Cocked, Locked, and Ready to Rock

My self-imposed exile from Twitter is essentially over. And I’m ready to kick the dust from this blog as well. I won’t be quite as prolific on either at least until mid-summer, as I’ve got a lot on my plate still.

And yes, there will be a blog post in the next few days about where I’ve been and what I’ve been up to. That’s not important for right now. What is important is that I’m recharged and ready to blog in a manner that would make Andrew Breitbart proud. This means that for the next several months, this blog is likely to be a bit edgier than it has usually been. I’ve had enough and I’m not going to take it any more. The focus of this blog over the next several months will be the election in November, and I don’t plan on pulling any punches.

Before I start, though, a retrospective.

Me, from January 20, 2009:

I am thrilled that my daughters (now 2 and 5) will grow up in a world where a black man has been elected President. While that is a reason for celebration, a better reason for celebration would be that it’s non-news, and that no one cares whether the President is black or white or green with purple polka-dots. I don’t see that event coming anytime soon, much to my dismay.

Hopefully this does represent a milestone in race relations and a sign that one’s race is unimportant in America. I have my doubts, but will continue to have cautious optimism on that front.

I still agree with everything I said in the first paragraph. Sadly, the events of the last three years have exceeded even my doubts. My cautious optimism has been replaced with disgust and distrust. It’s clear that the current White House occupant has no interest in improving race relations and never has. In fact, it is quite evident that his goals are clearly the opposite. He wants to destroy the American melting pot.

And me again, from January 5, 2009:

While I think that 2010 has potential to be a very good year for Republicans, at least in the House, the White House seems likely to be out of reach until 2016. At this point, a 2-term Presidency for Mr. Barack Obama (D-USA) seems a near certainty.

[…]

What’s the #1 question in voter’s minds when they go to the polls to re-elect an incumbent or vote in a new President?

“Am I better or worse off now than I was 4 years ago?”

It’s hard to see how most people will answer that as “worse”. I certainly hope that most people won’t. That would mean that we really are in a “depression” and not a “recession”. Because otherwise, because of or in spite of Mr. Obama, the economy should have recovered to some degree by then.

I already said that this blog is not going to be a cheerleader for every little negative thing that will hit the Obama administration. I’m certainly not going to root for the kind of economic downturn that would benefit a Republican Presidential candidate in 2012.

I think most people are not better off than they were four years ago. I’m not sure how many people would actually say “worse”, though, as the mood at that time regarding even the short term future of the U.S. was quite bleak. Right now, the short term definitely looks better than it did in November, 2008, while the long term looks even worse. People don’t vote on the long term, though, even if by “long term” we mean “2-4 years”. They vote on what they’re worried about right now, or the next 3-6 months. Still, the economy has not recovered to the degree anyone would have hoped, and is still only just a bit above stall speed. The economy will be one of the biggest issues of this election. I’m just not quite sure it will be the #1 issue. If it is, that makes things very hard for President Barack Obama (D-USA). If it isn’t, things get quite a bit easier for him.

We’ll see, as things progress through the summer.

And finally, me, from December 23, 2008:

However, I'm ready to get started on 2009, and I'll make a few statements on how this blog is going to function over the next few years.

First, I hope that President Barack Obama (D-USA) is an incredibly successful President. In fact, I hope he’s the most successful President ever. Unlike some of my more liberal counterparts over the last 8 years, I’m not going to wish him or the country ill just to satisfy my own desires for vengeance or conservative revivals.

Second, I’m not going to resort to ridiculous name-calling as we’ve seen elsewhere “Smirking Chimp”, “Bushitler”, etc. (Although I may occasionally call our VP “Clueless Joe”, just because that one is too easy and too good to resist—and I’m a “Shoeless Joe Jackson” fan.)

Third, I will point out when the new administration does things I agree with and when I disagree. I expect there to be far more of the latter than the former, but perhaps I’ll be pleasantly surprised.

Fourth, I will continue to push for GOP 2.0, and a new Republican Revolution (with Republicans who remember what it means to be conservative).

I’ve done a good job on these four points. However, I’m probably going to put aside #2 for the next several months, at least to some degree. I’m not going to resort to ugliness, but the simple matter of fact is that for our country to survive, we have to get that America Hating Communist out of the White House. There is no plan B. There is no “or”. We win in November, or we lose, forever.

And, never fear, when I do call him a name, I plan on backing it up. This blog has always been high on details and facts, with my interpretation of what those facts mean. That’s not going to change.

So, feel free to read this blog and share it. Comment, tweet, pass it on to #p2 and your liberal friends. Give them my twitter address, @ChrisOfRights. I’ll take the heat. I don’t care. This election will be about making people understand the truth and exposing the lies of the left, more than anything else. We can’t just write our little diatribes and pass them around our echo chamber. The information about what this man has done to our country and what he intends to do must be made public. I’ll do my part. If we all do our part, come November, we can breathe a sigh of relief, and relax for a day or two.

I needed this time off to prepare for this battle. Make no mistake about the following. The forces trying to destroy this country currently have the upper hand, and they have their man in power. And they will never stop trying until we expose them for what they are and destroy them. For us to win, this campaign season will be the ugliest and meanest ever. Obama knows the Chicago way. He won’t bring a knife to a gunfight. And neither should we.

Bring it on, Mr. President. We know your tricks now, and we’re going to use them against you. We’re ready.

Game on.

Andrew Breitbart (1969–2012)

I haven’t been blogging at all in months, and I’ve been meaning to pick things up again for the last several weeks. Now seems like as good a time as any.

Like most conservatives, I find myself saddened at the passing of Andrew Breitbart. He was a couple years younger than me, and that has me thinking of my own mortality again. I wish I could say that I have accomplished half as much as he had, but I still have time to catch up. I can’t say that I ever sat down with the man, or really knew him. I did have a couple brief Twitter exchanges with him. And I think my happiest moment in the Twittersphere was when he retweeted something I had said.

I think we need to be careful of how we remember this giant of a man, and how we react to his death. We have a problem in the conservative blogosphere/twittersphere. It’s not unique to conservatives, but to many groups. We’ve formed this clique requiring that you show you conservative credentials for admittance. Among us, there’s this smaller percentage, maybe 1%, that actually spend time engaging, leading the conservative agenda. We tweet, we blog, and we talk about what we see wrong with this country and how to correct it. Some of us do original research and break news. Others are more like me, and analytical in nature, and can break down a CBO report into something that real humans can understand. We lambast some politicos, and cheer for others. Occasionally the same politico might receive cheers and jeers in the same week. Those of us that are particularly witty or pithy or engaging get repeated and reposted by conservatives all over. We’re happy about this, and feel like we’ve accomplished something and we pat ourselves on the back for it and move on to the next thing.

Don’t get me wrong. This isn’t a bad thing by itself. It does help articulate our message, and if we can use our blogging to simplify complicated messages, that makes it easier to motivate people to spread the word, GOTV, etc.

But…

There’s a word for this type of closed system, self-congratulatory thought process.

Groupthink.

And now that I’ve written a page of what was supposed to be a memoriam to Andrew Breitbart, it’s time I actually mentioned the man’s name.

This is where he was different. Yes, he and his Big sites broke news. Yes, he and his Big sites often did some deeper analysis as well (and we hope that continues without him). But Breitbart was never content to just shout his words to his own little fan club and get the pats on the back for being particularly well spoken.

Breitbart understood that we need to grow the conservative movement, not just reinforce it. He understood that to do that, we need to take out message outside of our clique and face the enemy head on. He understood that when the left lies, we need to call them out on it, not just in our little conservative blogosphere, but right to their faces. The way we grow the movement is to get more people to stop blindly accepting the lies of the left, and begin to question their words, actions, and the motives behind them. This, not breaking news, not stories about ACORN or Anthony Weiner, was his strength.

I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of people with anything like his influence that understand these simple facts, and are willing to go out and battle every day to expand the conservative movement and shut down the lying left.

This is the problem.

If you’re wondering who is going to step up and be the next Breitbart, you never understood him.

Who should be the next Breitbart? Michelle Malkin, Ann Coulter, Sarah Palin, John Nolte, Rand Paul, Paul Ryan and Marco Rubio are all good lieutenants. Maybe one of them could even replace him. But to remember him properly, we should think about accomplishing his goals, not replacing him. Breitbart didn’t want to be irreplaceable or even unique. He was a great champion for our cause, but we don’t need another champion like him. As Glenn Reynolds says, we need “An Army of Davids”.

Who should be the next Breitbart? You. Me. All of us.

Thank you, Andrew Breitbart, for showing us how it’s done. You’ve earned your rest in the next life and you’ve now passed on the baton to all of us. Wherever you are, sit back, relax, and watch us as we accept your challenge and try to follow the example you set for us.

Andrew Breitbart Hacks Anthony Weiner’s…Press Conference

I want this as my screensaver. This is the best press conference you’ll ever see. If you haven’t watched it, please do. If you have, watch it again. For those of you who don’t know, Congressman Anthony Weiner (D-NY-09) scheduled a press conference today to discuss the latest news regarding his lewd pictures scandal. The story was originally reported on one of Andrew Breitbart’s sites, BigGovernment.Com, and Breitbart happened to be in the area of the press conference. He stopped by, and Weiner was late, so the press asked Breitbart to step to the microphone for a few questions. He obliged.

My favorite part is when he excoriates the press for not doing their job, while they’re still not doing their job and instead are attacking him.

There are a few amazing exchanges worth watching and listening to. The first is at about 5:05 seconds when a reporter asks Breitbart:

“Mr. Breitbart, why did you put this on the web in the first place? What were you trying to achieve?”

A: “It’s clearly a news story. Why are you trying to challenge a news story?”

Breitbart is clearly amazed at the inanity of the question. He runs a journalism site. This is news. How about a better question, why didn’t anyone else want to touch this story? If you were ever in doubt about how much the MSM is in the tank for the Dems, this question itself should clear it up for you. I can’t think of a more eye opening example.

Well, except for this one at about 9:40.

“Why should we believe you?”

A: “Ok, everything that I’ve said so far has come to be true. I’d like to hear one--The media says Breitbart lies, Breitbart lies, Breitbart lies, Breitbart lies. Give me one example of a provable lie. One. One. Journalists? One. Put your reputation on the line here. One provable lie.”

Again, Breitbart gets a little fiery here, deservedly so. I could give the MSM a pass on this one, if they had ever bothered to ask Congressman Weiner the same question. Weiner’s story clearly had problems with it from the beginning, and he clearly was acting like someone trying to hide something. And the MSM was just as clearly not interested in finding out what he was trying to hide.

Now, I’m not suggesting that Weiner should be treated as guilty until proven innocent—wait, maybe I am after all. This is supposed to be an adversarial press, right? Anyway, the press should be interested in a scandal and in getting to the bottom of it. They never went after Weiner, instead they were willing accomplices in his story and laughed with him at his silly jokes. Today, not only did Congressman Weiner end up looking ridiculous, but so did the entire mainstream media. One guy monitoring Twitter from his basement and another guy with a relatively fledgling media site did the job that the MSM is unwilling to do. We used to call this job “investigative journalism”. I don’t know what the folks that used to do that call their jobs now, because there’s clearly nothing investigative or journalistic about it.

So, for 15 minutes they got to listen to Andrew Breitbart lecture them all on how they should do their jobs. I’d hope that some of it sunk in, but I’ve given up hope on such things. Maybe we’ll get lucky and it will sink in to the next generation of aspiring journalists.

The Laughable-And Predictable-Weinerquiddick Reaction From The Left

Yes, I’m calling it Weinerquiddick, not Weinergate. I caught a tweet in passing yesterday that said:

And I suddenly realized what good advice that was. Henceforth, I will label no scandal with the suffix “gate”. I prefer “quiddick” over “aquiddick”, though. Seems to flow a little better. Hence, Weinerquiddick.

If you were out, I don’t know, having a life, this weekend, you missed Weinerquiddick, so I’ll summarize. Someone sent a lewd picture from Congressman Anthony Weiner’s (D-NY-09) twitter account to a young woman in Washington state. Weiner claims his account was hacked, but the improbability bar seems pretty high on that one. If you’re interested in who sent the pic, to whom, why, and how, start with the links I’ve posted and do some digging.

At this moment, I’m more interested in the reaction by the left and by the MSM (I know, I repeat myself) to this emerging story. It’s made me laugh and cry all at the same time, more than once. The reaction from the MSM has been to largely ignore the story. It took almost 24 hours for the AP to release anything on the story, and it looks like only CBS has run with the AP story. At least according to my Bing search as of this minute.

As for the left-wing blogosphere, they have gone ballistic over the story, but not attacking Congressman Weiner, begging him to come clean. No, the source of their anger is the Twitterer who caught the offending tweet, and Andrew Breitbart, for daring to publish the information about it.

I won’t say that Weiner definitely did this. His story is not completely impossible, just incredibly implausible. But this reaction, as I implied in my title, is typical of the left. When a scandal emerges regarding one of their own, the MSM suddenly becomes like The Three Wise Monkeys:

MoveOn, nothing to see here, nothing to hear, nothing to talk about.

Meanwhile,  the left wing attack dogs go after the source, trying to destroy the credibility of a Twitterer and a respected right wing journalism site. They have their Alinsky playbook out and they’re following it step-by-step. At this point, it’s become as easy to them as color by numbers.

Think this is a one time thing? Do you remember John Edwards? The MSM ignored that story for as long as they possibly could, trying very hard to pretend it didn’t exist so it would go away. Meanwhile, the left wing blogosphere did everything possible to discredit the source of the story, the National Enquirer. Now, I’m not saying that the Enquirer should be at the top of anyone’s “reliable sources” list. They predicted the imminent breakup of President George W. Bush (R-USA) and Laura more times than I can count. But they are capable of getting a story right. And it was evident from the very beginning, to anyone who bothered following up on the story, that the Enquirer had something. It just wasn’t absolutely certain what exactly they had. There was a ton of smoke, and some fire there. But the MSM was not interested in following up. Even such new media sites as Wikipedia were circling the wagons. I remember monitoring Edwards’ Wikipedia page during that time and arguing vehemently that, at the very least, the story about the scandal should appear in his bio, as it was relevant to his VP consideration. The editors were adamant that not one word would appear.

Now, consider a right wing “scandal”. I’ll just pick one, a prominent one, and how it was handled.

The New York Times ran a front page exposé on an alleged affair between John McCain and a staffer, on considerably less evidence (in fact, none) than either the John Edwards incident or this Weiner one. So little evidence that they were later forced to retract a page one story.

As I keep saying, there is a possibility that Weiner is telling the truth. And frankly, it wouldn’t take much in the way of good investigative journalism to get some more details and find out. Go talk to some people in Seattle, talk to Weiner himself, find out how his account was compromised, and what he did to secure it afterwards. Talk to his aides. Pass around a few pictures of Benjamin Franklin. People will talk. They always do.

However, I have little confidence that this will happen. The MSM could have done all this during the Edwards affair. They could have done it with McCain before running a front page piece that they would later have to admit was a lie. They could have done all these things, and they could do the right things in this case. But they won’t. The MSM is no longer interested in journalism or objective reporting. They’re interested in protecting the left and attacking the right. They are the PR wing of the Democratic party. If these three incidents don’t prove that to you, nothing will. And, sadly, I could probably spend two days on research and come up with over 100 more examples. It wouldn’t be that hard.

Righteous Indignation–A Conservative Primer

Andrew Breitbart’s new book, “Righteous Indignation: Excuse Me While I Save the World!” was released last Friday. If you’ve been following my Twitter feed, you know that I’ve been reading it. I didn’t get a chance to start until Sunday night, and I finished it last night.

This book does two things. It lays out the roadmap for how to finally take down the MSM, or Democrat Media Complex as Breitbart calls it. And it shows exactly what steps the DMC will take between now and November 6, 2012 to keep their power and to keep the Democrats in power.

Those two things alone make the book worth the cover price. If you plan on being actively engaged in next year’s election, even if just by blogging or tweeting, you need to read this book.

But there’s more to the book than just that. Breitbart lays out some of his history, including his own failings and mistakes. He discusses his change from liberal to conservative, and the metamorphosis is similar to that of Tammy Bruce. The left made a mistake allowing these two to escape. They understand the destructive tactics the left uses better than anyone. And they’re both willing and able not only to relate them to the rest of us, but also how to turn the tables and use these same tactics against the left.

Indeed, Breitbart makes the point over and over that we have to treat the left as the enemy and throw out our rules of engagement. We have to take the fight to them, not let them dictate the terms or the field of engagement. That’s exactly how we’ve lost to the left too many times.

I’ve tossed out several quotes on my twitter feed, but this might be my favorite.

That’s why it never crossed my mind whether I should play fair. Fair loses.

We have to stop worrying about being “the good guys”. We have to start worrying about winning. The Tea Party has been pretty good about that, but we can do better. 

Breitbart also lays out a bit of this history of the socialist/progressive movement in the United States. Note that if you pay attention to Glenn Beck, he’s been saying a lot of this same stuff for a couple years now. The difference is that Beck is so focused on minutiae that you have to watch him every day for a month to get anything like a complete picture, and you get one from Breitbart in a single chapter.

Finally, the behind the scenes information on his work with James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles to bring down ACORN is positively delicious. I remember when all of this was happening, and reading that when BigGovernment.com opened it was going to open with something huge, and I remember each day after the first video wondering what was coming next, but reading why and how it all came together as it did was incredibly fascinating.

Those are most of the things I enjoyed about the book. There’s a great chapter on the Tea Party as well. But I did have a couple minor quibbles, one of which he addresses in the Epilogue (not sure I’ve ever seen a non-fiction book with an Epilogue before, but I digress). The first is that he doesn’t discuss Shirley Sherrod. Ok, I can understand that as there are ongoing legal battles regarding that topic. So I’ll give him a pass on that one.

But he also doesn’t address Mary Landrieu. Now, you could argue that there’s no need to do so since the topic was only on the periphery of the Big sites, and that it was completely an issue with James O’Keefe. However, the left used Landrieu and Sherrod to tar Breitbart and O’Keefe together and to try to taint the ACORN videos. It seemed to me that it deserved at least a mention for that reason.

But that’s a minor quibble, and I certainly understand the reasoning for not including it. Overall, this is a great book, and I am sure that I will be referring to it often over the next 16 months or so.

Buy it! Read it! Use it!