Mad Hatter's Day

Mad Hatter: Would you like a little more tea?
Alice: Well, I haven't had any yet, so I can't very well take more.
March Hare: Ah, you mean you can't very well take less.
Mad Hatter: Yes. You can always take more than nothing.

From what I can tell, the national tea party was weak Earl Gray indeed. The crowd at Boston's tea party was 7,000, equal to 46 percent of Boston's population. The crowd at Boston's teabagger's confederation of fools was 500, equal to 0.08 percent of Boston. Some estimates put the count at 100 plus fifty onlookers-- or 20 sign waving folks and five onlookers after the Fox reporters left. This movement isn't going anywhere. They were your usual collection of kooks and clowns, flat taxers and flat earthers-- a conservative mirror of the Grant Park yippie parties of 1968.

I must admit I'm not totally getting this Alice in Wonderland tea soaked gala. Did suddenly Republicans finally decide that deficits did matter? Did those same Republicans believe that the big banks should fail? It's actually none of that, and Jesse Taylor nails the reason.

Tea Partiers are hoping that if they mimic the energy of anti-war protests and the savvy of Obama’s new media operation, that at some point an actual movement will spawn. Getting together a bunch of pissed off middle-aged white people with no clue about how the tax system works in public areas will generate a coherent agenda designed to combat the stimulus; if it gets enough media coverage, they will DOMINATE THE AGENDA.

It’s like taping a horn to a horse and waiting for it to alight on a magic cloud of stardust and pixies.