Uploaded 1/13/12 to YouTube, a reminder to people that hear GOP presidential candidate Rick Santorum saying nice things about the Tea Party movement, Santorum was originally opposed to the movement and said he would "vocally and publicly oppose" the movement.
Video below:
Below is a picture of the original Tea Party candidate, from 1994, AP caption reads "In this April 15, 1994 file photo, House Minority Whip Newt Gingrich of Georgia and 7th District (Ga.) congressional candidate Dr. Brenda Fitzgerald, throw mock tea crates into the Chattahoochee River in Roswell, Ga."
Showing it below because that version also adds more recent statements where Santorum claims to have felt a "bond" with the Tea Party audience and calls himself a "Tea Party person".
TEA Party of Florida, the only political tea party registered with the state Division of Elections, has endorsed Newt Gingrich as has The Florida Tea Party Coalition With Newt, just days after an ABC News report showed that Florida Tea Party supporters find Gingrich's "beating the pavement" more appealing than Romney's paid ads.
Unlike Romney, thousands of Floridians have flocked to Gingrich’s events, hoping to shake hands with the presidential candidate and voice their concerns. That kind of enthusiasm, experts say, could well overcome Romney’s considerable financial advantage.
“Newt is everywhere here,” Ingram, a Tampa resident, said. “Where is Romney? He’s on television with the paid stuff. But the enthusiasm that’s being shown by the folks at the Gingrich rally, that translates into real votes. Anybody who shows up at a rally, they are darn well going to vote for them on Election Day.”
Tea Party darling Sarah Palin, while not endorsing Newt Gingrich, has stepped in to the battle for Florida as well by tearing into the Republican establishment that has thrown all but the kitchen sink at Gingrich in an attempt to influence Florida primary voters after Gingrich easily beat Romney in South Carolina and rose in the nation polls.
National pollsters show Romney ahead of Gingrich in Florida, yet local pollsters have the race at a dead heat between the two candidates with Rick Santorum and Ron Paul in third and fourth place, respectively.
Florida Primary day, Tuesday, January 31, 2012, promises to be very interesting.
Via email link to Liberty News, we see that polling conducted from January 23-25, 2012 puts Newt Gingrich at the top of their favorite list with nearly a two-to-one lead over their second choice, Rick Santorum.
The survey was taken by 29,000 members and hit on a number of questions related to the 2012 GOP primary election. Of the 29,000, 75.7% of respondents said they closely identify with the ideals of the movement, and 17.2% said they are actively a part of the tea party movement.
The margin of error is at 0.56% with 95% confidence for the Grassfire Nation audience. First let’s take a look at the national results. We’ll follow up with some points about the numbers.
Question #1: If the caucus or primary were held in your state today, which of the following Republican presidential candidates would you support?
A press release describing the poll states Gingrich "leads among white evangelical Christians 43 - 30 percent and among those who consider themselves to be tea party supporters 43 - 28 percent." Each segment makes up roughly a third of primary voters, according to Quinnipiac pollsters, "although there is substantial overlap among those two groups."
This comes six days after a report showing that 100 Tea Party leaders, from 25 different states, stepped up to support Gingrich.
Two recent Florida polls have come out today showing that after overcoming Romney's lead in Florida and taking the lead himself, Gingrich has lost that edge and Romney has once again taken the polling lead.
The fluctuations in Florida polls over the last week alone, show a race that is unpredictable and could go to either candidate by Tuesday, January 31, 2012, which is primary day in Florida.
The RCP average for nationwide polling, as of this moment, has Gingrich up by one percent, showing a very close race. That average changes with every new national polling data that is added.
Click to enlarge- RCP Screen shot taken on 1/26/12
As South Carolina clearly evidenced with Romney leading Gingrich by double digits on a Tuesday and Gingrich overcoming that lead and winning the South Carolina primaries by 12 percentage points by that same Saturday, polling is a snapshot and dependent on the mood of the moment which can turn on a dime and many not making up their minds who to vote for until primary day.
An example is provided by the FiveThirtyEight forecast yesterday where they gave Newt Gingrich a 60 percent chance of taking Florida on Tuesday the 31st, with the caveat pointing to the fact that even that lead was diminished from just two days before.
Further mucking up of the GOP primary process in Florida is that not only are campaigns running negative ads against each other along with SuperPACS that are pro-one candidate or another, but also now liberal groups have jumped into the ad war against Romney, including the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, the nation’s largest public employee union and Service Employees International Union and Priorities USA Action, a pro-Obama super PAC, have also jointly launched a Spanish-language radio campaign in Florida accusing Romney of having “two faces” on immigration issues.
Tonight's debate sponsored by CNN, CNN en Español, The Hispanic Leadership Network and The Republican Party of Florida, at 8pm ET on CNN, just became of prime importance for the vote of the ten percent still undecided and the third of voters saying they could still change their minds.
A little lighthearted entertainment from Big Government who went through Twitters "Questions you don’t have to ask Tea Partiers" hashtag last week and created a video from some of the amusing questions.
Video below:
My personal favorite was whether the lice could be considered dependents.
I am sure that not many of you reading this have ever heard of Marilyn Davenport. You would be excused if you didn't.
She happens to be a hot- shot republican party official in Orange County, California and a tea party member.
I am also sure that many of you reading this who happen to be in a certain clique of A-merry-cans have seen the picture accompanying this post. (One of my regular posters uses it as their pic to accompany his/her post.) It's the kind of stuff ignorant racist circulate among themselves to make themselves feel better about their own pathetic lives and miserable existence.
Rather than attack O on the substance of his policies, (and there is room for attack) they choose to use racist caricatures to poke fun of his ethnicity. Nice!
So anyway, seems that my tea party friend made a mistake that racist of her ilk often make; she sent an e-mail which was seem by others outside of her racist circle and was called on it. (Maybe the NAACP was right.) But here is the funny part: She actually got upset at the thought that others would find it offensive and used the old "some of my best friends are black" meme to justify her despicable actions.
"Oh, come on! Everybody who knows me knows that I am not a racist. It was a joke. I have friends who are black! Besides, I only sent it to a few people - mostly people I didn't think would be upset by it," explained Marilyn Davenport , Teapublican activist and member of the Orange County Republican Party Central Committee.
Davenport is in hot water for circulating a racist hate-email depicting President Barack Obama and his parents as chimpanzees. The email also noted, "Now you know why - No birth certificate." As with most white racists on the defensive, Davenport's "excuse" was that she only sent the email to her closest racist friends, that she is not a racist , that she didn't realize the email was racist, and that it's perfectly acceptable to make fun of black people as subhuman.
These are each classic forms of racism denial. Instead of an apology, Davenport said she was concerned over who leaked her racist email and then blamed the media for running it."
Those comments were from a blogger named ThosPayne ,who is clearly not a tea partier or a conservative because he seems to be,well, a decent person.
Now, as is to be expected with these types of incidents, there are calls for Ms. Davenport to resign. (Because we all know that this incident is an aberration..... yeah right!) We will see.
Personally, I hope she stays on and does what she has been doing all along. If she leaves she will only be replaced with someone who is better at covering up their true feelings about a certain beige man in the people's house. Besides, this is A-merry-ca, calling the President the son of chimpanzees is not the same as yelling fire in a crowded theater.
So go on tea party lady, do your thing. I am sure that you have a lot of supporters out here who are behind you 100%. We will find find out soon enough if they actually vote.
The prestigious New York Times has released their official appraisal of where the re-election races of Pioneer Valley Congressmen Richard Neal and John Olver stand as of October 15. While Republicans in much of the country are enjoying unprecedented high poll numbers, the Times reports that according to their appraisal, coming into the home stretch both Neal and Olver are poised for landslide re-election victories.
Saying that "based on polling, expert forecasts, fundraising, past election returns and other indicators" in the closely watched 2nd Congressional District, where the entrenched Neal is being challenged by businessman Tom Wesley, the Times says that Neal is leading with 71% of the vote with Wesley trailing 44 points behind with only 27%. On the basis of those numbers, the Times declares that they are 100% certain that Neal will be re-elected.
The Times regards the Olver effort, where he faces local Tea Party favorite Bill Gunn, to be more competitive, but just barely. Dismissing leftist third party candidate Michael Engel as entirely irrelevant, the Times declares that Olver is leading with 66% of the vote to Gunn's nearly 32%. This leads them to conclude that there is a 99.9% chance that Olver will be re-elected, not quite the 100% certainty the Times has about Neal, but still pretty discouraging to those hoping for change.
Challengers Tom Wesley and Bill Gunn.
But is it really so hopeless? I think the Times is mistaken in totally dismissing the role of Engel's leftist third party challenge in the Olver race. If Engel pulls a significant number of disillusioned Obama liberals away from Olver, Gunn's chances may prove better than forecast. And the experts have been underestimating Tom Wesley from day one, when everyone said that Wesley's GOP primary challenger, Dr. Jay Fleitman would win the GOP nomination easily.
In any case it will be the voters of the First and Second District who will make the final determination on November 2nd of who will represent them in Congress - not the New York Times.
To read the full NYT Neal-Wesley appraisal click here. To read the full NYT Olver-Gunn appraisal click here.
Luke Arrivel was playing at the Haymarket in Northampton this past weekend.
A Deadhead in the UMass library.
I saw this red-tailed hawk in a tree outside Bartlett Hall at UMass this afternoon.
A local organization closely identified with the so-called "Tea Party" movement has been turned down by all the candidates but one in a forum intended to educate the public about the state representative race in the West Springfield/Chicopee area. According to the following press release:
Rep. Don Humason and candidate Vogel.
State Representative Candidate Dean Vogel will be the sole candidate to participate in a forum hosted by the Chicopee area group of the Western Mass 912 Project.
Vogel is one of three qualified candidates vying for a vacant seat in the 6th Hampden District, which includes all of West Springfield, and parts of Chicopee and Springfield. The Candidates’ Forum will take place June 3 from 6:00 to 8:00 p.m. at the new Chicopee Public Library on 449 Front Street. It is a non-partisan event that is free and open to the public.
According to Barbara Perez, event coordinator and area facilitator of the Chicopee group, the forum is designed to educate the public about important issues, and to learn about the candidates so we are better informed when we go to the polls to vote.
According to Perez, members of the group are pleased that Vogel agreed to attend the forum. Formal invitations and calls went out to all the candidates, she said. But the other Republican, Greg Neffinger, and the Democrat, Michael Finn, declined to attend.
“Dean will have ‘the floor’ all to himself,” Perez said. He will have the opportunity to define himself and the campaign in contrast to the other candidates.”
Congratulations to Vogel for having the courage and integrity to meet with all of his potential constituents in order to appraise their views, and shame on the cowardly Neffinger and Finn for not doing the same.
Meanwhile, the Northampton Democrats were doing grassroots outreach this morning downtown.
The weather was gorgeous as I crossed the Calvin Coolidge bridge yesterday on the bus.
The other night however a violent storm passed through the Valley, causing this tree to fall and block the woodland way into downtown Northampton.
Of course being an intrepid traveler I found a way around the tree through the woods. However, there was no way for cars to get around this fallen tree on Calvin Terrace.
On the UMass campus a tree in front of Herter Hall was knocked over.
Even the grass was torn up.
The national situation ain't so good either.
Jorma was in Northampton last weekend. Here is his diary entry.
Sunday, May 16, 2010 Northampton, Massachusetts
Alrighty then... Quite the hectic day today with non-stop traffic from Wilmington, Delaware almost to the the Northampton exit. Once at the iron Horse, we rushed through sound check, ate and hit the stage. Here is our set list:
The Iron Horse Northampton, Massachusetts Sunday, May 16, 2010
First Set: 1. Been So Long 2. There’s A Bright Side Somewhere 3. Prohibition Blues 4. Izze’s Lullaby 5. I Belong To The Band 6. Uncle Sam Blues 7. Sea Child 8. Full Go Round 9. I Know You Rider
Second Set:
1. Serpent Of Dreams 2. The Terrible Operation 3. Trouble In Mind 4. Things That Might Have Been 5. 99 Year Blues 6. River Of Time 7. More Than My Old Guitar 8. Good Shepherd 9. Genesis 10. Nine Pound Hammer 11. Encore: Come Back Baby
Here's an old video of Jorma in one of his last performances with the late Papa John Creach.
In the normal course of events, politicians are first elected to office and then they get arrested. But here in the bizarro world of Valley politics, first comes the perp walk, then comes the nomination papers.
Local Tea Party hero Bill Gunn
Yet an arrest record may actually work to the advantage of William Gunn of Ware, who will officially announce this weekend that he is running for U.S. Congress against incumbent John Olver. Gunn came to national attention last month when he was arrested in the balcony of the House of Representatives in Washington D.C. for yelling at the lawmakers below to "Kill the Bill" meaning the government healthcare takeover legislation which was under consideration at the time. Gunn and his companion in civil disobedience, Dave Sanders of Wilbraham, became instant folk heroes among the very active Tea Party movement here in the Valley. Gunn summarizes his campaign platform as follows:
I am running for the position of United States Representative for the first district of Massachusetts. I am currently collecting signatures and I can use all the help I can get.
We are going to oust John Olver, and the PEOPLE are going to take back the house. The house of representatives is supposed to be comprised of CITIZEN REPRESENTATIVES; people like you and me. It is time to show a renewed reverence for the Constitution and bring spending under control and actually CUT SPENDING ON EVERY GOVERNMENT PROGRAM.
The tax burden needs to be reduced, and if any are going to pay an income tax, ALL must pay an income tax. Only then will the majority of the people start voting for fiscal restraint.
Can Gunn win? Olver has faced better known challengers in the past and won re-election handily, but this is an unpredictable year when the winds of change are blowing at gale force. Gunn will also get a ton of free publicity when his case goes to trial. I put his chance of victory at fifty-fifty.
However former State Representative Christopher Asselin of Springfield is unlikely to be able to turn his former arrest record into a political plus, but that hasn't stopped him from announcing that he will be running to reclaim his old job. As explained by Masslive:
With 18 months in prison, $140,000 in restitution and one major corruption scandal behind him, former state Rep. Christopher P. Asselin is primed for a political comeback.
Breaking a long public silence, the 40-year old Democrat announced on Monday that he is considering running for his old seat in the 9th Hampden District, which straddles the Springfield and Chicopee border.
Asselin, the youngest son of a well-known political clan, won two terms on Beacon Hill before being named in a 122-count indictment accusing him, his father, mother, wife, four siblings and others of looting the taxpayer-financed Springfield Housing Authority for a decade.
After pleading guilty to bribery, theft and fraud conspiracy charges in 2007, Asselin was given an 18-month prison term. His father, Raymond, director of the authority until 2004, was ordered to serve 10 years behind bars.
Here is the first half of an interview with Asselin yesterday on the Bax and O'Brien Show, in which Asselin comes out swinging by essentially accusing incumbent Sean Curran of being a liar and a phony.
Here's the second half, where O'Brien asks Asselin about his alleged "mental issues":
Can Asselin rise from the ashes? Well, Springfield makes up most of the district, and Springfield voters are notorious for electing and re-electing bad guys, so it's impossible to say that Asselin has no chance. But incumbent Curran is popular, and is sure to remind voters of all the sordid details of the Asselin scandal. I would put Chris Asselin's chances at no better than one in three.
But to top it all off, after a sordid domestic scandal last year devolved into incidents of public violence that sank the re-election hopes of Agawam Mayor Susan Dawson, most observers thought that her political career was over. Not so, apparently, as Dawson is now running for State Senate! But hey, if Gunn can be arrested in the halls of Congress and run as a hero, and Asselin can walk out of prison and announce his own race, then why shouldn't Dawson run as well? Agawam voters adore dirty politics and she was the mud-wrestling queen they loved to hate. The electorate may choose Dawson just for her future entertainment value.
I took this picture in Northampton's Haymarket Cafe early this morning.
Tea Partiers protesting in Springfield in January.
The national media was reporting yesterday afternoon that two people in the gallery of the chamber of the U.S. House of Representatives were arrested for shouting slogans in opposition to the government healthcare takeover at the lawmakers below. What wasn't discovered until today is that the two are Western Massachusetts residents - Dave Sanders of Wilbraham and William Gunn of the town of Ware. The disruption was reported by nearly all major media but the most concise account of the incident, which included expressions of outrage from Massachusetts Congressman Barney Frank, appeared in the D.C. journal Roll Call:
Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) said Sunday that Republicans acted like “clowns” by egging on tea party protesters in the House gallery who were dragged out for shouting out against health care reform. A protester “stood up and started yelling, ‘kill the bill!’ … and then the Republicans started cheering him on,”
Frank vented to reporters after the incident. “You have dozens of Republicans standing and applauding and cheering on a guy who was disrupting the proceedings and resisting court officers. It’s really disgraceful.” Although Frank referred to only a single protester, Capitol Police spokeswoman Sgt. Kimberly Schneider later said two men were arrested in the incident. William Gunn and David Sanders, both from Massachusetts, were charged with disruption of Congress, Schneider said.
Rowdy tea party protesters have flooded the Capitol grounds in recent days to oppose health care reform; group organizers on Sunday were encouraging attendees at a rally to get gallery passes and bring their message directly to lawmakers.
A visit to the website of the activist organization to which both activists belong The Western Mass 912 Group shows photographs of both of the men who were arrested yesterday in the Capitol. Here is Sanders of Wilbraham:
This is William Gunn and presumably a young Gunn.
Gunn looks familiar to me. I suspect this is him waving a "Don't Tread on Me" flag outside of the appearance of Barney Frank at UMass recently.
If so it would be ironic that it was Frank who would later denounce him and Sanders in the national media.
Both the Western Mass teapartiers have been released from custody and are back in the area and posting on the 912 Group website, where they are receiving mostly congratulatory messages from supporters. Most of the comments reflect the sentiment that their act of civil disobedience was justified, as in the spirit of this one quote by Orwell that someone posted:
"Speaking the truth during times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act." - George Orwell
No, I did not go to the big parade yesterday in Holyoke, but the ever intrepid Kristen Beam did and here are a few of her snaps.
Naturally the media was out in full force, but this time they were also participants, not just observers. Of course if you want good weather for the parade invite the weathermen to march! Here are the Channel 22 folks Ryan Walsh, Brian Lapis and Adam Strzempko.
Dave Madsen and Eric Fisher of TV40.
Springfield Mayor Dom Sarno and his police department.
The rock star himself, Senator Scott Brown.
Representative Humason and Westfield Mayor Knapik.
When the crowds left, only the trash remained.
The Music Section
Once in a while you get shown the light in the strangest of places if you look at it right.
I've always considered Bob Dylan to be one of the great poets of modern times. Some people have said he's not really a poet but a songwriter. Yet from a historic perspective there is really no distinction, since originally all poetry was intended to be sung. In fact all good poetry (except free verse) should be able to be set to music, whether or not the poet ever actually composed any.
In any case it is very possible to consider many of Dylan's songs as musical poetry, especially things like Mr. Tambourine Man or some of the stuff from Blood on the Tracks. It was this admiration for Dylan's songwriting that made me glad to have the chance recently to read Bob Dylan's first book, the intriguely titled Tarantula.
Alas, to my surprise the title is the most interesting part of the book, which overall is an unbearable, incomprehensible bore. The Wikipedia has this to say about this "novel" which I would contend would be better described as just a collection of words.
Tarantula is an experimental novel by Bob Dylan, written between 1965 and 1966. It employs stream of consciousness writing, somewhat in the style of Jack Kerouac, William S. Burroughs, and Allen Ginsberg. One section of the book parodies the Leadbelly song "Black Betty". Reviews of the book liken it to his self-penned liner notes to two of his albums recorded around the same time, Bringing It All Back Home and Highway 61 Revisited.
This is not accurate, the liner notes on those albums were far superior to anything in Tarantula. Nor is the comparison to Kerouac justified, his stream of consciousness novels were never this sloppy or obscure. The Wikipedia continues:
Dylan would later cite Tarantula as a book he had never fully signed up to write: "Things were running wild at that point. It never was my intention to write a book." He went on to equate the book to John Lennon's nonsensical work In His Own Write, and implied that his former manager Albert Grossman signed up Dylan to write the novel without the singer's full consent.
It's good to know that Dylan didn't really intend to write a book, because he didn't really write one. The one comparison between Dylan and Kerouac that is accurate is that the worst insult ever hurled at Kerouac, delivered unjustly by Truman Capote, does in fact apply to Dylan, "That's not writing, that's typing." Nor is it fair to compare Tarantula to the witty and intelligent John Lennon book, since Tarantula is neither. The book is an obvious rip-off, a bunch of nonsense Dylan typed up to justify a contract he never wanted to fulfill in the first place and then released by a greedy publisher just to make a quick buck. Again from the Wikipedia:
Although it was to be edited by Dylan and published in 1966, his motorcycle accident in July '66 prevented this. Numerous bootleg versions of the book were available on the black market through 1971, when it was officially published. In the early 21st century, it was translated into French
The "early 21st century" reprinting was no doubt done for yet another round of rip-offs designed to cash-in on the 2003 release of Dylan's second book, the infinitely superior Chronicles.
In sharp contrast to Tarantula, Chronicles shows Dylan to be every bit as good a writer as one would have hoped. In that book Dylan writes with passion and insight about subjects he cares about, and leaves one wishing he would write more.
But one would never wish for another Tarantula. In 2003 Spin magazine did an article called the "Top Five Unintelligible Sentences From Books Written by Rock Stars." Dylan came in first place with "Now's not the time to get silly, so wear your big boots and jump on the garbage clowns."
But is the book really completely worthless? In a literary sense yes it is, although socially it may have had some value when first released. No doubt many people bought it simply to carry it around and look cool while sitting in coffeehouses pretending to read it. Hey, books have been purchased for much worse reasons, and by less deserving authors.
Proud Turnout
I continue to be impressed by the great turnouts reported nationwide for the "Tea Party" protests against the increasing deterioration of our liberty and financial security. Despite the attempts by some major media and the political class to downplay the protests, you can be sure that today in the White House and the halls of Congress they are trembling. I was especially impressed by the turnout in Springfield, as reported by Tony Mateaus. Check it out here.
And of course Deadhead Ann was right on target:
I had no idea how important this week's nationwide anti-tax tea parties were until hearing liberals denounce them with such ferocity. The New York Times' Paul Krugman wrote a column attacking the tea parties, apologizing for making fun of "crazy people." It's OK, Paul, you're allowed to do that for the same reason Jews can make fun of Jews.
-Ann Coulter
Clean Past
I saw this old fashioned washing machine at the Carriage Shops in Amherst. It had a date on it of 1888.
Better Than Jail
On King Street today I ran into my friend Alex. He was in rehab with me. The device on his leg is to allow law enforcement to monitor him.
You may think he looks young to have already been through drug rehab, but frankly I was surprised to see in rehab the number of people at twenty who had been through drug horrors I didn't experience until I was 40.
Today's Video
Members of the Amherst band ZEBU bounce to explore the strange while doing a Marvin Gaye cover.
