DOWNLOADS: (76)

PLAYS: (467)

Embed

Like any gathering of like-minded people, one of the more interesting facets of CPAC is the party scene, and one of the quirkier parties is BlogBash, put together by Breitbart acolytes and Karl Rove pal Ali Akbar.

One reason to pay attention is to see who will actually show up and be seen with the sleazy underbelly of the right-wing blogosphere. This is a group who honored white nationalist Robert Stacy McCain, and in an ironic moment, also wandering former managing editor Dana Loesch. Last time I checked, her lawsuit against the Breitbart empire was still pending.

Look who showed up this year to pay homage to the Deified Andrew Breitbart! Yup, Senator Troll Mansplainer himself came to tell those bloggers how dead mainstream media is, because of their exemplary work.

Cruz's paean to Breitbart got me to wondering whether it was Cruz who planted the bogus "Friends of Hamas" story that Breitbart editor-at-large Ben Shapiro choked so hard on. That would explain why Senator Troll would take time away from his mansplaining ways to show up at a bar out in the boondocks to drink a toast to Dead St. Andy.

In the video, organizer Ali Akbar explains how he was able to secure funding for the Big Bash this year -- getting all Republicans in Congress to donate. Other donors included Freedomworks, CRC Public Relations, and more. At the end of the evening, Foster Friess even made an appearance to wave at everyone, and possibly to drop a few thousand for them to continue their good works.

Akbar claims there is no equivalent to this on the left. He's correct, nor will there ever be. The left does not drop large chunks of cash on people who can't even bother to file for non-profit status while they're collecting the big bucks, who spend the better part of a year blogging about an imaginary bogeyman and who exemplify the negative aspects of "citizen journalism."

Bonus: Oops! Ali Akbar forgot to lock down his organizational group, it seems, and so his (and others') disdain for the American Conservative Union and its president in particular spilled out and over onto Breitbart Unmasked and RightWingWatch.

Co-authored with Alex Brant-Zawadzki and Bill Schmalfeldt. Research assistance by Melissa Brewer.

Ali Akbar, now President of the National Bloggers Club, is one of the conservative blogosphere's most infamous characters. He began his campaign of notoriety with a crime spree in 2006, blazing a six-year trail of fraud. That's him up there, in the mug shots. Akbar's story is as improbable as the Tea Party movement itself, and a lesson on the privileges of power in the age of Citizens United. How did a petty crook rise to these heights in such a short time? Why does he enjoy such influential connections today?

We ask these questions because we see an emerging bipartisan consensus that Akbar's National Bloggers Club (NBC) is entirely notional. Akbar has never applied to the IRS for 501(c)3 status -- despite having claimed as much on the NBC Facebook page. While the NBC requires an unusual amount of personal information from donors, they do not offer those donors an EIN (Employer ID Number) to make their contributions tax deductible.

An EIN is provided upon application for nonprofit status, and should be available if the National Bloggers Club has applied. It is an easy online process. Yet we have been unable to locate an EIN in any database, and inquiries by both liberal and conservative bloggers have been met with silence. When journalist Bill Schmalfeldt contacted the Internal Revenue Service, he was informed that no EIN existed in their database for a National Bloggers Club.

Continue reading »