1. If you’re so horrified by debt and spending, where
were your tea parties when George Bush was adding $4 trillion
to the federal deficit?
2. If you’re so outraged by the bailouts, where were your tea
parties when the bailouts werefirst instituted by Henry Paulson
and George Bush last fall?
3. If you’re so troubled by pork, where were your tea parties
when the number and cost of congressional earmarks rose
spectacularly in each year of Republican congressional rule between
1996 and the end of the Republican majority in 2006?
First of all, "tea-baggers" is a sophomoric epithet, not worthy of a writer who is supposed to be a legitimate journalist. Second, why don't you learn the difference between the deficit and national debt. Even under the great borrower Obama, the deficit is not $4 trillion. Under Bush, the maximum deficit was around $450 billion, so even if the deficit were that large all 8 years, and it was not, the national debt would have been increased by less than $4 trillion. Obama is already way past the $4 trillion mark, and he has been president for less than 100 days. Third, we were outraged by the Bush/Paulson bailouts; you can ask Sen. Charles U. Schumer and Cong. John Hall about the emails I sent to them back then if you do not believe me. Fourth, we were and are outraged by republican pork. Why do you think they lost the Congress in 2006 and the Presidency in 2008?
However, Matt, when it comes to deficits and pork (and power grabs and prostration before petty potentates), the republicans are pikers. Put that in your pipe and puff it, Matt.
P.s. The tea parties were not just about bailouts, pork and taxes, although that is about as much as I can expect a liberal to understand. The tea perties, and the movement they represent, are about massive expansion of the federal government, and erosion of individual freedom that used to be guaranteed by the Constitution.
The first words of the Constitution are "We, the People of the United States of America," not "We, the Congress," or "We, the President."
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7 comments:
Those of us who are conservatives were mad about all of those things. Obama has made it ten times worse and he's only just getting started. That's the distinction worth noting.
RKL
"First of all, 'tea-baggers' is a sophomoric epithet, not worthy of a writer who is supposed to be a legitimate journalist."
If you had looked up Taibbi, you'd have found that he is an unrepentant Godless drug addict (with bad teeth) who writes in the first person and ridicules characters on the left and on the right in far more vulgar language. He does some of it for humorous purposes and some of it just to hurt people he admits to disliking, like Thomas Friedman. Taibbi notoriously threw a cream pie made with horse semen in the face of a NY Times reporter for sucking at his job. The reporter didn't know the contents of the pie at the time. Taibbi calculatedly waited a month and then published a piece with photographic evidence of what went into the pie, just to be hurtful. He wanted the reporter to have gotten over the pie incident before finding out that the pie filling he licked off his fingers was laced with equine sperm.
Clearly you did not look Taibbi up before writing this post.
"Second, why don't you learn the difference between the deficit and national debt."
This is true. Taibbi meant to say that Bush, over the course of his two terms, added $4T to the national debt, which is verified by Treasury Department statistics in this CBS blog-article http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2008/09/29/couricandco/entry4486228.shtml
These are the Treasury Dept figures, not goofy blogger arithmetic.
"Third, we were outraged by the Bush/Paulson bailouts; you can ask Sen. Charles U. Schumer and Cong. John Hall about the emails I sent to them back then if you do not believe me."
It's clear to me that his criticism was something like this: why didn't you organize massive tea parties when Bush was spending recklessly? It's one thing to send emails to representatives and quite another to seed a national grassroots honest-to-God protest decrying an economic trend that has been going on for eight years already?
Think about it from the perspective or paranoid liberals: "Bush ran up massive deficit spending, and no one organized a tea party demonstration evoking a pivotal moment in our national history. Where were the tea parties when Bush succumbed to Keynesian economics and bailed out Wall Street and Detroit? Why did the tea partiers wait for America to elect a liberal Democrat before actually organizing a big national grassroots protest?"
Desman, I think you missed the point here. The question is: why weren't teabaggers (which by the way, actual naive protesters coined that term for themselves, first) teabagging when Bush was expanding government and bailing out banks?
This was a lame attempt to drum up some enthusiasm among conservatives.
I remember, just a year ago, when conservatives were crying about supporting the executive in times of crisis. Now I suppose they've been caught with their (balls?) in their mouths.
To Kevin and Graham: it is a matter of degree. In the past, when the dems were in power, the reps complained about deficits, and when the reps were in power, the dems complained; but we were talking about deficits that were a few % points of gdp. Obama and the current congress have eclipsed anything that has gone before. Obama's deficits are like a .400 batting average, Lou Gehrig's hitting streak, and Nolan Ryans' strike out record. When it comes to deficits, Obama will never be surpassed.
Sam, you say ..... "Why do you think they lost the Congress in 2006 and the Presidency in 2008?"Exactly! And, I am not sure that the rank and file of people that call themselves Republicans have grasped the fact that THIS was a big part of the reason that McCain lost.
Yup, my party has left me. Along these lines, I actually had a bumper sticker I made for my car during the last cycle. It said "Vote Democrat - Vote McCain."Now, some people thought I was trying to fake out Democrats to pull the lever for McCain. Others got it ...That I was hacked off that McCain (and the Republicans extending back at least to Bush #1) was trying to out-democrat the Democrats!
In fairness to some of the younger folks out there, I did have one young girl at a gas station get out of her car and ask about the sticker. When I explained, I could see the lights go off in her head.
Another one saved!
So, Pube has a G-d complex. I'm shocked.
Or is it just the well heeled elite wanting to hold on to their pennies? Going back to the tax rates of St. Reagan seems fair to me. The tea parties were an insult to our brave founding fathers who risked life and liberty to bring freedom from tyranny to our shores. The rich just want to make the gulf between rich and poor grow wider. Bush never saw a rich man he didn't make richer nor have the poor or middle class man made poorer. Fairness was lost.
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