My Right Online Experience.

After a  lot of difficulty and maneuvering I got a ticket for the full event at Right Online, which was sold out this year.

So Friday morning, my family* packed up and headed to Las Vegas.

The conference was held at The Venetian, which is apparently the only non-union business on the La Vegas Strip. Which made it ideal for a meeting of conservatives.

Anyway, I got to the Venetian in time to get registered and get my copy of Culture of Corruption signed by Michelle Malkin.

The Andrew Breitbart Tribute Reception was extremely moving with dozens of stories about Breitbart’s life and how he had affected the lives of those he worked with over the years. In fact, stories about Breitbart were brought up in almost every speech.

It made me incredibly sad to see how many people he had affected in his 43 short years and the fact that I never had to chance to meet him.

I can’t even begin to describe the awesomeness of the speeches at this event or how much they affected me. So I’ll simply include the videos and encourage you to listen to them.

I hope to also implement some of the ideas I got in the breakout sessions, where I heard a lot about making a blog successful and building an audience. Including the possibility of doing a roundtable podcast with other conservative voices and covering more of my city and state local politics.

To the speeches.

Andrew Marcus, Breitbart Tribute

Former Governor Sarah Palin

Michelle Malkin on June 15th

Michelle Malkin on June 16th

Roger Hedgecock

Hugh Hewitt

Congressman Joe Heck

S.E. Cupp

Lars Larson

Jonah Goldberg

Rusty Humphries

Dana Loesch

Who I got to take a photo with.

Ann McElhinney

 

*They wanted to go on vacation and Las Vegas seemed like a good choice.

I will be at the Right Online conference in Las Vegas on the 15th and 16th.

If any of my dear readers will also be at this conference then please let me know. It would be great to have someone to eat lunch with on Saturday.

I will be back on Monday with stories and photos of the weekend…well maybe not photos and maybe only carefully edited stories. After all, what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas.

In any case, I hope to return with all sorts of new tips and tricks for gaining a bigger readership and utilizing social media in a far more efficient manner than I have been. All taught by some of my favorite conservative commentators, such as Michelle Malkin and S.E. Cupp.

WOOHOO!

For all those who claimed it would never happen: Atlas Shrugged Part II

This is not the best ad I’ve ever seen for a movie, but the true importance of it is the confirmation that the movie will be made.

These are your complaints? Really? I’d like to know who “they” are…

So I found a list of complaints from the Occupy Wallstreet protesters, it was on Bill Ayers blog. *eye roll* Why am I not surprised?

I know I said I wasn’t going to talk about these guys anymore, but this list is just too ridiculous to ignore.

I have to say that I’m very anti-disestablishment when it come to this group, that is to say…I may have some problems with how the establishment is run, but that’s no excuse to destroy the establishment entirely…and that’s what these people want.

And these complaints are so much less than useful.

So let’s get this mocking off to good start.

First of all, I’ve left out a few lines at the beginning and end that I simply didn’t care about. I’m here to mock their, so-called, complaints.

As one people, united, we acknowledge the reality: that the future of the human race requires the cooperation of its members; that our system must protect our rights, and upon corruption of that system, it is up to the individuals to protect their own rights, and those of their neighbors; that a democratic government derives its just power from the people, but corporations do not seek consent to extract wealth from the people and the Earth; and that no true democracy is attainable when the process is determined by economic power. We come to you at a time when corporations, which place profit over people, self-interest over justice, and oppression over equality, run our governments. We have peaceably assembled here, as is our right, to let these facts be known.

“Corporations do not seek consent to extract wealth from the people and the Earth”

I think they just don’t understand Capitalism. After all, a corporation can make any product they want, but they cannot force a person to buy it. If you choose to give money to a corporation, which, I would venture to guess, that all of these protesters have done, then you are giving your consent to that corporation to take that money.

“We come to you at a time when corporations, which place profit over people, self-interest over justice, and oppression over equality, run our governments.”

First of all, you are protesting the wrong people if you have a problem with corporations “controlling” the government through economic power. As long as the government has powers that the corporations would like to exploit, this is going to keep happening. Fix the government, don’t attack the corporations for doing what corporations do…try to make a profit.

And another thing, of course corporations put profit over people. Last I checked, corporations were not charities. They are places of business where turning a profit is their main purpose for existing. And out of a need to keep good employees motivated they will give bonuses for good work, insurance to employees, and certain perks to draw in the most gifted people for the fields the corporation is concentrated on. Poor treatment will lose them good workers, but the only reasons a corporation has for treating their employees well is their profit margins. Take that away and you are destroying the very reasons why the business exists.

They have taken our houses through an illegal foreclosure process, despite not having the original mortgage.

Okay, who is they? The Occupy Wall Street complaint list mentions “they” several times. Who “they” are is never established, which make it rather hard to argue against their complaints, but I’ll give it a shot…operating from the idea that “they” means Wall Street, since that’s who they are protesting.

What do they mean by “illegal foreclosure process”? I can’t even begin to imagine. Do they mean the fact that mortgages were sold to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac because the banks were losing money because people weren’t paying back their loans? So sorry, it’s not the banks faults that the government pushed them to make loans to people who didn’t deserve them in the first place. The banks were merely trying to make the best of a bad situation and if you took on a loan that you couldn’t afford because you, foolishly, believed that you just had to own a house as part of the “American Dream” that is hardly my fault or the fault of the banks.

You are protesting the wrong people. Move over the Pennsylvania Avenue and go after the real people responsible.

They have taken bailouts from taxpayers with impunity, and continue to give Executives exorbitant bonuses.

Who gave them those bailouts? Oh…right, the White House again. They didn’t “take” the bailouts, they were given to them (in some cases forced to take them and not able to return them now) by the government.

As for the bonuses, yes that was stupid, but hardly a reason to stink up the entirety of Wall Street, quite literally.

They have perpetuated inequality and discrimination in the workplace based on age, the color of one’s skin, sex, gender identity and sexual orientation.

Once again, they list no proof to go along with their complaints. Making it very hard to refute their point. If you aren’t willing to give me hard facts, I tend to dismiss your complaints.

But, here, I’ll give it a shot. I have to assume what they mean, because, as I said, there are not facts given. I’ll assume, since these are liberals, they they feel corporations aren’t hiring enough minority workers. I honestly don’t care as long as they are hiring the right people for the jobs.

Affirmative action, in schools or the work place, is just so much bullshit. That’s all I can say here. No one should get special treatment, negative or positive, because of their race, gender identity, gender, or sexual orientation. There is a reason that there isn’t a giant rainbow flag on my resume, because the fact that I’m gay is not important.

They have poisoned the food supply through negligence, and undermined the farming system through monopolization.

Uh, well…the government has made it more and more difficult for small farms to succeed by creating tougher interstate commerce laws, trying to make it illegal to grow backyard gardens, raiding farms that sell raw milk, etc, etc, etc. However that has nothing to do with Wall Street and everything to do with the fact that our federal government is taking far too much power and getting a bit drunk on it.

They have profited off of the torture, confinement, and cruel treatment of countless animals, and actively hide these practices.

If they are hiding the practices then how do you know about them?

Still no proof, just a vague complaint about “they” and animal cruelty. I’m starting to think that concrete evidence is a foreign concept to these people….or specific names of corporations.

Because I don’t know what they mean by “cruel treatment” I can’t argue, but I will say that I do not think that animals are, in any way, as important as humans. Though truly awful animal cruelty should be stopped, it really depends on what they mean. See my article about PETA to get a better picture of how I feel about animal “cruelty”.

They have continuously sought to strip employees of the right to negotiate for better pay and safer working conditions.

If you actually mean that they are stripping the unions of the right to be bullies, then yes. I’ve actually known people involved in strikes here in my city, a good portion of those I talked to were not happy with going on strike, but were forced to by the unions, putting their jobs and livelihood on the line.

Who is the bully then?

Competition for better pay is healthy. No one should take their job or their paycheck for granted. Having a job does not mean you get to slack off and keep expecting pay raises and job security. For some reason that’s what unions seem to do though. Specifically the teacher’s union. Don’t even get me (or The Conservative New Ager started on them.)

They have held students hostage with tens of thousands of dollars of debt on education, which is itself a human right.

Once again, you are blaming the wrong people.

First, The universities are going to keep raising prices as long as the government will continue subsidizing the cost of school. I’m going to link to TCNA’s blog once more because he’s already written a great piece on the subsidization of college tuition.

Secondly, no one held a gun to your head and made you take out that loan. I bitch about my loans, but I also know I will pay them back one way or another. I bitch because I feel I’m not getting much out of the classes I’m paying for.

Thirdly, if you get a degree in something useless (yes, there are useless degrees) that was your choice. Do yourself a favor and wait to go to college, wait until you have at least a basic idea of what you want to major in and what that degree can be used for…and if that degree is going to give you a big enough return to repay your loans and live comfortably.

They have consistently outsourced labor and used that outsourcing as leverage to cut workers’ healthcare and pay.

And those jobs overseas haven’t helped other countries at all?

Also, if you are going to insist on taxes their profits through the roof why wouldn’t  they take their money, labor needs, and products to a different country who will actually appreciate them?

They have influenced the courts to achieve the same rights as people, with none of the culpability or responsibility.

I think the idea there, I could be wrong though, was that if they are going to pay taxes like the rest of the citizens, that they have certain rights.

So you want them to not be treated as humans, the answer is easy…stop taxing them.

You can’t have your cake and eat it too.

They have spent millions of dollars on legal teams that look for ways to get them out of contracts in regards to health insurance.

And until Obamacare is gone they will continue to do so. Obama’s healthcare plan is bad for the economy and bad for businesses.

They have sold our privacy as a commodity.

Come on now, why should you have a problem with that? I mean, you are perfectly happy using facebook, twitter, google+, gmail, etc. And all of those use your personal information to make money. Names, email addresses, your likes and dislikes. All being sold to make them a buck. If you don’t like it, stop using the internet.

They have used the military and police force to prevent freedom of the press.

Really? Because I haven’t seen this happening. I mean, look at Wikileaks. Julian Assange, the founder, has done some truly horrible stuff in my opinion and I wouldn’t even consider him “press” or  journalist, but he hasn’t been arrested or grabbed by the military or government (which were both hurt by the information leaks that Assange’s group has been a part of) and thrown in a deep dark hole.

They have deliberately declined to recall faulty products endangering lives in pursuit of profit.

Here’s another on that I can’t deal with because there isn’t any proof.

I’m beginning to think that proof isn’t high on their list of important things…

Besides, allowing faulty products to remain on the market would do the opposite of making profit. The longer the product stays on the market, the higher the chance that a class-action suit will be filed because of injuries and damages. It’s in the companies best interest to take dangerous and faulty products off the market and fix the problems.

They determine economic policy, despite the catastrophic failures their policies have produced and continue to produce.

Okay, now I must be confused…because now you’re talking about the Democrats and Obama right?

Right?

Please tell me that is who you are talking about. Because if you are talking about Wall Street, a place where it is completely against their best interest to destroy the economy, you are just trying to hurt my brain.

They have donated large sums of money to politicians, who are responsible for regulating them.

I think I already talked about this earlier.

Oh yes, here we are.

“you are protesting the wrong people if you have a problem with corporations “controlling” the government through economic power. As long as the government has powers that the corporations would like to exploit, this is going to keep happening. Fix the government, don’t attack the corporations for doing what corporations do…try to make a profit.”

And guess who raked in the most Wall Street donations than any other President?

That’s right, Barack Obama, the President who seems to be sympathetic to the Occupy Wall Street cause.

Well of course he seems sympathetic. He really needs their votes next year.

They continue to block alternate forms of energy to keep us dependent on oil.
They continue to block generic forms of medicine that could save people’s lives or provide relief in order to protect investments that have already turned a substantial profit.

Because creating medicine that will extend people’s lives and raise their standard of living is totally in the best interest of corporations.

And these companies spend years and thousands of man hours researching new drugs and medicines. Where is the proof that they have turned a substantial profit.

I’m seriously getting sick of this lack of citations.

They have purposely covered up oil spills, accidents, faulty bookkeeping, and inactive ingredients in pursuit of profit.

Admittedly, some of this could be true. Though companies that cover up faulty bookkeeping usually end up pulling an ENRON sooner of later and the FDA tends to keep an eye on that whole “ingredient” issue. Also…if the oil spill could be covered up, it clearly wasn’t a very big one and the only way a workplace accident can be “covered up” would be settling out of court with the injured party…or killing them. So I suppose if we are talking about the mob the second option might happen, but I feel fairly confident that that situation is rare.

They purposefully keep people misinformed and fearful through their control of the media.

CNN, MSNBC, ABC, CBS, NBC. What do these names have in common, besides being alphabet soup?

Oh yes, they are the names of major networks…most of which are major news networks, major liberal news networks.

Fox, one name, the name of a, supposedly, horribly conservative biased news network.

Are they saying that the liberal news networks, the ones that supply them with support and should be against Wall Street as much as they are, are being controlled by Wall Street.

Whoops.

They have accepted private contracts to murder prisoners even when presented with serious doubts about their guilt.

Wall Street has?

Wow, who knew.

And here I thought that the courts decided who was guilty and innocent. I thought that cases in which we were trying to convict someone and put them on death row tended to take years and years to settles, with evidence all over the place.

They have perpetuated colonialism at home and abroad.

What is this? The 18th century? When is the last time America (or a European country for that matter) had a colony?

I don’t even know what else to say to this one.

They have participated in the torture and murder of innocent civilians overseas.

I suppose some collateral damage in foreign wars had occurred, that happens unfortunately. However I think “torture” and “murder” are completely incorrect words, and loaded ones to boot.

And yet again, there is no proof for this claim. When using such loaded words they should provide proof.

They continue to create weapons of mass destruction in order to receive government ontracts.

WMDs? Really? I doubt that. The United States doesn’t make many of those these days. If you are talking about government weapons contracts, well…once again this is the wrong place to be protesting. As long as the government is giving out contracts, there will be companies to take them.

Move it along guys, these complaints are nothing and you could be doing a lot more with your time.

“He started it!”

If any of my readers ever had a sibling you will know what that phrase sounds like. A little bit of a whine, a raised voice, a pointed finger, and always, always directed toward the authority figure who is telling us to behave.

I remember my dad’s chosen response to that particular exclamation when it came up between my younger sister and I. He would look straight at us, glare, and say in an absolutely calm and threatening voice.

“I don’t care who started it, either you finish it or I will.”

In other words, you are being  a brat and I don’t care who pulled who’s hair first or who started repeating every word the other said first, settle it between yourself or I will settle if for you and you won’t like the way I settle it.

We usually settled the issue on our own at that point and stopped whining about who “started it”.

Too bad liberals and President Obama haven’t figured out how to simply deal with the economy without constant exclamations of “he started it!” to the American people in reference to George Bush.

Watching The Five tonight on Fox News and Bob Beckel proved that point by once more reverting to the accusation of “Well, George Bush was the one who started that” when the others on the panel brought up their distaste for bail out programs.

First of all, George Bush was no economic conservative, so that’s a completely useless argument. I didn’t agree with the bailouts when Bush arranged them, I didn’t agree with a lot of Bush’s decisions.

Secondly, I really just don’t care. Bush may have started the bail out programs, but Obama chose to become President. He chose to take that responsibility on his shoulders. He told the voters he would fix the economy, he took that burden on by himself. Therefore he is now responsible for the decisions he makes during his term as President, he can’t blame his failures on the previous President.

If he continues to do so, or the left continues to do so for him, he just looks incompetent and childish.

Let me explain something about the bailouts and Solyndra, both of which “began” during the Bush administration.

Obama chose to continue the bailouts and, in fact, chose to spend more money which has not had the promised effect of fixing the economy. Bush didn’t hold a gun to his head and make him continue that practice, he chose to do it. If the policy fails, Bush is not at fault, Obama is.

As for Solyndra, what person signs off on an investment without doing their own due diligence on it? So when people say “Well, the Solyndra deal started back in the Bush administration.” It just makes Obama look lazy. What? He couldn’t be bothered to check the facts again himself…or get an intern to check it for him? He just couldn’t be bothered to read any emails with the heading of “WARNING: SOLYNDRA DEAL IS BAD!!!”?

All I can say is that, I don’t care who started it Mr. President. Either you finish it, or the voters are going to finish you. That’s what happens in democratic republics.

Affirmative Action Bullshit and You CAN actually still write objectively while holding personal opinions on a topic

I have a feeling that my Beginning Journalism class is going to be the topic of many rants on this blog, this will only be the first.

Yesterday one of the deans came in to finish giving a lecture on “What is News”. The things that make a story newsworthy, important elements of journalism, etc. etc. if you have ever studied journalism you know the drill. If you haven’t studied journalism, but you have a shred of common sense you can understand the concept. It’s a Freshman level class, I’m the oldest person in it….partly because I’m a sophomore and partly because I’m old even for a sophomore. Ugh.

Anyway, one of the things that we talked about was the differences between the people who are commonly the editors in charge of major newspapers and news networks, as opposed to the rest of society. Now I’m not quoting the dean verbatim, I completely admit that, I was not taking detailed enough notes at this point in the lecture to do this. I will tell you the gist of what he said in his lecture and go from there.

The first point I want to address is one that he made when he said that Journalism would be a very tough field for us if we held any strong political beliefs in either direction. Now I will fully admit that my bias (and my knowledge of the majority of Journalism outlets) heard that as “you will have a lot of trouble in this field if you have any strong conservative political beliefs.” You can believe what you will about media and journalism bias that skews the field ever to the left, but I believe it is there even if you don’t.

The dean made this point because my school of Journalism teaches “objective journalism” in which you report the facts of the story, what really happened, where and to whom and how and why…if you can discern the why objectively. This is done in such a way as to remove personal bias from the equation. I like that sort of News reporting…it’s sadly not available on most major news outlets anymore *coughCNNcough* though the News shows on Fox (not the opinion shows, there is a distinction) still manage it quite well.

Now I’ve never pretended that this blog wasn’t biased. You read a few posts and you will realized pretty quickly that I’m a conservative first and foremost and a gay women somewhere far below that on the list.

I don’t write objectively on this blog. Now I do try to make sure I check and double check my facts because I strive for accuracy in my writing, but I will call Liberals idiots, I will call Islam evil, I will call pretty much everything as I see it…usually through the lens of my bias. Now do I think that my bias is the correct and rational way to think? Yes, most definitely. Why else would I think that way?

So I do have some very strongly held political views. Does that impair my ability to write objectively? No.

If you are a good journalist you will know how to separate your biases from the facts and still be able to write objectively. So I can write an objective article about Obama while somewhere, locked in a closet in my brain, my conservative self is rocking back and forth muttering “this President is a moron, this President is a moron” over and over. It can be done.

If you are reading this and shaking your head, saying it can’t be done. That you couldn’t possibly write about something objectively if you felt strongly about it. If that’s the case then you have one of two problems, you are either a very bad writer or you are very weak minded…possibly both, hopefully only the first one…you can be trained out of that one.

The second point he made was one that, upon looking back at it, completely contradicts the previous statement about not holding strong personal biases on “big issues”. He said that there was a need to “diversify” the pool of journalists and editors working at major news outlets (paper and media) because without more females, or homosexuals or people of minority background, the news will not be “understandable and clear” to those who read it.

Wait.

I thought the whole point of journalism was to not write using your bias. If you are writing something one way, only because you are a women, or black, or gay, then isn’t that writing going to be biased in that direction?

Oh wait. I forgot.

This is the liberal media. The only direction something is allowed to be biased in is toward the “minority”.

Another point, harkening back to post I made about how I didn’t realize I had a separate history from the rest of the world just because I was gay. History is history and news is news people. If it’s important to one group it should be important to every other person living in that area as well.

Stories about gay rights do not just affect gay people. I don’t need a gay journalist to write those articles, because, theoretically, the journalist writing it should be so objective that I shouldn’t be able to tell if they are gay, straight, asexual, or poly-sexual. Unless it’s an editorial, I don’t give a crap about their personal opinion on gay rights. I want to know the facts, minus their opinion on conservative or liberal politics or the morality, or lack thereof, of gay marriage. Besides, gay rights are not any issue that only affect gay men and women. It is a civil rights issue and it does affect the nation in general. We should all be keeping ourselves informed about the topic.

Do you think that women’s suffrage only affected women? No, it had widespread affect on men, women, children, corporations, and the government. That’s why it doesn’t have to be written about by a woman, for women. It’s important, it’s news, it’s for everyone.

There is no need to “diversify” the journalism workforce, there is a need to hire good journalists, objective journalists, no matter their race, gender, or sexual orientation. “Diversifying” the workforce is just Affirmative Action all over again and I bet you can guess how I felt about that. I want to know that I got my job because I’m good at what I do, not because I’m gay and female and the news outlet needed to fill a quota of “minorities”. I want people to get jobs because they deserve them, not because they “need” the job because they are an “oppressed minority”.

And anyone with a conscience and a scrap of dignity should feel the same.