so who exactly is paying for all this tea?

I have to think there are people everywhere who will try to make things happened. I know that people are generally in it for themselves but I really laugh when i see this Tea Party movement

Now I applaud the concept, the organization of it and the way they are trying to keep people accountable. Honestly a lot of what is on their platform resonates with the public and most people agree with the concept of no corporate bailouts, weeding out corruption and even the Reaganomics theory of smaller government but what gets me is who the actual Tea-Partiers are..

The Times had an extensive piece on them recently where they interviewed a bunch of guys at rallies across the country who were up-in-arms with the fact that the Banks, the car companies and the Insurance companies were getting bailouts, handouts and sweetheart deals. The article gave a good cross-section of the people who identified themselves with the TeaParty movement and the cross-section of people was fascinating. Obviously many were white and older although there were a lot of younger people, a scattering of minorities and at least a representation of people who would identify themselves as liberal. The head of one of the initial movements is some chick with crazy tattoos and a nose ring,

But one other identifying characteristic stuck out. There were many people out of work which with 10% unemployment doesn't seem out of the ordinary especially since those unemployed may have more time on their hands and feel the most disenfranchised. But what struck me was how man people were depending on government assistance and how nobody saw that as even slightly ironic.

This is a movement of people who talk about accountability, personal responsibility and minimum government interference yet the amount of people 'benefiting' from extended unemployment benefits, food stamps and other government assistance was staggering. I won't even go into the over 65 year old crazies who bitched about government takeover of healthcare while they themselves receive Medicare. As you can imagine nobody they interviewed saw the irony in this.

See it goes back to the old concept of people bitching about their neighbors yard while their own house isn't in order.

There are tons of radio commercials villifying the greedy banks taking bailouts and then ask the rhetorical question "where is the bailout for the regular people?". Then they go on to describe ways to cut your credit-card payments in half, or find ways to avoid paying them all together. So a bailout for a greedy bank is bad but when the bailout happens for a guy who put $30,000 on his Visa for a vacation to the bahamas that should be taken care of..

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