You watch this stuff and it strikes you that a significant percentage of the teabag crowd, no idea just how many, were the people who had those “Thank you, President Bush” signs stuck in their lawns about this time last year.
And at about 3:27 Brad asks the question I asked in the print edition last […]

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OUTRAGE!!!
Update: Hm.

You remember when that MoveOn ad compared Bush to Hitler, the absolute firestorm that erupted when right-wingers snarled, How dare you compare the president to Hitler?
It’s apparently OK now. Good to know.

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So there’s this big teabag protest going on down in DC today, more of what we’ve seen. But this photo in particular, from the Washington Independent, really struck me:

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Hm. Immigrants to rally tomorrow for changes to U.S. immigration policy; lower turnout expected than in past years due to swine flu concerns, but I’m struck by this line:
Thousands were expected at events in Houston, Los Angeles, Chicago, New York and other cities — mostly in the late afternoon, when workers finished their shifts. But […]

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It’s amazing to me how quickly the tea party business dropped almost completely off the radar screen.

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Funny.

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We read Matt Taibbi today for the rude invocation of Michelle Malkin and the teabags. We stay for the realities of what the federal government has long done with your tax dollars, in which the teabaggers don’t seem particularly interested…
What’s hilarious about the teabaggers, though, is how they never squawk about waste until the spending […]

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I suspect these folks were funnin’ with the protesters. But what do you want to bet, they didn’t get it:

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Stolen from Atrios, and I can’t tell you how many times I’ve run into this mentality. I’m related to this mentality, fer chrissakes:
She said she retired on disability from M&T Bank three years ago after undergoing knee replacement and back surgeries. She lives on her Social Security and disability benefits. Last year, she petitioned the […]

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Drove by the teabagging at Musser Park - actually a fairly impressive turnout, I’ll give it a drive-by 500. Better than Philly, it sounds - but this is Lancaster County, after all. Lots of Ron Paul bumper stickers.
Nationwide, however, the numbers have been unimpressive. Dismal in some cases. Kos catches Fox’s Neil Cavuto tripling his […]

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From John Cole:
You know what really irritates me about the tea parties? The basic fact that if right now, it were President John McCain and not President Obama, and nothing else had changed, these tea parties wouldn’t exist. You know it, I know it, and even the teabaggers know it.
I don’t think you understand. Obama […]

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Philly tea party: Almost 200 people:
Nearly 200 people have gathered at Center City’s Love Park for a noon hour “tea party” to protest excessive government spending.
I said two days ago that given the degree to which Fox was pimping this, these protests needed massive turnout to prove Fox - and the wingers themselves - as relevant […]

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They’re so cute when they’re angry.

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Sullivan:
When you see them holding up effigies of Bush, who was, unlike Obama, supposed to be the fiscal conservative, let me know.
Don’t hold your breath.

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Via Atrios, teabaggers concerned evil lib’rulz are going to show up to disrupt their party!
Conservatism apparently can’t exist unless there’s someone to oppress the poor conservatives.

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Will be very interesting to see how many people actually show up at these “tea parties” this week. Fox has been pimping it hard, and the impression it and the partisans on the right are trying to convey is that this is not only a populist movement (which it isn’t), but it’s a mass movement.
Turnout […]

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So I wonder what they do and say at those “Project 912 Glenn Beck Tea Party” events. Don’t you? Let’s take a look…
At a “Project 912 Glenn Beck Tea Party,” an unnamed speaker rants about “infiltration by the Communist Party” (a John Birch Society talking point), says that digital cable boxes are “brainwashing machines” planted […]

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Sullivan nails it:
Option 1: It’s a protest of the bank bailouts orchestrated by Bush and now Obama. But surely these tea-partiers understand what would happen if we didn’t bail the banks out. Are they advocating letting major banks fail? Or are they advocating a Krugman-style government take-over? No idea.
Neither do they.
Option 2: It’s a protest […]

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Via Kos, from whence we also stole the graphic:
Rep. Spencer Bachus (R-Ala.) puts the number of socialists in the House at 17.
“Some of the men and women I work with in Congress are socialists,” Bachus told local government leaders on Thursday, according to the Birmingham News.
Bachus gave the specific number of House socialists when pressed […]

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Those “tea parties” an uncoordinated, populist uprising? Yeah, not so much:
Despite these attempts to make the “movement” appear organic, the principle organizers of the local events are actually the lobbyist-run think tanks Americans for Prosperity and Freedom Works. The two groups are heavily staffed and well funded, and are providing all the logistical and public […]

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