An ABC team spent the week trying to find the link between the large amount of corporate donors at the convention and the Democratic candidates. The team was arrested on a Public Sidewalk filming Democratic Senators and big Corporate Donors walking out of an event.

Story from ABC:

Police in Denver arrested an ABC News producer today as he and a camera crew were attempting to take pictures on a public sidewalk of Democratic Senators and VIP donors leaving a private meeting at the Brown’s Palace Hotel.

Police on the scene refused to tell ABC lawyers the charges against the producer, Asa Eslocker, who works with the ABC News investigative unit.

A police official later told lawyers for ABC News that Eslocker is being charged with trespass, interference, and failure to follow a lawful order. He also said the arrest followed a signed complaint from the Brown Palace Hotel.

Eslocker was put in handcuffs and loaded in the back of a police van which headed for a nearby police station.

Full Story Here

One New Jersey lawmaker is thinking beyond the presidential election and looking toward next year’s race for governor.

The Associated Press is reporting Assemblyman Richard Merkt plans to announce at George Washington’s headquarters in Morristown on Thursday that he’ll form a committee to explore a campaign.

The Morris County Republican tells radio station WRNJ-AM the governor’s office is the only one that has the power to influence financial changes in the state.

Whispering voices are getting a little louder when discussing Texas Senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson as a possible choice as John McCain’s running mate:

CRAWFORD — Texas Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison’s long-shot prospect for vice president is getting a push from conservative and other pundits in the lead-up to next week’s Republican National Convention.

The latest flurry of speculation online and on cable television constitutes at least a third or fourth wave of chatter about Hutchison, whose name surfaces occasionally as a possible Republican vice-presidential candidate. {Source: Houston Chronicle}

Who are these “Conservatives” that would be behind a Kay Bailey Hutchinson for Vice President movement? A Pro-Choice social moderate, this pick would be in the same class as a Tom Ridge selection.

If McCain is going to go with a female pick, I suggest he look at Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, a true Conservative on all the issues.

The fear Conservatives expressed about the kind of mark John McCain will leave on the party platform on a whole range of issues is coming to fruition:

WASHINGTON, Aug. 26 (UPI) — The Republican platform may include a first-ever plank on global warming, an examination of a draft document indicated.

“Increased atmospheric carbon has a warming effect on the Earth,” The Hill reported the draft document as saying. “While the scope and long term consequences of this warming effect are the subject of ongoing research, we believe the United States should take measured and reasonable steps today.”

Sen. John McCain, poised to become the party’s presidential nominee next week during the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minn., is a proponent of tackling global warming. {Source: UPI.com}

While the platform still needs to be ratified, this is obviously a concern, and I fear one of many, before the official platform is ratified. For every scientist that screams about Global Warming, three others have proved otherwise.

And it is quite scary to see the GOP presidential candidate expressing the same views as Nancy Pelosi, Al Gore, HIS OPPONENT, Barbara Boxer, George Soros, etc., and not just on this issue.

The more things like this that happen, the more my decision to vote for McCain comes down to who McCain’s VP pick is.

As Democrats and Republican enablers of the Democrat agenda call for an end to illegal immigration raids, the total of illegal immigrants being picked up, processed and returned to where they belong continues to rise due to the effectiveness of said raids:

LAUREL, Miss. (AP) - Federal officials say nearly 600 suspected illegal immigrants were detained in a raid on a manufacturing plant in southern Mississippi, making it the largest such sweep in the country.

The Mississippi raid was one of a series of recent high-profile crackdowns on illegal immigrants. In May, officials swept into the Agriprocessors kosher meatpacking plant in Iowa and detained 400 workers. {Source: Breitbart}

As I pointed out right here, just 4 weeks ago, the Democrats goal was to STOP the raids. It seems the Democrats agenda is to do the opposite of what should be done; deficit running to high? Raise taxes instead of cutting spending. Have a problem with illegal immigration? Make them legal instead of catching and deporting them. And the list goes on and on.

Unfortunately for us, “our” candidate has also taken a hard line against these raids and has also offered a sympathetic shoulder to illegal immigrants looking for amnesty.

Looks like it’s Kobe Bryant, 1: Cris Collinsworth, 0.

The main stream media doesn’t seem to care, but at least plenty of country-loving bloggers are all over this. When I first learned of Kobe Bryant’s words of patriotism about playing for the U.S. Olympic team (who handily won the gold this weekend), I immediately ran a Google search to find out more. Not surprisingly, the Wall Street Journal was the only non-blog site I could find that even mentioned it. Even so, headlines of “Kobe Schools NBC Tool Collinsworth on Patriotism”, “Cris Collinsworth Prods Kobe Bryant to Be Unpatriotic”, and (my personal favorite) “Collinsworth Owned by Kobe Bryant” can be found rampant throughout the internet.

This Friday, NBC’s Cris Collinsworth interviewed basketball great Kobe Bryant on what it was like to play for Team USA at the 2008 Olympics:

Collinsworth: Tell the story when you first got your USA uniform.

Kobe: Well I had goosebumps and I actually just looked at it for awhile. I just held it there and I laid it across my bed and I just stared at it for a few minutes; just because as a kid growing up this is the ultimate, ultimate in basketball.

Collinsworth: Where does the patriotism come from inside of you? Historically, what is it?

Kobe: Well, you know it’s just our country, it’s… we believe is the greatest country in the world. It has given us so many great opportunities, and it’s just a sense of pride that you have; that you say “You know what? Our country is the best!”

Collinsworth: Is that a ‘cool’ thing to say, in this day and age? That you love your country, and that you’re fighting for the red, white and blue? It seems sort of like a day gone by.

Kobe: No, it’s a cool thing for me to say. I feel great about it, and I’m not ashamed to say it. I mean, this is a tremendous honor.

It’s even better when you watch the interview. I can’t help but cringe in disgust as Collinsworth smirks ever so condescendingly at Kobe, as if to say, “You poor, unenlightened American. You still think it’s ‘cool’ to be proud of America.” As if he, a second-rate reporter, could intimidate one of the world’s most well-known and liked athletes into giving in to peer pressure for the sake of being “cool.”

Without missing a beat, though, Kobe was quick to shoot back, as if he could see right through the antagonism in Collinsworth’s words and tone. And he wasn’t going to apologize for a thing.
How encouraging to see such a prominent figure in the entertainment industry stand up to the despicable false humility of snooty liberals, led by those in the media. For so long they’ve been holding their noses at American patriotism and trading it in to be a “citizen of the world.” They proclaim that pride in one’s country – so long as that country is the USA – is arrogant and offensive because it suggests that Americans think their nation is superior to others.

This, ironically, is the ultimate hypocrisy because these fake, phony pretenders are really just trying to convince the rest of us that they are morally superior themselves. They know better; they’ve been enlightened. To these snobs, it’s only cool to be proud when you’re proud of not being proud of America. Got that?

I’m glad Kobe Bryant isn’t afraid to set his own standards for what’s cool. Like other Americans who realize and appreciate the opportunities provided by this country, he doesn’t take this for granted. And he’s not afraid to show his appreciation, like way too many others who fall in his income bracket.

It’s almost enough to make me a Lakers fan.

Just kidding, that could never happen. Go Dallas. But go Kobe, too.

As we all know, the political conventions will be taking center stage over the next two weeks and we will see more of Chris Matthews than we should ever have to - but have no fear.

I will be heading out to the GOP convention in Minnesota and will do my best to provide some interesting video and posts from the ground there. Now, I am no professional with editing video, but will do my best to provide some interesting takes and interviews from the ground in St. Paul. There is such a buzz among people I speak with across the state about this election cycle and it’s something we should all be thankful for. It’s going to be an amazing next couple months and we sure have plenty of work ahead of us - so let’s rock.

If you have any suggestions or requests of what you would like to see out in Minnesota please leave a comment on this post. I will do my best to accommodate and get as much information up as I can - but I can’t promise it will be as thorough as we would like because I am pretty sure the pace will be very fast out there.

The coverage of this conflict has been extremely biased, no surprise, and I am appalled at some of McCain’s comments and analysis of the issues:

“Republican John McCain yesterday phoned Georgia’s president to tell him that Americans are supporting his ‘brave little nation’ against Russia’s military attacks - and blasted Russian leader Vladimir Putin, whom he accused of wanting to restore the czarist empire.

McCain told more than 2,000 voters that he spoke with President Mikhail Saakashvili of Georgia, who offered his ‘heartfelt thanks’ for US support.

“And I told him that I know I speak for every American when I say to him, ‘Today, we are all Georgians,’ McCain declared to loud applause.”

Brave, Little Nation, John McCain? A brave nation does not carpet bomb a civilian population for two days, John McCain. A brave nation does not fire artillery, mortars, and rockets into the heart of a city, John McCain.

Furthermore, that ‘brave nation’ you speak of, dropped all of their equipment and ran back to their capital before engaging any Russian troops.

There is nothing brave about Georgia!!

You do not speak for every American when you say something. I am an American and I was not a Georgian on that day. I was not affiliated with the massacre of 2,000 innocent civilians John McCain.

Russia disbanded the Warsaw pact, while we continue to push NATO right into their face. Why? How many Americans are willing to go to war with Russia if Georgia is attacked as part of NATO?

The answer is the 2% of the population that are part of this Neoconservative Globalization agenda:

“I think it’s very clear that Russian ambitions are to restore the old Russian Empire. Not the Soviet Union, but the Russian Empire.”

Very clear? The United States has military bases in what, 200 nations? How many nations have Russian military bases? As an immigrant of Slovak origin, I am from Ukraine, and as a Republican I hate to say it, but my presumptive nominee is Dead Wrong on this issue.

It’s official: Barack Obama has received no bounce in voter support out of his selection of Sen. Joe Biden to be his vice presidential running mate.

A new Gallup poll taken after the Biden announcement shows that the McCain campaign went up by 1%. 

McCain 46%  Obama 44%

Obviously not a big change, but it shows how little Biden has helped Obama at this point.  We’ll see if things change when McCain reveals his pick.   

After all that time spent preparing for the big moment, Barack Hussein Obama did the usual when not in front of a teleprompter:

When introducing his running mate, Obama said, “So let me introduce to you the next president - the next vice president of the US of America, Joe Biden.”

And then when it was Biden’s turn to speak, the Delaware senator called the presumptive Democratic nominee “Barack America” instead of Barack Obama.

“My friends, I don’t have to tell you, this election year the choice is clear. One man stands ready to deliver change we desperately need. A man I’m proud to call my friend. A man who will be the next president of the United States, Barack America,” Biden said, per ABC News’ Sunlen Miller.

However the official Obama campaign transcript of Biden’s remarks sent to reporters omitted part of the misspeak, reading: “A man who will be the next president of the United States, Barack Amer – You know, you learn a lot of things being up close with a guy.”

What an amazing speaker he is, I’m sure all 57 states were impressed.