Dealing with Teabaggers

Let's face it, Teabaggers suck. They are rude, obnoxious, ignorant, and self-centered. I have a few in my life and acquainted with a couple of others.

One of them is a co-worker (I'll call her Amy) She campaigned for a local Republican when he ran for the state legislature and unfortunately he won. Luckily He was in the news for beating his 15 year old daughter. He called it a spanking but his ex-wife thought otherwise. The charges did get dropped. He ran on a family values platform yet he has been divorced.

Amy is very self-righteous. At work when we are complaining about the boss (who actually deserves to be fired, but that's another story) and upper management, she cuts us off and says "You should be thankful you have a job". Amy also happens to be very fat and lazy, will hide in the MEN'S restroom when the boss is looking for volunteers to work on a project, and take long breaks. She should be thankful she does not get fired.

Another time when I was talking about going out to the Black Hills for an upcoming vacation, she asked if I could get her a brochure of Crazy Horse Memorial. I told her I would and she said that she always wanted to go there being she has Native American bloodlines. She then makes a comment that Crazy Horse was better than Mt. Rushmore because it was not built on taxpayers money. I informed her that Mt. Rushmore was started by a Republican (Calvin Coolidge) and funding for it was cut off by a Democrat (Franklin Roosevelt) so they could help pay for World War II. Keep in mind this woman has a college degree in Law Enforcement and spent 20 years in the Air Force as a military cop.

Amy also rants and raves about the government spending too much money. I was telling someone about a friend of my mother's who was trying to get her mother to go to a nursing home but the mother would not budge. The mother had said it's up to the kids to take care of their parents. Amy overheard me and said it's not up to the government to take care of people! I snapped at her and said I was talking about physical care like getting her to the bathroom, cooking meals, dispensing meds etc, not about paying for her care. She jumped to the conclusion that I was talking about financial care, not physical.

The irony with Amy is that she is Native American so she is eligible to get her health care for free. She also spent enough time in the military to get a pension and free health care too. She also used the GI Bill to pay for her schooling. In retrospect she does deserve those things cuz she fought for our country and the government screwed the Native Americans, but if she thinks the government is wasting money, then she should pay it back.

Then there is a gentleman I don't really know in my city but he is a frequent contributor to the letters to the editor. I'll call him Steve. Steve like Amy spent years in the Air Force and gets a pension, health care etc. When Steve writes his letters, they are pro-George Bush, anti-Barack Obama, anti-Democrat, pro-Republican etc. He even went as far as to call Muslims Islamo-Fascist (he served in the first Gulf War) Four years ago when a local political candidate who is a Democrat and was running against Amy's candidate got a DUI, he sent in a letter blasting her for it. Her BAC was barely above illegal. I met this woman at the County DFL Convention and she is very tiny, so one beer probably did her in. Steve conveniently forgot that Bush did the same thing 30 years earlier. You can imagine the response that got in the comments section of the online and paper editions.

Steve doesn't write as much anymore. Not sure why but there had to have been a lot of complaints about his racist and xenophobic comments.

The last one is a teacher. Marg is retired now but while a teacher was a union officer and very active in the teacher's union. She absolutely hates President Obama, refused to give him any credit for killing Bin laden, mocks him and Michelle every chance she gets and is also a frequent letter writer. She got involved with Tea Party Nation. Now that she is retired she hates teachers unions, got elected to the school board. Her platform was fiscal responsibility and voted to lay off all the non-tenured teachers, one of whom is a friend of mine from my church. Now that she has her retirement benefits she does not care if others get theirs or not.

It shocks me that a state like Minnesota has Teabaggers. Minnesota produced Hubert Humphrey, Walter Mondale, Al Franken, and Amy Klobuchar. But then again it also produced Tim Pawlenty and Michele Bachmann.