When I got home from work tonight, I found a disk in my mailbox containing photos of today’s Tea Party protest in Ypsilanti. What you see here are a few highlights from the event. The photos were taken by Oliva, who I’d like to thank for taking the time and going to the effort.
I thought that I’d said about all I had to say on the matter last night, but then my friend Steve started started goading me, reminding me of protests over the past eight years and how they were met by the party then in power. First, he shared this quote with me.
“How about a punch in the yap to these screaming banshees?”
– Ann Coulter on protesters
Then he reminded me of the so-called Free Speech Zones that law-abiding American citizens were corralled into, far away from the cameras of disinterested corporate news entities on countless occasions.
And, then he reminded me of this quote by Attorney General John Ashcroft, delivered on December 6, 2001, before the Senate Judiciary Committee.
“To those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty… your tactics only aid terrorists, for they erode our national unity and… give ammunition to America’s enemies.”
That’s right – just a few short years ago protesters were enemies of the American people. Isn’t it amazing how far we’ve come since then? Now, not only are people allowed to stand in public and question the motives of their leaders, but they’re encouraged to do so by the very corporations, such as FOX News, who not so long ago questioned the patriotism of protesters.
But now, several years after falsified evidence was used to justify an illegal war in Iraq, illegal wiretaps were implemented against the American people, and the practices of extraordinary rendition and water-boarding became known – now is the point where we apparently stand up and courageously yell, “STOP!”
None of these people gave a flying fuck about the forged documents concerning yellow cake uranium that led us into a war in which hundreds of thousands of people have died, but here they are today, actually taking to the streets with signs, questioning the legitimacy of the President’s birth certificate.
It’s absolutely mind boggling.
Do I think that we still have problems? Hell yes. Under the Bush administration, our rights were systematically stripped from us, and my hope had been that Obama would be quicker about restoring them. But it’s only been a few months. And my sense is that he’s trying. And it’s laughable to me that now – now that the tide is finally turning – you get people like the Republican Governor of Texas proposing secession because of threat to liberty posed by the federal government.
I could go on and rant for hours, but in the interest of protecting what’s left of my sanity, I’m going to call it a night.
Thanks again for the photos, Oliva.
And I’ll leave you with this observation from Curt Waugh, who attended the Ann Arbor Tea Party:
I just stopped by the Ann Arbor “rally” in front of the post office. There are about 100 very well-behaved people standing around. Some have signs. They seem mostly to be chatting with each other and enjoying the day. At one point, they broke into a very lame version of “God Bless America”.
One guy in a suit had a 3×5 American flag with a big motorcycle on it. After staring at it for a while, I had to break down and ask him what it meant. He told me (I’m paraphrasing here): “I believe that global warming isn’t real and is just a way to send jobs to 3rd-world countries. I’m for burning more fossil fuels.” He wasn’t crazy-sounding or weird-seeming. He gave his position in two terse sentences and didn’t seem the least bit bothered that I asked. I thanked him and walked off.
48 Comments
The comments after the Ann Arbor News article are interesting. Some are arguing that they had 2,000 people at the Ann Arbor event. Others are saying 20.
http://www.mlive.com/news/ann-arbor/index.ssf/2009/04/about_200_protesters_gather_in.html
I don’t remember Fox News, or, for that matter, any other networks, giving the protests against the Iraq war anywhere near this amount of coverage, and they were at least 10 times larger.
And here’s another photo for your collection.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/irees/3446664194/
I have photos of the folks in front of the AA post office. I didn’t see the crowd on the diag, but this crowd was absolutely 100-ish, give or take. My personal take-away isn’t very original: It was a diverse group of people, each with their own personal beef about one little thing grinding their gears but no great problem with any one thing that would rally the nation. Just a collective, “I’m anti-[fill in blank].”
But it’s done and over with. Maybe we can all get back to good governance now. I gotta go buy me a motorcycle.
I’m all for letting Texas secede. If that’s what they want, I say “Good Riddance.”
I had more people at my Sour Grapes Party at the Arbor Brewing Company last night.
…and I’m with you Paw. Texas has every right, and should, secede. I’ll help in any way I can.
We shouldn’t let Texas secede. Instead, we should trade them back to Mexico for a 30 year supply of free tequila.
As a bonus they can have all the white people as slaves.
I am totally against the idea of letting Texas secede … unless they agree to take Oklahoma, Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama, South Carolina, the Florida Panhandle, and most of Louisiana (except New Orleans) with them.
Has Cheney moved to Dubai yet?
As someone from Texas who was just reading LeDuff’s latest piece on the Michigan militia, I think you guys should focus on rooting out your own idiots. ;)
I wish he’d move to . . . North Korea actually.
(Thanks for amplifying the pics with excellent discussion, Mark, and nice arranging too.)
If Texas were on their own, they’d be living under Biblical law within five years.
Here’s the LeDuff piece on the Michigan Militia that was referenced:
http://detnews.com/article/20090416/OPINION03/904160398/1439/METRO08
kjc, don’t mess with Michigan.
One of my old college friends had this great rant about how Lincoln should have “just let the South go”, back in the day. I wish I could remember all of it, but he only delivered it when we were all drinking, so there you go.
This same friend had a great Facebook thread on how Michigan should secede (this was during the whole “don’t bail out the autoworkers!!11!1!!!!!1!” crap from the Southern senators) and take our water rights with us.
I kind of wish a few million of us would show up on the Mall (or make it local, all over the country) with signs saying things like, “I love my public library” and “I the P.O.” Some about the trains and parks. A nice populist effort to get our New New Deal off to a heady start.
“I [heart] the P.O.” (I used angle brackets the first time, and the word and brackets fell out.)
…and possibly a doctored potential domestic terrorist identification playing card of me in drag, which is in the works.
I look at these pix and all I can think is … O the irony.
I like the sign that says, “Somewhere in Kenya a village is missing an idiot.”
My other post has strangely vanished.
I don’t know what’s going on, Jake. Today when I got home from work, I had 1,000 spam messages that needed to be deleted. I must have accidentally cut one of yours in the process…. This system totally sucks for spam. I need to figure it out. I spend an hour every night dealing with it, and, by the time I’m done, I’m too pissed and tired to write anything decent.
Get a job hippies!
Seems like both sides are awash with comeuppance and hypocracy at this point. I can’t believe these tea parties piss people off so much, what with dissent being patriotic and whatnot. Why are people acting so threatened and angered by them???
Honestly, I’m not snidely suggesting “they must have hit pretty close to the mark, yada yada,” because honestly I’m still not sure what the core message is with the tea parties. If it were just the anti-bailout anti-federal reserve faction, I’d get it, but I don’t think it is. Which is also why I can’t figure out why the sometimes hostile response. Not you, Mark. But I’ve seen news anchors get all pissed about it. Why? What’s there to feel threatened about?
The core message is that people dislike paying taxes. It’s totally stupid, but that’s the umbrella they’re trying to gather everyone under. And, in the process, they’re getting every kook and nut case in the country.
The Tea Parties are about:
1. protesting the growing intrusiveness of our federal government,
2. the resulting erosion of personal freedom and liberty,
3. the unconstitutional usurping of state sovereignty by the Democrat Congressional leadership, and
4. the borrow-and-spend proclivities and creeping socialistic tendencies of our ballooning federal government.
Like the first Boston Tea Party, taxes have part in that – but are not the be-all and end-all of the protests.
So now what, now that tax day has come and gone?
Edit it like this and I’m on board:
The Tea Parties are about:
1. protesting the growing intrusiveness of our federal government under decades of Republican and Democrat leadership,
2. the resulting erosion of personal freedom and liberty under decades of Republican and Democrat leadership,
3. the unconstitutional usurping of state sovereignty by both Republican and Democrat Congressional leadership, and
4. the borrow-and-spend proclivities and creeping socialistic tendencies of our ballooning federal government under decades of Republican and Democrat leadership.
Now what? For the Rick Perrys among us: Confederate Memorial Day is observed on April 26.
Tea Parties are about “We the People” and waking up apathetic citizens to restore the proper role of elected government officials. They work for us.
…cause sometimes it seems like the same Republican guys that bashed and marginalized dear old Ron Paul and the more liberty-minded (actual small government) Republicans in favor of McCain and Romney’s big-Republican-government philosophies are just trying to cash in on having it both ways by pretending Obama is so much worse then them, when all Obama is doing is expanding the same policies that Bush and McCain started (i.e. — bank bailouts, stimulus packages, expanding foreign wars, domestic wiretaps, etc). That last part is the blind spot on the left that doesn’t seem to warrent as much attention as a bunch of sign-waving nobodies in tri-corn hats.
This should have been you, Mark:
http://static.crooksandliars.com/files/uploads/2009/04/IShavedMyBallsForThis_71fe7.JPG
I love that guy, Paw. I’d love to see his whole sign collection.
Best sign of the day.
http://pics.livejournal.com/koalafrog/pic/002g4c16/s640x480
(Following the link is fine, but if you go any farther than that, you do so at your own risk.)
Good lord, BA, what happened to me? I’m going to give a whole-hearted endorsement and a “huzzah” to your edits to DR’s manifesto. Seems like a much fairer way to state the issue.
I’d also endorse taking it one step further. If anybody who gets into power is seen to abuse the system (as they have, no doubt), then Deming tells us the problem lies in the system itself. What we have seen is the expected behavior based on the system we have. People simply cannot discipline themselves, but systems can be designed to disallow this type of behavior. It’s not that we need more laws to make more things a crime. We need a system of governance by which there simply is less to abuse – even if one wanted to.
I believe that’s a big part of what pure libertarians seek. I think if they were to refine their message, accept some social programs based on practicality and purge themselves of their religious fundamentalist brethren, they might have a stronger message than this teabagging messiness.
My biggest problem with the Tea Party’s was the coverage. I have no problem with people speaking their minds and protesting, I think we’d be a whole lot better off if it happened more often. Watching the coverage on tax day it really seemed like the media was making a mountain out of a molehill. They were acting like it was a huge uproar but I think in most cases it was just a handful of people. For a grassroots effort the whole thing smacked of astroturf to me.
By the way, I’m sending this from France, that’s cool…right?? Thousands of miles from home and I still have nothing better to do than check this site.
It is statistically impossible to not agree with me on at least one thing.
West Cross, Buvez-vous de beaucoup de thé en France?
Cool that you’re there? So so so so cool . . .
Please tell more, details of sound, smell, taste, etc. (Thank you.)
Olivia,
A Strasbourg, on boit la bière.
I’m in Strasbourg right on the border of France and Germany. For me it smells and tastes a lot like every other place I visit for work, very much like a transmission factory. Also like rain. The trip should improve by Wednesday when I’ll be done working, my wife flies over (thanks to frequent flier miles earned from many trips like this one) and we go to Paris for a few days. Might as well make the most of it before we go home to face stupid reality.
Obama was here recently, sounds like the whole town shut down for him (and its a big town). Nice to have a rock star for a president, not too many Bush fans here on my previous trips. I guess we should enjoy it while it lasts.
This video of a S. Carolina tea-party crowd booing a supposedly conservative republican congressman Gresham Barrett gives me some hope.
Hey mark in response to your statement:
“None of these people gave a flying fuck about the forged documents concerning yellow cake uranium that led us into a war in which hundreds of thousands of people have died, but here they are today, actually taking to the streets with signs, questioning the legitimacy of the President’s birth certificate. It’s absolutely mind boggling. ”
Allow me to unboggle your mind. Click on this link http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25546334/from/ET/ and get informed before you go sprouting off at the mouth. If those tea party protesters didn’t give a “flying fuck” (as you so eloquently put it) about the “supposed” forged documents, it is because the truth of the matter is that 550 metric tons of “yellowcake” — the seed material for higher-grade nuclear enrichment did in fact exist. The huge stockpile of concentrated natural uranium — reached a Canadian port in July of 2008. This was all part of a secret U.S. operation, as documented in this article.
And while we may have sacrificed some of our civil rights under Bush in the name of the war on terror with illegal wiretappings….you might want to point that finger at Mr. Obama as well.
“A spokesman for Barack Obama initially stated on October 24, 2007 that: To be clear: Barack will support a filibuster of any bill that includes retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies.
Yet when the final FISA bill came to a vote in the Senate—which included retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies—not only did Obama NOT filibuster the bill, he voted in favor of cloture—a technique that closes discussion on a bill and brings it up for vote—and voted in FAVOR of the revised FISA bill. This was a two-part flip-flop by Obama; he sold out both civil rights activists and did the exact opposite of filibuster this flawed act. The New York Times editorialized that:
[This bill would make it] much easier to spy on Americans at home, reduce the courts’ powers and grant immunity to the companies that turned over Americans’ private communications without a warrant.”…..Imagine that….Still think he is trying?
Finally as far as the tea party protestors…like it or not, agree with them or not, they are Americans, and they have a constitutional right voice their position. The size of the actual turnout is not indicative of the merit of their argument. However, as it turns out, nation-wide there were over a quarter of a million people voicing their anger…Ridiculing them will not diminish their momentum, if anything it will galvanize it.
You might also want to read this article, where I was able to document some of my info: http://www.campaigniran.org/casmii/index.php?q=node/6799
Betty0224, the Niger documents weren’t “supposed”ly forged documents. They WERE forged documents, and not just according to sprouting-off-at-the-mouth Mark. The CIA determined the documents to be forgeries, and so has everyone else who has examined them thoroughly. Only the Bush Administration ever claimed otherwise, and even they have acknowledged since that the documents were forgeries.
Why would anyone give a flying shit about anything else you have to say if you are in such open denial of a well established and agreed upon fact?
I believe Mark’s point is absolutely valid in that he was simply pointing out the obvious widespread hypocrisy of the tea-party crowd.
It should be pretty easy for you to understand how someone would doubt your sincerity on all this. Up until a few months ago, you yahoos were backing every single thing you are supposedly upset and complaining about now. In fact, over the past eight years you were absolutely KEY in bringing about the circumstances about which now you are pretending to be so outraged. If nobody takes you idiots seriously, it is entirely your own fault.
Why do you suppose it is that your heroes in the Bush Administration never talked about the yellowcake that WAS found in Iraq? Maybe you should be asking yourself THAT simple question. You may not like the answer.
Robert Shrum on the paranoia on the right:
http://www.theweek.com/article/index/95607/The_Republicans_Paranoid_Style
KJC….you’re not from Texas.
http://www.humanfiles.com/teaparties/teaparty_01.htm
That’s another thing on the MI militia tax day event a couple people mentioned above.
“This video of a S. Carolina tea-party crowd booing a supposedly conservative republican congressman Gresham Barrett gives me some hope.”
Where members of Congress who voted for the TARP bill or the “stimulus” bill appeared at Tax Day Tea Parties, many were received with boos. Fiscal irresponsibility abounds in too many professional politicians from both political parties in the U.S. Congress.
I would like it if some one would e-mail me regarding the meetings taking place in the greater Ypsilanti area pertaining to discussing/ planning of future Tea Party events.
-Thanks
Iconology1337@yahoo.com
Sean,
Visit my website for the answers you’re looking for:
http://dcon2012.wordpress.com.
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