This season should be called the summer of our discontent.

Aside from the discomfort of the terrible heat we have had to endure, our skies seemed destined to be shrouded in choking smoke and ash. Escaping one fire, we decided to get out of Dodge and head for the 62 degrees of San Francisco — fine dining, great museum openings like the Picasso and Balenciaga at the deYoung, a theatrical performance, and a tour of the wine country, which is like being in Spain or Italy.

As we were preparing to leave the Bay we got a call from a relative in New Mexico telling us, "Don't come back, we've got another fire called 'Las Conchas' and it's miserable out here."

Which goes to prove you can't escape reality or nature. In the Midwest it was flooding. From Arizona to Florida the drought is as bad as anything seen since 1895. Right now a huge section of the country is facing oppressive heat. We can always blame La Niña, El Niño, or the entire familia or global warming but there is little doubt human behavior certainly contributes to our discomfort.

Certainly the major discomfort and uncertainty most Americans, including the financial sector is undergoing is caused by human behavior, misbehavior. The recently elected children in the House and their actions as playground bullies have serious consequences beyond their demagoguery and ideology.

Their behavior can only be described as juvenile at best. You don't hold hostage the pensions and salaries of people whose only means are their Social Security checks, military families whose burden is already great not knowing whether their loved ones will return or those who are handicapped and hardly survive on what they can get in government benefits. These tea bag "revolutionaries" don't know what a revolt is if a compromise on the debt ceiling isn't reached soon.

Like stubborn, spoiled brats, they need a good schoolmarm who can take them out to the wood pile and give them a lesson in civilized behavior. And they are a bunch of hypocrites anyway. You don't seen any of them reducing the deficit by reducing their salaries or their Mercedes-Benz health care plans. Those brats only got elected because they promised to make Obama a one-term president. Anyone with any brains knows we need to cut the deficit, but where were they when George Bush was spending like a drunken sailor? Where were these tea bag patriots when the banking and Wall Street "entrepreneurs" were bring this country to its knees?

And since when do the tea baggers represent the common man? Since when is it American that billionaires don't pay their fair share in taxes or corporations can shelter money in offshore accounts? And since when is it American to send manufacturing jobs out of this country so corporations can pay cheap labor and swell the earnings of their CEOs and stockholders?

And what is this nonsense about entitlements? The government took money from my check since I was 16 for Social Security for my old age. It was like forced bank account that belongs to me. How about the "entitlements" of the millionaires and billionaires who don't pay taxes? Another question that begs to be asked of the tea baggers behavior is: What are your priorities, a gentler kinder America or a nation ruled by the powerful and rich, where the middle class becomes subservient to the powerfuls' every whim?

If this is the "America" these tea baggers envision, the perpetuation of greed, avarice and corruption, maybe we should default. Then we really will get a revolution that will not only destroy our country but also will bring back some common sense to these patriots. As of this writing some 62 percent of Americans polled believe that a compromise on the debt ceiling is essential for this country to avoid a default. Even as I write, a huge split is occurring between independents and tea-partiers on this issue.

If the tea-bag toters thought they were going to make Obama a one-term president by their proposals and behavior, they've just done the opposite. They've guaranteed his re-election.

Writer/historian Orlando Romero may be reached at nambe1@aol.com.