looking at a wave next month, but in the opposite direction.
Jeff,re: You didn’t hear from the TP during the Bush years because they didn’t yet exist. However, many conservative Republicans started disliking Bush when he introduced the Medicare prescription drug benefit and No Child Left Behind. We just saw him as the lesser of two evils. If you ran in GOP circles you’d know his domestic and budgetary policies were not at all popular, and the failure to control earmarks was strongly criticized.Jeff, Republicans domestic and budgetary pollicies are what you found “disagreeable” about GWBs adminstration? You only started disagreeing with GWB with Medicare Part D and No Child Left Behind? By the way, an unfunded $750 billion Medicare Part D passed using reconciliation, and an unfunded mandate on the states imposed No Child Left Behind also using reconciliation.One wonders where was the Tea Party when Bush and his Republican-controlled Congress doled out $1.35 trillion tax cuts, using reconciliation, for the wealthiest 1% of the population. These are the tax cuts set to end this year. While the Tea Party rages against Obama’s use of recess appointments, where were they when Bush used that procedure 177 times over his 8-year reign? Where was the Tea Party when Bush launched a disastrous “cakewalk” war in Iraq which was based on a pack of lies and which cost the lives of 4,400+ U.S. military and put tens of thousands of Iraqi men, women and children in early graves? Where was the Tea Party when Bush-Cheney abandoned the real war against al Qaeda and the Taliban, a war that could have and should have ended over 7 years ago? Where was the Tea Party when the Vice President in a fit of vindictiveness traitorously revealed the name of a covert operations CIA agent, thereby committing an act of treason against our country?
Jeff,Sorry, but I’ve seen the TP crowds, and those people weren’t born after 1990. They’ve been around, and voting, since about 1985, if not before, from the look of them.They had ample opportunities to have demonstrations. The only difference now is that they have buses paid for courtesy of the Koch brothers, and organizational support from Rupert Murdoch.
@ mclever……..I have been doing tags for years on different threads and blogs. They are not working on this one. At least, not for all of us.
Ominous tweet from PPP tonite:“We polled CO Gov, CO Sen, CT Sen, CT Gov, Both NY-Sen, and NY-Gov this weekend. Only 1 of them in single digits”
Bart-Restore liberty to the individual?To drive whatever speed I chose?To ingest whatever drugs I prefer?Exactly what liberties are you proposing to restore?BTW the founders were not against taxes, just taxation without representation. So is the Tea Party in favor of statehood for DC? Or just how to propose that the District be represented since they clearly are not now?
Alki:Quoting PPP: CO Gov, CO Sen, CT Sen, CT Gov, Both NY-Sen, and NY-Gov this weekend. Only 1 of them in single digitsIt would be either CO Sen or CT Sen. The rest of the contests are walkaways right now.If it’s CO Sen it’s good news for the Democrat Bennet, because it means the race is tightening. If it’s CT Sen it’s bad news for the Democrat Blumenthal, because it means he’s not pulling away.
The end of the Italic Era.
@ Mono…..When I thought about it, I concluded the single digits is about Bennet….I don’t think PPP would put out a teaser tweet if it were bad for the Dems.@Realist……how do you end the italics? The normal way? If so, why does it work for some and not others?
@shortchainThanks for pointing out the tenets typo. I like to play with words and I occasionally do things on porpoise to see if anybody is paying attention. Also, it oftern imbues the conversation with new meaning. The downside is that I sometimes make unintentional typos based on goofy things I’ve written in the past. You happened to catch one.I have a weird sense of humour, what can I say.
Mr. U,I’ve known since I was a small child that the universe has a weird sense of humor.
@JeffRE: Rachel Maddow as a nuetral source. Not sure what your complaint is here. I’m completely liberal and watch liberal shows. You’re surprised by this?Teabaggers: I’ll be honest; I didn’t really know what this meant either but I somehow knew it was derrogatory. Guess I spent too much time working and too little time watching porn.Yeah, thanks for the standard Republican ‘get a job, loser’ meme. If I had time. I’d come up with some clever sterotypes for you, too. But I’m busy working, loser.Huh-huh. huh-huh. He said ‘meme’.
shortchain said,I’ve known since I was a small child that the universe has a weird sense of humor.Now you know why I’m agnostic
The Tea Party/Republican Party, a division of Fox News.As the Republican political analyst David Frum put it, “Republicans originally thought that Fox worked for us, and now we are discovering we work for Fox”.http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/04/opinion/04krugman.html?_r=1&ref=opinion
@Alki – Re HTML: this site’s parser seems, um, rudimentary at best. My suggestion would be to make sure that the tag is neither the first nor the last character in your post. Sometimes HTML parsers screw up on that, so add a return or a couple of spaces after you close the italics, for example.
Jeff, I just don’t buy it.If Tea Partiers were really so incensed about fiscal irresponsibility, they should have been up-in-arms during Bush’s tenure. But, the same people who are the angriest about Obama’s alleged fiscal irresponsibility are the ones who were the biggest cheerleaders for Bush a few years ago. apologies if this ends up being a double-post… 🙂
@Jean, from the Krugman column: Perhaps the most important thing to realize is that when billionaires put their might behind “grass roots” right-wing action, it’s not just about ideology: it’s also about business.Absolutely. For the Fox News and the Koch brothers, it’s about lining their pockets with dollars. Not about patriotism or family values or government debt. Those are just the prods used to push the pawns into place.
More evidence Dems are coming home?http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1010/43076.html#ixzz11PDLQLKlhttp://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2010_10/025964.phphttp://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/03/us/politics/03campaign.html?hp
From the Politico article:“The bad news: In a sign of how hostile the election environment remains for the party (Democrats), the cautious optimism is largely due to the view that the impending political hurricane could be downgraded from category 5 to category 4.”
@ GROG….that’s right. But the good news, there is one month more to go……a lifetime in the political world. 😉
So in keeping with the general topic…One of the first questions on the “political compass” quiz is:”I’d always support my country, whether it was right or wrong.”*Strongly Disagree*Disagree*Agree*Strongly AgreeNow, I’ve tried to visualize a circumstance under which a person might “strongly agree” with this statement, but imagination fails me (and I have a pretty fertile imagination 🙂 Maybe somebody can help me out?
Off topic… I want a new topic!Can somebody please put up a new thread addressing Nate’s concerns about polling in the new millenium?There’s ton of stuff there to ponder, and now is the time to be chewing it over. Besides, I just sent a post to the NYT inviting folks over here to talk about polls… would be nice if they’re greeted with an actual “Poll Thread” when they get here… Treme, you there? Doesn’t need to be long, Nate’s covered pretty much everything. Just a jumping-off point..Thanks 🙂
Teabaggers are against Bush because his presidency was a complete disaster. Had he left the country in a slightly better state they would’ve picked his brother Jeb instead of McCain to run for president in 08. All this talk about spending like a democrat would’ve never come up and they’d be pushing for an invasion of Iran as if the Iraq debacle didn’t even happen.
@filistro “Now, I’ve tried to visualize a circumstance under which a person might “strongly agree” with this statement, but imagination fails me”A person might answer “Strongly Agree” if they strongly support their country no matter what, even if they disagree with the nation’s official stance on a particular issue. An example would be someone in the military who would follow orders to prosecute a war under the direction of their superiors even if they didn’t like the policies of the current President.Or, to be contrarian, a political protester might object to the prosecution of a war, while simultaneously strongly and strenuously supporting our nation, its form of government, its laws, and so forth.Does that irrigate your imagination?:-)
@ filistro……when you say someone post a new thread, do you mean anyone or just the blog moderators?
A month CAN be a lifetime in politics, but the left has nothing that it it’s “for”. The little bit of excitement on the left right now is about what it’s “against”. And it’s a lot more difficult to maintain excitement about something your “against” rather than something you believe in.Democrats are basically running all negative ads which will have a very short term impact. But sooner or later you have to have run on pro-something platform. This website has been a good example of what’s fueling the left right now. There is rarely ever a discussion on left wing or liberal or progressive ideas. It’s primarily about anti-tea party, anit-Bush/Cheney, anti-Fox News, anti-Sarah Palin, anti-Christine O’donnell……etc.The folks on this site can obviously stay engaged by focusing almost entirely on the right wing, but I’m not sure that main stream Democrats can.
I’m going try this again without all the typos:A month CAN be a lifetime in politics, but the left has nothing that it’s “for”. The little bit of excitement on the left right now is about what it’s “against”. And it’s a lot more difficult to maintain excitement about something you’re “against” rather than something you believe in.Democrats are basically running all negative ads which will have a very short term impact. But sooner or later you have to have run on a pro-something platform. This website has been a good example of what’s fueling the left right now. There’s rarely ever a discussion on left wing, liberal,or progressive ideas. It’s primarily about anti-tea party, anit-Bush/Cheney, anti-Fox News, anti-Sarah Palin, anti-Christine O’donnell……etc.The folks on this site can obviously stay engaged by focusing almost entirely on the right wing, but the folks get much for enthused about going out to vote “for” something rather than “against” something.
alki… only blog moderators can post new threads. (I’m not a moderator, just a contributor.)Anyhow, it looks like the NYT is not going to print my post anyhow… maybe they’re tried of me mentioning this blog.Anybody else want to give it a try? It’s best to post right when Nate puts a new blog post up… that’s when people are still paying attention and reading all the comments.
GROG… I think everybody knows what the left is for. After all, they’ve had a legislative agenda for the past two years, and it’s easy to point to. They can say… “Look what we’ve done (and what we’ve tried to do) since we’ve been in power. THAT’S what we’re for.”
mclever (re “my country right or wrong”)… I guess it depends how you define “support.” In your example of a soldier fighting a war he disapproves of… that’s not “support” in my mind, but “duty.”For instance… if one’s child gets into a conflict where he/she is clearly in the wrong, one doesn’t abandon that child. Necessities of life are still provided; parental duties are performed. But a responsible parent doesn’t “support” the child to the extent of justifying and defending the bad behavior.
fili said:They can say… “Look what we’ve done (and what we’ve tried to do) since we’ve been in power. THAT’S what we’re for.”I don’t know of any Dems who are campaigning on what they’ve done or tried to do since they’ve been in power. They’re not talking about Obamacare, or Gov’t bailouts, or cap and trade, or closing Gitmo, or figting Arizona’s illegal immigration law, or raising taxes.
GROG… Maybe you just aren’t paying attention. Here is what Dems are campaigning on. It’s all at their official website. Candidates use these accomplishments in their ads and their stump speeches. All of them come up in debates. The president mentions them at every big rally.Where’ve you been? 🙂
filistro,GROG could also see what Al Franken is campaigning for democrats with.That GROG doesn’t see something is not an indication that it isn’t pretty obvious.
fili,I’m talking about individual canditates who are actually trying to get elected.
candidates…..DAMN
As the Republican political analyst David Frum put it, “Republicans originally thought that Fox worked for us, and now we are discovering we work for Fox”.Ever since the recent SCOTUS decision declaring that corporations had unlimited free speech rights — as if corporations are people — I’ve been wondering how long it would be until corporations begin holding high office. I posted something to that effect on the old FiveThirtyEight, and I think people thought I was joking.It’s going to happen, sooner than anyone thought. It will be an outwardly human being who is elected — one bought and paid for by a corporation. Not merely a slave to the special interest the corporation represents, but an actual employee, whose professional interest is to do the corporation’s bidding.Wait for it. Probably will happen at least once this November.
GROG,At least the Democratic candidates aren’t hiding from the media.Meanwhile, the Republican candidates aren’t talking about policy at all. Jan Brewer of Arizona won’t even participate in debates at all, unless she falls behind in the polls. Several of the GOP candidates will only talk to Fox News.This is, for better or worse (mainly worse), how the game of American politics is played.Singling out the Democrats for not trumpeting their stances on a huge, controversial bill, which they had to hold their nose and vote for in the face of GOP opposition, is a bit unfair, wouldn’t you say?
GROG… don’t sweat the typos. We all do it :-)As for “individual candidates”… here’s the website for a Senatorial candidate in a really tough race.Note the issues she’s running on?I could show the Dem candidates to you one by one (their issues all look similar)… but you’d be pretty bored by the time I get to the end of the alphabet.
@GROG wrote:From the Politico article:”The bad news: In a sign of how hostile the election environment remains for the party (Democrats), the cautious optimism is largely due to the view that the impending political hurricane could be downgraded from category 5 to category 4.”So … the good news is that polls are dramatically changing, fundraising for Dems is setting new records, and even Rasmussen’s generic ballot is now almost within the margin of error. The bad news is a metaphor.I’ll take that. From the same article:Top Democratic officials are convinced, and even some Republicans privately concede, that what’s happening is that party loyalists are coming home and other voters are beginning to assess both candidates in individual races.“The early polls were really a gauge of people’s anger, but more recent polls are a gauge of people’s options,” Delaware Gov. and Democratic Governors Association Chairman Jack Markell told POLITICO.Most people — other than us wonks, and the most rabid of the Obama-haters (who ride busses paid for by FOX) — most people have only just started paying attention. The more of them do, the better the Dems’s chances look.What does that tell you?
Note the issues she’s running on?What? The small business jobs bill (which is just another spending bill)? What about Obamacare? Isn’t she big on global warming? What about cap and trade? What about immigration? And you know what’s funny about your dccc.org link? They never mention what those things cost.
@filistroCan somebody please put up a new thread addressing Nate’s concerns about polling in the new millenium?I’ve sent Mr U an short article on the topic. Hope it catches it soon…
So, Grog, it is pointed out that the Dems are actually running on the issues, and you come up with other issues, “Oh yeah? What about this and this?”So you tell me — how come the Republicans don’t have Bush and Cheney showing up at their campaign rallies? After all, they are still running on the policies that Bush and Cheney implemented. And they want to return to Bush/Cheney policies.All the local Republicans talk about is taxes and spending. Never any actual consideration of what taxes and what the spending is for.You want to reduce spending — the only areas where spending will have a significant impact on the deficit is to slash Social Security, Medicare, and defense. Yet Republicans are trying to push the meme that Democrats want to cut Medicare (an absolute lie, but what’s new?) And when it is pointed out that, say, Rand Paul wants to cut Medicare, it is supposedly a “negative ad.”Why are Republicans not running on actual policies? Why do they run merely on taking points — “Taxes BAD! Spending BAD!” Let’s have some real discussions of policy. And of why the R’s want to return to the Bush/Cheney disaster.
GROG… you said “I don’t know of any Dems who are campaigning on what they’ve done or tried to do since they’ve been in power.”Your words, direct quote.You’ve clearly been proven wrong. Just admit it and move on.
Ah but to be a righter one must never say they are sorry or were (gasp) ever wrong.cue the music
Yes. My bad. I’m wrong. All the Democratic candidates are running on the big issues that are so important the left in this country. You guys are right. I’m sorry.
See GROG? Was that so hard? 🙂
Wow my security code was my dad’s old phone number. What is the odds of that?And yet again I post what turns out to be the last or next to last word as a new post comes up and every on migrates….but when I was like first there is a glitch and I get dumped. I’m not being moderated i’m being sequenced to death.I have been saying for some time that I feared that Nate made his mark at just the right time and maybe the worst. As with every thing else now in politics the system has been gamed to the point where nothing is meaningful.Raz and R2-k and others may have killed their own golden goose. I seriously beleive that even a blind hog can find an achorn now and again. So even the worst pollster is going to get it right now and again. I sit here this night and wonder just where Raz or maybe when Raz is going to start back peddling. He will end up with good numbers I really beleive that. But and it is a big but how will he explain major last minute moves to the client base? I don’t think it is limited to Raz either. Afte this is over Nate needs to reevaluate the poll orgs and see how they stack up.I did get not one but two poll calls this last 2 weeks. One was so blatently push based I hung up but I did answer. The second was from an outfit I did not catch the name of and can not figure the name of from my caller ID but it was flat out amaturist. I hung in and worked wih them but I have no idea if there was ny agenda here or even what they may have learned. So maybe there will need to be some level of standards the industry can place on themselves before they are chucked in the dustbin.
@ filistro In your example of a soldier fighting a war he disapproves of… that’s not “support” in my mind, but “duty.” Right. That is your definition. You asked for an example of how someone could choose the “strongly agree” position, and I cited two examples of people who might select that option based on how they interpret “support”.:-)
Bart,re: BTW, The New Left’s theft of the Tea Party symbol to impose even more onerous redistributive taxation hardly puts them in the same company of the original Tea Partiers or those who share the founders love of freedom today.The “original” tea partiers were colonists masquerading in costume as Native Americans (those savages, as they were called)in order to try to divert the blame for dumping the tea on the Indians.
Mainer,Off the top of my head, and assuming it was a 5-digit security code, and assuming the codes are uniformly distributed in the numbers from 00000 – 99999, the chance of this occurrence is 1/100000 for a particular person. Your question translates into: what is the probability that one of the commenters gets a number that has meaning to them? If we assume 15 commenters, 5 “meaningful” numbers per person, and each person making 6 comments per thread, on average, then that would give a probability of such an occurrence per thread of about 1/680.A low probability event, but not shockingly so. If you might have more numbers that are meaningful, the probability goes way up, of course.Also, I generally have to do the security code twice, since I don’t finish in the time allowed the first time, which would double the probability.
New documentary explores corporate influence over Tea parties:http://wonkroom.thinkprogress.org/2010/10/04/astroturf-wars/
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@JeanNew documentary explores corporate influence over Tea parties:That’s valuable stuff. Unfortunately, documenting the astroturf beneath the Teapers won’t have much effect.The True Believers a) won’t believe it, b) won’t care, and c) won’t watch anyway.I don’t think are are many people who will say, “Oh, gosh I was gonna support the Teapers. They presented themselves as a grass roots organization, and it turns out they’re really an advertising gimmick. I was gonna even vote for a local TP candidate. But now that I know they’re just corporate propaganda monkeys, I don’t think I will.”No, wingers aren’t going to say that. If they even listen to the evidence, they’ll say something like, “How cool is that! These well-off people and these enlightened companies are helping to fund a grass roots populist movement that will save America! Hooray for the Good Guys!”No sense of irony there, no siree.
I suspect if Bart weren’t enjoying the Italian countryside, he’d suggest that the TPers are happy to take the corporate money, but would never allow that money to influence their beliefs. Further, I figure he’d say that what the companies want is irrelevant, since the TPers are going to vote for ideologically-TP-aligned candidates regardless of whether they align with corporate desires.Perhaps it’s even true. I’m sure that at the very least a subset of the TP members believes it, and so for that subset it is true. One of those rare cases of belief truly creating reality.
Just as Bart said that he didn’t care if a candidate was a complete loon, as long as they will vote the way the TP wants, he’ll say it’s fine that the billionaire boys are the backers of the “populist” Tea Party.Just like the politicians they help elect, if the Koch brothers don’t toe the line, he’ll say they can be taken out.Oh, and of course, for the Tea Party, it’s a huge problem for the Islamic center in NYC that they might take funding from a source we don’t completely trust. That’s different, you know.