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Comment by truth on March 1, 2009 at 3:12am

Rick Santelli’s Planted Rant ?

By Barry Ritholtz - February 28th, 2009, 5:47PM

I was interviewed by several journalists last week about Rick Santelli’s Rant — my exact quote was it had a “Faux” feel to it. (I haven’t seen it in print yet)

What was so odd about this was that Santelli is usually on the ball; we usually agree more often than we disagree. He’s been repsosible for some of the best moments on Squawk Box.

But his rant somehow felt wrong. After we’ve pissed through over $7 trillion dollars in Federal bailouts to banks, brokers, automakers, insurers, etc., this was a pittance, the least offensive of all the vast sums of wasted money spent on “losers” to use Santelli’s phrase. It seemed like a whole lot of noise over “just” $75 billion, or 1% of the rest of the total ne’er-do-well bailout monies.

It turns out that there may be more to the story then originally met the eye, according to (yes, really) Playboy magazine.

Excerpt:

“How did a minor-league TV figure, whose contract with CNBC is due this summer, get so quickly launched into a nationwide rightwing blog sensation? Why were there so many sites and organizations online and live within minutes or hours after his rant, leading to a nationwide protest just a week after his rant?

What hasn’t been reported until now is evidence linking Santelli’s “tea party” rant with some very familiar names in the Republican rightwing machine, from PR operatives who specialize in imitation-grassroots PR campaigns (called “astroturfing”) to bigwig politicians and notorious billionaire funders. As veteran Russia reporters, both of us spent years watching the Kremlin use fake grassroots movements to influence and control the political landscape. To us, the uncanny speed and direction the movement took and the players involved in promoting it had a strangely forced quality to it. If it seemed scripted, that’s because it was.

What we discovered is that Santelli’s “rant” was not at all spontaneous as his alleged fans claim, but rather it was a carefully-planned trigger for the anti-Obama campaign. In PR terms, his February 19th call for a “Chicago Tea Party” was the launch event of a carefully organized and sophisticated PR campaign, one in which Santelli served as a frontman, using the CNBC airwaves for publicity, for the some of the craziest and sleaziest rightwing oligarch clans this country has ever produced. Namely, the Koch family, the multibilllionaire owners of the largest private corporation in America, and funders of scores of rightwing thinktanks and advocacy groups, from the Cato Institute and Reason Magazine to FreedomWorks. The scion of the Koch family, Fred Koch, was a co-founder of the notorious extremist-rightwing John Birch Society.”

What is Playboy’s evidence of this?

“Within hours of Santelli’s rant, a website called ChicagoTeaParty.com sprang to life. Essentially inactive until that day, it now featured a YouTube video of Santelli’s “tea party” rant and billed itself as the official home of the Chicago Tea Party. The domain was registered in August, 2008 by Zack Christenson, a dweeby Twitter Republican and producer for a popular Chicago rightwing radio host Milt Rosenberg—a familiar name to Obama campaign people. Last August, Rosenberg, who looks like Martin Short’s Irving Cohen character, caused an outcry when he interviewed Stanley Kurtz, the conservative writer who first “exposed” a personal link between Obama and former Weather Undergound leader Bill Ayers. As a result of Rosenberg’s radio interview, the Ayers story was given a major push through the Republican media echo chamber, culminating in Sarah Palin’s accusation that Obama was “palling around with terrorists.” That Rosenberg’s producer owns the “chicagoteaparty.com” site is already weird—but what’s even stranger is that he first bought the domain last August, right around the time of Rosenburg’s launch of the “Obama is a terrorist” campaign. It’s as if they held this “Chicago tea party” campaign in reserve, like a sleeper-site. Which is exactly what it was.

This looks like more than a coincidence. This is now a very serious charge.

I have no insight as to whether this is true or not — but it certainly deserves a serious response from both Santelli and CNBC. If its false, then they should say so, and demand an apology from Playboy.

But if any of it is true, well then, Santelli may have to fall on his sword, and CNBC may owe the public an apology.

I am VERY curious if there is any truth to this.


Source: http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2009/02/rick-santellis-faux-rant/

Playboy Article: http://www.playboy.com/blog/2009/02/backstabber.html

Comment by Marklar on February 28, 2009 at 12:45pm

"Perhaps they wants to get control of the movement against them."

Exactly and such efforts will increase as things become more volitile. Something for which we should be on constant guard for in the near future. This and divide and conquer rhetoric meant to stir up divisions between right and left are, after all, normal modus operandi for the NWO. Even knowing the contents of their bag of tricks doesn't always make them less effective unless we remain vigilantly on watch for them.

Comment by truth on February 28, 2009 at 2:19am

Scott , you got me. I am asking the same questions. Perhaps you could go to the forum and post these questiosn to the entire network.

Comment by truth on February 28, 2009 at 1:52am

I agree Mark. Ask those rich F'ers if they cared that their childrens futures were gobbled up by bankers and you would have gotten a different response. This may have been staged, the eleite knows we are angry. Perhaps they wants to get control of the movement against them. Turns out Michel Malkin is involved in this too, as well as the less than impressive WND. Staged opposition??

Comment by Marklar on February 28, 2009 at 12:01am

I can support the tea parties but Santelli is just a creep. Here he is surrounded by rich wall street traders bitching about money going to anybody that isn't a fat cat banker who destroyed the system by design and should be in prison. Not one of those guys has ever worked in his life you can be sure but merely participated in the crime that picks the pockets of the entire nation until the only options we have are to either tear the system down completely or suffer eternal debt slavery.

If bailing out a few average folks is wrong bailing out rich wall street career criminals is a turd pile of steaming uncut evil on the face of Uncle Sam so just be sure you're tea partying with the true baby eating criminals in mind.

Comment by Scott on February 27, 2009 at 10:49pm

What happens when some one does get shot? What happens after the new Boston Massacre? Any plans? I'm just trying to be a realist here! Any mass demonstration will be infiltrated with anarchists and provacateurs. Is 2009 the the same as 1770? Who's willing to give up their life without first exhausting every conceivable means of avoiding a bloodbath? Are we to that point yet?

Plot out everything five and six ahead just like a chess game. You know full well the Gov't has, if not further. When you get there what will you find? I can bet that it isn't pretty! Who's ready for that??

Comment by chris E on February 27, 2009 at 10:28pm

We need to do something , these people take no heed to what we say. They had a record number of emails in voting"no" to bail out and what did they do ... do it anyway. They changing so many laws and destroying the constitution so many times, they should be shot for traitors. Or better yet hung in public for the rest fo the poloticians to see . Then they would think twice about their unscroupulous actions they do time and time again .

Comment by truth on February 27, 2009 at 6:02pm

Wichita Citizens Revive Boston Tea Party Protest