I was in San Antonio for business today. Once I got out of training I went over to the Alamo and was there for the big San Antonio Tea Party.
There were thousands of people around the Alamo. It was the most peaceful, polite, and cordial group of political protestors I’ve ever seen.
If you are not familiar with the Tea Parties, and you just read the news, you would get this:
Whipped up by conservative commentators and bloggers, tens of thousands of protesters staged “tea parties” around the country Wednesday to tap into the collective angst stirred up by a bad economy, government spending and bailouts. – AP
I love that. Whenever anybody gets together with any sort of Liberal cause, then it is a “grass roots movement” including the ones put on by the professional protestor class. If a bunch of conservatives get together, then they must have been “whipped” on by bloggers and commentators. I also love how we have “angst”, because, you know, not wanting to turn America into Big Dumb Canada is angst. Look, AP, Emo kids have angst. We’ve got disgust, indignation, and rigteous anger.
The Tea Parties are about a bunch of people who feel disenfranchised by their government. We feel that our government is out of control (on both sides) and that we’re spending ourselves into oblivion and turning away from freedom and toward socialism.
People are getting tired of being pushed around.
In my home state of Utah, the federal government just set a bunch of rules about how you can travel on government land. Basically this makes it so that if you live in the extremely rural counties of Garfield or Kane, you can’t actually GO anywhere. You can’t actually travel across land that your ancestors travelled across with wagons or handcarts, and that your family has crossed for the last hundred years, because a bureaucrat in Washington (who’s never actually been to Utah) decreed that you can’t cross that land unless you do it in some sort of magical conveyance that doesn’t make noise or carbon. This might not sound like much to some of you, but with the stroke of a pen, the lives and livelyhoods of thousands of people were just altered for the worst on a whim.
That is just another example amongst the hundreds. Things like that are what are driving the Tea Parties.
The last count I saw, Fox News ran 70 or so stories to promote the tea-bag protests.
Yeah, it was a grass-roots movement, all right. Just like Astroturf is grass. (stealing from Krugman)
I missed the San Antonio party, but stopped by the one in Boerne (about 20 minutes Northwest of SA), and it was great. It looked like about 200 folks when I got there, probably 300 when I had to leave 20 minutes later.
I wish I’d known you were in town, I’d have liked to buy you a beer.
My wife and I attended the one of four Tea Parties held in Kansas City. Attendance out ours was estimated at 5K and up.
I am from San Antonio and I attended the Tea Party yesterday. And to quote you, “It was the most peaceful, polite, and cordial group of political protestors I’ve ever seen.” I couldn’t agree more!
Thank you for joining us!
Texas Governor Rick Perry, speaking at the Austin Tea Party:
“There’s a lot of different scenarios,” Perry said. “We’ve got a great union. There’s absolutely no reason to dissolve it. But if Washington continues to thumb their nose at the American people, you know, who knows what might come out of that. But Texas is a very unique place, and we’re a pretty independent lot to boot.”
But who would be the President of the Free State of Texas?
Chuck Norris, of course. (Google it- he said he’s up for it)
You would be welcome here.
The last count I saw, Fox News ran 70 or so stories to promote the tea-bag protests.
Yeah, it was a grass-roots movement, all right. Just like Astroturf is grass. (stealing from Krugman)
You know, I kind of hope people like you keep thinking this, because by the time you learn the truth, it’ll be too damn late for you to try and mount an effective defense.
I’ve been watching the tea party movement grow for the last couple of months now. I’m not a participant as of yet (mostly because there haven’t been any protests in my small town and I’m too damn busy to organize one or go to one in the nearest large city), but I share many of the movements goals.
The fact of the matter is that Fox News had nothing to do with making this movement. Sure, they’re reporting it, but they have no more control over the movement than a war reporter has over the battle he’s documenting. This is a true grass roots movement, and you ignore it at your own peril.
It’s also a major mistake to somehow conflate this movement with republicans. The movement has nothing to do with either political party, except to communicate their disgust at both of them. The GOP does have a chance to benefit, IF they drop the bullshit they’ve been pulling for the past several years and go back to their small-government roots. Otherwise, there’s a damn good chance this movement will be aimed at them as much as it is at Obama and the democrats, and there’s not an unlikely chance that a third party will arise from this.
The last count I saw, Fox News ran 70 or so stories to promote the tea-bag protests.
Yeah, it was a grass-roots movement, all right. Just like Astroturf is grass.
Poor Lefties; they’ve been playing on astroturf so long that they don’t know grassroots even when fed a mouthful of divot. – Tamara Keel
Larry,
How many people do you suppose will just choose not to obey the new regulations…….
I know the folks in Utah can be a stubborn lot.
Tell me this: Was there more than five people at any of those tea-parties who voted for Obama?
If not, then how were the tea-parties anything more than loose congregations of people who were mainly upset because their side lost the election?
And when Bush ramped up spending and cut taxes and took the Federal budget from running surpluses in the $200 billion range to running far larger deficits for every year of his presidency, WHERE THE HELL WERE ANY OF YOU GUYS?
Comrade, ironically enough, there were Obama supporters. I saw one getting arrested. 🙂
Seriously though, at one point I was trying to cross the street, and I was waiting along with some other people. Two of them were friends,and they were having a discussion that I overheard. One of them had voted for Obama, but was there because of how disillusioned he had become over the last few months of Spend-Spend-Spend.
I don’t think that these people/my people are particularly big George Bush fans. The perscription drug benefit ranks up there with the dumbest things ever.
Where the hell were we? Right here. I think I complained about George Bush about half as much as I complained about Obama, but that was because I did happen to like his “kill bad people” policy.
Movements don’t pop up overnight, and this one has been building with time. Conservatives were getting sick of George Bush on spending and on securing the border. They were disgusted with John McCain during the election, and Barack moving for full blown socialism just pushed them over the edge.
You should have been in Chicago. This dickweed reporter started telling the protesters why Obamarama is so good (impartial reporting). Then accuses Fox network of organizing the Tea Parties.She got took to task by a woman first and then an older man. Good shit man she was so out of her depth. She said the crowd was anti gov’t and anti CNN. After she ran her mouth damn right they were