Tea Partiers blast Rep. Barrett

Props to this fellow’s blog and others for this video of Gresham Barrett, a representative from my home state of South Carolina attempting to address a Tea Party demonstration:

In Michigan and elsewhere, I’m sure Tea Party demonstrations are filled with folks such as the one in this video hollering “Go home!” over and over, even as the speaker, in this case, Barrett, is trying to kiss up to them as much as humanly possible. But in South Carolina, where, who knows, we may declare our indepedence once again!, the commentary from the audience is particularly vitriolic. He uses the term “liberal Democrats in Washington, D.C.” to win their side. He says,

I will fight for you, and I will never turn my back on you, I can promise you that.

He tells the crowd, which doesn’t stop booing the entire five minutes of the “plea,” says,

The Obama administration, they don’t believe in you guys,

attempting to speak to them as if he’s beer buddies with the lot of them. He petitions them that “we” must fight them on the deficit, spending, taxes, and

above all taxation without hesitation (Notice, he didn’t say “representation” because even he knows the analogy is a bogus claim, even as, two days before, folks showed up in cities all over the country in Revolutionary era garb to protest against … something. It’s hard to say just what.) must be examined, exposed and extinguished.

So, what we have hear is a Tea Party demonstration, where a Republican representative, not even a Democrat, is virtually shouted off the stage, as he fishes for something to say, anything anti-Obama, anti-spending or anti-tax, to get them to agree on any point. How much more excitable would they have been if Ben Bernanke or Barney Frank or Obama himself were before them? Who knows? But I do know that telling a state representative to go home contributes nothing to the debate, nor do the scores of “boos” leveled at the man, the latter of which says to me that the angst, the emotional, excitable, reason-bending, rabble-rousing type of angst, was coming from, not a single person or two, but from the majority. Which, in turn says to me that either the Tea Party has lost control of its own message (if it ever had one) or if we get Glenn Beck, Bill O’Reilly and the gang to begin talking about protests against the government on air, and all types of angry people to come out of the wood works, folks who are angry about all sorts of things from taxes to the Democratically-controlled Congress to big spending to the sun’s peculiar tendency to continue rising despite thousands and thousands and thousands of years of prophecy to the contrary.

But then again, South Carolina was the first state to secede the Union. It doesn’t take much for some folks over there to be rabble-roused.

Need a light? Have a cow!

I have been away from my blog for a few days, debating people at this site over my commentary, found here. One of the Web site’s organizers was gracious enough to invite to compose a guest blog on their site, so I took him up on it. If you get a minute, hop on over and add your thoughts. Of course, as with most anywhere on the Web, I had to deal with (or more to the point, I didn’t deal with them at all) posters who simply blew up at what I said, dismissed my arguments and failed to contribute anything meaningful. But others took the time to generate thoughtful replies and that was appreciated. But I’ll probably write more on it a little later.

For now, I offer this bit of comic relief:

Yes, that would be a lighter, complete with hooves and udders. Sen. Thomas Alexander, R-Oconee of South Carolina, thinks novelty lighters of this type should be banned from being sold in stores or else, the offending store would face a $500 fine.

“This shocks me,” he said, noting that he didn’t know lighters such as these existed.

Ignoring the fact that these lighters seem to have no purposes other than to entertain, of course, and set things on fire, let’s say candles or cigars, the notion of passing legislation prohibiting these things seems a bit silly. The feds are on board with banning novelty lighters as well. (Again, I return to the contradiction that Republicans seem bent on increased government influence when it comes to certain areas, say, the war on drugs or novelty lighters, but not other areas, like, say, gun control laws. They want to keep us safe by keeping drugs off the street and flammable cows out of our childrens’ hands, but fight for our gun rights. Interesting indeed.)

Here are Congress’ findings on the matter:

(1) Lighters are inherently dangerous products containing flammable fuel.

(2) If lighters are used incorrectly or used by children, dangerous and damaging consequences may result.

(3) Novelty lighters are easily mistaken by children and adults (Adults? “Dude, what’s that cow?” “I don’t know. Why don’t you hold it to your eye and click that little do-hicky.”) as children’s toys or as common household items.

(4) Novelty lighters have been the cause of many personal injuries to children and adults and property damage throughout the United States.

And here are my findings on steak knives:

(1) Steak knives are inherently dangerous products composed of sharp edges.

(2) If steak knives are used incorrectly or used by children, dangerous and damaging consequences may result.

(3) Steak knives are easily mistaken by children as butter knives.

(4) Steak knives have been the cause of many personal injuries to children and adults and property damage throughout the United States.

The bill offers no proof of this, so neither do I, but I would venture to guess that more people have been hurt by steak knives accidentally or on purpose (in civil disputes) than by novelty lighters. Interestingly, when asked by The State,

Fighters didn’t know of any S.C. fires that had been started by children using novelty lighters.

Udderly ridi … ahhh nevermind.

Most Earthlike planet found

Gliese 581d, originally discovered in 2007, has recently been found to, perhaps, have an environment that could support life. It is the most Earthlike planet yet to be discovered and is an exoplanet. National Geographic writes,

First discovered in 2007, Gliese 581d was originally calculated to be too far away from its host star—and therefore too cold—to support an ocean.

But (astronomer Michel Mayor, from Geneva University in Switzerland) … and colleagues now show that the extrasolar planet, or exoplanet, orbits its host in 66.8 days, putting it just inside the cool star’s habitable zone.

Also, according to Nat Geo,

Weighing in at around seven Earth masses, Gliese 581d is unlikely to be made of rocks alone, the team believes.

“We can only speculate at this stage, but it may have a rocky core, encased in an icy layer, with a liquid ocean at the surface and an atmosphere,” Mayor said.

This goes along with water ice discovered in 2008 on Mars. Obviously, water is the key to life. Where water is, life is not far behind. But I have this question. If we verify 100 percent in the next decade or so, as some predict, that, through these discoveries or others, that life does exist on Mars or some exoplanet in the form of a single celled organism or some other simple organism, how will that implicate religion as we know it? True, the big three, Judaism, Christianity and Islam attribute a creator god. But specifically with Christianity, how will such a finding affect things, if at all? Genesis assembles life on Earth (and only Earth) through God in a matter of three chapters with no mention of  the possibility of life anywhere other than Earth, which is convenient, since ancients believed the earth was the center of the solar system, not the sun. In fact, Earth exists on a spiral arm, so we are at the center of nothing, contrary to what the ancients and the biblical writers believed. We just are. And the discovery of life, or past life, on some other planet, would, it seems to me, shoot holes in creationist theories, perhaps beyond repair.

Updated: Unrevolutionary tea

Pardon me for borrowing the idea of Jamison Foser from mediamatters.org in my cutesy headline, but my argument about the tea baggers, as they have been called, is this, as reiterated here: Does anyone know what these folks actually stand for? Some say they are anti-tax, some say they are anti-stimulus or anti-big spending. Take your pick. I, personally, have no idea what these folks want or how they plan to achieve whatever it is they want, other than holding a bunch of sophomorish rallies across the country.

I seem to agree with Foser:

When a group of colonists in Boston dumped a bunch of tea in the harbor in 1773, they had an unambiguous grievance: They had no say in the tax policy to which they were subject. “No taxation without representation” became one of the central rallying cries of the American Revolution and continues to represent a concept so basic most Americans probably take it for granted.

As for this week’s tea parties, few people seemed to have any idea what, exactly, the events were meant to protest.

Even Fox News, which served as both quarterback and head cheerleader for the protests, had trouble explaining what the attendees were upset about, and what they wanted. They were angry, Fox told us — but angry at what? Some were angry about taxes, or (typically unspecified) spending, or Washington, or (purely imaginary) attempts to repeal the Second Amendment. Others just seemed angry at the wind. In Texas, some members of the “Party of Lincoln” even began talking about seceding from the United States.

Seceding. Let’s see. That sure worked out well the first time, didn’t it?

Chad Peace, who’s organization is so “grass roots” that he even saw fit to post on little ‘ol me’s site, had this to say about the seeming anachronism, in which I pointed out, that tea baggers were using the Boston Tea Party, wrongly, as an analogy to support their cause:

By the way…the original tea party was about the political favoritism of the English Parliment giving tax breaks to the East India Company.

True, many colonists were obviously aware of the tax breaks given by England to the East India Company, but such tax breaks did not directly affect them. Why would they care? But they did care simply because of a culmination of what they thought were offenses, not the least of which were taxations without representation in the form of the Stamp Act and the Townshend Duty Act, the latter of which included a duty on tea.

But I come to the point about what modern-day tea baggers actually want. On Peace’s Web site, we read this:

The Political Exploration and Awareness Committee PAC (“PEAC”) was founded in 2008 by two individuals with no connection or affiliation with any political party, candidate, or candidates committee.

PEAC is a political action committee that campaigns on behalf of issues, candidates, and potential candidates that promote honesty and Constitutional leadership.

Our team is a small group of young individuals who see the future as an opportunity to reinvigorate our faith in voluntary action, non-partisanship, and free thought. We recognize that many of our chosen leaders have good intentions. There are good Republicans. There are wise Democrats. Libertarians and third parties deserve more respect; but, the independent mind should always be championed. RE Declare Your Independence.

As I told Chad, I doubt few people would disagree with the vague precepts listed here. But, where are the specifics about what this movement is about? Of what specifically do they disagree? How would they solve the current economic debacle? What particulars of the president’s stimulus package do they disagree with? All of it? Parts of it? Who knows. Or, as I might posit, are they just rabble rousing for the sake of rabble rousing because they are unhappy with the current administration’s overarching ideals?

These answers are absent, and we are only left to guess. Why would they not make it explicit on the organization’s “About Us” page? This is, now, a supposed national movement, and the best they can offer is three paragraphs that say nothing meaningful whatsoever. He cedes that point that the “About Us” perhaps, should be revisited, but he said the content on the page was intentionally kept general in nature so as to not ostracize certain groups and to give the organization a more universal appeal (Since, as they claim, the tea baggers consist of, not only Republicans, but of Democrats and Independents who seek a return to the precepts of the Constitution.)

For a fuller account of what they stand for, you may read this post, to which Peace referred me and to which I will attempt to respond in a later post. I will say, briefly that it does go a long way to what I would have liked to see on the “About Us” page and is helpful in understanding what they stand for. But it still seems to lack specifics. If they were more specific on certain points, in fact, fewer people would feel compelled to sign on to the movement, wouldn’t they?

Basic rights seemingly fall by wayside

This story is not really news to me in general, for I knew long before now that Hispanic immigrants, legal or not, are often dealt a bad hand from law enforcement with regard to basic human dignity and human rights.

Take the case of Armando Ojeda-Jimenez, who before his death in an Oconee County, South Carolina detention center, lived in Walhalla, S.C., part of the coverage area of a paper for which I used to work. As the story says, he was apprehended in a ditch and booked for public disorderly conduct. Later that day, he complained of vomiting and police gave him Phenergan and Maalox for the symptoms. He had been drinking. By 10:44 p.m., the man had died of cardiac arrest. I posit there probably wasn’t any explicit malfeasance on the part of the law, other than, perhaps, a general lackadaisical approach to the man’s complaints (“Ahh, he’s just drunk. He’ll sleep it off.”). For instance, did they ask the Jimenez before giving him Phenergan if he had any heart problems or if he was a heavy drinker, both of which could have implications if that drug is administered? Who knows? Maybe it was just his time, but my hunch is that this fellow’s death was perhaps unnecessary had officials taken his complaints more seriously (by checking potential drug interactions, past medical history, etc.). Petty criminal or not, death should not be something with which we are comfortable in any case.

His sister-in-law called my former paper and gave this telling statement,

He is a person, and he does belong to a family. He’s been here for 10 years.

The New York Times recently blew the roof off similar cases in this May 5, 2008 article, in which illegals are being locked up and being denied basic human rights that should be, illegal or not, afforded to all:

As the country debates stricter enforcement of immigration laws, thousands of people who are not American citizens are being locked up for days, months or years while the government decides whether to deport them. Some have no valid visa; some are legal residents, but have past criminal convictions; others are seeking asylum from persecution.

Death is a reality in any jail, and the medical neglect of inmates is a perennial issue. But far more than in the criminal justice system, immigration detainees and their families lack basic ways to get answers when things go wrong.

Heck, it’s hard enough for even journalists to get clear answers from government officials. How much harder is it for the families of illegal immigrants?

And this cuts at the heart of the CNN story. Sure, many Hispanics in this country are here illegally. Sure, they should have tried to go about it the legal way (I will ignore the enormous heap of bureacracy through which one must navigate to even attempt to gain citizenship), but as I say frequently, these are people, and as the sister-in-law said, they are people with families who love them. They are attempting to make a better life for their families — in essence, to turn a life of relegated poverty for their wife and kids to a life of potential and hope. It is a brute fact that they are here, and we must work within that framework. We can’t herd them all up and ship them back; that is nonsensical. We should come up with a way to make the citizenship process less chaotic and less drawn out for applicants (and it is both), and we should, for those who are already here and working with clean track records, supply a ready and easy way (to coin a John Milton line) to citizenship.

As a side note: in the Northeast Georgia county in which I live now, the economic situation has gotten so severe that many Hispanics are, in fact, pulling out and moving elsewhere to find work because it simply doesn’t exist anymore in the county they once called home. I wrote a story reporting that very thing. One authentic Mexican restaurant which serves honest-to-God, regional Mexican cuisine (not Tex-Mex) and which once had a flourishing Hispanic clientele (Its menu is in all Spanish) now has a majority gringo customer base. And some of the Hispanics who are left in the county can be found each morning huddled in front of a local laundry mat hoping for some contractor or some developer to pick them up for a day’s worth of labor. When I went down there to attempt to speak with a couple of them about their situation, I do believe some of them thought I was there to offer them work. Now that’s sad.

Change Confederate History Month to Southern History Month?

Earlier today, I decided that this post would speak for itself, and I should say nothing more on the issue of Confederate History Month, which is in April, but as I thought through the issues and as a child of the deep South, I thought it would behoove me to say more, as this topic touches, not only on heritage, but as we know, on the legacy of hate, racism and a lot more.

As I noted in the earlier post, the Confederacy was a failed mutiny against the United States. The South, of course, wanted to protect its “necessary evil” and its “peculiar institution” of slavery because its economy was so critically dependent upon it. Not to mention, Southern slave holders and politicians (Not the least of which was Ben Tillman, a key player in the founding my own alma mater, Clemson) used the Bible to validate the seemingly relentless oppression they leveled against an entire race of people.

Yet, Web sites touting thoughts such as these are still evident:

April, as you probably do not know, is Confederate History Month. In less politically correct days, Southern governors had no more problem proclaiming it than they did in proclaiming National Pickle Week. Nowadays most governors are too yellow.

its (sic) unfortunate that a few demagogues and hate-mongers insist on associating the Confederate battle flag with racism, but, hey, you don’t exactly expect knowledge or reasoned debate from racist bigots. …

It fought for a good cause — independence and the right of self-government and the rule of law. Those are such good things so worth fighting for it’s no wonder Yankee propaganda keeps repeating the lie that it was fighting to preserve slavery.

In 1860, of 7 million non-slaves in the South, only 384,000 owned any slaves at all. That means that 6.6 million Southerners were non-slave owners, and if you think that they would leave their homes and farms to fight for the planters’ right to own slaves, you don’t know much about Southern culture. — The Confederacy Project, http://members.cox.net/polincorr1/conpro4.htm

So, the South defended slavery, yet this person says folks who associate the Confederate battle flag with racism are “racist bigots?” Astounding. He/she even said, “you don’t exactly expect knowledge or reasoned debate” from these people.

Well, here’s a hard dose of reason: To celebrate the Confederacy is to celebrate a failed attempt. The fight was not for a good cause. The fight was to attempt to maintain the institution of slavery in the South and to perhaps further its propagation in the West. Hiding behind the causes of “independence and the right of self-government” does no good. Why would it fight for self-government if not to protect slavery? Were there other, more compelling reasons to fight for self-government? I know of none. The issue was not about states’ rights. That was a guise.  The Southern states were arguing for self-government so they could more easily further the institution of slavery, on which the vast majority, if not the whole, economy was built.

Thus, as I argued in the previous post, if we as a country are going to have a day to honor Southern heritage, let’s call it what it is. Given the rich culture here, particularly among the numerous great authors that have called this place home, let us simply have a Southern heritage month.

It should not be a Confederate History Month, for on the Confederacy’s watch, some of the worst atrocities to humankind in this country have taken place. Let’s, instead, call it Southern History Month, or something similar. Again, the Confederacy failed, and that battle flag summons nothing but ill will among our black brethren and nothing but ill-will among many of our white brethren, including your’s truly. That flag should be banished to the annuls of history. It’s done. It signifies failure, not heritage. The war is over and has been over for 1 1/2 centuries. Get over it. Slavery is abolished. The South failed and could not sustain itself without slavery. We must move on.

Annotated list of holidays, observances to be axed

Next week, get ready to celebrate Administrative Professionals Day. That’s right. As I was purchasing a Mountain Dew and a pair of taquitos at the local RaceTrac, I saw a small banner on one of the cash registers telling me of this additional cause to celebrate.

Apparently, this “holiday” has been around some form since 1952, but in my book, it can be counted with the large number of useless (and meaningless) observances that have been created over the years. Lest this post begins to resemble a Wikipedia entry, I will keep the list small, but here are just a few:

  • Labor Day (Sept. 7) — Pointless. Last I checked, work was a necessity to having food and a roof over one’s head. I think Administrative Professionals Day could probably be lumped into this.
  • Arbor Day (April 24) — Trees? Where is the Grass Day? Or how about National Sky Day? Or how about oxygen? That’s just as vital as trees.
  • Columbus Day (Oct. 12) — He didn’t discover America.
  • Parents’ Day (Fourth Sunday of July) and Grandparents’ Day (First Sunday after Labor Day) — Although Father’s Day and Mother’s Day could be added to the list of days created to feed the greeting card market, I guess I will cede these two since, like Valentine’s Day, they have become so entrenched in our culture that we might as well leave them be, if for no other reason than that they are harmless, and in fact, make people feel good about themselves. But on the next few, I can’t say the same. …
  • Black History Month (February), Asian Pacific American Heritage Month (May) and National Hispanic Heritage Month (Sept. 15-Oct. 15) — In the 21st century, isn’t it counterproductive and hypocritical to still set aside certain months to celebrate our various minorities when, more than 200 years ago, we declared them all to be our equals (although putting this high ideal into practice, we learned, became much more difficult). Black History Month, which Cynthia Tucker, a black woman and editor with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, called “quaint, jarring, anachronistic,” is the most unnecessary of these types of holidays. An African-American is now president, a black man is head of the Republican Party and numerous black people hold public seats in the federal House and Senate and in state and local offices. While racism has certainly not been stamped out, it’s time for us to move beyond cutesy recognitions such as this, for they move us backward, not forward.
  • Confederate History Month (April) — While I like learning about Civil War history as much as anyone, the Confederacy is a failed attempt. Southern history is important, but call it what it is; to celebrate Confederate heritage or the Confederate battle flag is to celebrate a failed uprising and the distinction has to be made. The Hootie and the Blowfish song famously included the line, “Tired of hearing this shit ’bout heritage, not hate” and that’s precisely what a lot of folks tout. Southern heritage, that is, the legacy of the South as a region of the country, not as a seceded state, up to and following the Civil War, is a meaningful area to celebrate, but attach the battle flag to it, and it becomes a celebration of some of the worst atrocities this country has seen. So, for the folks who proudly display bumper stickers that read, “Southern by the grace of God,” that’s fine. I’m glad I was born in the South too, for it’s a beautiful part of the country with a rich heritage and which produced some great authors, but let’s not muddy the issue by summoning the legacy of a failed mutiny.

I’ll leave it at that, but you get the picture. We’ve got too many of these holidays and some of them are even offensive, or as Tucker said, “anachronistic.”

Kid licking ATV parts? Seek help

On one point, Glenn Beck and your’s truly can agree: banning dirt bikes meant for kids ages 12 and younger that may contain lead out of fear the kids’ mouths may come into contact with said lead is just nutty.Yup, that’s right. 

According to Brian O’Neill with the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette,

The new Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act, designed to protect toddlers from the dangers of lead paint, makes no distinction between the toy a tot might lick and the dirt bike an older sibling might ride.

“Two weeks ago,” said Kim Love, controller of West Hills Honda in Moon, “I had to remove $20,000 worth of vehicles from my sales floor because some of the metal alloy components, like valve stems and brake pads, contain lead and aren’t safe for licking.

“You know how those kids love to lick a valve stem.”

And from the Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune:

A new federal law aimed at protecting children from lead poisoning in toys is weighing heavy on sellers of motorized off-road vehicles in Minnesota and around the country.

Thousands of dirt bikes and mini-ATVs have been pulled from showrooms since the law went into effect last Tuesday because the lead content of such parts as brake handles, tire stems and battery terminals exceeded allowable limits.

“This is crazy,” said Sheri Rosoff, owner of Hitching Post Motorsports, which pulled dozens of motor bikes and hundreds of parts from four locations in the Twin Cities metro area. “This was supposed to be about toys. Nobody’s going to ingest the part of a motorcycle that contains lead.”

From Beck, we have this gem:

If your kid is licking the gears, we should let natural selection work.

But I can take that point further (Ignoring the fact that Beck would probably reject the principle of natural selection). If your kid is licking anything at all on an ATV or dirt bike, it may be time to seek professional council. Also, say some ATVs or dirt bikes contain lead. Is there a greater chance that a kid would lick a gear than, say, get a good whiff from the gas tank or take a sip from the oil tank? Lead isn’t the only dangerous thing on an ATV or dirt bike. Why not ban them altogether for kids 12 and younger? Who knows, but in this case, common sense has fallen far by the wayside. Or, in the words of Tim Patnode, spokesman for American Honda:

We’re hoping that they see … a difference between a children’s necklace and a motor part that has very little chance of being ingested by a child.

Tea bagging at its finest

This is sort of a continuation of this post about the apparent phenomenon known as “tea bagging,” which is an action of protest against what some feel has become a government system of overtaxation vis-à-vis the Boston Tea Party, in light of the recent large stimulus package and corporate bailouts.

Reteaparty.com says this about the organization:

PEAC is a political action committee that campaigns on behalf of issues, candidates, and potential candidates that promote honesty and Constitutional leadership.  Currently, PEAC has launched campaigns to draft three unconventionally honest candidates: Rand Paul, Andrew “The Judge” Napolitano, and Peter Schiff.  Additionally, PEAC has launched ReTeaParty.com, to organize a national Tea Party and fundraiser for the Goodwill on July 4, 2009, to promote the cause of honest and Constitutional government, voluntarism, and to organize an historic display of protest against our lack of representation.  At ReTeaParty.com, thousands of people sent their representatives a Tea Bag in the mail on April 1, 2009, as a sign of our unrest over D.C.’s foolish solutions and overspending. — reteaparty.com

And during a recent broadcast by FOX News, the organization’s founder, Chad Peace (PEAC?), had this to say:

It’s not a reaction to any one person in particular it’s not a reaction against Obama or Pelosi or against Dodd or Barney Frank — any of these guys in particular. It’s against the whole idea of Washington that they can take our money and solve our problems for us.

And here we come to the hang of it all: the very reason why the Republican ideals of personal liberty and small government married to notions of moral uprightness do not work. Many on the right attempt to coerce folks in leadership or pray for them or lobby them or whatever on social issues like abortion, gay marriage and stem cell research, hoping federal or state governments would, indeed, solve our problems. They believe federal and state governments can and should solve what they perceive to be our social ills. Government should preserve the institution of marriage. It should uphold certain moral codes that would prohibit heinous dabblings in abortion and embryonic stem cell research. Government should get drugs off the streets and prosecute drug dealers to the fullest extent of the law. State laws should keep the sabbath holy by disallowing the purchase of alcohol on Sunday (and in some states, disallowing even retail purchases before 1 p.m.!) Government should more fully represent our moral values, they say.

And in the same breath, what do we see? The same folks turn an about-face, and speak out against gun control, against big business regulations and against taxes. Thus, they favor big government in some areas and those of moral or social concerns, but not others like taxes or gun control. But they can’t have it both ways, and the logic just does not add up. Small government taken to its fullest end would mean this: the legalization of controlled substances, the continued or even a relaxing of gun control laws, allowing states to decide gay rights, relaxing regulations on abortion and stem cell research and some states disbanning their ridiculous blue laws. True, big government would mean the opposite. But both Dems and Reps want to pick and choose which causes they will champion.

Now, I come to the issue of the tea baggers. Obviously, it’s ludicrous to fain any comparison to folks today protesting taxes to those of the Revolutionary War era protesting taxation without representation by the British government. We have taxation with representation, and taxes are quite necessary to get things done. If there were no taxes, the country as we know it would crumble. If the tea baggers are protesting the stimulus plan and the bailouts, fine, but I fear this movement is another incarnation of those who throw the word “freedom” around like it’s a Hacky Sack. Witness this video:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CpKdZrIhSIE

Richard Behney, tea party organizer in Indianapolis, who clearly is trying to equate himself and piggy back on the fame of Joe the Plumber (By now, if phlegm is not forming in your gut and ready to spew upward, something is wrong), said,

To hear that a segment of our society and our politicians want to come in and take everything away and spread it around, umm, that’s when I said enough.”

Later, he said, “This is a freedom-loving, American thing,” when talking about the movement, noting that “they’re (politicians in Washington) all part of the problem and it’s time to stand up for freedom.”

What incoherency is this? What the hell does freedom have to do with anything? Throughout this whole debacle, has our freedom ever, ever, ever been in question? Or is this slick-haired baffoon just throwing out those four or five right wing buzz words that might give him instant cred with ignorants, including words like freedom, America, God, independence and country? I posit the latter.

As an addendum, this particular rally on April 15th is supposed to feature a guy playing Thomas Paine, who was, I must note, a deist, and whose arguments would fly in the face of Glenn Beck’s and (probably) Richard Behney’s belief that the Bible is true, for Paine believed nothing of the sort, and that’s quite evident from reading “The Age of Reason.” (Side note: Deism isn’t valid either, for it says that, while God exists, he is out there somewhere, did not author the Bible and is sort of an impersonal watcher on the world and personal events. He watches “from a distance” as the song goes. Thus, if he isn’t personally engaged in this world, it seems to follow that he is irrelevant and of no consequence for us.) Further, it’s a bit of an insult to the legacy and great work of Paine to have these types of  folks parading his name around as if he would agree with them on every point. He would probably agree with them on very few points. But that’s where the idiocy of this generation has gotten us.

Public pops one to deep right … ohh, FOX News errors again!

This stuff is just too easy. I don’t watch FOX News 24/7 snooping out stuff to write about or looking for errors. But in the matter of four days without trying whatsoever, I’ve found errors aired on TV. The first was here, where Sean Hannity referenced a writer from the London Telegraph, calling him Iain Murray, when his real name is Iain Martin. Doesn’t mispelling, or in this case utterly mangling, a person’s last name constitute a slightly greater offense than misspelling a person’s first name?

FOX News stort on "tea bagging"

The second can be seen here. We can only hope Chad Peace’s name is correct, but his Web site address, as seen above, is not. It’s www.reteaparty.com with no space between “tea” and “party.” I discovered this because I actually wanted to go to teaparty.com and find out what this organization was all about, but when one visits www.teaparty.com, one discovers a musical act, not a political activist organization.

Now, I would wonder how many similar errors I would find if I was actively looking for them and actually watched the channel, rather than just viewing an occasional clip here and there. Can FOX News not find decent editors? We all know that over at FOX, it’s a rigged game from the get-go. Has this excluded the station from being able to acquire respectable people who care about getting paltry things like spellings correct? Probably. If you can’t get the little things right, you certainly can’t be trusted to get the big things right. But that point seems to be neither here nor there in FOX’s case, for it has proven time and again it can’t be trusted, in any case, period.