Tea Party National Convention Wrapup
To paraphrase Sarah Palin, I have seen the future of politics in this country and I am happy to report that it is overwhelming white, Southern, and middle-aged. I left behind my 3 day stay at the Tea Party National Convention feeling like I was leaving summer camp, but at the same time hopeful for the future. My fellow tea party patriots and I had an amazing time and the price tag of over $1,000 now seems like a paltry sum to be at the center of a grassroots movement so strong that corporate sponsors like The Heritage Foundation and Freedomworks had no choice, but to sponsor.
Sarah Palin gave the keynote for Saturday night looking resplendent with a new hair style that wouldn’t have been out of place on the drummer for Winger or any other hair metal band of 15 years ago. She came to speak to the people and she didn’t need a fancy teleprompter. Sarah Palin was able to connect with her audience the old fashioned way, with spontaneity and a hand full of crib notes. Her talk was full of passion and inspired the entire room, but what I remember first was when she talked about how she reacted to her ticket losing the Presidential Election. Rather than dwelling on her defeat, she asked herself what she could do to best help this country moving forward and that’s when she resigned from public office. Throughout the speech, Sarah never let us forget she was a mom. This was a woman who was almost the female Joe Biden, but she still managed to throw in references to her children Piper, Yeti, and Trig.
Yesterday, ironically, would have been Ronald Reagan’s 99th birthday. I believe it’s a nationally tragedy that we will regret for many years to come that we did not cryogenically freeze him when we had the chance. Ronald Reagan was a national treasure and he is sincerely missed.
Today is the Super Bowl and it’s very easy to get caught up in the excitement of the big game, but let’s remember the real meaning of today–a child was born in humble circumstance so that he could one day save us all. Let’s not forget to salute Tim Tebow on this day of all days. My prediction for the game is that the Colts will beat the Saints 38-17. I just think they are the more God fearing team.
Tea Party National Convention – Day 2
I’m reporting back from the Tea Party National Convention and I have to say, it’s like Disney World for conservatives. The morning was very promising. Smart Girl Politics had a breakout session on “How to do Voter Registration Drives and Where to Find Conservative Votes” & “Women in Politics”. Unfortunately, I accidentally read it as Find Conservative Women, but that’s actually what it turned into. A lot of them were kind of old, but I was able to give my business card to a lot of girls and I told them to meet me at the hotel lobby tonight after 11PM. I hope that this pays off.
Young Americans for Freedom also had a breakout session in the morning and it was great. The topic was how to involve the youth in the conservative movement and I got a loud round of applause when I suggested golf as a great gateway to conservatism. We agreed to try and reach out to young people in our communities to bring them over to the conservative cause. The seminar focused on how to find potential tea party members. It seems a lot of the current movement members were loners in high school. They had some common hobbies like hunting small animals or watching fires. It also seems oddly that a lot of tea party members had issues with wetting the bed into their teens. Now, obviously we won’t be targeting bed wetters to join, but it shows just how open the spirit here is that so many people were willing to admit it.
The third breakout session on Conservative Arts and Crafts was great. I made an ashtray that is shaped like a gun rack. I was real proud of it and I can’t wait to see it tomorrow when it dries. There were a lot of awesome things made here. You’d be amazed how many things you can make a sock into.
There was so much good stuff tonight. I’m just getting back from seeing Joseph Farah and Angela McGlowan. They were as amazing as you could imagine. Angela was fair and balanced, but Joe was a great rabble rouser. His main point was how we can overthrow the government which seems a little extreme, but certainly interesting. The diversity here is amazing. I looked around the convention center and you could see white people, Caucasians, Anglo-Saxons, WASPS–it was breathtaking. I’m off to a karaoke party and I want to get there early before somebody else does a Toby Keith song.
Greetings from the Tea Party Convention
I’m excited to be writing to you from the National Tea Party Convention in beautiful Nashville, TN. This convention counting airfare is running me over $1,000 but it’s worth it to support a worthy grassroots cause like the tea parties. My day has been very full and enjoyable. I’ve learned more about NASCAR than I had ever known–being from Chicago and I felt a sense of American pride that I have never felt before outside of a Lee Greenwood concert.
My day was very full. After flying in this morning, I hit the convention. Ray Stevens provided the entertainment and I swear The Streak is just as fun as it was when it first hit the charts in the 1970s. Tom Tancredo provided the keynote for the evening and I got to listen to him with California Congressman Jack Kimble. There were two breakout sessions and I think I got a lot out of both of them.
The 50 Most Common Demonstration Sign Misspellings and How to Avoid Them was terrific. It was taught by Dr. E.Y. Hansen who was an English professor at Dartmouth before he was fired for teaching Creationism in his class. I learned a lot including that Fascism actually has an “s” in the middle. Dr. Hansen gave everybody a laminated list of frequently misspelled words from Tea Bag rallies so that even a moran would be able to protest without embarrassing themselves.
The second breakout session was taught by a Mindy Carlson who was a former Kansas City Chief cheerleader. It was discovered after several large tea parties last year that we were terrible at cheering on command. Several times the Fox anchor would hold the microphone out to hear us and you only hear a smattering of voices. What we learned wasn’t really cheering or choreography so much as pep–the sort of manly cheering that George Bush did in College.
I’m going with some cool Alabama tea baggers to watch Birth of a Nation. I like old movies and it seems to be the only DVD anybody has around here. I’ll keep you posted tomorrow.
Blogroll Amnesty Day
I almost let Blogroll Amnesty Day pass me by. I blame this on the demise of Jon Swift’s brilliant blog. If you like my blog, I promise you’ll love his because many people believed I was him when I started blogging. I especially recommend checking out his Amazon.com book reviews. As Jon Swift explains it:
Ironically, Blogroll Amnesty Day had a net positive effect for the blogosphere as a whole. I discovered a number of great blogs and made new friends and I am sure that is true for others as well. And so instead of remembering February 3 as a day that will live in infamy, let’s turn this day into a celebration of the power of smaller blogs. Let’s recognize that building an inclusive community of diverse voices is what the blogosphere should be about, not creating a new elite to replace the old mainstream media elite.
The goal of Blogroll Amnesty Day is for bloggers to link to smaller blogs that you like so that some of your readers will make their way over and you can build up the smaller blog readership. I avoided blogs that are already on my blogroll so this year, I think I’m going to make the focus be on education:
Edumacation Archive – OK, this is cheating because it’s my own education blog so I won’t count it as 1 of my 5. It is smaller though and less frequently updated than this one. However, it definitely gives you a different side of my writing.
1. Schools Matter – A great source for education news. Kenneth Libby is a great Twitter Friends and even their blogroll is fantastic although it does have one glaring omission (see above).
2. Porkchop Express – OK this guy is just flat out weird, but he linked to me.
3. I Like Argyle - The blog of a Twitter friend who is unfortunately liberal, but a snazzy dresser.
4. My Mental Dumping Ground – Australian Cricket fan now living in California so if you do write him a comment type it very slowly and take a break for tea.
5. Blue Gal - I doubt she’s smaller than I am, but she’s had several blogs which can make her hard to find. She’s one of the people I learned about Blogroll Amnesty Day from so she gets a link.
6. Kimble for Congress - I said I’d avoid my blogroll, but hey when the rest of you bums get elected to congress, I’ll make an exception for you too.
Congratulations to My Readers on 250,000 Hits
You have finally done it! Since www.thatsrightnate.com began on March 7, 2008 with a blog post entitled How to Make Sure You’re Not Voting for the Anti-Christ, I have made 982 posts, hosted 4,542 comments, and won nearly a dozen awards. However, I am most proud of reaching the 250,000 hit mark because if people visit this site, I know that I can educate them. I congratulate the many readers of this blog who have tirelessly linked, retweeted, and emailed your friends to get them to visit. The 250,000 hit mark is a testament to your taste and to your intelligence above all else. A painter can surely create a masterpiece without assistance, but if nobody appreciates it what is the point?
250,000 is quite an accomplishment. That means that for almost two solid years we have averaged over 1,100 hits each and every day. This number puts us in the top 100 political blogs on the internet and even higher in the rankings for the top conservative blogs. Through this blog I have been given the chance to meet politicians like Congressman Jack Kimble and to share critiques with Roger Ebert who linked to my review on Avatar. I intend to make this blog even bigger and better and I hope that it will not be too long before I can congratulate you all on a half-million hits. To quote former President Bush, “Mission accomplished.”
Grammies Prove Glenn Beck Right
Glenn Beck has been warning us for sometime now that the Obama administration is planning to use the military to eliminate our individual rights and crack down on all dissent. Many of the liberal elite have tried to tell us that Beck was simply overreacting and speaking in hyperbole, but it is that same liberal elite who shows us just how dangerous things have gotten. Jamie Foxx showed up in a military uniform which might not have meant much in itself, after all you never know when Kanye West will be charging the stage.
However, watching the Black Eyed Peas who I might add have connections with the President through Will I. Am and Beyonce both showed up with full armies. I do not know if this was some sort of musical statement, but it appears that the artists are themselves worried about a coming revolution and have been using the money that they have made in the entertainment industry to acquire their own private forces much like the Warlords in Afghanistan who control their own private armies. If there is a war coming to the streets near you, expect the entertainers to have the money to make sure that themselves and their money is protected. The Grammies tonight were most disturbing.
Protecting Our Children from Smutty Dictionaries
Long time readers of this blog will know that I am not a big fan of books. The printed page is an outdated communication tool that belongs back in 17th Century Germany with the inventor of the printing press Steven Gutenberg. I am opposed to my tax dollars being wasted on libraries to store these useless relics of an earlier age. However, the one book that I find especially dangerous is the dictionary. This book contains the words that spell out all the smutty, vulgar, and deviant writings that we need to protect our children from. It only requires a relatively clever child to put the dictionary words in the right order to tell a story that would make a sailor blush. Furthermore, our founding fathers were schooled on creative spelling–the authoritarian rule of the spelling conventionalists is a slap in the face to American values.
Fortunately, some good folks in Riverside, California complained to the Menifee Union School District and got the dictionary pulled from the schools. Isn’t it a parent’s right to teach their children new words? This is how government indoctrination starts. “It’s just not age-appropriate,” said school spokeswoman Betti Cadmus, “It’s hard to sit and read the dictionary, but we’ll be looking to find other things of a graphic nature.”
One board member told the Press-Enterprise that there are probably more objectionable terms in the dictionary. You can count on it. Unfortunately, a group of liberal thug parents demanded that the dictionaries be returned to the school classrooms and the school board caved. However, I am hoping that this case will illustrate the dangers of a dictionary for young kids. They can not only find smut, but learn the correct way to pronounce it and its derivation. This is not what our tax dollars should be going for.
Democrats Overreact to Phone Prank Yet Again
Louisiana Democrat Mary Landrieu has shown a total lack of humor over a recent prank by 4 scamps led by the irrepressible James O’Keefe. This is the same Democrat party that overreacted when some of President Nixon’s employees tried a similar stunt in the early 1970s so that they could hear the Democrats’ reaction to all the pizza’s they had ordered for Thomas Eagleton. O’Keefe who specializes in punking Democrats had set up this caper perfectly, by having two friends pose as telephone repairmen who would then cut phone service to Landrieu’s office and then watch the hilarity ensue.
“Mr. O’Keefe has a history of trying to embarrass agencies or political entities on camera,” said J. Garrison Jordan, the lawyer for Robert Flanagan, the only one of the four men from Louisiana. “I think it was just an ill-designed stunt with no intent to commit a crime.”
And what a stunt it was. Can you just imagine their faces when they’re trying to get the phone to work–priceless. Why stop at phones though. Think how hysterical it would be to cut the fire alarm and then send smoke billowing through the halls so they’re all like, “there’s all this smoke, but there’s no fire alarm. What happened?” lol
It’s time for Senator Mary Landrieu to grow up and reallize that boys will be boys. She needs to admit that she was punked by the master and then get on with doing the people’s business. What the media hasn’t talked about in this story is Landrieu’s irrational reaction to the phone prank bordering on paranoia. What is it that Landrieu is hiding exactly? Why is she so nervous that her phones might be cut? These are the real questions the American public needs to ask. What are you hiding Senator Landrieu?
Obama’s State of the Union Speech
I am happy to continue my long history of live blogging with Obama’s State of the Union speech.
7:52 Biden has a purple tie and Pelosi is dressed in purple—the color of royalty. Wow! Will the American people stand for King Obama?
7:57 Do the Judges really need to wear their robes? It’s like look at me, I’m a Supreme Court Justice la de da.
8:00 Michelle Obama is sitting next to a 4 foot tall police woman.
8:06 If we want to cut the budget do we really need 2 guys to introduce the President? Couldn’t one guy say the whole phrase?
8:13 Victory very much in doubt–not a real rousing open. He forgot the Titanic and the Hindenberg.
8:18 Nice job by Biden on the clap fake.
8:19 Nice shout out to Bush on the bank bailout
8:28 Well if the new trains are in China, it makes sense for the Chinese to own them. Why doesn’t he get this stuff?
8:33 Boehner and Cantor eye rolling strategy key to Republican victory
8:42 Yay! More standardized tests. We will have the best bubble fillers in the history of filling in bubbles – take that China
8:56 Freeze spending at 1980 levels. Reagan was our greatest President and those levels were good enough for him.
9:02 You know who’d like this speech? Bobby Jindahl
9:19 Notice Obama doesn’t mention names–he’s making up these people. I bet the money isn’t even the kid’s allowance.
9:21 Sorry for the delay in tweeting. I dozed off.
9:30 Great we have the State of Virginia speech now
9:30 Twins freak me out
9:32 For those who say the GOP isn’t inclusive, I say to you we have an African-American on camera
9:35 An oil platform in every pool and an SUV in every garage.
9:38 The Christmas day bomber should be in Gitmo, not sent to a US court like the shoe bomber was. In fact, let’s send all criminals to Gitmo.
9:40 I’d agree the government closest to the people governs best if I didn’t live in Chicago (Daley), Illinois (Blagojevich, Ryan)
Obama Throws in Towel on American Butchers
As a free trade advocate, I find myself surprisingly disturbed to read that the United States has ended a 21 year ban on the importing of haggis. On this Burns night when haggis is the dish of honor for families of Scottish descent, the haggis will not be American made. The steaming concoction of sheep’s offal, oats and spices stuffed (by tradition) into a sack made of sheep’s gut was banned in 1989 when American officials worried about the dangers of eating offal. How ironic that the Bush administration didn’t use the same zeal to protect the President from Japanese food.
Obama’s signal that he would be opening the door to the Scottish haggis industry was greeted as a victory by both Scots and free trade advocates, but with nearly 9 million pounds worth of haggis sold in the UK alone last year and potentially hundreds of dollars more sold world wide, I can’t help wanting some of that money for the butchers of the United States. Why has President Oabama so callously thrown in the towel on the American haggis industry? I know he would probably say that people don’t think of an American butcher when they think of somebody making a haggis, but before him they also didn’t think of a black man when they thought of the President of the United States. Shouldn’t American butchers be given the same chance to succeed that he was? Where is the stimulus plan for the American haggis industry? I remain extremely disappointed in the President and his short sightedness.
Address To A Haggis
Fair fa’ your honest, sonsie face,
Great chieftain o’ the puddin-race!
Aboon them a’ ye tak your place,
Painch, tripe, or thairm:
Weel are ye wordy o’ a grace
As lang’s my arm.
The groaning trencher there ye fill,
Your hurdies like a distant hill,
Your pin wad help to mend a mill
In time o’ need,
While thro’ your pores the dews distil
Like amber bead.
His knife see rustic Labour dight,
An’ cut you up wi’ ready sleight,
Trenching your gushing entrails bright,
Like ony ditch;
And then, O what a glorious sight,
Warm-reekin, rich!
Then, horn for horn,
they stretch an’ strive:
Deil tak the hindmost! on they drive,
Till a’ their weel-swall’d kytes belyve,
Are bent lyke drums;
Then auld Guidman, maist like to rive,
“Bethankit!” ‘hums.
Is there that owre his French ragout
Or olio that wad staw a sow,
Or fricassee wad mak her spew
Wi’ perfect sconner,
Looks down wi’ sneering, scornfu’ view
On sic a dinner?
Poor devil! see him ower his trash,
As feckless as a wither’d rash,
His spindle shank, a guid whip-lash,
His nieve a nit;
Thro’ bloody flood or field to dash,
O how unfit!
But mark the Rustic, haggis fed,
The trembling earth resounds his tread.
Clap in his walie nieve a blade,
He’ll mak it whissle;
An’ legs an’ arms, an’ heads will sned,
Like taps o’ thrissle.
Ye Pow’rs wha mak mankind your care,
And dish them out their bill o’ fare,
Auld Scotland wants nae skinking ware
That jaups in luggies;
But, if ye wish her gratefu’ prayer,
Gie her a haggis!
