bama's Answering Questions Live Right Now At The House GOP Conference

if you are advocating 'teabagging' of others than by definition you are yourself, a teabagger.

 

Freudian slip.

 

Even better that they had to take it in front of their families and had to stay on their best behavior.

 

Freudian corset?

And thumbs, thanks much for both of those posts responding to my questions. We agree some new legislation might be in order for campaign finance. And I'll try TPA from now on (Tea Party Advocates.) It makes it sound very uncrazy, with a close connection to PTA, but still far enough from PETA!

 

I have to assume that you typed that with a smirk on your face you wingnut teabagger.

 

You do realize that it was first used by those on the right. It's how they or their allies referred to themselves. It also isn't necessarily anti-gay.

 

im not a teabagger, but sometimes i like to fart right in my dogs face.

 

Pundits as well as some posters here hate us because they fear us simply because average run-of-the-mill Tea Party members are advocating sane government. Of course, the radicals do have real cause for fear because we are working at the root level to achieve our goals.

That said, there is a ripple of glee on the email exchange lists since Obama announced the serious expansion of nuclear energy. The plants will not be on line for years, but the building project will create solid new jobs while eventually bringing down the national carbon footprint. This was Obama's first step toward meaningful leadership of our nation. Personally, I am quite pleased and applaud the move. We can sustain this part of the growing deficit because it is infrastructure that we desperately need.

 

Shouldn't you be getting ready for the convention thumbs?

 

I'm not much for hoopla and spectacle. I'm content to monitor from right here.

 

That's a well-known gateway activity that often leads to teabagging. Be careful!

 

This was hilarous, thanks for the laugh CaseyH.

 

I'm not sure what the run-of-the-mill Tea Party members are advocating judged by what I've seen from the protests and what you have posted here. The general call of the Tea Party movement seems to be that "goverment is bad" yet much of the issues brought up are calling for more government intervention. The movement is at once for free markets, while also for more regulation. Simultaneously for health care reform while against it. They claim they are not for Republicans, at least the mainstream Republicans, while supporting a candidate like Scott Brown who is about as mainstream Republican (maybe even a little left of mainstream) as it gets. The second part of your own post that I am responding to shows how all over the place the movement is when you are praising a quintessential big government pork barrel program for building more nuke plants to create jobs.

 

Exactly. The tea party "movement" isn't for anything. It is nothing but an angry mob that is against Obama no matter what he does. As a group there are only two unifying characteristics: anger and stupidity. It is hilarious to see thumbs try to portray himself as a sober moderate in service of a group that is so spastic by nature.

 

I am for nuclear energy because it makes the country stronger, i.e. less dependent on other countries for power. The additional jobs are a bonus. The reduction is pollution is a bonus. This debt does not cripple the economy in the long run like cap and trade (i.e., cap and tax).

I can't think of many people who oppose health care reform. The difference is in the implementation. The same holds true for government. I can't think of many people who oppose having federal government with regulatory power. The difference again is in the implementation, especially when it goes too far and becomes unnecessarily intrusive.

We show no more schisms than any faction, left or right. The far left preaches freedom but works vigorously to take it away. The far right preaches fiscal responsibility but spends like drunken sailors who just looted a bank.

 

The President's GOP Outreach Comes Too Late
A photo-op is not the same as compromising on policy.
By KARL ROVE

Last Friday, President Obama met with House Republicans in Baltimore. He took questions, parried criticisms, and allowed all of it to be put on television.

Framed as an opportunity for the president to hear from the other side, Mr. Obama's real aim was to portray Republicans as obstructionist and boost his own public standing in the process.

Afterward, Gallup found that Mr. Obama's approval hit 51%, up from 47% after the State of the Union address two days earlier. But in winning that small victory, Mr. Obama also further poisoned his relationship with Republicans by repeatedly saying things that are demonstrably not true.

For example, when Texas Rep. Jeb Hensarling asked if the president's new budget would, "like your old budget, triple the national debt" and increase "the cost of government to almost 25% of the economy," Mr. Obama denied it. But that's exactly what Mr. Obama proposed doing in his budget framework that Congress passed last April, according to both Congressional Budget Office and White House documents.

In Baltimore, Mr. Obama criticized the GOP's response to last year's $787 billion stimulus package saying, "I don't understand . . . why we got opposition . . . before we had a chance to actually meet and exchange ideas."

In truth, the president met with congressional Republicans to talk about the stimulus package the day before the press said Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey completed drafting the 1,073-page bill. What occurred was a photo-op, not an exchange of ideas. Democrats at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue were scornful of Republican input.

When Georgia Republican Rep. Tom Price complained in Baltimore that the president kept saying "that Republicans have offered no ideas and no solutions," Mr. Obama shot back, "I don't think I said that."

But of course Mr. Obama and his people have said that repeatedly. They did so starting in April, when White House aides swarmed Sunday talk programs to label the GOP the "party of no" and say that the party lacked both constructive ideas and vision.

Republicans did score a small victory in Baltimore. They got Mr. Obama to admit that the GOP has offered ideas on health-care reform, economic growth and spending restraint. But that doesn't mean the president will now draw on any of those ideas.

Mr. Obama's problems remain reality rather than optics. Over the past year, he hemmed himself in by leaving it to Democratic congressional leaders to draft his health-care reform and other items of his agenda and by not pressing those leaders to negotiate with Republicans.

Until Mr. Obama changes those practices, the country will see more party-line votes in Congress, albeit with increasing defections among vulnerable Democratic members.

The next battle brewing in Washington is over the president's proposed budget, released earlier this week. Under Mr. Obama's blueprint, federal spending would rise to $3.8 trillion in the next fiscal year, up from $3.6 trillion this year. The budget is filled with gimmicks.

For example, the president is calling for a domestic, nonsecurity, discretionary spending freeze. But that freeze doesn't apply to a $282 billion proposed second stimulus package. It also doesn't apply to the $519 billion that has yet to be spent from the first stimulus bill. The federal civilian work force is also not frozen. It is projected to rise to 1.43 million employees in 2010, up from 1.2 million in 2008.

As Mr. Obama's approval ratings have dropped, the White House has been consoled by the Republican Party's poor image. But that's changing. Since last October, Democrats dropped from a 30-point net favorability to a one-point advantage over the GOP today, according to a recent CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll.

The fall of support for Democrats is also reflected in the generic ballot. Since October, Democrats have gone from six points up (49%-43%) to three-points behind (45%-48%) according to Gallup. The GOP has a seven-point (45%-38%) lead in the latest Rasmussen generic ballot survey.

Every week, it seems, more bad news accrues for Mr. Obama's party—whether it is a bad poll, a lost election, or a new retirement of a House Democrat in a competitive district. Democrats are in the midst of the painful realization: Mr. Obama's words cannot save them from the power of bad ideas.

 

either that or you can't afford the $549 registration fee :grin:

 

RLY? Karl Rove has negative things to say about Obama? What happen?

I wonder what Obama's chief strategist had to say about Bush?

 

Not to mention the airfare, rental car, hotel, dining, souvenirs, incidentals and time. I've never been to a party convention that was overly friendly to the poor.

 

if you enjoyed "question time" why not sign the petition to institutionalize the event?