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Wow, Brian wiffed on an easy soft ball today when he let the the Tea Bag caller make inflated claims about the number of people at the Faux News pimped September 12th rally and called the "Left" the fringe... The tea baggers are ultra right wing, anti-Obama neo-cons being led by the usual red meat suspects. Today's tea baggers represent main stream America like the brown shirts represented 1930's Germany.

Caffeine and politics! does not equal civil dialogue!

I predict the coffee party will either be: 1) hijacked by a group organized around an issue; or 2) fall apart.

Why is the Coffee Party's site a .com and not a .org? Follow the money (and the egos).

Why is it that I don't feel welcome by the Tea PArty? And why would the caller feel there isn't a need for the Coffee Party? That syas to me that Tea Partiers are not open minded and can't abide competition.

Mainstream politics in this country is not "polarized". Polarized implies that both the far right and the far left empowered and they refuse to work together.

The reality is that the republicans are true far right party and Obama democrats are centrist. But, no matter how centrist their opposition is the Republicans claim anyone less conservative than them is far left. So, the main thing centrist's achieve is moving the popular conception of the political center further to the right.

You cannot challenge the "Tea Party" from the center. Civility is good, but for change to come we need an animated empowered political Left.

Tea-baggers get too much press. Get the yahoos off the air. The Tea-baggers are the modern equivalent of the KKK - the third largest party in 1920's USA. Their "tactics" are similar.

~_~ intolerable sloganeering... both the tea party and the coffee party..

The 9/12 Tea Party rally snippets I recall on the news, counter to what caller Jeff said, were angry people shouting down anyone who didn’t agree with them while holding placards of Nazi-Obama complaining taxation without representation because their candidates lost the last election and how government spends too much money on socialist infrastructure while at the same time complaining that DC didn’t do enough with the federally subsidized metro system to assure they could go rally against government spending, so I’m not quite sure where Jeff was.

I am going to a meet up in NJ. I am excited and hopeful. There are many of us who want to participate and work with the government-help make change. I am tired of the rhetoric and obstructionist politics.

great question brian to the fox news watcher/teabagger caller. love how when you ask the fox watchers/teabaggers a question about social security and medicare, all they got is "um um um, i believe in free markets."

And today a free market SS and Medicare would be bankrupt. Why don't y'all bring that up when they say that now!

Ben from Manhattan -- We members of The Suds Party heartily agree!

Phil Lawson and the Coffee Partiers should know that they're actually part of a long tradition. Coffee houses, specifically ones in London in the 17th and 18th centuries, were the places where modern democracy and the Enlightenment were born. They were forums where people of different political beliefs could get together and hash out their ideas without fear of violence or intimidation.

Freudian slip? no see left wings?

This sounds like a great idea: we do need civil dialogue with an actual idea as to how to implement policy and not lash out.
My hope is that it doesn't get co-opted by external forces who will want to shoehorn in their own agendas.

I think it is absurd to answer the tea party movement with the same type of pointless gathering. People are so reactive. Waste of time to stoop to the level of the repubs.

Please, please, please ask if they believe all lobbyist should be outlawed and all political races, state and national, should be publicly funded.

Everybody needs to just chill out and join the Beer Party. That's where the real party is at.

I'd like to know how much of the "tea-party" movement is tied in with Fox News. They've certainly publicised it making it SEEM large but the Daily Shows' researchers have shown that footage was from other events that were more populated. How much of this movement is just hype, propogated by Fox news stimulation? Why are other media outlets letting them set the agenda?

Where does the Coffee Party stand on the war in Afghanistan?

What does the Coffee Party believe should be done to eliminate the deficit?

Sounds like a great idea. It's definately time for people to "wake up" to the manipulations against health care by vested interests and how it works against what our population really needs, Universal healthcare with a single payor. Everyone chipping in means costs are spread to everyone lowering costs for everyone. We just need to have the right slogans to hammer at people so they can "get it" that the concept is BENEFICIAL for all of us. Conservatives are propaganda masters. As Stephen Colbert so perfectly described it, they "define and conquer". Let's take control of the issue back and propogate what the true majority of Americans want, good and affordable healthcare.