A little-known Canadian band may soon be paid a fortune by supporters of former Alaska governor Sarah Palin, US Representative Michele Bachmann or Texas Governor Rick Perry.
More than a decade after their biggest hit, the Tea Party is considering selling the domain name teaparty.com to supporters of the US political movement, with analysts estimating its value at “well over” US$1 million.
For the last two years, the Tea Party has been the most talked about movement in US conservative politics, and a nearly forgotten band from Windsor, Ontario, has been the accidental benefactor.
Every time anybody searches for “tea party,” one of the top results has nothing to do with pork barrel spending, the US Federal Reserve, or, er, “Obamacare.” Instead, teaparty.com is the Web site for the Tea Party, a Middle Eastern-tinged band whose last charting single was in 2001. In anticipation of traffic from supporters of the political movement, the band’s Web site proclaims: “No Politics ... Just Rock and Roll.”
“So much damage has been done to our name by the political movement that we’re considering selling [the Web site],” Tea Party bassist Stuart Chatwood recently told BusinessWeek magazine.
The band does not support Tea Party politics.
“As Canadians, we’re sensitive to all the criticism of socialized medicine,” Chatwood said.
Although the Tea Party would rather sell its domain name to a liberal satirist such as Jon Stewart or a Democratic fundraiser such as George Soros, Chatwood said the URL would probably go to the highest bidder.
“We’ve got families,” he said.
In this political climate, a Web site at teaparty.com could be a valuable portal for either fundraising or satire. As BusinessWeek pointed out, it could also be a canny business opportunity for Lipton tea. However, high demand for the Web address means it won’t come cheap — domain names such as vodka.com and sex.com sold for millions.
Meanwhile, the Canadian Tea Party plans to keep making music. The band released seven albums between 1991 and 2004, selling 1.6 million copies — mostly in Canada. After breaking up in 2005, they reunited for several dates this year.
MINERAL DEPOSITS: The Pacific nation is looking for new foreign partners after its agreement with Canada’s Metals Co was terminated ‘mutually’ at the end of last year Pacific nation Kiribati says it is exploring a deep-sea mining partnership with China, dangling access to a vast patch of Pacific Ocean harboring coveted metals and minerals. Beijing has been ramping up efforts to court Pacific nations sitting on lucrative seafloor deposits of cobalt, nickel and copper — recently inking a cooperation deal with Cook Islands. Kiribati opened discussions with Chinese Ambassador Zhou Limin (周立民) after a longstanding agreement with leading deep-sea mining outfit The Metals Co fell through. “The talk provides an exciting opportunity to explore potential collaboration for the sustainable exploration of the deep-ocean resources in Kiribati,” the government said
The head of Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic intelligence agency, was sacked yesterday, days after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he no longer trusts him, and fallout from a report on the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack. “The Government unanimously approved Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s proposal to end ISA Director Ronen Bar’s term of office,” a statement said. He is to leave his post when his successor is appointed by April 10 at the latest, the statement said. Netanyahu on Sunday cited an “ongoing lack of trust” as the reason for moving to dismiss Bar, who joined the agency in 1993. Bar, meant to
Indonesia’s parliament yesterday amended a law to allow members of the military to hold more government roles, despite criticisms that it would expand the armed forces’ role in civilian affairs. The revision to the armed forces law, pushed mainly by Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto’s coalition, was aimed at expanding the military’s role beyond defense in a country long influenced by its armed forces. The amendment has sparked fears of a return to the era of former Indonesian president Suharto, who ex-general Prabowo once served and who used military figures to crack down on dissent. “Now it’s the time for us to ask the
The central Dutch city of Utrecht has installed a “fish doorbell” on a river lock that lets viewers of an online livestream alert authorities to fish being held up as they make their springtime migration to shallow spawning grounds. The idea is simple: An underwater camera at Utrecht’s Weerdsluis lock sends live footage to a Web site. When somebody watching the site sees a fish, they can click a button that sends a screenshot to organizers. When they see enough fish, they alert a water worker who opens the lock to let the fish swim through. Now in its fifth year, the
RSS