LIVE AT FIVE – 2.14.11

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Or, as we call it in the Wombat’s tribe, Bitter Singles Day.
Because we’re surly like that.


TOP NEWS
Egyptian Military Dissolves Parliament

Muslim Brotherhood's Mohamed al-Beltagy is lifted at a demonstration on Tahrir Square.

Once-banned political parties revive, gather strength to rule Egypt

Middle East Nations Struggle To Contain Unrest
From Algeria to Iran, protesters take to the streets


GOP, Independents Blast Proposed Budget
Boehner: “He’s going to present a budget tomorrow that will continue to destroy jobs by spending too much, borrowing too much, and taxing too much.’’



POLITICS
GOP Leaders Split On Obama’s Handling Of Egypt Crisis
Boehner: “I think they’ve handled what is a very difficult situation about as well as it could be handled.”

Speaker John Boehner on Meet The (De)Press(ed)

Arizona Files Countersuit Tied To Challenge Of Its Immigration Law

State Department Reaches Out To Iranians With Farsi Twitter


Pentagon The Budget Blind Spot?

Virginia’s General Assembly Becoming More Like Congress? Actually, No



THE ECONOMY, STUPID
“Animal Spirits” Back In Japan?
Oil Rises Slightly As Egypt Crisis Ends
PRC Reports Smaller Trade Surplus
Nokia, Microsoft Forge Smartphone Alliance
Sony Ericsson Xperia Play Gaming Phone: Hands On
Adobe Flash: 20 Million Phones Flip Steve Jobs The Bird



SPORTS
Dale Earnhardt Takes Pole For Daytona 500

Dale Earnhardt Jr.: ready for his comeback

NASCAR goes down memory lane for #3, but the real story is in the rules changes

Hype Can’t Save Heat From Celtics

Wizards End Road Losing Streak Against Hapless Cavs (Video)

Pujols Rejects Cards’ Offer, Suspends Contract Talks For The Season



FAMOUS FOR BEING FAMOUS
Christina Aguilera Redeems Herself At Grammys

Christina Aguilera en fuego

Brings down the house with cover of “Ain’t No Way”

2011 Grammys Belong To Arcade Fire, Lady Antebellum

Esperanza Spalding Beats Out Justin Bieber For Best New Artist

A Night Full Of Upsets At The Grammys

Charlie Sheen Has The Midas Chomp

Kate Hudson Shows Off Her Baby Bump

Jennifer Aniston Celebrates Her 42nd With Jake Gyllenhaal

Liz Taylor Hospitalized For Congestive Heart Failure

Lindsay Lohan’s Bad Taste In Jewelry May Be Best Defense For Felony Charges



FOREIGNERS
Palestinian Authority Dismisses Cabinet
Thousands Of Italian Women Protest Berlusconi
11 Killed, 29 Injured At Nigerian Election Rally
Iran Opposition Renews Calls For Rally; Government Forbids Protests
FARC Reneges On Promise, Frees Only One Hostage
Pakistan And The U.S.: Who’ll Blink First?



BLOGS & STUFF
Gateway Pundit: Obama Thanks Youth For Votes, Cuts Pell Grants
American Power: CPAC And The Muslim Brotherhood
Cubachi: Jeff Flake To Run For Senate Seat Being Vacated By Jon Kyl
iOwnTheWorld: Meathead Press
Outside The Beltway: Egyptian Military Reaffirms Treaty With Israel
Commentary: How To Think About The Tea Party
Colby Cosh: Pull The Other One, Pullman
Don Surber: Silence Is Golden
Dan Collins: $70 Billion Hardly Enough For Leading Ungrateful Egyptians For 30 Years


— compiled by Wombat-socho
—————-
Now playing: Roxy Music – Both Ends Burning
via FoxyTunes

Is the FBI Watching Barrett Brown? (And If They’re Not Already, Shouldn’t They?)

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One of those weird stories that just drops out of the sky: Regular readers will recall my occasional go-rounds with atheist blogger Barrett Brown, who first appeared on my radar amid the 2009 LGF blogwar and has since occasionally popped up from time to time. My status as a sometimes combatant with Brown resulted in me getting a tip that Brown has evidently become a public-relations agent for the hacker group “Anonymous,” which launched cyberattacks against critics of WikiLeaks.

Via his DailyKos account, Brown has posted a series of messages purporting to be press releases from “Anonymous.” One of Brown’s posts claimed that the hacker group successfully breached the computer systems of HBGary Federal after an official of that firm was quoted in a Feb. 5 Financial Times article warning that members of “Anonymous” had been identified and were vulnerable to prosecution.

Unfamiliar with (and not hitherto interested in) this aspect of the WikiLeaks controversy, I’m not sure what Brown’s trying to do. Some of what he has posted on behalf of “Anonymous” reads like demented satire. He may be joking, or perhaps just trying to insert his name into the middle of a story that interests him.

On the other hand, if he’s serious, he’s insane, because to make himself an online spokesman for “Anonymous” would almost certainly suffice as probable cause for a search warrant to determine how Brown is in contact with a group suspected of criminal activity online.

Maybe Barrett Brown’s computer activities are squeaky clean and perfectly legal, and he therefore feels entirely safe using his DailyKos diary to bait the Justice Department into launching an investigation of him. They say there’s no such thing as bad publicity, but trying to elicit a search warrant that results in the FBI seizing your computer would seem rather an elaborate P.R. stunt, even for a self-dramatizing narcissist.

Rule 5 SundayMonday: Ready To Go

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As usual, Soylent Green manages to be first in the Rule 5 mailbox, with a post that manages to combine criticism of Australian politicos with a non-gratuitous nude photo. Don’t try this at home, kids, this sort of posting is best left to professional bloggers. He then goes on a roll, proposing a (NSFW) solution for Egypt’s problems, posting THE Agent Provocateur ad (with additional imagery), and finally postponing the Friday Night Corset Revue to Saturday. Understandably so!

The Rio Norte Line pulls in with what appears to be a comprehensive review of British TV star Jennifer Metcalfe. Yow.

On this side of the pond, Wyblog informs us that Miley Cyrus is slated to host an upcoming episode of Saturday Night Live. Remember when that show was funny? Me, too. But we’re both pretty old.

Not to be outdone by Soylent, Bob Belvedere turns his spotlight on Marina Augusta Baker, Kimberly Evenson, and a double bill of the late Tura Satana and Maria Schneider; he also sends links to some CPAC Rule 5 hotness and some non-CPAC hotness as well. Thus we see that competition helps improve Rule 5 posts as well!

I’d like to know just how Dustbury found Abi Titmuss. Especially in that very appropriate lack of costume. On the other hand, finding out that Christina Ricci no longer looks much like Wednesday Addams (or Morticia, for that matter) is depressing, and I’m just going to move along.

At this point I must pause and give honorable mention to Great Satan’s Girlfriend, who adorns her every post with Rule 5 goodness. Come for the cheesecake, stay for the meaty politico-military main course!

Fortunately, Maggie’s Notebook is there to restore my spirits with a nice collection of J-Lo pix, some of which are mas desnuda que los otros.This is followed up with an interesting photo essay on dictators’ wives, which includes some very attractive young ladies as well as some who have aged quite well. Make with the clicky and check it out!

Last but not least, DaleyGator’s DaleyBabe Playoffs are in their fourth round. Head over there and vote on the following matchups:

  • Evangeline Lilly v. Ali Landry
  • Sela Ward v. Jennifer Love Hewitt
  • Elisabeth Shue v. Jessica Alba
  • Shania Twain v. Minka Kelly
  • Gemma Atkinson v. Monica Bellucci
  • Kaley Cuoco v. Kate Beckinsale
  • Kelly Brook v. Alyssa Milano
  • Halle Berry v. Leeann Tweeden

That’s all the Rule 5 goodness for this week. Send your links to me at the Rule 5 Wombat mailbox, and keep your pimp hand strong. Not like this guy.

FMJRA 2.0: Real As Anything You’ve Seen

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Rep. Chris Lee (R-Stupid) Quickly Becomes Former Congressman

CPAC Update: Rep. Allen West Will Buy Me Beers and Also Give Keynote Speech

Hey, Remember That Crazy Conspiracy Theory Glenn Beck Was Talking About?

AOL Pays $315 Million for HuffPo

CPAC Ends, Media Lies Continue

David Cameron to Brits: ‘They Be Snatching Your People Up Out Here’

VIDEO: Ronald Reagan’s 100th

Obama Jinxes Steelers in Super Bowl

Purge Dick Cheney?

Another Kooky Conspiracy Theorist

Rule 5 Sunday: Enter Laughing

Apparently Maggie’s Notebook really likes the Rule 5 roundup. NTTAWWT. 😉

Too Bad Mike Castle Lost

Don’t Worry, Egypt: He’ll Pull Out

Because I’m Stupid, You See

HuffPo/AOL Deal: On Second Thought … Hell, No, It Still Doesn’t Make Any Sense

Ruh-Roh: Fed to End QE2?

Shocked! Shocked!

Death by Political Correctness

Michael Moore Announces New Film: Those Greedy Jews Ripped Me Off!

Ruh-Roh, Again: Chinese Now Worried About Inflation, Raise Interest Rates

Amity Shlaes for Senate?

My Favorite Line by Shakespeare

Out of the Frying Pan, Into the Fire: Matt Lewis Won’t Work for Arianna Huffington; Soon He’ll Be Working for Tucker Carlson

‘Dave Weigel Calls Himself ‘Progressive’? (Also: Dibs on ‘Arianna Huffington Nude’)

CPAC Day 1: Deadline in the Lobby Bar

CPAC Day 1: Murderer’s Row

LIVE AT FIVE – 2.11.11

CPAC Day 2: About Last Night

CPAC Day 2: Hecklers in the Big Tent

CPAC Day 2: Into the Scrum

We Have Always Been The Party Of No

CPAC Day 3: ‘Flu-Like Symptoms’

CPAC Day 3: Fear and Loathing and
Tri-Corner Hats in the Kruiser Cabana

CPAC Day 3: Everybody Write-In Your Straw-Poll Favorite: Ann Coulter; UPDATE: Rejecting My Advice, CPAC Attendees Vote for Ron Paul, Mitt Romney

Top linkers for the week:

  1. Maggie’s Notebook (14 links)
  2. The Lonely Conservative (9 links)
  3. Da Tech Guy (6 links)

Thanks to all our friends on the intertubes for linking!

Stupid Google Tricks

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“Being ranked in the top 5 for something on Google and being ranked 25th or 125th can be the difference between selling your crappy website to AOL for $315 million and going out of business.”
— James Joyner, Outside the Beltway

The fact that a major corporation like J.C. Penney was willing to pay money for Web geeks to make sure they were the top Google result for phrases like “grommet top curtains” ought to tell you how important the Internet has become to commerce. Reverse-engineering the Google algorithm is the sort of knowledge-is-power formula that any student of human nature might have predicted would swiftly be hijacked to serve selfish and/or malevolent purposes.

The whole point of “How to Get a Million Hits” was to demonstrate that blogging isn’t rocket science, and to share a few simple ideas from my Underpants Gnome Theory of how it works.

That’s why, as Rule 3, I recommended Memeorandum as a source for political blog fodder. (Which is where I found Joyner’s post.) Memeorandum is an exceptional tool if the question you’re trying to answer is, “What are other bloggers are blogging about?”

They’ve got an algorithm over there, and one of the ways you make it onto the Memeorandum aggregation is by acknowledging them as a source. Because their choices are determined by an algorithm, you’re not at the mercy of some human “decided” who might play favorites.

You can use Memeorandum as a guide to where the blog conversation is heading, and also to find other bloggers you might want to link and quote. A relatively small group of bloggers who are (a) all getting blog fodder from a common source, (b) frequently linking to each other, and (c) collectively directing a fair amount of traffic to Memeorandum, can thereby become a sort of “center of gravity” in the blogosphere.

Jimmie Bise once dubbed this concept The Million Hit Squad. It is sort of a “gaming the algorithm” trick, except that it isn’t a secret and is intended to produce a kind of win-win result: Memeorandum gets more traffic, and the bloggers who use The Rules get more linkage, because they are engaged in mutually aggregating each other’s commentary. If enough bloggers follow that method, it would also give conservative sites more weight in the Memeorandum algorithm which currently tends to show more Left-leaning blogs (and their pet topics), for reasons that need not be discussed here.

Of course, to succeed with that concept, you still have to bring some element of skill and knowledge to the ‘sphere, and be able to contribute new information to the conversation. Here I would recommend a simple idea: Use Google News searches to expand your aggregation.

For example, I used Google News to find this relevant New York Times story from last week:

[A]n art and science at which The Huffington Post excels [is] search engine optimization, or S.E.O. The term covers a wide range of behind-the-scenes tactics for getting search engine users to visit a Web site, like choosing story topics based on popular searches.
Because Google is many Internet users’ front door to the Web, S.E.O. has become an obsession for many Web publishers, and successful ones use the strategies to varying degrees. But as newspapers, magazines, blogs and online-only news sites increasingly compete for readers, they are making it more of a priority than ever and adopting new techniques, like trying to maximize pass-alongs on social networks.

That article offers a revealing insight into how people who are in the business of generating page-views — whose jobs are dependent on success in that endeavor — do what they do. Even if you’re a dinky new blogger nobody ever heard of, you can adapt such advanced methods to a small scale.

Note that I have now, in a single post, combined multiple elements:

  1. James Joyner’s quote.
  2. Link to the article Joyner was commenting on.
  3. Link to Memeorandum.
  4. Link to a related news article.
  5. My own original contributions to the conversation.

It’s the value-added concept of customer service, applied to New Media. And it’s not rocket science. You can become your own traffic-enhancement expert.


CPAC Ends, Media Lies Continue

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WASHINGTON, D.C.
This morning, I had breakfast with Ladd Ehlinger here at the Marriott Wardman Park Hotel and stopped by a computer terminal in the lobby to check in on Twitter. Matthew Newman sent me a message with a link to a Politico article by Alexander Burns listing “winners and losers” for CPAC.

My first thought: Who anointed Alexander Burns as the Decider?

Why does a liberal columnist for a liberal newspaper get to decide who are the winners and losers at a conservative conference? A little research revealed that Alexander Burns is a graduate of Harvard University, so there’s your answer. Upon receiving his disploma, every Harvard graduate acquires the right to tell the rest of us what to think. And here’s what Alexander Burns (Class of 2008) tells you to think about Herman Cain:

The former Godfather’s Pizza CEO is in a category of his own, even among the obscure candidates of 2012. Cain, who hosted a radio show in Georgia and has never held public office, has traded on his reputation as a dynamic speaker to win attention as a long-shot presidential candidate.
Cain didn’t live up to that reputation at CPAC. He had one or two memorable lines, such as: “Stupid people are ruining America.” But one or two middling zingers do not a credible candidate make.
Given his flat performance, Cain’s going to have to work extra-hard going forward to win a place in the 2012 process.

Did Harvard Boy watch the same speech Ed Morrissey watched?

If you watch one speech in its entirety, this may be the one to choose. Herman Cain, so far the only declared candidate for the GOP presidential nomination, stole the show yesterday with his speech in the late afternoon. People left the ballroom saying that he moved them to tears.

You can go watch the entire 28-minute speech on YouTube and decide for yourself what you think.

As for the “winners/losers” question, permit me to make a suggestion: Wait until April, when we will see the first-quarter Federal Election Commission filings for Herman Cain’s presidential exploratory committee, and see how many donations he got Feb. 11-12. 

Someone told me at a reception Saturday night that during and after the CPAC speech there was a “surge” of contributions big and small to the Cain campaign. And you can go give a donation to the Herman Cain campaign right now.

Or you can let Harvard Boy do your thinking for you.

UPDATE: Welcome, Instapundit readers! Despite his Yale Law degree, Professor Reynolds somehow manages to avoid believing that his job is to decide what everybody else should think about everything.


CPAC Day 3: Everybody Write-In Your Straw-Poll Favorite: Ann Coulter; UPDATE: Rejecting My Advice, CPAC Attendees Vote for Ron Paul, Mitt Romney

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They saved the best for the final day of CPAC: Ann Coulter followed by Allen West.

UPDATE: Awesome!

Security at CPAC recognized me when I rolled down to the front row to get a picture. Pretty freaking cool. Ann ended her speech with what every Southern Baptist would recognize as her testimony, and it was 31 flavors of awesome. “For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God.”

UPDATE II: Getting ready for Allen West’s keynote speech. My daughter Kennedy and her husband Martin have joined me in the Blogger’s Lounge.

UPDATE III: CPAC straw poll results: Ron Paul 30%, Mitt Romney 23%, everybody else in single digits, including Newt Gingrich 6%, Tim Pawlenty 4%, Michelle Bachmann 4%, Sarah Palin 3% and Herman Cain 2%. Note the names below Cain in the straw poll: Mike Huckabee, Rick Santorum, John Thune, Jon Huntsman and Haley Barbour.

UPDATE IV: A few more photos:

Donald Douglas of American Power with 2011 CPAC keynote speaker Rep. Allen West.

Dana Loesch with her favorite blogger.

Fingers Malloy, Alyssa Farah and my young journalist protege, Josiah Ryan.

Javier Manjarres, Sarah Rumpf and Ed Morrissey.

UPDATE V: Total straw poll results at Human Events, via Memeorandum. I’m on the VIP list at the Reaganpalooza. so I’ll be catching you on the flip side.

UPDATE VI: Young Americans for Freedom has expelled Ron Paul from its national advisory board.

We Have Always Been The Party Of No

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By Wombat

This was originally going to be a response to one of the comments in Stacy’s post Hecklers In The Big Tent, but it got a bit long and complicated, so I’m going to throw this up as a regular post without all the linkagery I normally specialize in here.

I think everyone is missing a fundamental truth about the GOP that has pretty much defined the party since the New Deal days. Unlike the Democrats, who have always been about getting and keeping power (and more nakedly so since the New Left took over the party in the 70s), the Republicans have always been a party defined by what it’s against. During FDR’s New Deal, the main thing we were against was the socialism of the New Deal. When the Cold War started, this receded into the background and was replaced by a fairly solid anti-communist stance that left us somewhat rudderless when the Soviet Union collapsed, until the War on Terror came along. This is one of the reasons the GOP has traditionally been supportive of the military and vice versa.

The social conservatives, especially the Catholics who mostly hang out at National Review, didn’t always represent a major factor in the party. They first became a major bloc in the party as the Reagan Democrats of the 80s found themselves marginalized by the radical Democrats’ insistence on legalized abortion with as few limits as possible, and switched over to the GOP. This is not to minimize the role played by evangelical Protestants or Mormons by any means; all social conservatives were and are important to the success of the GOP, and Republicans who ignore them get what John McCain got in 2008: lots of voters staying home instead of being foot soldiers and reliable voters.

Until W’s second term, the fiscal conservatives and deficit hawks have had their concerns given lip service at best, and the back of the hand at worst. Now the spendthrift socialism of the New Left, untempered by a Republican Senate or President, has been made fully operational, and in response the GOP has found another Big Idea to be against. Libertarians, social conservatives and yes, even gay conservatives have found something they can all agree on: the free-spending Democrats need to be expunged, the national debt needs to be reduced, and Uncle Sam’s credit card needs to be taken away. As with Communism, anything that distracts from tackling the Main Enemy needs to be shoved into the background until we have defeated the unholy trinity of New Leftists, public sector unions, and crony capitalists who are driving the country into a pit of over-regulation, hyperinflation, and economic stagnation.

This is why I can’t get too excited over the GOProud flap. As a Catholic traditionalist, I don’t agree with a lot of their positions, but on the other hand, they’re willing to argue about those issues at the state level (where arguments about society and culture belong) while standing shoulder to shoulder with us in the trenches of fiscal conservatism. Considering the treatment usually handed out to political apostates from the GLBT community, I think we should cut them a little slack and accept their support. Especially if we can get them to quit taunting the more thin-skinned social conservatives. 😉

The RINOs have always been with us. There are a lot fewer of them now than there used to be, but we have always had Republicans who liked the power offered by public office (the Washington insiders) or who were more liberal in the fiscal or social sense due to the nature of their state or district. Conservatives and libertarians need to decide on a case-by-case basis whether having somebody on your side 60% of the time is good enough or whether we want to purge them in favor of a possible 75- or 90-percenter who maybe can’t get elected. Yeah, we should always have somebody in the wings ready to threaten them in the primaries if they get wobbly on spending and taxes, but we should pull together in the general elections against the greater enemy — and if they won’t return the favor, we need to run them and their supporters out of the party and keep them out.