Category Archives: Tea Party

March 8, 2011 · 8:46 pm

Exclusive: Limbaugh’s parent company still using actors to fake radio call-ins, exec tells Raw | The Raw Story

Talk about your media manipulation…

While I’m normally all for any opportunity for actors to earn a living, this is a bit much…

This is all cheap theatrics, not news….

Sad thing is their viewers/listeners don’t know this…’

The company responsible for syndicating big conservative radio names like Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity has been using paid actors to call in to their radio shows.According to a recent report in Tablet Magazine, Premiere Radio Networks, a subsidiary of Clear Channel Communications, hired actors to call in as guests.

via Exclusive: Limbaugh’s parent company still using actors to fake radio call-ins, exec tells Raw | The Raw Story.

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March 6, 2011 · 12:25 pm

Tea Party 2012: Will Michele Bachmann Steal Sarah Palin’s Thunder?

This could be more fun than the cat fights between Alexis and Crystal on “Dynasty” in the 1980’s!

Except Crystal and Alexis were both much smarter and much better dressed…

From the National Journal…

It’s looking increasingly likely that tea party maven and Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., will dive into the 2012 presidential waters.

Among the evidence is a packed schedule for this weekend, including two suspiciously stump-like stops in Florida on Friday and a Sunday appearance on NBC’s Meet the Press, where she’ll be asked about how “the campaign against President Obama’s reelection should be framed,” according to network previews.

Most notable is Bachmann’s involvement in the conservative Club for Growth’s annual winter meeting on Friday, where her name shared a guest list with those of Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour and former Govs. Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota and Mitt Romney of Massachusetts—all rumored White House contenders.

But if Bachmann—who started the House Tea Party Caucus—is considering a presidential bid, the elephant in the room is best illustrated by her appearance on Friday before the Palm Beach County chapter of the South Florida Tea Party. After all, in terms of national association, the tea party label is as good as sewn into Sarah Palin’s signature red jacket.

“I hear chatter” about Bachmann’s run, said Tea Party Express Chairwoman Amy Kremer, “just the same as I do with [former Alaska] Governor Palin. They’re both rock stars in the movement; they’re both strong and willing to take on the establishment. That’s why their message resonates and why people are seriously looking at them as candidates.”

But would a dual-darling bid split the tea party vote?

More:   NationalJournal.com – Tea Party 2012: Will Michele Bachmann Steal Sarah Palin’s Thunder? – Saturday, March 5, 2011.

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March 6, 2011 · 12:19 pm

Dick Durbin On Democratic Spending Cut Proposals: We’ve ‘Pushed This To The Limit’

It’s a little late in coming, but it sounds like some common sense may be taking hold with the Dems…

If they had a backbone earlier, we would be having an entirely different conversation now.  It would be about the success of the Second New Deal on jobs and infrastructure spending  and how the Democratic Congress would move forward next.  Not to mention the Economy would be growing faster and unemployment would be coming down faster.

You can’t cut deficits with two wars and a greedy military industrial complex running rampant.  You can’t cut a deficit by offering more tax breaks to the rich and the corporations.

No one is willing to take on these groups, so deficit reduction is not really possible.  It’s a GOP fairy tale…

This is just an excuse by the GOP to cut social programs that help the most vulnerable Americas:  Children and Seniors.  As well as to attack women’s health and welfare issues.

It’s about time the Democrats stopped enabling this foolishness.

From Sam Stein at The Huffington Post:

WASHINGTON — Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) declared on Sunday that his party was unwilling to budge one cent further on the number of cuts it included in its budget proposal, even with a government shutdown looming in less than two weeks.

The Illinois Democrat, in an appearance on “Fox News Sunday,” said that in offering $10 billion in cuts from current spending levels, Democrats had, in his estimation, “pushed this to the limit.” Cutting additional discretionary spending — which constitutes roughly 12 percent of the budget deficit –- in the hopes of balancing the budget was not only, quite literally, impossible, but counterproductive to economic recovery.

“To go any further is to push more kids out of school, to stifle the innovation which small businesses and large alike need to create more jobs, and it stops the investment in infrastructure which kills good paying jobs right here in the United States,” said Durbin.

via Dick Durbin On Democratic Spending Cut Proposals: We’ve ‘Pushed This To The Limit’.

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March 3, 2011 · 7:42 pm

ThinkProgress : Americans Overwhelmingly Support Millionaires Surtax To Tackle Deficit, Reject Cuts To Social Programs

Well, the truth is starting to both come out and sink in to the country as a whole…

Another article worth reading in its entirety and seeing the actual poll results…

For months, Republicans have relentlessly promoted the Tea Party-driven message that the government spends too much, and that social welfare programs should be first on the chopping block. “To not address entitlement programs, as is the case with the budget the president has put forward, would be an economic and moral failure,” House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) declared.

But a comprehensive new Wall Street Journal-NBC News poll suggests Republicans significantly overestimated the public’s eagerness to tackle the federal deficit by cutting programs like Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. As reflected in the growing “Main Street Movement,” the poll, released yesterday, found sizable majorities of Americans prefer steps like eliminating oil company subsidies, enacting a surtax on the income of millionaires, and rolling back the Bush cuts. Only 23 percent think it’s acceptable to, for example, make cuts to Medicare, while 81 percent favor instituting a millionaire’s surtax:

AND

Reacting to the results, one GOP pollster told NBC’s First Read that Republicans may have gravely miscalculated in their headlong rush slash spending, as demanded by the Tea Party. “It may be hard to understand why a person might jump off a cliff, unless you understand they’re being chased by a tiger. That tiger is the Tea Party,” he said.

MORE:   ThinkProgress » Blog Archive » Americans Overwhelmingly Support Millionaires Surtax To Tackle Deficit, Reject Cuts To Social Programs.

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March 2, 2011 · 7:20 pm

Why the Right Attacked Unions, ACORN and Planned Parenthood — Institutions That Help Bridge Politics and Daily Life | | AlterNet

This pulls it all together…

But while it’s obvious that the right wing is out to break the back of the progressive movement, it’s easy to miss the strategy that guides their selection of specific targets. Their attacks are all carefully aimed at the same critical juncture: institutions that work for people in their daily lives and in the political arena, those that connect people’s personal struggles across the country to the political struggle in Washington. Once we recognize the critical role these progressive service organizations play in building progressive politics, the right’s broader strategy in Wisconsin and elsewhere becomes clear. Scott Walker is a soldier in the same army as James O’ Keefe and Lila Rose, the right-wing video pranksters who tried to smear ACORN and Planned Parenthood.

Indeed, last month’s attack on Planned Parenthood provoked a sickening sense of déjà vu. Seemingly out of nowhere, undercover activists secretly filmed an employee of a major progressive institution making embarrassing statements. The resulting video makes news and inflames the debate around federal funding of the organization’s services. It was the ACORN attack all over again [see Peter Dreier and John Atlas’s “The GOP’s Blame-ACORN Game”].

ACORN was unique as a national organization that served our nation’s poor people. Wrangling with life’s common but critical challenges like mortgages and housing forms, ACORN employees built trust by offering assistance person-to-person, neighborhood-by-neighborhood. They then leveraged that trust to lobby for federal legislation to address the root causes of the crises facing these communities—predatory lending, lack of community investment and stagnant wages.

Planned Parenthood operates over 800 health clinics across the country. These clinics are often the only option for women who need vital services, including contraception, HIV testing or PAP smears to detect and prevent cancer and other life-threatening illness. Three million Americans go to Planned Parenthood every year, and one in five women in the United States will visit a Planned Parenthood clinic in their lifetime. The personal relationships developed at clinics inform Planned Parenthood’s critical and ongoing advocacy for federal support for reproductive health and freedom. As a trusted brand representing women in DC, Planned Parenthood Action Fund has successfully lobbied for greater access to healthcare, better educational resources for family planning and the preservation of a woman’s right to choose.

More:   Why the Right Attacked Unions, ACORN and Planned Parenthood — Institutions That Help Bridge Politics and Daily Life | | AlterNet.

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February 28, 2011 · 7:41 pm

Eric Cantor Dismisses Report That GOP Plan Would Cause Job Loss

These people are criminally misguided, at best….

More likely, they don’t want an economic recovery in hopes it will make it easier to beat President Obama next year…

And they certainly don’t want more Public Employees…

Another possibility is that they are simply evil….

WASHINGTON — Two weeks after House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) dismissed a question about the possibility of the lower chamber’s spending bill killing government jobs with the words “so be it,” Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) offered similar sentiments.

The Republican plan to cut $61 billion from current spending levels would take a heavy toll on employment, destroying 700,000 jobs by 2012, according to an independent economic analysis by Mark Zandi of Moody’s Analytics. The study, released on Monday, predicted that the GOP bill would slow economic growth by 0.5 percentage points this year.

In his weekly Capitol briefing with reporters, Cantor acknowledged that the Republican stopgap budget bill, known as a continuing resolution or CR, might increase unemployment. But he argued that the government should not be creating jobs if that means creating greater deficits.

via Eric Cantor Dismisses Report That GOP Plan Would Cause Job Loss.

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February 28, 2011 · 7:36 pm

How to Build a Progressive Tea Party | The Nation

Great article from Johann Hari at “The Nation”

Imagine a parallel universe where the Great Crash of 2008 was followed by a Tea Party of a very different kind. Enraged citizens gather in every city, week after week—to demand the government finally regulate the behavior of corporations and the superrich, and force them to start paying taxes. The protesters shut down the shops and offices of the companies that have most aggressively ripped off the country. The swelling movement is made up of everyone from teenagers to pensioners. They surround branches of the banks that caused this crash and force them to close, with banners saying, You As people see their fellow citizens acting in self-defense, these tax-the-rich protests spread to even the most conservative parts of the country. It becomes the most-discussed subject on Twitter. Even right-wing media outlets, sensing a startling effect on the public mood, begin to praise the uprising, and dig up damning facts on the tax dodgers.

Instead of the fake populism of the Tea Party, there is a movement based on real populism. It shows that there is an alternative to making the poor and the middle class pay for a crisis caused by the rich. It shifts the national conversation. Instead of letting the government cut our services and increase our taxes, the people demand that it cut the endless and lavish aid for the rich and make them pay the massive sums they dodge in taxes.

This may sound like a fantasy—but it has all happened. The name of this parallel universe is Britain.

More:   How to Build a Progressive Tea Party | The Nation.

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February 28, 2011 · 7:30 pm

Daily Kos: WI-Gov: Buyer’s remorse for Scott Walker

People seem to be starting to wake up…

At least in Wisconsin…

From DailyKos:

I always love these sorts of “do-over” polls, and PPP has a particularly good one:

We’ll have our full poll on the Wisconsin conflict out tomorrow but here’s the most interesting finding: if voters in the state could do it over today they’d support defeated Democratic nominee Tom Barrett over Scott Walker by a 52-45 margin.

Barrett, the mayor of Milwaukee, of course lost to Walker, by a very similar spread, 52-47. Tom Jensen identifies two important shifts: First, respondents in union households (about a third of the sample) now prefer Barrett by a 64-33 margin, but when asked how they voted in 2008, only went to Barrett 54-40. You gotta wonder about that one-third of union household voters who still support Walker… but nonetheless, this is a big shift, and Walker is doing wonders when it comes to energizing our side.

 

MORE:   Daily Kos: WI-Gov: Buyer’s remorse for Scott Walker.

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February 26, 2011 · 10:28 am

Richard T. Hughes: Revelation, Revolutions, and the Tyrannical New World Order

Very interesting article about alternative interpretations to Revelations and the way it is interpreted by Glenn Beck and the Radical Christian Evangelicals….

This is a brief excerpt but it’s really worth clicking the link and reading the entire article…

The truth is, rapture theology is not only unbiblical; it is anti-biblical. For rapture theologians focus on the hate and violence inspired by the “new world order,” all the while ignoring the biblical vision of “a new heaven and a new earth” that brings not hate, but self-giving love; not oppression, but comfort; and not violence, but enduring peace.

But we can also measure rapture theology by the biblical vision of the kingdom of God.

According to the Bible, the kingdom of God exalts the poor at the expense of the rich. But rapture theology exalts only Christians — and fundamental, born-again Christians at that — at the expense of everyone else.

According to the Bible, the kingdom of God promises justice for the oppressed. But rapture theology promises greater oppression for those who don’t conform to the prophetic timetable the rapture theologians have imposed on the biblical text.

According to the Bible, the kingdom of God resists imperial powers. But rapture theology exalts imperial powers as long as they conform to an imagined prophetic script.

And according to the Bible, the kingdom of God nurtures the paths of peace. But rapture theology celebrates apocalyptic violence.

If American Christians were committed to the biblical vision of “peace on earth, good will toward men,” they could contribute immeasurably to the growth of world peace.

But in order for that to happen, they must first abandon their fascination with the “new world order” — an idea that is alien to the biblical text — and work instead on behalf of two ideas that are central to the biblical message: “the kingdom of God” and the final realization of that kingdom in “a new heaven and a new earth.”

via Richard T. Hughes: Revelation, Revolutions, and the Tyrannical New World Order.

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February 24, 2011 · 6:51 pm

FLASHBACK: Mr. Rogers’ Stirring 1969 Defense Of Public Broadcasting (VIDEO) | TPMMuckraker

From Talking Points Memo…Link to their article at the bottom and a link to donate to PBS is under the video:

At a time when some Republicans are calling to defund public broadcasting, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting has added a link on its homepage to an appearance Fred Rogers made before the Senate Subcommittee on Communications on May 1, 1969, when President Nixon was proposing to cut federal funding for public broadcasting from $20 million to $10 million. In the video, Rogers offers a defense for his show over the other kinds of programs made for children at the time.

“I’m very much concerned, as I know you are, about what’s being delivered to our children in this country,” Rogers tells subcommittee chairman Senator John O. Pastore (D-RI). “We deal with such things as the inner drama of childhood. We don’t have to bob somebody over the head to make drama on the screen. We deal with such things as getting a haircut, or the feelings about brothers and sisters, and the kind of anger that arises in simple family situations.”

Rogers asks permission to recite the words to a song he sings on the show, “What Do You Do With The Mad That You Feel?”

When Rogers is done, Pastore says, “Looks like you just earned the twenty million dollars.”

 

Donate to Public Broadcasting via UNC-TV!  I do…

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via FLASHBACK: Mr. Rogers’ Stirring 1969 Defense Of Public Broadcasting (VIDEO) | TPMMuckraker.

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