How to Talk to a NObama Cultist - Cultists

Pictures

My rather pathetic attempt to post some mag pics that are a couple of weeks old but haven't made their way to People's website yet. Most likely better versions will be available in a couple of weeks. Click to make bigger:



And here's the USA Today weekend edition Mother's Day piece picture that wasn't posted online:

How to Talk to a NObama Cultist - Obama's Middle Name and Uncle Toms

Two videos. The first is good, but the second is better. Using Obama's middle name:

On being called an "Uncle Tom":

Bristol/Levi - UPDATE II

Okay, Bristol, I'm not gonna lie. You had me worried for awhile there. But I am lovin' this:

The day after Bristol Palin announced her engagement to Levi Johnston was off -- again -- she said she wanted her ex to be more like her dad, who "works his butt off."

"It is true that I wanted Levi to be at home, complete his education and get a regular job," Palin told "Good Morning America" in an exclusive statement. "Levi told me he wanted the same thing...."

"I see that Levi's representative said I expected Levi to be more like my dad. Exactly," Palin said in her statement to "GMA."

"My dad works his butt off and always put his family first. Every woman should want a husband like that," she said. "That is what I expected from Levi."

Sweet. Nice jab back at Butler. Oh, and did she only agree to get back together for the money? I think not, considering that Bristol walked away from a 1.5 million dollar deal:
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Bristol Palin and Levi Johnston were on the verge of scoring a huge seven-figure reality TV show deal, but a major reality TV exec tells HollywoodLife.com that they completely walked away from the offer.

Our source, who has created and executive-produced several very highly-rated and well-known reality series in the last decae, reveals that a $1.5 million reality deal was on the table for Bristol and Levi. One stipulation from the producers who made the offer: The couple’s 19-month-old son, Tripp, had to be part of the show.

Once the offer was made we’re told, however, the couple “completely disappeared.”

It turns out the former couple was so close to sealing a deal that the reality TV producer sent an advance producer to Anchorage, Alaska, in order to meet with Bristol and Levi. But as soon as the producer arrived, Bristol and Levi were nowhere to be found. Our source tells us Bristol and Levi “didn’t answer any calls” and it was “completely shocking” when the couple stopped communicating with him.

But interestingly enough, Bristol and Levi’s disappearing act happened right around the time when Bristol told People that she had broken up with Levi once again and that he “played” her.

“The final straw was him flying to Hollywood for what he told me was to see some hunting show but come to find out it was that music video mocking my family,” Bristol told People. “He’s just obsessed with the limelight and I got played.”

Our reality TV executive clears up one thing: Levi had NO interested buyers for a solo reality show, and there have been no takers on his book proposal.




UPDATE:

Sounds like Bristol is just not going to take this garbage anymore. She swung at Butler again to RadarOnline:

“Perhaps I was naive but I really thought Levi was ready," Bristol explained.

Hours after their broken second engagement made news, Bristol is already feeling the sting.

"I see that Levi's people equate me with a Bridezilla. This is not about me,” she added. “This was about doing what was best for Tripp and making us a family......

Levi is “doing well and is upbeat” since the news of their split went public a source close to the Alaskan told RadarOnline.com exclusively.

“They are both giving it space,” the source said.

And the Early Show:
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Betsy Gleick, Peopl's executive editor, said to CBS News, "What Bristol told People is that, on the very day that the world learned they were going to get married, Levi came home and said to her that he may have gotten another woman pregnant."

Bristol said in People that the final straw came when Levi was spending more time trying to get a reality show than being a father. She said, "He's just obsessed with the limelight and I got played."

Gleick told "The Early Show", "Bristol is heartbroken. She described texting him and getting no answer, and then eventually she said Levi said, 'Hey, do you want to be on a reality show?"'

Bristol, however, says she wants no part of Levi's reality show plans....

Glor added on "The Early Show" that Bristol has reportedly moved back in with her parents -- on their orders. As for Johnston, Glor reported he is shooting a music video in Los Angeles in which he plays a lover whose romance is thwarted by his girlfriend's disapproving mother.

On "The Early Show", Bonnie Fuller, editor in chief of Hollywoodlife.com, said the engagement isn't a stunt. The couple actually had a reality show on the table for $1.5 million, she said, and they walked away from the offer.

Fuller said the producer told Hollywoodlife.com that the show couldn't go forward without an entire family -- Bristol, Levi and Tripp -- on board.

"There was no interest in just Levi on his own," she said.

Fuller added the producer was very surprised by the split, saying the producer sent someone to Anchorage to talk to them, and suddenly, Fuller said, "they disappeared."

Fuller said, "Suddenly, he's off in L.A. and his people are claiming that he's got all kinds of other offers on the table."

So, is this the real end of Bristol and Levi?

Fuller said, "They are 19 and 20 years old, very young. You know, teenagers get together and break up all the time. And I think he particularly is very immature and he's in love with fame. He's in Hollywood right now, talking to people, at parties, filming a music video -- supposedly mocking her family -- though he's denying that, but he did film it."

Child psychologist and "Early Show" contributor Dr. Jennifer Hartstein said, "One of the main victims is Tripp, is this little boy whose dad is in and out and in and out of his life. There is no stable presence. It's very confusing for a 19-month-old to understand what that's like. That's really going to be confusing for him down the road. ... They'll have to find positive people to be in his life to take the place (of his father)."

"Early Show" co-anchor Erica Hill pointed out Bristol told People magazine she feels trapped.

Hartstein said, "Absolutely. She's 19. She's isolated. She's working. She's taking care of this child. What friends of hers are in the same place? Who has kids like she does? She can't go out and just hang out. It's a really tough position. She's not in the same typical 19-year-old position as her girlfriends and friends may be."

Fuller added, "I think (Bristol) does feel trapped and she looked at this as an escape. The fact Levi didn't sell a show and came back into her life, she was looking to create a stable family. Then she made money by selling their engagement story to the magazine. And there was all this other money. It was an escape, a way out. Now she's moved back with her parents."

Hartstein said Bristol is looking for someone for support and help her.

She said, "Why do we always go back to old relationships? They don't always change but we go back because we know them. The devil we know is better than the devil we don't. She needs to learn to grow out of that need and be self-reliant and find the best person for her."
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Looks like I'll probably be updating this particular post with any more developments. Sorry guys. Tabloid day here at Barbaricthoughts. I'll try to post something more "thinky" tonight. :)


UPDATE II

Politico has more:
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As the Bristol Palin and Levi Johnston relationship drama has unfolded in the public spotlight these past few months, People and US Magazine have duked it out for exclusive interviews and scoops on the Alaskan couple.

People reported on July 26 that Bristol was "taking Levi Back;" US followed up and advanced the story up with its "We're Getting Married!" cover and interview with the couple.

For a moment, it looked like US had won the war. But it was People who triumphed in the celeb-weekly battle with its Tuesday confirmation that Bristol had called off her engagement with Levi. (The National Enquirer and other sites had been buzzing with rumors to that effect in recent days.)

We asked People's Sandra Sobieraj Westfall, who got the break-up scoop, why she thinks Palin went to her magazine — which has also run a number of stories on Bristol's mother Sarah Palin — for the latest in the saga.

"The reason she came to me on Monday, when we spoke by phone, was because she felt like she could come to me," said Westfall. "She did tell me that announcing their engagement on the front page of a magazine [Us’s late July cover story] was Levi's idea, and she only found out about it two days before it happened."

“In her own way,” she said, “she was trying to do the right thing."

"This is one of the most contentious stories I've covered," Westfall continued. "These are very bitterly estranged people."

Following this line of reasoning, it does seem that there's a clear line in the sand: The Palin camp prefers People while the Johnston camp goes for US. (We’ve reached out to US for comment, and will update if and when we hear back.)

Westfall recognizes the competition between the two magazines over the story, but says "I'm not sure that I've spent a whole lot of time on lobbying" for exclusive news bits and interviews.

"I do feel like every interview that we've gotten with the Palins — whether it's Sarah or Bristol — has been because of our record of fair and dignified coverage," said Westfall. "Just [Tuesday] night after we posted the Bristol break-up story online, I got an email from someone in the Palin camp saying, 'Thank you. Once again you were fair and dignified.'"

Now the big question: Is this the last we'll hear of the off-again couple for a while?

"All I know is what I heard from Bristol and she said she knows now that Levi is never going to change. That to me sounds very final," Westfall said.

But don't think for a second it's the last we'll see of Palin and Johnston, individually.

"It's obviously not the last we'll see of Levi. He already has plans to make this music video and he's going to be at one of the awards shows with the singer," said Westfall. "And Bristol will, in the fall, have some speaking engagements where she is doing her advocacy for teen moms and teen pregnancy prevention, so she does not intend to go underground in any way."

Westfall added: "[Bristol] said the spotlight is on her family either way, so she might as well use it to get her message out. But she has no plans to appear in her mom's reality show, she does not want to do any kind of reality show with Levi, so I think she would like the soap opera of her personal life to die down. But we will still hear from her in her role as an advocate and an activist."

Rex Butler Confirms It

Levi was not ready to get married:

But Johnston's lawyer told us he doubts the couple is truly broken up for good. "These young folk have a lot of pressure on them right now," said Rex Butler. "All you have to do is watch that show 'Bridezillas' -- it's on and off, on and off, depending on the pressures."

Butler denied the couple's unlikely reconciliation this summer -- following a a year of public feuding -- was motivated by profit, though it's believed they were paid well for the Us Weekly exclusive. But he offered his own armchair psychology:

"Bristol, if she's going to be honest, she doesn't want him in Hollywood ..... She wants him to sort of be like Todd Palin in the background while she does the running around. Levi on the other hand is not ready to settle into that role while he has other options."

Palin told People she'd seen her boyfriend only once in the past three weeks, leaving her heartbroken and humiliated. So where is Levi? "He's around," Butler told us. "He's around."

Well, that pretty much confirms that Levi's whole "I wanna drop out of the limelight" thing was bull, not that it took a rocket scientist to figure that out after he was seen in Hollywood outside of clubs.

Memo: You could do a whole lot worse than to be exactly like Todd Palin.

Glenn Beck Takes on the HuffPo

Glenn Beck challenged the HuffPo's idea that the only reason people like Sarah Palin is because of her Mama Grizzly symbolism on his radio show yesterday:

Two things:

1. Mama Grizzlies

Apparently, the Mama Grizzly image is not to Glenn's liking. He is certainly in the minority on that one, but I guess that's his prerogative. His point is that people don't like Palin just because of a catch phrase or a symbol.

He likes her because she's real, because of her record, and (shock!) because of her policy positions. Glenn is one of the few to actually talk about her record as opposed to the latest tabloid controversies:

2. The Gulf

This is the part I have a slight problem with. If Mama Grizzlies are not to Glenn's taste, fine. Whatever. But this is ridiculous:

I haven't talked to Sarah in, I don't know, a month or so but I'm a little, I'm a little puzzled by why she didn't step to the plate on the gulf.

I mean, if she wanted to run for president, and I think that's the key, if she wanted to run for president, she should have been down there and she should have been organizing all those oil companies together and had some real press moments because that's where she excels. On energy she's amazing. She's amazing. And I don't think she capitalized on that the way she could have but I you know, again she's her own woman. Nobody's telling Sarah Palin what to do.

She should have been down there organizing the oil companies? What? Exactly where would she have gotten the authority to do any such thing?

Like it or not, she is not the President right now, Barack Obama is. The tarball was in his court, as well as those of the coastline governors, such as Bobby Jindal. Governor Palin would never be so presumptuous as to zip down to the Gulf and act like she owned the joint.

And press moments? Sarah Palin is not the sort of person who does anything just to get a good "press moment." I thought you liked her because she was real.

Sheesh, Glenn. A moment of temporary insanity, perhaps?

Among many other things, Governor Palin held Obama's feet to the fire on BP's campaign contributions, brought to the forefront what the Dutch were offering to help with the clean-up, and she reminded America that even though this was a tragedy, we still need energy. A moratorium will do nothing but kill jobs. Full coverage of Palin on the BP oil spill here.

Bristol Palin's First Paid Speech - UPDATE

Article:

Bristol Palin, daughter of Sarah Palin, will be the guest speaker at the Tulare-Kings Right to Life's 15th annual "Making a Difference for Life" Fundraising Banquet, 7 p.m. Sept. 28 at Visalia Convention Center, 303 E. Acequia Ave., Visalia.

Cost; $65 for individual tickets and $495 for table of eight.

Information: 732-5000 or e-mail: April@tkrl.org.

Good for her.

UPDATE:

Missy from Mississippi reminded me that Bristol spoke at a Heartbeat International Conference awhile back in more of a sit-down, interactive atmosphere.

From Heartbeat International's Facebook page:

Heartbeat International was pleased to have Bristol Palin, daughter of former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, for a special interactive Q&A session to conclude the first night of the 2010 National Conference in Orlando, FL. We're proud of Bristol for choosing life for her son, Tripp! (Contrary to published reports, Heartbeat did NOT pay for Bristol's appearance.)

Hence I have changed the title to "First Paid Speech."

"I Got Played" - Update

I know I nixed the tabloid stuff (and I took down that other blog. I figured it was pointless to spread this garbage around, even in a friendly environment), but this I have to post:
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And just like that, they were off again. "It's over. I broke up with him," Bristol Palin tells PEOPLE exclusively of her second try at an engagement to Levi Johnston, father of her 19-month-old son Tripp.

Palin, 19, says the relationship soured on July 14, the very same day they announced their marriage intentions to the world. Palin says he told her that evening he might have fathered a baby with another teenage girl. (Palin did not name the young woman, but a pregnant former girlfriend of Johnston's has since publicly denied his paternity.)

In an emotional phone interview with PEOPLE, Palin spoke through tears about feeling heartbroken, humiliated and trapped – while Johnston acted cool. "There's been no remorse," she says, adding that she's seen him only once in the past three weeks.

"The final straw was him flying to Hollywood for what he told me was to see some hunting show but come to find out it was that music video mocking my family," she says. "He's just obsessed with the limelight and I got played."

Reps for Johnston did not return calls seeking comment.

Palin's mom, Sarah, the former Alaska Governor and prominent Republican with whom Johnston publicly – and bitterly – sparred over the past year and a half, tells PEOPLE: "I wish for Bristol to be able to move forward in life with her same forgiving, gracious, optimistic spirit, but from henceforth she'll know to trust but verify. Bristol is strong, she is independent, and she knows what is right for her son."

Bristol says she's not giving up hope of a safe and happy two-parent home for Tripp. "I have faith that I'll find it. Through this whole experience I know I need a man who's going to be completely honest with me and someone who loves me and Tripp and wants to be with him all the time. I also want someone who has religious beliefs and a good family."
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I personally think it might have been the Brianna Plumb thing where she said Levi told her essentially the exact same thing he told Bristol. "I love you, I want to be a family with you," etc... Uh-huh. Sure.

As for Lanesia, I doubt he's the father of her kid. But something about the story doesn't add up. On the one hand, she says she hasn't hung out Bristol or Levi for five or six years. On the other, Rex Butler said that he and Levi talked to Lanesia before they made the engagement announcement, and his sister said she's been over to the Johnston house. Who knows. Who cares?

Hey, check it out. Levi's credibility has been completely destroyed. Not bad, huh?

And Tank is out there saying it was all a big misunderstanding, that Levi's not making a music vid to mock the Palins, etc... Heh. Right.

Bristol, you could save yourself a lot of grief if you listen to your parents first. Just sayin'.


UPDATE:

Bristol also spoke to TMZ:
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Bristol Palin just told TMZ she is "heartbroken" in the wake of her split with her baby daddy Levi Johnston ... explaining, "I so much wanted [him] to be a real part of Tripp's life."

Bristol added, "I was really convinced Levi was ready for this. I was wrong."

As we previously reported, Bristol secretly dumped Levi three weeks ago after she claims Levi told her that he may have fathered a child with an ex-girlfriend who is currently pregnant ... and then lied about shooting a music video in Los Angeles.

Bristol tells us, "He told me -- he told everyone -- he wanted 'out of the limelight' and was ready to settle down."

Levi claims the whole thing is a "misunderstanding" -- and is adamant that he is not the father of his ex-GF's unborn baby.

How to Talk to a NObama Cultist - Experience and Lobbyists

Parts two and three of how to talk to a NObama cultist.

Lobbyists:

I think there are times when a lobby wields far too much power, does not represent the majority will of the people of America, and should therefore not be listened to. Palin herself has spoken out against the big-wig lobbyists. At the same time, it's almost impossible to fully avoid them. It's not a sin to meet with a lobbyist or two.

The point is that Obama was talking about how he was so against lobbyists, when in reality, his campaign was absolutely stocked full of them.

"I'll Go Through Hell with a Gasoline Can"

Allen West, running for Congress in FL-22, talks about some of the controversy surrounding his war record. He's been endorsed by Governor Palin:

Black Liberation Theology

A follow-up to yesterday's video. This is a response by "Bigticer" to another guy on You Tube in which he further explains Obama's racist religion. Keep in mind that this was in the summer of 2008, and that this guy is actually a liberal Democrat:

Rerun

Huckabee appears to be a rerun tonight, meaning that the impersonator episode was probably shelved. Greta must have seen something she really did not like. At least, that's my theory. Or it could just be put off for a week.

I don't really care about all of this, to be honest with you. I never watch his lame show anyway.

Heffalump Congress - updated

I was thinking about moderate voters today. About centrists. People who would be less apt to vote for a Tea Party candidate, but who aren't comfortable with the radical left-shift that our current Congress has taken. Here's my message to those who want a centered government.

You want Congress to be more moderate? Vote for a "right-wing extremist."

Think of it like a teeter-totter.

Okay, say the big fat Heffalump represents the current make-up of our Congress. (If it was an elephant, you could say it represents the GOP, but it's not; it's a Heffalump.) One-sided, to say the least.

Now, you're in the middle. You want a more balanced and centrist Congress, therefore you would vote for a more centrist candidate. Have you really thought that through?

Say that a bunch of centrists get in there and sit squarely in the middle of the teeter-totter. Think back to your elementary days. Would that really do anything to change the balance?

Nope. You'd still have a Heffalump Congress.

How do you balance it out? Why, you put weight on the Tigger end, of course.

Some of these Tea Party candidates have things in their platforms that I don't agree with. For instance, doing away with the Fed. I'm all for auditing it, but I have my doubts about doing away with it completely.

However, I have no problem voting for an 'abolish the Fed' candidate because we need that to counteract the radical Leftist agenda that's running rampant in Congress right now. We need some weight on the Tigger side.

If we get enough to counteract the Heffalump, guess where we'll be?

Balanced, or (dare I say) more centrist. Checking and balancing each other.

That's my theory, anyway. Maybe an incredibly dumb theory. Hey, I had to do something with that cute Winnie the Pooh picture.


Update - My stats say people keep clicking on this post. Why? You're freaking me out. ;-)

Didn't know Winnie the Pooh was so interesting.