Was this, which is honestly for real and not an Onion parody:

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.

[Guest post by Aaron Worthing; if you have tips, please send them here.  Or by Twitter @AaronWorthing.]

In the middle of my twitter-war with chief twit Oliver Willis, twitter crashed, or stopped or something.

And this is why: Newt Gingrich sent out a tweet that said:

Today I am announcing my candidacy for President of the United States. You can watch my announcement here. http://bit.ly/kEbh7d

On the other hand, Monday he tweeted this:

Be sure to watch Hannity this Wednesday at 9pm ET/8pm CT. I will be on to talk about my run for President of the United States @seanhannity

Which means he already had announced he was running, he just didn’t “announce” it yet, I guess.  It reminds me of when my sister in law and the guy she was dating told me that they would be engaged the next year.

Me: So you are engaged to be engaged, is that it?

Her: Yes.

Me: So in other words you are engaged.  A promise to promise to marry is a promise to marry.

So this is a bit of political bull____, which you know I find irritating, but it’s part of the dance to grab as much free media attention as humanly possible, so that is expected.

Of course people who regularly follow this blog know that I like my presidents to have administrative experience.  I tweeted him asking about his.  I don’t expect to hear back.

Anyone know if he has any executive/administrative experience, preferably with citations?

[Posted and authored by Aaron Worthing.]

[Guest post by Aaron Worthing; if you have tips, please send them here.  Or by Twitter @AaronWorthing.]

Update: Willis responds only by pointing out that one of these was actually a retweet. I sincerely apologize for missing that one retweet and will note that below.

Now will you correct the serial falsehoods you have put out today and for your cheap use of the race card?

Update (II): Common made his appearance at the White House and praised the man whom he wished hadn’t been born.

And I wanted to kick myself at dinner tonight when I remembered this.  Oliver Willis himself has a history of bigotry toward an interracial couple.  You might happen to know that Michelle Malkin was born Michelle Maglalang and then married a white man with the last name Malkin.  She then did the perfectly ordinary thing and gradually took on his last name.

But in Willis’ mind that simple act was some kind of ethnic betrayal. He claimed her “real” name was Maglalang and accused her of ethnic whitewashing. Smilely has, ahem, whitewashed the post from his site, but an old post at Say Anything has the details.

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Blogger, Twitterer and writer for Media Matters for America Oliver Willis set off a bit of a Twitter firestorm today when he tried to distract from the increasing controversy over Common’s visit to the White House.

Now he claims that he never “defended” Common’s racism.  Sure he didn’t defend him.  He just wrote this, for instance [Update: That was technically a retweet.]:

Fox News calls @Common a “vile rapper” undeserving of attention. Comon’s last two movies? Date Night (Fox) and Just Wright (Fox Searchlight)*

Which actually demonstrates journalistic independence between Fox News and the entertainment affiliates, but of course Willis is never going to notice that.  And later, he asserts that it is a “non-story.”  But of course what he really wants to get to is insinuating that all of this opposition to racism is racist:

conservatives BLACK have very good reasons BLACK to oppose BLACK common’s BLACK scheduled appearance BLACK at the white house BLACK

But later what caught my eye was when he wrote this:

the same people who have been attacking obama’s parents for their relationship are suddenly defenders of interracial relationships. wow.

So I wrote back with a challenge:

(more…)

[Guest post by Aaron Worthing; if you have tips, please send them here.  Or by Twitter @AaronWorthing.]

Update: Linked at Big Hollywood‘s marquee. Thanks!

The original post follows as is.

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Not that he puts it that baldly (he only fantasizes about killing Republican Presidents) but he has said that black men should not be dating white women, which applies in an obvious way to Obama’s own parents.

Of course the more basic reality is that Common is an uncommonly shallow man who really hasn’t thought through what he is saying at all.  Let me quote extensively from an interview with the UK magazine Touch via Big Government:

TOUCH: This is a lyric from the track ‘Heat’ on your ‘Like Water For Chocolate’ album: “State senators, life twirls, most sell out – like a dread with a white girl.” Explain please.

COMMON: Rastafarianism is a black culture. When you see dreadlocked dudes with white girls that’s like they going against what the dreadlock’s purpose was. The dreadlock was a symbol of black love and the black people gettin’ to a certain level. In America we’ve got a lot of dreadlocked dudes and all you see them with is white girls. I don’t think there’s anything the matter with somebody loving somebody from another race but it’s almost like a stereotype that if you’ve got dreadlocks you go out with a white girl. I just feel like, as black men, we do have to be aware that, yo, every time we step out with some woman it’s setting an example for our daughters and it’s also representing something for our mothers. If you can’t really love your own, how can you really love others?

TOUCH: So you don’t agree with mixed race relationships?

COMMON: I disagree with them. It’s a lack of self-love. It’s a problem.

TOUCH: Have you ever dated outside your race?

COMMON: Nah, not dated [giggles].

TOUCH: Have you slept with anybody outside your race?

COMMON: Yeah, I definitely have.

(more…)

[Guest post by Lee Stranahan]

There’s been a lot of media fallout from Andrew Breitbart’s appearance last week on the Fox Business News show Stossel where he confronted Pigford mastermind Al Pires. I’ve already pointed out how Media Matters prevaricator Adam Shah deceptively edited the piece by removing any reference to the black farmers who have been trying to expose Pigford fraud for over a decade. It seems like MMFA actually helped give the story more exposure.

Two things happened that I consider fairly significant.

First, the story was covered last night on The O’Reilly Factor, bringing the story of the Pigford fraud to Bill O’Reilly large audience for the first time. O’Reilly seems to understand that there’s a real story here and although there are certainly points I would’ve made differently had I been a guest (hint hint) the exposure is great.

The other thing is happened is that some large liberal sites have begun to pick up on the story. I’d already mentioned Raw Story but now add Crooks and Liars to the mix. Looking at the statistics on the site it seems that about 8000 people over there watched the C&L edit of the original John Stossel piece.

Now, Crooks and Liars is a site where readers really hate Andrew Breitbart. The headline of their story was " Breitbart gets pwned by ‘Pigford’ attorney, targeted in his latest smear campaign” so they don’t even pretend to be objective in any way.

But a funny thing happened. The performance by Al Pires was so bad that a number of commenters on C&L were actually forced to look beyond their Breitbart hate and realize that Al Pires was actually the one who was ‘pwned’ in this appearance. Here are a few of examples of comments…

It looked like Breitbart did the slapping at the end and I hate the the guy. The lawyer had to sit there and take a beating at the end and that is just a fact.

And

How do you get that Pires came out looking good here? He answers serious questions with insults and when the subject of whether he lied about his compensation comes up he ends the interview. he made Breitbart look sane and reasonable. No mean feat.

And

I’m all for watching Breitbart get the hell knocked out of him, but honestly It looked like they won to me. I see these kinds of posts quite a bit. There are always claims that someone got pwned or really showed them what was what. Really, Stossel and Breitbart won that. That lawyer was effectively set up to look like a money grubbing, snake oil salesman.

I want to see the left beat the lies, but really… this was a huge loss. He presented no real facts and always looked like he was desperately trying to deflect accusations of fraud by Breitbart. I just don’t understand how anyone saw that clip as a "win for the left."

If the right is good at anything, it’s making us look like exactly what they want the narrative to be. They are masters of that.

I consider this a turning point that might actually make a few people on the left start to notice the story and realize that there’s more to it than the lies they are being spoon fed by the USDA and left-wing media.

– Lee Stranahan