Irony is teabagging us.

About 600 people gathered for a Tea Party protest in Monterey yesterday. I'm surprised by how many people are gathering around this idea. Fivethirtyeight.com gave a list of estimates compiled from police, reporters, and other non-protesters that added up to about 111,899 across the country. The numbers of people turning out aren't huge (less than 0.33% of the population?), but I'm surprised none the less. I have been reading about this for a while and it originally came across as laughable joke put forth by conservative pundits. It got a little more outrageous when it came out that this "sudden" uproar of popular protest against Obama's spending was actually planned by conservatives two months before the election was even decided, it was unconscionable, but ridiculous. I expected to see a few protests sparsely populated with angry, inarticulate citizens with more outrage than information.

I had a brief conversation with a client about the Teabaggers (there aren't many clients I can have political conversations with). I was disappointed to hear her say something to the effective of "If I wasn't so busy, you might see me out there with the Tea Party." I was respectful, but didn't hesitate to tell her how misguided I think those people are. My simplest explanation is that these are otherwise well-intentioned people gathering around an idea that is falsely labeled as a grassroots movement and making arguments against Obama's spending for the benefit of the GOP. She argued the issue went across party lines and the fight is against irresponsible government spending, bailouts and excessive taxation, not against Democrats or Republicans.

I agree that our tax policy is worth protesting and the problem is systemic, not partisan, but the notion of a movement against Obama for doing something that Bush, Clinton, Bush I, and Reagan all did before him without condemning them in all is asinine. For this reason most Teabaggers should be giving a heart felt apology for voting Republican.

Worse still, she suggested that I check on her claim that the Teabaggers are non-partisan by watching reports Fox News. Without missing a beat I told her to stop watching Fox News like she was a child I just caught eating her own boogers. I spent the next few minutes explaining why Fox News is the antithesis of journalism, and not too far behind it is the rest of mainstream media. ...but that's a blog of it's own. Five'll get ya ten that she went home and watched the Factor.

At heart I think those people are just pissed off. And they should be. They should be pissed off that they got tricked by the rich neo-cons who fuck them over into being leverage over the guy who is most likely to help them.