Our own John Amato appeared on The Alyona Show on Russia Today to discuss the Koch brothers and their astroturf "tea party" and their war on unions in America.

Could this be the perfect opportunity to expose the white collar, behind closed doors war on unions in America and expose the actions of the Koch Brothers to the masses? Crooks and Liars Founder John Amato discusses.

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While protesters gather on their state capitals across the country to show their support for the workers in Wisconsin, CNN thought they'd take some time out letting us all know that their astroturf tea party Republican re-branding effort just turned two.

Here's some of what CNN managed to ignore today from TPM -- Workers Of America Unite: Pro-Union Rallies Cropping Up Nationwide.

And from D-Day at FDL -- VIDEO: 100,000-Plus in Madison for Rally for Workers’ Rights.

CNN transcript below the fold.

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Joe Scarborough asked Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker if he was worried about some of the hateful rhetoric aimed at him and his family since he decided to bust the unions in Wisconsin and whether he felt threatened and apparently Walker is not worried about the local residents of Wisconsin. He's only worried about those being bused in. So I guess that means he's afraid of the Koch brothers and their "tea party" and the likes of Andrew Breitbat since those are the only groups I'm aware of being bused into his state.

He also apparently thinks that 60,000 plus non-astroturf protesters equals about 2000 Koch brother sponsored protesters since he made the ridiculous claim that the numbers coming out were equal on both sides. Apparently the state's new governor isn't very good at math, and he was allowed to get away with that by the Morning Joe crew that interviewed him. It's a good thing we've got that "liberal" network looking out for us dirty f**king hippies and our interests, isn't it?

It's not possible to recall Walker until he's served a year in office, but it is possible to recall members of the Wisconsin legislature right now. I hope to hell we see a move towards that happening and a move to get this man recalled next year. I would love to see this over reach result in a Governor Russ Feingold now that the voters in Wisconsin have had a chance to see how Walker has decided to govern and to use his position of power to enrich his friends at the expense of the working class.

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When Rachel Maddow aired this criticism of CNN for their promotion of Michele Bachmann's "Tea Party" response to the State of the Union Address and of CNN for promoting the astroturf Tea Party Express on their network for months on end as well, I wondered if Howard Kurtz would respond to it. Well he did, but par for the course, he completely ignored the criticism of CNN promoting Sal Russo's group.

Here's Rachel from last week -- Rachel Maddow Takes CNN to Task for Airing Bachmann's Speech and Promoting Astroturf Tea Party Express.

And here's the way Kurtz responded this weekend. Play the, yeah we covered crazy Michele Bachmann but everyone else does it too just to get ratings game -- and completely ignore that his network has acted about as badly as Fox with promoting the corporate funded tea party astroturf groups. Bravo Howard.

KURTZ: When it comes to cable news, all members of Congress aren't created equal. On the left, Democratic Congressman Alan Grayson, who just lost his seat, got plenty of exposure on MSNBC for saying such things as the Republican health plan for sick people is "die quickly." On the right, Republican Congresswoman Michele Bachmann became a Fox News star -- she occasionally pops up on other channels as well -- for saying such things as Barack Obama may have anti-American views.

But more incendiary is why the bookers go after them. So when a brainy, budget-cutting hawk, Paul Ryan, delivered the official GOP response to the president's State of the Union, it was Bachmann who made news by making a video appearance for the Tea Party Express thanks, in part, to this network.

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From AmericaBlog -- Maddow: The story behind Michelle Bachmann's speech — it was a manufactured 'event' by CNN & a Republican for-profit consultant:

Stunning. It appears from Rachel Maddow's reporting that there's a larger story behind the Michelle Bachmann "Tea Party movement official response" to Obama's state of the union address. Turns out, "Tea Party" doesn't mean what you think it means; and neither does "movement."

According to Maddow, CNN has been working with Sal Russo, of the for-profit Republican consulting firm Russo Marsh & Rogers — Rachel used the words "merging" and "partnering" — in several Tea Party–related joint enterprises.

• One was the placement of "embedded" reporters on Russo's phony Tea Party Express bus tour (giving credibility to the bus tour and Fox-like publicity to CNN).
• One will be an upcoming jointly-hosted "first-of-its-kind Tea Party presidential primary debate" (giving same to same; note the Fox-ification of CNN in this).
• And one was the Michelle Bachmann–delivered "Tea Party movement official response" to Obama. Why was it "official"? Because CNN, who appear to have helped create it, said it was.

Go read the rest but as they pointed out, it will be interesting to see if there's any fallout or not from Rachel's reporting. Here's CNN's contact page if you want to express your displeasure to them. Whether they respond now that someone on another network has called them out for their behavior, who knows. Anyone think Kurtz will pick this up for his Sunday show? Or that Anderson Cooper will mention it in one of his "Keeping Them Honest" segments? We've been covering this at C&L for some time now and it hasn't stopped them from promoting the "tea party" yet.

CNN pimps Great American Tea Party Express PR and Propaganda Tour

CNN's "Fox Envy": Details Behind Their Fawning Tea Party Coverage Exposed

CNN gives 'Tea Party Express' free publicity, free room to lie about their anti-Obama origins

CNN lowers itself and will air Michelle Bachmann's Tea Party SOTU Attention speech

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I think Jeremy Scahill summed this up pretty well on Twitter tonight. He suggested that SNL could just run Bachmann's "Tea Party" response to the State of the Union on its own, unedited. I couldn't agree more.

Our own Bluegal said someone else on Twitter thinks there are going to be a lot of GOP women using Sharpies as eyeliners now. And Susie Madrak thought she sounded like a librarian reading to her kids at story hour. I await the fact checking on her nonsense by others that have the time to do it, but for now, here she is in an appearance I hear was so rushed that they didn't even get her set up properly to be looking into the right camera for the CNN viewers.

And here she is preparing for her tea party response to the SOTU.

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UPDATE: It appears our friends over at Media Matters Political Correction had some time to fact check Bachmann's speech. Fact Checking Rep. Bachmann's "Tea Party Response" To The State Of The Union

Go read the whole thing since it looks like they put a lot of work into it including one of the first things that came to my mind when watching her which is The Washington Monthly's Steve Benen's bikini chart on jobs compared to Bachmann's chart tonight.

And here's more from Salon's Joan Walsh on both Ryan and Bachmann's responses tonight -- Why does the GOP hide its agenda?.

CNN has the transcript.

Good evening. My name is Congresswoman Michele Bachmann from Minnesota's 6th District.

I want to thank the Tea Party Express and Tea Party HD for inviting me to speak this evening. I'm here at their request and not to compete with the official Republican remarks.

The Tea Party is a dynamic force for good in our national conversation, and it's an honor for me to speak with you.

Two years ago, when Barack Obama became our president, unemployment was 7.8%, and our national debt stood at what seemed like a staggering $10.6 trillion. We wondered whether the president would cut spending, reduce the deficit and implement real job-creating policies.

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Somebody got on Tweety's bad side tonight... the Tea Party Express' Sal Russo. Joan Walsh didn't get a chance to say much during the segment but she has more here at Salon -- The skewering of Sal Russo:

Live by the Tea Party, die by the Tea Party. The GOP flack falls apart defending Michele Bachmann's slavery history

Poor Sal Russo. The Tea Party Express leader had a rough day. Booked on MSNBC's "Hardball" to discuss Michele Bachmann's upcoming State of the Union rebuttal, instead he found himself confronted by Bachmann's idiotic whitewash of American history in a speech in Iowa over the weekend.

Go read the rest for more on Bachmann's nonsense he was trying to defend, but I thought I'd share one more point she made during the interview and in her article about these astroturf teabaggers and who they really are.

It was hard to feel sorry for Russo, though: He's a mainstream Republican campaign consultant who's worked for everyone from Ronald Reagan to Christine Todd Whitman. He saw a future in the Tea Party, so he hitched his wagon to its "Express." His firm Russo Marsh and Associates paid itself millions for promoting the candidacies of Christine O'Donnell, Sharron Angle and Joe Miller -- three seats Republicans should have won but lost because Russo's candidates were crackpots. (Russo insists his firm does it for love, not money.) Now he's hyping Bachmann; it's the Tea Party Express that's sponsoring her speech opposite official GOP rebutter, Rising Star™ Paul Ryan. Maybe Russo is secretly working for the Democrats?

On "Hardball," I tried to meet Russo on his own terms and talk about the deficit. His former boss, Ronald Reagan, built up the largest peacetime budget deficit in history back in the day, and also signed the largest peacetime tax increase. Republican George W. Bush took over a $200 billion annual budget surplus left by Democrat Bill Clinton, and handed President Obama a $1.2 trillion annual deficit. Where was Russo's Tea Party movement when Republicans were looting the Treasury?

Nowhere to be found. Russo and his buddy Dick Armey and the rest of them didn't have a reason to be busing them to town halls when Republicans were busting the budget.

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Americans for Prosperity's Tim Phillips managed to get a nice softball interview from CNN's Eliot Spitzer and Kathleen Parker. They allowed their viewers to come away hearing this guy complain that his ultra-rich corporate donors just can't be disclosed because they're going to be harassed. And he got praised by Spitzer for being "brave" enough to say the retirement age should be raised and that we should be going after both the jobs and the pensions of federal workers.

And of course there was no mention of how much backing his group has got from those that stand to benefit from our current health care system keeping the insurance companies when the conversation turned to Medicare reimbursements.

It's too bad he wasn't debating someone who would explain that we could make Medicare affordable if we weren't dumping the sickest and most expensive patients onto the government instead of having single payer where the young are contributing to the same system as well, and cutting his buddies out of the massive profits they've been making doing their best to insure as few people as possible while they line their pockets.

SPITZER: Our "Headliner" tonight is Tim Phillips, the president of Americans for Prosperity, a right-wing group who Barack Obama claims was at the center of questionable Republican campaign spending in 2010. He called out the group at least 19 times in campaign speeches. A highly unusual level of attention from the president.

PARKER: Phillips is a major player in the rise of Tea Party. His organization has invested heavily in the fight against health care reform.

Welcome, Tim.

TIM PHILLIPS, PRESIDENT, AMERICANS FOR PROSPERITY: Nice to be here.

PARKER: How do you feel about being identified as a right-wing activist group? Is that accurate?

PHILLIPS: I think free market is the word. But we'll take whatever.

SPITZER: Those are words you guys use anyway. We're trying to be good to you.

PARKER: All right. Well, let me ask you this. Now that the elections are over --

PHILLIPS: Right.

PARKER: -- you recently had a meeting in Virginia with some other conservative leaders to develop a strategy for the next two years.

PHILLIPS: Right.

PARKER: So what did you come up with?

PHILLIPS: We're going to take on the Obama health care plan. We're going to make sure that issue stays in front of the American people. We think it's terrible legislation. The American people don't want it. And we're going to insist that this Congress continue to revisit that issue because it's crucial to our prosperity and individual health care choices.

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I always find it interesting to see how some of these so called journalists react when they're asked questions that don't fall into their scripted talking points of the week. C-SPAN aired Politico's weekly "Turn the Table" Sunday show preview which featured David Gregory, Candy Crowley, Bob Schieffer and Christiane Amanpour. A woman who identified herself as someone who works in alternative media asked the panel these questions.

Q: One, the Tea Party, are they Republicans? Because, have I seen where they have been placed on the ballot as a separate party like the Green Party or the Communist Party; is the Tea Party Republican? And a question to all of you in the media that I've not heard mentioned at all, the two largest embassies that have been built in the world in Iraq and Haiti, I've not heard any of the media, in terms of mainstream media talk about those at all. That's a lot of government and money.

David Gregory dismissed the size of our massive embassy in Iraq and simply said that if she was concerned about that the bigger issue is how much money we're spending on the "wars" and that the embassy was "just a symbol of that" and the concerns should go well beyond those buildings. While I don't necessarily disagree with that it doesn't excuse the lack of coverage over the waste and other problems involved in building the embassy in Iraq, the costs, and what it means in terms of our endless military occupations.

Gregory and the other panelists then said this about the so called "Tea Party":

GREGORY: I think the Tea Party's goal in life is to rehabilitate the Republican Party, so yes, they're part of the Republican Party.

SCHIEFFER: And they ran as Republicans. I mean they ran in the Republican primaries and I think one of the things that there was a sigh of relief for Republicans is they did not try to run as independents.

HARRIS: Yeah, Bob implicit in that question and I think is a pretty valid point is it seemed like many of the Tea Party activists, the people most motivated in this election care a lot more about their ideological agenda than they do the Republican brand. In many cases it seemed to me that they were as contemptuous of Republicans and sort of Washington political professionals as they were Democratic political pros.

SCHIEFFER: But they ran as Republicans.

HARRIS: Right.

SCHIEFFER: I mean they ran in Republican primaries and they were elected as Republicans.

HARRIS: Right...right... right.

SCHIEFFER: Yes, they want to change the Republican Party.

AMANPOUR: Jim DeMint said, and maybe he said it to you "We'd rather have people with principle" than just any Republican.

CROWLEY: Well it was something like that. Thirty true believers and sixty are Arlen Specters.

That's more of an admission out of any of them than you normally get on the air where they're more than happy to help the Republicans out by participating in their re-branding effort and pretending that the "Tea Party" is not just the far right wing of the Republican Party and ignoring their corporate backers like the Koch brothers.

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That tea party is so grass rootsy they're holding strategy sessions at The Heritage Foundation. Good thing they're just looking out for the little people. I found C-SPAN's description of this program rather odd:

Tea Party leaders talked about the future of the movement among new members of the 112th Congress. Following their remarks, they responded to audience members' questions.

"Tea Party leaders" huh. And just who are those "leaders"?

• Michael Franc, Vice President, Government Relations, Heritage Foundation
• Ed Morrissey from HotAir
• Billie Tucker First Coast Tea Party
• Byron York, Washington Examiner

I didn't know Franc, Morrissey and York were "Tea Party leaders". The only self-identified "Tea Party" leader who was there, Billie Tucker had this to say about "entitlements".

Q: Now all three of you have mentioned that for true financial reform we need to cut back on entitlements. Is there the motivation and the courage and the desire for the tea party to go into that fight? That's a long hard fight to cut Social Security, food stamps, Medicare, all those programs.

TUCKER: Yes and we've had discussions about that because we know it is a problem. Again, the American people are smart and the tea party members are smart. And they know we cannot talk about, you know, doing away with spending without really looking at the entitlement programs. The word that we do not like in the tea party movement is to say that Social Security is entitlement.

People are sick of that and they want that changed. They paid into a system that was set up by this government, again, sort of like this health care, was not entitlement; we all paid into it. The problem is corruption happened and they didn't do with the money what they were supposed to do with the money. So we're willing to work on that issue, but we're not willing to give it all up, because they screwed it up. Does that make sense?

But when it comes to entitlements for people that are not willing to work, absolutely, we're willing to talk about that as well. Because there are a lot of good people out there that can get to work but they're now being paid... they're on the dole of the government and we can't have that.

So we're willing to negotiate. We're going to take care of the people who paid into the system. I've got a 85 year old mother in law who lives with us. She paid into that system and doggone it she's gonna' get out what she's entitled to. And she's willing to give up a little but not everything for people that are unwilling to work.

Gee, I wonder who she could be talking about here?