I’ve met him. As I’ve commented before, he is the spitting image of Jeremy Piven, the annoying agent on Entourage.

On the subject of the power of conservative blogs, Patterico links and quotes the Wall Street Journal and Allah at Hot Air, before opining himself: [W]ell-written and insightful blogs can have an influence beyond that reflected by our admittedly pathet…

Like coffeehouses of the Revolutionary Era, HA and others (LGF, MM, etc) stir the polemical pot.

A match may seem small, but once it hits a fuse, look out!

The people’s outrage was primed and only needed the heat of focused attention to explode.

Keep striking sparks!

As far as member comments that serve only to cheapen the value of the content here you have my permission to kick them off or not accept that particular comment with a “black out or gray out” editing technique.
This would be very similar to Rush Limbaugh accepting only callers that prove to be interesting and informative.

This is YOUR gig after all!! It’s your baby. You can make any rules you want for member sign up! If members stray from your guidelines you can zap that comment with the “gray out editor” After the third time they go into probation for awhile and so on.

Further discussion and debate is essential here.

For all of you who love HA as much as I do and are willing to fight with your blood for the right to do so, and make it the most visited blog site, let’s hear from you.

Also, for those that are willing to work on interesting content please read this

Cheers again to we who run the country, pop them corks, toot them horns!!!!
Happy 4th!!!

Bradky on July 3, 2007 at 11:54 PM

You too.

unseen on July 3, 2007 at 7:39 PM

If it wasn’t for having Michelle on and Sean H. I also would have deleted them. Give CNN some credit for giving us Lou Dobb’s and not pulling his strings. And I’m sure they felt the heat coming from the ELITIST who problaly own most these companies lock stock and barrel..

Spirit of 1776 on July 3, 2007 at 11:38 PM

LOL I’m confused now. We must have both badly misunderstood what the other meant. It’s late have a good one.

I must have misunderstood you. Either way I don’t watch it, so unfortunately can’t answer your question.

Here’s a quote from Liberty and Culture…

The Revolutionary pamphleteers were not professional writers but common citizens engaged in the debate of ideas; they created a sense of democracy to the intellectual struggle that preceded the call to arms.

Or in the case of Shamnesty, not arms but an avalanche of calls and emails and letters to Washington DC…

Radio is one tool, blogs are another. Ergo, Hot Air et al = Thomas Paine. Simple.

I gave Protein Wisdom,HA and Ace. GUESS which one they picked?….Yup,Ace. Even though you folks covered it much better,the morons were going for the lowest common denominator(Sorry Ace,still luv ya like a Viking)

When the bloody hell is the conservative blogosphere going to get serious and at least ATTEMPT to expose the lies of the left…Berger,Wilson,Jefferson,Landreiu,BOTH Clintons…

Actually,I guess the real question is HOW do we do it? I know that as a simple commenter,I have no voice but there HAS TO BE a way. Newspapers won’t print our letters,the MSM won’t even reprt on YON fer chrissakes….so…HOW?

Spirit of 1776 on July 3, 2007 at 8:06 PM

Al Franken didn’t do so well because he wanted to stick to the party line. That was my point in an “all conservative” venue. Does Fox make you think? If it does then I think that is a good thing, don’t you?

Update: Dean claims at one point in his post that Rush Limbaugh’s and Sean Hannity’s audiences are 50 times the size of that of the most widely read right-wing blog, i.e., Instapundit. I think the real factor is considerably larger than that. The numbers I usually hear for Limbaugh and Hannity are 15 million listeners; Instapundit does, at last check, about 200,000 hits a day, but of course not all of those are unique visitors. Let’s guesstimate that the uniques are 75,000 and that each one checks his site on average between two and three times a day. That means the actual factor is 200. We’ll cut into that a bit as time goes on but for the widely foreseeable future, it’s night and day.

In a representative democracy, it’s true that the great masses of people must sometimes be addressed for the sake of good political effect. However, not everyone has to reach masses of people, and no one has to reach masses all the time. The quality of what can be said to, and understood by, great masses of people is often quite low; better speeches can be addressed to better eyes, and better eyes are fewer. There are times when I write chiefly for an audience of one.

sounds like propaganda

It is:

That’s right in the pockets of big Money

Surprised you missed that.

unseen on July 3, 2007 at 7:39 PM

Wow! sounds like propaganda rather than discourse.

Oh FOX where were you when we needed you? That’s right in the pockets of big Money. So good to know where you stand.

I hope that all these forces can keep up the good work and kill the “Unfairness” doctrine, which is really only a STIFLE bill for shutting down any opposition to the liberal/humanist/socialist/communist/atheist Dumocrat party. If the Dumocrats can shut down the voices in opposition to them, then they can control everything and do whatever the “progressives?” want to do.

Thanks again to all voices which were against this shamnesty bill.

franksalterego on July 3, 2007 at 6:14 PM

No it was just your imagination working overtime.

Admittedly, it was agitation on the right that killed the shamnesty, but I was hard pressed to find a left-wing blog that had the slightest in fight for shamnesty. I don’t believe that the rank and file on the left wanted shamnesty either, but they are too cowed by accusations of racism to speak up. When can we drive a stake through the heart of the “anti-racism” vampire? It currently does more damage to America than the tiny residual American racism does.

What the MSM fears is that the right wing blogs and talk radio can get the word out to the people. Without that, the people would have no access to critical information. The MSM certainly won’t provide it. They control the narrative. Since there are no nationally read conservative newspapers to feed them the information, the internet and talk radio are the only conduits for a reality check. Thus, their loathing of the power of the internet and talk radio to disseminate the message to the People.

Thirty years ago this bill would have passed, and made little news doing so. That was how things were done in Washington. Now, talk radio and the internet can shed light on these backroom deals and corrupt politicians and bring them to the attention of the masses.

So blogs killed the bill only in the sense that they helped, along with talk radio, to let the average Joe know about what was about to happen in Washington. Then it was up to the average Joe to decide if this was good or bad, and if bad, then to call and write, to take political action. Essentially, the MSM is afraid of what happens when the People tune in to what happens in Washington. They have never tuned in before.

The MSM and the liberals think that is a bad thing, they know that’s a bad thing, because what goes on in Washington is far to the Left that what the average Joe will tolerate if aware. The MSM can no longer control the message.

Whenever I watch Brit Hume, he uses a LOT of the material I’ve already read here and on Michelle’s and Ace’s blogs.