WHAT IF THEY GAVE A TEA BAG PARTY AND NO ONE CAME (PUN INTENDED)

Not much time to post this morning. Interestingly (or not), on this two year anniversary of my starting date at my "new" firm, I have a presentation to conduct this morning, and I have to get my ass into work earlier than usual. Cool stuff actually, but no time to crank out a full-blown post.

That said, the Cunning Realist has a post this morning that perfectly encapsulates how I feel about the whole tea bagging phenomenon.

{Snicker & giggle break. You got it all out of your systems? Ok, me too. Now back to it}

I have more than a little sympathy -- in theory -- for protests against taxes & wasteful spending, let alone the unconscionable bailouts. I also like to see someone, anyone, holding His Holiness' feet to the fire a bit. That's democracy in action, and I dig it.

But as the Cunning Realist so accurately points out, where the fuck were these people the last 8 years?!?! And why the hell should we listen to a word they're saying now? When even the least cynical among us knows its just a rotten, GOP political stunt, all about electioneering, with nothing to do with any forward-looking policy.

I guess I hope the tea baggers keep doing what they're doing, but deep down I wish a real protest movement started to form. And as long as these Soldiers-of-Newt keep dominating the headlines with their latest grandstanding version of "America, Fuck Yeah," won't that just block the light of the sun from shining on what's really going on? On who's really running the show? What needs to be done to fix a rotten-to-the-core systemic problem?

I assume the crowd here will be pretty heavily anti-tea bagging (and I will stop snickering about that in . . . ohhhh, let's say 3 years), but I'd love to hear folks' thoughts beyond the usual Olbermann-Maddow out-of-hand dismissiveness.