The number of bloggers in Alabama has grown by one in the past month.  After months of watching me constantly peck away at the keyboard, my wife has decided to take the plunge.  Her blog will be decidedly more apolitical than mine, instead focusing on the trials and tribulations of raising our three young children.  So now I get to jockey for time on the computer as we both try to pound out posts while the kids sleep (or under the duress of having them sneak up to the keyboard and inserting unnecessary characters here and there).

Visit her here at the War Eagle Mom.

Interesting.

Bloggers have been credited with stopping the sale of European-made military aircraft to Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez.

After Spain brokered the deal with Chavez last year, bloggers targeted the state-owned aircraft company, EADS-CASA, for violating the U.S. arms embargo against Venezuela. This week, online activists generated hundreds of letters and calls into key congressional offices to demand that EADS-CASA be disqualified from U.S. contracts. The effort followed questions that were raised about the deal by U.S. Senators in a letter to President Bush. Today, Spain announced that the sale was off.

“This is another example of the New Media’s impact on international politics,” says J. Michael Waller, Annenberg Professor of International Communication at the Institute of World Politics in Washington.

“Outside the blogosphere, this issue was off the radar screen. Bloggers publicized that EADS-CASA is lobbying Congress to buy its CN-235 and C-295 military planes while it was defying U.S. national security interests to sell the same planes to Chavez,” according to Waller. His blog, http://www.Venezuelastan.com, reports on the issue.

Other blogs include http://www.Casacrash.com and the website http://www.SecureTheHomeland.org. Alerting activists through ads on the conservative website http://www.TownHall.com, SecureTheHomeland allows users to send messages directly to House Armed Services Committee Chairman Duncan Hunter (R-Ca.) and Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John Warner (R- Va.). The site also directs messages to Senator Richard Shelby (R-Ala.), who has been pushing the EADS-CASA deal. A former Shelby aide is an EADS lobbyist.

“EADS-CASA planes are part of a jobs program for Spain’s ruling Socialist Workers Party,” according to Waller. “Even if the company lost money on the Chavez sale, it could recoup the losses by selling the same planes to the Pentagon’s Joint Cargo Aircraft (JCA) program. That effort failed once the bloggers alerted Congress about the double-dealing.”

“Nobody in Washington wants to do business with Chavez,” Waller said. “Now there’s little sentiment for doing business with those who are modernizing his military. Lawmakers didn’t have to say a thing to the company. The fact that they were alerted was enough,” he said. “The guys who did the website that sent letters into Congress really made the difference.”

Yet again, the huge role Congressional aides play in getting things done rears its ugly head.  I wonder if Shelby will even have  a sit down with the aide in question.

Alternate title: Economics for liberals.

Check out these two posts (kudos to Neal Boortz):

Captain Capitalism teaches class on how data is misrepresented by the media and liberals (I threw in the media part based on my own observations).  Of course, since the MSM is composed of liberals I could have simply said liberals and let the reference to the media be implicit.  He has two main points: 1) data should be compared as rates rather than absolutes (big pet peeve of mine) and 2) portray an appropriate time scale for context.

Engram at Back Talk points out that data for the U.S. economy during Bush’s tenure is very similar to the data during Clinton’s tenure.  But, strangely, polling suggests that 65% of people thought the economy was excellent/good during Clinton’s time 65%, while 65% think the economy has been fair/poor during Bush’s reign.  You don’t think the anti-GOP media pessimists have anything to do with that, do you?

From Michelle Malkin:

On the left, DU’ers prepare a mass Google-bombing campaign against ABC’s 9/11 docu-drama, “The Path to 9/11,” because of its critical look at the Clinton years.

On the right, Dale Roe organizes 2,996 bloggers to honor the memory of each and every one of the innocent men, women, and children murdered five years ago by jihadi hijackers.

I think it’s a rather striking contrast.

The MSM is in love with Markos Moulitsas and the other liberal bloggers.  Tom Curry at MSNBC led off this story with the following paragraph:

Could this past weekend’s Yearly Kos convention — the conclave of 900 activists sponsored by the Daily Kos web site — turn out to be the most significant political gathering of 2006?

He thinks 900 liberal bloggers is "the most significant political gathering of 2006?"  I guess he needs to be informed about the 6,000 to 7,000 who came to the FairTax rally in Atlanta last month (not including those who turned around their cars when the announcement that the arena was at capacity went out from WSB).  Another rally is in the planning stages for Orlando at a larger facility.

The Lieberman primary race will be interesting now.  The MSM has essentially pegged the viability of the liberal blogosphere to Lamont defeating Lieberman.  By the way, Lieberman is up by 15 percentage points.

Byron York attended the YearlyKos convention in Las Vegas and had the opportunity to sit in to a workshop about how to be a pundit.  The workshop was intended to train the liberal bloggers in the fine art of appearing in a shouting match, I mean discussion, on a cable entertainment, I mean news, show.  Mr. York's summary of the event is worth reading.

Some nuggets of wisdom from the attendees:

When one of the trainers said that Americans were smart someone in attendance replied:

“I was just wondering what world you were living in if you said the America [sic] people are smart…”

How about healthcare?

“Yeah, socialized medicine, bring it on.”

You wouldn't think someone there would have a strong opinion on abortion, would you?

Attendee: “I think abortion should be more available throughout the country.”

Trainer: “But isn’t it traumatizing for the woman?”

Attendee: “Absolutely not.”

From the crowd: “Bravo!”