Outraged Citizens of Hawaii Protest March @Volcano

[DanielP]

And those guys throwing all that good tea in the harbor really screwed up some birthday parties too!

[kimo wires]

I have a new acronym for all those with so much copious FREE time.

G_A_L.

GET A LIFE!!!!!!!!

[Rob Tucker]

See you at the parade.

My daughter will be marching with the cast of "Kiss Me Kate" which opens next weekend at KMC.

FoPF will be doing membership sign-ups at Cooper Center.

Enjoy the day!

[Guest]

OK now,
being true to my word I said that I should do a toon about protesting at such a great public event.
I have always been under the impression that the 4th of July was for the family, family values, picnicking, having fun, and celebrating the birth of this great nation. So this is my concept of the new values celebrated “Puna Style”.

Please leave your commit here and on my site.
Happy 4th of July to everyone.

The Lack

The Lack Toons

[DanielP]

Were it not for the protesters, there would be no Independence Day to celebrate!

The true patriot is the one who stands up for the rights of those with whom (s)he disagrees, even if it is inconvenient.

Support Liberty

Dan

[james weatherford]

This July 4th, Rebel and Agitate for Change

By Jim Hightower, AlterNet. Posted July 4, 2009.

Agitators created America, and it's their feisty spirit and outright rebelliousness that we celebrate on our national holiday.

If so, the Powers That Be detest you -- you ... you ... "agitator!" They spit the term out as a pejorative to brand anyone who dares to challenge the established order. "Oh," they scoff, "our people didn't mind living next to that toxic waste dump until those environmental agitators got them upset." Corporate chieftains routinely wail that "our workers were perfectly happy until those union agitators started messing with their minds."

In each case, the message is that America would be a fine country if only we could get rid of those pesky troublemakers who get the hoi polloi agitated about one thing or another.

Bovine excrement. Were it not for agitators, we wouldn't even have an America. The Fourth of July would be just another hot day, we'd be singing "God Save the Queen," and our government officials would be wearing white-powdered wigs.

Agitators created America, and it's their feisty spirit and outright rebelliousness that we celebrate on our national holiday. I don't merely refer to the Founders, either. Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, James Madison, Ben Franklin and the rest certainly were derring-do agitators when they wrote the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, creating the framework for a democratic republic. But they didn't actually create much democracy. In the first presidential election, only 4 percent of the people were even eligible to vote. No women allowed, no African Americans, no American Indians and no one who was landless.

So, on the Fourth, it's neither the documents of democracy that we celebrate nor the authors of the documents. Rather, it's the intervening two-plus centuries of ordinary American agitators who have struggled mightily against formidable odds to democratize those documents.

America's great rebellion didn't end with the British surrender at Yorktown. It was only getting started -- and the rebellion has moved through such great forces of agitation as the abolitionists and suffragists, Sojourner Truth and Frederick Douglass, the Populists and the Wobblies, Fighting Bob La Follette and Huey Long, the Square Deal and New Deal, Mother Jones and Woodie Guthrie, Rachel Carson and Ralph Nader, Martin Luther King Jr. and Cesar Chavez -- and on into today's continuing fight for economic fairness, social justice and equal opportunity for all.

Without agitators battling in politics, on the job, in the marketplace, for the environment, on Wall Street, in education, for civil liberties and rights, and all across our society, democratic progress doesn't just stall, it falls back.

The Powers That Be -- especially America's overarching corporate and political forces (often the same) -- give lip service to democracy, but tend toward plutocracy, autocracy and kleptocracy. They prefer (and often demand) that We the People be passive consumers of their economic and political policies. Don't rock the boat, stay in your place, go along to get along -- be quiet, they urge.

Be quiet? Holy Thomas Paine! How could freedom-loving, democratic citizens shrink into quietude, especially when the Powers That Be feel so entitled to run roughshod over us? Even a dead fish can go with the flow. We've got to be livelier than that.

July Fourth is a time to enjoy fireworks, flags, hotdogs, ballgames and such -- but it's also a time to remember who we are: agitators!

It's not easy to stand against powerful interests. Sometimes it's lonely, and you get to feeling like the guy B.B. King sings about: "No one likes you but your momma, and she might be jiving you, too." It's not easy, but having those who dare to stand up is essential if our country is ever to achieve our ideals of fairness, justice and opportunity for all.

And when the establishment derisively assails you as an agitator, remember this: The agitator is the center post in the washing machine that gets the dirt out.

COPYRIGHT 2009 CREATORS SYNDICATE INC.



James Weatherford, Ph.D.
15-1888 Hialoa
Hawaiian Paradise Park

[JWFITZ]

Bonus points for the first person who can name the site where oft quoted Thomas Paine is buried. . .any takers?

[mdd7000]

From Wikipedia:
Thomas Paine died at 59 Grove Street, Greenwich Village, New York City on June 8, 1809 at the age of 72. Alienated by his religious views, only six people attended his funeral.[4] He was buried at what is now called the Thomas Paine Cottage in New Rochelle, New York, where he had lived after returning to the USA in 1802. His remains were later disinterred by an admirer, William Cobbett, who sought to return them to the UK and give him a heroic reburial on his native soil. The bones were, however, later lost and his final resting place today is unknown.

[JWFITZ]

Religious views being the lack of them mostly, and hostile to christianity. Yup. Not a single cemetery in the country would accept this "founding father's" body, so they buried him in his back yard.

Bonus round. What were his views on inheritance and property rights?

[Hawaii Photo Guy]

And so what was it about? Its like typical news coverage - Big build up and lots of talk about it then no follow up info on what actually happened. lol
As for myself..I was checking out Hilo events cause I had to be in Hilo anyway.

Please be kind.