Truther, Self-described communist, and former Obama Green Jobs Czar Van Jones has a new mission, to start a progressive version of the Tea Party movement.  Just like the real tea party, the Van Jones creation is based on economics.  There are major differences though, being a progressive movement its basic premise is a lie, and instead of being a bottom up grass roots organization like the tea party, the Van Jones version is top down similar to the progressive philosophy that everything must be run by a central government.

Sporting posters with Che Guevara’s image and flying a Hammer & Sickle flag, May Day marchers in San Francisco confronted a protest organized by Tea Party members, Minutemen and 912 Protesters this past weekend.

Inspired by opportunistic Bay Area politicians who have sought to boycott and demonize the state of Arizona, the May Day marchers screamed profanities, made obscene gestures and attempted to storm a police barricade.  Unlike allegations of similar behavior made by members of the Congressional Black Caucus, all of this vile behavior is caught on video.

Pro-Illegal Immigration Protesters with Che Guevara Sign

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As our readers have already learned, Rep. Andre Carson gathered Capitol Hill reporters around him and told the tale of racial slurs and menacing crowds on the verge of hurling rocks at the congressmen.  Our first few videos showed the congressmen coming out of the Cannon Office Building, walking down the steps and into Independence Avenue from various angles.  None of those videos revealed the racial hatred Rep. Carson conveyed to reporters that day and none of the videos showed a mob rushing or in any way impeding the congressmen.

When Rep. Carson gathered reporters around him to spread the myth of racial slurs being hurled “fifteen times” he painted the protesters not just as racists, but as a terrorist threat.  We know this, because Kerry Picket of the Washington Times recorded Rep. Carson as he explained it all to eager reporters.

KERRY PICKET (Wash. Times): Do you think the people outside are generally dangerous or no?

REP. CARSON: Oh absolutely. I worked in homeland security. I’m from intelligence, and I’ll tell you, one of the largest threats to our internal security…I mean terrorism has an Islamic face, but it really comes from racial supremacist groups. (inaudible) Its the kind of thing we keep a threat assessment on record [for].

PICKET: From groups like this?

REP. CARSON: Oh absolutely.

And we can now see this two pronged message continuing in the narrative from Democratic politicians and the media:  The Tea Party protests are really about white rage and they are sowing the seeds for domestic terrorism.  This was the message delivered by Rep. Carson that afternoon and that is the message the media has run with.

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We all know the story by now.  Rep. Andre Carson (D-In) says that he and Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga) were assaulted with racial slurs by Tea Party protesters as they walked down the step of the Cannon office building and headed to the Capitol on March 20^th.  Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-Mo) also told reporters that he heard the ‘N-word’ as he was walking a few yards behind Rep. Lewis.  “It was like a chorus”, Rep. Cleaver said.

Only problem is:  Rep. Cleaver wasn’t there.  He didn’t walk behind Rep. Lewis coming down the steps of Cannon on the way to the Capitol.  He walked behind Rep. Lewis coming UP the steps of Cannon on the way BACK from the Capitol.

Of course, Rep. Cleaver and Rep. Carson could claim that racial slurs were screamed both times by the Tea Party protesters.  If that’s the case, then they have contradicted their own narrative from two weeks ago when the AP ran a story with the headline:

Wrong video of health protest spurs N-word feud

The entire thesis of that story was that the dumb, right-wing wackos were looking at the wrong video at the wrong time to show that racial slurs didn’t happen.  We’d been looking at a video showing the Congressional Black Caucus walking up the steps of Cannon returning from the Capitol.  But, it is now claimed, the racial slurs were shouted earlier in the day while Rep. Carson and Rep. Lewis were walking to the Capitol.

If last month’s narrative was that there were no racial slurs shouted on the way up the steps of Cannon, then how did Rep. Cleaver hear a chorus of the ‘N-word’?

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While scouring the thousands of videos that exist on YouTube from the March 20th health care bill protests in Washington DC, we were able to uncover four different angles of the Cannon Office Building at the precise moment Rep. Andre Carson and Rep. John Lewis descended the steps on their way to Capitol Hill.

We have noticed that there is a mystery man positioned at the bottom of the steps of the Cannon Building with a video camera.  He is in the exact position to capture the moment that Rep. Carson later described to reporters.  He is dressed in a dark suit and he is wearing some kind of credential on his jacket.

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We are in a fascinating period in American history, where a confluence of developments has transformed our citizenry’s relationship with government. The mainstream media is distrusted and dying. The majority of our elected officials – let’s not bother with terming them “leaders” – no longer care to represent the interests of the people. In response, the American people are rising up in protest at a rate and in a manner not seen in decades, if ever.

Congressional approval ratings are at historic lows at around 14% (an acquaintance joked that during the American Revolution, the British Crown had double that approval rating, with roughly a third of colonists supporting the Crown and Parliament). Rasmussen recently reported that only 21% of Americans believe our government has the consent of the governed, and CNN reports that 56% of Americans believe that our government poses an immediate threat to American citizens’ rights and freedoms . . . well you get the idea.

The American people are making it clear where they stand, and in an unmistakable manner. Next week, on April 15th, more than one million people will be at more than 1,000 Tea Party protests across the country as more and more Americans come out to protest where elected officials are taking this country.

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Remember our Rogues’ Gallery of Reid supporters from last week?  Let’s call them “The Searchlight Four”.  They were the highest profile members of the “Rent-a-Thug” protest in support of Sen. Harry Reid on Saturday, March 27th.  Their preferred method of showing support for the Majority Leader of the United States Senate?  Throwing eggs at a bus full of private citizens assembling in the Senator’s hometown to exercise their 1st Amendment rights.

Let’s re-aquaint ourselves with the Searchlight Four:

This is “The Eggman”

Jesse Walker threw an egg at the Tea Party bus.  He is a member of IBEW Local 357 and he was also instructing Andrew Breitbart on the finer, nuanced points of racial politics in America today:

“The demographics of this country is changing, your way of thinking is dead.”

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When thousands of peaceful, Tea Party protestors came to Harry Reid’s hometown of Searchlight, Nev. last Saturday, you would have thought that the favorite son of this hardscrabble, mining town would garner tons of local support.  Not so.  Members of IBEW Local 357 were called to action to agitate the crowd and, as we’ve previously shown, to hurl eggs at the busses carrying them.

Around 0:18 into the video released last night showing the exploding shell and yolk that came inches from Andrew Breitbart’s face, a loud protestor taunts Breitbart, smiling and mocking his condemnation of the egg-throwing.  “Glad you approve!” he sneers, “Thanks, man!”.

This guy really gets around.  Here he is at a Las Vegas healthcare townhall meeting back in August.

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This weekend, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi ensured that the 111th Congress will live in infamy. Instead of listening to the people she used every procedural trick at her disposal to pass her health care legislation. She must be stopped.

Over the last year, the American people have witnessed a Speaker who will stop at nothing to achieve her vision of a Leftist government. She believes that she is no longer accountable to congressional rules, and national laws. Those are just guidelines that can be tossed away on a whim if determined they will prevent her from accomplishing her goals. On Sunday, she cast them aside with reckless abandon and forced through her government takeover of health care.
Nancy Pelosi has no regard for public opinion. Even in a hostile electoral environment, she asked members of her caucus to fall on their swords so that she might add another achievement to her increasingly shameful legacy. Her actions are deceptive, dishonest, and simply unconstitutional, but she shows no remorse. To her, the ends justify the means.

Let there be no doubt: Nancy Pelosi’s sole priority in this entire health care drama has been authorizing a government seizure of the American health care industry and nationalizing a full one-sixth of our economy. She ignored the cold hard facts of the federal budget. Plainly put, you cannot add $1 trillion dollars to the budget and then claim that it’s revenue neutral, cut $500 billion from Medicare, and won’t affect recipients. The math simply doesn’t work. But Nancy Pelosi doesn’t seem to have any problem with fudging the numbers when it’s to her advantage.
Worse yet, Speaker Pelosi has claimed that she would preside over the most ethical and transparent Congress in history. She has repeatedly denied Americans their Constitutional right to know what Washington is doing in their name, because she knows that if they find out, they will hold her caucus accountable.

For the sweetheart deals and arm-twisting tactics; for this unconscionable dereliction of her duty; for this gleeful defiance of the Constitution; and for the utter contempt with which she has repeatedly treated the American people, Speaker Pelosi MUST be fired.

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Over the last several days, old friends and family around the country have contacted me with the same questions: ‘Do they have the votes? What is going to happen?’ Maybe they think that, living inside the Beltway, I get some secret newsletter that can divine what Congress will do. To all of them and you, let me be clear: I have no idea what is going to happen tonight. We have slipped well beyond any rational political thought or calculation. By any traditional analysis, this bill would have been buried long ago. So, while I don’t know what is going to happen, it is worth thinking a bit about what is going on. On that I have something to say.

The Democrats and the White House are lost in a legislative “fog of war” right now. They are focused on twisting enough arms, offering jobs and negotiating specific “deals” (bribes) to get them to 216 votes. Their attention and energy is focused exclusively on a final vote in the House tonight. No one is looking even one minute beyond that horizon. They are like a general who pours all his reserves into taking a symbolic bridge, never realizing that his lines have already collapsed and his flanks have been turned. They may take the bridge and get to 216 votes. (I’ve learned to never bet against Congressional leadership and an Administration united for a single legislative victory. ) But, they have already lost the war. They have deluded themselves that if they can…just…get…this…bill…passed, the public’s anger and attention will subside, they can put health care ‘behind them’ and they can focus on other ‘popular’ measures that will shore up their election prospects in November.

What they don’t realize is that today’s vote isn’t the end, but just a new beginning in the debate over health care. Buckle up, because if they manage to cobble together enough votes to pass the Senate Health Bill today, we’re set for weeks and perhaps months of a constitutional and political crisis the likes of which we haven’t seen in our lifetimes.

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As they say, if the snowmen are on your side…(God love the Lansing, MI Tea Party folks…)

Wednesday will mark the first anniversary of the presidential inauguration of Barack Obama — who began his Presidency, as nearly all new first-term Presidents do, high in the polls. At that time, Obama’s approval ratings were, in fact, in the stratosphere. In the last twelve months, however, they have fallen further and faster than those of any President since polling began; and, and, as developments in Massachusetts suggest, his party is now in danger of suffering in November an historic defeat — which is likely to rival its fate in 1938, 1966, and 1994 if the Democrats do not, as I believe they may, do even worse. In a poll released on Thursday, the National Journal reports that half of the adults sampled responded that, if new Presidential elections were held right now, they would vote against Barack Obama, and less than a quarter of those questioned indicated that they would vote to re-elect the President. It is an appropriate time in which to pose this question: Why have Obama and his supporters fallen so far and so fast?

We must, I think, begin before the beginning. The Obama campaign was predicated on a fraud. With a skill that was breathtaking, Barack Obama managed during that campaign to signal to the left within the Democratic Party with a wink and a nod that he was their man and that he meant business — that he really intended to “transform” America. To those in the middle and on the right who are ashamed of the nation’s historic sins in matters of race, he offered absolution, and he promised that the penance that they would have to perform after leaving the confessional would not be harsh. He was not, he said, a tax-and-spend liberal.

I was not taken in. Late in 2008, after reviewing the page proofs of Soft Despotism, Democracy’s Drift, I persuaded my editor to allow me to add the following to the book:

Once again, as in the 1920s, rational administration has failed us. As on that other occasion, the Federal Reserve Board and the Department of the Treasury pursued over an extended period under more than one administration an easy-money policy bound in the end to give rise to “irrational exuberance” in the markets and to a bubble followed by a catastrophic decline in prices and a collapse of the credit markets. And, to make matters worse, we responded to this set of circumstances precisely as we did on that earlier occasion — by electing a president and choosing a Congress intent on dramatically increasing the scale and scope of the administrative state.

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From Fox News’ Nine Big Stories the Mainstream Media Missed in 2009:

ACORN Tapes

Filmmakers James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles, posing as a pimp and a prostitute, went undercover to the offices of the community organizing group ACORN in the summer. They secretly videotaped employees instructing them in how to falsify tax forms and seek illegal benefits for 13 “very young” girls from El Salvador whom the pair said they wanted to import to work as child prostitutes. New videos emerged daily, but the mainstream media ignored the growing scandal for days, even as federal agencies began severing their ties with the group and members of Congress cried for an investigation. (more…)

Before there were TEA Party activists, there were Freepers. Through my experience as a long-time Freeper, I learned the value of street activism, and its limitations.

Capitol Confidential, in an essay posted at Big Government Monday, emphatically urges TEA Party activists to stop demonstrating and focus on local politics instead. I strongly disagree.

It is necessary to do both–and in fact it is being done all across the country.

When I was living in Washington, D.C., I helped the D.C. Chapter of FreeRepublic.com and other groups organize hundreds of protests, counter-demonstrations and several rallies. I also was an adviser for the Sept. 12 march on Washington.

Even though we didn’t draw huge crowds like the TEA Parties have this year, during my decade-plus of involvement I have witnessed conservative street activism rack up impressive victories.

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President Obama’s meetings at the Senate on Sunday, much like his visit to Copenhagen this week, are not indicators of inevitability; they are portents of panic.  The reports coming out of the closed door, Democrats-only, meeting of internal divisions that are still irreconcilable, despite the high rhetoric of historic moment, only make the point more vividly: can you say “desperation”?

The sensible Democrats know they are in trouble.  They know the American people have lost confidence that the Administration and Congress share their priorities.

While polls consistently show that Americans are increasingly concerned about jobs, reviving the economy, and managing our deficits, the Democrats fixate on health care, a relatively low priority for most Americans and anathema for many in this form.  The reforms the Democrats push are themselves unpopular, and for good reason.  Americans know that a government takeover of health care will diminish the quality of care, reduce our ability to control our treatment options, and drive up the premium costs for many Americans.  It’s not just the health care system that will suffer, but proposed reforms will also cripple one of the few sectors that have been creating jobs during the recession, create multiple new taxes and penalties, and further hamper the economy by creating massive new debt and entitlements.

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Last Tuesday, I had round two with former ACORN Chief Organizer and current head of Community Organizations International, Wade Rathke. This interview was a lot more sweeping. It ranged from Rathke’s philosophy, his philosophy on organizing, his views on the tea parties, to all sorts of issues surrounding ACORN.

1)What do you think of the tea parties?

It’s important to note that I wasn’t asking about political philosophy or personal preference, but rather as an organizing philosophy.

Rathke is impressed by their ability to organize. As an organizing phenomenon, the tea parties are effective and, as an organizer, Wade Rathke believes they took advantage of a vacuum, stepped in, and filled a void that the president never saw coming. Rathke once referred to the tea party movement as “tea baggers”. He did this only once. He never really took any pot shots at them besides this and so I don’t know that this was a deliberate dig.

Rathke did, however, also point out that often the tea parties fail basic organizing principles.

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