Friday, April 17, 2009
The Speaker of the House speaks too much nonsence
Is she out of touch or what? Astro turf? The lady needs to be voted off into the sunset. Those people at the tea parties were not all rich Americans. And....it wasn't just Bushes policies that got us here in the first place. It started back in Clintons era and 9/11 boosted it. Corruption helped to foster it...and not just in government. There are a lot of factors that got us here. For her to say the it was the former administrations fault that we are in this situation irks me. She is clearly not in touch with the American people or their issues.
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Politician's both left and right try to come up with clever puns to devalue something positive happening for the other side. When the Republicans came up with "Contract with America," the Democrats successfully made a funny by calling it the "Contract on America." In Pelosi's case, I just say "hee hee haw haw" and roll my eyes.
Also, don't bet on her being voted out of office. She represents the most liberal district in the country. She will be around as long as she wants to stick around.
That's dissapointing. I hope she isn't that well liked by them.
I have been anxious to respond to this post.
I often disapprove of Pelosi too. However, I usually don't disapprove of what she is trying to communicate but almost always of how she does it and her stupid political timing.
I actually believe what she says regarding the tea parties. But it was ridiculous of her to belittle the effort of the those who made the effort to participate. It could serve no political purpose to denigrate them publicly regardless of what she or her cohorts thought personally. It made her look callous and out of touch. Teresa was right to post her indignation.
Most of those citizens showed up because they are angry. Good for them. But they also showed up because those they listen to told them to. FOX News, Sean Hannity, Glen Beck and many local radio hosts promoted it actively. No problem there either really. But the tea parties were not, in my view at least, a real populist grassroots uprising. They were less a populist movement and more an orchestrated series of events by a handful of mainly Republican political entrepreneurs. Pelosi thought so too and hence her stupid comments about Asrtoturf and not true grassroots. Hence her comments that rich Republicans had manufactured and fomented the events to keep pressure on government to not raise taxes, because the rich would bear the brunt of the tax raises to come, not those citizens attending the t-parties. But she was stupid to make either comment, all she could accomplish was to insult the good citizens present.
However, on another very important level, she was not wrong in saying that it was the previous 8 year administration that got is into this mess. The Clinton administration is not to blame. The Clinton administration took its first four years to reverse deficits by George Bush senior's administration and then went on to run a surplus its last four years. It was using this surplus to begin to try to reduce the debt, a trend that the recent Bush administration wasted no time in reversing.
Regarding the t-parties, ask yourselves this question: why did all of the above mentioned Republican operatives not organize, promote, and foment during the previous 8 years such t-parties?
Because Republicans were in power! Never mind that the deficit year by year was clearly out of control, never mind that the debt was already mounting at an alarming rate, never mind those time-honored conservative values of fiscal responsibility! This is why I share Pelosi's sentiments if not her lack of political timing and poor choice of words. The t-parties were first and foremost a construction by the right and those who attended for the most part were the disgruntled looking to blame someone. It was a ploy by the opposition to attempt to look relevant and to re-affirm their base. And, in my view it worked.
There have always been tax protests and 'tea party' type tax protests, and I have always respected them, not but this round of protests.
On Pelosi and her district. Her district is California's 8th district. San Francisco. It is less that Pelosi is loved there, but Republicans loathed. If she gets her party's nomination she wins regardless. She will most likely always get the nomination.
We have like situations in here in Utah.
Yes, there was some surplus in some early Clinton years, but it was Clinton's good fortune that Reagan's tax cuts generated enormous amounts of economic activity. Hence the higher government tax revenues. Democrats are quick to take credit for the surpluses, but it was Reagan's tax cuts that brought it about. Clinton and the Democrats raised taxes during those surplus years and severely curtailed economic activity, resulting deficits later on. I am no fan of fiscally irresponsible Republicans, which is one of the reasons I voted against Canon (and good riddance to him). It is easy to blame our current situation on Republicans since they were in power for a few years, but don't forget that it is the Democrats who have controlled congress for two years prior to our current debacle, and it is well documented that the housing mess was engendered by Democrats forcing banks to give out loans to people who had no capacity to pay them back.
Regarding the tea parties, these protests were indeed grass root movements, but Hannity and other conservative opportunists jump on board only after the movement was gaining strength. I must note that protests on the left are rarely spontaneous either. They are promoted and organized by one group or another, so it's no different.
The thing that irked me was the foul treatment received by the protesters at the hands of CNN and NBC. Anderson Cooper in particular used childish sexual innuendo to demean the protesters saying (exact quote here) "it's hard to talk when you're tea-bagging." Other NBC and CNN commentators referred to them as "tea-baggers," all the while guffawing and chortling at their own cleverness. Such gross and offensive innuendo does not belong on news shows or on TV for that matter.
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