A very unflattering picture of Sarah Palin is on the front cover. We've seen such unflattering pictures of a bevy of democratic candidates, but how ironic that the dems choose to mock Sarah Palin who is NOT EVEN A CANDIDATE, although, she is a force. The dems are attacking "Brand Sarah."
The most interesting part of the flier (to me) is the back page which asks:
WHO IS THE
TEA PARTY?
A recent poll by CBS News and the New York Times provided a scary picture of Tea Party supporters.
92% believe President Obama is leading the country to Socialism
Quick timeout. I believe that President Obama is continuing a 30+ year tradition of corporate welfare (yes, this IS socialism of a sort), allowing the profits to be privatized unto the corporations, and socializing their losses. Witness the banks, investment banks, wall street bail outs which rubbed a LOT of Americans as being very, very, very wrong. Obama in fact took the lead, took point and actively politicked for a bipartisan handout to Wall Street; a task for which the Bush administration had no real stomach at the end of its term.
59% either believe or don't know if President Obama was born in another country.
This is entirely understandable, depending upon where one chooses to get one's source of news and information. Elected Senators have in fact questioned Obama's citizenship. And the so-called Main Stream Media (MSM, Mainly Sucks Media) has done very little in the way of providing the uber-narrative: that Fox News and Rush Limbaugh LIE to the faces of their listeners.
24% believe it is sometimes justified to take violent action against the government
But of course. DON'T YOU? This country was FOUNDED upon the taking of violent action against the government of Great Britain. There is a deep historical precedent. If the government is NOT responsive to the wishes and needs of the majority of its citizens (and the U.S. government has not been so for a long, long, long, long time) and if the mechanisms for making it responsive to the needs and wishes of the vast majority of its citizens, and if peaceful protest is supressed, um ... just what exactly ought a rational person to expect? That its marginalized citizens are gonna sit here and take this abusem, an ever-declining standard of living, job security, etc, etc, forever?
Forbid it Almighty God!
66% doubt the impact of global warming
Alexander Cockburn, editor and publisher of Counterpunch e-zine is a disbeliever in the science of global warming. Does that make him less left-leaning? Less radical?
Besides, once again the Mostly Suck Media has not done much to make the case for the impact of human activity upon increasing temperatures, more violent and extreme weather, the melting of the polar ice shelfs, etc, etc, etc. And why would they? Their get significant advertising revenues from CORPORATIONS directly involved with the oil and gas industries. Big oil, automobile manufactuers, real estate developers (the American dream suburban life-style is entirely dependent upon an unlimited supply of cheap fossil fuels; WHEN those dry up, that American Way of Life will be ex-post facto, and who wants to confront THAT reality?
64% believe President Obama has increased taxes. (He cut them for 95% of Americans)
This is such a little known fact that the democratic party felt it necessarily to parenthetically note Obama's tax policy has been. But, surprise, surprise, American's are paying higher taxes, higher state taxes, higher county taxes, higher property taxes, because the federal tax revenues were reduced as a result of the Bush administration tax rate cuts. This is information that you simply won't find in the Mostly Suck Media. And the Oobama administration, with one of the finest orators we've had in years fronting for it, has not been able to pound their message home. The most envigorating speeches Obama gave were all about ... well, nothing really, CHANGE & YES WE CAN, but there was never any substance to them. He just delivered them well (which was more than enough for the democratic base ... "look ma! a prez that can speak without tripping over his own tongue!"
Side note: One of my former bridge students had attended a Republican fund-raiser in Ohio where George W. Bush was present. She relayed that she was so worried, lest he trip, stumble and fall over his own tongue. But, he didn't! And that was enough to keep her faith, yea, verily, even to restore it.
What is it about so many of the rich and the educated that they want their heroes to be "well-spoken?" Which means, basically, to sound as bland as any weather man in the country.
66% have a favorable view of Sarah Palin
Well, yea. She resonates with them. She speaks in a way they understand. She is NOT some snotty East-Coast intelectual whose head is stuck so far up his ass that the only people who even pretend to understand him all "talk funny" in that Hahvahd educated kind of way.
59% have a favorable view of Glenn Beck
Watch Glenn Beck for a while. He too resonates, but unlike so many in the Mainly Sucks Media, Glenn will name the names of corporations that are ripping off Americans, with their off-shore tax havens, their out-sourcing of good American jobs, and their purchases of the elected public officials of this nation.
There are times when I admire both what he says and how he says it.
57% have a favorable view of George W Bush
I don't. But I don't have a favorable view of Bill Clinton, either. Nor Barack Obama. Nor George H. W. Bush, nor Ronald Reagan, nor of Jimmy Carter's presidency (he rehabilitated himself mightily upon leaving office) nor of Gerald Ford, nor of Richard Nixon, no of Lydon Baines Johnson, nor of John F. Kennedy.
I DO have a favorable view of Dwight D. Eisenhower. The best president of my lifetime. Why is that?
1. He ran on a platform of extricating the U.S. from the Korean War.
2. He did not do Israel's bidding in the Suez incident.
3. He took General Matthew Ridgeway's advice against picking up where the French left off in Vietnam after the French defeat at Dien Bien Phu in 1954.
4. He lowered individual income tax rates - watch by how much (for head of household)
in 1954: from 92% on incomes over $300,000 to 91%
in 1954: from 22% on incomes between 0-$2,000 to 20%
in 1954: with similar changes on in-between income amounts
And, America prospered. We built the world-class infrastructure system.
Oh but for a president who would tax the wealthiest among us at a marginal rate of 91% on incomes above a certain level, would get us out of wars, would keep us out of wars, and would BUILD AMERICA strong (once again).
THAT candidate would get my vote.
Am not holding my breath.
I do not mock the Tea Party. I embrace the change that they have brought to the political scene - they have shown that something CAN be done about the same old, same old.
This (wholly bought and sold) democratic party hit piece has had a very much opposite of intended affect on me. I want to meet the Tea Partyers, and talk with them. To find out where they and I have common ground and can make common cause.
And to WARN them that they MUST keep the feet of the candidates they elect to office to the flame, they must keep those candidates true to the ideals of their base, they must not fall in love with candidates who will sell them out, who will prostitute themselves to the monied interests of the wealth and corporate elites of this country.
Best of regards you patriots.
And to hell with you, you mostly feckless democrats.
