Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Teabagging - It's Just Surreal

As I watch the news coverage of the TEA (Taxed Enough Already) parties, I once again find myself feeling like we are all being punked, like Alan Funt (for the old farts out there) is about to walk out and let us in on the joke. This makes the fiasco that was Sarah Palin look downright professional by comparison, dontchya know.

I mean, they called this protest "teabagging". They did this to themselves. How do you top that? It'd be like John Butt and Mike Sniffer starting a company called "Butt Sniffer" and not understanding why everyone is laughing at them. Well, I guess all we can do is laugh with Keith and everyone else. I wonder if a society can survive with 30% of them off their rocker.

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

So much for you living up to your own committments... "The blog is not necessarily about science, but rather is a scientific view of the world. Rational, civilly expressed, thought-out opposing views are welcome. Disparaging, irrational, intentionally obtuse, troll-like whack-a-mole posts will be dispatched without hesitation or apology."
Where is the logical integrity in dismissing someones argument based on obscure refrences to gay slander? Because we want to hold the goverment accountable we are off our rocker. I think anyone who wants to give more of their money to this gathering of incompetence and crooks is way crazier than anyone protesting!

ScienceAvenger said...

I never made a commitment to not laugh at jokes, and that's what these TEA parties are. As for dismissing people's arguments, I've done that in detail on this blog. I'm not at all shy about my opinion and why I think some positions are wrong.

It's not wanting to hold the government accountable that demonstrates that some on the right off their rocker. Hell, *I've* been screaming for more government accountability since I started this blog.

It's their own statements of irrationality, untruth, and downright hypocrisy that shows the right is mostly full of it. The notion that the current administration are incompetent crooks, but the prior administration was just hunky dory is not a conclusion that can be driven by a rational analysis of the evidence. That's just partisan hackery that says "R"'s are good and "D"s are bad.

It's the same sort of hackery that says 9/11, eight months into Bush's term, was really Clinton's fault, but the economic disaster that actually started prior to the election is somehow Obama's doing. I suppose if a major terrorist attack occurred today that would be Obama's fault too?

Start screaming this loudly when the people in charge are "R"s and your arguments will get a much fairer hearing.

alex said...

Did you just promote Keith Olbermann? He's a big joke.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QXYJmBKh25I&feature=player_embedded

ScienceAvenger said...

Olbermann's a joke, and you reference Foc and Friends, the biggest joke out there, with their usual lack of facts or logic to back up what they say. I loved the claim that the tea parties weren't racist because there were three black speakers in NY. 3 people out of 300,000 is 0.1%, and bigots have always been happy to have the targets of their bigotry show up if they tout the bigoted party line. And just look at the clips they show of the tea parties in the background: 10% white.

Then there was the claim that Fox wasn't the primary sponser of the tea parties because Rick Santelli on CNBC first mentioned them. That's like saying Ray Crock wasn't responsible for McDonald's huge success because the McDonald's brothers founded it.

And how about the assertion that what Jeanine Garafalo said was dismissable because "she's never spoken to anyone outside of Manhatten or her friends"? Oh yeah, and you know this how? Oh, you just made shit up again, sorry.

Finally, I love how professional Fox screwed up a quote of Olbermann's and substituted "spear" in for "speak" when talking about the black president. A little Freudian slip perhaps.

Face it guys: your little 28-30% of America loved the TEA parties, but to the rest of us, it was a big ignorant, racist, crybaby jokefest.

alex said...

I was about to say "alright" to that last comment, but was thwarted by your last paragraph, in which you categorized the groups into only two groups, the "30% lovers" and "the rest of us who think it's ignorant, racist and a crybaby jokefest."

Well, if you had looked at the Rasmussen reports, you wouldn't have said that:

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/general_politics2/51_view_tea_parties_favorably_political_class_strongly_disagrees

Fifty-one percent (51%) of Americans have a favorable view of the “tea parties” held nationwide last week, including 32% who say their view of the events is Very favorable.


Thirty-three percent (33%) hold an unfavorable opinion of the tea parties according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey. Fifteen percent (15%) are not sure.


While half the nation has a favorable opinion of last Wednesday’s events, the nation’s Political Class has a much dimmer view—just 13% of the political elite offered even a somewhat favorable assessment while 81% said the opposite. Among the Political Class, not a single survey respondent said they had a Very Favorable opinion of the events while 60% shared a Very Unfavorable assessment.


One-in-four adults (25%) say they personally know someone who attended a tea party protest. That figure includes just one percent (1%) of those in the Political Class.

Something about "face it, guys"...

ScienceAvenger said...

That should read:

"And just look at the clips they show of the tea parties in the background: 100% white."

ScienceAvenger said...

So you cherry-picked a survey that looked best for you Alex, and one that I recall was consistently off predicting the elections on the GOP side. I'm shocked. You really don't understand the whole anecdote problem.

And yet despite that, it's 32% favorable narly matched my 30% lovers exactly, while the milquetoast "favorable" middle could be attributed to almost anything, particularly distaste for government and taxes in general. Hs there been a tax protest in history that didn't get viewed generally favorably by the population. Hell, I might have even qualified as being favorable to the tea parties depending on how the question was asked.

alex said...

"while the milquetoast "favorable" middle could be attributed to almost anything,"

Yeah, you attributed it to big ignorant racist crybabies. Egads.

memphisto said...

Matt Taibbi (sp?), the writer for Rolling Stone, cracked me up on his blog by suggesting "The Great Dirty Sanchez of 2010" and "The Million Man Felch".

alex said...

You might want to delete my previous comment. Apparently you didn't catch the fact that it made your argumentation look bad.

ScienceAvenger said...

Well Alex, first off, I don't delete posts based on how they make my argument look, and second, since what you said was neither accurate with regard to what I said, and made no sense on its own (as is true of most of your half arguments), the only one it makes look bad is you.