Thanks Jane.

The sad saps think they’re defending capitalism, when in reality they’re defending croneyism, financed by the super-rich.

Speaking of grassroots demonstrations, how do the teabaggers compare with the New Way Forward demo against the banks yesterday? There’s a local round-up over at the NWF’s blog.

Bob in HI

Thanks.

I’m still waiting for some progressive to disabuse these idiots what they think sparked the original tea party

it was the king lowering taxes for his wealthy homeys that pissed them off, not the king raising taxes on them

I want to see their heads explode when someone points out this sad (for them) little fact

Should not all this spending be counted as a campaign contribution to the Republican party? I see no complaints about Wasteful military spending for example on two wars that are lost.
I see no complaints about wasteful tax breaks for oil companies after they raked us for possibly their most profitable decade ever! And who among the real Common People has not bitched about higher gas prices?
The fact that higher gas prices are not mentioned at all is very strange.
Obama just got into office but he is to blame for everything?

it was the king lowering taxes for his wealthy homeys that pissed them off, not the king raising taxes on them

First time I have heard this.

Hilarious and insightful, as usual. Definitely going to add the big-money-org sponsorship angle to Teablogging.net. Thanks!

Glenn Beck will be taking his Armaggedon Show on the road this summer!

http://www.usatoday.com/life/p…..htm?csp=34

Yeah, yeah, he’s going to make everyone laugh at the thought of overtaking our government using armed militias and then saying Obama was wrong when he said the neocons turn to guns & religion when they’re confused & upset!

Nice.

Just like the spontaneous leaps GOP politicians make to bestiality (dogs, box turtles, etc.), I’m of a mind to believe these gay sex references aren’t accidents, but Freudian slips of the highest order. After all, the Conservapedia most-viewed pages list is often littered with links to gay lifestyle topics (as of now only a couple, “homosexuality” and “homosexual obsession” are on the list).

The Tea Baggers seem to want to let drug addict meth heads like the ones who got arrested before the Democratic Convention for wanting to shoot Obama keep their guns.
Meth heads, Klansmen, Crazed Gun nuts waiting for the end of the world waiting to shoot Cops and Immigrants get to keep their unregulated guns check.
However regular peaceful protesters at the GOP Convention were arrested for made up stuff.
Now then just who is the Political Party I fear that will stop peaceful protest and make me want to buy a gun to protect my rights?
I want a poll asking America that question!

This is nothing but a big public relations stunt ,the public wont fall for this. It will play well with their base though and Faux News will run coverage round the clock !

China and India must be very happy about this protest.

one would be able to get current information on it with a phone call or a couple of emails. It’s much more viral than that

Isn’t getting the information with a couple e-mails the definition of viral?

And the notices on Fox ‘News’ web site – that’s part of the “more viral” quality of these spontaneous gatherings?

The Tea Baggers are just a bunch of propaganda tools

look up the tea act, you’ll see it there

the kings pals couldn’t compete in the colonies with the tariff so the king removed that tariff to give them an edge

this country was founded on the principles that you MUST have protectionism

interesting stuff here

Thus sayeth the Wiki:

The protest movement that culminated with the Boston Tea Party was not a dispute about high taxes. The price of legally imported tea was actually reduced by the Tea Act of 1773. Protestors were instead concerned with a variety of other issues. The familiar “no taxation without representation” argument, along with the question of the extent of Parliament’s authority in the colonies, remained prominent.Some regarded the purpose of the tax program—to make leading officials independent of colonial influence—as a dangerous infringement of colonial rights.

Colonial merchants, some of them smugglers, played a significant role in the protests. Because the Tea Act made legally imported tea cheaper, it threatened to put smugglers of Dutch tea out of business.Legitimate tea importers who had not been named as consignees by the East India Company were also threatened with financial ruin by the Tea Act. Another major concern for merchants was that the Tea Act gave the East India Company a monopoly on the tea trade, and it was feared that this government-created monopoly might be extended in the future to include other goods.

Yeah, viral and grassroots, my ass.

Since when do grassroots organizations NOT knock on doors but pay organizations to use highly targeted lists to make robocalls across the country?

Last I checked, robocalls for a statewide campaign ran about 6 cents a pop…maybe we should ask little miss attitude what today’s going rate for so-called national robocalls might be.

Look Tea Baggers when I think about government expanding and taking away my rights I think of Bush spying on my phone calls. I think of Bush infiltrating peace groups. I think about Bush leaking fake WMD stories to Judy Miller. I think about people tortured.
When I think about One World Government I think about Bush looking the other way as the Banks built their Ponzai schemes and tried to buy the world!
I look at America’s economy held hostage by the big banks who are demanding cash from us to bail them out even as they refuse to help Americans who are getting their homes foreclosed on.
I look at No Child Left Behind as Big Government forcing everyone to do what they want then Big Government stuck the States with the Check!
When I think of Big Government I think of Bush.
When I think of Tea Baggers I think of Dupes.

it’s a convoluted tale to be sure, here’s another source;

Colonial America, December 16, 1773
In 1770, American protests led to Parliament’s repeal of the Townshend duties — except for the duty on tea retained by the British as a matter of principle. The colonists demonstrated their displeasure with the remaining tax by drinking smuggled tea. The effectiveness of American resistance was shown in the precipitous decline in tea sales in the colonies — a drop of 70 percent over three years.

In 1773 Parliament passed the Tea Act, which gave the English East India Company a chance to avert bankruptcy by granting a monopoly on the importation of tea into the colonies. The new regulations allowed the company to sell tea to the colonists at a low price, lower than the price of smuggled tea, even including the required duty. The British reasoned that the Americans would willingly pay the tax if they were able to pay a low price for the tea.

I was just looking at the blog Jane linked to at the top and it seems the person who has is going for the Sarah Palin look. The photo down on the side of the blog is really cute, lady with a .357 Ruger. Most intersting.

When I think of Dupes I think of Tea Baggers losing their jobs demanding that Obama stop spending money on the Jobs Stimulus Plan.
When I think of Tea Baggers I see people insisting that the bankers taking away their homes get paid tax payer dollars plus high *cough* performance based salaries and bonuses.
When I think of the Funders of the Tea Baggers I think that as the economy gets worse (and it will) people with guns will sooner or later go after people with money and not Cops, Immigrants, Dark People etc.
After all robbing poor people will not pay the bills. I expect a Columbia/Mexico size rise in kidnappings of the rich if things do not get better soon.
I expect the rich elites to start reading about Cause and Effect soon.

Target the money target the oil money behind the GOP? Even if costs more money to buy a hybrid put up green power target the money as a form of political protest. Just like the Americans targeted the tea.
We need a list of more targets and how we can hit them. Hal, KBR and Blackwater are the ones I want to hit.
Given KBR’s electrocuting how many troops in the shower? I think Pushing to end all of KBR’s contracts with the military forever is politically doable.
I want Glen Beck and Friends defending KBR. I want us to choose the ground we fight on.

2M4M

teabagging

Dick Armey

Who are these people?

Perris, I agree that the facts of the original Tea Action were more complicated than we’ve generally been taught. What I don’t understand is how the Teabaggin’ is supposed to relate to the original.

Basically, the British told the colonists that three ships were coming into Boston Harbor and were going to be unloaded and the British were going to be paid, no two ways about it. At that point the Bostonians identified the tea as a symbol of unjust oppression by the Crown and dumped the cargo (and the King by extension) in the Harbor.

How does this new faux protest work? What does the tea represent? It’s like a symbol by proxy for an alias of the representation of the thing someone doesn’t like.

The whole episode has that “Try a ten a.m. script meeting, coked to the gills, no sleep and you haven’t even read the treatment” corporate Astroturf vibe to it. They can’t even fake outrage well.

the colonies were told the tea was comming in without tariff

that’s what sent them balistic, that’s why they emptied the tea to the harbor

if the import company was going to be paid no matter what then no big deal, they get paid even if the tea is in the sea so the tea party doesn’t serve the purpose

the locals knew they couldn’t compete with tea brought in without tariff, they therefore staged the revolt

there are too few people educated enough to realize how we’ve been played

most people think this is some kind of “cycle” and those who remain republican can remain loyal only because they are easily convinced it would have happened worse under a democrat

How does this new faux protest work? What does the tea represent? It’s like a symbol by proxy for an alias of the representation of the thing someone doesn’t like.

True and too funny. But I think the bigger point should be who cares? I’ve seen many a two year old throw a tantrum. I say let the teabaggers have their little whine fest, then remind them that the adults are in charge now and we’re going to get on with the business of fixing the country.

you left out the governor from Idaho, Butch Otter

Considering that the organization of this series of “events” is “poorly organized” is NOT by any means a sign that it is grassroots. The whole Bush administration from Iraq to Katrina was poorly organized and they certainly were not grassroots.

I too am wondering why no one talks about the actual events surrounding the tea party. As Perris pointed out, this was a protest over a tax cut (for the mega-corporation of its time) and not a tax hike. The analogy is really lame and yes, maybe we should just watch and laugh. But it’s sad that there’s a lot of morans being manipulated by these corporate-pushed protests.

“disgust with the debt this country is taking on”

I’d be the first to admit I’m not happy with the idea of a huge deficit. Apart from those for whom deficits don’t matter, like Dick Cheney and Ronald Reagan, I doubt there are many folks who are dancing in the streets over the idea. But there is a huge difference between a president who took a sizable surplus, turned it into a record deficit, and did so without actually benefiting the USA in any material way. I mean, sure, spending a trillion dollars on an unnecessary war and making sure your best donors and cronies are “taken care of” is a viable spending plan if you’re a Republican, but a lot of rational people have trouble wrapping their minds around the concept. So — my question here is — where were all these teabaggers during the Bush years?

There is a long-standing “truism” that Democratic spending is bad and Republican spending is good. It is a fallacy.

I went over to the Faux site to find one of these Tea Bagging events. Wanted to see what kind of idiots attend this, for myself. Couldn’t find a zip code search, so it’s not that organized. Read a few posts, including some knuckle dragging smoker who was bitching how much the additional 68 cents per pack was going to cost him. Being an Ex Smoker, I’ve made those calculations in a spread sheet before. Naturally, he couldn’t get the math right. I went to correct this Maroon’s numbers and naturally it’s moderated…so only approved comments will appear.

Does anyone ever ask what would happen if Murdoch had come bopping into America and set up a network newspaper with a left wing agenda? Christ, they go on and on about Soros being a foreigner behind the scenes pulling strings all the while Murdoch and his agenda is blasting in their faces.
How screwed do people have to be b4 they realize they’ve been screwed and just where the money has gone.

Need to look at Meetup.com for the organizing tool. It’s not just Faux news organizing this, but CNN’s idiot emotive Beck with his 9-12 project.

There are lot of new Meetup groups arranged using this cover, and they are talking about their teabagging event when they even allow anybody to see what they are doing (quite a number of them are highly monitored; only approved members can join and the message boards and events calendar are can only be accessed by the same).

because $12,000,000,000,000 in new debt is something to crow about?