novatownhall blog

We are evolving into a nation of moochers, a process which has been apace for years but the twist now is we are mooching off of Americans who do not yet pay taxes and in fact have not yet been born. It is happening at the state level – thank goodness, not so much in mine – but it is the federal government we should all be very concerned about right now. The theft taking place under the Democrats, who have controlled Congress since 2007, and President Barack Obama is unprecedented in its scale.

As Smitty notes in one of the best blog posts I’ve seen in weeks:

Remember, this hairball has been a century in the making, and will, at bare minimum, require a decade of your best effort just to get that hydra chopped down to something reasonably un-lethal. Incumbency is the enemy. We The People can either rule, or enjoy slavery.

Go read it all, read it again, and then get your game face on for the campaign season which is about to begin.

Our focus must be 100% on the Democrats in public office who are pushing us further into debt slavery.

Just some recent examples to highlight the absurd level of heedlessness these larcenists are operating at:

- $23 million to promote abortion in Kenya.
- $192 million on signs promoting the utterly failed $797 billion “stimulus” boondoggle.
- $22 million to provide high-tech training … to workers in South Asia.
- And now they are poised to steal billions more to reward reckless borrowers in mortgages they can’t afford. You and your children and grandchildren will be paying the moochers’ bills.

This is all being financed with money our country does not have – debt imposed on future generations.

The federal government is filthy with programs we cannot afford and institutions which never should have existed in the first place. There needs to be a housecleaning of Robespierrian proportions, a slash-and-burn campaign on the federal budget. The federal government is meant to provide national security: Everything else should be on the chopping block. Our rule of thumb going forward should be “take it over and shut it down.”

Those who pay for the government must be in charge of the government. Those people, companies, industries and factions who are financially supported by it will receive only what we decide to give them.

To be sure, it has taken both Democrats and Republicans to get us into this mess. A bipartisan line of personages stretching from decades in the past up to the present day deserve a pox on their houses. We can’t separate all the wheat from the chaff along party lines. So if the Republicans currently holding office and the ones we will be putting in office from 2010 through 2014 do not take immediate action to reverse the criminal direction of the federal government we need to end their political careers with extreme prejudice. But let’s face it, the GOP is our only hope. Republicans certainly contributed to our precarious financial situation but Democrats have taken the theft to an entirely new level and one from which our nation may never be able to recover.

It should be more than evident simply by who brought us Obamacare and who did not which party needs to be chastened and which one needs to be tossed in the dustbin of history.

Anyone with the gall to run for public office under the Democrat party banner must be laughed out of all public forums and if they will not slink from the stage they must be shamed and scorned, because they no longer deserve to show their faces in civil society. This cabal of Democrat office holders is guilty of the attempted murder of American liberty. Their misdeeds must be memorialized in perpetuity so the destructive path of our current federal government is never taken again. Having a “D” after your name should be treated as the equivalent of membership in Cosa Nostra and assigned a similar degree of respect in American public life.

There are many problems facing our country and voters are motivated by different concerns, but the threat which should have our laser focus is the one that is in the process of turning us into a third-world nation over the next 20 years. Debt slavery should have every American’s attention. Those who will do the hard work of liberating us should have our undying support. The primary racketeers – elected Democrats, public employee unions, ACORN spin-offs and all the other leftist organizations – are threats to our nation’s future and should be viewed with all appropriate seriousness.

“Of course I’ll do it, I’m the right-wing Judy Garland!”

That the wonderful Ann Coulter should be the only keynote suggested by planners of the gay conservative conference seems right on numerous levels, but most of all to hear her current take on John Edwards (which caused such hyperventilating a few years ago), whose amazing metamorphosis really deserves further comment.

If you are gay you gotta love Ann Coulter. If you are straight you GOTTA love Ann Coulter. If your skin tone falls anywhere between obsidian and albino you gotta love Ann Coulter. So let’s just say: If you are a thinking human being in the year of our Lord 2010, when the Democrats have brought America to the brink of extinction, you gotta love Ann Coulter. That is an order.

UPDATE: “Dream Babe” typo fixed. Obviously, Ann is at best “II” after original Dream Babe Linda B. Won’t make that mistake again, sorry.

Never before released, the Marcela Hoeven bikini photos are causing an uproar throughout the nation.

To cut to the chase: Her father, John Hoeven, is running for Governor of North Dakota, but his daughter looks good in a bikini. And there are photos!

Her dad might be the next governor of North Dakota, but she's wearing a bikini. Deal with it, America.

Beautiful women exposing their bodies is a national crisis. I, for one, am willing to say that I recognize the problem.

No one can possibly know where this will all end, but all I know is if I was a Republican running for office right now I would be hearing footsteps: footsteps of a girl, who is a Republican, who is wearing a bikini, wandering into camera range. One little click and you have a beautiful Republican on the Internet for all the world to see. It brings chills.

UPDATE: Camp of the Saints says it is not a crisis, but just another beautiful Republican woman.

If you want “scandal.” Dave C can tell you about scandal.

Daley Gator is shocked.

Also, The Other McCain has a pretty interesting comment thread going on this topic.

Oh my, R.S. The things you find.

Content warning, and you must watch to the very end to get the full message.

A very positive development; on 900 AM, July 10th.

per the bulletproof one ….

Well, we often thank Ace for the good, and today we must thank him for the bad.

So MIA is just another dumb celebrity. Sheer heartache.

Longtime readers will know why this pains me so.

Alas, one final time, credit to the “original.”

Speaking of which: anyone want to go play with toys at Silver Eagle let me know, I will be spending some time there.

Always one of the most entertaining weeks of the year, at The Other McCain.

…. Women, Children Hardest Hit.

My work and domestic responsibilities still don’t permit much in the way of deep thoughts but I am sorting through some disks and running across some fond memories. [EDITOR'S NOTE: WE EDITED THIS POST] Urban living never interested me a lot but there is some appeal in being able to walk to the pub. Where the heck did El Jefe end up, anyway? I guess he’s got his Doctorate now.

The next few weeks will continue to be too tight a schedule for me to do any research or, really, work for the blog, so count this a forewarning that Joe will still be bringing the lemon meringue pie. You want meat, you better be reading LI.

Speaking of food service, the beautiful Linda B. and I got to indulge in our true passion at the WONDERFUL wedding reception for Eve Barner and Ryan Gleason today: We worked the punch-and-champagne-toast-station. The punch was non-alcoholic, but at 2 in the afternoon I find this a forgivable offense. Regardless, it was one serious punch-drinking crowd so we barely got to leave our post at all. I did get to talk with my favorite supervisor and yours, Eugene Delgaudio, and I saw our Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli when he first arrived. I also saw Robert Bruton, Geary Higgins and a number of old friends, but did not get a chance to breathe until the deal was almost over. It was a really nice reception and I am told the ceremony was beautiful.

My 90-year old grandmother is now on Facebook, and if I was a betting man I would wager she will soon be blogging and drawing a million visitors a day. It’s not so much there is anything really interesting about her but she has a huge amount of free time, which is a major unfair advantage. I’ll post the link when she starts posting.

Funniest thing on the Web this week: Now we know what the iPad really is. It is a cat toy. If I had it in me I would do a serious post on how Apple is not infallible nor is their stuff flawless, considering I have personally purchased five Macs in the past 18 months and two of them have had mechanical problems. Guess there is a reason they sell those expensive service agreements, huh? But, I don’t have the time for that. My take on the iPad is it is a cool extra toy to have, but it does not replace anything you might currently be using except a Kindle.

I am going to post some photos of exotic faraway airports in the coming weeks and maybe we will have a contest to guess the location first and win a box of bullets. Stay tuned.

Well, there was a post that took absolutely no work at all. Sweet.

[ACTION ITEMS: Read Smitty and Stacy. Keep current with Chris Cassone. Read Matthew Vadum and Barbara Espinosa, And by all means attend the Tax Day Tea Party.]

In case you were concerned, let me assure you the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy is alive and well, and in key.

(left) The Other B.B. King and Blind Melon McCain highlighted the evening with their soulful stylings.

Friends, I am sorry if you were not at the Third Annual Smittypalooza in Washington DC, because it was one of the coolest events I’ve attended in some time – and right on the eve of tomorrow’s Tax Day Tea Party. Tomorrow is a big deal, and tonight was a great way to kick it off.

It was about service, it was about fedoras, it was about imminent revolution, it was about citizen journalism as well as paid journalism … but more than anything, it was about the music. Stacy McCain, my friends, would be one HELL of a front man if there was a tip jar angle. I am convinced of this.

To put the evening in perspective, for those of you who do not know: Chris Smith, aka Smitty (center), is Stacy McCain’s co-blogger at The Other McCain, which our regular readers know is one of my favorite blogs and should be one of yours, too. Every year or so Smitty hosts the Smittypalooza in DC. It draws some really interesting visitors and this was no exception.

Here, Chris Cassone plays his new song, City on the Hill. (Click below to listen)

I had been shooting the breeze with Chris for about ten minutes, not knowing him from Adam, when the discussion got around to the 9-12 Tea Party event in DC. After I told him I was there he said “That’s where I played my song.” I asked, “What song is that?” He said “Take Our Country Back.”

Whoa. As you can tell from my video, I thought that was the seminal moment of the 9-12 demonstration. So it was wonderful to meet Chris in person. I recommend everyone check out his Web site and stay apprised of what he is doing. Chris Cassone is a really nice guy and he is providing the sound track for a sea change in America’s political culture.

A couple other impressive people at Smittypalooza were Matthew Vadum and Barbara Espinosa.

Matthew Vadum is one of the key journalists covering criminal leftist organizations such as ACORN. Read this and this to see why I believe he deserves some kind of medal of honor for his work.

Barbara Espinosa is an activist from Arizona who is now also a blogger. What an interesting lady! She is new to blogging, although with Stacy as her mentor she has a very good technical foundation to apply her knowledge and grassroots experience to the blogosphere.

Thank you, Smitty and friends, for a fantastic evening.

Our blogroll, with its breadth and diversity, leaves many readers paralyzed with awe, understandably. To ameliorate this condition, I proffer the following links for your enjoyment and diversion from the stresses of domestic life. Just click, and read.

The Monk foresees King Obama. I foresee the Joker.

TC suspects George Allen may be considering a Senate run. I am inclined to see it as a real possibility. If Barack Obama has managed to revive the Republican Party so quickly, rehabilitating Allen’s public image by 2012 should be a piece of cake.

Linda B. wrote a new post this week!! Another sign of the change of seasons. Seriously, she does a lot of writing in her real life so she can be excused for intermittent blogging. Go read her because everything she writes is good.

Not Larry Sabato links to one of our 2006 photos to make his case. The Cuccinelli obsession is odd, but at least someone still frequents the old blog. I’d hate to see it forgotten.

Eric – he of the life you and I can only imagine – muses about his upcoming travels and his country ham dinner. In related news, I heard a millionaire just won the Powerball lottery.

Eileen is perturbed about Obama’s possible straying from the climate alarmist straight and narrow. She and I don’t agree on much, but her conclusion drilling here ” ain’t never going to happen” is one we share though probably for different reasons.

Is John McCain truly up to his you-know-what in alligators? If one of the gators is his cousin RS, I’d say the answer is yes. If you were not following Stacy’s recent travels, you missed something. Click here and here for starters. If all this compels you to do some good in the world, by all means help pay for the trip.

Vivian says stop the violence lest the genie be released from the bottle. Good observation.

Ed maintains the vigil against Chinese death-merchandise. Buy American. Read MonkeyWatch. Tips to live by.

The subversive project known as Digital Camel continues apace. The good thing is, if they talk about other blogs it is usually NVTH. The bad thing is, they think we are evil. Well, any PR is good PR.

In closing, some good news posted by that remarkably prolific libertarian-type dude. Maybe it is like morning in America again albeit waking up with a hangover.

If you don’t follow any of the blog wars you are forgiven. But if you have some free time, they can be entertaining.

Bottom line: Our friend and one of the last to deserve the appellation “respected journalist” Stacy McCain has earned the ire of both the Southern Poverty Law Center and blithering idiot-on-wheels Charles Johnson, which is pretty awesome. It’s like being declared an enemy of both the Sudanese janjaweed and Kim Jong-Il – which by definition means you are a great guy.

Congrats, Stacy. Keep up the good work.

We are getting a ton of “hannah giles photos” related search engine hits tonight. Thanks Hannah, and thank YOU, Stacy McCain.

The traffic spike does not seem to be affecting mobile browser access, because I can get to the site from my Blackberry just fine. Must have to do with scripts or something. Sorry for the inconvenience!

Below is a condensed version of the video referenced the other day of Potomac District Supervisor Andrea McGimsey giving a presentation in Delaware on behalf of her employer, the Climate Prosperity Project.

Someone may claim this version of the publicly available video is in some sense “out of context” so I urge you to click the link above to watch the unedited video if you are motivated to do so.

I think this one below may be useful if you only have six minutes instead of 30.

Basically, this shows that Supervisor McGimsey really should consider answering the questions posed by Loudoun Insider.

Mixing public office with personal gain is a big no-no, and was one of the arguments Ms. McGimsey made against her opponent in the 2007 election which she won. So far, she has ignored the question, and a certain amusing left wing dude has tried to make the case that only the “disreputable” blogs of NovaTownHall and TooConservative are making an issue of possible conflicts of interest.

By taking the cover-up tack to the next level and going after the messengers, Jonathan unwittingly is helping Supervisor McGimsey paint herself into a corner that looks like it will be difficult to get out of unless she comes clean, pronto. As the video below demonstrates, there are a ton of questions to be answered and the conflict of interest question is chief among them.

Such as: How exactly do you have a Loudoun County employee “MIT student” write a program that you then offer to potential business clients for free, and not have a major ethics problem?

Yeah, it might be “disreputable” to ask the question, but if so that is a cross I am willing to bear, Jonathan. Frankly, it looks to me like some very frightened Democrats are circling the wagons without even thinking through the consequences for their own credibility and that of their issues.

You want to drive a final nail into the coffin of climate change alarmist credibility? Blindly throw your support to someone who has perched herself WAAAY out on a limb in terms of credibility.

Andrea McGimsey of Climate Prosperity Project from Joe Budzinski on Vimeo.

There are lots of people asking for money this time of year; as a matter of fact I believe there are lots of people asking for money all through the year, but this is the time of year we don’t necessarily give them the back of our hand … right off the bat, anyway.

Today I come to you with a message of concern for certain members of this worldwide community of ours who often are not the first ones we think of when we think of giving: your devoted, oft-taken for granted, bloggers. I don’t send money to a lot of bloggers, to be sure. If I tried to send a dollar to each of the 65 million of them here in the U.S. it would put a dent in the old Budzinski savings account big time. But that’s not a hurdle we need to address because of the 65 million probably no more than 23 merit compensation, and the two I have sent money to – The Other McCain and Ace of Spades – are worth far more than I could afford to contribute to.

Stacy McCain is Hunter S. Thompson with better political sensibilities and a slightly healthier lifestyle. Ace of Spades is the smartest and funniest guy you’ve ever met in your life. You should read their blogs several times a day, and you should send them money. Thus endeth the sermon portion of this blog post.

(If you want to contribute to either of them, on Stacy McCain’s site click on his “hit the tip jar” link which appears in approximately every other sentence, and on Ace’s site use the PayPal button in the left sidebar.)

The reason I send money to these two is I know they both are pretty much full time, committed, with no “day job” per se, and they provide, for me, an extremely valuable service (more on this later). Another one in this boat who does extraordinary work is Blog Fu, who I’ve never actually sent money to but did award him with some ammo after he won a contest here so we’ll count that as support. He also has a tip jar link in the right sidebar.

You probably know of others who for whatever reason you believe devote enough of themselves to the blog to deserve some cash as reward or just a token of recognition for jobs well done. Like I said besides these three there are probably 20 others worth paying and chances are they are some of the ones you read – so be a sport and show some love for all that uncompensated work.

This is not to diminish any other causes worthy of support at this time. Our family gives a lot to non-profits of all kinds and churches and such, the more typical charities you think of when giving to those in need, and we give exponentially more to those than I have given to any bloggers. So I strongly urge you to not walk past the Salvation Army ringer, to put some cans of food in the basket, give some toys for tots, surprise a charity or three with a $75 check or more. Just for the hell of it take the money you would have used on ammo or bon bons or another AK-47 for your collection in December and January and instead give it to a good charity or someone you know who is seriously in need. (We happen to have a reader here who is seriously in need but he/she has not relented on their anonymity and is perhaps not comfortable with handouts so I have been unable to send a contribution; if I find out more I may post about it). It is Christmas! Help relieve someone’s suffering and make this time of year happy for them.

But when I talk of supporting a blogger I am not at all talking about charity. What I am talking about is like paying the guy who towed your car back to Virginia after you broke down on the Beltway in some godforsaken part of Maryland in the middle of the night. That guy did you a big favor, saving you a lot of time and trouble, and by paying him you merely transmit the portion of your earnings to which he is entitled by virtue of him doing what you did not wish to do yourself.

I’ve been reading and writing and commenting on blogs for a really long time, dating to years before this blog was a gleam in anyone’s eye. Been through the argumentative phase, the substitute for yelling at the TV. Been through the recreational phase, which supplants video games and comic books. Now the major use I have is for blogs that save me time by aggregating and prioritizing information. If I trust the blogger’s judgment, I can reliably hit their blog when I’ve been away from the news and quickly find out what has happened that is significant. Since in my current phase I have almost zero time to meander the news sites I rely heavily on blogs to stay abreast of current events.

The Other McCain and Ace save me huge amounts of time, allowing me to focus on my job and earn money, so the least I can do is once in a while transmit some small portion of that money to them – because by flying without a financial net in order to do a seriously good job blogging, they do me an invaluable service when I hit their sites several times a day for all the new information they provide.

Other aggregating blogs that are of great use to me, and should also be on your must-visit list several times a day, are Hot Air and Instapundit. Although I’ve met both Michelle Malkin (and some of her bloggers at Hot Air), and Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit, I don’t know what either of their financial situations is but I sense that they are not exactly dire. They are both outstanding Web sites and probably deserving of much more money than they get – if there were any justice in the world we would just take all the money going into NBC News and redirect it to Hot Air and Instapundit. But they are both very ad-driven and saying “support those sites for Christmas” would be like saying, “Get in the Christmas spirit and buy a Toyota!” Not exactly what I am referring to with this post.

And while we are digressing interminably, I will also share that my other multiple-visits-per-day Web sites are three more aggregators. (In fact, my typical Web behavior throughout the day is to visit about six or eight blogs and these three additional sites several times, occasionally clicking through to other sites they link. That’s about all I ever do on the Web, when I’m not watching AK-47 videos. I find it a very efficient way to stay informed.)

News aggregators can be evaluated, or categorized, by the measures of timeliness and prioritization: to what extent they tell you every single thing that is happening just as it’s happening, and to what extent what is happening that’s important.

Drudge Report is king of prioritization. Whatever is the biggest news of the day, it will be highlighted on Drudge, along with a plethora of other interesting and significant stories, so you have to visit there all the time just to check – although some big things may have happened that don’t show up there because it’s only a couple guys combing the news so their bandwidth is finite.

Free Republic is at the other end of the spectrum – unparalleled timeliness with almost zero prioritization. There is a community of hundreds of people all over the world constantly submitting news links, so if a bus runs off the highway in Peoria you will know about it right after it happens. By the same token, if during a press conference Tiger Woods’ head splits open and from the husk of his body emerges an alien being named Zastchur from the Planet Intercourse who announces that the Earth will be destroyed in 24 hours, that news story might be buried under 30 posts about crashed hard drives and Barack Obama’s financial dealings and such, so you have to scroll a lot.

Sort of a middle ground is Lucianne.com which combines the hundreds or thousands of contributors of Free Republic with a decent prioritizing mechanism at the top of the first page. They have someone tasked with watching all the incoming news, so if there has been a major news story or a really great column it is likely to appear at the top of Lucianne.com before you see it anywhere else.

With those three Web sites you can stay pretty darned well-informed in a very short amount of time. They also each have times they ask for money, and ways that you can send them money if you find them valuable, which I think would be a good thing to do and also helps bring this extensive rambling digression back in line with the original concept of the blog post.

So to tie this all back together: Let me say once again, it is Christmas so for the love of God, man, support a blogger. They save you time and, if they are not saving you time, then shame on you because they should be saving you time. You have a life to live. They are out analyzing and interpreting the world. Take a small portion of the money you are making while you are not having to analyze and interpret the world and send it to them as a token of appreciation for their doing so while you are at work. It is only fair and you are getting the better part of this bargain, I assure you.

And please don’t for a minute think this post is self-serving because this blog is and apparently always will be a mechanism for transmitting money AWAY from me rather than toward me. I learned rather early in life there are people in the world who have money streaming in to them, and people who have money streaming out from them, and I was in the latter group. That is my lot and I accept it. Those various ads you have seen in our sidebars over the years? I put them there for free because I like them and in fact I created almost all of them myself without consulting the subjects. They’ve all been causes I just believe in. This blog is a sidelight for all of us who post here, and consequently this is not among the 23 of 65 million I think you should consider giving money to.

Merry Christmas, everyone. If you are lucky enough to still be employed despite all the Democrats have tried to do, please break out your credit card and be generous during this holiday season!

Key takeaway from the legal session:

If a commenter says something bad on your blog, you are not legally responsible for it. However if you receive a court order demanding the IP information about that commenter, you have to provide that info to the authorities.

Seems reasonable to me, so note to commenters: watch yo mouth.