Category: Uncategorized

Why does the Left hate us so much? Mainly because we’re red-blooded, patriotic, God-fearing Americans, but also because we keep messing up their narratives. The Left (#p2) can’t stand the fact that conservatives (#tcot) are more active on Twitter, so that when they roll out a pre-fabricated Obama-approved #hashtag, it immediately (and hilariously) gets hijacked by us. Just for fun.

OK, so to push their gun-control agenda in Congress, Team Obama started the #DemandAVote hashtag, encouraging the Left to re-Tweet Obama’s message (i.e., demanding that Congress vote on the Democrats’ unconstitutional gun-control legislation).

That hashtag was instantly jacked by #tcot, but then @DefendWallSt discovered that many of the messages in favor of the Obama agenda were from spambots — phony sockpuppet accounts, usually with a blank “egg” avatar, evidently created by some Democrat P.R. operation to give the illusion that this message was more popular than it actually is. In a phrase, Twitter “Astroturf.”

How many fake spam bot accounts will the DNC create to fluff up #WeDemandAVote watch hashtag on Tweetdeck – hilarity…lol

— ERMAHGERD SERQERSTER (@DefendWallSt) February 23, 2013

Looks like all of the #WeDemandAVote accounts which are egg avatars are just clicking a Tweet button somewhere on a website.

— ERMAHGERD SERQERSTER (@DefendWallSt) February 23, 2013

IKR? RT @lilmissrightie: Wow. Why are so many of the #WeDemandAVote people egg avis? More than half it seems

— ERMAHGERD SERQERSTER (@DefendWallSt) February 23, 2013

@lilmissrightie “Twitter for Blackberry” says most of the accounts were created today/yesterday/etc.

— ERMAHGERD SERQERSTER (@DefendWallSt) February 23, 2013

Let’s play a game with internet dummies.Find all the egg avatars in #WeDemandAVote and hit “Report Spam”.#tcot

— ERMAHGERD SERQERSTER (@DefendWallSt) February 23, 2013

@lilmissrightie Looks like hashtag activity died after I reported 3 of the 90 for spam lol

— ERMAHGERD SERQERSTER (@DefendWallSt) February 23, 2013

Obama hired spambots to push #WeDemandAVote — BUST THE BOTS!twitter.com/DefendWallSt/s… | | BRILLIANT! @defendwallst #tcot PLZ RT

— Robert Stacy McCain (@rsmccain) February 24, 2013

@defendwallst Because every bot you bust today is a bot they can’t use tomorrow!

— Robert Stacy McCain (@rsmccain) February 24, 2013

If the idiot running #WeDemandAVote weren’t an imbecile the accounts wouldn’t all be mostly following Steff Cutter

— ERMAHGERD SERQERSTER (@DefendWallSt) February 24, 2013

 

So, not only did #tcot jack the hashtag, they busted the bots, and exposed the phoniness of the #p2 “grassroots” effort.

 

by Smitty

This is lengthy, but worth your time, especially the first 38 minutes or so:

Positive arguments given by Dr. Craig include that God is the best explanation:

1. why anything at all exists,
2. for the origin of the universe,
3. the applicability of mathematics to the physical world,
4. for the fine tuning of the universe for intelligent life,
5. intentional states of consciousness in the world,
6. of objective moral values and duties in the world,
7. of the historical facts concerning Jesus’ resurrection,
8. of God’s ability to be personally known and experienced.

The first six are rather wonky, the seventh is more historical, and the final point is crucial for the discussion to be more than abstract.

The atheist opponent, Dr. Rosenberg immediately tries to alter the terms of the debate. The debate is not about theism; the debate is about whether faith is nuts. Watch the whole thing when you have a chance. Dr. Rosenberg seems consumed with the Problem of Evil, especially in the case of the Holocaust. I guess if I was Dr. Craig, I would have pointed out that the last century’s Holocaust was by no means the first to occur to the Jews, as a reading of the Old Testament shows.

As for Dr. Rosenberg’s arithmetic argument, he seems to have happened upon a possible model for angelic beings, other than Lucifer & cohort.

by Smitty

Jerry makes a good point here:

It’s interesting to note where priorities lie for people. I clearly recall after my brother passed away unexpectedly last year feeling not a little anger toward those too self-preoccupied to express condolences even after having been directly notified about what was happening. I also heard from more than a few conservative new media types that I needed to “get over it” and was grieving far too much whenever I mentioned this. Such individuals make this whole forgiveness thing quite the challenge, but it’s a work in progress.

I’ll link this post by way of apologizing for being in the “too pre-occupied” category last September when he wrote it. I recall that we’d made a trip to Germany around then, and were just back. I (looking at YouTube uploads) that I was over at LibertyCon around then.

But the excuse “I was too busy” isn’t really the point. No, the real issue is that, in the detached online world, working up significant emotion for unmet people is a Hard Thing. One’s immediate family, co-workers, members of the community of faith: when they pass, we’re moved. Heroes, statesman (that dwindling breed), artists: when they go, we write a blog post.

For people I haven’t met or don’t know of, genuine emotion just isn’t there. Sure, there is the general honor afforded all veterans, and the comfort of knowing that those of faith may be encountered in the next world. But in a firehose of online information, things like Benghazi draw the attention. The sheer volume of data moving through makes being online a “best effort” endeavor at best, short of contractual obligation.

To our detriment. The Internet was supposed to be a digital utopia, helping the truth get out, and allowing time to focus on Important Matters. Well, that didn’t happen. Jerry, I’m sorry your brother passed, and further sorry about the slow reaction. I’m not sure how the overall situation can be improved.

by Smitty

This first seven minutes is stand-up (but good if you’re a fan), so you can skip that if pressed for time:

One great quote, I guess due to Charles Murray: “One of the problems with the elite is that it refuses to preach what it practices.”

Another crucial point, he calls it a category error that the Left always makes, the Right sometimes makes, and Libertarians never make: the government cannot love you.

via Mataconis

by Smitty

Set aside ~8 minutes and watch this. Then tweet/post/email it around to all who understand the English language.

via Instapundit

by Smitty

President Obama’s humor is so subtle as to be unknown. But he’s kind of a funny guy, if you approach his schtick with a certain diabolical, bloody-minded literalness:

AFP has a spending accountability project that is interesting. I wonder, though, if we’re not focusing too much on symptoms, and not the disease here. It seems like corruption is a function of concentrated power. Thus, if we want to talk about reducing corruption, we need to talk about removing power from the federal government. If we were less than an exceptional nation, this would be a silly thing even to talk about. But we are who we are. So, how do we do this?

Update: linked at Jackie Wellfonder

by Smitty

In one of the biggest Huh? moments of my memory, McCotter went from high-ranking GOP representative and dark horse Presidential hopeful to. . .recovering Congressbum and of Counsel at the Detroit law firm of Ottenwess, Allman & Taweel, PLC.

McCotter offers a profile of Millard Fillmore over at Breitbart.com, wherein he performs the masterful trick of making 160-year-old history quite interesting. A taste:

Historians have been even less kind. Fillmore’s presidency has been consistently ranked in the “Bottom 10,” no mean feat for someone who wasn’t a Republican. A key reason is Fillmore’s acquiescence to signing the Compromise of 1850 over the objections of, among others, Northern Whigs and his wife Abigail (Note to husbands: she is always right).
The Compromise of 1850 admitted California as a free state; settled the Texas boundary and gave that state $10,000,000 in debt relief; granted territorial status to New Mexico and Utah and allowed them to determine the status of slavery within their own borders; enacted the fugitive slave law, which put Federal officers in the service of slaveholders; and abolished the slave trade, but not slavery, in the District of Columbia. Intended to end slavery’s sectional divisions, the compromise only exacerbated them: afterwards, Northern Whigs prayed, “God Save Us from Whig Vice Presidents!”

A great read. About the only thing missing was a “separated at birth” gag, which I’ll provide:

In all honesty, when you hear the word “feminist,” does anyone think of adjectives like pleasant, cheerful, successful and attractive?

No, of course not. You think of adjectives like strident, angry, bitter and ugly. Also, quite often, ridiculous — as illustrated by the deranged mob of strident, angry, bitter, ugly women who showed up for a “One Billion Rising” Valentine’s Day demonstration in San Francisco.

By the same token, anyone who thinks that “honest” and “Democrat” ever belong together in the same sentence is probably suffering from some form of mental illness, and speaking of the mentally ill: Jesse Jackson Jr. will reportedly plead guilty to federal corruption charges.