Tea Party Observations

[byu71]

Also, those who heard him say it. So he didn't really keep it a secret.

No, he smoothed talked his way, with the help of the media, out of it.

There are still good, smart, honest people who don't think he wants to redistribute the wealth and move us toward socialism. I actually hope those people are right and I am wrong.

[cowboy]

5) A majority of them are in an income category that have actually seen their federal taxes DECREASE over the last few years.

As a recent study on taxes noted: "A family of four in the exact middle of the income spectrum will pay only 4.6 percent of its income in federal income taxes this year, according to a new analysis by the Urban Institute-Brookings Institution Tax Policy Center. This is the second-lowest percentage in the past 50 years."

6) Sixty-four percent believe that the president has increased taxes for most Americans, despite the fact that the vast majority of Americans got a tax cut with the Obama Administration. Thirty-four percent of the general public says the president has raised taxes on most Americans.

These questions speak to the poll's bias. Most people are smart enough to realize that they can't base their expectations on one-time tax credit that temporarily lowers their tax obligations. Further, we would expect them to believe that their tax burden is fair, as it is the tax burden that was put into place with the Bush tax cuts.

To say that Obama hasn't raised taxes is blatantly misleading. He is allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire, which raises taxes across the board for all brackets. Trying to couch this as an expiration rather than a tax increase is just flat dishonest. The fact is that taxes will increase. Further, the administration just passed a series of tax increases to help fund the mammoth health care bill. To say that more Tea Partyers believe Obama raised taxes suggests that they are smarter than the average American.

The fact of the matter is that the Tea Party movement is about resisting bloated governments and high taxes. The Times poll is desperately and transparently trying to paint them as a bunch of right wing bigots who are hiding behind taxes to try to bring down a black president, which is simply not the case.

[il Padrino Ute]

These questions speak to the poll's bias. Most people are smart enough to realize that they can't base their expectations on one-time tax credit that temporarily lowers their tax obligations. Further, we would expect them to believe that their tax burden is fair, as it is the tax burden that was put into place with the Bush tax cuts.

To say that Obama hasn't raised taxes is blatantly misleading. He is allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire, which raises taxes across the board for all brackets. Trying to couch this as an expiration rather than a tax increase is just flat dishonest. The fact is that taxes will increase. Further, the administration just passed a series of tax increases to help fund the mammoth health care bill. To say that more Tea Partyers believe Obama raised taxes suggests that they are smarter than the average American.

The fact of the matter is that the Tea Party movement is about resisting bloated governments and high taxes. The Times poll is desperately and transparently trying to paint them as a bunch of right wing bigots who are hiding behind taxes to try to bring down a black president, which is simply not the case.

[PaloAltoCougar]

I continue to enjoy my status as a perceived bigtime Obama supporter. I voted for him, and based on everything I knew at the time, and in view of the alternatives, I don’t regret it. I’m bothered by some of his actions, pleased by others; he’s the mixed bag I begrudgingly accepted. If we had a Republican Congress as we did in the later Clinton years I think I’d be a lot happier.

I’m not nearly as upset as some here, and the Tea Partiers generally, about allowing the Bush tax cuts to lapse. I pay a lot of taxes, and I’d like to pay less. But I hate the mounting national debt even more. Viewed purely selfishly, I loved the Bush tax cuts, but for those to have been implemented at a time when the U.S. embarked on a colossally expensive and painfully misguided war, while actually increasing, not cutting back, other aspects of government, was catastrophic and the antithesis of what I thought my party was about. But with Palin and Huckabee hogging the spotlight, for the first time in my life I’m thinking of finally going independent.

[mUUser]

Hit a bullseye in 7/10 characteristics.

Maybe I should check a TEA Party out?

[il Padrino Ute]

Hit a bullseye in 7/10 characteristics.

Maybe I should check a TEA Party out?

I think you'll find that it's worth the effort. You'll also learn that it is being misrepresented by the media.

[VirginiaCougar]

What has Obama done thus far to give the GOP a chance to compromise? The fake little "health care summit" that took place before the vote was nothing more than Obama gathering the politicians together to tell them that they will do what he tells them to do.

It's tough to compromise when the other side shuts you out of everything.

Obama desperately wanted Health Care to be a bipartisan bill. He was willing to offer many things to have some GOP involvement. Why do you think this bill has 1990s GOP ideas written all over it? He would have added even more tort reform that he did (there is a little anyway).

The GOP leadership made a purposeful strategic decision (I think a bad one) to say no to everything, even their own ideas from a few years ago. Just call their own previous ideas socialism and scare the hell out of people. I know of a couple of US Senators that wanted to participate and negotiate a better bill than what we got, they were told flat out NO by GOP leadership.

I can critique Obama on a number of things, but on Health Care the lack of involvement is almost entirely in the GOP's hands. Later on they did keep Republicans out of the process, but that was because of the game the GOP was playing of trying to kill any bill through thousands of amendments, procedural process, etc.

Dems begged them to participate early on and a number wanted to. If they had, we might have had a better bill than what we have. As it is, it is still a GOP inspired bill (which is why strong liberals hate the thing).

[SoonerCoug]

I'd just like to say that I don't mind paying taxes. It's much easier for me to pay my taxes than my 5% tithing, and this attitude has nothing to do with the consequences of not paying.

[Color Me Badd Fan]

Probably 25%-30% of this country in general thinks Obama wasn't born here. There's a quarter of people on both sides of the spectrum who are more or less close-minded morons.

The thing I find amusing about the relationship between the Tea Partiers and the old media (NY Times, CBS, ABC, NBC), is how threatening the old media finds the Tea Partiers and how the publicity provided by the old media has seemed to feed the movement. These people pride themselves on pissing off the old liberal guard that controls these media outlets. And I think the old media finds this movement threatening because:

1) They're a political protest movement that matches some of the enthusiasm found in political movements of the 60s and 70s.

2) The movement is coming from a completely opposite direction. There's no denying that these people are, by and large, mobilized conservatives.

3) (To a lesser extent), the reason for being of the Tea Party movement touches on a HUGE big tent issue: the massively ballooning deficit and the notion that no one is guiding the ship in terms of government spending. This, probably more than any issue, caused conservatives and center-right voters to sit at home and enable the Democrats to take over the Congress in 2006, the perception was that the GOP had lost its soul on this issue. Some independents even thought that Nancy Pelosi heading the House would be better than having the GOP continue to control it. Concerns about levels of taxation, new entitlements that are impossible to remove once in place, the idea that our GDP to debt ratios at a governmental level is out of control- these aren't insignificant issues and they're also issues a big majority of people fall on one side of. If the GOP is perceived to be on the right side of it, then the Democrats are in big trouble. The Tea Party movement are enablers for the GOP in this regard.

[All-American]

Obama desperately wanted Health Care to be a bipartisan bill. He was willing to offer many things to have some GOP involvement. Why do you think this bill has 1990s GOP ideas written all over it? He would have added even more tort reform that he did (there is a little anyway).

The GOP leadership made a purposeful strategic decision (I think a bad one) to say no to everything, even their own ideas from a few years ago. Just call their own previous ideas socialism and scare the hell out of people. I know of a couple of US Senators that wanted to participate and negotiate a better bill than what we got, they were told flat out NO by GOP leadership.

I can critique Obama on a number of things, but on Health Care the lack of involvement is almost entirely in the GOP's hands. Later on they did keep Republicans out of the process, but that was because of the game the GOP was playing of trying to kill any bill through thousands of amendments, procedural process, etc.

Dems begged them to participate early on and a number wanted to. If they had, we might have had a better bill than what we have. As it is, it is still a GOP inspired bill (which is why strong liberals hate the thing).

Tell that to Bob Bennett.

[All-American]

I'd just like to say that I don't mind paying taxes. It's much easier for me to pay my taxes than my 5% tithing, and this attitude has nothing to do with the consequences of not paying.

I don't always appreciate your humor like I should. Especially when you're dead serious.

[VirginiaCougar]

Tell that to Bob Bennett.

I didn't want to name names as I think he is an exceptional Senator who has served Utah honorably and well. He would win handily any Utah General election and probably could still win a primary.

People are attacking him from the far right with a boatload of out of state money trying to knock him off at convention prior to any election.

Very sad how they are portraying someone who is serving Utah so well.

[SoonerCoug]

I didn't want to name names as I think he is an exceptional Senator who has served Utah honorably and well. He would win handily any Utah General election and probably could still win a primary.

People are attacking him from the far right with a boatload of out of state money trying to knock him off at convention prior to any election.

Very sad how they are portraying someone who is serving Utah so well.

Bob Bennett was also once thought by many to be Deep Throat. That's no small claim to fame.

[Color Me Badd Fan]

Bob Bennett was also once thought by many to be Deep Throat. That's no small claim to fame.

A guy that a former co-worker of mine knew, grew up in the same area where Bob Bennett lived before he became a Senator (I'm guessing this was the late 70s through the mid 80s or something). They nicknamed him Tri-Bob. Don't ask me how they came up with it.

[Uncle Ted]

The original Tea Partiers were terrorists...

Texas Schools Teaching Boston Tea Party As Terrorist Act

HOUSTON (CBS Houston) – The most historical instance of protesting against taxation without representation is now being taught in Texas schools as a terrorist act.

As recently as January of this year, the Texas Education Service Center Curriculum Collaborative included a lesson plan that depicted the Boston Tea Party, an event that helped ignite the American Revolution, as an act of terrorism. TheBlaze reports that in a lesson promoted on the TESCCC site as recently as January, a world history/social studies class plan depicted the Boston Tea Party as being anything but patriotic, causing many people to become upset with the lack of transparency and review for lessons.

“A local militia, believed to be a terrorist organization, attacked the property of private citizens today at our nation’s busiest port,” wrote the teachers in charge of organizing the curriculum about the Boston Tea Party. “Although no one was injured in the attack, a large quantity of merchandise, considered to be valuable to its owners and loathsome to the perpetrators, was destroyed. The terrorists, dressed in disguise and apparently intoxicated, were able to escape into the night with the help of local citizens who harbor these fugitives and conceal their identities from the authorities.

“It is believed that the terrorist attack was a response to the policies enacted by the occupying country’s government. Even stronger policies are anticipated by the local citizens.”
[...]

Damn those boston tea partying terrorists. It is was their fault that we had to fight a war against England. I am guessing it is really the tea partiers that are driving Obama's terrorist policy of killing women and children via drone bombing as well. It must be their fault that our current wars keep dragging on.