Tuesday, September 15, 2009

Just what the tea party movement needs - Peter LaBarbera

As if the teabaggers didn't shoot themselves in the foot by lying about attendance numbers at last weekend's anti-Obama protest, they receive more help with that gun courtesy of our friend, Peter LaBarbera:

Just in case you are still relying on establishment liberal media like the Associated Press (AP) to get your news, here are some startling photos and links documenting the mammoth, conservative “Tea Party Express” march in our nation’s capital Saturday, September 12th. This was a grassroots taxpayers’ protest of historic proportions — not in the “tens of thousands,” as AP misreported, but between one and two million people coming to make their voice heard in Washington.

That's right. It's not the fault of Matt Kibbe, president of FreedomWorks, who spread the lie that ABC News had reported that between 1 million to 1.5 million people had gathered to protest.

Nor it is Michelle Malkin's fault even though she helped to spread this lie. Nor is it the fault of the assorted nuts of conservative talking heads and bloggers.

It's the "damned liberal media" again.

And LaBarbera has "proof " of this.

But like so much of his information, his "proof" is inaccurate:

Obviously moved by the enormity of the 9/12 march, the British newspaper Daily Mail — hardly sympathetic to American conservatives — reported (emphasis added): “A million march to US Capitol to protest against ‘Obama the socialist.’” However, the Daily Mail’s original headline was: “Up to two million march to US Capitol to protest against Obama’s spending in ‘tea-party’ demonstration” (it appears that the DM’s editors made some politically correct revisions);

To dwell on the alleged political leanings of the Daily Mail is an evasive tactic. If one looks at the article, they would find that it does not cite any sources for its claim

Malkin’s follow-up web article: “Celebrating the 9/12 rallies; Turnout estimated at 2 million” ;

If you clicked on this link, you would see that Malkin updated the "article" saying that the 2 million number was inaccurate - something that LaBarbera conveniently omits.

WorldNetDaily.com story on 9/12: “A million or more rock Washington: Taxpayer march could be biggest rally ever in capital”;

WND founder Joseph Farah’s column: “The shameful non-coverage of 9/12″;

Isn't World Net Daily the same group that's pushing the "Obama is not an American citizen" lie?

Rather than pushing factual information courtesy of Politifact, such as this piece questioning a photo of the event, and Mediamatters.org, which tracked the attendance number lie put out by conservatives, LaBarbera does a poor job of trying to bring relevancy to this madness by reprinting refuted information and then blaming the media for the ineptitude of the tea baggers in their attempts to deceive.

And of course he tries to link it all to lgbts:

What does all this have to do with the fight against the Homosexual Lobby? Well, for one, beyond the health care debate, the Obama Administration is pushing to enact a comprehensive “gay” agenda that would greatly expand the government’s power to effectively force businesses and individuals to approve of or subsidize homosexual and “transgender” lifestyles. The Employment Nondiscrimination Act (ENDA) — slated for hearings next week — would create federal homosexuality- and transsexuality-based “rights” for employees. This would invariably circumscribe the liberties of business owners who oppose homosexuality as a matter of conscience.

We trust that the same people who oppose Big Government intruding into our lives will resist the idea that the Government should be forcing businessmen and businesswomen to support homosexual behavior and gender confusion or risk getting sued.

This is the point where I usually attempt to bring clarity to LaBarbera's nonsense.

But I can't right now because I'm too busy laughing.



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3 comments:

  1. Mykelb9:40 AM

    1 to 2 Million People? What a joke. I live in the District and believe me, there were not an extra 1 to 2 million people here last Saturday. This town would have shut down with that many people, and it did not happen. There might have been about 30,000 extra people here, but that's nowhere near 1 to 2 million.

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  2. ColdCountry10:45 AM

    Do you know if the photo on LaBarbara's site is also of a different event?

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  3. Knowing Peter, there is no telling.

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