Vernon Parker: Trained by the Best

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What you see in this photo is me checking my recently-purchased digital mini-recorder prior to my March 29 interview with Paradise Valley Mayor Vernon Parker, who is running for Congress in AZ-3. The interview was arranged by our friend Barbara Espinosa of American Freedom blog. However, transcribing audio is for me the journalistic equivalent of a root canal, which partly explains why it took me more than a week to write up the feature about Mayor Parker for The American Spectator:

Vernon Parker was trained by one of the most legendary campaign strategists in American history.
“The first time I met him, he said, ‘Hey, you got a job?’ — with that South Carolina accent — I said, ‘No, not yet.’ He said, ‘Well, come on over here and let me introduce ya to some folks.'”
The man with the Carolina drawl was none other than the late Lee Atwater, who ran the campaign that elected George H.W. Bush president in 1988 and who served as chairman of the Republican National Committee before his death in 1991.
“He gave me my first start in politics,” said Parker, a Texas native who is 50 but looks much younger. Nearly 25 years after beginning his political career, he still speaks of the lessons he learned from his first mentor. “It is a fight… It is a war. And I will take all the tools that my friend Lee Atwater taught me and we’ll deploy with my team and fight to take this country back.” . . .

Please read the rest of that article.

Vernon Parker’s Web site is here, and you can also follow him on Facebook and Twitter.

Irony And The Streisand Effect

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by Smitty

Much ‘Hey!’ has been made about the topless march in Portland. This is a variation on the theme of the Streisand Effect:

a primarily online phenomenon in which an attempt to censor or remove a piece of information has the unintended consequence of causing the information to be publicized widely and to a greater extent than would have occurred if no censorship had been attempted.

One mitigation would have been to invite the participation of Barbara herself, which would have crushed interest in the event like a brace of wrecking balls swinging. . .let’s just permit that imagery to die right there.

I Would Not Accuse Sen. Coburn Of Kool-Aid Quaffing

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by Smitty

Bluegrass Pundit wants to know if Senator Coburn is drinking the Kool-Aid, just because he’s attempting to neutralize some of the bile aimed at the Speaker of the House.

Pay attention, people: it is never wrong to be gracious to the foe:

If thine enemy be hungry, give him bread to eat; and if he be thirsty, give him water to drink: For thou shalt heap coals of fire upon his head, and the LORD shall reward thee.
Pro 25:21,22

Furthermore, as a doctor, Senator Coburn knows that there is a vas deferens between being gracious towards the foe personally, and agreeing with the economically infeasible, un-Constitutional insults to the American people they are peddling.

A. Because He Blogrolled Me

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Q. Why is David Weigel not a total douchebag?

Hits is hits, my friends. So when Weigel writes something that infuriates you (as he most certainly will) please try to keep in mind that a guy who gets a job at a big MSM operation and still blogrolls me cannot be a total douchebag . . . 99.44% maybe, but not total.

UPDATE: John Tabin assesses the WaPo’s hiring of Weigel and our friend Lene Johansen adds in the comments:

Dave is a reporter. In a city full of opiners, it is very valuable to have someone who goes places, talks to people, and write about what he learned, rather than sitting behind a desk thinking he knows what is going on.

Amen to that. As a matter of fact, I’ll be hanging out with Weigel in New Orleans at the Southern Republican Leadership Conference starting tomorrow.

Stormy Daniels, GOP Porn Star

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OK, I’m on deadline on another project tonight and trying hard to resist the temptation to blog about several things, but this was simply irresistible:

Former adult entertainment star Stormy Daniels released the following statement Tuesday, declaring her affiliation with the Republican Party. This statement is believed to be setting up Daniels’ bid for U.S. Senate, running against Senator David Vitter.
“After months of careful deliberation and consult as to the true nature of my political affiliation I am ready today to declare that should I seek the office of US Senator from the great state of Louisiana that I will do so as a Republican.
“While this decision has not been an easy one, recent events regarding Republican National Committee fundraising at Voyeur, an LA based lesbian bondage themed nightclub finally tipped the scales.
“As I have said for well over a year, it is time that our government and our tax policy begin rewarding entrepreneurship and creativity again. It is time again to inspire positive risks and out-of-the-box thinking in the interest of growing a strong economy and a strong America.
“For me, this spirit can be summed up in the RNC’s investment of donor funds at Voyeur.
“As someone who has worked extensively in both the club and film side of the Adult Entertainment Industry, I know from experience that a mere $1900 outlay at a club with the reputation of Voyeur is a clear indication of a frugal investment with a keen eye toward maximum return. . . .”

“Frugal investment.” Heh. You might get the RNC to buy that excuse, guys, but don’t try it with your wife.

And speaking of “Heh” and wives . . .

‘All Caveats’

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Back in the early ’80s when I was doing rock ‘n’ roll, you’d hand somebody a demo tape and automatically include apologies for the crappy quality — the tape hiss, the fact you didn’t have time to get the vocals just the way you wanted them, etc. A buddy of mine would interrupt this obligatory spiel with a simple phrase, “All caveats,” which is to say, he understood that it was just a rough demo recording and didn’t need to hear all the disclaimers.

So today Fannie Mae issued a new housing report, and Megan McArdle calls it “the first real good news I’ve seen in the housing market,” but then begins to offer caveats, e.g., “a long period of stagnant prices” and “vacancies remain very high” and “so many distorting price signals.”

Collectively, McArdle’s caveats add up to saying that (a) this report may not be such “real good news” after all, and (b) government has muddled up the market with so many screwball incentives that we’ve got no clue whether real estate has actually bottomed out yet. And Felix Salmon of Reuters is far from optimistic.

Furthermore, this Fannie Mae report is really just an opinion survey and, when it comes to economics, what people tell pollsters is a lot less important than what they actually do.

What people who can get credit are actually doing right now is bargain-hunting.

If you bought a house between 2002 and 2006 and are now trying to sell, God help you. The offers you’re getting are seriously low-balling, probably offering less than you owe on your mortgage if, like most people, you borrowed more than 80 percent of the assessed value at the time of purchase. And if you’re in a position to buy, you’re low-balling, too, because in the back of your mind you’re thinking about the chance that the home the real-estate agent is showing you today will be auctioned for back taxes six months from now.

In simple market terms, housing supply still exceeds demand, and the only reason prices aren’t still falling is because the feds have come up with several different ways to help prevent foreclosure on mortgage defaults. But that in turn adds an element of uncertainty to the market, since no one knows what direction future policy will take, or whether there will be another wave of defaults that will push prices even lower still, so there is a wait-and-see attitude and . . .

Well, “all caveats.”

When It Rains, It Pours for RNC

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Fresh off a double dose of bad headlines Monday, now the Republican National Committee gets another resignation:

NH RNC member Sean Mahoney resigned his post today, taking aim at chairman Michael Steele in a strongly-worded protest letter over the committee’s profligate spending.
“Not only has the out-of-touch, free-spending culture of Washington come to completely dominate the United States Congress, but I have watched with growing unease as the same mentality has seeped into our own national party,” Mahoney said in a letter to Steele.

Full text of the letter is online. and the Manchester Union-Leader has background. More at Memeorandum. 

Suggested 2010 Republican campaign slogan:

“Will the Last Person Resigning From
the RNC Please Turn Out the Lights.”