I'll be at our Tea Party rally at the Capitol on thursday. I haven't figured out what my sign will say yet though.

I've been listening to the right-wing's talk radio for the past several weeks.

If you listen to the Tea Party responder's, you notice that they cross the the whole social spectrum. But the big thing is that they want to be left alone.

I'm planning on going to to the event in my city on the 15th.

Just doing my part to help keep everyone pissed off until november. Then I'm voting out the whole lot of them, from local dog catcher to senator.

As soon as I have gone from the military, I'm probably going to enter government for the sole purpose of taking apart the unconstitutional morass we now find ourselves in.

My father is a very wise man, and told me a long time ago something I've never forgotten, but only in recent years come to understand:

"Those who choose for themselves a life of service, never run out of work to be done."

My father, also wise, once said,

"Once the people have learned they can vote themselves a hand-out, the party is over."

Our "party" is just about over. We are now in the hangover stage. I trust the Tea Party group to reverse the steps Congress has taken to bring us this far.

I think it's interesting that the tea partiers didn't make a peep during the Bush administration when he turned the surplus into a record deficit (and Bush didn't include the war costs), but as soon as Obama took office, suddenly there is all this outrage.

Anyone care to explain?

JoJo, I didn't vote for Bush, either time. Nice try though.

" ... the tea partiers didn't make a peep during the Bush administration"

What is the point of this statement? As Amy and momof4 have pointed out, everybody was NOT crazy about the Bush administration and its profligate spending. Then things get even worse, and the tea parties start sprouting up.

Is your point that the tea parties should have started sooner? Well where were YOU, for that matter? It's pretty obvious to me that a lot of Republicans got turned out of office precisely because of dissatisfaction with the previous Republican administrations. But those same voters ended up equally dissatisfied with this one. Maybe they thought voting for 'change' would, you know, actually change things. (I did not vote for Obama, but held my nose and voted Libertarian, for all the damn good it did me.) I would venture to guess that a lot of people thought an administration change would fix things. They were proven wrong, and now they see the system itself as being the problem.

Or are you trying to say the tea partiers are really just a bunch of lockstep Republicans, and that the reason they "didn't complain" about Bush is that they really liked his administration and want to return to that? If that is the case, why would they be complaining now? The Obama administration is almost identical to the Bush one, except with even more spending. And how do you explain that half of the tea party movement is made up of Democrats and independents? Seems to me the movement has been just as critical of Republicans as Democrats - they seem to wish a plague on both their houses.

I keep seeing that statement pop up again and again, and find it to be a baseless, annoying distraction from the issues at hand.

@JoJo: Anyone care to explain?
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Fair enough, and yes, I'll explain.

A few things worth pointing out.

1. Even Bush supporters did criticize his spending.

2. He wasn't single handedly responsible for deficits (but he shared fault because he rarely vetoed anything).

3. It was under his predecessor's administration that financial costs were put off. Though it got pinned on Bush, the sub-prime ordeal was initiated under Clinton in September 1999. You tube it--there are videos of the administration trying to address it, and Barney Frank accusing them of trying to manufacture a crisis for political gain, and the congressional black caucus calling them racists for going after a CEO. These are the same democrats that blamed the administration when what it predicted came true.

4. To expand on #1, I bet the Bush supporters that weren't happy with his spending would have made a lot more noise had Bush tried this massive health care takeover. It's a matter of proportion. To the left, here's a parrallel...the left wasn't nearly as vocal when Clinton deposed Slobadan Milosevic as they were when Bush deposed Saddam Hussein. Perhaps some is partisan, perhaps some is also the cost involved.

So, JoJo. There you have it, Bush supporters did hold spending against Bush, but Bush never took over health care in the middle of a recession and was a cheap skate compared to Obama.

So, then there is a question for you. How come all the Obama supporters that were on Bush's back for "turning surpluses into deficits" aren't on Obama's back for quadrupling the deficits? And don't give me this nonsense that he has to because of Bush, that's a cop out. Bush had problems Clinton didn't have too, such as 9/11 to name an obvious example, but that didn't stop the left from pinning everything on him.

Do you care to explain that?

Trust, while I agree with the spirit of your post, it sounds to me like the mortgage meltdown originated a lot further back than Clinton. I'd say the Community Reinvestment Act and the creation of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae were critical contributors, as well, and that goes back to the 1970s. A lot of the big-government problems we are facing go back even farther, to the New Deal and the creation of our biggest entitlement programs.

I can't speak for all the tea partiers, but as an advocate for limited government myself, I am against government growth that has spanned many decades, not just the last two presidents.

Momof4, when I picketed the court house in the middle 80's, I used a blank sign. People would stare at that sign, as if their vision was gone. When they asked why it had nothing on it, I said it was not a negative, critical sign. It was a positive, supportive sign, and I had written on it everything positive and supportive I could say about judges.

@Pirate Jo at April 11, 2010 3:09 PM

I totally agree. We've been spending ourselves right over a cliff for decades.

My emphasis on the Clinton administration strong arming them into sub-prime mortages is that, through all the decades we've been spending into oblivion, every says "Bush inherited surpluses." They don't realize the reason there were surpluses then was we put off our bills for a decade or more. I bet you I could brag on surpluses if I bought everything under a "no payments until 2018 deal."

We just need to stop with the spending. And we can't afford this health care mammoth.

Obama getting elected on Bush's back for spending right before health care would have been like Bush getting elected on Clinton's back over deposing Milosevic right before deposing Hussein. And they think we were the inconsistent ones--I didn't see any of us cheering Bush's big spending like they are cheering Obamss.

The question remains, what do you cut? Which of the following things, (plus the interest we're paying) which make up the lions share of the budget, would you cut significantly to make up the deficit:
Social Security?
Medicare?
Defense?
Medicaid?

I would cut 1, 2, and 4, and their associated taxes. I would also scrap S-CHIP and its associated tobacco taxes. And so on with all the other entitlements. The entitlements, especially the first two, are millstones around the neck of the government, bringing with them literally tens of trillions of dollars of unfunded liabilities. I doubt that today's young, successful workers are going to put up with ever-increasing taxes to fund these programs.

Defense, on the other hand, is a core function of our government, so it needs to be funded, except for the pork that seems to abound in all government appropriations.

To Amy: the only time I'll be calm about big government is when I die.

@Clinky: "The question remains, what do you cut?"
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Reasonable people can disagree about what to cut. The more appropriate question that remains in my mind is, in the midst of this financial debacle, why on earth would we want to introduce yet another entitlement that dwarfs the cost of all the others?

If we keep with these new (liberty robbing) big government ventures, then there won't be enough of the others to cut that will save us.

Clinky, for all of the entitlements programs except Social Security, I'd redefine the standards for eligibility. I'ts my estimate that less than 10% of the people who are currently on these programs really need and benefit from them. The rest are either spending the money on drugs, have mental problems that the programs don't address, or they're just plain lazy.

For Social Security, I'd cap the existing program at some cutoff age (say everyone younger than 30 is no longer eligible), and provide an opt-out for anyone else who is willing to surrender their benefits. What they'd gain from that is having their FICA taxes cut in half, with the provision that the other half must be invested in an IRA, a health savings account, or an educational spending account. The eventual benefits of such accounts would be tax free. I'd also change the law on health savings accounts to allow unspent money to be carried over from year to year.

Just my two cents...

First of all there was no budget surplus when Bush took office that has always been a lie. Secondly, Bush was not a real Republican...in fact, there are no "real" republicans for quite some time. these people are actually democrats. the democratic party has been taken over by Communists/Socialists and should be called the democratic socialst party (although I believe that socialists should be jailed and/or shot)and anyone espousing communist/socialist ideology should NOT be allowed to hold any government ofice. just my opinion.

Back to Bush...I personally did not agree with his bailouts, his "I am going to destroy Capitalism to save it" BS. If Bush did what Obama is doing, I would be complaining just as loudly as I am doing now.

As far as the housing bubble...democrats in Congress were largely guilty of the abuses in that arena as they were when clinton got rid of the glass-steagal act that caused the banking meltdown.

Both the GOP and the Democrats are snowballing America. Both parties are members of the CFR and other anti American groups. Both play the game of blame the other party....the GOP passes laws in a crisis that takes away personal liberty for the sake of security....does Obama get rid of it? no, he just gets rid of the law that prohibits the use of the US military against US citizens by the stroke of a pen. Obama got into office for a reason. That reason has been planned for years. He is systematically destroying this country economically (YES ON PURPOSE). Once he has served his purpose, the next administration will carry out premade plans to screw the American people in a different way. Neither party is for the American people....

As far as one budgeting for a war....what country has ever done that? If we have our troops in foreign countries we had better damn supply them!
Although I personally believe we should be out of both countries. In addition, I would bring the majority of our troops home why do we need troops in Japan anymore? Korea maybe. Guam, yes. a small contigent in Europe. A few in the middle east and bring the rest home.