Who took the photograph? Was the photograph taken to make the event look good or bad?
Regardless, the sign still exists, and the fact that it exists makes the event look really awful and STOOPID. Unless you want to argue that it was 'shopped, it doesn't matter who took the photograph or what their political views are, that man exists and he is an idiot spouting ridiculous hyperbole.
Steve, you are becoming more and more right wing every day. It makes me itch, but I still respect your right to hold whatever weird opinions you want to. I mean, geez, I know how it feels to have a president I don't agree with. It sucks, right?
I mean, geez, I know how it feels to have a president I don't agree with. It sucks, right?
This is really the entirety of the tea party movement. News clips inevitably feature some nutter saying, "This is taxation without representation!" But the truth is that it's just not majority representation anymore for the right wing. They are still represented. It must be hard to go from majority to minority.
What irks me the most is that the tea parties seem to be based on the incorrect assumption that spending is out of control because of Obama administration policies. That's lunacy. The national debt has jumped more than $500 billion per year since 2003... which, for those of you playing along at home, have been years when Republicans controlled both the executive and legislative branches. Meanwhile, the federal budget for 2008 was the largest ever — with a record $438 billion shortfall.
The debt was $6 trillion when Bush took the White House in 2000, and ballooned to $10 trillion during the follow eight years of right-wing control. If you can do simple sums, you know that's a 66.6 percent increase! It wasn't Obama who voted for that spending.
And that's not the worst of it. The worst is that the Republican majority continue to sling the old "tax and spend" slur at Democrats, but the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform found $1.1 trillion was spent between 2002 and 2008 on 700 projects that were mismanaged, wasteful, fraudulent, or abusive.
So who are the real tax-and-spenders? It's the same people the tea parties are trying to tout.
What irks me the most is that the tea parties seem to be based on the incorrect assumption that spending is out of control because of Obama administration policies. That's lunacy.
I don't agree with that assessment. I see the Tea Party movement as being against both parties. Those on the right are grabbing onto it and trying to use it to galvanize the Republican base because they are in the minority but that does not mean the people who are involved with the Tea Party movement are going to support Republicans in the coming elections.
I don't like the way Fox News and some members of Talk Radio are trying to latch onto this movement and turn it into a Republican thing. I think their involvement causes more problems for the movement.
The Tax Day Tea Party is a national collaborative grassroots effort organized by Smart Girl Politics, Top Conservatives on Twitter, the DontGo Movement and many other online groups/coalitions.
The Tea Party protests, in their current form, began in early 2009 when Rick Santelli, the On Air Editor for CNBC, set out on a rant to expose the bankrupt liberal agenda of the White House Administration and Congress. Specifically, the flawed “Stimulus Bill” and pork filled budget.
During Rick’s rant (see video below), he called for a “Chicago tea Party” where advocates of the free-market system could join in a protest against out of control government spending.
A few days later, grassroots activists and average Joe Americans began organizing what would soon become the Nationwide Chicago Tea Party effort.
On February 27th, an estimated 30,000 Americans took to the street in 40+ cities across the country in the first nationwide “Tea Party” protest.
Organizers of the February 27th events pledged to continue on with an even bigger and better protest to follow the first. With April 15th being “Tax Day”, it was decided to schedule the second round of Tea Party protests to ride alongside the tax deadline.
And with that, the “Tax Day Tea Party”, the second round of the Nationwide Tea Party protests, moved into reality.
I have talked to people who voted for Obama and those who voted for McCain who are interested in the Tea Party movement. They were getting pissed at the 'drunken sailor' spending of the Bush administration so they voted for "change". They weren't expecting to go from drunken sailor spending to inebriated rich frat boy spending. They are not looking to Republicans as the solution either (even if many on the Right and left like to think so.)
Yes, there are some crazies in the protest pictures but those types of people show up in nearly every protest of a decent size. I don't like the attitude I am seeing in the left-leaning media where the protesters are being portrayed as idiots or racists. For one thing it's wrong and for another it shows some serious hypocrisy when you look back at how those same media outlets treat the protesters on the left.
The reason the tea party protesters are being portrayed as idiots and/or racists by the media is because the whole thing is so ridiculous. "Teabagging" the President, protesting "reckless spending" when hardly any of it is past the planning stage, protesting taxes, saying Obama's a Nazi/idiot/criminal/drunkard, passing judgement on Obama's entire term in office when he's barely entering his fourth month (or calling for his immediate removal from office), and most especially claiming that they are the majority.
Say what you will, but most of the people making those kind of claims are either grossly misinformed, vaguely opinionated, crazy, or sheep. There are legitimate claims to be made against Obama, but the people making them are drowned out by the riotous Fox News-driven mob anger, and the percentage of people who actually bothered to look into the stimulus package beyond what they filter-fed from TV are tiny.
The Tick, I commend you for actually becoming informed on the issues, but you have to realize that sadly, many of your comrades are not.
Speck, with all due respect I think it is wrong to see this protest as strictly anti-Obama. it's anti-everyone-one-in-office protest, more of a 'vote everyone out' movement. I feel those who are trying to portray this as strictly an anti-Obama protest are doing so because they find it easier to counter if they paint it in those terms.
I agree with your opinion of the anti-Obama people in the crowd. However I consider those folks to be party crashers and not indicative of the movement as a whole.
As for the spending not being beyond the planning stages... When is the best time to protest something? While something is being planned or once something is already set in motion?
Speck, with all due respect I think it is wrong to see this protest as strictly anti-Obama. it's anti-everyone-one-in-office protest, more of a 'vote everyone out' movement.
I don't see any signs mentioning any elected officials other than Obama. They are not calling on senators or representatives to change. They are placing blame for poor economic policy on the hands of a man who took office AFTER George W. Bush ushered in the single largest administrative spending splurge in U.S. history.
The signs read: Obama Plan, White Slavery; The American Taxpayers are the Jews for Obama's Ovens; Our Tax $ Given to Hamas to Kill Christians, Jews, and Americans (Thanks Mr. O); Obama, What You Talkin Bout Willis; Obama Loves Taxes, Bankrupt USA, Loves Baby Killing; Barack Hussein Obama, The New Face of Hitler; Change We Must Resist; and so forth. These are clearly not bipartisan protesters.
Really, Steve, I think you are trying desperately to backpedal your way out of looking ridiculous. But you've hitched your wagon to the loonies. There is no ambiguity here; the tea-baggers are right-wingers. They are uniformly uneducated, knee-jerk reactionist nuts who don't understand public funding, and who still subscribe to the inane fallacy that Republicans save money while Democrats waste it.
I see the Tea Party movement as being againstbothparties.
Prove it. Show that there was any protest at all against republican politicians. In fact, some republican politicians, such as Gov. Mark Sanford and Gov. Rick Perry made appearances at the tea parties. It is simply delusional to believe that these tea parties have any significant bipartisan support. It's strictly a republican/conservative thing. Your own quote belies this fact:
The Tax Day Tea Party is a national collaborative grassroots effort organized by Smart Girl Politics, Top Conservatives on Twitter, the DontGo Movement and many other online groups/coalitions.
The named groups are all conservative groups. You just have to google them.
I don't like the way Fox News and some members of Talk Radio are trying to latch onto this movement and turn it into a Republican thing.
As proven earlier in this thread, such organizations are not trying to "latch on" to this movement". They created and they own this "movement".
Speck, with all due respect I think it is wrong to see this protest as strictly anti-Obama. it's anti-everyone-one-in-office protest, more of a 'vote everyone out' movement. I feel those who are trying to portray this as strictly an anti-Obama protest are doing so because they find it easier to counter if they paint it in those terms.
Odd . . . I didn't see many anti-Mitch McConnell signs. I did, however, see many, many anti-Obama signs. (Edit: Jason beat me to this particular punch.) It's very reasonable to conclude that these people are anti-Obama. If the signs aren't enough, all that's required is a brief scan of the tea party websites to understand that there is a significant anti-Obama component to the tea parties.
1. The "grassroots" movement that the Republicans et al would like people to believe actually is a grassroots movement, whose members include nearly all of the people actively protesting, which is an anti-government, anti-Obama, anti-tax, right-wing Republican facade. These people are the "teabaggers", those who cannot understand what such a term implies, nor do they care to find out (they are the same way with the issues).
2. Those who are rather more informed, the conservatives who don't strut their shit on Fox, and don't hide behind the skirt-tails of O'Reilly, Hannity, and all the other pundits when push comes to shove.
The problem is, those with legitimate concerns against Obama's economic policy, those who know what his policy actually is, do nothing, or don't do enough, and are drowned out by the gigantic amalgamation of Fox-driven lunatics who take charge and make themselves look like the uninformed jackasses that they are, all in the name of "the grassroots movement". I have fundamental differences with members of both groups, but I'd like to see people who disagree with me do so without being out of their fucking minds, who know what the fuck they are talking about, do it without getting emotional, and without taking every attack as a personal attack.
Most other democratic nations in the world have parliamentary systems with prime ministers and such. They also often have many more than two viable parties. In the US we have a winner take all system, and two parties. It's cases like this where it really bites us in the ass. Yes, I understand the pros and cons of both political systems, and I'm not saying we should have proportional representation like say, Israel.
All I'm saying is that right now one of our only two viable political parties is basically being split ideologically. The result of that is simply that both halves will be completely disenfranchised. Before we had a situation where both of the two parties had some say in government because they both had enough people behind them. If one party splits, all of its former constituents will go from 50% power to 0% on the federal level, and half of the US will rule over the other half. You might think that's fine if you're a Democrat, but think about it from a political science perspective. Pretend it's just party A and party B. It's not good for the future of our nation.
The signs read: Obama Plan, White Slavery; The American Taxpayers are the Jews for Obama's Ovens; Our Tax $ Given to Hamas to Kill Christians, Jews, and Americans (Thanks Mr. O); Obama, What You Talkin Bout Willis; Obama Loves Taxes, Bankrupt USA, Loves Baby Killing; Barack Hussein Obama, The New Face of Hitler; Change We Must Resist; and so forth. These are clearly not bipartisan protesters.
I can cherry pick photographs of signs too. Like I said before, just because some fringe folks were also in attendance does not mean they were the majority or the leading force. Besides, since we know both parties are big spenders in Washington how can you say a "vote the buns out" mentality is strictly anti-Obama/anti-Democrats?
As for the Obama/Hitler signs... We saw the same ones with Bush/Hitler when he was President.
As for those who were unaware of the sexual connotations of "teabagging" how many of your friends who don't play video games or watch porn knew what the term meant? I didn't know about it's sexual connotation until about 12 months ago.
One of the few pleasures I have is that every third Thursday of the month, those of us who do volunteer work at the Board of Registrars get together for hot dogs, burgers and sodas. This time around it was interesting that many of us who tend to side with the Republican party are worried that not only will the more radical factions of the party throw the Republicans into turmoil, but that they are trying too hard and too quickly to regain their footing after losing the 2008 presidential election.
One of the few pleasures I have is that every third Thursday of the month, those of us who do volunteer work at the Board of Registrars get together for hot dogs, burgers and sodas. This time around it was interesting that many of us who tend to side with the Republican party are worried that not only will the more radical factions of the party throw the Republicans into turmoil, but that they are trying too hard and too quickly to regain their footing after losing the 2008 presidential election.
Yea, that's pretty much it. The republicans come off SO desperate that it's really unnerving and kinda scary. I'm pretty sure everyone in the thread knows that the people that are being portrayed as wacko's are just a small part of the republican party, but if you hear even the Right wing news (like Fox and Drudgereport) they seem to be embracing this sort of craziness openly. Unfortunately for more main street republicans they still make the mistake of getting most of their news from FOX news. One wonders if there will be any moderate republicans left in a year or so. The republicans need a strong clear thinking leader and quickly, lest Rush, Hannity and Beck become the standard bearers of the republican party.
Like I said before, just because some fringe folks were also in attendance does not mean they were the majority or the leading force. Besides, since we know both parties are big spenders in Washington how can you say a "vote the buns out" mentality is strictly anti-Obama/anti-Democrats?
It's been proven time and again on this thread that teabagging is a republican/conservative thing. To persist in saying that it is not is delusional.
Here's a good video showing what the teabaggers are protesting, in their own words. From the video: "The only unifying belief that we witnessed, across the board, was an opposition to President Obama." I don't hear a lot of bipartisanship there. If you can find any video of democrats speaking at a teaparty, I'd like to see it.
One of the few pleasures I have is that every third Thursday of the month, those of us who do volunteer work at the Board of Registrars get together for hot dogs, burgers and sodas. This time around it was interesting that many of us who tend to side with the Republican party are worried that not only will the more radical factions of the party throw the Republicans into turmoil, but that they are trying too hard and too quickly to regain their footing after losing the 2008 presidential election.
Gee, why would you be woried about that if the teabaggers are so bipartisan? If I were you, I'd blame those democrat teabaggers. Goodness knows there were enough of those.
As for the Obama/Hitler signs... We saw the same ones with Bush/Hitler when he was President.
Show one.
As for those who were unaware of the sexual connotations of "teabagging" how many of your friends who don't play video games or watch porn knew what the term meant? I didn't know about it's sexual connotation until about 12 months ago.
Everyone except the conservative types in the video Mr. Cremlian showed in the first post of the thread who want to "burn those evolution books" knew what it meant.
If you're trying to defend them by saying that their lack of knowledge is excused because you had the same lack of knowledge, then you fail. That's the classic argumentum ad ignorantiam. Now before I go further, I just want to point out that you are using your lack of knowledge as your argument, so what I have to say next is not an ad hominem attack, but an assessment of and a response to your argument. You put the state of your knowledge in play and opened the door to comments about it by using it as your argument.
Your lack of knowledge cannot excuse anyone else's lack of knowledge. Your lack of knowledge is boundless. However, your statement disproves your own point. Even YOU know what teabagging means, and you've known it for a year - this from someone who was famously uninformed about the definition of a rape kit. Your knowledge is pretty much the minimum, baseline knowledge that everyone should have. If you know it, everyone should know it. So if you've known what teabagging was for a year, everyone should have known it before the tea parties were organized.
The republicans need a strong clear thinking leader and quickly, lest Rush, Hannity and Beck become the standard bearers of the republican party.
Too late. They already are the standard bearers of the party. Those people in the video you posted are mainstream repubicans.
As for the Obama/Hitler signs... We saw the same ones with Bush/Hitler when he was President.
Show one.
Is this what you refer to as "low hanging fruit"?
Just go on Google and do an image search for Bush+Hitler and you will find a ton of them!
Cremlian - It's not just the Republicans in trouble here. Elements of the left-wing fringe are trying to get moderate Democrats out of the government too! Both parties are being taken over by their extreme partisan wings.
No. I wasn't asking you to prove anything. I just wanted to trick you into posting a picture of one of those cool signs. That's why I wrote "show one" instead of "prove it by showing one." I know it was a juvenile thing to do, but it's Saturday and it's hard to remain totally mature when you're talking about teabaggers. Thanks for indulging me.
Cremlian - It's not just the Republicans in trouble here. Elements of the left-wing fringe are trying to get moderate Democrats out of the government too! Both parties are being taken over by their extreme partisan wings.
Now that calls for proof. The republicans are imploding. They have been taken over by their kooky fringe. They are well on their way to extinction. Democrats, on the other hand, are doing just fine, thank you very much. We'll be adding a new democratic Senator from Minnesota soon, so we're all pretty happy.
I had written a long response with two articles linked but my wi-fi went down while posting and now it is lost
Moderate Democrats Feeling the Squeeze was the last one I was linking to. Look on Google and you will find more results of left-wing groups planning to target Democrats in the primaries who don't blindly follow Obama.
I know many of you read the lefty blogs so you can't honestly claim ignorance of this.
As for ignorance of the sexual connotations of the term "tea bagging" I would like to know how long of a grace period people are allowed to have before they learn a slang term. I'd also like to point out that many words and phrases have different meanings based on context. I don't think anyone involved in the Tea Parties was using "tea bagging" in the sexual context sense. They were likely just adding an -ing to a noun to make up a word. Not that uncommon.
Example of context: If you read the line, "meet my gay friend Robert" in a book set in 1890 you would likely assume Robert is happy. Read the same line in a book set in 1990 and you would likely assume Robert to be homosexual.
Moderate Democrats Feeling the Squeezewas the last one I was linking to. Look on Google and you will find more results of left-wing groups planning to target Democrats in the primaries who don't blindly follow Obama.
This happens all the time, The senator of my state is A. Spector gets challenged and attacked by right wing groups all the time. That's not the point I'm trying to make. The point is other then these whacko's we are seeing on the right there are not "many" clear and rational conservative voices out there that can make a point without looking like they are reading from a script (I'm looking at you Romney). It's more along the line that the republican party is currently fighting for it's heart. You have the Elephant wing (I.E. McCain Campaign manager who thinks republicans should give up on banning Gay marriage) and the fucking crazy religious right..Guess who's making the big news these days, the crazies :-p Then again it further illustrates that in general media is not biased left or right but biased towards whoever is more crazy at the time.
The difference is merely that being an informed conservative/Republican or liberal/Democrat already sets you apart from the rabble of people holding inflammatory signs without being able to fully articulate what it is they are protesting. When it comes to fiscally conservative view points, I can see where people might hold those opinions. It is merely another way of running a government and handling its finances. Although I may not agree with fiscal conservatives, I realize that it is not a matter of being "wrong" or "right," it is just what people prefer. I happen to prefer more socialization and public works, they prefer privatization and lower taxes, and thus we will speak with our votes for these respective goals. However, the term "Republican" has become conflated with socially conservative, anti-intellectual bigots like the guys from the video at the top of the page. When someone screams to "Burn the Books!" all sorts of warning lights go off in my head. Republican or democrat, it makes no difference: When some intolerant, hardline crackpot tries to dictate my social mores and impede progress and learning, I will hate them.
Here is a very huge simplification of how to tell whether I like a political idea or not.
Does it make things more equal for everyone? Does it make things more open for everyone? Does it make things more peaceful for everyone?
I feel almost every problem in the world, at its base level has to do with lack of equality (financial equality, human rights, etc.), lack of openness/transparency/freedom, and violence/war.
How do you define more equal? Some might say that if everyone pays the same price for something that it is equal because everyone pays the same for the same thing. Others will say that it is more fair if everyone pays the same percentage cost for something because then everyone is bearing the same share (or burden) of the cost.
The most obvious example is that of the tax debate. Is it more equal if everyone pays the same (fixed) or should things be progressive with some getting for free while others have to pay more?
Equality can be a funny thing because some people will define it differently than others. Most arguments of equality are obvious (your chance to land a job should not be influenced by your race/sex/sexual orientation/religion). Where the problem comes in is when people confuse equality with fairness.
One person may not consider it to be "fair" that their grocery bill consumes 30% of their disposable income while it only consumes 15% of another person's disposable income. Even if both people are buying the exact same groceries at the exact same price their is a perceived "lack of fairness" in the transaction even though both transactions are equal.
So, does "fairness" play a role in your deciding whether something is equal or not?
So, does "fairness" play a role in your deciding whether something is equal or not?
The answer is really not to create total equality, just equal opportunity. If I'm rich, and you're poor, that's ok as long as we both had the same chance to become rich or poor.
Let's say you and I are at a crossroads, and we don't know which way to go. You choose North and I choose East. You end up getting lost, and I get to town. It's not equal, but we had equal opportunity. You could have gone East. Even though you get lost going North, that's ok because it was a consequence of your own decision.
What's not acceptable is if you are forced to go in a certain direction against your will. That would be me pointing a gun at you and making you go North. What's also not acceptable is if an option is not available to you, but is available to others. A gatekeeper allowed me to go East, but did not allow you to go, leaving you with fewer choices.
Another problem is if the opportunity is equal, but is entirely too small and momentum-based. Pretend you have a board game where everyone starts with five tokens. On my first move I get something that will produce one token per turn for the rest of the game. On your first turn you lose all five tokens, and there is no way for you to get any more. Even if it was the fault of your own poor decision, one mistake has ruined any chance you have with no possibility of recovery.
Such a game is technically fair, and we technically had equal opportunity. However, it is not a practical or good way for a society to function. People can only learn from making mistakes. There needs to be some amount of protecting people from consequences. Otherwise, only the truly exceptional people who make very few mistakes actually have any real opportunity, and anyone who slips up even a little bit is screwed. It won't be a true equality of opportunity, even though it is a technical equality of opportunity. Exactly how much safety net we should have is at the root of many political debates.
Once we've managed to eliminate those unacceptable infringements upon equal opportunity, we can start to work together to fight against one more, which is random chance and acts of nature. If someone builds a house in Kansas, and it gets tornado'd, that I would consider suffering the consequences of a decision. If a freak tornado takes out a house in say, Maine, then I can offer sympathy. But, as I said, fighting this kind of inequality is less of a priority than fighting the other kinds. Harmful acts of nature can only truly be fixed when we have better science and technology. Therefore our society should concentrate more on man-made inequalities, as it is fully within our power to eliminate them.
People can only learn from making mistakes. There needs to be some amount of protecting people from consequences.
How much protection? Without consequences there is no learning from mistakes.
Though I do not believe one bad decision should ruin your life I do believe that failure is a part of learning. If you remove the negative consequences of a bad decision you also remove or reduce the power behind the lesson being learned. There are no save games in life and there are no do overs.
Take the current bailout mess and mortgages. If you did good and paid your mortgage on time there is no program in place to help you refinance. If you have missed payments there are programs in place to help you. Why should the person whose only mistake was taking out the loan not receive the same opportunity to refinance as the person who took out the same loan but missed payments? That is not fair or equal.
I do agree that someone whose problem is not of their own creation (tornado in Maine) should be helped. You can't fault someone for a freak occurrence and there is no lesson to be learned other than "shit happens".
Comments
Steve, you are becoming more and more right wing every day. It makes me itch, but I still respect your right to hold whatever weird opinions you want to. I mean, geez, I know how it feels to have a president I don't agree with. It sucks, right?
What irks me the most is that the tea parties seem to be based on the incorrect assumption that spending is out of control because of Obama administration policies. That's lunacy. The national debt has jumped more than $500 billion per year since 2003... which, for those of you playing along at home, have been years when Republicans controlled both the executive and legislative branches. Meanwhile, the federal budget for 2008 was the largest ever — with a record $438 billion shortfall.
The debt was $6 trillion when Bush took the White House in 2000, and ballooned to $10 trillion during the follow eight years of right-wing control. If you can do simple sums, you know that's a 66.6 percent increase! It wasn't Obama who voted for that spending.
And that's not the worst of it. The worst is that the Republican majority continue to sling the old "tax and spend" slur at Democrats, but the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform found $1.1 trillion was spent between 2002 and 2008 on 700 projects that were mismanaged, wasteful, fraudulent, or abusive.
So who are the real tax-and-spenders? It's the same people the tea parties are trying to tout.
I don't like the way Fox News and some members of Talk Radio are trying to latch onto this movement and turn it into a Republican thing. I think their involvement causes more problems for the movement. Tax Day Tea Party About Page
I have talked to people who voted for Obama and those who voted for McCain who are interested in the Tea Party movement. They were getting pissed at the 'drunken sailor' spending of the Bush administration so they voted for "change". They weren't expecting to go from drunken sailor spending to inebriated rich frat boy spending. They are not looking to Republicans as the solution either (even if many on the Right and left like to think so.)
Yes, there are some crazies in the protest pictures but those types of people show up in nearly every protest of a decent size. I don't like the attitude I am seeing in the left-leaning media where the protesters are being portrayed as idiots or racists. For one thing it's wrong and for another it shows some serious hypocrisy when you look back at how those same media outlets treat the protesters on the left.
Say what you will, but most of the people making those kind of claims are either grossly misinformed, vaguely opinionated, crazy, or sheep. There are legitimate claims to be made against Obama, but the people making them are drowned out by the riotous Fox News-driven mob anger, and the percentage of people who actually bothered to look into the stimulus package beyond what they filter-fed from TV are tiny.
The Tick, I commend you for actually becoming informed on the issues, but you have to realize that sadly, many of your comrades are not.
I agree with your opinion of the anti-Obama people in the crowd. However I consider those folks to be party crashers and not indicative of the movement as a whole.
As for the spending not being beyond the planning stages... When is the best time to protest something? While something is being planned or once something is already set in motion?
The signs read: Obama Plan, White Slavery; The American Taxpayers are the Jews for Obama's Ovens; Our Tax $ Given to Hamas to Kill Christians, Jews, and Americans (Thanks Mr. O); Obama, What You Talkin Bout Willis; Obama Loves Taxes, Bankrupt USA, Loves Baby Killing; Barack Hussein Obama, The New Face of Hitler; Change We Must Resist; and so forth. These are clearly not bipartisan protesters.
Really, Steve, I think you are trying desperately to backpedal your way out of looking ridiculous. But you've hitched your wagon to the loonies. There is no ambiguity here; the tea-baggers are right-wingers. They are uniformly uneducated, knee-jerk reactionist nuts who don't understand public funding, and who still subscribe to the inane fallacy that Republicans save money while Democrats waste it.
1. The "grassroots" movement that the Republicans et al would like people to believe actually is a grassroots movement, whose members include nearly all of the people actively protesting, which is an anti-government, anti-Obama, anti-tax, right-wing Republican facade. These people are the "teabaggers", those who cannot understand what such a term implies, nor do they care to find out (they are the same way with the issues).
2. Those who are rather more informed, the conservatives who don't strut their shit on Fox, and don't hide behind the skirt-tails of O'Reilly, Hannity, and all the other pundits when push comes to shove.
The problem is, those with legitimate concerns against Obama's economic policy, those who know what his policy actually is, do nothing, or don't do enough, and are drowned out by the gigantic amalgamation of Fox-driven lunatics who take charge and make themselves look like the uninformed jackasses that they are, all in the name of "the grassroots movement". I have fundamental differences with members of both groups, but I'd like to see people who disagree with me do so without being out of their fucking minds, who know what the fuck they are talking about, do it without getting emotional, and without taking every attack as a personal attack.
All I'm saying is that right now one of our only two viable political parties is basically being split ideologically. The result of that is simply that both halves will be completely disenfranchised. Before we had a situation where both of the two parties had some say in government because they both had enough people behind them. If one party splits, all of its former constituents will go from 50% power to 0% on the federal level, and half of the US will rule over the other half. You might think that's fine if you're a Democrat, but think about it from a political science perspective. Pretend it's just party A and party B. It's not good for the future of our nation.
As for the Obama/Hitler signs... We saw the same ones with Bush/Hitler when he was President.
As for those who were unaware of the sexual connotations of "teabagging" how many of your friends who don't play video games or watch porn knew what the term meant? I didn't know about it's sexual connotation until about 12 months ago.
Here's a good video showing what the teabaggers are protesting, in their own words. From the video: "The only unifying belief that we witnessed, across the board, was an opposition to President Obama." I don't hear a lot of bipartisanship there. If you can find any video of democrats speaking at a teaparty, I'd like to see it. Gee, why would you be woried about that if the teabaggers are so bipartisan? If I were you, I'd blame those democrat teabaggers. Goodness knows there were enough of those. Show one. Everyone except the conservative types in the video Mr. Cremlian showed in the first post of the thread who want to "burn those evolution books" knew what it meant.
If you're trying to defend them by saying that their lack of knowledge is excused because you had the same lack of knowledge, then you fail. That's the classic argumentum ad ignorantiam. Now before I go further, I just want to point out that you are using your lack of knowledge as your argument, so what I have to say next is not an ad hominem attack, but an assessment of and a response to your argument. You put the state of your knowledge in play and opened the door to comments about it by using it as your argument.
Your lack of knowledge cannot excuse anyone else's lack of knowledge. Your lack of knowledge is boundless. However, your statement disproves your own point. Even YOU know what teabagging means, and you've known it for a year - this from someone who was famously uninformed about the definition of a rape kit. Your knowledge is pretty much the minimum, baseline knowledge that everyone should have. If you know it, everyone should know it. So if you've known what teabagging was for a year, everyone should have known it before the tea parties were organized. Too late. They already are the standard bearers of the party. Those people in the video you posted are mainstream repubicans.
Just go on Google and do an image search for Bush+Hitler and you will find a ton of them!
Cremlian - It's not just the Republicans in trouble here. Elements of the left-wing fringe are trying to get moderate Democrats out of the government too! Both parties are being taken over by their extreme partisan wings.
Moderate Democrats Feeling the Squeeze was the last one I was linking to. Look on Google and you will find more results of left-wing groups planning to target Democrats in the primaries who don't blindly follow Obama.
I know many of you read the lefty blogs so you can't honestly claim ignorance of this.
As for ignorance of the sexual connotations of the term "tea bagging" I would like to know how long of a grace period people are allowed to have before they learn a slang term. I'd also like to point out that many words and phrases have different meanings based on context. I don't think anyone involved in the Tea Parties was using "tea bagging" in the sexual context sense. They were likely just adding an -ing to a noun to make up a word. Not that uncommon.
Example of context: If you read the line, "meet my gay friend Robert" in a book set in 1890 you would likely assume Robert is happy. Read the same line in a book set in 1990 and you would likely assume Robert to be homosexual.
Here is a very huge simplification of how to tell whether I like a political idea or not.
Does it make things more equal for everyone?
Does it make things more open for everyone?
Does it make things more peaceful for everyone?
I feel almost every problem in the world, at its base level has to do with lack of equality (financial equality, human rights, etc.), lack of openness/transparency/freedom, and violence/war.
The most obvious example is that of the tax debate. Is it more equal if everyone pays the same (fixed) or should things be progressive with some getting for free while others have to pay more?
Equality can be a funny thing because some people will define it differently than others. Most arguments of equality are obvious (your chance to land a job should not be influenced by your race/sex/sexual orientation/religion). Where the problem comes in is when people confuse equality with fairness.
One person may not consider it to be "fair" that their grocery bill consumes 30% of their disposable income while it only consumes 15% of another person's disposable income. Even if both people are buying the exact same groceries at the exact same price their is a perceived "lack of fairness" in the transaction even though both transactions are equal.
So, does "fairness" play a role in your deciding whether something is equal or not?
Let's say you and I are at a crossroads, and we don't know which way to go. You choose North and I choose East. You end up getting lost, and I get to town. It's not equal, but we had equal opportunity. You could have gone East. Even though you get lost going North, that's ok because it was a consequence of your own decision.
What's not acceptable is if you are forced to go in a certain direction against your will. That would be me pointing a gun at you and making you go North. What's also not acceptable is if an option is not available to you, but is available to others. A gatekeeper allowed me to go East, but did not allow you to go, leaving you with fewer choices.
Another problem is if the opportunity is equal, but is entirely too small and momentum-based. Pretend you have a board game where everyone starts with five tokens. On my first move I get something that will produce one token per turn for the rest of the game. On your first turn you lose all five tokens, and there is no way for you to get any more. Even if it was the fault of your own poor decision, one mistake has ruined any chance you have with no possibility of recovery.
Such a game is technically fair, and we technically had equal opportunity. However, it is not a practical or good way for a society to function. People can only learn from making mistakes. There needs to be some amount of protecting people from consequences. Otherwise, only the truly exceptional people who make very few mistakes actually have any real opportunity, and anyone who slips up even a little bit is screwed. It won't be a true equality of opportunity, even though it is a technical equality of opportunity. Exactly how much safety net we should have is at the root of many political debates.
Once we've managed to eliminate those unacceptable infringements upon equal opportunity, we can start to work together to fight against one more, which is random chance and acts of nature. If someone builds a house in Kansas, and it gets tornado'd, that I would consider suffering the consequences of a decision. If a freak tornado takes out a house in say, Maine, then I can offer sympathy. But, as I said, fighting this kind of inequality is less of a priority than fighting the other kinds. Harmful acts of nature can only truly be fixed when we have better science and technology. Therefore our society should concentrate more on man-made inequalities, as it is fully within our power to eliminate them.
Though I do not believe one bad decision should ruin your life I do believe that failure is a part of learning. If you remove the negative consequences of a bad decision you also remove or reduce the power behind the lesson being learned. There are no save games in life and there are no do overs.
Take the current bailout mess and mortgages. If you did good and paid your mortgage on time there is no program in place to help you refinance. If you have missed payments there are programs in place to help you. Why should the person whose only mistake was taking out the loan not receive the same opportunity to refinance as the person who took out the same loan but missed payments? That is not fair or equal.
I do agree that someone whose problem is not of their own creation (tornado in Maine) should be helped. You can't fault someone for a freak occurrence and there is no lesson to be learned other than "shit happens".