Hard to say if it’s real or not. Snopes thinks it could even be a commercial for an energy drink.

From the Washington Post Q&A with Judson Phillips, the man behind the Tea Party Express:

Maryland: I am sorry but your answer of “I think the political class is afraid of the Tea Party movement. After all, we get people out as volunteers and get them to the polls. For them, it cannot be the same as usual in D.C. A lot of them are going to be unemployed after the first of the year and that does scare them” is really offensive. This us vs. them mentality is really repulsive to me. I am a hard-working middle class American and I don’t agree with anything you are saying, and I have a right not agree with you. But you spliting the citizenry into classes of “elites/political class/Washington insiders/liberals” vs “real Americans” is just plain wrong! and that’s the problem with your movement.

Liberals are just as American as you are and you and your movement has no right to question people’s patriotism or Americanness just because they disagree with you.

Judson Phillips: Yes we do. You folks in the left do far worse. Patriotism is not something that cannot be measured. It can be. And you folks on the left, as a general rule are not patriotic. You do not love this country. You are embarrassed by us.

I hate to tell you this, but those of us in fly over country are the real americans.

Really? Patriotism can be measured? I’d like to know what instrument he uses. The idea of measured patriotism makes me question the whole body of right-wing paranoia: why, for instance, should anyone in “fly-over country” get exercised about 9/11 if New Yorkers are not “real Americans”? They should cheer.

As for folks on the left not being patriotic: I’m on the left, and I’m quite patriotic.  (I also happen to live in “fly-over country.”) When Phillips can produce the measuring-device for patriotism, I’ll gladly hold mine next to his for immediate comparison. It’s likely he’ll owe me a drink afterwards.

I do love my country. I am not embarrassed by his movement; the tea party phenomenon *IS* an embarrassment. Either Phillips has created the greatest act of mass cognitive dissonance ever, or he’s holding an exercise in surrealist theatre of the absurd.

Phillips is a political failure — a hack — who declared bankruptcy in 1999:

As a lawyer, Phillips has struggled. His legal practice has been suffering for years. The slick-sounding Nashville address on his firm’s Web site actually belongs to a construction company. Phillips meets his dwindling clientele in a Starbucks, according to both Smith and Tami Kilmarx, another former Tea Party Nation volunteer. Since 2002, Phillips has failed to update state-mandated paperwork for his business. For almost as long, he failed to pay federal taxes, leading the IRS to saddle him with $22,521 in liens from 2004 to 2008. But his financial problems and personal troubles stretch back even further.

Bear in mind that the Tea Party Express is a for-profit corporation. Phillips is stoking this dangerous, un-American nonsense because he sucks at being a lawyer.

9:40 – We’re just picking ourselves up off the floor. The board’s far-right faction has spent months now proclaiming the importance of emphasizing America’s exceptionalism in social studies classrooms. But today they voted to remove one of the greatest of America’s Founders, Thomas Jefferson, from a standard about the influence of great political philosophers on political revolutions from 1750 to today. (Emphasis mine)

Via RightWingWatch. The events were liveblogged here. And yes, this does impact you because Texas schoolbook standards are every other state’s by default. That’s how the industry works, and the wingnuts were quite aware of this when they targeted this obscure panel for activist candidates. They mean to install an idiocracy, folks.

Speaking of which, my latest YouTube offering is about the return of paranoid politics to America. Enjoy.

Adding: the song is by the defunct metal band idiot, and was pressed to CD before the movie of the same name was ever made.

Seriously, with cocaine being the Republican drug you’d think the CPAC would recognize the Eisenhower Republican named Barack Obama. But for that to happen, the GOP would have to be interested in actual governance. They know they want power; but when they have it, their main use seems to be an uninterested and profligate disaster.

Rachel Maddow is exactly right to focus on the propaganda. Note the appropriation of communist and Maoist iconography (and outright theft of the Obama logo!) on Sarah Palin’s book tour:

And at her Tea party Convention:

Good work by Rachel. Given the way she shocks life into MTP’s ratings whenever she’s on, you’d think she would have replaced David Gregory already.