(a) Tea Party hubris; (b) the billionaires who fund it; and (c) the acknowledged (by both sides) "country club" split between the Roves and the Rubes (Mike Huckabee and the "lesser" ilk).
This will have to be just a taste, with less than the usual commentary — I'm soon to embark on trains, planes, and strangely-named buses again. Your taste (the first one is free; click for more):
But whatever Tuesday's results, this much is certain: The Tea Party's hopes for actually affecting change in Washington will start being dashed the morning after. The ordinary Americans in this movement lack the numbers and financial clout to muscle their way into the back rooms of Republican power no matter how well their candidates perform.There really is more, and that more is sweet (or bitter, depending on your mood):
Trent Lott, the former Senate leader and current top-dog lobbyist, gave away the game in July. "We don't need a lot of Jim DeMint disciples," he said, referring to the South Carolina senator who is the Tea Party's Capitol Hill patron saint. "As soon as they get here, we need to co-opt them." It's the players who wrote the checks for the G.O.P. surge, not those earnest folk in tri-corner hats, who plan to run the table in the next corporate takeover of Washington. Though Tom DeLay may now be on trial for corruption in Texas, the spirit of his K Street lives on in a Lott client list that includes Northrop Grumman and Goldman Sachs.
What made the Tea Party most useful was that its loud populist message gave the G.O.P. just the cover it neededboth to camouflage its corporate patrons and to rebrand itself as a party miraculously antithetical to the despised G.O.P. that gave us George W. Bush and record deficits only yesterday. ... The more the Tea Party looks as if it's calling the shots in the G.O.P., the easier it is to distract attention from those who are actually calling them — namely, those who've cashed in and cashed out as ordinary Americans lost their jobs, homes and 401(k)'s.
At least someone with New York Times inches (and Sunday inches at that) is onto them in print. Read on.
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h/t Pat: Michael Moore: A Boot to the Head.
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People who don't have jobs don't give a shit about the deficit. They care about staying in their houses, keeping the lights on and the water running, and not going broke if somebody in the family gets sick. It'd be nice if the talking heads could wrap their brains around that fact.
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The Nominees for Outstanding Achievement in Promoting a Christian Fundamentalist Theocracy and Pooping on the First Amendment are: http://www.mockpaperscissors.com/?p=39438
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Nine years of torture and 40 years of imprisonment for a 15-year-old defending himself. Shameful. "A US military tribunal has sentenced a self-confessed Islamist militant to 40 years in jail on charges that include murdering a US soldier and conspiring to commit terrorist acts. Canadian Omar Khadr, now 24, pleaded guilty to the charges at the Guantanamo Bay tribunal last week. However, Khadr's plea deal limited his sentence to eight years. Caught in 2002 at the age of 15, he is the fifth Guantanamo inmate to be convicted at the military tribunals."
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The late Molly Ivins: because classics like this cannot be improved upon.
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Study: Boozing Bad For Society, Eat Mushrooms Instead
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