Many in the Right Blogosphere have brought up the inexperience subject. To be fair, they’ve done so in a thoughtful manner. Two such people are Kevin at Pundit Review and Allahpundit at HotAir.

Here are a couple of concerns Kevin raises:

McCain turns 72 years old today. When thinking about a VP, I believe voters look at them and think, “can I imagine this person as president”. For all his flaws, Joe Biden passes that test. Will Sarah Palin? I don’t know?

Can she hold her own against a hostile press corps? How about against Joe Biden for that matter? The only honest answer is that nobody knows. I saw her about a month ago on Larry Kudlow’s TV show and I thought she did ok, not great, just ok. If that was my impression watching her in friendly territory, how will she do when really pressed?

With all due respect to Kevin, Joe Biden only passes the test stylistically. That isn’t nearly good enough for me. It’s why I ignored statements like this or that candidate “looks presidential.” When Sen. Obama took his overseas trip, especially after his meetings with President Sarkozy and PM Brown and in his ‘Citizen of the World’ speech in Berlin, the press practically wet their pants in talking about how presidential he looked. (continue reading post »)

Yes, you read that right. In this post for the Huffington Post, Clinton attack puppy Paul Begala said everything except that Michelle hit it out of the park. Here’s Mr. Begala’s opening paragraph:

Michelle Obama was spectacular Monday night. Poised, charming, beautiful, and most of all, authentic.

I’d love for Mr. Begala to spin me a tale on what he thought was Michelle’s most authentic moment. Was it when, as Byron York notes, Michelle said this:

“My piece of the American Dream is a blessing hard won by those who came before me.” Those forebears, she explained, were “driven by the same conviction that drove my dad to get up an hour early each day to painstakingly dress himself for work, the same conviction that drives the men and women I’ve met all across this country…That’s why I love this country.”

If so, how does Mr. Begala explain that against what she said in North Carolina: (continue reading post »)

I just visited DailyKos to see what the rabids are saying about Biden. I was totally unprepared for this headline:

AP Conservative shill Ron Fournier: Biden pick shows lack of confidence

The first thing I thought was “Ron Fournier is a conservative shill”? The next thing I did was ask whether there’s proof of anyone at the AP being a conservative. Then I realized that, to the KosKids, anyone slightly to the right of Ted Kennedy is a conservative. Here’s how MrBurns17 starts his diary:

Let’s see… how could lil’ Ron spin this Biden pick without getting into too much hot water? Sure those liberals threw a fit over his chummy emails to Karl Rove, but… what Ron worry? He’ll just pen an opinion piece, throw a softball to Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, and Bill o’Reilly, and let them do the dirty work. Not that these lackeys of the radical right needed any help, but why not throw them a bone anyway? Typical conservative greed and bigotry have managed, through another well funded smear campaign, to push Obama’s poll numbers down and bring another corporate proxy (actually two if you count Mitt) one step closer to occupying the White House. So now that we’ve established that Obama is too “exotic”, and too “liberal”, it’s time to paint him as “weak”…

I wonder what MrBurns17 will do when he finds out about Biden’s extensive ties to lobbyists. Will that information push him over the edge? Coming to think of it, I can’t be certain that he didn’t already go over that edge.

Tune in later today for more episodes from the galaxy the KosKids inhabit.

Technorati Tags: Joe Biden, DailyKos, Lobbyists, Ron Fournier, Agenda Media, Associated Press, Blogs, Election 2008

Cross-posted at LetFreedomRingBlog

I’ve had a mildly frustrating day today. I could access CalCon. I just couldn’t access my WP dashboard. (I kept getting 404 could not find errors.) After trying every trick in the book, & a few that weren’t, I decided “Screw this, download Firefox’, which I did. I got Firefox all setup the way I like it about a half hour ago. Or so I thought. I couldn’t access my TrueNorth dashboard with Firefox. MAJOR GRRRRR!!!

The next logical thing to do was to use Internet Explorer for TrueNorth & Firefox for everything else.

That’s when I noticed something unexpected and totally appreciated. When I started IE7, everything came up just like it’s supposed to, including my preset tabs.

HOORAY!!!

Now I’m back in business. It’s time to make up for lost time. It’s been an entire morning and afternoon since I’ve harrassed high profile liberals. With all this frustration, it won’t take me more than an hour for me to crank out at least 3-4 posts harassing liberals.

Technorati Tags: Blogging, California Conservative, Liberals, Internet Explorer, Firefox

Cross-posted at LetFreedomRingBlog

I just finished participating in Rep. Michele Bachmann’s conference call summarizing the “American Energy Tour” trip to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and to Alaska. The most bizarre question and followup was from the Pioneer Press’ Jim Ragsdale.

Rep. Bachmann used a word picture to describe the offlimits energy supplies in this way:

Picture the pantry being full of food and your children wanting to eat. Then picture that the pantry is locked. America has lots of energy but Congress has locked the pantry.

Mr. Ragsdale started by saying that he liked the picture, then asked this question:

“What if the pantry was full and the children were already overweight. Shouldn’t we keep that pantry locked?

Obviously, these aren’t verbatim quotes but they’re accurate depictions of what was said. Based on his question, I’d say that it isn’t a stretch to think that Mr. Ragsdale thinks that, in terms of energy consumption, we’re overweight and we need to have our food rationed so we get down to an acceptable weight.

The St. Cloud Times’ Larry Schumacher asked why Rep. Bachmann thinks we could return to $2/gallon gas prices. Rep. Bachmann replied by giving a historical perspective on gas prices. She first noted that national average gas price was $2.46 when she was elected. She then said that the signal that Congress sent to the world was that we weren’t going to do anything to increase energy supplies. (continue reading post »)

I just made my daily visit to El Tinklenberg’s blog and found a laugher quote in this post:

Rep. Michele Bachmann, who has called for domestic drilling in Alaska, once again proved that she favors extremist partisanship over moderate compromise. The 6th District doesn’t need a representative who demonstrates my-way-or-the-highway leadership that looks out for the pocketbooks of Big Oil over the pocketbooks of Minnesotans.

Michele Bachmann voted against this gimmick of a bill. This wasn’t a compromise. It would’ve been total surrender to the short-sighted CYA policies (I use that term lightly) of Pelosi’s Democrats.

Questions for the Tinklenberg campaign: If this was such a moderate compromise, why did Democrats bring this up under a closed rule? If it’s such a moderate compromise, why didn’t they allow any amendments to the bill? Why didn’t Speaker Pelosi let many Democrats vote to open drilling on the OCS? Considering the fact that there wasn’t a chance for real debate or compromise, who’s the “my-way-or-the-highway partisan”?

Mr. Tinklenberg talks about Rep. Bachmann’s “my-way-or-the-highway leadership.” Why isn’t he complaining about Nancy Pelosi’s “my-way-or-the-highway leadership”? After all, Ms. Pelosi’s leadership didn’t allow any amendments. Rep. Bachmann didn’t have any say in that closed rule.

Now that we’ve established the facts of this short-sighted legislation, it’s time to ask Mr. Tinklenberg if he would’ve supported legislation that wouldn’t have allowed a vote on actually increasing oil production? Would Mr. Tinklenberg support bringing adequate supplies of oil online? Or would he have blindly followed Ms. Pelosi’s instructions?

Finally, would Mr. Tinklenberg have sided with 74 percent of likely voters who favor opening up exploration on the OCS? Or would he have voted for band-aid solutions instead of voting for real solutions?

Technorati Tags: Gas Crisis, Nancy Pelosi, El Tinklenberg, Amendments, Oil Exploration, Michele Bachmann, OCS, Election 2008

Cross-posted at LetFreedomRingBlog

It would’ve been so much fun having Jesse Ventura in the race this time. I found this blurb on him in Charlie Walters’ column this morning:

DON’T PRINT THAT

Former governor Jesse Ventura, who is a member at the TPC Twin Cities in Blaine, site of the 3M Championship, showed up at the course Thursday to play in a pro-am driving his Porsche with a sticker on the back window that read “9-11 was an inside job.”

Ventura left the course to do an interview with the Middle East network Al Jazeera.

“I prefer Al Jazeera to the Minnesota media,” Ventura said. “I’ll talk to them; I won’t talk to you.”

It’s one thing for Jesse to not like parts of the Twin Cities’ media. Lord knows that I’ve ripped some of the buffoons currently littering the media landscape. It’s quite another to say that he prefers propagandists like al-Jazeera and that 9/11 was an inside job.

Jesse’s living proof that only buffoons thinks that 9/11 was an inside job.

It would’ve been fun having Jesse in this race solely for the quotes we would’ve gotten from him. He would’ve been a blogger’s full employment act. He might’ve even made Al Franken look relatively sane.

Technorati Tags: 9/11, Truther, Jesse Ventura, Al Franken, al-Jazeera, Election 2008

Cross-posted at LetFreedomRingBlog

I’ve been critical of the GOP ever since the midterm election debacle. I’ve been especially critical of the RNC because they’ve undercut true conservatives while promoting squishy moderates. It seems like the RNC has specialized promiting CW Republicans instead of lining up behind solutions-oriented, outside-the-box-thinking conservatives.

This morning, I read Fred Barnes’ depressing column titled “The Colorado Model”. I wasn’t depressed because he wrote about the Democrats’ plan to win Colorado on all levels. It was depressing to hear Barnes talking like there wasn’t anything we could do to stop the anti-GOP trend.

I won’t tolerate that type of defeatism. That’s why I’d fire every Beltway-based GOP strategist. That’s why I’m ignoring every defeatist, process-oriented Beltway GOP pundit from this day forward. If these pundits and strategists want to whine about things instead of figuring out solutions to the biggest problems of the day, especially high gas prices, then they’re part of the problem. PERIOD.

That’s why I’ve been impressed with the House Republicans. I’ve participated in 2 blogger conference calls on energy recently. Organized by my representative Michele Bachmann, they’ve focused on increasing oil production. That’s a solution that the public understands and agrees with.

What’s more is that they’re dispelling the myth that “We can’t drill our way out of this crisis.” They’re also dispelling the myths that drilling won’t drop prices and that it’ll take forever to get the oil online.

Whether it’s Michele Bachmann, John Peterson, Eric Cantor, Phil Gingrey or Roy Blunt, the House GOP is staying on this important battlefield and they’re defeating the Democrats on the field of ideas. They’re exposing the factual inaccuracies in the Democrats’ statements. (continue reading post »)

Earlier this week, I posted about the House Democrats’ attempted censorship of its members. This effort is spearheaded by Rep. Michael Capuano, (D-MA). This morning, I got an email from Rep. Mike Conaway, (R-TX) asking me to sign a petition to halt the Democrats’ attempt to halt the free flow of information between my representative and myself. I’ve already signed the petition. I’m urging my readers to do the same.

Follow this link to sign Rep. Conaway’s petition.

PS- After you’ve signed the petition, I strongly encourage you to bookmark Rep. Conaway’s blog, too.

Let’s remember that then Speaker-Elect Pelosi said that the 110th Congress would be the most open and ethical congress in history. We knew that was a line of BS then. All that’s changed is that we now have proof that they’re anything but transparent or ethical.

Technorati Tags: Petition, Mike Conaway, Blogs, Michael Capuano, Nancy Pelosi, Censorship, Ethics

Cross-posted at LetFreedomRingBlog

According to The Bachmann Blog’s latest post, Rep. Michael Capuano, (D-MA), wants to make blogging congresscritters go through a process before being permitted to post on blogs or YouTube. Here’s a portion of Rep. Capuano’s letter to Rep. Brady, (D-PA), chair of the Committee on House Administration:

As you are aware, current CHA regulations have been interpreted to prohibit Members from posting official content outside the .gov domain. Unfortunately, many members who wish to display vidoe on their websites have found that the existing tools available within the House to do so are not user-friendly or efficient, and in that addition, server storage space within the House is insufficient to meet the growing demand for video. The House Leadership and your committee began to examine solutions to this situation last year and the Franking Commission recently engaged in detailed discussions of possible solutions. Specifically, we discussed the ongoiong effort to establish designated House “channels” on external sites. This would allow a Member to post video on a qualifying external site and then embed the video on his or her Member site from this external site. The concept of an “official” external channel has been adopted by other government agencies and it could be available to the House in short order if the relevant CHA regulations and practice is amended.

Here’s another key portion of Rep. Capuano’s letter:

To the maximum extent possible, the official content should not be posted on a website or page where it may appear with commercial or political information or any other information not in compliance with the House’s compliance guidelines.

That last section sounds eerily close to censorship. Each representative reports to We The People, not the Franking Commission or the Committee on House Administration. The information that Michele Bachmann or Eric Cantor posts on their blogs or on YouTube is information about the people’s business.

Rep. Capuano’s suggestion that this be regulated in any way is an assualt on a legislator’s ability to communicate with his/her constituents. That’s totally unacceptable. Any attempt to regulate, restrict or inhibit electronic forms of communication between a legislator and their constituents is a potential restriction on a constituent’s right to know.

We The People won’t stand for that.

Technorati Tags: Censorship, Michael Capuano, YouTube, Blogs, Michele Bachmann, Eric Cantor

Cross-posted at LetFreedomRingBlog