Tea Party footnotes
A couple of musings about the Tea Party convention in Tennessee:
I'm puzzled by the disgruntled reaction among Tea Partiers to the fact that the convention charged money to attend -- about $550, it's been reported -- and that the convention organizer was a for-profit company. Yeah, it's expensive, all right, but isn't profit-making quintessentially American?
And I've seen photos of conventioneers wearing T-shirts with the image of a bald eagle on the back, the national bird, symbol of the nation. When the Founding Fathers were drawing up the blueprints for the United States, there were hundreds of thousands of bald eagles, coast to coast, clime to clime.
But then humans began crowding them out and shooting them down in such numbers that a law protecting them was put into place in 1940. But that was just about the time that DDT began to be used in vast quantities, and there went the bald eagle population again. DDT in the food chain rendered bald eagle shells too thin to incubate or hatch and perhaps rendered some adult birds infertile.
Rachel Carson's seminal book ''Silent Spring'' raised the public's awareness of the risks of DDT. In 1967, bald eagles were ruled an endangered species in much of the U.S. -- a status that was made national on the nation's bicentennial, in 1976 -- and they weren't declared to be a thriving species once again until 2007.
Which means that, if it hadn't been for all those tree-hugging pinko environmentalists, the bird of prey on all those T-shirts, the proud bald eagle, might very well have been a dead duck.
-- Patt Morrison
Ah. Well, I'm more convinced by Gerard Alexander's editorial in the Washington Post today: Why are liberals so condescending?
"American liberals, to a degree far surpassing conservatives, appear committed to the proposition that their views are correct, self-evident, and based on fact and reason, while conservative positions are not just wrong but illegitimate, ideological and unworthy of serious consideration. Indeed, all the appeals to bipartisanship notwithstanding, President Obama and other leading liberal voices have joined in a chorus of intellectual condescension."
Nov. 2, 2010. We'll let that decide it.
Posted by: andrew nelson | February 07, 2010 at 10:39 AM
Stop it ! Stop piken on my Tee Partie Qeen. Yaall do nt hav ani morles!
Posted by: gregggordon | February 07, 2010 at 11:13 AM
The DDT, thin shell thing, was/is/and always has been A MYTH!
Sheesh, do your homework man.
Posted by: In Reality | February 07, 2010 at 11:44 AM
The name Tea Party was chosen because No One would join if they used their accurate descriptive name " Neocon 2.0"
Posted by: Jack | February 07, 2010 at 12:20 PM
Ah. Well, I'm more convinced by Gerard Alexander's editorial in the Washington Post today: Why are liberals so condescending?
I think it is because on some issues it appears that conservative thinking is well... not that intelligent...
I can agree that we need to bring down the budget, and with quite a few other things that the conservatives stand for (well say they stand for?) But when you spit in the face of science (our best predictor of fact) if it doesn't agree with what you want to believe you come off looking a bit like an idiot.
When you make suggestions like all woman that are for woman's rights (you know feminists) are lesbians...
Well I could go on like that... Well and really isn't it fair to say that many conservatives do appear a little light in the head?
Now I am sure that not all of them are, and I have seen stupid things from liberals as well... It just seems on average that is the way it is
Posted by: Terra | February 08, 2010 at 03:05 AM
Well Terra, where to begin? You prove Gerard Alexander's point. I guess it's just that reflex action, developed by years of drinking the koole-aid. Anyway, I'm much more convinced by Hugo Chavez's brand of liberal progressiveness, or the collapse of the Soviet Union - the other great liberal progressive experiment of the 20th Century. As for Climate Gate, the Carbon Offset Derrivative Exchange being built in Chicago (near Hyde Park- home of the Washington D.C. chapter of the Chicago Mafia), the IPCC's gaming of the peer review process for 'approved science' on the issue of global warming, the record cold tempertures this year in Florida, the indictment for criminal conspiracy of the whole Academic Staff of East Anglia's College, the center of this Carbon alarm movement, the Cap and Tax bill that would give the president's Marxist-Leninist Green Jobs Czar, Van Jones, the power to determine where to spend 300 billion dollars a year in tax, to give jobs to the uneducated and undeserving, in Oakland, or the massive record snowfall happening now in Washington D.C. now. Excuse me if I seem to focus on those inconvenient truths and not pay as much attention to those very nice emotional reasons liberals provide for attempting to steal my freedoms, and my money.
Posted by: andrew nelson | February 08, 2010 at 04:36 AM
"Nov. 2, 2010. We'll let that decide it. "
and when the teabagger's lose that one, we'll let Nov. 2 2012 decide it, and when they lose that one...
Posted by: howardx | February 08, 2010 at 10:49 AM
To all those with the “I can't believe I ate the entire thing" syndrome, Sarah Palin should not be taken lightly. Don't do LOL LOL LOLs. She is serious. She is going after the Independents and those that are tired of Same Oh Politics. She is also working on the Fear Mongering aspect of Politics. She is also building her Fox News Ratings. You know ... say it enough and it becomes the truth. She and the other Fear Mongers continue to sing the same song … You know it is called the “Fear Monger’s Song”. The song includes some of the following …
1. The Security of this country is failing.
2. The prosecution of war criminals in federal courts is wrong.
3. Our captured terrorists are not telling us the entire story.
4. The Sky is Falling the Sky is Falling.
As Barack Obama was taken lightly by some and then became our President so to Sarah Palin should not be taken lightly.
Posted by: GordonSantaMonica | February 08, 2010 at 11:59 AM
"and when the teabagger's lose that one, we'll let Nov. 2 2012 decide it, and when they lose that one..."
Naw, howardx, I think at some point we'll just grow tired of a party that makes a profession of voting and living off taxes, and we'll simply stop caring what a bunch of liberals, who have thoughtfully taken the lead, and set the example, on their own gun control, has to say ... at all.
Posted by: andrew nelson | February 08, 2010 at 06:13 PM