In front of Dallas City Hall, radio host and Dallas Tea Party co-planner Mark Davis poured the first cup of tea with a joke: "Those who oppose big government actually have jobs." To which the crowd of guestimated thousands responded with chants of "U-S-A, U-S-A, U-S-A."
The scene at the Dallas Tea Party played out as it had all over North Texas, the U-S-A-U-S-A- and Fox News Channel throughout the day: Folks were told to show up and protest President Obama and the budget and the stimulus plan and federal taxes, only they brought signs and shirts invoking everything from welfare spending ("We are paying for people to not work, and we don't want to do that anymore," said one woman) to their opposition to national health care and gun control. And plentiful among the crowd were signs invoking Jesus and demanding the U.S.'s withdrawal from the United Nations. You can see as much in our slide show. And in this video.
Kelly Connell's scared Obama will take away her guns: "It's just one of the things I think he'll attempt to do." Her husband Billy worries about pork spending: "Fox News said yesterday there's more money budgeted for polar bears than for education in the United States. ... When you put a polar bear ahead of our children, I think that's pretty bad."
It was a small-government grab bag -- ask Jeremy Bradford, who sported a "Reagan/Bush '84" tee. "The federal government shouldn't have anything to do with the education of our children," he said. And it was a no-federal-government call to arms. Said Katrina Pierson, "Texas should close the borders and secede." Truthfully, though, the worst part was when someone spotted my yellow notebook and branded me a "liberal infiltrator" ... from The Huffington Post.
