What is the Tea Party?

[HumblePie]

humble pie

you are completely right about the seperation of church and state and I completely agree with it. We would turn into a something like an islamist state
I don't think i am explainging myslef in the well. Our morales have to come from somewhere and our country is spiraling out of control in many ways regardless of liberal or republican. at the end of the day they really suck as parties IMHO.

I think that is why the Tea Party is starting to get a serious following. I can't stand listening to Glenn Beck but he is the number one show for a reason. People in America are starting to get fed up with many of the policies.

Just like state and church are separate issues, morality and church are as well despite pains of any religious person to deny that. Morals have been around before man, and exhibited by every living creature on this planet. Albeit, not every creature has the same morals. Morality is defined as concerned with principles of right and wrong or conforming to standards of behavior and character based on those principles. Sense what is defined as right and wrong changes over time and is different from creature to creature, no one set of encompassing morals can be set. For the Lion to eat the Gazelle it is morally right for the Lion as well as it is morally right for the Lion not to eat his cubs. All lions do this so it is a set of behaviors to which they conform of what is right for a lion to do. Now you won't find lions philosophizes over morals, but they are moral creatures. However, to the Gazelle what the lion does may not be considered moral by their standards

So to go further, humans are much more complex and as such have a much more complex and dynamic set of morals. Christianity has tried to define their own set of morals, very loosely I might add, in how they dictate the behavior of followers of their faith.

I will state it again, there is really no way to lose morals as they can never be lost. They can change and humans can move away from what they once viewed as an acceptable set of morals to another set. Just as many Americans at one time had moved away from Christian morals at the founding of our country, so too do we move away from them again. It happens.

Part of the Tea Party is supposedly exclaiming we get back to Christian morals for this country. I find much of that argument hypocritical based off their actions in light of what they say.

 

[Steeplerot]

Foxnews poll:

What Do You Think Tea Party Movement Is About?

Vote here




Small government and fiscal responsibility 14% (29,083 votes)
Exposing Democrats' socialist agenda 1% (2,171 votes)
Voicing outrage at out-of-touch politicians 5% (11,033 votes)
Fruitless mix of racism, conspiracy theories 80% (171,046 votes)
Other (add your comment) 1% (1,425 votes)
Total Votes: 214,758

Now that's unscientific, but damn funny! Gotta love these internet tubes.

 

[CADsortaGUY]

Foxnews poll:

What Do You Think Tea Party Movement Is About?

Vote here




Small government and fiscal responsibility 14% (29,083 votes)
Exposing Democrats' socialist agenda 1% (2,171 votes)
Voicing outrage at out-of-touch politicians 5% (11,033 votes)
Fruitless mix of racism, conspiracy theories 80% (171,046 votes)
Other (add your comment) 1% (1,425 votes)
Total Votes: 214,758

Now that's unscientific, but damn funny! Gotta love these internet tubes.

I'm sure it made it's rounds on all the usual fringe leftist sites...

 

[Tab]

The Tea Party is a bunch of stupid people. A Fad.

 

[BigDH01]

Foxnews poll:
Fruitless mix of racism, conspiracy theories 80% (171,046 votes)

I'm sure it made it's rounds on all the usual fringe leftist sites...

Am I the only one that found this funny?

 

[CADsortaGUY]

Am I the only one that found this funny?

You were saying?

Hmm... at the time it was posted there - 93K votes and 65% nutjobs voting. As of the OP - 200K+ and 80% nutjob votes.

 

[CADsortaGUY]

DU THIS FOX NEWS POLL:

You were saying?

 

[heyheybooboo]

Foxnews poll:

What Do You Think Tea Party Movement Is About?

Vote here




Small government and fiscal responsibility 14% (29,083 votes)
Exposing Democrats' socialist agenda 1% (2,171 votes)
Voicing outrage at out-of-touch politicians 5% (11,033 votes)
Fruitless mix of racism, conspiracy theories 80% (171,046 votes)
Other (add your comment) 1% (1,425 votes)
Total Votes: 214,758

Now that's unscientific, but damn funny! Gotta love these internet tubes.

 

[BigDH01]

You were saying?

Hmm... at the time it was posted there - 93K votes and 65% nutjobs voting. As of the OP - 200K+ and 80% nutjob votes.

So when it was 93k votes, 65% of the people were fringe leftists deliberately trying to skew the results. When it is over 200k people, 80% of the voters were fringe leftists trying to skew the results. Doing some rough estimation, 65% of ~100k is 65k and 80% of 200k is 160k. So roughly 100k people from fringe leftist websites hopped in to this vote after this post at Democratic Underground to support the 65k nutjobs who voted before this post.

And these numbers all drastically dwarf the non-nutjob conservatives that would usually read the Fox News opinion section and vote. Still seems a bit conspiracy-theorish to me.

 

[CADsortaGUY]

So when it was 93k votes, 65% of the people were fringe leftists deliberately trying to skew the results. When it is over 200k people, 80% of the voters were fringe leftists trying to skew the results. Doing some rough estimation, 65% of ~100k is 65k and 80% of 200k is 160k. So roughly 100k people from fringe leftist websites hopped in to this vote after this post at Democratic Underground to support the 65k nutjobs who voted before this post.

And these numbers all drastically dwarf the non-nutjob conservatives that would usually read the Fox News opinion section and vote. Still seems a bit conspiracy-theorish to me.

You missed the other link.

here is another one...

One choice is, "Fruitless mix of racism, conspiracy theories."
You know what to do.

It was under 50% at that point.

Also there was a post about a link to another leftist forum that started doing it before DU got ahold of it. But yeah, it's "conspiracy-theorish"...

 

[CADsortaGUY]

koskiddies were in on it too

Want to have a little fun with Fox News?

 

[BigDH01]

You missed the other link.

here is another one... It was under 50% at that point.

Also there was a post about a link to another leftist forum that started doing it before DU got ahold of it. But yeah, it's "conspiracy-theorish"...

Yeah, it is... if you had looked, you'd have seen that your thread has a whopping 54 replies and 1733 views. If we assume that it's only counting unique views and that everyone who viewed went to cast a vote, you still need to find me about 164k more fringe leftist votes. Good luck.

 

[BigDH01]

koskiddies were in on it too

So was FreeRepublic...

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2448796/posts

Of course, they had the same reaction you did. In the opinion section of a conservative website, I'm sure the fact that only 43,437 out of 217,185 voters voted for something other than the racism, conspiracy theory option is because of DU and DailyKos.

 

[CADsortaGUY]

Yeah, it is... if you had looked, you'd have seen that your thread has a whopping 54 replies and 1733 views. If we assume that it's only counting unique views and that everyone who viewed went to cast a vote, you still need to find me about 164k more fringe leftist votes. Good luck.

Uh, you do realize there were more than 1 thread on DU, right? Did you also miss the koskiddies? And there are others too - google is your friend.

 

[BigDH01]

Uh, you do realize there were more than 1 thread on DU, right? Did you also miss the koskiddies? And there are others too - google is your friend.

Sure, you just add up all the views on the threads at DU and get me my numbers. We'll also have to account for the conservative websites trying to skew it in the opposite direction, like FreeRepublic. I'm sure when that's done, we'll find that only left-wing fringe elements voted racism, conspiracy, right?

 

[CADsortaGUY]

Sure, you just add up all the views on the threads at DU and get me my numbers. We'll also have to account for the conservative websites trying to skew it in the opposite direction, like FreeRepublic. I'm sure when that's done, we'll find that only left-wing fringe elements voted racism, conspiracy, right?

Did you read your link? DU and the others had already skewed the poll when the freeper posted.

Also, it has exactly zero bearing on my comment -

I'm sure it made it's rounds on all the usual fringe leftist sites...

 

[BigDH01]

Did you read your link? DU and the others had already skewed the poll when the freeper posted.

So the freepers were so disheartened that they were losing they didn't even attempt to affect the outcome? If you want to exclude votes from leftist sites, surely we should exclude the few thousand that probably came from sites like the FreeRepublic, no?

Also, it has exactly zero bearing on my comment -

Your comment was offered up as an explanation as to why so many people that voted think the Tea Party protesters are racist/conspiracy theorists. This was further evidenced by your following post.

Hmm... at the time it was posted there - 93K votes and 65% nutjobs voting. As of the OP - 200K+ and 80% nutjob votes.

You believe that the numbers both before and after your DU find were the result of nutjob votes. I know you wouldn't call your fellow conservatives nutjobs, so I can only assume you mean the people who read the usual fringe leftist sites. Thus, your explanation for the results is a conspiracy by left-wing nutjobs trying to skew the results.

The sad thing is, I'm inclined to agree with you. I do believe the results are skewed. I do not believe they are as skewed as you'd like them to be. I think your outright dismissal on the claim of conspiracy is simply ironic, given the nature of the results.

 

[Carmen813]

Per Nate Silver @ 538.com:
"Basically, "tea partier" has come to mean "angry conservative". The anger is real but the tea-party part is window dressing. "

It started off as a libertarian movement to elect Ron Paul. It was hijacked by a bunch of opportunists who are anything but libertarian. A lot of my friends who were part of the original movement no longer associate themselves with it.

 

[sandorski]

Online Poll Fight!!!!!!!!!!!!

Hilarious to see a stupid Fox News Poll get hit though. I'm sure we won't be seeing a vacant faced Fox talking head touting those results.

 

[CADsortaGUY]

So the freepers were so disheartened that they were losing they didn't even attempt to affect the outcome? If you want to exclude votes from leftist sites, surely we should exclude the few thousand that probably came from sites like the FreeRepublic, no?



Your comment was offered up as an explanation as to why so many people that voted think the Tea Party protesters are racist/conspiracy theorists. This was further evidenced by your following post.



You believe that the numbers both before and after your DU find were the result of nutjob votes. I know you wouldn't call your fellow conservatives nutjobs, so I can only assume you mean the people who read the usual fringe leftist sites. Thus, your explanation for the results is a conspiracy by left-wing nutjobs trying to skew the results.

The sad thing is, I'm inclined to agree with you. I do believe the results are skewed. I do not believe they are as skewed as you'd like them to be. I think your outright dismissal on the claim of conspiracy is simply ironic, given the nature of the results.

Uh, your reply to my comments was to basically claim it was just a conspiracy theory. I offered up multiple links to back up my statement. Sorry you can't handle that.

As to the results - yes. Anyone who picked that answer is a nutjob OR just plain ignorant. Yes, yes, the media has been trying to sell their narrative of it being racist or whatever but reality shows otherwise. Meh... my original comment stands.

 

[BigDH01]

Uh, your reply to my comments was to basically claim it was just a conspiracy theory. I offered up multiple links to back up my statement. Sorry you can't handle that.

As to the results - yes. Anyone who picked that answer is a nutjob OR just plain ignorant. Yes, yes, the media has been trying to sell their narrative of it being racist or whatever but reality shows otherwise. Meh... my original comment stands.

The fact that you made this assumption, as if fringe (who almost by definition are a few standard deviations away from the mean, at least further away than the average person that reads FoxNews) left-wing sites had amassed enough people to crush any of the people who would normally vote on FoxNews. This is especially true given that FreeRepublic was getting people to vote in the other direction.

I kept responding because of your automatic dismissal of the results based on a few posts you found (while ignoring factors that would've skewed the results in the opposite direction). Even if you added up all unique views from DU, you would barely make a dent. The post at DailyKos was pretty late in the day (about 6 PST Wednesday). If you look at the FreeRepublic thread I posted, you'd see that it was posted on Wednesday at 7:45PM with no time zone given. At that time, it was already 69% racism/conspiracy. The earliest result we have is that with 92k votes, 65% said racism/conspiracy. The first result from Kos shows 9:15 Central with 122k votes about an hour and 15 minutes after the original post. It just seems to me that DU and Kos had little effect in the initial results, which had 65% claiming racism/conspiracy. So while they may have had some effect when the poll war started (as FR would've), it doesn't seem like it would've changed the outcome which had most people claiming racism/conspiracy.

Nice to hear your opinion, as always. Although I did not vote in that poll, I can't say that I don't believe a portion of those involved in the movement are the conspiracy theory types. Mostly, I think those in the movement that I've talked to are ignorant, but not racist (at least not the majority).

 

[GuitarDaddy]

It's a fluke, damit

We are the majority! THE MAJORITY I tell you! If you don't believe it just ask us

Teabaggers unite! Power to the people!

 

[GTaudiophile]

Here is a 5 page article from today's NYT that you might like to read.

 

[BigDH01]

Here is a 5 page article from today's NYT that you might like to read.

That is often the point when Tea Party supporters say they began listening to Glenn Beck. With his guidance, they explored the Federalist Papers, exposés on the Federal Reserve, the work of Ayn Rand and George Orwell. Some went to constitutional seminars. Online, they discovered radical critiques of Washington on Web sites like ResistNet.com (“Home of the Patriotic Resistance”) and Infowars.com (“Because there is a war on for your mind.”).

Insanity. I wonder if they read anything beyond 1984, because Orwell was a Socialist.

 

[KMFJD]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eDYIlaaw_yI

Duh!