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The Tea Party community and its ethos of decentralized leadership and individual freedom is under an orchestrated attack from left-wing apparatchiks, elected Democrats, and their cheerleaders in the liberal media.  Having suffered through bomb scares, hostile abuse, death threats, and racial slurs, we are now called every epithet in Webster’s, from “phony,” to “astroturf,” “redneck,” “racist,” “domestic terrorist,” “mentally retarded,” “seditionist,” and “potential killer.”All this because we choose to petition our government in peaceful protest for a redress of policy grievances?  For practicing our First Amendment rights, they smear our moral character.  It’s as if they are afraid to debate their big government ideas on the merits.

Its time to draw a line in the sand. Its time to call out the bad actors, the crashers, and the haters.  We judge people as fellow individuals, based on the content of their character, and based on their individual actions. We will self-police our community and let openness, sunlight, and transparency shine the spotlight on individuals behaving badly.

So when we received the hostile message left on a FreedomWorks’ staffer’s phone by D.C. Douglas (a.k.a., Lance Baxter), with return phone number, we checked him out.  He is the voice actor who does the Geico ads.  (Not the gecko, thank goodness).   We posted his message calling us and all tea partiers “mentally retarded” on biggovernment.com.  We asked tea partiers to call him and Geico customer service and let them know that they were not, in fact, mentally retarded killers.

Geico cut D.C. Douglas loose.

Now the perpetrator claims to be the victim.  Me, I’m a “douche bag.”

There is power in accountability.  You have it, that power to speak up, to act in non-violent civil disobedience.  As the Reverend C.L Bryant asked the crowd of 40,000 peaceful protestors gathered on the Washington Mall at last Thursday’s Tax Day Tea Party:  “Is there any one out there that will stand up for American principle?”

Award winning war correspondent Michael Yon was detained and handcuffed at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport Yesterday by Customs and Border Protection (CBP) personnel.

Yon was returning to the United States from Hong Kong to visit family when CBP officials stopped him during a routine security checkpoint.  “Officials asked me what was in my bag—nothing wrong with this question,” Yon said in an interview with BigGovernment.com.  “I told them it was normal stuff, clothes and toothbrushes.”

At this point the Customs officials escorted Yon to a designated screening area where they examined the contents of his bag.  “Then they asked me how much money I make,” Yon said.  Yon suggested to the Customs officials that the question was inappropriate and unrelated to transportation security.  The award-winning blogger noted another CBP officer approached Yon: “he asked who do I work for.”  ”I did not answer the question which clearly was upsetting to the [CBP] officers.”

Yon was escorted to a room elsewhere in the airport where he said he remained silent during much of the questioning.   According to Yon, “they handcuffed me for failing to cooperate.  They said I was impeding their ability to do their job.”

(more…)

The conservative Internet entrepreneur on bringing down Acorn, Hollywood liberals, and embarrassing the mainstream media.

By JAMES TARANTO

Hollywood

Dressing up as a pimp and prostitute in order to seek Acorn’s help in starting a child sex-slavery ring wasn’t Andrew Breitbart’s idea. But without the Internet entrepreneur’s flair for publicity, the hidden-camera sting might not have produced such impressive results. Within days of his publishing the video exposé, government agencies were cutting ties with the left-wing advocacy and community-organizing group, Congress was voting to end its federal funding, and news organizations were rushing to catch up with a sensational story they had initially resisted or ignored.

James O’Keefe, the 25-year-old aspiring filmmaker who played the pimp in the Acorn meetings, came to Mr. Breitbart in early August with his videos. They showed Mr. O’Keefe and his putative partner in crime, 20-year-old Hannah Giles, asking Acorn counselors for advice on how to evade the authorities while setting up a business offering the sexual services of underage girls smuggled into the U.S. from El Salvador. It was a shocking and outlandish tale, but employees in at least five Acorn offices fell for it and offered to help. (more…)

Dear Chairman Landesman:

With all this fuss on Big Hollywood.com, Big Government.com and elsewhere over the NEA’s government-funded forays into partisan political propaganda, I thought maybe we could help each other out. 

–

Right now, you probably want to support some art that addresses vital current issues from a right-wing perspective in order to demonstrate your impartiality (ha ha!), and I just want to cash in your organization’s evident willingness to spend good tax money on any kind of nonsense that can be passed-off as “art” (ca-ching!)   

Well, I am uniquely suited to provide you with just what you’re looking for!  As a college student, I got a “B” in my Visual Arts 1 class for dressing up a juniper bush in one of my Hawaiian shirts to draw attention to man’s essential oneness with nature while providing a stinging critique of America’s consumerist culture.  Sure, my black-clad, Bauhaus-loving classmates protested that I was a fraud who was more concerned with collecting four easy credits than internalizing our professor’s commie insights about how expressionism equals imperialism, but hey – aren’t all great artists rebels?   Or, at least, weren’t they before last January 20th?

Just kidding, dude!  Anyway, as your organization’s visual arts mission statement says:

Grants in the visual arts support projects undertaken by organizations that encourage individual artistic development, experimentation, and dialogue between artists and the public through exhibitions, residencies, publications, commissions, public art works, conservation, documentation, services to the field, and public programs.

Sounds awesome!  Now, I went to the NEA’s grant application site and there’s a long complicated process for getting grants that seems to involve me becoming a federal contractor.  Nothing like the government for taking something simple – like you writing me a fat check – and turning it into a bureaucratic death march!  Can’t wait until you folks take over health care! 

Anyhow, instead I think I’ll just cut to the chase and sketch out my proposed projects for you here.  You can fund the one – or ones! – that you like best:

1) My first proposed project is an interpretive dance piece to be performed on the streets of Greenwich Village titled “The Cry of the Employed.”

This innovative performance involves me using motion and song to tell the story of a beleaguered taxpayer forced to subsidize the ridiculous indulgences of pseudo-intellectual no-talents who try to pass off their pretentious junk as art.  Dressed in business suit and button-down shirt with a sensible tie, I will confront passing goateed hipsters and pierced bohos, acting out the story of a man who works hard only to have his money siphoned off support the antics of a bunch of pompous deadbeats.  My choreography will draw from the traditions of ballet, kabuki and Appalachian folk dance while incorporating maracas and jazz hands.  And yes, there will be krumping.

2) My second proposed project is a performance art piece that was going to be called Chocolate Thunder until I Googled it and found that this is the title of a very , very specialized series of erotic videos.  Instead, my piece will be called Suburban Fudge.  Out of an abundance of caution, I have not Googled this title.

In the tradition of pioneering NEA grant recipient Karen Finley, who famously covered herself in chocolate to demonstrate the corrosive effects of patriarchal hegemony, I plan to slather myself in rich, creamy Hershey’s to demonstrate the glory of corporate America.  This act will reaffirm my allegiance to Big Chocolate and underscore my belief that the best hope for American progress is a vigorous, lightly-regulated private sector.  Using my body, I will also form a Laffer Curve then engage in some dramatic readings from Milton Friedman’s Free To Choose.  And I will personally keep any profits from the performance, an act which itself is central to the integrity of the piece.

3) My third proposed project is an installation that takes Andres Serrano’s infamous Piss Christ, the crucifix in a jar of the artist’s urine, to the next level.  I call it Pee Health Care Reform Bill.

Now, the draft health care bill is well over 1000 pages long, so I’m not sure I can personally handle the, uh, logistics of this project.  This is where the NEA comes in.  I plan to use my grant to buy a keg of frosty Dos Equis Lager for me and my buddies.  After we drink it we can, well, get “creative” Serrano-style!  We’ll also need limes, and some snacks would be nice too.  I think I could get you a final product for, say, $25,000.

Anyway, thanks for taking the time to read my email – though I have to say that as a conservative I am horrified by the fact that there’s an Internet domain out there with the name of “arts.gov” since the only proper involvement of the government in the arts is not to have any role at all.  Well, guess we’ll have to agree to disagree on that, right?

I sure hope you dig my personal vision enough to cut me a check – just don’t forget the second “h” in “Schlichter” on the payee line!  And remember, because I’m a heterosexual right-wing gun-owning veteran with a real job, you’ll be able to check several important diversity boxes for your organization for the first time in its illustrious history! 

I’m looking forward to seeing you at the premiere of Suburban Fudge, but don’t forget to bring a jacket – the first three rows will get wet! 

Best,

Kurt A. Schlichter
Future Performance Artist

NEA’s Yosi Sergant

Monday, we have the NEA under the microscope.  The Obama Administration was caught red-handed (is that “racist”?) funneling tax payer dollars into an official propaganda department.  I can’t wait to see what the excuse will be this time.

These people have mastered the art of defending the indefensible.

Let’s set aside the stupidity of this move.  Anyone familiar with the NEA knows that it pretty much exists to fund leftist propaganda disguised as art.  Officially coordinating it is a bit redundant.

Let’s also set aside the brazen arrogance.  Despite rejecting and dismissing charges that this administration is attempting to turn the United States into a South American Banana Republic, these folks keep doing things that make Hugo Chavez envious.  State run propaganda through the NEA, silencing critics with the stigma of “racism,” setting up official channels to rat out your neighbors for “thought crimes” with flag@whitehouse.gov, and restructuring our economy with wealth redistribution schemes like socialized medicine and cap and trade are just a few of their moves right from the Trotsky play book.  And they do it all with righteous indignation.  They claim that we students of history are too ignorant, too blinded by our prejudices, to really see what’s going on.

No, let’s focus on the inevitable excuses that will flow from the mouths of the White House spin doctors and the true believers that make up the mainstream media.  If I, from the outside, can predict their next moves, it’s pretty obvious that their excuses aren’t genuine.

They are just another act in this grand play of leftist tomfoolery.

Phase one will be complete silence.  The story won’t be picked up by the state run media.  Crickets.  Crickets.  After about a week of red faced Glenn Beck monologues, daily Rush Limbaugh pontifications (thanks, by the way, for the shout-out last week El Rushbo, the family was very impressed), Sarah Palin facebook posts, and Andrew Breitbart expertly rolling out more information, they will be forced to respond.

Phase two will be what I like to call “The Oz Effect.”  Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.  What’s the big deal, after all?  The President, through the positively Grima Wormtongue-like Robert Gibbs, will “not really be aware of it.”  There are bigger issues after all.  Americans are concerned about the greedy insurance companies and the doctors trying to amputate their feet for some extra scratch, not about what happens at the NEA.  David Shuster, the poor man’s Keith Olbermann, will point out that the people involved have already been reassigned.  Isn’t this just another Republican shot in the dark?  Don’t these people have any real ideas?  Aren’t the conservatives in disarray?  Who is their leader anyway?

Phase three will be the “offense-defense.”  David Frum will talk about the risks that conservatives run by offending artists.  Going after the NEA will just prove that we don’t like creative things.  CNN will air segments featuring inner-city kids finger painting, explaining that the NEA’s $50 million cut of the stimulus money paid for those paints.  You don’t want to take away finger paints. do you?  Evil conservatives.  The President will tout the importance of the arts in our community, the hope and joy it brings to so many.  Sure, there were some bad apples, but they were just cowboys acting without official orders.  We need the NEA.  Just like we need ACORN, socialized medicine, and cap and trade.

Phase four will be justice.  Riding high on the conservative smack down, bills will come forward in the House and Senate to freeze the NEA’s budget or defund it all together.  A few lone whack jobs will vote against it, but it will pass with a fat majority.

Breitbart and company can claim another scalp.  And to quote Aldo Raine, “I want my scalps!”

At no point will any member of the administration step forward and admit that it was wrong, un-American, or dangerous for democracy.  The mainstream media will never pile onto the story and dig deeper.

These lame excuses and political posturings come with a high cost.  Each time we do something like this, and they respond as outlined above, their credibility drops a few points.  Every time this sort of thing happens, another person on the fence looks at the evidence and joins the right team.

There is a reason why conservative blogs are full of charts, facts, figures and quotes from history, while liberal blogs ramble on about conspiracies and charges of racism.  There is a reason why conservatives use their understanding of economics to build companies and empires, while the left has to resort to trickery and emotional arguments to fund their pointless projects.

It’s because we “get it.”  They don’t.  Their edge has always been their stranglehold on the media; but that is slipping away like star systems through Grand Moff Tarkin’s fingers.  Conservatives, being the smart entrepreneurs that we are, created our own parallel media.  We have filled this new media with facts, intelligence and passion.  The response from the opposition has been demagoguery, excuses, and misdirection.  Bad form.  Bad form indeed.

So good luck digging your way out of this one, hippies.  2010 and 2012 can’t come soon enough.  Leftists, you are on notice.  Your orgy of power and stupidity will be brief and soon you will be gone.

Oh, and on your way out, take the mainstream media with you.  You are both useless.