The Tea Party Propaganda

Just another day and just another conservative scandal. I thought the organization around Rick Santelli's rant was a little too smooth, a little too perfectly orchestrated for something not to be very, very wrong about it. The right wing moneychangers tried once again to control the message and lie to the American people to push their agenda that only hurts America. The right wing elite hated FDR because he turned on his own class of people and put the average American worker ahead of them. They were shocked that he would care about the state of our nation over the vested interests in a very small few. I did write that Rick's behavior was indicative of most talking heads that appear on the Wall Street shows because they are slaves to the very wealthy. These same people are terrified that Barack Obama may indeed reach America in the same way that FDR reached into the hearts of a depressed and hopeless American population that was beat down by the the depression back in 1929.
What a great job of reporting by Mark Ames and Yasha Levine of Playboy:
Last week, CNBC correspondent Rick Santelli rocketed from being a little-known second-string correspondent to a populist hero of the disenfranchised, a 21st-century Samuel Adams, the leader and symbol of the downtrodden American masses suffering under the onslaught of 21st century socialism and big government. Santelli’s “rant” last-week calling for a “Chicago Tea Party” to protest President Obama’s plans to help distressed American homeowners rapidly spread across the blogosphere and shot right up into White House spokesman Robert Gibbs’ craw, whose smackdown during a press conference was later characterized by Santelli as “a threat” from the White House. A nationwide “tea party” grassroots Internet protest movement has sprung up seemingly spontaneously, all inspired by Santelli, with rallies planned today in cities from coast to coast to protest against Obama’s economic policies.
What we discovered is that Santelli’s “rant” was not at all spontaneous as his alleged fans claim, but rather it was a carefully-planned trigger for the anti-Obama campaign. In PR terms, his February 19th call for a “Chicago Tea Party” was the launch event of a carefully organized and sophisticated PR campaign, one in which Santelli served as a frontman, using the CNBC airwaves for publicity, for the some of the craziest and sleaziest rightwing oligarch clans this country has ever produced. Namely, the Koch family, the multibilllionaire owners of the largest private corporation in America, and funders of scores of rightwing thinktanks and advocacy groups, from the Cato Institute and Reason Magazine to FreedomWorks. The scion of the Koch family, Fred Koch, was a co-founder of the notorious extremist-rightwing John Birch Society.
As you read this, Big Business is pouring tens of millions of dollars into their media machines in order to destroy just about every economic campaign promise Obama has made, as reported recently in the Wall Street Journal. At stake isn’t the little guy’s fight against big government, as Santelli and his bot-supporters claim, but rather the “upper 2 percent”’s war to protect their wealth from the Obama Adminstration’s economic plans. When this Santelli “grassroots” campaign is peeled open, what’s revealed is a glimpse of what is ahead and what is bound to be a hallmark of his presidency.

All I can say is thankfully we have blogs to help expose this massive corrosion that has seeped into the bowels of our nation and uses our national media on all levels to mainline their corruption. Shame on them all.
As whenwego at DKos writes:
It appears that this is the brain child of the shadowy Sam Adams project:
The Sam Adams Alliance, a nonprofit conservative organization, has started an ambitious project this year to encourage right-leaning activists and bloggers to get online and focus on local and state issues.
And the coordination is now expanding to business interests that are opposed to Obama's programs:
Industries from health care to agribusiness to mining that stand to lose under President Barack Obama's policy agenda are ramping up lobbying campaigns to derail or modify his plans.
The day after Mr. Obama formally laid out his policy goals in his first address to Congress, the former chief executive of HCA Inc. unveiled a $20 million campaign to pressure Democrats to enact health-care legislation based on free-market principles.
And don't bother to ask who is behind the Sam Adams Alliance, because all that is scrubbed:
But it’s the Alliance’s scrubbing of their link to Koch that is most telling. A cached page, erased on February 16, just three days before Santelli’s rant, shows that the Alliance also wanted to cover up its ties to the Koch family.

Note the amount of coverage (advertisement) this movement has received from Fox and conservative talk radio. The Newt Gingrich Repubs are jumping all over this and several of the up and comers are attending these rallies and giving speeches. It amazes me how gullible and easily swayed we the people have become. The people that attend these things are literally supporting ideas that benefit them the least.

The East India Company long held a privileged position in relation to the English, and later the British, government. As a result, it was frequently granted special rights and privileges, including trade monopolies and exemptions. In 1773 the East India Company was one of the strongholds of British economy. Suddenly it found itself at odds with the American non-importation restrictions on tea and with a huge inventory it could not move. The company was not able to meet its payment on dividends and loans and was moving towards bankruptcy. Of course the British government was reluctant to let it happen from fear that this may disrupt financial markets. As an alternative to a direct loan the Ministry decided to allow the company to send tea to America without paying an export duty.

Only a few of the history books note this underlying reason for the uprising. Most merely say it was due to England imposing the "Stamp Act" and other taxation without representation. It's also left out of most history books that the so called uprising was very peaceful and orderly. The participants actually swept the decks of the boats clean after tossing East India company's tea into the harbor. The original Boston Tea Party was a million dollar act of vandalism against one of the largest global corporations in the world. The East India company. The colonists were protesting the lowering of taxes on the East India company. (the Walmart of the 1700's) The lowered tax on the tea enabled the company to repay their debt to England and made it all but impossible for American businesses to compete. (sound familiar?) The Boston Tea party has been co opted by the Right much like the Evangelicals co opted Christianity, convincing their followers believe that Jesus wants you to be rich.

Another incident of the right co opting progressive or democratic socialist ideals is Glen Beck's latest fascination with Thomas Paine. He's had an actor dressing up like Paine ranting against this administration. The actor rants from the writings of Paine and uses selective quotations completely misrepresenting Paine's beliefs. Thomas Paine would be today's right wing conservatives nightmare. He was for labor, taxing the rich and giving it to the youth of America so they could have free college education. He believed in setting up social safety nets like social security and unemployment insurance. on. It would do Glen Beck good to read Prof. Harvey Kaye's "Thomas Paine and the Promise of America". Since Beck is going to cherry pick some of Paine's quotes, I thought
I'd give you some that I will just bet don't get mentioned.

1. "Any system of religion that has anything in it that shocks the mind of a child, cannot be true."
2. "All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit."

3. (this one is for the past administration) "He who is the author of a war lets loose the whole contagion of hell and opens a vein that bleeds a nation to death."

4. "Is it not a species of blasphemy to call the New Testament revealed religion, when we see in it such contradictions and absurdities."

5. (Attention Repubs and Blue dog Dems!) "Lead, follow, or get out of the way."

6. "My mind is my own church."

7. "One good schoolmaster is of more use than a hundred priests."

8. "Suspicion is the companion of mean souls, and the bane of all good society."

9. "The Vatican is a dagger in the heart of Italy."

10. "To establish any mode to abolish war, however advantageous it might be to Nations, would be to take from such Government the most lucrative of its branches. "

11. "War involves in its progress such a train of unforeseen circumstances that no human wisdom can calculate the end; it has but one thing certain, and that is to increase taxes."
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While I agree that our government is spending way too much it must be noted that trillions of dollars in spending were purposefully left out of the budget during the past 8 years. None of the cost of the Iraq war was included in the Bush administration's budgets. This omission artificially lowered the budgets expenditures. Obama's budget includes this cost and naturally increases hid budget. Military spending under Obama's budget actually went up contrary to what the right wing pundits have been saying. They report cuts in antiquated war planes and ships that have little effectiveness in modern guerrilla type warfare. Obama increased spending for supplies that the soldiers can actually use as well as medical benefits when they return home. Even though the budget is the largest spending bill ever it at least attempts to address things that have been neglected for years and years. Infrastructure, education, and health care.
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In closing note to those who thought that Obama is secretly a Muslim. He gave the orders to the Navy snipers to "shoot to kill" those Muslim pirates. I guess for the unwavering haters that means that he's blood thirsty and a loose cannon.

DaG Out