The attorney behind the first-ever Birther infomercial started teabagging way before it was cool.
Back in the mid 1970s, Gary Kreep spearheaded a national tea bag-based movement to protest the Ford Administration's tax policies, he confirmed to TPMmuckraker today.
"To protest unreasonably high taxes, people stapled tea bags to their tax returns," explains Kreep, now director of the United States Justice Foundation, but then a law student and an officer in the California chapter of the Reaganite Young Americans for Freedom.
When the the 2009 teabagger movement began to emerge earlier this year, Kreep thought: "It's deja vu all over again."
Check out this AP piece that ran in February 1975, 34 years to the month before CNBC's Rick Santelli delivered his famous on-air anti-mortgage relief rant, thought to be the genesis of the 2009 teabaggers.
Kreep says he can't remember who came up with the tea bag idea back then, but knows they had the 1773 protest in mind. He believes "a lot of people -- tens of thousands of taxpayers" in fact sent in their tax returns with a teabag.
There were "little stickers on the tea bags that we handed out," he says. One was red. Another was green. They said something like "Stop Taxes."
Kreep and other activists who have attended tea parties this year have been discussing a reprise of the 1970s protest. But post-anthrax security measures have foiled the plans.
"Unfortunately, these days you cant get a tea bag to a congressman unless you hand it to them," Kreep says.
Readers everywhere are burning with anticipation.
Sarah Palin's much-anticipated memoir now has a title and a new release date, two advisers to the former Alaska governor confirmed to CNN on Monday.Why was the release moved up? Apparently, Palin's book was completed faster than expected. The former governor's book deal was announced just four months ago, and the 400-page text is apparently already complete.
Palin's book will be called "Going Rogue: An American Life" -- a reference to the anonymous criticism directed at Palin by aides to Republican presidential nominee John McCain during the final days of last year's presidential race. [...]
The book's publisher, Harper, has ordered a substantial first printing of 1.5 million copies and moved up the release date to November 17 -- conveniently in time for the holiday shopping season. The memoir was originally slated for release in the spring of 2010.
In January, when Palin first found a publishing agent, MSNBC's Chris Matthews raised a point that many are likely to wonder about: "The question is who, actually, will write the Palin book."
The answer, apparently, is Lynn Vincent, Palin's ghostwriter in San Diego, who has already signed a non-disclosure agreement.
- from the comments:
You heard it here first .... as usual the Right wing fundies will buy the book by the pallet to distribute at their fundraising events , thus propelling it to # 1 on the NYT bestseller list.
See other monumental publishing giants Hannity, Malkin, O'Rielly, et al
Posted by: John R on September 29, 2009 at 9:25 AM
Wash Post:Dems cave to a RW lie again. Impressive.
House races -- with less-well-known candidates and less money flowing through them than Senate contests -- tend to be heavily influenced by which way the national winds are blowing.Which is a bit odd, since nationally the polls are pretty bad for Republicans as compared to Dems. So why in Congress are their chances looking up? The supposed "anger" from August was from a very small percentage of the population, and in any case, from people who didn't vote for Obama anyway, and probably never vote Democratic. So why should their "anger" be a harbinger of anything?
Heading into the summer, the political environment had been neutral to slightly positive for Democrats. But it turned in a meaningful way as Labor Day approached and anger over the growth of government under President Obama emboldened Republicans.
The signs of this environmental change were everywhere.
I worry that it's something much more nuanced. The Teabaggers did nothing to change public opinion at all, in and of themselves. What they did do, however, was scare the bejeesus out of Democrats and the administration. That got Dem leaders to back off, respond incoherently and weakly, and overall give an impression of fear and incertitude. Those are not qualities the voters like. So, while the Teabaggers may be nuts, and fringe, and small and irrelevant, how our elected officials react to them - to any threat or challenge - is watched very closely by the voters.
No bogus points for fixing a fake problem Veterans' benefits were never at risk of being taxed by the Democrats' health bill, a fact confirmed on the show by Congressman Joe Sestak. Attempts by Congressman Steve Buyer to scare veterans with lies did not change that fact; nor did capitulations by Congressional Democrats to make the bill say what it already said just to calm Buyer down. No correction is in order.
It's not just in America . . .
Berlusconi red-faced for 'tanned' quip Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has embarrassed himself again, referring to President Bararck Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama as being tan.
By: Blue Texan Tuesday September 29, 2009 4:44 am
They're all Birchers, now.
They always do. Sneaky bastards.At the “How to Take Back America” conference in St. Louis, Frank Gaffney of the Center for Security Policy led two workshop sessions — one on “how to defeat attacks on sovereignty by U.N. treaties and North American Union” and one on “how to understand Islam.” At that first workshop, he took a question on the North American Union and stated that it “wasn’t black helicopter stuff,” but that its framers might miss their goal of a 2010 union between the United States, Mexico and Canada.
Hi and thanks for the video. I quite agree that people tend to find whatever possible against president Obama. But his opposers must be 1. his political opposers or 2. people who do not actually understand what are Obama's reforms about and instead of trying to learn more about the current financial and economical situation they simply blame him for all the bad that ever happend.
ReplyDeleteTake care,
Jay