Our Mission: Occupy CPAC. Create as much non-violent resistance as possible, and make this a conference the attendees will never forget.
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We will be joining in solidarity with the AFL-CIO, SEIU, National Nurses United, Metro Labor Council, OurDC, and more to make our voices heard in our increasingly top-down, money-corrupted democracy. We will have actions on Friday at noon and 5pm (for Scott Walker’s speech at the Reagan Banquet), and on Saturday we will meet at Malcolm X Park at 16th and Euclid at noon to march to the Marriott…
The stalwarts at Redstate [warning: obvious link] don’t seem too jazzed up about this yet. But Dave Weigel, who on Tuesday couldn’t see how the Occupiers would bypass the Marriott Waldman’s security, dutifuly reports that the ever-vigilant 101st Chairborne has seized the opportunity to go to Defcon Eleventy-One:
… What’s the worry? It’s not just Occupy CPAC, which I mentioned yesterday. It’s the specific action plan that Heritage Foundation blogger Lachlan Markay warned of yesterday.
The protesters suggested pulling fire alarms in the hotel where the conference will take place, screaming “fire” during conference activities, “glitter-bombing” participants, cutting electrical power, and barricading entrances to the hotel, according to the source, who requested anonymity. “Speakers will be physically assaulted, not just verbally confronted,” the source told Scribe in an email. Two Occupiers, who the source also identified as members of the New Black Panther Party, “said they would be disappointed if they didn’t get arrested and planned to ‘make it count.’”
It took a few hours to start hearing this from worried conservatives. This is a new CPAC phenomenon: Fear of violent disruption.
And where the Heritage Foundation leads, K-Lo’s House of Crazy must follow. Charles P. Pierce at Esquire (who reads these idiots so you don’t have to) comments:
Jonah Goldberg, self-admitted sorry-ass chickenhawk and maker of extremely ignorant wagers on other people’s lives, is worried about a gang war in D.C. this weekend… Jonah’s worried that folks are going to throw down some serious shit:
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There are a lot of guys at CPAC who daydream about the Occupy types picking a fight with them.
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There are also “a lot of guys at CPAC” who dream of a three-way in a hot tub with Laura Ingraham and Victoria Jackson. Dare to dream, boys. My advice to the Occupy folks? Take the weekend off. Regroup. Leave these people to hide under their overpriced hotel beds, waiting for black men in berets to steal the country… and all the hot women.
It’s possible that a half-dozen Rand Paul disciples ginned up on cash-bar well drinks and mutual testostereinforcement might roam the late-night corridors looking for a solitary undersized preferrably female or elderly Occupy protester to curb-stomp, but I doubt the Marriott security forces will leave them much to work with beyond their WoW posturing. And let’s face it, there isn’t enough glitter this side of Frank Baum’s Emerald City to ‘brighten up’ Ann Coulter, much less Rick Santorum.
Frankensteinbeck
NEW BLACK PANTHER PARTY. Well, obviously this must be legitimate.
Come on, conservatives. Can you get through ONE day without ‘black people are scary’? This is embarrassing me, and I despise you.
Gwiwer
I know this is a little off topic, but it seems as good a thread as any. Has anyone read the Rolling Stone article this month about all of the insanity that’s been going down in Bachmann’s home district? It’s insane to me to think that something like this could happen in modern America. When did this country decide to let the sociopaths and lunatics run the show? It’s equal parts sad and terrifying. I should probably warn you, don’t read it if you don’t want to spend the rest of your day upset and depressed. It really is that bad.
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/one-towns-war-on-gay-teens-20120202
AlladinsLamp
20% of Republicans leaning to Obama according to a World Net Daily Poll
http://www.wnd.com/2012/02/20-of-republicans-leaning-to-obama/
It’s WND, so clean your cache after going there.
Danny
If they are going, I hope OWS go with clear guidelines, that they are Clean for Gene and committed to non-violence. And that they have plenty of people with cameras. And that they got a plan to keep participants in line.
Pat In Massachusetts
Oh, joy! I must check my Twitter feed this weekend for the play by play as Occupy gets ready to rumble at CPAC.
I guess the right wing is only brave with the written word when they can hide behind Drudge and Red State, but when it comes to the thought of an actual confrontation they are pissing their pants already. May I advise Eric Erickson to wear Depends this weekend?
If I were the Marriott, I would not underestimate Occupy — they do undercover pretty well :)
Raven
Mornin Joe’s revival meeting continues.
Linda Featheringill
The fear is delicious.
But the actual event might be dangerous. I could the believe that the CPAP people are laying on more security, perhaps with orders to shoot to kill.
What about guns? The CPAC people have them. Occupy probably not.
I’m concerned about the safety of the Occupy folks.
sb
That last paragraph excerpted from Pierce? Yeah, that. That’s what the occupy people need to do. Avoid CPAC and let the crazies wallow in their fantasies.
So… rescued a toy poodle literally on Thanksgiving day (long one short: stepbrother found her abandoned in the rain a few days previous). She’s damaged goods–got the puppy mill tattoo, going blind in both eyes, had a bad limp but now, after tender loving care, she is safe and sound and waking me up at 2am to go pee-pee. If only she did this every night so I could get used to it.
Love her. Absolutely love her.
S. cerevisiae
I think the best suggestion for Occupy was above: don’t show up. Let the wingnuts swing their lightsabres on thin air. This would drive them crazier than anything.
sb
And one more thing. This here, from doughboy?
Adorable.
Linda Featheringill
I sent an email to OccupyDC, telling them of my fears for their safety. Don’t know if it will do any good.
gex
@sb: It is a wonderful thing to turn a dog’s life around like that.
rea
Two . . . members of the New Black Panther Party
Well, it ought to be simple to figure out who these two guys are, since the New Black Panthers only have about 3 members total.
HeartlandLiberal
What’s really funny about this meeting? They are terrified Ron Paul will win the straw poll once again, so are trying to figure out strategies to stop that from happening.
So CPAC. So right wing conservative. You can’t win an election honestly, so you just rig it.
Its the modern GOP in action.
Baud
@sb:
I have to agree with this. Conservatives have been doing such a good job of making themselves look horrible, I hate to interrupt them.
Shalimar
@rea: What I was thinking too. Doesn’t the entire “New Black Panther Party” consist of two guys who like to appear on FoxNews?
Funniest thing I have read in days.
Egg Berry
@rea:
And they’d be the only two blacks at CPAC.
honus
wonder what CPAC would do if some New Black Panthers showed up open carrying AR-15s and just stood across the street, like those wingnuts did during rallies in washington a few years back, you know, just to exercise their second amendment rights?
Scott
I’m not sure I’d do much more than sit across the street from the hotel if I was Occupy. And definitely get the cameras running for any encounter with the CPACers, mostly for legal reasons. And make sure everyone knows what James O’Keefe looks like.
As it is, the CPACers will be going crazy with paranoia anyway. I really wouldn’t be surprised if several attendees get assaulted by fellow conservatives because of rampant paranoia.
WereBear
@honus: I envisioned a giant mass self-whizzing.
Thanks a bunch.
kindness
I get how such sorry sacks of shit fantasize about kicking liberals asses but that’s exactly why they are sorry ass sacks of shit. I mean Jesus can you get more pathetic?
Sadly the answer to that is yes.
@sb: That’s so sweet.
beltane
It must be happy times for the CPAC’ers to have an enemy encampment outside their mighty fortress. It sometimes gets hard shouting back at the voices in your head so it’s nice they’ll have real people to scream at for once.
beltane
@honus: If that ever happened the whaambulence would be called at once.
Egg Berry
@beltane:
Except you know the commandos of the 101st Chairborne would just slink back to their rooms and fire up the video-on-demand instead of actually confronting anyone.
Yevgraf
I went there once as a participant, back in the days when I was somewhat of a wingnut. Attending wingnut events turned me away from the right.
What I saw at CPAC was pasty faced puffy bedwetters thrilled to hang out with public figures, activists on the make, bored hot wives, and kids working at think tanks. Only those who didn’t want to get laid didn’t get laid – it abounded with opportunity.
Oh, and I saw Laura Ingraham later that year – the girl had a nice figure – had I not been going nuts over something else, I’d have made a play.
beltane
@Egg Berry: Yeah, the hippies are very intimidating, the power of tofu and brown rice at work.
They say Ann Coulter used to be a Deadhead. Perhaps she will mix it up a bit by joining a drum circle.
Joseph Nobles
Top lawyer for U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops sez all Catholic employers should be exempt from birth control coverage in any insurance they offer, as in Joe Blow, the Taco Bell franchise owner.
I’m so old, I remember when Mitt Romney was mystified at a question about people attacking birth control.
Raven
@Egg Berry: Oh god, here comes the dragon lady to explain the 101st to us again.
beltane
@Joseph Nobles: They can never pass up an opportunity to overreach. Never.
Someone needs to go all Henry VIII on the U.S. Conference of Bishops ass.
Elizabelle
@Joseph Nobles:
They might regret that. I read through last night’s “Paranoid” thread, and it’s very possible this is a Terry Schiavo style overreach that will backfire on them.
jwest
Since 38% of democrats believe that the earth is only 10,000 years old and people rode dinosaurs, isn’t it likely that they would vote for Santorum?
http://scienceprogressaction.org/intersection/2012/01/republicans-not-democrats-are-the-dinosaurs-with-saddles-crowd-qed/
Kirbster
Slightly OT. Today in god-bothering: GOP House members freak out over change in obscure Air Force office’s joke motto from Opus Dei Cum Pecunia Alienum Efficemus (Doing God’s Work With Other People’s Money) to Miraculi Cum Pecunia Alienum Efficemus (Doing Miracles With Other People’s Money).
http://wonkette.com/462935/house-gop-angry-over-word-god-being-left-out-of-air-force-joke
Chyron HR
@jwest:
Did Ron Paul tell you that 38% is larger than 60%, or did you figure that out all by yourself?
Egg Berry
@jwest:
If the election were decided on age-of-earth and dinosaur-riding issues, maybe.
Joseph Nobles
@beltane & @Elizabelle: It could be overreach, but my first thought was that it was an attempt to set out a too-far position in order to get negotiation room.
kay
@Joseph Nobles:
Thanks. I was afraid of that.
Obama can’t give in, because large businesses are going to jump at the opening, and insist they don’t have to comply either.
I’m getting really, really curious at how this thing came down. Odd. The decision was out there for a month, and nothing. Then it hits the media all at the same time. Large businesses don’t want this regulation, and I assumed they would fight it tooth and nail.
beltane
@kay: I am so sick and tired of being used as a sacrificial victim. Why are men automatically entitled to health care from head to toe while we are only allowed to have health care from the waist up?
This and the SGK affair have done more to radicalize me than anything else in my life, and I am a rather boring, married mother of five.
YellowJournalism
I don’t know what’s more ridiculous: glitter-bombing or being terrified of being glitter-bombed.
I admit, though, that glitter is a pain to get out of your hair and clothes.
Ben Cisco
Nothing gives the NeoConfederates wood like Walter Mitty-esque fantasizing about beating hippies. They are nothing more than chickenhawks, and they’d piss themselves if a REAL gang of “thugs” showed up.
lacp
Anybody want to wager that Doughy & Co. confused New Black Panther Party with Black Bloc anarchists?
jwest
@Chyron HR:
So you accept the 38% figure of democrats believing in dinosaur-riding, Flintstonesque people as accurate?
jibeaux
Yeah, I wouldn’t bother occupying CPAC either. I might go ahead and buy up all the Cheetos outta the machine, but that’s about it.
beltane
There is a new “Spreading Romney” campaign going on. Google “Romney” and click the 5th or 6th result and see if you agree with the definition.
Cacti
@Joseph Nobles:
And right on cue…the overreach.
The righties just can’t help themselves.
Scott
Hey, y’all, jwest is a typically dishonest Rethug troll. Ignore him, and let him wallow in his statistics porn.
beltane
@Cacti: Hey, if Catholic employers get to discriminate against women it means that Muslim employers can discriminate against Christians, Protestants can discriminate against Catholics, and everyone can discriminate against Jews. This is a slippery slope that slides right down into the abyss of hell.
Thank you, douchebag bishops.
Cap'n Swag
Those chickenhawk CPAC pieces of trash wouldn’t have the guts to throw a punch. They’d have the Henderson, NV police waiting on stand-by.
Chris
The CPAC hotel is one block down from where I live. This should be interesting at any rate.
@Scott:
That. And as much as I’m entertained by the other suggestions, I can’t say the concept of yelling “fire” in crowded rooms appeals to me.
Chris
@Yevgraf:
What I see’s a place where fervent young anti-government activists can network their way into centers of power in the hopes of staying in government circles their entire lives. Yes, the hypocrisy is par for the course for them…
Scuffletuffle
Where all the scary black dudes at?
handsmile
I want to alert metropolitan New York City-based readers to an event this weekend at the progressive end of the ideological spectrum.
On Saturday, February 11, from 1:00-6:00pm, the New School and New York University’s Institute for the Humanities will host the free public conference:
“The Winter of Our Discontent: Stepping Back, Taking Stock, and Gazing Forward in the Wake of Occupy Wall Street.”
A series of three panel sessions, speakers include anthropologist David Graeber, one of the intellectual leaders of the Occupy movement, and Rebecca Solnit, author of the magnificent A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities that Arise in Disaster.
Expect to hear less paranoiac ravings and fewer bluster taunts than in the CPAC ballrooms. On offer instead will be frank analysis and strategic advocacy on how to expand upon the Occupy movement’s mission to combat and redress social and economic injustices. (Also too, far more interesting and creative people in attendance.)
http://nyihumanities.org/event/the-winter-of-our-discontent
Jay C
[Yawn] This really is an old joke that keeps on giving: every so often, we get to read gigapixels of overheated fearmongering from the Fritos Freikorps about the “violence” they expect to be on one side of or another at some rightie gathering or another; which, for some reason, almost never materializes.
(They tend to credit their own Toughness and general Awesomeness for this fact, I tend to think its because the “threats” mainly don’t really exist – YMMV)
No matter, one or another CPAC attendee might have to pass an Occupy sign-waver (or, God Forbid, a drum circle) on his way to the conference, and by the time he gets back to blog about it, it will read like surviving the Siege of The Alcazar .
@Gwiwer:
Yes, I saw that RS piece about Anoka-Hennepin, and I can tell you it was one of the more depressing things I have ever read. What was most disheartening about it was the fact that the “sociopaths and lunatics” get to de facto run the place because they are the majority, or at the very least, a sizable and organized minority, of the population.
maya
101st Chairborne? Ah,yes! Bob Marley’s ‘Buffalo-Wing Soldier’.
Scuffletuffle
@sb: Pics, or it didn’t happen! ;-)
Judas Escargot, Your Postmodern Neighbor
Just FYI, the Marriott’s a Mormon outfit.
Judas Escargot, Your Postmodern Neighbor
@S. cerevisiae:
Someone needs to convince the wingnuts that the Obama admin has issued the Occupy protesters personal cloaking devices.
He’s fiendishly clever, That One.
kindness
@Judas Escargot, Your Postmodern Neighbor: Yes Marriott’s is a Mormon outfit. A Mormon outfit that makes lots of money with video on demand porn. We won’t bother debating if the CPAC members will differ from the normal bell curve viewing. But I would like to see a debate on which type of kinks they actually do pay for. If I had the actual data. of course I’d then publish it.
cckids
@sb: That is so sweet. Best of luck with your new friend.
My neighbor rescued/found 3 little Chihuihua (sp?)mix doggies last week & is trying to find their owner. You’d think anyone with 3 of them would be tearing their hair out trying to find them. Signs all over the neighborhood.
Which make me smile when I see them, imagining the little gang of tiny dogs traveling in a pack.
Chris
Jonah better be careful about wishing for an Occupy street battle, the last fight Jonah had was with a donut and the donut won.
daize
My favorite quote from the Heritage post:
“In order to avoid having to shower and dress in business attire to blend in,” Scribe’s source said, “they plan to wear Ron Paul 2012 gear because they believe Paul supporters ‘generally look like hippies.'”
@sb: Wonderful story!