Ignorance on Parade

The Tea Party Express arrived in DC to protest government spending, rising taxes, destruction of the constitution, communism, fascism, and the eminent end of the world as we know it. As I've mentioned before, alluding to the Boston Tea Party when protesting taxes is already a mark of how misinformed the group is. The Boston Tea Party was to stop low priced surplus tea from being brought from England, thereby destroying the local tea business. If the people in Washington were protesting business monopolies, the tea party would be an appropriate symbol. As it is, perhaps it's an appropriate symbol for a large group that doesn't know what it's talking about, but nonetheless is sure it's correct.

The first thing I notice about these people is that they have amnesia of all things that occurred before Obama's inauguration. They don't remember that the recession and the bail-outs started during the Bush administration. They don't remember that there was a budget surplus when Bush came into office and a trillion dollar deficit when he left. They don't remember (or think is relevant) the unconstitutional acts of the previous administration, and they don't remember that, for most of them, they got poorer while their boss got richer. In fact, it's worth noting that while the "Tea-baggers" filled DC with anti-Obama signs and T-shirts, people were actually thrown in jail for wearing anti-Bush T-shirts at Bush's appearances.

The Atlantic just had an article about the economic legacy of the Bush administration, based on US Census statistics, which reinforces the bumper-sticker slogan; If you're not outraged, you're not paying attention. These protesters seem not to be paying attention to anything (except, maybe, the delusional rants of Glen Beck) and it's evident in their signs: Obama, depicted as Hitler, is turning the US to communism, government should keep it's hands off Medicare and Social Security, Obama's turning a Xian nation into an Islamic nation, and, if Obama's plans worked, everything should be fixed by now.

If these people really want to make this a better nation, they need to spend less time walking around with stupid signs, turn off the TV at home, stay home from the bible study meetings, and start reading some non-fiction for a change. When they learn that the spoutings of Glen Beck, Rush Limbo, and their anti-education fundy preachers are actually fiction, then, we can begin to have rational conversations about fixing problems and improving lives. Or, they can continue to parrot messages of ignorance and hate until we're all so angry and polarized that we annihilate each other. They have the freedom to chose.

A Few of my Favorite Things

I just found this article at Bloomberg by way of a reference to it in Pharyngula. The article is about an investment con where honest investors lost their life savings to 3 guys who promised great profits on their investments, but delivered nothing. The scam was what the article calls "affinity fraud",that targets a group of like-minded people who are especially vulnerable due to the mutual trust among the members. Here's my I-told-you-so moment. The targeted group was evangelical Xians and Mormons.

As I have ragged about a couple of times, some Xians make themselves easy marks for unscrupulous individuals because of their bias toward, and greater trust of, those that identify themselves as Xians. The members of the group lower their inhibitions because they perceive themselves as in a safe environment. The conference call meetings of investors included praying (as well as preying) and talk of using the profits for good causes. No matter how absurd the reasons that were given for needing more money or how many warnings they got from friends and relatives, the investors did what ever they could to come up with more money, even getting second morgages.

This brings me to another subject I've blogged about; avoiding cognitive dissonance. Fundies may be the all time champs at refusing to acknowledge the contradictions between their beliefs and facts that would cause the discomfort of cognitive dissonance. Just like the text books say, the people with the greatest emotional investment in the investment are are most likely to deny being ripped off. Some of the folks who lost everything, even though the con-men are all in prison, insist that they lost their money because the FBI stopped the process before the highly profitable deal could be completed.

I feel very sorry for these people who lost everything just because they trusted their fellow man, but as I have suggested before (and as G. W. Bush's political team said), fundies are very easy to manipulate. It's just a pity they don't read my blog, or they would have been armed and ready for the scammers.

Armageddon a Happy Marriage

A news article came out today on Yahoo News entitled “ Bush: Marriage has gotten better in White House” (read it at: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/bush_marriage). It’s all about how the pressures of the presidency have brought W and his wife closer together. Isn’t that peachy keen. We’re fighting a huge made-up war where thousands of Americans have died and tens of thousands of the people we were liberating have died. Our government has alienated almost every country in the world. The Environmental Protection Agency thinks the only environment it should protect is in the board rooms of big corporations, and the American economy is swirling down the bowl before our (increasingly unemployed) eyes. But George W. Bush is fine because he was able to take time away from orchestrating the end of the world as we know it to make his marriage work. Is there a better example of how far up his own ass George W. Bush is?