Where Do Teabaggers Get a Hundred Grand?

This convention means only one thing:

We’re going to need a bigger blog.

@blogenfreude: More generally, this is why I’m not buying any predictions for the fall elections — historically, Republicans should pick up some seats, but we don’t know yet how teabaggers will thwart the nomination process. If they manage to steer Repug nominees to the right and off a cliff, they could hand Demrats a landslide.

And one more thing – that NCTC director who didn’t bother to come back from his ski vacation when the underwear bomber almost blew up a plane?

Leiter is a carryover from the Bush Administration and has been director of the National Counterterrorism Center since 2007.

Heckuva job.

@blogenfreude:
Sounds like one of the many political appointees burrowed into the bureaucracy.

As far as revenue goes, it doesn’t hurt to charge friggin $90 for a silver pendant with tiny chip of semiprecious stone in it either.

@ManchuCandidate: Not even clear he was burrowed – he might have just been retained. To be fair – not everyone Bush hired was an idiot or some pal’s college roommate. A lot were, for sure, but I’d like to see this guy in a congressional hearing explain whether he was on the slopes or on his Blackberry.

Oh, my, are the teabaggers sentient enough to sense that they are being hijacked? This could shake out to be one hilarious hootenanny. We should hold a Stinque counter-convocation, no sending a representative blogger, no, all Stinquers, as well as our friends and well-wishers.

Oh, think of it, there will be Paultards and Colonial-garb-tards and Don’t Tread on Me-tards and there will be Palin-tards and Morans and Birthers, there will be Phelpses and armed Wookies and Border Patrollers, and Klansmen and pigfuckers and snake-handlers, all the demons and freaks and bogeymen, all the idiots and batshit insane and religious deranged, all brought out with their pitchforks and torches, united, somewhat, maybe not, by their hatred of the black monster commie stalinist nazi preznit. And the brave troops, also, and them liberties we’re so thankful for protectin’.

Interesting. CPAC, if that’s the whole confernece fee, is likely barely breaking even on the event unless they have sponsors, if it is held in DC which is never a cheap venue unless someone donates the space. With a nut of 100,000 for the speaker, likely $349 is a loser, even in Tennesee, unless they really think they’ll have a blow-out but the venue isn’t that big. Industrial events that have to make money can stretch out to the low four-figures in fees – though a significant fraction goes to travel and accommation and sometimes fees for speakers. The fees can’t be all the support that’s expected to come in for this event.

@Butterstinque:

You’re pretty smart for a panda.

@Prommie:

And Orly Taitz will read the opening prayer.

@Prommie: Actually, many teabaggers are quite aware of the astroturfing, which is why the funding is more interesting to me than Talibunny headlining.

They’re also deeply suspicious of the GOP establishment — it’s “politics as usual” they oppose (or think they oppose), not just Democrats. Aside from NY-23, it’s been playing out spectacularly in Florida.

@Tommmcatt is hunkered down in the trenches: You’re not far off there — CPAC banned birthers.

@Tommmcatt is hunkered down in the trenches: What kind of fucking comment is that?

@Butterstinque: Even better — $349 is for the speech alone. If you’re in it for the whole weekend, it’s $549. Only $400 more than CPAC!

@FlyingChainSaw: Your Panda Head is slipping.

@FlyingChainSaw:

Humanist, I suppose.

@FlyingChainSaw: I think you just outed yourself, buddy.

@nojo: I have been vaguely aware that the OTs, Original Teabaggers, have been mighty resentful of the bandwagon-jumping by “traditional” GOPers, but I have been wondering whether it matters, as the OTs are generally just random crotchety old insane racist gun nuts, its not like this thing coalesced around any celebrity personalities, except maybe Walker, Texas Ranger. In other words, do the rank and file teabaggers even know who the OTs are, so as to be able to tell who is an interloping GOPer?

Oh, come on, it doesn’t matter, there will be Relovution and blimps and caribou barbie and gun-toting fucktards with misspelled racist placards, a veritable freak show of Real Amurricans, the salt of the earth, the common people of the soil, you know, Morans.

We should print up a “Bestiary,” a guide to the various species of wingtard, christard, and mental patient, and klansman that will be present, and hire a fleet of Trolleys and sell sight-seeing safaris.

@nojo: CPACs thing, without sponsorship, is break even at best, if the speakers don’t ask for support. The logistics of the Teabaggorama and the frame it imposes on the scale of attendance – and the nut they have to beat – somehow they kinda don’t line up. There has to be strong third-party support.

@FlyingChainSaw: Hey, my little 2-bit party got Snakehead and SneeringCunt the Cheney Spokeswoman to come speak at our annual shindig, which is a paltry affair indeed.

@Butterstinque: I’m betting there are organizations/individuals in the background who will pay – trace it all back to the Kochs, Scaifes, and Olins of the world. A shame, really.

@Prommie: do the rank and file teabaggers even know who the OTs are, so as to be able to tell who is an interloping GOPer?

Well, in any broad movement, not everyone will know who’s pulling levers behind the scenes. But this is a suspicion they’ve raised themselves, not something imposed by lefty bloggers. That’s what makes it interesting.

On the other hand, they may just end up coalescing around whoever grabs the flag. But $550 for the weekend, plus travel and hotel — hell, that’s rent.

@nojo: Ah, and thus, we should be on the alert for GOP staffers and other sent to pretend that they are teabaggers. You are correct, $550 is a whole monthly disability check, for the average teabagger.

Isn’t it ironic, don’t you think, like rain, on your wedding day, like the guy who says taxation is slavery, who pays no taxes anyway.

Snow, I am hating this snow shit, its gonna snow here in Sopranoland tonight, and you know what I hate most about snow? The octogenarian bread and milk riots in all the supermarkets.

@Prommie: Or just follow the money. Butterstinque’s right — there has to be a serious wad in play to offer Palin a six-figure guarantee, and someone has to be prepared to take it in the shorts if the gate doesn’t clear the hurdle. (A three-for-three mixed metaphor!)

The titular sponsor swears he’s just a regular guy who got behind the original tax-day protests, so if he’s not staking the event personally, somebody else is. There’s a lot more to this story than we’ve seen so far.

@nojo:
It’s Dick Armey’s Dick Army.

@Butterstinque: I’m with Tommcatt on this. How is it you can figure out complex financial strategies for CPAC and Teabagapalooza, but have trouble with gettin in on with other pandas and raising young?

@ManchuCandidate:

No, it’s the People’s Front of Judea! :)

Seriously, every time the teabagger divisions come up, I keep waiting for the Pythons to jump out and let everybody in on the joke.

TJ/ Flying could get a lot more uncomfortable. From New Republic via the Beast:

The Next Threat: Butt Bombs
After the underwear bomber, travelers can expect more intimate pat downs at the airport. But, The New Republic writes, “Even a pat-down thorough enough to simulate foreplay, however, won’t protect us completely—not from a threat that sounds even more absurd than an underwear bomb and that is also more alarming: the butt bomb.” A butt bomb could be carried inside condoms in a terrorist’s anal cavity, similar to how drug mules carry their loads.

@Mistress Cynica: Been raving about this since the shoe bomb guy. The only way to be sure no one is carrying bomb making materials is to force them to defecate in front of TSA agents and undergo a colonoscopy in front of TSA agents who will author affidavits testifying to the completion of these safety measures and then sit for a lie detector test to make sure they’re not Al Qaeda operatives planted to let their co-conspirators through. A ticket from Chicago to Milwaukee will cost $56,000 but you’ll be safe from a rectobomber.

@Prommie: Whatever happened to that idea to have a Stinque convention? Did that ever come to fruition or what?

@blogenfreude: If I paid $70 + for a lift ticket, I wouldn’t come in either. We sure could use some more snow here, not only for skiing but for the rivers next summer.

@Prommie: In the parking lot or Waffle House, but not at the main event, which they could not afford after buying everyone “Going Rogue” for Christmas.

@TJ/ Jamie Sommers /TJ: I been pushing for a Santa Fe summer convention since the CP days. BTW, I’m gonna meet our local congress critter on Saturday night with the lovely and talented Mrs RML on my arm as part of her birthday weekend festivities. (We’re geeks.) Remember when my guy outed the now-congressman at a candidate forum in ’08? Also, Adam Kokesh is running for his seat. I’ll ax the Member if Michelle Bachmann is really as crazy as she seems.

@Prommie: This gun nut treated hisself to 400 rds of ammo for the .38, .357, 9mm and .22 yesterday on King’s Day. Thus endeth the Christmas season.

@redmanlaw: This gun nut is seriously aggrieved to have discovered the Sig 522. Must. Not. Spend. More!

@flippin eck: Pandas are naturally analytic and, to a bear, wizardly financial adepts. The screwy huggypie act is a deft attempt at getting out of working for a living which mostly works except for the gothic digs and weird culinary sensibility of the bipedal attendants. What’s with the fucking bamboo? Trust me, pandas are absolute sex machines but the weird diet imposed on us by our hosts has rendered the species all but infertile making us, sadly, victims of our own scheme of a freeloader’s life. Our normal diet consists of reuben sangiches, pizza and Ballantine Ale.