|
| quote: | Originally posted by Capitalizt
P.S. Looks like it's safe to say this is not really a grassroots anti-tax movement..but more of an anti-Obama protest organized by right wing media.. I do like the Santelli for President sign though. |
Are you kidding me? How could you of all people fall for that line? Are you really surprised to see a main stream media reporter naturally gravitating towards the guy holding a poster with a Hitler/Obama photoshop on it? Wow, who would have thought the media would single out the kookiest kids in the crowd in order to paint the whole movement as some sort of right wing militia, especially a couple days after the DHS's report on "right wing extremists" (which they admittedly have no proof of)?
It is absultely grass roots.... here is the truth about how it started, with links, and what you won't see reported on MSNBC. Tell me this isn't grass roots:
| quote: | Feb. 15: Keli Carender, who blogs as “Liberty Belle” spread the word about a grass-roots protest she was organizing in Seattle to raise her voice against the passage of the trillion-dollar stimulus bill. It’s the first time she had ever jumped into political organizing of any kind. She is not affiliated with any “corporate lobbyist” or think tank or national taxpayers’ organization. She’s a young conservative mom who blogs. Amazingly, she turned around the event in a few days all on her own by reaching out on the Internet, to her local talk station, and to anyone who would listen.
http://www.redistributingknowledge.blogspot.com/
Feb. 16: An energetic crowd of about 100 people came downtown to lambaste the Chicken Little process and the lard-up of the stimulus bill.
http://www.americantypo.com/2009/02...ll-protest.html
Word of the Seattle protest spread across the blogosphere. Readers suggested there should be a Denver protest on Feb. 17 to greet President Obama for the porkulus signing. Separately, the local chapter of Americans for Prosperity was already working to put something together on the fly. I met the head of the state AFP for the first time on the steps of the Capitol. No conspiracy here, tinfoil hatters. It was a union of like minds in an impromptu show of outrage against the legislation-without-deliberation process in Washington. Also there: Jon Caldara of the libertarian Independence Institute on one end of the spectrum and Tom Tancredo on the strict immigration enforcement end (hundreds of the protesters were mad about the absence of E-Verify standards for the stimulus funding).
On Feb. 18, 500 fed-up taxpayers showed up in Mesa, AZ to oppose President Obama’s campaign for massive expansions of the government mortgage entitlement and to mock what SC Gov. Mark Sanford rightly called savior-based economics. No top-down organization. Just the effort of local talk radio station KFYI. No Beltway GOP involvement. Zero national media coverage.
http://www.eastvalleytribune.com/story/135640
On Feb. 19, reader Amanda Grosserode e-mailed that she was organizing a tax revolt protest in Overland Park, KS the following weekend. More than 400 people showed up in freezing weather to protest Rep. Dennis Moore’s vote for the bill. Glenn Reynolds did the reporting the MSM didn’t do.
http://pajamasmedia.com/instapundit/70323/
On Feb. 19, CNBC’s Rick Santelli issued his now-famous “Tea Party” call — prompted, many people forget, by Obama’s mortgage entitlement expansion plans.
Ob Feb 20th David Hogberg of Investor’s Business Daily was the first MSM reporter to cover the burgeoning tax revolt protests. You can read it here: http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAna...?id=469322&Ntt=
On Feb. 21, the grass-roots Internet group, Top Conservatives on Twitter, founded by Michael Patrick Leahy and powered by Rob Neppell, announced “simultaneous local tea parties around the country, beginning in Chicago, and including Washington DC, Fayetteville NC, San Diego CA, Omaha Nebraska, and dozens of other locations” on Feb. 27. Patrik Jonsson of the Christian Science Monitor was one of the rare national MSM reporters who attended one of the tea parties (Atlanta) and provided a fair and balanced look at protesters mad at both parties:
http://features.csmonitor.com/polit...-new-tea-party/
An Internet-based coalition spearheaded by TCOT, Smart Girl Politics, and the DontGoMovement formed to coordinate today’s Tax Day Tea Party. It is a totally unprecedented phenomenon that no Beltway GOP guru or elected leader can claim credit for. The grass-roots coalition has held open planning meetings on BlogTalkRadio every week and maintained the transparency that Washington abandoned during TARP/porkulus/budget process. They’ve spent weeks helping first-time political activists get connected, obtain permits, and learn the ropes. |
Along the way, many different taxpayers’ groups, talk show hosts, individuals, and websites have stepped up to the plate to pitch in.
And along the way, detractors have fumbled and bumbled over how to discredit the Tea Party organizers — first blaming a cabal tied to CNBC, then jeering at the amateurishness of the participants before crying “astroturf,” then claiming the events were “financed by Fox News” or (fill-in-the-blank) conservative conspiracy, then smearing the protesters as crazed gun nuts (FNC’s Bob Beckel) and racists (FNC’s Geraldo Rivera).
Wouldn’t it be refreshing if MSM coverage refrained from parroting all the lazy, groundless, uninformed canards and reported the simple truth?
|