Hit a nerve

Over at Skippy the Bush Kangaroo this was posted by Skippy yesterday and the wing-nuts came slithering out from under their rocks in the fetid swamps to cry 'foul' ... The truth hurts them so!

it's my tea party and i'll lie if i want to

via the dispassionate liberal (on twitter of all places) we find out that the sudden populist "tea party" movement that has literally dozens of followers across the united states, is neither sudden nor populist. from exiled online:

within hours of santelli’s rant, a website called chicagoteaparty.com sprang to life. essentially inactive until that day, it now featured a youtube video of santelli’s “tea party” rant and billed itself as the official home of the chicago tea party. the domain was registered in august, 2008 by zack christenson, a dweeby twitter republican and producer for a popular chicago rightwing radio host milt rosenberg—a familiar name to obama campaign people. last august, rosenberg, who looks like martin short’s irving cohen character, caused an outcry when he interviewed stanley kurtz, the conservative writer who first “exposed” a personal link between obama and former weather undergound leader bill ayers. as a result of rosenberg’s radio interview, the ayers story was given a major push through the republican media echo chamber, culminating in sarah palin’s accusation that obama was “palling around with terrorists.” that rosenberg’s producer owns the “chicagoteaparty.com” site is already weird—but what’s even stranger is that he first bought the domain last august, right around the time of rosenburg’s launch of the “obama is a terrorist” campaign. it’s as if they held this “chicago tea party” campaign in reserve, like a sleeper-site. which is exactly what it was.

chicagoteaparty.com was just one part of a larger network of republican sleeper-cell-blogs set up over the course of the past few months, all of them tied to a shady rightwing advocacy group coincidentally named the “sam adams alliance,” whose backers have until now been kept hidden from public. cached google records that we discovered show that the sam adams alliance took pains to scrub its deep links to the koch family money as well as the fake-grassroots “tea party” protests going on today. all of these roads ultimately lead back to a more notorious rightwing advocacy group, freedomworks, a powerful pr organization headed by former republican house majority leader dick armey and funded by koch money.

the piece goes on to discuss eric odom, who was the "brains" (?) behind last summer's dont'go.com faux populist movement, and his badly-hidden involvement in this tea party phenom.

but more telling is when we follow the money:

but it’s the alliance’s scrubbing of their link to koch that is most telling. a cached page, erased on february 16, just three days before santelli’s rant, shows that the alliance also wanted to cover up its ties to the koch family. the missing link was an announcement that students interested in applying for internships to the sam adams alliance could also apply through the “charles g. koch summer fellow program” through the institute for humane studies, a koch-funded rightwing institute designed to scout and nurture future leaders of corporate libertarian ideology. the top two board directors at the sam adams alliance include two figures with deep ties to koch-funded programs: eric o’keefe, who previously served in koch’s institute for humane studies and the club for growth; and joseph lehman, a former communications vp at koch’s cato institute.

all of these are ultimately linked up to koch’s freedom works mega-beast. freedomworks.org has drawn fire in the past for using fake grassroots internet campaigns, called “astroturfing,” to push for pet koch projects such as privatizing social security. a new york times investigation in 2005 revealed that a “regular single mom” paraded by bush’s white house to advocate for privatizing social security was in fact freedomworks’ iowa state director. the woman, sandra jacques, also fronted another iowa fake-grassroots group called “for our grandchildren,” even though privatizing social security was really “for koch and wall street fat cats.”

now maybe those dozens of protesters will have to have a little crow w/their tea.

addendum: also discussed on the big picture, to whom we link purely for the memeorandum traffic.

update: the wingnuts attack!

*****

I feel your pain, having been the 'victim' of numerous wing-nut tirades I can empathize. They are annoying aren't they?!