Remember, America, this is the man that wants you to re-hire him.
Don’t be a fool. Dump Obama.
Cities
Actress Kyra Segdwick On Hollywood’s Mistake: Ignoring Midwest
-By Warner Todd Huston
Actress Kyra Sedgwick might be tempting fate in Hollywood with a recent interview on the Tavis Smiley show on PBS where she scolded her industry for ignoring the great middle of the country.
Sedgwick was on the show discussing her recently concluded series The Closer on TNT and noted that the show was a great hit in the Midwest, but not in L.A. or New York City. At first she said she felt insulted at this ratings truth, but it wasn’t long before she realized that this wasn’t a bad thing at all.
She told Smiley that she came to feel that Hollywood was making a mistake to ignore everything outside New York and Los Angeles.
“I think that there’s a … huge difference,” Sedgwick said, “between what people politically believe and what interests people in Los Angeles and what interests people in New York, and what they believe politically [in the rest of the country] … and I think to ignore that is really cutting yourself out of a huge part of your population that I feel… they’re under-represented, and I think that was the great thing about [The Closer series].”
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Actress Kyra Segdwick On Hollywood’s Mistake: Ignoring Midwest”
Apologize! Boston Globe Slams VP Biden Over ‘Chains’ Remark
-By Warner Todd Huston
Last week the talk of the news cycle centered on yet another “gaffe” by Vice President Joe Biden. In front of an audience half filled with African Americans Biden made the outrageous claim that Republicans want to put blacks “back in chains.” Many left-wingers and Democrats rushed out to defend Biden’s idiocy, but this weekend the Boston Globe parted company with defenders and demanded that Biden apologize for his remarks.
One of the untenable claims that Democrats are using to try and excuse Biden’s comments is that the audience in Danville, Virginia didn’t have many blacks in it. Therefore, Biden lapsing into black dialect and saying Mitt Romney wants to put “ya’all back in chains” surely wasn’t an example of Biden talking to blacks. But it its very first paragraph, the Globe demolishes that faux fact saying that Biden was addressing a crowd made up of “hundreds of African Americans.”
The Globe is correct on that point. Video of the event does show that the audience was about half African American.
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Apologize! Boston Globe Slams VP Biden Over ‘Chains’ Remark”
Shouldn’t Jesse Jackson Jr. Have His Gun Rights Revoked by Ill. State Police?
-By Warner Todd Huston
We all know that Representative Jesse Jackson, Jr. is a huge anti-gun activist. It is also public knowledge in Illinois that he is a holder of an Illinois Firearms Owner ID (a FOID card). This state-issued ID that allows Illinois residents to legally purchase firearms and ammunition is supposed to be revoked for people that have been admitted to a mental health facility. So, will the state revoke Jackson’s FOID card?
Rep. Jackson was admitted to a mental health facility last month claiming “exhaustion” but it has since been learned he suffers from a more serious mental condition such as depression. His own wife said that he’s been “completely debilitated by depression.”
In fact, on August 13 it was reported that Jackson is suffering from a bipolar disorder.”
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Shouldn’t Jesse Jackson Jr. Have His Gun Rights Revoked by Ill. State Police?”
NYTimes Food Reporter Rejoices at Chick-Fil-A VP’s Heart Attack, Apologizes
-By Warner Todd Huston
Mark Bittman, a New York Times food critic, admits he used an “inappropriate phrase” in an August 3 blog posting about Chick-Fil-A. In fact, it was down right Bitter, man, because he seemed to be rejoicing that a vice president of the fast food company had died of a heart attack back in July.
Bittman apologized to his readers for the giddiness he displayed about the death of Chick-Fil-A’s Vice President of Public Relations, Don Perry, who passed away on July 27.
Said the bitter foodie,
In a recent blog post, I used an inappropriate phrase to refer to the late VP of PR for Chick-fil-A. My choice of words did not rise to either my own standards or to The Times’s, and the phrase has been removed from the post. I regret this lapse.
What he said on August 3 deserved to be excised, too. It was pretty vile. Here is what was removed from the post:
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NYTimes Food Reporter Rejoices at Chick-Fil-A VP’s Heart Attack, Apologizes”
What’s Going Wrong at the Pacific Research Institute?
-By Warner Todd Huston
Early in July extreme left-wing Mother Jones magazine published a piece claiming that Sally Pipes, the head of the Pacific Research Institute, was not doing a very effective job of leading the San Francisco-based conservative, free-market think tank. Unfortunately, whether the magazine is left-wing or not and whether these questions make me comfortable or not (they don’t), there seems to be some truth in the story.
The magazine focused on the excessive amount of money that Pipes has requisitioned from the think tank to pay for Public Relations agencies to assist her in writing the many books, papers, articles and the like that carries Pipes’ name. Calling her “supernaturally prolific,” Mother Jones reported that Pipes employs Keybridge Communications to do the writing.
In fact, according to Mother Jones, Pipes has spent “nearly $1 million — $400,000 alone in 2010” on the services of Keybridge. This is a substantial amount of money considering that the institute has an annual budget of only $4 million. To have spent such a huge chunk on “research assistance” is quite a lot, indeed.
Pipes has a very high profile in conservative circles. She is a sought after speaker with a specialty in healthcare. She’s worked with such big name groups as the American Enterprise Institute and the Heritage Foundation, and her work appears in newspapers, magazines, and websites everywhere — such as Forbes, the Wall Street Journal, and National Review. Pipes is also listed as the author of at least a half dozen books.
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What’s Going Wrong at the Pacific Research Institute?”
Chicago Alderman Illegally Using His Office for Obama Re-election Campaign Workers
-By Warner Todd Huston
Rebel Pundit has discovered an interesting, and likely illegal, Obama campaign move in Illinois. It really does look like a Chicago alderman and the Obama campaign are breaking the law, here.
You’ll recall the little known alderman that tried to get himself some national attention by illicitly using the power of his office to deny the Chick-Fil-A company its right to its religious conviction and its right to do legal business in the city. His name is Proco “Joe” Moreno.
First of all this anti-American alderman is certainly violating the U.S. Constitution by trying to use the power of his office to attack a business that has broken no laws — not just broken no laws in Illinois, but broken no laws anywhere.
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Chicago Alderman Illegally Using His Office for Obama Re-election Campaign Workers”
Mayor Emanuel’s ‘Chicago Values’: Chicago, Deadliest Global City
-By Warner Todd Huston
Well, thank goodness for Rahm Emanuel’s “Chicago values,” eh? NBC Chicago is now reporting that it is more dangerous to live in Chicago than any other great city of the world.
Isn’t it wonderful that Rahm Emanuel came from Washington to save the city?
As the TV station reports it, Chicago is worse than even New York… even worse than MEXICO CITY, fer cripes sakes … in the number of murders we have here.
As measured in murders per 100,000 citizens, here is the list with worst (Chicago) listed first:
- Chicago 19.4
- Sao Paulo 15.6
- Moscow 9.6
- Mexico City 8.0
- Los Angeles 7.5
- New York 6.0
- Paris 4.4
- Amsterdam 1.8
- Toronto 1.7
- London 1.4
- Sydney 1.0
- Berlin 1.0
- Hong Kong 0.6
- Tokyo 0.5
- Singapore 0.4
Thanks, Rahm!
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Mayor Emanuel’s ‘Chicago Values’: Chicago, Deadliest Global City”
NYTimes Looks for ‘Golden Lining’… in Genocide?
-By Warner Todd Huston
By some accounts, since the coming to power of Zimbabwe’s terror-inducing Robert Mugabe, up to 480,000 people have lost their lives. Of those not killed outright or starved to death, tens of thousands of people had their property stolen and their livelihoods ended, they were beaten, raped, and left for dead. As these outrages were occurring the nation’s economy was devastated, a one-time economic bright spot in Africa reduced to ruins. And in all this violation of human rights the New York Times sees a “golden lining”?
How could there be a “golden lining” in all this murder — even genocide — and destruction? Well, apparently out of the ashes of a country, the genocide of hundreds of thousands, and the human rights violations of millions more, the fact that a few thousand small farmers have risen up to some modest success raising tobacco is somehow a great success.
In a Friday, July 20 piece, Lydia Polgreen is all excited over this year’s tobacco crop haul of 330 million pounds of the golden leaf (hence the “golden” lining).
Of course, this is down from the 522 million pounds that was realized in the year 2000, but it’s better than nothing, one supposes.
Polgreen goes on to laud all the progress that this handful of black small farmers have had this year and that success, she and other Mugabe apologists think, might signal that Mugabe’s genocidal “land reforms” might be a howling success. But even her own announcement of success is prefaced by the horrors.
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NYTimes Looks for ‘Golden Lining’… in Genocide?”
Media Ignores Warren Plagiarizing, Went Nuts Over Claims of Scott Brown’s
-By Warner Todd Huston
Michael Patrick Leahy detailed yet another twist to Elizabeth “Faux-Cahontis” Warren’s tale of fake American Indian claims. Apparently in 1984 Warren supplied several “old family recipes” to the “Pow Wow Chow cookbook,” edited by her cousin. Turns out these “family recipes” where just lifted from various cookbooks and newspaper articles of the era. She appears to have plagiarized them.
Will the media note that Warren plagiarized recipes from other cookbooks, claimed they were “family recipes,” and then signed them “Elizabeth Warren – Cherokee”? Probably not, but the Old Media went ga ga when they thought her opponent, Senator Scott Walker, plagiarized something.
For Warren’s part, Leahy notes that several of her “family recipes” were copied word-for-word from a New York Times News service piece published in 1979. Boston-based talk show host Howie Carr also found that several of her recipes appear to have been plagiarized. (Here, here, and here)
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Media Ignores Warren Plagiarizing, Went Nuts Over Claims of Scott Brown’s”
NY City Council Speaker Stands Up Against Freedom of Speech
-By Warner Todd Huston
Judging by this whole Chick-Fil-A oppression program liberals are engaging in, it’s no wonder Jonah Goldberg had a hit with his recent book, Liberal Fascism.
This time it is City Council Speaker Christine Quinn who is proud to stand against our Constitutional rights of freedom of speech and freedom of religion, not to mention the right to do legal business anywhere without fearing the iron boot heel of government coming down upon us for having upset some haughty government official somewhere.
Quinn has condemned Chick-Fil-A for having dared to break no laws in the exercise of its daily business and is sponsoring one of those wondrous Internet petitions saying so.
If a petition were to be where her ire ended, well, that would be her right as a private citizen, as far as that goes. But she’s taken that step farther which makes her actions illegal. Quinn’s invoked her powers as an elected official and sent a letter to New York University’s president demanding that the Chick-Fil-A outlet on his campus be shut down.
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NY City Council Speaker Stands Up Against Freedom of Speech”
Even TIME Says Mayors Emanuel and Menino Wronging Chick-Fil-A
-By Warner Todd Huston
It’s a “First Amendment buzzsaw,” that the mayors of Chicago and Boston have walked into over misuse of their powers in denying Chick-Fil-A the right to open and operate their fast food stores in the two cities. This is from TIME, yet. And if even TIME realizes that the Democrats are misusing their powers, well, let’s just say it’s a major violation of Chick-Fil-A’s free speech plain and simple.
For TIME, Michael Scherer goes over the whole series of events that led up to the two mayors — Rahm Emanuel of Chicago and Thomas Menino of Boston — imagining they have the power to deny Chick-Fil-A a right to operate merely because committed Christians run the company. Scherer’s analysis is that this mistaken belief in their powers puts the mayors in “tricky legal waters.”
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Even TIME Says Mayors Emanuel and Menino Wronging Chick-Fil-A”
Emanuel’s ‘Chicago Values’ Includes Supporting Gay-Hating, Jew-Hating Louis Farrakhan
-By Warner Todd Huston
Yesterday we reported that Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel said that the Christian values of Chick-Fil-A are not “Chicago values.” So, who does embody those “Chicago values” as far as Rahm is concerned? Why, extremist Louis Farrakhan, who else?
On July 25, Mayor Emanuel welcomed the “help” of hatemonger Louis Farrakhan, leader of the cult the “Nation of Islam,” in a non-violence crusade in a city awash with violence, murder, and gang crime. The Nation of Islam is a pseudo Islamic cult based in Chicago.
Emanuel has happily accepted Farrakhan’s “help” despite the fact that Farrakhan has a long, long history of anti-Semitism and violent rhetoric.
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Emanuel’s ‘Chicago Values’ Includes Supporting Gay-Hating, Jew-Hating Louis Farrakhan”
Chicago Teachers Union President Blames Woes on ‘Lower Class’ and ‘Students of Color’
-By Warner Todd Huston
The Chicago School system is rapidly collapsing. Its graduation rate is a horrid 56 percent, its finances are in tatters, and even though the Chicago Teachers Union was offered a 10 to 15 percent raise, CTU officials still want to strike claiming it isn’t enough. So, what went wrong? CTU President says it’s all because of Chicago’s “lower class students” and “students of color.”
CTU President Karen Lewis recently took part in a strategy conference call with community organizer Jitu Brown, and retired professor and Bill Ayers associate Mike Klonsky. In the released audio of the conference call, CTU President Lewis tries to address the reason for the Chicago Public School System’s woes.
Lewis, it seems thinks that the whole decline of Chicago’s schools is because of lower class kids. Her comments are heard in the last 30 seconds of the audio.
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Chicago Teachers Union President Blames Woes on ‘Lower Class’ and ‘Students of Color’”
Alderman/Mayor Emanuel Admit: Chicago is NOT for Christians
-By Warner Todd Huston
Anti-religion Chicago Alderman Joe Moreno has affirmed that the City of Chicago does not welcome Christians and stands four square against Christian principles. Further, Moreno says he has the “moral support” of Mayor Rahm Emanuel for his pronouncement.
Moreno is trying to shut down the opening of a new Chick-Fil-A restaurant in the city. Why? Because the chief of the company — well-known as enthusiastic boosters of Christian ideals — recently affirmed that his company does not support the homosexual lifestyle.
Moreno got on his high horse claiming that the fast food chain “discriminates” against homosexuals. This, of course, is a lie. No where has Chick-Fil-A been accused of any concrete discrimination against gays.
For his part, Mayor Emanuel agreed with liar Moreno.
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Alderman/Mayor Emanuel Admit: Chicago is NOT for Christians”
Roger Ebert Tries to Exploit Colorado Crime for Gun Control Purposes
-By Warner Todd Huston
Dear Mr. Ebert, the Colorado theater was a ‘gun free zone’
Jumping on the gun-ban band wagon and to take political advantage of the murders in Colorado, film critic Roger Ebert immediately ran to his keyboard to decry our “insane” gun laws in an Op Ed in the New York Times. His goal was to invalidate concealed carry laws by noting that no one in the theater shot back at the murderer in black. But, Ebert misses an important point. The Cinemark theater chain has a “gun-free zone” policy.
In the NYT, Ebert decried America for its gun laws (my bold).
That James Holmes is insane, few may doubt. Our gun laws are also insane, but many refuse to make the connection. The United States is one of few developed nations that accepts the notion of firearms in public hands. In theory, the citizenry needs to defend itself. Not a single person at the Aurora, Colo., theater shot back, but the theory will still be defended.
Of course, if Ebert had bothered to check before trying to use this murderous crime for his own anti-Second Amendment purposes, he may have found that no one could have shot back because the theater chain does not allow its customers to carry guns in its theaters.
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Roger Ebert Tries to Exploit Colorado Crime for Gun Control Purposes”
New York Times Slams Romney on Foreign Finances, Ignores Democrats’
-By Warner Todd Huston
The New York Times is aghast that Mitt Romney won’t succumb to demands from Democrats and the Old Media that he release enough of his financial records to suit them. In particular, the Times worries over Mitt’s Swiss bank account and foreign investments. But while the paper beats Romney up for his finances they ignore recent reports of all the Democrats that have similar financial holdings.
The Gray Lady begins claiming that Romney has “upended” the tradition of Presidential candidates releasing their financial records and goes on paragraph after paragraph raising suspicions over Romney’s finances. The Times focuses especially on Mitt’s foreign interests — yet the Times hasn’t even a modicum of proof to support the fears.
But while the Times attacks Mitt for having financial investments and accounts in foreign nations, there is no sense of that well worn phrase that so many journalists claim is one of the Old Media’s most important charges: balance.
The Times slams Romney for his Swiss bank account, but there isn’t a peep of all the high profile Democrats that have similar foreign financial interests. I guess the Times doesn’t feel a need to “balance” any report that is taking Republicans to task.
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New York Times Slams Romney on Foreign Finances, Ignores Democrats’”
Miami Herald: Hey, We Journalists are Heroes, Ya Know?
-By Warner Todd Huston
Tooting one’s own horn has always been considered a social faux pas, an example of arrogance, and just plain ignorant. But it seems that someone forgot to teach these social niceties to Leonard Pitts of the Miami Herald because this week Pitts has decided to tell us all that real journalists shouldn’t be scoffed at. Why? Because they are selfless, danger-defying, super action heroes, or something. Yes, Pitts is sure that journalists are just purer, better, smarter, and more intelligent than you just-a-bloggers out there.
Now, I’ve always tried to live by the maxim that my own status as a hero or villain is for others to determine, not me to invent and tout. But Pitts isn’t going to just sit around while his precious fellow journalists are verbally maligned by someone as low as Sarah Palin, any old Breitbart writer or — the horrors — just a blogger.
Apparently someone mentioned to Mr. Pitts that Governor Palin, who Pitts thinks is a “silly” person, mentioned his profession at this year’s Right Online event, sponsored by Americans for Prosperity. During her remarks at the weekend planned in part to celebrate the life and work of conservative Internet giant Andrew Breitbart, Palin said, “Every citizen can be a reporter.”
This struck Mr. Pitts as an outrage. Why, only real reporters, he feels, can properly report the news. Pitts proves to us how great these professional reporters can be with his very article, too. I mean, where else can we get such timely “news” reports on events that happened two weeks ago but from a professional journalist like Leonard Pitts. Jr.?
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Miami Herald: Hey, We Journalists are Heroes, Ya Know?”
LA Times Styles Romney the Whites Only Candidate
-By Warner Todd Huston
On June 18 the L.A. Times turned in a sly performance attempting to paint Mitt Romney as the whites only candidate in a piece headlined, “Romney, Cows and Ice Cream: Targeting Conservative, White ‘Backbone’.”
Romney is calling his current Midwest campaign stint a tour of the “backbone of America,” but it seems the Times is purposefully misconstruing that ages old saying about the Midwest, making it into a racial epithet, instead of the laudatory name it usually is, by styling it the “white backbone” of America.
The Times quickly goes on to quote partisan liberal author Ruy Teixeira, who also a senior fellow at the liberal Center for American Progress, who says that Romney is probably wasting his time on the tour because minority voters in some of the swing state he’s visiting are lost to him regardless.
Over the last 20 years, the percentage of white working-class voters in both states has dropped, while the share of minorities and white college graduates has risen, a trend apt to benefit Democrats over time, said Ruy Teixeira, a senior fellow at the liberal Center for American Progress.
Teixeira should have lost all credibility back in 2002 when he famously published a book titled, “The Emerging Democratic Majority.” In 2002 Teixeira claimed that the Republican Party was finished and the Democrats were sure to be winners for decades to come, yet Democrats have only controlled both the White House and Congress for two of the last 18 years. Further damaging his analysis, Democrats lost control of the House in 2010 in the biggest loss of seats suffered by any party in decades.
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LA Times Styles Romney the Whites Only Candidate”
Right Online 2012: Great Success at the Vegas Venetian
-By Warner Todd Huston
For my final report on the fifth annual Right Online 2012 sponsored by Americans for Prosperity we’ll be talking about the parade of great speakers like NRO writer Jonah Goldberg and environmental apostate (as far as the left is concerned) Ann McElhinney. But first a word about the great hotel and casino in which we stayed.
The Venetian Las Vegas is in many ways a conservative’s dream hotel — well, unless you opposing gambling, and certainly many conservatives do — that aside, as I was saying, The Venetian is the best of Vegas and the best for conservative entrepreneurship. You see, this hotel is the only union free hotel on the strip.
But not only is The Venetian union free, it also has the highest paid staff getting the best benefits in Vegas. This is because conservatives know how to treat their employees!
If you are planning a Vegas get away, even if you aren’t planning on gambling, come stay at the Venetian. Heck, it’s even the biggest single building in the world, now. The suites are incredible, there’s shopping, big time stage shows, swimming, and eating and drinking galore.
Just look at this incredible room:
See the sacrifices I have to make to report these events to you?
Anyway, folks, do yourselves a favor if you’re coming to Las Vegas, book The Venetian.
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Right Online 2012: Great Success at the Vegas Venetian”
Right Online 2012: Hoft’s Great Rant, Old Media vs New
-By Warner Todd Huston
Duane Lester of All American Blogger caught some video of a great rant by Jim Hoft of Gateway Pundit delivered at one of the breakout panels at Right Online 2012.
Go get ’em Jim…
He’s exactly right, too. before the New Media finally came about there was practically no way to get the truth.
Remember, we are all Breitbart, now.
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Right Online 2012: Hoft’s Great Rant, Old Media vs New”
Right Online 2012: Las Vegas, Nevada
-By Warner Todd Huston
I am here in Las Vegas this weekend to attend Right Online 2012 (the 5th annual) sponsored by Americans for Prosperity.
Last night was epic and today’s activities promise to be even greater.
Friday
Last night we were regaled by a welcoming by Americans For Prosperity President Tim Phillips and a handful of other speakers including Alaska Governor Sarah Palin and conservative writer Michelle Malkin.
Sarah Palin at Right Online
Michelle Malkin at Right Online
Palin was her always scintillating best, of course, and Michelle Malkin really rallied the troops for online activism
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Right Online 2012: Las Vegas, Nevada”
CPAC Chicago, Part 4: Joe Walsh, Randy Hultgren, Straw Poll Results
-By Warner Todd Huston
Finally, in part four we’ll hear from two solid Illinois Congressmen, the 8th District’s Joe Walsh and Randy Hultgren of the 14th. We’ll also hear the, perhaps not startling results of the straw poll, the most important question from which was who Romney should pick for his vice presidential candidate (hint, the top picks weren’t any of his one-time rivals for the nomination).
Congressman Joe Walsh
Rep. Joe Walsh gins up the crowd
Joe Walsh of the Illinois 8th District is the one Congressman that the left wants to eliminate more than any other Republican Congressman. This is because Joe has carved out from among his fellows an outsized voice for conservatism. He appears regularly on TV and radio to tout the conservative message. But he’s become a major target of Democrat redistricting and now faces a tough challenge to be reelected in his newly reconfigured 8th District. Me, I think he can easily beat the know-nothing candidate the Democrats have put up against him, but Joe is taking nothing for granted.
One thing is sure, though, Joe Walsh knows how to get a conservative audience in motion.
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CPAC Chicago, Part 4: Joe Walsh, Randy Hultgren, Straw Poll Results”
CPAC Chicago, Part 3: Bobby Jindal, Peter Roskam, Michele Bachman
-By Warner Todd Huston
In part three of our series we’ll take a look at the speeches of Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, Illinois Congressman Peter Roskam, and Representative Michele Bachmann of Minnesota. Bachmann’s speech was quite interesting for its singular focus on a particular jihad-supporting Muslim group that is operating in America today. Bachmann was vehement that Obama ban this group.
Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal
Gov. Bobby Jindal on the main stage
Jindal is another favorite of the greater conservative movement. He has a very compelling story of immigrant parents that came to America to become part of this great nation to finally see their little son become the most powerful man in their adopted state. It’s the perfect American story, for sure.
Speaking of stories, Jindal has a lot of them especially where it concerns his involvement in the BP Oil spill from 2010. I’ve seen Jindal relate this tale several times and it is always a good one. His description of how the federal government was more interested in observing its silly OSHA than deal quickly with the emergency before them was telling and hilarious — though ultimately sad and infuriating. Since this is standard stump speech stuff of Jindal’s, though, I did not Tweet that segment.
Like the others Jindal started praising the Walker win in Wisconsin. One of his funniest lines was that all the news people were proclaiming that the vote would be so close that it would be a long night for Wisconsin as they tallied the votes. But reality proved that the whole thing was over in a matter of hours with Walker’s landslide. Instead of it being a long night for Wisconsin, Jindal joked that it was instead a “long night at Obama headquarters in Chicago!”
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CPAC Chicago, Part 3: Bobby Jindal, Peter Roskam, Michele Bachman”
CPAC Chicago, Part 2: Richard Mourdock, Chris Christie, Herman Cain
-By Warner Todd Huston
In part two of my coverage of CPACs first Midwestern conference event, we will see some of the high spots of the floor speeches of Indiana Senate Candidate Richard Mourdock, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie – always a crowd favorite – and the redoubtable Herman Cain. Cain also visited the media room and I have video of that below the fold.
Indiana Senate Candidate Richard Mourdock
Richard Mourdock is the current Indiana State treasurer but he also just defeated long-time incumbent Senator Richard Lugar for the GOP nomination for the U.S. Senate from Indiana. He’ll face the Democrat come November. Mourdock has been widely touted as the insurgent Tea Party candidate that beat Lugar, the old line, establishment man.
“No one expected a lowly state treasurer could take out a 36-year Senator! But we DID,” Mourdock said triumphantly.
Mourdock also noted that Senator Chuck Schumer of New York has called him the “Hoosier headache.” Mourdock was rather proud of that appellation.
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CPAC Chicago, Part 2: Richard Mourdock, Chris Christie, Herman Cain”
CPAC Chicago, Wisconsin Praised, Obama Razed — Part One: Rick Santorum, Ron Johnson
-By Warner Todd Huston
Well, Friday evening, June 8, 2012, we marked the end of the first CPAC event held in Chicago and what a great event it was. The triumph in Wisconsin was on everyone’s mind but so was Obama’s dismal record. Not just dismal, but according to several speakers, even dangerous. The economy and the election of Romney were focal points but so was foreign policy this day. One theme, though, was constant: Obama has to go.
Because of other things going on and the several press availability sessions, I didn’t catch every speaker in the main hall, but I did hear the speeches of (in this order) former Senator Rick Santorum, Kentucky Senator Rand Paul, Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson, Indiana Senate Candidate Richard Mourdock, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, Illinois Representative Peter Roskam, Minnesota Representative Michelle Bachmann, and Illinois Representatives Joe Walsh and Randy Hultgren. I also heard and recorded the press availability sessions of Herman Caine, Peter Roskam, and Michelle Bachmann and I caught most of Kansas Representative Tim Huelskamp’s.
Other notables whose speeches I missed were Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton, Ohio Gov. John Kasich, Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell, Heritage Foundation President Ed Feulner, and Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback.
The event was a great success with well over 2,000 participants, all seats filled for the most part during the speeches and some great groups like the United Republican Fund, the Illinois Policy Institute, the Heartland Institute, Champion News, and others hosting and participating.
I’ll say a few words about the speakers I did see in the order I saw them and I’ll do this in a few installments so that this won’t be one long, overly taxing post. Now, as each of these speakers appeared before us I live Tweeted their comments, so the following quotes are pulled from my Twitter feed.
But before I do that, each speaker was quite enthusiastic over the win of Governor Scott Walker who defeated an effort by the far left and their union overlords to recall him in Wisconsin. Each speaker praised Walker and crowed about the left’s loss in there. I won’t regurgitate the Wisconsin hunk of each speaker as they were pretty much all the same; exuberant. The essential point was that we are all cheeseheads now.
Rick Santorum
Rick Santorum on the main stage
Former Pennsylvania Senator and recent GOP Presidential candidate Rick Santorum gave one of his well-crafted, typically workman-like speeches. One of Santorum’s early points was that America is at a “tipping point” and we’d better be there to tip it in the right direction.
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CPAC Chicago, Wisconsin Praised, Obama Razed — Part One: Rick Santorum, Ron Johnson”
Civil Rights Make no Appearance in Obama NATO Afghanistan Address
-By Warner Todd Huston
One of George W. Bush’s real achievements in Afghanistan was his push for civil rights for Afghani women. Real successes were had as girls were at last allowed to go to school and women began to enter the realm of Afghan politics. Bush made equal rights for Afghan women a priority. Not so with his successor, Barack Obama, and his speech at the opening of the NATO meeting on Afghanistan was yet another missed opportunity to reassert that drive for civil rights in Afghanistan.
The address before NATO during the opening minutes of the first ISAF meeting on Afghanistan — one with Afghan President Hamid Karzai right there in attendance — was the perfect time to at least mention the ongoing quest for equal rights for women in that region. Sadly, even as these rights have slipped backwards in some areas of Afghanistan in the last few years, Obama eschewed any reference to the subject.
At the end of his brief and perfunctory comments, Obama spoke of the “opportunity to ensure our [that] hard-won progress is preserved” and this would have been the perfect chance to at least mention civil rights for women. Instead, President Obama hewed close to the US support for Afghan security forces. “(A)s Afghans stand up they will not stand alone,” the president said as he hailed the “long-term relationship with Afghanistan beyond 2014” that was being cultivated.
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Civil Rights Make no Appearance in Obama NATO Afghanistan Address”
A Blogger at NATO 2012, What I Saw on Day One
-By Warner Todd Huston
I was awarded press credentials for NATO’s 2012 Summit in Chicago and, having no idea what to expect, what I found on day one was a study in contrasts. What occurred was sometimes amusing, often mundane, and sometimes even violent. But it was all democracy in action.
Early on the morning of day one, Sunday, May 20, I boarded a western Metra train under threat of having my equipment bags confiscated or at least me prevented from boarding the train with them. I was not ruffed up the “the man,” though and downtown I went riding high on the rails. Literally. I took a seat on the top tier of the train.
The Summit didn’t start well as the NATO advance video called Chicago the Illinois Capital (It isn’t) and the place where Obama grew up (Again, it isn’t).
Upon reaching the gathering point for the press in beautiful downtown Chicago I boarded the super, double, secret press shuttle bus that took us down the service streets, steering well clear of the surface roads, straight to Chicago’s McCormick Place convention center, site of the NATO Summit.
Of course, before I was allowed on the super, double, secret press bus, bomb-sniffing dogs were loosed to make sure I had no underwear-bomb on my person or in my equipment bags. After I was officially cleared, I boarded the bus with local Chicago TV newsreader Jay Levine.
Everywhere I went there were knots of security personnel. A LOT of security personnel. The last time I saw that many security people I was in Cancun, Mexico during the 2010 UN Climate Conference.
There were members of the FBI, Homeland Security, Chicago Police, the U.S. Marshals as well as U.S. Airmen and Army officers all there on duty to make sure our tender media people were safe and secure.
I was later to learn that out on the streets of Chicago the number of security of all sorts made the way to McCormick Place seem like it was lightly guarded!
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A Blogger at NATO 2012, What I Saw on Day One”
Why is the New England Historic Genealogical Society Lying Abut Warren’s Amer. Indian Claims?
-By Warner Todd Huston
As each day rolls on in this investigation of the claims made by Massachusetts Democrat Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren that she has Native American heritage in her background we are finding fewer and fewer reasons to believe her. Sadly, she is dragging down once well-respected groups with her unprovable claims and Boston-based New England Historic Genealogical Society is one of them.
As this story came to the fore recently one of the main sources that buttressed Warren’s now faltering claims that she is part Native American came from the New England Historic Genealogical Society (NEHGS). Famously, or perhaps now infamously, NEHGS genealogist Christopher Child substantiated Warren’s claim that her great-great-great grandmother, O.C. Sarah Smith, had Cherokee blood.
This evidence, Mr. Child claimed, is substantiated by a “marriage application” filed with the state of Oklahoma upon which, Child insists, is a section where this supposed native heritage is noted. This document, however, does not seem to actually exist.
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Why is the New England Historic Genealogical Society Lying Abut Warren’s Amer. Indian Claims?”
Dangers of the Ballot Initiative
-By Warner Todd Huston
At first blush, the idea of having ballot initiatives on election day seems like such a great, democratic idea. Unfortunately, all too often, all they are is a way to enlarge government, chip away at freedom, and cost the taxpayers money without returning the benefits promised. California is the perfect example of these troubles.
The problem, of course, is not that it’s too much democracy, but that few of these ballot measures are true grassroots uprisings meant to make the lives of Californians better. Instead they are moneyed special interests using their deep pockets to buy the petition process in order to get their own narrow needs favored in Sacramento.
Even as far back as 2004, the L.A. Times had soured on ballot measures. In an editorial scoffing at the whole system, the Times ended saying, “Ballot-box legislating — often swayed by false or misleading advertising — is no way to run a state of 36 million people and such diverse needs.”
That same year in San Jose, for instance, a ballot measure appear that was supposed to go to funding of libraries. The measure was supposed to raise the budget for libraries to $48 million per year but despite that good natured taxpayers approved the budget measure the city ended up cutting the library expenditures down to $32 million annually. This is a typical case where tax hikes approved by voters never ended up going where voters thought they were going to go. This year, new ballot measures meant to correct the library budget deficiency are being proposed but these measures are likely to make matters worse.
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Dangers of the Ballot Initiative”