Thursday 14 January 2010

$arah Palin, Queen of the Teabaggers - UPDATE 2

By Regina and Patrick

The people who would like to see Sarah Palin in the White House show how much they know about the problems facing the US.



Sarah Palin will be the keynote speaker at the first Tea Party Convention, an event that will be closed to the media. Tea Party Nation is the for-profit company promoting the convention. Most of the people seen on this video don't look like they can comfortably afford to attend the convention. The event is sold out, with some tickets still available for the banquet, where Sarah Palin will speak. The prices are as follows:

$549 for convention and banquet
$349 for convention only
$349 for banquet only.


These prices don't include hotel accommodation and there are travelling expenses on top.

So who will be attending this convention? Rich teabaggers? Or are the people we watched extolling Sarah Palin's virtues going to face hardship, feeding their families rice for years to come?

+++

We know of one person who can afford to attend the convention and is proud to be on a ticket as a speaker with Sarah Palin: Obama-birther guru Joseph Farah!

Joseph Farah is the owner of the right-wing conspiracy website "World Net Daily" which is a hotbed for the Obama birther movement.

On his website, Joseph Farah proudly boasts:

WND founder Joseph Farah will join former vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin as speaker at the first national tea-party convention – and he plans to get Americans energized and excited about reclaiming the nation this year from the clutches of "tyrannical central government." Tea Party Nation will host the first national tea party convention from Feb. 4 to Feb. 6 at the Gaylord Opryland Hotel in Nashville, Tenn.

Tea Party Nation President Judson Phillips is very proud to count on Farah's support.


Here is a screenshot from the current homepage of "World Net Daily" - the articles which are mentioned there might be removed from the homepage at some point, but in the index on World Net Daily you will find literally hundreds of Obama birther related articles:


Joseph Farah's online shop has some "bargains", such as this "inspiring" $19.99 t-shirt:

(Click to enlarge)

Keith Olbermann was never very impressed with Joseph Farah.



The fact that Sarah Palin is on a ticket together with Joseph Farah is particularly juicy because Sarah Palin had apparently declined the invitiation to CPAC partly because the radical John Birch Society was one of the co-sponsors, as it was "rumoured" on some right-wing blogs.

The "Washington Independent" about the CPAC issue:

"I was surprised that Sarah Palin, who has twice passed on chances to speak at the Conservative Political Action Conference, agreed to keynote the National Tea Party Convention. Undoubtedly the Tea Party event has more to offer her financially–tickets for her speech, as I reported last month, are selling for $349. But while CPAC is a well-established event with a filter for extremism, the Tea Party event is an unknown quantity. And right on cue, the conspiracy-minded site WorldNetDaily is joining the program, with Editor-in-Chief Joseph Farah getting a plum Friday night speaking slot.

Two months ago Farah appeared on the same stage as Bachmann and other conservative House Republicans to promote WND’s “pink slip” campaign against Congress, and political reporters pretty much ignored it. And WND has sponsored CPAC in the past. But CPAC has explicitly ruled out a “birther” forum at this year’s event, and some Republican activists have called for conservatives to cut ties with the birth certificate and conspiracy-obsessed WND. And here you’ll have Sarah Palin, giving her first political speech in months, on the same stage as Joseph Farah."

The birther and the faker - a perfect match!

+++

The whole tea party thing is trumpeted as a grassroots movement. At the prices we've seen above, the grassroots selling point becomes quite contradictory.

We don't know what Sarah Palin is going to do with the money she's being paid to speak at the event, but she doesn't come cheap.

Sarah Palin’s appearance early next month at the first tea party movement’s convention in Nashville has stirred controversy in conservative circles over her reported decision to charge a substantial fee.

Palin’s aides and conference organizers won’t comment on financial arrangements, but documents obtained by POLITICO reveal the going rate for the former Alaska governor: $100,000 a speech, with a discount to $75,000 for West Coast appearances. Palin has reportedly waived the fee for some charitable events, but what’s billed as a meeting of the grassroots conservative movement is not among those.

When Sarah Palin talked to Bill O'Reilly about the Tea Party Convention, she implied that the money will not be coming to her personally. Where is it going then? SarahPac or BSMP, LCC?

Why did she bother to sign up with the Washington Speakers Bureau?

Considering their ample knowledge about the issues, some unsavoury people associated with the movement and Sarah Palin's duplicity, we reckon the teabaggers are doomed.

+++

UPDATE

The media will be allowed to cover the banquet at the teabaggers convention after all.

Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has decided to allow media coverage of her speech at next month's Tea Party Convention at Gaylord Opryland Resort & Convention Center.

Palin's speech was initially announced as being closed to the media, but the former vice presidential candidate requested the press be allowed in after all, the event's organizer announced Wednesday.

+++

UPDATE 2

Palin's Tea Party Now Open To (Some) Press

The only media outlets currently credentialed, according to a statement released today by TPN, are Fox News, the Wall Street Journal and three conservative Web sites: Breitbart.com, Townhall.com and WorldNetDaily.com.

+++

Haiti Appeal - Separate post.
.

No comments: