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May 21, 2010

Republican Rand Paul: teabag douchebag

Rand Paul, the darling of Kentucky teabaggers, thinks that President Obama's handling of the ongoing oil spillage environmental disaster (courtesy of BP, Halliburton, et al) is un-American.

"What I don't like from the president's administration is this sort of, 'I'll put my boot heel on the throat of BP,'" Paul said in an interview with ABC's "Good Morning America." "I think that sounds really un-American in his criticism of business."

It's tempting to proffer Mr. Paul the defense of ignorance or perhaps stupidity. After all, the tea dumped into the Boston Harbor 237 years ago wasn't owned by the British. It was the wholly-owned product of a business (some sold to other middleman businesses before being sent on), traveling on privately owned, for-profit ships and consigned to local American business interests for their profit. Indeed, even WITH the tax the tea was being sold for slightly less than that brought in by smugglers.

In fact the British East India Tea Company, who were the ultimate importers of the tea, had unsuccessfully lobbied the British government to end the very tax which incited the "Tea Partiers" to commit the famous act of economic sabotage we all know as the Boston Tea Party. Which of course is the rhetorical meme today's teabagging douchebags have attempted to coopt - hence their self-chosen, faux patriotic "tea party" label.

There is simply no way around the fact that the Boston Tea Party was an act of economic sabotage which directly and materially damaged the financial interests of a whole range of business interests, both foreign and domestic.

I say "tempting" only because I want to be embarassed for such an appalling disconnect with reality. But I don't for a second believe that Mr. Paul is niave. It's the brainwashed teabagger rank and file supporting him who are niave... to the point of sheer stupidity if they tolerate such rank demagoguery.

Meanwhile, citizens on the Gulf coast are becoming increasingly outraged in part with BP.

One is left to scratch his head in disgusted wonder at the irony of a "Republican" politician all too predictably siding with businesses over the citizenry, given the infamous rephrasing of the very point of this thing we call America by the great Republican President Abraham Lincoln - "government of the people, by the people and for the people."

Posted by Kevin at May 21, 2010 12:15 PM