"Who are you?"

"And what have you done with the leftist newspaper I know?"

The Seattle Times published an EDITORIAL yesterday about the Tea Party Movement.

I put "editorial" in ALL CAPS because it was a positive editorial.

The "tea party" protests began in Seattle
By Bruce Ramsey Seattle Times editorial columnist

The "tea party" protests of April 15 were dismissed by progressive columnists as "AstroTurf" — fake grass roots, ginned up by moneyed interests. Paul Krugman said that. So did Joe Conason. Progressives delight in slandering their opponents in this way. It is an excuse not to answer them.

The protests had many organizers. The big one in this state, in Olympia, was partly organized by the libertarian Evergreen Freedom Foundation (EFF) and promoted on KVI-AM radio, the Seattle Fox News affiliate. But no radio station or 24-employee foundation has the AstroTurf power to order out 5,000 people on a Wednesday afternoon in Olympia to protest government fiscal policy. Counsel Mike Reitz says EFF has never had a turnout that big. KVI host Kirby Wilbur says the turnout was KVI's largest in 15 years.

Nationwide, the tax-day protests brought out at least 300,000 Americans in 800 locations. In this state, there were protests in at least 13 towns. They were not commanded by anyone. The protest in Spokane was started by a student, Gary Edgington, networking on Facebook and Twitter.

Some AstroTurf.

I couldn't sleep all night.

The editorial then went on to speak of Keli Carender, known here as Liberty Belle, who, as I have said here and the editorial repeated, organized and led the first "Anti-Porkulous" protest in Seattle on President's Day, which seems to have been the very first of the anti-spend-us-into-oblivion protests that came to be known as the Tea Party Movement.

Liberty Belle then commented on the editorial, and, moreover, the collectivists who commented on it, and who attacked the movement in general, and her personally. Go read her A Note to the Sad, Unfortunate People. Read the whole thing, she does a very good job of deconstructing the whole "Astroturf" accusation.

Those of us who have been active in the gun rights fight for years are not surprised at all by her final point, of course:

My last point is simple. When people start attacking us with ridiculous claims of "astroturfing" and racism, they have stopped debating us on the merit of our ideas and policies, which is what people used to do. They have succumbed to the lowest form of childish stone throwing. Why don't all these angry statists actually have a discussion or debate with someone of the opposite viewpoint instead of firing invectives arbitrarily? I love the Tea Party movement because it is held together by an ideal rather than by a cult of personality surrounding one man.

Making ridiculous claims of astroturfing and racism, among others, is, of course, how the collectivists roll.