The Only Coffee Guaranteed To Help You Sleep

I’ll admit it:  my fascination with the Coffee Party is a little aberrant. 

Maybe it’s petty, too.  Picking on them is fun. 

Hopefully, my indulgent behavior also provides a public service.  Plenty folks out there don’t know MoveOn.org from PajamasMedia.com, nor Tea Party from Coffee Party from The Rent Is Too Damn High Party.  Perhaps a few of those folks will stumble onto my blog after googling for Coffee Party information.

(By the way.  You totally have to follow the Rent Party link for the theme song that automatically plays.)

Ah, the Coffee Party.  Bless ‘em.  It’s in my nature to give people the benefit of the doubt.  So, most Coffee Party folks are probably sincere about what they peddle:  transpartisanship, common ground, independence from party politics, positive solutions and all the other kumbaya nonsense in their Mission Statement.

This thick gloss of “nonpartisanship” will inevitably appeal to some of the voters who label themselves independents.  These voters may in reality be centrist, even right-centrist, but if they are a product of modern public brainwashing schooling, they may not notice the hard left, typical Marxist, class-hating rhetoric beneath the gloss.  Plus, the Coffee Party crew has that whole civility vibe working for ‘em.  They are so civil that they had a Civility Pledge before Jared Loughner’s awful shooting spree.  Of course, there is some indication that the Coffee Party is (gasp!) not really so inclusive after all, but let’s not get into that.

Then why bring them up again?  Duh.  Because picking on them is fun. 

All that bipartisanship, civility and inclusiveness sounds sweet, but it’s really just boring.  Yawn city.  No matter how hard Annabel Park and the gang work, this endeavor will fail for the simple reason that they put their potential audience to sleep. 

Case in point:  their Vol. 1, No. 7 newsletter.  The whole thing is dozy, but the ”Inaugural Report from the Coffee Party 2.0 Transition Team” really takes the cake, assuming that cake was made with crushed Ambien mixed in the batter.

Ready for some sleep, dear reader?

”Coffee Party USA Board of Directors – Annabel Park (president), Chris Rigopulos (treasurer) and Bruce Hoffman – charged the newly-formed Coffee Party 2.0 Transition Team (TT) with the task of establishing the following: set up a process to select a permanent Board of Directors; set up internal committees and processes to manage ongoing business; hire management and administration personnel to perform member services duties; provide process for organizer training; and design a process to communicate effectively with, and integrate the input of, members at large at various levels. The timeline is set for the Transition Team is to achieve its tasks by July 1, 2011, the beginning of our next fiscal year. The goal is to disband by July 31, 2011, once the permanent Board of Directors is put into place and given proper orientation. The deadline is not a legal mandate but rather self-imposed so that the team can deliberate and come to conclusions in an expeditious manner.”

Whew.  That’s a lot of establishing and processing and managing and integrating and administering.  Dilbert’s pointy-headed boss would be proud.  And that’s just the first paragraph.  Read the whole thing if you have insomnia at bedtime.

This newsletter is their best effort at promoting a supposedly vibrant, grassroots organization, and the contents are so dry and devoid of all grassrooty-ness that it’s comical.  The best visual in the whole thing is a picture of a talking elevator.  Cuz, you know, nothin’ says GOTV like a . . . talking elevator . . . .

A recent WORM post comes to mind, about Talkers v. Doers.  The Coffee Party is a perfect example of When Talkers Think They Are Doers.  The WORM laments the fact that “the Doers let the Talkers take over the Doings,” and posits that “this is the thing that actually brings down Western Civilization.”

Well, yeah.

But sod the doom and gloom.  I choose to laugh at the Dilberts.  If I don’t laugh, then I’ll cry.

I’m A Little Nosy Part 2

Ever since the Coffee Party burst onto the scene in March of ’10, I’ve been on their email list.  Now, we don’t hear much about them anymore.  Professor Jacobsen over at Legal Insurrection noted the movement’s decline back in August.

Yet, the Coffee Party is still chugging along in a sleepy fashion, which amuses me since it’s named after such a stimulating beverage.  I still get emails from them, thanks to signing a sheet passed around that fateful first local Coffee Party meeting at Starbucks. 

At first, local participants sent the emails, but that stopped quickly.  Now it’s the typical mass email from headquarters–you know, like the stuff you get from OFA or the RNC.

So I get a little nosy when a new name appears in the “from” box.  (Like the time I got nosy about the name Joshua Norris, listed as the coordinator of a local OFA event.  His Myspace page was . . . interesting.)

This time the new name in the Coffee Party “from” box was Bruce Schuman.  Google produced a few different Bruce Schumans, but I’m pretty sure this is the guy. 

Go ahead, click over.

He’s probably a really nice guy, but I’m not sure I follow his spiritual beliefs.

Oh and hey.  If you ever run out of Lunesta and need a sleep-aid immediately, click here.

UPDATE:  Yeah, I’ve definitely got the correct Bruce Schuman.  He’s written an article at the Coffee Party site about ”transpartisanship.”  You know, because bipartisanship is so ten minutes ago.  What is it with the constant rebranding of all things progressive?

He also started something called Shared Purpose.  Here is the list of groups participating so far.

And check out the info on this kinda mysterious website called Public Intelligence Blog:

Below the line is an email with several links that has been broadcast by and to what we think of as the “thinking man’s kum-ba-ya crowd.”  They have not gotten a grip on public intelligence in the public interest yet, they are still crawling around the edges of structured organization.  Think of them as raw material for GroupOn.  A mix of naivete, scary, and inspiring.  Please also note, as Tom Atlee has emphasized, that CITIZENSHIP makes “transpartisanship” a moot if not a counter-productive term.  The Coffee Party is seriously over-hyped in the material that follows, but the spirit of the note is authentic and merits respect.

Okey-dokey then.

Isn’t There A Saying About This?

Something about doing the same thing over and over, and expecting different results . . .

I know:  it’s the definition of insanity!

Let’s see.

The Coffee Party.

Crash the Tea Party.  (The creator of this silliness lost his job over it, by the way.)

The Tea Party Is Over.  (I liked the original spooky look better, though.)

The Other 95% 98%.  (Also covered in my post here.)

The Teabusters.

The Brownbaggers.

Have I missed anything?  Good grief, I almost forgot that whole F*ck Tea thing.

Here’s the left’s new plan.  They are going to track the Tea Party Movement with a brand new Tea Party Tracker, sponsored by the NAACP and George Soros.

It’s bound to work this time, right?

Of course I perused the site, and followed the link that promises “photos of tea party extremism.”  This link leads to a Flickr group with a pretty daggum unimpressive collection of extremism. 

As of today, tea party types are the more active members of this Flickr group.  While there, I followed a link to a good video response over at Washington is Broke.

Way to go, statists.  With the Tea Party Tracker, you’ve managed to make the left look even sillier, while at the same time providing another place for tea party types to connect with each other.

UPDATE:  The heavens parted, the sun’s rays shone down, and an angel chorus sang:  “Instalanche!”  Thanks, Professor Reynolds.

What is the Coffee Party? Part 2

It’s been awhile since I wrote “What is the Coffee Party.”  Since then, the group sorta blended into the liberal background, until they were no longer individually discernible.  Kind of like Bootstrap Bill on the Flying Dutchman. 

The only notable change to the Coffee Party website is a loss of the “Who’s Online?” feature, which you can see on this old saved page.  It shows you how many guests and members are currently on the page.  Of course, there is only one reason to ditch that feature, and it sure ain’t popularity.

Then in May, I almost posted about the addition of Dale Robertson to the Coffee swill.  If this person has mercifully flown beneath your radar, I hate to break your blissful ignorance.  He’s some unwelcome oddball who unfortunately glommed onto the Tea Party movement. 

The Houston Tea Party Society explains how Robertson bought the rights to as many Tea Party group names as possible in Harris County, Texas, and threatened lawsuit when folks complained.  LoneStarTimes.com quotes the following from Robertson:

“You are no different than a Muslim willing to commit atrocities and feeling that the end justifies the means (Sounds like a Politician – destroying our Nation). I say we should unite to restore The Constitution & families: that is $78,000 per household and give a onetime restoration of a perfect credit score. High taxes and interest are the Financial Demons tools to enslave mankind. Scripture says the beast has 10 heads, when America severs this head we will no longer be possessed.”

Okey-dokey then. 

Perhaps because the Coffee Party founders are phony themselves, they were unable to discern the fact that Dale Robertson is not legitimate Tea Party material.  So he co-wrote an article on their website, “Tea and Coffee – Finding Common Ground On Changing the Political Culture.”

Yep.

But I never got around to posting about that team-up.  Then today, I read the excellent post on Disrupt the Narrative, “Coffee Party” Gets Another Mainstream Media Whitewash. 

Wow!  Hard to believe that a few folks are still trying to summon the Coffee Party into the forefront.  (Kind of like the voice of Miss Swan, summoning Bootstrap out of unconsciousness in the ship’s hull.)

So I figured, what the heck.  I did a few searches on the latest Coffee Party news, and I learned the Coffee Party founder Annabel Park endorses Pete Peterson’s America Speaks project.  I had never heard of this thing, but it seems to make folks mad at Firedoglake.  Huh.

Also, the Craig Daily Press faithfully carries the Coffee Party banner, but notes their local group is struggling.  The Floyd Coffee Party group appears small, but is still active.  They recently met with Congressman Rick Boucher.

That’s about it.  After attending the first Hampton Roads Coffee Party meeting, I received a handful of emails from the local attendees, but they have stopped.  The Coffee Party headquarters sent a more generous number of mass emails my way, but they have petered out too.  Perhaps my email address was dropped because I didn’t respond.

Or perhaps they are blending in with the hull of the Flying Dutchman.

UPDATE:  16 August 2010.  Via Legal Insurrection, news that the Coffee Party Movement has officially died.  How do we know?  They accidentally announced it on their website, with a post entitled, “Reversing the Coffee Party’s decline.”

Whoops.  They took it down once folks took notice, but that clever Prof. Jacobson saved the page for posterity.  Follow his link and have a look. 

Is it wrong to love it when leftists fail?

What is The Other 95%?

First was The Tea Party is Over.org.  (They have freshened up their look by the way.  I did not save the original page but a peek is found here.   Originally stark and mysterious, now all-American, Uncle Sam, and red white & blue.  Huh.)

Then came that caffeine sensation, the Coffee Party, which I discussed in this post. 

Third to hit my radar was Crash the Tea Party.org.  I cannot provide the link because the site is already defunct.  Learn more at dancingczars, who I need to add to my blogroll.

Now we have, drumroll please . . . theother95.com.

What is that, you ask?  To whom does that 95 refer?  Who are the other 5?

Well.

The gimmick stems from the idea that only the rich are suffering tax increases, and everyone else (the other 95% of Americans) are getting tax cuts.  The site now includes a brand new YouTube video.  It’s precious.  The video creators found a poor guy out of the many frustrated, unsophisticated folks in any given Tea Party crowd to act as fall guy for their dog-and-pony show:  “See, they are all angry and extreme and we are moderate, reasonable, and nice.”

NOTE to all Tea Party attendees:  this is an important lesson.  YouTube has a small genre of videos featuring Tea Party folks who are lost for words, mistaken in facts, and worst of all, losing their temper.  Swearing, yelling, the whole bit.  Make sure this YouTube genre remains small.  If you cannot remain calm, please walk away from the situation until you can.

Back to that Other 95.  Erick Erickson inquired on RedState yesterday, whether the Obama Administration itself is behind this new anti-Tea Party Movement (TPM) website.  His reasoning: 

Cass Sunstein had championed creating fake websites and using outside 501(c)(3) interest groups to act as alleged independent champions of government policy and to “cognitively infiltrate” opposition websites.

See, Mr. Sunstein is head of the federal Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs.  And his 2008 idea is to provide information while pretending to be something that you are not. 

Hmm.

I snooped around the Other 95 website awhile.  The site has evolved since this morning.  The little rant about ”the angry and scared members of the radical fringe dominat[ing] the news cycle every night” has been removed from the front page.

The creators of this website are thus far anonymous.  The “About” section does not share who they are.  The question “Who are the Other 95?“  is answered in laughable, unresponsive prose:  “We are teachers, military, doctors, nurses, small business owners, moms and dads, disenfranchised Tea Partiers, we are everywhere and we are hopeful.”

Did you almost gag too?

The section called “The Facts” seems pretty much like a memo straight from Whitehouse.gov.  Emphasis is on Pres. Obama’s tax cuts, which are actually tax credits, by the way.  Uncommon Misconceptions make a great point about the cuts/credits.

You know what?  A Knoxville news blogger recently posted about an astroturf letter to the editor.  When parts of the cut-and-paste letter were googled, the search result included the White House Web site and my.barackobama.com.

Not that the President himself is up late at night, making cut-and-paste letters-to-the-editor for nationwide newspapers.  Chuckle. 

But still, I got to thinking about Mr. Erickson’s hypothesis.  You know how distrustful we are about government nowadays, after all. 

Some searches on the Whitehouse.gov website were illuminating. 

I chose some prominent factoids from the “other 95%” facts page.  First, the simple percentage “95%” gave several results with the “We cut taxes for 95 percent of working Americans” mantra. 

Searches for “recent healthcare reform includes tax credits and savings for small businesses and working people” and also “stimulus package included $300 billion in middle class tax cuts” brought many matches as well.

The “other 95%” facts page closely mirrors this White House 12 April Fact Sheet about “Tax Savings by the Numbers,” and this White House 10 April Press Briefing about “Tax Credits Available to American Families.”

Both of the above documents contain, in virtually the same order, every bullet from the “other 95%” facts page:  1)Making Work Pay Tax credit, 2)Tax credits for college expenses, 3)Homebuyers Tax Credit, 4)Tax credits for energy-efficient renovations, 5)Vehicle sales tax deduction, 6)Expanded family tax credits, and 7)Tax-free unemployment benefits.

Oh and also handy reference to the new Recovery.gov Tax Saving Tool.  We mustn’t forget that handy new tool.

What is my point?  Not that the above similarities prove that the President, Mr. Sunstein, or other staff are in the White House right now, monitoring their fake grassroots website, reading comments, and commenting back at those tea party trolls.  (Funny to imagine though.)

My point is the answer to that first question:  what is The Other 95%?

The website’s claim that its creators are hardworking, everyday, middle-class Americans is complete garbage. 

Like the Coffee Party, the Other 95 is an attempt to siphon populist sentiment away from the TPM.  It is no different from Organizing for America or any other liberal mouthpiece.  It cannot add anything new to the debate.  All the Other 95 can do is parrot the talking points of the White House. 

Who is actually doing the parroting?  At least the Coffee Party offers Annabel Park as its spokesperson.

Shoot.  I don’t even want the answer.  I prefer to imagine the President and First Lady poring over the website and responding to trolls themselves.

UPDATE:  My research is clearly lacking.  Key information at Riehl World View:  The Other 95% website was started by Andrew Boyd, creator of Billionaires for Bush.  Dang, there goes my vision of folks in the White House hovering over their laptops.  Left Coast Rebel has good info too.

UPDATE 22April:  The full background of The Other 95 here.

UPDATE 05 May:  I notice the frequent tweaking of these goofy anti-TPM sites.  This one is now ”The Other 98%.”  Ohhh-key-dokey then.

What is the Coffee Party?

Fourteen everyday people attended my area’s first ever Coffee Party meeting.  Well, I was there so that is fifteen technically.  They all seemed nice enough.  Some stated they were Democrats, some Independent, and some didn’t speak.  If they had asked, I would have been honest about ”Libertarian” being my closest political label.  But they didn’t ask.  You know how it is in a group; a few are the main talkers and the rest listen. 

The fella that organized the meeting was so intensely nervous about being in charge that his voice quavered as he spoke.  I came in late and sat silent until he confessed his nervousness, stating he didn’t want to show up.  At that point the ‘mom’ in me kicked in, and I piped up that he’s doing fine, doing a great job.  I’d rather not speak in a group either. 

Bless him.  Easy enough for a soft heart like me to feel affinity for this nervous, youngish man bravely stepping outside his comfort zone.  It’s too bad we don’t live in the same world.

In the world of this Coffee Party meeting, the federal government can effortlessly provide health coverage to everyone that needs it.  The healthcare reform bill will stimulate the economy and help create jobs, somehow or another.  It makes perfect sense to stop insurance companies from denying coverage based on a pre-existing condition.  The national debt is not a concern.  By all appearances, in this world there is ample money to pay for new healthcare entitlements.

The organizer expressed dislike for one Tea Party sign he saw.  It had a baby photo and the amount of U.S. debt this infant owes.  I brought up this question:  is there a point at which the U.S. debt becomes too high?  I think his answer was affirmative, but there was not much interest in this topic.  Except a man across from me that nodded, “yes.”

Then there was a mention of Social Security and Medicare, and how no one wants to end those entitlements.  I asked, “Isn’t there some point in the future when these programs are going to collapse under their own weight?”  I don’t remember what the response was, except the man who nodded before.  I saw him nod again.

I stated that I don’t want to stop these entitlements either, but if they are going to collapse on their own weight, well I am young enough, so I am willing to keep paying into them until a prescribed end date rather than having them collapse unexpectedly.  Without receiving those benefits myself.  I asked when those programs are going to collapse under their own weight.  The nodding man mouthed, “soon.”  He left shortly after that. 

That was the extent of my contribution to the conversation.  Mostly I listened.  These were nice, everyday, well-meaning people.  Tea Party Movement (TPM) came up rather often.  To their credit, they never used the term “tea bagger.”  They usually prefaced a TPM criticism with some sort of caveat about how this isn’t all about criticizing the TPM.

Can I remember everything said of the TPM?  There was puzzlement, for this reason:  the federal government is going to burden with extra taxes only those who earn $250,000 minimum.  Yet, by all appearances, Tea Party protesters are not within that tax bracket.  This is not comprehensible when you fail to appreciate the cumulative effect of taxing the “rich.”  Also, I am suspicious this $250K limit is not accurate but that is for another post.

One lady expressed concern that violence is brewing just under the surface of political debate in this country.  She didn’t blame the Tea Party explicitly, but I’m pretty sure that was the implication.  There was mention of how skilled the Republicans were in feeding “talking points” to conservatives, and how most people don’t think.  They are just told what to think. 

Oh, there was dismay about how viciously President Obama has been attacked.  “There has never been any president in history attacked as viciously.”  I’m pretty of that quote word-for-word.  I had “Bush-bashing” at the tip of my tongue, but mercifully there was no break in the conversation.  Probably better to say too little than too much.

Then came the inevitable explanation why the attacks are so vicious:  the color of the President’s skin.  I had already heard Olbermann and Garofalo say it.  Now I’ve heard everyday folks say it too.  If this little excursion taught me anything, it taught me that nice, everyday liberals will assume racism, too. 

Like I care about pigment.

The racism card.  There is beautiful irony in it.  Once, there was a time when a man’s every thought and idea was discounted because he was black.  Today, we are enlightened.  You are no longer dismissed because of your skin color. 

Now, your beliefs are your skin color.  You don’t believe in the government as caregiver?  Then you know nothing, you idiot racist. 

What is the Coffee Party Movement (CPM), if it is not an anti-TPM group?  That, my friends, is the Big Question. 

A more civil and inclusive version of the TPM?  Civility and a return to middle ground were a popular sentiment amongst fourteen people tonight.  Surely we don’t have to be on the extreme left or the extreme right of anything.  Polarization is the problem.

Oh dear, I have found a Bigger Question:  Is there room for compromise between the left and the right?

The answer, perhaps to the dismay to compromisers, centrists, independents, and other fence-straddlers is . . .  no.

You either want the government to solve society’s ills, or you don’t.  You either want to shrink the size of government, or you don’t.  You are concerned about this nation’s debt, or you are not.  There is no compromise.  These positions are diametrically opposed. 

I’ve read many blogs about this new development, the CPM.  From American Power, I learned that CPM creator Annabel Park uses the term “teabagger.”  From Legal Insurrection, I learned that Annabel Park was one of organizers and operators of the United for Obama video channel at YouTube. 

From the American Thinker, I learned that the CPM website has a relationship with Democracy in Action, which gets funding from Open Society Institute, an organization belonging to George Soros.  From Left Coast Rebel, I learned that the “everyday folks” profiled in the recent CNN puff piece may not be so “everyday” after all.

Okay, so what is the CPM?  Fake, or real?  If it ain’t a figment of your imagination, then folks:  it is real.  Deal with it. 

That being said, it is not a mass, spontaneous uprising the way the TPM is.  This page of the CPM website should be ample enough evidence:  most every group nationwide was created by one man, Eli Regalado.  I haven’t researched this person; perhaps someone else will. 

What is the Coffee Party Movement? 

In my experience, it is an attempt to siphon populist sentiment away from the TPM.  It is no different from Organizing for America, the DNC, or any other liberal mouthpiece.  As such, it cannot add anything new to the debate.  The CPM has no innate momentum of its own. 

Here is my final answer to the question:  what is the Coffee Party?  It is flattery, in the form of imitation. 

This is significant.  The left actually feels it must emulate the Tea Party Movement.

Take a moment.  Soak that thought in.

UPDATE, 13 April:  The link above to Coffee Party groups no longer lists Eli Regalado as the primary group manager nationwide.  Instead, they have moved to a “more bottom-up 21st Century network-driven approach. “  This apparently means manager aninimity, perhaps so that the top-down reality is less obvious.

UPDATE, 29 April:  Okay now it is getting complicated.  The link above to Coffee Party groups is under “reconstruction” and is going to be dismantled soon.

If you want to see the old pages with first Eli Regalado, and then the anonymous managers, tell me and I’ll add the screen caps.