Dolores,

If and when the other side, Pro-Obama, Boxer, McNerney, etc. hold rallies and a few protesters show up, you will devote as much time to their comments as you did to the Anti-Tea Party contingent. Please also include the racial make up of any pro-progressive parties. Why is Steve Martinez news-worthy? By devoting 6 paragraphs of the story to protesters and commenting on the racial makeup of the crowd, methinks there is a little bias in the reporting. Incidentally, I am not a TEA party devotee nor was I at the rally.

Reminds of the time when I did attend a Schwarzenegger rally in Pleasanton a few years and there was a huge crowd and the photo on the front page of the Times was of Code Pink. Half the story was devoted to these protesters. You are not alone. Any and all left-wing protesters get all the publicity they seek.

Tony: Well said, I agree with you 100%!!

You honestly think this is biased reporting? Dolores "reports" an estimated crowd of 10,000 attended when in fact it was closer to 2,500, and her point is that of those "10,000," not all were Tea Baggers.

What I would rather have seen was an actual interview with a Tea Bagger to please enlighten me as to what specific taxes they are objecting to?

* My taxes have gone down!

* My diabetic son is likely to be covered by my insurance if he can't find a job immediately after college next year.

* My gay sister can visit her partner of 11 years in the hospital if she's ill.

* More high level Taliban and Al Qeada terrorists have been captured in one year of Obama's administration than the last four years of Bush.

* We have unprecedented international cooperation in reducing the threat of nuclear annihilation and keeping nukes away from rogue states and terrorists.

These are all amazing things that positively touch and impact my family that the Tea Baggers conveniently ignore, and Delores and others in the media never challenge them on. The media is WAY more interested in covering the freak show with their offensive signage than actually considering the issues at hand.

Tony, thank you. I have a similar situation - a family member with a pre-existing condition resulting in 90% of all claims being denied (knee jerk reaction for insurance companies) and a lengthy process of appealing them, and daughter who is about to graduate from college who is unlikely to find employment right away that provides health insurance.

If I believed the rhetoric of the extremists that regurgitate catchy statements like "death panels" I would be frightened also. It's my responsibility to look beyond the hype and see what this new system will do for ALL Americans - and how that benefits each of us individually over time.

"Adam": It is biased reporting by the liberal media. The media felt the need to note that the audience was mostly white, but of course when the same liberal media covered the recent immigration rights rally, there was no mention that the audience was mostly hispanic. Why do you think that is? You are naive if you think in the long run you, and your son's long run, that taxes are going to go down, with all the governmental spending programs Obama is implementing. Your son, and his son, are going to have to ultimately pay for all these socialized programs. Obama's fundamental economic philosophy is redistribution of wealth, from those who have earned it, to those who have not, which is socialism. Finally, Obama has nothing to do with your sisters right to visit her lesbian partner in the hospital. For years, California has had a durable power of healthcare form, and other simple documents, that allow you to designate individuals to not only see you in the hospital, but to make healthcare decisions for you if you are incapacitated. Obama likes to take credit for things that he does not deserve credit for, and ignore those things that he is liable for. It is ironic that Obama lectures the american people on healthcare issues, when he does not even have the will power to stop smoking cigarettes in our white house? As recent polls have shown, the american people are finally starting to see why we need change in the next election.

Dear Emily,

Is it any wonder? Global news services have provided exceptional in-depth coverage of the actual TEA party and the fringe groups that are trying to attach their prejudices to an earnest movement to hold elected officials accountable for the costs and definition of government actions. We do not need to agree with the specifics of such Tea Party accountability, but we do need to worry about the fringe prejudices that are impacting rational consideration of our USAmerican political direction.

Thus, at times of such stress, humorists step in to bring reflection on this growing political problem:

ZINFANDEL PARTY - provides the concept of a lengthy reception so the audience can tolerate news entertainers such as Sarah Palin.

MEATLOAF PARTY - provides celebration of diversity in our society in the same manner as diversity of ingredients in the many meatloaf recipes.

MARTINI PARTY - provides for purity of message with a single focus on "Don't bruise the GIN" from the Rat Pack days by asking everyone to get to the point and validate its reality.

Is it any wonder?

The ROFL in Ralph N. Shirlet

Huh?

American, without specific advance directives or a DPA for health care, same gender couples could be kept apart if one was unable to give consent while in the hospital (for example, if one was unconscious or had advanced dementia) and the "closest relative" of the hospitalized person had objections to their partner visiting.

Adam is on target, you only had a portion of the picture.

Huh?

Ralph, once again, you made me laugh out loud. Thanks for that!

Huh?

Adam:

There are so many people like you that are clueless about what the discontent is all about. This only shows you are out of touch with the average American.

The 10,000 attendance at the Tea Party event is accurate. This is the tally provided to the press independently by the Pleasanton police.

I was at the rally yesterday. I have never attended a political event before in my life, but I now feel compelled get involved and try to make difference. Like everyone else at the Tea Party event, I am deeply concerned with the direction our country is heading.

I did not see any hate, anger or extremists at this event. What I saw were average Americans from all walks of life and all economic backgrounds. These were people who contribute to their communities and pay federal income taxes, a category that is soon to become a minority.

This event had nothing to do with extremism, but it had everything to do with a government that no longer believes it is accountable to the people. It is about a Congressman who has betrayed his constituents in District 11. It is about a Congress that passed legislation that it knew full well was opposed by the majority of Americans. It is a about a President who has violated the trust of Americans by signing into law a bill that hurts the overwhelming majority while helping just a handful.

Let me address a few of your issues:

(1) Deficit spending is a form of taxation. The government is racking up unpredicted deficits for as far as they can project. This money must eventually be repaid, if not by you and me, then by our children and their children. Why is it so hard for our government to understand that they cannot spend more than they collect from taxpayers? They have no other source of income than the taxpayers of this country. Ultimately, the government has to raise taxes. There is simply no other choice.

(2) The health care reform bill is wrong on so many levels, I could write book about it. Suffice it to say that this legislation hurts 95% of Americans while helping only a handful. The 85% of Americans who have insurance will see their rates go up to pay for the higher overall risk profile of the insured pool. The 10% of Americans who are insured by choice will be forced to buy insurance they neither need nor want. Those who are in a low risk category today will be forced to pay more than they would in a free market system, unfairly subsidizing others.

(3) The health care bill moves us down a very treacherous path toward a dependence culture. Unlike Social Security and Medicare which people pay into for their entire working lives in return for benefits after they retire, the new entitlement provides cash handouts to people who have never worked or paid taxes. Handing out fistfuls of money is not the way to help the less fortunate. You help them by providing opportunities to improve their lives, not by giving them money. Most Americans want to provide for themselves and their families. They do not want to receive handouts from taxpayers.

(4) In today’s America, only 53% of households pay federal income taxes while the other 47% receive the benefits such as national defense and other federal services while contributing nothing. This is not sustainable long term, especially as we add new entitlements such as the health care reform bill.

(5) The health care reform bill is an unprecedented expansion of an already bloated federal government. Why do you think the health care bill is 2400 pages long? I have spent days going through the details and what I see is not comforting. A simple taxpayer subsidized high risk / low income insurance program would only need 10 or 20 pages. This bill is so long because it sanctions a virtual takeover of the health insurance industry, a massive intrusion of government into the health care provider business and a vast expansion of the Department of Health & Human Services.

Before you label me as a political extremist, let me say that I do not support the foreign wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and I never have. I disagree with the President’s decision to escalate the war in Afghanistan. I support gay marriage and gay rights. And please do not call me a racist. I have been in an inter-racial marriage for 34 years and have two beautiful successful children who support themselves and pay taxes.

However, I have never before in my life been more concerned about the future of our country than I am today. We have to reign in our government so that they are once again working for the people, not against the people.

TL Nelson: Thank you for restoring my confidence in the future of our great country. You get it. God bless you!

In the words of Billy Joel, "We didn't start the fire"..... Lest we forget that Obama was handed a government with a HUGE deficit. The person who caused this deficit was handed an economy that was in the black.
Our taxes have actually gone down since the current administration, look up the facts. I am in a high tax bracket, and proudly pay those taxes.
My family has fought and died in every war since the Revolution.
I love my country, and yet I am reminded of Chevy Chase's skit on Saturday Night Live, "run Liberal run".
My adult son was just insulted by a neighbor for not being a Tea Party attendee. My son, the disabled veteran, limped away on his shattered hip. Was the person who insulted him a Veteran? NO, of course not.

Well, of course, Fiorina knows where jobs come from. She eliminated them in the US and created them overseas.

She nearly destroyed HP and apparently now wants to complete the job of destroying California. Will that woman not be happy until she has destroyed the world?

I wonder whose phones she will bug this time if she's elected Senator?

She was incredibly amusing during the 08 election, though. A woman who proved that she couldn't run HP anywhere except into the ground had the courage to say that McCain, Palin, Biden and Obama couldn't run a company like HP.

The day Fiorina was fired from HP its stock price jumped over 6% and at one point that day was up as much as 10%.

Nonetheless, the woman walked away with $21 million. She's a prime example of the CEO excesses that have plagued Wall Street but now she wants to convince people that she's a Main Street type woman. FAIL! She's just another "Let Them Eat Cake" bimbo.

As a decline to state voter, I opted to participate in the Republican primary simply to vote against this chick.

id rather kiss a llama, than support that man obama.
obama is wrong for the u.s
he is not the man we thought he was.
everyone was in such a hurry to oust bush, and get the gop out, that they did not consider the consequences of their decisions by voting in this unamerican, unoffical resident to the us, wolf in sheeps clothing of a man.
soon the us flag will have a yellow sickle and hammer where the stars go and the moon of islam on the other end. the tea party is good for america.
the us was founded by like minded people that resemble the tea party.
good , smart, strong, educated, traditional, conservative americans.
the i am ok your ok, its all good, hook a brother up program just does not work. and now we have to worry about giving amnesty to to all the illegals that make the bay area their home and quietly watch while they fill it with crime, drugs and do nothing to consider the positive idea of smart family planning. reconsider the journey of the traditional family oriented, value driven american. stand up for tradition and morality based decision making poloticians. do your part. we can win this battle. lets stand together and stamp out the socialist breeze that is stinking up our state and country. lets take back what is ours and stamp out the hedonistic, please myself through anyway possable way of thinking.

Bobs Big Boy Statue:
Your ignorance is astounding. Why are you so fearful?

The politics of fear never ever got us anywhere good.

Way to tell 'em, TL Nelson! I agree whole heartedly with you! We should all be very concerned with the future of this country.

dear citizen. i am sorry if my honesty offended you in any way. i am not afraid. i am not ignorant. i am however well voiced and passionate about helping making america the country it once was. through education, decisive thinking, and general community involvement and responsibility, america can once return to its golden age of success and enormous growth and wealth for everyone. and if country like iran get nuclear armament , we can just forget about any prosperity at all. i guess living in danville sometimes hides the true issues this country is facing due to the fact that the social economic status of the community here is very high, which is in fact the true american dream in a nutshell. i love danville. i love america. i love general motors. how do you see fear. and again. my post was not to offend. i wrote it with love in my heart.

TL Nelson, Bob's Big Boob, Tony, and assorted Tea Baggers - I can the bulls$&t on all of you. The second to the last paragraph in TL's letter claims "I never supported the Iraq war".
Let's talk about something else none of you ever did: Protest the Iraq fiasco. Not supporting it, TL, means nothing. You sat by while the most corrupt administration in U.S. history pursued an evil neocon agenda in silence. You know what you can do with those signs.
Get it straight mental midgets: ALL POLITICIANS are corrupt beyond redemption - not just the guys you don't like.

Oh, and Tony G, Dolores F.C. was a republican through and through. She always gave coverage to every women's conservative event at every country club in the area. She allowed the likes of Mike Arata and Vlado Blech (sic on the last name, though I could really care less) to gibber and blather on incoherently for pages and pages, while allowing only scant or non-existent rebuttal. Her leanings were all too clear, and the paper version of the Danville Weakly (sic again!) proved it almost "weekly". Accusing her of liberal bias is nothing short of delusional. Oh, and Tony, did you bother to read the other headline - you know, the one about how someone named Emily took over for Dolores? No, I guess reading is a lot of work. Better to be spoon fed by Faux News.
If Hannity told you nutcases a tree hugger convention was coming to Danville, you would all be out at 7:00am the next morning attacking redwoods with your chainsaws, wouldn't you?
If Shun Sannity screamed that "illegals" were pouring over our southern borders, you would grab your guns and mass along the fences, would you not? Maybe call yourselves something like "minutemen" (your wives call you that, after all) and don funny survivalist clothes. Oops, wait a minute.....

Right on, Derek!
I do have a few questions for the "Tea Baggers". Do you really think that the fonding fathers were conservative??? From where do you get that? The Sons of Libery, were they conservative, too?
I grew up in the fifties and sixties, we were NOT all wealthy. Some of us struggled to get by. In fact, I remember when a fifty cent Bob's Big Boy was a once every other month treat!
I also remember living with a cloud of fear over everything we did during the "glory days" of the Eisenhower administration.

Collins:

The Tea Party movement is not about conservative vs. liberal. It is about common sense. (1) There is no such thing as a "free lunch" and (2) You cannot spend more money than you have.

I believe that our President, who spent his formative years living under a totalitarian government in Indonesia, really believes that he can do whatever he pleases regardless of opposition from the majority of American people. He has yet to learn that he is accountable to the people for his actions.

New political social groups are always refreshing, healthy for our exersize of free speech and at the end of the day always enhance our understanding of those fellow citizens who feel passionately enough to become engaged in our system of democracy. Good for the Tea Bag folks, thank you for getting out there. I guess John Anderson was the first (was that his name?) and then Ross Perot followed in a worthy attempt to corral and leverage the econonomic and political heft of those citizens feeling not represented in the current environment of the 2 party system. I guess the John Birch Society was not that radical after all in retrospect it seems. I am glad Derek mentioned Mike Arata's hate filled diatribes of days gone by. His intolerant views got quite a bit of exposure over the years in the local rag with Sharon's to follow in predictable lockstep. It was like he was lecturing me...am I the only one? I was waiting for an updated picture of him in high school with a "Hitler Youth" group photo. I kind of felt like he and Lanny Middings met at the Outpost and had a few too many Red Bulls and Smirnoffs and wrote their letters together.

Long Time Danville Resident:
I as unaware that Hawaii was a part of Indonesia. Thanks for enlightening me.
Not only did the majority of the people in our country vote for President Obama, so did the majority of people in Danville.
Are you of the opinion that our last President spent more than the country had?

Collins:

President Obama (b. 1961) lived and attended school in Jakarta, Indonesia from ages 6 to 10 (1967 - 1971). He lived there with his stepfather, Lolo Soetoro and his mother. At this time, he went by the name Barry Soetoro. It was not until 1971 that he moved back to Hawaii to live with his maternal grandparents.

Regarding deficit spending under the Bush administration ... I was never happy with the Bush deficits either, but President Obama is running deficits 3 - 4 times bigger than anything Bush ever had and they are projected out as far as they can forecast. Except for the Iraq/Afghanistan wars, Bush did not increase government spending during his 8 years in office. The primary reason the budget went from surplus to deficit in 2000/2001 was a dramatic decrease in revenue due to the 2000 stock market crash ...it had nothing to do with spending.

These tea baggers are just sore losers from the last election. If they knew anything about our current taxes they would understand that Obama has lowered our taxes since he took office. It is clear that tea baggers must spend too much time listening to the morons Rush and Beck.
President Obama is doing a great job. Obama has the economy moving up along with the stock market and has returned our great country to it's position of respected leadership in the free world. Thank you President Obama.

ray to call men like rush and beck morons is just wrong. they are smart educated men with lots of important things to say. now it is your right to not agree with them, but just becuase you do not believe in social conservatisim does not give you the right to hurl insults. i do not see many books written by ray, nor do i see shows on major news networks titled " american politics with Ray" more people would agree with rush and beck than not. we happen to live in california which is a do what ever makes you feel good kind of state. out side of cali you will find more families with traditional, conservative, moral , and honorable outlooks and ways of life.

Talk about hurling insults. How about generalized insults. You don't agree with people's lifestyle choices, so the entire state they live in is "dishonorable". And there is a great deal of difference between social conservatism and fear mongering. Which is what your heroes Rush and Beck have to offer. When there's a Republican President these guys are blanket apologists for every wrong step and turn they make. But when the dems are in office, they demonize everything. I'm not saying the left journalists don't do just the opposite, all I'm saying is don't hold these two up as some sort of idealogical standard bearers. Oh, and if they weren't out there whipping people into a frenzy and feeding their fears, their ratings would drop and you wouldn't have books or tv shows by them. It's in their best interests, financially and careerwise to be as controversial and strident as they can. They are in a business, after all. They're not doing and saying what they are out of any sense of altruism or patriotism, they found a niche market where they can make buckets of cash and they are milking it for all they can.