Wednesday, March 18, 2009

Hold on to your Teabags

Teabag protests are breaking out all over the country as Obama's support dips. And everything else that actually happened today.

First, let's look at news that slipped under the radar with the AIG debacle:

Secretary Gates has signaled an end to Stop-loss policy in the Military - this means that the military is actually going to start upholding its contract with military personnel regarding the length of their duty and will pay those it must hold an additional stipend for extended duty.

The GIVE act passes - Almost perfectly along partisan lines, but this legislation has moved out of the House to reauthorize and reform national service laws.

The RNC has seen a dip in Fundraising - But not in a really significant way suggesting that Michael Steele has had no real effect, or rather no overwhelming effect on RNC fundraising.

Attorney General Eric Holder makes a couple big announcements - including a shift in position on marijuana prosecution and a consideration of lessening regulation of anti-trust laws for newspapers.

The Pope says no to condoms while en route to Africa

Gay Rights Ban Signed by U.S. - So while we are debating the legality of it here in the United States, we are proud to say it's not okay to discriminate gays if you're not the U.S.

But most of these stories were overshadowed by the stories surrounding AIG and CEO Liddy's testimony regarding the bonuses that have now been paid out. Of course there are great stories that are riding along with the AIG mess including the new chic teabagging that is happening around the country which will culminate on April 15th. The Nationwide Tax Day Tea Party organized by New American Tea Party promises to be a very interesting event as we have already seen instances of people teabagging their local water sources in protest. These teabaggers are getting quite the media coverage for their antics. Bob Cesca, has published a fantastic little explanation of why that is a little funny.

It is always interesting to me when groups of people get together to throw little protests like throwing tea into the river because they don't agree with the administration. Just a quick question: Do you think throwing tea into a body of water is going to get your Representative or Senator to change their minds? As though they are sitting in their office on Capitol Hill going, "My goodness, my constituents sure have dumped a lot of tea into Lake __. I better ask Liddy questions harder before they get really angry."

This situation with AIG and Bank of America and all of the other banks is a real tragedy and those on the Hill and in the White House are working really hard to fix the problem. You dumping tea into the Potomac is not going to fix it. Neither is mailing it to the White House. And your protests are going to lead to panic, which as I explained yesterday, is exactly what we DO NOT NEED in this crisis. So let the boys and girls in D.C. do their work to try to solve this issue and stop protesting. You're not helping the matter any.

Obama came out with a very measured response to this ridiculousness on the Hill and ya'll should take a hint from him. It's time to take a little responsibility and get through this, not point fingers and whine.

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Today's Quote
"Though dissenters seem to question everything in sight, they are actually bundles of dusty answers and never conceived a new question."
- Eric Hoffer, Reflections on the Human Condition (1973)

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