In the late 1930's as the world watched Adolf Hitler's power and influence grow, some were worried but most went about their daily lives un-concerned. The outbreak of WW-2 awakened many more, but it was not until the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor that America awakened completely. She knew her very existence was now in doubt!
Yesterday when Congress passed its despicable Health Care Bill...America awakened again. We have known for decades that the cancer that is the Progressive movement was a real danger...now we see it in the open for the deadly tumor that it is.
Tens of millions of Americans are primed and ready to fight, and we will win this war, just as we won it 70 plus years ago. Anyone who thinks this movement is based on fear of change or politics is delusional! We are organised, we are the Tea Party, we are Oath Keepers, we are Democrats, Independents, Conservatives, and Patriots...but mostly, we are Americans who have seen our Constitution abused, our childrens future mortgaged, and our standing in the world now in doubt.
No more...NOT ON OUR WATCH!
Tea Party Express/Patriots whose membership is massive already has been inundated with new memberships in the last 24 hours coming close to crashing their site. It is becoming very clear that Dems will be voted out in numbers many experts are describing as a possible complete destruction of the Democratic Congress the likes of which has never been seen in U.S. History. Donations, even from people in desperate financial situations has exploded. A steam roller movement on all fronts is evident. States suing the Fed at the moment Obama signs the bill, Americans of all political stripes saying they have had enough and are out to get every Polotician who supported this bill. When asked, all make virtually the same statement...We all want HC reform...but this is not about reform, it is about subjugating and controlling the American people, it is un-just and most importantly...Un-Constitutional. We will win!!
It's payback time.
Tea Party leaders, livid over the passage of health care reform on Sunday night, say their next step will be to turn from fighting the bill to running the people who voted for it out of Congress.
The bill's narrow passage was inarguably a victory for President Obama and a blow to those who opposed it. Though Tea Partiers joined with Republican officials to rally in Washington and across the country against the package up until judgment day, Democrats were able to assuage skeptical lawmakers and muster the votes needed to send the sweeping overhaul of the nation's health care system to the president's desk.
Now those lawmakers have to go, Tea Partiers say, and they're planning to sustain their fight into November by registering voters, pumping money into ad campaigns against Democratic incumbents and supporting their challengers.
Some want to elect lawmakers with the ultimate goal of repealing the bill; but with repeal a heavy lift, at the minimum the groups are out for vengeance.
And while the Sunday vote was a defeat for the cause, it was potentially a boon for membership.
"I am deluged with phone calls this morning (from) people wanting to join the Tea Party," said Gina Loudon, a founder of the St. Louis Tea Party, which campaigned against the bill during Obama's stop there two weeks ago. "I literally cannot even return the phone calls quickly enough. ... This has absolutely awoken a giant."
Loudon said she and other activists -- who met up at a pub in downtown St. Louis Sunday night to mourn the passage of the bill -- are already drafting a game plan for the months ahead. She said getting involved in congressional campaigns will be a big part of that.
Expect Tea Party political action committees (PACs), to gain a lot more prominence in the months ahead. Loudon said the Ensuring Liberty PAC, the political group announced last month at the Tea Party Convention in Nashville, is going to be raising money and influencing targeted races -- her husband is a board member of that group.
Debbie Dooley, co-founder of the Atlanta Tea Party and a national coordinator of Tea Party Patriots, agreed that the focus will be on voting out health care reform bill supporters.
"Yesterday, they chose not to listen to what the people want," she said. "We, the people, will have our say in November."
She said lawmakers like Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich. -- who had been a holdout against health care reform over abortion funding concerns but who switched to a yes vote after striking an agreement with the White House -- are top targets. She said Tea Party groups plan to continue holding rallies and showing up at lawmakers' town hall meetings and congressional offices to protest the bill.
"This health care vote was not the end. It is just the beginning of the fight," she said.
The House on Sunday passed the Senate-approved health care bill along with a package of changes that House Democrats want the Senate to approve next. The bill is being considered under reconciliation rules, which would allow Democrats to pass it with just 51 votes, as opposed to the 60 that would otherwise be needed to avoid a filibuster.
Dooley said Tea Party groups will do what they can to fight the reconciliation bill as well -- not out of any particular objection to its contents but out of concern about the reconciliation process and a desire to hold House members accountable for the vote on the Senate bill.
They argue that preventing the reconciliation bill from passing could make some House Democrats even more vulnerable in November.
"We want to make this election a referendum on the bill," said Brendan Steinhauser, director of federal and state campaigns for FreedomWorks, the conservative organization that's closely aligned with Tea Party groups across the country.
Tea Party Express, a separate group of conservative activists, is also planning to kick off a nationwide tour Saturday in Searchlight, Nev.
Levi Russell, spokesman for the group, said the tour will focus on health care and on highlighting the "worst offenders" in bringing the bill over the finish line. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid will be the top target at the Tea Party Express kickoff, which former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin is expected to attend.
Though health care reform may continue to be the overriding issue for Tea Party groups in the months to come, the activists say they're ready to divide their attention among whatever issues Obama chooses to pursue -- immigration reform or cap-and-trade or something else.
"We are as passionate about those as we are about health care," Loudon said.
There simply are no words to describe the damage inflicted yesterday by Democrats upon America, her citizens, and the millions around the globe who look to America for hope - as the land of the free and the home of the brave.
Make no mistake about it - what happened yesterday was not brave, it was cowardly. It was not the best of America, it was the worst. And - at least with respect to the vote itself - it was not Republicans, it was Democrats. President Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and every other Democrat who sold his soul for 30 shekels of silver ignored the clear will of the American people. It was brazen. It was arrogant. And, it was a thumb in the eye of democracy, liberty, and most of all, the American people.
But rest easy. For now you know your enemies. And they stand before you.
For too many years, America has been attacked quietly - the serpent waiting patiently for his prey, striking only periodically. Starting primarily with the New Deal, incremental socialism as President Reagan famously observed, has been slowly eating away at the great American fabric of individual self-reliance, personal responsibility and limited government... Government program by government program, inch-by-inch, career politician-by-career politician... Democrat AND Republican. For decades, you have been losing your God-given and hard-fought birthright of freedom as surely as the vote that slapped you in the face yesterday.
But now... now, you know. Your enemy is clear. And the enemy has made clear their intentions - and that is the complete re-making of America.
Your enemy now is any Democrat - for it is a Party blinded by false notions of compassion, willing to trade liberty for self promotion and so devoid of a soul that innocent life is but a trivial instrument to barter. It is a Party lacking character and it is a Party that simply does not believe in the America of our founding.
But your enemy also is any Republican who is complicit in expanding government at the expense of liberty... Any Republican who would join hands with evil and continue to walk the road of denial, telling you he is fighting for America while he negotiates away her very foundation... And, specifically, any Republican who will not state clearly and succinctly that he will fight each and every day to repeal, de-fund, and otherwise eviscerate the healthcare bill.
And your enemy is the bill itself. For, if we do not repeal this bill, we will have nothing left. We will have forsaken all those who have bled to hand down to us this, the greatest nation the world has ever known - and we will have made a mockery of God's blessing on this nation.
The time has come to say, "no more." Not my country. Not on my watch. I will not stand by and let my nation be sold into the chains of tyranny in the false name of compassion. The opening words of the Declaration of Independence were nothing short of magnificent - charting a new course for humanity and laying the foundation for a new world. But, the actual force of the document were not the first words - rather they were the last:
"And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor."
WALL STREET JOURNAL (3-23-2010): U.K. foreign minister David Miliband will say Tuesday that Israel was involved in the cloning of British passports that were allegedly used in the killing of a top Hamas official in Dubai, a person familiar with the matter said.
American relief efforts should be driven by an understanding of what resources would provide the greatest benefit, rather than driven by an ego-based desire to be the hero that swoops in and saves the day.
-Trina Chiasson, executive director of Media Make Change
NEW YORK - A survivor of a natural disaster has a voice and shouldn't be subjected to pity and judgment. If we can help Haitians share their stories through social media, we will all benefit. It's a form of media that is completely participatory and open to all, said Tara Conley, founder of Media Make Change.
Media Make Change, a media justice organization, launched a new outreach program, Project Haiti Speaks. They want to provide multimedia support to relief organizations on the ground and provide a multimedia platform for volunteers, workers, citizen journalists and survivors so their stories can be told. Conley stresses the significance of Haitians telling their own stories for the primary reason that sound bites about this disaster will have long-term implications.
I didn't mean to write a blog post today, I really didn't. But then I finally read that article my mom sent me two days ago from the New Haven Independent in New Haven, Connecticut. The one entitled Outraged Judge Reverses Murder Convictions. (Bless her good heart, but my mom has a funny way of expressing her concern about my blood pressure.)
In 1993, two African American men, George Gould and Ronald Taylor, were arrested and later sentenced to 80 years in prison for the murder of a bodega owner. They were convicted on the basis of testimony from two state witnesses, but even Assistant State's Attorney James Clark, who prosecuted the case in 1995, acknowledged at the trial that "this case rises and falls on the testimony of Doreen Stiles."
Men of action, or men of words...
right or wrong, the sound of my country.
What are the men who represent the America I dream?
What is the song I hear?
When, I ask, when--is the sound of America? In the old men, or in the children?
The ticker ticks. The drum beats of hope and of fear. The Voice in the wilderness speaks of my country, my country. But what is it that trumpets the unseen day, the unheld hand, the unknown century of life and death? Whether it is a returning soldier from a field of war, or a troubled legislator in the halls of Limestone and Marble halls, this tenor I hear, this temperature I feel. The vision of deferred dreams of a lost cause. To them I say, where in this are all the children? What of them do you sing?
The vile tongue only can extinguish rational thought and argument with passion and intemperance. Killer of life and change and rightness. For I know too well.
It creeps in our house in small, invisible forms.
The stolen century nods.
The flag bends.
It creeps in beside the halls, beside the bed....
Take a walk through the last week to see just what I mean.
(A narrative by the author.)
Before yesterday, Bart Stupak was the object of scorn and rebuke by me and most of my fellow Democrats who supported the Health Bill, and saw the Congressman as simply a futile and unworthy man of no consequence and little vision. Someone who did not realize the import of a bill for millions of his fellow Americans. A lukewarm man, neither hot, nor cold. Thus, we spat him out.
As many of us began the final day of waiting, nervous and anxious of numbers and process--this Bart Stupak announced a deal was reached, and that he--after months of insurgency, would now give his full support to the above mentioned legislation. And, all those in within his fold would follow his lead. The bill's passage was then a foregone conclusion.
To most of us on the left, Bart Stupak may have became just a waffler, a flip-flopper, an opportunist--holding out for 15 more minutes of fame. The night before, I too was mocking him. Stupid Stupak I called him. And to every living person on the right, to the Pro-Life movement, the Tea Partiers, to Fox News, to Republican lawmakers inside the chambers of Congress--Bart Stupak had now become a Benedict Arnold. An Uncle Tom. A traitor.
To the vote we came, with the full confidence and comfort of a night of history. We came to believe within hours of the historic vote, that finally it would happen; and that all the months of hate and vitriol through town halls and addresses and protests--it would finally have closure with a gavel for change. The week preceding stirred up the full passion of the men and women yelling and spitting and harassing the United States Capitol, with all the violent fury and nostalgia of a town square lynch mob.
And it entered the chamber. After the vote passed, a roundly scorned, and roundly denounced Bart Stupak stood up and spoke. In the red faced opposition, the angry faces who stared avowed scorn and intimidation into his gaze--he spoke up against them with a voice that was in that one moment at the center of the storm. For all his weeks of stumbling, inconsistency and misplaced concerns for the present legislation--he, the chief antagonist--in full view of the opposition, expressed open support for it as a victory for America's children. He was not weak, nor dull, nor indifferent. He looked them down. He rebuked them. He shamed them. Courage. On the floor of the House, he looked at those rows upon rows of faces that in unison glared at him, and Bart Stupak called them out as desperate and obstructionist--and defended his re-united party as the only defenders of the American people.
For this, he received hisses, boos, and grumbling chatter. No doubt the pun of one-hundred crude jokes within a moment's time. A choice doomed to perhaps kill a career. A choice to let chips fall. And there, amongst the rising sound--one of those horse-whipped members said openly, in desperation, in futility--of Bart Stupak: "Baby Killer."
Bart Stupak had become the object of half the nation's hate. Represented by a fellow member. This is the tone, the note, the sound of hate, which the President too had heard not so long ago, and every day since. Having taking his stand, Bart Stupak will all told now be forgotten. Yet the hate will turn on him again.
No matter what they say, I hear the the angry voices say, "Kill. Kill. Kill."
I hear it on Barney Frank, on John Lewis, on those who were spat on and pushed and harrassed as once were on the Edmund Pettus Bridge.
This was not the end or the beginning of it, heard before in various venues, draped in flag and bunting, in banner and signage, pistol and rifle, stated with equal disgust and disrespect: "Terrorist." "Socialist." "Kill Him." "I want him to Fail." "Nigger" "I want my country Back." "Faggot." "You Lie." The note continues. The note will begin again tomorrow.
As I watched this unfold, on a night which is such a victory, such a blessing to the ill, and infirm--I thought--with every Tea Party, every manufactured false angry accusation, every shit disturbing fallacy and lie, each and every Michelle Bachmann comment, each address by the former Vice President, with every EIB "El Rushbo" broadcast, with every conspiracy theory of Glenn Beck, or each paranoid delusion of Sarah Palin, each sign of Obama in a coffin--the rhetoric, the words, the passions stirred in the fields of the national Mall become evermore a tone of hate, of bias, of anger, of fear. Like fog from the Potomac. The tone of Racism. The tone of Fear.
This has become about something else, my friends.
I say the sound of ignorance is loud today. Of no recourse, of desperation, of gnashing teeth and zero tolerance, of persecution complexes and paranoid hysteria. That sound is alive in the heartland, and in Washington, and on the waves of communication. An American political party has allowed itself to become run, and overrun, by a extremist group, a fringe movement, a lynch mob.
The sound of McCarthy, of Wallace, of Commie, Nigger, Faggot. Of Silence.
Again I say, where in all this are the children?
If we Americans are not careful, that tone will rise. That tone-deafness, that damaging dark march towards the past, in the stead of a future, a bright future, will infect every weary and tired and frightened soul, who will ask, "What o what of me?" It will penetrate not just the institutions that must remain free from passion, from violence, from undue influence--but in our homes once again, at our tables, over our shoulders. As though gothic cathedral or humble shrine, the halls of Congress, the White House--must not become a place where derringers and duels and assassination becomes the order of the day. Nor should our porches, our beds, our pews. Or children. All sides must know what is potentially at the end of that sound--that empty hollow trumpet of fear and hate when it is sent out. That tone of "Hell No!" That tone of "You Lie."
Of "Baby Killer."
Of "Nigger."
Men of action, or men of words; know where we are, and whither we are tending.
The sound of My Country, I ask.
Be Calm.
For if we are true, we must look to the good of our country, for we are Americans.
We must tend to our garden.
We must sing something to the children.
Honestly, I'm not a real Dem. I consider myself an independent, reserving the right to vote my conscience. I'm registered as an independent. It's just that the Dems are closer to what I want, so they get my vote. It's hard to say "what" I am if one needs to label me, but one could never say I'm a Republican. No, not ever.
It is with great happiness that I noted there was not a single Republican voting in favor of healthcare reform. It verified my conviction they truly are despicable human beings. To think one would suggest shame on people for putting together a program that would enable millions of people to obtain healthcare. To think there are those who agree with this proposition. To think not one person in their entire party has the temerity to oppose that notion. This is what they propose is leadership? It is truly a disheartening. That there is actually a whole party of politicians and large swaths of America that think of this as an act of courage. Delusions of grandeur. Maybe some day they will realize how miserable they are. That would be my hope and from that misery might come change I can believe in. So far? NUTHIN"!!!
The GOP is now actually suggesting this vote will spell doom for the Dems. Right! Like it did for Dems after FDR? That kind of misery and wandering in the wilderness? No. I don't think this vote spells the end of the Dems. It is rather the confirmation that the GOP is actually on its way to irrelevance. Obama gave them innumerable opportunities to be part of this historic reform. To actually get some credit. 200+ amendments in the bill and not a single GOP had the courage to vote for it. GOP, you now have your place in history, and any history worth reading comes with foot notes. Yes, we did! You are welcome to having your party be the footnote in this momentous legislation.
Thank you, GOP, for making your hatred for the American people so blatantly obvious. Thank you for not providing any uncertainty about your loathing of community and love of neighbor. Thank you for being so emphatic in your disdain for people coming together to take care of themselves. You declared we could not do it. We responded, "Yes we can" and now, "Yes we did", and we're really just getting started. We just took down the biggest one first. There's more to come. "Hope begins anew. The dream will never die."
(Originally posted February 22)
Why is the mainstream media describing Scott Brown as a "tea party candidate," and characterizing his election as a major victory for the tea party movement? Is it an effort to minimize him? The majority of voters in Massachusetts are proudly independent. They don't much care if a candidate is supported by the Democratic, Republican, or Tea party. And among voters who are affiliated in the Commonwealth, Democrats outnumber Republicans three to one. The "tea party movement" played a very tiny role - if at all.
Credit should be given where it is due. Scott Brown won because he ran a positive, issues-oriented campaign and was authentically fiscally conservative while being socially moderate and inclusive.
Give the credit to Brown and his supporters.
(Originally Posted January 29)
Democrats took control of Congress in 2006, both the House and the Senate. Why are they blaming Scott Brown for their lack of progress on health insurance reform? Why did they spend all of 2009 writing the legislation? Had they prepared and written it in 2008, or 2007, they would have been able to vote on it months ago and it would not have depended on the January 19th special senatorial election in Massachusetts. Why did they wait for a 60-seat supermajority to earnestly start preparing?
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