Corrupt Government
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Title: The Great Tea Party Rip-Off
Source:
NYT
URL Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/17/opinion/17rich.html
Published: Feb 3, 2010
Author: Frank Rich
Post Date: 2010-02-03 21:33:54 by Murron
Keywords: None
Views: 16979
Comments: 91
The Great Tea Party Rip-Off Even given the low bar set by America’s bogus conversations about race, the short-lived Harry Reid fracas was a most peculiar nonevent. For all the hyperventilation in cable news land, this supposed racial brawl didn’t seem to generate any controversy whatsoever in what is known as the real world. Eugene Robinson, the liberal black columnist at The Washington Post, wrote that he was “neither shocked nor outraged” at Reid’s less-than-articulate observation that Barack Obama benefited politically from being “light-skinned” and for lacking a “Negro dialect unless he wanted to have one.” Besides, Robinson said, Reid’s point was “surely true.” The black conservative Ward Connerly agreed, writing in The Wall Street Journal that he was “having a difficult time determining what it was that Mr. Reid said that was so offensive.” President Obama immediately granted Reid absolution. A black columnist at The Daily News in New York, Stanley Crouch, even stood up for the archaic usage of “Negro.” George Will defended Reid from charges of racism as vociferously as Democrats did. Al Sharpton may have accepted Reid’s apology, but for once there’s no evidence that he ever cared enough to ask for one. So who, actually, was the aggrieved party here? What — or who — was really behind this manufactured race war with no victims? It would be easy to dismiss the entire event as a credulous news media’s collaboration with a publisher’s hype for a new tell-all-gossip 2008 campaign book, “Game Change,” which breathlessly broke the Reid “bombshell.” But this is a more interesting tale than that. The true prime mover in this story was not a book publicist but Michael Steele, the chairman of the Republican Party and by far the loudest and most prominent Beltway figure demanding that Reid resign as Senate majority leader as punishment for his “racism.” Steele is widely regarded as a clown by observers of all political persuasions, but he is clownish like a fox. His actions in this incident offer some hilarious and instructive insights into what’s going on in the Republican hierarchy right now as it tries to cope not just with our first African-American president but with a restive base embracing right-wing tea-party populism that loathes the establishment in both parties. And though Steele is black, and perhaps the most enthusiastic player of the race card in American politics today, race was a red herring in his Reid vendetta. It threw most everyone off the scent of his real motivation, which had nothing to do with black versus white but everything to do with green, as in money. A profligate spender, Steele had inaugurated his arrival as party chairman by devoting nearly $20,000 to redecorate his office because he found it “way too male” for his sensitive tastes. In the weeks just before “Game Change” emerged, Steele was in more hot water. Over the holidays, G.O.P. elders were shocked to learn that their front man had a side career as a motivational public speaker at up to $20,000 a gig. The party treasury, which contained $22.8 million upon Steele’s arrival at the end of January 2009, was down to $8.7 million by late November, with 2010 campaign expenditures rapidly arriving. “He needs to raise money for the party, not his wallet,” one Republican leader griped to Politico. Then, just after New Year, Steele published an unexpected book of his own, “Right Now: A 12-Step Program for Defeating the Obama Agenda.” He hadn’t told his employers that the book was in the works, and, to add further insult, he attacks unnamed party leaders in its pages for forsaking conservative principles. Since it hit the stores, Steele has pursued a book tour for fun and personal profit, all the while daring his G.O.P. critics to bring it on. “If you don’t want me in the job, fire me,” he taunted them. “But until then, shut up. Get with the program, or get out of the way.” Fire him? Steele knows better than anyone that his party can’t afford what Clarence Thomas might call a “high-tech lynching” of the only visible black guy it has in even a second-tier office. Steele has said that white Republicans are “scared” of him. They are. He loves to play head games with their racial paranoia and insecurities, whether he’s publicly professing “slum love” for the Indian-American Louisiana governor, Bobby Jindal, or starting a blog on the R.N.C. site titled “What Up?,” or announcing that he would use “fried chicken and potato salad” to recruit minority voters. As long as the G.O.P. remains largely a whites-only country club, Steele has job security. But he had real reason to fear some new restraints on the cash box; last year the party was driven to write a rule requiring him to get approval for expenditures over $100,000. On Jan. 9 The Washington Post ran a front-page article headlined “Frustrations With Steele Leaving G.O.P. in a Bind,” reporting, among other embarrassments, that the party had spent $90 million during Steele’s brief reign while raising just $84 million. Enter “Game Change,” right in the nick of time for Steele to pull off his own cunning game change. On Jan. 10 he stormed “Fox News Sunday” and “Meet the Press” to demand Reid’s head. There has been hardly a mention of Steele’s sins since. He can laugh all the way to the bank. His behavior is not anomalous. Steele is representative of a fascinating but little noted development on the right: the rise of buckrakers who are exploiting the party’s anarchic confusion and divisions to cash in for their own private gain. In this cause, Steele is emulating no one if not Sarah Palin, whose hunger for celebrity and money outstrips even his own. As many suspected at the time, her 2008 campaign wardrobe, like the doomed campaign itself, was just a preview of coming attractions: she would surely dump the bother of serving as Alaska’s besieged governor for a lucrative star turn on Fox News. Last week she made it official. Both Steele and Palin claim to be devotees of the tea party movement. “I’m a tea partier, I’m a town-haller, I’m a grass-roots-er” is how Steele put it in a recent radio interview, wet-kissing a market he hopes will buy his book. Palin has far more grandiose ambitions. She recently signed on as a speaker for the first Tea Party Convention, scheduled next month in Nashville — even though she had turned down a speaking invitation from the annual Conservative Political Action Conference, the traditional meet-and-greet for the right. The conservative conference doesn’t pay. The Tea Party Convention does. A blogger at Nashville Scene reported that Palin’s price for the event was $120,000. The entire Tea Party Convention is a profit-seeking affair charging $560 a ticket — plus the cost of a room at the Opryland Hotel. Among the convention’s eight listed sponsors is Tea Party Emporium, which gives as its contact address 444 Madison Avenue in New York, also home to the high-fashion brand Burberry. This emporium’s Web site offers a bejeweled tea bag at $89.99 for those furious at “a government hell bent on the largest redistribution of wealth in history.” This is almost as shameless as Glenn Beck, whose own tea party profiteering has included hawking gold coins merchandised by a sponsor of his radio show. Last week a prominent right-wing blogger, Erick Erickson of RedState.com, finally figured out that the Tea Party Convention “smells scammy,” likening it to one of those Nigerian e-mails promising untold millions. Such rumbling about the movement’s being co-opted by hucksters may explain why Palin used her first paid appearance at Fox last Tuesday to tell Bill O’Reilly that she would recycle her own tea party profits in political contributions. But Erickson had it right: the tea party movement is being exploited — and not just by marketers, lobbyists, political consultants and corporate interests but by the Republican Party, as exemplified by Palin and Steele, its most prominent leaders. Tea partiers hate the G.O.P. establishment and its Wall Street allies, starting with the Bushies who created TARP, almost as much as they do Obama and his Wall Street pals. When Steele and Palin pay lip service to the movement, they are happy to glom on to its anti-tax, anti-Obama, anti-government, anti-big-bank vitriol. But they don’t call for any actual action against the bailed-out perpetrators of the financial crisis. They’d never ask for investments to put ordinary Americans back to work. They have no policies to forestall foreclosures or protect health insurance for the tea partiers who’ve been shafted by hard times. Their only economic principle beside tax cuts is vilification of the stimulus that did save countless jobs for firefighters, police officers and teachers at the state and local level. The Democrats’ efforts to counter the deprivation and bitterness spawned by the Great Recession are indeed timid and imperfect. The right has a point when it says that the Senate health care votes of Ben Nelson of Nebraska and Mary Landrieu of Louisiana were bought with pork. But at least their constituents can share the pigout. Hustlers like Steele and Palin take the money and run. All their followers get in exchange is a lousy tea party T-shirt. Or a ghost-written self-promotional book. Or a tepid racial sideshow far beneath the incendiary standards of the party whose history from Strom to “macaca” has driven away nearly every black American except Steele for the past 40 years.
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#28. To: Badeye (#25)
Sorry chestless [it was either lips or chest for you, eh?], only ONE of the Irony of the Day allowed...but feel free to play again tomorrow...
I think my prediction of 3 GOP Senate seats lost, and between 6 - 8 House seats is proving to be correct. But I think I nailed this one. We'll see. Badeye posted on 2006-11-03 16:11:09 ET Reply Trace ACtual results: House +31 Dems Senate +6 Dems
Faggot Freddie gives him competition, but for pure volume of verbal diarrhea, warthog wins hands down.
Sneakypete, have you ever been married? Said things you later regretted?
ethel doesn't pretend to be something he isn't on the internet. my anti groupie adopted this persona online 12 years ago, and never realized 'anonymity' on the internet is an illusion, especially when you post all day, all the time, 24/7/365. Thats whats so funny when you think about it..or maybe just pathetic is the correct view.
Its getting uglier out there...
(laughing)... Especially....
Sorry, the english language isn't the personal sandbox of those that can't describe opposing viewpoints accurately. Badeye posted on 2004-11-15 15:07:43 ET Reply Trace
This badeye man is like a bad smell on the wind. His posts fill a room like a most unpleasant odor. He speaks with much derision of a man posting many posts yet he himself holds the record for posts without content at a forum that has removed his person from their presence.
I support the right. But I'm leaning to the left.
So far as I know at the moment, about 600 have registered for the 'Private' Tea Party event, we'll know more tomorrow. What I don't understand is, if this is such a good thing, then why haven't more tea partiers registered for it? Palin has agreed to put her fee, about $100,000, back into the Convention.... Now my question is, where does this money go, to whom, and for what?
Alas...it take knowledge as vast as the fully loaded hump of many camel to embrace the irony of He Who Gives Himself Hummers...
Sorry, the english language isn't the personal sandbox of those that can't describe opposing viewpoints accurately. Badeye posted on 2004-11-15 15:07:43 ET Reply Trace
No way could I ever afford one, but I have a friend who's owns one, her family owns a large trucking company here. She visited me around Christmas, it was so funny, I accused her of visiting me just so she could show off her 'white hummer'...it's a really nice car, and I'd love to have one, but that's not possible.
You assume Hummer he give himself mode of transport... Foolish girl...
Sorry, the english language isn't the personal sandbox of those that can't describe opposing viewpoints accurately. Badeye posted on 2004-11-15 15:07:43 ET Reply Trace
Foolish girl... LOL..my bad, I never know what the hell you guys are talking about. I'll have to study your posts more carefully...&;-)
What do think he does all alone in his "office" in between posts? Don't you kind of get the image of how he might be viewed at "work" or, in his case, at "sit"? I mean, don't you think that there's got to be a "Thank GOD" element among the employees there that he does shut himself into that office all day with his computer and Crown Royal and away from anything that MIGHT require either interaction with others or an actual decision?
Sorry, the english language isn't the personal sandbox of those that can't describe opposing viewpoints accurately. Badeye posted on 2004-11-15 15:07:43 ET Reply Trace
(laughing)
Sorry, the english language isn't the personal sandbox of those that can't describe opposing viewpoints accurately. Badeye posted on 2004-11-15 15:07:43 ET Reply Trace
Sure, I'll be glad to. Ask me in September. I should have it sized up by then.
I thought it began today. My bad.
So did I, and they have it scheduled for 4-6th, Feb., but so far I've found nothing on it for today.
There are lots of articles of speculation, but no meat yet. The Pubbies want the tea baggers on their side.
Mudbot is supposed to be there. We'll see what he has to report.
Thursday, February 4, 2010 Registration, 3-6:00pm Meet & Greet Reception w/hors d’oeuvres, 7:00-8:00pm Kickoff Speaker, TOM TANCREDO - Entertainment, LISA MEI & RAY STEVENS 8:00pm Organized Prayer Session for the convention & our nation conducted by Dr. Rick Scarborough Movie-Tea Party, The Documentary
Unless he bought a ticket, he's on the outside, looking in.... Maybe it's just me, but I never thought of the Tea Party as two separate groups...the haves, and the have nots!
Meet & Greet Reception w/hors d’oeuvres, 7:00-8:00pm Kickoff Speaker, TOM TANCREDO - Entertainment, LISA MEI & RAY STEVENS 8:00pm Organized Prayer Session for the convention & our nation conducted by Dr. Rick Scarborough Movie-Tea Party, The Documentary Thank you...
My oh my, but doesn't the Governor of Alaska have wonderful penmenship?! Still, fer what it's worth, I'm thinkin' more along the lines of "Palin 2020!!" Hmmm...MUD BTW...I'm currently on-the-road to Nashville, where Sarah Palin shall sign my copy of her epic novel, "Going Rogue"...gonna be a HOOt!! Actually, it already is...LOL!!
"Devolve Power Outta the Federal Leviathan and Back to the States, Be carefull, you'll be passing my way and it's been raining...all morning, and will turn to snow/ice/rain mix, for the next couple of days..very nasty towards the mountainous areas.
Let us know how the tea bagger thingy turns out. Are you going to put up $349 for the Palin feast?
Shoot me an email for the return trip, you should stop by Mud.
Its getting uglier out there...
As is my understanding, the Mudd man will have face of blue for you to recognize his person. 'Howdy Pard' is a greeting that will please his heart.
I support the right. But I'm leaning to the left.
ooookay...(chuckle)
Its getting uglier out there...
Sarah Palin ROCKS...MUD
"Devolve Power Outta the Federal Leviathan and Back to the States, With the weather as it was, I was in no mood fer side trips...LOL!! I look forward to meeting you on future adventures...MUD
"Devolve Power Outta the Federal Leviathan and Back to the States, Indeed she did MUD! But here and I still disagree where John McCain is concerned, he is a TRAITOR, his policies have been, and are, a betrayal to the American people, if she truely feels the way she does about what Obama has done, then she should at least questions those closest to her that are doing the same. Below are two examples of why I cannot stomach her support of McCain, and she has me stumped as to why she continues to support this man, even thoough she has no obligation to do so. I don't like politics as usual, and when someones does something to harm this nation, I expect Palin, like I would any candidate I would support, to call this man on it...or distance herself from him, pronto! We, the American people, tend to feed the ego's of these traitors with Hero worship, we heap praise on them for something magnanimous they've done in their past. Most Americans are so focused on McCains pow days that they tend to look the other way, or don't understand the just exactly what his policies will do to this nation. For example! In Vietnam, he endured beatings and torture for the sake of his country. But the hero has since become a TRAITOR. Today, for the sake of his own populist self-aggrandizement, McSHAME betrayed one of his country's most basic principles: the freedom of political expression. How? Through the "McCain-Feingold Campaign Finance Reform Bill" What does this mean? Imagine that it is Oct. 1, 2012, and John McSHAME is running for re-election (if he's still alive). You and a group of like-minded friends pool together your money to buy a television spot in Phoenix saying "Don't Vote for John McCain." Under the McCain-Feingold bill, you would be breaking the law. When McSHAME asked whether this would suppress free speech, he and his followers glibly assert that "money is not speech." But how can you have the right to speak - unless you have the right to use your own money and resources to broadcast your ideas? That's like telling a publisher he can print whatever he wants - so long as he doesn't spend money to buy printing presses. The most brazen aspect of this proposal is the fact that McSHAME would suppress political speech specifically in an election season - precisely when a citizen's freedom to express his political views is most crucially needed. Such a provision is patently unconstitutional - and patently un-American. For all his supposed, newfound enlightenment about what most Americans want, protection against this Illegal Alien invasion taking place in his own state, not to mention this intire nation, commitment to the rule of law, meaningful employer sanctions, an end to sanctuary cities, enforcement-by-attrition plus deportation reform, and an end to special illegal alien benefits that invite more law-breaking McSHAME remains a Geraldo Rivera Republican. Like the ethnocentric cable TV host who can’t string a sentence about immigration together without drowning in emotional demagoguery, McCain naturally resorts to open-borders platitudes when pressed for enforcement specifics. Instead of emphasizing the need for local and state cooperation with federal immigration authorities to prevent the release of illegal alien criminals or discussing 100 percent preventable crimes by illegal alien thugs who should never have been on American soil in the first place, TRAITOR McShame harps on open-borders sob stories. McShame and his kind had their chance, and they've learned NOTHING. I think I can understand Palin's gratefulness at being selected as his running mate, but she doesn't need him now, and if she understands anything about this man's politics today, she'd distance herself...pronto!! JMHO!
While you know I agree with you about McStain, I don't think it's in Gov. Palin's best interests to throw him under the bus. That said, I think she's wise enough to realize McCain is the epitome of that GoodOl'Boys network she's used to fighting in Alaska and I hope J.D. whups his butt in the Primary...MUD
"Devolve Power Outta the Federal Leviathan and Back to the States, I don't like the thoughts of throwing anyone..well maybe obama, under the bus, but after years of watching everyone bitch and moan about McSTAIN, then seeing them jump to his defence in this, it just shows how damn fickle and stupid people really are. We either want TRAITORS like McSHAME in leadership, or we don't, I just don't stomach compromise very well, and never will. That's just my two cents. Now, you tell me just what it is that Palin owes this man, how far should she go to allow this man more power to fk this country up...? No disrespect intended.
I didn't say she needed to sell out fer him, just not totally diss the man who introduced her to America...MUD
"Devolve Power Outta the Federal Leviathan and Back to the States, Oh it is a dishonorable shame the way you grovel after this Palin woman. So hungry are you for the notice of a female type, so fruitless have your efforts been, you now are satisfied to drool after a political whore whilst dreaming of the touch of her calloused hands. For the sake of all that is holy throw down your cowboy hat, throw away that crystal meth, and strive to think the thoughts of a man.
I support the right. But I'm leaning to the left.
I have to agree with you there, I sure get heated when talking about him tho! &;-) I understand her gratitude to him, and not wanting to totally dump him, he did give her a great jump-start towards the WH, it's his left leaning policies that bother me. They threaten our freedom of speech, and our borders, our very lives, because he has always placed the concerns of Illegals before the American people, and it is that reason I don't want him back in the seat of any power...anywhere in this country. She can be friends with this man for life, and I wouldn't care, I just hope she backs off in helping him to continue with the destruction of our country, it just doesn't make since if you're trying to undo what he and other's have done, they've betrayed the people, and we don't trust him, and I guess it just spooks those who want to believe that she won't do the same. jmho!
LOL...evidence, please? Where have I been "groveling", RATbot?
"Devolve Power Outta the Federal Leviathan and Back to the States, So, Ms. Banal, what's not to like?
"Devolve Power Outta the Federal Leviathan and Back to the States, Mud, is this true? If so, I might know someone I can fix you up with. I have a single friend or two. What age range are we looking at here? And 2)are you a good dancer?
Abu, you have a way with words, a talent. Does your name, Abu el Banat, have a special meaning?
You are a woman of many questions. I feel I must counsel you to steer your maiden friends far from this MUD character. I think this cowpoke would not treat them well as he is one of those ebn el sharmoota's who treats objects like women.
So why do you bother soiling this site with your vacuous and inane commentary? ... yukon haha lots of laughing out loud
What is "ebn el sharmoota"?
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Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/LatestBig time, he's the biggest pussy in these forums. Bar none.
#29. To: Badeye, war, Fred Mertz (#25)
Big time, he's the biggest pussy in these forums. Bar none.
#30. To: Ibluafartsky (#29)
#31. To: Badeye, Fred Mertz (#30)
...especially when you post all day, all the time, 24/7/365.
#32. To: war (#31)
#33. To: Fred Mertz, war, Mudboy Slim, Ibluafartsky (#10)
#34. To: Abu el Banat (#32)
(Edited)
This badeye man is like a bad smell on the wind.
#35. To: war (#34)
Alas...it take the fully loaded hump of many camel to embrace the vast ness that is the irony of He Who Gives Himself Hummers...
#36. To: Murron (#35)
#37. To: war (#36)
You assume Hummer he give himself mode of transport...
#38. To: Murron (#37)
#39. To: war (#38)
What do think he does all alone in his "office" in between posts?
#40. To: Murron (#39)
#41. To: Ibluafartsky (#22)
Want to make some fookin predictions for this years [sic] federal elections?
#42. To: Murron (#33)
So far as I know at the moment, about 600 have registered for the 'Private' Tea Party event, we'll know more tomorrow.
#43. To: Fred Mertz (#42)
I thought it began today. My bad.
#44. To: Murron (#43)
#45. To: Murron, Mudboy Slim (#43)
#46. To: Murron, Fred Mertz (#43)
#47. To: Fred Mertz (#45)
Mudbot is supposed to be there. We'll see what he has to report.
#48. To: borntoweardiamonds (#46)
Thursday, February 4, 2010 Registration, 3-6:00pm
#49. To: Murron, Badeye, A K A Stone (#33)
Localities, and Individuals as Prescribed in the US Constitution."
#50. To: Mudboy Slim (#49)
BTW...I'm currently on-the-road to Nashville, where Sarah Palin shall sign my copy of her epic novel, "Going Rogue"...gonna be a HOOt!! Actually, it already is...LOL!!
#51. To: Mudboy Slim (#49)
#52. To: Mudboy Slim (#49)
#53. To: Badeye (#52)
#54. To: Abu el Banat (#53)
#55. To: Badeye, Murron (#52)
I couldn't get the WiFi to work for me at the Ramada Friday night/Saturday morning, so I wasn't able to read yer comments until today. Thanks fer the heads-up on the weather...the road was good on the roadtrip back, until I got to 64 East, which was quite the white knuckler, especially coming over Afton Mountain.
Localities, and Individuals as Prescribed in the US Constitution."
#56. To: Badeye (#52)
"you should stop by"
Localities, and Individuals as Prescribed in the US Constitution."
#57. To: Mudboy Slim (#55)
Sarah Palin ROCKS...MUD
#58. To: Murron (#57)
(Edited)
Localities, and Individuals as Prescribed in the US Constitution."
#59. To: Mudboy Slim (#58)
I don't think it's in Gov. Palin's best interests to throw him under the bus.
#60. To: Murron (#59)
"...how far should she go to allow this man more power to fk this country up...?"
Localities, and Individuals as Prescribed in the US Constitution."
#61. To: Mudboy Slim (#60)
#62. To: Mudboy Slim (#60)
I didn't say she needed to sell out fer him, just not totally diss the man who introduced her to America...MUD
#63. To: Abu el Banat (#61)
"...it is a dishonorable shame the way you grovel after this Palin woman."
Localities, and Individuals as Prescribed in the US Constitution."
#64. To: Abu el Banat (#61)
Localities, and Individuals as Prescribed in the US Constitution."
#65. To: Mudboy Slim (#60)
Oh it is a dishonorable shame the way you grovel after this Palin woman. So hungry are you for the notice of a female type, so fruitless have your efforts been
#66. To: Abu el Banat (#61)
Oh it is a dishonorable shame the way you grovel after this Palin woman. So hungry are you for the notice of a female type, so fruitless have your efforts been, you now are satisfied to drool after a political whore whilst dreaming of the touch of her calloused hands. For the sake of all that is holy throw down your cowboy hat, throw away that crystal meth, and strive to think the thoughts of a man.
#67. To: 3-Dee (#66)
#68. To: Abu el Banat (#67)
ebn el sharmoota's
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