Jillian Rayfield and I spent the afternoon at Uni-Tea, which organizers billed in part as the tea party reaching out to minorities and inviting them to join the cause. Judging by the low turnout and almost completely white crowd, that goal was not achieved. (Though the tea party leaders behind Uni-Tea say it was, and plan to hold more Uni-Tea events in the future). We’ll have a full accounting of the sights and sounds of the afternoon soon.

The most anticipated speaker of the 13-speech program today was Andrew Breitbart, who took the stage near the end of the day. Verbose as always, he gave a rousing speech about the liberal elite and media conspiracy to paint the tea party as racist. There was one topic he wouldn’t touch however: Shirley Sherrod. Read our take here.

Our reporting duo gives us the round down of just what happened at today’s pro-diversity ‘Uni-Tea’ Tea Party rally in Philadelphia.

If you’re up for a really hilarious story on a lazy Sunday, check this one out. It’s about a cross border raid by one of Mexico’s most notorious drug gangs (Los Zetas) in which they stormed across the US-Mexico border and seized two ranches near Laredo. The ranchers, thankfully, were able to retreat to American-held territory with no injuries. Another significant level of detail is that the whole thing actually never happened, though that hasn’t stopped a lot of right-wing sites from going totally nuts about it. And a good chunk of the right-wing blogosphere has now decided that the complete lack of evidence that it ever happened actually means that there’s a vast government coverup. (One conservative blogger has wittily and memorably dubbed these folks “Laredo Truthers”.) Read More

For the Citizens United files …

Target has taken the opportunity created by the Citizens United decision to drop a big chunk of change on Minnesota’s Republican gubernatorial Tom Emmer — arch-foe of gays and waiters, among others. And it’s caused a real backlash.

In a big speech on Iraq today, the President will hail this month’s end of Operation Iraqi Freedom, marking the “official” end of U.S. combat operations in Iraq.

Tea partiers on summer vacation descend on colonial Williamsburg seeking answers from Revolutionary re-enactors on toppling tyranny.

A Red Cross chapter in Ohio is offering blood donors a chance to win a 2010 Nissan Versa or a … horse and buggy, if you happen to be one of the area’s many Amish.

Last week we broke the news that the RNC’s Michael Steele was hosting an RNC fundraiser with Andrew Breitbart, just after Breitbart’s notorious video slam on Shirley Sherrod. Now the RNC has decided to ‘postpone‘ (or maybe just cancel?) the event.

President Obama is gave a speech today to call people’s attention to the end of the US combat mission in Iraq, on schedule on August 31st.

Here’s one response already written in the comments section of the post by one of our most prolific TPM commenters ‘Destor‘:

But he did it, just like he said he would. So even though I think a 50,000 troop presence is 50,000 too many, I respect that it was part of his plan, that he informed the public about it and saw to it that he was able to keep his word despite the complexities involved. I’m happy about that and Obama’s competence and ability to do what he says is pretty impressive after 8 years of a blundering White House.

In our new era of concern for unsustainable national debt, our first objective must be to massively expand our annual budget deficits by re-enacting the Bush tax cuts, most of which were passed when we were still running a budget surplus.

Who could argue with that?

Late Update: As a related but distinct matter, I’m troubled and a bit surprised that the opponents of this folly are acquiescing in the idea that this is a ‘tax hike’. It’s not. The Bush tax cuts were for 10 years. Do nothing and they go back to what they were in 2001. At some level it’s all semantic: do nothing and taxes will be higher in 2012 than they would if you repassed the law. But semantics count. Or didn’t we get that already?