Right Wing

Tea Party Very Concerned That Minorities Might Vote

With the election only days away, a few single-minded patriots have decided to take on the biggest problem bedeviling our political system: election fraud! Yes, a problem so huge, only 95 people were charged with it between 2002 and 2005.

The New York Times reports from the front lines of the Tea Party & Friends’ brave war against the scourge of voter fraud:

In 2006, conservative activists repeatedly claimed that the problem of people casting fraudulent votes was so widespread that it was corrupting the political process and possibly costing their candidates victories.

The accusations turned out to be largely false…

Ah. So, that’s that, right? Well, not quite! The sentence continues “…but they led to a heated debate, with voting rights groups claiming that the accusations were crippling voter registration drives and reducing turnout.” False accusations leading to a heated debate! What an amazing description of American politics. And so, even though no one seriously believes voter fraud is a problem in this country, the Tea Party is gunning for the completely made-up bad guys with tactics like:

• In St. Paul, Tea Partiers are “organizing volunteer ’surveillance squads’ to photograph and videotape what it suspects are irregularities, and in some cases to follow buses that take voters to the polls.”
• In Milwaukee, an anonymous person or group posted “large billboards throughout the city that show pictures of people behind jail bars under the words ‘We Voted Illegally.’” (You can check them out at One Wisconsin Now.)
• And this one is my personal favorite:
  

  During a meeting, [Tea Partiers] the King Street Patriots had shown a picture of the [voter registration group] Houston Votes office and stated its address before adding that this was the new location of the Black Panthers.

  Hiram Sasser, a lawyer for the Liberty Institute who represents the King Street Patriots, denied the claim but when presented a video of the incident, he said that his client had actually made a mistake and did not realize the office was tied to Houston Votes.

You know, 30 years ago, you’d have assumed this was all disingenuous—just a dressed-up strategy to deny traditionally Democratic voters the chance to vote. But now? I think a lot of these guys actually believe the New Black Panther Party is stealing elections. And honestly, I don’t know which is worse!

[NYT; image by Robert Doeckel via One Wisconsin Now]

Send an email to Max Read, the author of this post, at max@gawker.com.

Yesterday, it was the Counter Culture. Today… it’s
Monday, October 4, 2010

More Here @ 3 pm (PST)

Est. 1964 Re-Incarnated by Public Demand

This is the original, 60’s, counter culture, LA Free Press. Today’s Best Alternative View & Our Old Hippie Headlines, Too! A Head Trip for Smart Minds.

(This article refers directly to today’s issue of the Los Angeles Free Press. If you have not yet seen today’s issue, click HERE.

Yesterday, it was the Counter Culture. Today it’s…

All About: The Cultural War… is it Risen and Rising, or Exposed and Dying?

by Steven M. Finger

Is this Rally of Liberals really a Challenge to the Tea Party? Or is it, instead, a lost battle of the Cultural War?

More to come @ 5 pm (PST)

Pat Buchanan Culture War Speech Part 2

August 17, 1992

I AM AMERICA

Krista Branch

The Morning After Beck

August 29, 2010, 3:11 pm

On the morning after a big Saturday wedding, it is sometimes customary for newly united families to hold a low-key brunch for guests who are still in town.

Something like this took place early Sunday – actually it was more of a Tea Party than a brunch. On the morning after Beck’s massive “Restoring Honor” rally drew conservative throngs to the Lincoln Memorial and National Mall, 200 or so rally stragglers gathered on a hardtop between the U.S. Capitol and Union Station. While no one served omelettes or Bloody Marys, there was plenty of red meat here.

“You are an awakened sleeping giant,” said one of the speakers, former congressman Ernest Istook, Republican of Oklahoma. Standing before a “Tea Party Patriots” sign on the podium, Mr. Istook vowed that the energy of the weekend would last, and that “this resolve is not just one time.”

Nearly everyone in the crowd had attended Saturday’s Beck-stock, and most had come to Washington from other parts of the country. They were protesting the usual Tea Party menu – big government, taxes and President Obama. Unlike the Beck event, which de-emphasized politics and public displays thereof, organizers here did not discourage signs: There were many, the most common being “Stop Socialism,” “November 2 is Judgment Day,” and “Don’t Tread on Me.”

“Everything about this weekend was great,” said Michael Shatravka, 24, who held a poster that said, “I Want an America That My Dad Remembers.”

Asked about the sign, Mr. Shatravka said that actually a woman from Louisiana had given it to him at the rally Saturday, and that his own father – Alexander – had spent the better part of his life in the Soviet Union before emigrating here 24 years ago. Alexander, who now lives in the northern Maine town of Danforth, stood next to him, carrying a placard that said, “Marxism is the Way to Slavery – Capitalism is Freedom. Stop Socialism.”

By noon, the crowd was largely dispersed and many headed off in search of food before hitting the road.

Christian Nationalists Assuming Control & Authority over Meaning of the Flag

This Flag is Our Flag

By Austin Cline, About.com Guide

This Flag is Our Flag: Christian Nationalists Assuming Control & Authority over Meaning of the American Flag

One area where Christian Nationalists have attempted to exercise more subtle control over American culture is through the American flag. Efforts to ban flag burning have a lot in common with efforts to ban gay marriage as well as a host of other hot-button conservative issues. The issue is not the issue: it’s not about burning or protecting flags and it’s not about protecting the sanctity of marriage. It’s about retaining control over important cultural symbols upon which people base their identities.

Why do so many religious and political conservatives insist that same-sex marriages “threaten” and “undermine” traditional heterosexual marriages? Marriage is not just an institution, but also a symbol of a culture’s ideals about sex, sexuality, and human relationships. Such symbols are a common cultural currency which we use to help create our sense of self. Thus when the nature of marriage is challenged, so are people’s basic identities.

Flag burning fits in here because it’s a way in which people seek to radically alter others’ perceptions of the flag as not just a symbol within the culture, but as a symbol of America as a whole. Bans on flag burning and desecration are a way to avoid discussing what the flag as a symbol means and what America itself should stand for. They are saying to everyone: “This is our country. This is our flag. If you don’t adopt our meanings, you don’t belong.”

For Christian Nationalists, a ban on burning or desecrating the American flag is just the beginning: it represents a first step towards taking rights away from political minorities and establishing the power of a majority to dictate the terms of public discourse. They talk about the “right of the majority to rule,” which in this case means the power of the majority to dictate to everyone how exactly the flag will be treated, what it will mean, and what sort of relationship one is allowed to have with the flag.

Christian Nationalists hope that this will open the door to similar changes in other areas of law. If the majority has the power to censor certain forms of political speech, why not other speech and expression such as pornography? If the they are given the power to determine the meaning of the flag for everyone, why not also the power to determine the meaning and importance of the Ten Commandments for everyone?

This image is based upon a World War I poster depicting a worker rolling up his sleeves and getting to work for the flag.

To see the ‘image’, please go to the site link given below.

http://atheism.about.com/od/religiousright/ig/Christian-Propaganda-Posters/American-Flag-Is-Our-Flag.htm