THE NO-TELEPROMPTER ZONE: OK, maybe you’ve already seen the video clip of Fox News host Bill O’Reilly blowing his stack over a faulty teleprompter back in the day when he was doing Inside Edition, but I saw it on YouTube for the first time this week. If you haven’t seen it, catch it HERE - but be warned, ol’ Bill drops a couple F-bombs.
Now, what you might NOT have seen yet is a new, hilarious edited version which cuts back and forth between O’Reilly and the show’s faux “producer” who has some choice words of his own for the mega-star. You can see it HERE - just make sure you don’t spit out your coffee through your nose when you watch. (Hat tip to Steve Sebelius of CityLife for bringing this to our attention)
DEFINITION OF A CONSERVATIVE
There continues to this day a raucous debate over exactly what the definition of a conservative is. Ronald Reagan is often invoked as the embodiment of conservatism, so perhaps there is no one better than his former press secretary and senior political adviser - the late Lyn Nofziger - to define exactly what it means to be a conservative. And I’m sure THIS will put the question to bed once and for all.
DEAR JOHN
“This isn’t about making a choice between you and the Democratic Party’s nominee,” writes our good friend and former New Mexico Republican Party Chairman John Dendahl in an open letter to GOP presidential nominee John McCain. “Hell will freeze over before I’d vote to put an even worse Clinton in the White House. Too, I would not give my vote to someone with no – that’s zero – relevant leadership experience, whose beliefs are mostly shrouded in mystery, and who lives in a household where the pants are pretty obviously worn by the pretty obviously America-hating Michelle Obama.”
And Mr. Dendahl was just getting warmed up. The rest of his letter articulates what a LOT of Republicans are still thinking these days about the author of McCain-Feingold. A good read, which you can find HERE
COOLING OFF THE GLOBAL WARMING FRENZY
“Texas Senator John Cornyn delights in using Senate procedure to make his displeasure known, whether the subject is pork or climate change. But his insistence this week that all 492 pages of the Warner-Lieberman-Boxer ‘Climate Security’ bill be read on the Senate floor may have been salutary for another reason. Bills are supposed to be read aloud by the clerk of the Senate, but this formality is usually dispensed with by unanimous consent. On Wednesday, Senator Cornyn refused to grant his assent, drawing cries of obstruction from the bill’s backers.
“…Give Mr. Cornyn credit here. He wouldn’t let his Senate colleagues cast a lame symbolic vote without rubbing their faces in the full measure of the bill’s gigantic attempt to regulate greenhouse-gas emissions. Since some kind of climate bill is likely to come back with serious chances of passage under the next administration, voters have reason to thank Mr. Cornyn for inhibiting a careless precedent.”
- Brian Carney, Political Diary, 6/6/08
CATCH A PAIR OF RISING STARS
The current issue of Campaigns & Elections Magazine features its annual list of political “Rising Stars” which, we’re proud to say, includes two longtime friends of News & Views - Robert Bluey and Shane Cory. Here’s the C&E lowdown on these two rising stars who we knew long before they became rising stars. Hope they don’t forget us now…
Robert Bluey came to Washington hoping to make it as a political reporter, but it wasn’t long before he became enamored with the blogosphere.
Working as a reporter at Cybercast News Service, Bluey gained national recognition as one of the “Rathergate bloggers,” a group of bloggers and reporters who broke the story of the falsified documents CBS relied upon for its report on President Bush’s National Guard service. “I remember looking at the documents the day after the story ran and saying, ‘Wow, these look like they were typed on a computer,’” Bluey says. “So I got a few sources on the phone, put a story up and the next thing I knew it was the lead story everywhere.”
Bluey went on to become the managing editor at the conservative newspaper Human Events, where he developed the paper’s first blog. “He’s an online entrepreneurial genius,” says Terry Jeffery, the paper’s editor-at-large. Now at the Heritage Foundation, Bluey leads a weekly gathering of conservative bloggers to talk media strategy and public policy. “He’s taught people how to bypass the establishment media,” Jeffery says, “and that’s been so valuable to the conservative movement.”
* * * * * * * * * *
When Shane Cory took over the helm of the Libertarian National Committee in 2005, he worked overtime to turn the financial situation of the organization around.
After 9/11, the LNC suffered financially due to a lack of contributions and other budgetary constraints. But slowly, largely through direct mail efforts, Cory stabilized the LNC’s finances, and even brought them into the black. His prudence served the organization well, along with his constant mantra of thriftiness to his staffers. There was the time, for instance, that he decided to remove the office watercooler. No, it wasn’t a prank; he apparently didn’t want people lolling around the machine wasting time.
Late this spring, Cory moved on from the LNC to take a position as president of the Internet division at American Target Advertising, as well as to serve as a senior political adviser to Libertarian Party presidential candidate Bob Barr.
FED-EXCESS UPDATE
For those of you who have been following the issue of Fed-Ex abusing the independent contractor laws, the Washington Legal Foundation filed a brief in “FedEx Home Delivery v. National Labor Relations Board” and issued a press release on the matter which you can find HERE
THE UNION LABEL
Folks, in case you missed it, the SEIU held their annual convention in the “worker’s paradise” of Puerto Rico this week…and the fur was flying. The radical labor union is a house divided with union boss Andy Stern under attack from within and having to break out the ol’ iron fist to maintain his rule. And you won’t find any better coverage of this circus than right HERE by Warner Todd Huston on The Union Label.
FAMOUS LAST WORDS
“I don’t like government, it’s just that simple.”
- Lyn Nofziger
Posted on June 7th, 2008 by chuckmuth
Filed under: National
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