This is from the Carlsonington Post, so take it with a grain of salt of course:
Once on the ground, FEC filings suggest, Steele travels in style. A February RNC trip to California, for example, included a $9,099 stop at the Beverly Hills Hotel, $6,596 dropped at the nearby Four Seasons, and $1,620.71 spent at Voyeur West Hollywood, a bondage-themed nightclub featuring topless women dancers imitating lesbian sex.
I haven’t seen the actual FEC report, but presumably there really is a charge to a place called Voyeur West Hollywood on it.
aimai
If god is really, really, really good to us the other guests at the Voyeur lounge party will be Antonin Scalia and Justice Thomas. Oh please, please please.
aimai
Zifnab
IOKIYAR.
Seriously, though. Steele has just GOT to be a Dem infiltrator working from the inside. There’s no way he could be so completely caviler and party destructive simply by his own merits.
Jay C
Yes, but presumably the charge will be offset by a healthy contribution to the RNC from Voyeur’s political division (“VoyPAC”??), so the Republicans will end up to the good, after all.
Free markets in action!!
Facebones
Well, the Republicans keep saying they’re the “Big Tent” party.
They just didn’t say the tent was in their pants.
KDP
Hey, stop picking on Michael Steele! Can’t you see that he’s just doing community outreach? Expanding the Big Tent of the Republican party?
I’m sure erotic workers specializing in B&D pseudo-lesbian acts are a constituency that Mr. ‘Wat Up?” Steele knows will help to increase the reach of the new Republicans.
Alex S.
Sometimes I wonder whether Michael Steele got his position because the GOP wanted to prove that black men “can’t do it”. After all, his selection was affirmative action.
beltane
Hey, at least Steele isn’t hiding anything. He’s just “stimulating” the economy. Sheesh, you people are such prudes.
Bill E Pilgrim
@Zifnab:
It’s like they’ve turned the schadenfreude center in my brain into a voyeuristic sex club.
The Grand Panjandrum
I wrote about this in a previous thread. Here is The Daily Call link but still no link to the FEC report, yet.
Ash Can
I really think Steele is taking a page from Palin’s book and taking the GOP for everything he can. He figures he has the party in a no-win situation — they don’t have the stones to force him out — so he’s going to see how far he can push the envelope before it tears. Just like with Palin, he and the GOP are a match made in heaven, if you ask me.
Martin
I bet he has this shit in his contract. Every time someone calls Lewis and Clyburn niggers, Steele gets to go to the lesbian show. The GOP certainly doesn’t want to lose their ‘Hey, we aren’t racist, what about that Steele guy?’ excuse.
ellaesther
@The Grand Panjandrum: You are a prophet, my friend. The Grand Prophet.
Svensker
@Facebones:
LOL.
geg6
@Zifnab:
Although I am not one to ever easily go for conspiracy theories, I have to say that, at this point, I’m starting to subscribe to your theory. I simply have no other explanation for this man.
Comrade Jake
Assuming this is true, how does Steele possibly stay on as RNC Chair? Is the party simply too thoroughly embarrassed at this point to admit how much of a giant fuck-up this guy has been?
Corner Stone
I don’t have any way to contextualize this and am too lazy to research it.
Is this outrageous vs other RNC heads? DNC or former DNC heads?
I mean the amounts, not the places.
Martin
@Comrade Jake: The GOP has precisely one visible African-American. And you think they’ll fire him?
geg6
@Corner Stone:
I’m thinking no one would be questioning any of it if the fundraising had been going well. Since, however, it seems that FOX is running the RNC, fundraising has been rather…um…anemic. Make that a lot anemic. Add all the re-boots on fundrasing letter gaffes, website stupidity, and the fact that Michael Steele has been wildly spending with complete abandon on purely personal stuff ever since he was elected to his position (remember the scandal about his re-modeling of his office?), and you’ve got yourself a real budget problem.
Peter J
I guess Voyeur West Hollywood will pick up a 2010 Entrepreneur of the Year award from Newt Gingrich’s Business Defense and Advisory Council.
mistermix
@The Grand Panjandrum: I found the charge. It’s $1926. I don’t know how they know that Steele was part of it. Note the slightly weasely way the report is worded. “Filings suggest”, then “A February RNC trip”.
KDP
See? See? I’m prescient (according to Victoria Jackson, that means a prophet!). TPM says the same thing. Mr. Michael Stealey Pants (or one of his staffers) is just doing community outreach to an underserved constituency!
Ash
LMFAO, Voyeur?!?! You know things are really bad when you start going to clubs in West Hollywood favored by Lindsay Lohan.
elmo
Guys, the GOP is terrified of firing him because they really do think that this is how affirmative action works. You know how they’re always going on about how a black man can’t be fired in America, no matter how badly he screws up, because the racial grievance industry will make it all about racism? I mean, they say this stuff constantly, and even take the next step: that this attitude is why black people can’t get hired, because once you hire a black man, you can’t ever, ever fire him.
This proves that they really believe that.
They really believe that the minute they fired him, there would be an explosion of outrage at their “racism.” They honestly don’t get that we’re all tittering out here at them being held hostage to their own blinkered perceptions.
Because to them, all black people are by nature incompetent. Incompetence is just the price you pay for hiring black people.
It’s a little like the “huhwut?” reaction when McCain picked Palin, and couldn’t figure out why people held her obvious incompetence and idiocy against her. She was a woman. What did people expect?
Zifnab
@Comrade Jake:
See: Bush Jr, George.
The party is going to try and rehabilitate this guy for the next eight years, like they did with Reagen. It’s a bit of a lost cause, what with Reagen being more in the style of an uncaught Nixon than a catastro-fuck Hoover. But the Republicans are nothing if not the patron party of lost causes.
They’ll quietly usher Steele off the stage at the end of 2010, then brag about how racial friendly they are for the next fifty. That’s just how the GOP rolls.
some other guy
Who would you rather have a beer summit with: “Skip” Gates and a some uptight cop, or lesbian strippers?
Steele 1, Obama 0.
dr. bloor
$1600 for imitation lesbian sex, not that he’d know what the real thing looked like anyways. What a chump.
Pasquinade
Use search function for Voyeur
http://query.nictusa.com/cgi-bin/dcdev/forms/C00003418/457070/sb/ALL/2
Also. Too…it would be irresponsible not to speculate where Sarah Palin got that black dominatrix outfit that she wore while campaigning for McCain.
some other guy
@dr. bloor:
Well, they couldn’t very well have real lesbians. They are a family values party, after all.
It’s sorta like how rock ‘n’ roll is the devil’s music, but imitation rock– that is, Christian rock– is perfectly acceptable.
scav
It’s ok if you drive a truck. We’ve learned this — in fact, it’s more than ok, it’s stellar. Izn’t Ms. Also Too also picking up the black leather vibes on her last outing?
Grisha
When asked to which of the topless women dancers imitating lesbian sex he gave the 71 cents, Steele replied, “all of them!”
Uloborus
@some other guy:
Remember, pretty girls pretending to be lesbians is Hot, not Gay.
As much as I say that in snark, it seems to be society’s attitude.
Midnight Marauder
Oh wow. This is GREAT. Voyeur isn’t too far away from where I live at all, and it’s one of the latest “hotspots” in LA right now. Lots of paparazzi, celebs, and scenesters all looking for
love in the wrong placeblow and fame with a vodka Red Bull to chase it down.The greater travesty is that none of my friends who have been to Voyeur before mentioned the topless lesbian dancers featured prominently there.
That angers me greatly.
Ash
@Uloborus:
Unless one of them is/both of them are butch. Then it’s definitely gay.
Tsulagi
Yeah, but you couldn’t resist piling on could you? Citing questionable sources to smear Steele. At least Politico had the decency to check the charges…
__
See, it may not have been Steele. Could have been another RNC GOPper, And really, who lay blame on anyone wanting to watch hot lesbian sex using other people’s money? Win/win.
xian
is it really going to be ’94 all over again if the RNC’s chief fundraiser is so full of fail?
some other guy
Haha! Politico (aka the TMZ of politics) has picked up the story and it’s on the front page of Google News now. I wonder if the 24 hour
newsgossip networks will be running with it, too.morzer
@Tsulagi:
So you find it cool to spend other people’s money getting your rocks off, but providing health care to the American people is an outrage? Interesting and significant, my friend.
Rick Taylor
The Republican party admits the expense is real, but says Steele knew nothing about it.
__
__
Those whacky staffers. What are you going to do?
Pasquinade
Wonder if Steel hit Voyeur on a stopover in LA on his way to the RNC meeting in Hawaii in January.
http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/01/steele-fires-back-at-critics-my-style-is-not-something-you-get-used-to-very-easily.php
Uloborus
@Ash:
I’ve never quite understood where the dividing line is. Or why anyone thinks this is hot. But… that’s probably not a line of speculation for Balloon Juice.
Tsulagi
@morzer:
You got that right. When there is hot lesbian sex going on, everything else is secondary. RNC expenses confirm that truth. Priorities, bitch.
Keith
Now that they’ve apparently done their research, how long before Steele starts accusing Obama of sending secret Muslim messages to North Korea via the color and pocket of his handkerchief?
dr. bloor
@Rick Taylor:
In this case, “those whacking staffers” might be more appropriate.
Roger Moore
@mistermix:
Personally, I don’t think it really matters. The RNC shouldn’t be dropping nearly $2K at a strip club. It’s ultimately irrelevant whether it’s for Steele or somebody else, and whether it’s Voyeur West Hollywood or the Spearmint Rhino. It’s just a bad way of spending donor money no matter how you slice it.
Brachiator
@elmo:
Republicans really don’t care about affirmative action, seeing it as a deeply cherished liberal belief. The most conservative Republicans have wanted Steele out since almost the day he was appointed.
Where would this supposed outrage come from? The Left? If you a rabid Fox News believing wingnut, why would you care about the Left’s outrage. And who is going to jump to Steele’s defense? Al Sharpton? Hell, I would pay good money to see that.
As for outrage from the right, you’ve gotta be kidding.
The right is blind to Palin’s incompetence. The worst of them see her as superior to Obama and her “common sense” superior to a fancy liberal Ivy League education (unless you’re George W Bush).
Oh, that’s good.
Macha Maguire
beyond all the other ‘eeeeyuch’ moments, I am still (as a lesbian woman) trying to get my head around how topless women ‘imitate’ lesbian sex but don’t actually ‘simulate’ it or in fact… do it.
seems a pretty find line to me. Not sure I could manage to draw it myself.
morzer
@Tsulagi:
Tsulagi, are you getting a bit too excited about this lesbian sex thing? Bitch, eh?
dmsilev
@Roger Moore: Yep. At absolute best (for the RNC), this is an irresponsible staffer coupled with a complete lack of oversight on reimbursements.
-dms
morzer
I am hearing some interesting rumors that Steele may have charged the RNC for purchase of a stripper pole. Presumably the Chairtoken realizes that the scam can’t last indefinitely, and has plans for a new career. Doubtless the trips to the club were research for his new line of work.
Tonal Crow
And the FEC link is: http://query.nictusa.com/cgi-bin/dcdev/forms/C00003418/457070/sb/ALL/2 .
Gotta love this stuff!
If you want to search for more questionable GOP expenditures, search the filings for committee ID C00003418 .
LuciaMia
Gosh, no wonder Steele sent out that email hawking Hannity’s new book. The coffers must be getting low.
whetstone
I think y’all are burying the lead: strip club whatever – this is big-money politics after all – but strip club in WeHo? It’s got it all: gays, rich liberals, and Hollywood liberals, with considerable overlap I’m sure.
Brachiator
@Macha Maguire:
If sisters are doing it for themselves, it’s lesbian sex. If it is to please a man, then it apparently doesn’t count. Wink, wink, nudge, nudge. Say no more.
You know, it’s like how it really isn’t perverted to wear a wet suit with a dildo up your behind if you ask the baby Jesus for forgiveness. Or wearing diapers, also too.
Tonal Crow
Hmm. WP won’t let me post an excerpt of a review of “Voyeur West Hollywood”. We can haz better software?
WereBear
Color me unsurprised. It may or may not be Steele himself. But the self-evident fact that some RNC staffer wants to be a big playah on someone else’s dime? Typical.
Maybe it’s just me, but I’d love this to be a female running up the charges. But knowing the RNC’s proclivities, they wouldn’t let a female have a credit card, you know?
Dreggas
I so need to go there with the fiance…
mclaren
You know, I saw an interesting article the other day about new online reputation engines that are apparently going to gather together whatever anyone says about someone online, and put it all together, and produce a reputation output.
Source: “Reputation is dead.”
Well, you can imagine the next step. Right? Automated smearbots. The Karl-Rovification of web spiders programmed to anonymously smear anyone of your choice online. We’ve already got several people on this forum who could easily be replaced by smearbots, since they do essentially nothing but name-calling: General Fake Name and Mnemosyne never link to any information, never provide any documented facts, never engage in serious debate, but instead merely smear people with whom they disagree by accusing them of either taking drugs, or not taking their medication; or of being mentally ill, or mentally retarded. That’s it. That’s the sum total of these peoples’ contribution here. So obviously those people could replaced by automated smearbots with no difference at all.
But what happens (you have to wonder) when everyone online gets replaced by an automated smearbot? And everyone will have to set up their own automated smearbot online, because otherwise when they get hit with an automated online reputational smear, they won’t have any way to respond. So it’s going to escalate. Inevitably. Like the Cold War nuclear stockpile, it’ll just spiral out of control without end.
And then follow the logic a little further — what happens when credit rating agencies and employers and colleges start looking at online reputation to make their decisions? And what happens when that online reputation is pure garbage, gamed by automated smearbots, controlled entirely by programmed swiftboating spiders that spew out lies and reputational attacks online non-stop?
Now that’s an intriguing situation.
And this is the world the Republicans have given us. They thought they could use Senator Joe McCarthy’s smear tactics to win elections, but that only stimulated the Democrats to turn around the reputational attack on them. And pretty soon it’s going to percolate all the way down to the individual level, and then everyone’s done. Everyone’s reputation will be trashed.
This is going to be a very interesting next 10 years. Because what happens when everyone starts tracking everyone else and adding up every minor indescretion or baseless charge online and gathering it all together? Glenn Greenwald will get a reputation as “insane” and “raving” and “ranting,” Obama will get an online reputation as a “fanatical Muslim” and a “communist” and a “socialist” and “another Hitler.” It’s going to be amazing to watch society disintegrate into universal mutual reputational hara-kiri. There won’t be a single politician left standing by the time this is through. Both the Republican and Democratic parties will reputationally disembowel each other, because there isn’t anyone anywhere who doesn’t have some tiny little pecadillo that can be blown out of proportion and used as a smear online, and then amplified using automated smearbots.
You really have to wonder what the end point of this whole thing will be. Will your credit rating be tied to your online reputation? If so, everyone’s credit rating will go to zero, because the internet is full of anonymous hate-speech, the net is dominated by drive-by slander done by nameless people with fake handles.
It’s really going to be fascinating to watch the whole reputational process distintegrate into meaninglessness.
Randy P
Maybe I haven’t spent enough time in stripper joints, but how do you spend $1600?
Is that $20 for drinks and $1580 for dollar bills tucked into G-strings?
(Edit for my wife’s benefit: By “not enough time” I meant “I haven’t spent ANY time in stripper joints”. None. Zero. Swear. Other than that time.)
Tsulagi
@Dreggas:
Say Steele sent you, probably get a better table.
Thanks to R-baggers at townhall.com, they provided a link to reviews so you could have a better idea of what to expect. Jennifer lets you know they got a face policy so be prepared…
But if you get in, all is good. From patron Jennifer…
It’s the party of understated family values.
kay
@Pasquinade:
I like him. I don’t think he gives a shit about any of this. I think he landed in that job purely by accident, and is just playing along until it ends.
I just don’t buy him as a true believer.
PTirebiter
@Randy P: I’ve read that many of the girls are working their way through college. A surprising number are also orphans with younger brothers and sisters who depend on them to keep the family together. I can see how the compassionate conservative could easily drop $1600 on meal tickets and a semester’s worth of textbooks.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Dreggas:
Strange.
I would’ve thought that having RNC staffers on the premises would be a oh no! there goes the neighborhood.. moment, if ever there was one. I mean what is next – polka bands and fat sweaty men in lederhosen and brown shirts?
Steeplejack
@elmo:
Spot on.
Randy P
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ: You laugh about polka bands and liederhosen. But I know a place like that near Baltimore.
Hob
@mclaren: Missing from your interesting scenario is the reason why anyone, other than whoever is launching that website (and what you quoted sounds like a press release for it), would actually take an “online reputation” service seriously. Yelp is not a good model– they’re already having major credibility problems since, once the novelty wore off, people found out how easy it was to post malicious bullshit there, and Yelp is now being sued by numerous businesses for basically running a malicious-bullshit-protection racket.
But I’m not sure how seriously to take any of your post, since it looks like you may have constructed the whole thing just to get in a few insults against BJ posters you don’t like.
chrome agnomen
@aimai:
even better if they were doing the simulated lesbian sex.
Zeke
If no one has posted yet, here is the FEC link
http://query.nictusa.com/cgi-bin/dcdev/forms/C00003418/457070/sb/ALL/2
Montana
This is what happens when you have too many Whitecastle fast food munchies. Since their inception the Teaparty crowd (not a movement since they do have the numbers or clout) have been “haters not debaters”. In my opinion this is what the small portions of the republican party of “birthers, baggers and blowhards” have brought you. They are good at “Follow the Leader” of their dullard leaders, they listen to Beck, Hedgecock, Hannity, O’Reilly, Rush and Savage and the rest of the Blowhards. Are you surprise at what they do when you know what they think? The world is complicated and most republicans (Hamiliton, Lincoln, Roosevelt) believe that we should use government a little to increase social mobility, now its about dancing around the claim of government is the problem. The sainted Reagan passed the biggest tax increase in American history and as a result federal employment increased, but facts are lost when mired in mysticism and superstition. Although some republicans are trying to distant themselves from this fringe most of them are just going along and fanning the flames. Lets face it the Republicans had 8 years to deal with health care, immigration and financial oversight and governance and they failed. They could not even win one of the two wars they started, the body bags are still coming in. The Republicans wanted to give Obama his Waterloo defeat over healthcare but instead they gave themselves their own Waterloo defeat by not participating in the debate of ideas and by becoming the party of obstructionist. But they now claim they have changed, come on, what sucker is going to believe that?
Rick Cain
I think Willy Wonka said it best…
“The suspense is terrible! I hope it will last…”