What a Lovely Tea Party
Yesterday’s Huntsville Tea Party was a tremendous success. The Tea Party was organized by Christie Carden, who deserves our praise for her poise while doing the hard work of planning and promotion. It is heart-warming to know that there are young people out there who are making a difference.
The Tea Party drew over 2000 people and as you would expect, they were smiling and well-behaved. I’ve been to many protests (as a spectator) and this was the most pleasant group I’ve seen. When I lived in DC I often went to the Leftist Protests with their smelly hippies and angry Marxists and wailing harpies – this was way better.
Dale Jackson emceed the Tea Party. He did a fantastic job of promoting the event on air – and his enormous energy and personality entertained (and informed) the crowd. I can’t say more good things about Dale than he says about himself.
Since the Department of Homeland Security has branded us all “Right Wing Extremists”, here’s a picture of one of the threats to the Obama Administration:
Noting the HPD cars in the background of the picture – thank you to the Huntsville Police Department for providing traffic and crowd control – I hope you enjoyed the protest and I pray that all of your days are as safe as yesterday.
The local press coverage of the Tea Party was pretty good. The Huntsville Times sent their best political reporter, Patricia McCarter, who provided a fair report of the event “tax day tea party draws 2300″.
WAAY31, FOX54, WAFF48, and WHNT19 covered the Tea Party for television. Haley Baker of WAAY did the best job of covering the event – thanks to her and her cameraman for being fair. Note in this picture that the cameraman is filming Baker and Carden with the crowd as background:
For an example of bad coverage, WHNT19 interviewed some people while shooting them with bad backgrounds (portapotties, puddles). This had the effect of isolating the person being interviewed – the TV viewer wouldn’t see the 2000 people a few feet away. I don’t know if this was bad faith or inexperience, but thankfully a guy in the audience pointed it out to them.
The most well behaved, clean shaven, and informed domestic terrorist assembly I’ve ever seen.
Why on earth is nobody discussing the fact that there were TWO reports? There was a left-wing extremist report released this year, too. Nobody seems so outraged about that one. I suppose I’ll wait to be outraged when the moderate extremist report comes out.
The link to the pdf file can be found on Fox New’s website, but it’s here:
http://www.foxnews.com/projects/pdf/Leftwing_Extremist_Threat.pdf
The right just ain’t as special as they’d like to pretend they are.
Honestly, I have to agree with Dr. Taylor on this one. It seems few people actually read the report(s) and a few who did have poor reading comprehension skills. The others just seem to have added words that weren’t there and/or overlooked a word or two. Find me one place in the report that targets the tea partiers.
Key word is “extremists.” Not “activists.” Not “protesters.” I don’t see any unreasonable descriptions in either report. The biggest thing folks seem to have an issue with is the terminology and (in my case) the broadness of some terms. But there are only two EXTREME sides to a particular cultural issue– left and right– until those “moderate extremists” pop up, and “angry puppies and kittens” doesn’t seem to do it justice.
AL Mod, please let me know when you locate your sense of humor; I do recall you once had one!
AL Mod – the DHS ‘Left wing extremists’ are named organizations (i.e., Earth Liberation Front and Ruckus) with histories of bombings and mayhem.
The DHS ‘Right wing extremists’ are a broadly defined group of people who just happen to be Obama’s political opposition.
Doesn’t that bother you?
BTW, I knew that reading the ‘Anarchist Cookbook’ would get me in trouble one day…
Brian, seeing that pic of Ms. Baker reminded me of an event a few years ago I attended. I was interviewed by Courtney Friel(FOX News babe)at a GOP rally when she worked at WBBJ in Jackson back in ‘04. Watching her set up the camera and then start thinking out loud what kinds of questions she wanted to ask me was the best fifteen minutes I had that fall Brian…by far. As far as the tea party goes. I was going to go to the one in Tupelo with my brother in law and sister but I had a late meeting with a client. They said it went well though. I heard this morning there were a few “questionable folks” at the one in Cullman.
“Questionable folks” in Cullman, eh. What, did Zeb Little show up!
The TEA Party at the Alabama State House at high noon yesterday has also been called a successful and “lovely” Tea Party by the organizers, those attending, and the public in general in this area. Perhaps the best link for information about the Montgomery TEA Party is Montgomery Tax Day Tea Party Report @ http://politicsalabama.blogspot.com/2009/04/montgomery-tax-day-tea-party-report.html.
I spent what should have been the better years of my life wearing our nation’s uniform all around the globe. More that once I took this oath: “I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.”
Every member of the US Congress has to take the same oath I did. The POTUS takes a different oath as follows: “I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”
Unfortunately, over time, many members of Congress and some presidents (of both parties) have failed to keep their oath, and that sad process has recently speeded up…..you might say it’s gotten out of control.
I think what most TEA Party protesters really want is to see for our Congress and our presidents to return to governing in accordance with the US Constitution. For that reason I was proud to help promote yesterday’s event at the Alabama State House in Montgomery.
Reactionary, I suppose I should be surprised that you obviously didn’t read either report if you think all it mentions are specific organizations on the left and right doesn’t mention any. In fact, both documents look about the same and almost even have the same number of pages– 9 for the left and 10 for the right.
The right wing document mentions specific previous incidents on nearly every single page. And from page 8/10 of the pdf:
“A prominent civil rights organization reported in 2006 that ‘large numbers of potentially violent neo-Nazis, skinheads, and other white supremacists are now learning the art of warfare in the [U.S.] armed forces.’”
The left wing document also give a broad definition for those extremists. From the report (page 9/9):
“DHS/Office of Intelligence and Analysis defines leftwing extremists as groups or individuals who embrace radical elements of the anarchist, animal rights, or environmental movements and are often willing to violate the law to achieve their objectives. Many leftwing extremist groups are not hierarchically ordered with defined members, leaders, or chain of command structures but operate as loosely-connected underground movements composed of ‘lone wolves,’ small cells, and splinter groups.”
If only it stopped there. DHS didn’t merely commit one paragraph to defining leftwing extremists. They used a whole 3/4 page.
There’s a reason why right wing would sound like folks opposed to President Obama. It’s the same reason why left wing sounds like it’s opposed to Bush. Because by definition, those traits are the right and left side of the issue. Duh! So no, it doesn’t bother me that right wing and left wing would be defined as the right and left of an issue.
By the way, as Fox News reports, the series of reports from DHS were actually ordered by the Bush administration and were merely released while Obama was in office. So try again at the “Obama’s after his enemies” tactic.
Brian, I’d likely have more of a sense of humor about the thing if folks weren’t taking it seriously as a “sky is falling” threat. It’s statements like these that make folks want to take legitimate right wing arguments less seriously. The right is quickly becomming the boy who cried wolf, and I find that particularly upsetting because we NEED a right wing more than ever for their legitimate critique while the left is in control– just as we needed the left when the right was running things. What if there really is an issue we should be concerned about? There already has been, and the right actually IGNORED it for the most part.
Don and Brian, I really do wish your message had REALLY been heard at these rallies because I completely agree with that message. It should have been heard. But unfortunately, for the very reason I just listed, it was pretty much overshadowed at best and completely lost at worst. The big story was less about wasteful government spending and more about how some of the crazies on the right were running around saying that Barack Obama was going to get them because they attended the tea party. (Honestly, aren’t these the same people who were saying that warentless domestic wiretapping by the NSA was a wonderful idea?) THAT is what irritates me about the whole DHS situation.
AL Mod – you claim I didn’t read the report, but my post makes it clear that I did, since I refer to the left wing extremist groups specifically named in the report. Didn’t the reference to the “Anarchist Cookbook” (also mentioned in the report) convince you?
If you ever see me write this:
tl;dr
Then you can complain that I didn’t read something.
BTW, you say: “There already has been, and the right actually IGNORED it for the most part.” I’m curious; to what issue are you referring.
I had a copy of the Anarchist Cookbook while I was a precocious youth. Good reading, not terribly practical.
Me too, but I lost it. Many of the recipes were wrong anyway.
Hmm… I wonder if liquid detergent works as well as powdered detergent when making a Molotov cocktail…
I wonder if the “green” detergent that government envirocrats mandate in Spokane, WA works? It sure doesn’t clean dishes.
Actually liquid detergent does work. I imagine that the green detergent would too (it’s a “sticking agent”). Motor Oil, Palmolive, Cooking Oil, etc. all work, long list.
Fill the glass bottle about half full or so with gas, add a bit of the sticky stuff (to no more than 2/3 full), cap the bottle, attach fuse to the outside (for example, gas-soaked tampon), light, throw hard to break.
Or so I’ve heard…
I’m curious if ALMOD actually attended a rally, since she seems to know so much about them.