Steve Who?: tea party

Showing posts with label tea party. Show all posts

Tuesday, August 31, 2010

Glenn Beck's Restoring Honor Rally: Fueling the Fear of the Future (Video)

Beck addresses the unwashed masses at his "Restoring Honor" Rally.

I haven't written about Glenn Beck's "Restoring Honor Rally" up to now, because I usually don't like to shine a spotlight on the insanity that's taken hold of the country, especially among the dwindling numbers of desperate and terrified refugees of the Culture Wars. Seriously, these folks are pathetic. But now I'm thinking I should shine that spotlight and as often as possible.

These are the frightened, lost sheep who feel abandoned by the Republicans and who are turning to nut-jobs like Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin to fuel their fear of the future. With neither the Democrats or Republicans showing strong leadership, the disillusioned masses are falling prey to Beck and Palin and their ilk and to the leaderless Tea Party.

We are at a cultural turning point in this country. Liberal/progressive causes have been kept at arms length for four decades, because the Democrats have failed to lead. With LGBT rights groups and other liberal orgs pressuring the president to move decisively forward on repealing DADT and DOMA and to pass ENDA, the Obama Administration has been overly-cautious, so as not to offend a deflated and leaderless Republican Party. A Republican president, as we have seen, would never have dragged his/her feet for nearly two years to get his/her agenda through.

The Neo-Con movement is dead and buried and as the Republicans struggle to redefine themselves, without the help of the religious right, whose political leadership died with Jerry Fallwell, those on the extreme far right, who are by and large undereducated, extremely conservative, extremely religious, blue-collar families, are easy prey for scheisters like Beck and Pailn, who have taken the snake oil medicine show to new heights for the gullible, pathetic masses.

The future is coming whether we like it or not. The Tea Baggers, the Evangelicals, Pentecostals, the all the other Fox "News" loyalists are simply reacting to their fear of the unknown and allowing themselves to be taken over by Mob Mentality and being led, blindly and deliberately by opportunistic charlatans who are only too happy to pass out the torches and pitch forks.

The video below is an interview segment done at the rally. These people are very scary. Notice how they all talk about taking back their country and "going back" to some imaginary point in time when they think things were so much better in this country. Fear of the future is what drives these people. It's a sign that we are finally poised to achieve our goals, if our leaders will only lead. Are these the people you want running your country again? With GOProud's HomoCon Convention scheduled for the end of September, dangerously close to the November mid-terms, LGBT Rights is quickly becoming a bi-partisan issue and the Democrats had better be worried.

When you are confronted by right-wing nut-jobs spewing their ignorance, stupidity and hate, let them rant. In fact, hand them a microphone and point your cam at them. The more they rant, the more they drive rational Americans to become more tolerant.

Monday, June 7, 2010

Poll: Teabaggers think Gays too powerful

I seem to have missed something. When the Tea Party movement started a couple of years ago, it was out of frustration over high taxes, record-breaking government spending and anger at Washington's inability to get things done. Since the beginning the Fox "News" network has fanned the flames of discontent into an irrational wildfire of homophobia and racism, qualifying their actions by claiming over and over that "Americans are angry!"

A new University of Washington poll shows just how irrational and off message the Teabaggers have become since their unfocused, leaderless movement took off. The Huffington Post reports:

According to the survey, 74% of Tea Party supporters say they agree with the following statement: "While equal opportunity for blacks and minorities to succeed is important, it's not really the government's job to guarantee it."

Fifty-two percent of respondents also said that "compared to the size of their group, lesbians and gays have too much political power."

The latest data on the Tea Party reveals that the anger coming from the movement isn't unilaterally directed at government spending -- one of the group's core issues.

According to University of Washington professor Matt Barreto, who directed the poll, the Tea Party's frustration with Washington "is going hand in hand with a frustration and opposition to racial and ethnic minorities and gays and lesbians."

Other noteworthy findings from the University of Washington poll include:

    * 88% of Tea Party supporters approve of the controversial immigration law recently enacted in Arizona.

    * Only 18% of those surveyed say gay and lesbian couples should have the legal right to marry.

    * 73% of Tea Party backers disapprove of President Obama's policy of engaging with Muslim countries.

Tuesday, February 9, 2010

Teabaggers Cheer Tancredo's Call for Return to Racist Literacy Testing (video)

Republican Congressman Tom Tancredo addressed the Tea Party Convention over the weekend and called for a return to the racist practice of literacy testing for voter registration, the same practice that was used to deny African-Americans the right to vote for seventy years until the passage of the Voting Rights Acts in 1965. Even more appalling than Tancredo's words were the cheers that greeted them from the throngs of teabaggers in the convention hall.

Sarah Palin, who would never be able to pass such a test, also addressed the convention saying that the GOP should absorb the Tea Party platform, calling the movement "the future of politics". Do these people ever listen to themselves?

Rachel Maddow put together an excellent segment about all this for her show last night.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Saturday, July 4, 2009

Roanokers Meet for Patriotic Public Tea Bagging

The Tea Baggers from The Roanoke Tea Party are on the move again. The too-little-too-late whiners kept us busy yesterday at "Schminko's" printing up posters and fliers for their patriotic July 4th protest rally this afternoon at Roanoke's Elmwood Park, site of last week's "Rally for LGBT Equality". The event is part of a nationwide grass roots protest against the government's massive economic stimulus package.

Although they call themselves non-partisan, the group is made up mostly of Republican conservatives expressing their displeasure at the use of tax payer money to bail out failed mega-corporations. They believe in the free market and contend that when businesses, big or small, make bad decisions, they should be allowed to fail regardless of the impact on the global economy. It looks good on paper, not so much in the real world.

One poster had a graphic of a tea bag next to a pitcher of Kool-Aide with a caption that read, "Which One Will You Drink?" The question refers to the mass suicide that took place in Jonestown, Guyana thirty years ago when cult leader Jim Jones directed his dozens of followers to drink cyanide-laced Kool-Aide, killing themselves and their children. The tragedy has become a cautionary tale about the dangers of blind faith and an overused cliche' among right wing politicos in the wake of the passage of the stimulus package.

The unemployment rate reached 9.5% nationwide this week and people are hurting. Nobody is happy about the state of the U.S. economy or the idea of spending hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars to fix it, but most of us understand that to do nothing would be so much worse.

I'm all in favor of civil protest, community action, exercising free speech and freedom of assembly. But I have to ask, where were these folks five or ten years ago when they could have done some good?

During the years that led to this global economic mess, these free-wheeling free marketers were all nestled snugly up George W. Bush's butt. Why? Because a born-again christian president would never do anything to harm the good old US of A.

What galls me most is the group's repeated use of the words "patriot" and "patriotic" in their literature. These are the same words the Bushies shoved down our throats in the wake of 9/11, implying that if you don't agree with their policies or methods, you're un-American.

Let's not forget that President Obama inherited this economic mess from decades of deregulation and the bad policies of previous administrations from both parties. But that doesn't give him a free pass. The media scrutiny has been more intense with this president in his first six months than it ever was during W's entire eight years of secrecy and backroom politics. It is the job of the press to hold the government accountable for its actions and let's all hope they've learned their lesson and keep at it no matter who's in office.

Whether you call it tea or Kool-Aide, these patriotic tea baggin' tools gleefully chugged it down years ago. Now it's not sitting so well in their bloated bellies. If they're looking for someone to blame for our current state of affairs, maybe they should look in the mirror.