Steve Leser, the Editor of OpEdNews, was on the Neil Cavuto show and made a few fairly accurate statements about the Tax Day Tea Parties that FOX News is taking an active interest in promoting -- and, some might say, financing and orchestrating.
FBN's Stuart Varney is the guest host and talks out of the side of his neck like a snake oil salesmen selling magic elixirs and potions. (Rush transcript. Add to it in the comment section)
Leser: These tax day tea parties are a sham and a fraud. They are being presented as this organic, grassroots movement...
Varney: Wait a minute. That's a very, very strong language to use. I read your piece . Is the 2 trillion dollar deficit this administration has rung up. Is that a sham and a fraud?. Are you dismissing this out of hand like it doesn't exist?
Leser: Absolutely. In terms of the deficit, we have an economic crisis going on that this administration inherited from the previous republican administration.
Varney: Wait, you're dismissing the these people as fraudulent --
Leser: I'm dismissing the fraud, the protest. That's absolutely correct ...
Leser: I'm insulting the way the movement is being portrayed. It is a sham. The way this movement is being portrayed is a sham and a fraud. It's not an organic grassroots movement like it's being portrayed. There's ten Republican think tanks, heavily funded by top Republican corporations and headed by people like Dick Armey and Steve Forbes. Those are the people who have created and organized this so-called grass-roots movement.
Varney: You're insulting people.
Varney:...her 401K has been cut in half, she is outraged and you're calling this a sham? You're saying that that lady is fraudulent?
Leser: Absolutely.
Varney: That's nonsense, sir. And that sir is an insult to a very fine woman who's merely being a political activist. Nothing wrong with that.
Leser: I never insulted her or any of the people who feel strongly about this, I'm saying the way this is being portrayed is a sham.
Varney: There are thousands of parties and you're saying is the nature of this fraud?
Leser: Well, if you look back at it. The Chicago tea party.com website was actually created or registered in August of 2008 that's long before Obama was president had a chance to enact any of his policies. This has actually been in the works for a very long time. It's being portrayed as something recent and spontaneous and it's anything but that.
I would ask them, where were they during the last 28 years, 20 of which when we had a Republican administration in office that ran up massive deficits.
Varney: It's only in the last two or three months, or six weeks that the extent of this problem has emerged. The extent of congressional spending the extent of the deficit, the impending huge tax increases that we face. It's only become apparent in the last six weeks, during which time we've had a Democrat Congress and a Democrat in the White House.
Leser: I can't let you get away with that one, Stuart... It's amazing to me that any Republican with a straight face would try and talk about fiscal responsibility. Republicans have absolutely no credibility on fiscal responsibility.
Varney: It's now my great duty to promote the tea parties, here we go....
At the end of the video, Varney quickly promotes the FOX coverage of the tea baggers. Yes, there was a punchline at the end of the sketch. What I find so insanely stupid on Varney's part is that he's using the argument that it's only been recently apparent that we've got this huge deficit. This guy should be run out of television. It's been reported for years that the Bush administraion ran up huge deficits and spent far greater than anyone before him.
People have lost half their pension money and maybe more or have been wiped out. That happened under George W. Bush and Ben Bernanke and not under President Obama -- and the collapse happened unquestionably because of their laissez-faire economics. Then they came on TV and said the entire global economy would melt down if action was not taken, but by that time, people already lost their pensions due to the stock market crash. The fact that it continued until Obama took office is meaningless -- the deficit spending now is directed at trying to kick start the engine Republicans trashes. And it still might get much worse.
It makes no sense as a defense of the teabaggers. If that is the main motivation for these tea parties, then Newt Gingrich and Karl Rove should be protesting Republican and conservative policies and politicians who gutted government agencies that were supposed to be there as watchdogs, and an ideology of deregulation that was championed by the Dick Armeys of the GOP.
