Don's Tuesday Column

THE WAY I SEE IT   by Don Polson  Red Bluff Daily News   9/23/2014

Tea Party Patriots in year five

In honor of the five-year anniversary of the local Tea Party Patriots, I’ll share some of my October 5, 2009, column that informed readers of the first meeting, on the previous Wednesday, September 30: “Red Bluff now has another protest movement…Last Wednesday, about 75 folks gathered for the first Tea Party Patriots meeting. The movement began last spring with a call by a Chicago Mercantile Exchange trader calling for a ‘Boston tea party’ type of resistance to unrestrained spending, deficits, tax increases and government bailouts. Its mass appeal caught fire as the generally silent majority came to realize that one-party federal government was careening toward an all-intrusive, statist model utterly foreign to bedrock American principles of liberty, self-reliance and Constitutional government.

“Defying the sneering, cynical approbation and name-calling by Democrat office-holders and media talking heads, citizens across America have determined that their government is becoming no longer of, by or for the people. (Then, as now) If you believe in 1) Limited government, 2) Fiscal responsibility, 3) Adherence to the Constitution, you should consider joining this growing grass-roots movement.”

So, tonight at 6 PM at the Westside Grange, return for the camaraderie or make a first visit for curiosity’s sake. The Patriots continue to bring those in government, or seeking election to government, together with informed and concerned citizens to help self-governance prevail.

On another topic, I would like to profile two prominent African American leaders and compare and contrast what we know about them, and what they say about themselves. Next week, I’ll write about Dr. Ben Carson, author of several books, most recently “One Nation—What we can do to save America’s future.” Today I present Rev. Al Sharpton, who “has survived and overcome disgraces and scandals galore, without accounting and without apology…He remains an unsurpassed racial hustler.” (Powerlineblog.com, “Sharpton’s Shape,” 8/25)

You may be aware of his regular show on MSNBC. You may not have known that he has a vital role to play both for and with the Obama White House, as has recently been on nauseating display over the Michael Brown shooting and subsequent racial protests and riots in Ferguson, MO. Sharpton functioned both as a “source of information and a go-between” for the White House, which worked extensively behind the scenes to maximize his self-styled role. His go to person was top advisor to President Obama, Valerie Jarrett, who was vacationing in her condo in the exclusive Oak Bluffs section of Martha’s Vineyard, close to Obama’s palatial digs.

“So Sharpton is working the back channels on the administration’s behalf. That means MSNBC, through one of its most prominent hosts, is in cahoots with the White House. Plenty of pundits at the liberal-leaning network defend Obama, but when Sharpton does it, viewers may not realize that they’ve forged a political partnership…When a racial controversy erupts, Sharpton is there. He has a vested interest in keeping it alive (and) him in the spotlight.” (Howard Kurtz)

Before we condemn both the Democrat Party and Barack Obama for Al’s cozy, even absurdly respected role therewith, let’s summarize his abominable behavior and actions over the decades: Sharpton single-handedly promoted the accused rape of a young, disturbed black woman, Tawana Brawley, a hoax that was eventually disproved but not until after white officers Steven Pagones and Robert Abrams suffered irreparable defamation as the supposed rapists. Only in the last decade has Sharpton admitted the obvious—he perpetrated a fraudulent and despicable phony charge, refusing to apologize to those whose reputations were destroyed.

Sharpton more recently contributed to the miscarriage of justice surrounding the dismissed rape charges brought against the three Duke lacrosse players—no regrets or apologies there either. He agitated over the rape charges in the “Central Park wilding” assaults of a young, white female jogger, attacked by a horde of black men, charges and convictions irrefutably proven in court but successfully overturned in a legal and racial circus orchestrated by Al Sharpton.

“He inflamed angry mobs in Brooklyn’s Crown Heights, leading to the murder of Yankel Rosenbaum. He incited an anti-Semitic pogrom against a Jewish-owned clothing store in Harlem, Freddy’s, ending in a blaze of bullets and a fire that left several employees dead…Sharpton goes around creating personal tragedies.” (Ann Coulter, “How to Talk to a Liberal”) He has yet to admit, let alone retract this taunt: “If the Jews want to get it on, tell them to pin their yarmulkes back and come over to my house.”

“In 2010, Sharpton appeared on Bill O’Reilly’s Fox News show peddling the Democratic Party’s line tarring opponents of Obamacare and Obama’s program of national socialism as racists. Sharpton told O’Reilly that he had seen the (non-existent) tape showing Tea Party protesters abusing black congressmen with racial epithets.” (Scott Johnson, Powerlineblog.com)

Sharpton is easily one of the vilest men in American politics; however, such a record may have simply been a resume enhancer for Democrats as he was a speaker at the 2004 Democratic National Convention. As they say about “birds of a feather,” they stick together.