First Conservative - Political Humor and Obamatudes

Providing fodder for the conservative blogosphere on Sunday, David Axelrod – Senior Obama advisor – expressed disbelief that people that were scheduled to receive a tax cut would be protesting against the Leader’s tax policy.  The real reasons so many showed up to protest included taxes, but also spending.  Like most who took Economics 101, Tea Party participants understand that taxation levied by the IRS is not the only form of taxation.

Liberals in government prefer to keep income tax rates the same in favor of increasing things like fees and licensing costs.  When election time rolls around, these Democrats go to the voters claiming to be fiscal conservatives and point to a static income tax rate as proof.  Journalists typically provide safe cover and never address the issue of other increased costs to taxpayers.  Hiding tax increases is a necessary job skill for liberal politicians.

Unfortunately for Team Obama, many voters have figured out the game.  When Axelrod claims that the middle classes will be receiving a tax cut, he neglects to inform them that they will be paying more for everything else.  This is due to government caused inflation. 

Inflation is the natural and inevitable result of overspending and over-borrowing by the federal government.    Increasing the money supply to cover government debt – or increasing the number of dollars circulating in the economy – drives down the value of existing dollars.  This in turn drives up the cost of all goods and services.    Team Obama has already significantly increased the money supply.  In 2010 when the Stimulus spending really begins, the money supply will have to be increased even more. 

Inflation is the cruelest form of taxation as it impacts the middle and lower classes the most.  Workers will pay more for all goods and services, but wage levels never keep pace.  LBJ invented this method of taxation as a means to pay for the Vietnam War.  Knowing the voters would never tolerate being taxed for the war in Southeast Asia; Johnson just increased the money supply and paid the government’s bills with newly created dollars.  It took until the mid 1980s and Ronald Reagan to get the inflation beast under control.

So Obama and his media groupies will claim that there is a tax cut for the middle classes.  He will rely on the ignorance of the masses to carry off the illusion that there is no tax increase.  In fact, the Obama Tax Increase on the middle class will be very, very significant and should begin to accelerate early in 2010.  We will see who Obama blames then.

Ignoring the Tea Parties – A Dangerous Arrogance

In response to a question about the nationwide anti-tax revolt manifesting as “Tea Parties,” David Axelrod – a Senior Obama advisor - revealed this morning on CBS’s Face the Nation that “I think any time that you have severe economic conditions, there is always an element of disaffection that can mutate into something that’s unhealthy. This is a country where we value our liberties and our ability to express ourselves. And so far these are expressions.”  If Axelrod and the Obama White House are allowed to define what are “ healthy expressions,” they will be quick to bring the muscle of the federal government down upon those that do not express their opinions in ways they believe are “acceptable.”  In the Democrat’s dictionary, ‘acceptable’ means opinion that agrees with their progressive political theology.    

Prior Democrat administrations have had no problem bringing the Internal Revenue Service down upon those that are considered enemies of the party vision.  Commentators and contributors to conservative causes routinely face IRS audits under Democrat administrations, but this round of South-Chicago, bare-knuckle political battles will be new to most conservatives. 

In spite of Axelrod’s attempts to warn conservatives that their gatherings and opinions are becoming ‘unhealthy,’ anyone observing the Tea Party gatherings would quickly note that this crowd wasn’t going to be intimidated.  In fact, they seemed to welcome the conflict and as well as the opportunity to express themselves in a public forum.    On top of that, participation was fun!  And this is probably what set Team Obama off the most.  In addition to claiming the right to define what ‘acceptable behavior is’ Obama’s White House really wants to determine what should and should not be enjoyable.

For Democrats, power is enjoyable.  A popular movement that didn’t’ have a liberal in the leadership position left most Democrats feeling left out.  Like any middle-schooler who wasn’t invited to the popular kid’s party, Team Obama reacted as if to say ‘I really didn’t want to go anyway.’  A protest without a liberal leader?  Democrats still can’t figure that out. 

At last the day has arrived! This is the opportunity to find out how strong the anti tax movement in the United States actually is.  As conservatives have learned from liberal brethren, protest is a highly effective way to both get out the message as well as to gage the level of support for the cause.  All expectations are for significant turnout at events across the country. 

Lefties are stunned that there are people that object to the Leader’s plans.  They are even more stunned that these folks would take a few hours out of their work to join in a Tea Party Rally.  So to help our liberal neighbors better understand what is going on, here is a top ten list of things that liberals will be surprised to learn about the Tea Party protests:

10.  Most participants actually have jobs.  They also have the ability to keep those jobs over a period of time.  Liberals have a great deal of trouble with this.  That is why they are always looking Obama to pay their mortgages.

9.  Many are young people.  Although participation will include all age groups, the fact that young people participate will be a shock.  The young people that do participate in the Tea Parties will be the ones who can add and subtract.  They frequently subtract the taxes from their paychecks.

8.  Many are women.  This will be another surprise.  But it should be noted that women are quite good at addition and subtraction and are quite sensitive to having the fruits of their labor confiscated to pay the interest on Obama’s debt.

7.  Many participants have some money – at least enough to hit Starbucks after the rally.  This is also foreign to liberals who frequently must beg support from those that are able to keep a job.  

6.  Many participants have families.  The children at the Tea Parties are the real victims of Obama’s generational oppression, so their parents are highly motivated to leave them a world where they may pursue their dreams.  Obama wants young people to serve the state.

5.  Tea Party participants shave and bathe.  Remembering that smell is the primary way to identify an ACORN member in the crowd, most participants will be well-turned out and not dressed for the ’84 Grateful Dead concernt.

4  Party goers understand economics – Understanding that the upcoming round of inflation will be Barack Obama’s middle class tax hike, Tea Party protesters understand that over spending and over borrowing by the government – regardless of how worthy the causes – will cause inflation to rise.  Inflation will be hardest on the middle and lower classes – exactly those to whom Obama promised a tax cut.   

3.  Partiers have the ability to add and subtract.  Most public school grads have this skill, but few actually apply it. Those that do are Tea Party participants.

2. Participants actually enjoy living in the United States.  Actually, many liberals – especially those that are in the United States illegally - also enjoy living here.  However, many liberals yearn for a life under European Socialism with Canadian Health Care.   They just want someone else to pay for it.

1. Participants have a way of life that is worth preserving.  People protesting the outrageous increase in spending understand that spending is a threat to the American way of life.  Providing services to those who don’t pay for them is simply unfair.  Taking from the successful to reward the unsuccessful is also unfair.  Liberals love to harangue society over the issue of fairness, but when lefties are in power, fairness is reinterpreted to mean wealth confiscation from those that earned it.   

In all though, Tea Party protesters enjoy life.  They are typically happier people.  Lefties are usually in pain over something and just can’t understand how anyone can be happy when there is so much unfairness in the country.  And perhaps this is the single most significant difference that liberals will see.  Tea Party participants love their way of life and love their country.  There is no hatred in this crowd.

Huffington Post ran a piece on April 12 comparing Tea Parties to Book Burning Sessions.  It may surprise the lefties that many thinking Americans would readily agree to a mass book burning – as long as the books being burned are copies of the Federal Tax Code.  Burning all of these would provide enough heat to keep Fairbanks warm until Christmas.

Lefties in general and the Huffingtons in particular simply cannot grasp the fact that there are so many people who don’t like the Obama spending plan.  This lack of understanding will drive media coverage of the Tea Party events now two days away.   Media types don’t understand why overspending is damaging and can’t be expected to teach themselves. 

It is therefore important to make sure our local media understands why over spending is damaging.  The central reason is Inflation.  Inflation is Obama’s tax increase on the middle classes.  The Leader has already learned that the world isn’t crazy about buying US debt instruments, so he will have no choice but to print the money he needs.  Not wanting to leave this to the last minute, the administration has already expanded the current money supply very significantly.  Investors are somewhat unwilling to buy US T-Bills because Obama has already shown his willingness to devalue them the next day.

Inflation though, is a detailed discussion.  If one can keep a liberal’s attention for a couple hours, then one has a chance at winning the argument.  Lefties just don’t have the patience to understand facts or history, they just want to get on with the business of feeling. 

Where does that leave the Tea Parties?  The anti tax movement still needs press coverage and the key to gaining it is to make the messages entertaining but simple enough for journalists to grasp.   Pithy signs and witty slogans are all part of the mix, but there is one key element all Tea Party participants must make sure to use – laughter. 
Self righteous lefties are at their core are highly emotional beings.  As we learned during the Clinton years, emotional beings have one objective in life and that is “to be liked.”  Ann Coulter admonishes us to save our breath in discussing issues with liberals because they can’t discuss a rational issue on an emotional level.  When presented with facts, they just spin themselves into hyperventilating , incoherent  masses of goo.  Don’t believe this?  Just watch an interview with James Carville. 

So as the good guys take to the streets on Wednesday to do battle with those that would steal from our children, remember to point and laugh out loud at the ACORN members and counter protesters.  This is the one thing they can’t stand.   And journalists may just be inspired to talk with someone who is smiling, rather than a foaming-at-the-mouth angry skinny guy who hasn’t seen a shower in several days. 

And after the rally?  Start calling the TV station if your local media types get the story wrong.  Local journalists do not own truth, but they will omit facts.  If they do, they should be called on it.  And light up the blogosphere with your stories.  The blog world is the last bastion of uncensored communication. 

So take heart and take notes!  Hope and Change is on the way!  See you on the 15th!

Conservatives protesting?  When was the last time a nationwide series of events motivated working people to make silly signs and gather in a park they usually wouldn’t go to without a bodyguard?  One has difficulty remembering, but April 15 marks the coming-out day for the nation’s thinking people to campaign against government spending, borrowing and bail outs.

The art of protest has been perfected by the left to get maximum emotional impact for their worthless fringe causes.  Journalists love leftist protests because they are always emotional and reporters don’t have to work very hard before someone comes to them and starts complaining about something.  Protest is such an art form now, that young people who would normally have jobs and pay taxes, travel from city to city to participate in the protest du jour.  All of this paid for by Dad’s trust fund.

So what to expect on April 15?  It certainly will be a different site.  Conservatives by nature are not complainers, so protesting does not come naturally.  Leftists whine about everything – which is why most leftist protesters are young, recently post-teenagers.    But age isn’t the only thing that will set the American Tea Parties apart from almost all other protest events.  The bourgeois protest at hand will indeed be different from their liberal counterparts in many ways, including:

10.  A good number of Tea Party protesters will be carrying Starbucks cups – Lefties like Starbucks too, and appreciate the green corporate policy.  They also like the little sayings on the side of each cup.  They don’t understand the sayings, but they look cute.  Since lefties like to throw their fists in the air in angry shows of defiance, libs don’t carry their cups to the march.

9.  Most participants will have checked with their supervisor for the time off to participate - in fact, many of these supervisors will be there, too.  People that have risen to supervisory levels are frequently smart enough not to be liberals. 

8.  The participants that don’t have Starbucks cups will be holding bottled water – Your city won’t provide water or police protection for you like they do for the KKK rally. You are conservative and therefore you are evil. 

7.  Kids will be in attendance, but these will be well dressed and well behaved.  Lefties also bring their children, but usually to display them as victims of corporate greed or oppressive government policy.

6.  Several Tea Party participants will carry umbrellas – if it rains, they don’t intend to go home.  Liberals who get wet resemble soaked mutts looking for a dry doorway.  Have you ever stood next to a wet liberal?  Since Tea Party types have to go back to work, they’ll stay looking nice.  

5.  Humorous Chants – Lefties will hate this primarily because they’ll have to ask someone what the chants mean.  Liberal chants are usually loud and mean-spirited.  Tea Party chants will probably be humorous and upbeat.  Liberals absolutely can’t stand being laughed at and can’t tolerate anyone having a good time.
 
4.  Celebrities will generally not be in attendance – At liberal protests, celebrities are in the thick of the march with their personal assistants marching along-side holding up the mirror.

3.  Conservatives will clap their hands and shout respectfully – Lefties shout obscenities and leave their water bottles in the gutter.

2.  The dress code will be a significant cut above at the Tea Party rallies - Suits and ties are of course optional, but many liberals don’t even know what a suit is or how to put one on.  Most Tea Partiers will have to get back to work in a while anyway.  Liberals protest so they don’t have to get a job.

1.     The single biggest difference will be that Tea Party participants – despite the seriousness of the cause, will smile.  The ability to approach problems with an upbeat attitude is the primary reason one hires conservatives to take on difficult challenges.  Over taxation and over-spending are indeed difficult problems.  Solving them can’t be done by angry, foaming at the mouth, blithering idiots that have trouble conjugating common verbs. 

Protests are generally thought to be inventions of the poor and leftists.  However, the French bourgeois revolution (1789 – 1799) showed that even the middle classes were fully capable of separating heads from shoulders.  And all this started curiously enough as a tax revolt.   President Obama of course faces the same situation.  A government gravely in debt and a cabinet full of career bureaucrats that significantly raised spending, bear interesting similarities to 1789 France.   Soon, the US public’s mood could emerge just as foul.

Over spending and the associated borrowing inevitably leads to rapid, even hyper inflation.  This is the worst of all possible tax increases as inflation raises costs of essential goods and services to the poor and middle classes.  Inflation is a government tax because it is directly tied to government overspending and over-borrowing.   Stop borrowing and printing money and inflation will subside.  When Obama tells the country that He is giving a middle class tax cut, His statement is simply untrue.

As you head to your state capitol grounds or wherever your nearest Tea Party is scheduled to take place, keep in mind that although you might be new to the protest game, there is much to do and see.  Most of it is reasonably fun.  Should you have difficulty enjoying your Tea Party or if you are apprehensive about what will happen, here are ten suggestions to improve the day and bring people together in the spirit of protest.

10.  Roll late-season snowman sized snowballs in front of news reporters’ vehicles.  Journalists hate to work and denying their transportation to the press club bar means they will have to take a look at what is going on around them. 

9.  Find the infiltrator –  Obama’s brown shirts will be in the crowd.  Huffington Post and ACORN members will be the President’s eyes and ears and mischief makers.  One can usually tell an ACORN member by smell.  When one goes without showering for multiple days, one tends to stand out in a crowd.

8.  Look for the best opposition sign – then laugh (Remember the counsel of Ann Coulter… you can’t reason with these people so spin them into a lather and they’ll make fools of themselves) Laughter is the thing liberals really hate.  They can blame you for anything, but laugh at them and they come unglued.

7.  Find the MSNBC reporter – this could be a challenge.  MSNBC’s ratings  are so low that they may have to subcontract reporting duties to a local high school student.  The student will have endured years of oppression at the hands of the teachers unions, so treat her/him gently.

6.  Try to find the Governor – most Tea Parties are to be held on state capitol grounds.  Wave to the governor from where you are.  If your state is run by a Democrat, wave anyway, but understand that your Guv will probably be in Vegas.

5.  Nod your head ‘yes’ and smile when onlookers drive by and gawk – You need to appear confident.  Drive by types will be surprised though.  You will be the first protester they have ever seen that has washed his hair this decade. 

4.  Explain that Inflation is a Tax Increase!   - Obama will argue that he gave the middle classes a tax cut.  The tax cut he provided will be eaten up in two weeks on the inflation driven grocery bill.  And we won’t even talk about fuel prices. 

3.  Wear a Marie Antoinette wig – Liberals won’t get this right away.  Only when they are in their bunk beds at the youth hostel will it dawn on them that you were making fun of the last French Queen who lost her hair as well as what it was attached to.

2.  Take a big cake – Lefties probably won’t get this either.  But keep shouting to them “let them eat cake!”  Then point to your Marie Antoinette wig.

1. Wear red white and blue ribbon.  The tricolor was born during the French revolution.  Obama and Democrats would do well to remember that when government extorts wealth that it doesn’t create, the people tend to dislike it – and yes, even intensely.  They occasionally revolt over it.

As April 15 draws near, organizers have scheduled Tea Party tax protest events in over 360 cities nationwide.  National media is attempting to schedule a natural disaster of some sort to provide an excuse to avoid covering a conservative, anti-taxation protest.

Covering an anti-tax movement is unfamiliar territory for most in the media.  While journalists typically lean left in their coverage of political events, protests are events that they can’t seem to stay away from.  The key to longer term success is to compel the journalistic community to cover the Tea Party honestly and provide an opportunity to get the anti-taxation message out.  As local Tea Party organizers (read: real community organizers) prepare, a few points and warnings must be provided to all participants.

1.     Make sure you attend.  Journalists are big on making events seem larger or smaller depending upon the nature of the event.  Bob Beckel, a long-time liberal stalwart and news commentator said yesterday that he didn’t believe there would be much of a turn out.  Lefties don’t believe conservatives have the time to show up. (As most conservatives are employed, this is frequently true.)

2.    Bring a sign.  Thoughtful quips and bumper sticker-type quotes are useful, but also provide the kind of short message journalists are capable of understanding.

3.    Beware of ‘plants’ in the crowd that will attempt to keep the event off-message or cause some type of trouble.  Be advised that the Huffington Post – among other organizations – is recruiting volunteers to infiltrate the event.

4.    Seek out the television cameras!  The lefties have no problem with this.  Tea Party participants shouldn’t be bashful either.  Engage with interviewers as they will be seeking out the least informed put on camera.  If you are prepared, get in front of the camera!  Besides, going to them makes the journalists’ job easier and we all know that journalists enjoy easy work.

5.    Remember that Obama isn’t giving the middle class a tax cut.  2010 will see a huge middle class tax increase. INFLATION IS A TAX INCREASE!   Barack Obama and Democrats have chosen the strategy of massive spending increases that they cannot possibly pay for either through taxation or by borrowing.  In 2010, when they resort to printing the money they will need for the Stimulus package and Budget bills, your dollar will be worth less on a day by day basis.  LBJ invented inflation as a way to pay for the Vietnam War without a direct tax increase.  Obama is following this well-worn and disastrous path.  Democrats should be called on it.  Inflation will hurt the poor and middle classes the most.

The Reagan Revolution was enabled by the Presidency of Jimmy Carter, but many trace the actual beginning of the modern conservative movement to 1978.  In California that year, an little-known Orange County businessman named Howard Jarvis organized Proposition 13 – a measure to cut California property taxes by some 57%.   The liberal California media of course did its best to kill the initiative, but Prop 13 went on to pass and become the flagship of citizen’s movements to restrict government’s ability to extort citizen’s wealth via taxation.  It ignited a nationwide tax revolt.

This year, the Tea Party may be conservatives’ best opportunity to initiate another tax revolt.