Be fair—how can they report on opposition to a liberal government if they don’t manufacture the opposition?

“it’s not about any particular politician.”
lololol

There is a large part of me that leans conservative.
I think I am going to keep quiet about that fact for the next four years.
Well, even quieter.

did anyone else notice them pimping Malkin as “longtime Fox Contributor” while quoting her regarding her agenda to set these up?

How can anyone pretend that isn’t strongly partisan?

FOX is planning on some of these events becoming violent. They are trying to instigate violence, urging or daring we “Libs” to attend.  We may think its funny, but FOX and their cohorts are deadly serious.

OMG.  I thought the line about ACORN was just a throwaway joke.  I didn’t believe for one minute it was true…till I read the link.

Seriously, the response should be to ask them how much Obama raised their taxes.  With the exception of Malkin, the answer will be in negative numbers.  The next question should be “Why weren’t you up in arms about the unaudited no-bid contracts to Halliburton/KBR/Blackwater?”  The last question should be “Did you vote?”  Because then you are being represented properly in our democratic republic.  If you didn’t vote, then you have no reason to complain about a lack of representation, since you didn’t care enough to make yourself heard.

Oh, the person you vote for lost?  Too fucking bad.  You live in a democratic republic.  Deal with it.  You can still contact your representatives and make your voices heard.  You are not currently victims of “taxation without representation”.

Seriously, the response should be to ask them how much Obama raised their taxes.

The answer for 100% of the U.S. taxpaying population - not one red cent, as of today.

And for 95% of the public, they’ve gotten a tax reduction since Obama became POTUS.  Those folks making more than $250K per year?  Their taxes won’t go up for another 2 years, because Obama hasn’t repealed the Bush Tax Cuts, and he won’t.  They will expire in December 2010.

I’m still a little stunned by a conversation I had with my brother tonight.  He seemed to strongly hint that he—who keeps a picture of Ronald Reagan on his desk at home and at work—voted for Obama.

If my lifelong Republican brother voted Obama over McCain this year, seriously, it’s game over for the Republicans.  All they have left is the fringe nutjobs.

Heh! I looked at the website for PA. 15 “teabaggers” for all of Pennsylvania and keep in mind that that’s BOTH Harrisburg AND Philadelphia. They’re gonna use Love Park in Philly. Good luck being noticed! They’ll find it difficult to be distinguished from the usual lunch crowd.
And yeah, typical uninformed me. “Teabagging” is apparently a sexual term. Who’d a thunk it?

“Organizers say up to 20,000 could flood City Hall Park in New York City, where Newt Gingrich is scheduled to speak.”

Firstly - “up to” and “could” - weasal words!  Hey, it’s just as accurate to claim that up to three million could show up.

Secondly - who gives a fuck?  Do you know that at the height of Bush’s popularity and at the height of the popularity of the Iraq war (and oh yeah, both were well-loved at one point, please let’s not forget it), I marched in NYC, New York fucking city! in an anti-war march that had a couple of hundred thousand people, and it was not even mentioned in the mainstream media, including in the Ny Times, whose backyard we marched through?  And now they are going to cream themselves over a few thousand people?

Man, this really pisses me off.

“Teabagging” is apparently a sexual term. Who’d a thunk it? “

I certainly would have had no idea, except that Kim Catrell talked about it on SATC one time.  But now that you know it, it does give new meaning to those dopes holding up those “TEABAG THE LIBERAL DEMS BEFORE THEY TEABAG YOU” signs.  I still crack up every time I see that one, because of this.

FOX is definitely lending a helping hand—mainly through heavy, friendly coverage—but there’s also A LOT of grassroots action at work here.  I’m not a Tea Party guy, though I might drop by the local one just out of curiosity, but I know one of the chief organizers here, and I can tell you for sure, here in RI at least, FOX has nothing to do with it. It’s just a bunch of pissed off wingers doing their thaaang.

If you didn’t vote, then you have no reason to complain about a lack of representation, since you didn’t care enough to make yourself heard.

You know, as much as I hate these assholes, I don’t think this is entirely fair.  Government should represent everyone, not only the people who voted for this particular set of leaders or the people who agree with the party in power.

... And now they are going to cream themselves over a few thousand people?

Not to mention, yeah, right, AS IF they’re going to get 20,000 people to turn out on for a rally on a weekday during the middle of the day. 

I’m wondering if the organizers weren’t told by the city when they applied for permits that City Hall Park has a capacity of 20K, and if they go over that they’ll have to turn people away or be shut down.  Which last time I checked does not mean 20,000 people are coming to your rally.  It means that’s the largest number of people who would be allowed to attend.

Are there 20,000 rightwing wackjobs in New York?  The most conservative people I’ve ever met here were “Reagan Won The Cold War!” types and fiscal conservatives of various stripes, not the tin foil hat folks you find in the rest of the country.  New York is the sort of place where a white person publicly and persistently using the N word can make the evening news.

here’s also A LOT of grassroots action at work here.

Can you name some of the organizations which are sponsoring the actions? 

I know from working in leftist organizing that usually a protest of any size (especially something that is organized in concert with other actions around the country or on a global scale) usually has a few somewhat large or well-known groups associated with it.  On the left back when I was more involved it was likely to be ANSWER, United For Peace And Justice, Not In My Name, Military Families Speak Out, Mobilization For Global Justice, and the like. 

Generally these organizations would be prominently mentioned in connection with the actions, including having their logos on fliers for the event.  It’s very easy to discover which grassroots political groups are involved in a leftist political action.  So where are yours?

Wow!  If they get the PUMAs involved too, there could be up to 200-million TeaBaggers!  This is definitely a true, genuine, authentic example of grassroots action by The American People, who are sick and tired of the extreme, ultra-liberal, un-American Socialism the Democrat Party has been illegally and immorally imposing on Americans since Hubert Humphrey was elected President in ‘68. 

Jimmy Carter, Walter Mondale, Michael Dukakis, Bill Clinton, and Al Gore have been the most socialist, anti-democratic, communist, fascist, liberal, redistributionist American Presidents ever!  And now this Indonesian “Barry” Obama looks even worse!  We must band together to turn back the forces of progress and return this country to the glory of the late 19th Century!

Everybody should find a TeaBagging and engage in some heavy-duty TeaBaggery to protest our government, which has lost its way and must be put back on the straight and narrow!  It’s a sacred and patriotic act…!

LOL @ MikeEss

Opoponaz, I don’t know if there are 20 thousand right wing nuts in NYC itself, but in the surrounding areas, I’d say, yeah.  On LI we’ve got plenty of them.  Certainly in no way a majority or anywhere close to it.  But I used to hang banners off of the LIE overpasses, and they were always torn down.  So I started putting up “Pray For Peace” banners, even though I am not religious, figuring who could really rip something like that down?  Well, they did. I don’t think they are aware that Jesus sometimes goes by “The Prince of Peace”.  So I know you could probably scrape together several thousand off of LI.

Sure, but how many of those folks are going to go out of their way to attend a rally in the middle of the day on a weekday in Manhattan?  If you live in LI and are in Manhattan on a weekday, you’re likely working.  And I know from my own experience that if you hold anything like a regular 9 to 5 job, you can kiss attending rallies held during your workday goodbye (even if they are vaguely convenient to where you work).  Most workplaces aren’t real into employees wandering off for several hours during the day.  And it takes a damn dedicated partisan to take a sick day to do something like that—I seriously doubt that 20,000 people in the NYC area are going to do that.

Oh yeah, I agree.  There’s no way they’ll have 20 thousand there.  They’re FOS.  And most of them will be professional operatives.  Remember the “rising up” of people in the street in Florida during the 2000 recount?  And then it ended up that they were actually RNC operatives.  You know, but the media keeps falling for this shit, or just pretends to, for their own reasons.

I’ve actually taken sick days to go to anti-war protests!  But you’re right, only a very dedicated activist is going to do that.  I remember calling my boss from McArthur airport on a Thursday to tell her that I was so sick that I wouldn’t even be surprised if I wasn’t in tomorrow either.  I would have been even more surprised if I were in tomorrow since I was about to board a plane to Washington DC.  But the left has always had that, you know?  The right, they pay for their “grassroots” activists.  Unless we are talking anti-choice activists, then all bets are off.

I’ve also called out a couple times, though it was generally back when I worked retail and was often calling in sick to go to a big weekend protest.  I remember calling in sick FROM THE BUS to the March For Women’s Lives, for instance.  Ah, my rebellious activist days…

I still can’t believe they’re using the verb “Teabagging” with a straight face.

Uh, 20,000 people couldn’t flood City Hall Park, because there isn’t space for 20,000 people to stand in City Hall Park. If they’re using the parking lot in front of City Hall, there’s space for maybe a couple thousand packed like sardines. If they’re using the lower section south of there, most of the space was railed off back when it was converted from a real park to Checkpoint Rudy.

But the nice thing about packing people like sardines in a small space down there is that you can get the camera angles to suggest a huge crowd in the center of the metropolis without more than a few dozen actually in the frame.

The last question should be “Did you vote?” Because then you are being represented properly in our democratic republic. If you didn’t vote, then you have no reason to complain about a lack of representation, since you didn’t care enough to make yourself heard.

Oh, the person you vote for lost?  Too fucking bad.  You live in a democratic republic.  Deal with it.  You can still contact your representatives and make your voices heard.  You are not currently victims of “taxation without representation”.
Caren-Sun-blocking Creator of Animorphic Pancakes on 04/11 at 08:32 PM

[My emphasis on the part Oppo cited—MHF]

You know, as much as I hate these assholes, I don’t think this is entirely fair.  Government should represent everyone, not only the people who voted for this particular set of leaders or the people who agree with the party in power.
The Opoponax on 04/12 at 05:33 AM

Um, yaaas. “Should.” I use the word “should” a lot myself. But does our representative republic model guarantee that a particular majority regime will take due consideration of the minority view? Or even fairly consider the interests of those citizens even from their own point of view? Of course not!

One of the mechanisms that ought to motivate such a majority to have some consideration for the minority is that votes can shift—if everyone is allowed to vote and have their votes counted every time. This means a new majority can form around a different program, and that new majority can and should undo some of the policy initiative of the old one that lost power, presumably because critical supporters of the old order changed their minds based on the results.

But do you think, Opoponax, that the Republicans were paying any attention to the very large minority (in many respects, actually a majority) in opposition between 1994 and 2006?

By the very logic of a representative republic, they ought, by the same token, to expect not to have their policies maintained today, now that the shift has finally happened.

Sadly, the appreciation of the meaning of a representative republic is not symmetrical between the parties. Democrats, even when they enjoy comfortable majorities, just about always worry about their obligation to listen to all sides, include members of their conservative opposition in their bodies both legislative, executive, and even judicial, and are often browbeaten into going along with them themselves.

Back in Eisenhower’s day, he ran his Presidency on such principles himself. But at least since Reagan, the Republicans think of themselves as the only legitimate rulers; if democracy puts someone else in power, then democracy has failed!

It’s not so strange then that some of us on the Left have adopted a mirroring view; I never regard Republicans—at least not the type who still hold sway in the South, or in California or Nevada where I’ve been living my adult life—as legitimate either, precisely because I know from experience they disregard the interests of huge swathes of their communities. (One reason the Republicans lost control of California in the late 1990s was that Governor Pete Wilson demonized Latinos, for instance; this got him reelected in 1994 but galvanized Latinos to greater political activism and drove them to the Democrats. There are a lot of Latinos in California…)

I agree that if we take the view that a 50 percent plus one majority can run roughshod over the other side until the next election when the other side takes its turn at payback, we soon won’t have a republic at all; one side will seize power irreversibly lest total chaos reign—goodbye democracy. But what are we supposed to do when one side feels entitled to do just that, and appears to have the means and will to try and make that total seizure of dictatorial power?

My perception is, Republicans still have too much entrenched power; part of the problem (and the underlying reason for the asymmetry of belief) is that wealth rules, and the overall interest of the wealthy is against that of the majority. For the former to live amicably with the latter they need to be convinced that majority will will ultimately prevail, but our plutocrats have been very successful at ruling despite the public interest and it will take a lot of persuading for them to give that privilege up.

This is why I am sure that if only 10,000, or 5000, of the speculative 20,000 rightist protestors show up, Fox will play it as a big rally and the other media will play catch-up and me-too, and no one in those circles will acknowledge how there were protests ten times bigger 5 years ago they ignored completely.

Two things are clear about the right-wing spin machine:

1) They’re very butthurt about Obama not knuckling under to their agenda.
2) They are determined to disrupt the government of the country as much as possible, and don’t care one iota whether Obama’s policies work or not.

To watch Maddow get through a piece on “teabagging” with that shit-eating grin on her face and barely in control is amusing beyond belief.

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!

I certainly would have had no idea, except that Kim Catrell talked about it on SATC one time.  But now that you know it, it does give new meaning to those dopes holding up those “TEABAG THE LIBERAL DEMS BEFORE THEY TEABAG YOU” signs.  I still crack up every time I see that one, because of this.

It’s a major theme in the Jon Waters movie Pecker as well. >:)
That’s my go-to mental imagery when this ridiculous crap gets brought up.

Gotta love how their entire understanding of pre-revolutionary history and thinking is completely superficial and fetishistic.  These people are after reversion, and would have been the worst sort of tarred-and-feathered tories had they lived in colonial times.  If they actually read and understood the thinking and social forces that lead up the the revolution (plug for JL Bell’s Boston 1775 Blog goes here), they would be freaked out by the degree of subversion, radical thinking, and community organizing involved in the way the North American colonies just decided to tell the King to stuff it.

J. L. Bell takes on the Teabaggers and their revisionist revolutionary zeal directly

A far as ACORN and infiltrating, it would be funny to see these people turn on their own on suspicion of infiltration.

Otherwise, it would be fun to send in a group of guys in boxer shorts to form a “Boxer Rebellion” against taxation of any kind, ready to teabag at a moment’s notice if ACORN showed up ...

You know, if it wasn’t in and of itself a form of violence and an incitement, I’d suggest a counterprotest involving gigantic buckets of iced coffee.