LorieByrd.com

Who Wants To Be A Superhero?

This show is one of my guilty pleasures.  I did not plan to watch it, but caught part of the first episode and was hooked.  It is fun and the kids love it, too.  Tonight there are only two candidates left, and the audience will be voting on them  My favorite superhero, the former male stripper, Major Victory, was eliminated last week.  I still think he might be brought back as a perfect sidekick.  He is hilarious. If you have missed this show, you can catch up watching reruns on Sci Fi.

NC State Senator Fred Smith Hosts Blogger Event

Over the weekend I attended a "bloggers only" press conference sponsored by NC state Senator Fred Smith as part of his annual fundraising event, Summer Celebration. This year's event featured Texas Governor Rick Perry. The bloggers in attendance were given a private question and answer session with Senator Smith, and when Governor Perry arrived, were allowed a mini press conference with both men. (The picture above is of Senator Smith, Governor Perry, and the back of my head.)

Due to a late flight, there was only time for a few questions for Governor Perry, but he gave us a good amount of time and attention considering the constraints of the schedule. I asked him what elements of an immigration reform bill he believed were most important to address the problem of illigal immigration. He said that most important, it was necessary to secure the border first. He repeated his answer at least three times to emphasize the importance of first securing the border. He said that he had spent state funds to show that it could be done, and talked about various ways, including using new technology, that it was possible to improve security, but that the federal government needed to lead on the issue. He also talked about the importance of reducing taxes to strengthen state economies and other state issues.

The bloggers were invited to attend the reception following the mini press conference. NC blogger Dean Stephens attended the entire Summer Celebration event which began with a golf tournament and ended with the reception. He has an excellent report of the event with lots of pictures of Governor Perry and the others in attendance, including former U.S. Senator Lauch Faircloth. Other bloggers in attendance were Nathan Tabor of The Conservative Voice, Jason Moir of NC Rumors, and Frank Williams of NC Republican Roundtable.

Thanks to Senator Smith and his staff (especially David Smithdeal and Jonathan Hill) for the invitation and for all their hard work and hospitality to make the blogger event possible. Candidate outreach to bloggers is increasing, but is still very much an untapped resource. Smart candidates will be offering bloggers more of this type of access.

Cross-posted at Wizbang Politics.

Oh, The Irony

I just saw a promo for an Anderson Cooper special tonight.  It is about the Katrina one year anniversary.  The name of the program is "Keeping Them Honest."  I am not making this up.  I don't know who "them" is, but I assume it is "the government."  I don't know if it is ironic for one of the journalists who sowed seeds of panic and spread misinformation following the storm to talk about keeping anyone else honest or if it is just ridiculous.  It is probably both.

CNN To Rebroadcast 9/11 Footage In Real Time

Via Tracey Kane at Wizbang Pop!

CNN will mark the fifth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks by replaying on the Internet the cable network's coverage of that day's events.

Viewers can watch how events unfolded starting at 8:30 a.m., minutes before the first reports of an airplane hitting the World Trade Center. The feed will run in real time, as the network showed it five years ago, until midnight.

For the day, CNN will make its online video service, CNN Pipeline, available for free. Normally, viewers pay $2.95 a month or $24.95 a year for four separate video feeds.

Online viewers will be able to watch live reports of memorial services through one of the feeds. So that viewers won't accidentally stumble upon graphic footage from 2001, the replay feed will be covered with a notice instructing users to click only if they want to watch.

And They Wonder Why We Don't Believe Them

In an earlier post I referred to the outrageous coverage of the Valerie Plame story. The Plame story is a prime example of why I don't trust the take I get from the mainstream media. Coverage of the war in Iraq is another good example. Mary Katharine Ham provides many, many more examples in a very comprehensive post on the reasons most conservatives do not trust the mainstream media.

But that was just the beginning. There was Green Helmet Guy, who seemed to be ever-present at the sites of Israeli “atrocities,” always making the most of the evidence of civilian casualties. He even played director to international news crews and photographers, showing them how to get the best shots of Lebanese casualties.

Then there was the “Passion of the Toys,” in which brand-new toys—poignant symbols of childhood innocence—seemed to keep popping up, perfectly framed by the destruction of war, yet strangely unscathed by it.

Oh, but it doesn’t stop there. Later came the “unluckiest multiple home owner in Lebanon,” photographed on several occasions, weeping in front of her several homes, bombed by several Israeli airstrikes. Then, we have the New York Times’ pieta, in which a rescue worker was carelessly identified as a victim of an airstrike when, in fact, he had been injured while working in the area. And, the flaming tire atrocity. And, the time Hezbollah bombed an Israeli ship in Australia.

Finally, this week, there was the ambulance attack that maybe wasn’t. There’s strong evidence to suggest that the two ambulances allegedly hit by Israeli airstrikes on July 23 were not exactly pulverized by missiles, as we were led to believe.

Read it all.

Cross-posted at Wizbang.

Einstein He Isn't

Sandra Bullock's husband Jesse James, who I knew as the jerk on the Monster Garage show before he married Bullock, has unloaded on President Bush:<blockquote>The motorcycle maker visited American soldiers outside Baghdad, Iraq - and is convinced the majority of the US military agree with him. James says, "Everyone in Iraq knows Bush is a d**khead. He's the boss' kid. "Everybody I know who has a successful business who has a kid - the kid is always a f**khead. Have you ever noticed that?"</blockquote>I wonder what James' excuse is, assuming he is not the boss' son.

Calling NC Bloggers

If you live in or near North Carolina, and don't already have plans for October 7, check out Carolina FreedomNet 2006 sponsored by the John Locke Foundation. The featured speaker is Scott Johnson of Power Line. There will also be two discussion panels featuring North Carolina bloggers. I am very thankful to have been asked to participate and am especially looking forward to meeting some of the bloggers I have read for years.

8:45 a.m.-10:15 a.m.: Local vs. Global: What Should Be Your Blog’s Focus? Panelists are Raleigh's Lorie Byrd of Wizbang, Greensboro's Sam Hieb of Sam's Notes, Charlotte's Sister Toldjah and Raleigh's Bob Owens of Confederate Yankee.
...
10:45 a.m.-12:15 p.m.: Panel: How Has The Blogging Phenomenon Affected Politics and Political Discourse? Panelists are Townhall.com's Mary Katharine Ham (formerly of Durham), Jeff Taylor of Charlotte's The Meck Deck, Scott Elliott of Election Projection and Durham's Josh Manchester of The Adventures of Chester.

Cold Cash Congressman To Lead Katrina Tours

That is Jake Tapper's headline, not mine (but I wish it were). The story is for real, too. I would have sworn it was a Rush Limbaugh parody, but not so.

The Louisiana Democratic Congressman caught on FBI surveillance tapes taking $90,000 in cash has been selected by the Democratic Congressional caucus to lead a delegation from Capitol Hill on a tour of New Orleans next week to "join in prayer with the people of the region, to reflect and remember."

Jefferson has denied any wrongdoing in a case that sparked controversy when the FBI searched his Capitol Hill offices. The cash was discovered in a freezer in Jefferson's home.

"To pick somebody who's clearly having problems is insensitive," says Ken Boehm, Chairman of the National Legal Policy Center, a political ethics watchdog group, "I suppose if Representative Cunningham could get out of federal prison, they could have him lead the tour."

Ironically, Katrina victims will likely remember a previous Jefferson tour of New Orleans when he commandeered a National Guard escort to check on his own home and save his belongings while residents clung to rooftops awaiting rescue, as first reported by ABC News National Correspondent Jake Tapper.

Last week I wrote about the upcoming Katrina anniversary, but I never dreamed this would be part of it.

Update: Glenn Reynolds has a roundup of reaction to Spike Lee's Katrina movie. Here are some quotes from a couple of Brendan Loy posts that he included. (Loy appears in the Lee movie)

Ray Nagin is an incompetent idiot. Here’s a detailed explanation of why. Two days before landfall, I predicted that he would be “the mayor who fiddled while New Orleans drowned,” and I was right. Yes, there were massive failures at all levels of government — local, state and federal — but the single person who bears the most blame, in my view, is Mayor Nagin, for failing to make even a halfway-serious effort at implementing the city’s evacuation plan, even though it was 100% clear by the Saturday morning before landfall that if there was ever a time to do it, now is the time. Spike, I gather, intends to focus on Condi Rice’s shoe-buying tendencies in tonight’s movie, and while that might score political points, it’s not the Secretary of State’s job to protect American citizens from hurricanes. It is, however, the mayor of New Orleans’s job to protect his city’s residents by putting long-held evacuation plans into effect...
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I don’t mind the inclusion of the conspiracy theories, in the sense that it’s good to know how many people believe that, but Spike definitely didn’t emphasize the debunking of those theories. His treatment was hardly evenhanded, clearly leaving the impression that these theories are plausible, if not likely. A bit more actual scientific commentary on the plausbility of the theories, and alternative explanations for the “explosions,” would have been appreciated. . . . Also: Harry Belafonte is an idiot. But if you’re going to include his inane ranting about how Bush doesn’t care about poor people and black people, where was the alternative viewpoint saying that it was incompetence, not malice? I know Spike had footage available of someone saying that, because I said it. He just chose not to use it. So Belafonte’s crap goes unrebutted, the ridiculous criticisms of Rice go unrebutted, Nagin’s comment about “where are the buses” goes unrebutted (the obvious rebuttal being, you let them drown, Mr. Mayor)… yet when people criticize Nagin, it’s rebutted by Nagin and others. Very interesting editorial choices, Spike.

Well, what did he expect?

Crossposted at Wizbang.

Fall TV Premiere

Find out when your favorite shows will be returning.  Check out the list at Wizbang Pop!

Happy 80th

Happy Birthday to Ralph El Ramey who turns 80 today.  He was the longest serving mayor of Wilson, NC, where I grew up, serving 13 years.  He is a very dear friend of my family and the youngest 80 year old I have ever seen.   I wish him many more happy birthdays.