The End of the Page

CPAC Starts Its Wild Ride

(Honestly, the joke here writes itself.)

Coming directly on the heels of the Tea Party Convention only a few short weeks back, the other clamoring section of the far right came together once again from all over the country for their once-a-year, bang-a-gong, color coded convention (red, white and blue being the consistent theme).

CPAC stands for the Conservative Political Action Conference, where those politicians looking to connect to the fervent and boisterous base of the conservative movement come to recharge and reload their political weaponry (or actual real-life weaponry depending on how dedicated they are to appeasing the second amendment crowd). The main keynote speaker on the final night will be Fox TV host and poster child for the Chalkboard Lovers of America, Glenn Beck. I’m doing mental workouts each morning in preparation for this speech, making sure I can handle the triple jumps of logic and 100-meter dash from assumption to conclusion (while dodging those nasty fact hurdles, of course). Yet before Mr. Beck can grace the stage, the crowd must be worked into a frenzy over the opening days.

I can’t comment on Marco Rubio, the new young buck on the right-wing  block, since I didn’t catch his speech. I know he’s young and he’s bringing a hearty primary challenge in Florida against Republican Governor Charlie Crist in the race for a Florida senate seat. Once a total longshot, Rubio rallied strong and sits atop a healthy lead in the polls right now. From clips I did see the only thing I can truly hold against him is he began the unending train of anti-Obama teleprompter jokes, all while standing in front of a shiny pair of teleprompters. (Nearly every speaker who followed made a similar crack, each one more tactless than the one before)

Let hypocrisy ring, people. Oh, wait, it’s freedom. That’s what they meant to ring. Freedom. Oops.

Jim DeMint graced the stage and really got things cooking with a reminder about where the conservative movement truly wants to take this country. While touting the goal of freedom for everyone he simultaneously spouts the idea that all politicians should be taken out of office if they are not voting based on Judeo/Christian values. His claim that this was the true intention of the founding fathers and the Constitution seems to fly in the face of the first ammendment when it states, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;” but hey, don’t let the actual words of the Constitution get in the way of your point Mr. DeMint. Please proceed.

He goes on to state that what the government should do is place a moratorium on all spending and spend the next two years balancing the budget, but again he staunchly opposed, alongside the entire Republican caucus, the creation of a bi-partisan budget commission created to do that very thing. Hmmm…I’m sensing a pattern here.

Lastly, making a nice closing, he related a thinly veiled threat to those in the Republican party who were only pretending to be Conservative to gain the political voting power of these fine folks. Mentioning Mr. Rubio and others like him, DeMint made it clear that all the incumbent Republicans could easily be replaced if they didn’t fall in line with the people and this nationwide groundswell from the Tea Party movement.

Let the right-wing evisceration begin. Self-inflicted, of course.

Later on Kevin McCullough came up and reminded everyone how freedom loving the Conservative movement is. One of his points was that the young people in the conservative movement had to save the next generation from the terrors inside the “halls of academia”. Are our children are being taught too much? Given too much information so they can think for themselves and make up their own minds? Maybe he’s angry at the system because more and more of the youth are growing up more tolerant towards gays and lesbians, which is staunchly opposed to his “freedom”. Oh yeah, so is Roe v. Wade. So ladies, prepare to grow more free while simultaneously losing control over your own body.

My favorite moment of his was when he used the phrase “we will not sit in the back of the bus”, which is a direct reference to Rosa Parks and her daring silent protest against blacks being made to sit in the “black” section of the bus back in the pre-Civil Rights days. I had no idea the conservative fight for freedom was so identical to the civil rights movement.

That’s because it’s not. Not even close.

More and more came up, singing the praises of Ronald Reagan and each other and rehashing new version of the teleprompter gag. Scott Brown and Mitt Romney took turns praising each other, while Dick Armey, current head of FreedomWorks, dropped a gem when he claimed Obama created the illusion of the health care crisis in order to gain control of the economy. I wonder if Mr. Armey works for Aetna Blue Cross as well? They could most certainly afford to pay him well since they are planning to raise their rates for a large section of Californians by up to 39% with no reasoning whatsoever.

Nope, no health care crisis here. Not at all, Please move along and do not under any circumstances look behind the curtain. (Did you notice our new curtains, by the way, their made out of 100% money. Feel how decadent they are…)

Also, the right wing should know better what it look like when someone creates a fake crisis in order to gain control. Bush did a splendid job of that with his mythical WMD’s in Iraq. *BOOM goes the dynamite*

Lastly, Ginni Thomas, an everyday citizen who just wanted to get involved, spoke about how pleased she was with the energy surround the tea party movement. She specifically pointed out how wonderful she thought all the homemade signs were. Think she’s talking about this one:

this guy is actually the head of one of the largest Tea Party groups


















or possibly this one:

maybe this one:

but she couldn’t have meant this one:

Is half-breed muslin washable with other like fabrics?












These are the people rallying right now to take control of the direction of our country.  Progress sure looks funny, doesn’t it.

A Glimpse Behind the Fog of Hope and Hate

I promise to do whatever my political party says, in right and in wrong, till death do us part

I can hear it now rumbling in the back closet, rocking back and forth with one broken foot, that same one I’ve been meaning to fix for two hundred years:

The Political Spin Machine

…and it’s going full steam.

With the election of Republican wunderkid, Scott Brown, the troops on the right are doing everything they can to convince Democrats across the nation that every progressive and liberal policy currently being proposed now has as much chance of succeeding as Conan O’Brien ever doing a show on NBC again. Yet, let’s take a good close look at what really happened yesterday and see if we can’t find a way to help each party find its way back to some type of ethical center.

By electing Scott Brown, Massachusetts brought the Democratic majority in the Senate down by exactly one. They dropped from 60 to 59 and while many will bemoan the loss of the filibuster proof majority, what they neglect to mention is the filibuster proof majority never really existed because of those Democrats in the Senate referred to as “Blue Dogs”, or more conservative-leaning voters. The squelching of the filibuster happened only once, which was to finally push the Health Care bill out of the Senate, and the reparations the liberal Democrats had to make in order to secure those Blue Dog votes over the filibuster helped to shape a bill that virtually no one is pleased with. So the idea that Scott Brown’s inclusion in the Senate will suddenly destroy the happy-go-lucky hand-holding going on in the left leaning side of the chamber just shows how little the right side actually pays attention to what is going on.

This is nothing more than a scare tactic to frighten the left and encourage the right, but I honestly believe the right has more to fear from Scott Brown than the left. Republicans think his election is a repudiation of Democratic policies and of Obama himself, but in fairness I believe he was chosen more out of frustration of continued record unemployment ratings and a growing disappointment from independents who let themselves believe the Obama hype machine during his campaign. I’m not knocking Obama, I voted for him as well, but people seemed to forget he is just one guy inside a government machine built by money, power and massive special interests. He has made many changes already, in demonstrably record time, but people on Main Street won’t feel the effects of those until much later. The change some people was hoping for was much more than he could ever achieve in such a short amount of time. Remember, his one-year anniversary as President was yesterday!

Scott Brown also comes in claiming he is ushering in a “new type of Republican”, which in other terms means “time for the old guys to move on out.” Let’s see how well that plays out in the polls come mid-term time. Anyone coming in preaching change to the “old way of politics” is a danger to anyone currently sitting, Republican or Democrat.

Now, while watching Mr. Brown gloat over his seemingly amazing win, I can’t say I’m incredibly impressed with him or how he handles himself (check this little moment of pimping out his daughters at his acceptance speech), but I wasn’t all that enchanted by his opponent, Martha Coakley, either. This is where people need to help usher in a real and tangible sense of change. We need to start looking beyond the party name and look at the actual person. As unattainable as it might sound, filled with pretty rhetoric and uplifting oratory, I agree with Obama when he stumps for the goal of bi-partisanship, but I want to take it one step farther. “Bi-partisanship” alludes to the idea of two parties getting along, but what about “tri-partisanship”? Actually, we do have one Independent senator (wave to the nice Internet folks, Mr. Barney Frank of VT). What about “quad-partisanship”? The Tea-Partier’s are about to host their own conference, so who will deny they have a chance to get their own candidate on a ticket and not be forced to list them as Republican? I’m a good distance off from supporting anything currently coming out of the tea-party caucus, but I fully encourage their right to not affiliate with either dominating party. My belief is if we breakdown the powerhouse parties the American populace would be forced to learn more about who they are voting for instead of just checking whether their was an “R” or a “D” next to their name.

An informed populace is an absolute necessity of any great democracy and it’s time that we as members of that populace bore some responsibility for that.