Blind Leading the Blind into Battle?

Thank you to Teabonics for the picture, if you haven't been over to Flickr and checked out the hysterical photo album people have been putting together of Tea Party Patriot signs, please do not hesitate any further. Be sure to pee before you check it out though!

Though the Tea Party supporters have greatly decreased in the past calendar year, they seem to be popping up in the news the past week since April 15th, Tax Day was last week. I wanted to express some of my feelings on the Tea Party situation as a whole in one post. I probably won't revisit the subject unless these elderly nut jobs start bombing things or committing acts of terrorism in the name of patriotism.

First things first. Sarah Palin? Really? I think we all know my track record with the former VP candidate and Governor of Alaska. As it stands, I still think my dog could do a better job at most things, including mothering her brood. Could these Tea Party supporters not have access to anyone better? The majority of Americans think she is useless so the new cause de jour picks her up to be a spokes woman? If you guys really want to be taken seriously drop Airhead Barbie and pick up that other nut job Glenn Beck.
Does this mean the Republican's don't want her back?

Second, watch your words. Encouraging citizens to take up arms against the government could be considered a serious terrorist threat in the times we live in. Domestic terrorism is not special, it does not make you any better than the extremists that flew planes into the Twin Towers, and it certainly doesn't get anything accomplished, especially change. Bill Clinton was right when he warned you to watch your words.

Third, where are all the blacks at your rallies? The Tea Party movement certainly looks to me like a bunch of older, wealthy whites. I think Andy Ostroy hit the nail right on the head when he wrote The Tea Party Movement Isn't About Racism? Read This... After reading that, I took a stroll over to The New York Times which released the findings of a poll focused around the new Tea Party Movement. Their findings?
Tea Party Movement Supporters tend to :

• Be White
• Be Male
• Be Married
• Over the age of 45
• With Conservative Republican Views
• Classify themselves as "angry" with Washington
• Place the majority of the blame on Obama (that is a whole post in itself)
• Believe the current administration favors blacks over whites

All extremely telling for me at least. I am not racist by any means, but I can certainly see the divide between the races, even more so once Obama took office. In the article is shows the majority of the Tea Party Supporters feel as though Obama does not share the views of Americans. In other words, according to these new radicals, the majority of Americans are white, church going, conservatives, certainly not the case. Another reason why Obama was voted in to begin with.

If that is the majority, then someone needs to run that by the majority that run in my circle up here in the great white North East that would rather go out shopping or fishing on Sunday rather than run down to the local chapel for a snooze.

But the movement wouldn't be your typical post Republicans if they weren't hypocrites. The majority of the Tea Party Supporters do not want any changes made to their social security benefits, or medicare, two large government programs in many cases highly funded by the government they are bitching and moaning about.

To wrap it all up, I want to share a quote which was at the tail end of the New York Times article on the poll.

“He’s a socialist. And to tell you the truth, I think he’s a Muslim and trying to head us in that direction, I don’t care what he says. He’s been in office over a year and can’t find a church to go to. That doesn’t say much for him.”

Said by Kathy Mayhugh, 67, a retired medical transcriber in Jacksonville. Mrs. Mayhugh, buying into propaganda of this nature puts you in the same category as Palin, uneducated.

Long Time No Post!

I never thought I would agree with anything Dr. Amy had to say, but she wrote a great blog yesterday about Sarah Palin and her hate...

What Sarah Palin can teach us about hate

Sarah Palin burst onto the national scene slightly more than a year ago at the Republican National Convention. Since then she has gone from disaster to disaster: she fatally weakened the Republican ticket, committed countless ethical violations, and couldn't even manage to govern the State of Alaska. Through it all, she has demonstrated herself to be simultaneously a blithering idiot and a confirmed narcissist.

On the eve of publication of her new book, it is worth examining Palin's one outstanding talent, her ability to incite hatred. The contemporary GOP is a party fueled on hate. Hate is the stock in trade of O'Reilly, Limbaugh and Beck, so it is no small feat that Sarah Palin could claim to be the hater-in-chief. In her rapturously received speech to the Republican convention she gave what amounted to a clinic in inciting hatred. It is worth looking back at that speech and how she did it.

Psychologists have recently published findings on the five steps in the development of collective hate (Making a Virtue of Evil: A Five-Step Social Identity Model of the Development of Collective Hate, Soc Per Psych Compass 2/3 (2008): 1313–1344) and Palin seems to have embraced the model enthusiastically. According to the researchers:

The five steps are: (i) Identification, the construction of an ingroup; (ii) Exclusion, the definition of targets as external to the ingroup; (iii) Threat, the representation of these targets as endangering ingroup identity; (iv) Virtue, the championing of the ingroup as (uniquely) good; and (v) Celebration, embracing the eradication of the outgroup as necessary to the defence of virtue.

Let's look at how Palin accomplished those aims.

Identification, or I'm just like you: Palin led with a description of her family, proudly proclaiming, "Our family has the same ups and downs as any other ... the same challenges and the same joys." She emphasized her large family size, her family members in the military, her special needs child, her husband's blue collar job and her parents' background as farmer and small business person.

Exclusion, defining the other: Palin was quick to claim that her opponent talks one way in Scranton to working people (us) and another way in San Francisco (them, and they're gay, too) supposedly deriding religion and gun ownership. Palin invokes the Washington elites (them) as if the Republicans didn't hold the presidency, vice presidency, Supreme Court, and other major positions of power.

The threat: Her opponent supposedly wants to turn his back on victory in Iraq; her opponent wants us to be threatened by oil producing nations; and, worst of all, terrorists are trying to attack us and her opponent still cares about the Constitution.

Virtue: Her group is uniquely good. She implies that they, and they alone, are the people who care about family, about religion, about patriotism, about sacrifice, and she is sure that God cares uniquely about her group.

Celebration: Finally, the call to action, the insistence that the defeat of the other is required to defend the values of family, religion, patriotism and sacrifice.

Not only was the structure of the speech designed to evoke hate, the very words and the delivery were chosen to ridicule, demean and denigrate. She made is quite clear that her opponents are not merely political opponents, they are people unworthy of the basic respect that should be due to any individual, let alone two Senators who have served their country well.

Sarah Palin was perhaps more honest than she intended to be when she described herself as a pit bull with lipstick. She implied that she is vicious, immoral, bred to attack, and fed on misery and hate. The crowd lapped it up. She carefully followed the script for inciting hatred and the audience responded with thunderous applause. It was a virtuoso performance in the art of hate.

Buy an Outfit or Buy a Home?

Just another reason that no working middle class family can relate to the McCains.
Last night at the Republican National Convention, Cindy McCain, Rich Princess...
clothed herself in...

Oscar de la Renta dress: $3,000
Chanel J12 White Ceramic Watch: $4,500
Three-carat diamond earrings: $280,000
Four-strand pearl necklace: $11,000–$25,000
Shoes, designer unknown: $600

Total: Between $299,100 and $313,100

That is why the run of the mill American will not be able to look eye to eye with her.
The amount of her outfit is the amount we paid for our 5 bedroom, 2 bathroom, 1 car garage, on a half acre of land home in a upper middle class suburb.
For what she spent on clothes and accessories, she could out right buy MULTIPLE homes for hurricane Katrina victims that are still out of a home almost 3 years after the fact.

Palin Circus at the Republican National Convention

I would be lying if I said I wasn't excited to see the Palin Circus tonight on TV.
Sarah Palin, right wing, misogynistic, pro life, Christian, freak show.
Her husband the house husband who is jealous his wife wears the pants in the family.
Bristol, her 17 year old, underage drinking, unwed, knocked up daughter.
Levi Johnston, self proclaimed redneck, hockey loving, non child wanting, daughters baby daddy.
Trigg, her 4 month old child who I still don't believe is hers.

No, I did not just type that with a straight face either.

Bravo John McCain. If you want half a chance of winning this election, drop the Alaskan Freak show!