Archive for April, 2009
Tea Parties & More: Putting Money, Time & Energy Where Our Mouths Are–UPDATED
Friday, April 10th, 2009The Tea Parties are coming up and many of us, myself included, whose activism has been limited to voting and blogging are getting involved now locally. Twitter and Facebook have been good resources for networking and keeping up on how things are going. Still, many working people are too busy for that, but this new way to keep abreast of things is really useful: Being notified on your cell phone via text message of local events.
Please go to Let Freedom Ring and you’ll find all sorts of resources.
There is a sense that the United States government is no longer by the people and for the people. Now, the government is by special groups and for special groups who receive special favor. Average Americans need to band together to be heard.
The Left is way ahead of the Right when it comes to controlling the narrative, shaping policy and pushing an agenda. They spend money and push around power. Not only do they protest and make noise, they have agencies to do their ideological bidding and the press plays along:
Conservatives know liberals have built a powerful network of pressure groups who have entree — where right wing groups do not — into the newsrooms of the New York Times, Washington Post, NBC News and other left-leaning outlets.
What is not well known is that Fenton Communications, founded by liberal activist David Fenton, binds the two together to produce explosive public relations campaigns that conservatives have trouble matching or rebuffing.
Understanding Fenton’s connections to the press, liberal Washington lawmakers, pressure groups and trial lawyers is increasingly important for conservatives if they are to emerge from their decidedly minority status in Washington.
Think there isn’t coordination? Look at what Doug Ross has dug up. Most recently, a sham group for Big Labor has pushed forward “research” about uninsured people.
Hundreds of Mainstream Media headlines resulted from this bogus PR effort.
Oh, and P.S., the research is wrong.
The Right needs more coordination, more cohesion, more money, etc. And the big corporations bending over for the Left need to grow a spine and put money where it counts–fighting these extorting jerks by funding conservative foundations, media groups, bloggers and more.
Finally, conservative politicians need to walk the walk. Who, exactly, do these people represent anyway? Do they represent the average taxpayer being asked to bailout their irresponsible fellow Americans and corporations? Or do they, like the Democrats, represent the big interests, but just in a more subtle way. Are Republicans for personal responsibility or not? Are Republicans for economic freedom or not? Are Republicans for individual solutions or not? Are Republicans for the family or not?
Because Americans are unsure about the Republican party and feel betrayed by it, they are very angry. They feel taken advantage of and duped. Americans don’t want a “little bit better” Republican party. The party slogan has got to cease being, “It Could Be Worse”.
We’re seeing what worse looks like. It’s far worse than even we could have imagined. Still, Republicans can forget being rewarded for bad behavior. They need to stick to principles and make better, more proactive policy.
America suffers a crisis of leadership. We need new leaders. The Tea Party movement is not just about registering discontent, but renewing the focus on what matters.
America is at a cross-roads. We are either the nation the Founding Fathers imagined or we’re morphing into an impotent Europe II. What will it be? Average Americans should be the “deciders” not Leftist special interest organizations that have the Mainstream Media in their hip pockets. The Tea Party movement is a start.
UPDATED:
Matt Lewis talks about the outrage fueling the Tea Party movement and the liberal left’s odd two step of dismissing it as irrelevant and seeking to interfere at the same time:
In fact, it looks like liberals are taking this far more seriously than they are letting on. Furthermore, their underground efforts to disrupt the Tea Parties may even be a tacit endorsement of their effectiveness. Michelle Malkin noted that, “the tax-subsidized and Soros-subsidized troops are going to try and wreak havoc every way they can. Many readers and fellow bloggers have seen signs that ACORN may send in ringers and saboteurs”.
But one reason there is reason for liberals to fear this spontaneous movement is that, for years, the nature of conservatism to be a chaotic movement (in the sense that conservatives are guided by an “invisible hand” as opposed to following appointed “leaders”) has been a political detriment. The good news is that technology has finally arrived at a point where this independent nature is no longer a liability.
I think Matt is right. At one time, the fact that conservatives tended to be working, spread out and difficult to organize because, well, they have lives, has changed thanks to technology.
Also, I think that everyone–both elected officials (Republicans included) and the Left–is underestimating the fury. Yes. Fury. Moral outrage is mild. When my Aunt and Uncle at age 70 know about the Tea Party and are going into Chicago to attend and protest, the sentiment has reached the bottom of the grassroots. My Aunt and Uncle don’t read my blog. They are barely computer literate. But they get email and they know all about the Tea Party and they’ll be there. I was shocked, frankly, at their anger and involvement.
Underestimate this movement to your own demise. And every elected Republican should have his or her ass at the Tea Party. Don’t expect to speak. Just be there and absorb. Listen to your constituents and keep your yappers shut. Right now, you have no credibility. That includes you, Newt. People are sick and tired of hearing talk and ideas and then having the government get bigger, take more and just generally acting irresponsible.
Enough.
Cross-posted at Right Wing News
Drew At Ace
Thursday, April 9th, 2009How To Get Your Boyfriend To Dump You
Now, this, ladies, is some good advice.
“Is Levi Fair Game?” Yes.
Thursday, April 9th, 2009Ed Morrissey says this about Bristol Palin’s unfortunate choice in baby daddy:
In fact, I think a lot of people miss the point with Levi. Both sides seem to have forgotten that these are very young people who obviously have little experience in interpersonal relationships. The Left forgot that during the election when they pilloried Bristol (and her mother) for not getting an abortion and demanding to know whether Bristol used birth control — which was really none of anyone else’s business. Some of us are missing it now when we attack Levi personally, rather than just criticize his caddish “kiss and tell” appearances for what they are.
He is critical of Erick Erickson who makes some untoward inferences. Bah.
Talk about teen relationships is missing the point here. Sure these are young kids. Sure they’re stupid. Young and stupid kinda go together and babies sometimes result.
However, all sympathy for Levi evaporated when he and his sister, and worst of all, his mother appeared on a talk show hack’s couch and spilled the beans to the world about his sex life. Bad enough to talk in the locker room. It makes you scum. But to talk about your son’s mother on National TV? Well, sir, you’ve just made yourself into a celebritard worthy of scorn.
This story says more about our celebrity culture than it does about the sex lives of teenagers. Levi Johnson’s idiot mother sat on the couch with her son in front of TV cameras and knew that he was going to be talking about his sex life. And that was okay with her.
Is it any wonder this boy has no morals and no class? So sorry, Ed. 99.99% of the time I agree with you, but this time not so much. Levi Johnson made himself the focus. And as such, he deserves all the criticism that he gets. He’s not just the father of Bristol Palin’s son, he’s a celebrity! Lucky him.
P.S. This in no way excuses the behavior of the press toward Bristol and the Palins during the campaign. Bristol was not running for office and did not ask to be center stage. She did not deserve the treatment she received.
And for the record, I wish she would not have said a word about abstinence. Please. Sure, she believes it’s good, in theory, but that dog has hunt.
On Hanging Separately
Thursday, April 9th, 2009A year ago, my co-blogger John Hawkins asked me to write at Right Wing News. I’m an independent person. I have my own blog. I like the freedom to write what I want to write. Still, John has a bigger audience and I believe the future is going to be consolidation. United, conservative writers and thinkers have greater power.
But there’s not much money in the game. In fact, for most conservative bloggers, there’s next to no money in the game. Some very good writers, thinkers, strategists and experts who blog get nothing but a good reputation for their efforts. A good reputation doesn’t pay the bills.
In my own case, I doctor to pay for my blog habit. That is, I give away my blogging work for free unless I free-lance an article for an on-line publication. Since writing and politics are my passions, I have viewed blogging as a hobby.
As time has gone on, I’ve seen the trends that John mentions today and it’s getting irksome:
I got a promo from one of them, that shall remain nameless, a few days back. They were bragging that they were running a million dollar ad campaign. While that’s great, as far as I can tell, they’re not spending a cent of that ad campaign on conservative blogs — and do you know how much it would cost to run an ad on every single blog in the conservative advertising network at Blogads for a week? At the moment, only $5,686. That’s roughly 1/176th of the amount they’re going to spend on this campaign, but they’re not even willing to go that far to support the Rightroots that are out in the trenches every day.
In fact, we’ve even gotten to the point now where organizations will pay thousands of dollars on consultants, to hit blogs up for links, instead of just buying ads on the blogs. That’s great for the consultants (and I can tell you that from personal experience), but it sucks for the bloggers who get nothing but link requests out of it while some consultant pockets a fat check just for writing a few emails that generally don’t produce any results.
The consultants don’t just want links. They want friendly stories. They want candidate exposés.
During the last election, do you know who advertised on my site? C-Span. That’s right. C-Span appreciated my election coverage and live-blogging, but the Republican party probably didn’t know I existed. Well, there’s a few of us who live blog these big events and draw a crowd. It would be in a candidate’s best interest to know these people–Ann Althouse, VodkaPundit’s drunk blogging, and I are pretty darn consistent. And yet, no ad dollars from campaigns.
Part of the problem is that political bloggers focused nationally have a national audience. That is, since I don’t focus on Houston issues, my readership isn’t local. Ironically, I think I’d have an easier time with advertising if my readership were primarily local–even if the readership was smaller.
Since my readership is national and broad–political and cultural interests–fewer advertisers are interested. Doesn’t matter that the readership is educated, upper income, and fertile soil for certain products.
Will hanging together help to change the money problem? I don’t see how. If bloggers join together, it doesn’t guarantee that think tanks, lobbyist groups, candidates or other conservative groups will suddenly get generous and spend parts of their budgets online.
In fact, there’s been a strange derisiveness about bloggers by those on the right. Political consultants gingerly ask for help here and there, but don’t give much in return. And it’s not just a problem on the right. Yesterday, Jane Hamsher and Kos noted the same problem at the Plumline:
A number of these top bloggers agreed to come on record with me after privately arguing to these groups that they deserved a share in the ad wealth and couldn’t be taken for granted any longer.
“They come to us, expecting us to give them free publicity, and we do, but it’s not a two way street,” Jane Hamsher, the founder of FiredogLake, said in an interview. “They won’t do anything in return. They’re not advertising with us. They’re not offering fellowships. They’re not doing anything to help financially, and people are growing increasingly resentful.”
Hamsher singled out Americans United for Change, which raises and spends big money on TV ad campaigns driving Obama’s agenda, as well as the constellation of groups associated with it, and the American Association of Retired Persons, also a big TV advertiser.
“Most want the easy way — having a big blogger promote their agenda,” adds Markos Moulitsas, the founder of DailyKos. “Then they turn around and spend $50K for a one-page ad in the New York Times or whatever.” Moulitsas adds that officials at such groups often do nothing to engage the sites’s audiences by, say, writing posts, instead wanting the bloggers to do everything for them.
Some on the right were snarky, but the problem is universal.
Blogging, at the forefront of New Media, is a more intimate and friendly way to get a message to people. Politicians, lobbyists, writers hawking books,and think tanks, all love the medium when it suits them, but don’t seem to recognize that people are trying to make a living.
What to do? I don’t really know. Blogging doesn’t yet have the respect and understanding of the political class. And forget social media. Most of the consultants and “experts” I know are stupid about it, so how could their charges have a clue?
Perhaps as the Legacy Media fades, the political class will put their money where it counts more. Still, why pay for what you get for free?
Aggressive Schooling
Wednesday, April 8th, 2009There have been all sorts of articles written about Helicopter Parents and now, there’s a new trend called “slow parenting“. Slow parenting is just as the name implies–yank your kids out of activities and slow down. There is competing evidence, like came from Malcolm Gladwell’s book Outliers that kids do better with more activities and need at least ten years of consistent, hard work to achieve mastery. And then, there was his extolling of the schools that go year around and for eight hours a day, including Saturday.
Slow parenting might be a new trend, though I’m dubious. Aggressive, strung-out parenting seems to be the norm. Kids have their extra-curricular activities and then they come home…where they are the victims of aggressive schooling.
All the parents complain about aggressive schooling and then, they comply. Their kids come home with projects beyond their ability and the parents are forced to “help” or else the child will be consigned to B+ status.
There is a method to the schooling madness. By making every piece of homework a little too difficult and a must-check and sign by parents, teachers off-load responsibility. If the kid is uneducated, it’s not the teacher’s fault, the parents just don’t care enough and aren’t involved.
Beyond the state’s control of the individual’s behavior, is there any evidence that front-loading education accomplishes anything besides making kids tired and frustrated with school?
And while kids seem to know more minutiae do they have the context to put this information in?
My concern is practical–kids are tired, worn-out and have less time to just play. My concern is also scientific. It seems that there should be evidence that these methods actually work. Children are scheduled heavily and working evenings and weekends when the time could be spent doing other things. Does this work pay off? What are the outcomes to this approach?
If SAT scores mean anything, education has declined, not improved. From the Wall Street Journal:
High-school students’ performance on SAT college-entrance exams stalled, and the gap widened between low-scoring minority groups and the overall population, raising questions about the quality of teaching in U.S. schools.
There should be evidence that broad academic front-loading is helpful and effective. If not, kids need to be cut a break. They have their whole lives to learn taxonomy, but there are only a few years to play.
Europe: Out–European Bailouts By Americans, In–Talk
Wednesday, April 8th, 2009For eight years, Americans have been given a steady media diet about how America would receive help from Europe if only George W. Bush would have been less cowboy and more diplomat. So now, America has President Barack Obama who is all hat and no cattle, and European policy is still selfish, short-sighted and really, anti-American.
President Obama spent his European trip saying soothing words to an adoring electorate. That’s great. America now has our own version of Princess Diana in our President–beautiful, stylish, vapid, narcissistic and a tad unstable. The press adores him. The people swoon.
Meanwhile, Europe still refuses to help root out al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Iraq and denies any responsibility for the world economic woe. Now, I don’t feel so bad that they told our President “no way on the spending”, because I’d like less of that here, myself. It just irritates me that they Europeans are so eager to use anti-American rhetoric when they expect America to take care of them.
Here is the reality: Right now, Iran is almost armed. Right now, Russia controls a good chunk of the energy that makes it to Europe. Oh, and by the way, Russia informs America that Iran poses no threat to us. How about Europe? How about Israel? The European countries risk being squeezed like a vice. Should bad things happen in this scenario (and how can bad things not happen?) who do they expect to bail them out of the crisis? America.
Old Europe has pathetic military forces. They refuse to spend on defense. They live cushy, mediocre, socialistic lives because their excess cash goes to financial support for the non-productive with their perennially high unemployment rate. And they are surrounded by enemies and depend on America to be the bad cop while they appease evil all around.
And yet, President Obama kisses the ring of these weak, mushy “allies”. He bows where he shouldn’t. Worst of all, he puts terror in the hearts of staunch American friends. Poland worries about being defenseless. India is pressured about Kashmir. Israel, by all actions of the President, will stand alone.
In the new world order, Iran and North Korea will be allowed to continue their ambitions. In the new world order, President Obama will appease the appeasers in Europe. In the new world order, loyal American allies will be disrespected.
Japan, Poland and “New Europe”, India, Israel, and even “Old Europe” better pay attention. President Obama has shown a penchant for saying things that sound good to everyone but holding very leftist policies.
The only satisfying part of this new approach is that Europe will be receiving a taste of their own medicine. There will be lots of talk. Europeans prize talking. President Obama prizes talking. It’s a relationship made in Freudian, psychoanalytic heaven.
Talk. Talk. Talk. And when Europe gets in a pinch, rather than a bailout, they should expect more talk. It won’t keep them safe. It won’t fix anything. It will make the world more dangerous. But let’s keep our priorities straight. President Obama is absolutely dashing. That’s what matters most.
Europe and President Obama are a match made in heaven.
Cross-posted at RightWingNews
