And how did Fox's overwhelming joy at these protests strike you?

1) JS isn't bad when it's not around an election.

2) How many of the events did they show?

Damn alternative history theorists.

And slowly dropping, Thanks to his 1 trillion dollar deficit on top of the debt we already had. Obama has no idea what he is doing.

Thanks for electing him BTW.

Not remotely true. Individuals got themselves in debt, and trouble. I didn't, as I am fiscally responsible, so not sure why I should blame myself for paying my bills.

But let's look at what you just said. You think the problem is people borrowed money that was lent to them, and spent it with no regard for how they are going to pay it back? They took out way to much credit, to the point where one day, they couldn't get more, and all there debts piled up, and became financially ruined.

To the individuals that did this, I agree. They screwed themselves up. The problem is, I don't really care about them. It's a free country, You want to fuck your life up, go ahead.

What I care about, is my government doing the exact same thing. We have borrowed trillions from China, spent even more then we borrowed, with no plan to pay it back. Bush did that. 

Now the new guy is in office, and what does he want to do? Keep spending on all the things Bush spent on (that we can't afford), and explode government spending to heights never seen before in any time.

People need to stop acting like it's no big deal.

Then again, as I saw in another thread, no one on this site makes any money. When it's not your money, you tend to care less about it.

Mostly people carrying teabags and walking around with banners claiming Obama was a thief and such. To be honest British TV doesn't have too strong a bias on American political parties (Why would they, especially the BBC?). It was literally one of the rallys and they were talking about how these people were Obamas opponents basically.

A people of bad credit and debt yields a government that does the same.  How do you change that when the problem is with the people in general.  Problem is money is power and power corrupts while absolute power corrupts absolutely.  You don't want them to do the exact thing as the people but is that phsyically possible.  It's quite possible the entire system is broken from the beginning. 

You see I agree with people need to stop acting like it's no big deal.  I take that a step further.  I won't people like you and the rest of America to stop pretending the problem is something so simple as government spending.  Cut the bullshit for once in your life and look at the big picture.  If you really think the entire economy can be completely trampled by 2 presidents who compared to leaders in history are weak, then you aren't looking at the real problem.  It's a big deal but you don't know what the problem is. 

You and the rest of this country act as if they can point to something and use it as a scapegoat to the real problem: general mainstream American fear to capitalism.  You don't trust these corporations or the government when all of our beliefs (laizzes faire capitalism and representative democracy) are based on this trust with a system of checks and balances.  Thus you ruin it.  They complain every time the bust of a "boom and bust cycle" of capitalism occurs and cause this country to move further to the left.  They accept socialist and left winged regulations into the economy such as the Federal Reserve, minimum wage, trust busters, anti-monopolies, and more recently financially supporting businesses who should have burned to the ground with their errors. 

Then you have the nerve to tell me that I don't know this is a big deal when the rest of this country would willingly accept a dictator to bring us into socialism over a true capitalist representative democratic president.  Like the rest of this country, we let the media tell us what the problems are and then we complain about it.  But we don't know what the problems are and we don't have values anymore that resembled that of what the country was founded on.  Sure they will complain now about government spending being too much but only becuase it doesn't help their interests.  As soon as they get into financial trouble they'll all cry to the government... including you.  That's the funny thing about all these "anti-American" values that get into our system.  Something scares the people and fear causes these thigns to happen.  Ya'll took my liberty away after 9/11 and now you want to take away my capitalist system.  This is a great quote from Benjamin Franklin:

"They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety"

When the rest of this country is ready to get over their fears and let someone other than mainstream media tell them how to think, then these tea parties will mean something.  When they say no to paying income taxes then they'll truly know what the problem is.  Until then all I see is a nation of sheep.

(part of a piece I wrote yesterday which I'll translate for here soon)

Sure the BBC has a bias.  They're more left wing then the USA.

Hell the UK may be more leftwing then the democrats.

Well as the february 2002 anti-war protests against the iraq war showed, protests don't accomplish much. Especially, since the media always tends to marginalize protesters and their view points (I'm thinking of the WTO protests/anarchists / agent provocateurs). The Tea Party was different in that it got a lot of support from Fox News. Which larger protests (i.e. the iraq war one) have been dismissed.

I think the most ironic thing though, was the purchasing of one million tea bags (I believe they purchased them) and complaining about wasteful spending. Not to mention the elaborate costumes that apparently some people must have had laying around.

Overall though, I like protests and support them. I think many people had valid points, although most seem to be simply saying Democrats =evil. Nonetheless, I don't think it will have much effect - mainly because of the cheerleading that makes it seem disingenous in the eyes of those more to center or left.

I agree. I think though that my neighbors problem always becomes my problem. Maybe its because I live in a metropolitan area, but when people stop paying their mortgages and their home foreclose then my property value goes down, vagabonds move in, less tax revenue to afford the police etc. I guess it has a larger down word spiral. Sure some people truly fucked up and I believe that, but what about residual effects? Because those people fucked up banks stopped loaning credit, my employer relied on credit during this part of the year because business is slow and now that he can't get it, I get laid off. I get laid off and can't make my mortgage that is around 30% of my monthly income (probably less than most people as they tend to spend close to 50% if not more). I have money save but only enough to make four months of mortage, car payments etc.

This may have been a bad example, but I think their is this illusory concept that we are rugged individualists that can completely survive on our own. I think that is a bit fallacious though, particularly because of the nature of our economy is connected through ties of interdependence. Maybe I'm wrong about that, but I can see how my neighbors problem, will become my problem. Maybe if I lived in a different setting, it would be different. I don't know.