Tea-baggin' bellevue

It was a nice, warm Bellevue day, the codgers, geezers and the women who love them got out in the sun, warmed their bones, and dipped their withered sacs in the warm-wet joy of surrounding one's self in a small space with them what believe exactly as you do.

It was in the little park outside the Bellevue City Hall and a celebration of Tax Day with a little tea-baggin' in a crowd with no knowledge of the modern meaning of the word tea-bagging, and they were blissful in that ignorance. (Rush sort of defined it today for the dittoheads).

Bellevue is the city holding the greatest concentration of Republicans in King County and they might have all been here... all 300 hundred of them.

There was a lot of titch-titching; the minty fragrance of denture adhesive wafted through the aires of the warm afternoon.

Median age: 50.

• What they agree on is: taxation (even with representation!) is tyranny by tyrant
• President Obama is a Communist, Marxist, socialist
• He even may well be a Moslem and a Kenyan, but we know so little about him
• The world has ended, or will by 2010
• Tea bags can be jewelry

We were surprised at how little local talk radio had to do with all this. Seattle's had a 20-year history of talk radio rousing their listeners to action. Kirby Wilbur and his listeners embarrassed Hillary Clinton in the '90's with a mocking downtown crowd to protest her health care. It made national headlines, and might have been the proverbial coffin nail for Hillary Care.

KVI listeners were instrumental in getting on the ballot and passing the devastating, landmark I-695, putting Tim Eyman on the map and crippling the state's transportation revenues forever.

Wilbur and John Carlson stirred up anti-gas tax sediment on KVI in 2005, and got an initiative on the ballot pronto, and against all odds. It lost, but they later won a Supreme Court case around their rights to do it. Dori Monson stirred up his listeners against "disgusting outrages" in 2006, and raised $4000 for a set of hair plugs; and Mike Siegel (god rest his professional soul) stirred up all manner of shit, which eventually got him exiled.

That Fox News Channel co-opted the affair had a lot to do with why many talk hosts (Savage, Medved) avoided it. Libertarians were pissed off, but the Republicans as always were happy that someone led... even if it was Glennn Beck having a rally in of all places -- The Alamo! (not exactly a hopeful historical metaphor for a movement).

We couldn't find anyone in Bellevue Wednesday who said they  heard about it on the radio. We're sure there were some, but most said they heard it on Fox News. Kirby spoke to the rally in Olympia, Dave Boze gave a rally schedule on it on his website, Dori Monson talked about it after the fact. There was nothing of the muscle-flexing that talk radio had in the past. W

(We started BlatherWatch in 2005 to counter the political clout of local talk radio; now it's flaccid).

The tea-baggin day was kind of hilarious, sweet, and pathetic... the left definitely has better music... Pony-tailed oldsters sang This Land is Your Land with an acoustic guitar, (conveniently leaving out the part about utopian visions, and the socialist WPA) and sang some patriotic songs we never heard before that involved armed men and flying raptors.

The crowd was harangued by squeaky-squawky perennial candidate Steve Berens, who has a high-pitched voice, no sense of humor, a shaved head, looks like Dr. Evil, and has a propensity for running against the lovable fuck-up Jim McDermott. Berens loses with increasing numbers each time he runs, but it gets him on the stage at events like this, and they know him at the grocery store...

Republican State Chair Luke Esser made some snappy remarks (he needs a haircut, btw) and everyone clapped him up despite some in the crowd weren't tracking that well. One guy yelled, "Get the Rosellinis outa there!" That was a promise Esser could keep, so he nodded and pretended he didn't hear the old guy.

We've been to a lot of demonstrations and protests, we've never seen so many men in suits -- the conservatives don't have the heart, the gut for convincing populism. (although there was no dearth of extended guts in this crowd, our own included.)

There were not many in this crowd who have been newly politicized because of the Obama presidency. Every person we talked to voted for McCain, and say they predicted that Obama would turn out to be a radical.

Grassroots movement have to have grass roots. This seemed more like falling leaves.

Comments

[Upton]

These people are nothing but a bunch of right wing losers that love to whine. Apparently it's been quite a shock to their systems to find the GOP out of power for the first time in years.

So, pushed by Faux News and talk radio they hold these little events, but all it really does is highlight just how irrelevant their kind have become. Personally, I find the teabaggers rather amusing.

[KVIFan]

From: Seattle Times

"In Olympia, where the largest of the Puget Sound-area demonstrations occurred, some 5,000 people spilled across the state Capitol steps. It was the largest rally on the Capitol campus in about five years, said State Patrol Sgt. Freddy Williams."

Hardly insignificant!

[sparky]

I wonder if Duffman showed up.

[KVIFan]

Why are you so seemingly possessed by this Duffman?

[lotus eater]

Good writing, Michael, as usual...

[Nunya]

True KVIf a good turn-out, but You MAY Want to read Horsey's piece to get an inkling of the irony of this.

[Eric]

This would have been an interesting read if someone would have gotten off their couch and actually traveled to the news story that was in Olympia. This site has never tried to hide its one-sided bias on these type of stories and you have never tried to call this journalism so I will have to give you at least credit for that. It looks like the facts Tea bagged Blatherwatch on this one. What a lazy story.

[chucks]

It was fun in Olympia yesterday. I know what joy it brings to you to make fun of the working stiffs that just want to support their own family and not yours.

[Drew]

Bush and Reagan REALLY made fun of the working stiffs, and help set up a society where the middle class supports the wealthy. That's pretty funny.

[Coiler]

Why did you respond KVI Duffman...

I wonder how wealthy these folks are to show up on a weekday to protest, "taxes". Most of their meme seems to be "maxist this..." and the birth certificate replay.

Where were they during the events over the last 6 years when a trillion in Iraq was being spent?

Another question to ask them is, do you vote?

[KVIFan]

Guess I'll be anyone you need me to be.
You probably meant marxist.
Working.
You'll find out.

[Coiler]

Hey Duffman, Maybe you and GG can team up and do entertainment at the tea bag rallies.

[Drew]

I think it's funny (well, not really),that so many of the tea baggettes are middle class folks who really beleive the republicans want to help them. Every time the cons take over, the middle class gets screwed, especially in the tax department.

[KVIFan]

Your welcome.

[Brian]

Oh look the deficit is going to triple! ~~ don't worry about that, Look! the Obama's have a new dog!

--ignorant liberal sheeple.

[Billy Bob]

Feel kind of sorry for that cow with the tea bags on her ugly hat.

I hope someone tells her she looks buffonish so that she doesn't wear that again.

[mercifuln8]

Mike. Cut through the definitions. Hyperlink all future teabagging protests to this:

http://euroross.blogspot.com/Teabagging.jpg

[sparky]

I was scared to look...but that is a pretty good picture.

[M.Steele]

I think the tea baggers are a great start. Now all they need is a leader of this movement.

Any suggestions?

[Earl Grey]

ME!!! I alone am King teabag.

[drool]

I wonder what the guy in the first photo would say if you told him his medicaid prescription drug benefit was going away because it was unfunded and contributing to the debt?

[Earl Grey]

HE would say, 'My wife likes a tea bagging, what do you want me to say?'

Ok, maybe I should stop this…

[M.Steele]

drool;
If you talk to these folks you’ll find out they believe taxes should be completely cutoff. For example; illegal aliens are driving up our taxes. So I ask, do we round them up and send them out without taxes? Answer; we should make an environment hostel to illegal’s. Ok, I ask, how do we do that without spending money? No answer. I suggest the GLOWER. At 10, the stare of one of these folks, while retrieving my football, was enough to get me across the yard to yard border.

The signs are effective too….

[joanie]

You know Eric and chucks, Horsey said it all very well. Just what is it you guys don't understand? The English language perhaps?

It is as if you people on the right can neither read nor comprehend that which you can read.

I don't have a clue what you're talking about, Steele, but it makes just about as much sense as the comments of Eric, chucks and KVI. If we're going to talk nonsense, better yours than theirs.

[nevets]

"Just what is it you guys don't understand?"

Joanie, maybe you should read Eric's post again. Your above comment to Eric makes you look like an ass. See, he wasn't talking about Horseys column, he was talking about this thread. Next time wait for Randi...sorry, she's not available to give you your talking points is she. Next time do the logical thing. Read first, then post.
(Hee(Joanie)Haw)

[joanie]

Sorry, steven. I stand by my post. You have an uncanny ability to misread just about everything.

Or . . . are you, pray tell, saying that Eric actually agrees with Horsey and/or Michael and/or those of us on the left?

Of course, I have to confess that since you spout nonsense most of the time, you probably understand nonsense better than I do as well.

[nevets]

But you are making the ASSumption that Eric read Horseys article. So I stand by my post. And if you want nonsense. Read M. Steele.

[sms]

Great report. Wish I had tome to be there.

[nevets]

"not exactly a hopeful historical metaphor for a movement"

I don't think so.

[Mack]

So is steven moving to San Antonio? was that like his "Good bye, i loved you glance?"

[joanie]

Well, steven, you ought to know about ASSumptions being a self-proclaimed ass-backwards ASS yourself.

Stand by your idiot post all you want. It is still stupid.

[rozskat]

Drew – Just wave the flag and repeat the same rhetoric from the glory days. That seems to be the conservative/Republican mantra. Reagan and Bush was strictly for the wealthy believing that if you give them more money, somehow it was going to get to you sooner or later, which in this case much later in a few pennies for each dollar they were given, bye bye Friedman and his monetarist ideals. Prices of real estate skyrocketed, outsourcing increased and there were less competition instead of more through relentless deregulation along with condoned corruption and corporate mergers. Who was affected the most? The middle class of course who were starting to dwindle at the time.

Majority of the TEA baggers (different meaning to me but not for this blog) are nowhere near making a quarter of a million a year but stand up and fight for those who do. They are also the same class who are willing to send their sons and daughters to fight overseas. A group that is very consistent to whine, bitch, whine, bitch and more whining and bitching with no solutions, new ideas, or alternatives unless it is some Machiavellian character like Reagan in power. The rich are laughing at them now. Not only do they have these fools to fight for them on the war front but on the tax front too! Meanwhile where does the burden shift to when the rich get their breaks? These same clowns who wear tea bags while not realizing that their taxes pays for the interest on securities issued by Uncle Sam to sell to the Chinese and Japanese. How much of that money stays here? How many products do you see has the “Made in USA” label?

Reagan gave the lower middle class an enemy. Instead of the rich who was plundering the country like they did with recent bailouts (initiated by Bush and how conveniently TEA baggers forget he was a conservative and a Republican), it was the government with liberals and “welfare queens” (a.k.a minorities). They supplemented corporate troughs of the military industrial complex financed by deficit spending that turned this nation into debtor status. Never mind the initial $865,000,000 single Stealth bomber it bought. We see how that found Bin Laden. However, Holy Christ, it makes you feel damn good to be bombing the hell out of brown or yellow people in a developing country though! My gawd, that is American!

Maybe so, but it is their America not mine!

[Coiler]

These same rednecks were silent when Reagan tripled the deficit in the 80's.

It's all about a black president in which they feel cheated that he won.

[KVIFan]

Delusional. SOS, nothing new and nothing to see here folks, move along.

[Grace]

Why, who made you the fucking hall monitor "KVIFan"?

[Drew]

rozkat- very, very well written. Reagan's "trickle-down" economics failed to point out that gravity is a physical law, and certainly not an economic one. Ronnie Ray Guns stabbed the working and middle class in the back, and the people who are now pushing his dogma are the wealthy who benefited the most from it. The only thing good that came from his tenure was contained in a campaign speech (umm, don't worry, I'm certainly not going to collect the whole set): "Are you better off now than you were 4 years ago." I think that's a really good question that every citizen needs to be asking months before the elections. Obviously the voters asked that question in '08, insuring McCain/Palin didn't get their chance to continue the Bush/Cheney saga.

[mercifuln8]

Nevernevetsland:
"not exactly a hopeful historical metaphor for a movement"
(w/ bad youtube bit)

I don't think so.

Correcting Nevets' historical limpness:

A.) Unlike 1773, we do have representation. I know I know: not necessarily the Rep(s) that YOU voted for, but tough shit. USA! USA! USA! Love it or leave it! (sound familiar?)

B.) Despite the youtube simpleton message telling Santa Ana "Don't mess with Texas", the 1830s Texas "Revolution" had nothing to do with taxes and everything to do with white TX settlers trying to setup a new protected slave state in Texas.

Love him or hate him, Santa Ana represented a new wave of global prohibition against slavery, a wave that ran counter to TX settler ambitions.

C.) But toss out all that silly historical relativity! I encourage you Nevets to thoroughly (and more accurately) reinact the events of 1773.

Please Please please just grow some fugging teabags, and hijack freighter(s) carrying items that Obamuninism is forcing you to consume - might I suggest starting with foreign-made hybrid cars. Perfect!

D.) And again, despite historical relatively, please put down the picket signs, pick up your teabags, do the same with the events of 1836:

Step-1: Gather some yahoos n' guns n' shit and attempt to secede Texas (or Wyoming, or Alaska, or Eastern WA, or any other under-populated fed tax-leaching region)
Step-2: Call Faux news & AM talkies
Step-3: Barricade yourselves in a mission, & let the cards fall!

Pop some popcorn, this is gonna be fun to watch

[KS]

With all fairness, the Tea baggers need to show more passion, like some civil disobedience and break some CNN and MSNBC cameras to protest the biased and dishonest coverage they will get from these arms of the White House spin machine. The demonstrators need to make more noise and demonstrate their dissatisfaction with the oppressiveness of Federal Government, and maybe the light will go on in some of the brains of the sheeple on the left. This is not about a political party - it is about the future of this country 1

I was disappointed to not see a larger turnout. They need to take a page from the Obama campaign and install some community organizers to schedule the next one and I don't mean from A-freakin' CORN.