Shocking findings

As it is April 15th, Evil Government Stealing Your Money To Give It To The Blacks Day as some know it, there is of course a great deal more attention placed on the Tea Party and the Teabaggers. Because, after all, in addition to being an amateur society of birth certificate experts who could eyeball a man who was born in Mombasa at 100 paces, their movement is ostensibly about taxes or something. That's what the TEA stands for... Taxed Enough Already.

Sure sure, fine fine, they don't actually know anything about taxes or tax cuts they've gotten from Hussein Obama X or really... anything, but they do loudly claim that this is all about taxes... somewhere in between several rants about fascism, how that chubby Glenn Beck boy is right, and how they're holding out hope for that Palin/Bachmann ticket.

But what of the Teabaggers? Who are they? If the immediate thought running through your head was whitewhitewhiteoooohsweetjesusfuckingwhitepeople well... you were right. As a New York Times/CBS News poll explains.

The 18 percent of Americans who identify themselves as Tea Party supporters tend to be Republican, white, male, married and older than 45.

They hold more conservative views on a range of issues than Republicans generally. They are also more likely to describe themselves as “very conservative” and President Obama as “very liberal.”

And while most Republicans say they are “dissatisfied” with Washington, Tea Party supporters are more likely to classify themselves as “angry.”

I am Jack's utter lack of surprise. But only if there was some way this poll also quantified their seeming large scale racial resentment and white victimhood persecution complexes.

Tea Party supporters’ fierce animosity toward Washington, and the president in particular, is rooted in deep pessimism about the direction of the country and the conviction that the policies of the Obama administration are disproportionately directed at helping the poor rather than the middle class or the rich.

The overwhelming majority of supporters say Mr. Obama does not share the values most Americans live by and that he does not understand the problems of people like themselves. More than half say the policies of the administration favor the poor, and 25 percent think that the administration favors blacks over whites — compared with 11 percent of the general public. They are more likely than the general public, and Republicans, to say that too much has been made of the problems facing black people.

No! You don't say!

Lest you think this article and poll is merely there to state the obvious, there is a treasure trove of interviews with Teabaggers who aside from divulging their thought on how Obama is a Kenyan, a Muslim who dishonors this country by not picking a DC church to go to, general rage at "spending" and "waste", blah blah socialism, accusations that Obama is taking America away from what it used to be, how Obama is making the country not great, they are also filled with rage over socialist government programs... which they then reveal they're for when, like with Medicare or Social Security, they are in them.

To quoth Steve Benen at the Washington Monthly

If you were to make a Venn Diagram of the issues Tea Party members care about, and the issues Tea Party members are confused about, you'd only see one circle.

But these are an important group of Americans that it is important we listen to and they will get incessant coverage even though about 4% of the country is a Teabagger and blah blah blah.

At least we now officially know that the Tea Party is comprised of old, rich, ultra-conservative white people who don't know anything about what they claim they're most interested in. At least that's nice to have it finally made official.