MORE ON THE ST. LOUIS TEA PARTY:

A few conservative activists organized and promoted the rally, with help from talk-radio hosts. Pleased with the turnout in 35-degree bluster, leaders said they had stolen a page from liberal tradition by taking to the streets with homemade signs.

“If I had known this many people would show up, I’d have charged admission,” said Bill Hennessy of Ballwin, the lead organizer. “We’ll do this every chance we get until Congress repeals the pork — or we retire them from public life.”

Hennessy estimated that more than 1,000 people showed up. There was no official count, but the crowd spilled across roughly one-fourth of the grand staircase from the Arch to Leonor K. Sullivan Boulevard. Former state Sen. John Loudon, R-Chesterfield, said, “We conservatives are usually pretty pathetic at making crowds. But this one’s good.”

Indeed.

DEMONIZER-IN-CHIEF?

What is it with this President? Obama has an obsessive need to find enemies against whom to campaign. . . . Attacking lobbyists is not the point of Obama’s latest ploy. Rather, painting anyone who opposes him as a “lobbyist” is the point. In attacking the “lobbyists” Obama is doing what he did on the issue of race during the campaign: Anyone who opposes me doesn’t just have a different opinion, they are evil and dangerous to the rest of you. This tactic simultaneously generates support among the majority and silences the minority. Other presidents have been accused of using “enemies” as a political rallying point. Almost invariably, however, these enemies have been foreign (the “evil empire” and “axis of evil”). Obama is the first president “in my adult life” to set American against American, to create enemies at home as a political rallying point, to create a climate in which law-abiding American citizens are singled out as being worthy of attack.

Yep, Barack has met the enemy, and he is us.

Ouch.

VIDEO: Ladies of the Eighties. I had forgotten Jane Child.

So it ‘s not easy, but you can blog from a Kindle.

NEW YORK DAILY NEWS: Buildings sprang up as donations rained down on Bronx Borough President Adolfo Carrion.

The man who is President Obama’s newly minted urban czar pocketed thousands of dollars in campaign cash from city developers whose projects he approved or funded with taxpayers’ money, a Daily News probe found.

Bronx Borough President Adolfo Carrion often received contributions just before or after he sponsored money for projects or approved important zoning changes, records show.

Most donations were organized and well-timed.

Hmm. Sounds kind of Blago-like.

MARK TAPSCOTT ON WHERE THE TEA PARTIES SHOULD GO:

Where should the Tea Party Protests go next? Here are three suggestions:

* Where are House Minority Leader John Boehner, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnel and Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele? They should be challenged to get involved because the Tea Party Protests represents their greatest leverage against the Obama policy onslaught.

* The next round of protests should focus on places like Nancy Pelosi’s San Francisco district office and those of other Democratic leaders “back home.” Their home turf is Washington, ours is their home districts. For years, Jesse Jackson, ACORN and others on the Left have used Saul Alinksky’s tactic of targeted public pressure on banks, corporations and Supreme Court Justices. It’s time to give them a taste of the fact it works both ways. Not violently, but with sufficient vigor to drive the point home.

* March on the White House and Congress. Great movements need great goals. Gather millions of signatures on Tea Party Protests Petitions. Set a summer date for delivery in person. By hundreds of thousands of Tea Party Protesters from across the country.

And that will just be the start.

Plus, the end of Obama’s “Star Trek shield” against criticism.

UPDATE: Dan Riehl: “I wouldn’t rule out marching on some GOP politicians, too.” Indeed. And they’re already jeering Arlen Specter.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Katie Alitz writes:

My husband and I watched a political commentary show this a.m. in the bluest of blue Boston. The guest was Congressman Stephen Lynch and he spent 15 minutes criticizing the stimulus that he voted for! It was heavy criticism and my husband was amazed. Why the shift? Simple, I say. He spent a weekend in his district and he got more than an earful from his constituents.

Obama’s big mistake in my view is the call to class warfare. People who make between $85,000 and $500,000 basically identify as middle class–at least in high cost areas like Boston. My husband and I may be at the higher end of that spectrum, but we don’t take any more vacations than our neighbors who happen to be cops or firefighters. Our cars are no better. Our kids go to school together. Our kids see no differences other than most of their friends have been to Disney World and they have not.

Obama thinks he’ll get the $85K -$150K folks to turn on the rotten $250K plus. He’s wrong. We all identify with each other.

We’ll see. And reader Mike Domagala writes:

One item of interest – the lack of coverage by the Chicago Tribune.

I was there on Friday – maybe just under 1,000 people. Started across from City Hall (and the CBS studio), and we marched to Pioneer Plaza.

Despite the fact that the march was led by the city’s leading Republican (Peraica), and that we ended up about a sand wedge away from the Chicago Tribune headquarters, there still was not any coverage in their Saturday paper.

Somebody tell me again how this is a “Republican newspaper”.

Well, it was back in FDR’s day.

LONDON TIMES: Big spender Obama sets the red ink flowing.

CALIFORNIA UPDATE: L.A. budget gap could hit $1 billion. “City already faces $427-million shortfall, which could more than double due to pension fund problems.”

ANDREW SULLIVAN ON THE PLAYBOY TEA-PARTY PARANOIA: “I have to agree with Reynolds that this article is a bit of a Koch-tease.” Heh. I wish I’d thought of that.

A REPORT ON THE NEW YORK TEA PARTY PROTEST, in the Post.

About 150 angry taxpayers held a mock tea party at City Hall Park yesterday, protesting the trillions of dollars in spending Obama and Congress recently outlined in a massive stimulus package and budget proposal.

“I know my basic economics, and know the stimulus package doesn’t work,” said Kellen Guida, 26, who organized the “Taxpayer Tea Party.” “[Obama] is going to add more to the federal deficit in 20 months than Bush did in eight years.”

Plus, an editorial:

Grassroots “Taxpayer Tea Party” groups began sprouting up around the country over the last week or so.

Several cities hosted rallies yesterday, and the wave hits New York today in City Hall Park at 2 p.m.

The spark for most of these events has been a federal spigot pouring out money like a broken fire hydrant in August:

* Bailouts for banks, automakers and home mortgages.

* A $787 billion stimulus.

* Adding insult to injury – a $3.6 tril lion budget.

But there’s a heckuva lot of local stuff for New Yorkers to raise Cain over – including a range of new taxes and fees proposed to bail out a near-bankrupt state and Albany’s refusal to consider seeking economies from New York’s grotesquely bloated public sector.

The “Taxpayer Tea Party” movement may not go anywhere – but it sure gives overtaxed, tapped-out folks a place to let off a little steam.

At the same time, that 1773 tea party energized more than a few people, so who knows where this one might go?

As far as people are willing to take it, I’d say.

UPDATE: More thoughts here: “Call it what you will , but conservatives organizing protests is something unheard of in recent times. That it happens at all with conservatives, is a huge story. we expect the left to be generating these kind of things. Not the right.”

Plus, Michael Silence finds the Tea Party movement “stimulating.”

A MR. POTATOHEAD FLASHBACK. With retro commercial video.

QUESTION OF THE DAY: Are violent videogames adequately preparing children for the Apocalypse?

WARREN BUFFETT warns of a Treasury bubble. “Buffett said that with the U.S. Federal Reserve and Treasury Department going ‘all in’ to jump-start an economy shrinking at the fastest pace since 1982, ‘once-unthinkable dosages’ of stimulus will likely spur an ‘onslaught’ of inflation, an enemy of fixed-income investors.”

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: “Conservatives created Barack Obama and his vision of the Europeanization of America, and so have themselves to blame for the current recessional, as the present as we have known it fades into the past.”

BEST AND WORST CARS.

MORE ON NEW N.I.C. CHAIR Chas Freeman.

AN ABUSE OF ACADEMIC POWER? Professor Files Complaint With Police Based on College Student’s Class Presentation in Favor of Concealed Carry.

More from Paul Hsieh, and SayUncle comments: “Some ideas are dangerous and should be illegal or punished.” But be fair — it’s possible that there’s more to the story than made the press account.

HOPE AND CHANGE: Chavez says Obama same as Bush on drug war.

TAXPROF: Cohen: Obama’s Chief Vetter Does Not Have a Tax Problem.