500 Tea Party Protesters Storm Government Building

Got your attention?

Good. Because it seems that unless a story has negative implications for the Tea Party no one (even FoxNews) is going to make a stink about it.

On Thursday morning, over 500 members of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (an AFL-CIO union) did something that should have been the top news story on every major news network in the country.

Hundreds of Longshoremen stormed the Port of Longview early Thursday, overpowered and held security guards, damaged railroad cars, and dumped grain that is the center of a labor dispute, said Longview Police Chief Jim Duscha.

Let us change that around a little and conduct a thought experiment. What if the event were described like this?

Hundreds of Tea Party protesters stormed City Hall in Longview early Thursday, overpowered and held security guards, damaged office furniture, and dumped files out of the Hall’s archives, said Longview Police Chief Jim Duscha.

How would MSNBC, CNN, ABC, NBC, CBS, and even FoxNews handle the story? Do you think there would be wall to wall coverage of this criminal activity being done by a battalion-sized crowd of Tea Partiers? How many talking heads and other assorted pundits would be weighing in about heated political rhetoric and how opponents of Obama’s presidency are directly or indirectly responsible for a “toxic climate” that resulted in this behavior?

Five hundred people.

Six guards were held hostage for a couple of hours after 500 or more Longshoremen broke down gates about 4:30 a.m. and smashed windows in the guard shack, he said.

No one was hurt, and nobody has been arrested. Most of the protesters returned to their union hall after cutting brake lines and spilling grain from car at the EGT terminal, Duscha said.

Five hundred people stormed a shipyard, held hostages – HOSTAGES – for a couple of hours, smashed windows and then calmly returned to their union hall after cutting brake lines on trains and spilling grain (aka destroying property). And NO ONE was arrested? Are you kidding me?

What are we supposed to learn from this? Is it now okay to destroy property and literally take hostages as long as you roll 500 strong and belong to a union? Would anyone else get away with that without someone being sent to jail? What is going on in this country? Where is the outrage? This is not acceptable behavior if done by ONE person. This is 500 times worse!

Police from several agencies in southwest Washington, the Washington State Patrol and Burlington Northern Santa Fe responded to the violence to secure the scene that followed a demonstration Wednesday.

“We’re not surprised,” Duscha said. “A lot of the protesters were telling us this in only the start.”

OH! It gets even better! This is only the start! What are they going to do next? Shoot the security guards instead? Or maybe simply beat them with the baseball bats and crowbars they brought this time? Guns will come later, I guess. We can’t rush these things.

Again, if one lone Tea Partier had done something remotely close to what these union thugs did on Thursday, there would not only be wall to wall coverage of it, the Left would use this one individual to prove that the Tea Party are nothing more than anti-government terrorists. They tried, and failed, to do just that with the Tucson shootings – too bad Loughner turned out to be more Leftist than Tea Party.

This action by the ILWU is an outrage. It also isn’t some rogue group of thugs.

The train was the first grain shipment to arrive at Longview. It arrived Wednesday night after police arrested 19 demonstrators who tried to block the tracks. They were led by ILWU International President Robert McEllrath, who said they would return.

See that? The night before, Wednesday, some thugs – accompanied by the president of the union – were arrested for blocking the tracks. The next day they returned just like the president of the union said they would. This time they came 500 deep.

Just imagine if the head of a Tea Party group made a threat like that and the next day 500+ Tea Partiers showed up and committed an act of domestic terrorism like the union goons did on Thursday. We’d never hear the end of it.

We shouldn’t hear the end of this, either. But it seems many people don’t even want to talk about it. For nearly three years we’ve been told that the Tea Party are violent extremists who are stoking… er, exactly the kind of thing the ILWU did on Thursday. This union actually did what the Left has been accusing the Tea Party of trying to do.

What on earth is going on here?