Fox News 'all in' on freak show coverage: They are leading the charge for the tea-baggers
By John Amato Sunday Apr 12, 2009 10:00am
I have never seen a network so devoted to a wingnut cause like FOX is with their BIG coverage of the teabaggers tea party scheduled for April 15th. Check out this video clip I made just from one show.
Wall Street gladly took their $700 billion wingnut welfare cash without blinking an eye -- with Neil Cavuto demanding McCain's people cough up the cash for his peeps -- but somehow Rick Santelli's rant against "losers" who are having trouble paying their mortgages was just an incredible faux outrage and has become dear to Roger Ailes heart.
It's the rich and out-of-power Republicans who are organizing these events, and it's not an accident. They are trying to kick-start a broken conservative movement by making a huge effort to tap into the 25% of people who hate President Obama. Roger Ailes has gone "all in" and is waiting for the river card as he uses Beck, Cavuto and his merry band of disenfranchised conservatives to lead them on their disingenuous mission.
Here's the thing. The right lost its ability to be spontaneous sometime back when Phyllis Schlafly was pounding the ERA. They require structure and leadership in order to function, which is one reason why their movement and their party are so stuck. (They proudly call themselves dittoheads, after all.)
So, it's no surprise to learn this:
Despite these attempts to make the “movement” appear organic, the principle organizers of the local events are actually the lobbyist-run think tanks Americans for Prosperity and Freedom Works. The two groups are heavily staffed and well funded, and are providing all the logistical and public relations work necessary for planning coast-to-coast protests:
– Freedom Works staffers coordinate conference calls among protesters, contacting conservative activists to give them “sign ideas, sample press releases, and a map of events around the country.”
– Freedom Works staffers apparently moved to “take over” the planning of local events in Florida.
– Freedom Works provides how-to guides for delivering a “clear message” to the public and media.
– Freedom Works has several domain addresses — some of them made to look like they were set up by amateurs — to promote the protests.
– Americans for Prosperity is writing press releases and planning the events in New Jersey, Arizona, New Hampshire, Missouri, Kansas, and several other states.
This type of corporate ‘astroturfing‘ is nothing new to either organization. While working to promote Social Security privatization, Freedom Works was caught planting one of its operatives as a “single mom” to ask questions to President Bush in a town hall on the subject. Last year, the Wall Street Journal exposed Freedom Works for similarly building “amateur-looking” websites to promote the lobbying interests of Dick Armey, the former Republican Majority Leader who now leads Freedom Works and is a lobbyist for the firm DLA Piper.
Americans for Prosperity is run by Tim Phillips, who was Ralph Reed’s former partner in the lobbying firm Century Strategies. The group is funded by Koch family foundations — a family whose wealth is derived from the oil industry. Indeed Americans for Prosperity has coordinated pro-drilling ‘grassroots‘ events around the country.
If any members of the press are reading this, I hope they can see that this is the story, not the sad little dupes who are voluntarily calling themselves tea-baggers.
I wonder how many of these protesters tea-baggers make over $250,000 and are facing an uptick in their taxes? I bet most of them have received a tax cut, so the nonsense about taxes is capricious at best. They are trying to create a mob of Joe the Plumbers, people who are ignorant about their own needs and eager and willing to swallow the culture-war propaganda their moneyed con men leaders dish out.
Login or Register to post comments.
Just saw the handmade sign announcing the tea bagging orgy at our local (Hicksville, NoCal) court house as I was driving in from grocery gettin' (appy polly logies to Baby Jesus for ignoring His ressurection).
These weirdos are starting to scare the heck out of me.
The way I see it is Fox, in their defense of millionaires and billionaires, is encouraging the small people - the PAWNS - to cry out about taxes - taxes that WON'T effect them - in the hopes of getting noticed and having the taxes kept low for the wealthy also.
These people are BEING USED to do rich people's dirty work. They've got SUCKER written across their forehead.
Pardon my inability to write articulately - you know what I'm saying though!
We should attend a tea baggers' party and hold up a sign with the words written in large letters "SUCKERS".
It's funny how the Republicans who spent 8 years ballwashing Bush are now teabagging each other.
Yet again, media for mushrooms...
Just keep those teabaggers in the dark and feed 'em shit.
Does anyone wonder why a portion of this country wants to burn books so that they can remain blissfully ignorant of EVERYTHING?
Yes, I believe that FOX "News" is leading the charge towards violence in America with their daily rants as well as its awful-shallow analysis and revisionist history.
I do not know how FOX "News" can keep going on like this either. Promoting this type of violence and hatred goes beyond "news" or "free speech," as in asking others to become violent. I hope everyone boycotts all FOX "News" Sponsors and perhaps, Crooks and Liars can post all the advertisers on this violent network.
The "Violent News Channel," is who Glen Beck, Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly, Greta Van Sustren, and Geraldo Rivera work for, too!
Do any of the Teabaggers actually know what the Boston Tea Party, that they are so pathetically trying to emulate, was about? The East India Company (an 18th century "corporation") was the largest in England and going bankrupt. They were the largest supplier of tea in the world. The British government abolished the tea tax for East India, thereby subsidizing them and allowing them to sell their tea cheaper than the competitors. Then the government passed a law saying the colonies could ONLY buy their tea from East India, preventing colonial tea growers and buyers from plying their trade. THAT'S why the tea was thrown into the harbor! Not "taxation without representation." Not raised taxes. A government protecting the corporation and screwing the people. Sound familiar, you teabagging morons?
that's close but not quite it
the king lowered the tariff on the east india tea company, THAT'S what sent the colonies balistic, NOT raising taxes, lowering taxes
go figure
it was hurting the locals?
Yes, lowering taxes - actually removing them altogether - from tea from the East India Company, a British "corporation", so the company could undersell all others, including the locals. OK? Not lowering for the people; for the company, so it could stay in business and undersell the competitors, including the locals. And passing a law that you could only buy tea from East India, making it a monopoly. Therefore, the tea in the harbor.
Suckers don't even know what they are protesting.
are correct!
...most of us already "boycott" Fox News and get our daily dose of their outrages here and from other web sources. They simply don't care whether or not "libruls" watch. All they're interested in is keeping the already converted tuned in 24/7 in order to keep 'em riled up. In this they're eminently successful.
But......... do you watch "The Simpsons"? "The Shield"? "24"? National Geographic? Do you ever go to see a movie released by Fox Searchlight? Do you get your TV service from DirecTV? Do you subscribe to the Wall Street Journal? So, what about hitting Rupert Murdoch in all the other places where he lives? In ALL of his pocketbooks?
I'm really looking forward to all twenty of them to meet hundreds who drown out their nonsense with a few pointed questions, such as: what the f*ck are you talking about??? Where were you the past 29 years since ronnie alzheimer started the dismantling of regulations to protect from this state we are in??? etc.
At EVERY tea-bag location Democrats should set up FREE COFFEE STATIONS... to help these idiots to WAKE UP and CLEAR THEIR HEADS.
OF ROSES!
that one of these here yesterday (Studio City) was organized by Democrats WTF?
...that Iraq has WMD's. Don't believe everything told to you by corporate media news.
Not saying it wasn't organized by Dems, but that's a fact I'd check before just accepting.
http://dailypuma.blogspot.com/2009/04/tea-par...
Seems they are not protesting the US Government, but WaMu/Chase bank. Atleast that's my take on why the protest is being organized and the point of it's location.
"My Daily-Protests started last Monday, but this is the kick off of the nationwide TEA PARTY protests that will be running through April 15th. I plan on continuing after April 15th because there are specific, illegal things being done by the Credit Card companies that need to be immediately stopped,..."
But I get your point, and must credit you sir/madam with doing your research.
Seems like the MSM lumped it all together with the tea-baggers. No big surprise they didn't look deeper...
Tue, 03/24/2009 - 22:00 — Truth_Critic
collaboration with the Nazis (Historic Footage)
[ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W2JkpQ4b3J0 ]
Conason: Time to Find Corporate Billions Kept Offshore
By Susie Madrak Tuesday Mar 24, 2009 6:30pm
[ http://crooksandliars.com/susie-madrak/conaso... ]
They'll probably try to paint the thousands of LBGT "tea party" protesters as being part of the teabaggers protest too come Wednesday.
These tea parties are about the absolutely out of control spending that this nation has been doing. (under Bush too)
People with half a brain can understand that if you are in real trouble, you have to cut spending. What we are doing now is burying ourselves and more importantly our childrens' future in a never ending cycle of debt. Do you want your grandkids to be indebted to the Chinese? These tea parties are people getting together and saying stop this madness. This is nuts. We can't spend our way out of debt or to prosperity. We have to work our way out. If the left cannot see that (some can, you have democrats setting one up there) this is about our nations future and not about left or right then they are the ignorant ones.
The scumbags at Fox understand what the GOP understands as well; the ignorant "tea baggers" are just contemporary Confederates. If you scratch the thin surface of their nonsensical and contradictory ranting, you'll find the grinning ghost of Lee Atwater. It's all about fear and loathing of brown people.
Yes, all too often, as has happened in America, hatred cloaked under the rubric of "free speech" can turn into violence. The right wing continue to echo this plausible deniability trick when their flock go out and bomb abortion clinics, the Olympic Park, Gay Night Clubs, killing gay people-Matthew Shepard-in Wyoming, and dragging black men to their deaths--as in the James Byrd case in Texas.
The right wing will always say, "we didn't say that," without realizing the word "implication" exists in the dictionary and one does not have to say it outright in order to have the same effect/meaning.
So, I agree with what you said above here.
god man you are inept. why is it always about race? The left makes it that way, that's why.
In the past DCI (Washington DC and Phoneix) and it's partners have created many a so-called organization to publicize Repuke agendas. They and the US Chamber are the ones responsible for selling Bush's prescrition drug card plan to America. They invented several fronts for that cause... they could be the real muscle behind this latest BS!
The 25% of which you speak is pretty much the Repuke base. Perhaps 5/10% are just sheeple but there always seems to be a base of 15/20% that are just "anti-dem". There will never be any gettting through to them; you could elect Jesus as President and they are the types of mofos that would crucify him. These people are easily led by those in whom they beleive and are a danger to any sane thinking person.
Please explain to me why these right wingers who are so upset with Pres Obama's spending had little or not problems at all with Bush's out of control spending.
In fact they attacked the patriotism of anyone who questioned Bush's reckless spending-and now they attack the patriotism of anyone who defends Pres Obama....
Let's not forget that Atheism is also being "tea-bagged" by the right.
By the Rapture Right!
www.youtube.com/use/theraptureright
It's hilarious!!
The right will always points to the "liberals" as a threat to national security and the American way. However, if I were a member of a foreign power think-tank intent on ruining the country I would propose pouring in money to support Faux News, right-wing talking heads, and their various initiatives. Who would ever suspect the right and their motives?
Right wing conservatives have zero concept of the meaning of liberty and freedom, and they are proudly ignorant of history.
FOX is openly hostile to anyone who disagrees with the republican party line.
As a Bostonian who is poud of my local history, it's offensive to me when the right wing tries to compare what they are doing to the events of the Boston Tea Party.
Any other Bostonians here feel the same way? Try asking a right winger the details of the Boston Tea party, as to why it happened who was involved and when it occoured- Rest assured you will be greeted with blank stares and befuddled looks..
As I see it so many of these tea bagger types are absolutely apoplectic about the fall of caucasian dominance of America. They cannot stand the idea that their tax dollars are spreading their wealth to all "those" others.
And of course we have an industry that just feeds into this boiling cauldron that I suspect ain't gonna end with just steeping some toxic brew.
A sizable number of militant militas in this country are white supremacy groups- and what they think is on the horizon is a race war-
Their anti immigration rhetoric is thinly guised racial hatred of all latinos.
They are petrified that we have a black president. Glenn Beck is trying to appeal to racist whites- BUT they will find that despite their loud bravado, racist white men are not in a majority in this country.
They should rename Fux News into Demagogue Central where dim witted Americans go to get brainwashed.
From a reverse psychology perspective...
April 12, 2009 / DOBSON POINTS TO CULTURE WAR DEFEAT....
Snip - "James Dobson delivered a farewell speech to the Focus on the Family staff, and conceded that the culture war he helped start hasn't turned out well for the agents of intolerance. Indeed, Dobson almost sounded resigned to defeat."
→ → →[ http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/ind... ]
They're being played by both sides...
Fox is obscuring the issues.
Just to clarify, it is the Bush Obama McCain Bailout, or BOMB for short.
Anyone who thinks it is a GOP vs Dem thing is among the deceived.
It is a Predator State versus the prey.
Trillions for the Oligarchs bled from we the peons is the short and long of it.
The tax on we the peons will not just be on April 15th. It will the tax of stagnation and diminished prospects.
Fox would never talk about that but we all should.
I really wish one of the progressives would point out that the original boston tea party was the powder keg reaction to the king lowering taxes for his homeys, not a revolt against him raising taxes on the colonies
See four posts from the top of this thread...
It sure is funny to hear the right talking about teabagging, but it's also interesting in a way - I was just listening to an episode of The Joan Kenley Show (progressive Bay Area podcast) called The Media: What’s True, What’s Not that addressed how the right-wing corporate media will use catch phrases (like "socialism") and single-line branding to manipulate the information we hear. After getting in touch with all the ways that's worked for them, it's kinda nice to see this entry about a way it clearly is working against them!
Teabagging.
I'm still scratching my head over that one.
They haven't got the backs for sandbagging.
It just sounds wrong for a couple of reasons:
(1) Teabagging also refers to something that... well, let's just say that a certain South Park three-parter revolved around it.
(2) As I recall from my American history, the Boston Tea Party - the protest-du-jour of the right-wing - was about taxation without representation. I don't see any "without representation" going on here. And, for most of the people that will be at these protests, I don't see much "taxation" happening either.
The percentage of Americans who self-identify as Republicans is the lowest in 40+ years. So, instead of building up the brand, re-establishing their party infrastructure, registering voters, for crissakes, hiring the staff for the RNC that Steele fired, they engage in gimmicky PR stunts. I say, LET THEM!!! They will be lucky to maintain their current House seats in 2010, and with 5 incumbent Republican Senators retiring, they may even lose ground there (getting the Dems to the magic number 60).
Know what the Republican party needs? The much-maligned COMMUNITY ORGANIZERS!!!
I'm sorry - I simply can't watch this crap.
Why are the comments closed on the Bayh thread?
*
Comments are closed above on Evan Bayh thread.
{ Thank You. It's been taken care of. SiteMonitor}
I'm sure they'll be open bayh and bayh.
They're a bunch of Lady Prunella Shrivelle-Buttes with triangular watercress sandwiches (crustless of course), and lady fingers.
http://www.victorianweb.org/art/illustration/...
by comparison, no? They definitely have smarter leaders than the GOP these days, anyway.
I agree with every comment here.
By ignoring any and all press coverage. Who cares about tea baggers. What are they going to do? Just add to the pollution by throwing tea bags in our rivers and streams or on the streets.
The rich say they are oppressed, what a laugh.
Their cause is facilitated by organizing through power of the media that they own.
All while the Fairness Doctrine is spinning in its Reaganesque grave.
These idiots apparently don't realize that most of them will be getting a tax CUT under Obama, and that most (if not all) of the best legislation of the past century or so (voting rights, workplace protections, etc. etc.) has been passed by liberal Democrats, not regressive, mossbacked, retrograde Republicans.
Gawd, their stupidity is simply astonishing.
BID
Under Bush they got a whopping $300 tax rebate, which they paid taxes on the following year, as they lost their house, their job and their 401K.
I think it's safe to assume the tea baggers aren't the brightest flames in the fire.
They're making real ashes of themselves.
tax CUT? Yeah $13 a week. WOW
What to do with $13 a week. Tobacco tax- raised
Cap and trade- higher energy bills
10 Trillion budget over 10 years. Yea, sounds like a real cut......
Workplace protection? What the hell is that? If your talking about the "employee free choice act" that is a joke. taking away the secret ballot will only ensure employees getting harassed into signing the card. This if passed is only to pay back the unions for all their money they donated to Obama's campaign. everything the progressive movement has ever done to this country has led to failure. Remember the 'new deal'
complete failure. if it were not for ww2 we would still be in that depression.
There's stiff competition for those who want to fluff up the teabagging events. Fox News may taint the movement with their overt brown nosing of Bush in the past. I think this tea bagging blocks their vision on what really needs to be done in America.
i'm curious, what do you think needs to be done?
Ignore the tax cut Obama gets you next year if you make less than $200,000. It's only your eyes deceiving you. Foxaganda is telling you are paying more so you are paying more. Do not under any circumstances, Believe. Your. Own. Bank. Account. Your bank account numbers lie. Reality isn't what it is unless Fox says it is.
So have a cup of Kool-Aid, a hand full of wingnuts, a tin foil hat and get ready to go a tea baggin against your own best interests!
Idiots.
to the lowest rate they have been in years!
The idiots are protesting taxes!
It absolutely baffles me how Fox "News" is allowed to use this name. I mean, this isn't political speech, it's corporate advertising. It ought to be regulated by the FTC and the FCC.
OPINIONS are not NEWS.
This spreading of disinformation disguised as news is why people believe what they say. There is more than enough reason to be furious, but it has nothing to do with taxes being raised.
If they really wanted to stage an appropriate protest, they'd hold BBQs and eat the CEOs.
These are the same people who still believe Saddam had something to do with 911, that the earth was created 6000 years ago, winged x-people fly around in the sky and play harps, a bearded sky man oversees everybody, that Obama is gonna take their guns, that homosexuality is a choice, and who supported McCain/Palin because Palin was on the ticket.
These people are not exactly 100 watt bulbs.
People aren't born believing that Saddam had something to do with 9/11. The idea was pounded into their head by the media, particularly Fox News.
And I have a lot of family and friends who may not be 100-watt bulbs, but they're good people who would do the right thing, were they to be presented with the truth.
....if they believe all of the above...well... far be it from me to insult your family and friends. Most people on this site had the same lies pounded in their heads too, somehow they came away not being swayed and conned. Does that make everyone here myself included a 100 watt bulb? Perhaps not. But we aren't exactly nightlights incapable of thinking for ourselves and seeing through the bullshit either.
The "under $250K" teabaggers will file their tax returns on 4/15, and scream, "My taxes AREN'T lower! The libruls LIED!" Yes, they ARE that stupid.
That the wingnuts are such noobs at these "grassroots" events. What will it be like when they get their shit together.
...shudder...
Check out the first two sentences of the site http://www.freedomworks.org/petition/iamwithr..., which is listed above.
"The taxpayer tea parties were wildly successful! Thank you to everyone who planned or participated in a tea party."
They haven't even happened yet; and still they WERE wildly successful.
Nice catch
we Americans have to be some of the dumbest bastards, easily manipulated for the greater good of the rich, that have ever walked the face of the Earth. The only way to confront these assholes is to take their money grab from them. For one, quit patronizing the companies that sponser the right wing propaganda machine(tea bag nonsense)that is Fox News. They will go away, when corporate America can no longer make a dime on the schlock they spew.
http://www.fastvideoindexer.com/Fast video indexer is a video capture software that can capture video frames automatically from a list of videos and create index web pages, index pictures or a list of images.
Blind, totally ignorant, Faux Noise NutO's just copy and follow what other nutty, uneducted Reslugs do.
The way I see it is Fox, in their defense of millionaires and billionaires, is encouraging the small people - the PAWNS - to cry out about taxes - taxes that WON'T effect them - in the hopes of getting noticed and having the taxes kept low for the wealthy also.
-------------------
The taxes do affect us. New fees are being assessed for things that previously were paid for by taxes. Those fees are in actuality, tax increases.
"After her sport utility vehicle sideswiped a van in early February, Shirley Kimel was amazed at how quickly a handful of police officers and firefighters in Winter Haven, Fla., showed up. But a real shock came a week later, when a letter arrived from the city billing her $316 for the cost of responding to the accident.
“I remember thinking, ‘What the heck is this?’ ” says Ms. Kimel, 67, an office manager at a furniture store. “I always thought this sort of thing was covered by my taxes.”
It used to be. But last July, Winter Haven became one of a few dozen cities in the country to start charging “accident response fees.” The idea is to shift the expense of tending to and cleaning up crashes directly to at-fault drivers. Either they, or their insurers, are expected to pay.
With the economy flailing and budgets strained, state and local governments are being creative about ways to raise money. And the go-to idea is to invent a fee — or simply raise one.
Ohio’s governor has proposed a budget with more than 150 new or increased fees, including a fivefold increase in the cost to renew a livestock license, as well as larger sums to register a car, order a birth certificate or dump trash in a landfill. Other fees take aim at landlords, cigarette sellers and hospitals, to name a few."
Login or Register to post comments.