Via Mike Hiteshew, this is a long and quite good talk from last year on the international ramifications of continued expansion of US govt debt:
Tea Party
Tea for Texas
In the spring of 2009, I was asked by an old military blog-friend, a retired Air Force officer, if I would join his local Tea Party Committee to plan the Tax Day protest. We all assumed at that point that we would have an event involving five or six hundred people; with luck, we might even nab of bit of attention from our local media. We’d do it in a park someplace, listen to some speeches and hey, I was a former broadcaster, and he knew that I could write, and could I come along to write news releases? Pretty please? S’help me, that’s all that I thought it would be, and it would have been, save for a series of fortunate involvement by people who had bigger ideas and useful connections. So, our simple, humble home-made Tax Day 2009 Tea Party protest turned into a massive blow-out in Alamo Plaza, an all-day and into the evening extravaganza with Ted Nugent, at least 15,000 people from all over Texas and the United States, and Glenn Beck of whom at that point I had never heard. (Candidly, I had him mixed up with Jeff Beck and thought; oh, cool another conservative rock musician besides Ted Nugent.)
Chicago Tea Party Meeting, August 3, 2011
[As promised, here is my report.]
I was able to cram in two events. The first was a reception hosted by the Republican National Lawyers Association for Joe Birkett. It was a nice event, hosted by the same people who ran the election poll-watching project I wrote about previously. Judge Birkett gave an engaging talk. I was interested to see what he would say about current developments, but he said very little. He was carefully judicious in avoiding anything that could be construed as political in nature, as is appropriate and required by his new status as a judge. The gentleman who introduced him observed that he was “the captain of every football team he was ever on” which was believable, as was his youthful boxing championship. As a former prosecutor, he had the tough, cop-like demeanor you would expect. At one point he commented that the GOP needs to reach out to the Tea Party and work with them. It was rather vague. I mean nothing invidious about Judge Birkett when I observe that establishment GOP figures in Illinois seem puzzled by the Tea Party phenomenon. This perception would be reinforced later in the evening.
Also present at the Birkett event was conservative radio personality Dan Proft, who ran for governor last time, and recently got the 9 a.m. to 11 a.m. slot on WLS in Chicago. Dan gave a nice talk about a project he is supporting, Operation Homefront, which provides assistance to Illinois families of deployed service members, or wounded service members returning to civilian life.
I was able to get into a cab and dash over to the monthly Tea Party meeting and only missed the first few minutes. I was eager to hear a talk by Otis McDonald, plaintiff in the gun rights case McDonald v. City of Chicago. Unfortunately, Mr. McDonald cancelled at the last minute.
The meeting turned out to be the best one I have been to yet, anyway.
Chicago Tea Party Meeting Tonight
Chicago Tea Party meeting tonight, 7:00 p.m., features Otis McDonald, plaintiff in the critically important case gun rights case McDonald v. City of Chicago.
I hope to see some of you there. I will be wearing a seersucker suit and a Gadsden Flag lapel pin — carefully positioned to cover the small splotch from a drop of spilled coffee.
UPDATE: Despite Mr. McDonald being a last-minute no-show, this was about the best Tea Party meeting I have been to yet. I hope to blog about it soon.
