Take The Right And Their Tea Bagging Movement Seriously, Please

Conservatives say Obama isn't and American, that he is a socialist, that in ten weeks he is responsible for the Bush deficit, that he is planning to put everyone in re-education camps, that he is going to replace the dollar with a world currency, that he is gutting the military, that he is going to take away our guns... And he has only been in office ten weeks.

In fact, conservatives are back to being as crazy and paranoid as they were when Clinton was President. But that paranoid craziness worked; They took over the Presidency, the House and the Senate. Then they started wars. They tortured people. They tapped every phone in America. They appointed corporate lobbyists to run every agency. They filled the courts with Federalist Society judges that rule for the corporations and religious right every time. They stole billions -- in one documented case actually having the Fed ship truckloads of pallets of hundred dollar bills directly to Iraq to be distributed to Bush cronies. They destroyed the economy of the world. And they got away with it -- who is being held accountable for any of that?

So I want to say, please take the right seriously. They may appear to be crazy - and they are - but this doesn't mean it isn't going to work.

Read the rest of the story in the HuffingtonPost

Why Did TeaBaggers Wait Unitl Now To Rage Against Deficit Spending

The Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported yesterday that at least 10 rallies are being planned in the Metroplex and Gov. Rick Perry is scheduled to attend a rally in Fort Worth at LaGrave Field.

"It’s a day to get together with fellow patriots all across the state of Texas... Let them know what you think about the bailouts, all this stimulus, all this runaway spending going on in Washington, D.C.," Perry said in a YouTube video about the rallies posted last week.

Many conservative followers plan to "spontaneously" attend tea bagging party all on their own this week - after Republican billionaires funded and heavily staffed conservative groups organized all the logistical and public relations necessary to set up the protests and conservative media like Fox News so heavily promoted the event.

I too am alarmed by the large national debt the U.S. now owes to China, Saudi Arabia and other foreign interests. I have been protesting this fact for the last several years while Pres. Bush and the Republican controlled congress piled up that debt and facilitated a near catastrophic economic collapse.

Where were all tea bagging conservative followers then? And, where were the conservative interest groups that are now organizing the tea bagging parties? Why did they wait until now to speak out against deficit spending?

Our Republican representatives in Washington were for deficit spending, when Republicans controlled congress and the White House, before they were against deficit spending, now that a Democrats control congress and the White House.

In 2006, when the Republicans still controlled Congress, they actively rejected any attempts Democrats made to control deficit spending. The New York Times reported on March 14, 2006,

"Senate Republicans on Tuesday narrowly defeated an effort to impose budget rules that would make it harder to increase spending or cut taxes, a move that critics said that showed Republicans were posturing in their calls for greater fiscal restraint. ... Republicans said the push to add the rules to the budget was a back-door effort to make it harder to extend President Bush's tax cuts. 'The practical effect of this is to raise taxes,' said Senator Judd Gregg, Republican of New Hampshire and chairman of the Budget Committee."

And, as tax cuts along side hundreds of billions of dollars of war spending in Iraq pushed the nation ever deeper into long term deficits, our Republican representatives never spoke a word of concern about deficit spending.When Pres. George Bush "tax cut" the nation from an annual budget surplus of $300 billion, as Pres. Clinton left office, to an annual budget deficit of $1 trillion, as Pres. Bush left office, our Republican representatives in Washington fully supported and voted for Pres. Bush's deficit spending policies and legislation without complaint. Now our Republican representatives in Washington and tea bagging conservatives fuss about deficit spending?

This smacks more of political expediency and posturing for the 2010 election than principled government philosophy that we can believe in. This is why fewer and fewer Americans are willing to take seriously staged conservative political stunts and why there is increasing disdain for Republican leaders against a backdrop of Republican bickering and poll results showing approval for President Obama's policies.

71% of Americans have confidence in Obama to do the right thing on the economy. Most have little or no confidence in the GOP Congress - Gallup:

Over two-thirds of Americans -- 71% -- have a great deal or a fair amount of confidence in President Obama to do or recommend the right thing for the economy, a much higher level of confidence than is given Republican leaders in Congress.

Barely one-third of the American people have confidence in Congressional Republicans. Of all those tested, only the Republicans had a higher negative rating. When it comes to having confidence in the GOP on the economy, 58% of Americans have "almost a little or none." The Congressional Republicans have earned that lack of confidence. The GOP strategy of saying "NO" and staging the tea bagging event has resulted in NO confidence.

Conservative Media Unleash Violent, Revolutionary Rhetoric

Media Matters

Summary: Numerous conservative media figures have called for a "revolution" or have invoked violent rhetoric while discussing the Obama administration or government in general. In addition to encouraging violence, such violent rhetoric has also included suggesting Obama's policies were doing violence to the American people and depicting Obama as a rapist, spousal abuser, or mobster.

Read the full story at Media Matters

The Conservative 'Spontaneous' Tea Party Uprising

Updated 4/10/09 at 12:58 AM
Think Progress:

Think Progress already reported on Republican lawmakers planning to speak at anti-Obama “tea party” protests taking place nationwide on April 15. Last night, Eric Odom of the DontGo website — one of the organizers of the protests — wrote a blog post stressing that these protests are displays of “regular American[s] in protest of government spending and extreme taxation,” rather than something affiliated with a political party or special interest agenda.

Today on Fox News — which has actively been promoting the protests — Glenn Beck pushed the tea party talking points, similarly claiming that the protests aren’t “coordinated” and are fully organized by “regular” people. Watch it:

Despite these attempts to make the “movement” appear organic, the principle organizers of the local events are actually the lobbyist-run think tanks Americans for Prosperity and Freedom Works.


The two groups are heavily staffed and well funded, and are providing all the logistical and public relations work necessary for planning coast-to-coast protests:

– Freedom Works staffers coordinate conference calls among protesters, contacting conservative activists to give them “sign ideas, sample press releases, and a map of events around the country.”

– Freedom Works staffers apparently moved to “take over” the planning of local events in Florida.

– Freedom Works provides how-to guides for delivering a “clear message” to the public and media.

– Freedom Works has several domain addresses — some of them made to look like they were set up by amateurs — to promote the protests.

– Americans for Prosperity is writing press releases and planning the events in New Jersey, Arizona, New Hampshire, Missouri, Kansas, and several other states.

This type of corporate ‘astroturfing‘ is nothing new to either organization. While working to promote Social Security privatization, Freedom Works was caught planting one of its operatives as a “single mom” to ask questions to President Bush in a town hall on the subject. Last year, the Wall Street Journal exposed Freedom Works for similarly building “amateur-looking” websites to promote the lobbying interests of Dick Armey, the former Republican Majority Leader who now leads Freedom Works and is a lobbyist for the firm DLA Piper.

Americans for Prosperity is run by Tim Phillips, who was Ralph Reed’s former partner in the lobbying firm Century Strategies. The group is funded by Koch family foundations — a family whose wealth is derived from the oil industry. Indeed Americans for Prosperity has coordinated pro-drilling ‘grassroots‘ events around the country.

Originally posted 3/23/09
Republicans are pushing the idea that there is a "spontaneous" populist uprising against President Obama and his efforts to pull the American economy back from the brink of collapse. As they tell the story, the public is so outraged by Obama's economic Recovery and Reinvestment programs that Americans everywhere are forming a "spontaneous" movement to overthrow the tyrannical king of the federal government by re-enacting the Boston Tea Party.

Everything about this so called spontaneous "Tea Party" movement looks more like a preplanned "marketing program" designed to covertly re-launch the old conservative anti-government "product" in a seemingly new spontaneous populist revolt.

Is it coincidence that CNBC's correspondent Rick Santelli rocketed from being a little-known second-string correspondent to a populist hero of the downtrodden American masses suffering under the onslaught of a 21st century socialist big government?

Within minutes after Santelli’s CNBC on-air “rant” calling for a “Chicago Tea Party” to protest President Obama’s economic plans conservative blogs and websites were online live to echo Santelli’s “rant” and call for protest "Tea Party" rallies in cities from coast to coast. Why were so many slick websites and blogs able to get online and live within minutes or hours after Santelli’s rant, calling for a nationwide populist revolt? (one example: the New American Tea Party website)

What hasn’t been widely reported is evidence linking Santelli’s “tea party” rant with some very familiar names from the right wing machine from PR operatives, who specialize in imitation grassroots “AstroTurf'ing” PR campaigns, to billionaire money men known to fund conservative causes and PR blitzes. In marketing terms, Santelli’s February 19th CNBC network "rant" calling for a “Chicago Tea Party” serves as a prefect "launch event" for what appears to be a carefully organized and sophisticated public relations marketing campaign.

Conservative money men are pouring tens of millions of dollars into their media machines to stop Obama's classically Keynesian approach to stimulate the economy through government spending on public infrastructure, to reduce the massive budget deficits left by the Bush Administration by raising taxes on the ultra wealthy and to restore regulatory safeguards on those who irresponsibly exploit the financial systems of the U.S. and world.

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