This is the group the Grifter-in-Chief, Sarah Palin, is taking a huge sum from to speak:
In a post on his personal blog, In Media Res, Kevin Smith, an owner of the web design company HearSAY, writes that Tea Party Nation founder Judson Phillips took advantage of his volunteer computer experience in the creation of Tea Party Nation’s web architecture and profited from the enterprise.
Smith writes that his “zeal for the movement” meant he delivered Phillips’ web services at a heavily discounted rate at the expense of his own business. He believed that he was working for an nonprofit effort that would only supply founder Phillips with a little extra income to replace income he was losing while working for the movement instead of practicing law, he writes.
Smith reports being shocked when Phillips filed to create Tea Party Nation as a for-profit corporation. Disgusted with Phillips’ decision to continue taking donations for the for-profit company, Smith ultimately resigned.
I don’t understand. I thought the teabaggers were all about free markets and capitalism? Meanwhile, because Sarah Palin turned down a CPAC speaking role for the cash grab at Tea Party Nation, they had to go find a suitable replacement:
Fox News host Glenn Beck is going to the closing speaker at this year’s CPAC conference, according to the conservative organization’s Twitter feed.
“CPAC is my kind of people,” Beck said on the radio this morning. “CPAC is, I think they’re as angry at the Republicans as I am.”
Orly Taitz was apparently unavailable. The modern conservative movement- an insane clown posse of grifters, flat-earthers, and birthers.
Also, I would be remiss if I did not point out that these are the folks that the jackasses at Reason magazine were pimping at town halls all last summer. Heckuva job, glibertarians!
IndieTarheel
What foolish poo-flingers these ‘baggers be.
Zifnab
Wait, so you’re saying if you fill up an organization with con-artists, grifters, and financial leeches, you’re going to end up with people tricking each other out of their money and producing nothing but a series of carny acts to bring in more suckers for an even bigger scam?
I am shocked! Shocked that the Tea Party Movement has been overrun with this manner of tomfoolery.
But seriously, what do I have to do to get in on this gravy train?
What’s the over-under on the number of times he pimps out one of his books and / or buying gold?
jeffreyw
It’s all about gimme mine and fuck you for these creatures.
Bubblegum Tate
@Zifnab:
What’s the over/under on the number of times he cries?
DonBelacquaDelPurgatorio
Biglolz.
Once the TP “movement” finds out it is all about selling each other t-shirts, the luster is going to come off that bandwagon.
Mike E
Hey, if you embrace Capitalism, you just might walk away with a few parasites.
Zandar
Oh the Teabaggers now are even getting on the Reasonoids’ nerves.
They still hate health care reform however.
MattF
Looks like the Tea Party party movement is turning into a kind of Multi-Level-Marketing scam from Hell– Amway + Fox News + Mussolini.
Justin
Is the John Birch Society still one of CPAC’s cosponsors? With Beck closing it out, the circle is complete.
Tim O
I don’t think I’ve heard anybody mention that “The Grifter” is most likely not going to CPAC because they have a radio row, cameras and reporters all over the place; this means she’ll have to answer questions on the fly and, as we all know, it’s not her forte. Of course the money angle is the most obvious, but she won’t go anywhere that puts her in front of a reporter for a one on one. She needs the cover of crowds and chaos where she can pretend that she didn’t hear the questions, or shout out a talking point without a follow up.
Rick Taylor
Yep. And in picking Sarah Palin as his Vice Presidential nominee and Joe the Plumber as his spokesman, as much as they hate him, McCain sold his soul and gave credibility to the tea bag wing of the Republican party, helping to damage it more than any Democrat could.
Splitting Image
The sad thing is that I think the tea party movement really did begin with serious conservatives angry with the Republican establishment and the noise machine. In fact the first hint I saw that there were a lot of people like that out there was Sean Hannity being chased down the street by angry Ron Paul fans in New Hampshire last year.
Granted the Paul campaign attracted its share of crazies, but I figured if these people all thought Sean Hannity is a jackass, then they were at least on the right track.
Fox News obviously ignored the movement the entire year, even when Paul held his own convention opposite the Republican Convention. They didn’t even acknowledge the tea partiers existed until January 20, when they suddenly discovered there were a lot of people out there angry at the government and decided it needed to be reported on 24/7.
At this point I would say Fox has done more damage to the tea parties than everyone else combined. By presenting the whole movement as a group of people who suddenly started finding things wrong with the country the moment a black Democrat was in charge, they made the whole tea party movement seem more partisan and more racist than it really was. And of course once the idiots who really were racist and hyperpartisan (Orly Taitz, for example) started using the tea parties as a platform for their own drivel, any serious thinkers that were left got completely marginalized.
It’s sad, but it seems like for every one Paul, there are about twenty Palins, Bachmanns and Hannitys out there.
Ash Can
OK, I know that we bitch about these jerk-offs derailing the national discourse and sending it crashing off the cliff, but frankly, in light of the news about Haiti, this is some really welcome comic relief. Keep it coming, ‘Baggers.
@DonBelacquaDelPurgatorio:
They should figure it out in, oh, about 30-40 years or so. Plenty of lulz for the rest of us in the meantime.
Crusty Dem
@Zandar:
Yeah, and half the comments on that Reason article appear to come from Teabaggers. Glibertarians and Teabaggers have a lot more in common than their Dagny Taggart love dolls.
The Populist
Conservatism is basically code for selfishness. What I see in tea bagging is con values x 10000.
It’s a dog eat dog, every man for himself type of philosophy that still believes in rigged markets for the wealthy and being manipulated by the wealthy to think that liberalism is against your own best interests, when that is farthest from the truth.
Fact: America was founded as a liberal Democracy. The founders were liberals of their day. This tea bag movement is a slap in the face to the founders AND Thomas Payne.
FU Teabaggers.
shortstop
A quick look at the Tea Party Nation site shows that Smith’s work was worth approximately nothing. As ‘bagger standards go, however, it’s likely viewed as cutting-edge.
Neutron Flux
I think you do not undestand these folks John Cole.
The programmer in the story is telling his truth. I know several of these Tea Baggers and/or 9/12 folks. They speak about their movement in exactly the same way they speak about their Pentecostal Protestant religion.
My hope is that over the next year, some of the luster goes off this belief system as the profiteers continue to take over the movement.
ETA: When BOB speaks in awe of Glenn Beck I do not believer there is any trolling there.
slag
You know, if it weren’t so transparently obvious that latent and overt racism are a significant driving force behind the Teabagger movement, I’d be applauding Jane Hamsher for getting involved with these people. They’re clearly stupid. But they seem to have access. And progressives could use a bunch of stupid people with access to do our bidding.
The Populist
Oh and to anybody who advocates for free markets? You’d need to bring back anti-trust laws to break up these too big to fail mega corps and allow the market to work like it should.
We need a Teddy Roosevelt type more than ever. Somebody to tell the right to STFU and the wealthy to stop whining, nobody is going to take your money.
If you are conservative and think free markets = allowing the likes of B of A to get bigger, thus shutting down smaller institutions, in order to nickel and dime the average American you truly are an idiot.
The Populist
@Neutron Flux:
They are already there. These are the people who can’t make money in the so-called free market because mega corps are so big and unwieldy that they shut down any entry into their respective markets. These greed merchants than turn their eye to these types of movements to wring every dollar out of them.
Jim
Apparently the FDL are the real capitalists now, John. Scope this super-liberal perspective:
The Populist
@Jim:
Funniest part? That the government is showing PROFITS from these loans is almost awesome. Ron Paul’s head may be spinning but good on Obama and his team for making the banks pay it back with interest.
Awe-some.
Ash Can
@Jim: And the best of British luck to that sorry lot on trying to find agreement on just who those “people who didn’t earn it” are.
Tsulagi
Pretty much, or at least the ones currently behind the wheel of the R-party.
But good for the D’s politically. They get to point and say “Yeah, plenty of evidence we can suck, but the alternative is too often batshit loon.” Really, they should help fund the teabaggers and airheads like Palin.
DonBelacquaDelPurgatorio
@Rick Taylor:
John McCain, yesterday. I hope and expect that this will become his epitaph.
And his “I don’t want to go back and revisit the past” routine is the same one he used to brush off charges that he basically sucked the cock of Charles Keating while Keating stole millions from little old ladies’ savings accounts, and flew McCain and his family to seaside resorts on his private jet, back when. It worked then. I don’t know if that routine is still working now.
slag
@Ash Can:
Yes, indeed.
Grumpy Code Monkey
Weren’t you taking a break or something?
catclub
Splitting @ 12
You make some interesting points.
However, I think the Paultards ( not an insult, just a shorter)
were ignored because Ron Paul said we should not be in Iraq.
During the GOP debates I think those lines of his got the most applause – and were the most troubling for the rest of the war party candidates.
I always ask, where were they talking about balanced budgets when Bush II was blowing the budget skyhigh.
I do think Ron Paul was probably there, but he was getting no following until he opposed the war in Iraq.
i.e. The rest of them were not big on cutting government under Bush II.
ON the other hand, Ron Paul does apparently have a particularly rich racist history, so maybe he is the core of the tea party, in more ways than one.
ET
Are they going to be able to make enough money on this to pay the fees for Beck and Palin much less all of the others who are due money for service?
flukebucket
As I understand it John Thune is the guy I am supposed to be afraid of right now.
Phoebe
Maybe they’re “bleeding the beast” like the welfare polygamists out west. Everybody go read “Under the Banner of Heaven” by Jon Krakauer. It explains a lot.
And, while topic-straying, I’ll say my nutshell lesson from that book: What will bring down that sect and also the fundie sects abroad is the education of women. This point was also made [not in relation to the FLDS of course] by Greg Mortensen [Three Cups of Tea guy] in this talk:
http://www.spl.org/Audio/Mortenson2009.mp3
Short Bus Bully
It’s about the aristocrats (Get off my lawn!) whipping up the plebes into a frenzy so that they turn their pitchforks on the —- that the aristocrats don’t like.
Meanwhile the aristocratic “gentleman” spends his time drumming up legal precedent as to why he gets to fuck your wife while you are out fighting the war for him.
This same song has been playing on repeat since the beginning of time. Underneath all the shit the motivations remain the same for all parties involved.
Carry on fuckers, carry on I say!
rageahol
it feels really odd to say this, but I think you’re needlessly insulting Insane Clown Posse.
Stooleo
WBUR and On Point did a piece on the Teabaggers this morning. I didn’t catch the whole thing but there was a lot of crazy flying around. Eleanor Clift had a good point at the end where she pointed out that if the teabaggers were so concerned about the deficit, where were they the last 3 years.
Its more about tribalism than it is about deficits.
Michael
Hat tip to the Clown Posse reference….
freelancer
Brought to you by General Ripper’s own John Birch Society!
xenophobic paranoia, it’s like new New Coke! (without the fluoridation, of course)
catclub
DonB from Hell @ 25
yes, SATSQ (in re: McCain ‘not wanting to bring up past history’ and getting away with it)
Heck, he gets rewarded for it.
geg6
As for CPAC, seems we’ve got some controversy with the Christianists happening there, too:
http://thinkprogress.org/2010/01/13/liberty-cpac/
I’m actually kinda impressed that they stuck with the gheys and let Liberty take a hike. It hurt to say that, but there it is.
Mike E
@The Populist: Yes — a cogent, researched position. Telling that to a ‘Bagger recalls a Far Side called, “What a dog-owner says/What a dog hears.” Lotsa “blah-blah” in the 2nd panel.
kommrade reproductive vigor
A winger who operates on belief rather than knowledge? Knock me over with a feather.
@DonBelacquaDelPurgatorio: McCain only wants to revisit certain portions of the past. Specifically, the portions where he was a POW, so we should vote for him.
cleek
Frum has some smart things to say about Fox/Palin.
Zifnab
@The Populist:
It’s making some profits on some of the banks. But the shit we gave to AIG? And all the CDOs the Treasury purchased? I’m not holding my breath on those.
We paid full dollar for crap assets. Between Gittner and Paulson, the Treasury was completely raided. Once that bill comes due it is going to hurt. A lot.
Notorious P.A.T.
Here’s another view of Palin on Fox News, calling her a “mascot”:
Link
John Amato
You forgot to include the Oathers…
p.a.
“Dewey, Cheatham and Howe…”
Preston
So maybe the Brit, Neil Sankey can succeed where the Russian immigrant (from the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic) has failed, bring it on.
Poor little Birthers (still in denial about their losses), Judge Land and now judge Carter, smack down the crazies (case dismissed).
Not even “Fake News” Glenn Beck or Bill O’Reilly believes the crazies, how funny.
http://trueslant.com/erikkain/2010/01/05/glenn-beck-mocks-the-birthers/
http://belowthebeltway.com/2009/10/29/bill-oreilly-slams-orly-taitz/
http://tesibria.typepad.com/whats_your_evidence/BIRTHER%20CASE%20LIST.pdf
To all the birthers in La, La Land, it is on you to prove to all of us that your assertion is true (TOUGH WHEN YOU KEEP LOSING CASES), if there are people who were there and support your position then show us the video (everyone has a price), either put up or frankly shut-up. I heard Orly Taitz, is selling a tape (I think it’s called “Money, Lies and Video tape”). She is from Orange County, CA, now I know what the mean when they say “behind the Orange Curtain”, when they talk about Orange County, the captial of Conspiracy Theories. You know Obama has a passport, he travel abroad before he was a Senator, but I guess they were in on it.
In my opinion the Republican Party has been taken over the most extreme religious right (people who love to push their beliefs on others while trying to take away the rights of those they just hate) and that’s who they need to extract from their party if they real want to win. Good Luck, because as they said in WACO, “We Ain’t Coming Out”.
I heard that she now wants to investigate the “Republican 2009 Summer of Love” list: Assemblyman, Michael D. Duvall (CA), Senator John Ensign (NV), Senator Paul Stanley (TN), Governor Mark Stanford (SC), Board of Ed Chair, and Kristin Maguire AKA Bridget Keeney (SC). She wants to re-establish a family values party.
I can only hope that Taitz will resist the state collectors that will be hounding her like the “ruff ruff” that she is to collect the $20K.