...seem to be half baked. Ever since this phenomenon got started, I keep looking for a single solid positive idea underlying it; a suggestion of a course of action, any real plan at all. For the most part, these people seem like your typical republican cum libertarian. They hate taxes, they want the government to spend less, they want the government off their backs. But then, when you probe for details, they cannot agree that the military budget is one that might be touched (although that budget is bigger than the next fourteen largest nations combined); indeed they cannot actually really say which government spending needs to be trimmed, or if they do, they suggest something monumentally dumb like education, or infrastructural repair. And the same mouth that utters, 'get the government off our backs' seems to worship the police state mentality underlying homeland security, where the government rides all of us like guilty donkeys, and we are no longer so very free to speak. The problem here is that these people have turned a blind eye to so many things over the years that their frustration, while justified, seems devoid of reasoned thought. It's a movement made up of slogans, with no sense of the real problems facing our nation. To me the classic is the lady that told me she was afraid of socialized medicine, but then didn't want the government to touch her medicare. If you cannot get the irony of that, then you are ready to join the tea-party circus. I see it as a mob mentality wearing party hats. And in time, it may find a suitable charismatic leader, and become a very dangerous mob.