You guys teabagging today?

[[AK]Sonic Boom]

Fox news seems to be astroturfing this teabagging party pretty hard.

Since I make considerably less than $250k per year, I'm thinking of going out and protesting my middle-class tax cut.

[[AK]Bribo]

I was planning on hitting the Albany tea party but I'm working from home today so missing it.

Here's a story about the Albany protest: http://capitalnews9.com/content/top_...y/Default.aspx

[[AK]Camelwalk]

He said Teabagging

[[AK]Bribo]

More from Albany, NY's tea party: http://www.timesunion.com/AspStories...storyID=790455

Over 2000 people showed.

[[AK]Squidly]

Since I make considerably less than $250k per year, I'm thinking of going out and protesting my middle-class tax cut.

I think the idea of taxing anyone any more is a horrible idea - whether it effects me directly or not.

We'll all be paying for it indirectly over the short and long term.

[[AK]Clay]

Didn't go, but find the whole thing fascinating.

I see the media coverage is as fair and unbalanced as always.

Check this one out:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090416/...x_day_protests
"ATLANTA – Whipped up by conservative commentators and bloggers, tens of thousands of protesters staged "tea parties" around the... "

Wow, just wow.

This was actually quite a bit bigger than I was expecting. Even my little town had a tea-party. Supposedly downtown was packed by it in fact.

[[AK]The Beast]

I was contemplating going but a) no one I know locally would've gone with me and b) more importantly, my car was in the shop until well after the thing was rolling.

[[AK]Squidly]

The weekday turnout for conservative rallies is always lower because the vast majority of them have jobs and work for a living.

Leave the rallies to the college students, educators, and other societal moochers, IMO.

[[AK]Clay]

The weekday turnout for conservative rallies is always lower because the vast majority of them have jobs and work for a living.

You hit something that struck me as well. When is the last time you even heard of a conservative group conducted protest?

This is protest from the productive segment of society - who's time is both limited and valuable. (yes, this is broad characterization, but there is a nugget to this). Every person who attends an animal rights protest represents X number of people, where X isn't a very big number. If I were a politician, I'd be paying pretty close attention to this.

To be fair, some of these guys I've seen in some of the photo ops were kook's. Protests always bring those out. Yet, on my drive home, I passed a lot of guys in Dockers and other obvious professionals walking towards downtown for this thing. Don't see that a whole lot.

[[AK]The Beast]

The one in my area was 4-6 PM, right on my way home from work. If I'd had my car, I could have easily made at least the end of it without missing any work time at all.

[[AK]Squidly]

The one in my area was 4-6 PM, right on my way home from work. If I'd had my car, I could have easily made at least the end of it without missing any work time at all.

That yours was scheduled for 4-6pm supports my point.

[[AK]Bribo]

That yours was scheduled for 4-6pm supports my point.

I'm reading that the Albany one was a huge success probably due to the fact it was in a park downtown within walking distance to many office building, was scheduled during lunch time and on a beautiful sunny day.

[[AK]The Beast]

True, 5-7 or 6-8 PM would have been better, but it has to be early enough to be covered (and the attendance counted) on the 6:00 news.

Here's a quote from my local paper about the one in Wilmington:

...[T]here wasn't really tea in the giant burlap sack dunked into the Christina River on Wednesday. And the fluffy white wig on the guy dressed as George Washington kept sliding off his head in the pouring rain.

And here are half the captions from the story's photos:

President Barack Obama is a Soviet, a sign suggests at a Tea Party rally conducted in Atlanta on Wednesday.

Bill Menear of Fort Myers, Fla., holds a sign at a Tea Party rally there suggesting that President Barack Obama is, somehow, both a Nazi and a Soviet communist.

At a Tea Party rally in Chicago, Robert Goerlich holds a sign suggesting that President Barack Obama is a Nazi, or perhaps Adolf Hitler himself, but not indicating whether the president is also a Soviet communist.

Hmm, missing the point and highlighting the most extreme protest signage, and not even from the local party. Any wonder why I don't subscribe to the local paper, and only read the local section (since it's about the only place to get word about the $270 million dollar county budget deficit, and the largest per capita state budget deficit in the country)?

[[AK]Hylander]

Sonic should be more concerned by the fact that his Messiah is continuing the use of many information gathering tactics from the Bush Administration.