Open Threads

Erick Erickson starts his latest post, “I swore I was going to keep my mouth shut on this, but I keep getting emails from people along the lines of “if you don’t say it, who will?” Yeah, I guess I have become that guy.”

And here at Balloon Juice, well…

To further quote Mr. Erickson:

I am afraid Sarah Palin is going to harm herself unintentionally over this tea party convention in Nashville…

Let me be blunt: charging people $500.00 plus the costs of travel and lodging to go to a “National Tea Party Convention” run by a for profit group no one has ever heard of sounds as credible as an email from Nigeria promising me a million bucks if I fork over my bank account number.
…
The tea party movement was always about the unorganized masses of concerned, passionate Americans uniting together with a common voice to protest the direction of the country. From that passion, others have sought to make money off the tea party movement. Some have done it for good. Many have not. And more and more we are seeing some people rise up to claim the mantle of “leader” of the tea party movement. Many of us who have been around for a while just want to know who the heck these so called leaders are.

Even before his massively successful game-changing Narnia-referencing leadership of several dozen Red State Trike Farce Strike Force minions to send rock salt to a Maine Congresswoman just before driveway-clearing season, Erick Erickson was the kind of leader who could organize a super-select registration-limited Red State Gathering…

Tonight, we’ll hear from Roy Blunt, Pat Toomey, Jim DeMint, and Rick Perry. Then we’ll watch a special presentation of John Ziegler’s new movie. Tomorrow, Tom Price, Karen Handel, a super secret special guest, Ken Cuccinelli, Michael Williams, Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, and Nikki Haley join us.

We’re also going to do two workshops. One will be on becoming better online activists and the other on being better offline activists.

… and he brought them to Atlanta. In August. For a mere $50!

For some reason, I am reminded of how some people “organize” their university Student Activities Group and a handful of fellow geeks for a couple thousand dollars and the chance to meet the guy who wrote “Trouble with Tribbles”, while other people manage to turn their passionate concern for the underrated genre artforms into something like the San Diego Comic Con. Possibly thirty-plus years as an out and proud geek may have damaged my perspective on other folks’ enthusiasms.

I have been waiting for TBogg’s take on Erick the Red’s new crusade, but it’s still early on the left coast. So I leave you with his masterful commentary upon the 2009 Atlanta event, including the Big Reveal of the super-secret special guest…

Tragic the Gathering Is Go!

As If the All-U-Can-Eat Bacon Bar Wasn’t Enough…

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