Oh, Tea Party Patriots. How many times must you be reminded that you are, for the most part, irrelevant? Make all the scary movie trailers you want to fire up the last vestiges of paranoid Americans, but rest assured the only ones it resonates with are paranoid right wing Americans.

RJ Eskow picked up on this little gem of a movie trailer which was, according to him, a hit at CPAC. Somehow I am not surprised. Here is RJ's short summary of the movie they're promoting:

These films portrayed centralized government as Evil incarnate. Their scriptural source was the Book of Revelations, whose cryptic, evocative prophecies have fascinated and frightened believers for millennia. The same message resonates in “Movement On Fire,” which opens with a young woman staring across a river toward a city. “It was created to give us freedom,” she says in a voiceover as a torch burns beside her. “Our city became a great beacon of liberty and hope to the world.” The wind lightly ruffles her hair. “It was a shining city on a hill,” she adds, quoting the phrase that passed from the Bible to Puritan minister John Winthrop before winding up in Ronald Reagan’s 1976 concession speech.

“But 15 years ago,” says the narrator, “something happened.” Shadowy hooded figures creep up behind her. “Freedom died.” In a shot that moves so quickly we barely see it, one of the figures covers her eyes.

News anchors report on the rise of the “Development Party,” which took control of the city after winning control of its “Senate.” (Hmmm. Cities don’t have “Senates.” Who could they be talking about?) We see a gray-haired man with large, black, nearly pupil-less eyes. “All must contribute,” the dead-eyed “Troy Marcus” intones, “because from each, everything shall be given to all.”

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Nazi comparisons seem to be fundraising stalwarts, especially for Tea Party groups. First President Obama, now Karl Rove, thanks to a Tea Party Patriots fundraising email sent out over the weekend.

Not that I entirely disagree, you understand, but the whole "so and so is a Nazi" thing is overdone and minimizes the actual horrors Hitler brought down on the world. Karl Rove is an evil, evil man, but that evil is almost eclipsed when they portray him as a Nazi.

According to Politico, TPP co-founder and national coordinator JennyBeth Martin is now embarrassed and denies any knowledge of the email that went out under her name:

“Wipe the Smirk Off Karl Rove’s Face,” reads the subject line of the email from Jenny Beth Martin, co-founder and national coordinator of the Tea Party Patriots.

The email features a photo illustration in which Rove’s face is grafted onto a photo of a uniformed officer in the Reichsführer-SS, an elite class of soldier in the German Schutzstaffel during Adolph Hitler’s Third Reich. The lower left-hand corner of the photo features the inscriptions “Reichsführer-SS” and “K. Rove,” and appears to match a photo of SS Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler.

Jameson Cunningham, a spokesman for Tea Party Patriots, told POLITICO “the image was a mistake which was never approved by TPP.”

Cunningham provided a Microsoft Word document with what he said was the fundraising email as approved. It featured a link to a photo of an image of Rove appearing to thumb his nose. The next image in a slideshow on the linked page is the photo illustration of Rove in the SS uniform.

The text of the fundraising email is almost comically hypocritical.

Over just that last few weeks "Republicans" like Rove have called Tea Party members "racists","bigots," "paranoid" and even political "underbrush."

And now they've proved him right. Way to go, JennyBeth. Can't wait for your appearance on Hannity's show to smooth things over.

In a rare confluence of interests, the Georgia Tea Party Patriots joined with Occupy Atlanta, unions and the local LGBT community in protesting an ALEC-friendly bill that would place severe restrictions on public protests and the collection of union dues. This coalition has got to be making the state politicians very, very nervous, since it's in their best interests to keep us all divided. Via Daily Kos:

Georgia Senate Bill 469, which looks to place extreme limits on picketing, brought together an unlikely coalition of protesters at the Capital building on Saturday. The crowd, estimated at upwards of one thousand strong, was made up of local union members, Occupy Atlanta protesters, and many other groups who see the law as a violation of free speech and their right to peacefully assemble. Ben Speight of Teamsters Local 728 told the Atlanta Journal- Constitution:

"This is an extreme attack on our basic democratic rights. It's also an attempt to bankrupt and destroy our unions."

Occupy Atlanta participated in the event because the law prohibits protesting outside residences, making it impossible to demonstrate at CEO homes. The law has both an anti-union and anti-Occupy bias, not surprising considering four of the State Senators behind the bill are American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) members.

If Senate Bill 469 passes in Georgia it will likely make its way into other state houses.  This raises the stakes of the Georgia protests.

Unions are frustrated because the anti-picketing law attempts to sneak in paycheck deception language that would make it mandatory for unions to get written consent from members before automatically collecting dues.  

Senator Don Balfour, the bill’s sponsor, has recently amended the bill to exclude state teachers groups and police organizations from the mandate in the interest of “sweetening the deal’s chances.”  It appears, though, that the bill will face protest every step of the way.

Encouragingly, Tea Partiers are on the same side of this issue as unions and occupiers:

Julianne Thompson, Georgia state director for Tea Party Patriots, told The Huffington Post that she and her fellow organizers don't see SB 469 as a political issue so much as a free-speech issue. Thompson spoke out against the bill at the state capitol Monday."When we're talking about the first amendment of the U.S. Constitution, we're not talking about political right-versus-left. We're talking about right versus wrong," Thompson said. "If it's a violation of free speech we're going to be on the side of the Constitution. I'm happy that we've reached across party lines with regard to this issue."