I’m sure most of you by now saw the photos of Michelle Obama shopping at Target… I hope you won’t be too shocked to find out there’s now proof the photo op was staged.
Another staged moment in the lives of Barack and Michelle Obama.
Michelle Obama just had to get out to Target to do a little shopping last week. But, before the shopping run the White House tipped offAP photographer Charles Dharapak so that he would be at the store to memorialize the moment.
Michelle’s communication director has previously said that it is a common occurrence for her go out to run an errand. Sure, we really believed that one. It’s so common in fact that they have to alert AP photographers every time she finds it politically convenient to mingle with the real folks.
As you are all now aware, Mark is taking a leave of absence from blogging for a while, and I have been more of a silent partner with Blogs for Victory for a year or so now… okay, maybe longer.
First, let me assure you that Blogs for Victory is not dissolving. But, yes, changes are coming. These changes will be good, I believe, because as my absence has probably suggested, I’ve recently determined that I have new priorities (personal and professional) that have prevented me from blogging the way I used to.
In the past three years, I have moved out of my home state, got a new job, gotten married, bought a house, etc. etc. In between that stuff I have dissolved other, smaller blog projects that I no longer had time for, and also started other projects that have been rather successful. It’s painfully obvious that had Mark not kept things going here, Blogs for Victory probably would have withered away. Thankfully, that didn’t happen, and I’m not going to let that happen.
I was told this was the closing of a chapter, to relish in some of the glory this blog, and your the readers and commenters who have made this a reality. So here I go:
Mark Noonan and Matt Margolis promoting "Caucus of Corruption" in 2007
Many of you have been with us since Blogs For Victory was Blogs For Bush, my first national political blog that became one of the most successful political blogs in the country back in 2004, and took me places I’d never expected. I was at the 2004 Republican National Convention as one of the first credentialed bloggers. I was invited to Capitol Hill on more than one occasion for various blogger conferences, and even had a few meetings with the staff of high ranking Republican members of Congress, as well as Karl Rove and well known political pundits. It’s also worth noting that while my wife never read my blogs before we met, it’s safe to say we’d have never met had it not been for my political blogging. Also, Mark and I have both been on national television, and have a book deal. On the local level, I started political blogs in Massachusetts and Upstate New York that saw similar successes with media exposure and recognition from local political leaders. It has been a tremendous ride, but my time in the driver’s seat has come to an end.
I accept that fact that when it comes to political blogging, be it on the national stage or local, my fifteen minutes of fame are up. No regrets. I did what I had to do when it needed to be done. I can just be thankful that what I did made an impact. But, other, non-political projects are starting to take precedence, and the management of a national political blog is becoming harder for me to handle as I pursue these other projects. Amongst other things, I’d like to take a stab at writing fiction, and hope to start writing a novel in the near future. Who knows where that will go, but it’s something I want to try, and I recognize that now is the time. I believe that I need to make my own success, not wait for success to find me. I think I have a good track record so far, and I look forward to this new challenge.
Matt Margolis & Ali Akbar at CPAC 2009
So, you’re probably asking what this all means. Well, I’m not leaving this community behind. I’m not going anywhere. I’ve spoken with my friend Ali Akbar about all of this. Ali and I go way back. You may have tuned in to our once popular online radio show, The American Resolve. I am pleased to tell you that one of Ali’s companies, Pundit Syndication, will be acquiring Blogs For Victory in the near future. What does this mean? It means Blogs for Victory is about to get faster, better, and bigger. Over the next month, you’ll notice major changes in content and branding. I will be staying on, of course, as editor-in-chief emeritus, and working with Ali as he transforms Blogs for Victory into what I always hoped it could be.
So, rumors of the end of Blogs for Victory are grossly exaggerated. We still have a mission and a purpose, so stay with me as we take the next step.
Back in 2008, I saw many fellow conservative bloggers jump on the Fred Thompson bandwagon. It was a phenomenon I could never understand. It seemed like out of nowhere Fred Thompson was elevated to the position of GOP Savior. Many thought he was the only true Reagan-esque candidate that could enter the field. Hogwash, I thought. The day he formally entered the race I said his best days of the campaign were behind him.
I was right.
Here we are, four years later, and once again the GOP finds itself looking for a messiah. The current candidate-du-jour is Chris Christie, who was being talked up as a potential candidate practically seconds after his gubernatorial victory in New Jersey was confirmed.
Again, I say hogwash.
If Christie jumped in the race today, within a week 75% of Republican voters would write him off as a RINO. I’ve seen every candidate so far in the race attacked for not being conservative enough. That is just sad.
Republicans, I hate to say, are stuck on Reagan, constantly looking for someone who they believe emulates him perfectly. Reagan may be a conservative icon, but if we looked at his record as a whole, there are plenty of things there that wouldn’t fit in the conservative label.
Reagan’s legacy has strangely survived in perfect condition in a way that other Republican presidents’ haven’t. Perhaps it’s understandable. Before Reagan there was Carter. Need I say more? George H.W. Bush was fairly popular president until he broke his promise about not raising taxes. That more than anything defines his legacy.
Today, many Republicans have disowned President George W. Bush. “He wasn’t a real conservative,” they say, and so on. They say this despite the fact that he won reelection in 2004, which an incredible amount of positive support. Yet, many naysayers point to things done in his first term as examples of his lack of conservative bonafides: No Child Left Behind, The Patriot Act, even the Iraq War.
Another great example of conservative canonization that fizzled out is Senator Scott Brown. Anyone who actually knew his record as a state senator knew he was not a pure conservative, but the Tea Party organized for him, and helped mobilize a tremendous victory for him. Now, the Tea Party acts betrayed because of a few votes that didn’t meet their standards.
Seriously, let’s stop pretending the GOP has a savior.
Let’s look at Obama now. You don’t get more extreme than him when it comes to a left-winger. But, you cannot ignore the fact that the left is not entirely pleased with him because he hasn’t managed to completely redistribute the country’s wealth, or allow for the creation of drive-thru abortion clinics or whatever nonsense the left champions any given day.
In the end, politicians have records and realities to answer to. Voters often see the former without considering the latter. Even the most conservative of politicians has to work with the opposition to get things done. If we treat every compromise as a black mark on a candidate’s record than we might as well let Obama run the country for another four years.
It’s time for Republican voters to remember that we are all on the same team here. If we can’t put aside petty policy differences in favor of an overall ideological shift back to the right in 2012 then we deserve to lose.
President Barack Obama told an audience of high school students in Washington, D.C. on Wednesday that he was “not always the very best student” and that ethics “would not have made it on the list” of his favorite subjects.
“I was not always the very best student that I could be when I was in high school, and certainly not when I was in middle school,” Obama said, speaking at Benjamin Banneker Academic High School.
He ought to release his school records so we can see just how bad a student he was.
It may sound counterintuitive, but here’s betting that President Obama wouldn’t be at all upset if the high court rules that his health plan is unconstitutional.
By urging an expedited review by the U.S. Supreme Court, the president knows that the politics cuts his way. If the court strikes down the plan, then Obama won’t have to defend it in the fall campaign, robbing the Republicans of one of their two lines of attack, the other being the moribund economy. He could rally his base by arguing that he had pushed through a great “progressive” reform only to be foiled by the conservative-leaning Supreme Court. People, like markets, hate uncertainty, and the presumed swing vote by Justice Kennedy could settle the issue.
If Obama wins the judicial appeal, it will still be a win for him along the lines of today’s conventional thinking. He will be able to argue that the Administration always knew Obamacare was constitutional, and the expedited review will muffle the issue in the general-election campaign.
Here’s my thoughts.
First of all, should Obamacare be ruled unconstitutional, as it most likely will be, that’s a pretty big defeat for Obama. When your signature achievement is declared unconstitutional by the highest court in the country, that’s hardly a rallying point for voters to support, especially the coveted moderate vote. It’s hard to find victory out of a defeat like that. And even if a defeat energized his base, it won’t energize moderates.
Second, the biggest issue of the election will be the economy. Obamacare may be an issue in 2012, but regardless of a SCOTUS ruling or lack of one, Obama will be judged primarily on his failure to fix economy… or more accurately his success in making it worse.
I don’t think it’s worth it. I mean, sure it’s cheaper than a gallon of gas, really, I don’t even think I could be paid to break bread with Obama.
Of course maybe it be worth it for the chance to heckle him. But I’d think of something better than calling Obama the Antichrist, that might inflate his ego even more.
I’ve attended dozens of tea party events. I’ve helped organize them, and I’ve even spoken at a few. The tea party is not what is often depicted in the news. It is people of all colors who are terribly concerned about the direction that America is heading. We don’t trust big government to make decisions for us. And we fear that the present administration’s spending is going to lead our country down a path to insolvency, much like what Greece is currently facing.
Your comments about the tea party have caused me physical pain. You’ve rekindled the old painful paradigm of Uncle Tom – that any black man who votes Republican is some kind of sellout. It’s not true. I work hard, pay my taxes, love Jesus, and I’m good to my family and community. In effect, your comments have stereotyped an entire group of people. And I know in my soul that you must regret that on some level.
There’s already plenty of groupthink among American blacks. Over 90% of us vote Democrat with religious regularity, and we have been doing so for over fifty years. For a short time, I was one of them. I realized a few years ago that the Democrats’ promises of equality bestowed by government wasn’t working and will never work. I came to believe that redistributionist policies with the goal of social justice was essentially creating a new plantation within the federal government. Scraps might be thrown our way, but dependence on the plantation would be the inevitable result.
Ali and I have been good friends for quite a few years now, and our backgrounds are very different. Even our politics, while at the conservative end of the spectrum, are different. I dare say that if we reviewed all of our positions he’d probably be more conservative than I am. However we got to where we are politically, our beliefs are genuinely our own. We both believe enough in our politics to have walked the walk and not just talked the talk. And it is a shame that celebrities like Morgan Freeman or Janeane Garofalo use their celebrity to stereotype roughly half of Americans and insult minorities just because they don’t conform to their close minded belief that black Americans are traitors to their race if they lean to the right, or that Republicans are inherently racist. Those attitudes do more to hurt race relations in this country than they realize.
I’d like to see Morgan Freeman take up Ali’s offer to attend a Tea Party event in Tennessee. Perhaps a little open-mindedness can usher in a new era of civility.
Ten years ago our country managed to put politics aside and unite as we mourned. Today, let’s put politics aside for the day to remember. Feel free to post your thoughts on the tenth anniversary of the September 11th attacks.
UPDATE, by Mark Noonan: Major truck bomb attack in Afghanistan leaves 2 Afghans dead, 77 American soldiers wounded. Keep those who are on the front lines in your prayers today.
UPDATE II, by Mark Noonan: Presidents Obama and Bush mark 9/11 – from the Washington Times:
On the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, President Obama began a day of commemoration by honoring the nearly 3,000 victims at a memorial service at ground zero in New York with former President George W. Bush.
The president and first lady Michelle Obama joined Mr. Bush and his wife, Laura, at a reflecting pool at the site of the north tower of the World Trade Center, where Islamist terrorists crashed planes 10 years ago. The Obamas and the Bushes viewed the names of victims etched into a wall and greeted family members of those who perished.
Mr. Obama read Psalm 46, which begins, “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.” Relatives of the victims took turns reading the names of the dead in alphabetical order…
…Mr. Bush, who was commander in chief on the day America was attacked, read a letter from President Lincoln in 1864 to a mother who lost sons in the Civil War….
The World Trade Center cross is still a “sign of comfort” to many people, says the Franciscan priest who describes himself as its “unofficial guardian.”
On Sept. 13, 2001 construction worker Frank Silecchia found a 20-foot, cross-shaped T-beam from World Trade Center 1 standing almost upright in the wreckage of World Trade Center 6.
Fr. Brian Jordan, O.F.M., blessed the cross later that year on Oct. 4 and promised that it would be preserved…
Liberals who call themselves (or think they really are) moderates.
Seriously, it happens all too often that a liberal friend of mine (usually on Facebook) will argue with me about something I’ve posted and in the course of the debate they make the claim that aren’t liberal. No, of course not, if you asked them, they are moderate, or independent.
Why do they do this? It could be a number of things.
I suspect the main reason is they want to give the impression that they “listen to both sides” and come to an “unbiased conclusion” even though said conclusion is the left wing position virtually every single time.
This “I’m a moderate” argument is also used to attack my position, because I’m just an extremist right-winger who has some microchip in his brain taking orders from Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck or whoever tops their list of Hated Icons on the Right.
Sometimes what happens is that these so-called moderates adopt a couple of conservative positions on select issues so they can claim their moderate status.
Of course, I know plenty of conservatives (or Republicans) who hold the “liberal” position on issues like abortion or gay marriage, but they don’t claim to be moderates.
So why are liberals running from the liberal brand?
You better believe I am a proud conservative. Some conservatives would call me a RINO because I still like George W. Bush, but I don’t use that an excuse to call myself a moderate.
My conservative positions are based on my own assessments on the issues, and it’s hardly shocking that someone with generally conservative values will have an overwhelmingly conservative platform.
I am tired of liberals who call themselves moderate in order to claim they’ve reach an objective conclusion on the issues while implying that I have not. The fact is that they still use the same talking points that unabashed hardcore liberals use on a daily basis that reasonable people laugh at.
I’d much rather debate a liberal who is willing to admit they are liberal. At least they have a little pride in their ridiculous positions on issues and don’t try to hide behind a label that they think will protect them in an honest debate.
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