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Twin City Tea Party candidate forum Democrats attend!

Posted: June 29, 2010 by datechguy in local stuff, opinion/news, special events, tea parties
Tags: 37th middlesex, 4th worcester, jen benson, jennifer flanagan, kurt hayes, local elections, local government, massachusetts senate, neal heeren, reality, tea parties, twin city tea party

The Twin city tea party had its monthly meeting at the Border Grille and Bar yesterday. That in itself isn’t big news.

What WAS big news is that it included a candidates forum and two sitting DEMOCRATIC members of the General Court attended.

Jennifer Flanagan (Sen 4th Worcester district) and Jen Benson (Rep 37th Middlesex District) along with their opponents Neal Heeren (4th Worcester Senate) and Kurt Hayes (37th Middlesex) showed up and took audience questions and stayed to talk to the people at intermission!

The significance of this can’t be overestimated. For over a year the media has been painting tea party members as wild eyed extremists. Congressmen and women have avoided town hall meetings in fear of encountering them and now sitting democratic members of the General Court attend events.

Both Jens deserve a lot of credit for doing so, it shows a respect for the people who will be voting in this election, but more importantly it shows that they are smart enough to realize that pretending a portion of the electorate must be ignored is a losing policy. Rather than giving the floor to their opponents they engaged the tea party members as voters to be persuaded.

Did they win any votes? I don’t know but I think both were impressive and helped themselves. Just as it is hard to stereotype the tea party when you actually interact with them it is hard to do the same with candidates who take the time to talk to you.

Incidentally I’ll have video uploaded and posted later in the day.

Is this an anomaly or is this the shape of things to come? Well as goes Massachusetts…

Update: Instalanche! Thanks Glenn, welcome all take a peek around. Find out why Foster Kamer is Vizzini, why the Iranians are just cowardly bullies, check out my cynical look at Church Closings and Dave Weigel and of course my Amazon reviews.

Update 2: This is actually the Second bi-partisian event held by the Twin City Tea Party. The First was on Flag Day and included the mayor of Leominster. The evidence of change in drawing local pols is evidenced by this video:

When local pols in the most liberal state in the nation feel comfortable being seen at tea party events the worm has turned. I think tea parties nationwide should take a good hard look at what the Twin City Tea Party group is doing and copy it.

Update 3: Here is the video of Flanagan and Heeren

Update 4: And here is the video of Benson and Hayes.

“di” to “of”

Posted: June 25, 2010 by datechguy in catholic, local stuff
Tags: fitchburg

The final official decrees for the closing of parishes in Fitchburg have been published in the Catholic Free Press. Major changes have taken place, parishes have closed, others have merged and territories have been assigned.

St. Anthony di Padua has not been unaffected by these epic changes our parish has been renamed.

No longer are we St Anthony di Padua. The parish has been renamed St. Anthony OF Padua. No longer will we use the Italian word “di”.

How we will handle such an epic change I don’t know.

The territorial boundaries as I said have been re-drawn and my family sits about 30 -50 yards on the wrong side of the line for St. Anthony. We have however decided that we will somehow manage to continue to make the 3 minute drive or 10 minute walk to St. Anthony as opposed to the 7 minutes drive and half hour walk to St. Francis that the new boundaries would have us go to.

Oh and we now have a blog. Not a real active one but we have one.

My Latest Examiner Column A civic Tea Party

Posted: June 14, 2010 by datechguy in examiner columns, local stuff, tea parties
Tags: examiner, leominster, tea parties, twin city tea party

My latest examiner column A Civic Tea Party is now up. A quick peek:

Why does the tea party elicit such odd responses? Well everybody knows what the tea party is against, excessive spending and taxation, but what is the tea parties for? How can the tea parties become a movement that is not just a movement of protest?

Well it looks like the Twin City Tea Party and Justin Brooks their newly elected president seems to have found the equation.

More photos of the event here. Local tea parties should get involved in civic activities, particular ones that have been left behind. The more the Tea Party integrates with the community the harder it is to demonize us.

As always you can find my complete set of Enquirer columns here. Due to my extreme greed I suggest that you click on them often.