Our Tax Dollars at Work: The anti-Tea Party "Movement"

[The One Man Gang]

http://www.commentarymagazine.com/blogs/index.php/rubin/234631

A seemingly grassroots organization that’s mounted an online campaign to counter the tea party movement is actually the front end of an elaborate scheme that funnels funds — including sizable labor union contributions — through the offices of a prominent Democratic party lawyer. A Web site popped up in January dedicated to preventing the tea party’s “radical” and “dangerous” ideas from “gaining legislative traction,” targeting GOP candidates in Illinois for the firing squad.

The largest single donor: $9.9 million from the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME.)

Doc Zero adds this:

http://hotair.com/archives/2010/02/09/misunderstanding-the-tea-party/

The Tea Party movement is a political Andromeda Strain to the media, a baffling outbreak of viral unhappiness which has thus far defied every attempt at diagnosis. This is unsurprising, since the media has little interest in listening to what the Tea Party is actually saying. Instead, they attempt to stuff this remarkable grassroots movement into a variety of scary costumes, so they can be conveniently dismissed.

<snip>

The Tea Party movement is not crazy, hateful, or stupid. Their rallies are disarmingly cheerful affairs, which most certainly do include women and minorities. The movement is still in the process of coalescing, and seeks inspiration and representation, rather than leadership. They know their country is rocketing down the wrong path, and while the current President has a heavy hand on the throttle, the course was set long before he entered politics.

If you seek madness, look for it in the President’s delusional State of the Union speech, or the people who indulge his belief that another three or four trillion piled onto a $14 trillion national debt will get us at least halfway to utopia. If you want to taste hatred, sample the venom directed at Sarah Palin, the only person currently capable of building a bridge between the energy of the Tea Party, and the established resources of the GOP. If you would like stupidity illustrated, witness the spectacle of the Democrats passing off their oily mass of backroom deals and political payoffs as a rational plan for improving health care.

... and THAT, my friends, is what scares the sh*t out of AFSCME, SEIU and EVERY slimy "establishment" pol and strap-hanger of either party. 

As well it should.

Cockroaches and vermin, no matter whether the (D) or (R) variety, reflexively fear the light of day. 

[NCVol]

So what you're telling us is astro turf left wing outfit funded by unions is spending big money to counter astro turf tea bagger movement funded by right wing deep pockets like the Koch family?

That is shocking!!!!   

BTW, since your definition of our tax dollars at work includes union workers employed by the government, does that mean any activity by Wall Street, the military industrial complex, any company involved in health care, any of the Fortune 500 with a government contract (just about all of them), nuclear power industry, any doctor (since taxpayers subsidize their schooling), TVA, the UT athletic department, any company involved in road building, etc. etc. is ALSO our tax dollars at work.

Or maybe it only matters if the activity is a GD union?  I think that's the real answer.  CEOs whose pay depends heavily on your tax dollars are just "capitalists" who happen to have dealings with the U.S. government and that is why they buy congress!  Totally different than union workers who happen to be employed by governments.... 

[NCVol]

Cockroaches and vermin, no matter whether the (D) or (R) variety, reflexively fear the light of day. 

And that's why many of the "grass roots" organizations involved in the tea bagger movement but who have hijacked the Tea party name are mainline gop hacks and operatives who hide their involvement by putting up websites with fake amateur feel to them and why Dick Armey and hacks and hired whores like him won't reveal who is paying his hefty salaries.  So you're right.

[Flummoxed Lummox]

The Tea Party movement is not crazy, hateful, or stupid. Their rallies are disarmingly cheerful affairs, which most certainly do include women and minorities.

  Lane Lane

BY FAR, the funniest piece of fiction I've read in a long time.

Tea Party rallies are "disarmingly cheerful affairs"?  Oh God, my sides are hurting from laughing so hard.

Minorities in the Tea Party movement??? If Blacks, Asians, Latinos, and all other minorities COMBINED total 1% of the Tea Party movement I will be shocked. It is overwhelmingly a coalition of angry, middle-aged, WHITE malcontents.

[NCVol]

I'm sure you're wrong FL, just look at how Tancredo opened his arms to minorities with this:

And then, something really odd happened, mostly because I think [that] we do not have a civics literacy test before people can vote in this country. [Big applause from his audience.] People who could not even spell the word “vote” or say it in English [more big applause] put a committed socialist ideologue in the White House — [his] name is Barack Hussein Obama.”

He has a twofer welcome.  He welcomes blacks with a call for the return of Jim Crow era literacy tests to deny blacks the right to vote, then complains that furners who can't spell or speak english are who elected Obama.  Why it's just proof that the Tea baggers have a HUGE tent!

[Flummoxed Lummox]

If you want to taste hatred, sample the venom directed at Sarah Palin, the only person currently capable of building a bridge between the energy of the Tea Party, and the established resources of the GOP.

If you want to taste abject stupidity, sample the sexual lust directed at Sarah Palin by every horny, middle aged, white, conservative malcontent. She is the only person on the national stage who can't name a magazine or newspaper she reads. She can't recite the three basic tenets of her political philosophy without crib notes. She won't do press conferences where she might have to answer questions she hasn't rehearsed days in advance for fear of being exposed as the ignoramus she really is. She thinks having Russia as a neighbor gives her foreign policy experience. She believes the earth is only 6000 years old and that the war in Iraq is "God's will." She is the only GOP candidate who will guarantee a second Obama term.

When Michael Savage, as hard core a conservative as there is, says Palin is unelectable you might pay heed.

As for Palin being "the only person currently capable of building a bridge between the energy of the Tea Party and the established resources of the GOP" she will surely quit before the bridge is completed. Then she will claim she was against the bridge all along, even though she voted for it.  

[Flummoxed Lummox]

I'm sure you're wrong FL, just look at how Tancredo opened his arms to minorities with this:

He has a twofer welcome.  He welcomes blacks with a call for the return of Jim Crow era literacy tests to deny blacks the right to vote, then complains that furners who can't spell or speak english are who elected Obama.  Why it's just proof that the Tea baggers have a HUGE tent!

NC Vol,

I'm not sure what is more appalling, Tom Tancredo and his overtly racist views or the whackjobs in the Tea Party movement who cheered him when he called for a return to literacy tests for voting. You would think we were back in the 1960's South. Voting is only for whites. We don't need Blacks and Latinos spoiling our perfect system. And somehow OMG defends these people.

That's why I burst out laughing (literally, my sides are still hurting) when OMG posted that piece of fiction about the Tea Party movement including minorities. You can't make this stuff up. The truth really is stranger than fiction.

[The One Man Gang]

I thank you for making my point far better than I ever could.

Sincerely.

[Dementia_Madness]

I thank you for making my point far better than I ever could.

Sincerely.

Amen to that.

[The One Man Gang]

Even the folks in the Land of Oz are starting to get a clue.

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/opinion/menace-in-mad-marchbrof-the-thought-police/story-e6frg6zo-1225828481935

THE dark spectre of illiberalism is slowly poisoning Western liberal democracies. You won't hear about it from much of the left-liberal press. It is part of the problem and its silence only confirms that basic liberties integral to Western liberal democracies are under threat. That is why you may not have heard about the trial of Dutch politician Geert Wilders, who is being prosecuted under hate laws in The Netherlands for his opinions about Islam. Agree or disagree with Wilders, this is the thundering march of the thought police. And don't for a moment imagine that Australia is immune from this menace to democracy.

They told me if I voted for John McCain freedom of speech would be under an unprecedented assault, AND THEY WERE RIGHT!

h/t Insty

[NCVol]

I thank you for making my point far better than I ever could.

Sincerely.

I guess the new OMG debating tactic is to state random nonsense as proof of something.  On another thread is was Murtha's elite hospital and a dead woman who was cremated instead of buried in an Obama shirt somehow proved, I guess, that our healthcare system was working just fine.  Or something, we don't know, since OMG disappeared from that thread when challenged.

And now some unidentified passage in a half dozen posts is further proof that you're right of course about something you said or quoted or hinted at??? about tea partiers or tea baggers, two different things entirely.  One "movement" has Sarah "Where's my next 100k paid speaking gig?" Palin as figurative head, the one backed by billionaires and is a thinly disguised front for republicans looking for an alternative to their TOXIC brand, and the other HATES the GOP and everything it stands for as much as it does the mainline democratic party. 

Since you guys are regular water carriers for the GOP agenda, like Rush and Sean and NRO and the WSJ editorial page, I don't figure you all really aligning yourselves with the actual Tea Party movement.  They dont' actually kiss the a**es of the bankers, or the Fed, for example, or pretend Greenspan is a beacon of free markets or that using YOUR money to pay out billions in bonuses is anything other than massive theft.  It's kind of fundamental to the cause.  They also don't have any love for the military industrial complex or a trillion annual commitment to war or the erosion of our civil liberties and the emergence of a police state since those are all fundamentally toxic to a free society and are the opposite of small, limited government.  A government that can spy on you and jail you without charge or trial is dictatorial, not small or limited.  So I can't figure out what you guys support.  I have to assume its the Tea bagger faction led by the likes of Dick Armey and Sarah Palin and Tim Phillips funded by Koch and other special interests who like the status quo.