Archive for May 21st, 2011
Herman Cain, Tea Party Favorite, Announces Presidential Bid
Frequent Tea Party speaker Herman Cain, the former CEO of Godfather’s Pizza, announced his presidential bid in his hometown of Atlanta today. Over 15,000 gathered for his announcement rally at Centennial Olympic Park. Click on the screen capture to watch his announcement on C-SPAN.
Herman Cain is on fire. He shocked focus group expert Frank Luntz after the South Carolina GOP primary debate by winning the event, hands-down, among an audience of GOP voters who had largely never heard of him before.
And the Leftists are terrified.
Watch his announcement, then listen to the viewer calls afterwards. The Democrat callers are beside themselves…one even seemed nearly incoherent with rage. They call Herman Cain everything but an Uncle Tom (all but one, who is obviously posing as a Democrat who voted for Obama and says he’s switching. But kudos to someone from our side, finally using the tactics of the Left against them. For once.)
We believe this will be the Left’s talking point, when it comes to Herman Cain. He will be called a GOP puppet, an empty suit created just so there would be a black face running against Teh Won. He’s just a shill, a plant, the James Carvilles of the world will say. Members of the Cocktail Party GOP will call him “not serious.”
We’d like to thank Barak Hussein Obama for eliminating experience as a requirement for being elected President of the United States. We’ll be sure to remind Leftists of this when they start howling that Herman Cain isn’t qualified because he hasn’t been taking kickbacks from K-street lobbyists for the past 30 years.
Yes, we love Sarah Palin. And we hope she runs. But as of today, she’s not in the race.
We also love anyone who tells it like it is, and is willing to cut through the B.S. and be honest with the American people. We especially love it when a conservative, pro-Constitution candidate like Herman Cain is willing to take the fight to Obama and say the kinds of things that establishment Cocktail Party GOP bosses don’t dare say out loud, for fear of missing out on the canapes at Mittens Romney’s November, 2012 concession party.
Our favorite bit? Herman Cain’s foreign policy statement:
“Know who your friends are. Know who your enemies are. And don’t throw your friends under the bus.“
Concern Trolls vs Eeyores: Can You Spot the Difference?
(Moderator’s Note: The following guidelines for dealing with Concern Trolls and Eeyores are excerpted from a post by Kevin DuJan that originally ran on January 10, 2010. As the 2012 election process gets underway, it’s vitally important for members of the American Resistance to be able to spot and eliminate Concern Trolls and Eeyores, both online and in real life.)
Kevin DuJan, Editor & Founder of HillBuzz.org
Some of you have asked us to further explain the difference between Concern Trolls and Eeyores. Well, here goes.
Concern Troll = someone who posts on a board, forum, or article and says things like:
* “You know, I really like Scott Brown, but it’s Massachusetts, and even though he’s had a surge, it’s Massachusetts, so we should stop phone-banking or working hard and just give up. It’s Massachusetts”.
* “Oh, I’ve been so proud of how hard Hillary Clinton has been fighting, but there’s no way she’s going to win Ohio. This is the best board ever, and we all love Hillary, but I heard on MSNBC that Obama has it all sewed up, so for the good of the party she should just quit and drop out of the race. I like her, but I think we need to just give up now.”
* “You know, I didn’t like Sarah Palin at first, but then, wow, she gave a great speech at the convention and I think she has a good heart. Such cute kids, too! But, really, I hate to say she’s not ready yet to be Vice President, but she’s not. I think we just need to accept that and move on”.
Concern Trolls use a lot of “I Statements”, the kind bad therapists tell sociopaths to use more of so that they trick parole boards into releasing them. “I think”, “I feel”, “I believe”, etc. They have a three-pronged, four or five sentence max, little system:
(A) Establish some positive connection to whatever the thread is about, but using “I Statements” to say things like: “I like Scott Brown”, “I didn’t like Sarah Palin at first but”, “I’ve been so proud of Hillary Clinton”, etc. The example about Palin is good because one of the other things they try to do is establish some sort of false-honesty by seemingly admitting something to the board, so that they generate a fake credibility, among other oxymorons. “I didn’t like her at first, but, now I do, and I’ve thus established you can trust me because I shared that secret, now listen to me when I tell you to sit your butts home and let Democrats win. Otay? Buh-bye!”
(B) Tell everyone they all worked hard and note how impressed the troll is with all of you (“This is the best board ever!”), and then express “concern” that people are getting their hopes up too much and that people need to not waste their energy on the task at hand. “We’ve all worked hard, but now it is time to give up and do nothing so that Democrats can catchup and beat us”.
(C) Flat-out, using “I Statements”, tell everyone to just give up, but without making imperative statements that would come off as commands and piss people off. So, they don’t say, “You have to just stop and give up now so Democrats can win”. Instead, they say, “I think we’re all just really tired. We put up a good fight. But the Boston Globe poll says Coakley’s ahead by 15 points, and it is Massachusetts, so we should just all put our diapers on, sit in the corner, and fill them, all day, doing nothing productive, until someone can come and change us. That’s what I am going to do, and I have been the biggest supporter of our candidate ever. I love this board!”
Concern trolls are often, but not always, paid operatives who quite possibly work in little boutique PR and Public Strategies consulting firms in major cities. Chicago has DOZENS of these. We know — we’ve worked in these offices. Where do you think we learned everything we tell you?
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Eeyores are different from Concern Trolls even if the end result is the same, to demoralize supporters of one candidate so the other candidate can win.
We came up with the term Eeyores to describe people in our ranks during the Clinton campaign who would depress other volunteers with their pessimism, negativity, and “there’s no way we can win!” nonsense. These are people who get all their news from CNN and MSNBC without realizing that CNN and MSNBC have agendas and deliberately lie to push them.
Eeyores LOVE emailing people negative articles. It’s sick, actually.
Concern trolls WANT you to give up; Eeyores don’t want you to give up and don’t want the opponent to win, but don’t realize they are sabotaging all efforts you’re making.
Concern Trolls DELIBERATELY lower morale.
Eeyores lower morale unintentionally.
They just can’t shut their damn mouths and need to keep venting their pessimism, spreading their little black rainclouds everywhere. It’s frustrating.
Eeyores are actually FAR MORE DANGEROUS and harder to deal with, because they are often your friends. In our case, with Hillary Clinton, Eeyores were people we liked very much — but the time and energy it took to keep these people propped up, and to talk them down off ledges they got on whenever Tim Russert starting bellowing “Just quit already!” really distracted us from other things we needed to do.
It cost us AT LEAST three essays a day we could have written…about 100 phone calls a day we could have made…or just plain old sleep we missed because we were refuting, bit by bit, everything the MSNBC/CNN propaganda machine was putting out there to discourage Hillary’s voters and lower our turnout on election day.
Exhausting!
HillBuzz itself, this site, exists because of Eeyores, actually. It’s why we started this site, because the constant emails from 50 or so of these people on our list of 500 volunteers took so much time to address that we just started posting what we would have written to these people individually on this site. We never intended this to be a national site. It was strictly for Chicago Hillary volunteers, so we could share articles to refute what the MSM propaganda machine was doing, and to give people tips to fight Concern Trolls and combat Eeyorism in their own midst.
(Moderator’s Note: We’re re-running this Concern Trolls vs Eeyores identification guide because of a comment that came in today. Is it a concern troll? An Eeyore? A totally innocent reader just sharing his honest opinion? Should we delete it, or allow it to stand? Would you have recognized this as “trolling” before you became a Hillbuzz reader? Have you ever written anything like it yourself? Do you find it demoralizing? Hillbuzzers, please examine the following comment and share your critique. Please explain your reasoning.)
Thank you for the invite to post here boyz. I am a Romney supporter, and after being blasted…actually savaged here by many of you Palin supporters, I have opted not to have any further discussions on this site. While I understand that Palin is your number one choice for the nominations, the continuing barrage of insults to any other potential Presidential candidates (“soggy cucumber sandwiches”) has become not only tiresome, but offensive. Even worse, the insults I and others have had to endure from Palin supporters has only fed the reputations that Palin supporters can be the nastiest political group of people in cyberspace.
I am not trying to be intentionally mean or condescending here, only honest about my feeling about Hillbuzz for the past year or so. Since I found this site before the 2008 elections, I have enjoyed reading the various commentaries. I even wrote to Rush Limbaugh urging him to check out his site. I was even delighted to hear him mention it only a few days later on his radio show.
Since Obama was elected, I have been a little perplexed by the nonstop Palin worship going on here, especially with how I was viciously attacked for not supporting her to run for President out of concern that independent voters would not back her, handing four more years to Obama. The attacks were nonstop and relentless. I could not have a rational discuss on this site anymore. That’s it why I stopped posting.
If you have noticed that traffic on this site has dwindled, perhaps you should take note that the Palin supporters here need to tone down their rhetoric and be respectful to those who don’t support a Palin run for the Presidency. This site has a lot of potential and should be more welcoming to those who support different candidates. Perhaps then again, this is exactly what is article is all about.
So…what’s your verdict? Was this comment written by a Concern Troll, Eeyore, or Innocent Bystander?
Indiana State Senator Vows to Fight IN Supreme Court Decision Allowing Random Illegal House Searches
It’s good to know that not everyone is asleep at the wheel when it comes to the Constitutions of Indiana and the U.S.
Predictably, there are those in law enforcement eager to take advantage of the Indiana State Supreme Court’s ruling last week that forbids citizens of Indiana from resisting illegal home invasions by police, who also no longer need a warrant to enter a home (courtesy of a separate decision by the Court last week.)
According to Newton County Sheriff, Don Hartman Sr., random house to house searches are now possible and could be helpful following the Barnes v. STATE of INDIANA Supreme Court ruling issued on May 12th, 2011. When asked three separate times due to the astounding callousness as it relates to trampling the inherent natural rights of Americans, he emphatically indicated that he would use random house to house checks, adding he felt people will welcome random searches if it means capturing a criminal.
(H/T to an alert Hillbuzz reader)
Saturday Open Thread: May 21, 2011
Today in history, Clara Barton and Adolphus Solomons founded the American National Red Cross, the non-profit, volunteer-run organization that is synonymous with disaster relief.
What’s happening today where you live? If life looks good for you today, you may want to throw a few dollars at the Red Cross to help those across the US who are suffering.
