A Tea Party Video that Should Go Viral

Produced and directed by Tennessee's own vibinc:

By the way, any time teabaggers say that yesterday's protest wasn't about race or having a black President in the White House, remember the clip of the teabagger with the sign that says, "Obama is REALLY a Somali pirate." Not about race? What do they take us for? Stupid?

Post-Tea Party Quote of the Day

Sean Braisted lends some more perspective to the after-party glow on the right:

the funniest thing about the teabaggers is not that they think they can effect change by taking a long lunch and standing in a crowd whilst holding a sign, but rather that they really do have delusions of grandeur about their role in history. There was one sign that said "this must be what it felt like in 1776," thus equating standing around in a scheduled one hour, constitutionally and police protected protest with risking being on the business end of a rope to tell the King of England to go to hell.

Baggin' History

Time and again the sound bytes on today's Tea Party demonstrations seem to gravitate toward the claim that they somehow constitute the largest, most original grassroots social protest in American history. Pick any national movement in history to put this in perspective beyond the hype. I'll choose one that I can remember from my college days, the 1982 Nuclear Freeze Movement:

Two decades ago, Ronald Reagan had been elected President, and the hawks were riding high. Committed to a vast military buildup, they championed an array of new weapons programs, spurned nuclear arms control and disarmament treaties, and talked glibly of fighting and winning nuclear wars. The new President had opposed every nuclear arms control measure negotiated by his Democratic and Republican predecessors. The Senate was in the clutches of bellicose Republicans, while most of the public -- whipped into a nationalist froth by the Iranian hostage crisis -- heartily approved of military priorities.

Yet the hawkish consensus quickly unraveled. In the United States, the Nuclear Weapons Freeze Campaign, the Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy, and Physicians for Social Responsibility mushroomed into mass movements. In June 1982, nearly a million Americans turned out for a rally in New York City against the nuclear arms race, the largest political demonstration up to that point in U.S. history. The Nuclear Freeze campaign drew the backing of major religious bodies, professional organizations, and labor unions. Supported by 70 percent or more of the population, the Freeze was endorsed by 275 city governments, 12 state legislatures, and the voters of nine out of ten states where it was placed on the ballot in the fall of 1982.

I'm having a hard time seeing how the Tea Parties have yet to even approach the grassroots power of the nuclear freeze movement, let along several others that preceded it. I'd put the 5,000 disarmament groups of the summer of 1982 up against the 500 Tea Party groups of the spring of 2009 any time and feel confident that this year's variation on the anti-Obama movement has a long way to go to make history. The threat of nuclear winter mobilized more people to action than fear of socialism ever will.

Crowd Packing Tennessee Tea Parties with School Kids

At least a couple of schools in Tennessee excused students from classes to attend demonstrations devoted mainly to branding President Barack Obama a socialist or communist.

Hundreds vs. Thousands at Nashville Tea Party

Compare and contrast:

Don’t let anyone in the media or on the LEFT tell you that there were hundreds of protectors in Music City … there were thousands.

- - from some blog Michelle Malkin linked as representative of Nashville Tea Party reports

FOX 17 says "hundreds" attended today's #nashville #teaparty

- - @nitweet Twitter feed

Local Media Matters and Conservative Tweets on Tea Party

Local media tweets at Nashvillest and WKRN WKRN's Nashville is Talking are now passing along the information started by a conservative student from Murfreesboro that Nashville Tea Party crowds at LP Field number 2,000-3,000. Same media tweets acknowledge that they are not on the East Bank to corroborate that figure nor are any independent sources confirming the crowd nor are there any TV media with live coverage of LP Field to let folks judge whether the college student is accurate.

Tea Party Quote of the Day

Viva la Mancini:

It seems that the worse part of the Tea Party movement is its underlying philosophy: when it comes to the free market, unintended damage is OK ....
So what if people are unemployed, not able to feed their kids, without health care, losing their homes? “Stay away from my free market,” they say. “We’re not all in this together,” they say. “Running up the national debt for the military industrial complex is A-OK, but doing it to stimulate the economy and get the American people back to work? Hell, no!”

Tennessean Woos Tea Party with Friendly Publicity Rather than "Liberal" Media Blackout

Did Tennessean reporter Colby Sledge even bother to look up the average attendance of protests at War Memorial Plaza in order to put a "several hundred" tea bagger turnout in perspective? Did he bother to anything beyond a Google search and a phone call to a tea party dude in Brentwood?

I'm surprised the Tennessean doesn't offer to give conservatives rides to the event given Sledge's puff headliner and the attendant details on how to keep up with the tea party.

This big freeze that Nashville's flagship newspaper is putting on an extreme minority of red-state interests who cannot possibly hand the GOP control in Washington would make Barney Fife and Fox News proud. But if the Tennessean wants to be associated with wacko claims about Barack Obama's citizenship and fidelity then they'll just have to take their lumps with the cast of right-wing characters attempting to leverage some free media publicity this afternoon.

As Mad as a Hatter: April 15th Tea Parties are Crazy on Astroturf

Paul Krugman cuts to the chase with extreme right-wing protesters airbrushing themselves on Wednesday into the middle Americans they are not:

there are the claims made at some recent tea-party events that Mr. Obama wasn’t born in America, which follow on earlier claims that he is a secret Muslim. Crazy stuff ....

Last but not least: it turns out that the tea parties don’t represent a spontaneous outpouring of public sentiment. They’re AstroTurf (fake grass roots) events, manufactured by the usual suspects. In particular, a key role is being played by FreedomWorks, an organization run by Richard Armey, the former House majority leader, and supported by the usual group of right-wing billionaires. And the parties are, of course, being promoted heavily by Fox News.

But that’s nothing new, and AstroTurf has worked well for Republicans in the past. The most notable example was the “spontaneous” riot back in 2000 — actually orchestrated by G.O.P. strategists — that shut down the presidential vote recount in Florida’s Miami-Dade County.

So what’s the implication of the fact that Republicans are refusing to grow up, the fact that they are still behaving the same way they did when history seemed to be on their side? I’d say that it’s good for Democrats, at least in the short run — but it’s bad for the country.

For now, the Obama administration gains a substantial advantage from the fact that it has no credible opposition, especially on economic policy, where the Republicans seem particularly clueless.

Fox News Repeated "ACORN" Nearly 350 Times over the Weekend

It's no wonder local right-wing bloggers are catatonically repeating ACORN. Fox Noise ginned their side of the blogosphere up last weekend:

Two Local Pro-Redline Bloggers Twist News of $800,000 Donation

In attempts to continue to channel a McCain campaign adviser's talking points designed to help John McCain claw his way back into the presidential race, Republican Party and long-time Bush supporters Bob Krumm and Bill Hobbs continue to spin information in misleading and partisan ways.

They repeat McCain adviser Rick Davis's absolute, unqualified claims about ACORN accepting $800,000 from the Obama campaign. Here is Davis's exchange with the New York Times et al., which divulges more facts that mitigate the partisan mudslinging of pro-redline gang:

Mr. Davis urged reporters to question Mr. Obama about training sessions he had done for Acorn. “What were you teaching them?” Mr. Davis asked. “Were you teaching them how to evade the law?”

Lewis Goldberg, a spokesman for Acorn, said Mr. Obama conducted two leadership training sessions of roughly an hour each for Acorn’s Chicago affiliate over a three-year period in the late 1990s. He was not paid for that work, Mr. Goldberg said.

Even before Friday’s conference call, Republicans had made much of an $832,598 payment made in February by the Obama campaign to Citizens Services Inc., a consulting firm affiliated with Acorn.

“This organization is not just related to but deeply ingrained in the Acorn organization, a front group for Acorn,” Mr. Davis said.

The Obama campaign initially reported that the payment was for “staging, sound, lighting” and other advance work when it reported its expenditures with the Federal Election Commission. It filed amended reports in August and September to reflect that those payments were for get-out-the-vote efforts.

Mr. Davis contended that the original filing was an effort to “hide the fact” that money was paid to Acorn. But F.E.C. officials have said such amended filings are common.

Citizens Services typically contracts with Acorn and its affiliates for work like that done for the Obama campaign. Mr. Goldberg, the Acorn spokesman, said that less than $80,000 of the Obama campaign’s payment to Citizens Services went to Acorn.

Rick Davis would like to draw attention to ACORN lest he stumble himself into the political limelight because of the awkward fact that he received nearly $2,000,000 in five years to defend the failed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac mortgage companies from federal regulation.

If Bob Krumm and Bill Hobbs are going to criticize ACORN and Obama, then they should at least get their facts about the $800,000 straight. And by no means should they be ignoring Republican financial connections to some players with corporate payrolls astronomically larger than that of a small-potatoes community-based organization.

Bobbed Story on Reform Org Is Krummy

It is interesting what lengths a local GOP blogger will go to argue points based on only partial truths about Barack Obama's legal advocacy of ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now). One would think--and quite preposterously so--that Obama's legal representation itself lead to the mortgage crisis:

Barack Obama was a lawyer working on behalf of ACORN, yes that ACORN, the organization that orchestrated this case and hundreds of others like it, all of them alleging that racism was the sole reason that minority home ownership lagged.

Quite a bit of broader context left out of those claims. Here's what Bob did not tell you:

For starters – and I know this will shock you – the McCain people can’t even get their facts straight. In a ... conference call, McCain campaign manager Rick Davis said that Obama, as an attorney, once represented ACORN in a lawsuit “against the state of Illinois and the federal government.” (Thereby implying, of course, that Obama was in cahoots with anti-government law-breakers.) But Davis’ dark fantasies collide with factual reality. Obama did indeed represent ACORN in a lawsuit, back in 1995 – working on the same side as the federal government. ACORN and the feds, along with radical plaintiffs such as the League of Women Voters, went to court to compel the state of Illinois to implement a new “motor voter” law that was designed to make it easier for citizens to enroll as voters. They won.

In parroting the McCain campaign, Bob refuses to acknowledge all of the conditions surrounding Barack Obama's professional relationship to ACORN. That's because the less he says above and beyond wild accusation, the better for his candidates' campaign. Maybe Bob Krumm wants to engage in an unprincipled inquisition against the League of Women Voters, too?

In the particular case he cites--as in each of the handful of voter registration malfeasance out of millions of voters registered that conservatives attribute to ACORN's organization--he fails to acknowledge that ACORN monitors for voter registration fraud and supports the prosecution of accused defrauders who have worked for ACORN. Many states require that voter registration cards be turned in, and fraudulent cards are discovered because ACORN calls states' attention to them. However, in any endeavor, intention is not enough and exceptions will fall through the cracks.

But to argue that a organization-wide conspiracy can be deduced from a few exceptions is both logical fallacy and an utter stretch to a lunatic fringe of conservativism:

ACORN would need to be aware of every fraudulent form that's been submitted, the names and polling places of those false identities, and they would then have to have a network of thousands of voters nationwide whom they could readily (yet covertly) communicate this information to, so that those voters would show up to cast their fraudulent vote on election day. Given the possible prison time anyone who actually attempted to cast a fraudulent vote would face, it seems unlikely that they could find thousands upon thousands of voters to help in this effort in the first place, much less communicate the relevant information to them.

As for tarring the entire ACORN organization for the malfeasance of a few employees, Think Progress has the best rejoinder:

When a department store calls the police to report a shoplifting employee, no one says the department store is guilty of consumer fraud. The same principle applies here. The small number of staffers who have submitted fraudulent forms are violating ACORN’s mission. Anyone caught defrauding should be prosecuted, and ACORN says it is assisting in that effort. ACORN should work harder to catch these employees and ensure that they are held responsible.

You will not see any of that balance in Bob Krumm's biased narrative of these events. That's because his focus would seem to be strictly on helping McCain win, if necessary, by any means.

First They Came for ACORN, But I Did Not Speak Out, And Then They Came for Me

Attacking minority-run organizations is the only hope, the last gasp that the GOP and their blogging shock troops have left. And some local right-wing bloggers are acting high and mighty like their latest battle is a noble fight for a just cause.

But the recent attacks on ACORN were never about principle. If they would have been about principle, you would have seen enduring criticism (like that from liberal and community-based groups) not prone to the ebb and flow with the election season (like Bob Krumm). It is about partisan politics pure and simple (the fact that Bill Hobbs is locked on ACORN evinces that point alone). It is nothing more than aped election strategy with a cosmetic moralism applied. John McCain's supporters have no lanyard to fasten his opponent to our current economic crisis, and they have no legitimate means of defending McCain's own history as a "deregulator" or his membership in the previous Keating 5 banking crisis.

Hence, attacking ACORN has three tactical purposes: to draw attention away from the purging of voters in various states, to take organized black and brown voters out of the equation, and to draw McCain closer in the polls in order to resurrect the hair's breath Republican win scenarios of 2000 and 2004. Republicans cannot win without without maximizing the great white vote, so they must peel off minority votes and suppress voter registration. The groups who orchestrate the purging of voter registration polls are mostly (if not all) white, and the groups who register as many people as eligible to vote are largely minority. Hence, their last ditch attacks are always going to be race-based, just like the Willie Horton-attack on Mike Dukakis in 1988.

There is one simple solution to the Republican election strategy: taking anyone who stands in their way out of the equation. The problem is that they would not stop with ACORN:

for all people who consider themselves to be progressive, let's be clear: The current right wing attack on ACORN is a frontal assault on all of us who fight for social and economic justice. ACORN may not always behave in the activist sandbox, but they are one of us, and we better close ranks around them, because the barrel of the right-wing attack gun will be focused on you and me next ....

For instance, over the last few weeks, the right wing has blanketed media airspace with the idea that the Community Reinvestment Act, as aggressively promulgated by ACORN over the past few decades, forced banks to lower their lending criteria, which led to the subprime crisis ....

Implicated are all the rest of us who have used the CRA, the only government edict against bank redlining, to own up to their obligations to lend in neighborhoods of color and low-income areas. Not only is this argument against the CRA and ACORN breath-takingly wrong – most subprime lenders were not even covered by the CRA - but it goes far to make the racist suggestion that the very people that ACORN represents – people of color, low income areas – are inherently high risk and unworthy of credit ....

As a progressive community, we have an obligation to call out ACORN on their stuff. God knows I have. But we also have an obligation to stick up for one of the most effective grassroots social justice organizations this nation has ever seen, an organization that stands on the frontlines everyday, taking body blows for all of us.

In support of the Republican effort, conservative bloggers are willing to conduct a scorched-earth policy to secure the road to the White House, wiping out every opponent to achieve their ends. If a critical mass of us fail to support the forward guard catching the brunt of right-wing prejudice and treachery, then they'll be targeting the rest of us next.

Activist Supreme Court Upholds Enronesque Artificially Inflated Utility Prices

This has got to be a joke, because the reality is a farce. SCOTUS is essentially extending the utility giveaway that unethical John McCain economic advisor Phil Gramm started for his buddies and campaign contributors at Enron by defending a federal regulatory commission that is refusing state governments' wish to renegotiate bogus contracts.  Regulation in the Bush era (or error) is worth about as much as a pile of poop a stray leaves at a landfill.

SCOTUS backed up a federal regulatory commission's decision to shield the high western utility prices based on the "sanctity of contracts." Like I said, that's a joke.  How come contracts did not matter 6 or 7 years ago when Enron was cooking its books to show fake income and prompting suppliers to shut down energy plants under the false pretense of maintenance only to drive up the utility prices Californians had to pay?  If the sanctity of contracts really existed, then private utility prices would be rolled back to their pre-Enron days.

The SCOTUS decision is based on protecting the corporate political interest in making as much money off of people saps like us by any means necessary.  The biggest joke is the pretense of sanctity at Supreme Court.

When Right-Wing Talk-Show Hosts Get Their Intellectual Teeth Kicked In

Somebody needs to scrape this pathetic conservative talk-show host off the pavement after showing that he has no idea who Neville Chamberlain was even as he tries to tie him to Barack Obama:

It's further evidence that listening to right-wing radio only dumbs down your intelligence. The blowhard bases his history on "Pathway to 9/11," which producers conceded was a fictionalized account (you had to know that the vast right-wing media machine was going to spin it into truth).

Compare right-wing talk radio ignorance to a progressive grasp (in 2006) of Neville Chamberlain, who looks more like he would have been right at home in the Bush Administration:

Yep, Bush looks a lot like Chamberlain for demonizing Barack Obama in the same way that Chamberlain attacked Winston Churchill as an internal enemy for criticizing British foreign policy.

And yet, how much more audacious is it for George Bush to stand on foreign soil, link a loyal American and honorable Senator to Nazi appeasers, and then take cover behind the right-wing media machine which would not know the history of war from a hole in the head? Joe Biden had the spot-on analysis of the backstabbing tactic: "That is bullshit."