Don’t you just love it when a political figure opens up his or her mouth and out comes STUPID?
Unfortunately, the blubbering of absolute absurdity happens on the left AND the right, but former DNC chairman Howard Dean, appearing this week on ‘Face the Nation’, barfed up something so ridiculous it spawned many Google searches on my part.
In discussing this nation’s debt crisis, Dean joined John Kerry, Charlie Rangel and even John McCain to some extent, in throwing the Tea Party Conservatives under the proverbial bus, blaming them for the inability to reach better deal on the debt ceiling. Dean’s comment went a little somethin’ like this:
“I think this is [the] Tea Party’s problem. I think they’re totally unreasonable and doctrinaire and not founded in reality. I think they’ve been smoking some of that tea, not just drinking it,” Dean said …
Smoking tea … Well, call me sheltered (and not many do …) but I certainly hadn’t heard of any such thing … Smoking tea? Do people do that?
And if they do, what kind?
Lipton? Nestea? Celestial Seasonings? Herbal? Green tea? Will a Target generic brand suffice? I just had to find out exactly what would happen if one did actually fire up a tea doobie instead of steeping and drinking tea (I’m a journalist … don’t knock me for being curious.).
Google is amazing, right? Thanks to the internet gods who go above and beyond the standard Wikipedia link, I found many wannabe stoners asked the same question.
Unfortunately for Dean, and those looking for a black-tea buzz, it doesn’t look like smoking tea really does anything to ya (but do we really get sound medical advice online? DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME!).
Google could be wrong (GASP!) but smoking tea is said to have a calming effect, does not cause any type of hallucinations or ideas of political grandeur or destruction. It really doesn’t do much of anything.
Don’t you just love it? Now we’re smoking tea. … Let’s not forget last week, we were counted as terrorists, zombies, vampires, monsters and… addicts. The never eloquent, always full of hot air John Kerry furthered the likening of the Tea Party to terrorists by saying on Sunday:
“There were some people in the Republican Party — and (Senate Republican leader) Mitch McConnell even admitted this — who wanted to default. He said there were people in this party who are willing to shoot the hostage. In the end they found the hostage was worth ransoming. This is not about ransom, this is about our nation,” Kerry said.
I’d argue – and win – that we, the Tea Party and those who believe in the Constitution of this country – are being held hostage. We’re bound by a government who wants to put bags over our heads, tie our hands and put us in the darkest, dankest room so our cries of outrage and FEAR for the direction we are heading won’t be heard.
Even Senator John McCain, who basically came out in a rant against the Tea Party early last week (He called us hobbits. And basically, hobbits are cool except for the big, hairy feet), ran to apply a small adhesive strip (is that right, Band-Aid brand police?) in a minor way when he followed Kerry on ‘Meet The Press’ said Kerry’s comments do not promote solidarity, stating this is what our country needed right now.
“Talking about hostages? Lately the Democrats have been calling us terrorists. So, we need to lower that level of rhetoric obviously,” McCain said.
Thank you, Mr. McCain, but Kerry said it for that reason alone. He doesn’t want solidarity on our side. In fact, he doesn’t want solidarity between the right and left. He wants mayhem. He wants turmoil and he wants those who believe what we strongly advocate to be taken captive and rendered defenseless by the left’s mighty media machine.
This current government wants nothing more than to continue to attack us, beat us down and try to crush our spirit through harsh words, underhanded, unfair tactics and absolutely brutal psychological warfare used to turn our friends, neighbors and even family members against us.
This is not paranoia on our part. It is us, seeing what’s happening in this country all around us and being ready and aware. Those in our movement are committed to seeing the truth and working towards making definite and decisive change. Don’t believe it? We saw it in the last election and our plan is to continue to break the hold our government tries to have over our voices and actions. We will be heard.
We will not be silenced and we will not have our hands and feet tied. Action is our battle plan and change is our ultimate goal. To have a little fun mixing metaphors … we’ve let the crazies run the asylum too long … We’re taking it back and whipping it into shape.
So while I know my fellow tea partiers and I are by no means smoking the tea most enjoy drinking hot/cold/with/without sugar … I’ll just throw it out there, GOOGLE mentions lighting up a little Jasmine tea does have a super-calming effect … and I seem to recall, my left-minded frenemies, it doesn’t count if you don’t inhale.
Smoke ’em if ya got ’em.