The Tea Party------Old and New!

There is no middle ground.  You either love it and wrap your arms around what it stands for, or it is hated and maligned and demeaned and, well, you know what I mean.
But the truth is that where ever they go they leave the ground in better shape than when they arrived.  Whatever the crowd is it cannot be called unruly and shameful like the "Occupiers."   And, although the liberal crowd likes to believe otherwise, they are a huge force and growing daily.
December 16 marks the date 240 years ago when a gang of Bostonians dressed as Indians boarded the Dartmouth, the Eleanor,  and the Beaver and dumped 90,000 pounds of tea into the Boston Harbor.  The reason?  To protest the King and his taxes.  It was 1773 and Americans were getting fed up with what Parliament and the King were mdemanding of the colonies. 
The response from London was quick and inflammatory-----closing the Port of Boston, altering the colony's charter, limiting popular government in Massachusetts, allowing the quartering of troops in private homes, and other arbitrary measures------all leading to the Revolution.
Other than the name there is little to compare the Tea Party then and today's modern Tea Party.  Today the fight is to preserve what the Revolution brought to fruition----the Constitution.  In Washington today the real danger to the Republic is ever increasingly evident in a larger and more controlling Federal Government.  The Tea Party fights for a return to "From the people to the government."  I am one of them.

"Book Ends"

It took some 3.5 years to accomplish.  It all started when a Phoenix worker and history buff ran across a story about the last big gun from the USS Arizona.  The Navy had this gun, the last one in storage on the east coast.  In talking to the AZ Secretary of State they both agreed that it should be included in the Arizona Memorial in down-town Phoenix where the Ship's Bell and Mast-Head were on display.  The wheels were put in motion and plans were made to get it to Arizona.  Then the Navy told them that they had guns from the USS Missouri as well.   The Navy finally agreed to let Phoenix have the remaining gun from the Arizona as well as one of the guns from the Missouri.  The USS Missouri was the site of the surrender of the Japanese in 1945, ending WWII.
The huge task of moving the huge guns across country to the Memorial was done with all private donations and volunteers, no Tax money at all. They arrived in Phoenix, were installed in the Plaza with the Ships Bell and Masthead, and dedicated on December 7, 2013, Pearl Harbor day.  They are known as "The Books-Ends of the war", one at the beginning and one at the end.  How fitting.