Political Headline of the Day

Big mistake, Maxine:

Maxine Waters challenges 'Tea Party' to fight...
 

Didn't she and her cohorts try that in 2010? How'd that work out?

The Tea Party Showed What a REAL Populist Movement Looks Like, but Wisconsin Lefties Didn't Learn

Moe Lane looks at the coming electoral disaster for the Wisconsin lefties and their union thug buddies:

I don't want to spend too much time on this -- if for no other reason than it's lunchtime -- but here's a pre-post-mortem on the whole sorry recall election situation. What happened here was the accumulated karmic backlash of forty years' worth of Establishment Democrats telling the Activist Left that they were the vanguard of, and spokesmen for, a broad American populist movement. For the longest time, such lies were simply an accepted part of the public policy debate; mostly because the country had no yardstick by which to judge the Left's turnout and activities.

But then came the Tea Parties -- which showed people what a real American populist movement looks like, and what it can do -- and its success stung the Activist Left at the exact moment that Scott Walker came along and not unreasonably decided that if he was elected on a platform of doing certain things, he had best start doing them. This infuriated the Left, but not as much as the refusal of Walker and the WI GOP to go weak-kneed at the first sign of push-back. So... the recall movement was born!

And... fizzled. The Left should have cut their losses when Prosser demonstrated that drum circles and illegal indoor camping in the Rotunda didn't translate into votes... and they definitely should have cut their losses when the first wave of recalls didn't live up to the hype. But they didn't, and now the people of Wisconsin are increasingly demonstrating that they're tired of all of this - and they're not blaming the Republicans, either. Such a shame, but that's what you get whe- hey! The bacon's fully cooked.
Kind of metaphorical there, really.

Current polling has Walker up 5-8%. One organization, We Ask America, did an automated poll that showed Walker up 12%. The most interesting thing about that poll to me was the subset of public union households in which Walker was only losing by 3%. We're supposed to believe that Walker is the devil when it comes to public unions and yet he was almost break even in that category. Could it be that many rank-and-file public union members still have jobs today because of Walker's reforms and they're planning to reward him for that on June 5th? I think so.

My guess is the race won't be that close. Walker's supporters will show up in large numbers, but the left, disillusioned by the sure loss that's coming, will probably just stay home. I think Walker will probably win by 10%.

Mission Viejo Tea Party Rally

For the fourth year the Mission Viejo Tea Party rally will take place at the corner of La Paz and Marguerite Parkway on Monday, April 16th, from 5-7 pm.  I'm hoping we won't see a repeat of some things I saw at this event last year.

I've attended the three previous rallies, and certainly none of them have had the energy of the first one in 2009 when more than 600 people showed up carrying all kinds of creative signs.  Like any movement, Tea Parties have lost some of the enthusiasm they had in '09 and '10, but with a huge election coming, I'm hoping people will once again become involved.

The San Francisco Bay Tea Party groups got together on Saturday, and I like their style (from CalNews.com):

SAN FRANCISCO, CA (4/14)- In a move that is certain to cause controversy, members of the Bay Area Tea Party movement took over Justin Hermann Plaza, an area which had formerly been an encampment for Occupy San Francisco.

Heh, there's nothing like poking the opposition right in the eye.

If I get a chance I'll check out the Mission Viejo event and post some photos.

Political Cartoon of the Day

h/t Newsbusters:

Another Fee Dies At The Hands of Consumers

How is this story and the Tea Party connected?  I'll give you my theory in a minute:

Well, that was fast. Verizon Wireless caved to pressure from outraged consumers and a possible probe by the Federal Communications Commission and backed off of a plan to charge customers a $2 fee to pay their wireless bills online.

In a statement issued this afternoon, the company said it would drop the plan announced yesterday.

"At Verizon, we take great care to listen to our customers," Dan Mead, president and chief executive officer of Verizon Wireless said in a statement. "Based on their input, we believe the best path forward is to encourage customers to take advantage of the best and most efficient options, eliminating the need to institute the fee at this time."

Verizon said that it still wants to encourage customers to take advantage of other payment methods, including automatic payments that charge credit cards or debit bank accounts every month as well as electronic check payments.

I really think that the consumer reaction to this fee, and to the $5 bank ATM fees that were proposed and quickly dumped by BofA and other banks, can be traced to the rise of the Tea Party in America. A group of people said "Enough!" and refused to go along with whatever the government (or big business) wanted. I think a lot of people felt personally empowered by the actions of the Tea Party patriots and now feel less intimidated by both government and big business.

Could you imagine what we could get done if people would be as outraged by a $15 trillion dollar national debt and over $1 trillion in annual deficits as they are about a $2 Verizon charge?

The Revolution in a Cornfield

Gov. Sam Brownback is taking the Tea Party goals and objectives to heart and is transforming Kansas:

If you want to know what a Tea Party America might look like, there is no place like Kansas.

In the past year, three state agencies have been abolished and 2,050 jobs have been cut. Funding for schools, social services and the arts have been slashed. The new Republican governor rejected a $31.5 million federal grant for a new health-insurance exchange because he opposes President Obama’s health-care law. And that’s just the small stuff.

A new “Office of the Repealer” has been created to reduce the number of laws and regulations, and the Repealer is canvassing the state for more cut suggestions.

In the upcoming legislative session, Gov. Sam Brownback (R) plans to roll out proposals to change the way schools are funded, taxes are levied and state pensions are administered.

A year after voters vaulted hundreds of tea party candidates to power in Washington and in state capitals, the movement’s goals are being pursued aggressively in states such as Wisconsin, Ohio and Texas.

But in Kansas, as nowhere else in the country, tea party fervor is reshaping government. The same political forces of the Republican Party driving the confrontation over taxes and spending in Washington are now completely in charge in Kansas.

The GOP now controls the state’s House of Representatives with the biggest majority in half a century. Emboldened by this power shift, Brownback — the state’s former two-term U.S. senator — has embarked on his overhaul at a breathtaking pace.

“It’s a revolution in a cornfield,” said Arthur Laffer, the 71-year-old architect of supply-side economic theory and former economic adviser for President Ronald Reagan who is now working with the governor. “Brownback and his whole group there, it’s an amazing thing they’re doing. Truly revolutionary.”

Of course, the Washington Post is not that impressed, but I am. This kind of government tough-love is what's needed nationwide if we're to get spending and debt under control. Read the rest of the piece and try and gloss over the liberal bias. Brownback is doing good things and his state should be a model for the rest of the country.

The Obama Strategy for 2012 - More of the Same Old Demagoguery

Slate has a piece on a meeting held with Obama campaign staffers in which they tried to make a case that Obama is pretty much a shoe-in for re-election.  Just to show you how bad the president's position is right now, even Slate was not convinced.  These last two paragraphs show how out-of-touch the Obama campaign is with reality:

The briefing suggested a pretty rough campaign. When Axelrod was asked whether there were any vestiges of hope left over from the 2008 campaign, he said that the focus on fairness was in the same vein: "It is a hopeful vision of the future of broad prosperity." But it's hard to see how voters are going to see any hope at all. Polls show that people already have the lowest opinion of government they've ever had. They've heard these promises from President Obama before. Are they going to be more receptive to his message that he can change Washington and make it effective for them when he hasn't been able to for four years? It's all the other guys’ fault, the president's team will argue.

Perhaps, but the other guys are not going to change even if he's re-elected. Not so, says Axelrod. An Obama re-election will liberate Republicans by showing them the folly of standing with the Tea Party. Once Obama has set them free, they will join with him to tackle the real problems of America. That seems like a stretch, especially if the Obama team is effective in so diminishing the Republican opponent that Republicans can write off the loss as simply the result of a bad nominee, not a fatal flaw in their party's message.

Anyone who thinks the GOP is going to line up behind Obama if he wins again is simply delusional. The GOP is likely to hold the House and regain the Senate even if Obama wins. You'll see gridlock like you've never seen if Obama wins, and instead of the Tea Party being marginalized, they'll be angrier than ever...at the GOP for sticking us with a bad candidate. The GOP establishment will not only be fighting Obama, but they'll be fighting primary challenges from Tea Party candidates.

Tea Party Complains to City About #Occupy Costs, City Orders Tax Audit...Of Tea Party

Of course they did:

Two weeks after the Richmond Tea Party delivered an invoice to Richmond Mayor Dwight Jones for costs incurred for previous rallies, we received a letter from the City of Richmond formally stating that the city is auditing our Tea Party. Coincidence? This audit is an obvious attempt to intimidate and harass us for standing up against the unfair treatment and discrimination against our Tea Party.

First some back story: as reported on the front page of the Richmond Times Dispatch, the Richmond Tea Party delivered an invoice for charges incurred in our previous three Tax Day rallies at Kanawha Plaza because Mayor Jones chose to allow Occupy Richmond protesters to convene in the same park for two weeks.

The Mayor not only allowed the Occupiers to break the law, but he visited them in the city-owned park. “Jones said that as a ‘child of civil rights’ and protests, he had allowed the group to remain in the park but understands his mayoral responsibility to uphold laws of the city,” reported the Richmond Times Dispatch.

Apparently his mayoral duties included preferential treatment for a group he sympathizes with ideologically at the expense of the taxpayers.

The blog Virginia Right reported that the city provided services such as portable toilets, trash pickup, etc. The incomplete invoices obtained from the city totaled $7,000. This was only a portion of the actual costs to taxpayers because the costs of police, helicopter and incarcerations were not included. Also not accounted for was the 24-hour police protection of the Mayor’s home after the Occupiers moved their camp next door to the Mayor’s house. The Richmond Tea Party, conversely, paid for all services for our rallies, including the police, portable toilets, park fees and permits, amounting to approximately $8,500.

In Los Angeles, had the Tea Party set up camp across from City Hall they would have been run out the first night. OccupyLA has been there for two months, with no permits or fees paid, costing the city millions, and even when a deadline was set the city didn't act against the protesters. It's clear that liberal politicians are essentially wimps who believe that the law need only be enforced against people with whom they disagree.

#OccupyWallStreet Cartoon of the Day

From Facebook:

By the way, at last count the arrests at #Occupy rallies were somewhere in the neighborhood of 2,000. The arrests and incidents of violence at Tea Party rallies continue to be zero.

And then there are these headlines:

Millionaire Michael Moore visits protest...

Fights erupt between Occupy protesters...

'Occupy Madison' loses permit due to public masturbation...

Woman charged with pimping teen recruited at 'Occupy New Hampshire'...

#OccupyWallStreet Cartoon of the Day

Seen on Facebook:

Profile of Seal Beach Shooter

The Belmont Shores-Naples Patch has a good profile on the shooter responsible for the worst mass killing in Orange County, CA history, Scott Dekraai.  It's too long to excerpt here, so click on the link to read it.  This sounds like an otherwise ordinary guy who went through a personal tragedy in 2007 and the result has been a spiraling down of his personal life leading to yesterday's carnage.

Last night I noticed an interesting trend in my blog stats as a number of people were searching some variant of this term: "Seal Beach shooter Tea Party".  Apparently some site or perhaps a radio show was alleging that this shooting was somehow related to the Tea Party movement.  I guess with all the mockery going on right now of the Occupy Wall Street movement the left is grasping at anything they can to make the Tea Party look as crazy as the Occupy movement clearly is.  In reading the linked profile there was not mention of the Tea Party or any indication the shooter was somehow connected.  It certainly appears this shooting was the product of a custody dispute and nothing more.

Media Bias Is On Full Display When Comparing Coverage of Tea Parties and #OccupyWallStreet Loons

Amazing how activity that would have been lambasted had it occurred during a Tea Party is applauded and welcomed when a bunch of lefty loons do it.  From Daily Caller:

Tea Partiers notice slight double standard in media coverage -- As you watch the Occupy Wall Street jerks pooping on cop cars and literally stinking up Zuccotti Park, you might chuckle ruefully at how much different the news coverage would be if those "tea-rrorist hostage-taking teabaggers" ever pulled anything like this. You're not alone, as TheDC's Alex Pappas reports: "Activists affiliated with the tea party movement say they're witnessing a double standard in the way the media is covering the Occupy Wall Street protests compared to the tea party. 'It's almost laughable,' said Sal Russo, a strategist with the California-based group Tea Party Express, in an interview. While reporters at first didn't always cover tea party rallies, Russo said, a California newspaper has recently been putting stories about the Occupy Wall Street on its front page. 'The Sacramento Bee actually had a front-page story before the rally, telling people where it was and what time it was,' Russo said. An official at FreedomWorks, the Washington, D.C.-based group that has organized tea party rallies since the movement burst onto the scene in 2009, said the media has been ignoring negative features of the Occupy Wall Street protests while it played up dubious charges against conservative activists last year. 'I think it's kind of funny that the media talked about alleged things that the tea party guys did that were never proven,' spokesman Adam Brandon told The Daily Caller. 'Then you have pictures of these guys getting arrested and confronting officers and now they're being celebrated.'" That's the rule of mainstream media coverage: If they agree with a group's politics, any amount of misbehavior can be overlooked; if they disagree with a group's politics, any amount of misbehavior can be concocted. They've given up even trying to pretend otherwise. Which is why they're on the wane. Which is why you're reading this.

I'm kind of surprised the media would want to get behind this movement being that it can't possibly be good for Obama or the Democrats. A happy, well-run country does not act up like this, and this kind of rage against authority can only turn America off to the people protesting and their supporters in media and politics.

The media support for these morons will come back to haunt them next year.

Racist Tea Partiers Choose Herman Cain in Florida Straw Poll

If Herman Cain won the GOP Florida Straw Poll he must be a lily white Presbyterian, right?  After all, even Morgan Freeman says the Tea Party is racist.  Let me see if I can find a photo of him...

Uh...never mind.

Has the Tea Party Become the GOP Establishment?

I hope so, and George Will seems to think so:

Many have suggested there is a schism within the Republican Party between the tea-party wing and the so-called GOP establishment. Has the tea party taken over the Republican Party?


Sunday morning on ABC’s “This Week,” syndicated columnist George Will explained – as he has before – that there is no Republican establishment anymore. But this time he had a slightly different take.


“There is no Republican establishment,” Will said. “Its newspaper died, the Herald-Tribune in New York in 1966, and it died too … Google the Republican establishment and you’ll get 20 million hits. Google the Loch Ness monster and you’ll get a whole bunch. “


Then Will said something surprising.


“They are the establishment today if there is such a thing,” he declared. “The Republican establishment died at the Cow Palace in San Francisco in 1964 when Goldwater was nominated against their frenzied wishes.”

There is still a country club GOP set that thinks they control the party, and they're the ones most vocal in their opposition to the Tea Party. They're the people that gave us John McCain and hope to give us Mitt Romney this year. I think they're going to be disappointed.

It's No Surprise That Some in the Congressional Black Caucus are Racist

The CBC is one of the last vestiges of racism in the country.  What other organization could exist today that has race as a requirement for membership.

Members of the CBC are currently on tour around the country, and they're making headlines for all the wrong reasons (from Daily Caller):

West vs. Carson -- The New Civility is about to start any minute now, just as soon as folks like Andre Carson and Maxine Waters get done throwing their temper tantrums. One of their colleagues isn't putting up with it, though, as TheDC's Caroline May reports: "In response to recent comments made by Indiana Democratic Rep. Andre Carson and California Democratic Rep. Maxine Waters that denigrate the tea party movement, Florida Republican Rep. Allen West — a member of both the Congressional Black Caucus and the Tea Party Caucus — sent a letter to CBC Chairman Emanuel Cleaver Wednesday requesting that the body condemn such remarks. 'As Chairman of the CBC, I believe it is incumbent on you to both condemn these types of hate-filled comments, and to disassociate the Congressional Black Caucus from these types of remarks. Otherwise, I will have to seriously reconsider my membership within the organization,' West wrote. The freshman congressman declared, 'It is unconscionable when a fellow CBC Member, Congressman Andre Carson, comes to South Florida and claims that some in the Tea Party would love to see black Americans "hanging on a tree." It is appalling to hear another CBC colleague, Congresswoman Maxine Waters, say "The Tea Party can go straight to hell..."' West reiterated that the movement is focused on fiscal responsibility and American exceptionalism and wrote that the the CBC should be working to end the 'balkanisation' of America." And now it'll be Rep. West's fault for condemning hate speech, not his esteemed colleagues' fault for spewing it. 

With all due respect to Rep. West, he should never have joined an organization like the CBC. He apparently thought his membership would benefit his constituents. Rookie mistake. This organization is a virulently anti-conservative as it is anti-white, and should be disbanded by Congress.  Organizations like the CBC should not exist in America today.

Maxine Waters Loves Her Some Tea Party

You can thank the Voting Rights Act for making it possible for idiots like this to get elected to Congress:

Speaking at a jobs forum Saturday in Inglewood, Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles) came out swinging against Republicans in Congress.

A day after new statistics were released showing a rise in California's jobless rate -- the second-highest in the nation -- Waters vowed to push Congress to focus on creating more jobs. "I'm not afraid of anybody," said Waters. "This is a tough game. You can't be intimidated. You can't be frightened. And as far as I'm concerned, the 'tea party' can go straight to hell."

You want to see hell? Just go to Waters' district in South Central Los Angeles. It's hell's waiting room.

Wishful Thinking Headline of the Day

From Drudge:

Reid expects 'Tea Party' to fade away...

Sorry, Harry, but the Tea Party is here to stay as long as people like you are in government.

It's the Tea Party's Fault Because They're Right?

I heard on local radio this morning a talk host claim the debt downgrade and stock market problems are all the fault of the Tea Party, following the Dem talking points.  But he then claimed the reason it's their fault is because they're right.  Not right wing, but factually right.  They understand the problem and want to fix it.

His beef with the Tea Party is they've drawn the line at allowing any new taxes, and he's one of these guys who thinks we'll have to have new taxes to fix the problem.  He's wrong.

If we passed a trillion dollar tax hike today do you think our deficit or national debt would decrease by a trillion dollars?  Of course not, because as soon as the ink was dry on Obama's signature Dems would demand a trillion (or likely more) in new spending to "stimulate" the economy.  After all, we'll never grow out of our problems until we have enough construction workers sitting on their shovels waiting for their union-mandated break to end.

The Tea Party is absolutely correct to hold the line on tax increases.  Giving the government more money will not end our debt problems.  Stopping them from spending will.

Is This the Tea Party Market Crash?

Of course not, but it's obvious the word went out from the White House to Dem talking heads to blame the S&P credit downgrade on the Tea Party.  Yes, the group that just a year ago was marginalized as a bunch of hillbilly know-nothings suddenly controls the world financial markets.

David Axlerod, Howard the Donkey Dean, and John Lurch Kerry, among others, all made the morning shows with the exact same complaint about the Tea Party.  At we know they can read their White House faxes.

Lindsey Graham, in a rare moment of clarity, reminded everyone that had the political leaders actually listened to the Tea Party we'd have had $4 trillion in cuts in stead of $2.1 trillion and would have retained our AAA rating.  Those hillbillies aren't so dumb after all.

Timmy Geithner, who just reassured the world by telling us he'll continue to run Treasury into the ground through the election, took a different approach by going after Standard and Poor's.  None of this has calmed the markets around the world.

As I write this the NYSE has only been open for 21 minutes and the Dow is down 230 point.  No telling where it will end up since it's sure to be highly volatile all day.

Joe Biden, in the Spirit of Unity and Compromise, Calls the Tea Party "Terrorists"

You can read the story here.

I have a suggestion for Speaker Boehner:  Hold the debt ceiling vote right after Joe Biden comes to Capitol Hill and personally apologizes to the GOP caucus.  Not a moment sooner.  If he doesn't come, don't vote.

We'll show him how terrorists operate.

Of course, as many have pointed out today, if the Tea Party congressmen were really terrorists, Biden wouldn't dare call them that and would probably be trying to get them some sort of federal subsidy.