With Newt Gingrich now claiming that President Obama owes his allegiance to a “Kenyan, anti-colonial” worldview and agreeing that the United States is now being “ruled according to the dreams of a Luo tribesman of the 1950s … [a] philandering, inebriated African socialist, who raged against the world for denying him the realization of his anticolonial ambitions,” how long do you figure it is before he gets caught circulating the email photoshops of Obama dressed as a witch doctor wearing a loin cloth?
At this rate, I’d say: Not long.
It’s looking like today’s FreedomWorks “Tea Party” 9/12 event down in DC is basically a bust. Tiny crowd not only compared to last year’s estimated turnout of 37 million people but even in comparison to the actual numbers of people who showed up last year. Our Evan McMorris-Santoro has live updates from the ground.
Tea partiers are descending on DC today for their big 9/12 rally — one of the most hyped tea party events of the year. Our Evan McMorris-Santoro is on the scene. Check out his preview of the day’s events, and follow his live tweeting here. And don’t miss our slideshow from last year’s 9/12 rally.
Unquestionably my favorite image from today’s hate festival in Lower Manhattan is this one of John Bolton, piped in via Jumbotron for whatever reason, addressing the crowd.
Click the image for the full sized picture and rest of our slideshow of the event.
From TPM Reader TB …
Regarding ed. note on the post “Brings it all into focus“:
I’m glad to see you distinguishing from among those who oppose the building, those who “support the right of the builders to go ahead with it”. But I think even among those who oppose the building but support the right to build it, there is an important distinction that is less often made: those who are directly offended by the “mosque,” versus those who think it is a bad idea because others are offended.
Our Jillian Rayfield has a good wrap-up of the anti-Park51 protest down near Ground Zero this afternoon.
A few points worth noting. A police officer Jill spoke to at the event estimated the size of the crowd at about 1500. And despite efforts to bus people in from different parts of the country, Jill says it seemed to be overwhelmingly a local crowd. And there was a big turnout of counter-protestors as well.
Press reports suggest that the pro-tolerance demonstration had almost as many attendees as the hate festival which kicked off at 3 pm.
President Obama, Secretary Gates and Admiral Mullen hold 9/11 memorial at the Pentagon.
Demonstrators and counter-demonstrators at today’s rally. Pics here and more coming.
Our Jillian Rayfield is doing great live-reporting/tweeting from the scene of the anti-mosque rally in front of the proposed site of the park51/Cordoba House project. And watching them now, I see the moment that brings it all together. The headline speaker at the rally is none other than Geert Wilders, the neofascist Dutch parliamentary. Brings it all into focus. Pam Geller, the force behind the rally, just toasted him as a “modern-day Churchill.”
Some background on Wilders: He supports a ban on the Koran, a tax on women who wear headscarves and a ban on the construction of new mosques.
[ed.note: I should add that I know there are a lot of people who are against the Park51 project, by most counts a majority of the country, though I think those numbers are placed in an important context by the equally clear polling data showing that Americans overwhelmingly support the right of the builders to go ahead with it — which is key. I don’t for a moment believe that all of those people are haters. I think some have just gotten a very distorted impression of what’s being planned. Others know the facts but just disagree. I respect that. But the people behind this protest, this is the rancid, hating fringe. If only it were more fringe.]