The Texas Tea Party, Cowtown Bar and Grill, Fort Worth Texas, February 27, 2009

Yesterday I was able to spend a couple of hours at the Texas Tea Party, the anti-stimulus, anti-bailout, anti-campaign donor refund, and anti-bank recovery protest. It was held at one of my regular hangouts, Fort Worth's Cowtown Bar and Grill.
Having this event spontaneously erupt at my favorite watering hole is like a dream. One of those What-If-I-Ran-The-World dreams. I halfway expected to go to the Camp Bowie Starbucks this morning and have the barrista give me Anti-Al Gore literature.

The crowd was about 75% Republican, 10% Libertarian, 5% Undercover Democrats who wanted to infiltrate the opposition, and 10% bewildered regulars who were wondering what had happened to their favorite bar and why it was so hard to find parking.

My biggest regret is not getting there before the event started. (Work, work, work....) There was a long line of people along Camp Bowie holding up signs and waving flags. Most of the speechmaking and politicking was already over. I set up shop in back, and started handing out Nolan charts and doing my best to explain what the Libertarians are all about. The wind was blowing too hard to set up any kind of a backdrop, but it was time well spent.

It was my first time to represent the Libertarians at any public event, and it was enlightening. (For me. I don't know what it was for my victims.)

The Nolan chart/quiz is a set of 10 questions that does a reasonably ok job of defining your political beliefs. One of the questions is whether or not you favor drug legalization for adults.

People were stymied by this question, and agonized over it more than any other. The reason why? They know that if marijuana is legalized, the government will be able to tax it. They don't want to give anything else to the government ! ! !

These are MY people, and I love them.


If someone's survey defined them as "Conservative", I tried to steer the conversation to the part of the stimulus package that is 40% Republican pork. Then I typically veered off into the conservative opposition to drug law reform and gay marriage as a red herring.

I ran into several Democrats (including one co-worker). I usually told them to put all their drinks on my bar tab, since that's what their lords and masters in Washington were doing to us already. A couple of hundred dollars more shouldn't matter. Only two of them got the joke.

A few people didn't even bother taking the test. Based on previous experience, they just took a sticker and placed it on the very top of the Libertarian portion of the chart.

It looked like 300 people attended. No one threw anything at me. None of the (few) Democrats I spoke with had any rational way of justifying the recent spending abortions. None of the (many) Republicans could justify their continued support of the party of Snowe, Collins and Spector, or the Bush/Reagan/Bush budget busting.

The libertarians all had a fanatical gleam in their eyes. Our day is coming. I loved every minute of it. I want to do this again.

Pics came from here.

"Tea Party" protest at the Cowtown Bar And Grill in Fort Worth ! ! !

To: Fort Worth residents who have been paying attention
From: Me


Tired of giving your money to people who couldn't pay an $800,000 mortgage on a $25,000 salary?
Tired of watching your dollars buy less and less because The Fed is printing too many of them?
Tired of the current Billions For Bankers Bailout?
Boy, do I have the event for you ! ! !


This is from Craigslist.


"TEA PARTY '09."


Let "the man" know that you're mad, and you're not going to take it anymore!! Bring your protest signs and indignant taxpayer attitude with you to the rally at the outside stage at The Cowtown Bar & Grill on Friday, the 27th of February, from 3pm to 7pm, located at 7108 Camp Bowie Blvd, Fort Worth, TX 76116 (817) 570-7910

We hope to have a guest speaker there from KLIF radio. The "Desert Son Band" will be performing on the outside stage with their original music and some covers appropriate for the rally. Food and drink will be available for purchase.

This bar is right around the corner from my job. It's not quite a home away from home, but it's at least in 3rd or 4th place. A fun time WILL be had.


This is how they did it in Boston in 1773.




This is how they're doing it in Fort Worth in 2009.

If I can get finished at work by 6:00, I'm going to buy a bottle of alcohol-free beer and pour it out on Camp Bowie. (Wouldn't want to waste anything good on a protest.)

Here are a few more links with info about the event, including one where some idjit writes in to Jon Stewart's "The Daily Show", suggesting they show up with a camera crew to film "the rednecks" for the comedy potential. As if there could be anything dumber than the blatant giveaways we Texas rednecks are protesting against.

Hope to see you there !

************************

In the previous post I featured some student activists who were, to put it gently, not quite competent.

They could take a few lessons from these kids. This is brilliant. Enjoy !

On the Tea Party

From Commentary, my favorite conservative Jewish political magazine (not that there's a lot of competition for that spot):

“The irony is great here. A cadre of pundits cautioned the GOP after the 2008 wipeout to move to the center, to accommodate Obama’s agenda, and to recoil from the small-government philosophy that, the self-appointed gurus told us, had no sell with voters. With a big assist from Obama, the Tea Partiers have proved themselves much savvier than the punditocracy (damning with faint praise, I know). An entire populist movement built not on specific positions (e.g., anti-war) but on philosophical principles is a remarkable phenomenon; even more remarkable is the degree to which those principles have resonated with the public at large. . . . The left understood all too well what the Tea Party was about, tried its best to strangle it in its political crib, and now has seen its worst fears come true.”

And....

One should never underestimate the historical illiteracy of the liberal intelligentsia. And it is also the case that the left did not merely misunderstand the Tea Party movement but actively distorted and vilified it. When unsubstantiated claims of “racism” start flying, you know the left is running scared. Certainly the Tea Party was the repudiation of the notion that the recession and the election of Obama had moved the country to the left. It simply couldn’t be that there was a broad and principled objection to this hypothesis. And when the rabble — that would be fellow citizens — showed again and again that the movement was genuine, determined, and deeply principled, the left had a collective meltdown, railing at the supposedly crazy citizenry.

Thanks to Instapundit for the link.  I went to the first Cowtown Tea Party and it was an impromptu rally behind the Cowtown Bar & Grill.  They had to have the most recent one at the Tarrant County Convention Center.  Heh.

The Wake Up America Tea Party ! Tarrant County Convention Center, Fort Worth TX

The first Tea Party event in Fort Worth was a somewhat impromptu happening behind one of my favorirte watering holes, The Cowtown Bar & Grill.  There may have been 150 people there. 

That was then, this is now.  We've moved on to the Fort Worth Convention Center.  I don't think the first Tea Party even had a stage.  There was just a microphone on loan from the country-rock band who started the thing. 
The presentation has gotten more professional, while my photography skills have remained the same:

Here's Tarrant County Libertarian Party chair John Spivey, helping our LP candidate for Texas governor, Kathie Glass, convert a few Tea Partiers.

And we have the usual Temple Courtyard full of T-shirt vendors.  These folks had the best selection, my favorite being "Capitalism" in the Coca-Cola logo. 

This is me with The Statue Of Liberty.

A T-Shirt that gets straight to the point....

Here's Dallas Congressional candidate John Jay Myers, trying to convert Mike Coyne into someone who will purchase a T-shirt (John Jay eventually gave us all a freebie).

This guy, Princeton Benson, is affiliated with GAME CHAINgers (more on them later).  They're an African-American conservative group affiliated with Pastor Stephen Broden.  Everyone at this booth has been working out a lot more than I have. 

And this made me happier than an old hog in new slop.  I had heard this guy, Gregory Parker, on a local radio show a few weeks back.  He's written a book called "Global Warming...Really?" 

It's not every day that one has the opportunity to meet a published skeptic.

  

I now have a signed copy.  Will post about it soon. 

That's all for now.  Gonna go inside the convention center and listen to the rants.  Hit "Next Post" below to learn more about the Wake Up America/Tea Party Rally. 

Lordy, I love these things.