Thread: Time for a Tea Party

Tea party leaders anxious about extremists
By David A. Lieb, Associated Press Writer 2 hrs 38 mins ago

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. – Organizers of tax-day tea parties are preparing for their biggest day of the year Thursday, as thousands of demonstrators participate in local rallies against high taxes and big government spending. But the leaders are striving to keep the rallies from presenting another image: one of fringe groups, extremists or infiltrators obsessed with hateful messages.

Sensitive that poor public perception could sink their movement, some rally planners have uninvited controversial speakers, beefed up security and urged participants to pack cameras to capture evidence of any disrupters. Organizers want to project a peaceful image of people upset by what they consider to be a growing and burdensome federal government.

"We don't want to be misrepresented, whether it's by someone who is not part of the group and has their own agenda, or whether it's by some fringe extremist who may actually be a racist," said Jim Hoft, a political blogger and tea party activist who is one of the speakers for a rally in suburban St. Louis.

The National Tea Party Federation, a newly formed coalition of regional tea party groups, estimates that between 1,700 and 2,000 tax-day rallies are occurring Thursday in communities across the country.

"What's at stake is showing various government officials of both parties that people are concerned," said Tim Hagle, an associate political science professor at the University of Iowa. "That's why it's important that you don't have distractions from people who are interlopers of one sort or another."

The tea party took a recent publicity hit when three black Democratic congressmen said they heard racial slurs as they walked through thousands of health care protesters — many of them tea party activists — outside the U.S. Capitol on March 20. Some conservatives and tea party leaders insist it never happened.

But it's not the only racially charged incident. A photo posted on Flickr, which has attracted Internet chatter, shows a white man carrying a sign that says: "Obama's Plan White Slavery." The photo claims to have been shot at a tea party rally last year in Madison, Wis.

At a tea party rally Tuesday in Jefferson City, a couple of people wore T-shirts depicting President Barack Obama in white face paint above the word "Joker" — a reference to the villain in a Batman movie.

Some tea party organizers have taken steps to distance themselves from those espousing potentially controversial views.

The Waco, Texas, tea party started hiring off-duty police officers and renting their venues so that they could keep extremists out of their main events. The change happened after a group showed up with racist signs in a gathering in a public park.

"They tried to insist they were tea party members," said Toby Marie Walker, president of the Waco Tea Party. But she added: "Our tea party people would not hold signs like that."

At least two local tea party groups have shunned speakers who originally were scheduled for Thursday's rallies.

Alabama attorney John Eidsmoe, who has spoken previously to white supremacists, withdrew from a tea party rally in Wausau, Wis., after organizers questioned his views. Coordinators of a tax-day rally in Pleasanton, Calif., rescinded the speaking invitation of Orly Taitz, an attorney who has filed lawsuits claiming Obama was not born in the U.S. and is ineligible to be president.

Tea party leaders also are concerned that opponents may pose as tea party participants and cause a ruckus to damage the reputation of the movement. A Web site has urged people to "crash the tea party" to draw attention to the party's least appealing qualities.

The National Tea Party Federation is urging rally participants to point cameras at anyone acting obnoxious or hateful. The intent is to reprimand true tea party activists, disavow fringe followers or reveal the people as plants by opponents.

Cindy Maves, who put together a tea party rally at a park in Rochester, Minn., said organizers have brought in more security and put local police on alert. "We just want to make sure the press isn't covering these people thinking they're us," she said.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_tea_pa...NsawNwcmludA--

Obama makes light of anti-tax protests
By Erica Werner, Associated Press Writer 1 hr 15 mins ago

MIAMI – President Barack Obama said Thursday he's amused by the anti-tax tea party protests that have been taking place around Tax Day.

Obama told a fundraiser in Miami that he's cut taxes, contrary to the claims of protesters.

"You would think they'd be saying thank you," he said.

At that, many in the crowd at the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts stood and yelled, "Thank you!"

The fundraiser was one of two Obama held after a speech at Cape Canaveral on his administration's space policy. The other was hosted by Gloria and Emilio Estefan, a $30,400-per-couple fete that stirred some controversy in the traditionally Republican Cuban-American community. Together, the events raised $2.5 million for the Democratic National Committee.

In introducing Obama, Gloria Estefan said her father would have been proud to know that his daughter was hosting a president who had called for an end to repression in Cuba and the release of all political prisoners there.

"The beauty of this amazing nation is that anything is possible," she said. "Even hosting a very political evening to get the 'ear' of my president when I am politically nonaffiliated, but the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. put it succinctly when he said, 'We may have all come on different ships, but we're in the same boat now.'"

DNC Chairman Tim Kaine spoke before Obama and delivered a sobering assessment of the party's chances in the November midterm elections, noting that the party in power traditionally sustains losses in the midterms.

"There are a lot of prognosticators who are saying this is going to be a very tough year for the Democrats," Kaine said.

"We sort of have to assume that we're running into a headwind," Kaine said, but he contended Democrats were accustomed to being underdogs.

Obama called on Republicans and Democrats to come together to pass strong financial regulation legislation. He said every member of Congress would have to decide "between special interests and the American people."

Obama cheered the special-election victory of Florida Democratic state Sen. Ted Deutch in Tuesday's special election to replace retiring Democratic Rep. Robert Wexler. It was the first House election since passage of his controversial health care bill and Obama noted that commentators viewed the election as a referendum on that legislation or on Obama himself.

"And it was!" he said.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100416/...NsawNwcmludA--

Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck are not guilty of sedition -- but over-the-top 'tea-party' rhetoric doesn’t help
By Nicole Hemmer Fri Apr 23, 11:00 am ET

Charlottesville, Va. – Sedition. The word is all the rage as the nation commemorated the 15th anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing this week amid tumultuous times: a historic recession, massive deficits, nationwide “tea party” protests. As memories of the domestic terror attack resurface, critics of those tea party protests have shifted the debate from “racist or not?” to “seditious or not?”

Joe Klein of Time magazine recently made headlines when he said that comments by tea party advocates Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin “rub right up close to being seditious.”

Mr. Klein later explained that their sedition sprang not from dissenting, but from questioning the administration’s legitimacy. But even clarified, Klein’s position is troubling. Mr. Beck, Ms. Palin, and the protesters they rally are not engaged in sedition, and in making the charge, Klein not only waters down the true meaning of sedition but legitimizes it as a weapon against political opponents.

In a democratic country dedicated to freedoms of speech and press, sedition – inciting rebellion against the state – presents a conundrum. Where does legitimate, protected opposition end and sedition begin?

Historically, the bar has been set pretty low: Speech protected today almost always amounted to sedition in years past. The Sedition Act of 1798 criminalized “malicious writing” against the government, in large part to tamp down criticism against President John Adams and the Federalist government. Under its provisions, Revolutionary War veteran David Brown spent 18 months in jail for erecting a sign denouncing the Sedition Act and supporting Thomas Jefferson, the man who wrote the right of revolution into the Declaration of Independence.

During World War I, a new Sedition Act helped dissuade antiwar activists and landed Socialist politician Eugene Debs in jail. Revealing Americans’ uneasiness with political prisoners, Debs was allowed to run for president from his cell, winning nearly a million votes. A generation later, Franklin Roosevelt’s administration saw sedition in the very DNA of Japanese-Americans, sending them to internment camps in the western deserts for the duration of World War II.

Sedition, then, has been broadly construed in America’s past. But with the rise of civil liberty protections in the last half of the 20th century, speech has been given much looser rein. Even the USA Patriot Act, which had any number of liberty-limiting provisions, rarely constrained freedoms of speech and press outright.

Painting the tea party protesters or right-wing commentators as seditious, then, takes the nation a step back to a more restricted past, when dissent was criminalized. Dissent, not sedition, because whatever Klein might say, Beck and Palin are not advocating violent insurrection. Indeed, over the past few years Beck has repeatedly counseled his audience not to act violently.

The tea party protests that Beck and Palin support are not even particularly radical in their means. They argue for the ballot, not the bullet. They gather, mostly peaceably, for noisy but contained protests. And they don’t even challenge the two-party system: According to a recent New York Times poll, tea partyers are less likely than other Americans to support a third party.

So why the confusion? In part, debate about the tea parties is muddled by fringe actions that are, in fact, seditious. That actual seditious activity is occurring, though, is all the more reason to take care with the word, so we can recognize and deal with the real thing when it occurs.

Protesting outside Congress? Not seditious. Threatening Congress members’ lives? Seditious. Painting apocalyptic fairy tales, as Beck does? Not seditious. Planning an armed militia to ward off the federal government, as an Oklahoma tea party group was? Seditious.

This is not to say that Beck, Palin, and other tea party speakers are blameless. They may not be committing sedition, but their overheated, often stunningly fictional rhetoric doesn’t help matters. It may gin up their base, but intimating that President Obama may suspend elections or suggesting that the government is coming for Grandma makes meaningful debate difficult. Such talk sets up real barriers to solving the nation’s problems at a time when America can ill afford to spend time on unserious matters. But to equate over-the-top rhetoric with sedition goes too far: When it comes to weighing free speech versus sedition, we should err on the side of freedom.

Nor is the outrage emanating from the right in the wake of Klein’s comments wholly justified. Conservative commentators have cried sedition plenty of times, as when Michelle Malkin called Students Against War members seditious in 2006. And when a Veterans Affairs nurse criticized President George W. Bush’s handling of the Iraq war and hurricane Katrina in a letter to the editor, she faced a sedition investigation for her legitimate opposition.

For Americans of every political stripe, then, the lesson is the same: Sedition is a serious charge for a serious act. We should retire it as a label for nonviolent political speech, however flawed.

Nicole Hemmer is a lecturer at Manchester College and a PhD candidate in history at Columbia University. She is writing a history of conservative media.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/csm/20100423...JhaHBhbGluYW4-

SEDITION ?? For for using our freedom of speech? Thats right ... Obama is President i forgot.

Over the top is not coming from the Tea Party, it is coming from our career politicians. Term Limits for all of them!

'Tea party' founder: Why our movement will succeed -- and why it's good for America
By Bill Hennessy Fri Apr 23, 10:40 am ET

St. Louis – Imagine that the “tea party” movement continued to expand in size and influence. At some point in the future, tea partyers, regardless of political party affiliation, would dominate the executive and legislative branches of federal government. Our influence on the courts would increase. In this scenario, the tea party would eventually change the face of the federal government.

What would America look like then?

Before we answer that question, remember that no single person speaks for the tea party movement. Tea partyers hold political views that run the gamut from traditional Christian conservative to libertarian. We can’t describe a tea party future without answering the question, “Which tea partyer are you talking about?”

If we select the most common points of agreement, however, we can paint a fairly accurate picture of the changes tea partyers would likely make to our government and how those changes could alter your relationship to Washington. First let’s look at the most common themes among tea partyers.

While many local tea party organizations involve themselves in local or state issues and races, the movement’s primary interest lies in Washington. Nearly 8 in 10 Americans distrust the federal government, according to a recent Pew Research Center poll. Among tea partyers, that statistic is closer to 9 in 10. That’s important because it highlights a very important common theme: a libertarian view of Washington’s role.

Tea partyers would reduce the scope of federal power in two ways. First, we would trim federal legislation, reducing the Federal Register – the daily publication of federal rules, regulations, orders, and notices – from more than 69,000 pages to, say, 10,000 pages, as it was in 1950. Second, we would eliminate the legislative power of federal departments and agencies. The Environmental Protection Agency would no longer be able to declare the mud puddle in my backyard federally protected wetlands citing nothing more than bureaucratic fiat.

For you, this means that Washington would have less direct influence over your life. You could plan for the future knowing that your property is your property. You would not need a Washington bureaucrat’s permission to paint your house blue or to put in a swimming pool. You would not have to buy government-approved health insurance or drive a government-made car.

This change will significantly increase your personal political power. Today, Washington has undue influence over your life. And changing federal law is nearly impossible. You either have to hire an expensive team of lobbyists or convince at least half of all Americans voters to support the candidates for Congress who support your idea of reform. Do you have that kind of time and money?

Tea partyers want to restore the balance of power in America, making state and local governments more important than the federal government, as was intended by the US Constitution, and which was the case for the first half of US history. Under this arrangement, the number of people you’d need to influence to change the law drops quickly. Federalism and a smaller national government means individuals carry more power.

The Constitution lists a very limited number of activities that the United States may perform on our behalf. The tea party movement would implement a plan to phase out those activities, departments, and agencies that came about outside the amendment process of the Constitution. Expect to see the departments of Education, Health and Human Services, Housing and Urban Development, and Veterans Affairs disappear over time. Homeland Security, which comprises some legitimate activities, would be splintered into more manageable parts.

If we want to hold on to an existing department whose mission is beyond the constitutional roles of government, then Congress and the states would have to adopt a constitutional amendment to establish that new power.

For you, this would mean far less dependency on a faceless Washington bureaucrat. No more “No Child Left Behind” dictates that teach 20th-century lessons to 21st-century students. As with all of the tea party’s ideas, this one leaves you freer than you started out.

The tea party movement is most closely associated with anger over bailouts, taxes, spending, and debt. But the financial problems our government faces are symptoms of the problems addressed earlier. Reducing the government’s onerous and unsustainable spending is both an objective and a consequence of the changes above.

In 1949, federal spending equaled 14 percent of gross domestic product (GDP); in 2009, the government spent 25 percent of GDP, a 70 percent increase. According to the Congressional Budget Office, by 2019, the national debt will equal 90 percent of GDP, a tipping point associated with harmfully slower economic growth, according to economists Kenneth Rogoff and Carmen Reinhart. We aim to stop that.

Outside of defense spending, the three largest items in the federal budget – Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid – would be phased out unless proponents could muster support for a constitutional amendment. These extra-constitutional programs amount to massive Ponzi schemes that fall apart without significant population growth. I would propose phasing these programs out by age, with anyone at or near retirement receiving full benefits. We want to keep the previous generation’s promise to retirees, even if that promise was illegitimate.

For you, this change means a more secure financial future, a better education for your kids, and more predictable retirement. Eventually, your federal tax burden would ease significantly. Reduced federal spending will reduce the annual budget deficits and allow us to begin paying down our nation’s massive debt.

Since 2008, the American people have paid off more personal debt than we’ve taken on. It’s time for government to apply this simple practice of household finance.

While I don’t pretend to speak for all tea partyers, I believe these reforms represent a common theme among the various factions that make up the larger tea party movement. These themes – increased personal power, a smaller federal government, fiscal responsibility, and lower taxes – carry a lot of power in the American psyche.

As tea partyers learn to translate passion and energy into electoral success this fall, we will stop and reverse our country’s recent sprint toward socialism – a sprint never authorized by the Constitution. These principles will result in some victories in 2010 and even more success in 2012 and beyond.

To ensure victory in the fall, we have formed our own political action committees and political nonprofits. These organizations give grass-roots conservatives a stronger voice in the political process.

In St. Louis, we are spreading the word by creating hundreds of tea party block captains who will recruit small teams to visit every home in the area before Election Day.

These teams will deliver a simple message and a copy of the United States Constitution, asking the people they visit to read that document and decide for themselves whether or not our government is protecting or infringing on our rights and our national promise.

Finally, I know the tea party movement will succeed because of the people who support it. When my cofounder, Dana Loesch, and I planned the first St. Louis tea party in February 2009, we hoped for a crowd of 50.

To our delight, more than 1,000 patriots filled the steps of the Gateway Arch on the banks of the Mississippi. Since then, the people of this tea party have continued to organize, influence, and grow.

Together, we are simply pilgrims on the road to that Shining City on a Hill, and we will not rest until we get there.

Bill Hennessy is a software manager, author of “The Conservative Manifesto,” and the cofounder of the St. Louis Tea Party.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/csm/20100423...RlYXBhcnR5Mzk-

'Tea party' activists: Do they hate liberals more than they love liberty?
By James Bovard Fri Apr 23, 10:05 am ET

Rockville, Md. – Many “tea party” activists staunchly oppose big government, except when it is warring, wiretapping, or waterboarding. A movement that started out denouncing government power apparently has no beef with some of the worst abuses of modern times.

Unfortunately, there is scant evidence that most tea partyers have studied the copies of the Constitution they generously hand out to bystanders.

At a Tax Day tea party in Rockville, Md., the speaking venue was draped with a huge banner: “Tired of Big Government?” Members of the “Tyranny Response Team” stood near the front of the rally with their official blue T-shirts. Giant American flags and ones with “Don’t Tread on Me” (with a coiled rattlesnake) were carried around by men with tri-corn hats. Political campaigns busily sold “9/11 Remembrance” bracelets.

And yet, the crowd of 300 seemed most outraged that the US government is not being sufficiently aggressive in using its power.

Ken Timmerman, the author of “Preachers of Hate: Islam and the War on America” and other hawkish books, declaimed that the US government must take every step to stop Iran from getting nuclear weapons. Mr. Timmerman denounced the Obama administration for being soft on Tehran and urged support for legislation to impose harsh sanctions on Iran. Timmerman previously advocated a US naval blockade of Iran, which he claimed was planning a nuclear attack on the United States.

Running through a litany of President Obama’s greatest failings, Timmerman denounced him for forcing US agents to “stop using enhanced interrogation methods. Has that made us safer?”

“No!” the crowd hollered indignantly.

Jeffrey Kuhner, a local talk-show host, sneered that Obama “has found his inner Muslim” and raged against his bowing to foreign leaders and kings. He complained that Obama has “taken over college loans,” and warned that illegal immigrants could be “the shock troops of Obama’s socialist revolution.” The crowd ate it up.

One of the MCs gushed about how he and everyone else in the crowd loved the police. There was not a word spoken about the video released earlier that week showing a nearby horrendous police beating of an innocent University of Maryland college student.

The rally featured a string of Republican candidates praising fiscal responsibility and denouncing the national debt. One would have thought that it had been 50 years, rather than 15 months, since the Republicans controlled the White House.

There was almost no dissent from any of the 300 attendees. One 50-something man in a faded green T-shirt walked around with a handmade sign declaring, “Stop the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan – Bring Our Troops Home Now!” He told me that almost no one he’d talked agreed with his message.

Much more in tune with the crowd was the 20-something woman carrying a sign: “PROUD to be the Military Super Power.”

The fact that the cost of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq thus far roughly equals the projected cost of the first decade of Obama’s health-care program is irrelevant. Military spending is viewed as holy water by many activists who otherwise despise Washington. While tea party activists rage over Obama’s alleged lies, they ignore the Bush administration’s deceptive justification to attack Iraq.

None of the speakers criticized the warrantless wiretaps that the National Security Agency began during the Bush administration. The feds’ vacuuming up thousands of Americans’ phone calls and e-mails without a warrant seems to be a nonissue for these folks. Perhaps some tea party leaders hope that Republicans will soon be in position to use such powers to surveil the left.

There are many decent Americans who understandably feel that the government has become too powerful and oppressive. Yet, seeking enlightenment from most tea party speakers is like searching in a dark room for a black cat that isn’t there.

Many of the attendees seemed to hate liberals far more than they loved liberty. A CBS/New York Times poll conducted in April showed that two-thirds of tea party members have a favorable opinion of Sarah Palin, and 57 percent have a favorable opinion of George W. Bush. Denouncing big government while approving of President Bush is like denouncing immodesty while sunning oneself on a nude beach. After all, it was Bush who championed the prescription drug benefit for seniors that adds $7 trillion to Washington’s unfunded liabilities.

Some of the Republican incumbents endorsed by tea party organizations have been champions of “enhanced interrogation.” As long as the feds don’t announce specific plans to begin torturing card-carrying conservative activists, why worry?

If tea party activists cannot vigorously oppose torture and other high crimes, then counting on them to stalwartly resist any government policy that doesn’t mulct their paycheck is folly.

America needs real champions of freedom – not poorly informed Republican accomplices. Either tea partyers should become more principled or they should ditch their Gadsden flags and wear T-shirts of the lobbying group that organizes the rally they attend.

James Bovard is the author of “Attention Deficit Democracy,” “Lost Rights: The Destruction of American Liberty,” and other books. He’s also a policy adviser to the Future of Freedom Foundation.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/csm/20100423...RlYXBhcnR5Mzk-

I would like to thank the Christian Science Monitor. Until I was exposed to this diatribe I failed to realize the Tea Party movement was Pro War Movement. I need to think more 'in the box' than I have been. Perhaps everything can be seen from this perspective. Guess I need to increase my awareness and smoke something a little more powerful.

The federal government is suppose to take care of us against the foreign aggressors.

The Federal government is suppose to let the individual states take care of their own people.

That is what is meant by smaller limited government.

The people that attend the Tea Party rallies believe they no longer have representation from their elected officials. They are rallying together to change this.

The Tea Party movement believe that each person owns his own life and the fruits of his labors, and has the right to make his own choices as to how he lives his life, including living with the consequences of his choices, both good and bad and as long as he respects the right of others to do the same.

This means they are seeking smaller Federal Government. They don't want it to run their lives and they seek less Tax. They don’t want the Federal Government to dictate to them how they will live their lives.

If they gather to express this and only take action by voting their representatives out of office that don’t represent them (regardless of party affiliation), why then should they be call terrorist for exercising their constitutional rights?

Nazi Holocaust Survivor Speaks Of Nazification of United States
Published on Jun 24, 2013
Nazi survivor Kitty Werthmann speaks of how the Nazi world of her childhood is being re-created here in America.
Her advice to U.S. citizens is to "Keep your guns and buy more guns"



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=quhNvOXBCMs

Anonymous Troll: "Funny how the Tea Party didn't exist until we had a black President. Funny ain't it?

Me: "Ah, the Pavlovian leftist response to everything. "RACISM!!!" Alinsky would be proud of your anonymous trolling.

First, there is no "THE" Tea Party, per se. There is only a loose collection of concerned citizens who value limited but effective government, lower taxes, fewer job-killing regulations and political accountability. Like all Leftists, you are attempting to demonize an "entity" that doesn't exist.

Second, self-described Tea Party activists are not all white...and they don't only support white candidates. Herman Cain, Allen West, Tim Scott, Katrina Pierson, Mia Love and many other candidates of color have been supported by "Tea Party" activists. Dr. Ben Carson will receive similar support should he run for President (assuming that he alters his stance on the 2nd Amendment).

Third, these concerned citizens criticize any public official, in either Party, who fails to respect and defend the US Constitution. This applies to Barack Obama and Eric Holder, but it also works with "evil, white 1%-ers" like John Kerry (D), Harry Reid (D), Nancy Pelosi (D), John McCain (R), John Boehner (R), Peter King (R), and many others.

Fourth, Rick Santelli's rant, which many political observers have identified as the catalyst for "Tea Party" activism, was not a personal attack on our President. It was about big government generally. Google it.

Finally, your comment "ain't" funny...it's pathetic. Common sense knows no color. Anyone who lacks common sense, regardless of their race, age, gender, economic status, Party affiliation, sexual preference or religious beliefs, is fair game for criticism."

U.S. Navy DEFIES Obama… Allows Insignia on Uniforms He Calls ‘Racist’

By Gina Cassini on August 7, 2016



As TRN reported last week, the Obama Administration has taken aim at the Gadsden Flag, with it’s iconic “Don’t Tread on Me” (DTOM) slogan — deeming it racist.

Obama’s EEOC put the screws to government agencies — and even private businesses — when a Black postal worker complained of “racist intimidation” after a White co-worker wore DTOM on a cap in a USPS warehouse.

This, despite the fact that the Revolutionary War flag’s historical use had nothing whatsoever to do with race, racism, the Civil War or slavery, but instead opposed British blockades.

No matter. For the sole reason that the creator of the flag once “owned slaves,” Obama’s cultural Marxists have made it clear they will “investigate” anyone wearing the insignia at work across the country.

Well the U.S. Navy clearly didn’t get the memo — or couldn’t care less what Obama’s leftists think.

Because the Navy just approved a re-design of their uniforms and will now allow sailors to wear “Don’t Tread on Me” flag patches on uniforms.

From Federalist Papers: http://www.thefederalistpapers.org/u...-read-this-now

Barack Obama’s Equal Employment Opportunity Commission made waves when it suggested that the Gadsden Flag – the yellow banner with the coiled snake about to strike and the words” Don’t Tread On Me” (DTOM) below – might be racist.

As of October 1, any sailor who is wearing the “NWU Type III” uniform can wear the Gadsden Flag patch. Seals and other special units may also wear the patch, WeAreTheMighty.com is reporting.

“During garrison and non-tactical exercises or operations, the non-tactical DTOM and Reverse Flag patches may be optionally worn at the discretion of the unit commanding officer and at the expense of the Sailor,” the Navy announced in Navy Administrations Message 174/16. “During tactical deployment exercises and operations, a tactical DTOM and Reverse Flag patch may be worn at the discretion of the unit commander and approval from the Task Force or Joint Task Force Commander.”

Here are the awesome patches:



http://toprightnews.com/u-s-navy-def...-calls-racist/