Obama vs. The Tea Cowards

Why won't the Tea Party candidates -- Christine O'Donnell, Rand Paul, Sharon Angle -- appear on mainstream news shows? Why are they following Sarah Palin's advice to "speak through Fox News," which is about as bald-faced an admission that it is simply a propaganda machine, nothing like news in the real world -- before Fox News boss Roger Ailes' former employer, Ronald Reagan, had the Fairness Doctrine conveniently repealed (1949-1987 -- a parting gift of the Reagan Administration and their FCC to the moneyed rightwing interests in America and, with Rupert Murdoch, Australia.

Coincidence? Fox News would have been illegal in 1986. Why the hell do you think they revoked the rule?

So when say President Obama is "The Other" and smear him without either listening to what he says or snipping and twisting his meanings for their own political or emotional satisfaction, I hope non-Beckified Americans turn it around and ask who these Teapublicans really are, beyond their most recent stint as a Faux commentator or self-certified dentist or hypocrite living off her husband's federal pension.

Thank goodness we're seeing the President everywhere now, after a summer of well-timed underexposure, battling it out in the marketplace of actual ideas, explaining his Party's accomplishments over the past eighteen months and taking on self-aggrieved Wall Street greedmeisters like this one:



Does this particular hedge fund manager have any social conscience? A friend of mine in a similar position told me, prior to Obama's election, that he knew his taxes would go up, but it had to be Obama. We needed a smart, determined, persistent adult at the top of the nation. I haven't polled him recently, but after what could have been, Wall Street should be thanking Obama -- maybe earning less millions and even billions, but not suffering like an unemployed auto worker with a re-fi and a family in Detroit.

And, thank you, here's Obama calling out the Teapublicans as all thinking Americans should in the very same CNBC town hall:

"The problem that I've seen in the debate that's been taking place and in some of these Tea Party events is, I think they're misidentifying sort of who the culprits are here," said Obama. "As I said before, we had to take some emergency steps last year. But the majority of economists will tell you that the emergency steps we take are not the problem long-term. The problems long-term are the problems that I talked about earlier. We had two tax cuts that weren't paid for, two wars that weren't paid for. We've got a population that's getting older. We're all demanding services, but our taxes have actually substantially gone down."

"So the challenge, I think, for the Tea Party movement is to identify, specifically, what would you do?" he added. "It's not enough just to say get control of spending. I think it's important for you to say, I'm willing to cut veterans' benefits or I'm willing to cut Medicare or Social Security benefits or I'm willing to see these taxes go up. What you can't do, which is what I've been hearing a lot from the other side, is we're going to control government spending, we're going to propose $4 trillion of additional tax cuts, and that magically somehow things are going to work. Now, some of these are very difficult choices."

But we know their platform. Dismantle the government. No social safety net. The establishment GOP has only one platform: less taxes and less regulation = prosperity, no matter the evidence to the contrary. The Tea Party is even more extreme. And in the end it would just provide huge openings for the type of exploitation by private interests that would hearken back to the 1890's, the Robber Baron era, the forces of which which all of the progressive legislation of the 20th century was designed to blunt.

I'm looking forward to the repeal of child labor laws.