(Above: what we need more of in Australia, according to Janet Albrechtsen).
It had to happen sometime, and where better than in The Australian ...
Janet Albrechtsen issues a clarion cry, a strident call, for the Tea Party to get down and boogie in Australia, in Thirsting for a sip of the amazing American brew.
It is of course mere posturing and idle rhetoric, and full of the usual silliness which accompanies such posturing.
Albrechtsen could have called for the return of Pauline Hanson. Hanson had a program for cutting spending in best Tea Party style:
We now have a situation where a type of reverse racism is applied to mainstream Australians by those who promote political correctness and those who control the various taxpayer funded "industries" that flourish in our society servicing Aboriginals, multiculturalists and a host of other minority groups. In response to my call for equality for all Australians, the most noisy criticism came from the fat cats, bureaucrats and the do-gooders. They screamed the loudest because they stand to lose the most - their power, money and position, all funded by ordinary Australian taxpayers. (here for the speech that struck at the heart of political correctness and challenged the authority of the ruling elites).
Yep, Hanson had a strong campaign for funding cuts going. In certain quarters involving all kinds of welfarism. Back in the day however Albrechtsen compared Hanson to Jean-Marie Le Pen while managing to be just as offensive as Hanson, and as prone to error (here).
More recently of course a few electorates have avoided the diktats and voted in a few independents. You know, taken a walk on the wild and woolly side, and serendipitously found their wildcat MPs in a position of power.
Tea party bliss? No way Jose, this populist explosion was sternly denounced by Albrechtsen in Games powerful independents play, with the independents denounced as power-hungry elitists. That's right, holier than thou elitists, haystack amigos if you will ...
Which means you can take Albrechtsen's hearty current prescription for tea party bliss with a hearty dose of salt, and chortle along at the strident silliness. Because you see while voting for independents here might lead to heartburn amongst commentariat elitists like Albrechtsen, in America it's a wonderful, marvellous thing, in the DNA, and needing to be bottled and shipped:
If you could extract it and bottle it, send the first shipment to Europe. On the Continent, workers are protesting against their governments making essential and overdue spending cuts. In the US, the people are protesting for spending cuts. The italics again. They want austerity.
Americans want austerity? Last time I checked a healthy desire for consumerism and rampant obesity were still doing well in the United States. Could we just rephrase that last sentence? The Tea partiers don't want to pay taxes, and are happy for austerity for some ... provided it doesn't include them, and they can slip back into their gated communities and enjoy their wealth. As for funding the wars ... did someone mention a Krispy Kreme?
What became an article of faith for Left liberals treating Sarah Palin as a dumb-nut redneck is being repeated against the Tea Party. The New York Times mocked the movement as the "growling face of a new fringe in American politics". So it's fine for people to march against the war in Iraq. But protest against big-spending government? How terribly fringe.
How terribly fey. You see, you can't call someone a dumb-nut redneck even if they are a dumb-nut redneck because it's politically incorrect. Hello Bob Katter, hello the haystack amigoes ...
But I guess there's mockery and then there's mockery. It helps of course to completely overlook some of the more interesting aspects of the Tea party movement. Like the funding provided by the Koch brothers, detailed in Jane Myer's Covert Operations The billionaire brothers who are waging a war against Obama.
And it helps to overlook the strident racial component of Tea party protests. And it helps to downplay or ignore the nuttier elements currently going around:
Republican Karl Rove derided Tea Party candidate Christine O'Donnell as "nutty". Maybe she is, dabbling as she did in witchcraft in the 1980s. But it's not about Palin or O'Donnell. It's the people power behind them that matters. And millions of Americans are angry and engaged. Ridiculing them has only riled them more.
Huh? It's not about Palin or O'Donnell? Angry and engaged and riled about being ridiculed but it's not about the ballot box or getting a change in leadership, or voting in a few independents?
Perhaps we should just go and bomb a building in Oklahoma?
But that's just idle dissembling and posturing, because it is about the ballot box:
If the masses of protests are any guide, there are no thank-you notes coming Obama's way. And establishment spend-and-tax Republicans have been been replaced with Tea Party candidates in seven significant Senate races: Florida, Kentucky, Colorado, Nevada, Arkansas, Utah and Delaware. While some commentators have asked whether Tea Party candidates can "close the sale" by attracting voters beyond the base, Norquist says five of those seven candidates are polling ahead of the Democrats. What Jonathan Rauch best described as a "lava-like" movement is spreading across the US.
Uh huh. So it's not about O'Donnell, just make sure you vote for O'Donnell. And never mind the dabbling in witchcraft or the evolution denying or the masturbation lust in your heart wankery ...
Well the Republicans thought they could ride the wave, but it turned out that the wave was troublesome and difficult, and there's already been more than a few wipe-outs, and behind it all the spectre of inchoate fury and anger whipped up by the likes of Glenn Beck and his patron Fox News. Did someone mention Rupert Murdoch?
An intelligent person might be careful what they wish for, but Albrechtsen clearly likes the notion of an evolution denying, anti-masturbation ranting, dabbler in witchcraft fundie Christian getting her hands on the levers of government in Australia:
If only it could move across the Pacific Ocean. Those observers, such as former Queensland premier Peter Beattie, who have likened the Tea Party movement to the 1998 rise in Australia of One Nation, have misread this fascinating phenomenon. One Nation was a top-down party that depended on a leader who made an easy target, Pauline Hanson. It never had across-the-continent support.
Uh huh. Remind me again of Tony Abbott's role in Pauline Hanson's downfall ...
And it pursued illiberal ideas that would never stand the test of time. The demise of One Nation was a victory of common sense over anger. By contrast, Tea Party anger is fuelling a return to commonsense ideas about cutting spending and reducing the size of government.
Which is as good an illustration of topsy turvy rhetoric from Dame Slap as we'd expect from someone who spends a lot of time in topsy turvy land at the top of the magic faraway tree.
Because of course Tea Party anger is fuelled by anger about having a black Islamic president born in Kenya - just where is his real birth certificate - along with other confused, inchoate ideas driven by anger and contradictory messages. Like having George Bush embark on a couple of wars while abandoning regulation of the financial sector and deciding to provide tax cuts for the rich, on the principle that it's okay to have a couple of wars and nobody will actually have to pay for them.
Austerity? Could someone ever so politely please tell Albrechtsen that she's dreaming ...
Someone please spike the drinks at Liberal Party HQ with this fine imported brew. Had the Liberals finessed their message along similar lines before the August election, they may have picked up seats they should have won to take government. Maybe they're learning for next time.
Someone please spike the drinks at Liberal Party HQ with this fine imported brew. Had the Liberals finessed their message along similar lines before the August election, they may have picked up seats they should have won to take government. Maybe they're learning for next time.
Oh yes, please spike the drinks at Liberal Party HQ. Tell them to headline their campaign with a policy of smashing the public health care system, and demolishing Medicare. Tell the people that the aim is to go back to the American health care system that existed before Obama's feeble amendments, as the whole kit and kaboodle will be privatised by lunch time and you'd better have a good job and insurance or a flexible credit card, or you can just get out on the street and die ...
Tell them to abandon the centre and go mad nutty libertarian right wing ...
Light wick with taper and stand well clear.
The billionaire Koch brothers must be well pleased with their handiwork.
And Albrechtsen? She seems motivated by simple spite, and the sheer joy of ideas that drive the Left crazy. She seems to have drunk the kool aid that there is no Tea Party party, there is no leader, and the loons are just part of a sceptical leaderless army ...
Which proves she has all the dumbness required to become a key Tea Partier ...
Out on the street Dame Slap. You're as mad as hell, and as dumb as a Tea Partier drunk on an overdose of caffeine, and for all we know you might have dabbled in witchcraft in your youth, and you're not going to take it anymore ...
Let's see you start a new movement via the power of one, and soon it'll be snowballing in the streets and Australians will be marching and angry and upset and ....
Hang on, hang on, the economy's ticking over, the summer is coming on. Second thoughts, I might just go to the beach ...
Fine imported brew? Stupid is as stupid scribbles, and The Australian has hit a wondrous new level of silliness.
Once again we have to make a statement of the bleeding obvious. You pay to keep Janet Albrechtsen handsomely employed and paid? I know, I know, she only scribbles thus because she knows that it teases. But she's doing it on your money. That's right, those damned private enterprise elitists are wasting your valuable time and money yet again, in a way a thousand times worse than anything the government could manage.
Time to become an antipodean Tea partier and storm the editorial officers of the lamestream media? Like The Australian. Snatch away your cash and send them back to Kenya? Or at least the United States, where their whacky ideas will fit right in with their whacky boss's Faux Noise activities ...
Time indeed to Think. Again ...
(Below: yes, and we need more of this too).
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