How to Get Linked, Lesson One

Posted on Comments

Write a headline as good as this:

Paris teens charged in bare-breasted robberies

If you don’t get linked with a headline like that, you are obviously sending tips to the wrong blogger. Beyond the headline, it helps if there’s actually an interesting story:

French police believe they’ve gotten to the bottom of a series of robberies in which teenage girls exposed their breasts to distract men withdrawing money from Paris cash machines. . . .
Police say that on August 7, a man inserted a card into a cash machine in central Paris to withdraw money when two young females approached him and asked for money. The girls waved a newspaper at the man in an attempt to distract him, but the technique didn’t work.
So the girls tried another strategy: One of them bared her breasts and put her hand on the man’s genitals while the other took the opportunity to withdraw 300 euros, police said.

And if you want to send an experienced reporter to France to get the real story of this nefarious criminal activity, just hit the tip jar.

UPDATE: “Why is Halle Berry violating my human rights?” and “Sex is a human right?” You know, I’m starting to feel victimized here.

Event To Build Character Scheduled On Ann. Of Famous Speech On Character Denounced By Those Lacking Character

Posted on Comments

by Smitty

This blog is looking forward to having a fine, American, a-political time at Glen Beck’s 8/28 event.

From the 8/28 page:

What can I bring?
You can bring small umbrellas, bottled water (plastic bottles only please), bag lunches, snacks (e.g. Stacy’s vanilla pudding), lawn chairs, cameras, blankets, small coolers, backpacks, and flags. Also, we advise that you bring hats (say, a fedora) and sunscreen.

What can I NOT bring?
As a security precaution, the following items will be prohibited from the event sites:

  • NO signs (political or otherwise) as they may deter from the peaceful message we are bringing to Washington.
  • Firearms (either real or simulated)
  • Ammunition
  • Explosives of any kind (including fireworks, to the chagrin of Stacy McCain)
  • Knives, blades, or sharp objects (of any length)
  • Mace and/or pepper spray
  • Helium balloons
  • Sticks or poles
  • Pocket or hand tools, such as “leatherman”
  • Packages
  • Large bags (anything larger than a backpack)
  • Duffle bags
  • Suitcases
  • Weapons of any kind
  • Aerosols
  • Laser pointers
  • Animals other than service/guide dogs
  • Structures (i.e tents)
  • Alcoholic beverages
  • Other items that may pose a threat to the security of the event

Who are the speakers?
The speakers include representatives from SOWF, Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin, Dr. Alveda King and Marcus Luttrell. Jo Dee Messina will be performing as well.

Character vs. ‘characters’

Beck was quoted in the comPost as saying:

. . .whites don’t own the Founding Fathers. Whites don’t own Abraham Lincoln. Blacks don’t own Martin Luther King. Humans, humans embrace their ideas or reject their ideas. Too many are rejecting the Founders’ ideas. Too many have forgotten Abraham Lincoln’s ideas and far too many have either gotten just lazy or they have purposely distorted Martin Luther King’s ideas of judge a man by the content of his character. Lately, in the last 20 years, we’ve been told that character doesn’t matter. Well, if character doesn’t matter, then what was Martin Luther King asking people to judge people by?

The WaPo goes on to say:

Beck’s choice of day and place for the rally “is insulting, is what it is,” Marc Morial, president of the National Urban League, said in an interview Monday. “August 28 is something special. It is a day that means something in American history because it was the demonstration in the United States in support of civil rights.”
Beck’s plans are “an effort to embarrass and poke a finger in the eye of the civil rights community because Glenn Beck and his public utterances don’t necessarily demonstrate a consistency with the vision of King.”
Sharpton, who has planned a march that day to commemorate King’s legacy, says Beck’s rally contradicts King’s legacy. Sharpton said he began planning in April for his “Reclaim the Dream Rally,” which is scheduled to begin at Dunbar High School in Northwest Washington and end at the planned site of the King memorial on the Mall. The event, supported by the NAACP, the Urban League and Martin Luther King III, “is not a countermarch to Beck,” nor will the rally be about confrontation. U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan will be among the participants, according to a news release from Sharpton’s National Action Network.

As you say, Rev. Sharpton. You and the NAACP just stay classy.

In Closing

Why Stacy McCain wasn’t invited to speak at the 8/28 event is not exactly clear. There may not be enough time for him to get back from speaking at the Gay Vanilla Pudding Manufacturers of Bulungi Convention in Yabba-Dabba. Perhaps he can catch an earlier flight out of Primo-Ganja Airport, but it’s probably too late to book him. Blame Erik Telford, and remember the Gooey Shoe Leather fund.

We cannot over-emphasize the falsehood of the Leftist attempts to tear down America and Americans, but we should certainly attend events like this and give it a solid American try, honor of those who’ve gone before us, and do everything positive and possible to return our country to its founding ideals.

Call Me A Literalist

Posted on Comments

by Smitty

However, this blog will echo CNSNews in calling foul about the tweaking of the Constitution that’s gone on at the U.S. Capitol Visitor Center. Your tax dollars have been spent so that some Progressive could elide crucial bits of text:

The full text of Article 1, Section 8, Clause 1 says: “The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States.”

One marble exhibit case, however, is inscribed with these selected words: “The Congress shall have Power To … provide for the common Defence.” Another bears these selected words: “The Congress shall have Power To … provide for the … general Welfare.”

The full text of Article 1, Section 8, Clause 8 gives Congress the power “To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.”

RTWT.

Maybe, in her dotage, the Speaker of the House thinks that this cheerfully, conveniently airbrushed variation is what the Founding Fathers so carefully thought through when they delegated the minimal Federal powers necessary to defend the United States to the Federal government. Thus, when a clueful citizen (pesky CNSNews reporter) asked concerning her Constitutional basis for the ObamaCare debacle, she replied “Are you serious? Are you serious?”

Does anyone know how to research who was the contracting officer for that project? It would be interesting to interview the civil servant responsible (are those words meaningful in that sequence?), to see if he or she grasps the enormity of this seemingly innocuous edit, as it feeds into the noose of Federal overreach currently constricting the public throat.

I’d better stop here. Having sworn to support and defend the Constitution as often as I have, I grow steadily more irritated the more I consider this.

Say Hello to Liberty.com!

Posted on Comments

A right-wing MoveOn.org?

On Wednesday, September 1, 2010, a key organizer in the 2009 Tax Day Tea Party and “Don’t Go” movement pioneer Eric Odom will join a national coalition of conservative movement activists in launching Liberty.com, a right-of-center news and national activism website with the intention of eclipsing the left’s Moveon.org.
“For years, Moveon.org has directed millions of activist dollars to influence races and to defame targets like General David Petraeus,” observes Odom. “With Liberty.com, the conservative grassroots will be able to fight back.”
Organized along with Americans for New Leadership as an unconnected and unauthorized political committee that will conduct only independent expenditures, Liberty.com will begin operation having already raised $700,000 from individual donors and with over 70,000 members transferred from Odom’s existing networks, American Liberty Alliance and The Patriot Caucus. A January, 2010 Supreme Court decision has made the new organization possible.
“In January, the Supreme Court surprised us all by ruling in favor of free speech,” said Liberty.com Communications Director Yates Walker. “That decision and Eric’s vision have led to the creation of a new weapon in the conservative arsenal: Liberty.com.”

Here’s a video:

Visit Liberty.com and follow them on Facebook and Twitter.

Ann Coulter to WND: ‘I Speak at Harvard and I Certainly Don’t Endorse Their Views’

Posted on Comments

The news that Ann Coulter would headline next month’s “Homocon,” a conference of gay Republicans in New York, has caused her to be dropped as a speaker at WorldNetDaily’s “Take Back America” conference:

“Ultimately, as a matter of principle, it would not make sense for us to have Ann speak to a conference about ‘taking America back’ when she clearly does not recognize that the ideals to be espoused there simply do not include the radical and very ‘unconservative’ agenda represented by GOProud,” said [WND publisher Joseph] Farah. “The drift of the conservative movement to a brand of materialistic libertarianism is one of the main reasons we planned this conference from the beginning.”
Asked by Farah why she was speaking to GOProud, Coulter said: “They hired me to give a speech, so I’m giving a speech. I do it all the time.” . . .
Coulter responded: “That’s silly, I speak to a lot of groups and do not endorse them. I speak at Harvard and I certainly don’t endorse their views. . . . The main thing I do is speak on college campuses, which is about the equivalent of speaking at an al-Qaida conference. I’m sure I agree with GOProud more than I do with at least half of my college audiences. But in any event, giving a speech is not an endorsement of every position held by the people I’m speaking to. I was going to speak for you guys, I think you’re nuts on the birther thing (though I like you otherwise!).”

Staunch conservative John Hawkins of Right Wing News has signed on as a Homocon sponsor, so turning this into a litmus test in a “More Conservative Than Thou” game is ridiculous.

UPDATE: I explore this dispute in more depth at The American Spectator.

News Flash: Politics Is About Elections

Posted on Comments

It shouldn’t be necessary to say this in a crucial mid-term election year, but I have been troubled to find that it’s difficult to get conservatives to concentrate on supporting individual candidates in actual elections.

When I spent three weeks covering Tim Burns in the PA-12 special election, traffic to the blog actually went down. That was discouraging.

Everybody’s always saying we need more reporting by bloggers and yet, when I actually go out on the road to do reporting, it produces less traffic than when I’m just sitting here in my basement snarking about headlines.

Part of the problem, I think, is that conservatives don’t really like politics. The grubby business of electing politicians and enacting legislation strikes many conservatives as something uncouth and menial. And there is a notable tendency among conservative bloggers to limit themselves to three basic categories of topics:

  1. Liberals are evil.
  2. The media is biased.
  3. Whatever is on the Drudge Report.

Some people would rather speculate about the 2012 GOP presidential field — Sarah? Mitt? Newt? — than to expend the effort to research congressional races. Why? Because it’s much easier to do.

Everybody has an opinion about Sarah Palin. She’s a celebrity, and the latest gossip about her gets more readers than actual news about an obscure candidate that nobody’s ever heard of.

The problem, however, is that slinging snark about celebrities or media bias isn’t going to change anything in Washington. I might as well be blogging about Alyssa Milano or Justin Bieber, if all I’m going to do is pontificate about Barack Obama or Sarah Palin (who is never going to re-Tweet me, either).

Anyway, after doing plugs this morning for GOP challengers John Dennis (vs. Nancy Pelosi in CA-8) and Allen West (vs. Ron Klein in FL-22) I saw this Tweet from Amy Miller:

This aroused my curiosity: Who is Ron McNeil and what election did he lose? So I clicked the link and saw this news story:

PANAMA CITY — A Congressional candidate told local high school and middle school students Tuesday that Islam’s plan is to destroy the American way of life.
“I’m totally against it. If I had my way, it would pretty much be over my dead body,” said Ron McNeil, a candidate for the U.S. House District 2 seat, who was referring to a controversial plan to build an Islamic center and mosque near Ground Zero in New York City. “That religion is against everything America stands for. If we have to let them build it, make them build it nine stories underground, so we can walk above it as citizens and Christians.”

OK, if you talk to Pamela Geller, I think she’d argue that McNeil’s statements are quite literally true: Islam is “against everything America stands for.” And for all we know, a majority of FL-2 residents share that sentiment, so that McNeil’s comments might actually win him more votes.

A bit of research, however, discloses that Ron McNeil is a marginal candidate in a crowded Republican primary, whose fundraising has been effectively zero. The Florida primary is next Tuesday, and it is extremely unlikely that McNeil will win the GOP nomination.

Frankly, I was shocked to learn that this district in the Florida panhandle has been held by Democrat Rep. Allen Boyd since 1997. FL-2 is a very winnable district for Republicans; it was carried by Bush in 2004, and John McCain got 54% of the vote there in 2008.

Based on minimal information about the GOP candidates in FL-2, I’ll say we need to get behind Steve Southerland. He has the support of Eric Cantor, as well as the House Conservatives Fund, and that’s good enough for me.

STEVE SOUTHERLAND for U.S. CONGRESS

Everybody got all excited by the news that Republicans are leading on the “generic ballot” poll, but taking back Congress means winning a majority of House elections — 218+ seats in districts all across the country, including FL-2. We’ve got to focus on these key races. Generic ballot polls don’t win elections, candidates do.

Only 76 days left until Nov. 2, people: Start paying attention!

Florida Democrats Think This Allen West Video Will Help Ron Klein

Posted on Comments

The Florida Democratic Party has created an attack Web site called “The Real Allen West” — which showed up here via an Adsense rotation — featuring this video:

Isn’t that great? Ron Klein has gone from ignoring Allen West to trying to convince people that the Republican is some kind of dangerous radical. In other words, Klein’s starting to sweat.

ALLEN WEST for U.S. CONGRESS

Nancy Pelosi: Don’t Investigate Ground Zero Mosque, Investigate Opponents

Posted on Comments

Via Larry O’Connor at Breitbart.TV:

“There is no question there is a concerted effort to make [the Ground Zero Mosque] a political issue by some. And I join those who have called for looking into how is this opposition to the mosque being funded.”
— Nancy Pelosi

Kerry Picket of The Washington Times:

Calls to investigate the funding for those proposing the $100 million “Cordoba House” have fallen on deaf ears, though, as New York’s Mayor Mike Bloomberg has described such an investigation as “un-American.”

So it is “un-American” to investigate who’s footing the bill for the Ground Zero Mosque, but Pelosi has no problem calling for an investigation into the funding of the mosque’s opponents.

Speaking of opponents, did you know that Nancy Pelosi has a Republican challenger? You should investigate him. And fund him.

JOHN DENNIS for U.S. CONGRESS

UPDATE: Walid Shoebat says we should listen to what the Ground Zero Mosque imam says in Arabic.