The Hilarious Hypocrisy of the GOP's So-Called 'Tea Bag Revolution'

[babylonsister]

The Hilarious Hypocrisy of the GOP's So-Called 'Tea Bag Revolution'

By Bob Cesca, Huffington Post. Posted March 20, 2009.

Their gimmick to protest the bailout is hilarious because GOP tax policies are more in line with King George than colonial patriots.


Throughout history, there have been more than a few unfortunate and ill-conceived branding and marketing ideas to have been thrust into public view. I'm not just talking about minor infractions like the recent Cocaine energy drink or that children's candy with the hard plastic "prizes" suitable for choking buried inside. I'm talking about serious failures. Probably the most famous example of an epic fail product was the diet pill known simply as "Ayds," circa 1982. The slogan: "Why take diet pills when you can enjoy Ayds?" I'm not making that up.

In the past several years, this caliber of epic fail has also appeared at various political protests. There's the infamous mullet-headed pro-war demonstrator holding a sign reading: "GET A BRAIN! MORANS." And just a couple of weeks ago, there was this display of fail by a protester from the far-right blog Free Republic:



As the sign demonstrates, the funniest and most contradictory aspect of the recent far-right revolution is, hands down, the tea bag thing. But it's not just about the double entendre aspect of "tea bagging." A lot of it has to do with the idea that far-right conservatives are emulating the Boston Tea Party.

Let's recap. It began with the on-air rant from the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange by the Coward Rick Santelli -- "coward" because he's apparently too afraid to go on The Daily Show and, instead, Jim Cramer went on and took a beating for something that Santelli basically started. Nevertheless, according to one of the official tea bag websites, Santelli is credited as the patron saint of the movement.

And unless I'm mistaken, the basic idea of the tea bag revolution is to protest against government bailouts and in favor of tax cuts for the wealthiest five percent of Americans. Ultimately, the tea baggers (can I call them that?) appear to be against allowing the Bush's tax cuts to expire. Strangely, they also appear to be against President Obama signing into law the largest middle class tax cut in history. They're also against helping middle and working class "losers" keep their homes. (By the way, your neighbor's mortgage is your problem. Just watch your property values plummet as soon as there's just one foreclosure on your block.)

This series of Obama policies, they say, portends tyranny in America. Of course none of the policies of the Bush administration were considered tyrannical by many of the current tea bag leaders. You know the list of Bush trespasses. The illegal searches and seizures, the illegal electronic eavesdropping and torturing. The suspension of habeas corpus, the record deficits, the doubling of the national debt and so on. None of that was tyrannical. But allowing the tax cuts for the wealthiest five percent to expire is absolutely the vanguard of totalitarianism.


more...

http://www.alternet.org/story/132440/the_hilarious_hypocrisy_of_the_gop%27s_so-called_%27tea_bag_revolution%27/?page=entire

[soothsayer]

1. Just to correct the article, Ayds wasn't a diet pill, it was a diet CANDY, and it was gooooood

That is to say, a candy that helped you lose weight, not just an unfattening candy. Anyway, yum.

[barbtries]

12. and it didn't fail

until the disease kicked in. it was the name.

[ejpoeta]

2. the funny thing about this for me is....

for the past eight years bush and the republicans ignored everyone else and did whatever they wanted. obama is trying to include the republicans and at least hear what they have to say.

[screembloodymurder]

3. Reminds me of the George Carlin bit about the rich.

They don't give a SHIT about you. THEY don't give a SHIT about you! THEY DON'T GIVE A SHIT ABOUT YOU!

These tea baggers are the dumb and dumber of the far-right.

[Demeter]

4. Is There a Double Entendre in Tea-Bagging? I'm Culturally Deprived

[babylonsister]

5. Are you sure you want to know?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tea_bagging

[wolfgangmo]

6. And now that we do know

Looking at the pictures do you see those guys with the signs as more likely to teabag or more likely to be teabagged?

I used to work in a maximum security prison that did the initial intake of every male prisoner to the state before they were sent to their eventual "home" prison and we would size them up when they walked in the first time as to whether or not they would be OK or we would have to watch out for them. After a while you get good at reading body language and could tell pretty accurately.

Based on my experience, I would say the guy with the sign would be more likely to get teabagged, or worse. It's in his body language. He needs someone to take control and tell him what to do.

[unc70]

13. Obama aide Reggie Love was teabagged at UNC frat party

I suspect that some of the GOP are aware of a little local scandal here with a Duke basketball player partying in Chapel Hill.

Reggie Love had passed out drunk at a UNC frat party and became the victim of teabagging. The explicit closeup picture of a pair dangling inches away became a brief sensation locally and in certain sports corners of the net. While Duke BB players have always come to Chapel Hill to drink and party (and get away from Coach K), we were surprised that Love had been that careless in his behavior.

During the campaign we learned that Love was Obama's body man, and we all had another laugh about embarassing photos. This brings us to today and the teabagging of the White House. I "Loved" Jon Stewarts discussion of this and of the "tromboning" of the Washington monument.

BTW I just did a quick image search and did not find the primary image involving Love. I do have a copy saved on another system of mine because I suspected that it might receive some scrubbing, at least by the search engines like Google.

CAUTION: Some of the sites dicussing this are infected with Conflickr and other malware.

[Hugin]

8. ...

:spray:

:rofl:

:hug:

[Demeter]

9. So Laugh, Prag. I've Got Your Number

[Hugin]

10. Aw, I've had my moments too, Demeter.

IIRC it had something to do with Dromedary Digits... Or something like that.

[Joanne98]

7. The American revolution wasn't about tea tax. It was about the British central bank..

Money as debt.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vVkFb26u9g8

[yurbud]

11. oh, I thought they MEANT to do scrotum gargling. At least that's how Larry Craig protested

[starroute]

14. There was a teabag protest 20 years ago

I ran across it while posting a few days ago. It was sponsored by the National Taxpayers Union -- which is also involved in this one -- and involved dumping 160,000 teabags in front of the White House to protest a Congressional pay raise.

These guys *really* haven't come up with any new ideas since the 1980's. Even their idiocies go back to the Reagan era.