Tea Baggers, Terrorists and the Mob Mentality

Glenn Greenwald ran a post about how readily people accept what they are told, especially by our leaders. Essentially, the government claims that it can now kill anyone, even Americans overseas, by deeming them terrorists with out any due process. That whole "constitution" thing went out with the Patriot Act. And that people who may have opposed it's usage by the previous administration have no problem with President Obama making similar declarations. Much the same way the charges of socialist and communist are leveled at an obvious corporatist like our president by those on the right because they feel uncomfortable being led by someone with a darker skin tone, despite any empirical evidence.
On the right, the same thing is happening to the Tea Party movement. What began as a Libertarian anti tax movement in Chicago in 2008 has mushroomed and metamorphosed into a another arm of the Republican Party, being told to embrace the policies of that party or risk losing support from the movement itself. And while some (read the comments) may resist, the mob mentality will eventually grab hold and the GOP knows it can count on the support of those who while not ideologically aligned with Sarah Palin, will feel she is a better choice than another term of President Obama. For obvious and previously stated reasons.
It's the same mentality that has changed a championship game between the AFL and the NFL (now both the NFC and AFC arms of the NFL) 45 years ago into what is quickly becoming the national holiday. In these times of green thinking, how many of these plastic party supplies will end up rotting in a landfill? While some people will watch to root on their favorite team, more people will watch the Super Bowl for the ads than the game, which in a time of DVRs, is quite a trick on the part of advertisers. And a sign of sickness infecting the mob mentality, turning most of a nation into drunken drooling zombies, turning their memories into advertisements, their minds into pliable mush for the coming corporate state.

Shooting Yourself In The Foot To Spite Your Face

Hello, everybody, I have returned once again from the land of the television watcher, where fear and loathing are peddled and logic and intelligence are ignored. The most recent case in point is the Christmas Day plane bomber. Or should I say attempted plane bomber, since, like fellow shoe bomber Richard Reid, he wasn't actually successful, unless his goal was to frighten the bejeezus out of television watchers nation wide who immediately favored US intervention in Yemen.
Yemen? Really? I thought the suspect was from Nigeria and passed through Ghana, which is like a whole continent away from Yemen. To be sure, there are a lot of America hating people in Yemen, but is that a real reason to drop bombs on a bunch of people who could care less one way or the other? Because if they don't care, one way or the other now, once US bombs began ripping apart family members, they will care one way, and it's not the way we as US citizens would like them to care. Using the US military to intervene in a country that had nothing to do with the "terrorist" attack, while sounding vaguely Bush-like and familiar, makes about as much sense as swatting a fly with a battleship. It's very unwieldy, and will kill a lot more than the fly.
All this really does is illustrate how the corporatist agenda of Total Global Domination puts Americans at risk, and as long as we continue to cede power to them, we all are at risk.

You CanTell It's An Election Year When..........

Yesterday at work we received a printout of this warning from the USFDA about food defense and terrorism, which, after bringing much laughter and derision ( What with MFN Chinese government still sending us food laced with melanine), reminded me that this is an election year and once again the politicizing of government agencies to put fear into voters continues unabated under he Bush administration. (Remember the Justice Department's investigation into ACORN in 2004 which was carried out because Bush had politicized the DOJ?) Is this another case of manipulating terror threat levels right before an election?
Another way you can tell it's an election is falling gas prices, which also happened before the 2006 election. There really hasn't been any major changes in the oil markets to indicate why this has happened, nor have we begun drilling offshore, yet gas prices have fallen almost a dollar or more in the last couple of weeks.
So besides these two things, along with lawns cluttered with signs (because I really care which way a homeowner is going to vote) and rampant vote theft by the GOP what are other indications this is an election year?