Washington (CNN) – Just about every blockbuster movie is followed by a sequel, or two. The tea party cross country caravan, it appears, is no different.
A Tea Party Express official tells CNN that they’re planning a third national tour in late March and early April that will culminate in the nation’s capitol on April 15, tax deadline day.
Levi Russell, a spokesman for the group, which is organized by the conservative political action committee Our Country Deserves Better, says the slogan for the tour is “just vote them out.”
Russell says that with the crucial 2010 midterm elections just months away, the tour will spotlight members of Congress who they consider the worst offenders when it comes to fiscal policy. While both Republicans and Democratic lawmakers will be targeted, Russell acknowledges that more Democrats than Republicans will be on their scopes.
More Dems than Righties targeted? Who didn’t see that coming?
The Our Country Deserves Better PAC was on the campaign trail for John McCain in 2008. From CNN, August 2009:
Then Tony Harris did an interview with Mark Williams, the chief spokesman for Our Country Deserves Better PAC, the organization behind the “Tea Party Express.” And while Harris did try to ask Williams some skeptical questions, it was a very congenial segment.
Most of all, Williams was able to flatly deceive the CNN audience about their purpose and intent. Harris asked him whether or not the entire thrust of the “tea parties” was to attack President Obama’s policies — a reasonable point, since these “partiers” were nowhere to be found when George W. Bush was busily busting budgets and running up massive deficits in the name of tax cuts for the wealthy.
Harris, though, pretended throughout the segment that they were purely a nonpartisan outfit only angry about over taxation. Which is a large wagonload of hooey.
The “Our Country Deserves Better” PAC, in fact, was founded in August 2008 — before the election — specifically to oppose Barack Obama and his policies. (They called it “drawing contrasts between Senator Barack Obama and John McCain”.) In October 2008, for instance, Williams was out on the stump campaigning against Obama as a “socialist” on a previous bus tour called the “Stop Obama Express”. They’ve also runs ads comparing Obama to Hitler.
After McCain got spanked in November, 2008, the Our Country Deserves Better PAC became rebels without a cause – until the health care reform issue became prominent in the news and money from AHIP and others started circulating to various organizations. The tea-bag protests became a well organized and well funded effort to help defeat the public option by interrupting the normal August recess town hall meetings. The Rachel Maddow Show addressed the issue of how a well organized effort was planned and financed to high-jack town hall meetings:
Here’s my shocking truth: I think that news of even more Tea-bag protests coming next year is wonderful! It gives the American citizens, the normal ones, the ones that will actually make a difference in November 2010, another chance to see just how loony the right-wing has become. It is important, though, to point out that the main stream news media has given just a little more credibility to these fake grassroots organizations and their crazy-talk slogans than they deserve. It would be important for us to speak to that issue, but leave the sign toting nut jobs alone.
As a matter of fact, I think it would be beneficial for progressives to attend as many of these tea bag protests as possible. Progressives should bring signs that have populist slogans. Here is a few of my ideas for signs (I have no imagination, so come up with your own):
“More Public Sector Jobs!”
“We Need The WPA NOW!”
“Balance the Budget – No More Wars On Credit!”
“Tax Cuts For The Middle Class!”
“Stop Taxing The Poor! Tax The Rich!”
“Repair Our Roads And Bridges!”
“Stop Sending Our Jobs Overseas!”
“Buy American Products!”
“Fair Trade, Not Free Trade!”
“Protect American Jobs – Tax Imports!”
“More Investments In The Power Grid!”
“Invest In Our Nation’s Education! – Increase Pell Grants!”
Cheney told CNN’s “State of the Union” that the Bush administration’s “alternative” interrogation techniques were “absolutely essential” to preventing further assaults like the September 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington.
Critics said those techniques amounted to the torture of prisoners in American custody.
Critics? That sounds like the old term “Bush Haters”. “The Bush hating, tree-hugging, liberal hippy fags said those techniques amounted to the torture of…”.
“Critics said” are weasel words. That is Katie Couric’s favorite lead-in to a question. “Some say”, “others argue”, “critics said”, it is all the same thing.
Besides, those techniques were, in fact, torture and were, in fact, illegal. Torture did more to endanger American lives in the ME than other factor. Intelligence analysts claim that torture was al-Qaeda’s most powerful recruitment tool. When you place a beloved leader behind bars in Gitmo and then deny them the right to see the Red Cross/Crescent or to have legal representation you shake the hornets nest back in the leader’s home and recruitment in Al-Qaeda becomes easy. Then you take it a step further by implementing torture and then you have yourself a big problem. The Republican response is, once again, untrue and off the mark.
Former Vice President Dick Cheney
And who listens to this chump? Weren’t his numbers in single digits?
Media Matters: Coverage of economy repeats Iraq mistakes
From: Media Matters for America [action@mediamatters.org] Sent: Friday, January 16, 2009 5:40 PM To: tomc2322 Subject: Media Matters: Media Matters: Coverage of economy repeats Iraq mistakes
CNN senior political analyst Bill Schneider wonders, “How long will the voters give President Barack Obama to turn the economy around?” Looking back at Presidents Reagan and Clinton, Schneider finds that “Obama can expect midterm grades in two years, and final grades at the end of four. Another conclusion: Grades are based on many subjects, not just the economy.”
I figure the pundits have reached the conclusion that this is no time to sit and pyne over how the economy got to the point it is in the first place. Because if they did, then they would pretty much set their own hair on fire when it dawns on them that the remedies that they espouse are the reason we are in such a deep recession.
Point being: Political fortunes can change in a hurry, and the media pundits are nearly as bad at recognizing that simple fact as they are at making predictions. Maybe it would be best to lay off the speculation that Obama won’t win a second term — at least until he begins his first. The time they save could be used to provide some much-needed balance to news reports about the current economic crisis.
Last weekend, CNN broadcast a two-hour special that consisted entirely of airing an anti-deficit documentary and discussing it with a handful of guests, all of whom agreed with the film’s contention that reducing the national debt must be an immediate and urgent priority.
Balanced news from CNN? The network that hired Glenn Beck?
This is not the first source of the “balance the budget” urgency that has popped up. It is the new talking point for the right-wing neo-nuts. Representative John A. Boehner (R) OH-10, the House minority leader,
was lamenting this on the House floor a couple days ago.
A comment by Boehner jsut two days ago concerning the $825 Billion stimulus package, from MSNBC:
House Minority Leader John Boehner
Boehner says that much of it isn’t going to do anything to help the economy in the short term. He says the approach by Democrats is to “clean out every dime from the taxpayer,” and that the nation can’t “borrow and spend it’s way to prosperity.”
That’s odd. Bush seemed to think we could “borrow and spend” like drunken sailors. Where was this “paygo” crowd that has suddenly arisen? Didn’t Bush & Kerry debate this subject? The Republicans scoffed at this idea in 2004. They were all about proving Reagan’s idiotic “trickle-down” true. Deficits meant nothing then, and Bush could just borrow and spend until the Treasury exploded, it didn’t’ matter. The stories did, and will always follow the corporate will. If the guy who signed my paycheck said to air a certain biased documentary, then I would have to do that or find another job.
Economist Dean Baker, co-founder of the Center for Economic and Policy Research argues that the film’s deeply flawed focus on the deficit is not only misguided, but dangerous: “The basic story of IOUSA is that the United States suffers from a massive deficit problem. The film constantly comes back to the deficit using a variety of measures that are intended to scare viewers into action. … Hopefully, the film will not have this effect, because there is nothing that the economy needs more right now than very large deficits. … If IOUSA viewers manage to persuade their representatives in Congress to balance the budget then they will be guaranteeing the country another Great Depression.”
Not only did CNN devote two hours to the wrong problem, neither the guests nor the CNN reporters involved offered any real solution. Early on in the program, Alice Rivlin, a director of the Office of Management and Budget under Clinton, did note that reducing overall health-care costs is one way to address Medicare spending — but her CNN hosts all but ignored her. Though CNN devoted two hours to the program, they never explored how we might reduce health-care costs — and that was the closest they came to offering an actual solution.
Reduce health care costs! What a concept! Single-payer health care is the best way to reduce costs. How much extra do we pay for the HMO management?
One way to reduce health care costs is to hang the HMO lawyers – the ones that come after those who can’t pay their massive bills. The insurance the patient thought they had didn’t pay like they thought it would and now they will lose their home. Now they get phone calls from collection agencies wanting the bill paid. Hang the lawyers, and watch health care get cheaper.
Thank you, Media Matters, for sending me this email. Thanks for pointing out the “chicken littleness” of CNN’s documentary.
Football’s heartland will become dangerously hot Back in November, GE’s TXCHNOLOGIST blog pointed out that climate change “could ruin Texas football,” indeed all southern U.S. football: The effects of climate change, so far, have been most noticeable in Texas, where a terrible drought has dried up football fields in small towns that used to look […]
The past week brought heightened discussion of a potential Israeli unilateral attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities. But House Intelligence Chairman Rep. Mike Rogers (R-MI), appearing on CNN’s State of the Union with Candy Crowley this morning, agreed that an Israeli attack would “light the Middle East on Fire” and could be “a real problem for […]
Appearing on Meet the Press this morning, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg expressed bewilderment at the many lawmakers in Washington who continue sabotage existing gun laws: BLOOMBERG: You’d think that if a congresswoman got shot in the head, that would have changed Congress’ views. I can tell you how to change it, just get Congress […]
The Super Bowl is pure American Red, White and Blue. And organizers are trying to throw in a shade of green as well. This year, the National Football league is undertaking a variety of initiatives — from an urban forestry program to donation of a small solar array — to “green” its operations. The most highly […]
Denver Broncos quarterback Tim Tebow opened the door to a future in politics during an interview with the Golf Channel’s Dave Feherty. “It could be something in my future,” Tebow said. Feherty began the conversation by lobbying Tebow to run. “I have an idea — would you ever think of running for office, please?” Feherty […]
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Astroturfers Plan More Tea Bag Protests (TRMS Video)
Re: CNN Political Ticker: All politics, all the time Blog Archive – Tea Party Express, Part Three « – Blogs from CNN.com
More Dems than Righties targeted? Who didn’t see that coming?
The Our Country Deserves Better PAC was on the campaign trail for John McCain in 2008. From CNN, August 2009:
After McCain got spanked in November, 2008, the Our Country Deserves Better PAC became rebels without a cause – until the health care reform issue became prominent in the news and money from AHIP and others started circulating to various organizations. The tea-bag protests became a well organized and well funded effort to help defeat the public option by interrupting the normal August recess town hall meetings. The Rachel Maddow Show addressed the issue of how a well organized effort was planned and financed to high-jack town hall meetings:
Here’s my shocking truth: I think that news of even more Tea-bag protests coming next year is wonderful! It gives the American citizens, the normal ones, the ones that will actually make a difference in November 2010, another chance to see just how loony the right-wing has become. It is important, though, to point out that the main stream news media has given just a little more credibility to these fake grassroots organizations and their crazy-talk slogans than they deserve. It would be important for us to speak to that issue, but leave the sign toting nut jobs alone.
As a matter of fact, I think it would be beneficial for progressives to attend as many of these tea bag protests as possible. Progressives should bring signs that have populist slogans. Here is a few of my ideas for signs (I have no imagination, so come up with your own):
“More Public Sector Jobs!”
“We Need The WPA NOW!”
“Balance the Budget – No More Wars On Credit!”
“Tax Cuts For The Middle Class!”
“Stop Taxing The Poor! Tax The Rich!”
“Repair Our Roads And Bridges!”
“Stop Sending Our Jobs Overseas!”
“Buy American Products!”
“Fair Trade, Not Free Trade!”
“Protect American Jobs – Tax Imports!”
“More Investments In The Power Grid!”
“Invest In Our Nation’s Education! – Increase Pell Grants!”
More?
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