Guy wakes from a coma he's been in since Obama got elected. Bring him up to date.

[Skip Intro]

[UrbScotty]

1. It sure is refreshing to have a President who knows what he's doing (nt)

[rocktivity]

2. He told Jon Stewart, "Yes, we can -- but..."

And the audience groaned.

:(
rocktivity

[The_Casual_Observer]

3. Sadly, he'd hardly know the difference.

[napoleon_in_rags]

4. Well...

Here's what happened. The US was in a state of great elation when he got in, full of hope tinged with cynicism. Obama tried to do various things, but didn't exactly accomplish all of them like the golden boy he seemed to be, which lead to the cynicism to win out in the minds of many. Most particularly, he didn't stand strongly against Bush era policies and conspiracy thinking thrived. The Tea Party gave a voice to this, and was swept in to office in 2010. However, the Republicans swept into power then immediately set out to prove themselves as total authoritarians, undermining the whole message of the Tea Party, as exquisitely detailed by Maddow on a recent show, and the Tea Party now has its lowest ratings ever. So people are still fired up looking for new direction, but as of yet Obama doesn't seem committed about offering one, which is his great weakness. But on the whole he seems at least thoughtful, and doing a decent job.

[global1]

7. I Think You'll Need To Explain The Tea Party To This Guy Too.....nt

[napoleon_in_rags]

12. To you? Very well.

The Tea Party in a phrase: "The answer to 1984 is 1776".

Basically what happened is this: During the Bush years, there was a major block of Republican voters who had voted Republican because they were against the very sort of big government civil liberties intrusions they saw unfolding before those times, in terms of things like Ruby Ridge, Waco etc. Bush got in and started to expand those very same civil liberties intrusions, but the Republican coalition was held together with this sort of "wink wink, nudge nudge, he's still on our side, you'll see" narrative which they patiently held on to. The election of Obama, who inherited all the extraordinary dictatorial powers of Bush smashed that narrative, and they saw the "elite" were not really on their side, seeing Bush as a betrayal and Obama as a continuation of Bush.

The movement took its revolutionary direction and was growing rapidly at the grass roots level. It was led by politicians like Ron Paul and radio personalities like Alex Jones, previously described as a "conspiracy" talk show host that at that time commanded about 2 million listeners, due to the fresh fear about the Bush/Obama betrayal which was seen as a conspiracy. The Republican party saw this as an immediate threat, as the movement was comprised mostly of their own ex-members. A huge push was made to recapture them, both to embrace them and "put them in their place" as an element "too extreme" for the leadership of the Republican party, but as juniors they "cared" about. To this end, Talk show hosts like Glenn Beck began to use Alex Jones narratives, including his own "new world order" language. Certain politicians, some grass roots and some planted, sought to lead the Tea party back to the Republican party, and away from the non-partisan revolutionary direction they were headed in. Major financiers from the financial sector jumped in to the attempts to direct the narrative, further influencing major media outlets.

The result of all this is the "tea party" you see on the news: Ideological, goofy, but sharing enough of that angry grass roots sentiment to command an audience. However the corruption of the original grass roots message, which railed against bankers and financiers as much as government, has led to a rejection of the movement, and the reduction in its popularity as linked to above. It remains to be seen to what extent the original movement will survive this "embrace and redefine" mass media attack on them, but I suspect its strong enough to be a force for some time to come.

[global1]

17. Not To Me Silly - To The Guy That Wakes Up From A Coma.....nt

[CaliforniaPeggy]

5. Forget it! Go back to sleep.

[hlthe2b]

9. That was my first thought...

;)

[CaliforniaPeggy]

11. GMTA!

;-)

[Union Scribe]

27. Ha!

Excellent line.

[Armstead]

6. People got excited about new leadership...but leadership failed to maintain it

[hlthe2b]

8. Well, we CAN have a President who can speak coherently...

but, for many progressives, we've also learned the meaning of "CAN'T" and the tolerance appears quite variable across the spectrum for that little lesson. :shrug:

[Cali_Democrat]

10. He needs to know that a game of hyper-dimensional vulcan chess is being played

and he's the Pawn.

[Wilms]

13. Checkmate. n/t

[stevenleser]

19. Not to mention that some people think a joke is funny the 1000000th time they say it... n/t

[Cali_Democrat]

22. ....

:hi:

[leftynyc]

14. Robin Williams did a very

funny routine on something very similar to this story - his weapons of mass distractions tour on HBO.

[Bluenorthwest]

15. The premise is also the basis of Whoopi Goldberg's show

"Fontain: Why Am I Straight?" Straight meaning 'not on drugs anymore'.

[slackmaster]

16. The plankton is dying

Soylent Green is people.

[lunatica]

18. You've missed a lot. Major earthquakes in Haiti, Chile, the Indian Ocean,

New Zealand and Japan, some of which caused historic tsunamis that have recreated the coastlines and killed hundreds of thousands of people. Now Japan is experiencing Nuclear melt down. Incompetence creating the Gulf Oil Spill destroying the fishing industry and the wild life from the depths of the Gulf of Mexico well inland to the wetlands. Forget about politicians. They're fine with it.

Go back to sleep

[Arkana]

20. Drawing down in Iraq, both financial and health care bills passed, DADT repealed.

Unfortunately, because a bunch of people who I will not mention here decided their work was done after 2008, Republicans retook the House in 2010 and now an Oompa-Loompa is the Speaker.

Private sector job growth is slow, but climbing. Oh, also, the world's going to hell in a handbasket--riots in the Middle East, intervention in Libya after Gaddafi promised to butcher his own people after they dared ask for representative government, and an earthquake that nearly tore Japan in half.

[Agent William]

21. After the guy wakes up he gets the medical bill...

Then he wishes he'd never would have woken up in the first place...

[harun]

23. Ronald Reagan's 3rd Term.

[cottonseed]

24. I would have him read Free Republic. Then I would have him read DU.

Then I would tell him it's nothing like either of those.

[CakeGrrl]

28. Exactly. +1

As they say, the truth lies somewhere in between. And that's a good thing in this case.

[demwing]

25. OK, Michael Jackson, Elizabeth Taylor, and a bunch of other people died

other than that, we're still at war, still operating Gitmo, still off-shoring jobs and torture, our economy is still in the tank, and gas prices are still disgusting.

We nearly killed the entire Gulf of Mexico with a MASSIVE oil spill, and nothing much has been done to roll back our contribution to Global Climate Change.

As you may remember, Democrats won overwhelming majorities in both both houses of congress in 2008, in large part due to the DNC chairmanship of Howard Dean. Naturally, we immediately replaced Dean, and we suffered huge losses in both Houses in 2010.

Oh yeah, Obama is still president, and Republicans are still pretending they think he was born in Kenya.

[polichick]

26. The corporate takeover of American is still underway - go back to sleep.