The two most famous tax protests were Lady Godiva and the Boston Tea Party. Considering that the alternative would involve your sister running around naked, maybe you should be glad the right-wingers chose tea as their symbol to co-opt.
Glenn Reynolds has a blog and he passes on info that people send him. He has not taken on any active organizing role AFAIK (and I read his blog daily,so I’m pretty sure about that)
Media Matters? Why not just source DailyKos or Democratic Underground?
Fox and the Republicans are jumping on a phenomenon that started two months ago. Cite with copious linkage. Are they supporting it now? Yes, I suppose – but that’s very different froim saying it’s all astrturfed.
WTF? I remember day after day of news coverage of those protests. They were ultimately unsuccessful (and I imagine these one will be as well), but that’s not the same as being ignored.
Truly it’s mindboggling why they would want to compare themselves to the most famous anti-tax rally in American history, one that every schoolchild knows about. :rolleyes:
Oh, fucking come on! You complain about Media Matters, and then you cite Michelle goddamn Malkin?! For the record, Fox has been behind the entire damn thing from Rick Santelli’s pseudo-angry-populist rant.
I’m not in disagreement with the first part of what you said. But is there really a need to inject the word “nigger” into any of this? What has that got to do with anything? I can’t see how bringing that up is beneficial to anyone.
Mindboggling indeed, since the Boston Tea Party was a protest against taxation without representation. Which is the opposite of what the teabaggers are protesting.
I’m in the same boat, to a great extent–I’m not as all-fired conservative as some, but I try to vote fiscally conservative and socially liberal, because I think gays should be able to be married AND buy machine guns (along with the rest of us) =P.
That said, yeah, the Republicans need to offer the old-school small-government conservatives a choice–lately, it’s been lip service and same old spending on even less useful things (regardless of what you think of welfare, it’s more useful in an ultimately utilitarian sense than going to war for basically no useful reason). The social “conservatism” (which I read as “prejudice”) is just hat on the ass, so to speak.
Perhaps not, but as an instance of putting words into the other side’s mouth/mind, it is more defensible than the RW referring to Obama as “the Messiah,” which happens with disturbing and embarrassing regularity.
I don’t cite Michelle Malkin as an objective source – she obviously isn’t – I cited her because of the links and photos to events starting back in mid-February, before any Fox news coverage came along, and before Rick Santelli (who is not on Fox) said anything.
Media Matters is hosting that video to to make the claim that the coverage precedes the protests; this is untrue. The fact that Fox is glomming onto the protests NOW has no bearing on how/where/why the protests originated.
As a rhetorical tactic, though, what’s more underhanded: accusing the other side of “worshipping” someone who doesn’t deserve to be worshipped, or accusing the other side of being racist and using the word “nigger”? I think the latter is more of a cheap tactic.
Exactly. Much as I think of the likes of Sam Stone or lil’ Bricker as total shitbags, I wouldn’t have said it in reference to them. They’ve never shown the inclination.
LPC? Maybe at some point he’ll actually just show some honesty instead of hiding behind his usual shit.
Or maybe he can show us how he supported protests against runaway gummint spending any other time in the last 20 or so years.
I don’t really have a position on the topic of this thread; I don’t really know or care very much about this tax protest. But I think it’s kind of a stupid argument to just say “you’re racist,” which is essentially what bringing up that word is going. It’s possible to disagree with someone who is black, and not be racist. Polecat listed a bunch of examples of the government “running amok” - if you disagree with these, the solution is to argue against them, point by point - not just say “you’re racist.”
It is; but also, as I said, in this instance more defensible. Certainly not all of Obama’s critics are racists; OTOH, we’re definitely not into strawman territory here, if you take my meaning.