i doubt Ayn Rand who was pretty hostile to religion and stuff is really all that popular among rank and file teapartiers.

VoxOrion wrote:

drsmooth wrote:It's entries like that that suggest this piece was written by a recent college grad rather than a hardboiled beltway bandit.

How so?

See TVul's note

Apparently, Rep. Joe Barton agrees with Holman Jenkins:

“I’m ashamed of what happened in the White House yesterday,” Barton said in his opening statement. “I think it is a tragedy of the first proportion that a private corporation can be subjected to what I would characterize as a shakedown in this case a $20 billion dollar shakedown.”

I really don't even know what to say anymore; this kinda stuff just absolutely infuriates me.

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/06 ... z0r7a24UGU






http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0610/38665.html

Yeah he basically just apologized to Hayward. Markey, the chairman of this committee, than ripped into him.

drsmooth wrote:

VoxOrion wrote:

drsmooth wrote:It's entries like that that suggest this piece was written by a recent college grad rather than a hardboiled beltway bandit.

How so?

See TVul's note

You're both wrong. "Who is John Galt" is like, the second most popular Tea Partier sign/bumper sticker/t-shirt after the Gadson flag. This is why I started, and didn't bother getting into, your exchange earlier this week on the tea party stuff. You guys are not in touch with what you are attempting to dissect, explain, and criticize. Google "Atlas Shrugged Sales" and "Who is John Galt".

kopphanatic wrote:Yeah he basically just apologized to Hayward. Markey, the chairman of this committee, than ripped into him.

I swear, if I were in the gallery at that hearing there is absolutely no fucking way I would be able to keep my mouth shut. As an aside, I wonder how much BP stock Barton owns.

He's a prostitute for Big Oil, pure and simple.

Stick him in a gas tank to be internally combusted.

Hayward just has this look of contempt on his face. It's obvious that he doesn't want to be there.

Barton's pretty po'

(pdf)

kopphanatic wrote:Hayward just has this look of contempt on his face. It's obvious that he doesn't want to be there.

He can't help it, he's British. Plus, he is a scumbag.

VoxOrion wrote:

drsmooth wrote:

VoxOrion wrote:

drsmooth wrote:It's entries like that that suggest this piece was written by a recent college grad rather than a hardboiled beltway bandit.

How so?

See TVul's note

You're both wrong. "Who is John Galt" is like, the second most popular Tea Partier sign/bumper sticker/t-shirt after the Gadson flag. This is why I started, and didn't bother getting into, your exchange earlier this week on the tea party stuff. You guys are not in touch with what you are attempting to dissect, explain, and criticize. Google "Atlas Shrugged Sales" and "Who is John Galt".

you don't know me - you only think you do.

when you think "conservative", is Rand really the 1st exponent that comes to your mind? It isn't to most people who devote more time than they probably should to this sort of thing. She herself rejected the label.

So the author of your playboy piece's glib equation, that "knowing their Rand = "real" conservatism" is amateur bosh. That the teacuppers soak up that bilge is not of interest; it's not germane to the point that Rand<>conservatism.

VoxOrion wrote:

drsmooth wrote:

VoxOrion wrote:

drsmooth wrote:It's entries like that that suggest this piece was written by a recent college grad rather than a hardboiled beltway bandit.

How so?

See TVul's note

You're both wrong. "Who is John Galt" is like, the second most popular Tea Partier sign/bumper sticker/t-shirt after the Gadson flag. This is why I started, and didn't bother getting into, your exchange earlier this week on the tea party stuff. You guys are not in touch with what you are attempting to dissect, explain, and criticize. Google "Atlas Shrugged Sales" and "Who is John Galt".

I don't think anybody knows for sure how much of the Tea Party is blind, irrational rage--whether "rooted" primarily in racism, economic despair, cultural alienation or whatever--and how much of it is rooted in a real preference for smaller government and greater personal freedom.

I fully believe that both impulses are in there, but there are a lot of dogs not barking on the small-government argument: little to no willingness to endorse specific cuts in spending or entitlements ("keep yer gummit hands offa my Medicare"), not much protest of civil liberties encroachments or support for a more isolationist foreign policy (a pretty good proxy for what we're talking about, IMO), little recognition that a great deal of what's being protested is the continuation of Bush policies.

The Tea Party smells like "What's the Matter With Kansas" on steroids: culturally chauvinistic populism, directed at "experts" rather than or in addition to "liberals," put into the service of economic elitism. Lloyd Blankfein and Tony Heyward might be a lot of things, but they're not Howard Roark or John Galt. They've taken advantage of the failings of the public sector and informational asymmetries to amass vast riches on the suffering of powerless people.

No doubt, there's a lot of willful blindness to inconvenient facts like Ayn Rand's detestation of religion. But the bigger deal to me--and I fully admit that I'm "not in touch" with this movement; I don't think I've ever claimed otherwise--is the incoherence, lack of specificity and hypocrisy. Personally I'm entirely sympathetic to the push for government to live within its means; I'm the (only?) liberal who'd like to see a Balanced Budget Amendment to the Constitution. And I'm willing to sacrifice some of my own sacred cows to get us back to living within our collective means.

But what I primarily see in the Tea Party, ironically enough, is a mass reflection of the attitude of Blankfein and Heyward: I want mine, and fuck everyone else. Wrap that up in Christianism or "the virtue of selfishness," and it still stinks.

dajafi wrote:But what I primarily see in the Tea Party, ironically enough, is a mass reflection of the attitude of Blankfein and Heyward: I want mine, and $#@! everyone else. Wrap that up in Christianism or "the virtue of selfishness," and it still stinks.

I don't imagine it's intentional, but that's a subtext of the playboy piece vox provided: "hey dooders, fear not - Tea Partiers are just as much about snorting blow off hookers' tits as you are!"

drsmooth wrote:

dajafi wrote:But what I primarily see in the Tea Party, ironically enough, is a mass reflection of the attitude of Blankfein and Heyward: I want mine, and $#@! everyone else. Wrap that up in Christianism or "the virtue of selfishness," and it still stinks.

I don't imagine it's intentional, but that's a subtext of the playboy piece vox provided: "hey dooders, fear not - Tea Partiers are just as much about snorting blow off hookers' tits as you are!"

I assume there is still room for new recruits?

traderdave wrote:

drsmooth wrote:

dajafi wrote:But what I primarily see in the Tea Party, ironically enough, is a mass reflection of the attitude of Blankfein and Heyward: I want mine, and $#@! everyone else. Wrap that up in Christianism or "the virtue of selfishness," and it still stinks.

I don't imagine it's intentional, but that's a subtext of the playboy piece vox provided: "hey dooders, fear not - Tea Partiers are just as much about snorting blow off hookers' tits as you are!"

I assume there is still room for new recruits?

I think vox's article included a contacts directory

dajafi wrote:

VoxOrion wrote:

drsmooth wrote:

VoxOrion wrote:

drsmooth wrote:It's entries like that that suggest this piece was written by a recent college grad rather than a hardboiled beltway bandit.

How so?

See TVul's note

You're both wrong. "Who is John Galt" is like, the second most popular Tea Partier sign/bumper sticker/t-shirt after the Gadson flag. This is why I started, and didn't bother getting into, your exchange earlier this week on the tea party stuff. You guys are not in touch with what you are attempting to dissect, explain, and criticize. Google "Atlas Shrugged Sales" and "Who is John Galt".

I don't think anybody knows for sure how much of the Tea Party is blind, irrational rage--whether "rooted" primarily in racism, economic despair, cultural alienation or whatever--and how much of it is rooted in a real preference for smaller government and greater personal freedom.

I don't think it's really that difficult. Tea Party was born in response to "healthcare reform", where any kind of "healthcare reform" = socialism/collectivism/euro-unamerican. Opponents to any kind of "healthcare reform" played the socialism/collectivism card, play on the fears of losing liberty and freedom, to garner the support of Joe and Jane Sixpack for their opposition. Now, it isn't just HCR but any kind of deviation from the status quo by the Omama Admn/democrats gets painted with the "government telling you what to do/socialism/collectivism" brush. The right is still using fear politics, but nowadays it's more "socialism/collectivism" than "9/11 terrorism". "9/11 terrorism" wasn't effective in 2008 and the Obama cult of personality cost them the WH so they needed to re-tool the fear politics to try and retain the fold. You gotta admit, fear politics works. For crying out loud, they were able to get hard working poor and middle class folks to side with the positions of fat 'n' bloated big insurance and pharma consumerism.

Phan In Phlorida wrote:I don't think it's really that difficult. Tea Party was born in response to "healthcare reform", where any kind of "healthcare reform" = socialism/collectivism/euro-unamerican. Opponents to any kind of "healthcare reform" played the socialism/collectivism card, play on the fears of losing liberty and freedom, to garner the support of Joe and Jane Sixpack for their opposition. Now, it isn't just HCR but any kind of deviation from the status quo by the Omama Admn/democrats gets painted with the "government telling you what to do/socialism/collectivism" brush. The right is still using fear politics, but nowadays it's more "socialism/collectivism" than "9/11 terrorism". "9/11 terrorism" wasn't effective in 2008 and the Obama cult of personality cost them the WH so they needed to re-tool the fear politics to try and retain the fold. You gotta admit, fear politics works. For crying out loud, they were able to get hard working poor and middle class folks to side with the positions of fat 'n' bloated big insurance and pharma consumerism.

The first tea party protest was in late 2008, and the movement gained steam as a response to the TARP bill passed by Bush/Dems in Congress and then the stimulus bill. They started calling themselves tea-partiers in January 2009. Health reform wasn't on the radar at that time.

I think it was TV that posted a good article a few days ago, which pointed out that americans are becoming increasingly individualistic/libertarian. The tea parties reflect a portion of that sentiment.

VoxOrion wrote:

drsmooth wrote:you don't know me - you only think you do.

This is a funny statement. It implies that while I don't know you, you know me. In the end, none of us know one another, we only know each other's avatar. I know the drsmooth avatar quite well, and it's all I have to go with (just as VoxOrion is all you have to go with in return).

Dude, it's a line from Get Shorty. Travolta has just thrown stuntman/goon-for-hire James Gandolfini down the restaurant stairs, & Travolta then threatens to mop the floor with Gandolfini's boss, the underappreciated Delroy Lindo, if he doesn't vacate pronto. Lindo keeps his cool, sort of, uttering the quoted reply.

VoxOrion wrote:

drsmooth wrote:when you think "conservative", is Rand really the 1st exponent that comes to your mind? It isn't to most people who devote more time than they probably should to this sort of thing. She herself rejected the label.

I agree. Unfortunately, this has nothing to do with the fact that a significant number of people who identify themselves with the Tea Party movement are devotees of Ayn Rand. You didn't know this, but now you do. The author is simply distinguishing one group from another.

This much is clear: we disagree on what the author of the playboy article's assumptions are.

VoxOrion wrote:

drsmooth wrote:So the author of your playboy piece's glib equation, that "knowing their Rand = "real" conservatism" is amateur bosh. That the teacuppers soak up that bilge is not of interest; it's not germane to the point that Rand<>conservatism.

I'd say the reader who assumed that "knowing their Rand = "real" conservatism" is the problem here, not the other way around.

So it is not clear to you that what I have described previously is in fact Anon's implication.

You seem eager to establish "right" and "wrong" here (e.g., advising TV & me that "you're both wrong" about our view of the Anon's remarks about Rand & the teapots).

I'm not convinced you can do that, unequivocally.

docsmooth, you're defining tea party=conservative, when vox is saying that's not a good initial premise. It's not "conservatism" as we commonly use the term. Suspicion of government, rejection of corporate influence, and excessive individualism (how I would describe the tea party movement) may have some overlap with modern conservatives, but it's a poor label. Just like Ayn Rand is a bad example of a modern conservative, as you point out.