Recently at Reason.tv: What We Saw at the Washington, D.C. Tea Party

On Friday, February 27, John O'Hara of the Heartland Institute and JP Freire of The American Spectator organized a Washington, D.C. tea party to protest the runaway spending and tax hikes recently unveiled as part of Barack Obama's stimulus package and fiscal year 2010 budget.

Reason.tv's Dan Hayes was on the scene, talking with the organizers and participants about the state of the economy and how the government should respond to the recession.

Comments

[Rain Dog]

Astroturfin' mother fuckers... At least that's what I read somewhere.

[Warren]

WTF Reason? Seriously WTF? Why oh why, do you have to keep reposting Reason.tv videos. They are the lamest lame what ever lamed.

[AK]

No astroturf please

[Orange Line Special]

Here's more on Heartland: link (note: I have my own problems with that source, so double-check their claims).

I can't find it, but a couple years ago, DianneFeinstein said she wouldn't pay attention to something unless she got over 25,000 calls about it or something like that.

So, these loons - including the uberloon in the period costume - think 300 people are going to change their minds, despite the fact that they aren't encroaching on the Dem's territory in any way. No Dem leader is in any way scared of these loons because a) they aren't their voters, b) they aren't reaching out to their voters, c) they're libertarian loons, and d) they think wearing a tri-corner hat is going to have an impact.

P.S. Here's another recent video showing how not to do things. Unlike Reason, I indicate how to do things that are effective.

[Michael P.]

Street Fighting Man? Are you fucking serious?

Too bad the Stones never wrote one called Occasionally Tempted by Jaywalking but Discouraged by the Potential Consequences Man.

[Astroturf]

We swear it was all spontaneous! As spontaneous as the "All I want for Christmas is my PSP" viral marketing campaign!

[Derrick]

I guess this tea party thing is a start, but damn if it doesn't seem weak.

While opinion polls show that 30-40% of Americans don't agree with Pres. Obama's approach to "fixing the economy", you would never guess that from major media coverage. Consider this CNN story, which fawns over the jobs already being "created" by Obama's stimulus, without quoting one source to point out the faulty logic behind it.

So, there are a lot of people out there who are horrified by what's going on, but that doesn't seem to be translating into any sort of news coverage. It seems to me that it might help to have some sort of newsworthy online event, kinda like how Ron Paul pulled in like $8 zillion on Guy Fawkes Day and got the attention of CNN. But what kind of event? I'm at a loss for ideas.

[PETE]

Derrick, What coverage are you watching? Last poll I saw was 57 support/34 oppose, and yet leading up to the signing and ever since all we've seen on the news is GOP people making shit up about mice and the new one, a train from Disneyland to the Bunny Ranch, or "Harry Reid's Red Light Express." Google it. It's insane. The number of Republicans cable news is having on to talk about the stimulus outnumber dems by probably 2-to-1:

http://thinkprogress.org/2009/01/28/cable-news-stimulus/

and if the GOPers weren't propagating all these obvious falsehoods about a relatively small portion of the overall spending in the bill, and if cable news wasn't enabling them, support for the stimulus would probably be more in line with Obama's 68% approval ratings.

[mantooth]

You know who gets laid all of the time? John "Tea Bag" O'Hara. Like a young John Wayne, that one.

[Derrick]

Derrick, What coverage are you watching?

I don't have cable television service - just Internet. So the coverage I'm referring to is basically just CNN.com, MSNBC.com, Washington Post, and a few others here and there.

Glad to hear there actually is some representation of the opposition in the media. Thanks for the link.

[Chest Rockwell]

What are ACORN, Moveon.org, etc. besides "astroturfing" operations? When Obama's policies come to fruition and more of us are unemployed (like the typical ACORN "activist") I would expect attendance at these events to skyrocket.

[SDN]

I was one of the volunteers running the signature clipboards at the Dallas Tea Party. No one cut me a check.

I have to savor the rich creamy irony of the Soros bought and paid for Democrats complaining of astroturfing. Hypocrites!

[R C Dean]

Oh, its better than that, SDN. The Dems complaining about astroturfing are defending a bill which has billions of dollars for ACORN and other Dem astroturf fronts.