Tag: tea parties

“McVeigh wannabes” promote Tea Parties, Glenn Beck on their website. Tell me about that Snark again

     If you haven’t heard about the 30 Governors who have received “Resign or else” threats, you might be interested to learn about this.

    The group, “Guardians of the Free Republics,” wants to “restore America” by dismantling parts of the government, according to its web site.      

snip

    The website also promotes tea party protests, calls for revolution, videos from Glenn Beck, and sympathetic articles about recent right-wing domestic terrorist activities, like the suicide attack on an IRS building in Austin earlier this year.

thinkprogress.org

Bold added by the diarist

    More below the fold.

Thoughts on the anti-war movement as of March 2010

This post was written as part of GreenChange blog action day. Learn more here.

The anti-war movement seems to be at a crossroads these days. The rapid contraction of anti-war activism after George W. Bush left office caused many skeptics, including activists themselves, to wonder if most of the protesters had been more anti-Bush than anti-war. However, there are signs that the ranks of Americans who are determined to protest the evils of war, no matter which party controls the White House, is growing.

A December rally in Washington DC against the escalation of the Afghanistan War, which featured an impressive lineup of speakers including Chris Hedges, Cynthia McKinney, Dennis Kucinich, Mike Gravel, and Ralph Nader, nevertheless attracted only a small number of supporters – probably less than 1000. The recent March 20th anti-war march in Washington DC attracted between 2500 and 10000 supporters. That’s still a far cry from the hundreds of thousands who would march during the Bush regime, but it may be a sign that the movement is recovering from its post-election inaction.

I remember hearing from people familiar with United For Peace & Justice (UFPJ), a nationwide umbrella group for anti-war organizations, that UFPJ leaders opted not to put their organizing muscle behind the March 20 protest. I’m out of the country and out of the loop, so I can’t confirm if that’s true. If it is true, I think it’s a big mistake for a self-described anti-war organization to downplay an anti-war protest. If anti-war group leaders view President Obama as more receptive to their message, that’s all the more reason for them to put pressure on him to do the right thing.

Ross Levin has a great post on how the 3/20 anti-war march in DC, which he attended and reported from, got significantly less media coverage than a significantly smaller Tea Party rally against healthcare reform across town.

It’s an open secret that the “grassroots” Tea Party movement is actually an astroturf operation, promoted by establishment media pundits like Rick Sanchez and Glenn Beck and funded by establishment political operatives like Dick Armey. Yet the mainstream media coverage treats the Tea Party protests like a genuine grassroots conservative uprising. My question is: can anti-war organizers convert this state of affairs into greater publicity for their movement?

Just the fact that anti-war rallies attract more people than tea parties won’t get them more coverage, but maybe if anti-war organizers made the “we’re bigger than the tea party” challenge integral to their actions, and communicated it to both the mainstream and independent media (as well as creating their own media), it would get more press and attract more attention from the general public.

Another idea (just throwing it out there): an “An-TEA-War PARTY protest”, in which anti-war protesters would mimic tea partiers by standing on the Capitol steps and screaming anti-war slogans at passing members of Congress. By holding signs saying “An-TEA-War PARTY”, these protesters could attract the Tea-Party-loving press.

Another idea: antiwar protesters could have simply marched past the tea party protest, in an attempt to highlight the media’s bias in giving greater coverage to a smaller protest. Intrepid protesters could even join the Tea Partiers and wave their anti-war signs for the cameras. Such tactics would probably require nonviolence training, since some tea partiers could get physical and it would not be good if the anti-war protesters retaliated.

One more demonstration idea: I’ve often thought it would be interesting if someone organized a march in the style of a 1930s labor rally. Everyone would wear suits or dresses, and carry black-and-white signs and banners with simple lettering and straightforward messages. To my mind, a protest like that could attract media attention and get people talking.

In case I’ve offended anyone who thinks the tea parties are cool, there is an encouraging initiative from Voters For Peace to broaden the anti-war movement to include folks who don’t usually show up for anti-war events. Here’s Sam Smith’s take on the effort:

“Last Saturday I spent eight hours with three dozen other people in a basement conference room of a Washington hotel engaged in an extraordinary exercise of mind and hope.

The topic was, by itself, depressingly familiar: building an anti-war coalition. What made it so strikingly different was the nature of those at the table. They included progressives, conservatives, traditional liberals and libertarians. Some reached back to the Reagan years or to 1960s activism, some – including an SDS leader from the University of Maryland and several Young Americans for Liberty – were still in college.”

I’ve read the foreign policy chapter of Ron Paul’s book, and I felt that he was right on the money about many things, like ending US wars in the Middle East, closing US military bases in other countries, and cutting off military aid to foreign governments like Israel and Egypt. In the same coalition-building vein, we can only benefit by more often invoking the anti-militarism words of people who conservatives revere, like Dwight Eisenhower and George Washington. I’ll add some choice quotations below.

Another great thing about Voters For Peace is that it’s involved in both grassroots activism and legislative pressure campaigns. To be effective, the anti-war movement must get serious about pressuring politicians. Pressuring politicians requires setting specific goals that they can be held accountable to. For the anti-war movement, that means war funding, since Congress can end the occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan only by refusing to fund them.

The most effective pressure tactic would be organizing a nationwide voter pledge not to vote for any politician who votes for war funding. If you want a politician to pay attention, tell them they won’t get your vote if they don’t meet your conditions. The Democratic majority has voted solidly to continue the wars, but make them feel that their majority is at risk if they fail to end the wars, and that’s how you get real action.

In many districts, instead of voting for a pro-war incumbent in the general election, you can vote for a Green, anti-war Libertarian, or other independent. The anti-war movement needs to show politicians that only anti-war candidates will earn our votes from now on.

What are your thoughts?

QUOTATION TIME!

“Our detached and distant situation invites and enables us to pursue a different course. If we remain one people under an efficient government. the period is not far off when we may defy material injury from external annoyance; when we may take such an attitude as will cause the neutrality we may at any time resolve upon to be scrupulously respected; when belligerent nations, under the impossibility of making acquisitions upon us, will not lightly hazard the giving us provocation; when we may choose peace or war, as our interest, guided by justice, shall counsel.

Why forego the advantages of so peculiar a situation? Why quit our own to stand upon foreign ground? Why, by interweaving our destiny with that of any part of Europe, entangle our peace and prosperity in the toils of European ambition, rivalship, interest, humor or caprice? ”

-George Washington

“He who is the author of a war lets loose the whole contagion of hell and opens a vein that bleeds a nation to death. ”

-Thomas Paine

“Believing that the happiness of mankind is best promoted by the useful pursuits of peace, that on these alone a stable prosperity can be founded, that the evils of war are great in their endurance, and have a long reckoning for ages to come, I have used my best endeavors to keep our country uncommitted in the troubles which afflict Europe, and which assail us on every side.”

-Thomas Jefferson

“Of all the enemies of public liberty, war is perhaps the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. ”

-James Madison

“Allow the president to invade a neighboring nation, whenever he shall deem it necessary to repel an invasion, and you allow him to do so whenever he may choose to say he deems it necessary for such a purpose – and you allow him to make war at pleasure. ”

-Abraham Lincoln

“The best way to destroy an enemy is to make him a friend… Am I not destroying my enemies when I make friends of them?”

-Abraham Lincoln

” In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together. ”

-Dwight Eisenhower

“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. ”

-Dwight Eisenhower

GOP Rep. Nunes: N!%%er is okay if you call a tyrant it. Censure him NOW!

The transcript

R is officially for racist until an adult appears on the right. Don’t hold your breathe.

   With that in mind, I give you GOP Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA21). When asked about teabaggers calling African American Representatives N!&&er, spitting on them, and calling gay Represenatives “F@&&0t”, he not only JUSTIFIED it, he seemed to endorse this level of hatred and intolerence.

   Watch it for yourself.

A transcript, my interpretation and thoughts and more below the fold.

The Week in Editorial Cartoons – Al Gore vs the Denialists

Crossposted at Daily Kos.  If you choose to recommend it there, the Rec Button may have been pushed to the bottom after the last diary comment made.

THE WEEK IN EDITORIAL CARTOONS

This weekly diary takes a look at the past week’s important news stories from the perspective of our leading editorial cartoonists (including a few foreign ones) with analysis and commentary added in by me.

When evaluating a cartoon, ask yourself these questions:

1. Does a cartoon add to my existing knowledge base and help crystallize my thinking about the issue depicted?

2. Does the cartoonist have any obvious biases that distort reality?

3. Is the cartoonist reflecting prevailing public opinion or trying to shape it?

The answers will help determine the effectiveness of the cartoonist’s message.

:: ::



Chris Britt, see reader comments in the State Journal-Register (Springfield, IL)

Dear Ms. Palin:

I know that people are today making fun of you in the media and on the blogs because of your Nashville appearance at the Tea Bag Pay As You Go Event. They’re complaining about your irritating voice, your inability to complete a sentence, your having no plan and your writing on your hand. They say you are speaking “word salad.” That’s sad, but that’s how it is in America. People have the right to make fun of their politicians, and they should. And, lest you forget, you’re a politician. Or maybe now you’re not a politician any more and you’re an entertainer. Or something. Anyway, those folks cherish their “right” to make fun of you.

Regardless, I have a small proposal for you to consider. I realize that it’s unorthodox to print it here and publish it on the Internet, but after all it is 2010 so I beg your indulgence. How else can I get your attention?  And I know from how you dealt with all those couture clothes you got from John McCain’s campaign, that you understand self promotion for profit.  

My proposal: How about you pay me $50,000 before your next “speech” and I will write it for you. I am an excellent writer. I know grammar and sentence structure. I know how to construct a paragraph. I had an elite, liberal education at a very expensive, fancy, elitist college, and I have a graduate degree from one of America’s most revered universities, and I’ve written books.  But don’t worry.  I won’t tell anyone about any of that. Let’s put it this way: I know how to write. And I’ll keep what I write simple and direct so that your audience will follow it perfectly.  And they’ll hear every single dog whistle I insert in the text.  You know about dog whistles already I’m sure.  Look at that great one you “borrowed” from Lee Greenwood about your being proud to be an American.

I assure you the speech I will write for you will be (1) far more whacked out than the one you gave in Nashville (it will scare liberals to death), (2) far more clever (you might be tempted to say “cleverer”) and (3) your supporters, all those superannuated, semi and fully retired, more or less rich, white folks, will really love it. They will have something that is akin to an orgasm when you deliver the speech I will write for you. Only it won’t be an actual orgasm, that might just kill them, no, they’ll just smile and hyperventilate and cheer a lot. And want to smoke afterward.

You know how to reach me.  I am ready.  We both can grow rich while saving America.

Love, davidseth

PS. I can see Uranus from here.

MoveOn.org and Tea Parties coming together??

(Will be cross-posted at OpenLeft and thomhartmann.com)

Is it realistic to think that two groups such as MoveOn.org and Freedom Works, the lead catalyst and organizer of the Tea Party/9-12 movement could possibly find common ground? Given the institutional and financial pressures inherent in the two-party system it will be very difficult for these groups to actually work togther publicly, but recently two of their leaders met on a “transpartisan panel” at the Engaging the Other Conference. Their was a remarkably civil dialogue and all present were inspired that if the unthinkable cooperation were possible, the red-blue game may begin to shift in dramatic ways. Here’s a 7 min. video that gives a flavor of the very hopeful conversations…

The Beckers: An Army of Darkness

“The preparations for Hate Week were in full swing, and the staffs of all the Ministries were working overtime. Processions, meetings, military parades, lectures, waxworks, displays, film shows, telescreen programmes all had to be organized; stands had to be erected, effigies built, slogans coined, songs written, rumours circulated, photographs faked..”.

– George Orwell

The angry, shrieking hordes came forth this weekend in the nation’s capitol, waving their racist placards, their bagged birth certificates, their Gadsden flags and their Nancy Pelosi Nazi signs. The were legion and they got media coverage, unlike the massive antiwar demonstrations during the darkest days of the Bushreich when these phony patriots, aggrieved citizens and authority worshipping swine were content the ‘Bomb Em All and Let God Sort Em Out’ foreign policy of their Jesus kissed emperor. It was a gathering of blistering hatred, many smaller ‘tea parties’ were being staged across the fruited plain on that marvelous day, the day after the hallowed 8th anniversary festivities that marked the coming of the glory of the lord on that historic Tuesday morning when the American Reichstag Fire dragged us kicking, screaming and swaddled in the almighty stars-n-stripes into the New American Century.

The Burden of American History

As a student of history, I frequently refer back to the past in the hopes that it might provide some degree of clarity that I might be able to apply to the current day.   While I know better than to engage in the historical fallacy that deceptively promises that the past neatly and exactly dictates the future, I do find it interesting to observe the patterns and the events of a different age and how these intersect ours own times.   What deeply troubles me, however, is that I have begun to hear rumblings and impulsive chantings of division and acrimony.  I have begun to notice some alarming similarities between these times and other instances in our nation’s history where we eschewed logic and reason for emotional excess and mutual paranoia.   Such points in our past inevitably created terrible conflicts, the likes of which we are in many ways still dealing with into the current day.   Irrationality, emotion in place of reason, illogical accusations, and a building animosity bordering on violent hatred between ideological poles was present then and seems to be swelling in intensity now.

Dr. David McKalip: Right Wing Fiend of the Week

Why is it that every freak in America tends to gravitate to the state of Florida, the diseased penis of America? The latest example of the deranged assholes that are attracted to this goddamned state is one Dr. David McKalip who is now bathing in the tub of shit that is his ten minutes of fame for being outed as the provider of a racist picture of Barack Obama which is the one on display above. Seems that his email was intercepted and leaked to TPM Muckraker and the Orange Satan. When reached for comment by the dastardly librul media McKalip invoked the standard defense of “I am not a racist” which is right up there with Limbaugh’s “bone in the nose” or any of the rest of the cant spewed by these sort of diseased vermin. I would bet the rent that he is one of the deranged “birthers” too.

Tea Parties; Taxes and Torture Served

TxTrtr

copyright © 2009 Betsy L. Angert.  BeThink.org

I am a discontent and distressed taxpayer!  “Disgruntled” is a word that might describe my deep dissatisfaction with how my tax dollars are spent.  Yet, on April 15, 2009, typically thought of as “Tax Day,” I felt no need to join my fellow citizens in protest.  I did not attend a “Tea Party”.  I too believe, in this country, “taxation without representation” is a problem.  One only need ponder the profits of lobbyists to understand the premise.  Corporate supplicants amass a 22,000 percent rate of return on their investments.  The average American is happy to realize a two-digit increase.  Nonetheless, as much as I too may argue the point, assessments are paid without accountability, what concerns me more is my duty dollars did not support what I think ethical projects.  

Republicans stymied by own paranoia.

Cross posted at Passive Ranting.

This is beautiful.

Saw it via Big Orange. Here’s the short and skinny:

TEA PARTY CAUTION! DO NOT SIGN ANYTHING – FROM ANYONE – AT ANY TEA PARTY ANYWHERE IN THE USA — NO EXCEPTIONS!Federally-funded ACORN operators will be at all Tea Parties to get signatures which they will give to Obama stating that the signatures are in support of his policies or to get the names of people who oppose his policies and report dissention.

  NO MATTER WHAT, DO NOT SIGN ANYTHING! IF YOU HAVE FRIENDS WHO PLAN TO ATTEND, WHO DO NOT HAVE EMAIL, GET ON THE PHONE TO WARN THEM.  TRY TO CALL OR EMAIL RADIO TALK SHOWS AND LET THE CAT OUT OF THE BAG.

  PASS IT ON!

This is utterly fantastic news for liberals and Democrats, and it’s pure comedy gold for everyone with an iota of common sense.