'Coffee Party' Brews Up Progressive Answer to Tea

Annabel Park down on Tea Party approach

(NEWSER) - At first glance, the Coffee Party might seem like just a reaction against the Tea Party movement, and it did start that way. Founder Annabel Park recalls ranting against the "disproportionately effective " effort, saying, “We should just start our own party, call it the Coffee Party or the Smoothie Party—anything but Tea.” But her party has moved beyond that, she tells FiveThirtyEight.com : It's now about fostering a cooperative, responsive government. More»

Because there's more to life, and politics, than coffee and tea

(NEWSER) - The Tea Party movement's not going away and its Coffee Party counterpart has already made its media debut, but America's about a lot more than two measly beverages. Gawker 's Adrian Chen lists a few parties that don't exist, but probably should:

• The Long Island Iced Tea Party. Members hate taxes and President Obama, too, but their meetings are a lot more fun and laid back.
• The Monster Energy Drink Party. This one's for the American not yet overstimulated enough to deal with the flood of technology and information. Its Slogan? "Go America! Go! Go! Go! Go! Go!"

User known only as 'El Shaheed' fueled protests

(NEWSER) - The protests rocking Egypt have been fueled in part by a man who died before they began: Khaled Said, who was reportedly killed by police last summer. That’s the name that heads a Facebook page that has been helping to organize the demonstrations—but the page’s creator, who goes by the name El Shaheed, or martyr, remains completely anonymous, Newsweek reports. “There is no name. There is no leader. It is purely about the thought,” says an activist. More»

Obama 'swinging wildly' at them, needs to co-opt energy

(NEWSER) - The Tea Party is mad as hell and ... that's about it, writes Richard Cohen in the Washington Post. Beyond anger, the Tea Party "has no leader. It has no address, no phone, and no Washington headquarters. It is everywhere and nowhere." When a Post posse tried to track down 2,300 local tea-drinking groups, it could verify only 647. Cohen writes that "the Tea Party exists in the vapors," bound only by anger and the Internet. The latter eliminates the middleman—"in this case an actual political party, which was once called the organization because it actually organized." More»

Ex-governor takes aim at NAACP

(NEWSER) - The NAACP’s accusation that the Tea Party movement “ harbors racist elements ” got Sarah Palin so fired up that she had to write a Facebook post. “All decent Americans abhor racism,” she wrote , and with the election of Barack Obama “we, as a united people, applauded” the idea that we’d become a “post-racial” society. But now, 18 months later, the NAACP was trying to resurrect “the divisive politics of the past.” More»