March 2011

A new CNN poll shows the favorability rating of the Tea Party in decline:

The approval rating for the 2-year-old movement fell to 32 percent in a CNN/Opinion Research corporation poll released Wednesday, the lowest it’s been since CNN first polled on the tea party in January 2010

That’s compared to a 46% approval for Democrats and 44% approval for Republicans. Perhaps this gives us more insight to the recent decline:

The biggest drop in the tea party movement’s favorability came among people who make less than $50,000 a year. In October, 30 percent in that income group said they had unfavorable views of the tea party. Now, 45 percent say the same.

While many try and pull the wool over our eyes, people are realizing that the Tea Party is anything but a grassroots movement. It’s a corporate backed social experiment to lure people into supporting big earner tax giveaways.

The real shame is that we desperately need a 3rd party in this country, not an offshoot of the Republican Party. A movement like the Tea Party could have the potential to take off, if it is truly about the people. Get something like that going, something that will refuse the influence of big business and money, and you will have a movement that people can really get behind.

Yesterday the right-wing blogosphere erupted with posts of the greatest scandal of the 21st century:

Last Thursday evening at Montclair State University, with a video camera rolling, Bill Ayers volunteered that yes indeed he had written the acclaimed Barack Obama memoir, Dreams from My Father.

Unprompted, Ayers also noted that while Dreams deserves its praise, Obama's second opus, Audacity of Hope, is "more of a political hack book."

Not surprisingly, Ayers retreated into irony as he ended the session. "Yeah, yeah," he said after confirming again that he wrote Dreams, "And if you help me prove it, I'll split the royalties with you. Thank you very much."

This has been on ongoing conspiracy of the right for years, so it isn’t shocking that they would jump on this like kids to the tree on Christmas morning. As matter of fact, you can check this thread out on Memeorandum and see how many of the right wing blogs posted this with absolute giddiness.

But here’s the problem. If you watch the video, you see that Ayers is obviously giving a sarcastic response. I would have done the same thing if I were in his position. You get hammered day after day by some crapspiracy theory, you finally just say “fuck it” and play along. But that didn’t stop the right from eating this up as some big got ya against Obama. Well except for a few, which I must give credit to, like Dan Riehl.

Erick Erickson on CNN:

here is not in any way, shape, or form any rational explanation for the United States engaged in Libya to do nothing except for one I can think of — Barack Obama's re-election.

…

Suddenly Obama can look Presidential again — all through manufacturing the need for American involvement where there was no need. Barack Obama wants to be re-elected. The best playbook for his re-election is that of Bill Clinton. But Clinton had a government shutdown and Kosovo. In the absence of either, Barack Obama must manufacture them.

And he has.

From a 1998 Washington Post article:

In August 1998, when [Clinton] ordered missile strikes in an effort to kill Osama bin Laden, there was widespread speculation — from such people as Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) — that he was acting precipitously to draw attention away from the Monica S. Lewinsky scandal, then at full boil. Some said he was mistaken for personalizing the terrorism struggle so much around bin Laden. And when he ordered the closing of Pennsylvania Avenue in front of the White House after domestic terrorism in Oklahoma City, some Republicans accused him of hysteria.

Whenever a Democrat takes military action, the right takes to their aluminum foil hats to create any conspiracy theory they can. Of course Erickson is one of those that still believes we found WMD in Iraq, despite the Bush administration even admitting we never did. Aren’t you glad he works for the “most trusted name in news”?

It has become even more obvious that the GOP 2012 hopefuls only political platform is to oppose President Obama. Enter Newt Gingrich on the Libya issue. On March 7th, the presidential hopeful had this to say about Libya.

Exercise a no-fly zone this evening. … We don’t need to have the United Nations. All we have to say is that we think that slaughtering your own citizens is unacceptable and that we’re intervening.

Fast-forward 16 days and you get this:

GINGRICH: The standard [Obama] has fallen back to of humanitarian intervention could apply to Sudan, to North Korea, to Zimbabwe, to Syria this week, to Yemen, to Bahrain. … The Arab League wanted us to do something. The minute we did something, the Arab League began criticizing us doing it. I think that two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is a lot. I think that the problems we have in Pakistan, Egypt — go around the region. We could get engaged by this standard in all sorts of places. I would not have intervened. I think there were a lot of other ways to affect Qaddafi. I think there are a lot of other allies in the region we could have worked with. I would not have used American and European forces.

And this guy wants to be President of the United States. He changes his positions as much as he changes wives!