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[Video from BlueStemPrairie, at their YouTube page.]

The teabaggers are getting ready for the next round of wingnuttery against the Obama administration. It sure looks like they lost on health-care reform, but they have already been organized for a long time around the issue of immigration, so they are ready and rarin' to go careening off the far-right cliff.

This weekend, the nativist right-wingers at ALIPAC and the National Policy Institute organized a series of "Tea Parties Against Amnesty.

However, at the rally in Minneapolis, the demonstrators got punk'd by a young man who called himself "Robert Erickson".

"Erickson" got up and delivered a rant against European immigration. At first the crowd was whooping and hollering as he talked about the rights of "real Americans" -- but then it gradually tapered off as he went on and they realized they'd been had.

Here's the speech:

Hi, my name is Robert Erickson and I’m really excited to be here. Its people like all of you, and events like this that make our country great! Give yourselves a round of applause!

I just want to talk about a couple themes this afternoon because I love this country and I want to see America be the best place it can be.

Mr. Gutierrez is getting ready to propose an immigration bill in just a few short days, and we have to make sure he knows that we want a bill that's tough on immigration. Now is the time for us to stand up and make our voices heard!

In Minneapolis, where I’m from, we have a huge immigrant population that’s been causing a number of problems. With the economy in recession, and so many people getting laid off, and unable to find work, immigrants should not be competing for the few jobs that are out there. It's just not fair to the folks who have a claim to this land and the right to be here. All across America, they are contributing to the flooding of our job markets making it hard for Americans to find jobs. Well, I'm fed up, and it's time to let our politicians know that enough is enough, and we're not gonna take it any more!

We need to secure our borders to protect our country. We need to restore order and put an end to the anarchy that's sweeping the nation. We need tougher immigration laws to make sure that we send these people back where they came from. We need to protect the sovereignty of the real Americans. We need to hold our politicians accountable.

It's no secret that with an invasion of immigrants comes waves of crime. We see them involved in massive theft, in murder, and bringing diseases like smallpox, which is responsible for the death of millions of Americans. These aren't new problems, though -- they have been going on for hundreds of years, and continue to this day.

I say it's time for us to say enough is enough! Are you with me? Are you with me? Let's send these European immigrants back where they came from! I don't care if they are Polish, Irish, English, Italian, or Norwegian! European immigrants are responsible for the most violent and heinous crimes in the history of the world, including genocide and slavery! It's time to restore the sovereignty of people native to this land!

I want more workplace raids, starting with the big banks downtown. There are thousands of illegals working in those buildings, hiding in their offices, and taking Dakota jobs. Let's round them up and ship them out. Then we need to hit them at home where they sleep. I don’t care if we separate families, they should have known better when they came here illegally!

If we aren't able to stand up to these European immigrants, who can we stand up to? We need to send every one of them back home, right now.

Thank you very much, and we'll see you in the streets!

Columbus Go Home! Columbus Go Home! Columbus Go Home!

Not surprisingly, the organizers were pissed. Sally Jo Sorensen at BlueStemPrairie was there to watch, and she reported that some of the nativists started getting violent:

Most of the MINN-SIR supporters were slow to catch the satire, and so the cheering from that side of the crowd took a while to subside. As they realized they'd been punked, they stood in a cold, stunned silence, while the 30 or so counter-protesters urged Columbus to go home.

Unfortunately, some of the pro-MINN-SIR audience made up for what they lacked in humor through the use of violence. Both Danielson and I saw middle-aged men attack young protesters, knocking one off a bike before he started throwing punches at the young man.

Just as shocking was the reaction of the state police working the rally, who pushed back those being attacked, rather than those attacking the counter protesters.

Neither of us have ever witnessed violence at rallies and events we've attended in the past. The attacks formed a sharp counterpoint to Hendrycks' shrieked claims from the podium that MINN-SIR "patriots" had "respect" while the young protesters were rude.

I've been warning for awhile that there is a violent element already involved in the immigration debate, and when they become empowered by the "tea party" types, it's going to get ugly. Looks like the debate hasn't even started yet, and it already is.

If you thought the town-hall teabaggers went nuts over health-care reform, just wait.

[H/t Matt Ortega.]

The title alone might make you think this is some feel-good fairy tale. Well the feel-good part is right, but the fairy-tale part isn’t.

Southwestern Ohio has become something of a Mecca for Tea Parties. On Labor Day weekend of this year a Tea Party was held at Voice of America Park in West Chester, Ohio in which an estimated 18,000 tea baggers showed up. In the lead up to last week’s NY-23 race, John Boehner even brought up this event while talking to John King, which was held within walking distance of his home.

So knowing this, you would expect that any tea party-style candidate would be a shoo-in for local office in this area, wouldn’t you? Well, don’t be so sure:

The reign of the anti-school tax activists on area school boards was a short one

[SNIP]

Fairfield School Board incumbent Arnie Engel, who tried four times to get elected to Fairfield Schools governing board before finally winning in fall 2005, this time finished a distant fourth in the race for three open seats.

In Warren County's Mason School Board race, self-proclaimed "Christian conservative" incumbent Jennifer Miller ended up fifth out of eight candidates vying for three seats.

In the Monroe school board race, fiscal conservative Mike Irwin lost his re-election bid, finishing dead last among five candidates.

All three of the school districts mentioned above surround the district where the big Labor Day Tea Party was held, and they are all represented by John Boehner and Jean Schmidt. They are also parts of the reddest corner of Ohio.

So while Republicans are celebrating their wins in New Jersey and Virginia last week, we need to remember that all politics are local. And you can’t get much more local than a race for school board. Results like these show that when push comes to shove, people really aren’t ready to give the conservatives any more chances.

Corrente: One Down: Schlecher County jury convicts Jessop of child rape. And speaking of convictions...

Open Left: Only fiscal conservatives would say we can't afford to reduce the deficit

TPMMuckraker: Patriot Games: GOP lawmakers skip national security votes to toast tea baggers

Oliver Willis: Eric Cantor, soon to be pimp slapped...watch, ring, and all

David Rees:10 jokes about Joe Lieberman

ANNALS OF JOURNALISM: Brad Jacobson's investigative series..."Official" media criticism...A perfect match...Odd couple...Coming Sunday: NYT does something unprecedented...WaPo Co. crashed-and-burned-and-smoking...Terrorism, Islam and Fort Hood...Huffington: We do not live in the age of misinformation..Journamalism....Bumped... Gibbs...Special Suburbanites...More honors for Sy Hersh...Scribe nominates himself for CA Lt. Governor...

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How is that the House Minority Leader can mix up the U.S. Constitution with the Declaration of Independence in front of a Tea Party crowd at the Capitol? Who knows..but he did it, pulling out his pocket copy of the Constitution he's pledged to uphold, today pledging to "stand here with our Founding Fathers, who wrote in the preamble: 'We hold these truths to be self-evident ..."

Here's more from Rick Sanchez.

SANCHEZ: Representative John Boehner is House minority leader, the number-one Republican in the House of Representatives. So, you would think that he would know the Constitution, know in fact the thing backward and forward.

Well, I got a bit of a surprise for you. Here's John Boehner just a short time ago, House Minority Leader John Boehner addressing a TEA Party rally against health care reform from the marble steps of the U.S. Capitol.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BOEHNER: This is my copy -- this is my copy of the Constitution. And I'm going to stand here with our founding fathers who wrote in the preamble, "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SANCHEZ: And do you believe it? As most fifth-graders would know, the document Boehner was quoting is not the Constitution. It's the Declaration of Independence. I'm assuming he knows the difference, but maybe -- I'm not sure now.

Those other House Republicans, the ones behind him, Roy Blunt, Virginia Foxx, Michele Bachmann, are they cringing in despair or just blissfully unaware? I don't know.

The GOP has embarrassed itself once more. How can they actively promote an event like their tea party/anti health care protest in DC and watch silently as disgusting signs and insane wackos fill their ranks? Well, it's easy to do when you have Rep. Michele Bachmann telling the teabaggers to "scare" her colleagues into voting against health care reform during this "Super Bowl of Freedom." I mean, come on. First of all she should be arrested for actively promoting this type of hatred form a current member of Congress and can she at least come up with a name that's not as ridiculous as she is?

OK, that's asking too much.

In a conference call Wednesday night with bloggers and activists for the advocacy group Americans for Prosperity, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) called on protesters to “scare” members of Congress into killing the proposed health care reform bill.

If the protesters succeed in scaring lawmakers, Bachmann said that it could cripple efforts to restructure health care for a decade.

“Nothing scares members of Congress more than freedom-loving Americans,” Bachmann said.

She said that members were frightened by the August town hall meetings, but “then they came back to Washington, and they got back in the bubble and Speaker Pelosi put the hammer down on the Democrats.”

Rep. Todd Akin is also one of those special kinds of idiots that occupy the rank and file tea party and he led the crowd in the Pledge of Allegiance because the word "God," just drives us all crazy. I guess he doesn't understand history very well because the original "Pledge of Allegiance" never had the word "God" in it at all, but nothing is allowed to interfere with their conservative/religious talking points.

At the Capitol Hill Tea Party just now, Rep. Todd Akin (R-MO) stepped up to lead the crowd in the Pledge of Allegiance -- which he said drives the liberals crazy.

"And so as we now renew our commitment to the Red, White and Blue, let us with boldness proclaim the fact that we are one nation under God," said Akin. "It is altogether fitting that we should do this -- and it drives the liberals crazy."

The crowd laughed, and joined Akin in the Pledge, with a genuine shout given to the key words, "...one nation, UNDER GOD, with liberty..."

And no matter what Eric Cantor says, signs that use images of Holocaust victims are just sick and were not planted by anyone but his own. Has he not seen even one teabagger protest? My God, (I used the bad word) that's the norm at these astroturfed gatherings.
And our pal Dana Milbank fills us in even more.

Many of the demonstrators chanted "Weasel Queen," their pet name for the speaker of the House. Others wore masks of Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.); they were covered in fake blood and carrying dolls representing aborted fetuses, as the Grim Reaper led them in chains to hell.

In the front of the protest, a sign showed President Obama in white coat, his face painted to look like the Joker. The sign, visible to the lawmakers as they looked into the cameras, carried a plea to "Stop Obamunism." A few steps farther was the guy holding a sign announcing "Obama takes his orders from the Rothchilds" [sic], accusing Obama of being part of a Jewish plot to introduce the antichrist.

But the best of Bachmann's recruits were a few rows into the crowd, holding aloft a pair of 5-by-8-foot banners proclaiming "National Socialist Healthcare, Dachau, Germany, 1945." Both banners showed close-up photographs of Holocaust victims, many of them children.

Continue reading »

BAGnewsNotes: Underneath the Hood

litbrit: The view (and racket) outside my window: St. Petersburg tea baggers attend party of NO class

Cogitamus: Dear Blue Dog Bartlebys: Do your 'effin jobs or quit

the peoplesvoice: The great foreclosure robbery of the 21st century

naked capitalism: Goldman, Fed, Citi getting preferencial allotments of H1N1 vaccine

Infrastructurist: The Daily Dig: Strangest Bridges Edition

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Michele Bachmann was on Glenn Beck's show yesterday -- with Judge Andrew Napolitano sitting in for Beck, who came down with appendicitis after his candidate, Doug Hoffmann, lost in the NY-23 race -- plumping her big Tea Party protest of the House health-care reform bill today on Capitol Hill -- which she calls "Super Bowl of Freedom".

According to ThinkProgress, Bachmann is calling on protesters to “scare” members of Congress into killing health-care reform. “Republican organizers are planning for activists to go into the House office buildings and the U.S. Capitol and confront members directly.”

You have to be a little concerned about the kinds of nutcases she's calling upon to visit their Congresscritters. After all, Bachmann herself is a promoter of far-flung "constitutionalist" conspiracy theories about replacing the American currency, youth re-education camps and Obama-ordered "concentration camps." Napolitano opened the segment with a clip of Bachmann grilling Tim Geithner with her otherworldly questions about the "constitutionality" of the stimulus package.

So of course, they couldn't help but indulge in a fresh round of paranoia about security for today's 'Tea Party':

Napolitano: I have to give you a little bit of a warning. I have a friend in the American intelligence community who lives and works around Washington, D.C., who told me: 'Watch out for Mrs. Pelosi making the security requirements almost impossible to get to this rally.' You guys have to watch out for that, that she doesn't do something to make it very difficult for the folks to come to this gathering at noon tomorrow.

Bachmann: Well, she controls the Capitol. She's a very powerful individual. And she controls ingress and egress, and so, I think it would be a big mistake for Speaker Pelosi to prevent the American people from coming to their House. This is their House, after all. This is why we need to make this emergency 'House Call' on Congress tomorrow.

One can only imagine some of these doofus teabaggers getting lost on the Metro and then blaming Nancy Pelosi for it.

Joe Sudbay posted this over at Americablog and I had to pass it along.

Remember Fox News' now-defunct Half Hour Comedy Hour? Not Funny. They just don't do cool, well. Case in point, teabagging rapper, Hi-Caliber. Forget about his fact-free, "patriotic rap," he just sucks. I'll let the C&L'ers pick this stinker apart in the comments. Anyone care to offer up a more appropriate rap name for this guy?

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Bill O'Reilly is "fascinated" with Sarah Palin, and has been featuring segments on her a lot of late. He had Glenn Beck on The O'Reilly Factor on Thursday night to talk about her prospects.

They agreed that her upcoming book tour is a "make or break" situation regarding her political future -- but that if she fares well with the media, she'll be well positioned for 2012. They also agree that resigning as governor before had even completed her first term was a "smart move."

Which gave Beck a launching pad for his prophesying mode:

Beck: Smart move. And I think she's also positioning herself for a third party. By the time this election runs around for the president, I'm sorry, but unless the Republicans and the Democrats wake up, a third party will win.

Presumably, by "wake up" Beck means "embrace the tea party philosophy of small government and big wingnuttery". The Democrats won't, but most likely the Republicans will. But I don't think it's going to be the recipe for victory Glenn Beck thinks it will be.

From the department of You Can't Make This Sh*t Up:

Republican Rep. Tom Price, of Georgia, has introduced a House resolution that would, if passed, express the legislative body's "gratitude and appreciation" to Tea Party members who marched on Washington on Sept. 12 to "show their love of liberty and their grievance with recent government actions."

The proposed resolution is co-signed by more than 70 members of the House.

The proposed resolution would single for praise the "hundreds of thousands of American patriots, who refuse to sit idly by as the Federal Government advances skyrocketing deficits, taxpayer-funded bailouts, pork-barrel projects, burdensome taxes, unaccountable policy czars, command-and-control energy policy, and a government takeover of health care, came to Washington, D.C, to show their disapproval ..."

So let me get this straight...Price wants to pass a resolution that would praise anti-government, right wing extremists who want to overthrow their president? Really? If one single Democrat votes for this garbage, you can be sure we will call them out and ridicule them mercilessly.

Just to be clear, there weren't hundreds of thousands of people at that joke of a march on September 12th. And this was not an anti-tax march, this was a well funded hate-fest that was organized by Fox News and Glenn Beck.

You can read Price's entire resolution here. For added entertainment, click through to the original article and check out some of the comments. Didn't they learn anything from our Jon Perr's 10 Lessons for Teabaggers?

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One People's Project has the full-length version of this video, taken from the big 912 rally in Washington, D.C., showing a middle-aged white man and his Asian wife chasing after and harassing a trio of black people -- primarily two teenagers and an adult guardian (possibly their mother) who were selling "Don't Tread on Me" flags along the long grassy mall.

As you can see, the man -- who identifies himself as Tim Jones -- shouts after them: "ACORN! These people are ACORN!!! They are frauds!!! ACORN is fraud!!! Obama sucks! This woman sells signs for profit of ACORN!!"

It attracts more harassers, and it verges on the point of an outbreak of violence when the D.C. bicycle police show up and break up the scene.

Now, how does Jones claim to know that they are actually ACORN workers? He says he overheard a police officer ask them if they were selling for ACORN and the young woman -- who appears to be a young teen -- told the cop "yes." The older woman tells him flatly they're not from ACORN, but he keeps shouting it anyway.

Most of all, Jones and his wife are harassing these people based on some shaky presuppositions: that a young teenage girl would answer a cop's question -- particularly the addition of the ACORN element -- accurately is probably the shakiest, but toss in the fact that "off brand" vendors, people who have nothing whatsoever to do with a political entity like ACORN, employing young African Americans often flock to these political events and sell whatever is selling in terms of hats, T-shirts, pins, flags, and whatever gewgaws can be sold. Cops regularly chase them off if they don't have a license.

Which is probably what these people were doing, and why they fled. Well, that and the fear of being lynched by these maniacs.

The bigger question is: Why target African Americans when there are are hundreds of vendors at these things? And why assume that they have anything to do with ACORN?

Because, to the teabaggers, ACORN is synonymous with scary black people. The kind who, in the minds of Glenn Beck and his followers, are lurking, waiting to overthrow America when Obama orders them to. (Even if they later turn out to be a dance troupe.)

As Susie says, ACORN is just the new wingnutspeak code for the 'N' word. It's now become an epithet -- one you can chase black people around with and accuse them angrily. Just what America needs right now.

[H/t Max Blumenthal.]

So I've been following the Tea Party objections to the health care reform efforts. They're worried about the deficit, they just want to be left alone without government interference, and they're especially angry at the government singling out some privileged groups for special subsidies. They're proud, self-sufficient patriots and they don't want handouts.

Kids, have I got a proposal for you.

I've discovered a regressive tax break that favors the wealthy and has no good rationalization for its continued use. (According to historians, it was an accident, anyway.) And oddly enough, it costs us about $100 billion annually, or $1 trillion over ten years - exactly the estimated cost of healthcare reform. Really, there's no other word for it but "pork."

It's the mortgage interest deduction.

No, it doesn't seem like a huge deal. (A lot of the people eligible for it don't even bother, because you have to itemize your tax return.) But man, it sure adds up:

But cumulatively, the deduction is a big deal. This year [Ed. note - in 2006, when this was written], it is expected to cost the Treasury $76 billion. And the rewards are greatly skewed in favor of the moderately to the conspicuously rich. On a million-dollar mortgage (the people with those really need help, right?), the tax benefit is worth approximately $21,000 a year. And according to the Joint Committee on Taxation, a little over half of the benefit is taken by just 12 percent of taxpayers, or those with incomes of $100,000 or more.

So clearly, this hits the sweet spot. Why insult people who are already doing well in the free market with this unnecessary and expensive handout?

And what better time to cut it, anyway? While housing prices are already dropping through the floor, this is when phasing out this deduction will have the least negative impact on housing prices. It will lower housing costs down to pre-speculation levels, and that means your paycheck will go farther. And it's something policy wonks on both sides can agree on.

President Obama's already on board with the concept. In his first budget, he proposed lowering the deduction in 2011 for those in the top tax brackets.(Special interest groups successfully opposed it.)

Edward L. Glaeser, an economics professor at Harvard, put it this way:

Problem #1: Subsidizing interest payments encourages people to leverage themselves to the hilt to bet on housing markets. The size of the tax benefit is proportional to your debt. The deduction essentially encourages us to make leveraged bets on the swings of the housing market. That leverage means that housing price swings can easily wipe people out. We are currently experiencing the consequences of subsidizing gambles on housing.

Problem #2: The deduction pushes up prices in places where the supply of new homes is constrained, as it is in many coastal markets. Economics 101 teaches us that if we subsidize demand where supply is inelastic then the only effect is to make prices go up. Housing supply is pretty constrained in places like New York City because of land-use restrictions and lack of land. In these places, the deduction doesn’t make housing more affordable. It just transfers money from buyers to sellers, and that makes little sense.

Problem #3: The deduction is wildly regressive. The tax savings for households earning more than $250,000 is 10 times the tax savings for households earning between $40,000 and $75,000 a year, according to recent research by James Poterba and Todd Sinai.

If there ever was a case for small-government egalitarianism, then this is it. Eliminating the home mortgage deduction and replacing it with an across-the-board tax cut would equalize after-tax incomes without a single new government program.

Problem #4: The deduction encourages people to buy larger, single-family detached homes, and that increases carbon emissions and pushes people out of cities. The deduction encourages people to buy more expensive homes, which are generally bigger homes.

Bigger homes use more energy. The deduction is therefore implicitly urging Americans to run higher electricity bills and spend more on home heating. If global warming is a serious problem, then the government should be encouraging us to live in smaller, not bigger, dwellings.

Problem #5: The home mortgage interest deduction is poorly designed to encourage homeownership, which is, after all, the alleged desideratum. Much of the interest deduction’s benefits go to richer Americans who are likely to own homes in any case.

In fact, just about the only special-interest group still championing the deduction: Realtors. Obviously, the bigger the house, the bigger the commission. But is that good for our economy? This was written in 2007 but it's even more applicable now:

Nationally, half of renters and more than one third of mortgage holders — 37 percent, up from 35 percent in 2005, or a rise of more than 1.5 million households — spent at least 30 percent of their gross income on housing costs, the level many government agencies consider the limit of affordability.

“Maybe it all means that housing is not as smart an investment for as many people as we thought,” said Matt Fellowes, a scholar in metropolitan policy at the Brookings Institution. “Stocks perform better than houses over time. Maybe the American dream should be building wealth in general, not building a certain type of wealth, which we see is narrow and dangerous.”

Fourteen percent of mortgage-holders spent at least half their income on housing in 2006, up from 13 percent last year, while among renters there was little change. In both years, 25 percent of renters spent half their income on housing.

The rising housing burden cuts into the money people have available for other expenses and anticipated the rise in foreclosures.

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CNN's Rick Sanchez to Fox News... You Lie!

SANCHEZ: And I welcome you back. I'm Rick Sanchez here in the world headquarters of CNN.

All right, there's something that I got to tell you now. If you watch this show every day, as I mentioned a while ago, you know that I usually don't suffer fools gladly, especially when it comes to the fools who perpetuate falsehoods.

Well, today, thousands of you flipped through the pages of "The Washington Post" only to come across a lie so bold and so upsetting that, frankly, I'm just not going to sit here in silence and allow my craft or my news operation to be unfairly maligned, because enough is enough.

And, yes, I'm talking to you, FOX News, you, who claim to be fair and balanced. At what, I wonder? You know, I don't know, but I have got a couple ideas.

FOX News (INAUDIBLE) color ad today. It asks: "How did ABC, CBS, NBC, MSNBC, and CNN miss this?" They are referring to the picture there of the tea party protest in the nation's capital last Saturday.

They are saying that we missed this story. They are saying we did not cover this story. They are using a lie to try and divide people into camps. And, you know, Americans are starting to get tired of this.

Look at the bottom of the ad there, where it says, "We cover all the news."

Really? You do? What, we don't?

You know, that's an offense to myself and to my colleagues, who risk their lives for our viewers in Iraq and Afghanistan and around the world to bring the news. You're actually telling people that we didn't cover a rally on Washington. Really?

Rog, roll the tape.

Continue reading »

Nope, no racism here! That's the conclusion of the Village bobbleheads, who in the past 24 hours solemnly nodded their heads as other Villagers said they were shocked, shocked that anyone thinks racism plays a part in the attacks on Obama. After all, didn't a lot of those same people vote for him?

Then they showed the racist signs from the Tea Party rally and said it was a very small minority, this is all about the policies.

And you know, they're actually right - just not in the way they mean.

Because all the powerful right-wing interests in this country really want is an opening, however small. It is all about the policies: Namely, anything that benefits the general population, and not them. The right wing has always been focused on their core mission: Cheap, disposable labor with no legal protections. (Ideally, living in complete insecurity and grateful for whatever crumbs they get.)

The tools they choose to use in their fight are almost incidental to the goal.

Remember, these are the same people who impeached the last Democratic president over his sex life. These are also the same people who asserted Hillary Clinton was a lesbian who was also having an affair with Vince Foster, who by the way, she had killed.

The vast right-wing conspiracy specializes in pushing emotional buttons. They say the most outrageous things they can manufacture, then sit back and watch the fun.

Right now, they're leaning on the race button for all it's worth - because it works. Because it splits us apart, and a split electorate is a lot easier to manipulate.

And here's how liberals add to the divide: "We don't want those people in our party! We don't want those stupid racists!"

Go ahead, keep telling yourself that. It's political suicide, but you keep yourself warm with all that righteous indignation.

I agree with Howard Dean: The guys with the gun racks in the pickup trucks are part of our natural constituency. They have more in common with the inner-city poor than they do with the boys on Townhall.com.

They're economically oppressed and badly served by their country. They often live in states with minimal education standards and little to offer in terms of upward mobility except the military. They work in mines, factories and fields until the day they drop, and no one gives a damn.

At some point (usually via talk radio), poisonous ideas worm their way into their brains. In classic political sleight of hand, their attention is directed "over there," where those brown people on welfare and all those got-dam illegal immigrants gather, sucking up all the opportunities.

And no matter how enthusiastically the white working-class poor cooperate with the right-wing master plan, no matter how tightly they embrace the hate, I still believe they're ultimately economic roadkill run over by the right wing, corporate machine - just like everyone else.

Let's make a distinction here. Yes, there's no question that the Tea Party movement is being led and manipulated by the usual right-wing suspects - but the individuals who are being led and manipulated, like most people, simply have no idea of the sophistication (and money) behind this "grassroots" machine.

Aboard the Tea Party Express (CNN) -- From the stage, Deborah Johns is the angry conscience of the tea party movement.

"Question everything your government is doing," she tells a crowd of about 100 from the bus's stage in the parking lot of the Winners casino in Winnemucca, Nevada.

Under a setting sun on the steps of the state capitol in Little Rock, Arkansas, Johns says: "Our men and women took an oath when they put on the uniform to defend and protect this country from enemies both foreign and domestic. I think we've got some domestic enemies in the White House."

On a sunny afternoon in Louisville, Kentucky, Johns works the crowd of about 2,000 into a frenzy.

"The men and women in our military didn't fight and die for this country for a communist in the White House," she says, and the crowd erupts in a chant of "U-S-A, U-S-A!"

On the bus, Johns slips off her heels and slips on a pair of ankle socks. She curls up under a quilt her grandmother made. She favors skirts and cardigans -- a pit bull in cashmere.

She leads the rallies in each city with Mark Williams, a former talk radio host who now writes books and makes the rounds on cable TV chat shows. Both work for Our Country Deserves Better, the conservative political action committee sponsoring the Tea Party Express bus tour.

Deborah Johns, Deborah Johns. Where have I heard that name before? Here's what Hart Williams has found:

Via Sourcewatch:

The officers of the Our Country Deserves Better PAC overlap extensively with current and former leaders of the pro-war organization Move America Forward (MAF). These include MAF co-founder and former chair Howard Kaloogian, who chairs the PAC; PR executive Sal Russo, who serves as chief strategist for both MAF and the PAC; Russo Marsh & Rogers principal Joe Wierzbicki, who serves as grassroots coordinator for MAF and coordinates the PAC; and Marine mom Deborah Johns, who is MAF’s director of military relations and the [new] PAC’s spokesperson.[2]

Sourcewatch continues:

Following the election of Barack Obama on November 4, 2008, the PAC put a poll on its website, asking supporters to weigh in on the group’s future. The poll asked the question, “Should we fight on for victory in 2010 and 2012?” and the possible responses were “YES – We must fight for victory!,” “NO – We should accept defeat and move on,” or “UNDECIDED/UNSURE.” [7]

In response to a blogger’s question, “What will the Our Country Deserves Better organization focus on now that Obama has won?,” Deborah Johns replied: “We do plan to be a watchdog for what happens in the Obama Administration, especially when it comes to matters concerning our military and national defense. We are also going to look at Congressional and Senate issues and hold them accountable as well.” [8]

Professional "Marine mom" Deborah Johns has been on this particular right-wing gravy train for a while:

* Spokesperson, "You Don't Speak For Me, Cindy" tour for Move America Forward and the "Support Our Troops" tour for which Hart Williams records indicating it was funded by the Department of Defense.

* Vice President, Our Country Deserves Better PAC, which oddly enough for a "grassroots" organization, registers its domain site through Australia.

This particular PAC spends quite a bit of money hiring Russo Marsh (the company which created it) to create astroturf campaigns and ads against Democrats. They also pay Deborah Johns "PAC consulting wages." (Oh, and the ever-elusive Endeavor Media, owned by Bobby Eberle, founder of Talon News, employer of one Jeff Gannon.)

PRWatch:

Craig Holman, the watchdog group Public Citizen's campaign finance lobbyist, agreed that "there's a lot of commingling that goes on" between PACs and non-profit organizations -- also referred to 501(c)(3) groups -- though "there is supposed to be a very significant firewall between them." Under current rules, "the objective is to make sure that whoever's making the decisions and directing the PAC isn't also making the decisions and directing the 501(c)(3). If they're the same people, they've got the same knowledge, they've got the same objectives. To me, that crosses the line. ... But most of these groups realize that no one's going to go after them."

Americanrivercanyon, the Daily Kos diarist who did the very heavy lifting on this, concludes:

These anti-health care reform "grassroots" efforts are not just being organized and funded from the health insurance industry, pharmaceutical industry, etc. - but from Dept of Defense Contractors that depend on Republican earmarks for funding, and Big Oil, which is engaged in a power struggle with the rest of the nation as they fight against turning towards creating and using more renewable energy.