August 2008 – Page 4

No backup for a fellow blogger

As you can see by a run of recent comments to this website, the blogger known as “ShoreThings” and I have had a running battle of words over the solution to our domestic energy issue. (Okay, maybe “battle” is a strong word – how about disagreement?) Anyway, I got this interesting e-mail from Dave Ryan at American Solutions and I thought I’d share part of it with you.

As you know, poll after poll shows that we are winning the argument about how to lower gas and diesel prices and develop more American energy now.

But the even bigger news is that the anti-energy elites are desperately worried. They are not only criticizing us, but they are admitting that they are losing the argument.

And friends, that’s big. In fact, considering the source, that’s huge.

Recently, liberal group MoveOn.org in an email to their supporters sounded dejected. They wrote “Here’s the truth: Right now, progressives are losing this argument.”

That can mean only one thing – WE ARE WINNING THIS ARGUMENT!

In the energy debate, common sense is winning and it’s got the anti-energy elites rattled because they offer no solutions to lowering gas and diesel prices.

American Solutions, on the other hand, has taken a bold stand and has been leading the “Drill Here, Drill Now, Pay Less” movement that has energized millions of Americans around a positive solution. Because of your help and the help of more than a million others, today an overwhelming majority of Americans support opening up new areas for exploration and drilling of American oil and gas, including offshore.

Even though MoveOn.org admits we are winning, they won’t quit, and there is still more work to be done.

Congress has left for a 5-week vacation without doing anything to address the soaring cost of gas and diesel. This inaction is unacceptable to the American people, many of whom can’t afford a vacation this year. (All emphasis in original.)

Dave goes on to talk about a press conference held this morning with Newt Gingrich (the founder of American Solutions) taking time to join some of his former colleagues still occupying the Capitol despite Congress being in recess. I have that short video too.

By the way, while he’s not on a short list as far as I know, Congressman Putnam is a rising young star in the Republican Party and it’s not surprising they’ve put him out front on this issue. (Jindal/Putnam 2016?) But I digress. The ten or so holdovers who have remained in Washington during the recess deserve our support for standing up for what’s right.

And I don’t think these Republicans are against renewable energy, because those who truly think about the situation know that someday these alternatives will have their place, like coal supplanted wood in the mid-19th century and a few decades later oil and its derivitives supplanted coal. (A lot of old houses in my former neck of the woods still have the coal bins in their cellars, mine was one. But when we lived there we had a natural gas furnace heating the place.) Even John McCain has ideas on how to supplant the internal combustion engine (from his campaign website):

John McCain Will Propose A $300 Million Prize To Improve Battery Technology For Full Commercial Development Of Plug-In Hybrid And Fully Electric Automobiles. A $300 million prize should be awarded for the development of a battery package that has the size, capacity, cost and power to leapfrog the commercially available plug-in hybrids or electric cars. That battery should deliver a power source at 30 percent of the current costs. At $300 million, the prize is one dollar for every man, woman and child in this country – and a small price to pay for breaking our dependence on oil. (Emphasis in orginal.)

While I dislike the premise of the federal government being involved, it’s not a bad idea at all. If 3,000 of America’s best and brightest contributed $100,000 each to the cause, you could achieve the same goal.

My objection is against Democrats who, first of all, simply dismiss the oil industry out of hand and do as much as they can to limit what these companies do best – bring the energy that’s needed for a prosperous economy to those who use it. The other objection is their gaming the free market by overregulation, thus denying consumers all the choices which could be available to them.

A lot of political arguments come down not to philosophy, but to the means of achieving a common goal. I’m of the belief that ShoreThings wants to increase domestic energy production as I do, but we have a different manner of thinking about how to accomplish this goal. Right now, it appears the American people fall more in line with the solutions I favor than with his. And since we’ve tended to do things the liberal way more often than not over the last 70 years, perhaps it’s time for common sense to reign again.

Study: illegal population declining

Last week I was notified about a study done by Steven A. Camarota and Karen Jensenius of the Center for Immigration Studies which claimed that in the last year the population of illegal immigrants has declined about 10 percent nationwide. And while stepped-up enforcement got some of the credit, this drop was moreso simply because of a stagnant economy – there’s fewer jobs that Americans will do so the number Americans won’t do dropped as well.

To come up with their findings, the CIS duo used Census data along with information on other areas like cross-border remittances, incarceration data, and even school enrollment. The study itself is well-documented with several charts and graphs to show the trends in various areas.

But one weakness of this report is the glaring omission of state-by-state numbers. What piqued my interest in looking this over was whether the illegal immigrant population decline was spread among all 50 states, or concentrated in areas which have gotten tough on illegals over the last few months like Arizona and Oklahoma. Conversely, I wanted to know if the safe-haven laws in force in other states have contributed to increasing their illegal population despite the overall trend. (Obviously I was really interested in Maryland’s numbers given the ease which illegals can acquire a driver’s license. It’s my belief we’re among the most magnetic of states for these undocumented workers.)

Another interesting sidebar of their findings is that the illegal population rose sharply during the debate over the amnesty bill proposed by, among others, Senator John McCain. Apparently the newcomers were hoping against hope that they could be legitimized by the bill but once the measure died many decided to head back home.

Regardless of its main flaw of not having state-by-state information, as background material the study by Camarota and Jensenius is good for showing a trend that could accelerate if other states would be more aggressive in addressing the problem. Since no one really wants to maintain a stagnant economy for the long term, perhaps an approach that discourages illegals from even bothering to come is the best one. Speaking for myself, I have no problem whatsoever with those who wish to make a better life for themselves in America, I just want them to go about it in the proper manner and (especially) learn the language!

Response to comment #94662

Nope, it’s not what you think, I already took care of that one.

Yesterday’s post “Overtime inside the Beltway” brought two comments from my fellow blogger ShoreThings. Since the first one was number 94662 and it gets confusing if I overuse the title “comment that deserves a post” you get this title.

As for the first comment, I couldn’t do that right off the top of my head because I believe some of those leases are offshore. But the query misses the key point – whether oil companies already hold leases on a particular amount of explorable land is irrelevant when other areas with proven reserves are off-limits. Like the old adage goes, a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. And if oil companies have the choice between rolling the dice on an area that may hold some promise but could very well end up a dry hole against an area where it’s extremely likely that oil can be extracted and transported away profitably, chances are they’d go with the latter. While the drive-by media and the leftists (yes, I repeat myself) castigate oil companies for making obscene profits, it bears reminding them that indeed that is why they’re in business. Exxon/Mobil isn’t a non-profit corporation and it better not become one as long as I have a few shares of their stock. They still have to play in the market though and if Shell is selling gasoline cheaper, customers will go there and Shell will increase their profits.

To address the second comment, these House members make a compelling argument for their cause. However, to me the solution is not to place oil companies under the same restriction as coal companies have but instead loosen those shackles on the coal companies. Let’s look at this logically.

In both cases, the businesses are dependent on a supply of some sort to stay in business. Coal companies wish to mine coal as cheaply as possible and charge the highest price the market will allow. The same goes for oil companies. Therefore, for either entity to lease land but not use it would happen for two reasons: one, to prevent another competing company from gaining access to a particular site, and two, because to build the infrastructure necessary and transport the product to end-users isn’t currently estimated to be at a price point which is economically feasible. An example of this is oil shale, which I seem to recall becomes profitable to produce when the per-barrel price of oil is $75 or above. If oil companies are allowed to begin the process in an unfettered fashion, they can get to work on doing this as the per-barrel price is well over that figure – but methinks the environmental lobby will put the oil companies through a series of hoops before this ever happens.

So in the oil companies’ case they’re holding on to reserve areas because even at $120 a barrel it’s not currently profitable to start oil exploration and extraction there. (While I haven’t checked this out in some time, I used to frequently drive by some small oil wells in northern Ohio that weren’t being used – either the field is tapped out or the cost to extract became too high. The same principles apply, but I’ll have to check next time I go that way and see if they’re back in production given the higher prices.) But eventually as other areas begin to fall off in production oil companies are going to have to begin working these reserve areas, or else diversify their business away from oil. I’m quite aware that there is only a finite supply of petroleum; however, the supply isn’t going to run out anytime soon. In the meantime, oil companies should be allowed to lease more lands – after all, those lease payments do make someone a tidy profit for little time and investment on their part. (As I say, I’d be happy to lease my backyard to an oil company as long as I can use it too. Those little oil wells don’t take up a lot of space.)

While ShoreThings doesn’t mention this, I’ll also bet that the reason oil companies import so much foreign oil is quite simple – it’s cheaper to go to some other country, deal with their government-controlled oil monopoly there, and transport crude across an ocean or two than it is to produce here because our government discourages production through restrictions and regulation. And to address another argument he advances in his first comment, perhaps it is easier to transport ANWR oil to Japan but if the Japanese are willing to pay market price for oil, it’s not like we can’t use the money to buy that same amount of oil from a place easier to transport from than ANWR. (And you have heard that they built a pipeline across Alaska? With some help from Canada we could build another to the lower 48.) As readers may have gathered by now, oil’s a pretty damn valuable commodity to sell, too, so why not sell ours?

The other advantage to enhancing the areas available to domestic production is the additional opportunity to create good-paying jobs in America. This is a topic I’ve harped on a lot and it provides a great way to use those oil company profits – let’s create jobs which actually do work rather than a windfall profits tax creating jobs to push paper from one side of the desk to the other, as the government is famous for doing.

Finally, by loosening restrictions on where oil companies can go it allows property owners to possibly have more valuable land. While much of the land in question is already under the control of the federal government, there are many who could see their land become more valuable and in some cases those areas happen to be fairly depressed right now. As I stated in the last paragraph, let’s allow more of those oil company profits to be reinvested in the communities across America and not be sucked into the black hole inside the Beltway, lost in the maw that is Fedzilla.

All I am saying is give capitalism a chance.

A retitled and slightly shorter piece is crossposted at Red Maryland.

Referee in a catfight

While some say I don’t get a lot of comments, normally I don’t mind that as long as the comments advance the post in some way, shape, manner, or form. I have to tell you though that once in awhile it’s amusing to be the referee in a catfight, and the comments on my weekend post about Red Maryland being tagged as a spam blog have reached that point.

There was a point that was missed to some extent amdist the comments back and forth, and it came to mind after reading this:

I see your Blog Rankings are more where they should be, #14 in Maryland and # 14 on Delmarva. You must have slacked this week in cross postings?

You know we love ya Michael but this is a reality and IMHO where you should be. With all due respect.

Pardon me, I happen to think top 5 is a little more realistic. But those I’d be behind would be sites like Red Maryland, O’Malley Watch, Hedgehog Report, or even a site from the left like Free State Politics, not a site that barely dabbles in serious political thought but has no problem “borrowing” some when it needs to. (With all due respect.) It is a political influence rating, is it not? Maybe “news” blogs need their own category.

I’ve not met Brian Griffiths yet, but by reputation he seems like a reasonable person with some writing talent. I think his readership numbers suffer somewhat because he’s actually posting on Red Maryland quite a bit – why go to his site when you can read his stuff there?

And I seem to recall a few months back at the start of the year, when Brian was pretty much king of the hill, that there were accusations of him “gaming the system” and how poor the BNN ratings were because of the number of crossposts Brian did. With the shoe on the other foot, suddenly there’s no complaints but the comment insinuated that I was a similar beneficiary who fell sharply in the rankings because I didn’t have any crossposts last week – as if that were holding me up. Perhaps it was, but the incestuous relationship between the top 3 Delmarva blogs (who are 1, 3, and 6 in Maryland as well) might make one ponder who’s gaming who. (Both Pocomoke Tattler and Delmarva Dealings crosspost to Salisbury News, Delmarva Dealings also crossposts to Red Maryland as I do.)

I don’t know what the answer is to this issue, but I do know that I have a reader base who likes what I have to say and doesn’t really worry about my BNN ranking. I mean, if crossposting is what I have to do to achieve a higher ranking I certainly have places where I’ve been invited to do so (and did last night.) But it’s more important to me to write well for whatever number of eyes read through what I have to say.

On a related note, I do have to give kudos to G.A. Harrison for increasing the participation on the Delmarva BNN network; I’ve noticed a lot of new sites on the ratings over the last couple weeks. He’s also managed to put Delmarva Dealings on four different state/region rankings this week so hats off to him.

Finally, a bit of fair warning: I’m taking a few days off over the weekend. I’m planning to have fresh (to you) content each day but comment moderation will be much more sporadic. I’ll bring things back up to speed by next Wednesday.

Overtime inside the Beltway

While the majority Democrats decided it was time to pack up and head home for the usual August Congressional recess, a small renegade group of Republicans stayed behind to press the issue of energy independence. You know, I’ve heard a lot of folks say that it’s about time the Republicans showed they had cajones.

Unfortunately, all this bluster sort of escaped notice by the “drive-by” media, which isn’t surprising given who they’re in the tank for in this election. It’s one time the new media has taken the lead in coverage and ignored the B-list celebrity aspect of the Obama campaign – the mainstreamers have perfected ignoring to an art form as far as the McCain side goes. (Well, unless McCain does a campaign commercial they dislike.)

It appears that my blogging cohort The Waterman has gotten a front-row seat to the action, my guess is that he’s spending his summer as an intern for some Congressman or group. Regardless, he did jot down a few thoughts on Friday about the experience of having Nancy Pelosi turn out the lights and tell the GOP the party was over. (No, Nancy, it’s only just begun.) As well, The Waterman points out another first-hand report on the Americans for Tax Reform blog (perhaps that’s where he’s working.)

Is this all symbolism? Of course, because the GOP is a minority they can’t put together a quorum for business, and despite the Republicans’ most strenuous objections to the procedural call indeed the House is out of business until after Labor Day. Maybe the Democrats are hoping that oil prices continue to fall and along with that prices at the pump decrease too. We’ll still likely be looking at $3.50 per gallon by Labor Day though, and while that price is below the $4 a gallon tipping point which seems to the the highest price Americans will tolerate without complete outrage, it’s still over $1 a gallon higher than the price in force when Democrats seized back control of Congress after the 2006 elections.

I’ll come back to this point shortly, but one thing I received in my e-mail today was an update from the Harris campaign which featured an AP story by Kristen Wyatt. (She must be the Eastern Shore beat reporter because she has a lot of items in the Daily Times as well.) My jaw about hit the floor when Wyatt’s story claimed that Democratic opponent Frank Kratovil supported expanding domestic oil production like Harris did. Kratovil only wants to use the land already leased by oil companies which may or may not have marketable oil reserves on it, but not explore in other areas which are much more likely to pan out, like ANWR or on the Outer Continental Shelf. In many other areas of the Kratovil plan he advocates market-bending federal involvement and a reliance on “alternative” sources of energy that may be decades away from being practical unless heavily subsidized by our tax dollars.

In nearly two years of Democrat control, about all that Congress has accomplished is placing more restrictions on energy usage, for one example all but wiping out the incadescent light bulb in favor of the more efficient but more dangerous and harder to dispose of compact fluorescent bulbs. (Of course, President Bush didn’t veto the proposal either, to his discredit.) They haven’t created one volt of electricity or gallon of gasoline by doing common-sense items that would encourage oil and natural gas exploration, in particular loosening environmental restrictions. The permitting process for new power plants or oil refineries is way too long and arduous.

As I noted earlier, the GOP stalwarts can’t actually accomplish anything in terms of crafting and passing legislation by staying behind in Washington while their cohorts head home for some R and R. What they can do is show that they’re willing to work and solve these problems while the majority hems and haws about shifting to alternative fuels.

But perhaps the time spent would be more useful if the GOP got together and drafted up a list of legislative measures they’ll work on when Congress returns and make it public, sort of like 1994’s Contract With America. In this case, it would be all about energy independence through obtaining our own supplies of oil, coal, natural gas, and, hey, if T. Boone Pickens wants to front the cash, we can add wind power to the mix as well. I have no objection to that if the price is right. (In a side note, Maryland officials may be buying up the offshore wind power that Delmarva Power doesn’t buy from the Bluewater Wind project. Naturally it costs more to produce this electricity than it would to produce through more conventional sources, but Governor O’Malley isn’t one to be too worried about costs, is he?)

On the whole I’m very pleased (for once) that someone in Washington is willing to work to get legislation done, although I’m hoping that they pay as much mind to eliminating laws and regulations as they do to creating them.

Crossposted on Red Maryland and That’s Elbert With An E.

A message for Obama

I say that because I doubt John McCain has any thought whatsoever about not finishing this job.

Originally I wanted to place this video in the article about Steve Hudson’s endorsement for Maryland’s Eighth District by Vets for Freedom to illustrate a little more about the aims of that organization but I couldn’t find an embed feature on the site. Thanks to Judy Mayka at Vets for Freedom for her assistance in pointing me in the right direction.

Perhaps Steve Hudson’s campaign needs to get in touch with Kate Norley about helping out the cause, although the Reisterstown resident wouldn’t reside in that particular district.

Regardless, this just ties into my viewpoint that, whether you were for Iraqi and Afghan invasions or against them, we may as well finish the task we started and do it right. It would not bother me in the least to have a permanent base of operations in Iraq, much as we already do in other far-flung regions of the globe like Okinawa or Greenland. While I’m not a proponent of big government, I do share that particular foreign policy view with neocons.

Before you ask, no, I’m not a veteran, just a supporter of our military. I was blessed to have gone through my Selective Service age under Presidents Reagan and George H.W. Bush, when no draft was needed because there was an ample supply of volunteers for the military. This allowed me the choice to go to college, get my degree in Environmental Design, and work in my profession while others chose to enlist in the military for all the many benefits it had to offer. Fortunately for us, thousands of young men and women continue to make that choice each month and we should applaud their sacrifices. This is why I support the Vets For Freedom group and will continue doing so.

Red Maryland a spam blog?

Editor’s note – apparently there was an issue accessing this site since last night. I had to disable the Site Meter on a temporary basis to fix the problem; hopefully the folks there are working on it. Thanks to Joe Albero for the heads-up. (Wonder if that problem and the post subject are related?)

I became aware yesterday afternoon that the Red Maryland blog I contribute to was temporarily locked as a “spam” blog. As a part of Blogspot, this and thousands of other blogs fall under the auspices of Google, which can be a problem. Today was one of those days, as this quote from the Blogger Buzz blog attests:

While we wish that every post on this blog could be about cool features or other Blogger news, sometimes we have to step in and admit a mistake.

We’ve noticed that a few users have had their blogs mistakenly marked as spam, and wanted to sound off real quick to let you know that, despite it being Friday afternoon, we are working hard to sort this out. So to those folks who have received an email saying that your blog has been classified as spam and can’t post right now, we offer our sincere apologies for the trouble.

We hope to have this resolved shortly, and appreciate your patience as we work through the kinks.

Many who picked up readership of monoblogue in recent months may not know that my blogging history includes a fairly short-lived Blogspot blog I called ttown’s right-wing conspiracy. But after looking into Google for a post I did there, I decided it would soon be time to get my own domain name and not be held hostage by the folks at Google.

The post I did actually turned out to be my first real splash in the blogging world, and as a guy who was lucky to get 10 readers a day at the time, that week I had nearly 200 and I found out a lot about blogging as a business. It was called “For a few dollars more…” and I posted it on July 28, 2005. I suppose I’ll see just how successful this link turns out to be because I still get the SiteMeter reports for that site and I still have a couple people a week who stumble onto my old place almost 3 years after I stopped posting there.

As I depicted in the 2005 post, Google employees were astoundingly liberal in their political giving and at the time were not very friendly to conservative sites like Red Maryland would eventually become. It’s not out of the realm of probability that someone on the left with an axe to grind may have reported a number of right-leaning sites as spammers in order to do a little Blogspot censoring and the folks at Google were only too happy to play along. As one of the e-mail commentors I received noted, “what if this happened right before the election?”

It’s the reason I decided to get my own site where I can pretty much say what I want, and even though I do pay for the server the cost is well worth the peace of mind. And while one drawback to that approach for Red Maryland would be having to recoordinate all the contributors to a new site (and making sure everyone repoints their browsers) perhaps another alternative would be to look into a WordPress blog (also a free service). But that has drawbacks too as my blogging friend Elbert can attest to.

In any case, hopefully the issue will be resolved soon if it hasn’t already been – but it’s a wake-up call to many on the right side of the blogosphere that free speech isn’t always free when someone else provides the platform. Perhaps we need to take a page from one of our heroes, Ronald Reagan, and actually pay for our microphone.

And now for something completely different…

On a number of occasions I’ve written about being a contributor to the Patriot Post internet newsletter and was asked to make a mention of times I’d actually submitted an article. Well, over the last three Fridays I’ve been fortunate enough to be included – two by their request and last week’s unsolicited.

Yesterday they placed my piece on the state of California banning transfats (page 9), last week’s item was on Beltway Gas Pains (page 5), and the earlier article discussed Big Labor’s effect on the Big Three (page 7). Of the three, the gasoline article was probably the most heavily edited (I think another contributor may have added his or her two cents in an article and portions of both were used) while the other two had a little light pruning and additions here and there. I could recognize them right away as mine though.

Sometime I may have to go through my e-mail and paper archives and see just how many times I’ve had something included over the years – my time with the Patriot Post dates back to my days in Ohio. There are times I wish there were bylines and such to recognize the writers but as I understand it a few may not benefit from having their names known. Thus we toil in obscurity but on the whole I’ve enjoyed the experience and hope to continue contributing many times in the future.

20 years of ‘excellence in broadcasting’

Thanks to the magic of being able to prewrite posts on WordPress and have them come online at the desired point in time, as this appears on monoblogue Rush Limbaugh should be seconds away from or into embarking on his third decade of “broadcast excellence” utilizing “talent on loan from God.” For that I’m certain I join millions of others in expressing my hearty congratulations and megadittos. I know the Human Events website has celebrated the milestone all week through its writers.

Rush’s national show got its start just as another icon was getting ready to leave the stage and the conservative movement faced an uncertain future. While President Reagan’s two terms in office advanced a trend toward smaller, less intrusive government and reestablished an attitude of American exceptionalism, the jury was still out over the man who would eventually be his successor, Vice President George H.W. Bush (better known today as Bush 41.) At that particular point in time, Bush the elder’s election was anything but assured over Democrat hopeful Michael Dukakis. And as events would bear out, conservative misgivings were proven correct as the hapless Bush told America to “read my lips” but sold out to Democrats who promised spending cuts if only he would increase the tax burden to address deficit spending. Bush delivered the tax increase but Democrats merrily broke their end of the bargain.

In the midst of all this, Limbaugh’s Excellence in Broadcasting network grew from its initial 56 stations on that fateful August day to over 600 stations today, reaching upwards of 20 million listeners weekly. Growth occurred despite naysayers who continually wrote Limbaugh off, first after President Clinton was elected, then after his 1996 re-election, and again after Rush’s well-publicized battle with addiction to painkillers and going deaf in part because of it.

I’m sure every one who claims to be a “dittohead” has their story about how they became a regular listener to the early-afternoon radio program, and I’m no different.

My introduction to Rush came in the fall of 1993, and the gentleman I have to thank for it is a guy who still occasionally comments here on monoblogue as “Bob from Ohio.” Having changed jobs and moved to a fast-growing architectural firm in my hometown of Toledo, he and I were among four employees who had a unique office arrangement where we subletted one room in a different suite because the firm had outgrown its original quarters. Being on the south side of the building and completely insulated from the main office (without even a phone line – we had to walk down the corridor to the main suite to answer phone calls) our room was dubbed the “Rebeldome” and at 12:00 Bob made sure it was a Rush room. We just had to keep it low so as not to disturb the main tenants, who were licensed social workers. Indeed we were a outpost of conservatism in a very liberal setting.

Both Bob and I moved on to other opportunities during the next year, but in the brief time we worked together (about six months) I was hooked by Rush. Here was someone on the radio who spoke in plain terms about principles I agreed with but really hadn’t heard being expressed before, except during Ronald Reagan’s latter two Presidential campaigns. So even when I moved on to a firm that played Muzak all day and worked in a windowless room where AM radio reception would have been difficult at best, my lunch breaks were spent in my car listening to the first half-hour of the Limbaugh program.

While perhaps things may have evolved this way anyhow, I think Rush was an influence on my own political activity. With the exception of a two-year period where I was registered as a Democrat (I did my own version of “Operation Chaos” and voted for Jesse Jackson in 1984, perceiving him to be the weakest Democrat candidate) I’ve been registered as a Republican the entire 26 years I’ve had the opportunity to vote, and I’m sure coming of age in the era of Reagan influenced my original decision. But while I had one college roommate who was a College Republican, I didn’t really become political until the mid-1990’s when I was invited to a gathering of Young Republicans based simply on being the proper age and registered that way. I decided to go and the rest is history. Perhaps had I not been a dittohead, I would’ve tossed out the invitation and things would have been totally different in my life. While I’ve seen much more failure than success in terms of those candidates for whom I’ve volunteered and voted, I can sleep well most nights knowing I at least made an attempt to get the right people elected; those who stood for principles I agreed with for the most part.

The Limbaugh influence, though, is most prevalent where you are reading today. While I’ve always had some talent in putting words to paper, I really didn’t use it in a political sense very often. 99.9% of people wouldn’t know this, but twice in high school I was a county winner of the VFW’s “Voice of Democracy” contest, and I remember one speech I had to write and deliver was on “My Commitment To My Country.” After that, there was the occasional letter to the editor of my local paper, then once I joined the Young Republicans I had a term doing their newsletter and also put together an occasional newsletter on party happenings for the GOP voters in my precinct. From that I was honored to be selected as a Patriot Post contributor. With the advent of weblogs earlier this decade, it’s likely that I would have eventually gotten into what I do anyway but perhaps without the focus I’ve placed on it.

I’ve gone over this a couple times before, generally on the occasions where I mark my blogiversary, but the inspiration behind the very name of this site comes from Rush. My favorite portion of the show is his monologue at the beginning of each hour and as I wanted to write my site in a similar freeform fashion about “topics that interest me” (as Rush would say about his Monday through Thursday shows) I thought of these as my own monologues, with the natural inclusion of the blog aspect being placed in the name. This is why the “b” in monoblogue stands apart both in color and italic font face, as the site is truly my own monologue on political items and other things I find interesting to write and comment about.

Rush has often commented that he won’t retire until everyone in America agrees with him and recently he signed an eight-year, nine-figure deal to keep on doing what he’s doing for the Excellence in Broadcasting Network – a deal that makes those big-money contracts in the world of sport look pedestrian in comparison. And while he’s a pitchman for a number of companies on his own show, it’s not all that often you’ll hear him outside that venue. With his stature he’s earned the right to pick and choose the appearances he’ll make, which is good both for controlling the message he wants to impart and a shrewd marketing move, giving the recipient of his appearance a near-guarantee of higher ratings. If nothing else, the Limbaugh marketing plan would be a great semester-long course in a business school.

Then again, there’s an opportunity to attend the Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies at least five days a week on the radio, not to mention his Limbaugh Letter and website (I’ve subscribed to the newsletter since 2000 and am a 24/7 member.) Hopefully with good health on his part, we can look forward to enjoying Rush for at least another two decades of fighting liberalism (or, because Limbaugh was so good at making that term a non-starter in politics, the term is now “progressive”), advocating American exceptionalism, supporting our military, and generally being in favor of those people who make America work, such as entrepreneurs.

I’ve met a lot of politicians in my life, up to and including a former Vice-President of the United States, Dan Quayle. But I don’t think I’ve ever had a thrill quite like my opportunity to speak with the Great One himself last October. Not only did I find out about the powerful influence of his listenership (mentioning this site brought a Rushalanche that temporarily knocked my server offline) but I also believe I achieved the goal which Rush sets for any caller into his show, that of making the host look good. It doesn’t have to be with flattery; in fact that’s sort of discouraged and was made into shorthand by the advent of the term “dittos.” Making the host look good is simply having an interesting, intelligent conversation with him and keeping the radio listener’s hand from touching that dial and changing the station.

It’s an example I strive for each time I sit down behind my computer and begin plotting out the next post I’m going to write here. I want readers to come back on a daily basis to read what I have to say, and while I’m not nearly as successful as Limbaugh is he presents a worthy example to emulate.

So happy anniversary to Rush and the EIB Network. To close, I’ll paraphrase a greeting I send to friends each New Year’s Day: may the next two decades be the best of your life and the worst of the rest of your life.

Megadittos, Rush.