Long ago, I attended public school in a very fine, conservative and well-kept, intelligent small city -- our facility and instructors as also curriculum were all above average, paid for by local taxpayers and supported by the hard work of the residents. Our cafeteria was staffed by employed mothers who actually cooked delicious daily meals for us students, including hot-buttered dinner rolls daily and homemade icecream on some occasions -- point is that our "public" facility was highly supported by and administered/maintained by local residents and us students benefited from an excellent college-prep education despite it being "public education". I cannot begin to imagine the disasters of public education I read about today.

POINT BEING that in my experience, people such as these misguided, unprincipled people (Taibi, Levine, Ames) would not have fared well in that environment because the rest of the guys in our town would not.have.tolerated their fringe and damaging, reckless behaviors and views. They'd have been matured quickly or they'd have left by popular demand.

I think the Tea Party is generally a continuation of that same small-city, small-town citizen responsibility. It's people doing what they deem is best for themselves and our nation. Ames, specifically, seems to be mostly self-gratifying and his mental health is the issue: he certainly sounds insane.

Taibi and Levine sound troubled, not quite as irrational as Ames, but still reckless and irresponsible. It may sell magazines and be entertaining to read people gone mad with their self-indulged fantasies, but it's not respectable.

"' I’m a small government libertarian, and Santelli’s message appealed to me. It was that simple.'”

Such a genuine feeling, statement and sentiment followed with productive actions that reflect such intents is just too difficult for most of the Left to comphrehend.

Instead, actions that follow such intents "must" be "funded by" giant evildoers or other evil intents of a grandiose nature.

That the Tea Party is "simply" single citizens exercising their right to criticize their government and doing so in a lawful, peaceful and shared fashion with other citizens of similar complaints is too difficult a thing for the Left to understand.

And the guys identified in this article, particularly Mark Ames, Matt Taibi and Yasha Levine appear to be deranged, based upon what they've written and expressed. Utterly deranged.

These are the guys that decent people avoid, they only function in a third-party media like magazines, sites, political parties that afford them media-protection by avoiding the reprimands decent society applies to persons such as this otherwise. I'm finding their irresponsible expressions not only concerning but downright disgusting from a citizen perspective.

I agree with this teacher.

Excellent comments, ladykrystyna -- about which, I agree completely.

The Palin site mentioned and those associated with it are not in any way pure nor admirable in their online behaviors toward others. That key point -- that they harass others and otherwise "agitate" a personality cult, in my view (otherwise, what is it) -- is so often suppressed by others as to make the Palin site and those related to it appear guiltless, like angelic victims of some big, bad "get Sarah" effort, an effort that does not exist but which is shown to exist by framing any comments about Palin in any way, extreme or aimless, to be representation of that "get Sarah" effort. In other words, they play the victim card well and it eventually boils over for those they target (and that, apparently, is what Master Trolling wants, to get those they target to just go ugly like this hapless writer has on twitter).

I don't respect any involved there. Palin is well known to take a simple, direct question and make it immensely and in a cascade of speech monopoly, about herself eventually. It's simply irritating to many. But to the Palin folks, you aren't allowed to differ. I call that a cult just like the Obama folk are engaged in and the rest of us don't care for it from anyone in politics. I also don't find Palin conservative but that's another story and certainly Gingrich isn't.

AND SO, Beck makes another easy target. Unfortunately.

I just love the photos of all the children of military personnel...uhh, wait, what? There AREN'T any photos of "them"? Just photos of The Mad Hatter and his companions?

Well, second time my modest comment won't post, so I don't know how at this point to respond...the response does seem obvious to me, though, as to the why's of this story being covered-up.

I think it might be due to the inevitable public assumption that there was The Mad Hatter in the White House with his Wookie by his side.

Now, if media has any credibility, any at all, they'll air the stories and possible photos from those many Wednesday night cocktail parties the Obamas have had in the President's residence. I bet they won't.

The obvious, however: the Bush family would NOT have done something like this. I think the extent of their dubious partying was their Cinco de Mayo event completed in the South of the Border theme with everyone minding their p's-and-q's amidst the costumery.