CNN's biggest front page story

http://www.cnn.com/2010/POLITICS/03/13/coffee.party/index.html?hpt=C1

Coffee vs. Tea: A political movement is brewing

Quote :

"In Asheville, North Carolina, about 35 people gathered at Filo Pastries and Coffee, according to CNN iReporter Rachael Jernigan, a stay-at-home mom who coordinated the meeting. "I think the biggest thing to come out of it was people were tired of being labeled and divided," said Jernigan, who added that a Tea Party member was among the attendees. "They do agree on a lot." About 30 people came out to a meeting at Raleigh, North Carolina's Cup A Joe, said CNN iReporter Davis Hall. "I really liked what the Coffee movement said the foundation was -- which is to get everybody of all stripes of life to get together," Hall said. The meetings were among about 350 the party planned to hold Saturday. Coffee Party founder Annabel Park, who worked as a volunteer for Barack Obama's presidential campaign and Democratic Sen. Jim Webb of Virginia's 2006 campaign, says the group is not "aligned" with any party and calls the two-party system out of date."

Here are a few NC photos in Raleigh, Asheville, and Charlotte.

3/14/2010 12:09:38 AM

not enough hot bitches

3/14/2010 12:10:51 AM

i see white people

3/14/2010 12:12:20 AM

That was on the news in Iowa! There's also a kid in Iowa who's going to Carolina to play basketball.

3/14/2010 12:12:44 AM

More pics, not from necessarily from NC

3/14/2010 12:14:13 AM

Missouri sucks

3/14/2010 12:15:06 AM

Also to their name.

The Green Tea Party would have been a great portmanteau.

3/14/2010 12:15:21 AM

i see more white people

3/14/2010 12:16:55 AM

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_dragon_tavern

Quote :

"Green Dragon Tavern was a public house used as a tavern and meeting place located on Union Street in Boston's North End. Purchased in 1764 by the St. Andrews Lodge of Freemasons for its 1st floor meeting rooms, the basement tavern was used by several secret groups and became known by historians as the "Headquarters of the Revolution". The Sons of Liberty, Boston Committee of Correspondence and the North End Caucus each met there. The Boston Tea Party was planned there and Paul Revere was sent from there to Lexington on his famous ride. In January 1788, a meeting of the mechanics and artisans of Boston passed a series of resolutions urging the importance of adopting the Federal Constitution pending at the time before a convention of delegates from around Massachusetts. The building was demolished in 1854. The current Green Dragon Tavern is located on 11 Marshall Street in Boston's North End. Its publicity states that it is the "headquarters of the revolution", though its relationship to the demolished original pub is not immediately apparent."

http://www.teagarden.com/library/tea_library_06.php
"It started in the Green Dragon Tavern. If a man ordered tea, he was a Tory. If he ordered coffee, he was a Patriot."

Although, to avoid the explanation, they usually quote it as [In the time of the American Revolution] If a man ordered tea, he was a Tory. If he ordered coffee, he was a Patriot.

I'll grant that Coffee as a logo is pretty silly, but is it any worse than those most American of symbols the Donkey and Elephant?

3/14/2010 12:18:06 AM

In light of new information, it is a rather apropos moniker.

3/14/2010 12:20:33 AM

So, what you are saying is that hipsters have their own political party now?

3/14/2010 12:23:27 AM

^Yeah, basically. But atleast they're the largest political party on facebook having surpassed greens, libertarians, constitution party, tea party, republicans, and democrats.

Out of everything NC gets in national news for, by comparison this isn't half bad.

3/14/2010 12:27:09 AM

I am sure we don't have long before this is overshadowed by some terrible drunk driving bus driver or something like that.

3/14/2010 12:28:55 AM

We the People demand: Reason and civility in public affairs; A government accountable to the People; Liberty & Justice for All.

3/14/2010 12:31:53 AM

i didnt take it seriously at first but this could catch on

3/14/2010 12:59:20 AM

^^^I'll get right on that

[Edited on March 14, 2010 at 1:08 AM. Reason : ^]

3/14/2010 1:08:00 AM

Quote :

"So, what you are saying is that hipsters have their own political party now?"

How are white liberal yuppies hipsters?
Hipsters are generally too lazy or apathetic to do political things.

3/14/2010 1:27:52 AM

Quote :

"^Yeah, basically. But atleast they're the largest political party on facebook having surpassed greens, libertarians, constitution party, tea party, republicans, and democrats. "

nice... i joined when they had like 3000 people... i feel special now.

3/14/2010 1:55:07 AM

The "largest on Facebook" thing might be due to the fact that most people list their party/leanings in the "Political views" under Info rather than join a group. It likely wouldn't do to well if you compared it to people's listed political views rather than the Facebook groups for those parties.

...Huh, apparently I'm not in Soap Box either. I feel obligated to make this post less serious for CC...

Tittyballs.

3/14/2010 3:02:52 AM

I am totally down with the premise that people can have civilized discussions about issues that are important to them and coffee is a great way to prime people into doing so.

3/14/2010 3:08:43 AM

A pic from the Winston-Salem meeting:

3/14/2010 1:53:07 PM

tea people are baby killers.

3/14/2010 1:55:29 PM

Tittyballs.

3/14/2010 1:59:46 PM

Buy an ad?

3/14/2010 3:33:30 PM

coffee is gross

so is tea

3/14/2010 3:35:46 PM

^^To say that NC is in the news for something that isn't horrible for once?

[Edited on March 14, 2010 at 3:39 PM. Reason : one more ^]

3/14/2010 3:35:55 PM

Quote :

"About 30 people came out to a meeting at Raleigh, North Carolina's Cup A Joe, said CNN iReporter Davis Hall."

Hopefully some hobo black woman doesn't get arrested for trespassing and derail the entire meeting.

3/14/2010 3:36:50 PM

what party do you join where you want to see changes made to reduce the deficit, cut taxes, and keep government small, but don't want to be associated with the republican party so people don't think ur a nazi

3/14/2010 3:52:03 PM

http://www.newsobserver.com/2010/03/12/383692/he-helped-heal-the-hurt-locker.html

Quote :

" Professor's work rendered bombs inert"

RALEIGH -- On the morning of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, men and women all over the country decided to join the military. What Michael Steer decided that day probably saved the lives of some of them.

Steer, an N.C. State professor of electrical and computer engineering, and a naturalized citizen from Australia, was meeting with Army researchers when the attack came. He says he immediately knew that he wanted to fight terrorism by drawing on his years of research on the interactions between energy fields and electronic devices.

He worked every day, including weekends and holidays, from 2002 through 2005 on technology that saved the lives of hundreds of American troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, the commanding general of the U.S. Army Research, Development and Engineering Command, said Thursday.

Devices based on his work prevent the enemy from triggering roadside bombs with wireless devices such as cell phones. Improvised bombs have been the largest killer of U.S. troops in Iraq and now Afghanistan, causing more than 60 percent of fatalities there.

"This is a game-changer in modern warfare," said Maj. Gen. Nick Justice, who came from Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland to give Steer a special civilian award - the U.S. Army Commander's Award for Public Service - at a ceremony Thursday on NCSU's Centennial Campus.

The way that Steer's work is used is classified, Justice said. In fact, it's so sensitive he declined to say when it was deployed in the two war zones.

It started, though, when Steer beamed electromagnetic energy at electronic communications devices and measured the response. The measurements allowed him to learn about the way the devices were constructed.

In a speech during the ceremony, Steer, 54, said the work became a Manhattan Project-like effort that, along with his teaching and other faculty duties, devoured all his days for nearly three years, including Christmases.

In a way, Steer enlisted his wife and three children in the project.

"I think it was pretty tough on them," he said in an interview. "I'd talk to them about how this was really important, but of course I couldn't tell them exactly what I was doing."

His wife, Mary, stopped working full-time so that Steer could bear down. The rare breaks in those 80- and 90-hour workweeks included periodic games of tennis, a game everyone in the family plays.

Pressure was on

Aaron Walker, then one of Steer's doctoral students and a member of the research team, said the pressure was extraordinary because they could see on television every day what the bombs were doing to U.S. troops. They knew that any day off likely meant more deaths.

"Every bombing it was, like, how can we work harder and faster," Walker said. "The tempo was pretty intense."

The work provided Army research funding for 20 faculty members, students and postdoctoral researchers. A powerful motivator came, Walker said, when word filtered back that some of the products developed with their research were starting to save lives.

Justice said it did more.

"It also changed the way the enemy behaves," he said. "We had lost the capability to operate in that environment, and this put us back on the battlefield and gave us the ability to go out there knowing we can protect the young soldiers' lives and engage the enemy and not have to hide behind the castle walls."

An adaptable enemy

Steer's work didn't mean the end of improvised bombs. In 2009, there were 7,228 IED attacks in Afghanistan, a 120 percent increase over 2008; of 448 non-Afghan troops killed in action last year, 280 were killed by IEDs.

But it robbed the enemy of one of its best means of triggering bombs. Alternatives such as detonators connected by wires, or those triggered simply by the pressure of a vehicle or person passing over them, have weaknesses that troops can exploit. But all troops know that just when there seems to be a solution for one kind of bomb, the enemy changes things to adapt.

"The insurgents are very versatile," Steer said. "Once you've got one thing tackled, another shoots up. It kind of goes on and on, but eventually you'll have solutions for all of these things."

Steer said that he had eased his pace since 2005 and turned back to broader research.

Walker said he was skeptical of Steer's claim.

"Michael's pretty tireless," he said. "I wouldn't say there has been much of a letup."
jay.price@newsobserver.com or 919-829-4526[/quote][quote]

3/14/2010 3:55:45 PM

man. its something about everybody that gets involved in this bullshit has to pass through this filter:

1) be ugly as fuck

or

2) be fat as fuck

3/14/2010 3:56:09 PM

^^thats pretty cool...i imagine its some kind of device that blocks incoming cell phone signals in a certain radius so that the insurgents can't call a mobile phone tied into an IED to detonate it

3/14/2010 3:59:13 PM

Quote :

"Hopefully some hobo black woman doesn't get arrested for trespassing and derail the entire meeting."

^^^ tl,dr

I am waiting for ABC to come to one of these meetings and grossly over exaggerate the number of people.

+ points to someone who gets the reference.

3/14/2010 4:40:35 PM

if you didn't read it you are an unpatriotic, non ncsu-loving asshat

3/14/2010 4:54:21 PM

can't you just give me the tl,dr version?

3/14/2010 4:56:27 PM

someone smarter than you did something you could never think of

3/14/2010 5:02:39 PM

the tl;dr summation is in the quote box at the top of the post, retard

3/14/2010 5:10:53 PM

love it. thanks TreeTwista10

3/14/2010 6:23:32 PM

It was fun while it lasted.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35837213

Quote :

" Fayetteville Father Charged With Beating Son With Extension Cord FAYETTEVILLE, N.C. - Cumberland County Sheriff's Detectives have charged a Fayetteville man with beating his 8-year-old son with an extension cord. "

3/14/2010 11:15:34 PM

excellent photoshop opportunities ITT with all those poster board signs

3/14/2010 11:37:37 PM

^^ weird...

I'm pretty sure i was beat with extension-cord like apparatuses when i was a kid and did stuff wrong...

3/14/2010 11:56:35 PM

Quote :

"what party do you join where you want to see changes made to reduce the deficit, cut taxes, and keep government small, but don't want to be associated with the republican party so people don't think ur a nazi"

libertarian

3/15/2010 12:00:23 AM

Quote :

"excellent photoshop opportunities ITT with all those poster board signs"

good call.

[Edited on March 15, 2010 at 12:08 AM. Reason : if only I was good at Photoshop]

3/15/2010 12:08:07 AM

^^ Word.

3/15/2010 1:03:49 AM

Quote :

"what party do you join where you want to see changes made to reduce the deficit, cut taxes, and keep government small, but don't want to be associated with the republican party so people don't think ur a nazi "

The retarded fantasy party, because there's no realistic way in American politics to both reduce the deficit AND cut taxes. Clinton reduced the deficit, and Bush reduced taxes, but neither could have done both.

3/15/2010 1:08:18 AM

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35949380

Quote :

"NC State Students Develop "Over The Limit" iPhone App RALEIGH, N.C. - Four ambitious N.C. State students have already started their own corporation and are now tackling the fight against drunk driving."

Back in the news for something good!

Recalling the Coffee Party mentioned earlier in this thread, they had their first issue straw poll. Here are the results (but from what I understand they are less about actually taking stands on issues, and more about facilitating discussion of the issues).

3/19/2010 7:05:50 PM

NC is on a winning streak!

3/19/2010 7:14:47 PM

Coffee Party's next national event. It sounds so different than anything coming out of the tea party. And more healthy. But some of the NC photos made it into the few they used for they video.

3/22/2010 7:48:29 PM

Bill calling in from North Carolina:

3/29/2010 4:29:59 PM

Morgantown Mayor Challenges Durham Mayor To Friendly Wager
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/36149992

Obama: ‘We are beginning to turn the corner’
Latest government report shows 162,000 jobs added in March
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/36146932/ns/business-stocks_and_economy/

Quote :

"CHARLOTTE, N.C. - President Barack Obama on Friday hailed a new government report showing the most jobs created in nearly three years. "We are beginning to turn the corner," he told employees of a manufacturing plant that received government stimulus money."

Free press for the Celgard LLC factory I guess.

4/2/2010 4:13:57 PM

set em up

4/2/2010 4:15:11 PM