Bumped. This happens tomorrow. There was another Tea Party thread today, but not much talk about meeting up therein.

A number of people on the New York City list have asked me what official moron plan there might be for the Tea Party here on Tax Day -- Wednesday evening. (7-9pm at City Hall Park.) The answer? I don't know. But I thought we should have a thread here to talk about meeting at this and other Tea Party events around the country this week, and Ace agreed.

Information about the New York event is here. One of the listers had what seemed to me an excellent suggestion for an after-event meetup location (not the official afterparty), and if you want to be added to the NYC list discussing this stuff you can email me.

thanks to Iskandar: national Tax Day Tea Party site.

As for myself, I'm honestly not sure yet if I'll go. First, I'm paranoid about my identity and don't deal well with public events. Second, Newt is the featured speaker, which I'm not sure is a good idea. Still, it seems to me that the event may be bigger than either Newt or myself (or its detractors in the blogosphere who should know better), and it could be a good occasion to meet or recruit more morons.

In any case, talk amongst yourselves. I'll bump this at some point again before the event.

(this post has the Ewok seal of approval)

Posted by: Open Blog at 06:04 PM | Comments (2)
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Headline tastelessly stolen from the Anchoress.

I don't watch Colbert. Actually, I don't watch Comedy Central (as we all know, I am almost entirely without a sense of humor; it would be like your dog watching you load the dishwasher -- he just doesn't see the point). But this amused me.

Check it out below the fold; then click over to the Anchoress who had some more substantive comments. more...

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 04:58 PM | Add Comment
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Given that DHS secretary Janet Napolitano is hard on the case branding anyone who expresses the slightest disagreement with the Obama administration as a potential domestic terrorist, how about we talk about this story.

Because, you see, administration dogs are all in the news today. And decisions concerning actual administration dogs have led to some concrete actions by groups linked to actual domestic terrorists. But then, why should we hope that our DHS Secretary's would place an emphasis on the actual over the theoretical anyway? That's just crazy talk.

From the story:

"I thought when Joe Biden bought a puppy from me, what an honor," Brown told the Daily Local News. "Out of millions of breeders in the country, in the world, he picked me."

That was December.

When the story got out, Brown faced backlash from pet lovers who thought the Bidens should have opted for a shelter over a breeder to find their new puppy.
PETA seized the moment as an opportunity to blame the killing of shelter animals on people who buy from breeders. The organization's TV commercial, "Buy One, Get One Killed" ran in Delaware after the Biden puppy story made headlines.

Dog wardens from the state showed up at Brown's Wolf Den kennel, repeatedly, for inspections. "I was cited for a piece of kibble on the floor and five strands of dog hair. They took a picture of that, they walked around, snapped pictures and don't tell you why," Brown told the newspaper.

She was found "not guilty" for each citation, but hiring a lawyer for the court hearings has cost her $4,000 so far in legal fees.

Brown says she and Biden both received death threats from animal activists.

Hmm....Opposition to the actions of a high ranking administration official? Check. Single issue advocates? Check. Casual issuing of death threats? Check. History of funding extremist organizations? Check. Frequent use of government agents to intimidate and harass lawful actors? Actually, the DHS didn't seem to bring that tactic up. Perhaps they want to preserve some "flexibility" in their definitions.

Obviously, there is a lot of nuance involved in being a DHS appointee. Then again, maybe it isn't that at all.

Maybe since Jan 20, the place has just gone to the dogs.

Posted by: Jack M. at 03:03 PM | Comments (1)
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"Bo," actually, supposedly after Diddly, but as a comoron pointed out, that name just happens to contain The Narcissistic One's initials.

The media are going berserk. Why, he's just like the rest of us!!!

Bush had a dog, too. Didn't seem to get much press. The difference? Obama's dog has bulging biceps and a fashion style that makes Audrey Hepburn look like a crackwhore's fluffer.

The Watch-Dog Media: So kdabear dubs them.

Posted by: Ace at 01:11 PM | Add Comment
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Dated from March 30, but I don't remember seeing it. Old but somehow new?

A group of Iranian missile experts is in North Korea to help Pyongyang prepare for a missile launch intended to challenge US President Barack Obama as he attends the G20 summit in London.

North Korea has said it will launch a communications satellite over northern Japan between Saturday and the following Wednesday, and Japanese media reports yesterday said a 15-strong Iranian delegation had been in the country since the beginning of this month.

The Iranian party includes senior officials with Iranian rocket and satellite producer Shahid Hemmat Industrial Group, the reports said.

The Iranians brought a letter from President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il stressing the importance of co-operating on space technology.

And how is Obama's tough, smart diplomacy doing with the Mullahs? Awesome, thanks for asking! Obama's not imposing preconditions on the mullahs but they're imposing preconditions on him: They want the idea that they'll suspend enrichment during the early phases of negotiations scrapped, before they even begin negotiating at all. And the O-Team is considering it, which means they've already decided to make the concession.

Thanks to Anti-Harkonen Freedom Fighter Geoff for the old-but-new tip.

And Even More Diplomacy: North Korea walks away from six party talks.

Gee, one would almost begin to suspect these people aren't interested in talking to come to any resolution, but simply talking and talking and talking as a stalling tactic.

Posted by: Ace at 01:04 PM | Comments (2)
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After weeks of a near-blackout of coverage, the WaP finally reports on "Genital Integrity Awareness Week."

If you rely on the mainstream media, then much of what you’ve just read truly is news. The tea parties have only gotten passing mention on the major broadcast news shows. Papers like The New York Times and Washington Post would rather cover just about anything than a conservative protest. The Times preferred to regale readers with the “significance of the tea ceremony in Japan” instead of telling them the significance of tea protest in the United States.

The Post has completely ignored tea party events in recent weeks, but it’s there for meaningless demonstrations like “Genital Integrity Awareness Week.” (Such is the state of modern media that they need a week to find that which the lord gave them.) The Style section delivered a protest story involving "about 50 people" opposed to male circumcision. The event was typical Post fodder, lacking only the “Free Mumia” idiots who usually abound in left-wing gatherings. I guess it’s only natural that the Post would rather cover 50 penis protesters than thousands in an actual tax demonstration. Given how much they cover Congress, they are uniquely familiar with the subject of the first protest and care little about the second.

Even CNBC, which helped make the “Chicago tea party” an idea that the White House had to address, has slinked away from the battle. Santelli cancelled his scheduled appearance with Jon Stewart and the network itself has made a major left turn by adding analyst Howard Dean and getting Huffington Post founder Arianna Huffington to host “Squawk Box.” Almost over night, CNBC’s star attraction Jim Cramer went from comparing Obama to Lenin in January to saying he was “pro-shareholder” two months later. Apparently somebody at GE wants CNBC to be more like MSNBC.

But a news blackout wonÂ’t stop the tea parties. They are just getting started. The April 15 event is only round two of 10 planned rounds of butt-kicking activism. Round three, fittingly, is on July 4. On tax day, we get to remind Washington that we pay the bills for all of their pork-barrel spending. On Independence Day, we get to remind them that we can vote them out just as easily as they were voted in.

In case you don't know, you can still find a local tea party to attend for Tax Day at, erm, Tax Day Tea Party dot com.

I mean, assuming you can fit in an appearance between your anti-male-circumcision protests.

Keep your agenda off my pudenda!

Whose glans? Our glans!

Whose glans? Our glans!

One two three foyle,

we don't want your racist moyle!

Related: Left wetting themselves at notion that anyone but Mumia stooges and black-masked leftwing anarchists could possibly do the heavy organizing to meet at a specified location at a specified time and protest.

Surely there must be some rightwing conspirizing afoot. People on the right... couldn't possibly accomplish such tasks without Karl Rove's (Blessed Be His Santanic Majesty) guidance.

It's like that moment in Aliens when the "animals" demonstrate they know how to open doors. Scary shit, if you believe conservatives are actually capable of learning.

But of course we're not. We're uneducated, angry, and easily led, as the Washington Post famously opined in the nineties. There are unseen Cigarette Smoking Men behind it all.

Posted by: Ace at 11:11 AM | Add Comment
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The Times reported, in a breathless bit of boosterism by headline, Obama Wins Cheers from Troops.

But he hadn't won those cheers. He already had those cheers, because the soldiers chosen to meet him were screened to insure they were Obama voters.

Thanks to EdwardR.

Posted by: Ace at 11:03 AM | Add Comment
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Of course, of course. Why wouldn't he be?

President Barack Obama’s controversial appointee to the White House faith-based advisory council -- a professed gay Christian who has called the pope a “discredited leader” -- continues to rile conservatives.

...

Knox comes to the administration from the Human Rights Campaign, a homosexual advocacy group. His recent comments to a San Francisco-based gay newspaper have prompted much of the concern.

Last month, the Bay Area Reporter quoted Knox as criticizing the Knights of Columbus for supporting California’s Proposition 8, a voter-approved constitutional amendment defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman. Knox told the newspaper that the Knights of Columbus “followed discredited leaders,” including Roman Catholic bishops and Pope Benedict XVI.

...

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, a recent Catholic convert, said the Knox appointment is part of Obama’s “intensely secular” and “anti-religious” agenda.

“Why would you put an anti-religious, left-wing zealot on a faith-based council?” Gingrich asked on Fox News last week. “It’s a perfect pattern for this administration.”

There's nothing wrong with this guy serving in the administration in some capacity. But he's in a position where he's supposed to be networking with actual, you know, established churches and religions, not tiny apostate Faith of One Man religions.

But he's the guy Obama needs connecting with the Catholic Church on charitable partnerships. Another case where The Great Transcender chooses to stick a thumb in the eye of traditionalists in order to deliver the left a political payoff. And here he's directly undermining the entire mission of the council involved, which is charged with promoting religious charity and recoverry programs, not with advancing the gay marriage agenda.

Posted by: Ace at 11:00 AM | Comments (2)
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Ah, the perils of declaring victory too early.

Somali pirates captured four more ships and took more than 60 crew members hostage in a brazen hijacking spree Â…

Despite MullenÂ’s confident statement and President Barack ObamaÂ’s warning of further U.S. action, Somali pirates captured two more nautical trophies Tuesday to match the two ships they seized a day or two earlier.

The ships aren't American, which may be intentional but is likely coincidental. Many American-owned ships are flagged to another country, as was the case of the hostage standoff pirating.

I'll start the Olbermann-esque clock:

It has been one day since Barack Obama declared the oceans safe for commercial shipping.*

* Okay, he didn't say that. But then, Bush didn't say the War in Iraq was over, either, but it's been claimed he did ever since.

Certainly Obama was suddenly willing to appear in public and bask in the heroic glow of other men's decisions and other men's actions.

Posted by: Ace at 10:24 AM | Comments (3)
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Whoops: Gabe posted the main thing. Still, I like Frum's point.

A report titled "Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment," which seems to have been inspired by, or timed to coincide with, the the national tax-day tea party tomorrow.

Rightwing extremism in the United States can be broadly divided into those groups, movements, and adherents that are primarily hate-oriented (based on hatred of particular religious, racial or ethnic groups), and those that are mainly antigovernment, rejecting federal authority in favor of state or local authority, or rejecting government authority entirely. It may include groups and individuals that are dedicated to a single issue, such as opposition to abortion or immigration.

The Obama Administration doesn't seem particularly cautious about defining an entire political party, representing somewhere between 46% and 52% of the country, as "rightwing extremist." While they take pains to understand the Iranian Mullahs, they seem to take no such pains understanding half the country.

Preferring instead to simply call them potential terrorists.

Gee, I wonder where these people are getting the idea that their liberties are in jeopardy.

Before David Frum goes over the rails with yet another attack on Glenn Beck, he makes some good points.

1) It's disturbing that an administration that is busily downgrading and euphemizing the threat from Islamic extremist terrorism (sorry: "man-made disasters" to use the now preferred term) would redirect its energies from a global threat to national security to a handful of creeps, weirdos, and malcontents skulking in the mountains.

2) On the evidence of the past decade, violence by maladjusted immigrants represents a much greater threat to innocent life than nativist violence against immigrants, as incidents like the Los Angeles Airport gun attack.
the Virginia Tech massacre, the Santa Clara mass family killing, the Binghamton NY rampage. and many others remind us.

3) After eight years of listening to Democrats complain about the Bush administrationÂ’s alleged exploitation of actual terrorism for political purposes, it is grimly ironic to see the Obama administration preparing to exploit hypothetical terrorism. In this, it is taking a leaf from the bad example of the Clinton administration, which cynically attempted to link congressional Republicans to the Oklahoma City bombing in its 1996 re-election strategy.

He pretty much takes those points back by saying "I'd like to say those things, but I can't, because Glenn Beck is a clear and present danger to the Constitution." Or words to that effect.

But I don't care what he might take back or not. They're good points.

Thanks to JackM. for the Frum-bait, and Instapundit for the link to Legal Insurrection.

Just Checking: Are the various black-masked anarchists who periodically shut down cities and throw heavy rocks at police "leftwing extremists"?

No?

Funny how the inconvenient members of the left are never included in the ranks of the left. They're just "nuts," apparently, without any general political sympathies towards one more-respectable branch of political thinking.

Unlike skinheads and survival fantasists, who are definitely "rightwing."

I'm Told... that Janet Reno issued a similar report soon after the Oklahoma City Bombing. If anyone finds that, please email it to me.

Posted by: Ace at 09:40 AM | Comments (8)
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