Sedition? Let's try Treason!

The people have been betrayed by every institution created to protect them. So, where does one go when this fact becomes too obvious to be ignored? Our government was founded on the principle that the people deserved protection from the government, the government has turned that around to gain protection from the people.

The First Amendment to the document that established the method of protecting the people from the government gave the press the freedom to write whatever necessary to keep the government from oppressing the people. Complete freedom. And now we see that freedom being used against the people, to enlist resistance to them, to denigrate and marginalize the people to the benefit of the government and to a particular ideology.

There was no lack of journalistic investigation during the Reagan years, the Bush years, either one, but when it came to Carter, Clinton and Obama the rigors of journalism slipped from investigation to obfuscation, from exposure to enabler. There is no reasonable sense that information leaked about the current administration would lead the whistleblower to anything other than a cell in Guantanamo Bay and a date with a waterboard. Where indeed was the investigation of the Kenneth Gladney beating? Where is the exposure of Harry Reid supporters committing felonies by throwing objects at a moving vehicle? Where are these instances investigated and brought into the light for the people to see? The way the press has largely and maybe completely ignored such events give cause to suspicion of complicity.

They talk about sedition on news shows with the conviction of righteousness behind them. I say it is with complicity of the government behind them, the government for whom they have become propagandists. The political party for whom they have become obstructionists. They are the abettors to the undermining of the freedoms the people deserve. They are the descendants not of Lincoln Steffens and Upton Sinclair, but rather those slaves of the Politburo writing for Pravda. What is the difference?

Is it a secret that they almost to a person voted for the administration? Is it a secret that they have a vested interest in seeing the administration succeed in its taming of the population? They think they will be raised up by the eventual success of this presidency without the fundamental understanding that as soon as they fail to carry the administration's political water they will become the target and subjected to the hostility they have so willingly applied to others.

They indulge themselves with disgusting rants about dangerous words, about sedition and characterize good, honest political dissent as akin to the crimes and plots of Timothy McVeigh! These are the bomb-throwers the people need to worry about. When the average citizen, tired of being stepped upon by the government and sold down the river by a press protected by their consent, finally rises up to demand answers these propagandists have the gall to cast defamation and indeed criminal complicity on their heads!

They blame the people for speaking out against the policies that will obviously result in the bankruptcy of the nation. The people fear the debt that is piling high upon their heads and the heads of their children and their children's children and fear that no one other than themselves will ever acknowlege it and demand an accounting of it all. So, they speak out in rallies when if the press were to do its job, its duty, to the people these rallies would not exist. It is the media's complicity with the dangerous forces of government that imperil liberty and the freedom of action and opinion the people must enjoy if they are to exercise the rights guaranteed to them in the Constitution.

And, that is all they need to hear, the very invocation of the Constitution is itself a form of sedition to these so-called defenders of free speech. They foolishly believe that this president they so whole-heartedly defend with every barrel of ink and synapse of the brain will protect them once they have helped him dismantle any resistance to his policies. Wrong, he will only turn to them with that famous sneer and ridicule them for thinking they did not see his plan long ago. At this point, their treason will be complete.

These fools sicken me and I will watch with vast amusement when the president they have supported and abetted finally turns his will on them and reduces them to stenographers limited to glowing accounts of his benevolence.

Denver Tea Party

I worked security in an informal role at the tax day tea party in Denver, CO. At the same time I carried a camera to catch on film any irregularities that might lead to prosecution. The combination allowed me to interview some interesting people. It also helped me to identify some nefarious goings on.

Across the road from the main rally was a group generally denouncing the Tea Party group as racists. When approached by some of the tea party people, the main antagonist on a bull horn shouted: "Go back to the racist side of the street." He repeated this over and over. This was a great source of distraction, but served no other purpose. They were obvious agitators and had I not been counted on to keep an eye on things, I would have liked to have gone over as some others did and engage this obvious ignorant SOB. He was a self-loathing type calling us crackers and shouted about America stealing everything it had, I guess from Mexico. The trouble is, this guy was as white as anyone else and obviously an American. I suppose he thinks by attacking the rest of us, he absolves himself.

For me, it gave me an opportunity to make a comparison of the two groups. When the people I interviewed refused to absolutely condemn the group across the street it became quite easy to see their bias. Even when they did condemn it as the Coffee Party lady did, she did not objectively compare the groups and it was easy to see that while she didn't appreciate the man's tactics, she was not willing to extend to the Tea Partiers the graciousness they deserved. Believe me, I walked that crowd back and forth all day long. There was ethnic and racial diversity throughout the crowd without incident. But, when I talked to the liberals there on a mission to discredit the movement, they found instances of offensive behavior that I could only chalk up as over-sensitivity and a desire to find a predetermined outcome.

There was a group of students wandering the crowd interviewing the attendees. At first, I thought this was bad, since it was obvious that they were there to find and exploit the worst aspects of those they met. They, as a group, must have interviewed a large percentage of those in attendance, thereby increasing their chances of finding that one nut in the crowd that would justify their bias. So, I watched and leaned in to get the gist of the questions from time to time, but otherwise let them be.

Two things about this group. First, I interviewed their teacher, whom I found to be quite evasive and disingenuous. He told me of some young man who had encountered racism and was quite shook up by it. I told him I would be greatly interested in interviewing this person and in identifying the person who had made the remarks. The person was never presented to me and it didn't appear that the teacher had much interest in making the case since I passed by him at least ten more times without him even acknowledging my presence. It was considerably less crowded where he was standing, I guess so the students could readily find him, so it wasn't like he didn't see me.

Second, I interviewed the students and when I said I wanted to hear about their encounters with racism, they seemed ready to lie, until I told them that if they pointed the people out, I would throw them out of the rally. Suddenly, they had nothing to say. Later, two of them came up breathlessly saying they had found a racist sign. It read: "Somewhere in Kenya there is a village looking for its idiot." While I expressed the fact that I didn't consider that racist I would find the person and ask them what they meant by it. From this exchange it became clear to me that the mention of Kenya, to them, suggested that calling Obama a Kenyan was the same as calling him a n****r. In the end, they pointed the woman out to me and I went up to her and asked her intent. She explained that calling him a Kenyan was legitimate since he freely admitted his Kenyan roots and being called an idiot is something perfectly appropriate as demonstrated by the left during the previous administration. I explained this to the students and they grudgingly accepted the idea that it was not based in racism.

The point is: if that's the closest they came to finding racist epithets, and they believe those to be racist, it shows exactly the degree of bias they brought into the endeavor. One thing further: the teacher I spoke to said that the students were going to interview the tea partiers and the opposition and compare the two and see which they felt needed to be exposed. The students spent 95% of their time with the tea partiers, and even though they passed right by the other protestors on the way to their school buses, I didn't see a single interview take place on the other side of the street. I don't know for a fact that none took place, but I was watching.

Finally, we did have one infiltrator who was disguised and claimed to be a Truther. I had spotted the guy earlier in the day, noticed that he was obviously wearing a black wig, but I just kept an eye on him when I came around. He didn't, at that time, have a sign that I saw. Later, I got a good exchange between him and some of the other attendees, who backed him out of the crowd and confronted him.

Quite eventful, all in all. There were some tense moments like when the tea partiers went across the street to obstruct and counter the protestor with the bullhorn, but when the Denver Police descended on the scene, I turned my attention elsewhere, except to make sure if a scuffle occurred that I could get there with my trusty camera and document it all. You never know when you might catch some police brutality.

The videos I felt deserved posting are at http://teapartynewscentral.com/

 

The Watershed Moment of a Lifetime

There are moments in time when one realizes that he/she stands at the very edge of momentous change, a watershed moment, and I feel that now. We tend to look out and see events slowly notching themselves forward, like the heavy clank of a ratchet. We recognize that these are important events, but without the future to guide us, we don't know how important they will be. When we look back it is clear that the events we thought were significant were merely stepping stones to something bigger.

I feel a sense of history building as we near the April 15th Tax Day Tea Parties. There are a couple of reasons why this day is different from those coming before and those that will come after. First, this movement has had a year to build and gain membership and to spread throughout the United States. In some cases it has even gone beyond our shores.

The nation has, by now, had a chance to evaluate the Tea Parties and 912 organizations. For union thugs, these organizations have come to represent a threat to their incessant suckling of the public teat. And this is especially true as it is becoming ever more clear to those of us outside of government employment that the unions and their demands are bankrupting our cities and states. These new, vibrant organizations of average citizens are coming to threaten the illegal alien population because it is becoming ever more clear to the average citizen that illegal aliens are also wrecking the social structure with their demands for services and overwhelming demand for government benefits.

The Democratic Party is threatened by the speed with which their ultimate goal of European-style democratic socialism has been derailed. But, they overplayed their hand when they bought into the idea that they had become the rulers of the United States. They felt they didn't have to listen to the people anymore. They were probably a few months premature and that was enough to startle a wide swath of Americans who woke up just in time to realize what was happening.

My cause for optimism here arises from a recent meeting I attended at one of the several Tea Party groups I have joined. There were about 60 of us at the meeting. It was the first one I had been to (mostly due to previous inclimate weather and the fact that I live about 80 miles from there) so I only knew a few of the members, particularly the leadership.

At the start of the meeting the leader, Burt, called to have those new members stand. Yeah, I expected about three or four since this group had been in existence for over a year. I was surprised to see that clearly 50% of the people stood up. Astounding! Where did they come from and why? What had happened recently to cause that many people to find and join a tea party? I could only attribute it to the comments on the pages of the website where they put down their reasons for joining as suddenly being frightened of the changes taking place in the government.

The more the people shake themselves to attention and find the tea parties there to welcome them, the faster this movement will push past anything ever contemplated before in American history. I feel we are at that moment. A month ago there were polls that showed 16% of those questioned considered themselves members of the Tea Party Movement. Yesterday, I saw a poll that showed that number had increased to 25%, something I felt substantiated what I had seen in the meeting.

Daily we find out more and more about this health care legislation that was passed by those who felt they had secured a mild form of dictatorship by winning majorities in the 2008 elections. They have revealed their socialist hearts to the vast majority of citizens and these Americans are responding.

Tomorrow, the 15th of April, I think we see the culmination of these past months. I think we see the outpouring of attendees at the Tax Day Tea Party events being held around the nation. I think the media will cover them hoping for juicy bits of racism and rascalism we are assured the left has planned for the cameras. Inadvertently, however, the media will wind up showing those still on their couches what is afoot. The media itself will prove to be an unwitting accomplice in driving even more membership to the tea parties.

Also, however, I believe the desperation of the left will reveal itself in violence. They always do it. They can't help themselves, because the left is not used to being ignored and they recognize that if those Tea Parties get their way, there will be less government, tighter reins on the cash and perhaps a repudiation of unions in our government organizations. I think we will witness the death throes of the American violent left and perhaps the Democratic Party.

When the Democrats took that one last plunge into socialism via the health care reform legislation, they revealed to many couch-sitters where they had been heading for decades. They revealed their underlying intent. The violent left has always hidden its aims and for good reason: the vast majority of Americans do not support it. When they ripped off their mask, they lost the middle. It is as simple as that and it may have cost them their status as a majority-share party.

What I think will emerge is left to be seen, but I think tomorrow changes everything. It may not be immediately evident, but I think when we have the advantage of hindsight April 15th, 2010 will be the moment this nation changed.

April 15th Planned Chaos

My first real engagement in the Tea Party Movement came in August of '09. I wasn't even aware of it to tell the truth, all I knew was there were protests against the health care reform proposals and that Obama was flying into Grand Junction, CO to hold a town hall meeting. That was close enough for me to drive, so I decided I would go, not to the meeting of course, no one got into those things unless you were a dyed-in-the-wool supporter. I went for the protest.

During this whole time, from March to August, I was busy trying to understand the new economic situations that my company faced. I was busy trying to re-organize loans so I could survive on a fraction of the business I was doing before. I would see protests on television and I would hear of the SEIU and their counter-protests. As I saw the SEIU becoming more violent and threatening, I grew more interested in engaging them. Remember, at that time it was largely purported that the Tea Party Movement was nothing but astroturf, and while I didn't believe that for a second, I had to see for myself and I wanted to stand between the protestors and the thugs.

When I got there the Grand Junction police had done a good job of keeping the groups separate, but there was an odd...I don't know what one would call this...but someone had parked a bait car right in the middle of the protestors. It was liberally (no pun intended) pasted with Obama stickers, not just a few, but probably ten. Therein lies the heart of the union thugs. Because THEY would have taken the opportunity to smash the windows, flatten the tires, break the headlights, key the doors, simply because the person who owned it disagreed with them, they were praying that the anti-health care protestors would do the same. I stayed the whole time and not one hand was laid on the car. I didn't even hear rumblings of violence directed at it.

So, as we approach our April 15th Tax Day Tea Parties, let's keep that in mind. The whole idea of the unions is to bait us, to try and get us to do something they would do. They are going to try and infiltrate the crowds, pose as one of us and do stupid, outrageous things so CNN, MSNBC and the networks can get the footage they have been trying to get for more than a year.

I have volunteered to be a member of the security detail for the Tea Party in Denver. My background is such that I am neither intimidated by these people, nor fooled by their antics. And, there may be violence. We don't know how far they will go to achieve their goals, I am not afraid of that either. The most important thing is to get it all on camera, to clearly show who was the aggressor. In that way, they can't win. I'll take a beating if I have to, I've taken them before for a much less noble reason.

My book is called "The Constitutionalist: Rights To Die For" and that's what I meant. While our civil rights are not always worth killing for, they are always worth dying for. Now, I don't for one minute believe that these goons will kill me, but they might break a nose or something. I am willing to risk it to get on camera the type of violence they are willing to commit. I want to expose them for the black hearts they have.

The important thing is not to let oneself stoop to their level, don't retaliate! When I say that, I say that to myself as much as anyone else, because retaliation is the thing I enjoy most, but the cause is greater than the individual and retaliation would hurt our cause. For those who watch football and hockey, you know which one gets the penalty, the guy who retaliated, so DON'T!

Understand this: these people are professional protestors, it's literally part of their job description as union members. Beware of their tactics, both overt and covert. There is a rumor going around that some will be getting people to sign petitions and will use the information provided to harrass them later on. I saw this in Denver when the Tea Party Express came through. Don't sign petitions from people walking through the crowd. A lot of that can be done on the internet anyway, so go home and look into the petition and find a way to support it from there, not in the heat of the moment. If they have a booth where you can sign a petition, that is probably legit, but it still doesn't hurt to get information from those asking you to sign. If you are suspicious of the motives of petition carriers, point them out to the police and tell them you think they are fraudulently seeking personal information.

Now, to the point of union members protesting our rallies. Think about that for a moment. They should be ashamed of themselves. I thought unions were on the side of the people. I thought once the health care bill had been passed that the union participation would cease. Ask yourself, what dog do they have in the fight right now? This will expose the dog they have had in the fight all along, government! Many of these people are government employees. Now, let that sink in a second.

Here we have the people protesting government and the government employees protesting back! This is what is wrong with allowing government employees to organize. This is where liberty goes off the rails when the government not only has the power of lawmaking, but the police power to resist the efforts of the citizens, and now have the money and incentive to not come out as individuals, but as an organized mob to blunt any legitimate grievances of the people. So, what do you call company employees who resist a strike? SCABS! That, ladies and gentlemen, is who these people have become, you can refer to them as such with legitimacy, I know I will.

Becoming a Constitutionalist

I have spent a good deal of my time lately hanging out with Tea Party and 911 groups and while I feel my heart is with them and I support everything they do, I still find it hard to be anything other than what I have always been: A Constitutionalist. Fortunately, these are not mutually exclusive things, in fact, most of the Tea Partiers and 911 members focus heavily on the Constitution and work to revitalize it. I couldn't give any more support to them than I already do simply for that fact, but it occurred to me that they are not quite one in the same.

A Tea Partier or a member of a 911 organization, while focused on the Constitution, have other goals they seek, i.e. fiscal responsibility, a Constitutionally limited government, fewer taxes, more accountability, & etc, whereas I am still just sort of locked in on the words and meaning of the Constitution and feel that if it is followed and/or amended properly, all the other concerns will be negligible.

Tea Partiers and 911 members are right now working on the selection of candidates in the primaries and caucuses to get the people of their choice on the November ballots, as they should be. I, on the other hand, find myself thinking much more about who will actually seek to enforce the Constitution. I find these sorts of candidates almost non-existent due to human nature.

The trouble comes in when the candidate actually gets TO office and starts to see how much influence they have, how much they can accomplish, and then the handout-seekers come around. Having helped them to get elected, the people who supported them sort of expect something for all the hard work they put in to get the candidate to his/her seat in Congress. All of this is normal and natural.

The Consitutionalist, however, seeks only to make the representative (be they Senator, governor, etc) enforce the Constitution; they demand that laws first be Constitutional; they demand other laws that are not Constitutional be repealed.

Here is where the social justice crowd (most of them simply being pragmatic) raise the question of Social Security, of Medicare and challenge the Constitutionalist to admit that these things, while popular, are decidedly unconstitutional. Okay, I admit it, they are and should be done away with. AaaaHaaaa!

But, here's the counter to that: make them Constitutional. There is such a thing as Article 5 which allows for the document to be amended. If the Social Security program is so massively popular, amend the Constitution to allow for it. We amended the Constitution to allow for an income tax on ourselves, for heaven's sake, it can't be the near impossibility people try to make it out to be.

Constitutional amendments are difficult and should be. If it were easy the Constitution would not be the short, handy document that it is, but an amalgam of laws as thick as the Internal Revenue Code. Difficult does not mean impossible and any program which garners 80% support should allow for a Constitutional amendment if required.

I am much more interested in revitalizing and emphasizing the actual words in the document and doing things to bring us back into compliance, including making necessary amendments to allow those things which society NOW believes are crucial to existence as a moral and just nation.  

A Critique of the Tea Party Movement

The Tea Party Movement is more than a year old. From its beginning it was more an expression than a movement. It was a vehicle by which a number of disparate parts might coalesce into a group. Under the banner of Tea Party, or 912 Organization, these different people came together to express their outrage at any number of evils, most of which began during the Bush administration and included the bailouts and the TARP legislation.

The Tea Party Movement is not, nor has it ever been, inspired by the election of Barack Obama. However, when Obama showed no signs of doing anything other than what had already enraged the masses, it allowed the Tea Parties and 912 Organizations to focus on the Obama policies. The first demonstration of that was the idea that the government was going to take the money of the average citizen and pay the mortgages of other average citizens.

The primary focal point of the Obama administration and therefore the Tea Party Movement came to be the Health Care Reform bill and now law. This one issue came to dominate the landscape and consume the attention and energy of both entities.

With passage, the law seemed to encourage the Obama administration to pursue other pieces of transformative legislation. The Tea Party Movement paused, blinking in disbelief and betrayal. The members of the Tea Party Movement and 912 Organizations had always secretly believed that if they swung the polls against the law, demonstrated their political power, and rallied to show their numbers that the bill would be rejected. They believed that legislators covetous of power would not commit professional suicide for the legacy of one man. But, that one man had been able to frame the issue as a quasi-Civil Rights issue and inspire in the otherwise milquetoast legislators with crusading vigor.

The epic battle over health care legislation defined each side, neither quite being considered vanquished, nor victorious. Indeed, President Obama might have come out the winner, but in doing so he had exposed himself as a bitterly partisan, unscrupulous and diabolical ruler with no regard for the will of the people, or traditional methods of governance. He led the House and Senate on a Bataan-style death march in which he alienated the wide middle of the American populace.

The Tea Party and 912 Organizations fared little better in that despite all their efforts they failed to stop the juggernaut, at that time, their only goal. They suffered from a distinct lack of political clout, even though they continue to enjoy popular support.

Rasmussen polls show that 68% of the people believe members of the Tea Party Movement are better informed on the issues than their own congressperson; 47% see their views of issues to be closer to those of the Tea Party than those of Congress; one week after passage of the health care bill, 54% favor repeal. But despite the fact that Tea Party and 912 organizations are on the right side of the issues with the American people, only 16% consider themselves part of the Tea Party Movement.

This is probably the biggest failure of the movement. Instead of focusing on growing their membership and reaching out to the average voter to build a bigger and more influential organization they seem to be content with online membership and rallies. They seem incapable of evolution, but like Obama, continue to go back to what worked before. They seem not to understand that rallies have failed to do much more than sooth their egos after the defeat handed to them by Barack Obama. While he has moved on to other legislation, the Tea Parties are spending all of their time trying to rally the troops to the crisis of the day.

The role they should be assuming, if they want to be much more than a flash in the pan at the end of the 2010 elections, is to take on the image of a solid organization. They need to have a broader identity as combatants in a new Civil Rights movement. Even if they remain independent, they need to present a permanence they currently lack. One of the things a solid organization has that the Tea Parties don't is a physical presence. There is no local storefront to go to to talk these issues over, no place to get documentation and answers to questions. Without a place for the left to firebomb, how substantial can they be? Without a physical place, there is no where for volunteers to man the phones, reply to e-mail, hand out information, and just be available for media investigation and more importantly, for the average voter to stop by and get informed.

I know this flies in the face of conventional wisdom and the concept of "grassroots" but that label can not be more important than the political impact a physical presence could have. Washington D.C. is another place where there needs to be a physical place to go to. There needs to be a hospitality suite somewhere where tea parties from all over can stop and use office space and computers and printers to produce information needed to take topical action on Capitol Hill.

How you do these things is through fundraising and resource sharing. It is through some sort of national dues, and/or local dues. Yes, that is repugnant to the average independent citizen, but ultimately, this movement will dissolve back into the woods if membership isn't the primary goal of the oranization and dues aren't collected and a physical presence isn't maintained.

On the other hand, if the Tea Party and 912 organizations can get a grip on their evolving roles in American politics, they might ultimately weild incredible power. The numbers are there for them to succeed and maybe consider, down the road, not the idea of being a third party, but rather delegating the Democrats to a third party role. The allure of the Tea Parties to Republicans, Independents and even Democrats cannot be allowed to be squandered. Too many people are pinning their hopes on this movement to save liberty for them to be so sullenly "grassroots." Up to 28% of Democrats see themselves as ideologically aligned with the Tea Party Movement. 

For backup to these statements, check this out 

Constitutional Law Provides Repeal

I have been in deep discussions with a couple of Constitutional lawyers who visited this blog during the height of the Health Care Reform push from Democrats. Since then, March 21st, they have been working on an idea that seemed difficult, if not impossible, but have finally come up with a way to repeal the law.

The stumbling block for all this time has been the signature of the president. Now, keep in mind, these three people, two men and a woman, are legal geeks. With more money than they will ever need and Ivy League educations, they have nothing better to do with their lives than to investigate the most trivial of all nuances to the Constitution. But, while that makes them less than fun dates at a movie (unless it's a Grisham movie they treat as a comedy) that is good for you and me, because they figured out a way to repeal the health care legislation recently passed in the House and "fixed" by the Senate.

Now, keep in mind, I don't really know what the heck these people are talking about so forgive me if, in the retelling I screw something up. Initially, they started with how to get around the presidential signature. One idea was to impeach the president, which would only put Joe Biden in office, so that was eliminated as a useless gesture from the get-go. Besides, impeachment implies the breaking of some law and the violation of oath just doesn't have the solid grounds required to seek impeachment. They said they would need something like lying before a grand jury, or something overt like that. But, even then, Clinton got away with that, so it would probably have to be even more serious.

Also, this all has to take place after the 2010 elections, assuming that at least a majority of the house and a majority +1 of the Senate are Republicans, which is important to get around Joe Biden.

If you are right now screaming that the president will veto any legislation and that the Senate will not have a filibuster proof majority and certainly not 67 votes to override a veto, don't waste your breath. They started from that point and worked from there, so just listen, this is complicated. For those smartasses out there, it does not require a Constitutional amendment, so just read on, stop interrupting me with your defeatist bs, I've already raised all of those objections, like I had to. I'm telling you, these people are sharp.

First, the House will have to pass the bill, present it to the Senate and then, this is where the chickens come home to roost, if you will. Once the bill has been passed by both houses of Congress, it can be "deemed" to have been presented to the President. Since one step in the process can and has been "deemed" to have taken place, so can another. In this case, as long as the president does not obtain the official copy of the bill for 10 days, excepting Sunday, the bill will become law. The important part of this, is that the President must never come in possession of the actual text of the bill passed by both houses.

Since, the final bill can be drafted in private between the House and Senate leadership, the Democrats will have to vote on it blind, or fail to vote, but once it passes the House it can go to reconciliation and the Senate can do exactly what they did this time, pass it on a majority vote. There is no requirement for the representatives or senators to have actually read the bill.

Ta Da!