Thursday, April 15, 2010

Tea Party 2010 @ the Charlottesville Post Office

Tea Party Tax Day 2010 #4

It’s Tax Time in the U.S. The last day to legally pay your taxes or face fines for failure to do so. Now comes also the second annual Tea Party, with lots of gatherings all over the country. This will probably continue to be a contrarian event every tax day and every 4th of July - at least as long as such gatherings are legal.

The one in Charlottesville was sedate. Smaller than last year, perhaps because:

(a) the novelty is wearing off;
(b) folks have been intimidated by the name-calling in the MSM (i.e., only bigoted white people go to Tea Parties);
(c) it’s midweek, late afternoon, in a part of town - the main corridor through the city - where no sane person willingly ventures when work traffic is beginning to build, especially not on April 15th, with the crush to get to the post office to get the tax envelope marked on the due date.
(d)it was actually at the Post Office, on the right of way, a grassy area between the parking lot and the sidewalk.

However, the venue had certain advantages for those attending. Fortunately, the weather was lovely. There was lots of passing traffic to see the signs and honk their approval (one passing car shot an obscene gesture out the window at me; I waved and smiled in return). All but one of the big rigs (the 18-wheelers) gave tremendous honks of their horns and waved.

The gathering started at 4:00 p.m. Given my precarious health, we didn’t decide to actually go until about twenty minutes before it was time to leave for town (I’m glad it wasn’t yesterday as I was hardly functional).

I sat in one place, on the grass, or occasionally took an extra hand-made sign from one of the other attendees and waved it at the passing traffic for a while. I was fond of one that said “socialism is trickle down poverty”, but I also took turns with one about jobs…or the lack thereof. My very favorite sign was a half-block so south of me. It read “Save the Trees. Stop Printing Money”.

The Baron estimated there were three hundred people or so at the event, which is about a fourth of the 2009 crowd. However, the venue last year allowed for a lot more people and was easier to get into and out again. He watched the TV babe give her estimate - 150 - and corrected her later. He also told her she misused the word “renege”. Heh. Glad we don’t have a TV. She didn’t cotton to being corrected.
Tea Party Tax Day 2010 #3

I wonder if she and her cameraman will show the children running around, or the teenager selling chocolate bars, or the mothers with babies, or the young pregnant woman standing with her sign? Or will her tight focus be solely on the older folks - you know, the “angry, educated white people” who are the only attendees…per the MSM?

This year’s event was two hours long. Much better than last year, which ran far past most people’s ability to stay through it all.
Tea Party Tax Day 2010 #5

It was festive and upbeat. People still have some hope they can make a difference. The fact that so many states are fighting provisions of the omnibus health care bill gives a sense of focus. In fact, while no politicians were speakers that didn’t keep candidates for the district from showing up with flyers and buttons. It looks like there are lots of would-be congressmen beginning to campaign, hoping to dislodge our current seat holder.

One of them told me that our district is bigger than the state of New Jersey. Whoo boy! With the exception of Charlottesville, District Five is sure a far cheaper place to live than New Jersey:
- - - - - - - - -
Virginia’s fifth congressional district is a United States congressional district in the commonwealth of Virginia. It covers all or part of Greene, Campbell, Bedford, Albemarle, Nelson, Fluvanna, Buckingham, Cumberland, Appomattox, Prince Edward, Charlotte, Lunenburg, Franklin, Henry, Pittsylvania, Halifax, Mecklenburg, and Brunswick Counties, making it Virginia’s largest district with an area of 8922.03 square miles - 193 sq. mi. larger than New Jersey. It includes the independent cities of Bedford, Charlottesville (main site of the University of Virginia), Danville, and Martinsville.
It also includes a couple or three terrorist compounds, but they weren’t mentioned in the wiki.

During the last Congressional go-’round, the Democrat winner rode Obama’s coat tails. In a certified recount he won with a margin of 727 votes. That’s 0.229% out of the 316,893 votes cast. This time he will have to fight the shadow of Obama, which may be difficult considering that he’s voted the straight Dem line since he got to Washington. In fact, given his loyalty, I expect Obama will be on the campaign trail for his chum. That may prove to be a liability for the boy; we'll see.

After the event, people went next door to a restaurant. Being on a budget we skipped that part and bought some garden flowers instead. Now that I consider our purchases, those flowers were red, white and blue. Hmm…

Tea Party Tax Day 2010 #6

Which reminds me: when we sang the national anthem, I noticed few children or teenagers sang along. I asked some of them about their silence and they admitted not knowing the words. One boy said, “I’m working on it”.

Your kid can’t sing the national anthem?? Sheesh. Should you thank a teacher? Or are teachers permitted to give instruction on anything as seditious as “The Star Spangled Banner”?

Just askin’…

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

I know the anthem of the United States and I'm not even American. But again, I took one of those citizenship tests and I got over 90% on it, yet most Americans would fail it if they took it. This is quite sad and it shows the horrible state of education in the US. But I wouldn't be that proud, most people in my country probably don't know all the anthem either(all 11 stanzas, not just the 3 we usually sing or even those), just the first part. It's funny because our anthem is ethnocentric(it sounds funny if non-Romanians sing it since it appeals to our history as a nation) and it's Christian orientated so Muslims singing it would be quite funny. The most funny part though is that it curses the people who aren't willing to die for their own people. I remember when I was a child, the TV program started with the anthem and it was just before people left for work or I for school. I'm not sure if we sang it at school too before classes started since it was elementary days back then for me. :P Here is my anthem with English subtitles. Too bad it's just the singing part and it misses the part that would piss off a lot of Turks. lol

Rocha said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Rocha said...

Dymphna,

Are the Tea Parties dying?

RV,

Here the thing is very bad. MOST people do not know the anthem. And now it's sung only near patriotic days once or twice a year.=[
Beautiful anthem. I have noted that Moldova still used the anthem. Is there any talks of reunification?

Americans,

I share your sorrow my tax form must be shipped untill april 30.

Early Light said...

"at least as long as such gatherings are legal."

It will be interesting to see what the next edition of the Patriot Act says...

Avraham said...

Thank you for your comment on my blog. You could contact me
avrahamrosenblum@gmail

Steven Luotto said...

How lucky Americans are! I've been watching Tea Party Youtubes (Yesterday a whole Sarah Palin speech) and they're all about work, money, taxes, and money, taxes, work, and taxes, work, money.

Now work is prayer and taxes are certain as death and money makes the world go round, so I guess all this attention to work, taxes and money is - underneath it all - quite spiritual, metaphysical, philosophical... and not purely material.

Nevertheless it's such a far cry from "genocide against the white race" - "creeping Sharia" - "deculturalization" and the sort of icky stuff that makes us Europeans lose sleep.

Americans are lucky. A change in economics will make them happy again. We instead are DOOMED to studies of anthropology, theology, sociology, historiography.

What would a tea party do to solve the Islamic question in UK or Holland?

"Honk your horn if you think there are already too many Muslims in your country?"

"Stop squandering our hard-earned civilizational brithrights!"

The American national anthem is unsingable unless one is vocally gifted. The Italian anthem works very well if one merely sings "we lost the war - we lost the war - we lost the war!"

There has long been a movement here to dump the silly "Fratelli D'Italia" with a Verdi chorus from Nabucco

(skip to around 0.50"). It's got a nice Risorgimento sound to it.

The French anthem is the most "anthemy" of them all and eminently suited for jazzed up variations.

For Europe I'd be in favor of switching from Beethoven's Ode to Joy

...to Mozart's Dies Irae

Mad Dog Gazza said...

Kirk to Enterprise.

Beam me up, Scotty, and let's get out of here.

They want our ship for free.

EscapeVelocity said...

The Tea Party is just getting started. The momentum is full speed ahead. The lies that have been spread about the movement being racist have all backfired, and pissed people off even more, making them even more energized. They are pissed off as all get out with the Left and the New Left identity politics race hustling, on top of the fiscal issues...and the federal government power grab and nationalization of School Loans, the mortgage industry, the banks, the car companies and now 20% of US GDP, with this Health Care Industry destruction act of 2010. They are going down big time, in November.

New poll out shows a 30 point swing in even Jewish support for Obama Regime, if not the Democrats.

Even more and more black folks are starting to hesitantly show their faces at the Tea Parties, now that the lies about White Power movement that scared them have proven to be so much lies.

The Anti American Left is going down and going down hard.

Avraham said...

After you write please take down my email adress. (You mentioned you wanted to send a poem to me.)

Anonymous said...

Rocha, not really, Russia wouldn't like an unification and to be honest, me neither, unless Romania becomes a federation and the taxes from my city don't get redistributed to all the areas in the country.