There seem to be a few folks with too much time on their hands and a huge amount of frustration over losing last November. And tomorrow they're going to have a little party -- a nationwide protest in 500 cities and towns is scheduled for Wednesday -- to let everyone know just how angry they are. I support their right to express their opinion about how the government is spending "their" money. As long as they pay their taxes, their tea bagging ceremonies are a little bit like throwing spitballs in a sixth grade history class.

If tea baggers were real patriots though, they would come up with real alternatives to fix the problems about which they're complaining. As best as I can tell, the teabaggers were inspired by an on-air rant by CNBC's Rick Santelli back on February 19 who complained that Obama's $75 billion bailout of mortgage defaulters "rewarded bad behavior." Interestingly, Santelli has no problem with the other $12.725 trillion -- out of a total of $12.8 trillion -- being spent to bail out Wall Street's bad behavior.

CNBC commentator Rick Santelli is blasting the payment of $100 million plus in bonuses to executives at corporate train wreck American International Group (NYSE: AIG), but he's also drawing attention to what a side issue it is given the thousand-fold larger pile of cash we piled into that hellhole of a company.

"I think it's reprehensible, but I think the bigger issue is we're giving a lot of talk to the $165 million towel rack . . . I would like to see greater scrutiny given to the $165 billion house we now own."

Rick Santelli's passionate rant against Obama's stimulus plan attracted millions of YouTube views and a rebuke from the White House press secretary. Overnight, Santelli was transformed from an obscure commodities commentator into an icon.

Playboy claimed that there was more to the apotheosis of Santelli than met the eye. The URL to the Playboy commentary no longer works but it's reprinted here. Mark Ames and Yasha Levine claim that "As veteran Russia reporters, both of us spent years watching the Kremlin use fake grassroots movements to influence and control the political landscape. To us, the uncanny speed and direction the movement took and the players involved in promoting it had a strangely forced quality to it. If it seemed scripted, that's because it was."

In a discussion with Rick Santelli on Fast Money, CNBC's Dylan Ratigan argued that one of the major factors stifling a restoration of market confidence has been the failure to crack down on the bad actors -- the charlatans, crooks, and incompetents who drove corporate America into this ditch.

Ratigan makes a pretty bold comparison: He argues that the people who are saying that we need to "move forward" with a recovery are like people who said that we should "move on" after September 11, and not bother with going after Osama Bin Laden.

Rick Santelli's impassioned diatribe against Obama's plan to help struggling homeowners sparked a prickly and sarcastic response from White House press secretary Robert Gibbs.

Santelli fired back in a CNBC interview with Larry Kudlow (see below). In a statement on the CNBC website, Santelli wrote that "The issues that currently face us and the solutions to correct them need to be debated, vetted, and openly studied. This should not be an issue about the political left or right."

Kudlow, a die-hard right-winger, is trying to make this little cat fight between Santelli and Gibbs into a free speech/government bullying critics issue. I don't buy that. In any case, this makes for great theater, and it's good to see people debating important economic issues.