Tea Parties - When Citizen Journalism Is The Only Outlet

"Citizen Journalist Wanted" - banner ad on PJTV - Photo Image Credit: Edmund Jenks (2009)

Tea Parties - When Citizen Journalism Is The Only Outlet

Today, April 15, 2009 … a day when all Americans are supposed to have their taxes filed with the Internal Revenue Service (headed by Timothy Geithner – a man who was allowed to cheat/then pay-up on his taxes), 750 gatherings of citizens are scheduled throughout the nation and not one mention on the front pages of Main Stream Media newspapers.

Examples:

New York Times Front Page

Image Credit: NYT.com

Boston Globe Front Page

Image Credit: Boston Globe, Online

The Los Angeles Times Front Page

Image Credit: LA Times online

Code Pink, Cindy Sheehan, A Day Without An Immigrant, Million Man March, and other demonstrations that will have way less people showing up to attend to show support in getting a message of displeasure out routinely get front page spreads and advance information as to the event(s) and what the issues of protest are about from the MSM jungle drumbeat.

This tea party movement has had no such 4th Estate involvement.

A brief history excerpted and edited from Michelle Malkin –

A Tax Day Tea Party cheat sheet: How it all started
By Michelle Malkin • April 15, 2009 08:14 AM

For the Johnny-Come-Latelys in the MSM who will be dispatched by their editors to file obligatory stories about the hundreds of Tax Day Tea Party protests across the country today, here is a cheat sheet to get you up to speed.

Feb. 15: Keli Carender, who blogs as “Liberty Belle” spread the word about a grass-roots protest she was organizing in Seattle to raise her voice against the passage of the trillion-dollar stimulus/porkulus/Generational Theft Act of 2009. It’s the first time she had ever jumped into political organizing of any kind. She is not affiliated with any “corporate lobbyist” or think tank or national taxpayers’ organization. She’s a young conservative mom who blogs. Amazingly, she turned around the event in a few days all on her own by reaching out on the Internet, to her local talk station, and to anyone who would listen.

Feb. 16: An energetic crowd of about 100 people came downtown to lambaste the Chicken Little process and the lard-up of the stimulus bill:

Word of the Seattle protest spread across the blogosphere. Readers suggested there should be a Denver protest on Feb. 17 to greet President Obama for the porkulus signing. Separately, the local chapter of Americans for Prosperity was already working to put something together on the fly. I met the head of the state AFP for the first time on the steps of the Capitol. No conspiracy here, tinfoil hatters. It was a union of like minds in an impromptu show of outrage against the legislation-without-deliberation process in Washington. Also there: Jon Caldara of the libertarian Independence Institute on one end of the spectrum and Tom Tancredo on the strict immigration enforcement end (hundreds of the protesters were mad about the absence of E-Verify standards for the stimulus funding):

On Feb. 18, 500 fed-up taxpayers showed up in Mesa, AZ to oppose President Obama’s campaign for massive expansions of the government mortgage entitlement and to mock what SC Gov. Mark Sanford rightly called savior-based economics. No top-down organization. Just the effort of local talk radio station KFYI. No Beltway GOP involvement. Zero national media coverage.

On Feb. 19, reader Amanda Grosserode e-mailed that she was organizing a tax revolt protest in Overland Park, KS the following weekend. More than 400 people showed up in freezing weather to protest Rep. Dennis Moore’s vote for the bill. Glenn Reynolds did the reporting the MSM didn’t do.

On Feb. 19, CNBC’s Rick Santelli issued his now-famous “Tea Party” call — prompted, many people forget, by Obama’s mortgage entitlement expansion plans (proposals I’ve protested whether from Democrats or moron Republicans):
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On Feb. 21, the grass-roots Internet group, Top Conservatives on Twitter, founded by Michael Patrick Leahy and powered by Rob Neppell, announced “simultaneous local tea parties around the country, beginning in Chicago, and including Washington DC, Fayetteville NC, San Diego CA, Omaha Nebraska, and dozens of other locations”.
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And along the way, detractors have fumbled and bumbled over how to discredit the Tea Party organizers — first blaming a cabal tied to CNBC, then jeering at the amateurishness of the participants before crying “astroturf,” then claiming the events were “financed by Fox News” or (fill-in-the-blank) conservative conspiracy, then smearing the protesters as crazed gun nuts (FNC’s Bob Beckel) and racists (FNC’s Geraldo Rivera).

Wouldn’t it be refreshing if MSM coverage refrained from parroting all the lazy, groundless, uninformed canards and reported the simple truth?
Reference Here>>

Again, large gatherings of Americans - NOT just Republicans, NOT just Democrats – are gathering in over 750 cities throughout the United States, and in most cases, Politicians have been dis-invited. Pretty much a definition of GRASS ROOTS, and all of this activity after the Department of Homeland Security has labeled this type of activity as part of the list of recruitment threats to Radical Right-Wing political activity and terrorism.

Don’t Tread On … Us!

Rise up and report Citizen Journalist!


UPDATE:

Tea Party Tax & Government Revolt Event - Glendale, CA, USA - Report, Photo, & Video Assets Here>>

CNN's "Reporting" of a Tea Party event - Example Here>>

Tea Party Event tally as of the beginning of day April 24, 2009 - (Pajamas Media):

Number of Events: 1,003
Overall Attendance: 847,651

YES! More Troops For Iraq

An F/A-18 Hornet approaches for landing on the USS Theodore Roosevelt aircraft carrier after flight operations in this Thursday, March 20, 2003 file photo. The first Tomahawk cruise missiles were fired early Thursday against Iraqi targets Image Credit: AP Photo/FILE/Richard Vogel

YES! More Troops For Iraq

It is always confusing for a politically charged, micro-management focused, uninformed populous to rile against what a war power professional may recognize as the right thing to do at a time of conflict ... but, YES, more troops for Iraq.

General Petreaus was approved by unanimous vote by the Senate because it was the right thing to do - and now HE wants more troops because it IS the right thing to do.

The one thing that we have learned as it relates to task competency is that one leaves the decision making of each task to the trained professionals.

MAXINE has one question - When you have a pain in your jaw coming from a cracked tooth, which do you want to work on it ... Senator Kennedy, Senator Clinton ... Any Senator, or a trained and proven dentist with a going practice?

Give the General his request and let him run the war, thank you!

Excerpts from the Boston Globe -

General seeks another brigade in Iraq
By Bryan Bender, Globe Staff March 16, 2007

WASHINGTON -- The top US commander in Iraq has requested another Army brigade, in addition to five already on the way, as part of the controversial "surge" of American troops designed to clamp down on sectarian violence and insurgent groups, senior Pentagon officials said yesterday.

The appeal -- not yet made public -- by General David Petraeus for a combat aviation unit would involve between 2,500 and 3,000 more soldiers and dozens of transport helicopters and powerful gunships, said the Pentagon sources. That would bring the planned expansion of US forces to close to 30,000 troops.

News of the additional deployment comes about a week after President Bush announced that about 4,700 support troops will join the initial 21,500 he ordered in January. They are in addition to the estimated 130,000 troops already in Iraq.

"This is the next shoe to drop," said one senior Pentagon official closely involved in the war planning, who requested anonymity because of prohibitions against publicly discussing internal deliberations. "But you cannot put five combat brigades in there and not have more aviation guys, military police, and intelligence units."
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"There is a problem in the way the administration reported the surge numbers to begin with," said Frederick W. Kagan , a resident scholar at the conservative American Enterprise Institute. "When they initially reported the numbers they only reported the combat strength of the brigades, and they did not count support troops" and other personnel that the operation would need.

"Petraeus has now requested what many thought would be needed to begin with," Kagan said, "but it looks like another surge."

The plan for the aviation brigade is occurring as commanders express cautious optimism that US and Iraqi forces, working together, are quelling the violence in the city and building some much-needed good will among the population.
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But news that Petraeus wants several thousand more troops is bound to further frustrate the Democratic majority in Congress, which is intent on pressuring President Bush to start bringing troops home within months.

For the second day yesterday, the Senate debated a resolution that would require President Bush to begin a phased withdrawal of US troops within 120 days.

The resolution failed to garner enough votes to pass, but Democratic leaders have pledged to use their power to force the White House's hand, including placing limitations on federal funds for the war.
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Despite the congressional opposition, the number of US troops committed to Iraq has steadily grown since Bush decided to send the 21,500 troops, the equivalent of five Army brigades and two Marine Corps battalions.

The Congressional Budget Office predicted last month that the total "surge" could ultimately double in size and cost once all support troops are in place.
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The new unit would bring to four the total number of aviation brigades in Iraq. The official said American commanders would have to reassess in a few months whether they want to keep the higher number; if so, they would have to identify another brigade to relieve one of them.

Military strategists consider the aviation unit an "enabler," meaning it will help the additional combat troops who are spearheading the new Baghdad security plan and operations to secure several cities in Anbar Province where Sunni insurgents and followers of Al Qaeda have gained a foothold.
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" Any time you deploy more combat forces you need more support forces," said Michael O'Hanlon , a defense specialist at the Brookings Institution who compiles the Iraq Index. "You need some tactical mobility to get them out of trouble."
Read All>> (free subscription required)

More support forces to enable more troop forces, makes sense to MAXINE!

POV Point, Counterpoint – Global Warming Opinion Intentions

A general view shows the lower house of Parliament Bundestag inside the Reichstags building during a commemoration ceremony to mark the Holocaust memorial day in Berlin January 29, 2007. Image Credit: REUTERS/Fabrizio Bensch (GERMANY)

POV Point, Counterpoint – Global Warming Opinion Intentions

When we, at MAXINE, see, listen, or read anything from longtime flame-throwing MSM liberal hack (Boston Globe, The McLaughlin Group (NPR), and go to “talking head” for biting MSM POV commentary for any political talk enterprise) we are stunned at the echo chamber logic expressed given almost any topic she jumps off into.

Usually, it is easy to just discount the views as coming from a very liberal, journalistic, and socialist camp.

That is, until her latest attempt to place people who want to deny that the Holocaust (where people of the Jewish faith were rounded up, taken to prison camps, placed in gas chambers, and executed) actually happened during WWII are used as the measuring stick for people who wish to debate against the proposition that Human activity is the primary cause of Earth’s temperature changes (Global Warming).

Dennis Prager makes it very clear as to how WRONG, damaging, and piously-political her latest column is on the subject of Global Warming in the Boston Globe through his latest column featured in Townhall.

Point, Counterpoint!

This from Dennis Prager, contributing writer for Townhall –

On Comparing Global Warming Denial to Holocaust Denial
By Dennis Prager - Tuesday, February 13, 2007

In her last column, Boston Globe columnist Ellen Goodman wrote: "Let's just say that global warming deniers are now on a par with Holocaust deniers . . . "

This is worthy of some analysis.

First, it reflects a major difference between the way in which the Left and Right tend to view each other. With a few exceptions, those on the Left tend to view their ideological adversaries as bad people, i.e., people with bad intentions, while those on the Right tend to view their adversaries as wrong, perhaps even dangerous, but not usually as bad.

Those who deny the Holocaust are among the evil of the world. Their concern is not history but hurting Jews, and their attempt to rob nearly six million people of their experience of unspeakable suffering gives new meaning to the word "cruel." To equate those who question or deny global warming with those who question or deny the Holocaust is to ascribe equally nefarious motives to them. It may be inconceivable to Al Gore, Ellen Goodman and their many millions of supporters that a person can disagree with them on global warming and not have evil motives: Such an individual must be paid by oil companies to lie, or lie -- as do Holocaust deniers -- for some other vile reason.

The belief that opponents of the Left are morally similar to Nazis was expressed recently by another prominent person of the Left, George Soros, the billionaire who bankrolls many leftist projects. At the World Economic Forum in Davos last month, Soros called on America to "de-Nazify" just as Germany did after the Holocaust and World War II. For Soros, America in Iraq is like the Nazis in Poland.

A second lesson to be drawn from the Goodman statement is that it helps us to understand better one of the defining mottos of contemporary liberalism: "Question authority." In reality, this admonition applies to questioning the moral authority of Judeo-Christian religions or of any secular conservative authority, but not of any other authority. UN and other experts tell us that there is global warming; such authority is not to be questioned.

Third, the equation of global warming denial to Holocaust denial trivializes Holocaust denial. If questioning global warming is on "a par" with questioning the Holocaust, how bad can questioning the Holocaust really be? The same holds true with regard to Nazism and the George Soros statement. Claiming that America in the Iraq War is morally equivalent to Nazi Germany in World War II trivializes the unparalleled evil of the Nazis.

Fourth, the lack of response (thus far) of any liberal or left individual or organization -- except to defend Ellen Goodman -- or from the Anti-Defamation League, the organization whose primary purpose has been to defend Jews, is telling. Just imagine if, for example, an equally prominent Christian figure had written that denying America is a Christian country is on a par with denying the Holocaust. It would have been front-page news in the mainstream media, the individual would have been excoriated by just about every major liberal individual and group, and the ADL would have cited this as an example of burgeoning Christian anti-Semitism and Holocaust trivialization. But not a word at the ADL on Soros's comments about de-Nazifying America or Goodman's Holocaust-denial comment.

Fifth, and finally, the Ellen Goodman quote is only the beginning of what is already becoming one of the largest campaigns of vilification of decent people in history -- the global condemnation of a) anyone who questions global warming; or b) anyone who agrees that there is global warming but who argues that human behavior is not its primary cause; or c) anyone who agrees that there is global warming, and even agrees that human behavior is its primary cause, but does not believe that the consequences will be nearly as catastrophic as Al Gore does.

If you don't believe all three propositions, you will be lumped with Holocaust deniers, and it would not be surprising that soon, in Europe, global warming deniers will be treated as Holocaust deniers and prosecuted.

Just watch.

That is far more likely than the oceans rising by 20 feet.

Or even 10.

Or even three.
Reference Here>>

Hey Ellen! ... Al! Surf's Up!

Good on ya', Dennis.