President Obama is being blamed for causing then disrupting the USA far right Tea Party taxation protests (sponsored by Lipton, the only true winner today?). The protests harkened back to the Boston Tea Party of 1773 and appear to be massive duds thudding their way across the country. What was most funny were the fringe protestor spectacles which made the news sound bytes in much the way the left and anarchists wandered about in disorganised fashion during Bush era fights against the war in Iraq. Despite continuous advertisements 24/7 all weekend on the far right’s mouthpiece news network FOX, the main question being asked today is: what if you gave a tea party and no one bothered to come?

The tone deaf, demoralised and marginalised far right conservative wing of the US is in a ‘lather’ over tax increases. They seem to ignore the billions of dollars in cuts and incentives given to those hit hardest and instead focus on Obama’s plan to raise (2 years from now) the highest marginal tax rates for those earning $250,000 or more a year from 36% to 39%. This is what they were during the Clinton era, yet Obama has been branded as a socialist by the right.

The American public, which ignored Republican smears during the campaign and took the November election very seriously (David Cameron beware, snarkiness during a recovery could cost you an election coronation here in the UK) have rejected them and their obstructionist ways.

Then, to make matters even worse, over the weekend President Obama ‘broke his military maiden’ by acting decisively and quickly with a surgical strike to free a container ship’s captain off the coast of Somalia from local pirates holding him hostage. The US Navy Seal strike was as ruthlessly cold and calculating as it was brilliant. President Obama added further injury to insult by delivering a surgical, professorial, almost equally no-drama-ice-water-in-his-veins-point-by-point filled explanation of his economic policy arguments.

While the three precision head shots that took out 3 of the 4 pirates certainly caused the remaining 16-year old pirate to soil himself in abject fear as he surrendered, it was the kind of quiet flexing of military might long missing from the “bring it on” Texas style bluster and war mongering of the previous White House occupant.

Indeed Right wing blogs spent the weekend mocking Obama’s inaction and questioning everything from his strategy to his manhood. When the order went out during the weekend giving the on-scene ship’s commander full authority to take whatever action he deemed necessary if it looked like the captain was in immediate danger and then the successful resolution, one can certainly imagine the basketball chest and fist bumps in the Situation Room.

So the Republican Party that brought us the Gingrich Revolution of 1994 by changing the message and tone, the legendary Party of Lincoln… is now run by hacks that still cannot shake “the Party of NO” label. It has devolved into a “one tune wonder ‘all tax cuts all the time’ ” and is run off the rails by talk-show hosts Rush Limbaugh, his sidekicks Bill O’Reilly and Glenn Beck and a fanatical religious conservative right wing. And then we look to their possible future leaders Sarah Palin, Eric Cantor and Bobby (creepy Mr. Rogers) Jindal and can barely stifle a belly laugh.

This was a good Easter weekend for the President. Feeling buoyant, he let is hair down and led an energised story reading session during his family’s first White House Easter Egg roll for some 30,000 Internet ticketed guests including a group of specially welcomed gay and lesbian parent couples, long excluded from previous celebrations.

And he finally got his dog, ‘Bo’ (more on him later from Charley James).

So we end as the film Philadelphia ends with an AIDS stricken and dying Tom Hanks joking: “what do you call 200 lawyers (Republicans?) strapped together at the bottom of the ocean? A good start.”

As they say here in Wales in response to the question: How ya doin’? ‘Not so bad.’