DON'T BLAME ME - BLAME BOROWITZ

Borowitz Report - Rabid Dog Briefly Mistaken for Tea Party Candidate

Read it all.

I know. Wicked, wicked, wicked.

ANOTHER TEAPARTY CANDIDATE FOR PRESIDENT

Grady Warren is running for president. In the video, he declares teahad on the people in the country whom he does not like. And the people Grady doesn't like are not few in number. Teahad? I believe that's a new word. I've not heard teahad before now, but perhaps it's been around for longer than I know.

I'd find Grady's video incredible if I didn't hear similar talk with my own ears without the aid of YouTube. Still, I'm inclined to agree with Grady that uneducated citizens in our midst having the right to vote can be a real problem in this country.

A tip of the hat to Athenae at First Draft, who says:

You can nutpick on YouTube all day with these freaks, but I have the same confusion seeing this every damn time and I really, really would like somebody to solve it sociologically: Nothing is happening to this guy. Nobody is doing anything to him. Other people are existing, and they're living their lives and some of them are fuckups and some of them just speak Spanish in the store around him. Other people are a pain in the ass. They get in your way at the checkout line and they're loud at the doctor's office and they muck up things with their needs and their worries and their problems and their lives. I get it: The world would be so much easier for me if every experience outside my house consisted of just me getting the stuff done I need to get done....

Read the rest of her righteous rant.

THE TEA PARTY (REPUBLICAN) AGENDA

From Frank Rich at the New York Times:

That’s not to say there is no fiscal mission in the right’s agenda, both nationally and locally — only that the mission has nothing to do with deficit reduction. The real goal is to reward the G.O.P.’s wealthiest patrons by crippling what remains of organized labor, by wrecking the government agencies charged with regulating and policing corporations, and, as always, by rewarding the wealthiest with more tax breaks. The bankrupt moral equation codified in the Bush era — that tax cuts tilted to the highest bracket were a higher priority even than paying for two wars — is now a given. The once-bedrock American values of shared sacrifice and equal economic opportunity have been overrun.

Please read the entire splendid opinion piece.

UPDATE: Another excellent opinion column which includes the stories of working people who are struggling and some who have hit rock bottom by Bob Herbert also in the New York Times. Read their stories. Herbert says:

It would be a mistake to think that this fight is solely about the right of public employees to collectively bargain. As important as that issue is, it’s just one skirmish in what’s shaping up as a long, bitter campaign to keep ordinary workers, whether union members or not, from being completely overwhelmed by the forces of unrestrained greed in this society.

The predators at the top, billionaires and millionaires, are pitting ordinary workers against one another. So we’re left with the bizarre situation of unionized workers with a pension being resented by nonunion workers without one. The swells are in the background, having a good laugh.

I asked Lynda Hiller if she felt generally optimistic or pessimistic. She was quiet for a moment, then said: “I don’t think things are going to get any better. I think we’re going to hit rock bottom. The big shots are in charge, and they just don’t give a darn about the little person.”

"...they just don't give a darn about the little person," understates the attitude of the predators. They are contemptuous of the little people.