These are signs seen primarily at Tea Party Protests.
They all feature "creative" spelling or grammar.
This new dialect of the English language shall be known as "Teabonics."
I especially like this one.
A week ago, the U.S. House of Representatives voted to enact a sweeping reform of the nation's health-care system. A lot has been written about who should take the credit (or blame) for passage of the bill after almost a year of often acrimonious debate. But today, I want to thank the people who really made it possible, the unsung heroes, if you will, that really helped make health-care reform the law of the land.
I'm talking, of course, about the Republican Party.
Last July, Republican Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina revealed the true Republican goal. "If we stop Obama on this," he said, "it will be his Waterloo. It will break him."
After that, it was, as the kids say, on.
They pulled out all the stops. Sarah Palin raved on her Facebook page about nonexistent "death panels." Far-right bloggers and talk show hosts whipped "tea partiers" into a frenzy over "government-run health care" (although, judging from the apparent age of most of them, they were already on government-run health care, i.e., Medicare).
Joe Wilson of South Carolina shouted "you lie!" at the president during a congressional address. The Republicans carped that Obama had promised the debate would be televised, and then, when he called a televised "health care summit" with them, derided it as a "PR stunt."
The ones that showed up provided a "plan" that was to "scrap all your proposals and start over." (Remember, to a Republican, "bipartisanship" is a code word for "do everything we demand or we'll say nasty things about you, except we'll say nasty things about you anyway.") GOP lawmakers predicted "the death of the Senate" over parliamentary procedures that they themselves had frequently used in the past.
Eventually, it became clear to everyone that there was no compromise with these people, that they were going to vote against whatever plan came up in the House or the Senate. That left President Obama and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi free to concentrate on lobbying their own fractious party.
That's never an easy task, with single-payer advocates like Dennis Kucinich on the left, social conservatives like Bart Stupak on the right, and conservative Blue Dog Democrats scattered about. But the behavior of the Republicans made their task that much easier.
Sun Tzu, in "The Art of War," offered this advice: "In death ground, fight." It became apparent that this was, indeed, meant by the GOP to be the Democrats' "death ground." If this failed, the president and the speaker warned, every Democrat would spend every news cycle from now until the midterm elections with the GOP talking heads and their lapdogs in the media hanging the "loser" sign around their necks and deriding the President's and Congress' "inability to get anything done."
They developed a plan to vote "yes" on the Senate bill, then send a filibuster-proof package of changes to the Senate, where the reconciliation process provides only for what Republicans used to routinely demand: "an up-or-down vote." At which point, Republicans howled that an up-or-down, majority vote was, literally, tyranny of Hitlerian proportions.
Gradually, as their opponents got crazier and crazier, the recalcitrant Dems fell into line. Kucinich signed on, reluctantly, to the bill. Stupak, who'd fretted about federal money going to fund abortions, agreed to a face-saving executive order that said that the bill would -follow current law that already forbade such funding.
But, as he found out, that doesn't help you with Republicans, one of whom shouted "baby-killer!" at him on the House floor. In the end, the bill and the reconciliation package passed in the House with votes to spare.
So thanks, Republicans. By announcing early on that you meant to "break" their party's president, then using every lie, slur, whack-job conspiracy theory, drama-queen display, and outright thuggish tactic in your arsenal to try to make that happen, you helped bring the Democratic Party together. Not completely, but enough. The president and the speaker couldn't have done it without you.
Now, they announce, they intend to run this fall on a platform of repealing the bill. They'll be trying to make it possible once again for insurance companies to deny coverage for pre-existing conditions and drop you when you get sick. They'll be trying to reopen the Medicare "doughnut hole" and cost seniors more for their medicine. They'll be trying to repeal tax credits for small business to help them buy insurance.
Go ahead, guys. Knock yourselves out.
More than 90 percent of Tea Party backers interviewed in a new Bloomberg National Poll say the U.S. is verging more toward socialism than capitalism, the federal government is trying to control too many aspects of private life and more decisions should be made at the state level.
At the same time, 70 percent of those who sympathize with the Tea Party, which organized protests this week against President Barack Obama’s health-care overhaul, want a federal government that fosters job creation.
They also look to the government to rein in Wall Street, with almost half saying the government should do something about executive bonuses. Supporters are also conflicted over whether private-enterprise elements should be introduced into government programs like Social Security and Medicare.
“The ideas that find nearly universal agreement among Tea Party supporters are rather vague,” says J. Ann Selzer, the pollster who created the survey.Democrats shouldn't expect much cooperation from Republicans the rest of this year, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) warned Monday.
GOP senators emerged Monday to caution that the health debate had taken a toll on the institution, warning of little work between parties the rest of this year.
"There will be no cooperation for the rest of the year," McCain said during an interview Monday on an Arizona radio affiliate. "They have poisoned the well in what they've done and how they've done it."
Help me out here.
When the hell have they gotten cooperation from the Republicans so far? Waht are they going to do that they haven't done so far? Put a "hold" on nominees for important posts? Block legislation and throw people out of work just to show they can, then say "tough shit" when anyone calls them on it?
Seems to me all they've done with that well is piss in it. And now they're saying they're going to take a dump in it too, not because of the merits or lack of same of any pending legislation, but because they have their Depends in a wad?
Well gee, Honorable John, guess that whole "Country First" slogan was just that: a slogan. And guess we'll just have to toddle along without you, like we did on the health care bill.
Will somebody please remind this old coot that 41 Republicans + Lieberman is STILL not a majority? And will someone remind the Democrats as well?
True, one of those immigrants was Prince Andrew of Greece, who, for some reason, was actually Danish. (Trying to figure out the interweaving bloodlines of European royalty can be a bit like trying to untangle a drawer full of headphone cords.)
When his family was exiled from Greece, the plucky prince made hisway to Britain. There, he served in the Royal Navy, dropped all hisGreek titles like an old pair of worn-out socks, renamed himself Philip Mountbatten and married way, way up when he wooed and won then-Princess Elizabeth. At first glance, the job of prince consort of the United Kingdom looks like a pretty sweet gig. The hours are easy, you’re married to one of the world’s richest women, and — here’s the part that really endears ol’ Phil to me — you can say pretty much any fool thing that comes into your head and no one can do squat about it.Which brings us to Philip’s latest gaffe. While he and the missus were reviewing Royal Navy cadets, he happened to strike up a conversation with pretty 24-year-old female cadet, Elizabeth Rendle, who moonlights as a bartender.
“I told him I worked in a club,” Rendle told the British newspaper the Daily Mail. “He then asked if it was a strip club. Obviously I said ‘No’, and then he said, ‘Oh, it’s a bit too cold today anyway.”I’m not sure what that last bit was supposed to mean. Too cold? Very few strip clubs are outside. You’d think a prince would know these things.
The amazing thing is, while remarks like this one usually lead to a storm of criticism in the British press, the people at whom the prince’s barbs are directed seem to take them in stride. “I don’t think he put his foot in it,” Rendle reassured reporters. “It was a joke and I didn’t take any offense. I think he was just putting people at their ease.” Because nothing puts a young woman at ease like an 88-year-old man asking her if she takes off her clothes for money. Especially if the guy’s wife is right there. And she’s, you know, the queen. Philip has become famous over the years for this sort of thing. Just recently, it came to light that seven years ago, the queen asked a 15-year-old cadet blinded in an IRA bombing how much sight he had left. Philip responded, “Not a lot, judging by the tie he’s wearing.”My favorite is still the crack he made to a group of British students in China: “If it has got four legs and it is not a chair, if it has got two wings and it flies but is not an aeroplane, and if it swims and it is not a submarine, the Cantonese will eat it.”
All of these have caused controversy to various degrees in Britain, but none of it seems to bother Crazy Phil. That’s just how he rolls.In the insect kingdom, the drone bee wanders off and dies after impregnating the queen. The female praying mantis bites the male’s head off during mating to signify that his task on Earth is done.
Unfortunately for Philip, his heir-siring duties as prince consort were over in 1964, once he got done fathering a prince (Charles), a princess royal (Anne), a duke (Andrew) and an earl (Edward). Since then, he really hasn’t had a lot to do except drink gin, go to horse races and say things that tick people off.Maybe the BBC, or even some American network, ought to give him his own sitcom. After all, curmudgeonly old dudes who say outrageous things are a staple of both British and American TV comedy. The guy’s a natural. He’s got years of experience, we know he can ad-lib, and he’s got a built-in fan base.
I can see it now: “That’s Our Prince!” coming this fall on Fox. Hey, it can’t be any stupider or more offensive than “The Cleveland Show.”
