T.E.A. Parties

It’s tax day. Hopefully you aren’t going to be up at midnight dropping your taxes off at the post office or trying to work through the electronic traffic jam submitting them on-line. Personally, I am very proud of myself, I am expecting my refund any day now. This is a personal best for me having done all of my information gathering in March!

And there was much rejoicing… yeah.

In any case, if you have all of your papers in order and have already completed your filing, you may be free for a party, a T.E.A. party that is (Taxed Enough Already). During the height of the stimulus nonsense, Rich Santelli stood on the floor of the Chicago exchange and worked the traders in the vicinity into a frenzy over the government using tax money to bail out banks and bad mortgages. As part of the rant he called for another Boston Tea Party. Some people thought that was a good idea. Today, all around the country there will be hundreds (estimates go as high as 2000) of TEA Parties in different locations, usually staged near state capitols, city halls, or other prominent government buildings.

If you would like to participate at a rally near you, there are several places that you can go. Freedom Works has a good map of them, although no site is going to have a exhaustive list, since there really isn’t any central organizing behind this. It’s just more of a grassroots movement that caught on. If you are already planning on going and want to take your digital camera with you, maybe your Blackberry or I Phone and do some Twittering from the rally, PJTV.com is signing up “citizen journalists” to help cover the different events. PJTV.com (Pajamas Media) is also a good place to get the real and latest story on all of the protests since they will be covering it extensively today.

Some have been skeptical that the main stream press is going to cover these events. I would disagree entirely. I think they will be well covered. Not to get the message out that people are upset about the government spending 90% over budget, but as a follow up to a story that ran yesterday. The Dept. of Homeland Security released a report discussing how the recession and the fact that we have our first black president, were fueling “right wing radicals”. Kind of odd to me that this report would come out right before protests that have been planned for weeks.

The sad thing is that the ‘report’ is not based on any facts. Where are the attacks by “right wing radicals”? What groups specifically are growing during this turbulent time? There are no specifics about any groups. No numbers. Nothing to back up the claims. They also single out returning military veterans as possible targets for these right wing militia types, after all, everyone in the military is a stupid hick anyway, right? Bunch of violent, uneducated, racists. That’s why they got “stuck in Iraq”(to quote former presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry) in the first place.

This report is ridiculous and shameful; evidenced by the fact that the White House dodged questions about it and reasserted their claims of supporting veterans.

The report also claimed that single, hot button issues would be used for recruitment, things like border security and gun rights. Good. As if these two things weren’t legitimate issues? As if someone who thinks our border should be secured and protected is some type of racist zealot, or that someone who believes that the founding fathers knew what they were talking about when they wrote the Second Amendment is some type of crazed gun freak.

The protests will continue anyway. They will get slanted coverage that will minimize their numbers. The smaller protests will get coverage, while the larger protests will be ignored or downplayed, all while small numbers of “anti-protestors” or President Obama supporters will get all of the coverage. Guaranteed. Sad to see what our media has come to.

Check out PJTV.com, the Drudgereport.com, Townhall.com, Freedomworks.org, or any other crazed, right wing, radical news site. They will be giving more realistic reporting of what happened. It’s one of those far right, conservative, fundamentalist issues that we believe in… it’s called honesty.