My name is Ali Akbar. I’m a 26 year-old African-American small business owner and a tea party activist. I’m not writing to rake you over the coals in the way that many conservatives have done in the last 48 hours. Heck, I wrote a passionate open-letter refuting many of your claims already, but this is not that. This is an honest and standing invitation. I do believe that you are wrong in what you said about the tea party, but I would rather prove it to you than castigate you for your comments.
[…]
Over half a century since we started voting for Democrat policies, blacks in America are worse off than before. Black Americans are more likely to get involved with drugs, go to prison, and die younger than our white counterparts. Over 70% of our children are born out of wedlock. Our abortion rate has never been higher. There are two explanations for these results. 1) Blacks are an inferior race and can’t take care of themselves. 2) Despite the best of intentions, the government has created and implemented “social justice” policies that promote perpetual dependence. I choose to believe the latter. Therefore, I have become a Republican.
Mr. Freeman, I’m not asking you to adopt my political views. You’re in your seventies, and a political shift is not in your future. I’m reaching out to you because I want you to think better of your fellow countrymen. Barack Obama is in the White House, and Herman Cain just won the Florida straw poll. America is the land of opportunity for black Americans like never before.
On Monday’s Early Show, CBS’s Norah O’Donnell promoted the left-of-center talking point that Standard & Poor’s recent lowering of the U.S.’s credit rating is a “Tea Party downgrade.” O’Donnell played three sound bites of notable liberals using this line of attack, versus only one opposing from a center-right politician. She also spun Treasury Geithner’s decision to stay as “good news for the President.”
At the top of Saturday’s NBC Today, CNBC’s chief Washington correspondent John Harwood told co-host Lester Holt that the downgrade of U.S. debt provided President Obama with “a tangible consequence to point to for Republican brinksmanship on the debt and deficit reduction deal.”
Deriding the Tea Party: Terrorists “Strapped with Dynamite”
“There’s a nihilist caucus which is, ‘Listen, we want to burn the place down.’ I mean, they’re not, they’ve strapped explosives to the Capitol and they think they are immune from it. The Tea Party caucus wants this crisis, and do we want to do this again six months from now?”
— Bloomberg columnist Margaret Carlson on Inside Washington, July 29.
“If sane Republicans do not stand up to this Hezbollah faction in their midst, the Tea Party will take the GOP on a suicide mission.”
— New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, July 27.
“You know what they say: Never negotiate with terrorists. It only encourages them. These last few months, much of the country has watched in horror as the Tea Party Republicans have waged jihad on the American people….For now, the Tea Party Republicans can put aside their suicide vests. But rest assured: They’ll have them on again soon enough.”
— New York Times columnist Joe Nocera, August 2.
Tea Party Budget Slashers = “Cannibals,” “Vampires” and “Zombies”
“Tea Party budget-slashers….were like cannibals, eating their own party and leaders alive. They were like vampires, draining the country’s reputation, credit rating and compassion. They were like zombies, relentlessly and mindlessly coming back again and again to assault their unnerved victims, Boehner and President Obama. They were like the metallic beasts in Alien flashing mouths of teeth inside other mouths of teeth, bursting out of Boehner’s stomach every time he came to a bouquet of microphones.”
— New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd, August 3 column.
Children Who Don’t “Understand” How Government Works [ELITISM]
“The question, I think, some people might be asking is, do you think that members of the Tea Party caucus know how to govern, or are they — do they understand that standing up for a cause is not the same as governing?”
— Co-host Ann Curry to Tom Brokaw on NBC’s Today, August 1.
“Some people say that the Republican Party has been held hostage by the Tea Party. One of our Facebook followers sent in an interesting analogy and said, ‘Why are Republicans allowing freshman congressmen to control this debate?’ and this person said, ‘It’s like letting the teenager in the family run the family budget.’ I mean, there’s some truth in that.”
— Moderator Bob Schieffer to GOP Senate Leader Mitch McConnell on Face the Nation, July 31.
Obama Foes Are “Muggers,” “Kidnappers” and “Haters”
“Let me finish tonight with this bad experience we’ve all just been through. What we saw, what I saw at least, was one guy with a knife and the other trying to avoid being cut. It was a thug attacking a victim. It was a mugging. Now, the good news — relief is a better word, I suppose — is that the victim did get through it. The bad news is that the mugger got what he wanted. He got the wallet….The mugging continues, again and again and again. The people who perpetrated this assault on the President will come back to do it again.”
— Chris Matthews talking about the debt talks on MSNBC’s Hardball, August 2.
“Why did he [Obama] let this develop for six months, well, eight months since last December, this drum roll of the Republicans saying, ‘We’ve got the baby. You don’t get the baby back unless you pay us?’ Why do you let the other side have the baby, to use kidnapping terms?”
— MSNBC’s Chris Matthews to the New Republic’s Jonathan Chait on Hardball, August 1.
“From day one, from second one, the goal of the Republican Party of the right, of corporate America, of the Tea Party, the whole shebang, has been eliminate this guy’s presidency. It’s been personal, it’s been about him, and it’s about hatred….‘We hate you, want to kill you (pause) politically.’”
“The progressive sees racism and other evils as stages to move beyond; they are national problems to be solved, not human problems to be guarded against and punished. In fact, these evils are often made possible by the odd progressive belief that man will stop being bad if he is no longer restricted from being bad.” Dale A. Berryhill, The Assault: Liberalism’s Attack on Religion, Freedom, and Democracy (Lafayette LA: Huntington House Publishers, 1995), 31.
I would be interested to hear and see more of what this young man was into. I have been told by many, for years now, that Timothy McVeigh was a Christian fundamentalist. This is not the truth. So if “one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter,” as the Left like to always say. Couldn’t “one man’s Christian Fundamentalist be another’s radical cult member?” First, from the AP:
SUNDVOLLEN, Norway (AP) — The 32-year-old man [Anders Behring Breivik] suspected in bomb and shooting attacks that killed at least 91 people in Norway bought six tons of fertilizer before the massacres, the supplier said Saturday as police investigated witness accounts of a second shooter.
Norway’s prime minister and royal family visited grieving relatives of the scores of youth gunned down in a horrific killing spree on an idyllic island retreat. A man who said he was carrying a knife was detained by police officers outside the hotel, as the shell-shocked Nordic nation was gripped by reports that Norwegian gunman may not have acted alone.
The suspect in police custody – a blonde blue-eyed Norwegian with reported Christian fundamentalist, anti-Muslim views – is suspected in both the shootings at Utoya island and a massive explosion that ripped through an Oslo high-rise building housing the prime minister’s office two hours earlier, killing seven people. He has been preliminarily charged with acts of terrorism.
Oddny Estenstad, a spokeswoman for agricultural material supplier Felleskjopet, confirmed Saturday that the suspect in custody purchased six tons of fertilizer 10 weeks ago. Artificial fertilizer is highly explosive and can be used in homemade bombs…..
Firstly, Christian means Christ like. A fundamentalist Christian takes what Jesus said to be literal truth (the Bible, Jesus’ Resurrection, creation, and the like). So
John 18:33-38:
So Pilate entered his headquarters again and called Jesus and said to him, “Are you the King of the Jews?” Jesus answered, “Do you say this of your own accord, or did others say it to you about me?” Pilate answered, “Am I a Jew? Your own nation and the chief priests have delivered you over to me. What have you done?” Jesus answered, “My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting, that I might not be delivered over to the Jews. But my kingdom is not from the world.” Then Pilate said to him, “So you are a king?” Jesus answered, “You say that I am a king. For this purpose I was born and for this purpose I have come into the world— to bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice.” Pilate said to him, “What is truth?”
So what would a fundamentalist say of this verse? This is not to say that one should not defend oneself against attacks or criminals, it is to say however that actions of violence toward a political end — like saving what many thought was their political leader prophesied about in the past — is forbidden. There are, however, liberal fundamentalists that like to rip from a historical time-period an event in the Old Testament where the Hebraic agrarian society [farmers] have to defend themselves against people (the Assyrians for instance) that would fillet their enemies alive and display their mangled corpses as a warning to those who opposed them. These liberal fundamentalists extrapolate that violence they perceive as unjust onto all Christian fundamentalists as normative. Please. But I ingress.
So what are a few things already making my head tilt? The Telegraph has this:
On the Facebook page attributed to him, Mr Breivik describes himself as a Christian and a conservative. It listed his interests as hunting, body building and freemasonry. His profile also listed him as single. The page has since been taken down. Police chief Svinung Sponheim said that internet posting by Breivik suggested he has “some political traits directed toward the right, and anti-Muslim views”.
I know of no conservative Christian that would be keen on Freemasons. In fact, most Christians have wild eyed conspiracies involving this gnostic sect. Continuing they say,
Police officials have also said that the suspect appeared to have posted on websites with Christian fundamentalist tendencies.
What does this sentence mean? Do they consider Christian Identity or KKK type sites, Christian fundamentalism? More info will come out, I am sure… but this is what I am use to (and most of this comes from my old blog under the tag, Crazed Gunmen Bios). And please keep in mind the following which was believed around the time of all these happenings:
– Think 9/11 was perpetrated not by Muslims but by Republicans?
– Grow and smoke marijuana?
– Read left-wing anti-Bush books?
– Are anti-war?
– Talk about “economic justice”?
– Think the Vietnam War and the Iraq War were not merely mistakes but were part of a government conspiracy?
The Pentagon shooter is linked to several gay rights groups along with PETA, NPR, various drug legalization orgs, Greenpeace and Al Franken. Not your typical Tea Party member, eh? Or, there was Joseph “the bomber” Stack. Another immediate member of the Tea Party (hence a conservative and/or Christian) according the media almost immediately after the attack. Interestingly enough, his written manifesto lines up well with Michael Moore movies.
Anti-health care system= Sicko
Anti-Capitalism= Capitalism, a Love Story
IRS cronyism with businesses= Capitalism, a Love Story
Anti-Bush= Fahrenheit 9/11
Blames Big Corporations for job issues= The Big One
Another person said to be a Christian Fundamentalist was James von Brunn, the Holocaust museum shooter. This first part is a post I did on him that counters fundamentalism:
Now isn’t this fascinating. James von Brunn , the white-supremacist suspect in the Holocaust Memorial Museum shooting in which the guard who was shot has now tragically died, describes the relevance of evolution to his sick thinking. He’s obsessed with “genetics.” He writes in his manifesto (emphasis added):
Approval of inter-racial breeding is predicated on idiotic Christian dogma that God’s children must love their enemies (a concept JEWS totally reject); and on LIBERAL/MARXIST/JEW propaganda that all men/races are created equal. These genocidal ideologies, preached from the American pulpits, taught in American schools, legislated in the halls of Congress (confirming TALMUDIC conviction that goyim are stupid sheep), are expected to produce a single, superintelligent, beautiful, non-White “American” population. Eliminating forever racism, inequality, bigotry and war. As with ALL LIBERAL ideologies, miscegenation is totally inconsistent with Natural Law: the species are improved through in-breeding, natural selection and mutation. Only the strong survive. Cross-breeding Whites with species lower on the evolutionary scale diminishes the White gene-pool while increasing the number of physiologically, psychologically and behaviorally deprived mongrels. Throughout history improvident Whites have miscegenated. The “brotherhood” concept is not new (as LIBERALS pretend) nor are the results — which are inevitably disastrous for the White Race — evident today, for example, in the botched populations of Cuba, Mexico, Egypt, India, and the inner cities of contemporary America. (Here’s the PDF version of Von Brunn’s “manifesto.”)
This wacko despises Christianity, too, though not quite as much as he does Judaism. Like Hitler in Mein Kampf, he draws lessons from his interpretation of Darwinism.
“The stronger must dominate and not mate with the weaker, which would signify the sacrifice of its own higher nature. Only the born weakling can look upon this principle as cruel, and if he does so it is merely because he is of a feebler nature and narrower mind; for if such a law [natural selection] did not direct the process of evolution then the higher development of organic life would not be conceivable at all…. If Nature does not wish that weaker individuals should mate with the stronger, she wishes even less that a superior race should intermingle with an inferior one; because in such a case all her efforts, throughout hundreds of thousands of years, to establish an evolutionary higher stage of being, may thus be rendered futile.” (Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, translator/annotator, James Murphy [New York: Hurst and Blackett, 1942], pp. 161-162)
One must keep in mind that this militant atheism is harmful and needs to be countered with Biblical principles. For instance, one article points out the following:
“Christianity has fought, still fights, and will fight science to the desperate end over evolution, because evolution destroys utterly and finally the very reason Jesus’ earthly life was supposedly made necessary. Destroy Adam and Eve and the original sin, and in the rubble you will find the sorry remains of the son of god. Take away the meaning of his death. If Jesus was not the redeemer that died for our sins, and this is what evolution means, then Christianity is nothing.” (G. Richard Bozarth, “The Meaning of Evolution”, American Atheist, 20 Sept. 1979, p. 30)
From another post of mine:
While Mr. von Brunn is currently being made out to be the poster child of the Republican Party, even a cursory look at his professed views shows he is the avowed enemy of the GOP in its current incarnation. Among many others, Mr. von Brunn hates,
Rupert Murdoch
Fox News
George W. Bush
John McCain
Weekly Standard
Iraq War
believed that 9/11 was an “inside job.”
Given this political sketch, Mr. von Brunn would feel at home at Camp Casey, Cindy Sheehan’s antiwar outpost in Crawford, Texas, and at the Daily Kos convention, rather than partaking in a National Review cruise with pro-Israeli war hawks Mark Steyn and Victor Davis Hanson. It’s not Charles Lindbergh’s Republican Party any more. And it hasn’t been for more than a half-century. But don’t tell that to the facile minds at the DHS [the Department of Homeland Security] and CNN.
I need to point out here that most violence comes from the Left. CNN, MSNBC, ABC, CBS, NBC, NPR, etc., were all trying to find violence at Tea Parties, even the signs people carried were less violent than union or Democratic political marches. When violence was found to be done in the name of Islam, hosts would say they wished it was from a Tea Party member, or, after realizing many blacks supported the Tea Party, they even manufactured racism when they couldn’t find any!
(Much of the “violence” politically tuned is from the Left [see here, and here]):
(On this next video, watch your volume level)
UPDATE, he does seem very Christian (minus the violence and belonging to a Gnostic organization)… here are his own writings, translated (thanks to Reason.com). Much of it could be written by a conservative commentator, minus the violence:
“He recently claimed that politics today was not about socialism vs. capitalism but nationalism vs. internationalism.”
Blogger Doug Sanders has contacts in Norway. They have offered a rough translation of some “collective writings” on the internet of Anders Behring Breivik.
There are some references to libertarians and conservatives which could be interpreted as him expressing positive viewpoints on both groups. At one point he even mentions the US Tea Party.
However, there’s also this passage which suggests that he may have been more socially conservative yet economically left-liberal, i.e. Populist.
The main axis is the economy and culture. They were right-wing culturally but leftwing economically. Liberals like of course to tag them as right wing as well as anti-socialists refer to them as leftextreme.
The third axis authoritarian vs liberal is inappropriate to use as a marker.
Quite bizarrely, he seems to have a knowledge of American politics, and at one point makes the statement “a Republican in the U.S. is a libertarian…”
The sound was incredible, the view was as well as a myriad of colors and flashes of light drizzled across the sky as I left a prescreening of Undefeated and was back on the freeway headed towards home. It is almost as if Disneyland was in cahoots with the showing of the film as they lit off their nightly fireworks display heading towards this July 4th weekend. I was one of a handful of bloggers invited to the showing… why, I don’t know. (Obviously not because of my looks.) But I wanted to show support for such a nice offer and decided to go and support the showing. I went with some reservations about Sarah, “why?” you might ask. Well, after hearing some input at a lecture by Hugh Hewitt, and listening to talk radio a bit, many of these conservative pundits are very weary of Mrs. Palin running because they feel she cannot win like a Romney or Pawlenty can. Mind you, they have some valid points in some respect, but I am [was] teetering on the precipice that Dennis Prager has already committed to. That is, he [now I] am not concerned about guaranteeing a win with a nominal Republican. He, as am I, are more concerned with turning the country back in a big way from the jaunt to the left that has been happening since the Dems took control of congress.
I was surprised to see – not because they wouldn’t support Palin, but because I wasn’t expecting to see them in the documentary – Andrew Breitbart, Tammy Bruce, and Mark Levin in the movie. Because of their background and insight into matters I respect their commentary like I do other conservative pundits. May I say, the points they were making (especially Breitbart) resonated with me. They resonated with me in a big way.
So before talking too much more about the film, I want to give the readers a bit more about the day, only because I was very early to the area to beat any traffic. I went to a restaurant across from the theaters to have a couple of beers and to get something in the gut. I sat in the outdoor section of the bar and really hadn’t planned on talking to anyone and was getting ready to pull out my Mamet book and get a few chapters under my belt with the time left before the show. (By the way, when some hear “a few chapters” they think this refers to a lot of pages. David Mamet’s chapters are short and very digestible… so I wanted to make sure people know this was no big feat.) A gentleman at the bar (Jim) started to smoke. So he politely asked if it was going to bother me and pointed out that the wind was working against me. So I moved to the other side of him, which started the conversation off. (Interaction with real – live people is far more preferred than burying one’s nose in a book, as much as I love doing this. We got to talking about various topics, one being his loss of his businesses after 9/11. He mentioned he was hitting record sales, owned three car dealerships, and then… after those planes spliced through those buildings killing many inside, we often forget that they also killed something else. The livelihood of many Americans the country over. I am not a small business owner, never have been, probably never will be. I ma one of those guys a small business owner wants working for him. So I am not aware of the impact outside of stories told via media, but once in a while you meet flesh-and-blood that has a story that touches you in a more personable way. Obviously Jim has moved on and grown and learned from his life experiences. It was a pleasure to meet a guy who is a fellow Republican – maybe not because he is as politically adept as us bloggers (*pat, pat, pat*), but deep down I think he knows that the government can get “too big to fail.”
I think the country is starting to feel this way, that the rate and breadth of growth in government is out of hand. It’s no way to run a business, or a household for that matter; which means it is no way to run a country. I broke off conversation with Jim to head over and see if there was a line at all, and it started to form. There were a couple of lively ladies up front with Palin jerseys on, one was a fellow blogger. The leader of and other supporters of the Beverly Hills Tea Party chapter (see quick question to the right). She, as well as others were there to support this release and unite in some sense for the common bond she mentions in her response that all who were there could all agree. The Tea Party reps I spoke to did not endorse Palin officially (this is not in their purview to do as you will hear further down below), but privately they leaned towards her running.
I met a young man who is not the President of the Young Republicans Club at the University of California Irvine. He talked about how when the Democrats and Republicans throw events on campus they have big turnouts. I hope the best for Nick and look forward to speaking with him again.
And finally, I interviewed Marc Harris who is a blogger from BigGovernment.com and the leader of his areas Tea Party as well. To break the ice as well as start a nationwide survey of a poll truly I asked a question of everyone that was submitted to me by Every Day Reggie (his Twitter account feed can be found to the right). This was the answer wanted, and Marc gave it!
Mark was a nice guy, down to earth, good sense of humor, with a lovely lady to boot. Mark makes clear what the Tea Party is geared towards doing, and that is hold the candidates feet to the fire. The base wants to hone these politicians to stand by their core principles. This is the gist of what Marc is getting at. I end with another question submitted by Reggie.
All in all I think I would like to see a Palin/West ticket. This is what I see the base starting to settle on, especially after the release (July 15th) of this movie, which I highly, highly recommend.
You may remember in February when “fit fun classy guy” Rep. Chris Lee (R-Stupid) resigned from Congress after being caught trolling Craigslist for dates. That set up a special election to fill the seat, now scheduled for May 24 — two weeks from today.
Republican county chairs picked Assemblywoman Jane Corwin as their candidate, while Democrats picked an obscure county official, Kathy Hochul. This is a strong Republican district in western New York and Corwin, who also has the crucial endorsement of the state’s Conservative Party, should be running away with this.
Alas, there is the Crazy Jack Davis, a once-upon-a-time Republican who, in 2004, 2006 and 2008, ran for the NY-26 seat as a Democrat. Crazy Jack has now managed to get himself on the May 24 ballot as a “Tea Party” candidate. Of course, he’s not in any way representative of the Tea Party movement, and is supported by no Tea Party organizations, but nevertheless — funny how these coincidences happen — Davis has the “Tea Party” ballot line.
Crazy Jack Davis is a millionaire protectionist. As Sam Foster pointed out at Red State, “His signature issue, his raison d’etre has to do with our nation’s trade imbalance… He wants to cancel all free trade agreements in favor of something he calls ‘balanced trade.’ ” Which is utter nonsense, of course. (How is it that some people — Donald Trump is another — become millionaires without understanding basic economics?) “Balanced trade” is just a variation of economic nationalism which, in turn, is a straight road to the planned economy. But if you don’t yet understand why free trade is better policy than protectionism, there’s no point in my lecturing at this point: You’re on the wrong blog, pal.
Of far more immediate political relevance is the fact that a substantial number of NY-26 residents appear to be buying the Smoot-Hawley snake oil that Crazy Jack is selling. One recent poll showed Davis playing the “spoiler” role in the special election by pulling independent voters away from the conservative Republican, Jane Corwin. This has enabled the Democrat to eke out a lead:
