March 13th Becomes First National Coffee Party Movement Day

Accidentally started by documentary filmmaker Annabel Park, the Coffee Party movement faces its first test today:  newly-formed Coffee Party chapters are meeting all across the country.  Formed out of frustration over what some call the extreme views of the Tea Party movement, and even racism, the Coffee Party movement started with a rant on her Facebook page by Park.

Several weeks ago, Park posted the following on Facebook:

"Let's start a coffee party — a Red Bull party — anything but tea. Let's get together and drink cappuccino and have real political dialogue with substance and compassion."

After Park was swamped by responses agreeing with her, that the Tea Party movement did not represent their of America, things snowballed.  The official Coffee Party movement Facebook group has swelled to over 130,000 fans.   They also have an official website. Interestingly, despite being founded in March of 2009, as opposed to weeks ago, the Tea Party facebook group has only 110,000 fans.

Saturday, local Coffee Party movement organizers will hold more than 350 meetings for the Coffee Party National Kick Off. Meetings will take place in almost every state, with national organizers encouraging groups of no more than eight people at a local (where else) coffee shop.

The Coffee Party movement declares the following on its Facebook page:

"We want jobs with decent pay for all Americans. We want affordable health care and education. We want our government to cut wasteful spending and practice fiscal discipline. We want regulation of Wall Street to protect consumers and promotion of financial literacy."

It also states the following in a message to Congress:

"You work for us, not for corporations. We hired you and we get to fire you. We pay you and give you great health insurance. Now get to work serving the interests of the American people, or get out."

The Coffee Party movement, like the Tea Party movement, believes that government does not represent them.  Unlike the Tea Party, however, the Coffee Party wants to change it so that government does represent them.  Meanwhile, the Tea Party wants government to go away.

It is clear, therefore, that the Tea Parties have not taken an example from Denmark.  For years (2007, 2008, late 2009) Denmark has been called the "happiest place on earth."

University of Copenhagen Sociologist Peter Glindelock described part of the reason for the happiness in Denmark is, in fact, big government. He has conducted many studies on this issue.

Glindelock says part of the reason is the country's social system. "The happiness standard is the quality of life in different societies. And Denmark scores very highly on all those different values. So even though the climate is poor, which is part of that analysis, it still shows that the welfare state is very important for people's happiness."

In Denmark, the state controls the health, educational, and other systems, and the Danes are willing to pay high taxes to support them. "And this kind of welfare state means that everybody gets more or less the same from the state," said Glindelock. "At least what the Danes like, they like an egalitarian society."

Watch a video from the Coffee Party Movement's website:

Tea Party Movement Racist: Fox News Poll

Strange results from a Fox News poll, as their core audience is undeniably to the right. However, a Fox News poll indicates that even those viewers / readers feel that the Tea Party movement is racist.

Here's how the poll was posed:

How to define the Tea Party movement was nearly as big an issue last week at the National Tea Party Convention as the political issues discussed, from government fiscal responsibility to greater accountability of public officials. Some participants drew cheers for raising more controversial topics, such as President Obama's nationality, but others argued that those points were, at best, politically unproductive. Meghan McCain went further on Monday and called segments of the movement "racist."

As of the the time of this writing, there are 210,835 votes. 80 perecent of them selected the option that the Tea Party movement is "A fruitless mix of racism, conspiracy theories."

Interestingly, for those who believe the policies of Barack Obama are socialist, only 1 percent of respondents agreed with that statement as a reason that the Tea Party movement has begun. Of course, those who truly know what socialism means know that any idea that the U.S. is moving toward it is a completely untrue statement, anyway.

Sarah Palin Uses Crib Notes During Tea Party Appearance

Sarah Palin's speech at the so-called National Tea Party Convention last night was interesting for many reasons. One of them is that Palin was forced to use crib notes scrawed on her hand.

The photo above, blown up from the photo below by The Huffington Post, clearly shows the evidence. The crib notes were used during a Q&A session at the convention, leading to the obvious conclusion that the questions and answers were known beforehand.

It's not hard to believe she would need to use crib notes. After all, this is a woman who didn't know Africa was a continent. It is, however, hypocritical since she recently criticized President Barack Obama over use of a teleprompter.

It does show that she's learned from the Katie Couric interview from last year: don't go in without knowing the answers, and make sure you have the answers around in case you forget them.

Watch a video, too: