The Tea Party Guests Who Aren't Being Served

Rolfe Winkler hit a bullseye with the article he wrote at Option ARMageddon about the recent Tea Parties, "CNN Misses the Tea Party Point."

Wasn't just CNN who missed the point, it was virtually all of the Left Wing. CNN just happened to have the most egregious example of "if it doesn't fit our view, we ain't gonna report it" party-line journalism - the type of unbalanced reporting I'd expect from either Fox or MSNBC, depending on the party line. (The video is included in the article, and it is a sad commentary on the state of journalism and news reporting today.)

But the point here isn't the obviously biased reporting - that's merely a symptom of a larger issue; an issue that many are not yet recognizing in their zeal to mock the Tea Parties. Winkler notes,

"The lefties and the righties are still so blinded by their hatred of each other, they don’t see the emerging super-majority in the middle. They don’t see (yet) that they are actually in violent agreement, incensed as they are with nonstop government spending, in particular the bank bailouts.

Anger over the bank bailouts unites virtually the entire country. And how very ironic that this inchoate union of right and left is forming in opposition to Mr. Post Partisan himself, Barack Obama."

This observation is supported by the first reader comment, which in part reads, "...there is a building of all the people in the middle that are sick of the business as usual regardless of Rep or Dems." Indeed there is - I know because I am certainly a part of that ever-growing political demographic.

The party that best addresses the concerns of this middle-ground group will have the strongest position gong forward - assuming either party gets their heads out of their behinds and begins to address these concerns instead of spending all their time and energy in this ongoing political pissing contest.

Mr. Obama's Fuzzy Facts

Image by jmtimages via Flickr

So, we're a little over a month into the Presidency of Barack Obama. I wonder how different these past 30+ days have been from what he envisioned. He was all revved up to "hit the ground running," and he started stumbling right out of the gate! Blagojevich-gate cast a pall over the transition period, no less than three of his appointees for major positions within his Team were shown to be tax cheats (causing two of them to "withdraw from consideration"), his half-brother was arrested for drug possession, his efforts to reach across the aisle have been rebuffed at every turn. Surely this wasn't what he thought he was getting himself into!

For as much as he had campaigned on a promise to change Washington, he had better learn to play the Washington game considerably better than he has been playing it if he hopes to survive it. He's going to have to adapt, adopt and adjust quickly, lest he endure four full years of this Washington culture of digging up skeletons and political progress-blocking stalling every effort he makes toward his goals.

Indeed, he's already taken the first tentative steps into par-for-the-course politics-as-usual: in Mr. Obama's first speech as President before a joint session of Congress on Tuesday, it seems the old tried-and-true strategy of refusing to let facts get in the way of a good story was his choice of gameplan.

The non-partisan public advocate site FactCheck.org (which everyone should bookmark or subscribe to) reviewed the speech, and reports that President Obama sure seemed to get a lot of things wrong:

* He said "we import more oil today than ever before."

* He claimed his mortgage plan would never help those who borrowed beyond their means.

* He claimed health care costs cause bankruptcies in America "every 30 seconds."

* He stated that the automobile was invented in America.

* He said the transcontinental railroad was completed during the Civil War.

* He claimed that his stimulus plan "prevented the layoffs" of 57 Minneapolis police officers.

* He said that the CHIP program only provides health insurance for those children whose parent's work Full-Time.

Every single one of these assertions turns out to be either completely false or, at best, exaggerated and distorted. Yet, these "facts" are among those on which he is basing the defense of his stimulus plan and proposed budget. (Read the article at FactCheck.org to get in-depth discussion of each point - what he actually said in the speech and what the real truth is. You can read that article here.)

So, before even half of the high-scrutiny First 100 Days of his Presidency have passed, is President Obama becoming the very type of typical Washington politician he railed so hard against in his campaign? The line between maintaining the support of the idealistic youth vote that helped to sweep him into office (and, indeed, his own optimism) and doing what he will have do to accomplish his goals (get down in the muck with the Washington crowd) is razor thin. How long can he walk that line? How long before the notoriously fickle American public begins to turn?

This is the "New Washington"?

So, President Obama has been in office all of 15 days. Wonder how he's liking the job so far?

Today saw two more nominees for important positions on Obama's team bow out due to tax payment issues: Senator Tom Daschle, nominated for Health and Human Services Secretary, and Nancy Killefer, nominated for Chief Performance Officer, both voluntarily removed their names for consideration for those respective positions due to the fact that each has failed to pay taxes in the past. These withdrawals are of course happening shortly after news broke about Treasury Secretary nominee Tim Geithner's extensive unpaid tax debt.

Psst...Mr. President...you may want to amend your vetting process for future appointees to include the question, "Have you paid your taxes?"

Couple these withdrawals with President Obama's half-brother, George Obama, being arrested on drug charges over the weekend, and it's a fair assessment to say that this has not been the best weekend the new Prez could have asked for. (By the way, what is it with Democratic presidents and their siblings? Should George Obama's "incident" be a surprise after the country has been subjected to Roger Clinton and Billy Carter?)

All during his campaign, Obama told us that it would not be business as usual once he got to Washington, that he would hit the ground running and we would start to see immediate change. So, someone wanna explain to me how this is not typical Washington political embarrassment?