I’ve been unable to post for a few days , due to hectic travel and difficulty figuring out how to embed links to the site using my iPad (which is all I had with me on the road), because for some reason the editing options for WordPress sites are different on the iPad than a regular computer.

Anyway, home now and lots of things to mention, in case you haven’t seen them:

In evaluating the Tea Party phenomenon, those of us who insist white racial resentment is at the heart of the movement are often attacked for besmirching the high minded, non-racial motivations of those who identify with this insurgency. So, for instance, we are told that the real concerns of the TP are: deficit spending and big government. Prejudice and bigotry have no part in their efforts, or so we’re told.

And yet, if this were true, the conservatives in the Tea Party would have been screaming at George W. Bush when he was president (and certainly wouldn’t have voted for his re-election, since he eliminated the government surplus that had been created in the Clinton years). They would have called for the resignation of Dick Cheney for saying, famously, that “deficits don’t matter.” They would have supported Al Gore in 2000, since he was a member of the surplus-creating Clinton Administration. They would detest, rather than revere, the legacy of the Reagan years, which boosted the deficit and debt to before-then unheard of proportions.

And surely they wouldn’t support candidates who claim to oppose deficits but routinely live in debt, without concern about the internal inconsistency. To wit, Alaska TP favorite Joe Miller, who has run up immense personal debt, despite his insistence that the country must live within its means.

As for the TP’ers claimed “love” for the Constitution (and thus, their insistence that they are merely wanting to return to its principles), key TP backed candidates are remarkably dedicated to altering it, apparently not at all thrilled about some of its stipulations.

And speaking of Miller, he also proves how little the TP movement is really about opposing government intervention in the economy, or health care (at least if the aid is to people like themselves). Thus, Miller has been forced to acknowledge that he has personally benefitted from government health care as well as other government programs. That his supporters continue to reward him with loyalty, despite his hypocrisy suggests that it isn’t government aid that bothers them, so much as concern that the “wrong people” might receive that aid. In addition to health care benefits paid for by government, Miller has also “previously acknowledged receiving federal farm subsidies for land he owned in Kansas in the 1990s, as well as low-income hunting and fishing licenses for him and his wife in Alaska.”

Meanwhile, while there is little evidence the TP candidates really stand for fiscal responsibility, or even a principled opposition to government spending, there is plenty in the past week to suggest that bigotry and prejudice (racial and religious) is what steers their ship. And so, we have Sharron Angle attacking Harry Reid for being an “illegal alien’s best friend,” and running an ad featuring presumably scary looking Mexican immigrants (who, turns out, are actually Mexicans living in Mexico), whom Louisiana Senator David Vitter also featured in an equally xenophobic ad of his own.

And to demonstrate that her bigotry isn’t limited to Mexican folk, Angle fabricated a story about Sharia Law taking root in American cities, so as to scare up anti-Muslim hysteria. Specifically, she singled out Dearborn, Michigan, which has the largest per capita population of Arab Americans, Muslim or not, in the U.S. On a side note, I was in Dearborn this past week. Strangely, the only law enforcement officers I saw were white cops. No Taliban. No Caliphate. In short, Sharron Angle is full of crap. But anyone with sense already knew that I suppose.