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"I am big. It's the media that got small." Andrea Mitchell channels Norma Desmond

"A horse got me out of bed ... and living life," Ann Romney told the Ocala Star-Banner recently, referring to how horseback riding, and specifically the art of dressage, has helped her overcome some of the debilitating symptoms of MS. “Horses are great teachers. Horses are great companions. They bring us great joy," she enthused, but you'd have no idea of the depth and richness of her involvment were your primary "news" source MSNBC and Sarah Palin's "lamestream" media. Yes YOU, Lawrence O'Donnell. (CNN photo)

"All right, Mr. DeMille, I'm ready for my close-up," quips Lisa B on Twitter, locating the perfect fictional equivalent of old-media delusions of grandeur in Gloria Swanson's "Sunset Boulevard" portrayal of faded silent-movie star Norma Desmond, descending from denial into madness:

I am big. It's the pictures that got small.

Or, as faded lamestream-media stars like Andrea Mitchell — who was caught by new-media star Sooper Mexican the other day smearing Mitt Romney by twisting his words into the JournoList narrative of choice — might put it:

I am big. It's the media that got small.

She's right. It's those annoying gadflies Juan Williams calls "just bloggers" and our fellow soldiers in Glenn Reynolds's Army of Davids, wielding our rhetorical weapons of choice through social media old and new, who are as mad as hell and are not going to take this any more!

Who is big? The Anchoress twitters the answer in response to a snotty New Yorker whine about Ann Romney's horse sense, "Do we have to cheer for Ann Romney at the Olympics":

What a small question.

Update: Almost forgot. Ms. Mitchell has been honing her journalistic "objectivity" skills for decades: This from "The Tribal Filter on Green News," Insight July 23, 1990:

There was applause from the pressies in conclave assembled, after which Andrea Mitchell, an NBC correspondent, said that "clearly the networks have made the decision now, where you'd have to call it advocacy."

 Update II: Teresa nails it in the comments:

When I saw the story pop up yesterday all I could think was... people still watch MSNBC? Really? Or are a few people listening in so they can grab twitter fodder?

Update III: David Hogberg ponders the question "Which end of the horse is Lawrence O'Donnell":

Surely O’Donnell has assistants who can look this stuff up for him. Or was it just too tempting for him to score cheap political points to bother with the research showing the benefits of hippotherapy on multiple sclerosis?

Crossposted at Riehl World View.

There's diversity at Harvard?

"Cello," part of "Chamber Orchestra" series of concert-instrument interiors by Studio Mierswa-Kluska, featured in the Boston Society of Architects' Architecture Boston.

"There's diversity at Harvard? Where are the conservatives?" asks a skeptical bflat879 in the comments of Harvard graduating economics concentrator Shreya Maheshwari's myopic Harvard Crimson essay "The Social News Network," a touchingly naive take on the narratives that be:   

It’s great to use Facebook to filter through our personal and commercial interests. But when this filter extends to our intellectual life, it can trap us in an online echo chamber by gradually minimizing our interaction with opposing thoughts and cutting off our engagement with the broader world …

Even students at Harvard, with all its emphasis on diversity, aren’t immune to default social and intellectual collusion."

EVEN students at Harvard? Emphasis on diversity? If you want diversity, see Senator Scott Brown challenger, Harvard Law School's "first woman of color," lily-white Elizabeth Warren (0% Cherokee, 100% Bullshit). Who needs Maheshwari's "online echo chamber" when you've got the politically correct mindset of academia itself? Michael Barone explains in "Life in a cocoon dulls political responses":

But cocooning has an asymmetrical effect on liberals and conservatives. Even in a cocoon, conservatives cannot avoid liberal mainstream media, liberal Hollywood entertainment and, these days, the liberal Obama administration.

They're made uncomfortably aware of the arguments of those on the other side. Which gives them an advantage in fashioning their own responses.

We've been there forever, of course. As we wrote a few years back in "Bloggers are 'cracking, popping, drilling and peeling their victims open'":

Leftists have become soft and flabby in their thinking over the last 20, 30 or more years because their fellow travelers in the mainstream media — supposed to be keeping them honest — have been giving them a free ride, even as thinkers of the right, not enjoying such reflexive support, have been honing our debating and intellectual survival skills. That leaves the left soft and lazy and the right battle ready.  Enter the bloggers, stage right.  As paleontologist Dr. Vermeij might say, "It isn't going to be pretty." Googling the good doctor, we were thrilled to see his field studies of animal evolution had led him to very much the same place Thomas Sowell has come to in his studies of economics …

The leftist utopian dream was doomed from the start because it denied the economic logic of nature and human nature. The long-repressed voices of opposition in a free society, now ringing loud and clear through talk radio, cable TV and — of course — the blogosphere, will force the left to rethink its arguments or go extinct.

Update: Doug Ross is on the same wavelength:

Old media is literally committing suicide in front of our very eyes. In its desperate rush to see Barack Obama reelected, they are ignoring bigger and bigger stories. People have the Internet. They read The Drudge Report. They listen to talk radio. They read blogs. And in spite of all of these different access points, old media is ignoring blockbuster story after blockbuster story.

Update II: Heh. Instalanche! Thank you, Professor Reynolds.

Update III: Doug Ross links.

Crossposted at Riehl World View.

An Army of Andrew Breitbarts

"She just paints whoever inspires her," twittered Mandy Nagy — aka Liberty Chick — last summer, referring to her mother's expressionistic portrait of Andrew Breitbart (detail above). "This is my war cry for 2012. You need to join me in my war against the institutional left. This is not your mother's Democratic party. Duh!" the social-media provocateur extraordinaire told a CPAC12 audience recently.

"We've lost our Samuel Adams," twittered Mark Tapscott midmorning. "Thoughtful, passionate, complicated. Actually challenged liberals to be better at arguing for what we believe in" said liberal FoxNews contributor Sally Kohn. "Back to blogging!" admonished comrade-in-arms Susie, aka Stoutcat, adding her tears to the torrent of heartbreak, fond memories and renewed resolve that drowned out all else in our twitterstream and on Fox as word emerged, disbelieving tweet by tweet, of Andrew Breitbart's untimely death at age 43 from natural causes. Susie's hashtag, a play on Glenn Reynolds's Army of Davids, resonates:

An Army of Andrews [#armyofandrews]

Like the conspiratorial "dog whistle" of our statist adversaries' nightmares, Breitbart's passing was a call-to-arms for the freedom fighters to ratchet up our defense of the Shining City. "In his honor, I'll fight harder," vowed Lori Ziganto, aka Snark and Boobs, and from our twitterfriend Rachelle Friberg, gratitude and sorrow:

"Thank you, Andrew Breitbart, for inspiring young blogging journalists like me. You will really be missed :(

"I am Andrew Bretbart right now, and if you are a blogger on the right, so are all of you," declared Peter of DaTechguyBlog:

On the left there are plenty of people celebrating (literally on twitter right now) but the line from Spartacus was never more true than today:  He'll be back and he'll be millions.

I know because I'm one of those millions, and if you are a blogger or radio host on the right who has gotten involved in the last few years, so are you …

He understood better than almost anyone else that it was the stories the media refused to cover, more than what they actually said, that really was the lifesblood and power of the MSM leftist bias

To your stations, bloggers, and disintermediate at will!

Update: "God bless you, Andrew. Rest in peace, friend. We will continue the fight," promises that other tireless disintermediator of the powers that be, Sarah Palin:

For me, just one of those memories was in Pella, Iowa, last year after the premiere of “The Undefeated.” Andrew held court in the restaurant at the local hotel talking about his favorite topic: how “culture is upstream of politics” and how conservatives must be unafraid to fight the leftwing media, cultural, and political establishments. The loss of his voice in this fight will be deeply felt, but thankfully his work lives on at his “Bigs,” and thank God for his inspiration and leadership.

Update II: Professor Reynolds links. Be sure to check out related links, including this from that other professor, at Legal Insurrection:

I've often wondered where to go with this blog. I now know.

Crossposted at Riehl World View.

"Sissy Willis uses Darwin to utterly demolish Marxism"

We loved twitter friend Dan Collins of POWIP AKA vermontaigne's disagreement with tahDeetz's assertion [above] re Leftists. "I disagree with the 'sane' thing." Exactly. As we twittered back, "To say 'keep sane' implies they ever WERE sane." But speaking of driving leftists over the edge, tahDeetz was spot on with this: Metaphorically WaterBoard your "favorite" Leftist. Make them read this.

"Sissy Willis uses Darwin to utterly demolish Marxism," twittered tahDeetz this afternoon. We'd sent her a link to one of our uber posts from way back in February of 2005, "Bloggers are 'cracking, popping, drilling and peeling their victims open." Take THAT, you leftists claiming to own Darwin even as your core collectivist beliefs fly in the face of the economic logic of nature and human nature that underlies Darwin's theory of natural selection. A few excerpts from our original post:

February 2005 caption: A "snail link" — an article from the NYT Science Times that caught our politico-philosopho-scientific eye ten years ago.  Not having the option of URL linking in those pioneering days, this protoblogger clipped the thing, underlined important passages, sent xeroxed copies to our small circle of interested parties and then carefully filed it away in a drawer, from which we were able to pull it this afternoon after all these years.

From our February 2005 post "Bloggers are 'cracking, popping, drilling and peeling their victims open":

"Meanwhile, the fossil record showed crabs, fish and others who would dine on these shelled delicacies diversifying and becoming better at cracking, popping, drilling and peeling their victims open," goes the snail link from February 7, 1995, referred to in our last post. For ten years this brilliant/crackpot explanation has been festering in our brain. We're talking here about what went wrong with the Democrats, not to mention their leftist allies in academia, the MSM and the larger world of international progressivists.

… leftists have become soft and flabby in their thinking over the last 20, 30 or more years because their fellow travelers in the mainstream media — supposed to be keeping them honest — have been giving them a free ride, even as thinkers of the right, not enjoying such reflexive support, have been honing our debating and intellectual survival skills. That leaves the left soft and lazy and the right battle ready. Enter the bloggers, stage right. As paleontologist Dr. Vermeij might say, "It isn't going to be pretty." Googling the good doctor, we were thrilled to see his field studies of animal evolution had led him to very much the same place Thomas Sowell has come to in his studies of economics.

It took a little longer than we'd thought it would for what turned out to be the Tea Party movement of constitutional conservatism to emerge and start reigniting the lights of the Shining City, but our words back then are standing up pretty well given the reverberations of the Revolution of 2010.

Crossposted at Riehl World View and Liberty Pundits.

Speaker Boehner: The revolution will be livestreamed

"In addition to Facebook, Boehner (above) often 'tweets' out comments or announcements, but the Speaker-designate will change his Twitter name to reflect his new position. That change is not expected to happen until later Tuesday night and Boehner's staff is not releasing what his new Twitter handle will be yet," reports CNN's politicalticker.

"Seems like John Boehner's been studying Sarah Palin's embrace of the full panoply of media, old & new," we just twittered: "Opening gavel tomorrow to livestream on Facebook":

According to a blog post that will be posted on Boehner's website this afternoon, the incoming speaker will direct people to visit the "Pledge to America" Facebook page to view the transition to the GOP-controlled House.

Nick Schaper, Boehner's director of digital media, tells CNN, "This kind of streaming and real-time interaction is not only unprecedented for the House, it's helping to set the tone for a new majority that will continue to find new ways to listen to and better represent the American people." Those watching on Facebook will be able to offer feedback and comment on the proceedings as they happen live.

We assume they'll be livestreaming the controversial reading of the Constitution on Friday, blogged here. Rube that we are, we have to admit we get goosebumps at the thought of this obvious "stunt," the "showy equivalent of wearing a flag pin" — We're still sporting our post-9/11 flag pin to this day! — as bitter dustbin-of-history opinionator David Corn scoffs. Sorry, David. Disintermediating the powers that be via the internet is where we're at. Been there since our first tea party/town hall in March of 2009 and never looked back. Republican vs Democrat are no longer the relevant categories. It's "them vs us," Angelo Codevilla's the Ruling Class vs the Country Class, the vested powers that be vs the Sons and Daughters of Liberty. Check out the cynical conventional "wisdom" of this item from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: 

But the question being debated in legal and political circles is whether the constitutional rules are simply symbolic flourishes to satisfy an emboldened and watchful tea party base. "I think it's entirely cosmetic," said Western Connecticut State University history professor Kevin Gutzman, who said he is a conservative libertarian and sympathizes with the tea party.

 "This is the way the establishment handles grass-roots movements," he said. "They humor people who are not expert, or not fully cognizant. And then once they've humored them, and those people go away, it's right back to business as usual. It looks like this will be business as usual — except for the half-hour, or however long it takes, to read the Constitution out loud."

"Not fully cognizant"? Harrumph! Thanks to the internet-facilitated freedom of assembly — both virtual and on the ground — we're not going away any time soon.

Update: Michelle Malkin Buzzworthy link!

Update II: "Boehner to livestream" trending on Memeorandum.

Crossposted at Riehl World View and Liberty Pundits.

Good tidings we bring to you and your kin

In celebration of our blog's seventh anniversary day after tomorrow, December 12, we proudly republish our very first post ever, "The tidings that dare not speak their name." It features our Christmas Card of that year, an image of the homestead festooned with the lights fantastic, and a fearless, politically incorrect challenge to those who would wilfully misrepresent the Establishment Clause of our Constitution's First Amendment. An early stirring of the Tea Party spirit that would rise up to disintermediate the powers that be via the internet?

"Chelsea-by-the-Sea at Christmastime"

We wish you a Merry Christmas!

That was it, a blogpost of exactly 68 characters that could hold its own today in the fast-moving, 140-or-fewer-characters world of the Twittersphere. We were delighted to note that Glenn Reynolds has more or less declared victory in the war this Army of Davids was waging back then:

I GUESS THE "WAR AGAINST CHRISTMAS" HAS BEEN LOST, THEN: Obama lights the National Christmas Tree, says ‘Merry Christmas’ three times.

Not that there aren't still some air-headed holdouts.

Update: Michelle Malkin Buzzworthy link!

Crossposted at Riehl World View and Liberty Pundits.

"Help! I'm going down." A desperate Barney Frank calls in the big guns?

The caption from our post-election November 2008 post "Bloviating, grandstanding, bullying political hacks with little to no understanding" resonates in this election year of our new resolve to throw the bums out: "There's something seriously wrong with an America that constantly re-elects people who all but laugh in your face while squandering taxpayer money. It isn't even real money to them," observes Dan Riehl re Barney Frank's latest comment about "spending your money" for a Detroit bailout: "There's no downside to trying." Barney Frank, above, in a CNBC "Closing Bell" interview October 20 tells Maria Bartiromo "I think there are a lot of rich people out there whom we can tax at a point down the road and recover some of this money."

"There are rumors that Barney Frank, concerned about Sean Bielat’s insurgency in the 4th District, has asked Obama [who'll be stumping for Gov. Duval Patrick at the Hynes Convention Center at noon Saturday] to make an appearance in the Newton area" this weekend, writes a hyped Stacy McCain, who's on the ground here in Eastern Massachusetts getting the scoop in partnership with our own Bay State beat reporter Peter Ingemi, aka Da Tech Guy. Listen to the dynamic duo's interview of Sean Bielat at his Newton headquarters, give to Sean's Bye Bye Barney moneybomb early and often, and finally, please consider hitting the tip jar for Pete and Stacy's Have-Fedoras-Will-Travel Road Trip. Now a few thoughts on where we've been and where we've come to as we prepare for the final GOTV push — See Ace of Spades HQ for more — on the eve of this portentous election.

As a member of the Army of Davids who blogged our heart out to restore the "Kennedy Seat" back to the "People's Seat" in the special election last January that sent Mr. Brown to Washington, we're totally energized by our supremely qualified prospective citizen legislator Sean Bielat's campaign to restore the "Barney Frank Seat" back to its rightful owners.

By the time we discovered Sean's "Retire Barney" campaign at the April 2010 Boston Tea Party on the Common, we'd gotten into the habit of giving to "strategic small-government candidates, not parties." Thinking strategically, we skipped over "our own far less powerful MA 8 District Rep. Michael Capuano to go straight for the jugular of the man who did so much to precipitate the nation's current economic woes," as we wrote a couple of months back.

It's all about disintermediating the powers that be via the internet and every other medium out there, from blogging and twittering and social networking on Facebook to beat reporting à la Fedora, knocking on doors and phonebanking from campaign HQ or from home. This new kind of grassroots campaigning is shaking up the establishment of both parties in what we love to call "term limits by other means."

And now there's an even easier way to put your money where your mouth is, the Election Day Tea Party Cash-for-Candidates program (h/t DanRiehl) that kicked off yesterday and ends at midnight tonight. Scroll down for our man Sean Bielat, #49. As Dan says:

If the cash is going directly to the candidates for any organization, then it sounds like a good idea. I think the trending is away from giving to orgs … to candidates directly. And it's probaby how it should be.

Update: Goomp — a thrifty Old Yankee who lives Down East! — in the comments:

Sounds right to me. Check is in the mail for you to give where it helps the most.

Update II: Michelle Malkin Buzzworthy link!

Update III: Mary Katharine Ham at Hot Air! links:

NRCC to spend money on Sean Bielat's campaign against Barney Frank?

Frank hasn’t faced substantial competition in 30 years, and now he faces a young, Harvard-grad Marine who builds robots that save U.S. troops from IEDs. Scott Brown won the district narrowly, giving the Brown grassroots hope and turning them into Bielat evangelists.

Update IV: Stacy McCain links:

Sissy Willis says Barney Frank is going down. NTTAWWT.

Crossposted at Riehl World View and Liberty Pundits.

Dan Riehl's advice to bloggers: "Instead of just ranting about it"

莎拉裴琳準備2012年選總統? (Is Palin gunning for 2012?)

"Shorter or quicker is better, imo," says alpha blogger Dan Riehl of The Riehl World — Full disclosure: We co-blog there at Dan's discretion — in one of his longer, more extended blogposts, "A Post For New, Or Striving Bloggers." Check it out for some good advice if you're just jumping into the 'sphere. Setting the scene:

When I heard Gloria Allred mention Mark Van Der Hout in her interview with Mark Levin, it was a name I didn't know, one not previously affiliated with the story. So, I went to Google and started looking into him. That the housekeeper's immigration lawyer is a card-carrying Leftist activist, precisely the type to want to help Brown, advances the story as a likely partisan election smear. No so-called journalists bothered even looking into him at the time, if they even heard his name.

Going for the jugular:

Bloggers are limited in resources, but there are hundreds of news stories breaking every day, many of them with facts and personalities that present tangents for exploring to expand the story, instead of just ranting about it, or offering your special brand of insight, no matter how clever or witty you might think it is.

"Offering your special brand of insight, no matter how clever or witty you might think it is"? That one hit a bit of a nerve here till we remembered that's where we live. We're not about to be cowed by such dissing. Take it or leave it. Fun to participate in breaking news, as we did peripherally via Twitter yesterday with Stacy McCain's scooping the Todd Palin/Joe Miller pseudo spat. Among our proudest accomplishments have been those moments — blogging, twittering and on the ground — when we've been disintermediating the powers that be by promoting fresh, new candidates to facilitate "term limits by other means," from Scott Brown's retaking of "The People's Seat" last year onward and upward to our stout-hearted support this election season of Sean Bielat's RetireBarney.com campaign. No one's better than Dan at what he does, but that notwithstanding, we're a lumper, not a splitter, and our stock in trade is making connections between/among things normally seen as separate. Perfect example from Joshua Rothkopf's excellent review of "The Social Network" the other day where the author got it almost right:

… sparkling dialogue, thorny situations, soulful performances, and an unusually open-ended and relevant engagement with a major social issue of the day: how we (dis)connect.

Good as far as he went, but that "major social issue of the day" is hardly confined to our day. It's one of the great good-vs-evil über themes of human nature and human history — "the importance of being noticed" — that we are forever flogging here. Unfortunately, all too many people haven't a clue. Meghan McCain comes to mind.

Update: Michelle Malkin Buzzworthy link!

Crossposted at Riehl World View and Liberty Pundits.

The making of a blogger

Ah, the image we have of ourselves in our salad days. It lingers: "So, I tuned out and turned on," twittered Dan Riehl (above) this afternoon in a fun and funny exchange amongst twitterbuddies Angela Lash (Lash3), Jennifer Caballero (Cubachi) and Dan Collins (vermontaigne).

"No, he can have handsome, I'll take teddy bear. Pays off better in the end!! lol" twittered alpha male Dan Riehl in response to apha male Dan Collins out here in the wild, wild west of the twittersphere on this lazy afternoon. We'd all delved deeply into our hearts and minds and blogged/twittered our personal takes on 9/11 Nine. Now it was time for a little R & R. "Awesome pics and narrative, Dan :)," twittered Angela:

Heff who? I was sooo ahead of my time! Made a fortune in men's comic books.

Then blew it on the ponies.

So, I tuned out and turned on.

Then Carter got elected. And I got mad.

So, now I blog [Irresistible force Angela meets old immoveable object Dan at CPAC 2009]

 
"SissyWillis I think DanRiehl looks like a model in that picture ;D," twittered Cubachi. Eye of the beholder. Reminded us of "Hawaii Five-O's Jack Lord." Cubachi has the final word: "Heck yeah he's hawt :D."

Turn it around, and there's your blogger.

Update: "Oh Chit!" twitters the big guy: "Time 2 pull posting privileges?"

Update II: "They're Teddy Bears … No, Really, They're Teddy Bears," twitters Jerry Wilson.

Update III: Months later the final word from the man himself:

Oh Yeah, I'm a Teddy Bear.

Crossposted at Riehl World View and Liberty Pundits.

"Go Sean Bielat! If I could vote for you, I would"

THE TWO SEANS. Catch Sean Bielat (left) — Barney Frank challenger for "The People's Seat" of Massachusetts District 4 — tonight on Hannity at 9.

"As a red-state tea partier behind enemy lines here in deep-blue Taxachusetts, I like what you're saying about fiscal responsibility, limited government, free markets and other Contract from America aspirations," we wrote Barney Frank challenger Sean Bielat last week, "So let me skip the 'what' and focus on the 'how.'" Here are the five questions and answers of our email interview with one of the "rising stars in the resurgent Massachusetts Republican party" (Earlier phone interview here):

1. Sissy Willis: How will you win? Your primary opponent Earl Sholley is no doubt unelectable in the general, but could he damage your candidacy with dirty tricks? Please discuss your strategy for winning the September 14 primary.

Sean Bielat: We have a clear path to victory in November. The key is going to be activating supporters and raising the money we need to get our message out. Barney is going to have plenty of funding from the entrenched special interests he protects from his powerful seat in Washington. We have to generate a lot of enthusiasm from regular folks who are fed up with the way Washington works. We're going to make sure to explain that Barney has been a big part of why our economy collapsed in the first place, and why we continue to have trouble creating jobs. From pushing Fannie and Freddie to make bad loans and blocking reform of those companies, to bailing out Wall Street executives and pushing our country deeper into debt, there are a lot of reasons for people to join our campaign to oust Barney from office. We're not overlooking the primary, but by focusing on what we need to do to defeat Barney and making a forceful case that our campaign can win in November, we'll do just fine on September 14th.

2. Sissy: How about the general election? Polls suggest a majority of Massachusetts voters are ready for what I call "term limits by other means," and anecdotally we've all heard stories of life-long Democrats and others who are beginning to wake up to the deleterious effects of the Democrats' big-government power grabs. The Brown Revolution has certainly been an inspiration for fresh new candidates within the Bay State and beyond, but among many of Brown's supporters, his voting record has taken the sheen off the golden boy's image. What is your strategy vis-à-vis Brown to distinguish your own path from the direction his incumbency has taken? Please discuss Brown's influence on your own candidacy and how any past or current association with our junior senator could be a negative.

Sean: It's great that Sen. Brown won the Fourth District. It means that people in the Fourth aren't afraid to support Republicans and that there is a significant number of people out there who are fed up with entrenched politicians who support policies that have a lasting negative effect on our families. But I'm not Scott Brown and we're running our own campaign. For example, I would not have supported the Dodd-Frank Financial Regulation Bill. It's not difficult to find people in and out of state who would like to see Barney Frank head for early retirement. He has been central to many of the problems that caused and exacerbated the economic collapse. We're getting that message far and wide and have been successful attracting volunteers and financial support. We're going to continue to reach out to people seven days a week through social media, mainstream media, events, door-to-door, mail and phone calls.

3. Sissy: Conservatives are energized this year, but even with an army of enthusiastic voters marching to your tune, what about the usual Democrat Machine voter fraud and thuggery — dead voters, hired union goons and such that were in evidence during the Brown/Coakley battle? As with the primary, how will you counter dirty tricks in the general election?

Sean: We are going to have a very aggressive Get Out the Vote effort both for the primary and the general. My belief is that a good ground game will beat party hacks and dirty tricks. We'll have poll watchers and other volunteers monitoring what's going on for us. At the end of the day, whatever dirty tricks are played, it won't have an effect on the outcome.

4. Sissy: How will you raise the funds necessary to be competitive with an opponent some would say is "too big to fail"? In a Huffington Post article published last February you were quoted as saying "If I'm not getting support from outside Massachusetts, it's not going to happen." Please comment on your fundraising strategy and other issues brought up in this excerpt from the article:

"As a powerful chairman, Frank has access to a nearly limitless supply of campaign cash. In the past, Frank has shared that wealth with candidates in tight races. Bielat says he met with the National Republican Congressional Committee this week and pitched his candidacy to them. By the end of the meeting, he says, they were very receptive, and he may end up in the Young Guns program … 'If nothing else, I should get national support so that he has to keep that money in the district.'"

Sean: We're not expecting to beat Barney in fundraising, but we are going to be very competitive. Again, there are a lot of people willing to help and, now that Barney will have his first viable challenger in two decades, I think we have a great opportunity to tap into that. People have a swift and visceral reaction to how out-of-touch Washington is. Barney Frank is in the middle of all that, and people are attracted to a campaign like ours that can win.

5. Sissy: You were quoted in the HuffPo article as saying you have "one key advantage on the campaign trail that most GOP candidates can't count on: Barney Frank." In fact, it was your campaign slogan "RetireBarney.com" that first attracted me and others to your candidacy. As the longest-serving House member of the Massachusetts delegation, Frank has accumulated a political lifetime of egregious "accomplishments," the most significant being, perhaps, his role in facilitating and then covering up the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac scam. His cameo in the Republican Study Committee's rousing campaign video "Those Voices Don't Speak for the Rest of us" says it all: "Give us more power." How will your campaign take advantage of the new media to spread the word?

Sean: We are already making good use of new media platforms and social media to spread the word, fund raise, attract volunteers and supporters, promote events, and learn about new opportunities. I have a great relationship with our Twitter followers and the number of Facebook friends grows by the hundreds each week. There's still no substitute for retail politicking, looking people in the eye, and shaking their hand. But new media has been very effective in getting people to look at our campaign and what we're all about. Building a robust new media campaign is also key to our fundraising strategy. We need national help with fundraising to help level the playing field. Challengers always face an uphill battle, but a national grassroots base can counter some of Barney Frank's advantage.

Several of our readers from within Massachusetts and beyond have told us they'll be supporting Sean. Fellow Bay Stater Teresa of Technicalities has already sent in a check and had this to say in the comments of our recent post "Barney Frank: Politically fat and campaign lazy?":

Oh I shall have to follow on twitter! Now if only we had a contested election out in our neck of the woods and could have a chance to get rid of McGovern. Maybe there is and I've missed it since I've been working so much. But I'm glad to see someone giving Frank a credible challenge! Go Sean! If I could vote for you, I would.

Update: Maggie's links! Thanks, Bird Dog.

Update II: Michelle Malkin links in her August 30 endorsement of Sean:

Boot Barney Frank: Support GOP challenger Sean Bielat

Crossposted at Riehl World View and Liberty Pundits.