We're going to need more tea...

On September 12th, a massive crowd descended upon Washington DC.
They were there to protest big government, runaway spending, and the growing realization that our government increasingly no longer represents or acts in the best interests of its citizens.

Good descriptive article from WND with some pictures here.

UPDATE:
Excellent set of mostly high quality photos of the crowd, along with time-lapse video showing the surge of people attending, can be found here. Note that the signs are almost all home made. This is not some manufactured crowd, these are concerned individuals.

The New York Times dot com article was titled "thousands stage protest of big government".
The White House said the day before that it was "unaware" of any rally.
The main stream media generally did not cover it.

Well, it was more than thousands, and it was more than tens of thousands.
This article on the Obama inauguration crowd demonstrates that there could easily have been over one million protesters. (see the diagram at the top) It appears that the numbers at least rivalled those of the inauguration of Lyndon B. Johnson, at 1.2 million.

Christie Carden, the organizer of the very successful Huntsville Alabama tax day tea party we covered here back in the spring, was there as well. Describing the turnout, she said:

"GET IT RIGHT, PEOPLE! Even Fox News is reporting "tens of thousands" marching in D.C. I was there. Crowds went all the way to Washington Monument on ONE SIDE of the Capitol, AND all the way to Pennsylvania Ave and 14th St on the OTHER SIDE. "

Mike Pence also gave a speech, the beginning of which can be seen here:





We'll let you decide if you think it was significant to have this kind of crowd, of conservatives (who typically don't protest in large numbers), many of them senior citizens, on a national holiday weekend, who travelled all the way to our nation's capitol for a one day rally.

This is something new, or something rather old that we've needed for a long time.
Washington would be wise not to ignore it.

Yet their response has mainly been to do just that, or dismiss it as irrelevant.
Some party officials have attempted to picture the organization as fringe radicals opposed to the health care plan. (Of course, the tea party movement started far earlier than the health care issue, but spin is the order of the day)

A few more cynical commentators have said that the moment the economy improves, these kinds of protests will largely evaporate. That may be true. People are less likely to turn out when they don't feel directly threatened.

However, the numbers in Washington surpassed all expectations, even for those who helped organize it. If this many Americans are motivated enough to actually pay to go to DC, how many are sitting at home, equally motivated but without the time or money to attend?

3 million people is 1% of our entire national population. By some accounts, over half that many people showed up. And the exact number is not even important, clearly there is a national shift in mindset occurring. What affect will all this have on the 2010 elections? Time will tell. Meanwhile...

Remember, remember, the 12th of September.

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8 Years Later

The weather here in Dallas is quiet and overcast this morning.
A fitting accompaniment to the day's memory.

It has been 8 years since then. Children now in third grade do not remember the events that occurred this day in 2001, because they were not yet born.

Those of us old enough to feel the impact of that day said "we will never forget".
Have we remembered?

On that day, we all came together. Everyone was an American, and differences were put aside, at least temporarily. President Bush stood on the rubble with a megaphone, and we all agreed "never again".

Well, it hasn't happened again. We demanded more security, and we we got it. Lines at airports, Patriot Acts, increased government control. Are we safer? Hard to say. Probably, we are.

At what cost has our increased security come?
The "War on Terror" continues, with the lives of many soldiers lost. (I say lost, but not wasted)
Yet after many setbacks and many hard-won victories (heard about Iraq much lately in the MSM? There's a reason for that.), are we any closer to defeating global terrorism?
Is that even a meaningful goal?

I have written that we cannot defeat Islamic fundamentalist terror groups if we do not ourselves possess principles as deeply held as theirs. I hold to that statement, and maintain furthermore that the current cadre of unqualified, opportunistic career politicians (on both sides of the aisle) are clearly not up to the task.

Accusations of irresponsibility from other nations hurt because they are true. Our national economy is deeply and integrally tied into the world economy, and those who should have wisely governed our spending have foolishly increased it beyond all reason, passing laws which led to the collapse, then spending unprecedented sums of taxpayer money to feed the bonfire they started. In doing so they destroyed not only vast portions of our own national wealth, but contributed to the destruction of other countries' wealth in the process.

We do not live in a vacuum; our actions affect the rest of the world significantly, and it will react in various ways, whether justly or murderously. This lesson at least one would think we would have learned after September 11th. I do not think any reasonable person can suggest that we are to blame for the events of that day, but one could probably suggest that if we had been paying attention, we would have seen it coming. When will we realize that we, as normal American citizens, need to demand accountability from our elected officials? And to elect competent and qualified people? The alternative is to let those who failed to see 9-11 coming, those who ruined our economy, and those who seek to exploit and direct a culture of entitlement to maintain their control, turning this nation into something utterly different from what the founders conceived. We elected them with the understanding that they would govern well and rightly, but they have done neither.

Even as I write this, thousands of Americans are en route to Washington DC for what could be the biggest 'Tea Party' yet, to protest a such a government. One that seemingly goes its own way now, regardless of the views of its constituents, or the dictates of economic and social reality.

The protesters' choice of day is fitting; what better way to honor those who fell on this day eight years ago than by using the following day to attempt to ensure that the lessons we should have learned from their deaths not be disregarded by an entrenched and power-hungry bureaucracy whose only concept of "change" is further entrenchment and encroachment?

Let us live in freedom, because the gift of a life is too precious to be managed by a government institution. Perhaps that is the best lesson we can take from this day, 8 years later.

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Athens Tea Party

So, I unexpectedly had the chance to attend yet another tea party in the area, this time in Athens Alabama.

I didn't have my camera with me, so I will put up another post later with pictures off my phone.

For those of you not familiar with the area, Athens is a small town, about 23,000 people.
I wasn't expecting much, perhaps 50-100 people. But it seems that the word is getting out better these days. About 300 people showed up, by my estimation. And if everyone who honked and shouted in support as they passed had parked and joined us, we could easily have matched the Huntsville event.

Will Anderson, an area radio personality, led the proceedings.
Christie, the young lady who organized the Huntsville event, showed up as well, and was given a very well-deserved round of applause.

We also heard from a Marine veteran who had recently seen combat in Iraq, been injured several times, and brought back an elaborate dagger from one of Saddam's palaces.

It was encouraging to see more people show up on shorter notice this time. Perhaps the necessary organization is beginning to be set in place. That by itself would be a positive outcome of the tea party movement. Conservatives aren't used to protesting, but we all may be forced to become rather skilled at it in the coming days.

Pictures and more information to come.

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Huntsville Alabama Tax Day Tea Party - Part II

First, some number crunching, for anyone who likes numbers.

The final attendance estimates I'm getting for the Huntsville, AL event were about 2300-2500.

For comparison purposes, that's about 1.4% of the city of Huntsville's population, though many participants came from the surrounding area rather than Huntsville proper.

Pajamas TV is estimating total turnout for the nationwide protests at over 578,000 people.
For Alabama, total participation was estimated at about 12,000.

So a slightly better than proportional turnout, since Alabama represents 1.6% of the nation's population, and contributed 2% of the tea party attendance with 18 events.
(New York, by comparison, with 6.5% of the nation's population, contributed just 3.3% of the total event attendance, with 33 events, while Texas, with 8.2% of the the nation's population, contributed 12.4% of the total event attendance, with 78 events. But more on Texas later.)

Note: They estimated Huntsville's attendance numbers at 3000, about 500 more than police estimates, so some optimistic rounding up may have occurred. However, by the same token, many events may have been low-balled by official counts, depending on the politics involved, so it's really hard to say.

In any case, at least half a million Americans showed up on April 15th to make their voices heard, many for the first time in their lives.

High-level reactions to the events were varied, including:
Crude and sophomoric
Clueless
Opportunistic
Hypothetically Seccessionary

CNN and MSNBC showed their true colors as crude, sarcastic, out-of-touch elites who neither have any idea of what they are talking about, nor of what normal Americans think about anything.
FOX, meanwhile, was basically along for the ride, defaulting to be the only network that gave the events positive coverage, and earning massive rating boosts as a result.

Republicans generally tried to co-opt the events as supportive, but received mixed results.
Even in Alabama, where for conservatives the Republican party has for years now been seen as the force of good in Washington battling the evil Democrats, opportunistic Republican attempts to channel the events into support for their own campaigns foundered.

One of the more interesting moments at the Huntsville event was when a Republican candidate had been speaking about kicking the current group of politicians out of power (loud cheers), and then expressed his hope that everyone would support his upcoming reelection campaign. (a few weak cheers, deafening silence)

That gave me hope more than most other things I saw. Once people realize that it's not a question of a good party vs. a bad party, but of an entrenched, damaging bureaucracy in which two largely similar parties share power and unelected officials pull the important strings, we might see some effective action taken.

To all the Americans that took time out of their schedules and showed up on Wednesday, and especially to those for whom it was the first time, we salute you. You have earned the right to protest, by acting on your principles.

In a sense, you are learning what it truly means to be a self-governing American citizen, and it is in you that any hopes of stemming the dark tide of government encroachment remain.

Let us draw together in the days ahead, for in the words of Benjamin Franklin:
"We must all hang together, gentlemen... else, we shall most assuredly hang separately"

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Huntsville Alabama Tax Day Tea Party - Part I

Today, all over America, concerned citizens gathered together to protest uncontrolled spending and general encroachment by Washington. I was present at the Huntsville, AL rally, and I can say that it was quite another thing from the small but lively band that gathered in Decatur. Even before I got off the highway, cars were backed up. People parked all along the street for over a mile down the road.

By the time I had walked to the event itself, there was already a crowd of probably three hundred. This grew steadily to a maximum of what I would guess to be around 800-1000 people. (estimated attendance will be forthcoming eventually, as some local media was present, but anything lower than 750 is an attempt to lowball the figure; the crowd was quite large and densely packed)

The speakers did mostly well. Dale Jackson was present, and of course did an excellent job getting everyone fired up. He and other speakers made numerous comments about our being "domestic terrorists", a reference to the DHS report featured in my previous entry below.

Things began to wind down when an interesting but longish discussion on the Fair Tax was plagued with technical difficulties. I am all for the Fair Tax, and for promoting it, but this was perhaps not the best venue to go into more than a brief summary.

However, everything got back on track, and ended with the recitation of the pledge of allegiance, and a rousing USA chant.

All in all, I was pleased to see the turnout, considering the unfortunately low attendance in Decatur previously. Alabama is not densely populated, so massive crowds tend to require attendance drawing from more than one county. Huntsville is something of a regional center for most of northern Alabama, however, and the event drew people from the surrounding areas. I recognized some people from that earlier Decatur rally as well.

It was a good day, and a good event. In the grand scheme of things, however, it must merely be the beginning of something greater to have any lasting effect.

I will post another article with more information soon, also hopefully with a link to some video of the event, and some commentary on the news coverage.

UPDATE: It turns out I am indeed a conservative, including when it comes to estimating crowds. Huntsville Police are estimating the crowd at 2300 people.

UPDATE 2: WHNT has a great picture of the Huntsville crowd from a better vantage point than I could reach. They also have a couple of pictures from the Dekalb county protest. More pictures may be forthcoming later.

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Warning: You might now be a domestic terrorist

Are you dedicated to opposing abortion or illegal immigration?
Do you support state and local government's authority versus that of the federal government?

Then congratulations, according to the DHS (Department of Homeland Security), you are a right-wing extremist, and possible terrorist threat!

A footnote attached to the report by the Homeland Security Office of Intelligence and Analysis defines "rightwing extremism in the United States" as including not just racist or hate groups, but also groups that reject federal authority in favor of state or local authority.

"It may include groups and individuals that are dedicated to a single-issue, such as opposition to abortion or immigration," the warning says.

The timing of this release is rather suspect, with the tea parties happening nation-wide tomorrow. It rather appears to be an attempt to dampen turnout.

Yes, this means our federal government is now actively prosecuting those who disagree with them, on a national level.

What did people expect? That when they gave liberals the power to enforce their doctrines, they would not then proceed to do so? It's very like electing a ski-lodge-burning eco-terrorist as President who repeatedly claims he believes the current human population is unsustainable and should be reduced immediately, then being shocked when he begins to seek practical means to do so.

The report continues, mentioning gun control and immigration issues:

Congressional debates about immigration and gun control also make extremist groups suspicious and give them a rallying cry, the report says.

"It is unclear if either bill will be passed into law; nonetheless, a correlation may exist between the potential passage of gun control legislation and increased hoarding of ammunition, weapons stockpiling, and paramilitary training activities among rightwing extremists," the report said.

Wait, so there might be a connection between moving to ban guns, and people wanting to acquire them beforehand? Brilliant!

The report also expressed worry that extremist groups would subvert and recruit returning veterans to their cause.

"As far as our military members go, I think that the military is a melting pot of society. So you might get a few, a fractional few, who are going to be attracted by militia groups and other right-wing extremists," he said.

"We have to remember that the people serving in our military are volunteers, they do it because they love their country, and they believe in what our country stands for," he said. "They spent their time in the military defending our Constitution, so the vast majority of them would be repulsed by the hate groups discussed in this report."

If they spent their time in the military in order to defend the Constitution, they might very well be tempted to join a group opposing the current administration, at least...

Now the important point is, while this report is speaking more of groups that currently pursue domestic terrorism and white supremacy organizations than of your average abortion-opposing NRA-member, what it does is blur the line between the two. This is the first step necessary to associate the latter, law-abiding citizen, with the former.

I think it's now become quite clear where things are headed. Liberal ideology states that those who know best, should make the decisions for those who do not. In their minds, they are the ones who know best, and the common people should sit back and let them create a better world for all of us. They are now taking steps within the government to ensure that they remain in permanent majority. (after all, you can't very well execute your long-term social agenda when you keep jumping in and out of power)

The farther they encroach on liberties (liberties being dangerous animals that let us make our own decisions about what to think and how to live our lives), the more people will get upset, and try to do something to stop them. That, of course, is when they must use force. It's not a question of you ever being allowed to have liberties, but of how easily you conform.

There are three responses to this. One is, to surrender. To let the government define "decent, law-abiding citizen" to mean whatever type of person will not oppose any of their actions, regardless of existing laws or the constitution, and then conform your actions to that standard.

Another is the passive-aggressive response. Let the government do what they want, don't raise a fuss, but continue to go about things your own way. I submit that this is comparable to surrender. To not resist is to encourage, and good men who see evil and yet do nothing to stop it are culpable in it as well.

Lastly, there is action. What kind of action? Well, that is what millions of Americans want to know. What can Americans who love their country, love their freedom, and yet who are also not the radicals DHS is accusing them of being, but rather respect the rule of law, do to stop this insanity?

For starters, you can attend your local tea party. Sure, you probably have a job, it's probably inconvenient to go, and there might be odd people there with silly signs, but do you think that by doing nothing, your life will continue as usual? The tea party movement may or may not have permanent effects, and alone, I suspect the net result will be insignificant. But they make an excellent first step, and a step in which numbers are crucial.

Writing your congressmen is another step. No, they won't change their mind based on your letter. But with enough letters, they may worry about being re-elected. And that will give them pause.

This DHS report is a sign of things to come. Or rather, things that are currently arriving.

How will you greet them? With fear, with indifference, or with action?

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Decatur Alabama Tea Party

On a warm Saturday morning at Rhodes Ferry park by the Tennessee River, a few score citizens gathered to celebrate their freedom and protest Washington's encroachment on both their rights and their pocketbooks.

Things were a little slow at first; it was the first time that some people had attended this kind of meeting. But as it went, things picked up steam, and pretty soon we had a full-fledged political assembly going. The Republican party was heavily represented, of course, but seemed almost apologetic, whereas some of the open-mic speakers commented that both parties were responsible for the current mess.

After the scheduled and open speakers, petitions were brought forth to be signed, and things ended on a more or less hopeful note.

The Verdict:
It's a beginning.

If that meeting constitutes the sum of the region's efforts, then it will not have accomplished much. However, if this is the first step towards gaining a voice in Washington, then combined with all the numerous towns doing the same, it might not have been in vain.

The idea is that this is all leading to a massive crowd converging on Washington on July 4th.
We shall see, but if such an event occurs, there is at least a decent chance that MC will be there to cover it...

I hope to attend the "tea party" in Huntsville in a couple weeks, being the area's largest city it may have a somewhat higher turnout. The more people show up, the less excuse the media have for ignoring it. If you are sick of listening to the depressing news and want to actually do something about it, come on down. Here's the info...


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Taking Stock

In which Rick Santelli says what we all have been wanting to say.



So, I suppose I'll see y'all in Chicago in July then? Heheh.

UPDATE: CNBC has posted a poll about whether or not you'd join the Chicago Tea Party.
Go vote yes!

UPDATE 2: CNBC is now spinning this like crazy. The link above that used to lead to the poll, now leads to desperate attempts to contain the message. The poll seems to have been removed, after a quarter of a million Americans responded, 94% saying yes.

UPDATE 3: Now the White House has responded with a curt dismissal of Santelli.

The White House on Friday dismissed a cable television reporter's criticism of President Barack Obama's housing bailout plan as the ranting of an individual who "doesn't know what he's talking about."

This is a foolish decision on their part. Santelli's remarks are resonating because many people agree with him, not because he's a marginal ranter. Look for these "rants" to become increasingly frequent in the days ahead.



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