Santelli's "Tea Parties" were pre-planned by the Right Wing!

[Joe Bacon]

http://www.playboy.com/blog/2009/02/backstabber.html

But was Santelli’s rant really so spontaneous? How did a minor-league TV figure, whose contract with CNBC is due this summer, get so quickly launched into a nationwide rightwing blog sensation? Why were there so many sites and organizations online and live within minutes or hours after his rant, leading to a nationwide protest just a week after his rant?

What hasn’t been reported until now is evidence linking Santelli’s “tea party” rant with some very familiar names in the Republican rightwing machine, from PR operatives who specialize in imitation-grassroots PR campaigns (called “astroturfing”) to bigwig politicians and notorious billionaire funders. As veteran Russia reporters, both of us spent years watching the Kremlin use fake grassroots movements to influence and control the political landscape. To us, the uncanny speed and direction the movement took and the players involved in promoting it had a strangely forced quality to it. If it seemed scripted, that's because it was.

What we discovered is that Santelli’s “rant” was not at all spontaneous as his alleged fans claim, but rather it was a carefully-planned trigger for the anti-Obama campaign. In PR terms, his February 19th call for a “Chicago Tea Party” was the launch event of a carefully organized and sophisticated PR campaign, one in which Santelli served as a frontman, using the CNBC airwaves for publicity, for the some of the craziest and sleaziest rightwing oligarch clans this country has ever produced. Namely, the Koch family, the multibilllionaire owners of the largest private corporation in America, and funders of scores of rightwing thinktanks and advocacy groups, from the Cato Institute and Reason Magazine to FreedomWorks. The scion of the Koch family, Fred Koch, was a co-founder of the notorious extremist-rightwing John Birch Society.

Read the balance of the blog to see the entire sordid mess exposed!

[BlooInBloo]

1. More dot-connecting....

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/2/28/202318/053/640/703118

[FrenchieCat]

2. One Big Hoax!

I hope this man is fired!

I think we should do a letter writing campaign to NBC that they fire Little Ricky the Ranter!

[Kaleko]

3. Interesting.

[drm604]

4. Check out my thread about how this seems to go back to March '08 or earlier.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x5159165

[NYC_SKP]

15. Great post there. Just gave it it's 85th recommendation.

:patriot:

Nice work! Thank you.

[Joe the Liberal]

5. And it begins.......

well we better get used to it, because things like this will go on for YEARS.

[zeemike]

6. Who wants to bet me

Than in less than a year Santelli will have his own TV and or radio show?
No takers? I will give you 2 to 1 odds.

[AllentownJake]

7. What the hell is this entire "Tea Party" Bullshit about

[Joe Bacon]

8. It's "The Arkansas Project" 2

And you can sure as hell bet that the same people who plotted to impeach Clinton and overthrow Al Gore have their fingerprints all over this!

It's THEM or US. Fuck Scaife and the rich. Make em pay and soak the rich!

[AllentownJake]

9. Agreed

They are going to try to employ the same tactics of 1993. Some people on here were bitching that there were too many Clinton era people in the White House. Myself I find comfort in that as they battled these tactics 16 years ago and are the most equipped to battle the tactics in 2009. The GOP is reverting to their 90's area strategy...what they forget is that we have veterans from that war and won't be caught as off guard as we were in 93.

[Kalyke]

10. Surely there's another place to read about this.

I don't click on links that objectify women.

[wndycty]

11. Oy vey

I understand your sensitivity on this, however I should point out both Playboy and Penthouse have excellent journalists who do stellar work on current affairs/ poltics. The first expose I saw on Richard Mellon Scaife was in Penthouse.

[Kalyke]

12. I was a journalist and know of Playboy's fine journalism (Penthouse, not so much).

However, I do not support them in any way. People should want to read their work without being lured in by making women objects. Why can't they go work for the New Yorker or something?

Just because someone is great in their profession doesn't mean I need to support their organization if I don't agree with the fundamental premise of their purpose.

It would be like purchasing Ann Coulter's book because there was an excerpt from a Seymour Hersh investigation in it. "Ain't" gonna happen.

[NYC_SKP]

14. Whatever...

I could say, "I don't usually respond to replies that include the tired pseudofeminist meme that Playboy objectifies women...", but I won't.

Or you could read upthread, there are other sources.

Here: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x5159165

[Numba6]

13. Why doesn't the SEC investigate Santelli's efforts to manipulate the market?

why does the Board of Trade allow someone on the floor trying to manipulate the markets w/ rants?

Did Santelli have any short positions before his rant?