Waving A Flag...

Apparently according to some media outlets there was either a KKK or Neo-Nazi rally at the Mall in Washington this past Sunday..

Someone actually thought it was a good idea to bring a Confederate flag to protests at the White House, ones attended by Sarah Palin and Ted Cruz. Shockingly the flag's presence is backfiring for conservatives who hoped today's protests would be the big momentum turn in their favor.

Sen. Ted Cruz and Sen. Mike Lee, flanked by former Alaskan governor Sarah Palin, headlined protests at the World War II Memorial on the National Mall Sunday morning... blah blah etc etc

Yes, yes, it's unfortunate that one guy with a battle flag gives the media a reason to focus on their presumed Confederate roots of the Tea Bagger movement instead of focusing on a legitimate act of civil disobedience from some veterans. 

But hey, free speech can get messy at times.   Take for example the La Raza/SEIU illegal alien rally at the same National Mall last week. There were people there also waving flags that didn't feature stars and stripes..

So where was the saturation coverage of those flag wavers? People (probably some illegal aliens) were rallying on the National Mall, just a few hundred yards from the closed World War II Memorial, waving Mexican flags, and the media can only find a few political show arrests?   Shocking.

If this doesn't show the importance of independent media sources and cell phone cameras, nothing does. Even still, if it doesn't get national coverage it doesn't inflict damage to narrative, so it's almost as if it never occurred.

Tea Party Erupts...

..into the violence everyone said would happen. That's what happens when people show up at rallies with automatic weapons, after all...

In Atlanta, police in riot gear and SWAT teams arrested 53 people in Woodruff Park, many of whom had camped out there for weeks as part of a widespread movement that is protesting the wealth disparity between the rich and everyone else.

Mayor Kasim Reed had been supportive of the protests, twice issuing an executive order allowing them to remain.

Reed said on Wednesday that he had no choice to arrest them because he believed things were headed in a direction that was no longer peaceful. He cited a man seen walking the park with an AK-47 assault rifle.

These Tea Partiers must be stopped now, before someone gets hurt. Maybe it's time for another speech on civility from the "bully" pulpit.

Hello, Nancy

There's so much wrong with this clip it's not even funny--not only from Pelosi but from the doe-eyed reporter letting her get away with it. But OK, Miss Nancy is still rolling with the unproven meme about a congressman being 'spit on' by a Tea Party protester in DC and thinks the OWS folks are basically patriots for simply expressing their voice as the constitution allows. Time to call up the wayback machine for a minute...and not so wayback at that..



You see, the OWS people are simple patriots speaking their mind, but Americans she doesn't like are robotic fascist astroturfers..



Maybe she doesn't realize there's an internet. Or maybe she doesn't care, knowing that only bloggers and talkers like Limbaugh will be calling up such relics from her past while mainstream reporters will be struggling hard to understand why those drums and tambourines are being beaten so loudly, and how the GOP was responsible. As Herman Cain says, anything but focusing on the actual problem. BTW, Cain is very poised but he needs to be--these same people will soon be calling him a racist without pausing one second to consider the absurdity.

MORE 10/10/11

This comment jumped out at me from a Daily Mail roundup up of the festivities:

'We realise that Occupy Wall Street is calling for systemic change. We are honoured to join you in this call to take back our nation and democracy' -Ben & Jerry's

Ah yes, Ben and Jerry's...which is now owned by Unilever. In other words Ben and Jerry sold out, just like capitalist pigs. As to the support statement, it's likely just a marketing ploy. Who are the protesters going to "take back the country" from? The Democrats hold a majority of power and Obama was elected to take back the country. But it's the symbolism that counts, not the substance.

End Game?

As all the bargaining parties declare victory with only 1 day left on ABC's Armageddon countdown clock, the rank and file, who actually have to vote for the deal and live with the results in their districts, are being coddled and heard from. One is even calling for civil protests.

But what can they do now? They've been given one day to express their outrage. If this package is voted down we either default or Boehner and company will have to rush through a clean short-term extension--and make no mistake it WILL be short term deal if it has no extensions and Obama will have no choice but to sign it because it will be a bi-partisan epic fail he can't demagogue. Then we get to do this all again next year. Will the Senate and House leaders be able to get enough votes to prevent chaos, or are we already doomed, doomed?

Meanwhile, the government runs out of spending authority on October 1 without a passed budget for the fiscal year 2012. So barring a miracle we get to do it all over again anyway.

A Blurry View of TEA

Our local newspaper columnist Wendi C. Thomas was recently invited to a "LiberTEA" event in the Memphis area and unlike Keith Olbermann, she actually attended. And indeed, she found some good in the den of evil:

At a Bartlett bowling alley, I joined a few dozen Tea Party supporters (all of whom were white) at a fundraiser for the local Tea Party and for Eighth Congressional District candidate Donn Janes, who is running as an independent.

I was not taken into slavery when I arrived, and I found no indentured servants either.

What I did find is what I've always found when I engage in prolonged conversation with people whose politics are opposite of mine -- and that's civility and hospitality.

Hmm, as if she were expecting a lynching? Seriously, Ms. Thomas (who is black) came up with a decent zinger using the slavery analogy but as with most liberal zingers it's high on emotion and low on depth, insight and logic. Here's her capstone comment:

If you recall the three-fifths of a person part of the constitution, and how recently government restricted the rights of people of color and women, and can name a founding father who owned slaves, an invitation to return to 1776 isn't so, well, inviting.

So the casual reader would be left to believe that in her view, there's really nothing much to celebrate about 1776 because the slaves weren't freed.

Granted, it's not hard to imagine how descendants of people described as 3/5ths of a human being might not have the same warm fuzzy about the whole revolution thing, but what of history without it?

For instance, where would Ms. Thomas be now had those racist white guys not signed the Declaration, gone to war, and written a Constitution, even without solving the slavery issue? How long would it have taken the British Crown to abolish slavery here? After all, they seemed fine with it before the split.

The Constitution, if nothing else, provided a controlling document and thereby a formal guilt to spur future masses towards improvement (the phrase "all men are created equal" is fairly unambiguous). Most historians agree that had the founders brought the slavery issue into the Constitutional process it could have scuttled the whole thing due to the agri-dependent economies of the south (and some of the north) at the time. Here's a collection of writings from prominent founders on the slavery issue, including a parody letter written by Ben Franklin hoisting slavery apologists on their own petards by substituting a north African Islamic Mufti slave owner for them (oh, the irony).

It's obvious Ms. Thomas doesn't like the Tea movement--she's no different than most mainstream reporters/commentators. She chose the racial angle to make her point because it's her perspective. But is she really comfortable dismissing the very building blocks that led to the recent improvements she's so clearly proud of? Seems a little blurry.

Whatever it Takes..

Obama was in Michigan Saturday giving a commencement speech where he warned about violence stemming from protests:

President Obama took aim Saturday at the angry rhetoric of those who denigrate government as "inherently bad" and said their off-base line of attack ignores the fact that in a democracy, "government is us."

Obama used his commencement speech at the University of Michigan to respond to foes who portray government as oppressive and tyrannical -- and to warn that overheated language can signal extremists that "perhaps violence is ... justifiable."

He went on to mock some tea partiers (after repeating Clinton's demagoguery); meanwhile in New York two men were arrested for providing support to AQ then later Times Square was cleared due to a bomb plot. It appears the president is railing on the only group of people who haven't engaged in violence. But we must avoid jumping to conclusions.

BIG SIS 05/02/10

...says the word 'terrorism'. Meanwhile, other federal officials say it's too early to call:

A second federal official also said there are no clear indicators that this is international terrorism.

So we have Napolitano saying they are not ruling anything out while another official downplays any foreign connections. And none of them used the term man-caused disaster. They must think it's a local source.

DIVERSITY

Our lecturer-in-chief's call for right wingers to read the HuffPo in the commencement speech was yet another bizarre thing coming out of a president who loves to name names. Has he ever seen the comments there? And is Kos now crushed because he didn't get any presidential man-love? But the funnier thing was him pegging New York Times readers as partisan and encouraging them to read the Wall St. Journal. Imagine Bush scolding Times readers and telling them to read the Post every now and then.

The Clinton Domestic Directive

According to the former president:

"By all means keep fighting, by all means, keep arguing," he said. "But remember, words have consequences as much as actions do, and what we advocate, commensurate with our position and responsibility, we have to take responsibility for. We owe that to Oklahoma City."

I for one welcome this new era of personal responsibility for elected officials, journalists and politicians over what they say and look forward to holding them to account. Here's one already.. a birther mayor--not very productive.

Here's another. Of course, he's only a comedian.

How about Clinton himself, who mentioned the word "terror" or one of its derivatives 12 times in his CFAP speech on lessons learned from April 19, 1995, apparently violating a previous soft edict from Obama on toning down the hostile impact of that word when it's applied to Islamic (radicals who do terrorizing things). Words matter!

OK, there's a point here. Rhetoric can inflame. But the left needs to understand that it's not only conservative rhetoric, it's everyone's rhetoric. Until luminaries like Clinton and Obama come down off their high horses of absolute moral authority the situation is not likely to change. Wait, unless no change and more chaos is the ultimate goal--why, such a thing would be near-treasonous (er, sorry, not very nice).

Cooling the Rhetoric

As we approach the 15th anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing some liberals have seen fit to use it as a reminder to everyone (conservatives) to cool their rhetoric lest it occur again in this charged environment. Opined Bill Clinton:

"Most of them have been well within bounds," Clinton said. "And they're harsh but limited criticism; in other words, they're not advocating violence or encouraging other people to do it.

"But I just think that we have to be careful," the former president added. "We've been down this road on more than one occasion before. We don't want to go down it again."

Like accusing tea party protesters of being racists? Jack Cashill of Kansas City has been one of the web journalists exploring the Washington "spitting and N-word" incident, primarily since it involved Kansas City's own black congressmen Emanuel Cleaver.

In challenging the narrative--which almost every mainstream outlet ran with, including a few using the N word in the headline--Cashill discovered a troubling event that occurred in the Country Club Plaza section of his city over the past two weekends:

This past Saturday even the Kansas City Star had to take notice when, according to a Plaza spokesman, some 900 youths roamed the Plaza streets, “ destroying property, pushing people as they walked down the sidewalk and spitting on people.” Spitting on people? The Star does not mention whether the people were spit on because they were white or beaten because they were white or robbed because they were white. In fact, in a 2,000-word summary article, the Star does not mention race in any which way at all.

Hmm. Whether this kind of thing was responsible for the attack on Bobby Jindal's chief fundraiser and her boyfriend in New Orleans recently is anyone's guess, but the internet makes it possible to organize such things quickly--as Clinton warned. So surely if chaos breaks out again this weekend in KC or elsewhere using such tactics then Clinton all the mainstreamers (and the WaPo's ombudsman) will jump right on it, making the required inferences to race then calling for calm, right? Or maybe they'll just circle around and blame it on the spitting incident.

CLINTON TAPPED 4/18/10

Clinton sat down with Jake Tapper in an attempt to rearrange the history of the 90s to fit his political narrative:



A few takeaways: One--he's right about inflamed rhetoric and demonization. ALL politicians should be careful in how they word things and should resist demagogueing situations for their own political gain as Clinton seems to be doing here. Calling right wing protesters racists comes to mind. This should also apply to so-called objective media figures, but I apologize for the redundancy.

Slick said the rise of Rush Limbaugh came after his presidency, which is only partially true. The first time I heard Rush on a national show was in 1991 during the run-up to the Gulf War, nearly 2 years before the inauguration.

As to McVeigh, he was fueled largely by Waco. That was Clinton's decision and cannot be completely eliminated from the calculus. Children died. But neither he nor the formally intrepid Tapper mentioned it. For the record, I backed both him and Reno on it because we can't have people simply picking off federal agents and starting wars over warrants. Koresh was a nut. But the abhorrent end-game firestorm debacle was shameful--apparently they didn't even bother to check a weather forecast (strong winds + ordnance = disaster). McVeigh was also fueled by Ruby Ridge, which occurred during Bush 41.

So Slick is largely blowing smoke again but nobody in the media except Limbaugh dares to challenge him on it, and Limbaugh has long ago been placed neatly in his box.

Are the Dems Using Okla City?

...as a way to paint modern Tea Partiers as dangerous radicals who might one day blow up buildings just like al Qaeda? Surely they wouldn't stoop so low, but some early rumblings are pointing in that direction.

Rachel Maddow will be hosting a special two hour show about the Oklahoma City bombing Monday night. Her stand on 'teabaggers' is well known. The preview of the show suggests a connection. How is that not vile?

BTW, wonder if Maddow will venture down this road? Wonder if she'll explore the puzzle of why Terry Nichols' went to Cebu City, Philippines at the same time Yousef and KSM were there, only to return and have his bomb work as well as the first WTC bomb? Wonder if she'll ponder what might have happened had Clinton interrogated Yousef when he was captured two months before the bombing? Nah, she probably condemns the targeting of Muslims in such a manner.

Meanwhile the NYT, never one to be one-upped, features Bill Clinton's take on the event today. He will deliver a keynote address tonight at a memorial event held by his former associates at the far left Center for American Progress. This same man once insinuated that Rush Limbaugh was responsible for the bombing and his wife claimed there was a vast right wing conspiracy out to get them. Wonder if they'll explore those lessons?

Slick points to Michelle Bachmann; the Times writer mentions the crosshairs on Palin's political target map in the effort to demonize those opposed to the present track we're on. Yet somehow it wasn't incendiary when anti-war protesters were in the streets openly advocating for Bush's demise while the DLC produced a political target map in 2004 with bullseyes.

They mention Waco, but looking back the Ruby Ridge incident occurred when Bush 41 was president. Many militia members thought he was on the leading edge of a one-world government when he called for a 'new world order' in a speech condemning Saddam Hussein--delivered on September 11th, 1990. Surely that was a memorable date in Saddam's mind.

But despite reality a lecture is always appropriate:

“Have at it,” he said. “You can attack the politics. Criticize their policies. Don’t demonize them, and don’t say things that will encourage violent opposition.”

Nice to see he's publicly discouraging the use of Alinsky tactics while engaging in them, while almost everyone in his party--even to include the president of the United States--have demonized the protesters from day one. Of course, such is becoming old hat with the latter.
Meanwhile another Clinton-era rejoinder, "it's the economy, stupid", lies dormant.

SPEAKING OF.. 4/16/10

..dangerous radicals, this swell character was just sentenced to 10 years in an Arkansas federal court for threatening the president and black people in general. Ten years seems rather lenient.

Then again, someone who actually killed a soldier while committing jihad against America, and who has recently "lashed out" at the president, sits in an Arkansas jail awaiting a state capital murder charge with no federal component whatsoever. What would happen if the case were thrown out on a technicality?

Double Down Then, Sir

Obama, finally reacting to the tea party protesters:

Speaking at a Democratic fundraiser tonight, President Obama touted his administration’s tax cuts and said that the recent tea party rallies across the nation have “amused” him.

“You would think they should be saying thank you,” the president said to applause.

Well then, if he thinks tax cuts are so great why not make the Bush cuts permanent (or maybe double down on them)? Is it because our Chicago machine president most likely always planned to sprinkle out goodies on the way in the door with reality designed to arrive after the mid-terms (after his liberal agenda was through Congress)? Who doesn't think tax hikes are coming, maybe even a VAT?

Aside from being snide his comments also illustrate the fact that the movement is truly grassroots, mainly comprised of moms and pops not pros, who have no strong leadership and are largely reacting emotionally to the socialist mosaic this president is painting. They can't always put their feelings into exact words so the skinny but tough Chicago politician will be happy to it for them--to cheers from his flock. But rejection is part of the job description, fear and retribution are not. That is, if Obama hasn't already torn up that description.

Hey Look! A Kristallnacht!

My own Congressman--calling me a Nazi Klansman! Oh, and anyone else who "goes out and exercises their first amendment rights". And Kristallnacht? Criminy, what a maroon. But this is Left Tennessee, so it's appropriate. Here's the explanation..

Cohen's challenger for his 9th district seat is former Memphis mayor W.W. Herenton, who has already dropped the race card by suggesting the 9th district seat belongs to a black person. So that explains Cohen. It's not the first time.

The Johnson Factor

Charles Johnson continues his quest to win friends and influence people by lobbing missiles towards his former friends:

Open talk of revolution, Hitler, Hitler Hitler, pictures of dead babies with a fanatic screaming “Repent,” and more people with signs that say, “We came unarmed ... this time.”

Some will no longer hotlink to his posts; Power Line recently de-linked him off the link list. Linking to his post doesn't bother me because one, this blog is like a speck of dust on the moon and two, I'm a dumb southerner myself, so dumb I'll even concede his point: there are some white racists attending these TEA events who haven't yet come to grips with a black president. There are even some religious folks a few cards short of a deck. And there are certainly a few salt-of-the-earth southerners (who seem to be his target du jour lately) who have trouble adequately articulating their fears in a manner suitable for an east or west coast intellectual. Gotta give him that.

But I think he's losing the forest for the trees. For most folks, even the southerners, it's not a skin thing at all, it's a socialism, spread the wealth around, hide behind slick syrupy rhetoric while lying his ass off about darn near everything thing, then blaming southerners or nondescript people clinging to AR-15s. Sorry Charles, but rural America is what it is--a bunch of bitter clingers who hate jazz. But it doesn't take a rocket scientist to see the writing on the walls. Mocking and obsessing on the TEA faults might be necessary for perspective but in reality it just gives more cannon fodder to the left (if LGF is actually down with teh hopenchange now pardon the omission--it's no longer a daily read).

Mr. Johnson should find an event down here and make the trek, even bring along some of his lizard people. Unlike in certain parts of LA he won't get shot, not even for his skin color or opinions. Well, unless he happens to wander into the hood at the wrong hour (racist!) or stops and asks for directions in west podunk Arkansas after a Razorback loss while eating a granola bar and wearing a purple fishnet shirt. No, you know what, he won't be hassled there either. They'd probably offer him an iced tea and a piece of pound cake for the road, or if he's real lucky some watermelon wine, fried catfish or a bowl of grits.

That is unless he gets too close to some of those Deliverance type people. But I hear they're mainly in Alabama.

Tea in DC

From Saturday's million mobster march..



It's kind of sacrilegious but it pretty much sums up everything going on right now.

MORE 9/13/09

New York Times web site front page coverage...midnight central 9/13



US POLITICS
"thousands rally in Minnesota for Obama ..."
"thousands rally in Capital (sic)..."
"on the hill: Congress can't rely on public opinion"

According to the Star Trib, the 'thousands' in Minnesota for Obama's speech totaled 17,000. Is the Times so shamelessly low they would try to make an offhand comparison of that number to this number?

MORE 9/13/09

Don't get me wrong; this horrible ABC News story mentioning hate, Hitler signs and only 60,000-70,000 people in attendance, is not unexpected. On the contrary, it simply confirms Hannity's charge that the mainstream media in America is utterly compromised.

FINALLY

I don't know why this surprises me. Maybe it's just disappointment or shock or an inability to accept what's going on. But if one were to stumble upon the Washington Post's web front page at 12:30pm central today, they would not readily know there was up to a million people protesting in their own city the previous day...




They would know, however, that Serena Williams lost on a foot fault. Oh wait! There it is, buried in the Kennedy story.

update..
The link to the Amorian web site was changed due to a bad link. It appears somebody misattributed a photo of another event as the tea party (figures), so they must have pulled it. Ouch. At any rate, the YT time lapse is enough to prove it was much more than media outlets will admit and certainly enough to get Congressional attention, which is what matters.

Memphis Tea Party

A Tea Party was held at Patriot Lake in Memphis today, and yours truly got on the radical protest clothes and attended. Here's a sample snapshot...



I've stashed the others here.

The crowd was light but well-behaved. There were no premier speakers that we noticed, just people exercising their rights of peaceable assembly on the most patriotic day of the year.

Lefty Tea Party Love and Right Wing Hate

What's more Constitutional than peaceable assembly? The tea parties might reflect a little sour grapes from the right but there's an important principle other than protesting an outrageous expansion of the government through mortgaging our childrens' future via Beijing--the right to protest government policies.

After eight years of telling everyone (or often screaming) about how Bush 'trashed' the Constitution and said it was just a 'GD piece of paper' one might think the left would be hailing the peaceful patriotic dissent scheduled to take place tomorrow and throughout the summer. It's Constitutional, baby!

If so, they have a funny way of showing it. And here's your Casablanca reference.

Meanwhile their Obama-voting friends in the mainstream media who've said almost nothing about the tea party movement to date are suddenly in possession of a flaming hot DHS report about the increasing threat from crazy right wing terrori, er, man-causers. So far we don't know if the government has started a Domestic Contingency Operation but some of this stuff has produced much right wing conniption, such as suggesting that espousing federalism is enough to get somebody on the watch list.

And right on schedule we have LGF to throw cold water on all the outrage:

That’s ludicrous. First, this DHS assessment was begun more than a year ago, before Barack Obama was even nominated. It has absolutely nothing to do with “tea parties,” and it was not done at the behest of the Obama administration.

This isn't about Bush. But Charles didn't mention who else was making hay with this story, and just in time for April 15!

If you think the conservative "Tea Party" movement is daunting then take a look at a new report issued by the Department of Homeland Security that says right-wing extremism is on the rise throughout the country.

Logic says both Charles and AJ are just trying to prevent Obama Derangement Syndrome from ruining the conservative movement, which stands to be harmed much more in their dissent than was the looney Bushilter left due to an unbalanced media.

However, both should know there's a game to this. From initial reports it doesn't appear that Obama demanded Napolitano release the DHS report to coincide with tomorrow's tea parties. So, even though Axelrod and Emanuel have already admitted a strategy of trying to paint the right as a bunch of Rush Limbaughs; and even though the boss himself has been running around the world apologizing for Bush, there's absolutely nothing to worry about here, right? This is how Reuters is playing the headline in their coverage:

Recession fueling right-wing extremism, U.S. says

The story can now be about crazy right wing extremists instead of patriotic dissenters. That's how they roll.

If it comes out that nobody from DHS or another government agency tipped the media to the existence of this report I can live with it, but pardon me if I question the timing.

COVERAGE BEGINS 4/15/09

Scanning around last night produced a surprising lack of MSM coverage of the DHS right wing terrorist report aside from lefty blogs and Reuters. Today is a new day, though!

Here's the picture used by CNN.com on their report:



And here's MSNBC:


Surely just a coincidence...

Selective Outrage

From the Times..

The Obama administration said Friday that it would appeal a district court ruling that granted some military prisoners in Afghanistan the right to file lawsuits seeking their release.

From the other Times..

The CIA's secret prisons are being shuttered. Harsh interrogation techniques are off-limits. And Guantanamo Bay will eventually go back to being a wind-swept naval base on the southeastern corner of Cuba.

But even while dismantling these programs, President Obama left intact an equally controversial counter-terrorism tool.

Now, from the Washington Post..

Asked whether Obama's policies had increased the chances of a terrorist attack or not, 26 percent said they had while 72 percent said they had not.

The WaPo Fix Guy predicted the CNN poll would draw a huge amount of attention from the reality-base, but apparently reality begs to differ. As of supper time the Fire Dogs were foaming about tea...

With only seventy-two hours or so before America gets teabagged by conservatives the teabagggers are getting all hard-nippled with excitement as their big day approaches. After Wednesday, NOTHING IN AMERICA WILL EVER BE THE SAME AGAIN

And the Huffpuffers were trumpeting the end of the depression..

Goldman Sachs, in another sign that banks may be turning around, beat Wall Street's earnings expectations as it reported a profit of $1.66 billion for the first three months of this year.

Perhaps the reality of Obama's anti-terror tact serves to remind the liberty-lovin' lefties more of his string of broken campaign promises while strongly suggesting all those Presidential Daily Briefings Bush worried over were not actually created in the basement of some neocon think tank after all.

So the Constitution can wait--right now there's a revolution to tamp down and make fun of.