By Shamus Cooke
15 April, 2010
Countercurrents.org
Rank and file Tea Partiers are, politically speaking, lost at sea in the dead of night, looking for the light of common principles. On land, those manning right-wing lighthouses are broadcasting ideas loaded with hidden motives into this ocean of conservative public opinion. What the Tea Party will become is presently unknown; but those with an agenda will do their best to steer lost boats at sea in their direction, with potentially dangerous consequences.
Only recently have some tea party groups spotted land, organizing themselves under the new body National Tea Party Federation. One would expect such an organization to release a detailed statement about its members’ shared political positions, beliefs, goals, etc.
Instead, only three unifying concepts were announced: fiscal responsibility, constitutionally limited government, and free markets — all vague terms overused by any corporate Republican. It seems, then, that there is still much work to be done in organizing and channeling the national Tea Party “movement.”
Because the three unifying ideas are so vague, special interests will fill in the blanks when needed. For example, does a “constitutionally limited government” allow the economy to be dominated by giant corporations? Does “fiscal responsibility” mean that the U.S. should spend hundreds of billions of dollars annually on foreign wars? Does “free markets” mean that Wall Street should be allowed to do whatever it wants, whenever it wants? The answers to these questions, according to the National Tea Party Federation, will all be YES!
How can we be sure? The website announcing the new federation lists a number of Tea Party “allies” and “support groups.” Many of these groups are corporate-dominated front groups such as Freedom Works and Americans for Prosperity — two groups who’ve relentlessly promoted the Tea Party movement with massive resources. Not listed as an “ally” is the super-rich Koch family, which has also poured giant resources towards boosting the Tea Partiers. Fox News and other corporate media outlets, too, are non-official Tea Party “support groups.”
What are the goals of these corporate groups? Profits for corporations, at whatever the cost to the rest of us. And because they all subscribe to corporate ideology, the investments in the Tea Party come with strings attached. So what do the corporations and super-rich want from the Tea Party in return? Glenn Beck gives the most specific answers to this question.
Beck is a right-wing populist who supports the Tea Party via his television show on Fox News. At the same time, he dedicates much of his time to “educate” his supporters as to who their enemies are. In no particular order: Obama, labor unions, working class organizations like ACORN, “progressives,” “social justice” advocates, and “socialists” and “Marxists.” For Beck, all of these constituencies are the same and equally involved in an absurdly complicated conspiracy to “destroy America.” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJDDvyAQO6s&feature=related)
The fact that this fanatic rant is being broadcast internationally is very telling, hinting that Beck’s corporate sponsors have crossed the political Rubicon onto territory dominated by the extreme right wing.
Beck, along with his other right-wing colleagues, are reviving the putrid American tradition of Communist witch hunts and McCarthy-style red-baiting. Such tactics are used in times of social unrest, where the corporate elite needs both distraction and excuses for persecuting anyone who challenges corporate rule.
Beck’s attempt to denounce labor unions — especially the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) — and other working-class organizations as “Marxists” and “extremists” is not an accident. Some sections of the U.S. corporate elite view these groups as having too much power, especially in the context of the still-continuing Great Recession.
For example, U.S. corporations are intent on continuing — and even expanding — foreign wars, low taxes for the wealthy, and when needed, further bank/corporate bailouts. These policies are incompatible with the current expenditures on social services, education, and Social Security and Medicare — thus the gigantic and expanding U.S. deficit.
There has been enormous talk in the corporate media about dealing with this problem by cutting back Medicare and Social Security (Obama’s health care bill reduces Medicare by $500 billion). Likewise, Obama’s education plan, Race to the Top, is designed as a massive attack on public education. Social services in general are also being targeted.
The strongest defenders of these social programs are the groups that Beck routinely denounces. Unions and progressive groups are viewed by the corporate elite as obstacles, which need to be weakened or removed so that a solidly corporate agenda can be pursued. Beck is preparing public opinion to accept any harm that may come to labor and progressive groups — by individuals or the government — by routinely condemning them as America’s enemies.
Beck’s preaching can be referred to as a form of “fascist ideology.” The most defining element of fascist movements and governments is their destruction of working-class organizations: both Mussolini and Hitler outlawed and smashed the labor unions and Left organizations, allowing their own corporate sponsors a conflict-free environment to make profits.
Fascism becomes a social force when society is ridden with class conflict, when income inequality soars, and when corporations and the working class and the unemployed cannot find a stable equilibrium during prolonged economic crisis. Fascism comes onto the scene to aid the very wealthy with brute force, while creating new organizations and political parties to pursue a radically right-wing path outside of the existing political structures (tea partiers seem split between forming a new party or attempting to further radicalize the Republicans).
One way that Beck helps the super-rich is by confusing the word “property” and “wealth redistribution.” Beck never ceases to explain that progressives and socialists want to “redistribute wealth,” while always ignoring the fact that there are two types of wealth: the corporate wealth of the very rich and the insignificant/non-existent wealth of the majority of Americans. Many Americans would agree that the “property” of the giant corporations and Wall Street could be “re-distributed” to the working class, or better yet, run as public utilities for social need, not for private profit. Such confusion is only one way that Beck mis-educates and sows confusion and fear for his corporate donors.
Fortunately, labor activists and some union leaders are starting to catch on to the danger that Beck and the corporate sponsors of the Tea Party represent. For starters, labor unions and progressive groups are organizing a tax day protest — not in opposition to the corporate media-advertised Tea Party tax day protests, but above it.
For example, the Tea Party anti-tax protests are simply “against taxes.” Instead, unions are demanding that we “tax Wall Street.” Labor’s message is superior; it takes sides, whereas the Tea Party’s vagueness is its weakness.
This weakness must be further exploited. A tax day protest against Wall Street is a positive message, but it’s not enough. A campaign must be waged by labor and community groups to demand massive job creation, to be paid for by the rich and corporations. If specific demands like these are raised in mass demonstrations, the Tea Party’s blathering against “government” in general will seem far less inspiring.
Also, labor taking the streets with its own demands will compel the Labor Movement into opposition to the Obama administration and its own corporate backers — something some labor leaders resist like the plague. But such a break is necessary if organized labor is to receive mass support from working people in general, since right-wingers like Beck earn populist points by pointing out Obama’s corporate-friendly policies like bank bailouts and corporate health care.
The sooner that labor becomes an independent force in national politics, the more difficult the Tea Party will find in gathering popular support. The extreme right is only in its infantile stage of development. This growth will be stunted if labor wages a strong campaign in the streets for jobs at the expense of the rich and corporations. Waging a half-hearted campaign will have the exact opposite effect.
Shamus Cooke is a social service worker, trade unionist, and writer for Workers Action (www.workerscompass.org). He can be reached at shamuscooke@gmail.com
Last night after waiting 2 hours on my feet to ask the Candidates a question Pat Miller of the MSM Media Radio Station WOWO decided to cut off questions and ignored my hand being raised and standing along with all the others before me. This is another fine example of how my rights have been and continue to be violated to this very day. I was refused my right to Free Speech and Freedom of the Press. Only a 150 people showed up and 30 of them were Candidates running for office including myself. So the actual number of citizens was lower.
I was even told that if wasn't for me emailing the news of this event to my local Campaign for Liberty Group they wold have never heard of the Event.
I haven't found anything on Wane TV News yet on what the Candidates said or even any video coverage to let the public even hear the next possible Senator voices to be Heard.
So not only was my voice silenced last night, now facts point out the News Channel that covered the event aren't even letting the Senatorial Candidates voices be heard by the all the people either, because there is no unedited undoctored live video coverage yet published.
If this is all the GOP can do in trying to win over voters during this Election. Then they are gonna end up failing in November because of the same Old Gatekeepers in the GOP who refuse us Voters to Speak.
Once again I have been cheated out of my vote and the ability to probe those who are wanting my vote because I wasn't allowed to see what these political Hacks offer that Represents Me.
One thing is for sure that since those GOP Gate Keepers who have the power to Rule over everyone with their Microphones, it is gonna be coming to end, once we fix this Problem and Kick out the GOP Gate Keepers who continue to ignore our Anger.
I waited 2 hours on my feet to ask be able to ask at least one question and I was tossing around what would be the most important issue that I wanted to knwo where the Candidates stood on.
So my question was gonna involve where they Stood on the New World Order and the Global Government Conspiracy.
Needless to say, I got my point across after blowing my lid and creating a scene.
They even threatened to call the police if I didn't shut up.
But not one word from anyone on supporting my right to freedom to speak and Freedom to Express my self without fear of threats or getting arrested again for speaking out, when told not to.
PBN8510IN
NEIN Field Reporter
neverknwo
http://nevernwo.blogspot.com/
Racist Provocateur Posing As Tea Partier Threatens To Shoot Obama
Either the feds are up to their old tricks again or the “crash the tea party” punks have taken things too far
Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
Thursday, April 15, 2010
Either the feds are up to their old tricks again or some of the individuals behind the “crash the tea party” campaign are taking things too far – Muskogee Tea Party leader Jamison Faught received a call yesterday from a man who tried to get him to agree to shooting the President, a clear attempt at entrapment as anarchists prepare to stage false flags at today’s tax rallies in an effort to frame the Tea Party movement as violent racists.
“Law-abiding Tea Partiers are apparently being infiltrated and made to look extreme,” writes Andrew W. Griffin of the Oklahoma Watchdog. “Growing evidence points to provocateurs that bring to mind the protests of the Vietnam War era and COINTELPRO.”
As we have been tracking, with the establishment media drooling at the prospect of mayhem and violence during this week’s tax protests, so that they can finally ally their baseless rhetoric about the vast majority of Tea Party members being violent extremists and racists with something tangibly shocking, so-called anarchists soon arrived on the scene to announce that they would infiltrate and pose as Tea Partiers before carrying out false flag incidents to portray the Tea Party movement as dangerous bigots.
Now the dirty tricks have intensified, with provocateurs posing as violent racists calling for assassination attempts against the President and attempting to get Tea Party leaders to agree with their rhetoric.
Would a genuine racist with any remaining intellect deliberately broadcast his desire to shoot the President, knowing that Faught would immediately report him to the authorities?Oklahoma Watchdog received a tip Wednesday noting that a Tea Party activist, Jamison Faught, with the Muskogee Tea Party, had received a call from a man threatening violence at their Thursday Tea Party in Muskogee.
Faught said the man – using a blocked phone number – called him asking him if he was the head of the Muskogee Tea Party. He said he was.
“He then asked, ‘Can I bring my gun?’ I told him I didn’t think it would be a good idea in light of the shooting at the mall this past Saturday,” Faught said. “He then said, ‘Don’t you think someone should shoot the president?’”
Alarmed by the direction the conversation was going and what the man was saying, Faught said gun violence is not necessary and that the Tea Party advocates changing things at the ballot box. The caller said he “wanted to shoot somebody” and then said that the Second Amendment – the Right to Bear Arms – was “all about shooting n*ggers.”
“That’s when I hung up,” Faught said. He said they shared this information with the Muskogee County Sheriff, the District Attorney’s office, the U.S. Marshals and the Muskogee Police Department.
“There are people out there who want to portray the Tea Parties as racist,” Faught said. “That they are against African-Americans and the federal government. We’re not.”
Invoking violence and attempting to get the intended target of your sting to agree is a favorite tactic of the feds every time they attempt to radicalize and bust some two-bit retarded militia or Muslim group, but this could just have easily been an adherent of the “crash the tea party” initiative, whose founder preaches non-violence but whose members subscribe to the opposite. It could have been a genuine Tea Partier, since any movement comprised of millions of people is bound to contain at least some fruitbats, but with all the hype surrounding violence and promises on behalf of anarchists to stage false flags while posing as Tea Partiers, the most likely culprit is clearly one of the former two groups.
Remember, it was the feds, paid for with your tax dollars, who directed phony right-wing radio host Hal Turner to make death threats against federal judges in Illinois and lawmakers in Connecticut.
The supposed white supremacist worked for the agency from 2002 until 2007. “His job was basically to publish information which would cause other parties to act in a manner which would lead to their arrest,” Michael Orozco told the Associated Press.
As Griffin points out, the fact that the call was put through to a leading Tea Party representative in Oklahoma, the same location as the 1995 Oklahoma City Bombing, perpetrated by the FBI-directed patsy Timothy McVeigh, allied with the recent controversy surrounding efforts to create a volunteer Oklahoma militia to counter growing federal power in the state, strongly suggests that this was some kind of attempted set-up that would have been used to provoke authorities into crushing the Tea Party movement in Oklahoma.
As we reported yesterday, the Oath Keepers organization was forced to withdraw from a “Restore the Constitution” rally in Virginia because participants in the march were spewing violent rhetoric and threatening to brandish guns during the event, which is precisely what the establishment media wants to see so they can exploit such scenes to demonize Constitutionalists as unhinged extremists with gun fetishes.
With Crash the Tea Party leader Jason Levin having apparently organized leaders across 65 cities to coordinate the plan to “infiltrate and dismantle” the Tea Party rallies, we can expect all manner of dirty tricks to be played during today’s events, but the acid test on whether they have any impact will be down to how genuine tea partiers react and whether or not the corporate media takes the bait.
The Axiom For Liberty blog has put together a useful guide on how to deal with provocateurs in the event of them attempting to cause mayhem at today’s protests. The key thing is to never lose your temper and always keep the anarchists, feds, or whomever they be me within the confines of a camera lens so that their false flags can be exposed for all to see.
Tax Day Protests In US Called 'Low-Grade Civil War'
Tensions are rising between tea party supporters and liberal activists as tax-day protests get under way. More likely than violence, though, is debate about what the phrase ‘real American’ means.
*
An Obama supporter at the edge of the crowd gets into an argument with 'tea party' supporters at a rally in Boston Wednesday. The Tea Party Express ended its cross-country tour in Boston, where Sarah Palin was a guest speaker.
This year, things are looking a little dicier.
In towns large and small on Thursday, which is tax day, tea partyers are planning to march against big government – and the rhetoric is getting heated as counterdemonstrators mobilize. Some agents provocateurs say they’ll crash the tea parties, and the threat of fisticuffs and worse is hanging in the air.
Both sides have been fueled by the Internet's churning of partisan, even extreme, politics. One commenter, a tea-party supporter, recently warned of a looming "low-grade civil war.”
But evidence, political scientists say, shows that political conflict rarely erupts in the United States once protesters and counterprotesters are actually toe-to-toe. In fact, partisans meeting on the street – away from their keyboards, TVs, and radios – may have a moderating effect.
"Mainstream politics is sort of like listening to two lawyers arguing, while [political outsiders] sound more like two guys getting ready for a bar fight," says political scientist Charles Franklin at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. "If opposition rallies start showing up or infiltrating the tea party, you do run the risk of fisticuffs. But you might have the opposite effect: If we're face to face, I might not actually punch you in the nose."
Yet the tension is palpable.
Crashing the tea party
A group called Crash the Tea Party is recruiting activists from New Hampshire to California to infiltrate hundreds of planned tea-party events. It’s urging activists to hold up racist signs in order to paint the movement in a negative light.
Tea partyers say they'll bring video cameras to root out any imposters.
In North Carolina, a new state regulation bans flags and signs from being carried on poles. This means that tax protesters can wave objects only as big as the flags handed out at a Fourth of July parade. According to state officials, the rule was put into place last September to prevent ralliers from inadvertently injuring one another.
But others suspect that the measure is aimed at suppressing intentional violence. Raleigh’s News & Observer writes, "The ban comes as, elsewhere in the nation, demonstrations have become heated and raucous."
"It's sad our country has come to this," Laura Long, who applied for a permit for a tea-party rally on Thursday, told the N&O.
Reports from New Orleans that a couple attending the Southern Republican Leadership Conference in the city was beaten up for wearing Sarah Palin pins were wrong. But that didn't stop Internet commenters from sensing a looming battle.
"If i am attacked at a rally ... someone will end up in their grave.... ENOUGH IS ENOUGH!!!!!" writes a commenter at the conservative Gateway Pundit blog.
Skip to next paragraph
And the Sooner Tea Party group in Oklahoma made news this week when it announced it was getting help from legislators to start a state-sanctioned militia to protect residents from illegal federal encroachment and in anticipation of civil breakdown.
Then again, not all threats are rhetorical, as this street fight in Florida last year shows.
Liberal activists say tea partyers ratcheted up the threat when they began carrying guns to protests. The counterprotesters have also been motivated by the provocative signs and rude epithets allegedly hurled by some tea-party members.
On liberal blogs, the phrase "violent racist teabaggers" occurs time and again.
"I predict the ... teabaggers will defeat themselves, and take down the Repubs with them. Then again never underestimate the power of stupid people in large numbers," writes a commenter on the progressive Truthout site.
The impact of agents provocateurs
Ultimately, agents provocateurs seldom make an impact, says Mr. Franklin, who is co-founder of Pollster.com. He points to Rush Limbaugh's exhortations for conservatives to vote in Democratic primaries during the 2008 presidential election. Such votes were essentially a nonfactor.
"Ultimately, the way the progressives win against the tea party is more through mainstream political action and less through tricks at campaign rallies," he says.
At a tea-party rally Wednesday morning in Boston, featuring Ms. Palin, liberal activists waving pro-Obama posters were keen to provide counterweight to a tea-party movement that polls show is itself becoming more mainstream. But the passion never devolved to violence.
Scattered in small clumps throughout the crowd, tea-party opponents reported receiving mixed reactions from rally attendees, says the Monitor's Will Buchanan, who was on the scene. Obama supporter Annie Reed of Brookline, Mass., for one, said she was called at various points a "communist" and "America hater." Someone suggested that she move to Russia.
But for others, the rally was an opportunity for constructive political discourse. One man in the crowd engaged several tea partyers in a measured back-and-forth discussion about the definition of patriotism and what "real American" means.
As for displays of anger and rudeness, something the tea-party movement has been criticized for, liberals in Boston showed they can dish it out, too. Derogatory statements about Palin were in evidence on signs and T-shirts sported by the counterprotesters.
Hating the government finally goes mainstream
By: Chris Stirewalt
Political Editor
April 15, 2010
Today, he is in a statistical tie with President Obama in 2012 polling. His son, an ophthalmologist who has never run for elective office, is well ahead of not only the GOP's handpicked candidate for Senate in Kentucky but also both Democratic contenders -- all statewide officeholders.
What happened? Did America suddenly develop an insatiable appetite for 74-year-old, cranky congressmen from Texas? Is the gold standard catching on?
Racist Provocateur Posing As Tea Partier Threatens To Shoot Obama
Either the feds are up to their old tricks again or the “crash the tea party” punks have taken things too far
Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
Thursday, April 15, 2010
Either the feds are up to their old tricks again or some of the individuals behind the “crash the tea party” campaign are taking things too far – Muskogee Tea Party leader Jamison Faught received a call yesterday from a man who tried to get him to agree to shooting the President, a clear attempt at entrapment as anarchists prepare to stage false flags at today’s tax rallies in an effort to frame the Tea Party movement as violent racists.
“Law-abiding Tea Partiers are apparently being infiltrated and made to look extreme,” writes Andrew W. Griffin of the Oklahoma Watchdog. “Growing evidence points to provocateurs that bring to mind the protests of the Vietnam War era and COINTELPRO.”
As we have been tracking, with the establishment media drooling at the prospect of mayhem and violence during this week’s tax protests, so that they can finally ally their baseless rhetoric about the vast majority of Tea Party members being violent extremists and racists with something tangibly shocking, so-called anarchists soon arrived on the scene to announce that they would infiltrate and pose as Tea Partiers before carrying out false flag incidents to portray the Tea Party movement as dangerous bigots.
Now the dirty tricks have intensified, with provocateurs posing as violent racists calling for assassination attempts against the President and attempting to get Tea Party leaders to agree with their rhetoric.
Would a genuine racist with any remaining intellect deliberately broadcast his desire to shoot the President, knowing that Faught would immediately report him to the authorities?Oklahoma Watchdog received a tip Wednesday noting that a Tea Party activist, Jamison Faught, with the Muskogee Tea Party, had received a call from a man threatening violence at their Thursday Tea Party in Muskogee.
Faught said the man – using a blocked phone number – called him asking him if he was the head of the Muskogee Tea Party. He said he was.
“He then asked, ‘Can I bring my gun?’ I told him I didn’t think it would be a good idea in light of the shooting at the mall this past Saturday,” Faught said. “He then said, ‘Don’t you think someone should shoot the president?’”
Alarmed by the direction the conversation was going and what the man was saying, Faught said gun violence is not necessary and that the Tea Party advocates changing things at the ballot box. The caller said he “wanted to shoot somebody” and then said that the Second Amendment – the Right to Bear Arms – was “all about shooting n*ggers.”
“That’s when I hung up,” Faught said. He said they shared this information with the Muskogee County Sheriff, the District Attorney’s office, the U.S. Marshals and the Muskogee Police Department.
“There are people out there who want to portray the Tea Parties as racist,” Faught said. “That they are against African-Americans and the federal government. We’re not.”
Invoking violence and attempting to get the intended target of your sting to agree is a favorite tactic of the feds every time they attempt to radicalize and bust some two-bit retarded militia or Muslim group, but this could just have easily been an adherent of the “crash the tea party” initiative, whose founder preaches non-violence but whose members subscribe to the opposite. It could have been a genuine Tea Partier, since any movement comprised of millions of people is bound to contain at least some fruitbats, but with all the hype surrounding violence and promises on behalf of anarchists to stage false flags while posing as Tea Partiers, the most likely culprit is clearly one of the former two groups.
Remember, it was the feds, paid for with your tax dollars, who directed phony right-wing radio host Hal Turner to make death threats against federal judges in Illinois and lawmakers in Connecticut.
The supposed white supremacist worked for the agency from 2002 until 2007. “His job was basically to publish information which would cause other parties to act in a manner which would lead to their arrest,” Michael Orozco told the Associated Press.
As Griffin points out, the fact that the call was put through to a leading Tea Party representative in Oklahoma, the same location as the 1995 Oklahoma City Bombing, perpetrated by the FBI-directed patsy Timothy McVeigh, allied with the recent controversy surrounding efforts to create a volunteer Oklahoma militia to counter growing federal power in the state, strongly suggests that this was some kind of attempted set-up that would have been used to provoke authorities into crushing the Tea Party movement in Oklahoma.
As we reported yesterday, the Oath Keepers organization was forced to withdraw from a “Restore the Constitution” rally in Virginia because participants in the march were spewing violent rhetoric and threatening to brandish guns during the event, which is precisely what the establishment media wants to see so they can exploit such scenes to demonize Constitutionalists as unhinged extremists with gun fetishes.
With Crash the Tea Party leader Jason Levin having apparently organized leaders across 65 cities to coordinate the plan to “infiltrate and dismantle” the Tea Party rallies, we can expect all manner of dirty tricks to be played during today’s events, but the acid test on whether they have any impact will be down to how genuine tea partiers react and whether or not the corporate media takes the bait.
The Axiom For Liberty blog has put together a useful guide on how to deal with provocateurs in the event of them attempting to cause mayhem at today’s protests. The key thing is to never lose your temper and always keep the anarchists, feds, or whomever they be me within the confines of a camera lens so that their false flags can be exposed for all to see.
Tax Day Protests In US Called 'Low-Grade Civil War'
Tensions are rising between tea party supporters and liberal activists as tax-day protests get under way. More likely than violence, though, is debate about what the phrase ‘real American’ means.
*
An Obama supporter at the edge of the crowd gets into an argument with 'tea party' supporters at a rally in Boston Wednesday. The Tea Party Express ended its cross-country tour in Boston, where Sarah Palin was a guest speaker.
This year, things are looking a little dicier.
In towns large and small on Thursday, which is tax day, tea partyers are planning to march against big government – and the rhetoric is getting heated as counterdemonstrators mobilize. Some agents provocateurs say they’ll crash the tea parties, and the threat of fisticuffs and worse is hanging in the air.
Both sides have been fueled by the Internet's churning of partisan, even extreme, politics. One commenter, a tea-party supporter, recently warned of a looming "low-grade civil war.”
But evidence, political scientists say, shows that political conflict rarely erupts in the United States once protesters and counterprotesters are actually toe-to-toe. In fact, partisans meeting on the street – away from their keyboards, TVs, and radios – may have a moderating effect.
"Mainstream politics is sort of like listening to two lawyers arguing, while [political outsiders] sound more like two guys getting ready for a bar fight," says political scientist Charles Franklin at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. "If opposition rallies start showing up or infiltrating the tea party, you do run the risk of fisticuffs. But you might have the opposite effect: If we're face to face, I might not actually punch you in the nose."
Yet the tension is palpable.
Crashing the tea party
A group called Crash the Tea Party is recruiting activists from New Hampshire to California to infiltrate hundreds of planned tea-party events. It’s urging activists to hold up racist signs in order to paint the movement in a negative light.
Tea partyers say they'll bring video cameras to root out any imposters.
In North Carolina, a new state regulation bans flags and signs from being carried on poles. This means that tax protesters can wave objects only as big as the flags handed out at a Fourth of July parade. According to state officials, the rule was put into place last September to prevent ralliers from inadvertently injuring one another.
But others suspect that the measure is aimed at suppressing intentional violence. Raleigh’s News & Observer writes, "The ban comes as, elsewhere in the nation, demonstrations have become heated and raucous."
"It's sad our country has come to this," Laura Long, who applied for a permit for a tea-party rally on Thursday, told the N&O.
Reports from New Orleans that a couple attending the Southern Republican Leadership Conference in the city was beaten up for wearing Sarah Palin pins were wrong. But that didn't stop Internet commenters from sensing a looming battle.
"If i am attacked at a rally ... someone will end up in their grave.... ENOUGH IS ENOUGH!!!!!" writes a commenter at the conservative Gateway Pundit blog.
Skip to next paragraph
And the Sooner Tea Party group in Oklahoma made news this week when it announced it was getting help from legislators to start a state-sanctioned militia to protect residents from illegal federal encroachment and in anticipation of civil breakdown.
Then again, not all threats are rhetorical, as this street fight in Florida last year shows.
Liberal activists say tea partyers ratcheted up the threat when they began carrying guns to protests. The counterprotesters have also been motivated by the provocative signs and rude epithets allegedly hurled by some tea-party members.
On liberal blogs, the phrase "violent racist teabaggers" occurs time and again.
"I predict the ... teabaggers will defeat themselves, and take down the Repubs with them. Then again never underestimate the power of stupid people in large numbers," writes a commenter on the progressive Truthout site.
The impact of agents provocateurs
Ultimately, agents provocateurs seldom make an impact, says Mr. Franklin, who is co-founder of Pollster.com. He points to Rush Limbaugh's exhortations for conservatives to vote in Democratic primaries during the 2008 presidential election. Such votes were essentially a nonfactor.
"Ultimately, the way the progressives win against the tea party is more through mainstream political action and less through tricks at campaign rallies," he says.
At a tea-party rally Wednesday morning in Boston, featuring Ms. Palin, liberal activists waving pro-Obama posters were keen to provide counterweight to a tea-party movement that polls show is itself becoming more mainstream. But the passion never devolved to violence.
Scattered in small clumps throughout the crowd, tea-party opponents reported receiving mixed reactions from rally attendees, says the Monitor's Will Buchanan, who was on the scene. Obama supporter Annie Reed of Brookline, Mass., for one, said she was called at various points a "communist" and "America hater." Someone suggested that she move to Russia.
But for others, the rally was an opportunity for constructive political discourse. One man in the crowd engaged several tea partyers in a measured back-and-forth discussion about the definition of patriotism and what "real American" means.
As for displays of anger and rudeness, something the tea-party movement has been criticized for, liberals in Boston showed they can dish it out, too. Derogatory statements about Palin were in evidence on signs and T-shirts sported by the counterprotesters.
Hating the government finally goes mainstream
By: Chris Stirewalt
Political Editor
April 15, 2010
Today, he is in a statistical tie with President Obama in 2012 polling. His son, an ophthalmologist who has never run for elective office, is well ahead of not only the GOP's handpicked candidate for Senate in Kentucky but also both Democratic contenders -- all statewide officeholders.
What happened? Did America suddenly develop an insatiable appetite for 74-year-old, cranky congressmen from Texas? Is the gold standard catching on?
Something Not Quite Right in the Heavens
We had another geo-magnetic solar storm which began yesterday (Wednesday) and continues today. The Kp Index measures at -5- which describes a moderate storm. (see chart below). It may have been related to sunspot 11060 which did set off a small partial-halo CME (coronal mass ejection) as it was rotating around the western limb of the Sun.
Having said this, something seems unusual with the traditional cause and effect time-linked-means associated with plasma discharge. I would suggest it is not geo-magnetic storms we have historically witnessed over the past few millennia (maybe 2000 - 3000 years), but a more galactic-driven form of charged particle discharge. In other words, I believe the initial source comes from outside our solar system. I would suggest it comes from identified - and unidentified celestial orbs.
Celestial orbs include supernovas, brown dwarfs, black holes, dark matter, plasma fields, planets, asteroids, and comets. Something within our galaxy Milky Way (and perhaps outside) appears to be the cause of recent unusual geo-magnetic storms.
Background: What Scientists Are Saying About Mitch Battros Research
Related Article: 'Cluster' Spacecraft Makes First Direct Observations of Charged Particles
Related Article: Inter-Galactic Magnetic Fields to be Measured
Related Article: Solar Explosion Tracked All The Way From The Sun To Earth
The Relationship Between the NOAA G-Scale and Kp-Scale
The Kp scale is a reasonable way to summarize the global level of geo-magnetic activity, but it has not always been easy for those affected by the space environment to understand its significance. The NOAA G-scale was designed to correspond, in a straightforward way, to the significance of effects of geomagnetic storms. We use estimates of the planetary average Kp index in our operations to determine Geo-magnetic Storm (NOAA Space Weather Scale) level, as follows:
| Kp-index | NOAA Space Weather Scale |
| Kp=5 | G1 |
| Kp=6 | G2 |
| Kp=7 | G3 |
| Kp=8 | G4 |
| Kp=9 | G5 |
Something Else Is Going On Below the Surface
As a direct cause of geomagnetic flux, something seems a bit different with the Earth's Core. The sensitivity of Earth's tectonic plates is shifting more easily as it relates to external magnetic influence as illustrated in the "Dipole" theory.
As we have seen, recent earthquake and volcanic activity has increased in size and numbers. We have also witnessed an apparent direct correlation of seismic events with geo-magnetic storms. What seems peculiar is the current rash of earthquake and volcanic activity appears to be set off by moderate magnetic fluctuations. This is to say, historically, it was during large geo-magnetic storms ranging in the M-9 to X-5 class flares which would cause havoc. Today's events are occurring during modern activity.
Related Article: Charged Particles, Earth's Core, and Earthquakes
**The question is 'Why'? - Answer Coming Next Week
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Meteors Light Up Midwest Sky
People call 911 after witnessing a meteor shower and sonic booms.
Meteors Light Up Midwest Sky
People call 911 after witnessing a meteor shower and sonic booms.
The Son of man shall send forth his angels, and they shall gather out of his kingdom all things that offend, and them which do iniquity; And shall cast them into a furnace of fire: there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth (Matthew 13:41-42).
So shall it be at the end of the world: the angels shall come forth, and sever the wicked from among the just, And shall cast them into the furnace of fire: there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth (Matthew 13:49-50).
Britain Closes Airspace as Volcanic Ash Spreads
An aerial photo shows smoke rising from the volcano under a glacier in the Eyjafjallajokull region of Iceland on Wednesday. | LONDON - British civil aviation authorities ordered the closing of the country's airspace as of noon on Thursday to shield aircraft from a high-altitude cloud of ash drifting south and east from an erupting volcano in Iceland. The plume shut down airports and forced the cancellation of hundreds of flights in a wide arc from Ireland to Scandinavia.
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