I have nothing against the tea parties; they strike me as a good form of protest. But watch out for the guys who start talking about how the real problem is the international bankers and the Federal Reserve:
Just as the Sons of Liberty protested "Taxation without Representation", we will be protesting the private banking institutions such as the Federal Reserve and its "Inflation Tax" and the bankster gangsters and their unconstitutional bailout as allowed by the Legislative Branch.
The guy in question, who was helping organize the Pensacola Tea Party, turned out to have quite an interesting website:
Most disturbing: the website which hosts Mr. A*'s email address (www.meetthetruth.org) is an antiglobalist, antiwar conspiracy-theory group. Among its tamer claims is that the 9/11 attack was an inside job done by "Zionists." This is just the kind of association the media would love to jump on to discredit to the entire Tea Party movement.
The actual website itself is down right now; it's not one of the ones I recognize from dealing with the 9-11 Nutters.
I'm not saying don't participate in the tea parties, just saying that when somebody starts pushing the Federal Reserve crap or talking about fiat money, know that your dealing with an infiltrator from the Ron Paul brigades.
Update: And right on cue, guess who's on the speaker schedule at the Phoenix Tea Party?
Ernest Hancock It’s Not My Debt TI 3 6.59-7:02 pm
Ernie Hancock, local libertarian lunatic and 9-11 Truther. Ernie used to have a radio show. Want to guess on which station?
1480 on the AM dial in Phoenix
In other words, the old far-left Phoenix Nova M radio. Yeah, this guy belongs at the Tea Party like Hillary Clinton.
Update: Guess who else is going to be there? The local 9-11 Truthers.
The Tea Party will join us all together against the recent Bankster Bailouts. Join us around 5 pm - 7pm as we march on the State Capitol building to demand that our leaders do their jobs! We will have plenty of signs, banners, DVD's & balloons. Bring signs or whatever you'd like to show your disgust for taxation without representation. . . Don't forget your teabags!!! :)
And who sponsors the Phoenix 9-11 Truth group? Why, it's Ernie Hancock!
I hereby announce that I will unequivocally support the Republican candidate for President in 2012, no matter who he or she may be, and that I will support all Republican candidates in 2010. And that absolutely includes Michelle Bachmann and Ron Paul; I'd rather have them than somebody who'd pal around with Al Frankenstein.
Let me point out here that it is no surprise that cranks from the right wing (and yes, we have them) are going to try to latch their cause onto a more popular movement like the tea party groups that have sprung up around the country. I disagree with LGF here; I saw no signs that the audience was eating up the idiotic spiel that starts about about 2:00 in. I would have liked to see people laughing him off when he started in with the cable boxes being a tool to brainwash us all.
The girl who posted the YouTube video also appears to be the gal calling for book-burning, so take that part with a grain of salt.
Spencer Bachus: Right On the Principle, Wrong on the Numbers
There aren't 17 socialists in the US House of Representatives. My guess is more like 71. The House "Progressive" Caucus is made up of the far-left weenies in the House, like Sheila Jackson Lee, Dennis Kucinich, etc. Guess who founded it? The only socialist in Congress who admitted he was a socialist; Bernie Sanders.
Update: Looks like a whole lot of us conservative bloggers are getting our marching orders from Soros. Rick Moran checks in with a broadside at Beck:
Now, if someone wants to make a case that this was a rational, reasoned response to our current crisis, I would first put you in a padded room and then give you some crayons to play with. Perhaps one of things that attracts many fringe righties to Beck is that often, he appears to be barely under control, as if powerful emotions have a hold of him and only with a mighty, conscious effort is he able to keep from erupting into spasms of emotive irrationality. This plays well especially on TV where Beck has been reduced to near tears several times when contemplating what America is becoming.
But what are we rationally minded conservative thinkers to do when shouted down by an ever-growing mob of Beck-ish doomsayers? Moran says that if we can’t beat the crazies, we might as well join them. Of course, he’s only joking, but he’s right in a sense. The real question is, then, what are we to do when we conservative thinkers are subjected to the kind of vicious vitriol normally reserved for the liberal nutroots and their cronies?
How is it that Charles Johnson and Christopher Orr both think Glenn Beck (whose Fox show I've never watched, BTW) represents the camel's nose in the tent, a dangerous intrusion of crackpottery into the Republican mainstream, while the genuine wingnuts still feel as ostracized and alienated as ever?
Charles Johnson and Christopher Orr probably both think that because, unlike RSM, they have actually watched Beck's shenanigans.
ASU: Thanks for the Speech, But No Honorary Degree
I don't particularly care either way but it does give me a reason to smirk a bit that Arizona State University is not awarding some honorary doctorate on Barack Obama despite his planned commencement speech this year.
It's a snub especially when you consider that ASU previously awarded an honorary doctorate to Douglas Wilder, the one-term (black) governor of Virginia, a pretty obvious comparable.
Go Devils!
Now, comes the obvious; somebody at ASU likes him or he would not have been invited in the first place, and Arizona has the potential to be a battleground state in 2012. So the negative is that Obama may be getting some votes and supporters among those graduating seniors and their friends and family.
Libs are trying to push this story: as some sort of cause celebre:
A North Texas legislator during House testimony on voter identification legislation said Asian-descent voters should adopt names that are “easier for Americans to deal with.”
Killer lede and you can imagine the howls from the left about what an insensitive jerk Betty Brown (the legislator in question) is. But the clown hat belongs on the idiot lefties this time when you read the context:
Ko told the committee that people of Chinese, Japanese and Korean descent often have problems voting and other forms of identification because they may have a legal transliterated name and then a common English name that is used on their driver’s license on school registrations.
Okay, so now we're talking about people who have already (somehow) changed their names on their driver's licenses and on school registrations, and yet have a different legal name for voting purposes? Can you see why Betty Brown's question was not out of line or absurd? She was not telling them to change their names from out of the blue, she was telling them to change their names to what appears on their driver's licenses. A completely reasonable request.
Greg Sargent writes about how the lib bloggers are moaning about how they don't get any love when it comes time to pass out the ad dollars:
“They come to us, expecting us to give them free publicity, and we do, but it’s not a two way street,” Jane Hamsher, the founder of FiredogLake, said in an interview. “They won’t do anything in return. They’re not advertising with us. They’re not offering fellowships. They’re not doing anything to help financially, and people are growing increasingly resentful.”
Hamsher singled out Americans United for Change, which raises and spends big money on TV ad campaigns driving Obama’s agenda, as well as the constellation of groups associated with it, and the American Association of Retired Persons, also a big TV advertiser.
“Most want the easy way — having a big blogger promote their agenda,” adds Markos Moulitsas, the founder of DailyKos. “Then they turn around and spend $50K for a one-page ad in the New York Times or whatever.” Moulitsas adds that officials at such groups often do nothing to engage the sites’s audiences by, say, writing posts, instead wanting the bloggers to do everything for them.
I'm not entirely opposed to the concept, but it certainly raises troubling questions about editorial independence.
He’s right. This turn toward the extreme right on the part of Fox News is troubling, and will achieve nothing in the long run except further marginalization of the GOP—unless people start behaving like adults instead of angry kids throwing tantrums and ranting about conspiracies and revolution.
Chafee has a storied name in Rhode Island politics – his father, John, represented the state in the Senate for 23 years. But Chafee disaffiliated from the Republican party in 2006 after facing loud opposition from conservative Republicans over his moderate-to-liberal voting record in the Senate. He won the primary, but lost to Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) in the general election
I wonder if his political opponents are aware of his flirtation with the 9-11 "Truthers"?
Well, Now We Know What Obama Will Do When That 3:00 AM Phone Call Comes
Roll over and go back to sleep. The New Republic is annoyed they actually bothered to wake him:
It's a small thing but did Robert Gibbs really need to wake Obama at 4:30 am with news of the North Korean missile launch? We knew the launch was coming and Obama had no imminent decision to make. Waking the president to tell him things so he can return to a troubled sleep that leaves him less sharp the next morning strikes me as a PR-oriented tradition we can do without.
