Quote of the day

"At the West Valley Tea Party Patriots meeting I attend, campaigners for migrants are accused of being 'communists'. I ask about the imminent debt ceiling crisis and they hand me a dossier claiming to prove President Barack Obama is really Kenyan."

Newsnight's economics editor Paul Mason charitably tries to engage the Tea Party in rational debate, as part of an expose of middle-class and migrant rootlessness in Steinbeck country.