TeresaCentric

In today's Wilshire & Washington, hosts Ted Johnson, Maegan Carberry, and Teresa Valdez Klein weigh in on the week's biggest issues in politics, new media, and entertainment.

I've written a lot over the past few months about how the Republicans have devolved from a major political party to an out of touch dying anachronism being led by an obnoxious, pill-popping clown. But evenI didn't think they would become this out of touch this fast. If you're wondering how involved today's youth and the Republicans are today, check out two of the major movements on the right. The first is a grassroots movement of people angry about Obama's out of control spending and tax increases. This group has been throwing impromptu meetings and protests all over the country that they have been referring to as "Tea Parties," in reference of course to the Boston Tea Party. You might think the most ridiculous aspect of the group is that they didn't protest or complain at all when Bush ran up massive surpluses and Cheney said "deficits don't matter." Or that they are protesting Obama's outrageous tax plan, which just gave me an extra $600 on April 15, and is only increasing taxes on those making so much money that they probably don't have time to go to protests on Tuesday afternoons. But you'd be wrong. The most ridiculous aspect of this group is their self-proclaimed name. Teabaggers. Yes, the Republican party is now full of a bunch of people who want to "Teabag" Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi. Members of this group have even been wearing hats with teabags hanging off, right in front of their faces, wearing shirts that say "I'm a Teabagger," and carrying around signs warning that, if you're not careful, the Liberal Democrats just might teabag you. Meanwhile, another right-wing group has decided to protest the recent string of same-sex marriage legalization throughout the nation by organizing a massive "pro-marriage" group. The name of this group is "2 Million For Marriage." In effort to appeal, to young, hip kids with their myface accounts, slap bracelets, and Saved By The Bell t-shirts, the group decided to market their name as an acronym. 2M4M. Yes, the right-wing has decided to name their new anti-gay group, 2M4M. I think it's safe to say that no one in the Republican party has ever heard of urbandictionary.com, or Google for that matter. I can't help but wonder what would happen if the Teabaggers met up with 2M4M. Perhaps the two could combine into a new super group, called Glorious Alliance of Your Organized Righteous Guidance from Yesteryear. *In order to read news about the Republican Party you must be at least 17 years of age(NC-17).

Sorry for the light posting, I've been in super web developer mode. Off-the-clock, I made a gorgeous website for an entrepreneur who is hands down the best massage therapist I've ever received a massage from. The site's called Hundred Thousand Dollar Massage, and I did a pretty good job on it if I may say so (also, Teresa helped because she has an eye for design). Meanwhile, on-the-clock, I've been working insanely hard, and entertaining my co-workers. So much so, that one of my co-workers made a fake twitter account about my office antics and coding travails.

The Republicans just released their alternative budget. Since they are all going to vote against Obama's no matter what, they decided to come up with their own. However, because they don't have any actual ideas or plans, it didn't include any actual hard numbers. You can read about it more here, or just view my summary below. We'll see how much longer they exist as a major party.

New Hampshire's State House of Representatives passed a bill today allowing same-sex marriage by a 186-179 vote, after a 3 hour debate where crazy people claimed that marriage as it currently exists us "perfect" and that gay marriage would cause irreversible damage to our children. Unfortunately, the bill is unlikely to pass the State Senate, and even if it does the Governor has indicated that he intends to come up with a fake reason to oppose it. In other same news, it seems people with Internet connections REALLY want to ask President Obama if he will legalize marijuana. On whitehouse.gov's website, where people can vote on questions they want the President to answer, nearly all top questions in all categories related to marijuana legalization. While the President has yet to directly addresses this, one wonders how long an open and pragmatic leader can ignore the disastrous effects that the war on drugs has had on the world.

It seem sanity has recently begun sweeping the nation. I'm astounded. First, the Vermont State Senate passed a bill to legalize same-sex marriage, by a margin of 26-4. As the bill goes to the Vermont State House, Republican Governor Jim Douglas has announced prematurely that he will veto the bill. His reasoning is that the civil unions law is good enough. As inane as it sounds to veto a law just because a slightly less good law already exists, I'd like to point out that his fake reason for vetoing the bill is at least more plausible than his original reason* for being against the law: that it will waste valuable legislative time. Ironically, since the state legislature has an obvious super majority and will end up overriding him, his veto will actually probably end up wasting more time than the passage of the original bill took. But I digress: there is a super majority, and gay marriage will be coming to Vermont very soon (along with a new Governor). Sanity. In other legalization news, sanity has recently hit California and Massachusetts. In California, the new bill AB 390 looks to legalize and tax marijuana. Expected revenues could be as high as a billion dollars, while helping to slightly decrease revenue to the drug cartels that are slowly taking over Mexico. Meanwhile in Massachusetts, there are House and Senate bills that have just been introduced in the Massachusetts General Court to effectively legalize and tax cannabis. The bill proposes to tax based on the THC concentration of the weed, with proposed taxes of $150/oz for "C Grade" up to $250/oz for "A Grade." Additionally, growth for personal or non-profit use would be allowed. Revenues is Massachusetts could be in the hundreds of million dollars. I wrote a while back about the ten main reasons against gay marriage, which are essentially masks for homophobia. I have not been able to find ten reasons against legalization of marijuana. The only one I can find is that it will increase use by minors. This is of course ridiculous, as the black market for illegal drugs actually makes them easier for minors to purchase. If you ask any high school senior which is easier to purchase, alcohol or marijuana, they will tell you the latter (I taught high school for 3 years, most kids who smoke marijuana rather than drink alcohol do it because it's easier to get their hands on marijuana then beer). Legalizing and regulating marijuana would actually make it easier to keep out of the hands of minors by removing a black market that does not discriminate based on age. If you know of any other reasons to legalize marijuana, please comment. I would love to have a sane debate on the topic. Even more though, I would love to see our political leaders sanely debate the topic. * In a previous post, a commenter mentioned that there are more than ten reasons to oppose gay marriage. I suppose I should add "civil unions are close enough", and "I'm busy" to the list.

Welcome to Wilshire & Washington's One Year Anniversary Show! We've got a very special one planned, covering everything that makes us tick. The Annenberg Foundation, one of the largest private family foundations in the United States, is opening a photography space here in Hollywood today, and hosts Ted, Teresa, and Maegan have the foundation's Managing Director, Leonard J. Aube, on the air to talk the role of arts and culture in politics, innovative philanthropy in difficult economic times, and whether Los Angeles can be a leader in this field during the Obama era.

In case your wondering which teams Barack Obama thinks will do well in the tournament, I'll give a hint. They come from swing states. President Barack Obama filled out an NCAA Tournament Bracket, and his picks are political brilliant. He basically chooses the higher ranked team. If the teams are close, he picks the team from the more important state. For example, Maryland upsets California, Temple upset Arizona, and of course, North Carolina wins it all. http://games.espn.go.com/tcmen/entry?entryID=2813746

Come meet up with Andy and I at two awesome gatherings around journalism, both happening in the University District this evening. First off, we'll be meeting up at around 6:15 with SeattlePI.com reporter Mónica Guzmán at Bulldog News to chat about how the PI will evolve now that it's an all-digital publication. Then we'll head over to Lucid just a few blocks away for The Pitch -- an event put on by Jason Preston of Eat Sleep Publish and talk about the best business model for news in five years. If you're in Seattle and interested in any facet of the news, it's worth turning out to these two events. (Here's a handy map with the two addresses marked together.) Oh, and incidentally, the two hosts happen to be one of the world's cutest couples:

Hosts Ted Johnson, Maegan Carberry, and Teresa Valdez-Klein are joined by Adriana Dunn of Participant's Take Part to wrap up the most fascinating news coming out of the SXSW Festival down in Austin. Plus, the AIG bonuses and Megan McCain's tiff with Laura Ingraham.