Big Surprise: Hune endorsed by teabaggers

Local tea baggers endorsing Joe Hune for the 22nd State Senate District is as much a surprise as cold temperatures in Michigan in December.

Apparently, Hune’s answer in a debate last week that UN black helicopters are coming for his handgun was just crazy enough to earn the endorsement of the Hartland area tea baggers called “RetakeOurGov.” The fact is they just wasn’t to take it back from Democrats.

Teabagger organizer Wes Niagara - whose 15 minutes should have been up a long time ago - told the Livingston County Daily Press & Argus that he decided to back Hune after last week’s candidate forum.

“After watching the debate, it was clear to me that Joe has the traditional mainstream values and the fiscal values which are sought after by the ‘tea party’ movement,” Nakagiri said.

Hune has turned into an extremist since he started hanging with teabaggers, so the endorsement had to come before the debate. Hune’s comment about the UN even led to a follow up story, but what should have rated a follow up was Hune’s lame answer on the movie film credits where he claimed he didn’t know the package included a tax rebate, even though just about everyone in the state knew.

For comedy relief, we have Nakagiri’s last quote:

“Not only does Joe Hune share the values of conservatives and disaffected Democrats, he demonstrated the passion and backbone to stand up for what he believes,” he said.

No Democrat I have ever met shares those extremist views, and only the fringe of the Republican Party holds those views.

It seems ironic that the tea baggers are endorsing at all. On “Off the Record,” Gene Clem, the founder of the Southwest Michigan Tea Party Patriots and one of the original members of the Michigan Tea Party Alliance, appeared on this week’s show and said tea baggers don’t endorse candidates.

Regardless, they only candidates they will endorse will be extremist Republicans.

Don’t forget to vote for Chuck Fellows, the Democratic candidate for the seat, on Tuesday.

Health Insurance lobby able to spend its millions elsewhere thanks to all the free media

Not only are Republicans courting teabaggers, so is the conservative media.

Hartland Township resident and teabagger Wes Nakagiri was featured today in the Livingston County Daily Press & Argus for the second time in just four months. Apparently, the small fringe extremists known as teabaggers are getting free media by continuing to change the name of their groups and come up with news ones. They are following the framing used by the Bush Administration by naming them the exact opposite of what they really do.

The paper is promoting two “tea parties” this week, and Nakagiri is quoted extensively. I guess the good news is that the paper found someone else as a source besides media hog and extremist Howell School Board member Wendy Day for a change. You will recall that right after Christmas Nakagiri’s rightwing blog was featured in an article.
“RetakeOurGov will meet at the Cromaine District Library in Hartland Township to address concerns about the national health-care legislation,” and “The new Brighton Tea Party organization is trying to form a rally at the gazebo at Mill Pond in Brighton on April 15, the due date for federal income taxes.”

How ironic. The teabaggers are anti-government and anti-tax, but they are choosing to meet at places paid for by taxpayers. I always wonder who has their government and country when I hear teabaggers say they want their country back, and then I remember the racism I have seen at the fake, corporate Astroturf “tea parties” and then I remember who they want it back from.

Judy Daubenmier, Chair of the Livingston County Democratic Party framed what the debate over health insurance reform is really about. Daubenmier “said she wondered why "tea party" members would want to change a health-care-reform plan that forces insurance companies to provide coverage to children with pre-existing conditions, or what's wrong with Medicare recipients being relieved from what was a "doughnut hole" in prescription- drug coverage — under Part D, a gap in coverage the left patients solely responsible for drug costs between initial coverage and when catastrophic coverage began.”

What is rally laughable in the article is the spin on the teabaggers by the chair of the Livingston County Republican Party. He is still trying to make the claim that the teabaggers and the Republican Party are not one in the same. They are.

“Livingston County Republican Party Chairman Mike Murphy said the Republican Party has its own mission — to elect and retain elected Republicans — and that the organization has not taken a position for or against the recent "tea party" movement.”

I guess if you’re going to tell a lie, you might as well go big. The Livingston County GOP has promoted the “tea parties” on its web site, and numerous Republican politicians have spoken and appeared at these Astroturf events started by Washington, D.C. lobbying firms, including local Republican politicians from Mike Rogers to Bill Rogers.

With all the free publicity these groups have been given, the health insurance lobby can spend the $1.4 million a day it’s spending to kill health insurance reform to allow insurance companies to continue to deny coverage to those with pre-existing conditions to spend it on something else.

If the teabaggers ever decided to form a third party, Republican support for the teabaggers would melt like snow in July.