This morning I listened in on Eric Cantor’s conference call concerning the launch of the National Council for a New America (NCNA) hosted by Congressman Cantor and Senator John McCain.

One of the main points that the two men stressed is that this is “not a contract with America,” but a “conversation” with her. The GOP leaders also stressed that this is an “inclusive” effort with which they want to hear from all manner of Americans adhering to a variety opinions on today’s most pressing Issues. The two also said that this is not an attempt to “re-brand” the GOP.

The first townhall style meeting is to be held on May second in Northern Virginia and along with Cantor and McCain it is expected that Mitt Romney and Jeb Bush will be in attendance.

Additionally, several Governors past and present have joined this effort. Governor Haley Barbour, Governor, Jeb Bush, Governor Bobby Jindal, Senator John McCain, and Governor Mitt Romney.

Senator McCain also mentioned several times that they had contacted Governor Sarah Palin’s office and asked her to join them with future NCNA efforts. Senator McCain made sure to mention that fact several times.

The effort has thus far been broken down into five areas of discussion. The economy, healthcare, education, energy, and national security all will come into focus.

My impression is that it certainly is an attempt to refocus the GOP, maybe not necessarily “re-brand” it but certainly re-introduce Republican principles to the people.

It is sure that the “conversation” meme will be looked upon with skepticism, but let’s face it. They had little choice but to employ the terminology. The GOP is in a weakened state and something does have to be done to vivify the Party.

We shall have to wait and see where this goes, but I see no reason to unnecessarily scoff at the effort. Let’s give it a fair hearing, fellow Republicans, conservatives, Libertarians, Americans.

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Jessica Valenti, founder of the vaguely pornographic sounding Feministing.com, has decided that there is no such thing as virginity in America’s young girls and the Today Show is entirely pleased with itself to give her a national TV venue from which to say so. Never mind how silly it all sounds.

On April 22 Valenti and Today pushed the idea that sexually active girls should not be thought of as a problem, that an expectation of virginity is harmful, and that religion is a baneful influence on young women today. Valenti says that if young men can have their sexual exploits given a wink and a nod, then so should the sexual activity of young girls.

Naturally, being a good left-wing, feminist, Valenti draws all the wrong conclusions and advocates all the worst solutions to address the real problems in American society. Just as naturally, NBC gives a legitimate stage for her absurd proclamations and ill-thought-out prescriptions.

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OK, why did the corruption plagued Association for Community Activists for Reform Now (ACORN) suddenly and quietly delete from its website its ties with the corruption plagued Service Employees International Union (SEIU)?

The American Spectator’s Matthew Vadum found the strange deletion of a photo showing SEIU president Andy Stern standing in support of ACORN from February of 2002. The ACORN site was also scrubbed of any mention of two SEIU locals that used to have a prominent place on the ACORN site.

The two SEIU locals, Local 880 and Local 100, have been a part of ACORN’s site for years, but as of this month were scrubbed. Speculation is that the unions don’t want ties to ACORN too well advertised as the unions fight to get the Employee Free Choice Act passed through Congress.

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One would think that The New York Times is purposefully putting American’s in harm’s way with its latest travel section vacation suggestion. If it isn’t doing it on purpose, it certainly is acting almost criminally negligent over its reader’s safety abroad. Back on March 22, the Times suggested that Americans vacation in Deptford, one of England’s most dangerous, crime infested areas. And why would the Times want to send Americans into such a seedy and dangerous place? Because it’s “hip,” man. What else?

The suggestion by the NYTimes for American tourists to visit Deptford brought all manners of jaw-dropping, guffaws from the British press this week. The disbelief is thick over there because Deptford has some of the highest crimes stats in the country — the tenth most violent according to Britain’s Home Office — and Britons simply cannot fathom why The New York Times would willingly send Americans unawares into the heart of such violence and crime.

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Senator Specter is truly first in his mind; last in his mind are the people.

Barack Obama’s new way socialism is really just as no way as it’s always been. But, regardless of the central American spirit that Obamaism attempts to defeat, it is proclaimed that he is only interested in fixing America. So, because he is only here to help, Obama is deemed a savior by his acolytes.

Another of Obama’s false fronts is his claim to be “just like” Abraham Lincoln, a facade he wears with relish. The claim is, after all, a perfect cover for his essentially anti-American agenda. What could be more American than the fulfillment of Lincoln’s efforts to free the slaves but a black man being elected to the presidency? The mere fact of his election seems to affirm the better angels of our nature.

But, here I’d like to report a quote that tends to show that Lincoln would not have approved of a president Barack Obama. Not because Obama is a black man, but because he is a socialist.

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The Washington Post’s Howard Kurtz has let the cat out of the bag in the Post’s April 27 issue about a regularly scheduled secret media dinner attended by some of the top left-wing journalists in the country. But it isn’t just the lefty scribblers that have attended these secret, off-the-record dinners for these gatherings have each featured a guest. Rahm Emanuel, Sec. of the Treasury Tim Geithner, and Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke have all recently had their chance to schmooze the press and guide them with the spin desired by the White House.

So, not only does Obama’s Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel have secret daily phone calls with which to program the media’s coverage of the White House, now it is revealed that Emanuel and other Obama staffers have been attending secret dinners to help the press “understand” what the White House wants reported? As Kurtz says, it all sounds “rather cozy,” doesn’t it?

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I respect Polish concert pianist Krystian Zimmerman’s moxie. Oh, he hasn’t a clue what he is talking about, but he has the courage of his convictions at least, which is more than I can say for all those wild-eyed, half-informed, hypocrites in the American entertainment industry.

You see, a few days ago, pianist Zimmerman announced in the middle of a concert that he would no longer be playing concerts in the U.S. because he is against U.S. foreign policy. If you truly want to know this loon’s political complaints, there is a long, pointless and boring story about it in the L.A. Times on April 28.

Me, I couldn’t care less about this half-wit’s gripes. But I do applaud him for having the backbone to do something about it. He will forgo his money, cancel his concerts and leave this country. I say good for him. It’s about time one of these pampered “stars” in the entertainment industry finally has the stones to live up to the blather.

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Looks like Washington Post Editorial Page Editor Fred Hiatt sort of put his foot in his mouth — or his pen as the case may be — in an April 27 editorial where he as much as called America’s older workers “lumbering” and less talented than “younger, nimbler” employees. In a nation that has one of its largest blocks of citizens in the “older” category, those over 40, it seems like Hiatt just insulted the largest number of Americans. Not the best way to sell newspapers, eh?

In his headlined “600,000 Bad Hires? Making Federal Jobs Cool Once Again,” Hiatt seems to be urging The One to come to the rescue of the jobs market. Well, not real jobs, but government jobs, anyway.

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Someone needs to sue Santa Monica High School for education malpractice on behalf of the ill-educated Sean Penn. I mean, the man is nearly illiterate and he certainly has no grasp on history, philosophy, or statecraft. But his wacko left-wing inanities aside, it is his illiteracy that seems the most lamentable. Oh, it isn’t Rosie O’Donnell illiterate, hers is a special class of insensibility all by itself, but Penn’s brand is proof of the lowest quality of education. I mean the man can barely put two words together sensibly much less exhibit a grasp of grammar and syntax. It really is a crime how badly he’s been educated.

Take for instance his latest Huffington Post blathering where he seems to be saying that all we need to win the day in international relations is to give a “smile.” Aside from being childishly simplistic in concept, it has some of the worst word usage and syntax I’ve seen for a long time in what is supposed to be a leader of opinion (again, Rosie aside).

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In July of 2008 a national hotel chain manager had a man arrested for displaying a Confederate flag in his hotel room window in Concord, North Carolina. It happened that Concord’s Wingate Inn had booked guests that had come to participate in the annual convention for an organization known as the Sons of Confederate Veterans (SCV), a group that celebrates family ties to that Confederate service of 145 years ago. To be sure the hotel manager knew full well that every guest would be displaying Confederate flags everywhere they went. On shirts, on book bags, on posters, on their cars these dozens of guests had Confederate flags on display. Little flags, medium sized flags, and big flags filled the hotel.

Yet hotel management called the cops on this one guy.

So, what happened? Why did this hotel manager imagine he had the right to force just this one guy, Basil D. Childress of Kentucky, to pull down his flag while ignoring all the others? Why were the police idiotic enough to actually arrest the non-violent and perfectly compliant hotel guest instead of telling the hotel manager that he was acting foolishly?

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Harry Reid made a mistake. I know that is over generalized so I’ll narrow it down to a specific mistake because there are far too many from which to choose. The mistake I am taking about is in the addendum to his book titled “The Good Fight,” ghost written by Mark Warren, that is about to come out in paperback.

Reid added a 15-page epilogue to the paperback version that confirms Obama’s arrogance. In it, Reid claims to have approached Obama after a speech on Bush’s war policies that Reid heard Obama give just after becoming the Junior Senator from Illinois. After congratulating Obama on the speech, Reid recounts that Obama replied, “I have a gift, Harry.”

Well, that wasn’t too self-congratulatory, too arrogant, what it now?

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The newest false meme invented by the Old Media is this claim that ex-presidents and ex-vice presidents have some sort of “tradition of silence” where it concerns commenting on those that take residence in the White House after they leave. The reason the Old Media is pushing this false claim is because Dick Cheney has been commenting on Obama’s security mistakes and the Old Media wants to scold Cheney for his efforts to get the truth to the people.

Certainly it is true that some ex-chief executives have maintained silence after they left office. Still, it isn’t really true that there has been any long tradition of staying silent out of some sort of respect for the new president. But, no matter how many past presidents/vice presidents have remained quiet, the one glaring exception to that so-called tradition is the vp just before Cheney: Al Gore. And this man has been absent in the Media’s attack on Cheney.

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Well, we can’t say no one saw this one coming, but Obama has turned back rules that had been put in place to force unions to be more transparent in their financial reporting. These rules were meant to stop union fraud, theft, and embezzlement but in an effort to pay back his supporters, Obama has turned these rules back so that unions can find it easier to hide illicit financial transactions.

Naturally, one of the chief opponents to union transparency that fought the Bush administration, Deborah Greenfield, is now in the Obama administration. It was Greenfield that fought the financial reporting rules when she was a lawyer for the AFL-CIO. She was against forcing unions to account for all their illicit cash and secret accounts then. Now that she is in charge of implementing such rules she has been a major part of eliminating them so that unions could more easily hide their financial dealings from union members and the government.

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Looks like the Pentagon wasn’t listening too closely!

Have at it with an open thread, folks.

Here is a reading of my piece explaining why eggheads can be bad for the country.

I am also pleased to note that the Publius’ Forum Podcast is now being featured on the www.OutLoudOpinion.com podcasting service. Please visit OutLoudOpinion.com for some other great podcasts like IBD Editorials, Creators, The New Republic, Roger Hedgecock, G. Gordon Liddy, the Conservative Funhouse, and many others.

Feel free to visit the Publius Forum TalkShoe page to see my past podcasts. Or see www.OutLoudOpinion.com for an aggregation of my podcasts as well as some other great podcasts for your listening pleasure. New podcasts appear approximately monthly, or whenever the mood strikes me to do one.

I am not a doctor, but I play one on the Internet. So, take the following as a prescription for what ails you. Now, if for some unexplainable reason you have been feeling queasy since November of last year, if you have felt like you want to throw up but just can’t seem to get that bile to overflow, well I have a little something here that will surely cause that gag reflex to result in a healthy expulsion of bubbling acids. The Associated Press would call it a “news story,” but it serves a far better purpose as syrup of ipecac than anything else.

Anyway, if you need a ready emetic, try giving a read to our pal Liz Sidoti’s doting portrayal of President Obama as a “no jitters” expert that is “extraordinarily at ease” sitting in the big chair. He’s a fellow that has mastered the office even though he has “youth and inexperience,” and he’s Confident almost to a fault.” Obama is the greatest story ever told as far as Liz is concerned… and after only four short months in office to boot.

But, wait. There’s more puke inspiring sycophancies yet to come… read on if you dare.

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THIS is what our fetid universities promulgate instead of actually teaching anything useful.

A few days ago Noel Sheppard brought to us the story of yet another example of how the star struck media is fawning over President Obama. But, when the story first broke of the photo of that lean, swimsuit wearing Obama gracing the cover of the next issue of Washingtonian Magazine, it wasn’t immediately realized that the photo itself was a photoshoppped image of the president and not in its original form.

But not soon after the image of the cover was released folks began to realize what had happened. It turns out that Washingtonian Magazine made several photoshop alterations to the Obama image to enhance it to make it more pleasing to look upon. So, the main question centers on whether it’s ethical to photoshop the image of the president for a news story?

I suppose, though, if you want your Obammessiah to look his best, why not use all the tools at your disposal… even if they are a tad unethical.

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The cool thing about attacking someone that’s been dead for over 100 years is that they can’t fight back. The other cool thing is that you can use them to fuel your race baiting so that you can get some cheap publicity, get noticed, or play the faux “civil rights leader” on TV.

Such is the case in Auburn, Alabama where a city councilman decided to get noticed by ripping tiny Confederate flags from the graves of long-dead Confederate veterans buried in a local cemetery. Shockingly those flags were placed there on Confederate Memorial Day. Who wouldda thunk it, eh? Confederate flags on Confederate graves on Confederate Memorial Day! Shocking, I know.

Despite that this has been going on for well over 100 years, this councilman puffed himself up to being “offended” because he claimed he was a “civil rights leader.” He said that the tiny flags made him feel that the cemetery was “like a Klan rally or a skinhead rally.” He put on his showy high dudgeon claiming that the tiny flags are “intimidating to black folks.” Yes, he, an elected official, is “intimidated.”

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