Notes On Teabagging. Really.

[Photo: Teabagging in Charlottesville VA, 15 April 2009]

Who gave this tax revolt the catchy name? Is she demanding royalties? Is she paying them to John Waters?

Where were the teabaggers when the last guy in office was bloating defense spending beyond reason or proportion and initiating the most expensive entitlement program in American history?

Teabagger is not an epithet I would self-apply. Anything-bagger is generally derogatory, e.g. "carpetbagger". Note to teabaggers: I vote for "Sons of Liberty," or "Mohawks".

Capitalism, like the sign says, is supposed to rock. If you believe that, you may console your bruised ego with the knowledge that you, and all of us, now own huge chunks of the American financial sector, theoretically valuable chunks, and that we bought them at closeout prices. If capitalism works, these chunks will, at some point in the future, be worth much more than 3 dollars a share. At that time, Treasury will be able to unload its stakes in the banks at a profit. Parti-nationalization would be good capitalism. Something any conservative worth his salt would applaud; buy low, sell high. This frisson between "defense of capitalism" and hatred of Tim Geithner's faith in that same "capitalism" is really the most interesting thing about teabagging, beyond the ballskin.

Of course, we don't have nearly enough nationalization, or the right kind, to recoup, much less profit from our national investment. Per the Geithner Put, the FDIC guarantees a profit for anyone who bids on bundles of troubled assets; barring unnatural occurrences -- such as every homeowner tied to a subprime mortgage suddenly winning the lottery -- the FDIC has no opportunity to profit. We are -- all together now -- privatizing profit and socializing loss.

I like the teabaggers' equation of fiscal dumbfuckery with treason. I especially like to see the advocates of less-to-no government espousing a penal ethic that would punish spendthrifts with beheading. I like the contradiction inherent therein.

I like the idea that Newt Gingrich will run in 2012. I see the teabaggers as his plutonium: there lieth power and radiation poisoning. I can see a future wherein the Republican Party boots its (presumed) Pawlenty-Steele-Romney wing, its paleo-conservative technocrats, in favor of sexier, wildfire hillbilly demi-movements. After all, Limp Bizkit is getting back together, so impotent white male rage might actually be a thing.

Pretty sure we'll all be speaking Chinese before we learn Teabagger.
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Caribou Barbie=Silky Pony?

Lack of chemistry? Now, given this is an entirely subjective reading on the part of Chuck Todd, I'm seeing shades of Kerry-Edwards here. Youngish, pretty, charismatic, obscene expenditures on coiffure or couture...

...but most importantly, the lack of chemistry. Is she aiming for a 2012 run? People seem to think so. But I'm not thinking it'll work. God willing, the Famous Air Pirate and the Beauty Queen will lose in two weeks and, in four years, she'll face some of the same problems as Edwards. That is: she'll still have little more than charm and red meat for the Base to run on.

Oh, sure, some neocon or theocon will take her under his carrion-smelling wing, try to tutor her in the ways of wickedness. She'll probably do some speaking tours on the SuperChurch circuit in between texting with Kissinger and hitting up AIPAC and PNAC gatherings to bone up on her bona fides. She'll likely seek a second term up in Seward's Icebox and win. All the while coyly dodging questions about disagreements within the campaign and whether or not she'll run again:

"Oh, you know, you get two independent minds on a ticket and there's bound to be some disagreements. Would I have done things exactly the same way? I don't really see any point in looking back. What I'm trying to make sure I do is keep my eye on the prize in ensuring I'm doing the best job I can to protect the people of this great state from what I truly believe will be destructive fiscal policies under this president. Am I going to run in two years? Oh, now let's not put the sled before the dogs here. I'm governing Alaska. It's a great job and I can't say what the future holds..." U.S.W.

And then, come 2011, she'll still have her ready made base of support. All revved up and ready to face Mittens. She's free and pretty compared to his stiffness and artifice. And then both of them get surprised all to hell by Bobby Jindal.

Let's talk more on this Republican Nova stage, though...

Save yourselves...

I don't get this. The NYT finds itself duty-bound to vet the McCain campaign's allegations of a nefarious Obama-ACORN connection. This neither-nor criticism effectively grants some right-wing-rant about Those Ones stealing the election equal time with mere facts from Barry's CV. The NYT covers the story about BHO's connections without questioning the legitimacy of the allegation that those connections are themselves dubious. Slate covers the "Q: What's wrong with ACORN?" angle, but sticks to interviewing the people who put a bounty on ACORN's head in the first place.

Okay, so big deal. Small ripple. Never mind that it's this kind of acrobatic accomodation of the far-right that got Judith Miller's Iraq stories printed. Never mind that Ed Murrow figured in the '50s that all opinions are not equal: when covering a lynching, do you make sure to give the local Grand Wizard equal time? Never mind that if so-called bastions of the liberal media have to kowtow to the right fringe now, what lengths will they go to to protest their innocence once Republicans are out of power and spoiling for a fight? Seriously, look at how they savaged Jimmy Carter, for no other reason than to prove they didn't just hate Nixon.

I hate to think that I've become a one-issue bloggist, but the discovery of the Hensarling Quasar (alternately, the incipient Fourth Red Shift in American politics) has become a unifying theory for the McCain Campaign. Why pick Palin? Why harp on Ayers? Why holler about ACORN? In a time of national crisis, the campaign decided to run sludge ads? (The last Ayers ad I saw, btw, was far more savage than the flip-flopping Kerry ad from 2004. See? Isn't that cute?)

The people who are working on his campaign clearly expect to work for someone else: what's their best-case scenario? One term, followed by a Palin 2012 run? The man has lost a 14-point lead in North Dakota; he's clinging to West Virginia by 2 points; there is no future for you, staffers.

Again, at the risk of being prolix, if McCain wanted to win the election, he would have never run the Ayers-meme. Clearly, he has no interest in winning the presidency, as at this point who would? Presumably, he has a crock pot full of Wright-meme ads, ready to rock, so that by 2012, there will be a core of wounded free-marketers with exaggerated senses of entitlement for the Palin-Romney ticket, all shouting about black separatism, reverse discrimination; weeping about how McCain was martyred and how they was robbed.

Running on McCain's corpse is more profitable than running beside it.
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