The History of the Tea Party From Its Beginning to Now

The History of the Tea Party From Its Beginning to Now The tea party movement may only be a few years old, but the beginning of the movement is often misunderstood and misreported. While the tea party is often portrayed as being purely an anti-Obama movement, the truth is that the Republican Party has always been as much a target as President Obama and the Democrats. The Tensions Rise During the George W. Bush Years While the tea party may have formerly started after Obama took office, anger over federal spending and a rapidly bloating government began to surface during the big-spending years of the George W. Bush administration. While Bush scored points with conservatives on his tax policies, he also fell into the trap of spending too much money that didnt exist. He pushed for a large expansion of entitlements and, most dangerously, continued the Clinton-era policies that led to the collapse of the housing market and financial industries. While conservatives opposed these big spending measures, it is also true that they lagged far behind their liberal-counterparts in vocalizing anger, showing up at Capitol Hill to protest, or rallying thousands of people at any given time to support a cause or oppose a policy. Until the rise of the tea party, the conservative idea of activism was to shut down the congressional switchboard. Yet despite one disappointment after the next from our elected leaders, voters continued to send the same people back year after year. It would take a major economic crisis to help Sarah Palin Rallies a Crowd Prior to the 2008 elections, it seemed as though conservatives had no clue how to rally a crowd around a cause. While they had their moments - opposing Bushs immigration policies and Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers to name twoa real movement was hard to come by. But in 2008, John McCain selected Sarah Palin to be his vice-presidential candidate and suddenly the Republican base did something they never really did before: they showed up. When Palin joined the Republican ticket, people suddenly started attending rallies. McCain events had to be moved to larger venues. Rather than attracting hundreds of people like McCain had been doing, Palin was attracting thousands instead. Palin was hard-hitting, despite being seemingly restrained by the establishment. She gave one of the greatest convention speeches ever, where she hit out at Barack Obama and saw her popularity soar. She connected with people. And while she was eventually destroyed and rendered ineffective during the 2008 campaign, her ability to actually get thousands of people to rally for a cause would jump-start the future tea party movement, and she would eventually become the top draw at future tea party events nationwide. Rick Santelli Delivers a Message Shortly after his inauguration in January of 2009, President Obama began pushing the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, a package costing close to $1 trillion. Already infuriated with the final years of the Bush administration that saw multibillion-dollar bailouts and payoffs, conservative outrage of the fiscal insanity was escalating rapidly. After the package passed, CNBC personality Rick Santelli took to the airwaves to deliver what would be the final spark to ignite the tea party flames. In what turned out to perfectly summarize tea party sentiment, Santelli took to the floor of the Chicago Stock Exchange and stated the government is promoting bad behavior... This is America! How many of you people want to pay for your neighbors mortgage that has an extra bathroom and cant pay their bills? Raise their hand.  When the floor traders started booing the government policies, Santelli dropped the President Obama, are you listening?  line. In the rant, Santelli also stated that Were thinking of having a Chicago Tea Party in July. All you capitalists that want to show up to Lake Michigan, Im gonna start organizing.  The clip was widespread, and the first tea party rallies were held eight days later on February 27th, 2009, where tens of thousands of protesters showed up in over 50 cities to voice opposition to the Bush and Obama spending sprees. Tea Party Targets Republicans and Democrats Challenging Democrats in November elections is always a fun thought for tea party members. But it is not their first goal. The tea party does not exist to challenge only Democrats simply to return the same Republicans who rubber-stamped the big government Bush agenda for eight years. And this is why the first victims of the tea party in any given election cycle are always Republicans. The first goal of the tea party was to target liberal Republicans up for reelection. Arlen Specter (PA), Charlie Crist (FL), Lisa Murkowski (AK), and Bob Bennett (UT) were just a few of the many politicians backed by the mainstream GOP but opposed by the tea party. Specter saw his time was up and bailed to join the Democrats. When Crist realized he was soon to lose to a young conservative star in Marco Rubio, he jumped ship and ran as an independent. Bennett was so unpopular he couldnt even earn a primary slot. Murkowski lost her primary also but was eventually saved by the Democrats after launching a write-in campaign. Only after getting a strong foothold in the Republican Party by knocking off incumbent or establishment Republicans would the tea party focus their attention on Democrats. As a result, the myth of the blue dog  Democrat was mostly destroyed and the GOP decimated the ranks of so-called conservative Democrats.  It would be over three years since the start of the tea party movement before conservatives would have a shot at President Obama. The number of Republicans that the tea party has brought down is proof enough that this is about more than just one man. Final Takeaway The tea party does not exist because of one individual. It exists as a result of the constant and rapid growth of government under both Republican and Democratic-led governments. The tea party does not care whether there is a D or an R next to a politicians name or whether a politician is black, white, man, or woman. If a Republican is elected president, the tea party will exist to hold him just as accountable as they hold President Obama. Anyone seeking proof can ask any of the many moderate Republicans who have been ousted in primaries for failing to follow the principles of limited government.

Polish Surname Meanings and Origins

Polish Surname Meanings and Origins With more than 38.5 million inhabitants, Poland  has the seventh-largest population in Europe. Many more millions of Polish nationals and people with Polish ancestry live around the world. If youre one of them, you might wonder about the meaning of your last name.  As with the majority of European surnames, most Polish surnames fall into one of three categories: toponymic, patronymic/matronymic, and cognominal. To learn more about your family name, read on. Toponymic Surnames   Toponymic last names are typically derived from a geographical or topographical location. For instance, some names are derived from the homestead where the first bearer of that name and his family lived. In the case of nobility, surnames were often taken from the names of familial estates. Other place names that  were adapted into surnames include towns, countries, and even geographical features. While you might think such surnames could lead you to your ancestral village, often thats not the case. This is because, over the course of history, many places in Poland have shared the same name, while other locales have changed names over time, were subdivisions of a local village or estate too small to be found on a map- or simply disappeared altogether. Surnames ending in the letters owski usually derive from place names ending with y, ow, owo, or owa.   Example:  Cyrek Gryzbowski, meaning  Cyrek from the town of Gryzbow. Patronymic and  Matronymic Surnames Surnames in this category are usually derived from the first name of a male ancestor, although some are derived from the first name of a wealthy or well-respected female ancestor. Such surnames with suffixes such as  icz, wicz, owicz, ewicz, and  ycz usually mean son of. As a rule, Polish surnames that include a suffix with the letter k  (czak, czyk, iak, ak, ek,  ik, and yk) have a similar meaning which translates to either little or son of. The same is true for the suffixes yc and ic, which are most commonly found in names of eastern Polish origin. Examples: Pawel Adamicz, meaning Paul, son of Adam; Piotr  Filipek, meaning Peter, son of Philip. Cognominal Surnames There are two basic types of cognominal surnames. The first category encompasses names that are based on a persons occupation. Some of the most common occupational surnames are derived from what were traditionally the most prominent professions in Polish society throughout history. These include blacksmith (Kowalski), tailor (Krawczyk), innkeeper (Kaczmarek), carpenter (CieÅ›lak), wheelwright (KoÅ‚odziejski), and cooper (Bednarz). Example: MichaÅ‚Â  Krawiec, meaning Michael the tailor. Descriptive surnames, on the other hand, were often derived from nicknames or pet names that highlighted either a physical attribute or personality trait of the original name bearer. Example:  Jan Wysocki, meaning Tall John. 50 Common Polish Last Names Surnames with the  ski  suffix and its cognates cki  and  zki make up almost 35 percent  of the 1,000 most popular Polish names. The presence of these suffixes almost always denotes Polish origin. The most common Polish surnames are listed below. NowakKowalskiWiÅ›niewskiDabrowskiKaminskiKowalcyzkZielinskiSymanskiWozniakKozlowskiWojciechowskiKwiatkowskiKaczmarekPiotrowskiGrabowskiNowakowskiPawlowskiMichalskiNowickiAdamczykDudekZajacWieczorekJablonskiKrolMajewskiOlszewskiJaworskiPawlakWalczakGorskiRutkowskiOstrowskiDudaTomaszewskiJasinskiZawadzkiChmielewskiBorkowskiCzarneckiSawickiSokolowskiMaciejewskiSzczepanskiKucharskiKalinowskiWysockiAdamskiSobczakCzerwinski