Yeah I think less than 1% is probably quite accurate.  My question would be what are you basing your estimate of 20% on? 

I can tell you my assessment is based on my own conversations with the people you see in these crowds...I'm friends with at least a dozen of the 400k (likely more tbh) and they were all excited and pumped up after the tea parties.  But what were they excited about though??

How positive the message was, that they felt like this movement was taking the right approach by saying it is BOTH PARTIES and that frivolous spending is a problem no matter who does it and that they are going to fight any politician who is not fiscally conservative and support any politician who is..regardless of the other policies they might support (including canvasing, donations, fundraising, etc..).  At no point did they ever bring up race or even Obama alone as an issue and I can tell you they are extremely offended by comments like Garofalos and found it to be a pathetically ignorant comment.  They've been deliberate and explicit in their efforts to point out that it isn't just Obama, that this problem is much bigger than one politician or one party. In fact when racism did rear its head in Papillion the crowd is the one who reacted the strongest towards it according to my friend Kairi who I have no reason to doubt.  She isn't exactly a conservative by any stretch of the imagination either....the bottom line is that the these events were of a very different tenor to what was being portrayed in the media.

Do you understand that their plan for the next set of events is actually a 4th of July picnic/BBQ setup?  I mean I'm sure racists like picnics and BBQ's as much as anyone else but the fact is that the kind of vitriolic hatred that racism is based on doesn't produce a protest via picnic parties...there is just a fundamental disconnect between the tone being put out by the grassroots organizers of these events and their supporters compared to their portrayal by folks like Olby and Garofalo.

Consider that by your estimate you think that statistically it is likely that 2 to 3 of my friends are racists....I strongly beg to differ.

I will probably be participating in the 4th of July festivities if the movement stays on the same message and tone it has right now.  I wanted to see how they handled themselves at this first round before I got involved and I'm more than pleased.  But don't worry I don't take offense to the idea that you think there is a one in five chance that I'm a racist .

See I think you're making a good argument...but I don't think you've provided any proof (neither has anyone else though).  Nor do I think anyone really can get that proof for their case short of some special FBI connections that could get the ball rolling on deep and thorough investigations.

Going back to my original point that I disagreed with, I'm very particular about the word "proof".  You certainly have a solid argument in my view, but I don't think you have proof.

Specifically a formal series of statements showing that if one thing is true something else necessarily follows from it.  That from a basic premise agreeable to everyone you can show through logical and deterministic steps what happened and why.

See that is the problem, I could shove objective proof in people's faces all day long, and they would be too ignorant to see it as such. There is no debating the fact that bad loans caused a huge portion of this financial mess we are in. And there is no debating that Fanny and Freddy, section 8, and HUD, had a lot to do with this mess.

What is wrong with attacking people who are "dissenting?" Isn't that freedom of speech too? There is nothing wrong with attacking the reasons why someone is doing something as fundamentally unsound.

Why did we never see these protests during the Reagan years (the one who started massive deficit spending), or the Bush W. years (the prince of deficit spending)?

I don't think that the people who are protesting actually care about this stuff as much as they claim. They only care when a Democrat is doing it. Its a political charade. Maybe it just bothers them that Obama is being honest about it while Bush W. did a lot of creative bookkeeping to make the problem seem a lot smaller than it actually was. I think anyone who complains about what Obama is doing and isn't willing to take on Reagan, Bush Sr. (least culpable, he tried to raise taxes in the name of fiscal responsibility and his party hated him for it), and Bush W. as well are blatant hypocrites.

Cold War.

The deficit spending wasn't nearly bad as bad... but people still did complain.

I mean if Bush was the Prince of Deficit spending Obama would be the King.

But we've already gone over this a couple times in this thread.  You just keep bringing it back though because your blatantly partisan... and would rather do that then argue the issue.

So the Cold War can justify deficit spending but a humongous economic crisis can't?

For a lot of people yes.

A full scale Nucleaer war between the US and USSR would of been a lot more disasterous then the current economic crisis.

The fact you can't instantly recognize that is kinda crazy.

Well for one, this has been building up, the recent onslaught of bailouts has prompted this movement. To say that they only care because a demecrat is in office is inherently wrong since there were many demacrats at these tea parties. If you could look past your own idealistic partisonship you might actually begin to see that.

I recognize that some people believe that, but saying that the rational behind one is substantially more sound than the other is questionable to me.

I don't blame Reagan for the spending as much as I blame the people who have taken some of Reagan's ideas to such an extreme degree that it has really come back to haunt us.  I hate how he popularized deficits and demonized taxes while doing so under the cloak of fiscal responsibility.  And I think his tax cuts were a good idea for the economic problem he was facing, stagflation.  Tax cuts are about the only way to deal with stagflation.

I cannot stand how some people now believe that tax cuts can solve any economic problem.  That's just as stupid as saying that government spending can solve any economic problem.  You can't fix every problem with one solution.

was that a joke?

If we didn't do anything it would be cheaper to print newspapers on dollar bills.