I first heard of the Koch (sounds like Coke) Family in 1959. I had enrolled at the University of Kansas in Lawrence, Kansas on a football scholarship. Back then wealth and big farms seemed to impress the local Kansans I met I guess because big money and coming from it impressed most all young humans back then. Most of the men and women were corn fed and wanting to get away from the farm by striking it rich in the big city (like New York, or maybe even Kansas City or Topeka). Now too. The Koch Brothers from Wichita had to be the richest family in the whole state. And they were in the oil bidness! And that was even before Ethanol, too.
Those days were before Bill Gates and his Microsoft juggernaut would revolutionize the world. With the advent of Windows, computers became affordable and necessary for half the humans on the planet to own, conduct business, and for corporations to shed the massive hardware systems that used to be called mainframes. And for students and households to use to solve their problems of everyday living, finance, instant information at a touch. But wait. The innovations of Gates and his Microsoft team would come later. We are talking about before the easy and magic money of magnetic impulses recorded on hard drives came along. Before the computer and software explosion that was Apple and Microsoft and the trickier “Dot Coms”, where, to make a million, you had to lie, cheat and steal with the best of them. If you were unable to inherit wealth, you had to, like any other respectable family or group of outlaws, cut corners and make deals if you were going to get rich. The Rothschild’s with their banking schemes that covered the world like an octopus for over a century by the time, and the Rockefeller’s and Pennsylvania Mellons with centuries of banking and oil, the Kennedys (who made a fortune bootlegging whiskey during Prohibition), or Prescott Bush and his “married-into-families” arrangements with the Harriman’s, the Walkers, the Herbert’s, and Brown’s from St. Louis) became rich by directing the sale of steel to Hitler (thanks to Fritz Theissen, German citizen and the richest man in Europe in the 1930s). Until FDR slapped a cease and desist order on his ass. When our allies were being overrun by Hitler and his Blitzkrieg armies. FDR cared more about England and other persecuted peoples than he did for Prescott, but then who could say?
But comes now the Koch’s and their new invention the Tea Party that even they don’t what it is. They just wanted to spend a few billion dollars, create a new political party, and later they just might decide what it is or who the members actually could be. But if it is to have Sarah Palin as the keynote speaker at the Tea Party National Convention in Nashville, that, alone, says a jaw full. It’ll be a tough sale but crikey, she’s got a nice smile and legs, and that couldn’t hoit. No one will notice that she meanders around questions before refusing to answer them.
I must take care to resist the temptation to be kind to the Tea Baggers no matter how silly-ass they sound and act. Why? Because, for openers, they are mentally challenged. Yet last November America decided that these notorious conservative factions to be its choice in government and leaders. Go figure, indeed.
Ironically, I had been just reading about the Koch family a week before the elections in order to get a little more perspective on that force that notoriously purchases votes and voters, dresses them as members of Astroturf groups and companies dedicated to such issues as saving grandma from an early death. Something Obama said that sent the Tea Baggers into a deep-spiraling blue funk.
Like a dog with a bone they wagged the misconception that Obama said old people could just go to an early grave instead of using up federal dollars to pay for their last illness on the earth. Did you ever? He wanted to kill grandma! So the Democrats were branded as a party who would let old people slip away to the unknown, cross the bar, without care or attention in their final days and months. Preposterous? Of course. But the Baggers latched onto the stretch to ingratiate Obama and never missed a step. Millions were injected into this anti-Obama diatribe in the various media. They swore that Obama had said that we needed to just let grandma die if she became too old and expensive for government to care for. So did Obama say that? No. Was he quoted wrong? Of course. Get this one. I still find it hard to believe, but it was caught on camera. Thousands of Tea Party demonstrators paraded about Washington, D.C. holding signs on sticks that said: “No Youth in Asia. It will kill your grandma.” Do you love it? Can you believe anything so dumbass?
http://politicalhumor.about.com/library/bl-tea-party-signs.htm?PS=657%3A58&x=251&y=251
Did the Tea Baggers mean, “Euthanasia?” Oh well. Does it matter?
Tea Baggers seem to know less about politics, how our government works, and history than an almost run-over Texas road lizard that got his toes pinched by a speeding Honda motor bike when he tried to run across the road. The Tea Bagger’s task is simple: to project an image of God-fearing, flag-waving, Americans who are focused on the right stuff. Like grass roots. God and country, boy howdy. But when questioned by newscasters with cameras they will tell you straight out that our founding fathers founded this country right as God-fearing Christians. Guess somebody should have told the Tea Baggers that Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin, and James Madison were all Deists. Duh. Like how many armadillos does it take to make a stew? Actually, they can’t cook (wink*).
The Tea Party was the brain child of the Koch Brothers. It was a lame attempt to lure America away from its Republican roots. I have spoken to Democrat political consultants who have joined forces with Republicans who worked hard to excise the bloody Tea Party from the political stage. The biggest fear on both sides of the aisle is the terminal dumbass the Baggers exhibit about our system of government and what is right and wrong for Americans. The fear is that they could break a lot of glass, big time.
Tea Baggers contend that Democrats and Liberals and other freeloaders need to be excised from the human race, not to mention DC. The gist of the Tea Party doctrine was and is that Republicans were too weak to do the job. So ditto for them. Tea Baggers proclaimed themselves to be Turbo-Conservatives, Republicans on steroids, so to speak.
However stupid they seemed, the newly-formed Tea Party did manage to turn out some votes that unseated some of the GOP candidates running for office on national and local tickets throughout America. It’s true. But the Tea Baggers knew little about the issues and about government. They had a pretty good run of it all, but then they faltered. The darling of the Tea Party, Sarah Palin, I suspect was a bit too much to swallow as a credible human being and viable candidate. Her problem? Simple. She made George W. Bush and his 92 IQ look like Albert Einstein.
Now as the Tea Party fades away (from my lips to God’s ears, please) and the GOP retakes many of the seats in government that were taken out by a silliness and ineffectiveness unequaled in the annals of history maybe we can redeem ourselves and act like sane caretakers of the public trust. It became a slippery slope. Whoever dared to extol Sarah Palin as a serious candidate for high office became suspect. McCain for his giddy selection of Palin as his running mate in 2004 became a serious screw-up. And it scared America that the GOP would seriously run Palin for the Vice Presidency of the United States. She had ties to the Tea Party, sure, but the GOP had America scratching its head in remorse that John McCain would tag her for his running mate. America had to think that McCain was running on his rims. And coo-coo for Koko Puffs. That was the beginning of the end. Even the billions of dollars availed to the GOP/Tea Baggers was not enough to overcome the bad taste in the mouths of voters. Many Republicans and Tea Baggers alike were crushed that Obama won a second term. Many of the conservative voters thought that it was because Palin had been (stupidly) placed on the ticket. So when Romney ran against Obama the second time around for the White House Romney ears were boxed good.
Palin worked her charm just swell, but the short take on the Tea Party is that they were all hat and no cattle. Too much belt buckle and eat up with the terminal dumbass. They knew little to nothing about history or our needs as a collective people. Like in helping people with medicine, healthcare, college expenses, and the opportunity for all Americans to earn a good living at a good job. The Tea Party abhors those on welfare, and any other lower rungs of the food chain here in our great country. Backed by the father and son, Ron Paul and Rand Paul, they give notoriety to the Tea Party by shaming people on taking welfare and government help. Yet you won’t see them blasting Raytheon for their pricey charge to us taxpayers for Tomahawk Missiles at 1.6 million dollars apiece. Or the feeding frenzies of the Military Industrial Complex war corporations like Halliburton during periods of war and lies where we need to cleanse and occupy countries that hate us (you know the drill that opens the money spigot). All off budget, of course, and well into the trillions of dollars to give them the old “shock and awe” treatment. And Blackwater a billion dollars in cash for their first year of service as mercenary soldiers of fortune for Bush. And you won’t see Ron and Rand Paul writing legislation for limiting funding for illegal soldiers at 5 times the price of one of our legitimate uniformed soldiers to fight in Iraq. Makes you wonder how they can be silent in lieu of sins and waste of government at the top while slam-dunking the poor on welfare with their tasteless “cradle-to-grave” rhetoric. How can the Paul’s shame the poor by telling them to suck it up and forget the notion that the government will provide for you from cradle to grave? How can they keep a straight face while shaming the poor when, at best, they overlook the real drain on our Treasury for starting wars based upon falsehoods our leaders told us about Iraq pointing WMDs at American cities?
Am I the only person who sees that exercise as an insult and an affront to human dignity? Must we assume that all Americans deserve little or no help from government? When government is always about serving its own interests first, their pensions, their supporters and cash cow contributors to help them get reelected? Is government about voting NO on raising the minimum wage on every roll call vote in the history of the House? Dr. NO (Ron Paul) should address that instead of ridiculing people who really DO NOT expect to be sponsored from cradle to grave, but who just want a fair shake, a fair chance to go to college and make something of themselves like father and son were fortunate enough to be able to do in both becoming doctors. And then Congressmen. Each of them should they quit their day jobs right now will be favored with the best healthcare system our tax dollars can buy, beginning right now, the day they leave office. With paid other benefits that will amount to big bucks for the rest of their lives in retirement wages. And health coverage fully paid for. And you don’t need spend 30 years on Capitol Hill to get it. Just get out of Congress, leave DC and apply. And begin spending your allowance bucks for setting up such an unfair and lopsided system (voted for by them) in the first place. I guess you could say if both quit tomorrow, they would have government aide and support from Capitol to grave. Cradle to grave seems less ominous, less sinister since they are the very ones who vote themselves the perks they would never give to the common man here in America. That’s the bigger shame. Hey, isn’t government supposed to exist for the people? Or has it become a cash cow for personal gain by the people who control the purse and can legally vote themselves oceans of money?
Starting a new movement, a party to contend with, and a third party they could mold into something of their own personal liking lost its luster. Perhaps no one will ever know what the Koch’s intended, but it was not grass roots people in a grass roots America, you can rest assured. The Koch Brothers bought and paid for hotel rooms, bus and airplane fares to many cities where demonstrations against all political parties would occur. They demonstrated in Pennsylvania, Washington, D.C., and attended the Tea Party National Convention in Nashville to see the keynote speaker, Sarah Palin, deliver her keynote address. And yes, their $250 a plate dinners and admission tickets of $250.00 were bought and paid for too (some grass roots demonstration, what?) by guess who? The Tea Party projected a real America with none of the bureaucratic trappings where everyone worked for the common good, did not take from the government in trivial entitlement programs like education, welfare, Social Security, Medicare and food stamps. Down the road, Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid would become easier targets to destroy if the people, the masses bought into the Tea Party and its messages and hidden agenda. Did the funding behind its birth truly intend for things to evolve this way? Was this a part of the New World Order that Poppy Bush prophesied? In any case, our people programs supported by government were to come into harm’s way of the Neocon Knife while the Tea Party, and of course the Koch’s, and Sean Hannity, Limbaugh, and O’Reilly kept the pressure on to cut social programs that really hurt people and condemn their kids to an education always out of reach.
The Neocons and other forms of Tea Party madness prevailed in last November’s election. And already the Tea Party has whipped out their scalpels and long knives to cut and hack away at Social Security benefits. http://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-mh-on-day-onel-new-congress-launches-attack-on-social-security-20150106-column.html