Erick's blog
Posted at 12:00pm on Jul. 10, 2008 Fair Warning
By Erick
Registration for RedState 2.0 is now closed.
RedState 3.0 will launch softly on Friday night, with a full launch on Monday morning.
Your user ID and password will be ported over.
Posted in Archived — Comments (29) / Email this page » / Read More »
Posted at 2:58pm on Jul. 2, 2008 Team America PAC Supports Paul Broun
By Erick
Tom Tancredo's Team America PAC, headed by Bay Buchanan, has endorsed Paul Broun and is pushing others to send him money.
Posted in 2008 | GA-10 | Georgia | Paul Broun — Comments (5) / Email this page » / Read More »
Posted at 12:00pm on Jun. 30, 2008 It is that time
By Erick
Friends,
Some time in the next week you are going to come to RedState and it will not look like this site.
It will look a heck of a lot better.
If you have not checked out http://beta.redstate.com you probably ought to.
Because sometime around this time next week, that site will replace this site.
You better go check it out.
Erick
Posted in Blogosphere — Comments (8) / Email this page » / Read More »
Posted at 1:32pm on Jun. 17, 2008 A few words on our community
By Erick
IF YOU ARE NEW TO REDSTATE, GO DOWN TO THE HIGHLIGHT. IF YOU ARE A PRE-EXISTING USER, READ THIS:
Friends, I want to ask a favor.
I want to ask you to remember that RedState is a community. Sometimes, new people move into a community.
In normal communities, when a neighbor moves in you welcome them -- unless they are damn dirty hippies.
Lately I've noticed a problem in our community. We have new people move in. Some of them are damn dirty hippies we have the power to evict. But some of them are well meaning. Some of them are just new and want to get in to the community. And there are some in the community who, instead of digitally shaking hands and getting to know the new neighbor, would rather pile on and correct them for improper usage of the site, bad blogging, dumb comments, etc.
Posted in Archived — Comments (58) / Email this page » / Read More »
Posted at 3:45pm on Jun. 10, 2008 Why Jim Johnson Matters
By Erick
If you're scratching your head on this Jim Johnson story, as I was, watch the video I've put together below:
Obama sets standards for everyone else, but he refuses to live up to them himself and damn you for challenging him to live up to those standards.
Posted in Archived | Barack Obama | Countrywide Financial | Jim Johnson — Comments (3) / Email this page » / Read More »
Posted at 1:16pm on Jun. 10, 2008 Dog Pound Disappointments
By Erick
My first piece of legislation from my new post as Councilman for Ward 5 on Macon, GA's City Council finally passed out of committee today, My second piece of legislation has already been enacted. This particular legislation is to do away with euthanasia by gas chamber in favor of lethal injection of animals.
There was no controversy in City Council when this first came up. I think most all of Council has signed on as a co-sponsor. All the opposition came from the Mayor's Office. That office is worried about the budget year. Because there were so many animal control ordinances put forward, the Chairman of the Public Safety Committee created a subcommittee on animal control to consider the legislation.
Posted in Miscellanea — Comments (11) / Email this page » / Read More »
Posted at 1:09pm on Jun. 6, 2008 Tagging Posts in RedState 3.0
By Erick
Because we are a user-content site, we wanted to make sure to expand the options for user-content access.
Every user will now, instead of having fixed categories, be able to tag posts. I will routinely sort through the tags so, for example, if you have a post on Barack Obama, it will appear in the "Elections" category that appears in the masthead.
Likewise, the most commonly used tags will appear in the "Hot Topics" list.
Posted in Miscellanea — Comments (3) / Email this page » / Read More »
Posted at 11:02pm on May 19, 2008 Just for the record and because he got banned before I had a chance to chime in
By Erick
RE: this comment
Here is some logic for you. Try to follow.My God doesn't punish. If your God punishes, then your God is not my God. Does your God punish?
The Constitution is my God given rights that cannot be taken away by government. Now, where does your punishing God’s thought stop and mine begin, I will tell you were, oppression stops with the Constitution. It is freedom from religion.
Let's just break this down, shall we?
Posted in Archived — Comments (10) / Email this page » / Read More »
Posted at 1:13pm on May 11, 2008 OB(H)AMA(S)
By Erick
If you have Facebook, consider joining our Obama group.
Likewise, remember we have a RedState group at Facebook.
Posted in 2008 — Comments (2) / Email this page » / Read More »
Posted at 8:56am on May 8, 2008 RedState 3.0: Where do we go from here?
By Erick
We've got about two weeks left. Where do we go from here?
It is my intention for RedState 3.0 to be much more focused on activism. In fact, that has been my goal from day one of the redesign: provide tools to the VRWC to organize online via RedState and collaborate on campaigns, issues, activism, etc.
Many of us feel -- and it is a *feeling* -- that whoever wins on November 4th, we'll be in the minority.
So here's the thing. First, what Mike said.
Second, you don't want to rah-rah John McCain? Fine. I'm happy to pull your weight around. All you have to do is turn your fire on the Democrats. This site aims to win and it is our intention to support McCain. If you don't want to, I'm not going to make you. But, see the third point.
Third, there is a candidate in your state that you support. He or she may be running for mayor or city council or district attorney or the state legislature or governor or congress. There may be a *Democrat* you cannot tolerate running for office in your state. Heck, there may be two or five or a dozen such candidates. There might even be an issue on the ballot you care about.
Get writing about that candidate or issue. In RedState 3.0 you'll have the power to create the state sites. Your post on candidate X in Wisconsin will be on the front page of RedState Wisconsin.
Read on . . .
Posted in Miscellanea — Comments (33) / Email this page » / Read More »
Posted at 8:52pm on Apr. 8, 2008 Tennessee Edukasion: Lynn Lang Gets Reinstated
By Erick
I mentioned this in my new column at Human Events, but it is worth sharing here.
Blue Collar Muse has the tale of Lynn Lang, a high school basketball coach and teacher turned felon.
Posted in felons | Lynn Lang | State Politics | Tennessee — Comments (1) / Email this page » / Read More »
Posted at 1:32pm on Apr. 5, 2008 Question for our readers
By Erick
Out of curiosity, who among you know Python and/or Django? That's what the new site is going to be built on.
I know we have a good number of PHP guys, but didn't know about this.
Posted in Archived — Comments (12) / Email this page » / Read More »
Posted at 10:39pm on Mar. 31, 2008 Bobby Jindal -- Change you can believe in.
By Erick
The contrast between Barack Obama and Bobby Jindal could not be more stark. On the campaign trail this year, Obama serves up messages of hope and change. Last year, running for Governor of Louisiana, Jindal did the same. But Obama’s hope and change consists of platitudes. Jindal’s hope and change was premised on detailed plans and policy roadmaps to move people forward, get Louisiana on the road to recovery, and end the boom-bust economic cycles. Entering his fourth month in office, Jindal’s change has already proved to be change we can believe in.
Governor Jindal is a master of new media. To demonstrate the point, I was among a number of bloggers invited to dinner at the Governor’s Mansion last week for a mostly off the record chat. As we sat around the table, Jindal shared some of his ideas and his vision for Louisiana. To hear Jindal talk, you appreciate how rare a breed of politician he is -- a policy wonk who can relate the policies to people’s pocketbooks.
“We did a survey of business leaders before entering office and found that the top three issues for them were ethics, taxes, and workforce. That helped us build our agenda,” the Governor said. Almost immediately after his swearing in, Jindal called a special session of the Louisiana Legislature to push through an ethics reform package. Getting almost everything he wanted from the session, Louisiana went from being one of the bottom 5 states in the nation on government ethics to the top state in the nation, according to several public interest watch dog groups. (As amazing as it sounds, before this year there was no prohibition in Louisiana against state legislators doing business with the state, nor were there significant disclosure requirements for elected officials and lobbyists.)
Jindal related the story of a plant manager from north Louisiana who approached him on the campaign trail with a list of taxes his business paid in Louisiana that were paid no where else. The man reminded the governor that his plant, the largest employer in his parish, is in annual danger of closure. “He looked at me,” Governor Jindal said, “and he says, ‘Governor, because Louisiana taxes new equipment purchases, the newest equipment in my plant is older than the oldest equipment in any of my company’s other plants.’” As soon as the legislature concluded its special session on ethics reforms, Jindal called them right back into session to deal with this issue.
Read on . . .
Posted in State Politics — Comments (17) / Email this page » / Read More »
Posted at 11:57am on Feb. 21, 2008 Paging All Wii Owners (And Wanna Be Wii Owners)
By Erick
I no longer hate you. I have now purchased one.
By the way, I write this as it may be of interest to those of you who have been looking for one and can't find one.
I signed up for a tracking account at iTrakr. The site text messages you when shipment of Wii's arrive at a Wal-Mart, Gamestop, Circuit City, Best Buy, Target, or other electronics store.
Posted in Archived — Comments (13) / Email this page » / Read More »
Posted at 2:05pm on Feb. 7, 2008 I Welcome Our McCainiac Overlords (consider this your open thread to vent. Put it all here and then be done with it)
By Erick
En la luz del poste de Byron York, justo como decir hola y bienvenidos a nuestros nuevos jefes supremos McCainian.
Yo apreciaría un trabajo en la sombra y sólo preguntaría que ellos usen la fusta frugalmente en mí. También, si ellos consideran posiciones para campos de reeducación, sé este lugar agradable en las montañas de Carolina esto tiene temperaturas agradables y clima.
El senador McCain habla a las 15h00 hoy en CPAC.
[By the way, lighten up people. Just trying some light hearted humor here.]
--------------------------------------
In all seriousness, despite the light hearted humor that will no doubt rub the humorless the wrong way, it is now time to rally behind McCain.
I will have more on my thoughts later.
The big question is how far McCain will go today to patch up ties with conservatives today.
Stay tuned . . .
Posted in 2008 | always look on the bright side of life | Immigration | McCain — Comments (170) / Email this page » / Read More »
