Congratulations, Tea Partiers!  You know you’ve become a genuine threat to the Progressive movement when they start making t-shirts about you.

The Agenda Project has launched “F*ck Tea”, an anti-Tea Party campaign that aims to “dismiss the tea party and promote the progressive cause.”  Check out their nifty little video promoting their positive cause:

As Agenda Project founder Erica Payne explained to Politico’s Ben Smith:

“We will be launching new products in the next several months to help people all over the country F*ck Tea.  Products like a Glenn Beck Bowl Buddy (Beck B Scrubbin) and others are perfect holiday gifts or just a great way to say, ‘I love you and our country’ to your spouse, friend or family.”

The website features a variety of t-shirts and mugs imprinted with the slogan “F*uck tea,” and Ms. Payne infers there will be more to come in the future.  It also splashes a host of unsourced “Tea Party Facts” across the left side of the page, in an attempt to demean and minimize those who belong to or support the Tea Party movement, and imply that those who don’t are somehow of superior intellect based solely upon said “facts.”  Meanwhile, the site dotingly highlights the word “progress” as “a movement toward a goal; advancement; growth; development; continuous improvement,” calling it “The Real American Party.”  Frankly, I see nothing “real” about this or about any of the progressive people involved in it.

Now, I’ll admit, I’m one conservative constitutionalist who embraces the “F” word as part of my regular vocabulary, as much of a shock as that may be to leftists who may have already stereotyped me otherwise.  But I was not aware that the word had become synonymous with positive development and improvement.  (What a relief!)  If brandishing the “F” word across my chest and gallivanting in public is a sign of intellect and the new symbol of the party of Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, then I’m more than happy to save my $22.50, thanks.  (Besides, if one’s cause were so important that such a word absolutely had to be used, the Libertarian in me wonders, why not just spell it out?)  Also somewhat amusing about the entire venture  is that the very people railing against the tea parties and against capitalism are shelling out over $20 a shirt for someone’s concocted-idea-turned-business-venture.  It’s the very Capitalist tale that so many of the progressive left heartily opposes.

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If you haven’t read by now all the headlines on this story, you’ll want to start at the beginning and read the first post, SEIU Storms Private Residence, Terrorizes Teenage Son of Bank of America Exec.  Because as each day passes, new facts are popping up.  The story seemed so outrageous at first.  After all, the thought of over 500 screaming and chanting protesters surrounding a Bank of America lawyer’s private residence while the man’s teenage son, home alone, hid frightened inside a bathroom – it’s just so extreme, even by SEIU’s standards.

I knew something was up when the following day, Fortune magazine editor Nina Easton, a neighbor of the targeted residence, published an account of the incident and was almost immediately attacked by what seemed like practically a coordinated dogpile of writers from several specific sources.

In almost mirror fashion to the Town Hall events last August, when both the Huffington Post and Media Matters seemingly tried to cover up and dismiss the violent acts that SEIU committed against Kenneth Gladney, the same players were again out in full force.  As our Larry O’Connor wrote, both outlets behaved less like journalists and more like arms of the SEIU press office, dismissing SEIU’s bad behavior and attacking an innocent party with fabricated conflicts of interest as a method of distraction and intimidation.

Bob Borosage, Erica Payne, and John Podesta

And now we learn this:  Erica Payne, the guest who was invited to appear Friday on Megyn Kelley’s Fox News show and proceeded to blame the Tea Parties for the behavior of SEIU?  She was co-founder of Democracy Alliance, the very organization that spawned and is a donor to Media Matters.  SEIU Secretary-Treasurer Anna Burger is also the Vice-Chair of its Board.

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We’ve always known that there’s no equivocation a like leftist’s equivocation.  But this one has raised the bar (or do I mean lowered?).

Megyn Kelly interviewed Erica Payne on the thug-like tactics of SEIU this past Sunday as hundreds of them stormed the front door of Bank of America executive Greg Baer’s home.  Payne barely gets out a perfunctory condemnation of the mob tactics before she launched into a hilarious attempt at blaming the Tea Party activists as the root of the problem:

Yes, you saw right.  This is a laughable attempt at equating the organized and approved mob scene sponsored by the SEIU with one lone nut who posted a ridiculous and offensive suggestion on his blog in the wake of the health care vote.

And as she uses one side of her mouth to pretend to condemn this sort of behavior, she quickly uses the other side to throw more gasoline on the fire with class-warfare rhetorical talking points such as “300 billion dollars in bonuses”, “600 million dollars on lobbyists”, “They (the bankers) walk around in a bubble”.

Right up to the end she continues to dismiss the SEIU mob and tries to point back at the lone blogger who identifies himself with the Tea Party movement.  According to her she just wants to “make sure we realize we have problems on both sides of the political aisle”.

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Facing what could become a bruising primary battle, appointed U.S. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) is embracing one of President Obama’s best known communist appointees, former green jobs czar Van Jones.

The Hill reports Gillibrand will share the stage with Jones at a panel discussion sponsored by the Advocacy Project at the Harvard Club in New York. Jones, a self-described “communist,” was pushed out of the Obama administration five months ago following the embarrassing revelation that he was a 9/11 “truther” who had signed a petition accusing the U.S. government of orchestrating the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

For a time, Jones had been politically radioactive to Democrats but Gillibrand’s decision to work alongside him appears to bring Jones’s political exile to an end.

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