Politicians: Pay Attention! The Anger Is Real
Thursday, April 16th, 2009If the politicians in Washington, DC, both Democrat and Republican, take nothing else from the nationwide Tax-Day Tea Party protests, they need to understand this: THE ANGER IS REAL.
Contrary to what the MSM would have you believe, Republicans were not the only people who attended these protests yesterday. While I’m sure that Conservatives were the majority, many Liberals and Democrats also attended. The Tea Party here in San Antonio drew a crowd of about 5,000 from all around the state and country. In Atlanta, the crowd was between 15,000 and 20,000. Nationwide estimates put the total attendance at about 250,000 people.
So, how did the MSM chose to cover the Tea Parties? Well, it appears that they all regressed back to their immature middle school mentalities:
For thousands of Americans, Tax Day was a moment to protest what they see as bloated budgets and a pile of debt being passed on to their children.
For CNN, MSNBC and other media outlets, it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to use the word “teabagging” in a sentence.
Teabagging, for those who don’t live in a frat house, refers to a sexual act involving part of the male genitalia and a second person’s face or mouth.
So when the anti-tax “tea party” protests were held Wednesday across the country, cable anchors and guests — who for weeks had all but ignored the story — covered the protests by cracking a litany of barely concealed sexual references.
The MSM, when they could be bothered to cover the story at all, treated it like nothing more than a joke. This is probably on of the best examples of why the MSM outlets like MSNBC, CNN, NBC and the rest are losing viewers by the thousands while Fox News keeps beating the pants off of them, usually outdrawing them by more than 2 to 1. It is one thing to have a bias and to govern your news coverage according to that bias, but it is quite another to openly mock groups of American citizens exercising the free speech rights.
Of course, this attitude is coming straight from the Obamassiah himself. The president’s arrogant treatment of Republican Senator John Kyl during a supposed “bipartisan” meeting regarding the administration’s stimulus plan has certainly influenced those on the left. With their declining viewership and ratings, one wonders why it is that they are so arrogant.
The protests were a good beginning, but will ultimately mean nothing if the anger is not channeled into action at the ballot box. The protesters who showed up yesterday must also show up on election day 2010 and 2012. The protesters must support those candidates who understand that the tax burden that the current administration is creating is not sustainable and will cost our kids and grand kids hundreds of thousands of tax dollars they haven’t even earned yet.
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April 17th, 2009 at 8:59 am
Of course the anger is real. About 20-30 percent of the electorate is ALWAYS angry about something. And they are especially angry now because they got their butts whooped in the last election.
I think this comment sums it up best:
April 17th, 2009 at 1:04 pm
Mike, your inability to understand the motivation for these protests renders your opinion and comments above worthless. The protesters, me included, are not angry because Obama won the election. Yes, there are people on the right who are angry over the election outcome, but they were not the driving force behind these protests. Outrageous spending by the government is the driving force behind this movement, regardless of who is in the White House.
We are angry that Bush and the Congress started the whole deal with the TARP stuff. We are angry because Obama and the Congress continued with the Auto and Bank bailouts, passing a bill with over 9,000 earmarks, and now trying to pass a budget which, according to the non-partisan CBO will increase the national debt to over $10 Trillion in ten years. These guys are spending money that hasn’t even been earned yet, and won’t be earned for at least a generation or two. On top of that, they are going to start printing more money and pump it into the economy, which will make existing money worth less.
Long and short of it is that we are very upset with Bush for starting this whole thing, and we are upset with Obama for continuing and enlarging it. You dismiss it all as anger at the election results, but you do so at your own peril. Conservatives were not the only people protesting at the Tea Parties, and if this movement continues to the 2010 and 2012 elections, politicians of both parties will be looking for new employment.
April 17th, 2009 at 3:17 pm
Sorry Nick, but I don’t buy for a second that it was a non-partisan affair. You’re going to tell me that y’all would have been out protesting just the same had John McCain won the election? Baloney!
If McCain had won, he would have done the same thing Obama and Bush did bailing out the banks and the financial industry. And he probably would have tried to bail out the auto industry too. The one difference would have been that his budget would have spent less trying to fix our health care crisis. Instead, he would have just spent more on the war in Iraq. The total would have been the same, but there would have been no tea party protests, just as there were none during the entire eight years of Bush’s miserable stewardship of our economy.
As for the TARP funding that you are so steamed about, perhaps you haven’t noticed but the banks have already started to recover and have been posting profits this quarter – Wells Fargo, Merrill Lynch, Citibank – and they are starting to pay off their TARP money. By the time this is all said and done the government could end up with a healthy profit itself.
And the auto bailout money is substanially smaller than the amount thrown at the banks, in case you haven’t noticed.
The one area where we might not make our money back is the fund Timothy Geithner set up to clean up the “toxic assets” weighing down the financial industry which are the result of Phil Gramm’s derivatives trading scheme. Unfortunately, this mess has to be cleaned up somehow before our economy will be healthy again.
The additional spending in Obama’s budget is not a big deal if we get the health care crisis under control. The thing that is making those deficit numbers so high in future years, aside from Bush’s tax cuts for the rich, are our Medicare and Medicaid obligations due to the out-of-control increases in medical costs.
The same goes for the stimulus spending. Sure it’s a lot of money right now, but if we get our economy going again it isn’t that much debt as a percentage of the GDP and will get paid off very quickly.
I for one have faith in our country, and unlike Gov. Perry and a lot of the teabaggers, I am not looking to secede or start a revolution.
April 17th, 2009 at 5:10 pm
Mike, I know it fits into your preconceived ideas of what the tea parties were about, but these protests were not about a person or a party. They were about the actions that both presidents and both Congresses took with regards to spending taxpayer money. And I can tell you categorically that if McCain had won the election, and if McCain had done the same thing, these same protests would have taken place. If you will recall, the Republicans were not that thrilled with McCain as the candidate to begin with, and Conservatives absolutely hated him.
As for the banks paying back their TARP money, why is it that Obama doesn’t want them to pay it back so soon? Its because he wants to maintain control and expand his power over the private business sector.
As far as the “health care crisis” goes, it isn’t as bad as you liberals make it out to be. No one who shows up for treatment at a hospital in this country is refused treatment; it is against the law to do so, and illegal aliens have been doing it for years and years. Changing the health care system to a socialist system where the government (you and me) pay for everything will end up costing even more than it does now, because we’ll not only be paying for the people who can’t pay, we’ll be paying for the people who under the current system could pay for it. How’s that going to reduce the $10 Trillion dollar National Debt Obama’s building right now?
You guys love repeating your mantra that “tax cuts are only for the rich,” don’t you? Problem is, it isn’t true. Under the Bush tax cuts, everyone who paid taxes received a rebate check. Yes, a majority of the poor did not, but that was because they ended up not owing any tax to begin with. How can someone who paid nothing get a rebate?
And what about all that new paper currency Obama is printing up? What is going to happen when the value of the dollar hits rock bottom? Face it, the debt is not only not going to be reduced, it is going to expand beyond anyone’s expectations.
As far as seceding or starting a revolution, the vast majority of the people at these protests don’t want to do any of that either. Its easy to pick a few nut cases out of a crowd and then try to paint everyone with the same brush, but the reality is the majority of us just want those people in Washington to at least READ the legislation they pass before they pass it and to cut the spending.
April 17th, 2009 at 6:20 pm
Nice site Nick, did you try to make it to the Alamo?
Anyway, the other commentor has learned his lessons well. I don’t think he came here for a fair debate or to listen to another point of view. I will give him credit, he did not resort to name calling so I tip my Stetson to him for that.
Take care amigo.
April 17th, 2009 at 6:26 pm
If I may comment about your new poll, some new leaders need to rise up out of the crowds for the momentum to really gain good traction. A third party seems unreasonable as most states are set up for a two party system.
But under what party would one run under? I dunno, both parties are carrying baggage which can be used by the other to tear ‘em apart. Look what the left did to Govenor Palin.
April 18th, 2009 at 1:15 am
You know, Nick, I can believe that you would have stuck by your principles and been out protesting even with McCain in the White House. But I don’t believe that Glenn Beck and Fox News would have been out promoting it like they did. Not unless they could work it so that all the wrath was directed at the Democratic Congress and they could have VP Palin as a featured speaker.
And you are right that it is not fair to judge all the participants based on a handful of wackos (although some of the biggest wackos – Glenn Beck and Ted Nugent – were the featured entertainment). But I still think the whole premise of the tea parties were off kilter and I will continue to criticize them for it.
I hope you had a chance to meet Robin Juhl, aka Ranten’ Raven, who chaired the group that organized the local tea party. He is a really good guy, and even though I don’t agree with his politics, I have a great deal of respect for him. It’s too bad that he shut down his blog before you started yours up.
As for the TARP money, the real reason I think why they didn’t want those banks to just pay it all back right away is because the whole purpose of giving them the money is so that they would lend it out to struggling businesses to help get the economy going again. It doesn’t help matters if the banks just sit on the money and then give it all back without lending it out.
On Health Care, Obama is not proposing that we move to a socialist system. I don’t know all the details, but he is pushing for universal coverage which I believe we are obligated to provide without taking away people’s ability to go to the doctor or health plan of their choice.
April 19th, 2009 at 8:33 pm
Mike, if McCain had been in office, doncha think the MSM would have been promoting the protest because then they could have used it “objectively” to point out all McCain’s shortcomings? Heck, you know if three folks in a pink T-shirt were within a square mile of each other the MSM would be covering it thinking a code pink protest had broke out.
Now the last I looked, no one is denied health care if they get to a hospital. While it has been ten years since I lived in Seguin, I do remember that a fair percentage of my county property tax goes to the hospital to care for those who cannot pay for health care. Now I think I see those wheels turning in your Aggie mind Mike (I’m class of ’81, BTW.) and I could agree we could use those taxes and arrange things for preventive care and get things organized instead of filling up the emergency rooms and wasting money. However, I have dealt with HMOs and having some clerk telling me I can’t have a particular drug or treatment I need is certainly where the feds will take this. I travel to Canada on business and let me tell you, the people there really do not like their health care system. Long waits and higher death rates. And I am concerned that universal health care will not be applied fairly. Another concern is really good doctors will find somewhere else to practice where there is no limit to the amount of money they can make. You know, that capitalism thing.
I’d like to see someone on the left (you on your blog maybe?) say something about Ms Garofolo calling the folks who made the protests racists. Do you really think they are all protesting because a mulatto was voted into office?
Now enough of that, lets get to the important stuff. I watched the game last night, can the Spurs get past Dallas? I was at the game in Atlanta in March and they did not look that bad when Manu was not playing.
April 20th, 2009 at 11:27 pm
The local tea party we attended had about 500 attendees. There were dozens of signs. T(axed) E(nough) A(ready); You spend your money, I’ll spend mine; Impeach them all; Congress Gone Wild; Impeach Federal Reserve and IRS Mafia; Wasting our Money; Bankrupting Our Country!, etc. There were no curse words, just anger at the reprehensible waste of money.
No where at any time was there a sign against Obama. The only Congressmen I saw mentioned were Dodd and Frank for their inept performance on the Senate Banking Committee. This isn’t against the President. This is against the spending of TRILLIONS of dollars that we don’t have by the President and Congress, forcing things that we don’t need right now until our country gets healthy. We need and want our Washington crew to work on the economy. Everything can wait until we are solvent enough to grapple with it.
We had a mesmerizing speaker, a man 72 years of age, survivor of Auschwitz. He spoke of grave fears of what he’s seeing, because, of course, he’s seen it all happen before. Nothing noticeable, just one tiny step at a time. He fears for our Country, so do we.
Our country is going down the tubes and one Congressman is still ranting about wanting hearings as to whether or not 7 District Attorneys were unjustly fired in 2004 or 2002, or whenever. How much money would he like to spend on that? Did the press look into whether or not Pres. Obama fired any District Attorneys?
The Congress is supposed to be SERVING us, not screwing the whole country. The people in Congress are OUR servants, supposedly serving their country to the best of their abilities. Is this the best we get? A 1,700 page bill forced into passage overnight before anybody read most or all of it? Madness. A bill with 8,400 earmarks totaling an amount of money that is impossible to comprehend? What is with these people that they feel they can always get away with this? Enough is enough. We are punished if we don’t live within our means, bounce checks. To live on other people’s money used to be called embezzling and fraud. Why is Congress allowed to do this and it’s OK?
As for health care. If any bill is passed, it needs to be an umbrella held over everybody, including Congress! I want Congress to live by the rules they pass for the country! Any passed health bill good enough for Americans should be good enough for our Congressmen (and women). Anything good enough for the Congress should just about be good enough for our Vets, too.