"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler
. . . those are the speakers who have already confirmed for the Southern Republican Leadership Conference April 8-11 in New Orleans.
Sean Hannity will broadcast live from the conference. And I’ll be there, too.
Registration is $119 ($699 for “VIP” registration).
He’s running against Barbara Boxer in the Democratic primary:
Pioneering political blogger Mickey Kaus took out papers filed to run for U.S. Senate in California, he told LA Weekly. The Venice resident said he’ll run this year against Barbara Boxer for her seat. He said he took out filed papers at with the Los Angeles County Registrar of Voters, although a spokeswoman there could not yet confirm the filing.
The Democrat has been centrist and even conservative on some of the issues on which Boxer has taken a more left-leaning stand, including immigration: He does not favor amnesty and favors a more restrictive national policy.
At his Slate blog, Kaus writes:
Next phase: Lowering expectations!
Bloggers running for public office could create some interesting questions for the FEC. Will an Instalanche be considered a “contribution in kind”? And what about getting re-Tweeted by Alyssa Milano?
So far, the former “Who’s the Boss?” star-turned-mega-Tweep — with more than 700,000 followers — hasn’t mentioned Kaus’s Senate campaign, and her support is obviously crucial in the online community.
Alyssa Milano never re-Tweeted Harold Ford Jr. Just sayin’ . . .
UPDATE: Dr. James Joyner, dream-killer:
This would seem to be a classic protest candidacy, with next to zero chance of upsetting Boxer in the primary.
Just because you’ve never been re-Tweeted by Alyssa Milano is no reason to lash out at Senator Kaus in a spiteful act of vengeance, Dr. J.
Over a period of four days spanning from February 23 to Feb. 26, Reynolds published a total of 287 links to 144 separate domains. In that small space of time, there were 26 domains that he linked to three times or more.
We didn’t make the list. Hat-tip to American Power, who didn’t make the list, either. I’ll ask Monica Bellucci to intervene . . .
There are rumors and denials that CBS is trying to recruit CNN’s Anderson Cooper as a replacement for Katie Couric, who’s been stuck in the Nielsen ratings basement almost from the moment of her “Evening News” debut.
A Cooper-for-Couric switch would not significantly alter the traditional liberal slant at CBS. However, the utter flop of Couric as anchor is a thumb in the eye of feminism, so at least we have that to celebrate.
Not that Anderson Cooper is the personification of manliness or anything. If manliness is what CBS wants, they should try Rachel Maddow.
It’s bad enough to have Bob Belvedere and friends distracting me with Old School pinup trivia — I’d never even heard of Melba Ogle before — but what’s with Ross Douthat trying to spark a premature rush to the Mitch Daniels 2012 bandwagon?
At 5’7”, the Indiana governor wouldn’t be the tallest man to occupy the White House, and he’d be the baldest president since Dwight D. Eisenhower. If Romney looks like central casting’s idea of a chief executive, Daniels resembles the character actor who plays the director of the Office of Management and Budget — a title that he held, as it happens, during George W. Bush’s first term.
Ross needs to get his priorities in order:
Whatever you do, Ross, wait until Nov. 3 before you do that Google search.
A British paper claimed last week to have identified David Geffen as the mystery man mocked by Carly Simon’s “You’re So Vain,” and our blog friend Nicholas accepted this as refutation of the long-popular Warren Beatty theory (my favorite).
Now, however, Simon has denied that speculation, calling it a “funny mistake.”
By the way, I’ve never bought into the Mick Jagger theory, a confused telephone-game rumor based on the fact that Jagger sings backup vocals on the chorus of “You’re So Vain.” The confirmation that the whispered word “David” on a re-release of the song is a clue to the subject’s identity — which is what sparked the false ID of Geffen — leads me to believe that David Bowie was the actual target.
Bowie’s wife Angela once claimed that Jagger was the subject of the song, based on the lyric about “the wife of a close friend,” but that might be a reflection of Angela’s own vanity. But if the Bowies were close enough to Simon that Angela might have thought Jagger’s alleged “obsession” with her prompted that lyric, then why not David Bowie? Certainly he was a peacock.
But I still think it was Warren Beatty, and Carly’s just trying to throw us off the scent with these bogus red-herring clues.
Pay no attention to the so-called “experts” :
After the president underwent a 90-minute physical exam at the National Naval Medical Center Sunday morning, Navy Capt. Jeffery Kuhlman, the chief White House physician, declared him to be in “excellent health.”
But Kuhlman still had some healthy recommendations for the president. First and foremost: “Continue smoking cessation efforts.”
Dr. Nieca Goldberg, a New York City-based cardiologist, said that despite the president’s clean bill of health, he may still be at risk for heart disease, because he is a smoker in a high-stress job.
“It’s great that he is physically fit, but it won’t counteract the fact that he still smokes,” Goldberg said. “To reduce his risk of cardiac disease, you can count his exercising as a benefit, but he needs to quit smoking.”
Screw that goody-two-shoes crap, Mr. President. Your health-care plan is doomed, you’re obviously under a lot of stress, and the last thing America needs is a Commander-in-Chief in the throes of a nicotine fit.
BRUSSELS — In a desperate bid to end the Cleavage Wars that have devastated the blogging community for the past week, representatives of the European Union dispatched “Matrix Reloaded” star Monica Bellucci as a special peace envoy.
“This senseless waste of cleavage cannot be allowed to continue,” said the 45-year-old Italian actress. “In the name of humanity, I call on the combatants to end their breast belligerence.”
Bellucci’s cease-fire plea followed a failed peace conference at the Hague, in which Bob Belvedere denounced as “propaganda” the claims of other bloggers that this ongoing conflict began with the aggressive display of flesh at Belvedere’s Camp of the Saints site.
“Lies! All lies!” Belvedere shouted during a speech following the Hague talks. “The record clearly shows that Donald Douglas provoked the current hostilities with his neo-imperialist Gemma Atkinson lingerie attack!” Continue reading European Envoy Seeks Cease-Fire as Peace Talks Fail to End ‘Cleavage Wars’ →
