OK, so Tea Partiers are "radicals." Even Obama recognizes that.  As things heat up, it's gonna get ugly.  The left is trying to goad us into making un-forced errors.  Let's review the rules, shall we?  I forget where I got this, but it's a good summary of Saul Alinsky:

Rule 1: Power is not only what you have, but what an opponent thinks you have. If your organization is small, hide your numbers in the dark and raise a din that will make everyone think you have many more people than you do.

Rule 2: Never go outside the experience of your people.  The result is confusion, fear, and retreat.

Rule 3: Whenever possible, go outside the experience of an opponent. Here you want to cause confusion, fear, and retreat.

Rule 4: Make opponents live up to their own book of rules. "You can kill them with this, for they can no more obey their own rules than the Christian church can live up to Christianity."

Rule 5: Ridicule is man's most potent weapon. It's hard to counterattack ridicule, and it infuriates the opposition, which then reacts to your advantage.

Rule 6: A good tactic is one your people enjoy. "If your people aren't having a ball doing it, there is something very wrong with the tactic."

Rule 7: A tactic that drags on for too long becomes a drag. Commitment may become ritualistic as people turn to other issues.

Rule 8: Keep the pressure on. Use different tactics and actions and use all events of the period for your purpose. "The major premise for tactics is the development of operations that will maintain a constant pressure upon the opposition. It is this that will cause the opposition to react to your advantage."

Rule 9: The threat is more terrifying than the thing itself. When Alinsky leaked word that large numbers of poor people were going to tie up the washrooms of O'Hare Airport, Chicago city authorities quickly agreed to act on a longstanding commitment to a ghetto organization. They imagined the mayhem as thousands of passengers poured off airplanes to discover every washroom occupied. Then they imagined the international embarrassment and the damage to the city's reputation.

Rule 10: The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative. Avoid being trapped by an opponent or an interviewer who says, "Okay, what would you do?"

Rule 11: Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, polarize it. Don't try to attack abstract corporations or bureaucracies. Identify a responsible individual. Ignore attempts to shift or spread the blame.

According to Alinsky, the main job of the organizer is to bait an opponent into reacting. "The enemy properly goaded and guided in his reaction will be your major strength." 

 That's how they fight.  Be ready to deflect their attacks and think on how to attack them.

This cardiologist tells a hell of a story about a man with an implanted defibrillator.  The comments carry the humor forward.  DO GO READ THIS VERY SHORT POST!

Believe me, it'll make your day.  Even MyLovelyWife was amused....

Better than ObamaCare(tm) -- A Time Lord!

The newest chapter in BBC's long-running series "Doctor Who" starts Saturday, April 17th at 8 p.m. CDT (that's 9 p.m. Eastern).  Check out the new Doctor and see some previews at the BBC America site.

Oh, and it's worth watching out for a re-run of last season's 2-part finale, "The End of Time" just to see  Timothy Dalton as Lord President and hear him do the narration.  What power he projects!  I didn't recognize him and was amazed when someone pointed that out.

Much of the media has been picking up the drumbeat from the DNC on the "Tea Party violence" meme.  Somehow, we're a real threat, while left-wing violence and threats are ignored.

Instapundit (among others) has been watching and gathering some examples:

• James Cameron (the reason I have not seen "Avatar"):  "Cameron said at a news conference that he would like to shoot "those boneheads," referring to skeptics of anthropogenic global warming."
• "...when ACORN sent protesters to the homes of Wall Street executives, the media was very supportive,"recalls Instapundit.
• He also remembers protesters going to Karl Rove's home.
• Oh, and union thugs went to John McCain's condo.
• POWERLINE has the real topper, remembering the 2008 Republican Convention:

  I attended the convention and remember the terrorist acts that were carried out by anti-Republican protesters very well. They threw bricks through the windows of buses, sending elderly convention delegates to the hospital. They dropped bags of sand off highway overpasses onto vehicles below. Fortunately, no one was killed.
  . . .
  Yet, hardly anyone seems to be aware of the violence that took place in 2008. At most, the story was treated with a ho-hum attitude in the press. For some reason, political violence was not a concern less than two years ago. Yet today, we can hardly imagine what would happen if a group of tea partiers were to drop sandbags off a highway overpass, trying to kill motorists below. Liberal reporters' heads would explode. Yet this is exactly what anti-Republican Party protesters did in 2008, and no one cared. To my knowledge, not a single Democratic politician condemned this anti-Republican violence or attempted in any way to distance the Democratic Party from it.
  
  Keep that in mind next time you hear a Democrat whining about the Republican effort to "fire Nancy Pelosi."

 Indeed.

I do have to give kudos to NBC Nightly News for their Saturday night report on Sarah Paling & her speeech at the Tea Party Express stop in Harry Reid's hometown.  It was actually fair, and they interviewed normal people.  Had I not seen it, I'd not have believed such a thing was possible!

Afternoons are terrible.  At 2 p.m.,my body still thinks it's the middle of the night.  Falling asleep at meetings is horrible!  (Well, all meetings are horrible, right...?)

Got 15 Giga-Bytes of pictures & video to go through.  Ugh!  Here's a taste of some of the fractured English we noticed:

 

It was at the entry point to the Great Wall.  Nobody in the group could figure it out.

So I get back from a trip to Beijing in the Land of Red Commies to discover two disasters:

1. Some S-O-B broke into my car, stole my work badges, my music CDs, my insurance card, and drained the battery.  Had a fun time jumping it, etc.  Gonna LOVE telling work what happened to my badges.

2.  The Obama/Pelosi.Reid cabal passed their damned bill.

I'm  TIRED.  It's now 9:30 p.m. here, which is 10:30 a.m. in Beijing.  Been up for 34 hours straight.  My body thinks it's almost lunch time and I need to get to bed so I can go to work in the morning. More on the Great Wall, the Terra Cotta figures, Tienamen Square, the Forbidden City...   later.

Due to forces beyond my comprehension (much less my control), there will be a hiatus.  Busy, busy, busy!

Don't expect any updates here until about 23 March.

No time even now!  I'll explain later.

Wow -- it's been one full year!  The reminder was a bit unpleasant:  An email saying "your account has been deleted!"

Back when SATP had just set up that gorgeous new website that TheOtherGuyWhoShallNotBeNamed managed (at the .org address), the great and glorious new leader of SATP -- HeWhoShallNotBeNamed -- and I had decided to let this site die off.  I'd notified the hosting service (Fat Cow) of that intent and slapped his name on the contact info and such.   It was a Good Thing that it had not yet died off when HeWhoShallNotBeNamed blew it all up, eh?

Having to use the site again for SATP got me to wanting my own personal blog again, and I set up the auto payment stuff -- but forgot to tell Fat Cow.  Oh, well, I didn't really need that extra $75 it took to recover the site for anything else, right?

Anyway, this is now paid for the next two years.  If Jon Kaplan has to use it to rescue SATP again, well, the Board members who make that necessary had best hide in a deep, deep hole!

1. Doctor Who returns 17 April! OK, so I'm a geek. So, sue me. (On second thought, don't!  He Who Shall Not Be Named does have that habit....)  Anyway, I'm setting the DVR for BBC America, ASAP!  http://scifistorm.org/2010/02/25/doctor-who-returns-in-april/

2. When does government NOT lie? Answer: "The Empty Set." See DNA Deception:

When state health officials were sued last year for storing infant blood samples without parental consent, they said it was for medical research into birth defects, childhood cancer and environmental toxins. They never said they were turning over hundreds of dried blood samples to the federal government to help build a vast DNA database - a forensics tool designed to identify missing persons and crack cold cases.

A Texas Tribune review of nine years' worth of e-mails and internal documents on the Department of State Health Services' newborn blood screening program reveals the transfer of hundreds of infant blood spots to an Armed Forces lab to build a national and, someday, international mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) registry. The records, released after the state agreed in December to destroy more than 5 million infant blood spots, also show an effort to limit the public's knowledge of aspects of the newborn blood program, and to manage the debate around it. But the plaintiffs who filed the lawsuit never saw them, because the state settled the case so quickly that it never reached the discovery phase.

3. "Tax increases may be necessary..." Why is it that those with a "(D)" after their names just CANNOT resist raising taxes? In this case, Patterico points out it's House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD).

"No one likes raising revenue, and understandably so," Hoyer said....

You can believe as much of that as you like. Me? I know they like raising taxes.

Like the kid's song says:  If you're liberal and you know it and you really want to show it, if you're liberal and you know it raise a tax!

4. Good News -- NOT! Obama plans 'dramatic reductions' in US nuclear weapons

It remains unclear how Obama will decide the crucial question of whether the United States should openly declare the conditions for the possible use of nuclear weapons, or retain ambiguous language.

Some of Obama's allies in Congress are pushing to change standing US policy that permits using nuclear weapons in response to a biological or chemical attack, even against a country without an atomic bomb.

The lawmakers want Obama to declare that the exclusive purpose of the arsenal is to deter nuclear attack, which would allow for more drastic cuts in the arsenal.

Remember--the best way to be safe when walking down a dark street in the worst part of town is to ensure everyone knows that you left your gun at home!

5. Tom Sawyer's aunt would be proud of this whitewash! NY prosecutor clears ACORN workers of Criminal Wrongdoing. The mighty Instapundit notes this wonderful bit:

"The Brooklyn DA is a member of the ACORN/Working Families Party. That means he signed their pledge, and worked for their endorsement."

6. American media's coverup.  http://hotair.com/archives/2010/03/02/another-american-media-failure/

In the years after the the 2003 invasion of Iraq and the subsequent failure to find WMD, the American media flagellated itself publicly over its lack of skepticism of Bush administration cassus belli claims. We endured reams of essays about the supine nature of the corporate-owned media, the supposed disinformation campaign of the White House, the "lies" on WMD claims (that had also been made by Democrats in Congress from 1998 until the invasion), and so on. To this day, the American media still considers their self-described blind acceptance of claims about intelligence without sufficient investigation as an indictment on their industry - and a consequence of the Internet-driven changes to the media market.

After wearing sackcloth and ashes for so long, one might believe that the American national media would leap at the chance to show its newfound mission of skepticism and challenge to authority.

Unfortunately, US journalists have missed a grand opportunity to demonstrate that it learned a lesson about swallowing a story from the government without question, if indeed that is what happened in 2002 on Iraq. We know this because their colleagues across the pond in the United Kingdom have not missed the chance to speak a little truth to power, both in their own government and to multilateral organizations that issued faulty analyses, false data, bad research, and hysterical demands for action.

Do I refer to our military efforts in Afghanistan? In Pakistan? Fiscal  policy among the G-20? No. The Australian and British press have eaten the American media's lunch on the collapse of credibility at the IPCC and in the anthropogenic global-warming (AGW) movement.

Follow the link for a concise summary of the MANY things you've missed because they don't report it!

7. Why are so many of these faked? Because not many of them are real! Student apologizes for noose in UC San Diego library

The campus paper publishes an anonymous letter by a minority student who calls the incident 'a mindless act and stupid mistake.'

The UC San Diego student reportedly responsible for hanging a noose last week in a campus library issued a public, but anonymous, apology Monday and said she had no racist motivation.

The noose's discovery set off protests at a school that is already tense from recent racially charged episodes and triggered condemnations from UC leaders and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

In a letter published Monday on the front page of the UC San Diego student newspaper, the Guardian, the student wrote that the incident was "a mindless act and stupid mistake" and was not meant to recall the lynching of blacks.

"As a minority student who sympathizes with the students that have been affected by the recent issues on campus, I am distraught to know that I have unintentionally added to their pain," the student wrote. She was suspended Friday and remains under investigation for a possible hate crime.

8. In which I finally disagree with Michelle Malkin. Michelle says "Al Gore is not responsible for those alleged global warmicides.":

After a year's worth of unhinged lefties blaming conservative bloggers, pundits, and activists for every crime spree on the planet, it would be just deserts to blame Al Gore for the alleged global warming-inspired murders reported in the UK Daily Mail today. But count me out of that game.
. . .
I want to see the note. Were the references to global warming just one small part of a lengthy, nutball rant? Is this another bizarre, twisted hoax a la the Sparkman census scheme?

In any case, Al Gore is responsible for enough fraud and misery without overreaching and laying this strange case at his feet.

Leave the hysterical smear-mongering to Frank Rich, Andrew Sullivan, Paul Krugman, and Keith Olbermann.

Sorry ma'am; Love ya, but gotta disagree. Al Gore "yelled 'Fire' on a crowded theater." Those who paniced and hurt others as a result did so at his prompting. He should be held accountable.

9. Do you have the RIGHT to keep a gun at home? We'll soon know whether it's "The High Nine" or "Nine Boobs in Black."  The Volokh Conspiracy has an interesting first-look at the Supremes' reactions to the arguments.

Joni sent an email noting a Michelle Malkin post about a great idea for the census that comes from Mark Krikorian.  Fight the race politics!

Fully one-quarter of the space on this year's form is taken up with questions of race and ethnicity, which are clearly illegitimate and none of the government's business (despite the New York Times' assurances to the contrary on today's editorial page). So until we succeed in building the needed wall of separation between race and state, I have a proposal. Question 9 on the census form asks "What is Person 1's race?" (and so on, for other members of the household). My initial impulse was simply to misidentify my race so as to throw a monkey wrench into the statistics; I had fun doing this on the personal-information form my college required every semester, where I was a Puerto Rican Muslim one semester, and a Samoan Buddhist the next. But lying in this constitutionally mandated process is wrong. Really - don't do it.

Instead, we should answer Question 9 by checking the last option - "Some other race" - and writing in "American." It's a truthful answer but at the same time is a way for ordinary citizens to express their rejection of unconstitutional racial classification schemes. In fact, "American" was the plurality ancestry selection for respondents to the 2000 census in four states and several hundred counties.

So remember: Question 9 - "Some other race" - "American". Pass it on.

1.  How to avoid an audit. The Taxprof offers some advice.

2. To spank or not?  Mom & Dad had it right ... "Young children who are smacked 'go on to be more successful'" reads the headline.

Young children who are smacked by their parents grow up to be happier and more successful than those who have never been hit, research claims.

It found that children who are smacked before the age of six perform better at school when they are teenagers.

They are also more likely to do voluntary work and to want to go to university than those who have never been physically disciplined.

But the study also revealed that children who are smacked after the age of six were more likely to exhibit behavioural problems, such as being involved in fights.

3.  Obama is here to HELP you!  The chart at Hotair shows the trend in employment through the post-WWII recessions.  You'll notice one outlier.  Go have a look! A simple glancetells you all you need to know.

4.  It'll never happen HERE!  (Yeah, just keep telling yourself that.)  Ah, Canada!  Fiorito: The cops came and took my gun

Officer K. reminded me that my firearms licence had expired. He said I could turn the gun over to them for storage, or they could take the gun and destroy it.

My gun? It is a single-barrel .20 gauge shotgun. It is 40 years old. I used to take it into the woods up north to get partridge in the fall.

The last time I used it, I was walking along a hydro cut when I surprised a deer in the long dry grass. She leapt away in slow motion, flanks rippling, nostrils flaring; too beautiful.

I haven't hunted since.

I own no shells.

But it's my gun, dammit. I guess, when the Feds began the long-gun registry, I should have lied and not bothered to register the damn thing.

 

Spent Saturday afternoon at Starbucks wondering where Representative Rodriguez was.  We all thought he'd be there.  At least I go to shoot more "I Am The Tea Party Leader!" videos.  It's short; check it out HERE.

So, when will we get a chance to see OUR FEARLESS LEADER?  According to his web site:

Saturday, March 20, 2010

Community Event in San Antonio, Bexar County

"Theme: Tax Preparation Assistance"

10:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m.

North San Antonio District Office

6363 DeZavala, Suite 105 in San Antonio

Let's have a good turnout. OK?

1.  The joy of government health care -- British style.  This poor guy was so dehydrated that he called the police from his hospital bed.  The nurses assured the bobbies that everything was fine.  It wasn't.  Neglected by 'lazy' nurses, man, 22, dying of thirst rang the police to beg for water:

A man of 22 died in agony of dehydration after three days in a leading teaching hospital.

Kane Gorny was so desperate for a drink that he rang police to beg for their help.

They arrived on the ward only to be told by doctors that everything was under control.

The next day his mother Rita Cronin found him delirious and he died within hours.

. . . The next morning she visited him before going to work. 'He was delirious and his mouth was open,' she said. 'I gave him a drink of Ribena.

'I told three nurses there was something wrong with my son and they said, "He's fine" and walked off. I started to cry and a locum doctor who was there told me not to worry.

'Eventually the ward doctor came round, took one look at Kane and started shouting for help.'

Miss Cronin was asked to leave her son's bedside. 'He died an hour later,' she said. 'I didn't even realise he was dying. I didn't even have a chance to say goodbye.'

The death certificate said Mr Gorny had died because of a 'water deficit' and 'hypernatraemia' - a medical term for dehydration.

Can't you just envision how wonderful Obama Care will be?

2.  The Consent of the Governed.  That's important.  How that relates to the Rasmussen poll and Schlitz beer makes for an interesting read. Glenn Harlan Reynolds: Consent of the governed - and the lack thereof.

According to a recent Rasmussen Poll , only 21 percent of American voters believe that the federal government enjoys the consent of the governed. On the other hand, Rasmussen notes, a full 63 percent of the "political class" believe that the government enjoys the consent of the governed.

It's tempting to stress the disconnect here, and that disconnect is certainly huge. Unsurprisingly, the political class -- which talks mostly to itself -- thinks that it is far more popular, and legitimate, in the eyes of the country than is in fact the case. In this, as in so many things, America's political class is out of touch with reality.

But forget the views of America -- where, it seems likely, more people believe in alien abductions than in the legitimacy of our rulers -- and look just at the more cheerful view of the political class.

Even among the rulers, only 63 percent -- triple the fraction of the general populace but still less than two-thirds of the political class -- regard the federal government as legitimate by the standards of America's founding document. The remainder, presumably, are comfortable being tyrants.

3.  Short Shrift?  Yeah, that was.  Sorry, but awful busy!

Some folks who attended the 4 March 2010 protest in front of the Alamo helped make this video.  My first YouTube effort....

I AM THE LEADER OF THE TEA PARTY!

It was great being out front of the Alamo again.  A fine spring day, warm but not hot.  As close to perfect as God gives us on this planet.  Old friends and new were there, including Joni and Jon, a couple of my favorites.  SATP:  Joni started it all, I let HeWhoShallNotBeNamed take over to screw it up, and then Jon saved it!  God Bless 'em both.

God Bless, too, those who turned out.  I took some videos of folks for the I Am The Tea Party Leader project.  Sadly, I screwed up the first 1/3rd of them.  I have lots of footage of the flagstones at our feet, taken as I held the camera down by my side (and of darkness while it was in my pocket) and then the "let me start the recording" bit at the end.  In the immortal words of Homer:  D'Oh!

But I did get a bunch, and I have them strung together into an ok-ish video (I'm no Eric Adam!)  Now, If I can just get into my YouTube account....

The time has come, the Walrus said to talk of many things....

And to make it clear:  Just Say NO! to Obamacare!

1.  Only four (4) people showed up for the precinct caucus.  I see that a fellow Tea Party member who lives on my street didn't vote.  Grrrrr.....

2.  Cool down, Robin.  Maybe it's time to switch?  Not to the overly astroturfed "Coffee Party," but to the much more fun Cocoa Party!

 

1.  GO VOTE!  If you're in Texas, also make sure you attend the precinct caucus, which should be at the polling place, just after the polls close at 7 p.m.  (Do  ask the election judge to make sure).

2. The Chicago Gun Case gets argued befor the U.S. Supreme Court today.  Unlike with the D.C. Gun Case, there won't be a tape of the arguments (according to Scotus Blog).  But there should be a transcript.  Given we'll all be at the precinct caucuses, it may be a while we get to it, right?  Full details on the case are available at http://www.chicagoguncase.com/.  Don't just read the pro-gun briefs!  Be sure to learn what the Lilly-Livered, Left-Leaning, Lenin-Loving Liberal Liars are saying!

 

1. Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-NY) Thinks You Are Stupid! This socialist bimbo is the one who told the tale to the Health Care Summit about the woman who had to take her dead sister's dentures.  How stupid does she think you are?  Stupid enough to believe ObamaCare covers dentures!  It doesn't.

2.   The Brady Campaign To Prevent Gun Violence Thinks You Are Stupid!  In "Bang! Bang! You're... Safe?"  the ever-great Wizbang blog points out the beautifully reverse relationship between freedom and crime:

Recently, the Brady Campaign To Prevent Gun Violence released its report card on all 50 states, rating them as far as "gun safety" goes. The top score went to California, with a 79 out of 100 points. My own New Hampshire scored a 9 (alongside Nevada and Texas), and 22 states scored even lower -- with Utah ranking a mighty zero.

My goodness. I had no idea I lived in such a dangerous state. I thought we were pretty safe.

Oh, right. We are.

New Hampshire ranks 50th on that list, with a score of 0.43. And California? Brady's "safest" state? 4.82 -- more than 11 times worse. (That's gun homicides per 100,000 residents.)

Oh, and Utah? The state that scored a zero? Twice as bad as New Hampshire, with 0.93. That's still less than one-fifth of California.

I'd really like to see how Washington, DC ranks, as they have the toughest gun control laws and exceptionally high murder rates, but the Brady Campaign -- for some reason -- doesn't want to discuss them.

More Guns == less Crime?  Someone should write a book!

3.  George Soros Thinks Yoy Are Stupid!  Move-On.org's big backer made his $billions by trading on the misery of millions in money speculation.  Now, he's at it again. "Man who broke the Bank of England, George Soros, 'at centre of hedge funds plot to cash in on fall of the euro'."

4.  Quote of the day.  HotAir's Allahpundit on the Health Care Kabuki:

"We think you're stupid" is rarely a winning slogan, least of all in this political climate.

5. Well, the headline is certainly true!  Every man is a sex addict

6. DO NOT Trust These People!  They've lied before; they'll lie some more! Climate scientists hope independent reviews will reverse public's loss of trust

7. This is a strength of the Tea Parties, too!  This article about ACORN has a great tidbit:

The understated genius of the ACORN is that there is no national front figure, no organizational figurehead. Unlike the Rainbow/Push Coalition with Rev. Jesse Jackson, Sr., or the National Action Network with Rev. Al Sharpton, the face of ACORN is ordinary little old ladies from any community USA.

Whether or not you agree or disagree with their tactics, most corporate executives know what is happening to them when Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson show up. But a handful of non-descript little old ladies? They never bat an eyebrow - their hubris does them in.

The Tea Parties should study ACORN's success very carefully. They did a lot of things right to become the powerhouse that put Obama in the Whitehouse.

8. We have GOT to get rid of McCain!  Michelle Malkin points out he's STILL pushing the "Man-made Climate Change" lie and the horror called "Cap & Trade"