Florida is a wretched hellscape in August, with 100-degree temperatures, smothering humidity, daily monsoons and the ever-present threat of hurricanes. But the GOP is having its convention here anyway, perhaps for the same reason thieves often target Jeep products: It’s relatively easy to steal. With a cast of even more comically obvious villains controlling state government than those who boosted Bush the Lesser over the top in 2000, it’ll be “Gone in 60 Seconds.”
But there’s still the problem of how to protect melanin-deficient RNC delegates from the ferocious heat and unpredictable weather: The polyester-and-pantyhose faction and bespoke-suited plutocratic contingent alike are in danger of wilting under the fierce Florida sun or being pelted senseless by the sudden onslaught of wind-driven rain as they shuttle drearily between the Tampa Convention Center and Tampa Bay Times Forum (and titty bars).
To address this problem, the Tampa Bay Host Committee is considering a blocks-long, air-conditioned tube to connect the two staging areas. Since the summer storms often produce water spouts, small tornadoes and sudden, strong wind gusts capable of knocking over grandfather oaks, I can’t see any drawback to a plan that involves packing scores of RNC delegates into a long, outdoor plastic tube. Nope, no problem at all.
[X-posted at Rumproast]
WereBear
Works for me!
Geez, they can’t even walk a few blocks? Where’s the toughness, now?
SIA
That is hilarious, Ms. Cracker.
Villago Delenda Est
@WereBear:
“Toughness” is a rhetorical device with these wusses.
It’s all “good for thee but not for me” with these assholes.
While I wish no harm to Betty, if a hurricane did hit, and just accidentally drown all the Santorum and Paul delegates, the hurricane’s name would have to be retired for doing such yeoman work on behalf of the sane rest of us.
Schlemizel
Having lived in that toilet with palm trees I can tell you that they better have handlers at the airport. When those delicate flowers get off the nice air conditioned planes & have a wet,hot blanket dropped on them many will be knocked to their knees. Its a physical presence you really can’t imagine if you have not felt it.
But a hurricane might work to the GOPs advantage. It would keep the Taliban & Randoids from bloody combat & allow the party to call the whole thing off, paper over the gulf between the various asylums and march forth appearing united.
Josie
Thanks, Betty for my first good laugh of the day. The mental picture is uplifting.
JCT
Hope springs eternal – hopefully lots of cameras to record this.
MattF
What would happen if that long plastic tube was, um, ‘seeded’ with some palmetto bugs? It would be, like, totally tubular! Right? Just to be perfectly clear, I only ask, and wouldn’t even consider thinking of such a thing.
feebog
Kinda like the worlds largest, ickyist hot dog.
Ben K.
“Bespoke-suited Plutocratic Contingent” is the new name of my band.
dmsilev
We are allowed to seal the ends once they’re in, right?
bootsy
@dmsilev: Damnit. Stop filling me with hope :)
Richard S
And they can stand their ground! oops – I forgot – you only need to stand your ground with black people and republicans – well…
beltane
The only thing better than cramming them into a long plastic tube would be cramming them into a long latex bag.
vhh
It will be the world’s biggest condom ever.
rob!
C’mon, President Obama, time to call for another drone strike…
beltane
Funny how all these rugged individualists can’t survive outside a climate-controlled environment for even a few minutes. They’d love to go Galt, but only if it’s not raining out, or too hot or too cold, and if there’s room service and someone there to fluff their pillows every night.
beltane
@rob!: Who need drone strikes? These delicate flowers would perish instantly in the absence of air-conditioning.
Odie Hugh Manatee
If they use that tube then someone has to go into the middle of the it on a busy day and pour a bottle of Liquid Ass there.
Then run out, quickly cork both ends and then roll it into the ocean.
espierce
Actual bumper sticker seen in the Tampa Bay area:
Tampa 2012: Where stupidity meets the humidity!
Maude
You mean they have to walk?
The RNC needs to get on the ball and sort that one out.
Omnes Omnibus
@Odie Hugh Manatee: Liquid ass?
Julia Grey
Rilly.
I suggest a continuous conga line of golf carts. Keep em moving, hop in and out as they come around a pylon at each end.
Omnes Omnibus
@Julia Grey: Hummers. Just to piss off the liberals.
red dog
I can’t wait for them to scream for federal aid when the hurricane hits and O’bama says there is no money…pay your own way.
Arm The Homeless
I like the idea of seeding the tube with palmetto bugs, but to truly honor our glorious ecology, someone should also let a couple alligators free to roam about in it too.
dmsilev
@red dog: Or tells them that the free market will inevitably provide.
muddy
@MattF: “Totally tubular”, that’s great. Have not heard it in decades.
I was imaging the tube being sucked up into a hurricane spiral, like a helix made of assholes. Pink slime, baby!
dmsilev
@Arm The Homeless: I think the accredited delegates *are* the alligators.
Which means, of course, that we can all look forward to footage of GOP delegates being wrestled from someone’s pool with their jaws taped shut.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@Omnes Omnibus:
Liquid Ass.
It really works. :)
JPL
John Galt is makin some money off those freedumb lovin folks.
Will the tubes be equipped with wifi.
bemused
I’m so enjoying the mental pictures I am having of streams of tea partiers and assorted sorry lot of rightwingers in a plastic tube battered by rain and wind gusts.
gocart mozart
@feebog:
More like a giant plastic shit filled colon.*
*I think this was the name of a Captain Beefheart album.
RossInDetroit
@feebog:
Habitrail came immediately to mind. And the association with mindless rodents seems appropriate.
Amir Khalid
If it’s sunny out, all the Republican convention-goers need to do is take off their jackets and walk between Forum and Convention Center. If it’s raining, they may have heard of these wonderful portable low energy-consumption protective devices called “umbrellas”. If it’s windy, I respectfully suggest that the convention-goers go fly a kite.
Arm The Homeless
@dmsilev: Something tells me that this contingency has been discussed.
Commenting at Ballon Juice since 1937
Supposedly, people aren’t interested in how the sausage is made. This is one time it should be videotaped. Mmmmmmm… RNC in a tube.
dr. bloor
@Odie Hugh Manatee: Outstanding. Made in the good old U.S. of A., too.
Legalize
And of course they’ll all be armed while traversing the tube.
Arm The Homeless
@Commenting at Ballon Juice since 1937: Be careful, in this heat ‘RNC In A Tube’ may turn into spotted dick.
Steve M.
How do Randian anti-government absolutists’ Medicare motor scooters function in hurricanes?
Chris
@Maude:
There goes any chance of Chris Christie attending.
kindness
Oh man I am so loading up with stink bombs for these blocks long sealed off tubes. This convention is gonna be fun.
CaseyL
If there is a God, and that God wants my worship, there is no surer way to get me to sing praises than sweep the entire, and I do mean entire, GOP Convention out into the sea. Every single delegate and every single candidate – and if a few talking heads get swept out there with them, all the better.
Omnes Omnibus
@CaseyL: Hasn’t the Gulf suffered enough recently?
Brian S
@Arm The Homeless: You won’t have to seed it with palmetto bugs–they’ll find their way in on their own thankyouverymuch.
I suspect it’ll be so humid that no matter how much they crank the AC in that thing it won’t get cool, and it may start raining inside the thing. I’m really hoping for a typical Florida August there–90+ degrees every day and just enough humidity that you can’t breathe but not quite enough to actually rain. It’ll look beautiful on tv, but everyone there will be miserable–add in a bunch of Tea Partiers het up about their right to carry guns, and you’ll have a story worth watching.
scav
Boys in the Bubble can’t exist outside of it. Reality is scary scary dangerous and ideas infect like germs, spoiling the vacuous sterility of their unspotted beautiful algar minds, fertile beds for whatever needs to be planted and nurtured there under strict control of the guys in lab-coats aka suits.
patrick II
@Brian S:
I am guessing the teabagger — and others — right to bear guns is the unstated reason for this hallway. Teabaggers can’t carry sticks or stones in Florida, but they have a legal right to a gun and that will be a dangerous walk when the Santorums oppose the Pauls in the party’s plank battle between the social conservatives and the libertarians. Both groups agree, however, on Florida’s right to be armed law, so it is best to stay hidden until inside the convention center.
If you add in Florida’s stand-your-ground law, I can see some Paulista’s refusal to give in on abortion law “terrifying” some social conservative, and he just will have to shoot that Paulista because he doesn’t have to back down.
Better the tunnel.
Arm The Homeless
@Brian S: You’re going to get your 90+ either way. I can tell you that I will be tracking the hurricanes quite closely as August approaches. Let’s just say that this year my hurricane kit will include an extra bottle of gin to toast the gods of snark.
Here is the 2012 Atlantic hurricane names. Ladies and Gentlemen, start getting your bon mots ready
2012
AlbertoBerylChris
Debby
Ernesto
Florence
Gordon
Helene
Isaac
Joyce
Kirk
Leslie
Michael
Nadine
Oscar
Patty
Rafael
Sandy
Tony
Valerie
William
Brian S
@patrick II: There might be a fight between supporters of Frothy Mixture and Crazy Uncle Liberty, but it won’t be over abortion. Maybe the only thing the two groups agree on is that the wimmens need to pay for having sex. It would be entertaining to watch the two groups try to outdouche each other, though, I have to admit.
Arm The Homeless
@Brian S: I predict that Santorum will setup HQ in Ava Maria
I predict that Santorum will wash over the convention, leaving a mess, as well as a bad taste in everyone’s mouths.
M-Pop
Better to keep the convention attendees under observation.
M-Pop
Hey, Florida Balloon-Juicers: What do you think about a Balloon-Juice meet-up in Tampa during the convention?
Arm The Homeless
@M-Pop: I am down for a day in Tampa. I vote for a group of us taking the Cigar City brewery tour. It’s $5, but their beers are well worth it.
Plus all the pointing and laughing, which is quite frankly, priceless.
MattR
@Brian S:
I work for a refrigerated/frozen warehousing company and we have a warehouse in the Tampa area. During the summer, it rains in the dock area almost every day as a result of all the humid air coming in from outside and being cooled off.
M-Pop
@Arm The Homeless: I’m up for any side shows and field trips!
SiubhanDuinne
@Arm The Homeless:
Can we hope the RNC dates give us a repeat of 2004 when four hurricanes (Charlie, Frances, Ivan, Jeanne) whacked Florida more-or-less simultaneously, or at least consecutively?
Obvs I want Betty and the chickens and any other BJ Floridians to come through unscathed, but I’d love to see a few Cat 3 or 4 ‘canes dump some wet windy havoc on the delegates. Yes ( ::evil chuckle:: ) and their little pundits too.
Arm The Homeless
@M-Pop: This thing should be done! I have never used meet-up, but if Betty is willing to show a little love, perhaps we can get a few people in the same meat-space at the same time
Bubblegum Tate
It’ll be like Michael Scott’s Tube City writ large!
Arm The Homeless
@SiubhanDuinne: It was supposed to be a mild to average storm season, but since 2004 it’s been very quiet, and I am just not attuned enough to be able to guess about possible paths anymore.
Even money on a wet convention, either way it’s going to get weird down here. It’s Florida, that’s our MO.
WereBear
That’s poetry, that is.
ruemara
What if those tubes get sealed up with these RNC folks in it? And let’s say…someone forgot to put air holes? This could happen, right?
T. Scheisskopf
One could easily suppose that the meat n’ taters of the convention will be held at Mons Venus.
Mike G
A plastic tube filled with disgusting meat-based things containing no brains – it’s like a sausage made under a Republican-crippled FDA.
dww44
@Schlemizel: Won’t a substantial number of GOP delegates hail from the generally hot if not always humid red states? Those from my state, to the North of Florida, are quite acclimated to the heat and humidity. Give’em the requisite air conditioning and they won’t object at all to being shut in the whole time. That’s how we all survive anyways come July and August.
Citizen_X
@patrick II:
I can’t see this happening at all.
Tehanu
Me neither. Is it too much to hope that Ernesto or Rafael will be the lucky storm, thus showing the Rethugs exactly what Latino voters think of their immigration policies?
PaulW
Stop pissing on my state, people.
It may be 88 to 92 degrees outside on a clear-sky Tampa day, but we’re nowhere near as bad as your urban hellholes in late August in terms of humidity and concrete-induced cooking areas you call sidewalks.
I’ve been to DC in August. You have a f-cking wall of humidity hit you the second you step outside. The air just SITS THERE. At least in Tampa/St. Pete we got the coastal winds blowing about to circulate the air.
And also, air conditioning in Florida is not a privilege, it’s a right!
Also wik, if we do get a hurricane striking Tampa during the convention, look on the bright side…
espierce
I’m thinking of hiring a voodoo priest(ess) to sacrifice a few live chickens on the Skyway in order to vector a small hurricane through town while they’re here.
muddy
I told my sister about the RNC tube meat, she reminded me about the Roman punishment of the sack, for parricides. The person gets sewn into a leather sack with a rooster, a dog, a snake and a monkey, and as they tear him up they throw the sack into the water and drown him. It’s mean to the animals tho.
But we could assign those roles to other Republicans. I’m not sure if Gingrich would be a snake or a monkey. The dog could be Zombie Seamus. I’d say the rooster could be Willard, but of course he would never mingle with the common peeps in the tunnel of doom.
M-Pop
@Arm The Homeless: This must be done, ATH – was looking at the NRN meet up BJ did with Wonkette and I think Wonkettes might be at the RNC thing so it will be extra fun! If I can hang with Betty Cracker for even part of the day I would be a lucky girl, indeed :)
PaulW
@M-Pop:
It will be tricky, if we try to meet anywhere near the convention – Channelside or Ybor in particular – we’re gonna run into parking issues and security hassles.
LosGatosCA
@dmsilev:
Outlander style.
M-pop
@PaulW: I’ve only been to Tampa a couple of times so I’m not really aware of parking – I’m very curious about what it’s going to be like, though!
TenguPhule
Just add the second wetsuit and the dildos will feel right at home.
Joseph Nobles
Can’t believe I made through the whole comment thread and no one mentioned the scene in E.T. where the kids drive off in the van and the two thugs are in the umbilical being drug behind.
Here’s hoping.