Best Speech Of The Convention

Even though he was the last one scheduled to speak, Adnan Barqawi quickly became the talk of the Republican State Convention for Virginia. He joined the Corps of Cadets at Virginia Tech and rose through the ranks. What got the crowd to their feet -- one of many -- is when he said he became not a hyphenated American. But a whole American.

Enjoy:





Linked by Riehl World View.

Thanks to Rick Sincere for getting the videos out there so soon.

Best Cover of Don't Stop Believing Evah

Thanks to JustKarl.

Wrap Up

Updated and bumped: It's official
.
Not official yet. But it is sounding like Cuccinelli and Bolling are in.

Nothing about the Party Chair yet. Must still be close.

I have to say that the location from Bloggers Row was excellent. If this was a Miley Cyres concert, I would have to have been a relative of either Billy Ray or Michael Eisner. The old media was near the back. Heh.

UPDATE: Having to leave a bit early for personal reasons. Something about wanting a check deposited and about not wanting the lights shut off. Thanks to the guys at Bering Drift, they have the final result.

Patrick Muldoon, John Brownlee, and Dave Foster move to elect Bill Bolling and Ken Cuccinelli by acclimation as the Republican nominees for LG and AG respectively.

Place goes nuts!

“I will endorse [Sen. Ken Cuccinelli], support him, do everything I can to ensure he is the next attorney general of the Commonwealth of Virginia,” said Brownlee.

Cuccinelli thanked Brownlee and Foster for running a hard and fair campaign.

Bill Stanley also moved that Pat Mullins be elected as chairman by acclimation

Just For Dave - I know he will get a kick out of this:

Found it over at Hotair



From Dave: Very nice.

Day Two

At the Virginia State Convention.

With a few primative tools, I was able to fashion a connection to file this.

And a hike to the nosebleed section to secure an actual laptop to, you know, actually live blog.

Bob McDonnall gave a good speech. Seing how he was running unopposed on the Republican side, it's a forgone conclustion he will be the GOP Candidate.

The big wait now is for Attorney General, Lt. Governor and RPV chair.

Ken Cuccinelli had the rock star intro with his speech and everyone in the crowd waving the classic, "Don't Tread On Me" rattlesnake flag (note to self, I have to get one of those). The lights went out and an audio montage started to play with clips of the recent news talking about nationalization of banks, so called domestic terrorist (Tea Parties.. Yeah, right..) and other items. Then the smoke and lights. I almost expected 'Rock and Roll Part I'. Ken looks to be the favorite of the crowd here. When the other candidates mention his name, it's not a good sign when the cheers drown out their speech.

UPDATE 2:40: George Allen just finished speaking. Eric Cantor is speaking now.

Line up other speakers for the Virginia GOP to help fill the time until all the voting has been done for the other three races.

Breaking rumor; Cuccinelli is the Republican Canidate for Attorney General.

More here at the Wrap Up.

"Thanks For Voting, Now Eff Off"

H/T to Paranoid Polly.

One of the neatest things I saw last November when I was working at the precinct was when a very nice middle aged lady came in to vote for the very first time. It was awesome to see someone -- for the first time in her life -- to want to be part of the democratic process. I hope she keeps it up. But when I read this last night, it agitated a slow burn inside. I'm reprinting the entire posting here for those who do not want to link over.

Who says that liberals aren't racist? Shorter Frankie Teardrop: Vote how we tell you how to vote. We only need you as a means to our ends.

The disgraceful California Supreme Court decision today to let Proposition 8 stand is a setback, not a defeat. Make no mistake, Prop 8 will come back up for vote, and when it does, it won’t have the record turnout of Blacks and Hispanics that we saw in the 2008 Presidential election to pass it. That, together with effective countering of any Mormon efforts to support Prop 8, will ensure that next time, Prop 8 will be killed.

he same record turnout of Black and Hispanic voters that was a key factor in getting Barack Obama into the White House was unfortunately a double edged sword; in California that same ethnic and racial demo also was instrumental in the passage of Proposition 8.

The majority of Blacks and Hispanics voted in favor of Proposition 8, and with the vehemence the church communities in these demos came out and rallied against Prop 8, it’s no wonder.

Over 35 anti-gay, black pastors in California even went so far as to coerce hundreds of marching Los Angeles school children to encourage blacks to vote "yes" on Proposition 8.

Steve Lopez of The Los Angeles Times describes the quasi-fascist spectacle:

"The uniformed children were a nice touch Tuesday at the Crenshaw Christian Center, marching out of school with U.S. flags -- like good little soldiers in a holy war -- to hear ministers preach against the evils of gay marriage. ...

The Yes on 8 banners read: ‘For Children. For Families. For Our Future.’

Apostle Frederick K.C. Price stepped to the microphone. 'I believe and teach the Bible,' he said, pausing briefly, as if nothing more needed to be said.

But he went on to quote Genesis, saying marriage is that which occurs between a man and a woman. To veer from that course, he suggested, would ‘jeopardize our children's future.’"

Price and the Crenshaw Christian Center teamed up in public support of Proposition 8 together with one thousand other black and Hispanic congregations with about 3 million followers total, and he said this about Propostion 8: ""We shouldn't do anything to jeopardize the future of our family and our children."

It’s a blessing that the next time Prop 8 is put to a vote with the people of California, it won’t share the ballot with the historic "Obama Election" and Black and Hispanic turnout will be lower, despite the pro-Prop 8 rallies sure to be organized again by community and church leaders. We can again expect Mormon money to pour into pro-8 ads and, next time around, this will be the biggest factor in a Prop 8 re-vote. We must prepare now to counter the Mormon ad machine with our own messages to kill the abomination that is Prop 8.

Next time, it will be killed.

First Attempt at a Live Blog

I'll be at the Republican Convention covering the progress for the races in the commonwealth of Virginia. I have a tin can at home tied to a string stretched out to the convention center so I will have to tap everything in by binary. We'll see how everything works out.

UPDATE: The string broke. Something about laying out 30 miles of twine and someone is bound to muck with it. Wrote out a note with a charred stick and plank of wood to remind me to bring a laptop for Saturday.

Now This Biden Gaff is Funny!

Quote For The Week

The Social Innovation Fund was authorized in the recent Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act. The Fund will focus on priority policy areas, including education, health care, and economic opportunity. It will partner with foundations, philanthropists, and corporations which will commit matching resources, funding, and technical assistance.

The White House Office of Social Innovation and Civic Participation will coordinate efforts to enlist all Americans –individuals, non-profits, social entrepreneurs, corporations and foundations – as partners in solving our great challenges. Located within the Domestic Policy Council, it will:

• Catalyze partnerships between the government and nonprofits, businesses and philanthropists in order to make progress on the President’s policy agenda


• Identify and support the rigorous evaluation and scaling of innovative, promising ideas that are transforming communities like, for example, Harlem Children’s Zone, YouthVillages, Nurse-Family Partnership, and Citizen Schools.


• Support greater civic participation through new media tools


• Promote national service.
  

Thanks to RSM and P & P.

Memorial Day

A time of quiet observation for those who have served our country and are no longer with us.

Suzanna has a nice tribute on her page here.

Too Good To Pass Up

Stick with it to the end.

Saturday Night At The Quarry Pit

Quite the flexible machine.



If you are not in the mood for big yellow trucks, maybe this is more your speed. He knows 'speak', 'fetch' and 'roll over'. 'Sic balls' doesn't work.

Can You Imagine...

Funny that I haven't seen this in the main stream. Can you imagine how the MSM would have handled this if GWB had been in charge when this happened?

What Comes Around, Goes Around

This video made the rounds last year right when the bail-outs just started and the housing bubble burst. Everything that has been done so far has been band-aids on a broken arm. Peter Schiff is an economic prophet.

Cheney vs Obama

There's a large group of liberals out there that are all worked up in a tizzy over Cheney's American Enterprise Institute Speech:



This is part one of four. Be sure to see all four.

Then... Check out Obama's American Values and Security Speech and judge for yourself:

Gitmo

Lifted from a "Quote of the Day" at Hot Air.

It's rather long but it carries with it the history of Club Gitmo and how it came into existence. As well as how it got smeared with the reputation it has now. From Commentary Magazine. I pulled a few choice snippets to get to check out. Arthur Herman even delves into the history of the loudest opponents of Gitmo too. Shockingly enough, they all seem to be extreme leftists of some degree or another. It's worth the time to read for yourself.

Then several strange things happened. Obama’s order “closing” Gitmo actually left it open for a year, ostensibly until new arrangements could be made for the 240 or so inmates still detained there—though Obama admitted privately it might have to stay open longer than that. Later, Attorney General Eric Holder announced that, far from being “the Bermuda Triangle of human rights” that Human Rights Watch’s Wendy Patten had dubbed it, Gitmo was in full compliance with the humane-treatment provisions of the Geneva Convention. Meanwhile, the military commissions, which Human Rights Watch and others groups had denounced as a travesty of justice, were only being suspended for 120 days, pending a review—and, indeed, following that review, will be reinstated almost exactly as they were before.
[. . .]
So Democrats were quick to embrace the thesis put forward by Seymour Hersh in his book Chain of Command: Even if Bush and Rumsfeld hadn’t actually ordered the abuses at Abu Ghraib, still, their “hard” approach to the war on terror, denying Gitmo suspects American-style civil rights and allowing coercive interrogations, had created an atmosphere in which torture was condoned and even common. Hersh attempted to make this explicit by pointing out that Gitmo’s former commandant, Geoffrey Miller, had been sent to Iraq to advise on interrogations in August 2003. Here was clear evidence, Hersh and others claimed, that the Bush administration had wanted to extend Gitmo’s “reign of terror” into occupied Iraq. But the opposite was true. Miller had been sent to Iraq precisely to make sure that American prisoner detention facilities there lived up to the rigorous standards applied at Gitmo under Miller’s tenure.
And what was the Bush administration’s response to these attacks on its own integrity and humanity, and that of the men and women working at Gitmo?

Nothing.
[. . .]
Meanwhile, Gitmo remains open, the unwanted orphan of the war on terror. Attacks on guards at Gitmo continue as before, sometimes as many as ten per week. However, human-rights groups and lawyers are just getting warmed up. They are now laying the ground for a similar legal assault on the American detention center at Bagram Air Force Base in Afghanistan, which they call Gitmo with a different zip code.

On April 15, detainee Muhammad al-Qahtani told al-Jazeera that he had been quietly sitting in his cell when soldiers burst into his room with a thick rubber or plastic baton. “They beat me with it. They emptied two canisters of tear gas on me,” he said, and claimed that after all this, they beat him again.

It is, of course, a lie. But it is of a piece with the entire Gitmo myth, which was constructed to ruin the Bush administration and blacken the reputation of the United States. The careful construction of this myth caused America to turn on itself in the midst of a still desperate struggle against Islamist terrorism. The consequences of this sea change in opinion may turn out to be measured not in political gains and losses by our major parties but in a revival of the fortunes of America’s foes.

"We Are Not Going To Frighten People Into Thinking That They Will Lose Their Private Insurance"

From Verum Serum (who has more on the background on this) via Pundit & Pundette. As to why they want health care along the lines of how the DMV works is beyond me.



Michelle has more about Obamacare.

I too have been infected by the same strand of pox

Like Dave I was also tagged by Eric. Keeping faith with the cure for the "Filthy Tag Pox"; my eight random things:

* I enjoy a good Merlot - And a full flavored beer.
* I have been to 31 countries. (most were not fun places)
* I have also been to all but six U.S. States.
* I have lived in seven of them.
* I am a jack of all trades master of only two or three.
* I saw the Rolling Stones Steel Wheels tour in Detroit in 1989.
* I helped build about 20 homes for Habitat for Humanity.
* I have an awesome wife and two of the best kids any man could ever want.

Glenn Beck - Credibility Blown

Well... Just when I was starting to think maybe... just maybe... he is different.


UPDATE By Dave: He's still more credible than the hags on The View.

UPDATE By NS: He's still less credible than I had hopes that he might be.

UPDATE By NS: A day late but... Glenn finally defended himself.
There is audio over at HOT AIR

Quote For The Week; Outraged Edition

There came a day in 1985 (my dad had died in 1984) that I began to take another look at my commitment to the both the far right of Republican Party and the Religious Right. I came to realize that I was in bed with a group of people who were profoundly anti-American. They were professional haters. They wrapped themselves in the flag and "loved America," but it was an America in their imaginations only and cast in their image: white, middle-class, straight, born-again, homophobic and tinged with racism, not to mention misogyny.
[. . .]
If you're not a gay-hating, "pro-life," born-again evangelical and/or an ardent Israel-can-do-no-wrong-all-Arabs-are-evil-Jesus-is-coming-back-soon evangelical on the one hand or a neoconservative I-never-met-a-war-I-didn't-like "intellectual" on the other hand, these days you're probably not a Republican. Throw in a college degree or the habit of getting information from any source other than right wing blogs, radio "personalities" like Rush Limbaugh or "authors" like Ann Coulter and you won't be voting Republican again in this lifetime.

What's caused the Republican Party's real meltdown? It's that it has ceased to exist as a political party and is instead a dwindling weirdly eclectic collection of uneducated rubes led by a few fearful angry far right thinkers who talk in media sound bites geared to the types of people who watch Fox News. Jack Kemp was not part of this horrible little "party." He was a smart compassionate man. There used to be more Republicans like Kemp. Today the Republican core constituency is the national village idiot.

With the election of President Obama America has turned the page on the village idiots. We now have a president who is a religious believer himself, who supports Israel (as I do, by the way), but who well understands -- and articulates beautifully as he just did at Notre Dame talking about abortion -- the fact that authentic faith should be a unifying force instead of a divisive one. That's bad news for religious nuts, be they Christians or Jews. That's good news for America and the world, and maybe for our overstretched military too.

If you want a hint as to who said it, click here.

In A Pinch, Count On The New York Times

The New York Times showed a positive bias toward Barack Obama? Who knew?

Acknowledging what the blogosphere has known for weeks, the New York Times finally went on record to admit that just before last Election Day it killed a politically sensitive news story involving corruption allegations that might have made the Obama campaign look bad.

Be sure to read the rest on how The NYT helped to kill a story on campaign finance violations and Barack Obama.

Via Memeorandum.

It's Only A Mild Pox, Nothing To Be Worried About

I was tagged by Eric. May as well get it over with. Post eight random items about me then I'll do my civic duty by passing the Filthy Blog Pox along to someone else.

• I have lived in Wyoming, Arizona, Michigan and Virginia.


• I am a Detroit Tigers fan. Detroit Lions? Meh.


• My primary education went private school, home school, then public school.


• I have a mild case of OCD when I post something I need a tag for it.


• As a Boy Scout growing up, I would work at the summer camp most of the summer. One of the best jobs I ever had.


• I installed enough Direct TV systems that at one time, I could figure out my azimuth (The left and right direction the dish pointed) by checking the time and the location of the sun.


• I do most of the cooking for my household.


• This has to be one of the coolest things I've ever seen. Maybe because I got to work and play with a lot of the same equipment when I was taking electronics in college.

Off to visit P & P, HotMES, and Clever S.Logan and cough on their blogs so I can pass it along.

THE PRESIDENT OF EARMARK NATION

It's Friday Night And Dollhouse Is Over For The Season

What's left except fun with Star Trek. Via Moe Lane.





And if Trek isn't your thing, Korn has a respectable cover of Radiohead's 'Creep'.



And if covers by Korn isn't your thing, Moe has some more fun stuff worth checking out.

Tea Party Message Received Or Political Positioning?

From his campaign trail news conference in New Mexico.

“We can’t keep on just borrowing from China,” Obama said at a town-hall meeting in Rio Rancho, New Mexico, outside Albuquerque. “We have to pay interest on that debt, and that means we are mortgaging our children’s future with more and more debt.”

Holders of U.S. debt will eventually “get tired” of buying it, causing interest rates on everything from auto loans to home mortgages to increase, Obama said. “It will have a dampening effect on our economy.”

No shit, Sherlock. For those of you who have been paying attention, that has been the unifying message of the Tea Parties (The President is echoing the cries of so called 'Right Wing Extremists'? Who knew?). Stop the massive increase of national debt.

But did Obama really get the message from the Tea Parties? I have my doubts. Others do too:

That is to say, if we assume that this speech about "unsustainable" debt signals a new theme that will become part of the administration's economic policy, Obama can only be laying the groundwork for massive tax hikes:

• A. We can't keep borrowing money, because that will "have a dampening effect on our economy";


• B. However, we can't cut entitlement spending, because that would hurt poor people and old people who are dependent on federal aid;

Ergo . . .

• C. We must raise taxes on "the rich," who "aren't paying their fair share."

Nice game Obama has going on. If he was serious, he could immediately curtail any and all of the so called 'Stimulus Bill' and re-draft his budget. Which will happen as soon as a radioactive spider will bite me enabling me to climb walls.

H/T to R.S. McCain who has more.

Cross posted at the Richmond Tea Party.

I Never Thought I Would Live To See The Day When Maxim Magazine Would Play Politics

It's either a big suck up or it's Chicago Politics at it's finest.

"Nice magazine you have here. Shame if anything were to happen to it. See da boss's dame over there? Hows about putting her in one of yer special lists, see? Right there where dat Palin chick was going to go. And there had better me no mention of Palin at all in the final listings if you knows what's good for you."

Maxim magazine listed her as number 93 of their yearly 'Hot 100' list.

Beating out Padma Lakshmi who was placed at 95:



No politics being played at all. Nope.

H/T Newsbusters via P & P.

Nice Photo

Now In Technicolor

Interesting seeing how this was made over fifty years ago. Don't worry about the voice over at the beginning but stick with it for the cartoon.

Other Things Overheard At The White House Corrispondance Dinner

If she didn't want to hear the answer she shouldn't have asked the question.

Sen. John McCain’s daughter [Meghan McCain] — who writes online for The Daily Beast and will soon release a book about life as a Republican — lost it after getting stopped by security when she arrived at the White House Correspondents dinner Saturday. The problem? She had only two tickets, but brought two friends.

“The security guard sent her to talk to someone to sort out the situation, but Meghan got bratty and nastily told him, ‘We’ll just stand here then,’ like an insolent child,” our source said, adding that after dealing with the guard, “She muttered to her friends, ‘Does he even know who the f--- I am?’ ”

A few other things were overheard that night too:

• "For a Republican who likes to write about sex, you sure aren't trying to hard to get your extra friend inside."



• [Alternate take] "Meghan, you will have to do what Helen Thomas did when she was a ticket short."



• "That's the same thing Alexandra Kerry said four years ago.



• "The president should be squirming in his seat. Not smiling. The black dyke got it wrong. No one told her the rules." [I'm not kidding on this one]



• "Who hit Whoopi with the ugly stick?"



• "Is it just me or when Pres. Obama tells a joke he reminds me of Urkel?" "Heretic!"



• "*gasps* Pres. Obama knows my name!"



• "If Helen Thomas gets to the open bar before we do, we'll never get a drink."



• "I like the cut of this young man's jib. This Sykes fellow."



• "No Meghan, both tickets are for you. One for you, the other for your ass."

Money Pit, Money Hole, What's The Difference?

It would be more along the lines of outright hysterical if it wasn't so to the truth.

I'm Not Sure But This Movie Looks Serious

Movie previews are an art form in and of themselves. To be able to show enough to entice the average viewer and tell what the movie will be about but not give away the plot. Music helps with a vital component as well. Will the be funny or serious? Scary or an adventure?

With the right edit and the right score for a movie, a rather benign comedy can give the appearance a rather dark and disturbed looking drama.



Moe Lane has some more thoughts about Ferris Bueller and Tyler Durden that may be on the disturbing side.

A Well Regulated Yard Sale

File under 'Creating a bigger problem than it solves' category.

Thinking of having a yard sale this weekend? Before you do, be sure to consult CSPC Publication #254 [PDF]. This handy 28-pager from the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) reminds the American people that, thanks to the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act (which I have blogged about here and here), the government is totally in charge of your yard sale:

This handbook will help sellers of used products identify types of potentially hazardous products that could harm children or others. CPSC’s laws and regulations apply to anyone who sells or distributes consumer products. This includes thrift stores, consignment stores, charities, and individuals holding yard sales and flea markets.

Moe Lane has more about it and summed it up before I had a chance too.

Marie Osmond's Lesbian Daughter

If Elisabeth Hasselbeck decides to ditch The View (whenever her contract is up), my bet is that it will be Meghan McCain replacing her. The long shot? Marie Osmond's Lesbian Daughter.

And on the subject of The View, a new web portal is starting. The Conservative Political Report has made it's debut. Stacy McCain said it best that Jason Corley and Mike Casey running the site have "more IQ points than the combined cast of 'The View' (except Elizabeth Hasselbeck)." Even that last part is suspect at times.

From The Somali Souvenir Shop

It's been out of the news for a while but I just received this the other day in my email.



Thanks Mom and Dad.

Show Them The Door

Way to be stewards of the country.

"We are, in essence, deputizing the entire American citizenry to help with the oversight of this program," said Rep. Brad Miller, chairman of the House Committee on Science and Technology's subcommittee on investigations and oversight.

So, too, said Earl Devaney, the ex-cop who's now chairman of the Recovery Act Accountability and Transparency Board, charged with tracking the torrent of cash now pouring out of federal coffers.

"I'm going to have millions of citizens to help me," he said, comparing run-of-the-mill Americans to inspectors general, the high-ranking officials charged with ferreting out waste and abuse in federal agencies.

"I'm going to have a million little IGs running around," the chairman said Tuesday after his testimony before the subcommittee.

Just three of the 10 members bothered to show up for the subcommittee's second meeting, dramatically titled "Follow the Money Part II."

Can't help but feel like this is some sort of fail on a multitude of levels.

"How do you plan to verify the actual number of jobs created?" he asked.

"Sir, we haven't really received any information about that on the Web site," Mr. Devaney said.

Thanks to Re-Tea.

Speaking of Gitmo

About the 1:30 mark everyone in the room shuts up and listens to Dr. Rice speak. Note to punk college kid. Never try to match wits with someone who has a resume bigger than the Playboy magazine you have stashed under your mattress.



Unless you are a pimpled face ambulance chaser old named Scott Horton. Horton is best known for representing Bilal Hussein. A terrorist who would take pictures of the enemy forces in Iraq firing on US troops then selling them to the Associated Press.

He has it in for anyone in the Bush administration. For a lawyer, he doesn't seem to realize that this can set a bad precedent.

In a meeting with Stanford students at a dormitory reception on April 27, the school’s former provost got off to a shaky start and ended in a train wreck. She may in fact have her last words in the exchange quoted back to her some day in a law court.

It's not so much as he was against enhanced interrogation techniques as he seems to be against anything Pres. Bush did.

There Is a Bore In The Woods

H/T Conservatives For Palin.

You Think?

“The more they look at it,” said one official, “the more commissions don’t look as bad as they did on Jan. 20.”


Thanks to JR for the link.

The Simplest Solution Present's Itself

"I fully expect to have 535 pieces of legislation before this is over saying, 'Not in my district, not in my state,' " Gates said, referring to the number of senators and representatives in Congress. He said the Pentagon wants to have $50 million at hand in case it has to build a prison on short notice.

In January, President Obama ordered the closure of the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, within a year. Gates said the facilities, which cost tens of millions of dollars to construct, are likely to be "mothballed."

There is a simple solution to this. I know of such a facility that isn't inside the continental United States. The outrage of Not In My Backyard won't be an issue. In fact, it is on an island where if there is an escape attempt, the escapees won't get very far. It's already operating within the current budget of the administration. The best part is that you do not need to transport the current detainees to a new facility.

Leave Gitmo open and make the detainees in the Global War on Terror stay there

Friday Night Mash Up

The golden rule for mash ups, add Star Trek to make them better.

Shut Up

This has been around for a few days now. Worth watching once more.

A Thought

For those of you who have been paying attention. Snarlin' Arlen Specter switched political parties -- making it formal -- to the Democrat ticket. Giving the Democrats a filibuster proof Senate and hold more than a hundred seats in the House over the Republicans.

That means that any legislation that is voted down will be a bipartisan effort.

I look forward to more bipartisanship in the future.