TEA PARTY'S TEA CAKES PUT ENTIRE WORLD ECONOMY AT RISK BECAUSE ... THEY ARE THICK

Our trusty North America correspondent, that intrepid man about Washington, thought it prudent to let me know about (and explain in simple terms), the intricacies of the financial crisis which is currently threatening to shut down America, and with it most of the Western world.

As soon as the Republicans took control of the House, people who know about Washington realised that there was a potential for a major crisis. The necessary increase in the statutory national debt ceiling, which allows the federal government to continue to borrow money, would need to be approved. Normally, says Danny, that presents no problem. The debt limit was raised seven times during the Bush the Younger’s administration. Indeed it is raised all the time, by agreement of both parties.

In Danny’s own words: “Not raising it is simply unthinkable. It would force the United States Treasury to default on its debt obligations....traditionally among the most secure and highly rated in the world. The economy of the United States would implode, and with it, much of the economy of the western world. So the stakes are the highest in the world.....literally!”

So what, you might ask is the problem. Well, try fruit cakes... not literally of course, but it’s an appropriate appellation for people in the so-called Tea Party (which, of course, is not a party at all, but a right wing faction of the Republicans, populated by such nut jobs as Michelle Bachmann), members of which now sit in Congress.

They say no. NO MORE DEBT. It is, as Danny says, ‘religious heresy’ to continue to fund debt.

So the Republican leadership: in the House and in the Senate decided to tell the President that any increase in the debt ceiling must be coupled with huge spending cuts to reduce the budget deficit. And that this must be done by cutting social programmes. Absolutely no new taxes on the wealthiest Americans would be agreed to by Republicans!

President Obama is calling their bluff. He said that he will not cut programmes for the most vulnerable in society while the rich enjoy no tax increases. There will be absolutely NO spending cuts without also increasing taxes on the rich, and corporations. (The GOP wants the social programs that benefit the poorest Americans to pay for it all.) Impasse.

The economies of the West are being held to ransom by people who want to cut the little that is spent on the poorest and the sick, and in many cases may even be stupid enough not to understand what is at stake.

Of course the mainstream Republican Party does understand the implications of allowing the economy to crash and burn...and that the biggest losers in that situation would be...the rich. So Republicans in Wall Street, for example, are telling the leadership to get the situation sorted sharpish.

The very last date for agreement is August 4. I wonder who will blink first.

(Sincere thanks to Danny for his email about this. Parts of the above post are copied directly from it.)

Pics: Michelle Bachmann looking completely mad, and sticking her finger right up that dude's nose. Barack Obama not doing any of that stuff.

A TEA PARTY FOR THE GRAND OLD PARTY

Congressional and State Gubernatorial elections in the USA are a complex mixture, made even more interesting this time because of the “Tea Party” candidates of the righ. It can mean only one thing for Munguin’s Republic. Yes, I bottled out of writing anything myself and asked Danny to do a "Letter from America".

The Republicans had a party Tuesday night, and the Democrats just tried to put a brave face on things, as the votes were counted in the American midterm election. Voters went to the polls to elect the 112th US Congress, along with many state offices. With a few close races remaining to be decided, the Republicans will take majority control of the 435 member House of Representatives by a sizeable margin of approximately 242/193, a swing of 64 seats away from the Democrats. With three races left to be decided among the 37 contested Senate seats, the Republicans will take five to eight seats from the Democrats, leaving a thin Democratic majority as close as 51/49, if all three remaining seats go Republican. Republicans also took key state Governorships.

By any reckoning, this spells big trouble for Barack Obama’s legislative agenda as he enters the second half of his term and looks to the presidential election of 2012. He came to the presidency with a large reservoir of personal popularity, but with the wreckage of the George W. Bush administration all about him, and the immediate crisis of an economic crash looming. Not the least of his problems was the historically fractious nature of his own Democratic Party, which made large majorities in both houses of the 111th Congress somewhat illusory. Less obvious, but just as real, was his own relative political inexperience, and what would prove to be a largely ineffective White House political operation in dealing with a resurgent Republican Party, especially its so-called “Tea Party” faction determined to drive the party to the political right.

Nevertheless, Obama and the Congressional Democrats achieved the passage of major legislation to shore up the weakened economy and re-regulate Wall Street. Most important of all was the passage of his landmark health care reform bill, the signature political issue of his 2008 campaign, and a fitting contribution to the historic legacy of progressive Democratic social legislation stretching back to FDR.

All of this was accomplished in the face of implacable Republican opposition. Facing White House political ineptitude and divisions in the Democratic Congressional caucuses, the Republicans only had to become the “party of ‘No’” to achieve success. Their political tactic was as effective as it was transparently obvious. They would oppose everything, put forward no alternatives, watch things go to hell in a hand basket, and then blame Obama when the next election came around. This cynical political tactic was rewarded in spades with the counting of the votes Tuesday night.

A major political subtext of the midterm campaign was the success of many Tea Party-backed candidates over mainstream Republicans in the party primaries. But the general election results were more mixed for the Tea Party faction. Tea Party Republicans won high profile Senate races in Florida, Kentucky, and at least eight other states. The three Senate races left to be decided involve Tea Party candidates in Alaska, Colorado, and Washington State. On the other hand, the disastrous candidacy of Tea Party Republican Christine O’Donnell in the Delaware Senate race cost the Republicans an almost certain Senate seat, as did the candidacy of Sharron Angle in Nevada, which saved the seat of Harry Reid, the Senate Majority Leader. The Senate race in Alaska remains to be decided, but involves the candidacy of popular incumbent Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski who mounted a write-in campaign after losing the Republican primary to a Tea Party insurgent backed by former Governor Sarah Palin. On balance, Tea Party Republicans made a creditable showing in the midterms, and they should be able to play a significant role in Republican politics going forward.

With the end of the midterms, the 2012 presidential campaign effectively begins with speeches and fundraising in 2011, in advance of the state primaries which begin early in 2012. Their midterm successes may have positioned Tea Party Republicans to advance one of their own to run against Obama. The most prominent “unannounced” Tea Party candidate is Sarah Palin, the current media darling who ran for Vice President on John McCain’s Republican ticket in 2008. Famously, it was then discovered that she doesn’t read newspapers, and frankly seems not to be all that bright. She does have a cutesy wink and a few political punch lines that are catnip to the right wing nut cases of the Tea Party. If she receives the Republican nomination, Obama should be able to make mincemeat of her. Surely she’s unlikely to be elected president. But then strange things do happen “only in America.”

TEA PARTIES WITH A FRUIT CAKE

The other day Niko brought up the subject of Sarah Palin on one of his posts, and that reminded me that she had been involved recently in a new movement in America about which I knew little, so, as ever in these situations I turned to the expert, Danny 1st Earl of the Ozarks, whom I thank for this article:

ONE OF THE BIGGEST American political stories since 2008 has been the ongoing war for the heart and soul of the Republican Party. And the war is heating up, with the off-year Congressional elections coming in November. We are now in primary election season, when the voters determine who will be the standard bearers of the two parties. Some Republican incumbents will be facing conservative challengers in their primaries. No less a political figure than John McCain, the recent Presidential candidate, is facing a right wing Republican challenge to his bid for reelection to his Senate seat in Arizona.


The cast of characters in the Republican struggle are a colorful lot and among their number, perhaps the most colorful of all, Sarah Palin, darling of the right wing, and fresh from her gig as Governor of the Arctic tundra. She now sells books, collects huge fees for after dinner speeches, and is a contributor to Fox News, offering her keen intelligence and insight in the role of political commentator and analyst.


And into the fray comes the conservative “Tea Party movement,” opposing “big government,” federal budget deficits, tax increases, and Obama administration policies generally. They first came to wide national attention with protest meetings across the country on April 15, 2009, (the day when income tax returns are due.) These Tea Party protests were massively promoted by Fox News as a major political event, on a par with the second coming. Styling itself as a “grass roots” uprising, the Tea Party movement was in fact organized by very well funded conservative lobbying organizations, most notably “FreedomWorks,” an activist organization controlled by Dick Armey, former Republican House Majority Leader from Texas.


The Tea Party movement takes its name from the “Boston Tea Party” of 1773, when colonists boarded British ships in Boston Harbor and dumped cargoes of tea overboard, an iconic early event of the revolution. The Tea Party protests have certainly tapped into genuine American populist sentiments, and dissatisfaction toward Washington. But it’s also an example of how large, big money interests with self-serving agendas can manipulate relatively naïve people to serve their political ends. In any event, the label “Tea Party” has gained such considerable media currency that every right wing loon in America either self-identifies as a Tea Party protester, or is labeled as such by opponents. The term “Teabaggers” has been gleefully used by opponents to refer to the movement, and refers to a protest gesture of mailing a tea bag to the White House. (That name is now much hated by the protesters, since they discovered that it is also a salacious term describing an activity, the explanation of which would be far below the journalistic standards of Munguin’s Republic.)


There now seems to be some splits forming within the movement. We have the “Tea Party Patriots” (Dick Armey’s FreedomWorks group), but also “Tea Party Nation,” which held its inaugural national convention in Nashville, Tennessee, on February 4-6.

The convention met with immediate controversy over its high attendance fees, Sarah Palin’s $100,000 honorarium, and a for-profit financial structure with dubious intent. Several sponsors and speakers pulled out before the event, but sister Sarah delivered her address as scheduled. (The exact amount of her fee was not disclosed.) The New York Times reported that Sarah assailed Obama, urged the audience to support conservative challengers in the Republican primaries, and announced that “America is ready for another revolution.” She left the stage to chants of “Run Sarah Run!”


You will know that American politicians “run” rather than “stand” for political office. So yes, the Tea Party protesters were urging her to run for president. Only in America, God help us.



PS: Danny, Beneath the journalistic standards of Munguin's Republic....? Impossible!