Remember the unbridled joy that was unleashed when UC Irvine revealed Barack Obama will speak at the 50th anniversary graduation ceremony at Angel Stadium on June 14? I recall video of students hooting and hollering as if finals were canceled and blanket A's were given out.
Well, it turns out not everyone in Irvine is pleased about the looming presidential visit.
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President Obama Will Speak at UCI's 2014 Commencement
A group of … well, not many from the looks of the video. But how ever many there are–measles are spreading through our fair county, after all, so who knows how many were home sick?–they took to a local freeway overpass to kick off a new “Impeach Obama Now” group in Irvine. Here's that video posted Saturday (which provided our screen grabs):
They claim to have formed so “street protests” can be mounted before Obama's scheduled appearances May 8 with Nancy Pelosi at a fundraiser in La Jolla and the aforementioned UCI commencement June 14 at the Big A, where “[a] large protest is expected.”
As for the small number of participants so far, Impeach Obama Now claims here that to retain their nonprofit status, “patriot organizations are prohibited by law from being primarily about politics.”
Go on . . .
“A lot of members of these groups would like to help out with an impeachment effort, but they are loyal to their group and take their cue from their leadership, who are probably advised by their accountants and tax attorneys to not get involved in political activities that could be construed as partisan, such as a campaign to impeach and remove Obama could be construed.”
Hmmm, I swear I've seen similar “Impeach Obama” signs at tea-bagger rallies. Maybe I imagined them. Are they sure the reluctance is more about the Lyndon Larouche identifiers on at least one of those freeway overpass signs?
Who am I to ask? For more information on Impeach Obama Now, visit http://ion-us.net. It was there I noticed this in the rail to the right:
It's hard to make out because of the shading, but the caption reads, “'Devil' to speak at Angel Stadium to UC Irvine grads.”
That's only because God's speaking at Concordia.
Email: mc****@oc******.com. Twitter: @MatthewTCoker. Follow OC Weekly on Twitter @ocweekly or on Facebook!
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.