Tulsa Tea Party coverage

I couldn't be at Veterans Park myself for yesterday's Tea Party -- too much to do at work -- but plenty of people were and have posted stuff on the web to tell you all about it.

Jenn Sierra has posted photos of the Tulsa Tea Party. You'll find a few more on Chris Medlock's blog (here and here). Joe Kelley has video. Here's KOTV's report.

Here were some of the signs on display:

• Government is not your mommy!


• Repeal porkulus!


• 220 years to build the republic -- one month to destroy it.


• Give me back my 401K -- you can keep the "change."


• Crisis? You bet -- too much government.


• Pay your own mortgage! No freeloaders!


• Grow the economy -- not the government!

You can find writeups about the Oklahoma City Tea Party at Red Dirt Report and on Wizbang, where OKC-based blogger Michael Laprarie is now a regular contributor. (Congrats!)

Tax protesters in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, who are also protesting a local sales tax increase, wanted to dump tea in the Cedar River, but they were barred by state officials, who consider tea a pollutant because it would discolor the water (via Michelle Malkin):

Tea, although natural and quite tasty, is considered a pollutant that can't go into a body of water without a permit, said Mike Wade, a senior environmental specialist at the DNR's Manchester field office.

"Discoloration is considered a violation," Wade said.

Although not as steeped in history, the Cedar Rapids Tea Party will dump dechlorinated tap water or riverwater from buckets labeled "tea," said Tim Pugh, the group's founder.

"We don't want to hurt the river," said Pugh, 32, of Cedar Rapids.

I thought the whole point of the original tea party was to defy government authority.

Elsewhere in Iowa, David Burge (aka Iowahawk) has a message from the subprime borrower community for "America's Irresponsible Tea Party Whiners":

But through all of it, some of us persevered. We made the hard economic choices.... We spent countless hours applying for the credit cards that would see us through. We made the wise economic decision to stop paying our stupid mortgages -- because we calculated that when the rainy day came, Washington would come to its senses and clear up the tab....

I wish I could take credit for it, but it took the collective effort of hundreds of thousands of us in the subprime community, working with the financial industry and public sector officials. Unfortunately, there is another group out there who is working to kill important financial bailout reforms just as they are sparking a renaissance in the American housing market. I'm speaking, of course, of the so-called "Tea Party" tax protesters.

I'm sure you've heard of them or read their emails: "Wah, I paid my mortgage." "Wah, I didn't use my house for an ATM." "Wah, Dave I need that hundred back I lent you at Christmas." Now, I'm as sympathetic to a good sob story as anybody, but these whiners have nobody to blame but themselves for their predicament. Anyone who kept track of the Gallup presidential polls last year should have known what was coming, so don't blame me if you decided to waste your money paying your stupid mortgage. But, in the six-dimensional bizarro world of these noisy tax gripes, they expect me to give up my bailout to pay for their irresponsible lack of foresight! Helloooo?! Beam me up, Scotty!