WELL, WE DON'T WANT TO LOSE YOU, BUT...

Dear Readers,

Word has it that former US Vice-President and virulent Obama-basher, Dick "The Duck Hunter" Cheney has been taken to the hospital with a suspected heart attack. We here at Tea With SB, in a bi-partisan spirit of good will, wish Mr. Cheney a full and speedy recovery, as we will miss his Dracula-like presence, sledgehammer wit and good-natured patriotism.

It would be a serious loss if the political world were to be deprived of his witticisms, his helpful suggestions and the fact that he continues to serve as the real face of American right-wing paranoia.

So, get well real soon, Mr. Cheney!

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BYE BAYH CIVILITY

Dear Readers,

When politicians in Warshington D.C. start retiring with excuses like 'they want to spend more time with the family', you know there's trouble. This week, the Democrat Senator from Indiana, Evan Bayh, announced he was falling on his sword and leaving an uncivil, bitterly partisan Senate that he says is "where bills go to die".

Well, Bayh wasn't a leading light in Congress, yet I think he had enough nouse to sense that 2010 was not going to be a Democratic year. The Democrats in Congress have looked lately like just what they are: a slimy bunch of dumb, grasping, woefully out-of-touch satraps who inspire nobody and have ruined the first half of President Obama's term. And they're the good guys! The Republicans are even worse! Besides their 'just say no' approach to legislation, the GOP pols look like big lobby glove-puppets, and act like a bloated and snarling bunch of rabid rodents. And since nobody is looked up to in government these days, into this yawning breach steps the loose association of associations called The Tea Party movement.

Led by safe-within-their-glass-booth TV and radio blabbermouths, these are people who couldn't be bothered to get upset at a stolen election (2000), a phony, unwinnable war (2001), another phony-er war (2003), and a decade of letting the foxes of Wall Street guard the chickencoops of middle America, but now feel obliged to come in at the last minute and save the country.

The thought of any sane person believing a word that issues from such poisonous rictuses as Glenn Beck, Rush Limberger, or the other free-speech gangsters who have polarized the country for their own, financial benefit is depressing, to say the least. But these 'defenders of liberty' are looked up to by millions as oracles who's rants inspire the resurgence of interest in the American constitution, so willfully neglected when we most needed it to be lived up to.

Not that I am against people organizing and demanding their 'redress of grievances', but I think it's kind of suspicious that this new 'band of patriots' have emerged at the same moment that an African-American took the presidential oath of office. Goaded on by Fox News and Limberger and his imitators, we suddenly have a 'tyrant' for a president, and are being dragged towards 'socialism' (a term not one teabagger could accurately define, I promise you) by this non-citizen (got birth certificate?). No coincidence there, I'm sure.

The Teabag brigades say they don't like Republicans either, but it's a weak argument, seeing as they hang on every word of the right-wing media giants who have been little more than Republican Party flacks for years and years, and have taken on as their hope and saviour the GOP half-wit, Sarah 'I can see Russia from here' Palin. 'Taking back the government' has been a rallying cry for the Tea Party movement, but then handing it over to a puppet who will make Quisling look like an independent is sheer madness. Instead of 'The Tea Party' they might as well call themselves the 'Peyote Mushroom Party'.

So as pitchforks rise in the hinterlands, a decent and sensible adult like Evan Bayh exits the stage, probably for his own sanity and self respect as for anything else. He leaves behind a Congress looking more and more like the Roman Senate of Caligula's reign, the one where the Emperor appointed a horse to fill a vacancy. Nobody said or did anything about it, except to wonder why lately there was so much more sh*t all over the place.

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WRITING ON THE HAND THAT FEEDS YOU

Dear Readers,

This past Saturday, amidst all the breathless hype for Super Bowl 44, a version of the Teabag Party movement held a 'convention' at a hotel in Nashville. The Teabagggers are riding high at the moment, after a successful summer of tar-and-pitchfork rallies, rages and meeting-busting, followed by elections in New Jersey, Virginia and Massachusetts that they claimed as victories for themselves over the dark forces of state-sponsored 'socialism'. While the established parties look on with a bemused- but- nervous curiosity, the fact is that these people may have tapped into something that might eventually reconfigure the body politic. The demographic of this movement may have all the diversity of an Osmond family reunion, but it does seem to be fulfilling a perceived need, and providing a home for people who probably haven't actively participated in public issues - nay, perhaps have never even voted -in their lives.

The meeting's climax on Saturday night was the appearance of Sarah Palin, recently retired Governatrix of Alaska, flop GOP Vice-Presidential candidate and best selling author of a fictional romance book, Going Rouge. Palin, with characteristic, down-home, easy-to-understand, simple-minded rhetoric, delivered a speech to the restricted-country-club-looking crowd. With apparel, makeup, hairdo and shoes that must have easily eaten up most of the reported $100,000 appearance fee, our Sarah gave the teabags what they wanted - an aggressive, down-the-line recitation of the 'party's' manifesto, probably to avoid being lynched as much as agreeing with the intolerant organization's stated beliefs. Actual socialists could only dream of such unity that was evident in this crowd of rabid, anti- socialists.

There wasn't anything new about what Palin gassed on about, nor the predictable reaction from the Knotts-Berry-Farm-loving audience, but what was new was some crib notes our Sarah had written on her hand and was plainly picked up by the cameras as she spoke. I think this should not be interpreted in a negative way by progressives, but applauded, as she finally seems to be taking her role as president-in-waiting seriously. After all, she spent a few lines of her speech dissing President Obama for his extensive use of teleprompters (even when reading bedtime stories to his children, apparently), but avoided the pitfalls of extemporaneous remarks by giving her palm a quick peek every now and again to keep her train of thought on their rickety tracks.

My only question about the Tea Party Convention and it's associated entertainments is who's paying for all this? Even at $549 a plate for the Palin speech, the math doesn't quite work if our Sarah trousered a cool $100K for the blab. Could it be dark forces on the right, carefully planning their Manchurian Candidate for 2012? Sarah herself, is probably oblivious to the machinations going on behind the curtains, but at least somebody with advice-rights to our next President has opened up the possibilities of using one's skin as a place for cram notes. John McCain is probably kicking himself right now for not thinking of that back in 2008.

So, thanks to a sharpie and a dry palm, Sarah Palin remains the pinup gal stuck to the inside of the right-wing's gym locker. I didn't see the whole speech and Q and A with her, but has anybody commented on the possible symbolism that she kept referring to the notes on her left hand? Those were bad enough, but God only knows what she might have had scribbled on her right.

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