Video: Sen. Marco Rubio At The Reagan Library

Wish there were more Senators like him in DC.



Joy has more here.

Thanks to Beth.

What Do You Know, The Tea Party Was Right About The Debt Deal After All

Doug has this over at The Daley Gator.

In case you didn’t hear- and you would have to have been living in a box for the past 72 hours not to — America’s AAA credit rating was lowered to AA+ status for the first time in history on the fifth of August, and the primary reason for this move couldn’t be more painfully obvious.

Standard & Poor’s downgraded the credit rating of the United States because, even if most Americans don’t understand what baseline budgeting is, credit agencies do, and they aren’t fooled by the media’s insane mischaracterizations of the “historic debt ceiling deal” reached in Congress several days ago.

To begin with, practically every story written about the debt fight over the past few weeks has included some reference to an ‘imminent debt default’ if our government failed to reach some sort of agreement on extending the debt limit yet again. This term — or something like it — was used as a scare tactic by both the Democrat party and the mainstream press, who knew damned well that such a default was NEVER going to happen, regardless of whether Congress and the President came to an agreement on the debt ceiling matter.

The only way the U.S. would have defaulted on its debt-payment responsibilities is if President Obama had decided to not make good on them for purely political reasons. According to the Treasury Department, existing federal revenues were more than sufficient to cover these costs, as well as Social Security, Medicare and military expenditures.

Read the rest because the Tea Party was right and you know it.

Can The "Tea Party Downgrade" Label Stick?

For the person who follows politics, it shouldn't.

The administration’s knee-jerk responses are somewhat inconsistent: if S&P was wrong to downgrade the debt, and the downgrade was based on a mathematical error, then it is hard to see how the downgrade can also be the Tea Party’s fault. (In the legal world, this is known as pleading in the alternative: when sued for borrowing a neighbor’s pot and breaking it, the defendant answers that he never borrowed the pot; the pot was never broken; and the pot was already broken when he borrowed it.)

Of the administration’s alternative theories, the most ludicrous is the claim that the Tea Party, the one group dedicated to doing something about the nation’s spending and debt crisis, is somehow to blame for it.

Via Insty.

Video: Allen West's Response To John (Who Served In Vietnam) Kerry's Statement On The "Tea Party Downgrade"

Late Friday, Standard & Poor downgraded the country's credit and like clockwork, the usual suspects came out and blamed the Tea Party for it. Even a moron was able to foresee this.

What happened with the Tea Party was rhetoric. No bills passed with the full support of the Tea Party faction in Congress. The budget that finally was passed and was signed by Obama was a bipartisan bill.

That is what S & P was responding to. It's asinine to think otherwise. Which explains John Kerry.

Which brings us to today with Rep. Allen West.



My favorite take away from the clip? When West is talking about Timothy Geithner: "When you open that refrigerator door, the lights don't come on."

John Kerry (who served in Vietnam) is shoveling the usual crap Democrats like to do. He's voted in the past to increase spending time and time again and when the over-spending catches up with him, he cries out that taxes need to be raised to keep up. It's disingenuous and disgusting but what do you expect out of guy who dumps his rich wife for an even richer wife?

The Camp of the Saints has a pretty good round up about just Who is John At-Fault, including this from Protein Wisdom:

That the establishment GOP seems feckless in its attempts to get its message across is part of the Big Government kabuki dance: neither Republicans or Democrats who have become part of the career ruling class have any real desire to shrink government. The Republicans are willing to slow its growth occasionally — and they do believe in lower taxes; but as the Bush years should have taught us, they’re just as willing to spend as the Democrats, because giving gifts with other people’s money — and being praised for it — is the absolute easiest form of cheap grace on earth.

The entire establishment political class is corrupt. And it has declared open war against those Americans still left who believe in fiscal responsibility and a constitutional check on federal powers. Both the establishment Republicans and the Democrats (and their ancillary and parasitic attendants in the media and the inside-the-beltway political machinery) have shown themselves immediately willing to scapegoat the one anti-big government faction willing to insist on making the difficult choices necessary to save the country from the bloated, cynical, complacent pig class who presumes to run it in our name — though never in the way we wish. And that’s because party doesn’t really matter any longer, as I’ve been saying for years now.

Video: Montage Of Liberals Pundits Calling Tea Partiers "Terrorists"

Because not going perpetually into debt is something only a member of the Taliban would do, right?



Via Weasel Zippers.

Is Boehner's Plan The Best We Can Do?

let's examine the history here. Cut, Cap and Balance is dead. Ryan's plan is dead. Boehner's plan will be DOA.

The CBO scored the plan light on cuts in the front end and heavy on the back end. In the ten year time span where it won't matter anyway. Because all of those other ten year, eleven year, twelve year plans in the past have been so successful in cutting the existing deficit. Oh, right.

Regardless of who leaves the bargaining table first, the Republicans are going to get the blame. More specifically, the Tea Party Republicans.

Ideally, I would like to see variations of the CCB bill passed and sent to the Senate. Make the Senate Dems "the party of No" for once. But that would depend on the Republican leadership being able to put forth a coherent narrative and a spine. So no dice.

It's going to come down to a game of chicken. I honestly believe that Obama doesn't care if the Nation defaults on it's debt or not. Boehner does so he'll cave first and give Obama what they want. A budget with lots of democrat input. In which case the TP Republicans in the House won't be necessary for passage.

This is the hill to stand on. Not next year because it will always be 'next year, we'll fight'.

This is the game they seem to play:

• The Republicans have the House but they can't do anything over fear of not gaining the Senate.
• If they win the Senate they can't do anything over fear of losing the Presidency.
• If they have both houses of Congress and the White House, they can't do anything at all because then they might loose it all.

This is the hill to fight on but it's also prudent to prepare for the worst. Downgrading of the US's credit rating which will affect interest rates, mutual funds and inflation will kick in. Not because of the Tea Party Republicans but because the Senate will accept nothing else but a blank check from the House. But somehow it's the TP Republican's fault for not partisapating in Kabuki Theater.

Back to the Speaker's budget. It's dead. Robert Stacy has this about it:

Of course, any bill acceptable to 218 House Republicans may be impossible to get approved by Harry Reid’s Democrat majority in the Senate.

So why is there the white hot heat for the TP Republicans that John McCain demonstrated? I'm sick and tired of conservatives being the scapegoat of very thing bad to the point where backstabbing bastards like John McCain feels the need to give out Democrat talking points.

The only thing I can think of is because they are voting the way they said they would vote. To cut spending. The Speaker's plan seems to indicate the 'business as usual' that Congress always does instead of actual cuts. Business as usual is what got the Republican party almost beaten to obscurity. It was, in large part, the Tea Parties that got the Republicans back to where they are today. Boehner needs to be kissing their toes not telling them to get back in line.

It's simplistic but the Republicans don't want a default on the Nation's credit rating but Obama has signaled time and time again he's not going to work with any Republican unless they agree with him. Going back to, "I won". It's not going to change now. And somehow this is the TP Republican's fault.

The Rumors Of Rep. Allen West's Apology Are Greatly Exaggerated

A follow up to Allen West's email to Debbie Wasserman-Schultz from yesterday.

West is standing firm.

Rep. Allen West (R) said he had no plans to apologize to fellow Florida Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D) for a strongly worded email he sent to the congresswoman.

“That is not happening,” West said Thursday on Fox Business Network. “This is a pattern I referred to in that email that goes back to 2010. Finally I think I have the right to stand up and defend my honor and make sure that this type of activity does cease. I sent her a private email, she decided to make it public by releasing it to the news media.”

I think it was a caller to Rush Limbaugh yesterday who said that it would make a great visual if all the Tea Party Freshmen women in the House make a 'Stand With West' statement or something like that. Rather than have the Republican leadership leave him hanging in the wind.

Previously:

The Character Assassination Of Allen West By The Coward Debbie Wasserman-Schultz

Who Knew This About The Hippies?

I guess anti-establishmentism never went away, only cut it's hair.

If you, as a hippie, think the thesis of this essay couldn’t possibly be true, you’ve been paying too much attention to the mainstream media. The Tea Party has been intentionally misrepresented, villainized and smeared by the powers-that-be. But this too is a feature that the Tea Party shares with hippies — the hippie movement was itself misrepresented and smeared by a different mainstream media over 40 years ago.
This essay will elucidate in a fresh way how Tea Partiers are the true heirs to the hippie ethos. When you’ve finished reading, you’ll see the Tea Party in a new light and (hopefully) understand that you may have been on the wrong side of the fence until now.
In short, the Tea Party and the hippie movement share four fundamental core values:

• A craving for independence;
• A celebration of individualism;
• Joy in the freedom offered by self-sufficiency;
• And an acceptance of the natural order of things.

It's worth the read.

To File Under, "If It Walks Like A Duck, , , "

This is something that always puzzled me. If I can see it. If countless others of other bloggers and members of the Tea Party can see it, why can't pundits like Charles Krauthammer and Rick Moran see what's should be as plain as day?

I guess it's an elitist thing:

Unless and until those who people the contemporary socialist movement revert to donning berets and going full-on khaki, or carrying little red books in their tiny utilitarian shirt pockets, or referring to themselves as numbers like a cadre of high-ranking SPECTRE villains, the nuanced pragmatic conservatives of the stripe who backed McCain and mocked the TEA Party at its birth wouldn’t recognize a Marxist if several of them clenched themselves into a giant worker’s fist and went totally Caligula on our dear intellectual betters.

Video: Racist Tea Partier Disrupts African American's Town Hall Meeting

By racist tea partier I really mean failed Air America radio host trying to heckle Congressman Allen West at a townhall meeting.



I still stand by my charge of RAAAAACISM though. She is white, Rep. West is black. What else could it be?

The Schadenfreude comes in about the 3:30 mark.

Not Satisfied With Repetitive Chants, Protesters Take Up Primal Screams And Grunts

Uhhh. Ummm. This is a protest?



Near as I can tell, he's protesting over this.

Civility Watch: New Tone At Work When Protest Crowd Drowns Out 14 Year Old Girl Speaking

In that Mecca of post-modern civility, Madison Wisconsin.

Just In Case You Missed It

Sen. Marco Rubio spoke at the Tampa Bay Tax Day Tea Party.

Video: The Tea Party vs. John Boehner

From Insty-Glenn.

I don't remember who said this originally but all politics are local. Sure, it might not be as sexy sounding as going to Washington DC for a rally or two but it does help serve it's purpose by making sure that a politician knows his base, donors and voters are keeping watch.

The Tea Party held a rally outside the Capitol Building today to demand that congressional Republicans demand significant cuts in federal spending. The outlook is bad. House Republicans are fighting to hold on to the $61 billion in spending cuts they approved in February, a mere rounding error in a budget totaling about $3.8 trillion.

Today's rally shows how the Tea Party has continued the fight to make itself heard in Washington. But in Ohio there's a new focus: local politics.

Video: Bill Whittle & The End Of The Beginning

Mr. Whittle expounds on the classic Ronald Reagan axiom, "If no one among us is capable of governing himself, then who among us has the capacity to govern someone else?"



Thanks to Paul.

This Confirms What Most People Already Knew

There isn't anything post-racial about this President.

But Obama, in his most candid moments, acknowledged that race was still a problem. In May 2010, he told guests at a private White House dinner that race was probably a key component in the rising opposition to his presidency from conservatives, especially right-wing activists in the anti-incumbent "Tea Party" movement that was then surging across the country. Many middle-class and working-class whites felt aggrieved and resentful that the federal government was helping other groups, including bankers, automakers, irresponsible people who had defaulted on their mortgages, and the poor, but wasn't helping them nearly enough, he said.

A guest suggested that when Tea Party activists said they wanted to "take back" their country, their real motivation was to stir up anger and anxiety at having a black president, and Obama didn't dispute the idea. He agreed that there was a "subterranean agenda" in the anti-Obama movement—a racially biased one—that was unfortunate. But he sadly conceded that there was little he could do about it. [Emphasis mine]

It isn't the color of his skin. It's the color of his politics. Red.

Obama is either willingly ignorant about this or gleefully lying about the 'race' aspect of this. I'm guessing he's lying.

Video: The Deficit Explained Using Shots Of Jack Daniels

Via The Daley Gator.



Or it can be summed up by this Iowahawk quote:

If your pet govt agency is existentially threatened by a 5% budget cut, it's too poorly managed to exist in the first place.

Read The Bill!

Some encouraging signs from the new Republican Congress.

Sen. Rand Paul, Kentucky Republican, blasted his fellow party for how they brought up the bill. “Little debate, no committee hearings held, no amendments allowed, and no examination of whether our government had lived up to its responsibility to protect the liberty of the people,” is how he put it in a press release.

Please read the whole thing.

It's A Sad Commentary When Cracked Magazine Is Able To More Accurately Report On A Story Than The Actual News Media

Mainly, anything that related to the Tea Party.

For all those wackjob birthers captured on film wearing frilly lady blouses and triangle hats, there were thousands of ordinary people just living their lives, being regular, and not liking how their Republican Party had turned out. And even though Tea Party members tend to skew toward older, middle-class white guys, their overall demographics aren't that far from the rest of the country. Of course, regular people are about as riveting as dry toast, so they didn't get much screen time. Which is why it came as such a shock to everyone when 32 percent of Tea Party-affiliated candidates won their elections.

By focusing in on the assclowns the media painted a picture that not only wasn't accurate, but pretty much made constructive political discourse impossible. They didn't just fail to do their job -- they did the opposite of their job, and they've been doing it for years.

Like back in the 1960s, when they homed in on long-haired hippies dancing like spazzes and plugging every orifice they could with flowers, then declared these ding-dongs the voice of their generation. In reality, most kids from the 60s never looked like that or behaved that way, but that doesn't mean they inherently supported the war in Vietnam or were opposed to civil rights. They just weren't part of the hippie fringe. Look at your mom's (or grandma's?) yearbook if you don't believe us. Or look at this picture from Woodstock.

In case you can't tell, most of the guys are sporting relatively short hair ... at Woodstock.

So when we watched coverage of O'Donnell and the Tea Party this year, we were only getting the bonkers half of the picture. Now that CNN is teaming up with the Tea Party Express to host the Republican debates next year, we'll probably see a lot fewer costumed revolutionaries. But everyone will just assume the Tea Party cleaned up its act, when in reality it will be CNN.

Be sure to read the entire thing. Even the Jay Leno/Conan O'Brien dust up that. . . Wasn't.

Video: Eric Fuller Tells Tucson Tea Party Founder Trent Humphries, "You're Dead!" When Humphries Calls For Healing

Video from Outside the Beltway. The Other McCain has touched on this as well.



It's a bit difficult to hear but it's definitely there.

To date: Legitimate threats of violence from the left since the Tucson incident. One and counting. Legitimate threats of violence from the right. Nothing reported so far but if it happens, it will be the lead story in every newscast.