The Tea Party Express...you have been conned

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I received an email about this and followed it up with some checking of my own. I'm not going to post any links because a quick google search will bring up what I'm about to post...and more...so check it out for yourself if you are in doubt. According to what I've been able to learn, the Tea Party Express is not simply one of the many independent factions of the Tea Party movement and never has been. They are an organized GOP-affiliated PAC (Political Action Committee), operating under various names. Originating as Our Country Deserves Better, which held a cross-country "Stop Obama" bus tour in 2008, they raised money and ran attack ads directed at Obama during the campaign and "Thank You" ads directed at Sarah Palin following her loss. They launched a bus tour under the name Tea Party Express in August of 2009, hoping to cash in on the popularity of the tea party movement and to eventually insert Palin into the movement, with the goal of gaining support for a presidential run. Even more disturbing is that the chairman of the Our Country Deserves Better PAC is Howard Kaloogian. The PAC's Chief Strategist is Sal Russo. Kaloogian ran for a seat in the House in 2006 and Russo ran his campaign. They go back even further though. In 2004 they teamed up to create Moving America Forward, a political action group, with a public goal of promoting conservative causes and singing the praises of Operation Iraqui Freedom, but privately signing a contract with the Kurdish government to promote Kurdish interests in the U.S. There was an issue during Kaloogian's 2006 campaign involving a picture he tried to pass off as being a quiet street in Baghdad when, in reality, it was taken in Istanbul...followed by other lies in an attempt to cover up the first lie. Do you feel like you're being played?