Occupy Wall Street versus Tea Party

I'm not sure what to make about the headless Occupy Wall Street movement, but I do find it interesting that various Tea Party followers are none too happy about the OWS movement being compared to the Tea Party movement.

The Occupy Wall Street folks are totally different from the Tea Partiers. For starters, the Occupy Wall Street people are a bunch of anarchists, while the Tea Party followers just want to get rid of government.

Or so the joke goes.

According to the above linked article, the Tea Party folks are citing the "safe and clean" Tea Party rallies to contrast with the "lawbreaking troublemakers" in the OWS movement.

I'm not sure how much that holds water, though, when the Tea Party's inspiration itself was an act of breaking and entering, followed by destruction of property. With more than just a tinge of racial scapegoating (they tried to blame it on the Indians).

But I do see a key difference: While both OWS and TP think that things have gone to hell and they're not going to take it anymore, the former may see government action and regulation as the solution to the woes caused by fat cats on Wall Street who largely don't produce anything but get fat on the efforts of others, while the latter thinks that government action and regulation is the bane of the nation's woes which have been caused by fat cats in Washington who don't produce anything but get fat on the efforts of others.

I've used fat too many times in that paragraph.

Why I chose this picture: Like the Occupy Wall Street movement, it depicts being headless, and like the Tea Party, it hearkens back to the 18th century. 

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Tea Party Nation founder on WikiLeaks: Kill him!

One of the things I take away from the Tea Party movement is that it seems so emotional, so disjointed, and so contradictory at times. Okay, I get the idea of less government intrusion, but it so often seems that any government action — even limiting unhealthy foods in public schools — is seen as assailing some God-given right to be obstinate, uninformed, or just plain stupid.

And those contradictions... It's almost as if the Tea Party movement is some magic box that can be anything you want it to be. Or worse, it can be molded into anything that political players behind the scenes want it to be.

The People have Spok! And we're not giving him back
until you meet our list of illogical demands.

And with that in mind, I give you a Tea Party Nation piece by Tea Party Nation founder Judson Phillips on the recent WikiLeaks dump of diplomatic cables, something about which I myself have expressed ambivalence:

Some of the leaked documents identify people in Iraq and Afghanistan that have helped the United States. In some instances, their addresses are given or even GPS coordinates of their houses have been released.

If none of these people have been killed yet, it is only a matter of time.

And now, it is time to tell Assange that we expect him to die.

Some will scream, this is horrible.

No it isn’t.

First, Assange is not an American citizen. He is not entitled to any of the protections of the United States Constitution. He has aided and abetted our enemies. He is encouraging others to leak classified information.

Killing Assange sends a message. Under American law, there is a theory called deterrence. Why don’t I go out and kill someone I really don’t like? Ignoring all other issues, the simple fact that I would spend the rest of my life in prison is enough to convince me killing someone is a bad idea.

Killing Assange sends a message. You are not going to make cyber war on America, which is basically what has happened here.

There are some, even within this movement, who think the United States should have no secrets. That is lunacy. Our country has secrets for a very good reason. We need them. We cannot publish on the front page of USA Today that our diplomats think that the leader of a country is a fool, or that we have bugged their military headquarters or that certain members of the Taliban are actually providing us with information.

We have secrets and we have them for a reason.

Unfortunately, we do not have an American President right now or even people in top leadership in this country that are patriotic or even care about the country. After all, from Obama (releasing the number of nuclear weapons we have) to the Justice Department (allowing our classified interrogation methods to be released), they all support weakening this country.

Assange has nothing to worry about for the moment. But in two years, there will be another administration coming into office. Then, if I were Jullian Assange, I would be very worried.

Never mind that Mr Assange is merely the face of the operation and not the operation itself. This Tea Partier, presumably someone who believes that government intrusion in our lives is generally a bad thing, wants the government (or someone working in support of the government) to go kill someone to send a message. Whiskey, tango, fu¢k!

Fortunately, cooler heads prevail among what I would hope are the true Tea Party thinkers, those who apply the less-intrusion principles more consistently. Bill Haney has this to say:

Hold on! Haven't we all believed, all along, that our government has been lying to us? Don't these documents prove that? All of this is right in line with what many of us have suspected for a long time, but now we have proof in black and white. Let's not threaten him nor celebrate him, but make every effort to root out the evil in our government and return it to the people. These revelations provide us the evidence that we need to overhaul those "public servants" and make them responsive to us.

I'm not sure I'd vote for Bill Haney for national office, but he sounds like a far more sensible person than the founder of Tea Party Nation.

Full-body skinflicks (Or, TPA versus TSA)... possibly NSFW

It's fun to get past the T... S... e... A!

There's been a lot of buzz lately about opposition to the employment of full-body scanners at various airports earlier this month. In addition to privacy concerns (the images can supposedly be inverted to make a nearly pornographic image), there are health concerns.

It's been in the news a lot this past week because flight attendant unions have joined pilot unions in opposing them. These are folks already exposed to higher levels of radiation due to their time up in the air, and the back-scatter rays may be the straw that breaks the camel's back for them.

Of course, one can opt for a pat-down, but there is a growing concern that this, too, is invasive along the lines of being sexual assault. The new meme is that sexual predators seek out these jobs, or something like that.

From one Tea Party writer:

At least for the TSA, this is a new recruiting tool. I can see their ad on Craigslist right now. “Why risk prison for groping a stranger, when you can be hired by the government, draw a paycheck and grope to your heart’s content, without the fear of arrest!”

Meanwhile, the TSA is trying to "assuage the public's fears."

Meanwhile, what prompted me to post on this was that same Tea Party writer's rumination that the nefarious Barack Hussein Obama had an ulterior motive in mind:

I have my own opt out plan. I am not flying any more. Perhaps this is part of the Obama regime’s plan to destroy another sector of the American economy. Let’s make air travel so objectionable, no one will want to fly and these companies will go out of business.

Yeah, right. Never mind that the technological, administrative, and legal push for full-body scanners got underway during the Bush administration. What with TARP, the bailout, the astronomically costly Iraq War... where were all these Tea Party activists before January 20, 2009? I defer to iheartblueballs on their apparent hypocrisy.

Not safe for work... unless you work at an airport. 

Anyway, I don't know where I stand on this, except that I want to see damned clear evidence that these scans are not going to harm my health in the long run, and I'm not so sure they've done that yet. Or even if they can. I live on an island, and the environmental activists killed off our ferry service to the neighboring islands. In other words, if I want to go anywhere, I've got to get past the TSA.

Talk of the Tea Party: Impeach Obama

Though they think it's a long shot, some in the Tea Party movement seem to be taking the idea seriously:

The impeachment is much like an indictment. It alleges what the President has done wrong. The matter then goes to the Senate where it takes a two-thirds majority to remove the President.

The common wisdom is that is impossible because not only to the Republicans not have two thirds, but also the Democrats actually control the Senate.

The conventional wisdom may be wrong.

An amazing editorial appeared in the pages of the Washington Post today. Top Democratic operatives Douglas Shoen and Patrick Caddell called on Obama to announce immediately he is not running for reelection in 2012. While Obama would never do that voluntarily, the fact that two top Democratic operatives called for this with two years left in his administration means the Democrats have come to a realization. Obama cannot win 2012.

The idea is that Democrats in the Senate would go for removal of Obama believing that a newly elevated President Joe Biden has a better chance of winning if he then repudiates the Obama agenda.

The Washington Post op-ed cited above, though, is quite interesting, and I had planned to blog about it even before I spotted the Tea Party Nation piece that prompted this post. Here's the gist:

This is a critical moment for the country. From the faltering economy to the burdensome deficit to our foreign policy struggles, America is suffering a widespread sense of crisis and anxiety about the future. Under these circumstances, Obama has the opportunity to seize the high ground and the imagination of the nation once again, and to galvanize the public for the hard decisions that must be made. The only way he can do so, though, is by putting national interests ahead of personal or political ones.

To that end, we believe Obama should announce immediately that he will not be a candidate for reelection in 2012.

If the president goes down the reelection road, we are guaranteed two years of political gridlock at a time when we can ill afford it. But by explicitly saying he will be a one-term president, Obama can deliver on his central campaign promise of 2008, draining the poison from our culture of polarization and ending the resentment and division that have eroded our national identity and common purpose.

Yeah, yeah, except that actually the very act of making good on his statement that he'd "rather be a really good one-term president than a mediocre two-term president,"by declaring he won't run in 2012, he would simply declare himself a lame-duck, embolden the opposition to stonewall further, and his noble sacrifice would be all for naught.

It would appear that these two "pretend Democrats" are not coming to us with as heavy a heart about Obama as they let on. Past editorials of theirs in which, for example, they blame Obama's reaction to racially divisive issues for causing the racially divisive issue in the first place, make clear how they view Obama, and the shellacking this November is just an excuse to up the ante.

In other words, the Tea Party should take care not to take two Fox News analysts as representative of Democrats at large. Or Democrats in Washington.

But I say bring it on. In 1998, Clinton's popularity went through the roof when the Republicans decided to impeach him for lying about his sexual dalliance with Monica Lewinsky. Some in the Tea Party apparently believe what many operatives across the political spectrum believe: the American people loathe so-and-so as much as I do. It's why liberals and other Democrats were dumbfounded that Bush43 got a second term or why Clinton's popularity went up.

I don't know how this will play out for Obama, though. But my gut feeling is that it wouldn't be good for the country to find out. And you are more concerned about the country than politics, right?

[NOTE: Except for the photo of President Obama appearing on The View (which gave me an excuse to highlight Elizabeth Hasselbeck's legs), all the artwork here comes from this site, whose owners seem not to have grasped the intent of the political cartoon way up top.]

Leave Rush the fu¢k alone

Rush Limbaugh, bastion of conservative talk radio and long-time supporter of the ACLU (or is that the other way around?), is in the news yet again.

Beneath the inflammatory headline, "Limbaugh's latest drug run-in," CNN informs us that radio commentator Rush Limbaugh was detained for three hours at the Palm Beach, Florida, airport because, according to police, he had Viagra in his possession without a valid prescription.

Okay, so the guy did have legal problems surrounding how he illegally obtained painkillers and all that, but does every move the guy makes deserve this kind of press play?

Show a fucking ounce of compassion, not to mention propriety and proportionality.

Yeah, the guy can be a jerk, a polarizer, an occasional race-baiter, a deceiver, etc., etc. (and yes, I often listen to his show; unlike some people, I regularly listen to people of a different ideological bent from my own, even those I consider dogmatic, because it helps me challenge and strengthen — and occasionally alter — my own beliefs), but none of that deserves the embarrassment of having such details of one's private life splattered all over the media.

It was already iffy when the press was trying to get ahold of his medical records during his painkiller legal fiasco, but this goes beyond the pale.

The famous are people, too. I can't think of anyone who would want their use of Viagra plastered all over the place. So the guy was detained over his possession of the medication that had his doctor's name, not his, but this is going overboard. He admitted the medication was his — it had the doctors's names on it, according to Limbaugh's lawyer, to protect this very privacy — and was released without charge.

So if he ever gets detained over a traffic ticket, are we going to here about this? Is that the requisite for the press to get involved? Or is it only when he gets detained for potentially humiliating things?

Leave the guy the fuck alone.

Yeah, yeah. I know that's not going to happen. It's man-bites-dog news, and the hypocritical, merciless, acerbic, and vitriolic may not be deserving of the kind of compassion he denies his opponents (or their kids), but on principle, if nothing else, it is wrong to make this into the media story it is.

The public ain't got a right to know a fucking thing here.