President Obama Swats Fly during CNBC Interview

Now that's talent. He's like the Karate Kid.

Keyes is staying...

reports the trib. so, i'll have to figure out what to do with the counter.

Asking a pointless question

is the Illinois Leader in a continuation of an interview of Phyllis Schlafly:

She also answers a question that was circulating in Illinois at the time of the interview - whether Mrs. Schlafly would have considered entering the race to be the Republican U.S. Senate candidate.

Although now that they've asked it, I'm actually wondering what that Senate race would have been like. Update: Sorry for the earlier typo.

Currently on keyes2004.com

Is an article entitled: "How and why Dr. Keyes won in Illinois."

"It's great about Bush getting re-elected," my conservative friends have been saying to me these days, "but, hey! You must be bummed about Keyes' big loss in Illinois." "What 'loss'?" runs my somewhat testy reply. "The one where he got, like, a quarter of the vote." "That," I inform them, "was a loss for Illinois, and for the Republican Party, and for the country as a whole, not for Dr. Keyes." And though this may sound — coming from an avowed Keyester — like sour grapes, it is not. In fact, the course and outcome of the senatorial election in Illinois reveals a self-inflicted wound on the cause of conservatism in America, which deserves careful reflection before we will be able to recover, as well as evidence of a growing Declarationist movement in the Land of Lincoln and elsewhere, from which we can draw great hope.

Yes, a new blog is coming

From the letter Eric Zorn posted yesterday:

I have purchased www.truthgirl.com and will hopefully be live on Monday. I'm aiming for a two-part site. A 5-step plan for helping Democrats turn their evangelical friends and family members Democratic blue--complete with resources on specific issues, a history of evangelicalism; and directions on how to find an evangelical if you don't know one. A blog (probably less frequently updated than the Keyes blog was) that tracks the current issues being discussed by the religious right. As for my qualifications for offering an insider's view on the religious right: I am a Wheaton College grad; the daughter of a Bob Jones University grad and the daughter of Christian bookstore owners. I took every class on the history of evangelicalism that Wheaton had to offer and worked at a place called the Institute for the Study of American Evangelicals for 3 years. Eventually, I became a Democrat myself, which makes me feel qualified to explain how to convert someone. Finally, as I have had to explain my background to every single friend that I've made since moving to Chicago, I feel qualified to explain American evangelicals in lay language. There might be people more qualified than me on any of these topics, but since I was having fun blogging, I thought I would keep it up

I will definitely have the site up on Monday, maybe before. You can also hear me ramble about the site on this NPR story about the religious left. As a bonus, if you listen to the story, you discover my true identity (which is rather pointless, because I'm really just an anonymous, random face in the crowd). Actually, I'm a little embarrassed--I have modest qualifications, but there are definitely people with more. Anyway, the new site is www.truthgirl.com. Come by on Monday.

The most complete round-up

of the values and evangelicalism links is by Ted Olson at Christianity Today's Weblog. He titles them:

Links to more than 422 (really!) other news articles and opinion pieces, including some not about how stupid evangelicals are.

Remember this, liberals, they're watching you. Don't call them stupid--they'll remember. And they aren't stupid. Update: Austin Mayor points out that there are stupid people in all demographics. I stand corrected.

If this is true, I still don't care...

I'm aware that there is still a very good argument that exists as to whether it was really values that won Bush the election. But, here's the deal: I don't care. As long as the notion of Christian values is dominated by the right (whether or not they won the election), I'm going to be a thorn in the side of the religious right. To those of you who have emailed me, I appreciate your stories. We will work together to combat the religious right. We'll be in touch.

Blaming the media, yet again.

Is the Renew America staff:

So why didn't Illinoisans elect Keyes? Because they never were permitted to hear Keyes' message undiluted and unperverted by the state's powerful liberal media. They were deprived by the media--in utter violation of the public trust--of the chance to get to know Keyes for themselves, without intentional distortion.

And I love this attempt at a slam on Chicago:

As a result of this disturbing fact, Chicago's Cook County stands out above all other counties in the U.S. as disproportionately alien to bedrock American values in a 3-dimensional graph posted by CBS. Are the people of Cook County really that uninformed and liberal? Perhaps. But if you took away the control of their minds by the Chicago media, it would be interesting to see how they would respond to important truth of the sort that Alan Keyes articulated throughout his campaign. It's not fair to cynically generalize about so many people when they plainly have little access to correct information.

I'd prefer to think of it as informed and liberal. Perhaps Keyes should remember that there's a reason some of us like to live in a city, things such as a liberal and diverse environment. We're happy with our "blue state" (or at least city) haven and anyone who thinks that the media could change our mind is clearly delusional. (But we knew that already.)

Oh...isn't this cute

From his notebook:

Eric Zorn would like Keyes to stay here primarily because Truth Girl, an anonymous lawyer who started up the "Truth About Keyes" blog when he became a candidate, has said she will quit her blog when Keyes quits Illinois. And Eric Zorn has developed kind of a thing for Truth Girl.

So, far no need for tears, Truth Girl has received no word that Keyes has left the state.

Why we can't give up on white evangelicals:

The Archpundit comments that conservative white evangelicals are a lost cause. I may agree to some extent, but the reason that we can't give up on them is because they are the fastest growing churches. If we give up on conservative evangelicals, we will lose. Their numbers are growing faster than ours. He's also bothered because Democrats lost "a significant chunk of overservant Latinos." My guess: 37% percent (pdf) of Latinos identify themselves as born-again (both Catholics and Protestants). I think James Dobson had a Spanish version of his periodical long before major politicians were practicing their Spanish on audiences, and he ran ads this year urging Hispanics to "Vote por Sus Valores". The evangelical community is continuing to expand its influence beyond the traditional white Protestant. We can work all we want to change the media's message, but we are going to have to deal with this at its core--the conservative churches themselves. (Of course, I have no great plan how--only fledging ideas.) And it as has been pointed out to me, I have been too quick to refer to evangelicals as white only. According to one poll, at least 57% of African-Americans consider themselves "born-again," yet 88% of African-Americans voted for Kerry. Although this columnist expresses concern that African-American voters will be ignored while the search to reach white evangelicals reaches full-force, it's my hope that the dialogue over the interplay between religion and politics involves all religions and all races. A final comment, in case you ever wonder why conservative churches are the fastest growing, compare the website, particularly the weekly events, of an evangelical church with the website of a mainline church and think about it from a marketing perspective. Which set of events lends itself best to bringing new people in?