Back in Germany and been thinking...

I made a mistake in Hawaii. I was sitting in the car and driving around Maui and I thought that maybe it would be interesting to listen to all this famous right wing radio hosts. So I did and on the first one I was greeted with trumpets and an announcement that the host was involved in taking back America from socialism and from there it just went down into the mud never to recover. I noticed myself gripping the steering wheel tighter as they talked about how bad everything was, how the country was disappearing, and so on. Then I remembered something: isn´t a lot of this just the same rhetoric that was present with Clinton. The kind of rhetoric we forget about because it never got beyond rhetoric, it never reached any kind of substance.

That brings me to the Tea Party. I just finished reading this article in the New York Times. I also watched some of the highlights from the convention they had. Its a conspiracy theorists playground. All the aluminum foil hat kids are there. They keep talking about the government being unconstitutional, about it taking away their liberties, etc. I didn´t see any of that in the US. Don´t get me wrong. There are plenty of things the government does that I don´t agree with. That is why I vote. I also think highly of these people for caring. I only wish they were informed. I wish they knew what they were talking about. I wish they had facts. I wish they weren´t just all white (I am sure there are minorities there as well but that is not the face I am seeing, or the one they are presenting). I wish they could present some kind of interesting arguments for the things they stand for. They don´t. They are about fear and anger; fear of their own fantasies and anger about things they chose not to understand.

When the Tea Party has something of substance to say it will be interesting to hear it. Until then they are just another right wing movement that honestly won´t be anything different than the republican party we have now. Congrats on renaming yourselves.

Joe Klein making an incredible point about the Queen of the movement.

To quote someone I much respect about her: "She´s just an embarrassment."

Sweden took their first Gold in Vancouver. Congrats to Charlotte Kalla and she deserved it.

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