Tea Party convention begins in Nashville

Source: Washington Post

NASHVILLE -- The grass-roots movement that exploded across the nation last year in revolt against President Obama's economic policies and health-care agenda reached a critical milestone Thursday as hundreds of conservative activists converged here for the start of the inaugural National Tea Party Convention.

But the first gathering of the sprawling movement, made up of hundreds of disparate "tea party" organizations, has been marred by controversy. Some high-profile speakers and activist groups have canceled their appearances in protest of alleged profiteering by the convention organizers.

Attendees have paid $549 a ticket (plus hotel and transportation) to gather for three days at the Gaylord Opryland Hotel and Convention Center, which critics say is out of reach for many activists. Some of the proceeds will cover former Alaska governor Sarah Palin's reported $100,000 fee for Saturday's keynote address.

Despite the fractiousness, however, officials said the event is sold out, with 600 "delegates" registered and scores more being turned away. The closing steak-and-lobster banquet, featuring Palin, has sold 1,100 tickets.

Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/04/AR2010020402884.html?hpid=topnews

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This shit has been getting wall to wall news coverage for weeks, and there's going to be 600 whole people there? And no, I didn't leave out any zeroes. That's six hundred. Oh I get it, they're sold out and they're turning hordes away. Right. Have you ever been to the Gaylord Opryland Hotel? You could fit the Superbowl in there. Not just the fans, the actual stadium too. Plus all the cars and busses in the parking lot.

But wait, they're saying they've sold a whopping 1,100 tickets to Sarahfest. That's it? You betcha SarahPAC bought half of them.

No problem though, they can just paste some old Promise Keepers photos into the hotel lobby and presto! Grass roots up the ying yang, just in time for the Sunday talk shows.

this is as close as i've seen to a third party..

in their ongoing effort to divide and conquer...

This is a whine fest for the fringe of the Party of no, no, no, no.

These Teabaggsters have NO solutions -- Only whines, complaints, bellyaches, and hate.

Oh wait. Check this out from the linked article:

They could have sold a bundle.

... at least for getting the votes out. Nothing new here.

It might look like a third party to you, but to me they're just the most vocal part of the antitax wing of the Republican Party.

The GOP is very close to morphing into two single-issue wings. I will bet you a nickel cigar the anti-abortion people would support raising taxes and increasing the size of the government to create an abortion prohibition department, and the teabaggers would decide drugs were a "social problem" best dealt with by the private sector if abolishing the drug laws would lower taxes. The two wings are agreed on one thing, though: if an Abortion Party candidate pulls 30 percent of the vote and a Tax Party candidate pulls 30 percent, the other 40 percent of the vote will go to the Democrat and neither of their sides will be happy.

I wonder...did some Democratic group pony up $600 to put a mole into this convention? If they did I think the number one issue there would be, "how do we ensure Tea Party-friendly politicians are on the Republican slate?"

but it is close enough to pretend..

I wonder this about their convention: Why limit the attendees? The only thing I can think of is, they googled the names of every applicant and started seeing a lot of Democrats pop up. I don't think a Democrat would go in there specifically to disrupt the proceedings; he'd last about two seconds before the Nashville police were called. Rather, there'd be cellphone videos on YouTube and hilarious daily updates on DU or Bartcop. After a while they probably said "no more, we'll say there are thousands and thousands just itching to get into the convention but we're cutting it off now."

I know it's not a hotel issue. The Gaylord Opryland has 2881 rooms--this is in their FAQ. But assume they actually filled the place. Have you ever heard of a convention--especially one they've been planning for six months--that didn't have overflow hotels? As for the convention events...uhh...don't political conventions normally take place in arenas rather than hotel conference rooms?

Looks like the KKK is growing by leaps and bounds. :popcorn:

called these people "retarded" ...

Sorry about all you innocents being caught in this thing but this is our opportunity to round up the nut jobs in one place.

Give them their own little Utopian space to destroy themselves.

The nefarious teabaggers have gotten non-stop coverage of everything they've done, and the group was formed the moment Obama was elected.

We struggled against BushCo for eight freakin' years and got almost ZERO coverage, and what was there certainly was not as fawning as this piece.

They seem to enjoy doing that at political events, right? Or do they only carry those to Dem events?

I wonder what services that includes?

I'd think a quarter ($.25) would be price gouging.

EDIT..."The Barbies are cuming the Barbies are cuming!" One if by land two if by sea she'll put her pig's lipstick on thee...for a fee

I wonder if they're going to have a good old-fashioned cross-burning.

The rednecks are coming the rednecks are coming!

Remember this when you get a table of these asshats! They will look down on you too.

There is a thread in the archives written, iirc, by a DUer who is a server at a restaurant and whose "tip" from a freeper was a card that said he was not going to leave a gratuity for some reason--I think it was because he was protesting the practice of allowing employers of tipped employees to use tips to subsidize the minimum wage. But he had to dine out to help the economy, of course.

They probably print those up and sell 'em on secret conservative websites in the "hidden Internet" and the servers at the teabag convention will get a LOT of those.

Advice to the attendees: if you use the "no tipping cards," I recommend passing on the complimentary chocolate chip cookies you'll find on the front desk as you check out.

These are copies of greenbacks with 'clever' placement of scripture. One day I'll scan them up. The worst one on a 'twenty' said " I'll bet you were exited when you saw this but if you go with Jesus blah, blah. blah." We, in our restaurant, had tea baggers a couple of weeks ago on their special day. Ugly, mean, cheap, & drunk, they had not been out in social situations much. I put 18% on them so servers would get some loot. They still felt dirty but they got some cash. BTW years ago the socialist table in the hippie joint I worked in didn't tip either. They were protesting how the man screwed us over. My wife, who I met there laughs when we reminiscence to those days, remembering how they hit on her after they stiffed the tip. The 'baggers are a lot worse.

Opryland Hotel this week end. It's easy to walk around the indoor river and gardens where all the tea baggers will be hanging out between Sarah Palin speeches.
Walk around and carry on casual but 'loud' conversations with your friends or spouse within ear shot of tea baggers.
Say things to each other like, "You know, George Bush was a murderer." "Joe the Plumber is not a Plumber." "Ronald Regan was responsible the the biggest tax hike in history." "Dick Cheney and Karl Rove should be in jail."
There are many other ways to use your free speech make a point there and I think it should be used.
The real point is to make these racist bigots little weekend as miserable as possible.

National Tea Party Convention Circus. :boring: :freak:

"If you take 1,000 so-called tea partiers and ask them what this movement is, you'll get 1,000 different interpretations," said Mark Williams, a talk-radio host and chairman of the Tea Party Express. "But they're all waving American flags and speaking out against the galloping socialist agenda."

In other words, they haven't a clue other than "waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa"...

from ABC news:

Its credibility already thrown into question by rival activists, the Tea Party Convention in Nashville did little to quiet critics who say the grass-roots movement often flirts with extremism. Former Rep. Tom Tancredo, famous for his anti-immigration politics, offered a racially incendiary opening day speech on Thursday in which he denounced "the cult of multiculturalism" and said President Obama was elected because "we do not have a civics, literacy test before people can vote in this country." The line about tests carried an explosive edge beyond its schoolyard taunting: literacy and civics voting tests were notoriously used to prevent blacks from voting during segregation and were banned by the Voting Rights Act in 1964. A number of speakers and sponsors have pulled out of the convention over claims that its organizers are exploiting the movement for money (tickets are $549), but Sarah Palin, whose speaking fee for the event is reportedly $100,000, has pledged to see it through.

Hell, they're the epitome of extremism.

Tom Tancredo? Besides pissing off the entire country, did Tom Tancredo ever actually DO anything?

Oh! I went to Tancredo's wikipedia page...Tancredo served four terms in the House and sponsored three bills. One was the Sudan Peace Act, which is essentially a resolution against the Sudanese government for genocide. One was a moratorium on immigration that got eleven cosponsors. The third was to get the government to abandon the one-China policy.

Tancredo is in favor of marijuana legalization but he really should be in favor of crack legalization since he appears to be on it.

The fact that it's the child of Fox News and Glen Beck seems to have escaped this reporter. Or maybe he just didn't want to deal with the bullshit had he not said that. ACORN is grass roots, this is a media-generated and guided movement. These are like Trekkers, except Trekkers knew it was fun and fantasy, they never claimed that Khan had taken over the White House, and at least never take themselves as seriously as thinking they should be in charge of the whole country.

"'We are all very mature people -- without the pointy hats and the signs," Skoda said. "You will see people of quality and maturity to help bring this movement to a pinnacle whereby we actually change politics.'"

Oh, that's hilarious! I want to see a video of Mark Skoda's face as he says this. I can't see any people guided by the likes of Glen Beck and Sarah Palin as being anything like mature.

When the reporter talks about a "don't tread on me brand of fiscal conservatism" when referring to people who'd spend $549 to get into this convention, and then $110 more to hear the wisdom of Sarah Palin, I almost spit my Rice Krispies all over the screen.

These are people who hate taxes? Who then deadpan that they know how to spend their money better than a government? The government will provide them the use of a highway for the next year for that amount of money. While driving on that highway, they could listen to the same dribble they are going to hear at this convention, free of charge.

The fact that their members are being exploited by the people they most admire, the people who they look to as the leaders, the hope of their movement, shows that there's no real unity there. Some might be motivated to stay in the movement, though, just so they could avoid feeling like suckers after this. Sort of like what they did with Dubya's second election.

Yes, the people with the moral integrity who brought us that diseased scourge called the Second Bush administration and found that the only thing wrong with it was-- it spent too much money, they are now trying to fix things.

Source: Raw Story

Tea party opening speaker suggests blacks be kept from voting

By John Byrne
Friday, February 5th, 2010 -- 9:38 am

The opening night speaker at the Tea Party convention suggested a return to a "literacy test" to protect America from presidents like Obama -- a segregation-era method employed by southern US states to keep blacks from voting.

In his speech Thursday to attendees, former Republican congressman Tom Tancredo invoked the loaded pre-civil rights era buzzword, saying that President Barack Obama was elected because "we do not have a civics, literacy test before people can vote in this country."

Southern states used literacy tests as part of an effort to deny suffrage to African American voters prior to Johnson-era civil rights laws.

"Prior to passage of the federal Voting Rights Act in 1965, Southern (and some Western) states maintained elaborate voter registration procedures whose primary purpose was to deny the vote to those who were not white," a website for civil rights veterans explains. "In the South, this process was often called the 'literacy test.' In fact, it was much more than a simple test, it was an entire complex system devoted to denying African-Americans (and in some regions, Latinos) the right to vote."

White applicants could be approved even if they didn't pass the test.

Read more: http://rawstory.com/2010/02/tea-party-opening-speaker-suggests-blacks-voting/

"His" party doesn't want him to vote! Hah! Talk about a fuckin idiot!

So,I don't think he's too worried about voting rights for his fellow African Americans.

Is he black? :sarcasm:

Or Kenny Blackwell?

They can always take it to the Supreme Court for a rubber stamp.

The fact that a single person voted for him for President, or elected him a Congressman, scares me even more.

Baggers equal Klan. End of story

Teabaggers = racists.

We all knew it, but they finally admitted it.

Fucking bigots. THEY certainly need civics lessons AND literacy lessons. Because they're unbelievably stupid.

That is one woman I cannot stand, that Palin. She fans her hatred everywhere she goes.

Not really, but it does sound like dear old dad. He told me once that only white, male, landowners should be able to vote. Yeah, we don't talk much.

We can only hope that this will only help highlight the morons and racists that make up this group. Don't have much hope though, given the coverage that the health care rallies were given. Racists? What racists? Just concerned, average Americans...:banghead:

That the Tea Party wasn't racist?

Sniff the air. Can you smell the thick putrid racism? If you can you're in the company of

They don't even try to hide it.

Hopefully, this will be picked up by the media.

because dumbasses like you damn near ruined the country for bush's eight years. Literacy tests to vote? I'm all for it. If literacy swept Mississippi it would be a blue state for eternity.

TEA PARTY the latest version of the Ku Klux Klan.

I always knew from the start that a heck of a lot of the folks behind the Tea Party movement were really just modern day white racists, and a few other undereducated unhappy folks going along for the bus ride to the events.

We've all seen the signs, we've all heard the racial slurs against Obama from these protesters.

Tom Tancredo?? My GOD, they are now even bringing the blatant racists to the podium.

The Tea Party movement is just the 21'st century KKK, in my opinion.

Republicans and libertarians are pretty deaf to all of this.

"In what regards, Charlie", would be the answer to every question.

Not long ago, when the White Christians first arrived in the Americas,
all pagans were "eligible for" slavery and dispossession.

They have really improved a lot, folks! Be patient,
evolution is a process and Dark Ages are not easily overcome.
They only discovered schools and universal education recently.

And remember, people don't change much, the old ones die! :rofl:

Please keep talking like this, Teabagger Republicans.

inviting a racist Republican to speak.

And they charged the listeners lots of money for this weekend?

Oh Wait, yeah, I CAN believe they would be this stupid as to invite Tom T.

"In Washington, the Republican establishment has wrestled with the tea party movement, but House Republican Leader John A. Boehner (Ohio) said Thursday that there is "no difference" in the beliefs of Republicans and tea party activists. Appearing on conservative Mike Gallagher's radio show, Boehner counseled Republican candidates to "prove it to tea party activists that we really are who we say we are."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/04/AR2010020402884.html?hpid=topnews

Probably 100% of them.

but that nuance would be lost on teabaggers, because they're really just racist thugs.

therefore illiterate, we continue to get this ignorant thinking.

There are many poor whites who cannot read and have learned
to negotiate society hiding this fact.

Furthermore this is not a bash. At least they can read at this
level. How many Duers have ever picked up one of the "Left Behind"
Books or "The Purpose Driven Life," for that matter. The Authors
were very smart. These books are written at grade school level.
They have sold because they hit a target audience. Millions and
millions of copies sold and read.

Speaking of Obama's win, this just proves the TeaBaggers are
really upset over a black man as President more than any issue.

The Republican Party had best do something to channel this type
anger. This is not about principle this is about retaining
the White Caste System.

By those standards you could lose 85% of the people you are talking to...

coming from the folks who can't even spell "democracy" or "Constitution" half the time.

I kind of favor that kind of competency test.

Think about it: the party whose leadership can't tell the difference between the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence wants to protect the American electorate from itself, in order to never again elect someone like Barack Obama, whose commitment to socialist ideology seems to have been detected only by right-wing nut cases who apparently don't have the slightest idea what socialist ideology is.

But hold on here, might we be too hasty in issuing a blanket condemnation of Tancredo's rantings? If the civics test were to be administered to members of the House of Representatives wishing to vote on the House floor, many Republican members, including their own leadership, would fail their own civics test, and thus be barred from voting against legislation proposed by Democrats. If applied exclusively to members of the House and the Senate, I guess this idea would bring some benefits after all................

From the article linked in the OP:


Religion, The Pledge, and the US flag are a real big deal to these same people when they want to spread lies about a Obama. But Teabaggers are not to be blamed because they temporarily forgot these things exist. It's the hotel staff's fault. How Republican of them.

This really is being hyped. I hope that it backfires though. All that unites these people is anger, so there is some real potential that there could be really unappealing speeches and demonstrations.

:rofl:

"How's the gift bag thing going, Frank?"

'Just fine, Ross. We got the Christian store to give us all the Bibles they couldn't sell. We got jars of some kinda face cream for the ladies. And we've got a complete copy of the Constitution to stuff in every bag.'

"Complete? Uhh..."

'Yes, complete. We put the directions for impeaching the president and the Second Amendment on a postcard. Is there anything else in the Constitution?'

"No, I think you covered it. How many Bibles did you get?"

"Well...only 600.'

"And how many registrations did we get?"

'Six hundred forty-four.'

"I know! Pick 44 names, ask them if they'd like to donate their registration fees to The Movement, and say we had to turn away scores!"

'Great one, Boss. Why don't I ever think of good stuff like this?'

My son said when fighting in an online game, after you kill an opponent, you go an squat over them and go up and down. this is called teabagging because the balls going up and down on the guy. that is always what I think of when I hear about tea baggers. lol

This has to be the best example. Tea Party convention tickets costing 500USD? They have been targeted as a highly motivated group, just like Fox have been doing. They are simply rallying these people to make money off them.

Talk about irony.

The state that spawned the klan,now they give us the teabag klan.It take a long time for an empire to fall,but our teabaggers are hell bent on speeding up the day of decline.

when the scumbaggers came riding their George Bush stick mustangs into town...better check their diapers they might be carrying some Dave Vitter type WMDs(Wittle Messy Dumplins)in their unterhosen.

They need to show 'em that they are tough.

for any length of time they will soon discover that the only thing they have in common is their poutrage.

Nothing more, nothing less...

Source: Al Jazeera

The first national Tea Party convention is getting underway in the US.

The conservative political movement named itself after the Boston Tea Party of 1773 in which Americans protested against British taxation.

The modern-day group objects to the tax policies of the Obama administration, and what they call "big government interference".

As Cath Turner reports from Nashville, some are questioning the group's own finances.

Read more: http://english.aljazeera.net/news/americas/2010/02/20102573458231127.html

to hear sarah bimbo talk, I mean babble?

as they do here.

These idiots couldn't have cared less when BushCo was pissing on the constitution and Bill of Rights, and those of us who DID care were not called patriots, we were called traitors for having the audacity to criticize the pResident.

Now, these hypocritical teabaggin' losers are all over the MSM, like they're special. :puke:

finance questions. :)

Once they have been in hot water long enough to suit their master's taste, they will be squeezed out and discarded.

600 people attended, with 500 more signed up for sunday's Palin speech. Total: 1100. Don't know how true it is but those were the numbers cited.

The sad part of the whole thing is, they're supposed to be this huge rising force in American politics but they only let 600 people in? Plus an extra 500 to eat whatever the Tea Party could get for ten bucks a plate and listen to Caribou Barbie.

Check for a Tupperware party near you.

What a great business idea, to form a news network catering only to the lunatic fringe of the right. Highly motivated people who are willing to go to great lenghts to ahve their way.
Then you create a political movement. Make books for them to buy (and a flag factory probably).

Then you have the convention, charge them up the ass to let them in.

Is it possible that the entire Tea Party movement is just a big business idea by insane capitalists? And that the Tea Party goers are simply being exploited?

If so, that is the mother of all ironies.

....don't let Palin and her corporate GOP Wall Street friends steel your movement and thunder....I don't agree with much of what your movement stands for, but I'll be the first to admit, that this country in desperate need of new grassroots political Parties that will once again represent the interests of the American people....

....because the Dems are in power now, we on the Left have not yet fully organized into a unified movement that will gladly do battle with you over the directions, ideas and solutions to our nations long list of pressing problems....I personally look forward doing battle with you for the hearts and minds of the American people, but let us all agree upon one thing, that we must do this in an America that is as free from corporate political power, influence, control and interests as possible....Grassroots on the Right vs. Grassroots on the Left IS America....

....pursue your right of center movement if you must, but please don't be duped or blind-sided by the so-called Republicans and their many paid shills that don't want to see anything 'grassroots' ever come to power....remember those who brought us the meltdown in the first place....they play us against each other so that no interests, other than corporate interests, are ever served....

thuh way thay war talkin.

Some said Obama was the scariest person they'd ever heard of.

I'm just glad all of those great brains aren't meeting in in my area. I don't think I could handle being in the same place with them. From the interviews, eew what a meeting of minds.