'TEA' parties: Grassroots or Astroturf?

FOX: Fairly Unbalanced.
If they only signed up this vigorous for the "war" party.

It's gimmick time again for the boys and girls of the Republican Party, those of the WMD !! They don't have any constructive ideas, so they present tea bags. What silly nonsense !!? I hope like heck, they come to their senses and get behind President Obama's efforts to bring America out of the crater, into which, the draft-dodging team of Bush and Cheney, left us !! Otherwise, please behave yourselves and stay out of mischief !! America needs all hands on deck, in order for President Obama to right our ship of state. That will be the hardest thing you will have to do, be a good American citizen, not a clown, calling for her and President Obama's failure !!
SUPPORT OUR TROOPS, BRING THEM HOME, ALIVE AND WHOLE. NOW.

Leave it PMSNBC to discount the Tea Parties. 750 of them thoughout the country. Tens of thousands of people, if not hundreds of thousands of people, and the Left discounts them or believes they are terrorists. I wonder if Janet Napoleon will have quadrons of government police at these rallies to arrrest these folks? I mean they are protesting the government, aren't they? By the way, when the Left protested Bush, Bush said it was their right and the protestors will left alone. The Obama Monarchy now calls those who protest the federal government, "terrorists."

When will the media expose these pathetic red state Obama bashings for what they are; Fox News-backed GOP fundraisers?

http://www.political-buzz.com/

Since when did the communists infiltrate the media?

We know they are in the White House, but thought the media was somewhat immune to this.

Guess not.

A populist uprising because taxes for millionaires are rising three percent? Huh?
We're going to have another McVeigh in this country, and it will be on the head of the GOP.

The fact that bazillionaires who hate America and it's quest for military might at the expense of tax payers who fund it . . . have been funding this "grassroots" propaganda to protect them from funding the infrastructure that made them rich has been revealed is a fact the Santelli and FOX rabid ranters want silenced.

We should spend some of the state's bailout money on a Right Wing BS monitoring system.

Or some billboards in the red states quoting the Mr Big of the National Chamber of Commerce who published his threats to use the $60 million businessmen gave him to oppose any humane treatment of We the People here in the consumer nation that can't consume what made them rich anymore.

There are many striking things about a bunch of self-entitled Republican white men, crouching down together, waving bags of dried leaves in the air as they whine vaguely about losing the country they've been in firm control of for eight long years. Not the least of which is the fact that they decided to call themselves "teabaggers".
.
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=teabagger

These will go down as one of the most embarrassing stunts in Fox news history. Only the Bush-Cheney deadenders care.

Makes for great comed though.

Instead of these Repuglican clowns actually spelling out any new new ideas they might have, they've got Glenn Beck out there hawking old discredited John Birch literature, promising the arrival of fascism (or communism, depending on the day), and generally sobbing like a kid whose ice cream fell in the dirt. Beck, Hannity, Limbaugh etc like to talk about pitchforks and torches, while at the same time refusing to take responsibility for it when one of their listeners goes too far after hearing their inflammatory, hyperbolic diatribes.

So today we're convened to give these Teabaggers one more chance. We'll see if they present an actionable set of fresh ideas that they'd like to see Congress and the Obama administration adopt, or whether they'd rather listen to Glenn Beck sob publicly and hear Chuck Norris threaten mutiny against the government. The choice is yours, Teabaggers. Make us proud.

I don't doubt that Santelli's original rant was spontaneous, but the "movement" it spawned is anything but. It is AstroTurf, an ersatz "grass roots" effort organized and promoted by the RNC, Fox News and Freedom Works.

Follow the money. Who has stands to lose the most from Obama's tax policies? The wealthy do. Bush's temporary tax cuts for the wealthy are due to expire in 2010. The rest of us have received tax relief from Obama as promised.

But you don't expect Rick Santelli and his over-privileged cohorts from Wall Street and CBOT to take to the streets in protest, do you? Of course not, that's not the way of the wealthy. Never do anything that you can get someone else to do for you.

So Fox News gasbags like Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity stoked the fear and loathing that their audience has for all things Obama and created this rationale-challenged tea-bag movement...common, ordinary working Republicans taking to the streets for the rich.

The teabaggers, with generous support from the right-wing astroturf machine ("Hi, Fox News!" "Hi, FreedomWorks!"), are using "tea parties" as a catch-all to vent their frustrations. On the surface it's about taxes (even though President Obama has cut taxes on the middle class) and spending (even though government spending is the only thing that will lessen the severity of the recession and prevent it from becoming a depression). But bubbling under the surface is the old social-wedge issue chestnuts, God, Guns and Gays. In other words, the usual boring old nonsense dripping from the mouths and cardboard signs of a severely misinformed Repulican segment of our population, aided by a right-wing media machine that has trained them to tune in every night and suck their nuts. I believe there's a term for that specific act but I'm too pure of thought to know what it is.

It all boils down to this, my friends, as articulated so beautifully by Anti-Christ abettor Jon Stewart: "Republicans, I think you are confusing tyranny with losing."

The Obama Monarchy now calls those who protest the federal government, "terrorists."

Posted by: John D | April 15, 2009 1:03 PM
.

Little Johnny Forkball,

Shouldn't you be out teabagging yourself with your fellow misinformed and misguided Wingnut minions today?

I see this page is called the "Swamp" very accurately. It's full of putrid gas from rotting left-wingnuts.

The only teabaggers are O and his friends in the MSM. But don't worry your little (and I do mean little) heads off. You will get your teabagging real soon now.

Oh. By the way, pay your damn taxes like the rest of us.

Oh. By the way, pay your damn taxes like the rest of us.

Posted by: Dave | April 15, 2009 4:27 PM

Gee you hurt my feelings. Don't get to pompous there son, I probably pay more in taxes than you earn.

Hey John D.

Seems you forgot the Bush administration's favorite tool for controlling populist outrage at their public speaking events. Ever heard of "Free Speech zones"??? If not, suggest you do a little reading before you post. For it's better to remain silent and be thought the fool...........

And if there was any remaining doubt that Republicans are the squarest subculture on the planet............to willingly label yourselves "Teabaggers"??

LOL!!!

Not sure if it's my memory loss or that of others, but here goes:

The largest protests in world history took place in March, 2003, presciently opposing a disastrous war, yet as I recall our wingnut friends had a distinct position that it was really swell that the "President" stood on principle, didn't govern according to polls -- didn't even read the newspapers.

Republicants are quite principled, they tell us. So surely it must be that my memory has failed me yet again, as it is inconceivable that Republicant "principles" flap with the wind.

I’m neither a republican nor democrat. This protest is a necessary thing and should not cease after today.

This link shows the November 2008 elections Electoral College Map Compared to Tea Party Locations: http://www.marketingshift.com/2009/4/electoral-map-compared-tea-party.cfm

There is no discernable GOP preference.

I would have attended the tea party in my state capitol, but–no thanks to Al Gore’s convienient lie–I’m completely snowed in.

Compare the peaceful protest of today as compared to the anti-war Iraq protest of last fall

http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalradar/2008/09/violence-breaks.html

Or in Seattle at the WTO in 1999.

http://www.cnn.com/US/9911/30/wto.04/index.html

It all goe back to the fact that liberals, as a whole, are a bitter group

True, a blinkin; and FoxNews barely mentioned those protests.

This is the biggest joke! LOL
300 people at one rally. They blame it on the rain! There's more people than that at Walmart on a given day! LOL

I guess the Right Wing missed Obama's Acceptance Speech in Chicago! 1,000,000 plus!!! And, that is only Chicago in the Winter!

From Santelli complaining about his Wall St buddies not getting their bonuses, we get these hokey staged events to complain about higher taxes on the rich.

These tax tantrums would be funny, if they were not so stupid.

It all goe back to the fact that liberals, as a whole, are a bitter group

Posted by: Terry | April 15, 2009 8:44 PM
.

Why aren't you out teabagging yourself with the rest of the deadenders today, girlfriend?

Quit making them do all of the hard work you lazy bum!

AstroTurf is what is on Bidens head

Republican Astroturf "Protest" VS Real Protests

Republicans think they are fighting "the man." Here's how you can tell who is fighting the man and who has the man's testicles in their mouth:

If your protest has an excessive intimidating police presence, you are fighting the man (real protest). If not, you are probably sucking the man's balls (Republican astroturf "protest").

If the corporate media neglects to interview protesters on TV, you are fighting the man (real protest). If they are interviewing protesters on all the cable networks (Faux) rather than just interviewing law enforcement, you are licking the man's scrotum (Republican astroturf "protest").

Conclusion:

Anti-war protesters, anti-globalization protesters, anti-Bush protesters, etc. = Fighting the man.

Republican Teabaggers = Republican Teabaggers.

You people are disgusting and you make me sick. The people that make up this country are NOTHING like they used to be when people had souls and were kind and had respect for others. The individuals who are parents need to have their tubes tide and a vasectomy. You aren't teaching your kids to have respect for people. Who do you seriously think you are to make fun of people who are SICK of this administration and are SICK of being taxed to death! If you people love socialism so damn much and believe in nationalized health care and wealth redistribution, why don't you just move to any of the European countries. I am also tired of the hypocrisy on the left. It's OK for you people to protest about your beliefs but not ok for those on the right. And, BTW, anti-tax protests are not a left or right issue. It is a VALID AMERICAN ISSUE and CONCERN. Get off your high horses people. If you don't want to protest, fine. Then stay the hell out of it.

So the Republicans are protesting. It happens to be their right to do so. Far be it from ME to stop them, especially considering this particular stunt makes them look eminently foolish.

Everybody seems to think that because Obama and his pals say they're giving the bottom 95% a tax cut (which is more of a $500 giveaway than a tax cut, from what I hear) that everything's okay. Well, let me explain something to you (not that I expect you to believe me.)

The current corporate tax rate in the United States is 35%, excluding state corporate taxes. When corporate taxes are so much higher in America than other countries manufacturers have to raise their prices or go overseas. Retail businesses, of course, will buy their goods from other countries because they are cheaper, costing America manufacturing jobs.

Of course, manufacturing business aren't the only ones that have to raise their prices to compensate for taxation. Goods and services sold in the United States cost more than they would otherwise because businesses need to make a profit, and that raise in price combined with all of the jobs going overseas means fewer people can afford their goods and services. What that means is less employees are needed to keep up with demand, meaning more people lose their jobs.

In other words, corporate taxes affect everybody in the country, and they're incredibly high. Giving tax cuts to 95% of Americans sounds nice, but even if working class citizens weren't paying any income tax at all we would still be paying these incredibly high corporate taxes with unemployment and higher prices.