“Watch yourself. Be on guard. This place is full of vultures, vultures everywhere. Everywhere.” – Casablanca
There is a “movement” of idiots afoot protesting President George Bush’s tax structure, though they claim they’re against President Obama’s bailouts (like TARP, which started under . . . President Bush). They’ve mistaken the stimulus package passed by President Barack Obama and the 111th Congress for something that affects them as they file their taxes for 2008. What’s more, Faux News is promoting this farce and trying to make it sound like a news story instead of a (permanent opposition to a Democratic president) publicity stunt. Fashioned after the famed Boston Tea Party, where American colonists disguised themselves as Native Americans and destroyed private property in protest of taxation without representation, today’s ‘tea baggers’ are protesting against the wrong people for the wrong reasons. However, they haven’t realized that much like the Virginia Republican Party, which was displaying softcore lesbian pornography on its website a few days ago “by mistake”, that their preferred method of protest, teabagging, is a rather vulgar masculine display of power and authority it modern parlance.
This confusion about what is good for the United States, and what is Right in the United States, and what is simply peeing into the wind is exemplified by the people who speak for the Republican Party in public. Take House Minority Whip Cantor’s comments about tax increases today.
“At a time when American families and small businesses are facing difficult challenges and financial uncertainty, Washington must not make their situations worse by imposing the largest tax increase in American history.”
His comments have absolutely nothing to do with the taxes we’re filing. He (and the teabaggers . . . giggle) are trying to link together President Obama, the economic crisis, and the fact that our government must have taxes as revenue in order to function. How did he vote on Congressional salary increases? How do the teabaggers expect that the services they depend on like police departments, fire departments and public schools to name a few, are to be paid for?
The tax structure today is lower than it was under that paragon of conservative economic virtue, President Reagan. President Obama’s tax cut for the majority of American families (including those who run small businesses) took effect in March of 2009 – which means that they affect next year’s tax returns, not today. The New Right is so wrapped up in fighting President Obama (even though they lost the election, remember) that they can’t see straight.
I’ve grown tired of the whining, the preening, the Rushing. Protest is the right of every citizen of the United States, and really the world. But you should know what you’re protesting for (or against) before you open your mouth, paint a sign, or threaten to tea bag someone.
Anti-Tax ‘Tea Party’ Protests Expected Across U.S.
The first Olympic Torch run in the modern era was a product of Hitler’s Minister of Propaganda, a run from Greece to Berlin to show the world how well the Nazi regime was doing in rebuilding Germany. Despite the anti-semitic rhetoric flowing from the government propaganda machine, the United States Olympic Committee voted to send the athletes to the games. Though there was lip service to “opposing Hitler’s practices” even while participating in the games, the stamp of approval that United States’ participation includes spoke volumes. Jesse Owens and the other black athletes at the games made a mockery of Hitler’s Aryan theories, but they should not have been there at all. Some people argued that the games are not political, and that the athletes should not be punished. I would have argued (and will later on), that if my eight year old is invited to spend the night at a friend’s house, and I know or suspect that the people who run that house beat and kick their dog, starve their cat, punish their children in a draconian manner, then my child is not going. By sending him, I am saying what they do is okay, when I don’t believe it is. I am not punishing him by not sending him. I am “walking the walk.”
