Thursday, April 15, 2010

Who are the Teabaggers?

Of all of the MSNBC programs who covered this poll and the rallies, I actually thought that Chris Matthews was the most even handed.

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Here Matthews interviews two Tea Party representatives.

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Okay that is the teabaggers in their own words. Did they change your mind?

13 comments:

  1. The teabaggers are still a bunch of misguided people...misguided by the likes of Beck, Rush and their ilk. I am grateful for them since they will split the votes, so play on.

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  2. Anonymous7:36 PM

    No, they did not. Simply because a poll casts them into a higher educational and socio-economic group does not change my mind. They are still short-sighted idiots who do not think about the long-term consequences of what they are proposing, what they are doing, and what they are saying.

    They do not understand the very Constitution they purport to support. They do not understand our form of government and how it works or why it works the way it does.

    Having read their 10 Point Contract with America, I am even less impressed. While it may seem almost palatable on at first blush, it becomes a grime document that would result in even more gridlock.

    For example, requiring that each bill in Congress state which specific part of the Constitution gives Congress the power to do what the bill says is per se idiotic and unnecessary. Firstly, the Constitution gives the Congress the power to enact laws. The Supreme Court has the right to review and reject a law as unconstitutional - not the Congress so even if a bill has a stated Constitutional clause on it, that does not guarantee it will be interpreted by the S.Ct. AS being Constitutional.

    Another example of how silly their Contract is their demand that a Blue Ribbon taskforce be assembled (at government expense?) to audit every single agency and program (er, how long would that take?) to determine if the agency or program is constitutional (only the S. Ct. can make that determination - so wouldn't that mean, even if the S.Ct. decided to review it, first a lawsuit would have to start at a trial court, move up through the appeals court system and then maybe the S. Ct. would review it - a long, expensive and time-consuming process and that would be for only one agency or program at a time). Then they want each agency and program reviewed for efficiency and waste (umm - how long would that take and who would be qualified to do that AND how would they do anything about their findings?).
    A blue ribbon task force by definition is only a reviewing committee and could not do anything more than recommendations.

    That is only a first blush review of two of their contract points.

    I am sure each one can be analyzed and proven to be a way to hike up costs, halt efficient governing and - oh, yes, expand the government (because don't you think we should pay folks who would have to do all that work - and they would have to be qualified to ferret out info and analyze it so they wouldn't come cheap - unless, of course, we got wealthy professionals to volunteer - but then they might be tempted to skew their findings to benefit their professions.)

    So, no Gryphen, the poll and the rallies did not change my mind as to the stupidity of this movement because I am even more convinced that Big Money/Big Business is behind this.

    Rachel did a great job exposing one of the major corporate movers behind these Tea Parties: Koch Industries. They did issue voluntary, preemptive denials before the Tea Parties got started, but Rachel was able to trace the Koch involvement through the CEO's little foundation and website that backs the Tea Party movement. Seems Koch Industries donated over $5 million dollars to this movement.

    I am even more angry now because I know they have taken advantage of working people, retired people, uneducated people and even those who think they are educated and well-off to promote policies that benefit only the wealthy.

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  3. Maeve8:34 PM

    G.
    Check this out:

    http://TheOther95.com/

    Maeve

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  4. Matthiews I cannot stand to watch. He would sell his soul for a box of Gummy bears.
    THE TEABAGGERS CANT GET ANY MORE STUPID. But wait the GOP has been doing all they can to dumb down America so we can be sure to see years more of this shit. Not much i can do but smile and dance a jig. I know there is more but just sayin.

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  5. Anonymous9:27 PM

    Crashed my browser twice trying to load today. Page is very slow. The videos might be slowing it down.

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  6. Gryphen, short answer... no. Their arguments are smoke and mirrors. I see right through them. Bush created this mess but they argue it's really Obama's fault. They do the dance of the dishonest. Pathetic!

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  7. Anonymous10:13 PM

    I don't believe what this for a min..nothing explains a bunch of people with mis-spelled,racist signs trying to de-legitimize a sitting President - it's about racism. Where were these people asleep for the last 8yrs when Bush spent trillons of money on a war he dragged US into based on false intel? I'm hearing crickets..I've challenge every Teabagger or wannabe Teabagger I come across..Did you pay less taxes this year? Very few of them can actually explain what they are about, beyond a few repeated sound bites..Nobody felt a need to get angry until we elected a black man in the WhiteHouse. I am very proud of President Obama - I shudder to think of what the alternative may have been...

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  8. Sharon - FL2:11 AM

    No, didn't change my mind. The poll showing Teabaggers are better educated than the average, blah, blah doesn't mean anything either. Sarah Palin has a degree (we're told) but she doesn't appear to be well-educated. IMO there's a bunch of colleges churning out graduates who are not well-educated. It's about race...nobody can convince me it isn't.

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  9. Anonymous3:13 AM

    The bottom line is that these people did nothing while Bush and Cheney ran slipshod over our economy and our constitution for eight years. Now, all of a sudden we are supposed to believe that they are concerned?

    I'm not saying they are all racists (although a large portion of them are), just that they are all hypocrites who criticize a democrat for doing less damage than the idiot boy republican and his evil sidekick/master we most recently had in the white house.

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  10. Anonymous4:24 AM

    After watching both videos, I am as unimpressed with the Teabaggers as I was before watching them. I have not only not changed my mind about them and their motives, but the unpersuasive arguments of the 2 speakers also cements my observation that the Teabaggers are both intellectually dishonest and intellectually bankrupt.

    There are a bunch of wealthy neanderthals among them, just like their loony idols Bachman and Palin. They must have been asleep at the switch when Bush ran the country into the ground, or they must have liked what he was doing.

    The excuses they use for being so angry are either stale GOP cliches or they are so far out of whack with reality, especially about taxes.

    The bottom line is that they are full of racism, and angry about the fact that an African-American is the President, and they are attempting to discredit this presidency with a lot of help from the GOP.

    The world around them is changing drastically, and they are lashing out through anger and fear,
    stoked by dishonest and irresponsible fools like Limbaugh, Beck, Palin, Hannity, Bachman, and certain other GOP politcians. These demagogues are playing with fire, and it seems they won't be satisfied until someone is injured or killed.

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  11. Anonymous9:47 AM

    The only reason this poll shows the Teabaggers are more educated or wealthy is because they are all white. They are mostly males and some females who had better opportunities during the years the country was last torn apart by racism and the war movement. They went to better schools, ate better food, and had more money growing up to spend on things they wanted.
    My dad was of this generation (young adult during the wars Korea to Viet Nam) and he was just the same way. "I got mine so screw the rest of you especially the poor, not white, under educated, no opportunity folks." He would have died on the spot had he been alive when Obama was elected.

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  12. "The world around them is changing drastically, and they are lashing out through anger and fear," Bingo! I am an Educational Psychologist by trade. Some years ago I finally realized that much of changes in today's society requires an above average intelligence to successfully understand and cope with. Think about that and its implications for awhile. This explains the extreme popularity of right wing religion, pundits, "leaders"... They are all telling those who can't really cope with the changes that "if you follow me, I'll tell you how to cope", "if we just go back to old-fashioned values, everything will be alright", "you are right, you understand; those others are wrong and will destroy us"... We aren't going back folks. Much of the change has been allowing the long time "others" to speak and that genie is not going back in the bottle.

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  13. There are a whooooole lot of stupid people with college degrees out here, lol! A lot! Having that degree doesn't necessarily signify intelligence. These tea-party people are all about race and in some ways religion. If you're not white and christian, they have a problem with you. Their so-called college education didn't teach them tolerance, cultural understanding, or how to spell apparently! This is the klan, white-supremacists dressed up in a more palatable cover. But that venomous hate comes out loud and clear and they're not fooling anybody!

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