Nightly Wingnuts: That'd show them! Edition

From kos:

• Glenn Beck backs out of keynoting San Antonio tea party.
• Speaking of Glenn Beck, from his website's message boards (all errors from the original):

  My son, is an operator with an SF team and we are in reg comm. they are ready. we are ready. and if you start reading between the lines, you will see it. L presidente obama bin osama, is breathing borrowed air. as are all of congress. it has gone to far. they will all hang. just be ready.

• "Permanent Democratic Majority"? Please. We saw what just happened to the GOP's permanent majority. There's no doubt that the trends look great for us, and it's great that conservatives are doubling down on their failed past policies and ideas, but things can always turn on a dime. Believing oneself "permanent" is a sure path to hubris, corruption, arrogance, and ultimately, defeat.
• Arjun tweet:

  Perhaps we should have mailed teabags to the pirates. That'd show them!

Kurtz (TPM): Those Were The Days Neil Cavuto claims Fox News is covering teabaggers in same fair and balanced way it covered the Million Man March in 1995 -- except Fox News didn't exist yet in 1995.

kos: Some cons not liking their craziness played back on video

You may have seen this video from a Glenn Beck 9/12 get-together:

Some conservatives are a bit shocked at the guy at the microphone getting loud approbation for crazy conspiracy theories. John Cole has the rundown:

Dan Riehl states that the guy talking is a "fairly obvious nutcase gets up in an open mic forum and makes some outlandish claims."

Oh really? What I heard was pretty standard fare for mainstream Republicanism. Here is a transcript, starting at 2:20:

This is a 50 year plan that is coming into culmination right now. This is not something that just happened with Obama. George Soros is the money man behind Barack Obama. I say, and I know it, I’m in the marketing business...

The only thing missing was a little ACORN love, and this rant from an "obvious nutcase" is fundamentally no different from ANY afternoon at the National Review’s Corner. Nothing he said is any different from anything you would hear on an O’Reilly, Hannity, Limbaugh, or Glenn Beck show. Nothing he said was fundamentally any different from anything you would hear at the McCain/Palin rallies last fall. You had a Vice Presidential candidate saying the current President didn’t like America and palled around with terrorists. You spent months peddling nonsense about Obama not putting his hand over his heart or being sworn in on a Koran or not being an American citizen. This week, you had the former chief strategist for Bush, a former Republican Senator, and a Washington Post columnist all basically questioning the loyalty of the President. This guy’s fault isn’t just that he is a nutcase- his problem is he just believed the bullshit pushed through the right-wing email lists.

And even then, the problem isn’t one nutcase. The problem is that you are whittled down to nothing but the bitter rump, and you are discovering that not only does the camera add ten pounds, but it also adds a heap of crazy. When you play back the nonsense you have been spewing for the past couple of years, you don’t like what you see. I guess you have something in common with the rest of the country.

"The problem is that you are whittled down to nothing but the bitter rump, and you are discovering that not only does the camera add ten pounds, but it also adds a heap of crazy." That has got to be one of the best lines written on any blog in 2009. And John is right, we're going to be treated to lots more of this kind of nonsense/fun from the teabagging parties planned this week.

As the craziest of the crazy burn up the YouTubes, expect conservatives to claim infiltration by ACORN and other such nonsense, but our side simply can't fake this sort of crazy. And we certainly can't fake the adoring crowds applauding enthusiastically at this sort of crazy.

Jane Hamsher: Corporate Lobbyists Raising Money For Tea Parties

Teabaggers are having a hard time coming to terms with the fact that true "grassroots" demonstrations aren't orchestrated by corporate lobbyists. Understandable -- if you didn't have any experience organizing a demonstration that didn't have millions in free PR from Fox News and well-funded GOP fat cats providing a national infrastructure, you wouldn't know the difference.

They seem to be particularly upset about links I sent out yesterday on Twitter (using the teaparty hashtags #tcot and #teaparty) regarding a report by Lee Fang at Think Progress documenting the involvement of corporate lobbyists FreedomWorks in organizing the teabaggers. FreedomWorks is run by ladies' man (and registered lobbyist) Dick Armey, and if they're not "organizing" the Tea parties, it's news to them.

From the FreedomWorks website:

With your help, we have been able to organize hundreds of Taxpayer Tea Parties across the country, from Santa Barbara, California to Amarillo, Texas, and all the way to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

[]

If you are not able to organize or attend a Taxpayer Tea Party, you can still help the cause by donating or buying a t-shirt. You can also spread the word via email, facebook and word of mouth. If you would like to post updates on tea parties in your state, or if you’d like to get in touch with other people planning tea parties, visit our Tea Party HQ. We have created an interactive Google map that you can use to locate a tea party near you!

The "donation" for the Tea Parties page goes to -- you guessed it -- the FreedomWorks Foundation. The "thank you" lettter is signed by Matt Kibbe, President & CEO, who cut his teeth working for Lee Atwater. He was behind the attempt to get Ralph Nader put on the ballot in Oregon in 2004, prompting a complaint to the FEC of illegal collusion with the GOP.

FreedomWorks was launched a GOP version of MoveOn. "We believe that hard work beats daddy's money," said Dick Armey at the time. Armey seems to be a bit irony challenged -- Steve Forbes is on the FreedomWorks board. As Krugman notes, their money comes from the Koch, Scaife, Bradley, Olin and other reliable funders of right wing infrastructure including Exxon Mobil.

I don't know which is sadder -- the fact that the Teabaggers don't understand that it would be impossible for them to do what they're doing without this kind of infrastructure behind them, or the fact that they're being manipulated by the very people they appear to be raging against who are only looking to channel their anger for their own purposes.

Whatever. Glenn Reynolds seems to have blown a gasket over the whole thing today, and that's always a good thing.

Think Progress: Fox’s Megyn Kelly Falsely Claims That Only Two Members Of Congress Have Embraced Anti-Obama Tea Parties

On Friday, Fox News.com — which has been aggressively advocating on behalf of radical anti-Obama “tea party” protests — reported that they could find “only two members of Congress — both Republicans — who have committed to attending the demonstrations on the day income taxes are due.” On Fox’s America’s Newsroom this morning, host Megyn Kelly pushed the report in an interview with one of the lawmakers, saying that “only two members of Congress have agreed to join in, in these events, one of them is South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint.”

During her interview with DeMint, Kelly repeated that he was “one of only two lawmakers, we could find, who was openly participating in these tea party events, which are happening coast to coast.” As she said this, a chyron on the screen read: “1 senator, 1 congressman set to attend tax day tea parties.” Watch it:

Fox News appears to have not tried too hard to find lawmakers attending the events. As ThinkProgress reported last week, at least 11 Republican lawmakers and governors have signed on to speak at local events:

– Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) and Rep. Rob Bishop (R-UT) will be speaking at the Salt Lake City protest.

– Rep. Todd Tiahrt (R-KS) and a representative from Rep. Sam Graves’ (R-MO) office will be speaking at the Overland Park protest.

– Rep. John Fleming (R-LA) will be speaking at the Shreveport protest.

– Rep. Ander Crenshaw (R-FL) will be speaking at the Jacksonville protest.

– Rep. Bob Latta (R-OH) will be speaking at the Wauseon protest.

– Rep. John Shadegg (R-AZ) and former Rep. J.D. Hayworth (R-AZ) will be speaking at the Phoenix protest.

– Rep. Sue Myrick (R-NC) will be speaking at the Charlotte protest.

– Rep. Bill Posey (R-FL) will be speaking at the Brevard protest.

– Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) will be speaking at the Longview protest.

– Gov. Mark Sanford (R-SC) will be speaking at the protest in Columbia.

Additionally, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported yesterday that Texas Gov. Rick Perry and Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) will be appearing at tea party protests as well. Rep. Denny Rehberg (R-MT), Rep. Jack Kingston (R-GA), and Rep. Tom Rooney (R-FL) have also been urging their constituents to attend tea party protests while Sen. David Vitter (R-LA) is sponsoring a bill in Congress to honor the protests.

In his New York Times column today, Paul Krugman writes that “it turns out that the tea parties don’t represent a spontaneous outpouring of public sentiment.” Instead, Krugman notes that a key role in organizing the “AstroTurf (fake grass roots) events” is being played “by FreedomWorks, an organization run by Richard Armey, the former House majority leader, and supported by the usual group of right-wing billionaires.”

Think Progress: Bolton Calls Invading Somalia With A ‘Coalition Of The Willing’ ‘The Prudential Response’ To Piracy

Yesterday, the Navy Seals launched a daring and successful effort to free the American cargo ship captain who had been held hostage by Somali pirates for five days, killing three pirates. Throughout last week, some conservatives used the hostage situation to lobby for military action and massive defense spending on irrelevant weapons.

At the forefront of the calls for war was, unsurprisingly, former U.N. Ambassador and perpetual war-monger John Bolton. Even after the successful rescue of the American hostage, Bolton endorsed a ground invasion of Somalia this morning on Fox News:

FOX HOST: Ambassador, if you were serving in this administration, would it be your recommendation that they go in to, militarily with air strikes and/or boots on the ground, into these so-called feral cities, where these pirates are taking hold? Should we go in and take those people out, and take their installations out, now, militarily? Is that what you’re suggesting?

BOLTON: Yes. … Unless we go in and really end this problem once and for all, we will simply see it grow over time.

On Friday, Bolton called for a “coalition of the willing” to attack Somalia, saying the use of force was “the prudential response” to piracy problems. He kept up his calls for war over the weekend. Watch it:

For Bolton, war is always the best option. Last year, he said that attacking Iran “is really the most prudent thing to do.” In 2002, he declared Saddam Hussein to be “a real threat,” making it “a very prudent and logical conclusion that he needs to be replaced.” And less than two weeks before Bush ordered the invasion of Iraq, Bolton praised “the prudent course we are on with Iraq.”

Bolton’s insistence that we will see the piracy off the coast of Somalia “grow over time” without U.S. military intervention to “end this problem once and for all” is striking. Back in 1994, Bolton lambasted the Clinton administration for expanding the U.S. mission in Somalia to prevent it from becoming a failed state. Clinton’s efforts “led to the violence and embarrassment that ultimately ensued,” Bolton wrote.

In 2005, Bolton stood by his critique, saying, “I would not have intervened in Somalia.” Today, however, Bolton views such intervention — including the possibility of “boots on the ground” — as “the prudential response.”