RECENT THOUGHTS ON SARAH PALIN AND THE TEA PARTY

PALIN AND CRIB NOTES ON HER PALM - HARDLY A BIG POINT BECAUSE SHE HAS ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO SAY WITH OR WITHOUT NOTES

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN IN THE NEW YORK TIMES

The problem certainly is not the crib notes on Sarah Palin’s palm, although it makes a funny anecdote after her blubbering about teleprompters.

The problem is that Sarah Palin has absolutely nothing to say, with or without notes.

Almost every word that comes from her mouth is completely predictable. And all of it is as vacuous as the applause soundtrack from a 1950s television sitcom.

Organizations might just as well buy a DVD of her past appearances and play random selections.

Imagine giving this hare-brain a hundred thousand dollars to come and say nothing?

Ah, that’s America, land of opportunity.

And, of course, when dear Sarah bounces around and waves her hands like a Baptist preacher at a tent meeting, she sees nothing from the podium but real folks in the audience, not beltway insiders.

This, as she works tirelessly to become one of those very beltway insiders.

What a truly tiresome theme, a re-tread of Newt Gingrich and Lamar Alexander and Phil Gramm plus countless other past opportunists devoid of content.

How is it that America has an endless appetite for such regurgitated tripe?

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STILL MORE ABOUT THE GOOFY TEA PARTY: THIS TIME JOHN IBBITSON WRITES ABOUT AMERICAN ANTI-STATUS QUO MOVEMENTS

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY JOHN IBBITSON IN TORONTO’S GLOBE AND MAIL

John Ibbitson,

You really do have it entirely wrong.

I’m surprised at how much so. Perhaps it’s your American-wannabe inner-self seeking expression?

There is nothing new, and certainly nothing genuinely anti-status quo, about the goofy Tea Party.

Good Lord, Sarah Palin - George Bush with a sex change - was there, and they were applauding that total airhead as she waved her arms around like a Baptist tent preacher.

And surely, you understand that there is nothing new about Palin except the color of her hair.

In fact, the Tea Party is the same tiresome bunch we’ve heard from dozens of times before in the U.S.

It’s a re-run of a re-run of a re-run there: back to political basics and origins.

It’s almost a hobby amongst the U.S. Right Wing, every once in while, we get a bunch of them with a new set of slogans.

This latest group of clowns reminds me of Lamar Alexander working desperately towards the Republican nomination in 2000, by going around in a red lumberjack shirt and offering the profound suggestion of a part-time government.

Likely it was a custom-made lumberjack shirt since good old Lamar is a multi-millionaire. Of course, in one sense, old Lamar was only talking about formalizing the de facto reality: America does have a part-time government if you count the time spent soliciting money.

Were you aware that one of their speakers at the convention also called for the re-establishment of literacy tests for voting? It’s the old code phrase for eliminating black votes.

Anti-status quo? Yes, if you count going backward a century as being anti-status quo.

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THE GOOFY TEA PARTY AGAIN - AND THE CLOWN SARAH PALIN - AND THE TRUTH ABOUT THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY KONRAD YAKABUSKI IN TORONTO’S GLOBE AND MAIL

Oh, please, any group which can become excited by a certified airhead like Sarah Palin is pathetic.

The Tea Party is just one more in a long list of fad right-wing movements in America, most of them deliberately employing the language of revolution to make themselves sound consequential.

Well, they are all about as revolutionary, and as interesting, as the latest version of dish soap from Procter and Gamble.

And this author, Konrad Yakabuski, too, has a childishly limited understanding of the American "revolution."

"...driven by the same distrust of the ruling class that inspired the Revolution."

That statement is simply not true. It represents the American 8th grade civics-class version of the "revolution."

Americans in the colonies were a pretty privileged group in the world of 1776. Everything we read from foreign observers tells us how good and healthy and free their lives in fact were. From life expectancies, smart people like Franklin calculated how quickly the population would become large.

Britain - in the Seven Years War (aka, French and Indian War) - had even eliminated the worrying threat of the French encroaching into the Ohio Valley.

But when Britain wanted Americans to help pay for that war with some new taxes - a perfectly reasonable expectation – we first saw Americans acting like rude kids being served spinach for dinner, a behavior which has continued down to this day.

Indeed, the financial crisis which just threatened the world comes from the same dark place in the American soul: “I want it all, and I want it now.”

Britain also irritated the colonists by keeping rules about land speculation and against disturbing the natives in the Ohio Valley, an unpleasant get-rich-quick practice in which George Washington was a leader, surveying other people’s land and later selling it to new immigrants from Europe.

And it still further irritated the colonists – actually infuriated them – by imposing the Quebec Act, arousing the ugliest anti-Catholic rhetoric you could imagine, truly gutter stuff.

These are the true origins of the American Revolution, an event which is far more accurately called a revolt since it was an effort to overthrow an imperial power, not local government by locals.

None of the rhetoric about liberty and justice had much to do with it, unless you agree that people who trade in slaves make any sense in talking about such concepts.

Selfishness writ large.

And just so now, the clownish Tea Party.

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MORE ON THE TEA PARTY: THIS AN ARTICLE SO POORLY INFORMED IT SHOULDN’T HAVE BEEN PUBLISHED - BUT PERHAPS IT FITTINGLY SUMS THIS SILLY BUNCH

POSTED RESPONSES TO A COLUMN BY TOM VELK IN TORONTO’S GLOBE AND MAIL

Tom Velk, this is a remarkably poorly informed piece.

First, you start with a straw-man argument.

The fact is no one on earth thinks the Tea Party represents rebels.

In fact, they are the same tiresome bunch we’ve heard from dozens of times before in the U.S.

Back to political basics and origins.

It’s a fad amongst the U.S. Right Wing, every once in while, we get a new bunch of them with slogans.

It’s been typical for them to use words or phrases like “manifesto” or “revolution” so that they grab attention and sound like something other than the retro-grade folks they are: Patriots with four-car garages.

The Tea Party will disappear within a year or two. It has nothing to offer. Good God, just consider they’re using the brainless Sarah Palin as a keynote speaker. Kind of says it all.

As for Jefferson, you seem unaware of the facts of his life. He said that the country needed some blood shed every twenty years or so to keep the Tree of Liberty nourished, and he wasn’t using poetic language. He supported the bloody French Revolution right through The Terror, leaving behind some pretty awful statements.

Jefferson actually shared qualities with Cambodia’s Pol Pot: he believed in the honest yeoman type and was against industrialization and opposed Hamilton’s sophistication in finances. He was repressive as in the revolt of Haiti and his horrible embargo of England and his Inspector Javert-like pursuit of Arron Burr.

Altogether a confusing and rather unpleasant man.

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"4. Describing America’s growth in the 19th century: "the giant did not grow by conquest (except of a figurative sort)" The War of 1812 was an attempt to do just that; The Mexican War? the forced death March of natives from Florida; the many ’Indian Wars’ of conquest."

Yes, indeed. Don’t forget the Spanish-American War intended to steal Cuba and other properties.

Then there’s the theft of Texas.

The theft of New Mexico and California.

The story of Hawaii is a very sad one. America stole the place after the British were gone and ignored the pleas of natives who even petitioned Congress and were completely ignored.

Don’t forget the many bloody uprisings in the "Empire of Liberty" stretching back to putting down the Whisky rebellion to the ghastly mass slaughters of blacks in the 1920s in Oklahoma and Florida and other places. Bodies by the hundreds dumped into mass graves and their property stolen.

Actually, America’s record, for those who know it, very much resembles Germany’s rise in the late 19th and first half of the 20th centuries.

Only the fact that the places America attacked and pillaged were thinly populated prevents its record from being one of deaths in the many millions like Germany’s.

Of course, its ruthlessness goes right up to the fire bombing and atomic bombing of Japan and its mass murder in Vietnam with perhaps 3 million victims left behind. And a million victims in Iraq.

It ain’t a pretty record.

I really think the editors of the Globe need to do a much better job in selecting the people they print. This piece is uninformed trash.

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MORE ON MASSACHUSETTS

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY PAUL CELLUCCI IN TORONTO’S GLOBE AND MAIL

The Tea Party is just one more in a long list of American right-wing political fads, just during my lifetime.

For some reason they always use words or names that are suggestive of revolution or revolt - words like manifesto.

I guess that serves to disguise the basically retrograde nature of their movement.

Of course, I recognize that America is an extremely conservative country.

A genuine liberal there is rather like a rose blooming on the desert.

But Americans are given to fads and impatience in all aspects of their lives - after all, that’s a good part of the reason for the financial crisis (’I’ve got to have it all and have it now’).

The Tea Party, as with all of its predecessor fads and clubs and movements, will be forgotten in just a few years.

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Why on earth is the Globe publishing the comments of Paul Cellucci?

Cellucci surely qualifies as the most obnoxious, intefering-in-our-internal affairs ambassador of all time. A truly unpleasant man who loyally represented America’s first certified moron President’s interests.

As for Brown, he’s another empty shirt spouting synthetic slogans.

The Democrats’ candidate, Ms Coakley, proved a disaster.

In a six week campaign, Ms Coakley started by taking a week off around Christmas. Simply politically stupid.

She also did not use television to any extent. Again politically stupid.

And she made several blunders during that short time.

While I agree there is now impatience with Obama in America - after all, these are people ready to kill over a late pizza delivery - Obama would have had to be miracle worker to save her.

Sadly the voters had no third choice, because the empty shirt who won is no prize.

Here’s an example of Brown’s silly gibberish:

"I didn’t mind when President Obama came here and criticized me - that happens in campaigns. But when he criticized my truck, that’s where I draw the line."

"I’m Scott Brown, I’m from Wrentham, I drive a truck, and I am nobody’s senator but yours. Thank you very much."

Pure Sarah Palin. Pathetic pseudo-humility.

Oh, sure, "nobody’s Senator but yours." Do Canadians realize that U.S. Senators spend on average two-thirds of their time soliciting money? That a big Senate race can cost $15 million for each candidate’s election? You don’t get that kind of money from "folks."

Well, you do get pretty much the government you deserve.

Of course, the main trouble when America elects bad government is the rest of the world is made to suffer.

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A COLUMNIST WRITES THAT OBAMA MAY INSPIRE BUT SARAH PALIN CONNECTS

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY REX MURPHY IN TORONTO’S GLOBE AND MAIL

Connects?

She connects with a fair number of male couch beer-swillers who consider her a "hot babe."

She connects with the gun nuts.

She connects with the trailer-park and fuzzy-dice set.

She connects with the lobotomy cases of the religious right.

She connects with all the xenophobes in America who have no use for "damned fureigners."

God that’s a lot of people in America, and she is a very dangerous woman.

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Apart from Sarah Palin’s dozens of ridiculous errors and misstatements plus a demonstrated tendency towards abuse of power, two facts stand out like the great rocks of the Straits of Gibraltar for me.

One, Sarah took six years at five different colleges before she finally earned her BA in a bird subject like "communications."

Two, the woman quit her elected job as governor of one of the least populated states in America, yet told us she was not a quitter.

The woman is simply a joke, but then so was Bush, and look what that moron gave the world.

America seems to have a boundless appetite for this kind of insipid daytime-talk show politics.