Tea Party group defends depicting Obama as skunk
A tea party group in Kansas says its depiction of President Barack Obama as a skunk is satire, not racism as the leader of a civil rights group alleges. |
Hutchinson-based Patriot Freedom Alliance says on its website that like the president, the skunk is “half black, half white, and almost everything it does stinks.” |
The Hutchinson News reports local NAACP president Darrell Pope sees no humor in the depiction, which he calls a blatant statement of racism. |
Local tea party supporter Chuck Sankey says former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin has been the target of worse insults than what’s on the website. |
What Occupiers and Tea Partiers Should Fear Most
It’s not taxes. It’s the passage of a new bill that would allow people on both sides of the political divide to be detained without trial. |
Sixty-four percent of Americans consider big government the biggest threat to the country, according to Gallup, but who knows what they mean by big government? Do 64 percent of Americans oppose the biggest big government threat in our history — the virtually omniscient, omnipotent national-security state? |
I doubt it, and neither the president nor many members of Congress seem fearful of public opposition to post-9/11, big-government authoritarianism. Instead, they cringe at the prospect of seeming soft on terrorism and rush to enact the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA,) including provisions that would arguably allow the indefinite detention without trial of American citizens, seized on American soil.
I won’t repeat here the many urgent critiques of this bill emanating from the left and right. But I do want to stress that opposition to the NDAA spans some of the usual left/right divisions. Opposing the indefinite detention of American citizens, Tea Party Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.) sounds like a speaker at an ACLU convention. |
Tea Party grassroots army readies for battle
Tea Party grassroots army readies for battle |
Interviews with activists across 20 U.S. states indicate that Tea Party groups, far from fading, have evolved into an increasingly sophisticated and effective network of activists. They are working to unseat establishment Republicans who they believe have betrayed the principles of lower taxes, limited government, and free markets. |
“Those who think the Tea Party is on the wane are in for a gigantic surprise in 2012,” says Debbie Dooley, co-organizer of the Atlanta Tea Party. “We have built a grassroots army and we will be a fine-tuned machine next year.” |
The goal of these loosely affiliated but fiercely independent groups nationwide is to hone their electoral skills and build a “farm team” of public officials who can ascend through the ranks of government. It’s a long-term strategy that looks past the 2012 election to a takeover of the Republican Party and the U.S. Congress. Read more at www.reuters.com |
Ron Paul: The Alternative Candidate is a force to be reckoned with
He’s also a force to be reckoned with in this presidential cycle. He has passionate followers from across the political spectrum, a good organization, a distinct libertarian message and plenty of money. He could be a game-changer if he decides to run as a third-party candidate. |
No one has ever accused Ron Paul of being a flip-flopper. He has been saying the same things for 35 years. Now world events have conspired to make him look increasingly on point. |
Paul is the Alternative Candidate, someone who subscribes to an alternative history of the world. Paul believes that powerful and secretive forces (the Fed being the best example) have manipulated human events and bankrolled wars. He fears that the nation is turning into an Orwellian police state. (“Sometimes it seems as if we are living in a dystopian novel like ‘1984’ or ‘Brave New World,’ ” he writes in his most recent book.) |
Leadership Bid Reflects Growing Tea Party Influence in World’s Greatest Deliberative Body
The tea party movement began in an unassuming way: A series of March 2009 conference calls of a couple dozen conservative and libertarian activists from across the nation. How far it has come. Yesterday, after taking back the U.S. House of Representatives in November 2010 and growing its rank and file members into the millions in less than three years, the movement made a bold but ultimately unsuccessful bid for a leadership position in the United States Senate. |
With tea party support, U.S. Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI) challenged U.S. Senator Roy Blunt (R-MO) for vice-chairman of the Senate Republican Conference. With all 47 Republican Senators casting votes, Blunt won the vote narrowly, 25 to 22. But the tea party-supported Johnson challenge proves important symbolically as a demonstration that, while tea party-affiliated members of the U.S. House of Representatives have proven hugely influential in guiding the direction of that legislative body, support for the tea party movement and its policy agenda is growing in the U.S. Senate too. Read more at michaeljohnsonfreedomandprosperity.blogspot.com |
The Senate’s Mr. Tea
Lee founded the Senate Constitutional Conservatives Fund, a leadership PAC modeled on the one DeMint used to raise money for conservative primary candidates in 2010. He would like to start an associated “super PAC,” which can essentially raise unlimited funds, pushing the envelope of the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision. Whether federal legislators can establish super PACs remains an open legal question. What is not open to question is whether Lee would target GOP incumbents. He told The Hill: “It would be hypocritical of me if I were to say never, ever under any circumstances would I try to support someone trying to come here the same way I came here.” |
Lee drafted a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution before he even took office. A large part of his book The Freedom Agenda is dedicated to explaining, as the subtitle says, “Why a balanced budget amendment is necessary to restore constitutional government.” Lee called up Chris Chocola, the former congressman who heads the Club for Growth, to pitch the amendment almost as soon as he got to Washington. “We need a permanent structural limitation on Congress’ authority to borrow and spend,” the senator tells me. |
Lee was one of just a handful of senators who supported Rand Paul’s budget proposal, which contained $500 billion in spending cuts in a single year even without touching entitlements. Lee indirectly supplied a second vote for Senator Paul’s budget as well, with Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch—likely afraid of going the way of Robert Bennett—giving an aye. (The other surprise vote in favor came from McConnell, who had unsuccessfully backed Paul’s primary opponent in their home state of Kentucky.) Hatch also supported Cut, Cap, and Balance and has ended his career-long practice of voting to confirm Democratic Supreme Court nominees. |
Establishment Tea Party Activist Supports Romney Presidential Bid
A prominent activist for the hijacked Tea Party in New Hampshire has declared he will support Mitt Romney’s bid for president. Tom Thompson is the son of the late Meldrim Thomson, former governor of New Hampshire and an anti-tax activist. Tom Thompson is the chairman of New Hampshire’s Americans for Prosperity. |
“I was a Tea Party activist before it was cool,” Thomson told the Union Leader. “And as a Tea Party person, I believe the best avenue to the White House is through Mitt Romney.” |
The Tea Party was created by libertarians as part of Tax Day protests. In 2007, supporters of Ron Paul used the anniversary of the original Tea Party in Boston as a fund raising event for the 2008 primaries. They advocated an end to fiat money and the Federal Reserve System, ending the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and supporting states’ rights. |
Tea Party Effort to Overturn Dream Act in Home Stretch
It can be said that the Redlands Tea Party Patriots’ push to repeal the Dream Act is in the home stretch, said group member Lane Schneider. |
“We’ve already gotten some (pages) completed,” Schneider said a few hours into a signature drive Sunday. “We’re getting some good response.” |
Schneider sat with Suzanne Owens at a table in front of Stater Bros. near Alabama Street and Barton Avenue. Petitions and voter registration cards were spread out in front of them. A banner draped in front of the table featured a photo of Assemblyman Tim Donnelly (R-Twin Peaks). |
A former Minuteman, Donnelly has opposed AB 131 since its introduction by Assemblyman Gil Cedillo (D-Los Angeles). With the strong backing of the Redlands Tea Party Patriots, Donnelly is now leading the effort to repeal the bill, signed by Governor Jerry Brown on Oct. 8, through an effort he’s calling Stop the California Nightmare Act. |
Tea party, capitalism, not socialism, will revive nation
In response to all the Occupy and left-wing socialists, I’d like to point out a little about capitalism. |
Instead of spending all your time whining about the 1 percent, do something to become one of the 1 percent! If you spent as much time working on ways to make money as you do standing on street corners asking the “gummet” to help you, maybe you’d become one of the 1 percent. You are picketing in the wrong place. You need to be standing in front of the White House, Senate or House office buildings. |
The problems we have were mostly orchestrated by Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) and his supervision of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which encouraged (read “forced”) the banks to finance houses for people who couldn’t afford them. This eventually resulted in a failing housing industry and caused the current recession. Yes, the banks were equally responsible but only as directed by the government. |
Tea Party Leaders: Why ‘Occupy Wall Street’ Doesn’t Compare
Mark Meckler and Jenny Beth Martin are the cofounders and national coordinators of Tea Party Patriots, America’s largest Tea Party group. |
Two groups, one “Day of Action,” vastly different results. |
According to the New York Times, more than 240 Occupy Wall Street protesters were arrested in New York City on November 17; some for felony assault. As New York Mayor Bloomberg said, “some protesters today have deliberately pursued violence,” resulting in injuries to seven police officers officers. How did the Occupy Wall Street protestors pursue violence? One threw a “star-shaped glass object” at a police officer, cutting his hand so badly it required twenty stitches. Another protester threw a corrosive liquid into the faces of four police officers. And a mob of ‘Occupy’ protesters tormented a group of “little school kids trying to get to class” chanting “follow those kids!” |
By contrast, Tea Party Patriots across America visited our local representatives on the same day for what we called a “Deal in the District.” The purpose of our civilized meetings with our local representatives was to remind them that the deadline for the “super committee” to find $1.2-$1.5 trillion in cuts was November 23, and that We the People want real cuts to government overspending, not fake cuts. |
