"TEA PARTY"
Originally started by grass-roots opposition to the economic stimulus bill and taxpayer bailouts of homeowners as well as being strongly against the Democrats' national healthcare reform plans.

They oppose taxation without representation, excessive spending and have a Constitutional right to exercise their freedom to assemble and freedom of speech. They believe that when our elected officials vote on measures they haven't even read they have forfeited their "duly elected" status and, in effect, become the enemy of the constituency they were entrusted to protect.

Tea party followers are concerned about our national debt, too many regulations, loss of many of our previous freedoms and the potential of more loss of current freedoms, the immensity and complexity of our current tax laws, and the future of our nation and the need to return to the three documents that started our nation: The Declaration of Independence, The Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

QUESTION? What specifically is what's wrong with that?

As reported by Newsweek, Gallop, NY Times, USA Today, etc., most of the Tea Party movement, their age, educational background, employment status, and race are representative of the public at large. They include union workers, Democrats, Independents, business people, farmers, lawyers, educators, self employed, employed, and all other types in our society as well as Republicans and Conservatives.

Documentation?
1. NEWSWEEK:
For more than a year now, pundits, politicians, and the public have been trying to understand the "tea party." Yet, even after two nationwide reports, a USA Today/Gallup poll and a New York Times/CBS News poll, the definition of a "tea partier" remains elusive. The Gallup findings say that tea-party members are more like the rest of the country than one might expect. Of the 28 percent of U.S. adults who call themselves supporters of the tea-party movement, the survey surmised that they skew right politically, but demographically and ideologically they are generally representative of the mainstream public.

2. NEW YORK TIMES poll:
On the makeup of the Tea Party, the most interesting data was that Tea Party members are wealthier and better educated than the general public. (This set of data fights the perception of who the tea partiers are, at least as it's presented sometimes by left and center-leaning (or non-leaning) media sources: that the tea partiers are a bunch of angry white people, or that they're the working-class whites who, liberals have long complained, vote against their interests by supporting Republicans. Or that a lot of them are unemployed, as were the jobless tea party activists interviewed by Kate Zernike for this New York Times piece. . . they are not the demographics of activists who regularly go to meetings hosted by "tea party" groups, nor are they the demographics of people who show up for tea party rallies.)

3. GALLUP:
TEA Party demographics represent mainstream America (April 5, 2010). Tea partiers are no different from the rest of the country. In terms of age, employment status, and educational background, the tea partiers are virtually the same as a cross-section of all U.S. adults. 5% fewer are black; 4% more are white. 6% fewer make under $30,000 per year; 5% more make over $50,000.

4. WIKIPEDIA:
The Tea Party is an American populist political movement, is generally recognized as conservative and libertarian, and has sponsored protests and supported political candidates since 2009. It endorses reduced government spending. One Gallup poll found that other than gender, income and politics, self-described Tea Party members were demographically similar to the population as a whole.

5. VAN SUSTEREN:
If I sort of step back and look at the people I think might be in the Tea Party movement, they seem to fall primarily in my mind into three groups. One is independents, another group are people who are never involved in politics before but suddenly are getting motivated. And the other ones are the ones that are furious at the Republican Party for letting them down.

TEA PARTY BEGINNINGS:
The "Contract from America" was the idea of Houston-based lawyer, Ryan Hecker. He stated that he developed the concept of creating a grassroots call for reform prior to the April 15, 2009 Tax Day Tea Party rallies. To get his idea off the ground, he launched a website, ContractFromAmerica.com, which encouraged people to offer possible planks for the contract.

A. Identify constitutionality of every new law
B. Reject emissions trading
C. Demand a balanced federal budget
D. Simplify the tax system
E. Audit federal government agencies for waste and constitutionality
F. Limit annual growth in federal spending
G. Repeal the healthcare legislation passed on March 23, 2010
H. Pass an 'All-of-the-Above' Energy Policy
I. Reduce Earmarks
J. Reduce Taxes

R E P E A T: Specify what's wrong with those ideas!
[Note: Tea Party Patriots have asked both Democrats and Republicans to sign on to the Contract. NO Democrats signed on,]

LEFTWING MEDIA PROPAGANDA
More than one study has shown that the media leans left – this is not news. The problem in the case of the Tea Party is that they have crossed a new line. It is no longer a simple case of bias rather it has taken on a nasty tone full of misrepresentation and inaccurate coverage. Here are just a few of examples of what is being said in the media and on social media:

CNN'S WEBSITE: "Experts: Angry Rhetoric Protected, But Can Be Disturbing — Letting disgruntled citizens vent is important to national security, experts say but some messages emanating from angry Americans in recent weeks have pressed the boundaries of free speech." [The article goes on to loosely analyze the Tea Party and other movements on both sides of the aisle. The problem is that the Tea Party is always compared to the more extreme side of grass root organizations.]

THE NEW YORK TIMES: Tea Party Lights Fuse for Rebellion on Right
An excerpt – "These people are part of a significant undercurrent within the Tea Party movement that has less in common with the Republican Party than with the Patriot movement, a brand of politics historically associated with libertarians, militia groups, anti-immigration advocates and those who argue for the abolition of the Federal Reserve". [In this article there is an attempt to tie Tea Party members to the militia movement. In the end this just another mainstream media smear job.]

TIME MAGAZINE took this shot after Joe Stack crashed his plane into an IRS office in Austin Texas. Time Magazine immediately drew comparisons between Stack's anti-government writing and a "Tea Party mentality". Even though Stack never mentions the Tea Party in any writings Time was willing to draw the comparison anyway. In a passage from the article, reporter Hilary Hylton writes, "The White House was quick to say the incident was not a plot by overseas terrorists. But was it terrorism nevertheless? In his note, Stack was very clear he was unhappy with the U.S. government. He complained about onerous and merciless taxation of individuals like him as well as corruption and the special treatment the executives of big corporations allegedly received after their companies failed. And he seemed to be as emboldened as any suicide bomber." Hylton also said Stack's manifesto "eerily reflected the angry populist sentiments that have swept the country in the past year". [Using this line of reasoning everyone that is upset or angry with the government is a candidate to crash a plane into a building and kill themselves.]

WASHINGTON POST took a similar path on this story. Jonathan Capehart wrote in the PostPartisan column for Post opinion writers, "Joseph Stack was angry at the Internal Revenue Service, and he took his rage out on it by slamming his single engine plane into the Echelon Building in Austin, Texas. We now know this thanks to the rather clear (as rants go) suicide note Stack left behind. There's no information yet on whether he was involved in any anti-government groups or whether he was a lone wolf. But after reading his 34-paragraph screed, I am struck by how his alienation is similar to that we're hearing from the extreme elements of the Tea Party movement."

SUMMARIZING:
In the Tea Party there is NO specific leader, only education and a determination to change things through the Ballot Box. It's a movement of the people, a determination to hold our elected officials ACCOUNTABLE.

WHAT;S WRONG WITH THAT?

Christian values, standards, traditions, ethics and morality were the foundation blocks of Western Civilization, without which there would be no Western Civilization.

Consistent Christian religious values in the "West" have been the cement which has held our own American society together for over 200 years. Our religious heritage clearly distinguishes between right and wrong. They demand self-discipline which instills and produces good character, the foundation of good behavior. Certainly many of those standards have evolved (been "refined") because societal and cultural conditions also changed and evolved. (We had no traffic lights 200 years ago but the principles of courtesy and safety remain constant.)

G.K. Chesterton said that America is the only nation in the world founded on a CREED. "That creed is set forth with dogmatic, even theological lucidity in the Declaration of Independence . . . all men are created equal . . . endowed by their creator with unalienable rights - among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." The roots of the United States of America are religious. Not too long ago, the Brookings Institution "think tank" concluded that the stability and future strength of American democracy depends upon the "underpinnings of religion." Those who reject, oppose and try to reverse this fact are the true subversives, the radicals.

The Thomas Moore Law Center, defenders of religious freedom, family values and sanctity of human life comments, "Left Wing, anti-God organizations - led by the ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union) are out to destroy the moral and religious foundations of our great Nation because they know . . . the key to America's greatness lies in its Christian roots" which has always called for respect for authority and individuals, good environmental stewardship, acceptance of others regardless of race, color or creed, and so on. All have undergone further exploration, emphasis and attention in our lifetime because of maturation of our society over the past 100+ years; the basic principles have been there all along.

Without promoting Western Civilization's Christian values hedonism in this country, coupled with moral relativist philosophies, encourages, invites and allows us to be seduced and enslaved by our base impulses, desires and whims, blaming society, outside circumstances or "feelings" for outrageous behavior and to avoid accountability. Human frailty tempts us to indulge our feelings in pursuit of self-satisfaction rather than making judgments between good and bad.

Law, morality and Christian values cannot be separated from one another. The civil, criminal and procedural laws of the United States came from, or represent, the MORAL ORDER which flows from Western Civilization's Christian religious heritage. The legal and moral order written by our lawmakers and enforced by the courts is, in a sense, an "establishment of religion" - not the establishment of a church and its theology and doctrine, but religion, a moral base of the State. Many third-world, emerging countries do not understand or accept our religious views of honor, morality and ethics because they lack that Christian faith-heritage based upon the dignity of human beings, liberty and justice for all.

The growing "multi-culturalism" craze, steeped in propaganda and deception, often strives to draw a MORAL equivalence between the American value system and that of pagan, tyrannical, backward nations. The United States is not like, or equal to, those countries because our Christian faith foundations are not the same. We don't burn widows on a deceased husband's pyre, sexually mutilate the genitals of innocent girl babies, force widows to drown themselves after their husbands die, break children's legs so they can become beggars, sell or coerce pre-pubescent girls into prostitution, murder wives at the husband's death or gang rape them because the dowry is not enough, or banish the elderly to die in the fields. Many nations, not part of our Judeo-Christian traditions, place little value on human life. Daily news stories expose horrendous acts which take place all around the world. Compared to those cultures, the principles and convictions of religious Western Civilization are exquisite, radiant lights which penetrate a dark world of horrendous, heinous wickedness and inhumanity.

Archbishop of Denver, Colorado, Charles Chaput in his book 'Render to Caesar" had this to say:
"To be a European or an American is to be heir to a profound Christian synthesis of Greek philosophy and art, Roman law, and biblical truth.
This synthesis gave rise to the Christian humanism that undergirds all of Western civilization.
German Lutheran scholar and pastor, Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote these words in the months leading up to his arrest by Gestapo in 1943. ‘The unity of the West is not an idea but a historical reality, of which the sole foundation is Christ.'
Our societies in the West are Christian by birth, and their survival depends upon the endurance of Christian values. Our core principles and political institutions are based, in large measure, on the morality of the Gospel and the Christian vision of man and government. We are talking here not only about Christian theology or religious ideas. We are talking about the moorings of our societies -- representative government and the separation of powers, freedom of religion and conscience; and most importantly, the dignity of the human person . . . Take away Christ and you remove the only reliable foundation for our values, institutions and way of life.

Conservatives who challenge, criticize or disagree with Liberals/Progressives are hysterically accused of inciting violence, of spewing hate speech, "while liberals who actually call for violence and publicly wish death upon conservatives are given a free pass."

Here are examples that have been coming from the Left for years. We don't hear Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and Barack Obama "stand up and condemn the ocean of violence and hatred being spewed by their friends, supporters and ideological allies:"

1. "I want to go up to the closest white person and say: 'You can't understand this, it's a black thing' and then slap him, just for my mental health" -- New York city councilman Charles Barron

2. "I believe in ecoterrorism." - James Cameron

3. "Republicans don't believe in the imagination, partly . . . it gets in the way of their chosen work to destroy the human race and the planet. . . . which is why I personally think they should be exterminated before they cause any more harm." -- The Village Voice's Michael Fingold

4. (Rush Limbaugh)" just wants the country to fail. To me that's treason. He's not saying anything different than what Osama Bin Laden is saying. You might want to look into this, sir, because I think Rush Limbaugh was the 20th hijacker but he was just so strung out on Oxycontin he missed his flight. ... Rush Limbaugh, I hope the country fails, I hope his kidneys fail, how about that?" -- Wanda Sykes

5. "You guys see Live and Let Die, the great Bond film with Yaphet Kotto as the bad guy, Mr. Big? In the end they jam a big CO2 pellet in his face and he blew up. I have to tell you, Rush Limbaugh is looking more and more like Mr. Big, and at some point somebody's going to jam a CO2 pellet into his head and he's going to explode like a giant blimp. That day may come. Not yet. But we'll be there to watch. I think he's Mr. Big, I think Yaphet Kotto. Are you watching, Rush?" -- Chris Matthews

6. "I have zero doubt that if Dick Cheney was not in power, people wouldn't be dying needlessly tomorrow....I'm just saying if he did die, other people, more people would live. That's a fact." -- Bill Maher

7. "If I got (Condi Rice) a— on camera, I would put my Mars Air Jordans so far up her butt that the Mayo Clinic would have to remove them." -- Spike Lee

8. I know how the 'tea party' people feel, the anger, venom and bile that many of them showed during the recent House vote on health-care reform. I know because I want to spit on them, take one of their 'Obama Plan White Slavery' signs and knock every racist and homophobic tooth out of their Cro-Magnon heads." -- The Washington Post's - Courtland Milloy

9. Conservatives are the major target of liberal hate. Sen. Ted Kennedy gave this description of Republicans:
"The Republican Party is basically anti-civil rights, anti-immigration, anti-women, and anti-worker." Howard Dean, former chairman of the Democratic National Committee, stated, "I hate Republicans and everything they stand for." Jesse Jackson after the 1994 GOP victory claimed that "[h]ate and hurt are on a roll in America. If what was happening here was happening in South Africa, it'd be called racist apartheid. If it was happening in Germany, we'd call it Nazism. And in Italy, we'd call it fascism. Here we call it conservatism."
Liberals appear to get a pass when they attack conservative individuals. USA Today columnist and Pacifica Radio talk show host Julianne Malveaux expressed her opinion of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas on PBS: "The man is on the Court. You know, I hope his wife feeds him lots of eggs and butter and he dies early, like many black men do, of heart disease. Well, that's how I feel. He is an absolutely reprehensible person." Nina Totenberg, National Public Radio and ABC News reporter, commenting on Senator Jesse Helms, said, "I think he ought to be worried about what's going on in the Good Lord's mind, because if there is retributive justice, he'll get AIDS from a transfusion, or one of his grandchildren will get it." Former Speaker of the House Tip O'Neill had a less than flattering opinion of Ronald Reagan: "The evil is in the White House at the present are and no concern for the working class of America and future generations of America and who likes to ride a horse. He's cold. He's mean. He's got icewater for blood." New York Times columnist Anthony Lewis claimed that President Reagan "spews out rage and hate, fear and falsehood." It would take volumes to chronicle the outrageous attacks on George Bush or Sarah Palin.

10. Bernard Goldberg in his book Bias A CBS Insider Exposes How the Media Distorts the News" says, "Along the same lines, the Arkansas Times wrote that "Kenneth Starr is cunning, ruthless, and about as well mannered as Heirich Himmler." Then there was Los Angeles Times "frequent contributor" Karen Grigsby Bates, who said of Sen. Trent Lott: "Whenever I hear Trent Lott speak, I immediately think of nooses decorating trees. Big trees, with black bodies swinging from the business ends of nooses."

11. The Democratic National Committee launched a Web video charging "desperate Republicans and their well-funded allies" with "organizing angry mobs" to "destroy President Obama." Then House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) accused town hall protestors of "carrying swastikas."

AND FROM OUR COMMANDER IN CHIEF?

** Obama: "They Bring a Knife…We Bring a Gun"
** Obama to His Followers: "Get in Their Faces!"** Obama on ACORN Mobs: "I don't want to quell anger. I think people are right to be angry! I'm angry!"
** Obama to His Mercenary Army: "Hit Back Twice As Hard"
** Obama on the private sector: "We talk to these folks… so I know whose ass to kick."
** Obama to voters: Republican victory would mean "hand to hand combat"
** Obama to Lib supporters: "It's time to Fight for it."
** Obama to Latino supporters: "Punish your enemies."
** Obama to Democrats: "I'm itching for a fight."
** "If they're successful in doing that, they've already said they're going to go back to the same policies that were in place during the Bush administration. That means that we are going to have just hand-to-hand combat up here on Capitol Hill."

The fact is that Islam has historically and habitually converted sacred shrines of its enemies into mosques (as well as madrasas). A cursory look at the world's most famous mosques exposes the reality that many mosques were former houses of worships of defeated enemies.

Centuries before New York's 9/11, Mohammed's army conquered Mecca in 630, now the hub of the annual Muslim pilgrimage. Al-Kaaba, in Mecca was a pagan shrine that predated Islam by hundreds of years.

When the Muslims conquered Jerusalem, the Ummayad Caliphate proceeded to build the Dome of the Rock, the Masjid Qubat al-Sakhra, on top of the Jewish Temple Mount in 689. It was a clear declaration of Muslim supremacy over Christianity and Judaism. (Inscribed on the inner walls of the shrine are clear warnings to Christianity, professing Islamic supremacy.)

The Grand Mosque of Damascus was converted from a church dedicated to John the Baptist in 705. The world-renown St. Sophia church in Istanbul was a thousand year-old Christian church before being transformed into a mosque following the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople in 1453.

Over the long history of Muslim territorial conquests thousands of mosques, from Spain to India, were built on sites of important religious or political value to their defeated foes.

For those who might argue that the actions of invading Muslim armies over a millennia ago are irrelevant today in lower Manhattan, recent territories that have returned to Muslim rule have seen the return of the conversions of religious sites into mosques. Muammar Qaddafi, the ruler of Libya, converted 78 synagogues into mosques in the 1970s. In 1975, the Great Synagogue of Oran was confiscated by the Algerian government and similarly transformed.

The "controversy" is about understanding how Muslims across the world, particularly Islamists, would view the conversion of the site of the greatest Muslim attack on U.S. soil into a Muslim house of worship.

Given the long history of mosque-building following Muslim military victories, the building of the "Cordoba House" on Ground Zero will be seen in the same light as the Muslim conquests of Mecca, Jerusalem, and Constantinople.

That is the whole point!

So, for uninformed, naive, idealistic Americans, it would be wise for them to ponder the psychological axiom, "past behavior is a good sign of future behavior," and to consider proverbs which apply as well:

"History repeats itself."
"A leopard doesn't change it's spots."
"As you make your bed so you will lie in it."

Challenge your thinking. This might also help you in your debates with teachers or others who don't believe that God suddenly created a species known as "human beings." My position if simple: Evolution is not a proven fact; it's an unproven theory.

In 1859 Charles Darwin , wrote his Evolution theory in the book "Origin of the Species." Darwin's theory of evolution says that life on earth began with single-celled "creatures," which evolved into multi-celled life-forms, and then over thousands of years evolved into higher life forms.

A scientific theory stands until proven "wrong" -- it is never proven "CORRECT." Let me begin by proving it wrong compared to the theory of Intelligent Design. The theory of Evolution is not based on legitimate science but emanates from an idea, opinion or guess which is then supposedly confirmed by what they call scientific "observation." By "assuming" it is true, science can then take a personal opinion and call it a fact because of what they "observe."

For example, they observe that some apes have much in common with humans. Chimpanzees, gorillas and humans walk upright and their skulls and their teeth are similar. They claim we are related, that we had the same ancestors because we have a lot in common with those apes. Well, you have two eyes, two legs and eat with your mouth just like a turkey; does that make you a bird? Conclusion? Similarity is not "evidence." Also, as for using "observation" as proof, if you put a straw in half a glass of water you will observe that the straw appears to be broken. From observation then, you might "scientifically" conclude as "fact" that all straws in the unopened box are broken - of course, they aren't. Or, stand at one end, between the two rails of a railroad track and observe how the tracks appear to get narrower at the far end, which it doesn't in reality as you walk along the track. Science is not blessed with an exclusive path to discovering "truth."

Some time ago scientist Robert Jastrow, in New York Times Magazine, explaining why many scientists won't accept objective evidence uncovered by science itself commented, ". . . scientists cannot bear the thought of a natural phenomenon that cannot be explained. There is a kind of religion in science . . . that every event in the universe can be explained in a rational way . . . This faith is [therefore] violated by the discovery that the world had a beginning under conditions in which the known laws of physics are not valid, and as a product of forces we cannot discover."

Historically, science is known to make up answers which have been incorrect, way off-base and disconnected from reality. In other words, to repeat, science cannot always be relied upon to reveal "truth." For example, in my high school science class I was wrongly taught that the "atom could never be split." In George Washington's time draining blood out of the body of a sick person was "supposed to get rid of the disease. At one time, science taught that light needed a "medium" in which to travel. After years of being unable to detect this medium, it was discovered that light can travel through a vacuum - space.)

The theory of evolution is not science, it is speculation, guessing, wrong premises, and mistaken assumptions For sure, there is evidence that animals have "adapted" to their environment, but adaptation is not evolution. There is no scientific proof of evolution in science labs or in the fossil records - even after 150 years of searching and researching. Evolution believers hold the idea that all of this change from the ape family to human beings occurred by chance, without an intelligent power behind it. A number of them continue to promote the theory of evolution because their goal is to prove there is no God.

Those of us who seriously challenge the evolution theory cannot discount or ignore the evidence of "intelligent design" throughout the universe. There is more evidence (beyond faith) to sustain that notion than the evolutionists can provide for their opinion. New discoveries in molecular biology and chemistry have revealed that living cells cannot be explained by evolution, More and more scientists now believe in "intelligent design" to explain the origin of life. One of these scientists, an atheist named Antony Flew recently announced he finally accepted the existence of God saying that DNA shows that "intelligence" had to be involved to get all these differing elements together."