A Tea Bagging Schism?

Evidently the "real" tea baggers are beefing with the "fake" teabaggers. I am sure hilarity will eventually ensue LOL.

Grass With No Roots

Rachel Maddow turns in another outstanding effort at exposing the astroturfing activities of the companies opposed to health care reform. This time she catches the American Petroleum Institute with their hand in the cookie jar.

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She's On Fire!!!

You can't stop Rachel Maddow, you can only hope to contain her!

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Seriously, is there a way we can nominate her for an Emmy or something? She deserves it if even only just for this week's work.

Kenneth Gladney, Fraud

YouTube was made for teabagging liars like Kenneth Gladney.

I thought conservatives were against frivilous torts.....

The Next Logical Step

Is anybody REALLY surprised that teabaggers are now threatening to shoot people? What else did you really expect? Now if the GOP will not come out and strongly denounce these kinds of threats and somebody ends up getting hurt they can kiss their party goodbye altogether. There won't be a Republican in this country that can get elected.

Totally Grassroots!

Someone should show Claire McCaskill this video and then ask if she stands by her words.




(h/t HuffPo)

If You Aren't Watching The Rachel Maddow Show, You're Missing Out

Rachel connects a few more dots to expose the people behind the teabagging protestors that are disrupting the townhalls of Democratic members of Congress. This time she connects some shady former Bush Adminstration officials.

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Then she calmly, carefully and politely connected Americans For Prosperity and their President, Tim Phillips, with this astroturfing effort and with catering to the religious right. If you pay attention you will actually see near the end of the interview where realizes that he has said too much and tries to call what she is doing gotcha journalism, but by that point it the cat was already out of the bag. I think he was thrown off because she was so mild mannered when asking him tough questions. So she came off as friendly all the while she was pulling negative information out of him. That's some top notch work righ there! She deserves an award for her reporting on this issue.

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I Need To Play The Lotto

I made this comment earlier today at The Plum Line:

Its all fun and games until somebody gets their a$$ whupped. I can pretty much promise you that sooner rather than later the tea bagging protesters will incite their crowd to violence. Especially if they start being confronted by liberals and progressives who support health care reform

New story on tampa area news website wtsp dot com, "Violence at Tampa health care forum"

Tampa, Florida - Angry protesters and strong supporters are clashing inside and all around a health care reform town hall meeting in Downtown Tampa. The meeting which was scheduled to begin at 6:00 at the Children's Board of Hillsborough County drew hundreds of people who quickly began to overwhelm staff and event organizers at the front entrance.

As the building filled to capacity, angry protesters stuck outside began to scream, yell, and chant. At one point, those trying to get inside began banging on windows as Tampa Police officers quickly spread out guarding all entrances.

10 Connects photojournalist Kevin Carlson, currently inside the meeting reports at least one fist fight breaking out inside. Some other journalists remain outside.

Democratic Congresswoman Kathy Castor and State Representative Betty Reed were hosting the event.

The Democrats better get in front of this story and I mean fast. I can guarantee you that the Republicans will try to say that the Democcrats are at fault for telling their supporters to start turning out to oppose the teabaggers.

Update: Just in case there was anyone still holding on to the false notion that these teabaggers are just expressing genuine "grassroots" anger...

Instead, hundreds of vocal critics turned out, many of them saying they had been spurred on through the Tampa 912 activist group promoted by conservative radio and television personality Glenn Beck. Others had received e-mails from the Hillsborough Republican party that urged people to speak out against the plan and offered talking points to challenge supporters.

If you can't even express your outrage in your own words, why in the hell are you at a townhall yelling?!

Who's Who

Rachel Maddow is doing an excellent job of exposing the people behind all these teabagging disruptions of Congressional Democrats' townhalls. She put a few more of them up on the summer jam screen tonight.

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Now what sucks is that hardly any other news organizations are reporting this kind of stuff. As a matter of fact even other personalities on MSNBC aren't even reporting just how bogus these people are. But bigger than that there are even some ConservaDems who are convinced that these people aren't astroturfed at all. Take Democratic Senator Claire McCaskill for instance. Normally I am a fan of hers but at times she just doesn't get it. Here is her tweet from earlier this evening.

I disagree that the people showing concern over some healthcare proposals are "manufactured" Real folks, strong opinions.

Many people on twitter tried to change her mind but she seems to be brainwashed herself. I wonder what she will say when she finds herself on a youtube clip.

Well what it comes down to is what Rachel said at the end of the segment. This whole movement is totally bogus and the rest fo the mainstream media needs to be reporting it as such.

Update: It looks like these outbursts are starting to back fire.

From the conservative paper Napa Valley Register

Monday night’s health care forum in Napa grew unruly and wild, with some critics of the current health care proposals seeking to derail the event, harming their cause and nearly destroying a meaningful forum on a critical topic for Napa and the nation.

The display was unwelcome — and unsuccessful if it was meant to move health care reform supporters toward considering the concerns of the critics. Several callers to the Register on Tuesday reported they were repulsed by the aggressive tactics of some members of the crowd.
To the degree the catcalls, chants and shouts were organized — and it appears from events around the country that they were — we strongly suggest that the organizers find more constructive ways to get their message out.

snip

But it seems that some of the demonstrators were primed for action no matter the viewpoints the speakers expressed.

It is to the moderator’s and the speakers’ credit that they kept the conversation focused and answered the questions posed.

snip

Monday’s event was out of character for Napa County political clashes, even hotly contested ones. In our view, most politically active people here have better sense than to debase the debate that way.

Unbridled anger is not a substitute for intelligent discussion. Catcalls are not replacements for hard questions and criticism.

(h/t TPM)

And from ABCNews' Political Punch:

In talking to a few attendees afterward, one man said he now admires and respects his representative.

“He stood up, he took his shots, and did it like a man,” a man named Bill told me.

Two elderly women said they were embarrassed by their neighbors.

"They were rude! Oh, they were behaving terribly," one said, calling it a "disgrace to our community."

Said another of the anger, which sounded very much to her like what she hears on Fox News and conservative talk radio, "If it's not manufactured, they're brainwashed."