“This is what happens when out-of-state ‘astroturf’ groups push demagogic events like this in our state,” Huttner continued. “It brings out the worst elements in our political culture, people who embarrass the event’s organizers more than anyone else. What does Senate Minority Leader Josh Penry, the keynote speaker at this event, think of the young kid carrying the ‘Obama monkey’ sign? Or the many pictures of Obama dressed up as Hitler? Is this the kind of political discourse he wants to foster by headlining at these rallies?”

“This insanity isn’t going to convince Americans that Obama is on the wrong track. According to a Gallup poll released just yesterday, 71% of Americans have confidence in the President to bring about an economic recovery. To answer that overwhelming majority, Dick Armey and Josh Penry managed to scare up–quite literally–a few hundred crazies and racists on a beautiful April afternoon.”

Small problem for Michael Huttner and ProgressNow - Josh Penry was NOT THE KEYNOTE SPEAKER, and he NEVER SPOKE AT THE RALLY.

PPC confirmed this in email with rally organizer and emcee Brian Campbell: “No he [Huttner] is sadly mistaken. Josh never spoke. ”

That’s right: Michael Huttner LIED.  He made it all up.  He faked a speaker who wasn’t there, and then faked his outrage against the nonexistent appearance.   Michael Huttner is a bald-faced liar.  But then, that’s what he’s paid to do by the Democracy Alliance of Billionaires.

But why, oh why, would Michael Huttner lie like this?  Why would Michael Huttner make up lies about something that never happened?  Simple: he knows that Josh Penry is looking at running for Governor next year, and that Penry is a credible threat to the incompetent weasel Democrat incumbent, Bill Ritter.  This lie by Michael Huttner is nothing more than an attempt to preemptively smear Josh Penry by dishonestly associating him with “racism” and “insanity” that never happened, and to file away what Huttner and his Proggy billionaire masters hope will be a “poison pill” they can trot out during the 2010 campaign should the need arise.

But of course, the whole thing is a lie.  And Michael Huttner and his billionaire sugar-daddies aren’t going to get a free pass on it. Not from us.

(Remember, if you want to call Michael Huttner personally at his billionaire-paid-for office at ProgressNow and give him a piece of your mind, his number is 303-931-4547.)

Oh, and something I didn’t notice before in the dishonest ProgressNow hit-piece: if you look at the picture lower down, with the “Stop Obama” sign (the same sign whose owner our friend Ari took to task), in the background is a “Bush’s Mess” placard with the ProgressNow name on the bottom of it. A slick, professionally-made sign from the looks of it. Gosh, I wonder which billionaire-financed dirty-tricks tentacle of the Democracy Alliance of Billionaires paid for that sign? It’s certainly more non-grassroots-looking than 99.9% of the legitimate signs seen at the rally.

Oddly enough, the most ridiculous part of this clip is not Keith Olbermann’s baritone droning of lewd sexual innuendo in an attempt to dismiss the whole thing via a puerile attempt at humor (“Look at me, won’t you now, I am so achingly hip with this humorous off-colour slang terminology!”).   No, the part worth watching is Garofalo’s “big lie” approach to slandering the Tea Parties.   Watch as she repeatedly punches every liberal hotbutton on race and trots out all the favorite Proglodyte stereotypes of non-lefties, over and over.  She throws everything out there, including the KKK, describing not just “teabaggers” but anyone who is not a big-P “Progressive” (ie: liberal fascist) like her as a stupid, brain-damaged, violent racist.

“Let’s be very honest about what this is about. This is not about bashing Democrats. It’s not about taxes. They have no idea what the Boston Tea party was about. They don’t know their history at all. It’s about hating a black man in the White House. This is racism straight up and is nothing but a bunch of teabagging rednecks. There is no way around that.”

It’s a remarkable (and unintentionally hilarious) display of shameless and transparent propagandizing.  And the irony is, she probably believes it all, and doesn’t recognize that this bigoted and willfully ignorant hatred she displays is exactly what she is accusing anyone to her right of harboring.  Maybe if she could get over her deep and obvious hatred for her self, she might be able to stop deflecting that hatred outwards on her selected scapegoat group.

I’ve been waiting for the day when the Proglodytes open the “any opposition to Obama’s policies is motivated only by race” door, and watching the hyperventilations on the left over the Tea Party movement this week, I think we’re very, very close to that happening.   Believe you me, that is one door they will regret having unlocked, because it swings both ways.  That charge of racism is a powerful political weapon that can be used against non-lockstep Democrats just as easily as pro-liberty activists….so go ahead, Proggies, hand it to us!

Have a little common sense when you make up your protest placards, morons.  You have to remember that hacks like Huttner are paid by the Democracy Alliance of Billionaires to attend these events and sift for the most offensive things they can find, and twist words out of context if they have to.  That’s his job.  Along with getting paid by the billionaires to hypocritically hyperventilate about the “astroturfing” and out of state funding he thinks is behind all of this.  We’ll never stop paid liars from lying about what we do, but it’s just plain stupid to hand them ammo to use against us.

Funny, though…huh…you know, I don’t seem to remember Mike Huttner showing any concern about the blatant hatred and racism on display at the pro-Hamas rally back in January, in the form of offensive Nazi references:

…and in the use of children to carry messages of hate:

…and eliminationist racism far worse than some dumbasses’ stupid monkey joke:

The real hatred was on display back then. Where was Mikey then? Was he blubbering in a fetal curl on his floor in shock and horror at the insanity on display in the public square?  Or busy cashing the latest support check from the Colorado Democracy Alliance of Billionaires?

Mote, beam, Mikey.

Oh, and if you attended the Tea Party rally Wednesday and you’d like to explain to Mike Huttner at ProgressNow what it was really about, he helpfully provided his own telephone number on the press-release linked above: 303-931-4547.

Rally Disruptors Flyer [PDF] – formatted to be printed on both sides, then cut in to half-sheets.

Print a bunch and take them to your local Tea Party rally, and spread this PDF around for others to use!

More on the disruptors and infiltrators (ooh, scaaary!) over at Michelle Malkin’s place and over at HotAir.

[Wednesday Morning Update]:

Michelle Malkin has posted a handy-dandy history of the Tea Party movement, useful for fending off those dumb allegations from the Proggies that it’s all ginned up “phony populism” manufactured by Fox News or CNBC or Big Corporations™, or whatever boogieman they want to pin it on today.  Click on the printer friendly link, and print a few copies to take with you to the rally!

And hopes that we here at PPC shoot ourselves in the head.

(Rob…I’ve seen Zombiehunter’s arsenal and, well, let’s just say that your inadequacies in the weapons department make me snicker.  Maybe when you’re done compensating and are ready to start putting together a real collection,  he can give you some advice.)

ADDED: My new fan Rob Findlay (aka slag7900) is also sharing his misogyny over at Flickr.

But that said, it’s hard not to laugh at the outrage from the nutroots over Michelle Malkin posing for a photo at yesterday’s rally with some guy who happened to be carrying one such frivolous sign.

For balance, Michelle presents a gallery of just a few instances in the past eight years where leftards thought it was perfectly acceptable (if not the height of political wit) to compare George W. Bush with Hitler.  Did Media Matters or Daily Kos criticize those instances as inappropriate?

And what about the numerous instances of lefties protesting against Israel or the U.S., and turning the “S” in each into a swastika (often luridly dripping blood)?

While I think it inappropriate to use a swastika in this way, regardless of who is using it, I can’t really take seriously the previously silent (if not complicit) left’s whining now that it’s being used to blaspheme their Most Holy Messiah.

Note the small text: Israel – Racist State.

I bet he’d tell you some of his best friends were (non-Zionist) Jews…

In contrast to the folks hiding from the camera, this kaffiyeh asshole seems awfully proud of himself. Gotta wonder what sort of intellectual knots someone like this has to tie themselves into to swallow with a smug smile the Orwellian B.S. being peddled by the people on that side of the street.

Does any other country on Earth have to make affirmations like this?

A common theme among the pro-Hamas counterprotestors was to equate Israel with Nazi Germany, often in the crudest manner possible. In this case, equating the Israeli military to Hitler’s personal bodyguard, elite military force, and executors of the Final Solution.

The whole point of this hyperbole, of course, is to undermine Israel’s legitimacy and its right to defend itself. The anger and grief felt by the Jews who these sorts of slurs are aimed at is cruel icing on the sadistic cake.

Note the signs: no hate, no racism, no anger.

More examples of the pro-Hamas protestors’ use of Nazi imagery to delegitimize Israel and sadistically taunt Jews.

Good thing it’s only Jews that they’re taunting, otherwise this kind of thing might constitute hate speech, and that would be unacceptable.

As for the…uh…guy?…on the left, he seems to have been stuck with DNC placard leftovers. (By the way, does anyone know what is located at 770 Grant in Denver?)

Huh – I didn’t know Simply Red was playing in Denver this weekend…

Not sure which moral equivalence Pierre in the back is trying to make here…either the Israelis blitzkrieged Poland and annexed it for lebensraum and nobody told me, or he’s confused on his dates and is equating the killing of the Jews trapped in the Warsaw Ghetto as part of a systematic plan of extermination with Israel’s current attempts to stop Hamas’ rocket attacks and remove its terrorist infrastructure as surgically as possible.

As for the two useful idiots in front, well…I’m guessing actually defining “justice” or “compassion” in any depth beyond the bumper-sticker bromides on their posters might be a little bit beyond their abilities. But golly, those treacly sentiments sure sound nice, don’t they? And that’s what’s important: preening your sense of self-importance with easily-mouthed and important-sounding slogans…even if those slogans provide a veneer of morality which in practice enables terrorism.

Lest we forget what the proximal cause of the current conflict is…and Israel’s saint-like patience in putting up with it for so long.

Quite a difference in message between this child and her counterparts in the counterprotest.

They murdered a bowling pin, from the looks of it.

Oh, those cruel, inhuman Israelis! How will he ever pick up that spare now?!

A twofer: one poster using the Nazi moral equivalence to delegitimize Israel itself, and another attempting to steal Israel’s basis for trying to shut down Hamas’ rocket capabilities and terror infrastructure.

While the Nazi-themed word signs were pretty offensive, for some reason I found this purely graphical sign to be the most offensive of the bunch. And that’s only because I didn’t see with my own eyes the minimally-modified Nazi Kriegsmarine ensign that one of the Hamas supporters had been waving while I was up on the capitol steps.

Not sure if she’s one of the Loretto kooks who usually show up for these sorts of things, or what – the ginormous Loretto banner wasn’t out today.

Support for Israel? Check.

Sympathy for the Palestinians and a rational assessment of their plight? Check.

American and Israeli unity? Check.

Hate? Rage? Eliminationist rhetoric? Umm…nope.

There you have it.

How can you negotiate for peace with people who do not accept your country’s right to exist in the first place?

And what’s amazing is, the woman holding the sign has probably never thought through the implications of the position on her placard, and is probably genuinely outraged when the easily foreseeable consequences of that position come calling. I can imagine her thinking the obliteration of Israel is a perfectly natural and normal and reasonable thing to hope for, and being surprised that the Israelis themselves don’t agree and make a fuss about it instead of simply committing national suicide like they should.

A smile and a joke. One example of the positive “sense of life” on display at the pro-Israel rally, as opposed to the hatred and rage across the street at the counterdemonstration.

Note that I’m not talking here about whatever grievances or differences of opinion exist between the two groups – this is a reflection of a philosophical foundation, a fundamental difference of perspective. The sort of difference which makes sending one’s children out with suicide bomb vests strapped to their bodies to commit mass murder so incomprehensible to one side, and so prideworthy to the other.

I do.

They’re at it again because there will be a pro-Israel rally from 2-4pm on the Capitol Steps on Sunday, which these folks will be attempting to a) upstage by starting a half-hour earlier, b) intimidate by being in full swing when the Israel supporters arrive, and c) shout down like playground bullies.  

Should provide some good fodder for a compare-contrast photo essay tomorrow, given what I saw when driving by the rally at the capitol steps last night.

Brief background on why I like them so much: this is a $500 million manufacturer of t-shirts, underwear, and the like. Typically low margin products, the kind of thing that usually comes from Asian and Central American sweatshops.

But not at American Apparel. This company makes over 1 million articles of clothing per week, from their one factory in Los Angeles and they grew 40% this year. They pay their 5,000-person workforce significantly above minimum wage (average is $12-$15 per hour), give them full subsidized benefits (such as high quality health care insurance for $8 per week), and they turn a profit.

This should embarrass the heck out of any executive who thinks he has to outsource in order to find effective labor. Or at least call into question his fundamental competence as a leader. If American Apparel can manufacture low margin clothing efficiently enough to beat the sweatshops (in California no less), then anyone should be able to. If they try hard enough.

How are they doing it? Among other things, by listening to the efficiency and product ideas of their employees, by keeping design, management and production close together to provoke fruitful interactions between them, by cleverly turning waste into new profit-generating products, and by keeping product cycle times short enough to enable rapid product changes and the ability to profit from short-term trends.

The American Apparel example shows that clothing companies are being perfectly honest when they say they can’t produce clothing at a profit in the U.S. – because they don’t know what they’re doing, and they aren’t interested in doing the hard work of figuring it out. Like the Starnes Heirs from “Atlas Shrugged”, they are too focused on trendy causes that show everyone how much they care about the world to take care of their business, or too worried about when the etched-glass shower doors in their executive washrooms will be installed to worry about continously improving their products and production methods. Or like many other industries in the U.S., they are too bound to the old way of doing things to see the benefits of institutional change, or even to see that there is a problem with “the way things have always been done” — offshoring allows the old ways to continue, in a different locale.

While this incompetence doesn’t excuse the excessive costs imposed on manufacturers by union extravagance and regulatory lunacy, it shows that another big factor driving manufacturing offshore is the lack of innovation and skill among those very people who point the finger of blame at work rules and government meddling.