Tea Party Limerick from Leisure Lad

The Tea Party geezers familiar refrain
"Why insure the slackers who play?"
But if we made it fair
And cut their Medicare
There'd be quite different protests today.

Tea Party: Are You Serious or Just Bitching?

The Tea Party stands for a few principles that are shared by others. Others they may not like. If they are serious about achieving their goals, or at least some of them, they will need to work with other political groups because this is still a democracy and they don't have a majority.

Some discerned ideas of the Tea Party:

Anger at the banker bailout
Anger at both Republican and Democrat parties
Restoring limited government
Free market boosterism.

Some discerned ideas of Market Socialism:

Anger at the banker bailout
Anger at both Republican and Democrat parties
The means of production are publicly owned, managed, and administered
Democratic socialists do not want to create an all-powerful government bureaucracy. But they do not want big corporate bureaucracies to control our society either. Rather, they believe that social and economic decisions should be made by those whom they most affect.

I propose that the Tea Party, the Market/Democratic Socialists and the Progressives get together to push their common ideas: that the bank bailout was just welfare for the few at the expense of the many, that both the Republican and Democratic parties are owned and controlled by corporate money, therefore neither are really representing us.

If the Tea Party is serious, really serious, about achieving its goals they will be open to this idea of teaming up with other people who don't share their perspective. As long as this is still a democracy, they will have to do that to get anything done at all. That's if they want to in the first place.

Michael Steele is the Vuvuzela of Republican Party Politics

Witness the vuvuzela: it is hard to ignore, it makes a lot of noise, it does not contribute positively to the overall game and it is difficult to eliminate.

The same applies to Michael Steele. He is hard to ignore because of his position as head of the Republican National Committee. Combine that with his salient news analysis on our purpose in Afghanistan and how it's all President Obama's fault, and you have an attention-getting dynamo.

Michael Steele makes a lot of noise because people are always putting microphones in front of his face. And once the microphones are there, he insists on talking. Once he has spoken into a microphone, video of that event is rebroadcast all over the world. To be fair, though, I don't think that anyone outside of the United States really cares. But we care, and that's what counts.

Accusing President Obama of bringing us into a war that was started by a President from his own party allows Michael Steele to be a distraction from the idiot leanings of the Republican party in Congress right now. Things like blaming the unemployed for being lazy instead of the lack of jobs causing the unemployment springs to mind. Just as the vuvuzela is a constant distraction from the World Cup game going on in front of the fans, Michael Steele is a distraction from the serious missteps of his party.

Finally, Michael Steele is tough to purge. How many times has he outraged his own party by now? And he is still there. That's impressive staying power. Instead of everyone going on about how Michael Steele is awful at being the RNC chair, let's find out what he is doing right. It's got to be pretty good.