Credo
"Sign on, young man, and sail with me. The stature of our homeland is no more than the measure of ourselves. Our job is to keep her free. Our will is to keep the torch of freedom burning for all. To this solemn purpose we call on the young, the brave, the strong, and the free. Heed my call, Come to the sea. Come Sail with me." -- John Paul Jones
"Pardon him, Theodotus; he is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature" --George Bernard Shaw, "Caesar and Cleopatra"
"And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music."--Friedrich Nietzsche
"A kind Providence has placed in our breasts a hatred of the unjust and cruel, in order that we may preserve ourselves from cruelty and injustice. They who bear cruelty, are accomplices in it. The pretended gentleness which excludes that charitable rancour, produces an indifference which is half an approbation. They never will love where they ought to love, who do not hate where they ought to hate."--Edmund Burke
“You say that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: when men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows. You may follow your custom. And then we will follow ours.”--General Sir Charles Napier
"Μολὼν λαβέ" -- Leonidas
"Blogito Ergo Sum" -- Neptunus Lex
Ummm, I don’t get the issue. I’ve visited Madison, and I believe the president’s arrival increased the black population to somewhere in the hundreds or so.
Still a very liberal college town, though.
The issue is that when a predominately white group gathers to protest the President’s policies there are allegations of racism. When a predominately white group gathers to listen to the President there is no mention of race.
Race has nothing to do with it, it’s the double standard.
Don’t post here often. Agree with a lot of things you say, disagree a fare share too.
I actually was on the Kerry ’04 advance team that put a on a huge rally in Madison right before the ’04 election (Having Springsteen helped). We actually scrapped the idea of putting people on the stage because we couldn’t find enough “diverse people”. We looked, for two days.
(Yes I know that sounds horrible, but in political stagecraft that is how it is).
Maybe your hinting at something I am missing here, but in reality outside of parts of Milwakee, Wisconsin is as white as it gets.
Right.
The linked to post came off as…reaching at best, petty at worst.
I think that Wisconsin MIGHT just be whiter than Utah.
And that is saying something.
Loralee, the ENTIRE mid-west–upper, lower, eastern and western parts–outside the maj cities is OVERWHELMINGLY white. (Like flit, below, I grew up in an all-white town in east-central Illinois, although we had an integrated state college) And demographically almost 50% of those are German immigrants–their presence is absolutely huge in the central part of rural America. Read “The Nine Nations of North America” by cultural geographer Joel Garreau (1981)
CJ, it’s fairly simple. The mainstream media has been thrashing several politically conservative or libertarian movements (the Tea Party especially) as racist, bigoted, or “for whites only.” I’m surprised you haven’t noticed all the cheap shots and snide remarks.
That explains the responses below of folks like guy or raz. They’re sick of the hypocrisy and intellectual dishonesty of the media who cooperate with Democratic Party leaders in pushing such a dishonest meme.
As a South Dakota resident I’ve examined the dearth of ebony faces in my neighborhood and, rather than concluding there is a racist conspiracy or some sort of check at the Minnesota border where we send potential black immigrants back to Minneapolis, I like to think that the reason for this low representation is that nobody really wants to move here.
Which sort of makes the folks that do live here, Norwegians and Germans most of them, by inference sort of on the low end of the intelligence scale since they’re too dumb to know to leave.
It’s sort of funny that race, or rather the lack thereof, is a telling indicator yet Obama carried several states that are overwhelmingly white in voters.
My conclusion is that the race card has been measured, weighed, and is now found wanting.
– Max
Mene, mene, tekel, upharshin, DNC?
Ooh, I love the draK. She is one of my favorite weird Internet smartasses, and is not afraid to show her ass, either, it being a marvelously good-looking Venus-like one.
I just thought of another reply . . .
Can anyone post a photo of the throngs attending the inauguration in January 2009 for comparison?
Speaking as a Wisconsinite, that does look like a pretty standard crowd at the UW. We are a state that is around 97% Caucasian, so there are probably more Blacks there than there should be, porportionally.
I find all the signs odd, as UWPD said no signs on the Library Mall, a seperate area for peacefull gatherings of protester will be made available. But the Left has never been very good at following rules they don’t like.
I went down to Madison yesterday, to hit Barnes & Noble, The Last Square, a military bookstore, and Madison Hobby. I did not see the President, but I was about a mile from LaFollette High School, where he dropped in for a surprise visit, at about the time he visited, so I sure heard him. I think everything in Dane County that had a siren was part of the motercade.Listening to a part of his speech on the local radio station, Mr. Obama is sure capable of hatred of anyone who opposes him, isn’t he? At least, he is more than willing to demonise us.
Madison Hobby, eh. Do they have jap tissue, and quarter-sawn 4lb/ft^3 balsa, and nitrate dope? Oh, and rubber, gotta have rubber.
I would imagine that they do. I was there to buy some .008″ aluminum sheeting. So that was in the model RR section. I am building a 1/2 scale working model of a set of Nathan K3 locomotive air horns out of Schedule 40 PVC plumbing and needed the aluminum to make the diaphrams.
Cool. There is nothing finer than to lose a model airplane out of sight overhead, in a thermal. It is a sacrifice to God.
The Last Square? One of the most outstanding hobby/military bookstores still extant. I was there in 2001 when we were on vacation in Madison with family friends. Nice to know they are still in business.
Right, this gathering should feature racial composition relative to the local populace.
BUT, gatherings like, oh say the tea party get-togethers, are just SOOO damn white don’t you think?
If SondraK’s observations are petty, what are the MSM’s constant kvetching about right-wing protest demographics?
Ever dadgummed one of those widgits needs to step up to the IRS and voluntarily declare “I’m for Obama so raise my taxes, raise ‘em as much as you need”. But then it would be followed by “oh wait, I don’t have a job and unemployment is 20% for my age group”. Duh, where’s GWB when you need a whipping boy.
I truly believe that if PeeBO stood up and declared that anyone under 21 would have free health care for life but gosh, their medicare tax rate was going to 15% that those idiots would hear one thing only – “free”.
They can’t dance, they can’t jump, obviously they can’t think either.
UNIVERSITY – this was taken at a UNIVERSITY –
Ya know, a place full of kids who have no FRICKIN’ clue what life really costs, Professors who have gotten more $$$$ at a better incoming rate than any other industry, outpacing inflation by an easy margin of 10%+, and those who are his base, liberal elitists…..oh yeah, forgot to mention predominantly white crowd…predominantly white crowd…overwhelmingly white followers…overwhelmingly white…a vast and overwhelmingly white crowd…must be racists
Well, Governor Lee Dreyfus used to say that Madison was 50 square miles surrounded by reality.
That is a very valid point, and is true of virtually every college or university.
Some more than others.
Yeah, I had Hillsdale College in mind so had to qualify my response.
Madison has a reputation in the social/political arena, not positive to me, that almost equals Chapel Hill.
I graduated from Tennessee Tech and the place was relatively conservative. Of course, the place is an Engineering School. UM Rolla, is pretty much the same way.
Strange thing about Engineers. They have to take the world as it is, not as the wish it to be. I know very few moonbats who are Engineers. Moonbats would rather Engineers didn’t exist.
Tell me about it….I live in Massachusetts….Liberal Elite central.
Scott Brown’d election is a sign that things have changed (somewhat)
Needless to say, had this been a Glenn Beck rally, the lead would have been “predomenantly white crowd”.
What I notice, ScotttheBadger, is that all the signs shown by the carefully assembled crowd are blue, and professionally printed, probably by a printing firm in Madison and paid for by the Democratic campaign people. This is unlike those at the vastly larger Tea Party rallies in Washington D.C., where there is an endearing difference in sign slogans and a definitely homemade look, and they are mostly carried by older people with the careworn look of actual wage earners, who have paid for their own tickets to get there, and for rooms for the night. And cleaned up the Mall after themselves.
The last time Obama was speaking in a college town, several months ago, his security people called out the local SWAT team to protect him from the gathering of Tea Partiers nearby, who were ambling along with their canes and walkers singing ‘God Bless America.’ The SWAT guys must have felt silly, but their helmets covered their faces so one could not be sure.
I bet the SWAT guys were grateful for that.
Marianne
I wish I had thought to go see a movie, and then dinner, to kill time, and then gone downtown to the Library Mall, to see what condition the Mall was left in by the crowd. Pretty grubby, I warrant.
Marianne, you should go and take a peek at Loralee’s website. She, too, is a singer. I told her I have a Marianne Mathews album, and then, alas, I gloated about it. Gloat, Gloat, I went. But that is, I belive, understandable.
Would love to hear it sometime.
wouldn’t wanna make it available would you?
Irony at it’s core = schadenfreude.
I noticed nothing “suspicious.” As many have pointed out, the picture is quite representative of Madison. People who want to make something of this are being petty. Move along, nothing to see here.
A photo of my entire Midwestern town where I grew up would show 100% white faces. It would be stupid for anyone to make a racial, political, or any remark whatsoever on our uniform ethnicity if we were all photographed together.
The fact was, we had no African Americans, no Latinos, and no Asians in town, whatsoever. Except for one Lebanese family moving in, we were all Irish, German, or Swedes and little else. We all looked alike. The whole town! [But we were evenly split between left and right leanings and politics.]
We on our farm had a telephone, “party-line.” You knew when to answer by the combination of long and short rings – ours was 3-short rings. Of course many eavesdropped on the party line conversations. So many on the line spoke in their native, old-world native language. So as to hide their personal conversations.
Counting the color of faces in any picture is really petty. Those who do it – left or right – sink to a lower level.
Jeebus, Flit, that’s horribly disingenuous, even for you. You did read all the above comments, yes? You do follow the mainstream news, yes? You are aware that one of the Democratic Party’s talking points (which the MSM has been mindlessly & faithfully following) is that the Tea Party movement is composed of “whites-only” racist bigots, yes?
If you truly aren’t aware of these things you’ve had your head under a rock for at least a year.
This is all about the Democratic Party’s attempt to paint the Tea Partyers as evil white-supremacist racists. It’s also about how a large part of the traditional media have gone along with that.
As for sinking to a lower level, as stated above the Democratic Party, their faithful apparatchiks (including Janeane Garafalo and Keith Olbermann) and the mainstream media have been pushing this meme for a year now. Funny that you didn’t notice, or criticize until now.
Don’t worry, the WI dems are trying to push through (unwanted) high-speed rail between Milwaukee and Madison. That’ll get the crowd picture right for 2012.
/snark
I sure don’t want it. I can’t even figure out what the point is. Once you get to Milwaukee, you still have to get where you’re going, and taxis are not cheap, and buses don’t always go where you are going. Milwaukee and Madison are only 75 miles apart, so you won’t save any time, either, as you will have to wait for the train to leave, both directions, rather than driving when you see fit. What a waste of tax money. I can see the point of the Chicago, Minneapolis high speed train, but not the Madison-Milwaukee one. We need to clean all the weasels out of madison, and put Badgers in, who care about the Badger State.
You know, rail in this country could really take off if they stopped pouring money into high-speed and instead invested in RORO auto carriers like they have for the Chunnel.
It seems every other episode of Top Gear involves someone driving to or from the continent, and every time I see them do it I wonder again why I’m stuck making 15 hour drives. I’d gladly pay a couple hundred dollars to spend 12 hours on a train with a 2 hour drive on each end as opposed to driving all day.
Sorry for the digression.
I think the point of this exercise is to point out that if there were to be a conservative rally there, of a similar size and demographic, that the usual suspects would be whining and moaning (again) about the racist, bigoted, lily white TEA movement.
I wonder how much those kids were paid to cheer on the fraudster in chief…
Pay them? Pfft.
As other have stated, calling Madison “white and left-leaning” is a major understatement. They probably had a near riot from too many supporters trying to get in. Though they just may have gotten class credit.
They probably got extra class credit. I wonder how many of them are actually students and how many are bussed in union members?
You hit it! Their challenge was:
1. Write a paragraph telling about how thrilled you were to be able to see our President.
2. Write about his message of hope and how it is what we need here in cheeseland as well as other places in North America.
3. (Extra Credit) Tell us how you felt betrayed by your parents when they explained that there would be a cutback in your cashflow and car allowance during your next two to five years at university.
I went to school at UW-Madison, graduated in 1997. Not a bit surprised at all and think there is no correlation whatsoever. When Obama spoke at Norfolk State Universtiy and Hampton University in Virginia it was the exact opposite…nothing to this at all. As stated, it’s Madison, what does one expect?
How many times does it have to be explained to people that, if this had been a Tea Party rally with the exact same demographic turnout, a hue and cry of racism and lack of blacks in the crowd would have been noted.
It is about MSM hypocrisy.
A Tea Party Rally would have to be considerably less diverse in order to achieve the demographic turnout displayed in this photo.
I’m pretty sure everyone gets that, but the intended result was weak due to location.
Some interesting threads (with personally taken Photos) over at Ann Althouses’ place. She’s a law prof at Uof Wisc and attended the event. Some really interesting comments, different takes–most witty as hell –several by others from Wisc who were there also.
The Tea Party rally wouldn’t have cookie cutter signs cranked out by some lefty organization.
I didn’t notice the crowd color,
I did notice that the signs seem to have all come from the same source. Like they were handed out at the gate.
is blue sign production the latest in government bought industries? The Tea Party folks at least know how to write their own signs, I like that in protesters.