About those Tea Party "racists"...

Ever since the Tea Party thing launched about a year ago, Democrats and their loyal media have attempted to paint the entire movement as a pack of racists. The theme has become so pervasive that casual observers have come to believe it, upholding Vladimir Lenin's theory that "a lie told often enough becomes truth".

Last Sunday during the health care debate on Capitol Hill and the attendant Tea Party demonstration there, a number of black Congressional leaders claimed to have been jeered with racial slurs, and one even claimed to having been spit upon. Not to be left out, Rep. Barney Frank claimed to have been targeted with homophobic epithets. Naturally, the media took every unsubstantiated claim, packaged them up nicely, and reported them as undisputed fact.

Now supposedly, these acts occurred repeatedly as the accusers were walking to the Capitol building from a nearby Congressional office building on the Capitol grounds. Since the underground tunnels connecting the buildings is the preferred route, their presence on the grounds was unusual enough that there were dozens of members of the media and their cameras covering their walk. And yet not one video tape of any of these alleged incidents has surfaced. Not one.

Someone given to conspiracy theories might even think that their very choice of an outdoor route among the Tea Partiers was premeditated just so that they could make such accusations.

But not me.

Janeane Garofalo: Hypocrite Extraordinaire

In a Boston Herald article on Janeane Garofalo's recent stand-up comedy gig at the Somerville Theatre, Garofalo reflected on the antipathy some people have for her:

While Garofalo isn’t shy about her politics, she didn’t delve into a diatribe on her liberal views. She told the audience she stands behind what she says, but admitted she gets upset by hateful comments directed towards her.

There's no mention in the article, though, on whether the racists and teabagging rednecks who attended the recent Tax Day Tea Parties were upset by Garofalo's hateful comments directed towards them.

Liberal spin on Tea Parties soundly refuted

Lifted from Hot Air. This is important because it gives lie to the leftists' and media (but I repeat myself) spin that the Tea Parties were all about opposition to Obama and Democrats in Congress.

South Carolina Rep. Gresham Barrett is roundly booed by the crowd - beginning to end - at the Greenville, SC Tea Party for his less than stellar voting record on spending. He's a Republican, and he voted for TARP.

Yes, the Tea Parties were kicked off almost exclusively by conservatives and it's very much a conservative cause. But dismissing them as Republican party populism and propaganda is very much complete and utter bullshit. The lefties know this, but it better fits their narrative to push that lie.

My media moment

Here's the video clip from Breitbart TV's B-Cast that's got the segment with my phone interview with Liz Stephans and Scott Baker from last night's Tea Party in Richmond. You only have to get to just past the 1 minute mark and my interview runs a little over six minutes.

Eye of the beholder

I recall years ago watching the late, great Sam Kinnison doing a standup comedy routine during which at one point while riffing on homosexuals he uttered the line "How does one man look at another man's hairy ass and see love?"

Similarly, how does one look at this graph and say "Hey! I want me some of that!"


I mean, c'mon. Even the White House's own projections are worse than Bush's worse deficits, and the CBO's projections are worse than those. So, how is it that Obama's fanboys snicker at the Tea Parties and dismiss them as meaningless rants by a fringe right-wing element when this hairy ass is what the Tea Partiers are bitching about?

How does one look at this hairy ass and see love?

Richmond Tea Party follow-up

Had a great time at the Richmond Tea Party this evening. Talked to some real nice people and enjoyed a couple hours out in the wonderful 45 degree damp weather, which failed to keep the crowds away. I chatted with a cop there who put the crowd to be in the 1000-1500 range. Final tally may have ended up higher, because that was early (right around 6PM) and people were still streaming in.

The crowd was well-behaved with no fringe elements I could see (other than one guy with a cryptic Ron Paul sign), and no ACORN freakazoids or others of their ilk were around to make things unpleasant. Three Richmond TV news trucks were there, but I saw no news crews about in the crowd. I'm not sure exactly where they were or what they were covering, but maybe I'll catch something on the local news tonight.

Near the end I was feeling a little cold and damp, so I headed a couple blocks over to Richbrau, my favorite haunt from my days working in downtown Richmond. I had a pre-arranged phone interview with Liz Stephans and Scott Baker of Breitbart TV's B-Cast, and they managed to get me on the phone for the live interview while I was still into my first beer, so hopefully I made sense. If they post a clip of the interview, I'll update with a link.

Dave...sorry we missed each other!

Update: A tweet (actually a re-tweet) from Tammy Bruce puts the attendance at 3500-4000. Possible, I guess. Who knows? I know I can't tell the size of a crowd just by looking at it.

Right-wing extremists

Guess he made this sign in the past day or so.

Denizens

The permanent residents of Kanawha Plaza don't seem overly excited by the goings on.

Three local TV news trucks, but no crews spotted yet.

Bagpipes sighted

What's a rally without bagpipes?

"Stop Comrade Obama"

Loved this one. 15 min to official start time and Kanawha Plaza is filling up.

My (least) favorite bar chart

I'll post good sign pics when I see them. No counter demos yet.

Richmond Tea Party

Mobile blogging from Richmond Tea Party. Pretty good turnout so far especially in the rain.

Indymedia Richmond cancelled due to lack of interest

The Independent Media (Indymedia) project is a network of local and regional "news" sites which is, well, let's hear it from them:

Indymedia is a collective of independent media organizations and hundreds of journalists offering grassroots, non-corporate coverage. Indymedia is a democratic media outlet for the creation of radical, accurate, and passionate tellings of truth.

I love that last bit..."tellings of truth". And not just accurate, but radical, too! Heh.

Anyway, Indymedia sites are commonly used to advertise and solicit participation in demonstrations for left-wing causes, so I thought I'd check the Richmond Indymedia site to see if they were planning any festivities to counter the Richmond Tea Party coming up on 15 April. But it seems that if anyone's promoting such a counter-demonstration, it won't be Indymedia Richmond. Their last update is from January 2008, and reads:

The Richmond Independent Media Center website has served as an online news outlet for Virginia since the end of 1999. And now we’re putting the site on pause by turning off open publishing until we can fix the tech problems that have plagued us.

Overcoming our technical challenges is not the only need. For Richmond Indymedia to continue being a passionate media-driven vehicle for progressive social change it needs a core collective of volunteers dedicated to maintaining the site editorially and technically.

[ ... ]

We’re dedicated to keeping this site up even with publishing turned off so that at least the unique and often exclusive news stories it has carried over the years remain available for all to remember, learn from, and be inspired by. Check out our old features (linked at the bottom of this page) going as far back as April 2001 when we upgraded the site, if you’d like a taste or memory of what an open-publishing news site can be when it’s not all spammed out and under-utilized.

One would think that with all those colleges in and around Richmond there'd be battalions of hippies to keep the site up and running and posting drug-induced drivel about the evils of capitalism, Republicans and bathing.

Richmond Tea Party

We'll be having our own Tea Party in Richmond on - appropriately enough - Tax Day, 15 April. If you're in the area, c'mon down and be heard!

I know most of us who give a shit about this stuff are actually, you know, gainfully employed and all that so this will take place from 6PM - 8PM so you can participate and still do your part for the GDP.

Details and directions at the link.

Update: The link I posted is to the Richmond Tea Party blog, which still has all the info you need, but here's the link to the official site.